The 2016 Presidential Candidates Thread

ReggieB said:

paywalled...

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I was surprised that it worked for me.

Just google the text of the sub/headline,
there's a crapload of spin out there going both ways.

But since I got it, here's the text:

FBI Director James Comey appears Wednesday before the House Judiciary Committee, where he’ll get another chance to explain his agency’s double standard regarding Hillary Clinton. His probe of the former Secretary of State’s private email server is looking more like a kid-glove exercise with each new revelation.

House Oversight Chairman Jason Chaffetz on Friday disclosed that the FBI granted immunity to Mrs. Clinton’s top aides as part of its probe into whether Mrs. Clinton mishandled classified information. According to Mr. Chaffetz, this “limited” immunity was extended to former chief of staff Cheryl Mills and senior adviser Heather Samuelson, in order to get them to surrender their laptops, which they’d used to sort through Mrs. Clinton’s work-versus-personal emails.

Why the courtesy? “If the FBI wanted any other Americans’ laptops, they would just go get them—they wouldn’t get an immunity deal,” Ohio Rep. Jim Jordan told Politico. He’s right. The FBI merely had to seek a subpoena or search warrant. By offering immunity, the FBI exempted the laptops and their emails as potential evidence in a criminal case.

Beth Wilkinson, who represents Ms. Mills and Ms. Samuelson, says the immunity deals were designed to protect her clients against any related “classification” disputes. This is an admission that both women knew their unsecure laptops had been holding sensitive information for more than a year. Meanwhile, Mr. Comey also allowed Ms. Mills and Ms. Samuelson to serve as lawyers for Mrs. Clinton at her FBI interview—despite having been interviewed as witnesses and offered immunity.

The FBI also offered immunity to John Bentel, who directed the State Department’s Office of Information Resources Management; to Bryan Pagliano, Mrs. Clinton’s IT guru; and to an employee of Platte River Networks (PRN), which housed the Clinton server. Usually, the FBI only “proffers” immunity deals in return for genuine information. In this case the FBI seemed not to make any such demands. The deals also did not include—as they often do—requirements that the recipients cooperate with other investigating bodies, such as Congress.

Meantime, the FBI waited until late Friday to dump another 189 pages of documents from its investigation, including notes from interviews with Ms. Mills and Ms. Samuelson, Mr. Pagliano, Clinton confidante Huma Abedin, and Platte River Network employees. They raise even more questions.

Was the FBI concerned that Ms. Mills in the fall of 2013 (after Congress began investigating the Benghazi attacks) called Mr. Pagliano to ask about software that could be used for “wiping computer data”? Or that a Platte River Networks employee, after getting instructions from Ms. Mills to begin deleting Clinton emails more than 60 days old, entitled the resulting work ticket the “Hillary coverup operation”? Or that a PRN employee was instructed by the company’s lawyer “not to answer any [FBI] questions related to conversations with” David Kendall, Mrs. Clinton’s personal lawyer?

The FBI documents also disclose that Mr. Pagliano admitted to having, at the beginning of Mrs. Clinton’s tenure, several conversations with unnamed State Department official(s) who expressed concern that her private server posed “a federal records retention issue,” and that it was likely transmitting classified information. When Mr. Pagliano relayed these concerns to Ms. Mills, she ignored them.

We’d also love to hear what the FBI made of the news that Mrs. Clinton maintained a Gmail account. The Democratic presidential nominee has never disclosed this detail. Speaking of revealing, President Obama has publicly said he found out about Mrs. Clinton’s server through “news reports.” Yet the FBI notes reveal that he emailed Mrs. Clinton on her private server under a pseudonym. Ms. Abedin told the FBI that the White House was notified when Mrs. Clinton changed her email address so the President’s secure server wouldn’t exclude her emails. Was Mr. Obama fibbing too?

These columns have long opposed the appointment of special prosecutors, but that depends on the ability of established legal officers to do their jobs without political favor. Mr. Comey’s handling of the Clinton case understandably makes Americans wonder if their government can be trusted to perform this duty. On the evidence of the FBI’s special treat for Mrs. Clinton and her aides, they are right to wonder.

http://www.wsj.com/articles/james-comeys-clinton-immunity-1475017121

Sounds like a lot of opinion but not a great deal of anything else.

Maybe, Perhaps, Possibly are not taught in Journalism!
Who, What, When and Where is news Why is editorial.

Michelle Obama speaking now... damn she's good! Behind every good man is a SUPERIOR WONDERFUL woman - Barack is one lucky guy!

Snappo said:

Michelle Obama speaking now... damn she's good! Behind every good man is a SUPERIOR WONDERFUL woman - Barack is one lucky guy!

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They don't call her "The Closer" for nothing. In the future, she could make a very viable candidate if she ever chooses that path.

lwien said:

They don't call her "The Closer" for nothing. In the future, she could make a very viable candidate if she ever chooses that path.

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I was thinking the other day if the dems needed a quick replacement, she would be a shoe in...

steama said:

sometimes this thread almost sounds like the campaign rhetoric...just a little though

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It's that old saying, eh? "Garbage in........garbage out."

I can't wait for all the news-feed & trash media-blitz pollution to clear and we don't hear the name Trump anymore. It will be a world-sized sigh of relief and breath of fresh air.

macbill said:

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The jerk doesn't even know it's there.

The Problem with Trump Isn’t His Debating Skills
By Adam Gopnik
September 27, 2016
In a year of absurd, nerve-testing disconnects, Monday night’s disconnect was the biggest of all. In a moment when, in an all too real sense, the future of liberal democracy itself was on the line—when the possibility of seeing one of the hyper-nationalist demagogues and autocrats who have emerged throughout Europe and Americas in the last decade take power in the United States seemed all too near—the debate was being billed and sold as entertainment. Clinton vs. Trump, toe to toe! Come watch Hamilton and Madison’s dream end, live at 9 P.M.

As it happened, and has been generally reported, the rout that followed was of a kind that few anticipated—one that seemed arranged by a God operating in Vince McMahon mode, deciding that in this round the good guy, or woman, would win. The well-coached and prepared wrestler pummelled the sneering loudmouth with the cape and mask into submission while the crowd at home (in our home, anyway) cheered.

There have been some desperate remedial attempts to pretend that, in the early rounds, Trump did better than Hillary Clinton, but he didn’t. He was ranting incoherently from the kickoff, and it only got worse as the night wore on: “As far as the cyber, I agree to parts of what Secretary Clinton said. We should be better than anybody else, and perhaps we’re not. I don’t know if we know it was Russia who broke into the D.N.C. She’s saying Russia, Russia, Russia. Maybe it was. It could also be China. It could be someone sitting on their bed that weighs four hundred pounds. You don’t know who broke into D.N.C., but what did we learn?” Struggling to recall what Trump’s ramblings, with their telegraphic simplifications, their abrupt disconnects, and their sudden hallucinations of imaginary figures, reminded me of, I realized that they were exactly like an excerpt from the dying words of the gangster Dutch Schultz after he was shot in a mob hit in Newark, in 1935: “Please get me up, my friends. . . . No payrolls. No wells. No coupons. That would be entirely out. Pardon me; I forgot I am plaintiff and not defendant. Look out. Look out for him. Please. He owed me money; he owes everyone money.”

Obviously there was something cheering and even comforting in the reality that Trump had “lost.” But there was something disturbing in seeing Trump once again being normalized by being made part of an ordinary contest in coherence and “presentation” and “preparation.” In truth, that was the least of it, because what was really outside any norm of decency was what he thought even after you had dutifully distilled away the incoherence and the manic improvisations. Talking, again, about President Obama’s birth certificate, he displayed not only the usual pathological inability to admit to an error—any error, ever—but an underlying racism so pervasive that it can’t help express itself even when trying to pass as something else. There was, after all, never any doubt or controversy about Obama’s being born an American—never any actual “controversy” about his place of birth, any more than there is about Trump’s or Clinton’s. (And Clinton never said there was.) It was a settled matter from the time Obama began running for office. What there was was a racist conspiracy theory, invented by various people on the fringe right, that Trump brought into the center of attention. By 2011, Trump had simply succeeded in making this racist conspiracy theory so prevalent that Obama, who had released his birth certificate three years earlier, concluded that it was more efficient to end it for all time by asking Hawaiian officials for special permission to let him give out the “long form,” archival version than to let it go on. What Obama may not have realized was that in Trump’s world, since he is never wrong, it couldn’t end.

Yet Trump continued last night his self-congratulations for compelling the President to do this, along with the grotesquely racist notion that it was “good for him” (i.e., for the President). It slowly dawned on the listener that this was all of a piece with the rest of Trump’s racial attitudes: he believes that, as a rich white man, he had a right to stop and frisk the President of the United States and demand that the uppity black man show him his papers. Stop-and-frisk isn’t just a form of policing for Trump; it’s a whole way of life. The idea that he had a right to force a black man to go through what Obama rightly saw as the demeaning business of producing his birth certificate showed his fundamental contempt for any normal idea of racial equality. It was of a line with his equally bizarre notion that owning a country club that doesn’t actively discriminate against black people is not a minimal requirement of law but a positive achievement of the owner. This isn’t the case of someone misarticulating an otherwise plausible position; it was just a case of someone repeating, once again, not only a specific racist lie but also the toxic underlying set of assumptions that produced it.

Pass over quickly, for the moment, Trump’s notion that contracts are to be respected depending only on the wayward autocratic impulse of the richest party to the contract. Think, instead, again, of one of the last subjects of the debate—his misogyny. By sexism, we mean something specific, not the business of appreciating beauty—if Trump wants to host beauty contests, let him—but the habit of conceiving of a woman as being a lesser species, one defined exclusively by appearance. His cruelty to Alicia Machado was unleavened by any apparent respect for her as a human being in any role other than as an envelope of flesh—an attitude he only doubled down on the following morning by complaining that she presented what he saw as an obvious problem as a reigning Miss Universe: she had gained “a massive amount of weight” (by Trump standards, that is). Again, this wasn’t a problem of how he chose to present his beliefs; the problem is with the beliefs. This wasn’t a question of preparation. It was that the things he actually believes are themselves repellent even when coherently presented. This was not a bad performance. This is a bad man.

And, speaking of the New Yorker...

Trump Threatens to Skip Remaining Debates If Hillary Is There
By Andy Borowitz
September 27, 2016
The Borowitz Report)—Plunging the future of the 2016 Presidential debates into doubt, Donald J. Trump said on Tuesday morning that he would not participate in the remaining two debates if Hillary Clinton is there.

Trump blasted the format of Monday night’s debate by claiming that the presence of Clinton was “specifically designed” to distract him from delivering his message to the American people.

“Every time I said something, she would say something back,” he said. “It was rigged.”

He also lambasted the “underhanded tactics” his opponent used during the debate. “She kept on bringing up things I said or did,” he added. “She is a very nasty person.”

Turning to CNN, Trump criticized the network’s use of a split screen showing both him and Clinton throughout the telecast. “It should have been just me,” he said. “That way people could have seen how really good my temperament is.”

The billionaire said that debate organizers had not yet responded to his ultimatum, but he warned that if he does not get assurances in writing that future debates will be “un-rigged, Hillary-wise,” he will not participate.

“I have said time and time again that I would only do these debates if I am treated fairly,” he added. “The only way I can be guaranteed of being treated fairly is if Hillary Clinton is not there.”

Haters just wish they had mad skills in "the cyber" like Trump does.

For a hot second, I thought his running mate's name was Weed.

Krazy said:

Haters just wish they had mad skills in "the cyber" like Trump does.

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The White Male Privilege of Trump, Giuliani, and Gingrich
by Nancy LeTourneau
September 29, 2016 10:03 AM

Yesterday in Quick Takes I quoted from an excellent article by Adam Gopnik in which he captured the utter depravity of Donald Trump’s racism and sexism. Here is what he wrote about the Republican nominee’s birtherism:


I was reminded of that when Trump and two of his most prominent spokesmen – Rudy Giuliani and Newt Gingrich – decided that they would go after Hillary Clinton for her husband’s infidelity and fat-shame former Miss Universe Alicia Machado. That these three men think it is OK for them to “stop and frisk” these two women is the ultimate example of what we mean by male privilege.

A quick rundown shows that the leader of this little pack is just a few pounds shy of obese, loves to brag about eating fast food and revels in the fact that the only thing he does to get exercise is wave his arms at a campaign rally. He’s also the guy who bragged that maneuvering the dangerous landmines of women’s vaginas was his own private Vietnam.

Giuliani is they guy who called a press conference to announce his divorce without telling his wife and went on to praise his employee – with whom he was having an affair and later married. And yet yesterday he said that if Hillary Clinton didn’t know about her husband’s affair with Monica Lewinsky, she is too stupid to be president.

Gingrich – who is anything but svelte – got in on the act of fat-shaming Alicia Machado. If you’re wondering how these guys have the balls (crude, but appropriate reference at this point) to do that kind of thing, take a look at how Gingrich’s second wife told the story about what happened when he said he was having an affair with Callista – who eventually became his third wife.


There is a way that this kind of behavior fits the profile of a sociopath – who elevates himself as a great savior, but has zero capacity for self-reflection. But it is also profoundly sexist. As Gopnik went on to say, “His cruelty to Alicia Machado was unleavened by any apparent respect for her as a human being in any role other than as an envelope of flesh.” That is how these men see women – and are therefore able to hold them to completely different standards than they do themselves.

As we saw with Trump’s self congratulations for getting President Obama to release his long-form birth certificate, he now thinks he should get credit for doing Machado a favor.


In just the same way, both Trump and his surrogates are very busy congratulating him for not bringing up Bill Clinton’s infidelities in the first debate – a blatant attempt to actually make them the story.

Some people thought that in 2016 perhaps our country was beyond this kind of sexist male-privileged thinking. It’s true that “we’ve come a long way, baby!” But for some men, women are still merely “an envelope of flesh” to be used for their own pleasure and degraded/discarded when they don’t go along. It just so happens that one of them is the current Republican nominee for president.

Marijuana Can Fix Hillary Clinton’s Biggest Problem

If Hillary Clinton can consolidate the support of young left-wing voters — and motivate them to turn out on Election Day — she will win the White House. And there’s no better cure for millennial apathy than legal marijuana.

How about if/when killary gets put on the spot about bill's infidelities, she starts dropping f-bombs:

"How much time to we have to answer this pathetic excuse for a question, when we could be talking about something important, something the american people actually give a shit about? I'm setting my watch, so I know how long I should sit here is silence while you think of a better fucking question. But here's something for the american people to think about while they're waiting: does anybody out there really want this giant fucking douche to be the next leader of the free world? Because even a turd sandwich starts to look pretty good in comparison amiright? Vote for the turd sandwich, because the giant douche is way worse."

Now THAT would be real leadership

I'm thinking that if she keeps it real, she might be able to pick up some of the deplorables vote

If this is correct, than we have much worse problems than Donald Trump.

Trump campaign defends its rejection of substance, policy details
09/29/16 09:50 AM

By Steve Benen
If anyone on Donald Trump’s presidential campaign should be willing to defend the importance of substantive details, it’s Sam Clovis. He is, after all, one of the Republican candidate’s top policy advisers.

And yet, as BuzzFeed noted yesterday, even Clovis doesn’t want to bother stressing the importance of governing details in the campaign.


In fairness, Clovis added that he cares about “specificity,” but the campaign has chosen not to get into policy details because these kinds of campaign debates are of no interest to the electorate.

“I think the American people, the American voter, will be bored to tears if that is in fact the way this thing goes,” he said.

It’s a valuable insight, if for no other reason because Clovis’ comments make clear that Team Trump is deliberately avoiding a substantive campaign debate over the issues. For the Republican candidate and his team, it’s a feature, not a bug.

In May, Politico quoted a campaign insider saying Trump didn’t want to “waste time on policy.” The Trump source added at the time, “It won’t be until after he is elected … that he will figure out exactly what he is going to do.”

A month later, the candidate himself added that “the public doesn’t care” about public policy.

Hillary Clinton, obviously, had adopted a very different approach, recently telling voters, “I’ve laid out the best I could, the specific plans and ideas that I want to pursue as your president because I have this old-fashioned idea. When you run for president, you ought to tell people what you want to do as their president.”

As we discussed several weeks ago, according to her Republican rival, this is an antiquated model to be avoided. Indeed, circling back to our previous coverage, I’m reminded of something MSNBC’s Chris Hayes wrote nearly a month ago, noting a fairly routine profile in Politico on Clinton’s tech policy advisers. It stood out largely because there is no comparable group on Team Trump, which has made a deliberate decision not to build any intellectual infrastructure.

“ltimately a Trump Presidency is a complete and total black box,” Chris concluded. “No one, probably not even Trump, knows what the hell it looks like.”

And that’s not how national campaigns in mature democracies are supposed to work. Candidates for the nation’s highest office are not supposed to mock the very idea of pre-election governing details, vowing instead to figure stuff out after taking office.

It’s a problem exacerbated in Trump’s case because he’s never held elected office; he has no background in public service; and he’s never demonstrated any real interest in government or public policy. What we’re left with is an odd set of circumstances in which voters are apparently supposed to support the least-experienced, least-prepared presidential candidate of the modern era first, and then he’ll let the public know how he intends to govern.

The alternative, according to Trump’s national policy adviser, is a bunch of boring details that are only of interest to nerdy egg-heads. Why bore the electorate “to tears” with detailed information about the direction of their country after the election?

Stick it in a time capsule. Future generations won’t believe it.

cybrguy said:

If this is correct, than we have much worse problems than Donald Trump.

Trump campaign defends its rejection of substance, policy details
09/29/16 09:50 AM

By Steve Benen
If anyone on Donald Trump’s presidential campaign should be willing to defend the importance of substantive details, it’s Sam Clovis. He is, after all, one of the Republican candidate’s top policy advisers.

And yet, as BuzzFeed noted yesterday, even Clovis doesn’t want to bother stressing the importance of governing details in the campaign.

Sam Clovis, Donald Trump’s national policy adviser and campaign co-chair, said Monday before the debate that voters don’t care about policy specifics and would be “bored to tears” by them.

“Our approach has been to provide outlook and constructs for policy because if we go into the specific details, we just get murdered in the press. What we’re dealing with [is] we’re chasing minutia around,” Clovis said on the Alan Colmes Show on Fox News’ radio network.​

In fairness, Clovis added that he cares about “specificity,” but the campaign has chosen not to get into policy details because these kinds of campaign debates are of no interest to the electorate.

“I think the American people, the American voter, will be bored to tears if that is in fact the way this thing goes,” he said.

It’s a valuable insight, if for no other reason because Clovis’ comments make clear that Team Trump is deliberately avoiding a substantive campaign debate over the issues. For the Republican candidate and his team, it’s a feature, not a bug.

In May, Politico quoted a campaign insider saying Trump didn’t want to “waste time on policy.” The Trump source added at the time, “It won’t be until after he is elected … that he will figure out exactly what he is going to do.”

A month later, the candidate himself added that “the public doesn’t care” about public policy.

Hillary Clinton, obviously, had adopted a very different approach, recently telling voters, “I’ve laid out the best I could, the specific plans and ideas that I want to pursue as your president because I have this old-fashioned idea. When you run for president, you ought to tell people what you want to do as their president.”

As we discussed several weeks ago, according to her Republican rival, this is an antiquated model to be avoided. Indeed, circling back to our previous coverage, I’m reminded of something MSNBC’s Chris Hayes wrote nearly a month ago, noting a fairly routine profile in Politico on Clinton’s tech policy advisers. It stood out largely because there is no comparable group on Team Trump, which has made a deliberate decision not to build any intellectual infrastructure.

“ltimately a Trump Presidency is a complete and total black box,” Chris concluded. “No one, probably not even Trump, knows what the hell it looks like.”

And that’s not how national campaigns in mature democracies are supposed to work. Candidates for the nation’s highest office are not supposed to mock the very idea of pre-election governing details, vowing instead to figure stuff out after taking office.

It’s a problem exacerbated in Trump’s case because he’s never held elected office; he has no background in public service; and he’s never demonstrated any real interest in government or public policy. What we’re left with is an odd set of circumstances in which voters are apparently supposed to support the least-experienced, least-prepared presidential candidate of the modern era first, and then he’ll let the public know how he intends to govern.

The alternative, according to Trump’s national policy adviser, is a bunch of boring details that are only of interest to nerdy egg-heads. Why bore the electorate “to tears” with detailed information about the direction of their country after the election?

Stick it in a time capsule. Future generations won’t believe it.

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Sadly, I do in fact think that most of the electorate are very ignorant. Many couldn't pass a citizenship test and are lucky they were born here. Our vote is precious and levies a great responsibility upon the voting citizen. Many just do not recognize this responsibility and then you have someone like Trump who recognizes this and takes advantage of voter ignorance and apathy.

Most people just want to make sure its not THEIR ox that gets gored by policy/law. They could care less about any other issues.

The Second Presidential Debate Will Try Something New

Which questions should be asked at the next debate :
(edit: these examples are not mine)

• As President, will you commit to keeping guns out of the hands of domestic abusers? What specifically will you do to address domestic violence against women, including keeping guns away from abusers?
• Quality child care is increasingly unaffordable, especially for Black and brown families, what will you do to fix that?
• Should politicians have the power to ask doctors to give medically inaccurate information regarding abortion to women?
• Do you support allowing Gary Johnson to participate in the final debate?
  
• You can submit your own, or vote for your favorite questions

from:
https://presidentialopenquestions.com/
http://www.theatlantic.com/politics...e-two-the-questions-are-on-the-ballot/501791/

grokit said:

As President, will you commit to keeping guns out of the hands of domestic abusers? What specifically will you do to address domestic violence against women, including keeping guns away from abusers?

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Ah, you are aware that a conviction for domestic abuse will result in a NOT PASS NICS screening and therefore is not allowed to buy a firearm. This is existing Federal law.

grokit said:

Quality child care is increasingly unaffordable, especially for Black and brown families, what will you do to fix that?

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And this is the responsibility of the Federal Government, funded by the tax payers, for what reason? I often think that our current social programs remove any incentive for potential parents to evaluate their financial ability to support the children they seem to have so prolifically.

I don't expect these to be popular views here...just wondering why my tax dollars should be used to help you pay for care for your child? (you being used euphemistically)

Baron23 said:

Ah, you are aware that a conviction for domestic abuse will result in a NOT PASS NICS screening and therefore is not allowed to buy a firearm. This is existing Federal law.

And this is the responsibility of the Federal Government, funded by the tax payers, for what reason? I often think that our current social programs remove any incentive for potential parents to evaluate their financial ability to support the children they seem to have so prolifically.

I don't expect these to be popular views here...just wondering why my tax dollars should be used to help you pay for care for your child? (you being used euphemistically)

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Those examples aren't my suggestions (see edit);
you could still vote, or submit your questions to the debate site.

Among the uses of the government for the purposes of the people is promoting the vision of seeing society as an advantage and encouraging societal values; like objectively acknowledging and respecting the humanity of all peoples' needs, not only one's own kind, which is very unkind.

The purpose of one's tax dollars is not to pay for others' benefit now. It pays back for your own prepaid benefit of living long enough in civil society, to become a (rare) functional adult (food, water, shelter, protection, education, roads, etc were there for us).
Tax dollars are the civilized way to pay thanks to the previous people who built and maintained a world in which we can live without marauding war-lords ripping off our wives and cattle and burning our homes.
If some of those tax dollars manage to maintain for the future... Great!

If someone benefits, why complain only when it is the least among USA (us-all) who are helped.

Some attempt to equalize the benefits of a this vast and rich nation is needed.
Anything less is not nice, not Christian and not a functional organizing principal for a society seeking to avoid surrendering to the best armed, worst dressed, mad militia 'king-of-the-hill' mentality.

We have done so very well with assuring the rich and famous access to everything, including the Presidency.

Trump uses the courts of our country, the laws, the power of a large economy, etc while bragging about refusing to pay for the benefits of not being disappeared and buried in a building basement.