Octopus Overlords

I'm still up in the air. I really, really don't want to vote for Hillary. I'm watching the polls, though, to determine if I need to do so in self-defense.

Don't make a Brexit mistake of voting based on what you think might happen.

Isgrimnur wrote:Don't make a Brexit mistake of voting based on what you think might happen.

Exactly my fear, and why I'm less likely to protest-vote for someone I actually like.

Scoop20906 wrote: This makes sense to me and might explain why Trump was able to hijack the Republican system because he was able to tap into people's frustration with the main parties nominations over the last decades.

Don't let people off so easily. They had sixteen choices and they picked the worst.

YellowKing wrote:What we really need is an alien invasion to unite humanity against a common enemy.

[Edit] I'm only half-kidding. Think about it - we no longer fear the Soviets, China still seems kind of a distant threat. Terrorism, OK sure, but it's not centralized enough. With no big threat to focus on, we turn on each other.

The whole planet's political thought processes are absurd. We could be working together far better both within the USA and across borders to fix our impact on Earth, colonize and explore the Solar system and further the chances of human life continuing after we destroy this planet. But instead we continue to focus on craziness like Drumpf and email servers, Brexit, et al.

We do have big, clear, obvious threats to focus on. But they're hard, they require a critical thought process not bound by preconceived notions about whose team's claims must be correct, they don't have solutions available within an election cycle, and they aren't shiny.

This is made all the more demoralizing whenever I think about what we as a planet could be accomplishing were we not so ridiculous.

Holman wrote:

Scoop20906 wrote: This makes sense to me and might explain why Trump was able to hijack the Republican system because he was able to tap into people's frustration with the main parties nominations over the last decades.

Don't let people off so easily. They had sixteen choices and they picked the worst.

Which is I think the biggest part of the problem.

If the establishment Republicans wanted to win they should have just went in with 2 or 3 guys. While the Democrat establishment people deferred to Clinton which kept Sanders from doing what Trump has done.

I think Rip's right there. With so many choices name recognition bubbles to the top.

I don't think anyone had control over how many candidates went into the ring, though. People can just announce they're running for president, can't they?

Yes

Each individual who is a candidate for federal office must file an FEC Form 2 within 15 days of becoming a candidate. The candidate may file this form on paper or electronically. Paper filers may choose to send a letter that contains the information required on the FEC Form 2, in lieu of the form itself.

Under the Federal Election Campaign Act of 1971, as amended (the Act), an individual becomes a candidate for federal office when:

• The individual has received contributions aggregating in excess of $5,000 or made expenditures aggregating in excess of $5,000; or
• The individual has given consent to another person to receive contributions or make expenditures on behalf of him or herself and that person has received contributions aggregating in excess of $5,000 or made expenditures aggregating in excess of $5,000 (11 CFR 100.3(a)).

There are 1,785 filers listed at the link.

Rip wrote:

Holman wrote:

Scoop20906 wrote: This makes sense to me and might explain why Trump was able to hijack the Republican system because he was able to tap into people's frustration with the main parties nominations over the last decades.

Don't let people off so easily. They had sixteen choices and they picked the worst.

Which is I think the biggest part of the problem.

If the establishment Republicans wanted to win they should have just went in with 2 or 3 guys. While the Democrat establishment people deferred to Clinton which kept Sanders from doing what Trump has done.

Yeah, you figure with several more candidates Sanders would have had a much better chance. There was an analysis the other day (I think the NY Times?) about how much closer Clinton / Sanders would've been had Biden entered the race.

They can. But in the Democrat party not towing the party line will turn you into an outcast. Just ask Bernie.

http://www.politico.com/story/2016/07/b ... ats-225161

That the Democrats only had a couple realistic candidates isn't an indication that their were only a couple Democrats who would like the job but more of the fact you can't get the Democrat nomination without the support of the establishment Democrats.

The Republican establishment guys have lost control over several segments of their base because they sold them out one too many times. I'm sure they will want to adopt some super-delegate based system as well in an attempt to keep the little people in line the way the Democrats do.

Watch how fast they turn on Bernie and everything he stood for. They will give a little lip service to some of his agenda but very little will ever get anywhere.

Will Rogers must be spinning in his grave.

I am not a member of any organized party — I am a Democrat.

I prefer watching Republicans hold their nose and try to find nice things to say about Trump.

Rip wrote:They can. But in the Democrat party not towing the party line will turn you into an outcast. Just ask Bernie.

http://www.politico.com/story/2016/07/b ... ats-225161

Timing is everything...

House Democrats frustrated with Bernie Sanders' slow-moving support for Hillary Clinton shouted "timeline, timeline" at the presidential candidate during a closed-door meeting. A dozen Democrats wanted to know the Vermont senator's timeline for endorsing Clinton, the presumptive nominee, with just three weeks to the start of the Democratic convention in Philadelphia. Sanders never answered, though at one point he said, "our goal is not to win elections," then paused. During that pause, Sanders was booed, until he completed his thought by saying, "but to transform America" in order to win elections. The exchange is according to a Democrat who attended the session and spoke on condition of anonymity to freely discuss the meeting.

Bernie is in a position to make changes to the party platform, but he needs to endorse Hilary and move his supporters towards her since beating Trump is paramount

tru1cy wrote:Bernie is in a position to make changes to the party platform, but he needs to endorse Hilary and move his supporters towards her since beating Trump is paramount

He has more leverage to change the platform the longer he waits. This is a non-issue until the convention.

He's already said he will vote for Clinton. They'll try to leverage the best position until the convention, and then he will absolutely endorse her. Although some of his supporters are crazy enough to vote for Trump on principle anyway.

Watching the "interrogation" of Comey right now. The Republican member from Florida is a total a**hole. He all but accused Comey of conspiring with Lynch, Clinton, and Obama in deciding not to recommend prosecution. No wonder this country is screwed up when people like this hold elected office.

gilraen wrote:He's already said he will vote for Clinton. They'll try to leverage the best position until the convention, and then he will absolutely endorse her. Although some of his supporters are crazy enough to vote for Trump on lack of principle anyway.

Fixed.

Grifman wrote:Watching the "interrogation" of Comey right now. The Republican member from Florida is a total a**hole. He all but accused Comey of conspiring with Lynch, Clinton, and Obama in deciding not to recommend prosecution. No wonder this country is screwed up when people like this hold elected office.

Do you remember which a··hole from FL it was? There are so many...

I've been watching this. I had high confidence in Comey (going back to the infamous incident with Ashcroft). I have extremely high confidence in him now. Congress - still useless. We have actual problems. This whole thing was as usual completely wasted time.

I particularly enjoyed when Comey says that the Nishimura case was *completely different*.

Comey needs to run for office. Any man who can deliver the line

I offered extraordinary transparency, which I'm sure confused and bugged a lot of people

has my vote.

hepcat wrote:Comey needs to run for office. Any man who can deliver the line

I offered extraordinary transparency, which I'm sure confused and bugged a lot of people

has my vote.

Wow. That's brilliant!

If you don't get the result you want, investigate again until you get something to stick!

So tired of these jackasses endlessly spending our tax dollars in the hopes of a short-term political advantage.

Zarathud wrote:So tired of these jackasses endlessly spending our tax dollars in the hopes of a short-term political advantage.

I guess if I was looking for a little light in a *very dark and seemingly endless tunnel* I'd say at least this isn't on the level of short-term political advantage that ends in a Brexit-level event.

Chaffetz is amazingly out of his mind. He is saying that there should be prosecutions of Clinton's uncleared attorneys because they *may* have happened to come across classified documents accidentally. Comey dealt well with that total jackass.

malchior wrote:Chaffetz is amazingly out of his mind. He is saying that there should be prosecutions of Clinton's uncleared attorneys because they *may* have happened to come across classified documents accidentally. Comey dealt well with that total jackass.

He doesn't understand that the attorneys didn't look at the emails, they used a search engine to look at headers and email content to determine if they were personal vs. work. It also turns out that they may have security clearance after all according to Elisha Cummings (TBD).

If I understand the law I don't think it matters anyway. The idea that a random person happening in the course of their job across data that would open them to prosecution by just seeing it...seems bonkers insane.

Isn't the method to put almost everything under classified and then downgrade it later?

Still, I still think how dumb it is for someone to mix their personal and work (especially sensitive) emails in the same pool. He is right that this shows a large level of poor judgement and I think she should have some type of sanction if she was still Secretary of State where they could fine her or put her on administrative leave or something. But she isn't anymore so you can't do that. Is she even employed by the federal government any longer?

malchior wrote:

Zarathud wrote:So tired of these jackasses endlessly spending our tax dollars in the hopes of a short-term political advantage.

I guess if I was looking for a little light in a *very dark and seemingly endless tunnel* I'd say at least this isn't on the level of short-term political advantage that ends in a Brexit-level event.

I suspect the markets would react even worse than they did to the Brexit if Trump were to win.

I don't disagree. I think Trump winning will have a net negative effect on the economy. One that he'll have zero ability to deal with.

Zarathud wrote:If you don't get the result you want, investigate again until you get something to stick!

While legally the Clintons are Teflon, I think this is really going to stick. I think she's going to win, because Trump but this is going to stick. I think this (biased libertarian) opinion piece is going to be how the white house and therefore American justice is viewed as Just Us (how's that for a right wing bumper sticker?) at least for next four years and shit's gonna move that much closer to a boiling point because of it.

This is not good when, #BlackLivesMatter is not exactly a distant memory of the past and when for profit prisons are a growing business.

http://reason.com/blog/2016/07/07/why-h ... leges-that

http://www.newyorker.com/news/john-cass ... rd-snowden

Snowden wasn't hounded for how he handled classified information. He was hounded for intentionally spilling classified information to a widespread audience.

Clinton did not intentionally spill classified information to anyone. I've asked several times, without answer, so I'll give it one more go. How did the classified information get on her email server? Did she put it there? Did someone email it to her?

Snowden was a whistleblower that she wants to fry. She said he should have done thing right. But there was no right way for him to be a whistleblower, except maybe lie about it?

RunningMn9 wrote:I've asked several times, without answer, so I'll give it one more go. How did the classified information get on her email server? Did she put it there? Did someone email it to her?

While it's a valid question and interesting and excellent question, I don't know if the FBI addressed it (publicly?). I haven't read it anywhere.

A quick Internet search say this is the closest thing I can find quickly that is more or less objective (poltifact seemed less objective and more slanted to her being the originator and that trying to claim the server had in fact been demonstrably hacked, where as factcheck says there is no evidence of successful hacking even if that does mean there was no hacking)....

http://www.factcheck.org/2016/07/a-guid ... ns-emails/

Yes. More than 2,000 of the 30,490 emails Clinton turned over to the State Department in December 2014 contained classified information, including 110 emails in 52 email chains that contained classified information at the time they were sent or received, Comey said. The FBI director said “a very small number” of the emails containing classified information “bore markings indicating the presence of classified information,” contrary to Clinton’s claims that none was marked classified.

The answer is both? 110 less than more 2,000 were either emails she sent or receive not in an email chain with a "a very small number" marked explicitly as classified?

And yet in the court of public opinion, I don't think it matters one way or another. I think the perception that she is Stanford Swimmer guy of politics will stay with her for her entire term, and not just from the extreme right.

You can quote me on this prediction and laugh at me when I am wrong: Even though Clinton is running against Trump, Trump, TRUMP!, and even though our population has expanded, Clinton will get less votes than Obama did against McCain...

Internet says...

69,498,516

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U ... ote_margin

http://www.multpl.com/united-states-population/table

US pop in 2008 304.09 million
US pop in 2016 322.48 million

Grifman wrote:Watching the "interrogation" of Comey right now. The Republican member from Florida is a total a**hole. He all but accused Comey of conspiring with Lynch, Clinton, and Obama in deciding not to recommend prosecution. No wonder this country is screwed up when people like this hold elected office.

I caught some of this while waiting at the airport. What I came away with was, out of thousands of emails investigated, there were only 3 that had (C) in the body of the email, and so were not even correctly identified as classified by the department's own guidelines! And for this some ex-CIA turd from Texas was saying Clinton put lives at risk. Bitch, please.

RunningMn9 wrote:Snowden wasn't hounded for how he handled classified information. He was hounded for intentionally spilling classified information to a widespread audience.

Clinton did not intentionally spill classified information to anyone. I've asked several times, without answer, so I'll give it one more go. How did the classified information get on her email server? Did she put it there? Did someone email it to her?

Interesting tidbits from today's hearing. There wasn't a discussion of who sent the email but mostly it sounded like it was multiple people inside the organization. But the 'clearly marked' classified information Comey referred to in his statement. There were 3. And they constituted a single character - (c) for confidential (not secret or top secret!) buried in a paragraph in the 3 longish emails. And they weren't actually legitimate. They were human errors. All the other classified information was upclassified or deemed classified when sent but wasn't marked as such. Comey classified it seeming to consist of general State Department business.

RunningMn9 wrote: I've asked several times, without answer, so I'll give it one more go. How did the classified information get on her email server? Did she put it there? Did someone email it to her?

Hmm, I would have that it was pretty clear - it was emailed to her. In most cases, maybe even all, it wasn't a document that was attached, it was a classified matter discussed by someone else who wrote the initial email and then it worked its way up the chain to her. She ddin't download a file of classified info, if that's what you are asking.

I was out doing some yard work a few minutes ago and I recalled there was an actual interesting moment in the Comey inquisition. I don't know if anyone else was watching but at the end Chaffetz asked a question about whether they found anything implicating the Clinton Foundation. This seemed (to me at least) to get under Comey's skin. I don't know if it was supposed to be an off-limits topic, something Chaffetz found out about, or just bluster but Comey's composure changed and Chaffetz started swaying back and forth like he wanted to dig in on it. Maybe it is the poker player in me looking for something but there was something going on there. Comey said he wouldn't answer the question and Chaffetz just moved briskly on with his presen-questioning. Thought that was fairly odd.

Another interesting tidbit - gross negligence was never on the table. Justice doesn't think it is likely constitutional.

malchior wrote:I was out doing some yard work a few minutes ago and I recalled there was an actual interesting moment in the Comey inquisition. I don't know if anyone else was watching but at the end Chaffetz asked a question about whether they found anything implicating the Clinton Foundation. This seemed (to me at least) to get under Comey's skin. I don't know if it was supposed to be an off-limits topic, something Chaffetz found out about, or just bluster but Comey's composure changed and Chaffetz started swaying back and forth like he wanted to dig in on it. Maybe it is the poker player in me looking for something but there was something going on there. Comey said he wouldn't answer the question and Chaffetz just moved briskly on with his presen-questioning. Thought that was fairly odd.

Another interesting tidbit - gross negligence was never on the table. Justice doesn't think it is likely constitutional.

I didn't see this or have an extensive background but is under the skin the same as ? I could see a testimony turning hostile if goal post changed for witch hunting purposes. You know damned well that it's the next target for Republican hunting grounds. On the other hand, you have context I don't. Maybe there was supposed to be something verboten about discussing the Clinton Foundation. I just don't see that in what is largely a partisan investigation with too much hackery displayed already.

So apparently the Congress republicans are now going to send another "recommendation" to the FBI to investigate whether Clinton perjured herself during the Benghazi hearings when the subject of email came up.

At this point FBI should just come back and say flat out right that will not investigate anything else that has anything to do with emails or Benghazi. I don't care if all of Saudi royal family and Kim Jong-Un have hacked into her server. Just stop wasting my taxpayer money on this witch hunt! Just accept the fact that it's 2016 and there's no such thing as secure data anymore.