Grilling the FBI agent

Peter Strzok is the reviled FBI agent to wrote all sorts of nasty texts about Trump using his official FBI phone. The texts were sent to an FBI colleague with whom he was having an affair, an interesting bit of spice but oh-so-common among Congressman, presidents, and assorted Washington folk.

Supposedly Strzok may have been in deep with the deep state that concocted the Russian interference hoax as part of a planned coup. That's according to the far-right conspiracy theorists, who really seem to believe this. (Sources 1, 2, 3.) And Fox News got heavily involved, showing that it isn't much different from the far-right conspiracy theorists. Everyone is now Alex Jones school-shootings-are-staged crazy.

This past Thursday, members of the House grilled Peter Strzok. It was a circus, with too many insane moments for complete discussion here. I'll pull out a couple bits I found significant.

Trey Gowdy, a one-man Jekyll-and-Hyde combo who can't decide whether to go full honest or full partisan, decided to grill Strzok about this text complaining about what an idiot Trump is. For some reason, Gowdy wants to take these off-hand texts as completely serious. (Scroll down here for the testimony.) Absurdly, he questions Strzok on what he meant when Strzok wrote the Clinton should win 100 million to zero. He refused to accept the answer that it was hyperbole, despite that it obviously was hyperbole. How does that make sense? How is that constructive at all as questioning?

Gowdy seems to have a special hatred for Strzok. Does Gowdy not know how people talk about Trump, and how Strzok is fairly representative? On the other hand, Gowdy can be realistic, like supporting the Mueller investigation and pointing out that there is no rationale for impeaching Rosenstein. This is a head-scratcher, but that's how Gowdy has been for a long time.

Stranger still...

Much more puzzling was Louie Gohmert's questioning. Gohmert appeared to be reading notes about the Inspector General for the intelligence community (ICIG) sending an investigator to verbally tell Strzok that Clinton's server had been hacked, something strange (an anomaly) installed, and emails copied and sent to a foreign account. Strzok remembered meeting with the investigator, but nothing else. Gohmert in incensed. How could such a finding be ignored by the FBI? Well, that's a good question. No one other than Gohmert seems to have information about this accusation. I have to wonder, was there a written report? Who was it sent to? Why didn't Horowitz, the Inspector General for the DOJ, mention it? And wasn't Hillary's server stored in some facility and wiped? How would an investigator find 'an anomaly' on it if that's true?

Gohmert seems to be the only person telling this story, which is a bit bizarre. I have to wonder if Gohmert got punked with a fabricated story using a few actual details, like the name of the IC Inspector General. So far, no reporters have followed up. But it can't be hard to call up the IC Inspector General and ask him about the server. I hope I get to read about it. It would be delicious if my theory was confirmed. I'll have to eat dirt if I'm completely wrong and there is an inspector's report to that effect.

Strzok's look of defiance

Image: 4videogames.com

February links

Good news for Dems. A court ruled that Pennsylvania was gerrymandered to benefit Republicans illegally. Therefore, when the new district lines are redrawn, the Dems may pick up several easy wins.

Do nothing Congress. A poli-sci professor reads the signs and predicts that Congress won't do much this year. Congress probably won't pass a budget resolution and therefore can't use reconciliation to pass bills with only 51 votes in the Senate.

Vain hope on immigration. This item was more meaningful before the Senate failed to pass any immigration deal today. In the House, a group of 48 reps are trying to reach an immigration agreement.

The story behind the Clinton's email server. A reporter read all the notes about the email server, and shares what he learned. Clinton was weird and backward when it came to using electronics, and that was the main consideration--how to kludge up something she could use. That is so sad. For the info, skip down to 'Act One.'

Trump's budget. Good graphics. I have to check more, such as the highly important question of the projected deficit.

Image: deadline.com

Memo frenzy: sequel 1

The Nunes memo (text here) hammers on the Steele dossier, how biased Steele was against Trump, how the dossier was used to spy on an American whose rights were thus abridged, and, hey, the targeted individual worked on Trump's campaign.

The memo was heartily cheered by the Trump faithful. Their narrative is that the whole 'Russia thing' is fake news, stirred up by media, abetted by deep state leakers and a very biased FBI and Justice Department. Both of those departments should obviously be cleared out, with all these anti-Trump conspirators sent to jail.

The Nunes memo supported this narrative by positing the FBI used the perfidious Steele dossier to get a warrant to spy on a loyal American (Trump adviser Carter Page), violating his civil rights. Those who want to take that narrative even further into territory even Nunes can't go, they say that the FBI was spying on the Trump campaign and giving that information to Obama.

The Nunes is centered on the claim that the FISA court judge wasn't told that the dossier was opposition research. Dems dispute this. Am I going to believe Nunes? Not a chance. I'm looking forward to the actual verbiage that Dems points to as backing their claim that the judge was informed that the dossier had political origins.

The duplicity of Steele is a fair target. He didn't fully share his motives. His work was sloppy and uneven, and he broke faith with FBI by leaking to the press while he was very engaged with the FBI.
Did the FBI know the origin of the Steele dossier, paid for by Clinton and the DNC? Did they dig for the information? How did the FBI frame the information from the dossier? Were they clear on its origin at oppo research? Did the judge have full information? It is a reasonable question whether the court would have granted the FISA warrant if the judge had been fully informed.

The Nunes memo is also disputed because it ignores that the FBI was already investigating Russian hijinks prior to the creation of the Steele dossier. What other information had the FBI gathered? Nunes pretends there was none. Trump loyalists pretend there was none--as though there were no Russian hijinks at all. Dems claim there was other evidence.

If there was no evidence of hijinks, then there is no reason to spy on Carter Page. However, if there were Russian hijinks along with evidence that Carter Page was involved, then there's a good reason to spy on Page. Interestingly, Page hasn't been a big figure in the whole issue of Russian meddling. The current inquiry isn't centered around Page, but around multiple connection points between the Trump campaign and Russia. Also, Russian meddling -- can we take it as granted that there were a lot of Russian dirty tricks? Do we need a laundry list of them?

So the question of whether Russian meddling was real is paramount. If it was real, if there were sources showing Russian meddling, and not just the fervid, well-paid work of one biased spy, then the investigations appear to be justified.

If Russian meddling was real, then Russia deserves the sanctions put on it. And it would have been wrong to remove those sanctions, as it appears Trump was ready to do. In fact, the whole coziness of Trump, many of his advisers, and Russia appear to be frightening, as though rules and laws don't matter.

One other observation about the memo. Nunes claims twice that FBI and DOJ knew the Steele was being paid by DNC, but is actually vague on the point. It doesn't say who in the FBI and DOJ knew this. It is also vague on what was known, using the phrase "knew political actors..." This vagueness may indicate that there is no written evidence that the information was known at that time at the FBI and DOJ.

Is this applicable to the memo? To the strategy?

Image: smoosh.com

Extras. Reaction from the director of the FBI. Reaction from the New Yorker. Here's an interesting point. Carter Page was already on the radar of other news organizations before the leak from Steele: Huffpost early Aug 2016, ABC July 2016, and Slate July 2016.

Because of the memo frenzy, Congress didn't do the work they needed to in the run-up to the end of the most recent continuing resolution, so we're facing another shutdown. Way to go, boys!

Guess what! There was verbiage to the effect that the dossier was political. It was footnote, and Nunes knew about it. What a fucking liar he is.

More extras that I forgot. Conservative theories and reaction to them. Super-great wonderful interactive graphic about who is who in the Russia investigation. Gowdy splits the difference in conspiracies. An unofficial Dem rebuttal is rebutted. Scathing review of the memo because the critique is very sharp, not because the language is hyped. WaPo timeline I might want to refer to.

Finally, a much better memo from Senator Ron Johnson. Reasonable tone, reasonable questions. Download the memo and the internal FBI communications. This is what a decent congressman does. Nunes is a sideshow.

More and better extras. A long, detailed profile of Carter Page. Impressive unless it's full of Russian disinformation. Another more important memo, also about the Carter Page surveillance, but so much more solid.

Bombshells at the DNC

I don't subscribe to the belief that Clinton rigged the Democratic primary. Unless you stuff ballot boxes, bribe party reps at state conventions, or manage to disqualify your opponent or his supporters, it's hard to rig a democratic selection process. (I suppose if you own all the media, that might work too, but that doesn't pertain either.)

I'm not changing my mind due to the revelations from Donna Brazile. She's a party hack who's had various roles, including interim party chair after Debbie Wasserman-Schultz was forced to resign in disgrace.

Brazile writes in overly dramatic prose about discovering the unsavory arrangement for sharing campaign and party money. Clinton gave money to the debt-ridden party in exchange for a high degree of control of the levers. This allowed her to tilt the debate schedule to her advantage, but I don't see any other major advantage that she had. I don't see evidence that this changed the eventual outcome of the primary.

It does show yet again Hillary's penchant for rigid control regardless of ethics, protocol, rules, transparency, or good judgment. Her basic drive is not for truth or honesty or the greater good, but for the maintenance of her own power as she conceives it. Again I'm relieved that she's not in the White House,.further tarnishing herself and other Dems by association.

I wish I had any hope for the Democrats to improve. Donna Brazile doesn't inspire confidence. I hated Wasserman-Schultz. I have no idea if there are any Dems I respect aside from Joe Biden, Howard Dean (maybe), and Deval Patrick. That's a pretty small number of people for a national party. But that's where I'm at with this excuse for a political party.

This country, which I've loved and respected, we may be on the skids to being a low-class country like Argentina. I hope it doesn't happen. I hope I see a turn-around before I die. I'm not hopeful though.

Image: thronesvideo.xyz

More links - even more interesting

Unmasking unmasking. Republicans are trying to shift the attention on Russian election interference to the unmasking of names in intelligence documents. It turns out that the House Intelligence Committee asked for some unmasking itself. Perhaps unmasking names isn't as bad as they're pretending it is.

Clinton Emails. I had an argument with another Bloomberg commenter on whether we should assume Hillary's server was hacked, even in the absence of leaks of her emails. The commenter provided a link to a video clip of a former intelligence officials saying that he'd have no respect for foreign intelligence agencies if they hadn't hacked her emails. (Sorry, I can't find the link. It was a respectable news channel.) I don't think this is compelling enough evidence to say the realistic people must assume her emails were hacked. Fox News (not a respectable organization) claimed that it received info about known hacks. But I guess they backed down on that. This New York Times article discusses some reasons to strongly suspect it happened.

But a final bit of speculation: it was a very close election. If foreign intelligence agencies has hacked her server and had emails, and didn't want to see Clinton as president, isn't it likely that they would have leaked the emails before the election? Consider whether some not-so-Clinton-friendly countries like Russia, Israel, or Saudi Arabia had those emails. Would they not have tried to tip the election? If indeed she'd been hacked, I'm rather surprised that information hasn't clearly surfaced.

Trump is trying to hire... but will people serve? That's a good question tackled by this must-read article. There's a telling anecdote of an interview for a high position.

Unwarranted suspicion. The investigation of contacts between Trump advisers and Russians was started because of malice on the part of John Brennan, the former CIA director. The investigation was totally fake. Don't you believe me????? (I often don't believe the Washington Times.)

Trump war room. With Trump's return from his first foreign visits, he may be setting up a war room to fight back against the mounting Russia news blizzard. How they might fight back: Deny Russian contacts happened. Then claim what did happen is perfectly fine. Or get the supposedly recused chairman of the House Intelligence Committee to jump back in and run interference again. Or coordinate/non-coordinate with a group to run commercials attacking former FBI directory Comey.

Unfortunately, I doubt that they'll decide to be transparent on all Russia contacts. Cover-up and obfuscation seem to be the go-to strategies of politicians -- see Hillary and her email server. Also, a very readable speculation on Trump's mood and how it permeates everything.

Impeachment. A conservative gets that impeachment would be a fiasco. For the record, I don't see impeachment happening, due to the prez being a Republican and Republican control of the House. Duh! How the hell would it happen?

Don't cry for Robert E. Lee. The Atlantic has an illuminating article on the myth of Lee versus the reality. He wasn't exactly the reluctant defender of slavery. A good read as statues are being removed.

Paris climate accords. Trump, true to his rhetoric, pulled the US out of the non-binding accords. The effect is to make the US look greedy and rather irresponsible, and everyone else look more like grown-ups. Go, team, go!

Signs of more instability in the Mideast? Several major Mideast countries, including Egypt and Saudi Arabia, cut diplomatic ties with Qatar. What's going on? Even more infighting in that region, it appears. There are Muslims fighting the West, Sunnis and Shia fighting, Kurds being suppressed, and maybe now Sunnis fighting other Sunnis. What a mess. Here's a reflection: perhaps Obama was partly successfully in controlling the chaos. But he's gone now, and Trump's policies will give rein to more chaos. Update 6/12/17. An article explaining the Qatar situation. Another good article. More updates 7/16/17. Report that the United Arab Emirates probably hacked Qatar and placed false information to start this action. Trump doesn't understand this and isn't listening to the smarter cabinet secretaries. Secret alliance documents. Interesting, but the news story is somewhat muddy. Analysis that the Saudis are overplaying their hand.

Former libertarian turns supporter of welfare state. I guess he stopped fighting the wave and started communing and learning how the wave thinks. The wave wants the welfare state that is embodied by Social Security and Medicare. However, most GOP lawmakers haven't read between the lines, or won't be saying out loud that entitlements have won, even in the GOP. Because of this, legislative paralysis wins.

How to get caught leaking. Interesting background on the first leaker arrested in the very leaky start of the Trump administration. Possibly memorable trivia, but maybe throw-away trivia.

Rhetoric games. A National Review columnist notices one of the most common rhetorical tricks: 'Hey, what about this [outrage/blunder/hypocrisy]?'

The Swamp

Image: tulane,edu

Horrendous media transgressions--not

I've read so many people claim that it was just terrible how the MSM favored Clinton, and flagrantly colluded with her campaign.

I'm not naive enough to claim that the MSM is fair and unbiased. I frequently see a liberal bias there. But I wondered about charges of collusion, with journalists breaking ethical rules to help Clinton. The only example I heard about before the election was Donna Brazile providing Hillary with a heads-up on one question at one campaign event. Yes, it was unethical, but there's no way it was a huge deal and a huge advantage.

So how bad was all the other collusion? Did it amount to an unfair advantage?

Finally, I found a list. From Breitbart:

WIKILEAKS REVEALS LONG LIST OF MEDIA CANOODLING WITH HILLARY CLINTON

It lists nine incidents, including the leak of the question. It includes of couple of instances when a reporter emailed ad ideas to the campaign or its advertising agency.

Really, all of NINE instances.

This is pigeon feed next to the bias of the MSM, and next to the bias of the conservative media. It's so incredibly ironic that Breitbart thinks this is horrible, while their lack of critique of Trump's numerous insults, ludicrous boasts, history of cons and bankruptcy is not an issue of ethics.

If we're going to talk about unethical and biased behavior by the media, let's talk about what really happens on practically a daily basis. Let's not pretend a list that doesn't even reach a couple dozen cases makes an ant's worth of difference compared to the daily skewed news of hundreds of media outlets.

Free from bias, free from ethics

Image: breitbart.com

Extras. Here's a list of damaging info about the DNC related to Bernie Sanders. It may be a partial list because document dumps were ongoing. Again, mostly small stuff, nothing like stuffing the ballot box, buying votes, or violently assaulting opponents.

Stupid campaigns, stupid candidates

I haven't been writing much about politics because there's nothing positive to inspire me. It's the same stupidity that we've had since 2012. Republicans still don't know how to negotiate on appropriations, so they end up caving and sticking with the status quo.

This year some of the actors on the stage are different and worse. Hillary is still secretive and having trouble admitting her mistakes. Maybe she learned a lesson from her poorly received comments about how the FBI 'exonerated' her, because she was straightforwardly apologetic about her email server during the first presidential debate. However, secrecy does seem to be her to-go method to handle any information that shows her being less than perfect, including the human trait of susceptibility to illness. Hillary and her campaign didn't acknowledge that she was ill with pneumonia until she collapsed at an event. She could have shared the truth, but chose not to. We'll have to see how frequently she hides the truth during the rest of the campaign and in her administration if she's elected.

Although Hillary has a secrecy problem, Donald Trump has more problems than I can count, and they've been erupting despite his campaign's efforts to keep him in check and help him act presidential. Trump is a braggart who is temperamentally unable to back down from a challenge. He claims to be the best in all things so he can't admit or learn from his mistakes. This was clearly on display during the first presidential debate, when Trump was able to temper his comments during the first 30 minutes, but then slid further and further into his reactive mode, being accusatory, interrupting, disrespectful, petulant, and whining (about 'not nice' anti-Trump ads).

Since the debate, Trump has feuded about his treatment of a beauty contest winner (why he was justified in calling her names) and threatened to ramp up his criticism of Clinton into new areas. Some of his comments have come as tweets in the middle of the night, so probably weren't vetted by his campaign advisers. So far Trump hasn't increased his criticism of the Clintons that much. He questioned Hillary's loyalty to Bill and her sanity, but this isn't much of an increase in rhetoric considering what Trump has said about other people.

Yet I sense that Trump could blow at any time, and start spewing all kinds of conspiracy nonsense about the Clintons from the deep well that conservative media has filled for over 20 years. I really think this will happen because Trump has met my low expectations every time. He's fundamentally remained the egotistic blowhard who can't and won't learn to be better than what he already is. He may be able to be rational for a few minutes, hours, or days, but not for an entire week or 5 weeks until the election. I have to wonder what extreme anger Hillary or the media will goad him into. I feel certain there will be more, but I can't predict the direction Trump will spew at. But I am almost certain he will erupt with devastating results.

Image: mirrorspectrum.com

Crazy week for The Donald

Matt Glassman (via twitter): Is this the stupidest week ever in American politics?

Jonathan Bernstein (via twitter): It's Monday.
_____________________________________________________

Yes, it's been a crazy week. Last Thursday, the father of a Muslim-American US Army captain who was killed in Iraq spoke at the Democratic Convention and attacked Trump for his prejudice against Muslims. Trump unwisely has launched attack upon attack back at this family.

Attacking the grieving families of fallen soldiers--not a good tactic. Has Donald Trump adopted the tactics of the reviled Westboro Baptist Church? So it seems. And the conservative media is supporting him in these tactics.

Last night my sweetie was kept awake following myriad tweets about Trump's campaign falling apart. Campaign aides are suicidal. Paul Manafort, his campaign manager, is 'mailing' it in. Trump is feuding with GOP heavyweights John McCain, Kelly Ayotte, and Paul Ryan. The head of the Republican National Committee  (RNC) has called Trump to complain about how he handled the Khan family, and then leaked this information. The RNC has even checked on the official procedure for selecting a new nominee if Trump quits the race. (Source for part of this info.)

Then this morning on Morning Joe, Scarborough revealed that Trump has questioned advisers on why we can't use nuclear weapons since we have them. This is astounding, and the people on Morning Joe were certainly distressed. This is the most terrifying aspect of Trump. He doesn't understand that as president, he needs to be careful not to trigger a chain reaction of nuclear missile launches Because if we start using them, other countries will follow.
______________________________________________________

Hillary hasn't fared that well this week either. She went on Fox News and doubled-down on some claims that the head of the FBI already said weren't true. However, she also repeated that she wouldn't handle email that way again.

And it was uncovered that the US government sent $400 million to Iran on the same day that they released four American prisoners. Though this looks like a ransom, it wasn't a straight ransom, but part of a series of large deals with Iran settling old issues while setting up a new nuclear agreement.

However, any comparison of Hillary's week and Donald's week has Hillary is the big winner. Will it matter on Election Day? I certainly don't know.

Image: @MEMRIReports

Extras. Lots of other sources. Other Republicans support the Khan family. Trump seeks support from Congress, gets little. GOPers trying to talk sense into Trump. Detailed discussion about Khan from Snopes. Trump against Kelly Ayotte. Campaign woes from Vanity Fair:

"The problem is that Trump watches TV every minute that he isn’t actually on his phone, either talking or tweeting. And then he gets angry at what he sees on TV and reacts."

Update 8/4/16. Was there or wasn't there an intervention of the few GOP leaders that Trump might listen to? Maybe there was, because Trump didn't insult the Khan family in the past 24 hours. However, Gingrich is now sadly admitting that Trump is blowing the campaign. Guiliani says "What intervention? There was no such thing. Trump is a great candidate." Well, something like that.

Update 8/7/16. The Huffington Post has a timeline of Trump's week, including additional gaffes and missteps that are too numerous for me to cover. It's rather stilted, and doesn't note the Trump toed the line on Friday. Still, a fun recounting of the many Donald blunders in an amazing week.

Update 8/8/16. A letter signed by 50 former national security officials says Trump "would be the most reckless President in American history." Maybe he'll retaliate by saying he's 'not there yet' in deciding whether these former officials deserve tickets to the next Miss World contest. This deserves to be a big issue. I wonder if/when it will become so.

Update 8/10/16. Here's a CNN article on GOPers who have declared that they don't support Trump. The list goes on and on. I did eventually get to the end.

Rant on our horrific choices

How crappy are the political conditions in the US that our choices are Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump?

In one corner, we have battered Hillary Clinton. She and Bill wanted both money and political power, and they've cut lots of corners to get the money. While there are innumerable false complaints about them, there is plenty slime that they created and sticks to them. Here are some: Vince Foster (FALSE), cattle futures (LIKELY), monetarily motivated pardons (LIKELY), rapes by Bill (HYPED by GOP operatives), State Department favors in exchange for Clinton charity donations (SERIOUS AND PLAUSIBLE).

In the other corner, we have Donald Trump, a modern-day ringmaster with a circus of his own follies. One of his follies is starting to believe his own hype. He's said he's the only one who can fix the problems in the US, the Mideast, and probably the world. Who actually believes that kind of talk? Too many Americans, for one. Maybe half of Trump's supporters believe he has something special. Maybe the other half hope and pray that he'll bring some change to the constipated, blocked, inefficient government we now have. Yes, they hope Trump is the enema that the US needs.

What's especially sad is that these two were picked in competitive primaries. That means the other choices were too weak, too unpopular, or too weird to be chosen. Or perhaps our parties and our politics are frightening away the better candidates, or suppressing them, muzzling them, or turning them into cookie cutter clones.

I hope sometime in the next 10 years to have a candidate I really respect. At the rate we're going, that isn't going to happen, and the US will continue its slow slide down the tubes into mediocrity.

Complete Trump enema kit, backed by Trump University

Image: enemakit.com

Trump finally starts running against Hillary--SPLAT!

Donald, with his usual grandiose bragging and blather,' implied that he was beating Hillary, and that he hadn't "even started yet."

As of June 22, he has now started. He gave a speech about Hillary and "the stakes in this election." It was the usual bragging from Donald. The country's a mess, but it can be fixed, but "only by [him]." Yes, he actually claimed that, but it's so typical that he thinks he is the savior. (Look here at the transcript.) Too bad he's so unclear how he'll do this without causing trade wars-- possibly even global instability on the order of our last massive recession.

What's funny about his speech is how many of his complaints about Hillary also apply to him:

• "Hillary Clinton who, as most people know, is a world class liar..." (Trump thinks he's world class in everything, so just add 'liar' to the list, since he's deserving.)
• "Hillary Clinton has perfected the politics of personal profit and theft." (Trump has done with with his various businesses, including casinos, real estate developments where he cashed in and others lost their investments, and, of course, Trump U.)
• "She made $21.6 million giving speeches to Wall Street banks and other special interests – in less than 2 years – secret speeches that she does not want to reveal to the public. (How about Trump and his secret tax returns?)
• "But she doesn't have the temperament or ... the judgement, to be president." (Trump talking about temperament and judgment? Hahahaha.)
• "Hillary Clinton gave China millions of our best jobs, and effectively let China completely rebuild itself." (Oh my God! It wasn't the corporations who shipped jobs overseas, it was Hillary!)
• "But Hillary Clinton learned nothing from Iraq, because when she got into power,she couldn’t wait to rush us off to war in Libya." (First, the war in Libya started as a revolt by Libyans, Second, Trump claims to have a different way to fight wars, and win oil, that's so much better--if you believe in him and fairy dust.)

I can't wait for the commercials blasting Trump. He provides so much ammunition. We'll probably get a dozen reasons not to support him each week, and still not run out of fodder.

Image: slate.com

Extra. Another author's take on the same speech. Very readable and worthwhile.

IF--the unlikely upside if Hillary loses

Is it already too late to write about the possibility of Donald Trump winning the presidency? Trump has had some miserable weeks where he's said stupid shit for the whole country to hear and process. But before that happened, he and Hillary were nearly tied in the conglomerate poll average. At that time I started thinking about the benefits of a Trump presidency.

OK, I came up with one advantage. It would signal the end of the Clinton era. We wouldn't have to worry about Hillary running for another office, or listening to the infuriating reports of all the sleazy things she and Bill have done over the years. There has been a fair amount of sleaze. Off the top of my head, I can recall: cattle futures trading, travel office firings, Bill's sexual escapades, Bill lying about his sexual escapades, questionable pardons, private email server for personal secrecy reasons, and Clinton foundation payola.

Not too many other Democrats have a list that long. I started wondering whether I would have preferred Hillary to sit out this presidency race and instead go into a quiet retirement. Unfortunately, I still think she might have been the best candidate available this time. The likely alternative, if Hillary hadn't run, would have been Elizabeth Warren, who isn't exactly my favorite.

I'm still hoping that there are centrists in the Democratic Party and one of them will run for president at the next opportunity. But it isn't very likely. The centrists like Ron Wyden have been sidelined for so many years that few know about them. If anything, the party is split between progressives like Nancy Pelosi and even-further-left progressives like Bernie Sanders. Ugh. In a situation like this, Hillary is better, which a very sad commentary indeed.

Image: realclearpolitics.com

No one solves the problems

Trump is promising to bring good jobs back to the US. He doesn't say how this will happen, but we're supposed to trust him because he knows how to make good deals.

Is he different from other politicians (both right and left) who have promised good jobs? Were the earlier politicians (right and left) different from one another when they promised good jobs?

In many ways, they weren't different. Both sides failed. Their promises were half-baked words meant to get them elected, but not suitable to be implemented. Trump's promises look a lot like this.

I'm not an economist--not that economists have delivered all that well on their predictions/solutions (i.e. promises). I haven't seen an economist discuss which economies in the world are working well, and whether the US can emulate their success. I suspect that the US can't emulate their success. If we are to recapture our former higher level of economic success, we'll have to figure out our own path there.

The GOP path was tax cuts for 'job creators' and the trickle-down economy. Since Bush Jr., that path has clearly been a failure. The Democratic path seems like a hodge-podge of security nets programs and tax increases on the wealthy. How that brings more jobs isn't clear. I'd have to classify as a redistribution program, not a jobs-creation plan.

The failure of both the GOP and Dem plans have left the door wide open for Trump, and he has taken full advantage. I don't know how many of his supporters actually believe him. But for sure, they know that the GOP and the Dems have failed, so maybe it's time to try something else.

Ask the question: Is this working?

Worst of all, neither the Dems nor the GOP have grappled with their failures. Dems are doubling-down on the social safety net, while the GOP continues their trickle-down fantasies. Dems, for electoral reasons, won't consider that large-scale immigration has hurt average Americans. Many in the GOP elites won't talk about it either because they benefit from cheap immigrant labor, and they're looking at electoral demographics too.

So, it is no surprise that Trump wins the GOP presidential nomination, since he is the only candidate who will talk about immigration in forceful, if ugly, terms.

As for the general election, I'm not confident that Trump will lose. Hillary represents one failed plan, so she certainly doesn't deserve to win. Trump doesn't deserve to win either. No one seems to deserve the office. No one has strong, new ideas.

I recently read a history of the US from 1932 to 1972 (The Glory and the Dream by William Manchester). It was enlightening how Roosevelt tackled the depression. The problem is that the US is so much larger now with so many more layers of spending. Can we actual do anything major now? I have strong doubts.

Nonetheless, I wish more politicians were making big proposals that are outside of the same-old partisan failures. Instead of Trump vs. generic-Dem, we should have had the choice of a half-dozen new ideas. But we didn't, and that's the shame and the pity.

Image: deliberatemeans.com

Extras. Are there countries we can learn from? HuffPost's top ten. US News and their ranking of 60 countries. Also by quality of life.

Short: Jamelle Bouie speaks truth to starry-eyed Dems

I'm cleaning up my browser and clearing out some interesting stories I read over the past few months. However, this is just from yesterday.

Jamelle Boiue, a black political columnist, tries to explain to all those starry-eyed idealist what is going to happen if a Democrat wins the presidency in 2016. The unwelcome news: Even their beloved Bernie can't change the dynamic enough.

Please read the whole thread. I almost feel like I could have written it.

Benghazi hearing round-up

Nope, I didn't watch the Benghazi hearings where the GOP hoped to embarrass Hillary Clinton. I caught up with the news later. It seems that Clinton did pretty well and the committee was blah, as befits a newstory that's been raked over for three years already.

When I first checked Google News for stories, I noticed the lack of stories from conservative sites like Breitbart and Daily Caller. Oh my, they didn't have any stories to trumpet. Looks like it was a bad day for the Hillary-haters all over the US internet.

That seems to be the consensus--no big moments going against Hillary. A bust for the committee, if we are to guess what their real objective is.

Extras. The MSM reviews the conservative media (3 stories). Politico's top moments. Very pithy and readable analysis. I sought out a bit of video.

Hillary being stupid on Syria

I think I'm hitting my limit with Hillary. She is making one pandering bad decision after another.

This time it's calling for a no-fly zone in Syria. As a candidate, she can do this without political cost to herself, as she isn't the president who'd have to deploy forces, order missile attacks, order shots fired at Russian aircraft, and deal with the consequences.

She should shut up and rethink her position.

Syria has proven to be a no-win situation. We dislike Assad, but we dislike ISIS even more. The only people we half-way trust have failed and/or been crushed. We should chalk this up as a short term loss, with the long term not visible at all at this point. Unfortunately, the hawks in the US aren't able to accept this loss, and they seem to want to throw more into this no-win situation. BAD IDEA!!! I don't know how much clearer it could be.

You want a piece of this?

Image: middleeastmonitor.com

Hillary panders on the Cadillac tax

This is disappointing but not surprising. Hillary Clinton is calling for the repeal of the Cadillac tax provision of ACA. And like many repeal proposals, she's vague on what she'd do to make up for the lost revenue. Actually, she's silent on what she'd do.

This is just bad, typical pandering. Some unions want to protect their benefits as much as possible, and they don't want members hit with the punishing 40% excise tax on the primo health benefits. However, the premium must be over $27K for a family. That's pretty damn high. How many people really have such generous health benefits?

I couldn't readily find any numbers. Companies have been trying to change their plans in preparation for the Cadillac tax starting in 2018, but also to rein in health insurance costs and to get employees to share the burden. I don't think that's at all bad. It's better for employees to be aware of healthcare costs, rather than treating it like a perk that someone else pays for.

The arguments for repealing the Cadillac tax aren't very strong. Opponents claim that it will hit 82% of all employers by 2023 because of the indexing (if they don't make adjustments, which they are). That leaves plenty of time to adjust the indexing if needed. Opponents also don't answer about how to make up for the lost revenue, which is just so typical.

Image:freerepublic.com

Extras. Forbes complains about higher cost or lack of choice, ignoring responsible decision-making. The Fiscal Times seconds that. A different author calls it 'modest.'  The typical economist response here.

Why I don't care about Hillary's emails

A commenter on Bernstein says: "This is not about party politics silly but ABUSE OF POWER, something we all should be united against."

Well, maybe, kinda, sorta. Hillary probably wanted more control over her documents than the rules gave her, so she went the private email route, which supposedly other Sectaries of State took before her.

She also didn't want to relinquish that control when she left office, so she took her emails with her. When she had to turn some over, again she wanted control, so she sorted them and gave what she felt like giving. This is a bit high-handed of her, but certainly not more than most (or all?) presidents, which is the office she aspires to. And I haven't noticed that we turned a president out of office for not sharing all the information he should have.

That's long way of saying that she behaves like many of her peers. Which means that we have to question why she should be held to higher standard. Sure, I'd like her to follow a higher standard, but I'm not going to eliminate her from consideration as a presidential candidate over this.

Another funny idea is that, in this age of hacks of Sony, the IRS, etc. and hacks by Wikileaks, Manning, and Snowden, it's possible that Hillary did a better job protecting her emails than the State Department would have.

So, again, what am I supposed to be all angry about? She doesn't follow the government rules--I don't follow all of them either. She abuses her power--like so many in top posts, but is she significantly worse? If so, explain how. She didn't secure government secrets--well, she did it better than many other officials, you have to admit that.

I'm sorry, but this just isn't stoking my moral outrage very much. Can't Hillary just do something really, terribly, and clearly awful and unforgivable, like hiring an assassin to kill Jeb Bush, or giving our negotiating strategy to the Iranians, or going to Trump's underground wedding to three 16-year-olds? That would make it easier to summon some outrage.

Then I'd have to hope the Republicans didn't top it the next day...

Everyone looks worse under the microscope.

Image: legalinsurrection.com

Update 7/29/16. Well a lot has happened. The biggest is that the director of the FBI said that Hillary was extremely careless with classified documents, but not to the point that she can be prosecuted. GOPers are outraged that HRC isn't headed to prison. Curses, foiled again. What the FBI Director James Comey said in his statement and in his testimony to Congress.

The Donald and The Clintons

"The Clinton Foundation has no plans to return tens of thousands of dollars in donations it received from Donald Trump"

I don't need to read anymore than that. It's so funny and ironic in so many ways. I've even broken my moratorium on Trump news to share it. But I still can't bring myself to thank him.

Better hair, better personality, better chance of winning.

Image: undercoverguineaupigs.blogspot.com

Benghazi: What is being covered up?

I never got to finish my post on Benghazi because I waited for the GOP House to hold its Benghazi hearings. They were supposed to happen during the summer when they would be filler during the news-drought months of the summer. Then it turned out that summer 0f 2014 was well-populated with political bombs, such as the immigration crisis and Mideast crisis. Benghazi wasn't necessary after all. That also turned out to be true in Fall '14, so the GOP didn't hold the hearings then either.

Nonetheless, I waded through a lot of Benghazi info last summer, and I don't want it to go to waste. So, finally seven months later, I'm publishing what I found out. It's late, but still more timely than our GOP political circus. This is actually two posts in one.

1. The Conservatives' Attempt to Make a Smoking Gun

What is the big new story about Benghazi [as of last summer, that is]? It seems that there was a stand-down order. Well, maybe it was more like a wait-and-let-me-think-about-this order. The CIA leader at the annex  (that secret other location that was attacked later that night but not at first) made his gung-ho underlings wait about 22 minutes before going to the consulate.

This word comes from three security operatives who were among the forces at the annex. These are three of the two dozen or so 'Benghazi survivors' who were strangely absent from previous hearings. Now some information is leaking from a few of these sources. So far it doesn't seem like enough for the GOP to cry "scandal," but the GOP will try anyway.

Here's the headline from Breitbart (same link as above):

BENGHAZI SECURITY CONTRACTORS: ABOUT 25 AMERICANS ARE STILL ALIVE BECAUSE WE BROKE 'STAND DOWN' ORDER

But if you read it closely, they saved 5 people from the consulate, not 25. They didn't exactly defy a stand-down order so much as put pressure on the chief/team leader to end the delay and get going. If there was a stand-down order, the chief/team leader didn't obey either, because he went with the security team to the consulate. Ah, but you must have drama, especially if you're trying to sell a narrative or sell books. 

From another article:

Their team leader was a CIA official who got direct orders from Washington to wait multiple times... [One security operative] said "I strongly believe if we would have left immediately, they would still be alive today."

Neither of these points is supported by other evidence. Was someone in Washington incorrectly telling them to wait? Maybe it wasn't that bad a call. Would leaving immediately have saved lives? That's questionable. Shoot first and plan later isn't a great policy in general.

2. The Worst of It: Bad, but not even close to horrific

Despite conservative media hype, the Benghazi scandal is bigger than the MSM made it out to be. The best evidence of this comes from Hicks, an assistant to the ambassador. The mistakes/poor judgment/incompetence has two parts:

1) Libya was a lot more dangerous than the administration let on, and the staff was expected to live with that danger and not report. If the dangers were known, it would bring unwelcome focus on Obama's decisions on how to handle Libya, and Obama seems to be unable to handle criticism.

2) The administration wanted to cover up that they were informed about the dangers, so they decided to go with the story that it was a protest similar to the one in Egypt. I don't know who made the decision, but people at the top knew it was a lie. However, the lie unraveled pretty quickly because GOP congress members knew of the dangers in Libya from intelligence briefings, and they gave that info to conservative news sources who ran with the story.

Get By with a Little Help from Our Friends

Obama and Clinton have counted on the friendly MSM to not pursue the story hard and not put them in a terrible light. No surprise there. Our media is very skewed, with the conservative media being even worse, and therefore having even less credibility.

How will Obama, Hillary, and the Dems deal with the scandal? I'm not sure, but perhaps they will treat it as a regrettable mistake, but not a huge, disqualifying mistake. Perhaps that's the conclusion of most of the electorate too, and they don't want to hear anymore about it. It boils down to this: most people are tired of it, so it won't matter in the 2016 campaigns.

Image: pinterest.com

Extras. I did lots of research, and here are the most interesting bits:

Three days after the attack and some newspapers are getting the story straight.

Comments at National Review are almost all partisan--not looking for truth, but looking to smear Dems. George will is castigated for not getting on the bandwagon. This is the echo chamber again.

Why Stevens didn't take the offer of more security--a good reason: immunity for the security personnel.

Who and what on the stand down command, maybe. This is the decision not to send fighter aircraft to Benghazi. Might or might not have helped. No refueling support available.

Strong comment with perspective on the incident. "It does not matter to ordinary voters whether it was a local militia stirred up by the video or it was a pre-planned Al Qaeda attack. We sent our people to a dangerous place, some of them died. Who [in the administration] said what ... is not really an important issue." What's not important is all the stuff the GOP is focusing on.

Politifact account of chain email about rape and mutilation. Another rumor with a different name as the source. This is very ugly partisanship, luckily confined to the shadows.

Update 3/13/16.  Did Clinton make false claims about the video to the families of the casualties? Accounts differ in profound ways. Why is this a big issue? Um, oh, because Clinton had a spin-laden story in public, and a different story in private. And because she must be blamed for the spin since she's running for president. Can't forget that reason.

The Political Lie Machine: Self-serving predictions

Contrary to an abundance of evidence, Hillary Clinton isn't running for president, or at least she won't be running.

That's according to some hackish journalist writing for the conservative Washington Times. Let's see what he says: She doesn't have the fire in the belly. She doesn't want to spend her golden years working 16 hours a day and sleeping in unfamiliar beds. He theorizes that there's a "hard blue flame" that drives the winners, and declares Hillary doesn't have it.

Excuse me, but did George Bush (either of them) have a hard blue flame? No, they didn't. They were candidates of convenience. It's a bunch of bullshit to think tremendous, unabridged ambition is required to become president.

Of course the article correctly claims Hillary has a mountain of negatives. This is true, but it's also true of every other candidate for president. Their opponents dearly wish that these negatives would disqualify the hated candidate. But it just doesn't seem to happen.  From reading Bernstein, I know the qualifications you need to win a nomination, but there's no clear list of what 1) disqualifies candidates, or 2) ensures you win the general election.

It used to be that a divorced candidate couldn't win high office, yet Reagan disproved that. It used to be that no woman or black or hispanic could win, but that obviously isn't true anymore. People want to believe that no one with such-and-such a black mark can win the presidency, and then they conveniently fill in the disqualifying event. But it just isn't so. Probably every single president has at some point been declared disqualified, and those predictions were wrong, wrong, wrong. This is just a particularly stupid example of the genre.

Image: washingtontimes.com