Il Douché and His Discontents: The 2016 Primary Voting Thread, Part 4

I agree the DIY home server is nagl, and I cringe inwardly every time I think about it. But the usual counterpoint to that is prior secretaries of state did similar things, as did many Bush admin officials. For me this is not very helpful - she should have known it would look sleazy and get used against her, the way so many things have been. Caesar's wife and all that.

... I mean, you come into a new job, you ask "how should we set up things? what are the best practices?" and someone tells you "everyone set up a personal server" so you say "okay, let's do that" and then years later everyone comes down on you like a ton of bricks for following procedure with precedent that apparently didn't divulge any critical secrets to anyone who didn't already have access to them, and somehow at the originating point you are supposed to know that the best practice put in front of you is a set up for a partisan attack?

^^^

this whole thing is such a stupid non-scandal. People harmed = 0.

I mean it's one thing if they were like "use this Dropbox for all of your sensitive documents, that's our standard practice" but I do think you're basically saying "Hillary Clinton should have had precognitive abilities, then none of this would be happening"

The Koch Bros are avowedly anti-Trump

― on entre O.K. on sort K.O. (man alive), Thursday, March 3, 2016 3:58 PM (9 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yup, they are quite clearly NOT in control

― Οὖτις, Thursday, March 3, 2016 3:59 PM (8 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

don't Kock bros own the R voter database? they could withhold it from Trump

... I mean, you come into a new job, you ask "how should we set up things? what are the best practices?" and someone tells you "everyone set up a personal server" so you say "okay, let's do that" and then years later everyone comes down on you like a ton of bricks for following procedure with precedent that apparently didn't divulge any critical secrets to anyone who didn't already have access to them, and somehow at the originating point you are supposed to know that the best practice put in front of you is a set up for a partisan attack?

personally i don't really care at all about the email thing, BUT while i could see some people in her position being that ignorant, i can't imagine that she didn't realize there was something fishy about what she was doing. proper recordkeeping is drilled into you in the federal govt. i have a hard time believing she didn't understand it herself, but certainly one of her handlers would have known something was wrong with that approach.

Doc Casino, apologies if that came off as insensitive. There's an obvious parallel in my mind with a Muslim defending Trump's anti-Muslim rhetoric and insisting that he ultimately has a good heart, but I wasn't intending to be flippant about domestic abuse.

even if it is a real problem (which i'm clearly not even a little convinced about) republicans kinda blew it with all the other fake scandals they tried to make stick before this one. it's hard to believe any scandalous claims are valid at this pt, and certainly not ones so flimsily constructed.

karl otm

i registered democratic today so if the dem primaries do make it to PA i can vote in them

Anyway, given the area I covered, I received a lot of classified reports from the CIA, the State Department, etc.. They had all sorts of warnings in capital letters on their covers: SECRET NOFORN NOCONTRACT PROPIN ORCON, I think, was the standard litany. And there was a security person who came through our offices at night, scooped up any classified documents we left out, put them in a safe, and issued citations. Between the number of classified documents I received and my continuing true identity as an absent-minded professor, I got a lot of citations — second only to Marty.

But the reason I kept forgetting to lock the things up was that none of them — literally not one, during a whole year — contained anything actually sensitive. There was nothing in any of them you couldn’t have read in newspapers, or figured out for yourself given public information.

I was privy to a few bits of sensitive information, I guess — for example, I knew that Brazil was out of money a few days before it was public — but none of it was in classified documents. (And the larger secret I learned from my year — that the quality of discussion in cabinet-level meetings is lower than you can imagine — isn’t the kind of thing people put in classified documents.)

So my guess is that the only scandal here is how much anodyne stuff gets “Top secret” slapped on it.

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2016/01/29/my-classified-life/

Old Lunch, thanks, i appreciate that. Sorry for coming at you kind of abruptly and without really explaining myself.

oh ffs this Romney speech is hilarious, just watching his face, I really really really wish he were running again, I think a can of Diet Coke could beat him.

hell a can of diet PEPSI could

i'd bet on a flat Diet Rite even

President Tab

don't look at the carpet trump drew something awful on it

― Karl Malone, Thursday, March 3, 2016 3:25 PM

still laughing

President Tab

― i like to trump and i am crazy (DJP), Thursday, March 3, 2016 3:36 PM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

doesn't romney actually have a son named "tab"?

Tagg!

Willard Romney—father of the Massachusetts healthcare reform which he disowned while running for president; once more pro-gay than Teddy Kennedy; employer of undocumented workers who had to can them because he was running for office, for pete's sake—actually deploring He, Trump for being malleable in his political opinions?

Honestly, people. If you can't see the humor in this, you're not having nearly enough fun in show business.

-- Charles Pierce

Mitt looking pretty good for a 68 year old though, i had no idea he was that old

uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/donald-trump-brothers-grimsby-sacha-baron-cohen_us_56d8774ce4b03a405677a912?j27f1or

Donald Trump Gets AIDS In A New Movie, And That Has Studio Execs In A Panic
Afraid of Trump's reaction, they're "subtly trying to make it disappear," says an industry source.

Holy shit SERIOUS LOL at this line at the end of Romney's speech: "He's playing the members of the American public for suckers, he gets a free ride to the White House, and all we get is a lousy hat."

missed his chance to say "lousy hat made in China"

Editor's note: Donald Trump is a serial liar, rampant xenophobe, racist, misogynist, birther and bully who has repeatedly pledged to ban all Muslims -- 1.6 billion members of an entire religion -- from entering the U.S.

We really need to find a way to convince Trump to kill himself while making hime think it was his idea

shit Romney did at Bain Capital was graft on a level that makes the Donald look like a guy working a crooked carnival game at a county fair

Lol @ clemenza's Hinckley observation

Having previously blamed a faulty earpiece for failing to condemn Duke, he this time said he couldn’t just come out and condemn groups generically because — what if they were Jewish?

shit Romney did at Bain Capital was graft on a level that makes the Donald look like a guy working a crooked carnival game at a county fair
― robbie ca$hflo (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Thursday, March 3, 2016 4:05 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yeah, like keeping guitar center afloat another few years

the people need their multi-fx pedals

If we can't buy a Tube Screamer at 9 PM on a Tuesday, then the terrorists have won.

so there is already, somehow, another GOP debate tonight. i'm not sure i can bear even tuning in and out without carson there.

Rubio and Cruz should just knife Trump onstage

they should just dispense with the questions and do an American Gladiators-styled joust

xpost godfuckingdammit

LOL

Rubio and Cruz: bringing piss to a shitfight

"speak up Donald, you're hard to hear under that white sheet"

romney pulling a backstab candidacy around the GOP convention is akin to throwing the presidency, which it sounds like the party would rather do than see trump run and demolish the party for a decade. romney has nothing to lose and plenty of goodwill to gain. republican party is certainly capable of mustering the political will to push trump outta the drivers seat at their own convention, no? That's what I'd expect if he continues to cruise through the primaries.

somebody who understands this horseshit better than me explain how that can't happen

GOP wont sacrifice an energized voter base. Thats why it wont happen.

They're going to resign themselves to being a rump party/try to cut their losses because the alternative is to not be a party at all.

it can if theyre in denial that it's their base

xp

don't they desperately WANT to sacrifice trumps energized voter base? and don't they want a figleaf so all the senate race candidates can "disavow" trump or embrace him depending on their constituency?

Former=no. The latter=yes. Not mutually exclusive.

also if liberals have to triangulate their thoughts around voting for the same November candidate as John McCain, Bill Kristol etc CHRIST i will have an orgasm every three hours.

romney as candidate doesn't make a whiff of sense to me, even if we're entertaining the idea of a counter-trump nominee getting cooked up at the convention. the argument would be: trump only has a plurality of delegates, the majority of the party voted against him. very close to that would be the thought: and they voted for these other people. not for mitt romney. the delegates they'd be trying to horse-trade into some united non-trump candidate would be ted cruz and marco rubio delegates (well maybe kasich i dunno), neither of whom likely would have the slightest interest in handing the nomination to a proven loser who's anointed himself the savior of the party for no really clear reason.

imo the backroom deal would be for a cruz/rubio ticket or cruz/kasich if rubio completes his fizzling and the latter has some late-game surge and has something to actually offer the dealmakers. this is all imagining a world where a) we actually get to the convention and trump only has a plurality and b) there are people who can present themselves as plausible brokers in the first place. i could imagine that romney is kinda putting himself forward for that role. but him slipping into the presidential nom after having done jack shit this whole time would seem weird, underhanded and/or fishy even to swaths of the party not otherwise inclined to see the entire business as a shady steal of trump's rightful crown etc. etc. i still don't think any of this is a likely scenario mind you but i am willing to say, boy does it look less utterly unlikely than it did when the subject first came up.

also if liberals have to triangulate their thoughts around voting for the same November candidate as John McCain, Bill Kristol etc CHRIST i will have an orgasm every three hours.

― we can be heroes just for about 3.6 seconds (Dr Morbius)

Pictures or it's gonna happen.

romney as candidate doesn't make a whiff of sense to me

I'm not seeing this entertained anywhere in a serious fashion. NRO was tepid too.

yeah it's only popped up as being some hazy idea being considered by possibly no more than one anonymous source, as in this AP story:

Romney advisers have recently sought information on a contested convention, though there appeared to be no concrete planning for that possibility and it was unclear whether their efforts signaled Romney's own interest in becoming the GOP nominee through a floor fight, according to a Republican familiar with the efforts. That person was not authorized to discuss the plans publicly and spoke only on condition of anonymity.

Another idea rumbling through power corridors in Washington was the prospect of a late third-party candidate to represent more mainstream conservatives.

Former Texas Gov. Rick Perry has been approached by "a mixture of people" about being part of a third-party bid, said Jeff Miller, who managed Perry's failed GOP presidential campaign. But Miller said Perry found the idea "ludicrous."

i.e. never gonna happen but get ready for a million commentaries and fan-theories as to how it just... might.. happen!