Clinton Coverup Queen

[jennypenny]

Some of those DWS emails are bad. Sanders got hosed.

What's the deal with democrats and emails??

[Dragline]

My question to others here is this: Other than hating Trump, trust me, I get it, why would you support her? Because of the potential Supreme Court nominations? First woman President? She's a Democrat? Her accomplishment's? (please list), Her experience in government?

She is so repulsive to me that I am truly curious why anybody would support her if they aren't personally gaining from it.

The reasons people vote a particular way in presidential elections are generally:

1. Party loyalty/past practice/modern "tribal" affiliation (consistency of personal narrative, really).

2. Greater dislike of the the other option(s).

3. Single issues -- usually in the negative or prevention form, as to "stop" the other side from doing something like restrict your guns, prevent you from getting an abortion, raise your taxes, cut your social security, etc. (This is why most political appeals for money are phrased in terms of parades of horribles if the other side gets elected.)

Two other points. First, people do feel, accurately or inaccurately, that they are "personally gaining" from the way they vote, even if its only a psychological feeling and not some kind of financial betterment. Second, the character flaws of a candidate are typically only meaningful to someone who has decided against that candidate already for other reasons, and are just used to support a narrative that already exists. This election might be an exception to that general rule, but I kind of doubt it.

[IlliniDave]

Seems as though it's beyond debate now that every effort was made to rig the Democratic primary in favor of HRC. I've got my popcorn made waiting to see how this (leaked emails) gets swept under the rug. NPR handled it with kid gloves this morning. They turned it into a question of whether Sanders was going to decide to fracture the party with his remarks this week as if he would be the bad guy in the whole thing if he decided to be critical.

We'll see just how thoroughly he's sold out to the establishment he fought so tenaciously while he was campaigning.

[tylerrr]

Seems as though it's beyond debate now that every effort was made to rig the Democratic primary in favor of HRC. I've got my popcorn made waiting to see how this (leaked emails) gets swept under the rug. NPR handled it with kid gloves this morning. They turned it into a question of whether Sanders was going to decide to fracture the party with his remarks this week as if he would be the bad guy in the whole thing if he decided to be critical.

We'll see just how thoroughly he's sold out to the establishment he fought so tenaciously while he was campaigning.

The biased media is already turning the leaked email story into "the Russians are behind it" instead of focusing on the actual content/intent of the emails....

Typical....

The media is 95% behind HRC and will do/say anything to try and get her elected.

[jennypenny]

Round two ...

--The common theme for both conventions seems to be that the ruling class of each party still doesn't understand how disgruntled the rank and file are. It was expected that DWS would get some boos, but it's happening at many of the state delegation gatherings, including California. I'm sure the week will end as planned, but I think the crowd will cause some tense moments for convention organizers.

--The other common theme is that both parties seem to be in disarray and unprepared for the hiccups they've encountered over the last couple of weeks. The Clintons have always had a reputation for thriving in crisis mode, but things are abnormally frenzied in the Clinton camp.

--The term 'optics' is overused these days, but the Dems should have given some thought to the optics of building a wall around the arena. I understand why they did it, but they handed Trump a talking point.

--Weather in town is going to help Clinton because it will discourage protesters.

--There's a rumor going around about Clinton's health again. Did she have another coughing fit this weekend? I didn't see anything. The rumor is that they want to keep her appearances and speech as brief as possible, but there's some pressure to deliver a longer speech because of the length of Trump's last week.

--There's lots of shuffling of speakers going on and a joke is circulating about a 'boo' meter being used to determine time slots for speeches.

--There's talk of a surprise Hollywood speaker who'll 'dazzle' the crowd. I'm assuming it's someone like Clooney.


I'll admit I'm not as interested in this convention. I'm just doing my job and enjoying the show, but I'll pass along any other tidbits I hear.

[black_son_of_gray]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the ... onvention/

Recent poll numbers for Hillary:
30% say they think Hillary is honest and trustworthy, vs 43% for Trump!
(68% of people said Hillary isn't honest and trustworthy)

Ok, like him or hate him, everyone acknowledges that Trump just throws statements out there, 'truth' be damned. Many people who support him readily admit this, but just don't care if he does it. But when it comes to Hillary...

I highly recommend the quick read On Bullshit. In it, the author lays out an interesting distinction between truth, lies, and bullshit: both honest people and liars care about whether what they are saying is true... bullshitters make statements that may or may not be true, but they don't care whether it is true - they just want to get away with saying it and make the impact that they want to make. I wonder if Trump gets a bigger pass on his statements because so much of it is perceived as bullshit, whereas Clinton's statements are more damning because they are perceived as being maliciously deceptive.

[Gilberto de Piento]

Some of these leaked emails are really sickening to me. I'm really disappointed they couldn't give Bernie a fair chance.

Here's a real Clinton conspiracy you might enjoy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arkansas_Project. Interestingly, Christopher Ruddy, one of the people involved, is apparently now a friend of Bill Clinton: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newsmax_M ... _influence.

[jacob]

https://www.dailykos.com/story/2016/6/1 ... -ever-seen [really long]

More on the "Hillary standard" going way back (thx to Nate Silver and his quant stuff). It's interesting, because it wasn't always so.

[GandK]

https://www.dailykos.com/story/2016/6/1 ... -ever-seen

The problem with this piece is that he claims it's sexism, but fails to identify other female politicians who have experienced the same. So to me he hasn't established at all whether this is about her being a woman, or about her being Hillary.

[IlliniDave]

Of course! Anyone that doesn't fall meekly in line with the progressive regime is guilty of some sort of -ism or -phobia.

[jacob]

At least the author correctly predicted one thing. From the article:

1) Almost nobody will admit to it. Conservatives decided long ago that all such accusations (sexism, racism, homophobia, etc) are standard liberal bullshit whose only real intent is to shut down debate, and liberals tend to possess a sense of moral entitlement which leads them to consider themselves automatically exempt from all such accusations. (Side note: if you did roll your eyes above, there’s a good chance I’m describing you here. Sorry.)

Okay, that was a cheap shot on my part, and likely that was preemptive strike by the author [to shut down exactly that response], however ... I do find it illuminating that what I extracted from this article was substantially different from what you guys extracted: Ahh.. just another -ism from the opposing shirt-color. Dismissed!

(Actually, I was expecting something like: "Ahh.. it's from dailykos. Dismissed!"). In any case,

From that article, I noticed the following things:

1) Popularity declined starting with every power move made by HRC. There's a [Nate Silver] graph in the article. I would consider this normal for any politician due to attack ads, etc. Lesson learned: anyone with enemies will tend towards becoming less popular on average. This is certainly something I've noticed even with ERE. If you stay small, all you have are friends. Once you get big enough to attract enemies, overall popularity will decrease.

2) The corrupt/liar idea seems to be THE meme that just stuck(*) with HRC---unlike many other politicians---and it started with a specific article in a specific point in time. I suspect most politicians deserve that label at one level or another. There doesn't seem to be any objective reason why HRC should merit it more than anyone else. Indeed, fact checkers show her to be one of the least-lying politicians. Of course, if simple BS gets a free pass on the lie detector, it might be that she is just a more devious liar than anyone else.

Put it another way, if I was a quant having to build a truth filter, then with Trump, I should suspect a very high (the highest in the entire distribution of politicians) level of noise to signal when it comes to factual statements---IOW my filter wouldn't trust much of anything he says. Conversely, with Hillary, I should expect the lowest noise to signal ratio (she rarely says something wrong based on various fact checkers), but maybe also fear that my detection software could be failing to detect type II errors, IOW my filter would trust most HRC statements, but I'd be careful to consider where she's a version of "highly competent evil" so Black Swan risk control would be much more important than with Trump.

In nerd terms:
* Trump has volatility risk
* Clinton has tail risk

(*) It started at a specific point in time, but there doesn't seem to be a reasonable explanation why she should merit that meme and not someone else. The article uses the Petraeus scandal as an example. Objectively, "knowingly giving classified information to your journalist mistress" seems like a much more severe issue than "keeping emails on your private server which later got classified" (something that Powell also did). Whether that's sexism or not, there definitely seems to be a double standard.

3) When it comes to HRC, I can think of much worse things than what's been popularly promoted in terms of coverups. For example, what's with the Clinton Foundation's dealing with oligarchs in the Ukraine. Why has that not been a story in the media? What has it not been mentioned in the media or even in this thread? Why has there been zero discussion of Victoria Nuland's connection with the coup in Ukraine. This seems to be much more important/damaging than Trumps business deals with Russians. In that regard, it's no surprise that Putin likes Trump because he must hate Clinton (and the Obama admin as well). Also see Syria. Why, in particular, is this not part of the media discussion? Is it too complicated for the electorate to understand? Does it not sell newspapers?

In particular, I'm interested in what degree either side just dismisses the other side because it simply is the other side. Voters don't appear to be very neutral. If there was one thing I learned from my few years at Wall Street, it's how easily most traders dismiss loyalty-frameworks. If Democrats wear blue and are willing to make any kind of allowances simply to avoid even thinking about someone in a red color. And Republicans follow the same party loyalty to the point of cognitive failure. Then ... there's really a group with a third kind of shirt color: Grey!

The Grey team hold the distinction of simultaneously neither dismissing either other color, yet, nor do they take either side very seriously. (This is/was quite refreshing to me. I kinda miss that after leaving the business.) I'm actually surprised that there aren't more neutrals on these forums. And by neutrals, I don't mean people who are somewhere in between red and blue x-axis, that is, purple, but people who are somewhere on the y-axis.

Yeah, that's just surprising to me.

[BRUTE]

Of course! Anyone that doesn't fall meekly in line with the progressive regime is guilty of some sort of -ism or -phobia.

that's what an -ist would say.

[jacob]

@brute - The term is loyalist

[enigmaT120]

I'm a right and left wing extremist, so am not neutral. I just see very little consistency in the specifics of each so-called wing.

[IlliniDave]

I'm not neutral, but probably average out to moderate (self-described conservative tree-hugging libertarian) who feels free to favor whatever issues/positions I favor irrespective of which team promotes them.

I think the dishonesty/corruption thing is a bit more than a meme with HRC. I'd argue her popularity declined as she acquired more power because through what she did with that power her character was revealed.

[Riggerjack]

From the article:

. And her battle with societal sexism isn’t going to stop because of her success anymore than Obama’s battle with racism stopped once he was elected.

I just spent 8 years being told that the only reason I could possibly not agree with the President, is that I'm a racist. I can't wait for the next 4-8 yer gag order labelled sexist.

To me, Clinton honesty issues are like ffj's last paragraph. I don't care if most of her statements are true. Most of her ACTIONS are underhanded, and move money/power to the Clinton Crime Family.

I expect politicians to be dishonest. But the constant scandal and corruption and sleazy deals are over the top. Nixon must be rolling in his grave with all the Nixon/Clinton comparisons of late.

[jacob]

@ffj - Well, that's the kind of information Team Grey wants to know (because I didn't know some of it) as opposed to the [other person sucks because they aren't our person]-"debate".

In terms of the Clinton Foundation, the disturbing part here is that a) Clinton is accepting money from Russian-related interests that are connected with US policies (e.g. Ukraine coup and subsequent NATO escalation); b) Trump is being very friendly with Russian interests who are opposed to the very same. In either case it's pretty bad, insofar that one still believes in the nation state that domestic politicians should be dabbling so freely with foreign interests while the public/voters remain entirely ignorant of the backroom dealings #houseofcards?!

In Trumps case, I consider this more excusable (he was doing this before his political ambitions and the Putin bromance is dismissible ... The Clinton Foundation receiving money from Russian opposition, not so much). TL;DR - Russian Intelligence is definitely involved in the US elections either way! (Worse, the Russians seem to be better at it than we are. Case in point: 1) Do Americans still remember Ukraine? 2) Who's currently running things in Syria?---Whenever the US pulls back, guess who moves forward). The Obama admin was about as naive handling things in Syria as the Bush admin was in handling things in Iraq. If armchair generals have a more nuanced comprehension of foreign policy than the admin, I'd say ... that's a problem. In particular, because the Russians are going to win either way it goes.

In terms of the DNC leaks, GRU was apparently part of it. (Anyone can just google certain keywords insofar the have a prefered medium), however, I wonder just how serious those leaks are. Are we truly talking conspiracy or is it normal [backroom wonk speak]? I remember the Climategate emails. I actually read through all of them (I have no life) and found nothing out of the ordinary scientist jargon talk. Whereas science noob friends (e.g. software engineers) who opposed climate science back then and saw all kinds of conspiracy and failure to adhere to standard software production validation procedures or whatever. So I don't know ... is this a big deal or not? I suspect it might not be.

In any case, everything is very much connected. This isn't just a US thing. Just like -isms aren't invented for the sake of recent US politics.

[jacob]

Ugh! I just realized that it is/was exactly this kind of ranting [on the blog] that got me hired at WS the last time. The most important lesson of that was that "the markets can stay irrational for longer than you can stay liquid" or more precisely, the only way to be successful is to be able to work well with[in] a system that's semi-broken---rather than actually fixing it. I suspect that the same thing that holds for high finance also holds for high politics.

[jennypenny]

quick update during the (endless) roll call

--They are worried about booing during Bubba's speech tonight -- not about the optics but how he might react to the booing. They're afraid he'll go off script.

--They (not sure who 'they' is in this case) tried to confiscate placards from Sanders supporters on the floor before the roll call, specifically anti-HRC signs. After some pushy-shovey, they gave up on the idea. Apparently, one middle-aged woman whacked one of the younger guys trying to take her sign and drew blood. Feel the burn ...

[jennypenny]

If you're the kind of person who likes to stare at car accidents, turn on c-span. Sanders is supposed to come out when Vermont casts its votes.

edit ... If Clinton wins, she has Sanders to thank.