Curb Your Authoritarianism? The 2016 Conventional Wisdom Thread (Elections, Part 6)

Mosquitos target our precious bodily fluids.

I'm surely not the first person to draw this parallel, but I'm getting some serious Drunk Uncle vibes from this Trump speech. He rambles incoherently until he tapers off and the crowd cheers...because he finished a sentence or something, I guess? Except for when he pays lip service to Hispanics or African Americans or the LGBT community, when they grow strangely quiet for some reason. I dunno. It's just more of the same. So goddamn bizarre.

Wow, I think Trump actually believes he was the first to ever refer to American politics as a rigged system. Really doubling down on that one. Such an innovator.

Clinton will very likely get through this, but I think the Republicans are decimating Comey.

The Republican questioners talk about Clinton; the Democrats talk about Petraeus and Trump,.

i wasn't going to vote for her but that was before i learned that if i vote for the green party i can cancel my student debt

http://i.imgur.com/tlOLiPk.png

I know almost nothing about James Comey but what I do know suggests he's a craven doofus who shouldn't have this job

It's a shitty day for Clinton when trey fucking gowdy is scoring points:

Representative Trey Gowdy, Republican of South Carolina, read Mrs. Clinton’s public statements about her email account to Mr. Comey and repeatedly asked: is that true?

The answer from the F.B.I. director could not be seen as good news in Mrs. Clinton’s campaign headquarters: Mr. Comey repeatedly said that Mrs. Clinton’s statements were not true.

“Secretary Clinton said there was nothing marked classified,” Mr. Gowdy said.

Mr. Comey said that description was “not true.”

Mr. Gowdy noted that Mrs. Clinton said there was no classified material on her servers.

“There was classified email,” Mr. Comey said.

Mr. Gowdy said that Mrs. Clinton claimed that she turned over all work-related emails.

“We found work-related emails, thousands, that were not returned,” Mr. Comey said.

I know almost nothing about James Comey but what I do know suggests he's a craven doofus who shouldn't have this job

― Sean, let me be clear (silby)

should fit in nicely with congress then

How Comey earned his rep: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/05/15/AR2007051500864.html

I was going to say that I hope Alfred's watching; I think that's Mark Halperin at the right of the frame when the camera's on Comey.

brb gonna get chips

Clinton should just come out and say "look, I have no idea how an e-mail server works and neither do most of you, there was no security breach and nobody was harmed, so who gives a shit"

Comey did as well as he could have on Tuesday, but found the part of Comey's speech when he said foreign agents "may" or "might" have looked at her material irresponsible. Keep it in your pants, Romeo.

(xpost) I don't know...that sounds a little bit like Rosemary Woods saying she didn't understand how a tape recorder worked.

Rosemary Woods's job was to operate the tape recorder. Hillary Clinton was the Secretary of State. HTH

i consider myself at least mildly tech-aware and i don't think i could describe what a server does in a way that didn't make me sound like an idiot.

just reading some live updates, it seems like this is going....not very well for the GOP

sorry for the massive c/p from another message board but this is a good readthrough of why this isn't a very big deal:

This is primarily a meta-argument about how the email scandal accusations are framed.

xxxxxxx posted:

It's very likely that the state dept had no mechanism for delivering classified email to smartphones and the only option would be unclassified email.

When Colin Powell stepped up in 2004 the state department didn't have email at all. He used a private mail account through dial up on his personal laptop in his office to do all his emailing in part to show other people how awesome email is and make the case for adopting it.

In his autobiography he talks with pride about successfully making the case to get funding that allowed him to purchase 44,000 internet capable computers so that every person at state could have one:

http://www.politicususa.com/2015/03...il-scandal.html

Colin Powell posted:

What I did when I entered the State Department, I found an antiquated system that had to be modernized and modernized quickly.

So we put in place new systems, bought 44,000 computers and put a new Internet capable computer on every single desk in every embassy, every office in the State Department. And then I connected it with software.

But in order to change the culture, to change the brainware, as I call it, I started using it in order to get everybody to use it, so we could be a 21st century institution and not a 19th century.

It's a rather important bit of perspective to realize that when Clinton stepped up in 2008 email was still a rather new thing at State ( it takes awhile to get funding and install 44,000 computers ) and that prior to its adoption all the business done on email was done on private accounts out of band. For example, Powell's demo email account only connected with staff who also had private email accounts since the .gov email system didn't exist yet. People who frame this as if the state department IT was run like a James Bond movie are misinformed. Deliberately so since talking up the maturity/security of their IT allows detractors to make Clinton's actions look more significant/subversive.

Another bit of misleading framing is the implication or claim that Clintons' server was set up after she was appointed SoS. In reality the Clinton family server was set up by Bill after he stepped down around 2001ish. Hillary had her blackberry hooked up to it all during the primary. Setting up a secure email server is a significant endeavor for the layman. By claiming it was done after she stepped up you make listeners suspicious and prime them to accept a devious motive. The truth that she just kept on using the setup she'd been using, otoh, flows much more naturally into Hillary's stated reason, convenience. All her shit was there and why mess with what works? You can juggle two mail boxes ok but juggling two calendars completely defeats the purpose of a calendar. Again, she used it in place of a non-classified .gov email. When she had to use the secure system she went to the secure building and handed over her wireless devices to security to get in and sit at a special secure terminal like everyone else. She hated it just like everyone else. Lastly, her own emails show her asking IT to hook up her blackberry to a .gov account and them saying they couldn't do it.. ( http://www.cbsnews.com/news/emails-...ure-smartphone/ ). This information is also left out or actively lied about by people pushing a nefarious motives narrative since attempt to use the State system while maintaining the functionality of her system undermines their entire premise.

The last major false frame of the email scandal is the idea that criminal prosecution is something that routinely happens when people mess up with secure material. You get a lot of hyperbolic claims about how much trouble a regular Joe would be if they'd done that. Also a shit ton of quoting snippets of legal statutes and torturing the definition of the word "deliberately". If security agencies criminally prosecuted people for honest mistakes then people would never self report or cooperate with security audits for fear of jail. It is more important that breaches be promptly and honestly reported than to jail people for mistakes. They will fuck you up if you deliberately sell data or deliberately post it to wiki leaks sure. But if you are operating in good faith then jail isn't a realistic outcome even if you "deliberately" took some work home with you the night you got mugged and someone stole your backpack. You didn't intend for the data to get away so that's not the right kind of "deliberately" to get anti-espionage statutes thrown at you.

A minor frame used in all three major frames is trying to make this an elitist thing. Asserting that nobody else uses personal emails when it was actually a common practice or that she is avoiding punishment others would face when in reality punishment would be the exception rather than the rule.

Once you see the tropes and false frames, you can't un-see them.

xxxxx posted:
That is exactly what she did though? It was all on the same server unless you are drawing the distinction at email address instead of hardware that hosted it.

No.

She used it instead of an unclassified .gov email. The classified system is something else entirely. It's not even connected to the civilian internet.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/SIPRNet

One of the accusations in the right wing media is that she sneaker-netted a few classified documents from a SIPRNet terminal to the unclassified email system. The quote you'll see for that will have a snippet from her emails with the word "nonpaper" in it ... which is industry jargon for removing the classified bits so that you can release the rest. telling an aid to make it nonpaper and send it is not a problem.

Re: email servers, these days everyone is a fucking expert on everything that anyone talks about in the news. Everyone has to have an opinion even if they don't understand the basics of the thing they're forming (or, more likely, regurgitating) an opinion about, and you don't want to be the asshole who ever professes ignorance about anything.

Actually, I'm wrong about Woods--she attributed the gap to a mistake, not to not understanding a tape recorder:

Nixon’s Secretary Rose Mary Woods took the blame for the first five minutes of the erasure. She said that she had been transcribing the tape, and when she reached to take a phone call, her foot hit a pedal on the recording machine, inadvertently causing the tape player to “record” over the original tape’s contents.

Anyway, all the intentional scrubbing of e-mails that today's testimony has made fairly clear, that doesn't seem connected to whether or not Clinton understood how a server works.

"Another bit of misleading framing is the implication or claim that Clintons' server was set up after she was appointed SoS. In reality the Clinton family server was set up by Bill after he stepped down around 2001ish."

i'm old enough to remember nixon constantly talking about how lbj set up the white house recording system. if you're going to talk about "framing" probably good not to frame things in a way with direct parallels to watergate.

the photo of Woods reenacting how she "accidentally" erased that tape is one of my favorite images from Watergate

xp

I like the idea of Sid Blumenthal as Clinton's Rose Mary Woods.

http://nsarchive.gwu.edu/news/20140324/images/Rosemary_2.jpg

Back, and to the left.
Back, and to the left.
Back, and to the left.

lol

I really want an interviewer to ask Trump, "what's a server?"

And then, I guess, reframe the question after Trump points at the dude who brought him his taco bowl.

Also, "explain the procedure for processing refugees from Syria or elsewhere." Or any number of other things he rails against without betraying the slightest understanding about.

I hope that now that the media have started actively calling out his lies and misstatements, that the moderators don't let him get away with any of this shit at the debates and cause him to just melt down.

debates are gonna be pretty unpredictable. I could see Trump refusing to do it.

"Not only will I stand up for Article One," Trump enthusiastically stated, according to the member in the room. "I'll stand up for Article Two, Article 12, you name it of the Constitution."

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/dc/trump-changes-few-minds-with-meeting-on-the-hill

Rep. Mark Meadows (R-NC) said that Trump did a good job at the meeting "laying out a conservative agenda," but when asked if he still had fears about Trump's candidacy, Meadows said, "I got an interview I got to run to."

Ha ha ha ha. Oh my god.

presumably a job interview

Shouldn't we have some basic low threshold for allowing a person to become a presidential nominee? Like passing a citizenship test or something?

That seems like a nice idea but no. Never.

Signed, someone with ancestors who faced "literacy tests" when they attempted to vote.

I'd argue that there's a difference between what one should expect from a voter and what one should expect from the people who want to run the country.

Fields medalist Terence Tao weighs in

https://terrytao.wordpress.com/2016/06/04/it-ought-to-be-common-knowledge-that-donald-trump-is-not-fit-for-the-presidency-of-the-united-states-of-america/

Republicans now following Trump's lead in the direction of coordinated conspiracy. Dumb. They were doing fine trying to get Comey to explain the difference between "gross negligence" and "extreme carelessness."

"I'll stand up for Article Two, Article 12, you name it of the Constitution."

"Seriously, you gotta name it, cause I have no idea what all's in there"

missed opportunity to get him to endorse Article 1, Section 2, Paragraph 3

Isn't the Constitution that piece of paper with "GUNZ R OK" scrawled across it in crayon? What more do you need to know? Defend it all!

"I think he was confusing Articles and Amendments. Remember, this guy doesn't speak from a TelePrompter. He speaks from the heart retweets a bunch of shit he found on racist websites, claims there's no difference between that and a Disney sticker book, and then goes on to compliment Saddam Hussein."

it's GUNZ R THE GREATEST, REALLY THE BEST, JUST UNBELIEVABLE iirc

xp

re tests for nominees, if the american electorate actually chooses trump, the country is so fucked that rejecting him wouldn't have helped anyway

serious lol @ "He was just listing out numbers"

24 is the highest number iirc

https://i.ytimg.com/vi/15QO0jqMP6I/hqdefault.jpg

Article 1, Article 12, whatever it takes

I'm honestly curious what these people think they gain in undergoing the mental gymnastics of trying to twist Trump's words and actions into anything rational and defensible. Best case scenario, you're unlikely to earn any personal favor from a President Trump. Maybe he'll let you fetch his McDonald's, if you're really lucky.