Police don’t have any power over Snowden or Assange.
Yeah, actually they do, just not *our* police.
Snowden and Assange are subject to the laws of the land where they are and the government who controls that land. Russia doesn't need an army to deal with Snowden, their normal claim of monopoly on the use of force would work just fine.
Unfortunately, liberals have determined that Ivanka’s 6-week paid leave plan is just plain old insulting.
Was it Ted Kennedy who used to talk about having a chance to vote for something like Universal Health Care back in the 70's(?) but voted against it because they could do better?
The rarest resource in the universe is the attention of upper management.
So he would need to get new loans…and no one will loan him or his company money.
What's it worth to you?
Forbes thinks he's worth 4 Billion (he claims 10), would clean government be worth the taxpayers buying him out for that? Presumably then we spend years breaking it apart and selling it piece-meal (like the TARP).
Asserting that the AUMF allows the president to unilaterally decide that any person, anywhere in the world is a member of Al-Qaeda or affiliated groups without any sort of judicial process, then dropping a bomb on their house is “the usual rules?”
Hardly "anywhere in the world", more like "any battlefield in the world where the police have no power".
What was the "judicial process" when we bombed Saddam's house during the gulf war? When we sent a snuff squad in to kill Bin Laden? Or if you want to be really nasty, when we firebombed Tokyo during WW2?
Do we just know that she’s sane and stable relative to her father?
That seems a pretty low bar.
What we have is a total lack of meltdowns, a lot of public poise, some jobs not under the thumb of her father, relationships with functional people, and the words of Chelsea Clinton.
The First Lady's job is to advise her husband. She herself can't be fired. Often she's one of her husband's closest advisors. Except with Trump, that's his daughter. His daughter has his brains, his wife does not. His daughter is a big time advisor, his wife is not.
And I don't care. I wouldn't care if Trump wanted to have one of his sons take over that office.
We, the American people, are best off with more voices of sanity/stability talking to Trump, not fewer. Given his daughter is one of the big ones in Trump's life, I think that benefit far outweighs any downsides from potential conflicts of interest.
This is playing Trump's game and you'd lose by stepping into that ring. Focus on some outrageous thing Trump has said regarding sex and you're just letting him distract you from what he's actually doing.
You're not going to embarrass him, all you're going to do is spend your own resources (money, time, outrage) uselessly.
Kazzy:
Floyd performed the following actions, all of which have been used to justify police shootings:
Think of what Floyd did as drunk driving. What chance does the typical drunk drive have of killing someone? 1%? Probably a lot less? You can get so drunk that it's impossible for you to drive without killing yourself so the odds increase (even all the way to 100%), but that's mostly a different problem.
What Floyd did with those cops was risky, but odds were still heavily stacked in his favor that it'd be fine.
However I think you're trying to represent his behavior as potentially-risk-free-if-we-educate-the-cops (if he can do it then everyone should be able to always do it), and that seems as nonsensical as claiming that if one drunk drive doesn't cause a problem then society should be fine with it.
The point is within a rounding error, 100% of arrests don't result in anyone dying. More than 99.99% are fine, what happened here is not only what should happen but what typically does.
When a situation escalates into a shooting, have the officers involved write a description of why it went that way and things they could have done to prevent it. Circulate these in the department, so other cops can learn from them.
Not a bad idea... but the implication is we move to "no fault" as a way to deal with shootings.
If you want absolute truth and people to learn, then you can't punish them for telling it.
Number of Drunk Driving arrests per year, 1.5 million (google). That's 4109 per day.
Number of people killed by the police so far this year: 940 (https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/national/police-shootings-2016/ )
Number of arrests for drugs in 2015: 1,488,707
http://www.drugwarfacts.org/cms/Crime#sthash.723ECB3F.dpbs
Number of arrests (for anything) in 2012: 12,197,000
http://www.politifact.com/wisconsin/statements/2014/aug/29/edward-flynn/fatal-police-shootings-occur-tiny-percentage-arres/
Number of murders in the US in 2015: 15,399 (google quoting the NYT quoting the FBI).
To those paying attention, false accusations say more about the accuser than the accused. Unfortunately, so few people do.
False? Marc Rich's wife really did give more than a Million dollars to the Clintons (mostly HRC's senate campaign fund), and then Bill really did ignore all sorts of standards to give Marc a pardon. And since there's no bill of sale or other signed contract between the four of them, apparently this doesn't quite rise to the level of "provably criminal".
There's no reason to pardon him other than the money, but the legal system can't prove an actual transaction... and that's apparently the ethical standard the Clintons use.
That the Clinton' actions aren't "provably criminal" doesn't mean the accusations are "false", and we could do this dance on multiple other ethical adventures they've been on. But I don't see the point as long as you're going to insist there is no difference between "not provably criminal" and "innocent".
AFAICT, most politicians don't insist on living this close to the edge, the only other one I can think of who does is Trump.
So, no evidence of wrongdoing, just quotes that something looks fishy. And from political rivals, exactly the sort of thing you dismiss downthread.
I picked Jimmy Carter because he wasn't a political rival, certainly not to a fellow Dem and brother retired President.
I don't think it'd be useful to detail all the "evidence of wrongdoing" to everything the Clintons have done over the years (I'm sure people have written books). A good summation is they do (sometimes extremely unusual) favors for people wearing their political hat, money/power is transferred to their personal control, and we can't prove beyond a reasonable doubt that one had anything to do with the other.
Then people like you insist that "not provably criminal in court" is exactly the same as "innocent".
After we repeat that process with many ethical adventures, I get what's known as "Clinton Fatigue" and you insist that all these attempts to prove wrongdoing reveal more about the Clinton's opponents rather than the Clintons themselves.
Against Trump, a $25 million dollar judgment.
Actually that was a "settlement", and I already linked to how he works. Getting sued is expected, it's part of the plan. Like the Clintons he doesn't care what people think and he can sleep well at night no matter what he does.
If TrumpU made a profit after subtracting that $25 Million, then it was a success. If that $25 Million means it didn't make money, then it was a failure. He over promised, under delivered, and probably hurt people but whatever. He assumes he's going to get pulled into court (maybe even constantly), he assumes he'll lose every now and then, typically he settles.
The difference is pretty clear.
Amoral self seeking behavior resulting in personal profit by ignoring the usual societal norms in how that job is supposed to function. Doing just enough to keep yourself out of jail and simply not caring about ethics or even the appearance of ethics.
I don't see a difference. Trump is to business what the Clintons are to politics.
Since he would have screamed Wolf no matter what, he has zero credibility... even as to whether HRC would have been better on this issue.
Note that Wolf scream probably means HRC and Obama shouldn't be in office. If everything is racism, or a nuclear crisis, then nothing is. If everyone is a threat to the world's survival, then no one is.
If their claim to HRC being the better candidate comes down to fear, then maybe they don't actually have a claim.
If we're going to be serious about this, I think the odds of either of them pushing the button are remote, but it's slightly higher with her. Short of alien invasion he's not burning down his assets.
HRC, whose husband was the target of repeated investigated his entire term, all of which went nowhere except for one that didn’t involve corruption?
Let's just quote Jimmy Carter about the Clinton pardons: "A number of them were quite questionable, including about 40 not recommended by the Justice Department."... "I don't think there is any doubt that some of the factors in [Rich's] pardon were attributable to his large gifts. In my opinion, that was disgraceful."
Or HRC whose family foundation is a highly-rated charity with no evidence of corruption?
Let's quote Bernie Sanders about Clinton's conflict of interest: "Do I have a problem when a sitting secretary of State and a foundation run by her husband collects many, many dollars from foreign governments — governments which are dictatorships? Yeah, I do have a problem with that. Yeah, I do"
Further that "highly-rated" aspect is troubling. TCF was given unfavorable ratings until December of 2015 because of it's highly unusual structure and secrecy. Since then it's been given really high ratings. Higher even than the red cross. What changed?
3rd, I seriously doubt he's the first or the last sociopath we'll have as Prez. I'd feel a lot better with Romney in office, but that's not an option.
I'll support him when I think he's doing a good job and oppose him when he's not. Thus far he's at least shown that he's taking the job seriously. It's possible we're actually seeing "Pence in charge" and Trump is just rubber stamping everything but whatever.
You *are* aware of the allegations he constantly, repeatedly, does not pay contractors, right? There’s dozens of stories about this.
Your post, and the background research I had to do to respond to it was an eye opener. Lots of things have been brought into focus (Thank you).
I'd assumed this was a repeat of what happened with Romney, large numbers mean political opponents can pick the worst outcome and represent it as the normal. (Note having cried wolf with Romney meant this was much less believable).
I withdraw that argument. What he's doing is a deliberate business ploy. He pays his bills when it's to his advantage and doesn't when that is to his advantage. http://fortune.com/2016/09/30/donald-trump-stiff-contractors/
IMHO we're deep into "Charming Sociopath" territory.
Sociopaths are a lot more common than commonly known, something like 1%-4% of population. Lawyers, CEOs, and Politicians are seriously over represented. I've considered HRC to be one for quite a while so IMHO the country was going to be enjoying this no matter who won.
Moving back to "does it disqualify him", the answer is "no", we already knew he was a total bastard... but I will double down on saying he's a "high risk, high reward" gamble.
It's possible to view him in his entirety and say "I don't want him anywhere around me, he's a total bastard". It's also possible to say "Wow what a bastard! That's who I want as my agent!" We just had an election proving the later.
None of this, of course, disqualifies him from office. The foreign *and* domestic emolument clauses do, however.
We've talked about this. He's not disqualified if he gets Congress' blessing. Given that he's popular and got the American People's blessing, IMHO Congress will fold.
It does occur to me that if he gets totally out of line, Congress may decide they'd be better off working with Pence. And the Supremes who he's said he'll put into office are the sort of "restrain the gov" types who'd hamstring him.
My point is that the usual rules apply, and work, pretty well as is.
1) Use the police where we can use the police.
2) Being a member of the other guy's army means we can shoot you on a battlefield if there's a war on.
3) AQ has decided and declared that the entire world is a battlefield, so that's basically anywhere where we can't use the police.
Using drones to kill individuals is MUCH less ugly than sending in armies or leveling villages. That it requires we know their names is a pointless quibble. Us not knowing someone's name never meant that they didn't have one.
This war could easily last many decades, maybe even centuries. Understand that, accept it, and move on. The enemy has a vote in whatever happens and we can't force peace on him against his will.
...the steady stream of corruption scandals surrounding this man would be so obviously disqualifying as to not even be worthy of discussion.
You mean as opposed to HRC?
...character is the number one job description.
It's not. I couldn't care less about Bill's sex scandals, Trump's marriages to women who (one assumes) are marrying him for his money, Trump being an ass, or HRC reportedly being a fairly unpleasant person to work for.
I assume I'll never meet any of them or interact with them personally.
Policy and Competence greatly outweigh any/all of that.
Sure, the Clintons have no influence or connection to The Clinton Foundation at all. HRC never raised money for it, her daughter didn't use that money for her wedding, it's just a coincidence that the people HRC does favors for as SoS also give money to TCF, and that those people aren't humanitarians in other situations.
HRC threw away the election rather than let her 800 emails a month go public because she didn't really want to be President, not because going public with those emails could land her in jail or would have ended her Presidential ambitions.
/sarcasm off.
Granted, the whole TCF thing is speculation on my part, but you don't even have potentially innocent explanations.
The moment we open the door to speculation, we have a full time job's worth of emails, vile people giving Billions of dollars to TCF, and deliberate mixing of professional SoS duties with those people, etc.
Of course HRC could simply have cleared the whole thing up by going public with her email... but apparently that would have been worse than everything she did do.
I mean, imagine that there is a totally innocent explanation and there's nothing on those emails other than yoga plans and birthday planning. Picture her coming forward with that a few weeks before the election after having let Trump spend lots of time making accusations that she then proved were totally imaginary. She would have totally re-enforced her narrative that he was a loon and she was a solid, stable citizen who wasn't collecting money in a pay-to-play.
But that didn't happen. Which means the kind of speculating I'm doing, which for other people led to calls of "lock her up", was actually the least damaging path forward for her.
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.
On “Impeach Barack Obama”
Yeah, actually they do, just not *our* police.
Snowden and Assange are subject to the laws of the land where they are and the government who controls that land. Russia doesn't need an army to deal with Snowden, their normal claim of monopoly on the use of force would work just fine.
On “First Spouse Problems”
Was it Ted Kennedy who used to talk about having a chance to vote for something like Universal Health Care back in the 70's(?) but voted against it because they could do better?
The rarest resource in the universe is the attention of upper management.
"
Maybe. But time itself speeds up as you get older so it's probably that.
"
What's it worth to you?
Forbes thinks he's worth 4 Billion (he claims 10), would clean government be worth the taxpayers buying him out for that? Presumably then we spend years breaking it apart and selling it piece-meal (like the TARP).
On “Impeach Barack Obama”
Hardly "anywhere in the world", more like "any battlefield in the world where the police have no power".
What was the "judicial process" when we bombed Saddam's house during the gulf war? When we sent a snuff squad in to kill Bin Laden? Or if you want to be really nasty, when we firebombed Tokyo during WW2?
On “First Spouse Problems”
That seems a pretty low bar.
What we have is a total lack of meltdowns, a lot of public poise, some jobs not under the thumb of her father, relationships with functional people, and the words of Chelsea Clinton.
So... not perfect but way better than nothing.
"
The First Lady's job is to advise her husband. She herself can't be fired. Often she's one of her husband's closest advisors. Except with Trump, that's his daughter. His daughter has his brains, his wife does not. His daughter is a big time advisor, his wife is not.
And I don't care. I wouldn't care if Trump wanted to have one of his sons take over that office.
We, the American people, are best off with more voices of sanity/stability talking to Trump, not fewer. Given his daughter is one of the big ones in Trump's life, I think that benefit far outweighs any downsides from potential conflicts of interest.
"
This is playing Trump's game and you'd lose by stepping into that ring. Focus on some outrageous thing Trump has said regarding sex and you're just letting him distract you from what he's actually doing.
You're not going to embarrass him, all you're going to do is spend your own resources (money, time, outrage) uselessly.
On “Give This Man a Promotion”
Think of what Floyd did as drunk driving. What chance does the typical drunk drive have of killing someone? 1%? Probably a lot less? You can get so drunk that it's impossible for you to drive without killing yourself so the odds increase (even all the way to 100%), but that's mostly a different problem.
What Floyd did with those cops was risky, but odds were still heavily stacked in his favor that it'd be fine.
However I think you're trying to represent his behavior as potentially-risk-free-if-we-educate-the-cops (if he can do it then everyone should be able to always do it), and that seems as nonsensical as claiming that if one drunk drive doesn't cause a problem then society should be fine with it.
"
How does the 1% know who they are?
"
The point is within a rounding error, 100% of arrests don't result in anyone dying. More than 99.99% are fine, what happened here is not only what should happen but what typically does.
"
Not a bad idea... but the implication is we move to "no fault" as a way to deal with shootings.
If you want absolute truth and people to learn, then you can't punish them for telling it.
"
Number of Drunk Driving arrests per year, 1.5 million (google). That's 4109 per day.
Number of people killed by the police so far this year: 940 (https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/national/police-shootings-2016/ )
Number of arrests for drugs in 2015: 1,488,707
http://www.drugwarfacts.org/cms/Crime#sthash.723ECB3F.dpbs
Number of arrests (for anything) in 2012: 12,197,000
http://www.politifact.com/wisconsin/statements/2014/aug/29/edward-flynn/fatal-police-shootings-occur-tiny-percentage-arres/
Number of murders in the US in 2015: 15,399 (google quoting the NYT quoting the FBI).
On “The Electoral College Option”
False? Marc Rich's wife really did give more than a Million dollars to the Clintons (mostly HRC's senate campaign fund), and then Bill really did ignore all sorts of standards to give Marc a pardon. And since there's no bill of sale or other signed contract between the four of them, apparently this doesn't quite rise to the level of "provably criminal".
There's no reason to pardon him other than the money, but the legal system can't prove an actual transaction... and that's apparently the ethical standard the Clintons use.
That the Clinton' actions aren't "provably criminal" doesn't mean the accusations are "false", and we could do this dance on multiple other ethical adventures they've been on. But I don't see the point as long as you're going to insist there is no difference between "not provably criminal" and "innocent".
AFAICT, most politicians don't insist on living this close to the edge, the only other one I can think of who does is Trump.
"
I picked Jimmy Carter because he wasn't a political rival, certainly not to a fellow Dem and brother retired President.
I don't think it'd be useful to detail all the "evidence of wrongdoing" to everything the Clintons have done over the years (I'm sure people have written books). A good summation is they do (sometimes extremely unusual) favors for people wearing their political hat, money/power is transferred to their personal control, and we can't prove beyond a reasonable doubt that one had anything to do with the other.
Then people like you insist that "not provably criminal in court" is exactly the same as "innocent".
After we repeat that process with many ethical adventures, I get what's known as "Clinton Fatigue" and you insist that all these attempts to prove wrongdoing reveal more about the Clinton's opponents rather than the Clintons themselves.
Actually that was a "settlement", and I already linked to how he works. Getting sued is expected, it's part of the plan. Like the Clintons he doesn't care what people think and he can sleep well at night no matter what he does.
If TrumpU made a profit after subtracting that $25 Million, then it was a success. If that $25 Million means it didn't make money, then it was a failure. He over promised, under delivered, and probably hurt people but whatever. He assumes he's going to get pulled into court (maybe even constantly), he assumes he'll lose every now and then, typically he settles.
Amoral self seeking behavior resulting in personal profit by ignoring the usual societal norms in how that job is supposed to function. Doing just enough to keep yourself out of jail and simply not caring about ethics or even the appearance of ethics.
I don't see a difference. Trump is to business what the Clintons are to politics.
"
True, but at the same time, that cynicism has been earned and is deserved.
The way to bet is Trump doesn't use nukes to burn down his hotels, and he doesn't build death camps for his daughter and grandchildren.
That I can put it that way should show just how bankrupt the entire argument is, and should also show just how deserved my cynicism is.
"
Since he would have screamed Wolf no matter what, he has zero credibility... even as to whether HRC would have been better on this issue.
Note that Wolf scream probably means HRC and Obama shouldn't be in office. If everything is racism, or a nuclear crisis, then nothing is. If everyone is a threat to the world's survival, then no one is.
If their claim to HRC being the better candidate comes down to fear, then maybe they don't actually have a claim.
If we're going to be serious about this, I think the odds of either of them pushing the button are remote, but it's slightly higher with her. Short of alien invasion he's not burning down his assets.
"
It's possible Obama was right.
However Obama would have said that against whoever HRC was running against.
"
Let's just quote Jimmy Carter about the Clinton pardons: "A number of them were quite questionable, including about 40 not recommended by the Justice Department."... "I don't think there is any doubt that some of the factors in [Rich's] pardon were attributable to his large gifts. In my opinion, that was disgraceful."
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/carter-rich-pardon-disgraceful/
Let's quote Bernie Sanders about Clinton's conflict of interest: "Do I have a problem when a sitting secretary of State and a foundation run by her husband collects many, many dollars from foreign governments — governments which are dictatorships? Yeah, I do have a problem with that. Yeah, I do"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clinton_Foundation%E2%80%93State_Department_controversy
Further that "highly-rated" aspect is troubling. TCF was given unfavorable ratings until December of 2015 because of it's highly unusual structure and secrecy. Since then it's been given really high ratings. Higher even than the red cross. What changed?
"
1st, I didn't vote for the guy.
2nd, HRC has a lot of those indications as well.
3rd, I seriously doubt he's the first or the last sociopath we'll have as Prez. I'd feel a lot better with Romney in office, but that's not an option.
I'll support him when I think he's doing a good job and oppose him when he's not. Thus far he's at least shown that he's taking the job seriously. It's possible we're actually seeing "Pence in charge" and Trump is just rubber stamping everything but whatever.
"
Your post, and the background research I had to do to respond to it was an eye opener. Lots of things have been brought into focus (Thank you).
I'd assumed this was a repeat of what happened with Romney, large numbers mean political opponents can pick the worst outcome and represent it as the normal. (Note having cried wolf with Romney meant this was much less believable).
I withdraw that argument. What he's doing is a deliberate business ploy. He pays his bills when it's to his advantage and doesn't when that is to his advantage. http://fortune.com/2016/09/30/donald-trump-stiff-contractors/
IMHO we're deep into "Charming Sociopath" territory.
Sociopaths are a lot more common than commonly known, something like 1%-4% of population. Lawyers, CEOs, and Politicians are seriously over represented. I've considered HRC to be one for quite a while so IMHO the country was going to be enjoying this no matter who won.
Moving back to "does it disqualify him", the answer is "no", we already knew he was a total bastard... but I will double down on saying he's a "high risk, high reward" gamble.
It's possible to view him in his entirety and say "I don't want him anywhere around me, he's a total bastard". It's also possible to say "Wow what a bastard! That's who I want as my agent!" We just had an election proving the later.
We've talked about this. He's not disqualified if he gets Congress' blessing. Given that he's popular and got the American People's blessing, IMHO Congress will fold.
It does occur to me that if he gets totally out of line, Congress may decide they'd be better off working with Pence. And the Supremes who he's said he'll put into office are the sort of "restrain the gov" types who'd hamstring him.
On “Impeach Barack Obama”
My point is that the usual rules apply, and work, pretty well as is.
1) Use the police where we can use the police.
2) Being a member of the other guy's army means we can shoot you on a battlefield if there's a war on.
3) AQ has decided and declared that the entire world is a battlefield, so that's basically anywhere where we can't use the police.
Using drones to kill individuals is MUCH less ugly than sending in armies or leveling villages. That it requires we know their names is a pointless quibble. Us not knowing someone's name never meant that they didn't have one.
This war could easily last many decades, maybe even centuries. Understand that, accept it, and move on. The enemy has a vote in whatever happens and we can't force peace on him against his will.
On “The Electoral College Option”
Very good post David, I'll have to look up some things before replying.
"
You mean as opposed to HRC?
It's not. I couldn't care less about Bill's sex scandals, Trump's marriages to women who (one assumes) are marrying him for his money, Trump being an ass, or HRC reportedly being a fairly unpleasant person to work for.
I assume I'll never meet any of them or interact with them personally.
Policy and Competence greatly outweigh any/all of that.
On “Impeach Barack Obama”
Sure, the Clintons have no influence or connection to The Clinton Foundation at all. HRC never raised money for it, her daughter didn't use that money for her wedding, it's just a coincidence that the people HRC does favors for as SoS also give money to TCF, and that those people aren't humanitarians in other situations.
HRC threw away the election rather than let her 800 emails a month go public because she didn't really want to be President, not because going public with those emails could land her in jail or would have ended her Presidential ambitions.
/sarcasm off.
Granted, the whole TCF thing is speculation on my part, but you don't even have potentially innocent explanations.
The moment we open the door to speculation, we have a full time job's worth of emails, vile people giving Billions of dollars to TCF, and deliberate mixing of professional SoS duties with those people, etc.
Of course HRC could simply have cleared the whole thing up by going public with her email... but apparently that would have been worse than everything she did do.
I mean, imagine that there is a totally innocent explanation and there's nothing on those emails other than yoga plans and birthday planning. Picture her coming forward with that a few weeks before the election after having let Trump spend lots of time making accusations that she then proved were totally imaginary. She would have totally re-enforced her narrative that he was a loon and she was a solid, stable citizen who wasn't collecting money in a pay-to-play.
But that didn't happen. Which means the kind of speculating I'm doing, which for other people led to calls of "lock her up", was actually the least damaging path forward for her.
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.