I DON'T KNOW WHERE THE BOTTOM IS • US presidential elections part VIII

It's a weird situation to be in. I feel dismissive about the emails but not because I am confident the Clinton Foundation has always been on the up and up. I'm not sure of that tbh, although I am almost certain it was never "crooked" the way D-bag implies. I don't care about it because it's too late to vote for anyone else. After she's elected I'll probably be more open to critical perspectives on Clinton

idk how anyone can take it seriously. benghazi was bullshit that led to private server which was bullshit which now leads to clinton foundation which TBD is bullshit they'll just keep finding new shit bc they know americans are dumb and believe that "when there's smoke there's fire" is an actual property of the observable universe.

heh my friend once Snopes-bombed a guy posting dumb Obama shit and the guy's reply was "I dunno much about Snopes but if Obama is appearing on it so much, it must mean he's got something to hide"

Phil: I'm giving my impression of how I think her handling of all this--in this instance, brushing it aside with sarcasm--might strike some people. If one of the commenters does in fact come away with a similar impression, digging in your heels on the sarcasm doesn't really counter the point I'm trying to make.

She would do much better to simply answer questions in a straightforward manner for the next 80-some days, even if she has to continue doing so ad infinitum. As much as possible, anyway--I don't expect her to say more than is absolutely necessary.

I don't care about it because it's too late to vote for anyone else.

If I had a vote, I'd feel exactly the same way. And Trump continues to find ways to probably make it all moot anyway. But I'll say it again: the sarcasm in her voice sounded terrible.

That commenter is sarcastically pointing out that the story has no merits.

Okay, misunderstood. I'm lost now, but I'll stand by my original point.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Pje34fUgLQ

Clinton is at least as big a ***** as Barbara Bush

and that word is 'loser'

blood coming out of her *****

burka

Bill Clinton is an even bigger ******

geisha

(that can be either racist or rapist, depending on where he stands on the automatically guilty Woody/Assange spectrum)

If Hillary can keep her enemies focused on the content of the emails instead of her hilarious reasoning for setting up and maintaining her own private server, she will have won the battle.

why would you stand up for assange isn't he like a libertarian? speak up, tell us all about it, no hyperlinks allowed!!

I dunno guys I think the Clinton Foundation is probably not good it seems like it sucks up a lot of resources meant to go to help people and instead rewards already well-off business people and politicos and is kind of similar to other charities that are functionally more just wealth management schemes (Gates Foundation *cough*). Obviously it's very disingenuous and weaselly of Trump/his supporters to suddenly care about shit like that when its operated by Democrats, but I think that criticism of the CF is justified, where other "scandals" like Benghazi or Hillary's health are much more clearly a bunch of bullshit.

acc to charity watch 89% of CF's money goes towards charity

This article isn't clear that the new doc dump are even different from what they've already produced. Like only 20 emails in 700+ new docs judicial watch got were new. This whole stupid thing is a lame ass discovery dispute playing out in front of an audience who has no fucking idea what's actually going on.

http://mobile.nytimes.com/2016/08/23/us/politics/hillary-clintons-new-emails-release-state-department.html?_r=0

Newspapers who still want "balanced" coverage buried the lead: so far donors came hat in hand to Clinton people but nothing came of it. Other than a Clinton was in the State Department, I fail to see how it's any different from Lincoln or Zachary Taylor getting mobbed at the White House by a sheriff from Peoria wanting a federal job after serving as a poll watcher.

Well, there was this from the Associated Press tonight, which doesn't focus on the email issue at all:

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_CAMPAIGN_2016_CLINTON_FOUNDATION?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2016-08-23-14-35-04

Saying "nothing came of it" is a bit of a stretch, Al.

And sure, we can say, "buh buh buh buh this is the way it's always been done!" but I thought we were supposed to at least hope for better.

http://www.politico.com/story/2016/08/john-mccain-straight-talk-arizona-227348

apparently 'straight talk' is telling corny ass jokes and eating shit for trump

Eating corny shit jokes, huh

The Best Shit! You've never tasted shit like this before! The shit at Trump Tower will leave you begging to be Human Centipede-d!

btw, is there a thread for how bad FiveThirtyEight is fading? So disappointing

It's not a good year for any site that has a quota of "Well, historically / statistically...", but their roundtables are often good - I enjoyed their last one in particular when they teetered on the edge of admitting that being a good politician in office is as important as getting into office, but they can't run up three graphs about the former.

http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/has-the-hillary-clinton-campaign-been-lucky-or-good/

And sure, we can say, "buh buh buh buh this is the way it's always been done!" but I thought we were supposed to at least hope for better.

― Worst Presidential Election Ever (dandydonweiner), Tuesday, August 23, 2016 11:34 PM (

from Hillary Clinton?

Joe Scar has spent 28 minutes on the AP story, including interviewing the reporter, who, overcome by a case of the nerves, stuttered and "uhhed" and "ummed" through most of it. Like Tom said, I'm trying to figure out what distinguishes her venality from her predecessors.

Well, if you're comparing her to Lincoln and Taylor, one key difference is the social service reform of Chester Arthur. (Yeah, that's right, I listen to the 'Presidential' podcast!)

One way of getting around it for years was appointing a campaign manager to postmaster general, in charge of federal patronage.

My niece is starting her freshman year at the University of Akron this week, and she tweeted "The fact that Donald Trump was literally just here makes me sick to my stomach." So proud of her, especially since she comes from the right-wing redneck part of my family.

Maybe she was nervous and excited about the prospect of meeting him

hey Phil, are your redneck family family members actually excited to vote FOR him or more voting against Hillary?

Oh, they are all in for Trump. He's their dream candidate!

splitting hairs there really - who in their right mind sees Trump as the "lesser of two evils"?

xpost

In fact there's a good chance they think he isn't racist enough. I have family members that are neo-Confederates, Birchers, etc.

People not in their right minds. I know plenty.

Yglesias is having none of this Clinton Foundation reporting: http://www.vox.com/2016/8/24/12618446/ap-clinton-foundation-meeting

As the AP puts it: "[T]he frequency of the overlaps shows the intermingling of access and donations, and fuels perceptions that giving the foundation money was a price of admission for face time with Clinton."

With that lead-in, one is naturally primed to read some scandalous material — a case of someone with a legitimately crucial need to sit down with the secretary of state whose meeting is held up until he can produce cash, or a person with no business getting face time with the secretary nevertheless receiving privileged access in exchange for money. Instead, the most extensively discussed case the AP could come up with is this:

Muhammad Yunus, a Bangladeshi economist who won the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize for pioneering low-interest "microcredit" for poor business owners, met with Clinton three times and talked with her by phone during a period when Bangladeshi government authorities investigated his oversight of a nonprofit bank and ultimately pressured him to resign from the bank's board. Throughout the process, he pleaded for help in messages routed to Clinton, and she ordered aides to find ways to assist him.

I have no particular knowledge of Yunus, Grameen Bank, or the general prospects of microcredit as a philanthropic venture. I can tell you, however, that Yunus not only won the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize but has also been honored with a Presidential Medal of Freedom and a Congressional Gold Medal. In 2008 he was No. 2 on Foreign Policy’s list of the "top 100 global thinkers," and Ted Turner put him on the board of the UN Foundation. He’s received the World Food Prize, the International Simon Bolivar Prize, and the Prince of Asturias Award for Concord.

In other words, he’s a renowned and beloved figure throughout the West, not some moneybags getting help from the State Department in exchange for cash. On the level of pure politics, of course, this is exactly the problem with the Clinton Foundation. Its existence turns the banal into a potential conflict of interest, and shutting it down is the right call. But the fact remains that this is a fantastically banal anecdote.

Equally banal is this finding: "[I]n December that same year, Schwarzman's wife, Christine, sat at Clinton's table during the Kennedy Center Honors. Clinton also introduced Schwarzman, then chairman of the Kennedy Center, before he spoke."

Of course the secretary of state introduced the chair of the Kennedy Center when she attended the Kennedy Center Honors. More substantively, Braun and Sullivan also note that "the State Department was working on a visa issue at Schwarzman's request." One could imagine a scandal here, but the AP doesn’t produce one — was a visa wrongly issued? Or was the State Department simply doing its job and fixing a problem?

The State Department doing its job seems to clearly be the story of the time "Clinton also met in June 2011 with Nancy Mahon of the MAC AIDS, the charitable arm of MAC Cosmetics, which is owned by Estee Lauder." Was the meeting about Mahon trying to swing a plumb internship for a family member? Nope! As the story concedes, "the meeting occurred before an announcement about a State Department partnership to raise money to finance AIDS education and prevention."

Meeting with the head of a charity as part of an effort to raise charitable money is just the system working properly. Read the meat of the article, and the most shocking revelation is what’s not in it — a genuinely interesting example of influence peddling.

The State Department is a big operation. So is the Clinton Foundation. The AP put a lot of work into this project. And it couldn’t come up with anything that looks worse than helping a Nobel Prize winner, raising money to finance AIDS education, and doing an introduction for the chair of the Kennedy Center. It’s kind of surprising.

Pierce:

If you want a perfect example of what corruption-by-access can do to journalism, you have it right there. The authors know that candidates come and go, but that the permanent class of consultants, advisors, lobbyists, strategists, and other species of political Remoras will be with us always. So you decide that the candidate (and her husband) are to blame for not being ready for another onslaught of thinly sourced investigative offal. That way, your friend in the permanent political class will still return your calls.

It's a wonderful life, truly.

splitting hairs there really - who in their right mind sees Trump as the "lesser of two evils"?

― Neanderthal, Wednesday, August 24, 2016 12:35 PM (4 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Not in their right minds, but it's mostly the most deeply entrenched Berniebros and the conspiracy nuts and plenty of overlap there too.

Must be a lot of people who dislike trump but literally believe doing anything to help clinton to the white house would condemn them to an eternity of hellfire.

or berniebros as they're known lol joeks

When the rhetoric got them to those depths during the primaries, the idea of changing their tune now is a major case of cognitive dissonance constipation.

Oh look, horrible people made a horrible version of a horrible song:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C7aG-VQYGhA

why do i read comment sections, i know what will happen and every time it happens and i think "you could have prevented this"

cool revolution, bro: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/25/us/politics/bernie-sanders-our-revolution-group.html?_r=0

Huh, that may be the first time I saw a plane hit the towers.

The announcement of the group, which will be livestreamed Wednesday night, also comes as the majority of its staff resigned after the appointment last Monday of Jeff Weaver, Mr. Sanders’s former campaign manager, to lead the organization.

jeff weaver obv a very popular boss

uncucked and hellbent

“I left and others left because we were alarmed that Jeff would mismanage this organization as he mismanaged the campaign,” she said, expressing concern that Mr. Weaver would “betray its core purpose by accepting money from billionaires and not remaining grass-roots funded and plowing that billionaire cash into TV instead of investing it in building a genuine movement.”

I thought people were supposed to resign in protest over things that had actually happened, not in protest over things you projected happening at some unspecific future time. So, yeah, he's probably just a really crappy boss.

Paul Waldman cautions everyone to get ready for what'll happen in the Senate with President Clinton:

And what about the Supreme Court? We’ve all but forgotten that there’s still an open seat, since Republicans refused to consider the nomination of Merrick Garland. Some have suggested that if Clinton wins, they’ll quickly confirm Garland during a lame duck session, since he’s a moderate who’ll turn 64 years old just after the election and would thus be better for them than whoever Clinton were to nominate in his place. But Mitch McConnell has ruled that out.

There’s another possibility to consider: Don’t be surprised if Republicans suddenly decide, once Clinton makes her nomination, that the Court is functioning perfectly well with eight members, and we should really wait until President Ryan gets elected before we fill that seat. That might sound absurd, but every time people have said, “Republicans would never go that far” in recent years, Republicans have replied, “Hey, that sounds like a good idea.”

But since in our scenario Democrats control the Senate, that would mean Republicans would need to take the almost-unprecedented step of filibustering a Supreme Court nominee. My guess is that if they were about to try, new majority leader Chuck Schumer would pull McConnell aside and say, “If you do this, we’re just going to change the rules to eliminate filibusters for Supreme Court nominations,” which is something Democrats already did in 2013 for some other executive branch appointments. McConnell would say, “You’d better not!”, Schumer would say, “I’m gonna!” and then Republicans would proceed in retaliation to be even more obstructionist than ever, perhaps even shutting down the government (again) and threatening to default on the United State’s debt (again). Sounds like fun, right? And that’s not to mention the investigations. Republicans will impanel so many special committees they won’t be able to keep track of them all. I fully expect them to begin drawing up articles of impeachment before Clinton even takes the oath of office.