FBI to re-open email investigation
My prediction is that nothing will come of this in terms of the election. The sad thing—the very sad thing—is that Trump’s nomination has allowed Hillary Clinton to get away with things that would otherwise have harmed her with the electorate had she been running against anyone else. And the sad thing about Hillary Clinton’s nomination is that it has allowed Donald Trump to get away with things that would otherwise have harmed him had he been running against anyone else.
It’s the Kang and Kodos election:
https://youtu.be/4v7XXSt9XRM
So . . . Tony or Dak Nov. 6th in Cleveland AG Comey? What say you?
And don’t cop out by asserting you’ll only decide once Jerry has decided, hey? Just don’t.
(he sniggered)
@Eric – beat you to it… 😉
http://neoneocon.com/2016/10/27/about-that-binary-choice/#comment-1827863
False binary choice.
CNN is reporting that this investigation is based on info from their Anthony Weiner investigation. Who knows?
Assange says he has something to release next week that will be enough to put clinton in jail.
Frankly, if he does have that, it is rather a p*ssoff that he hasn’t released it as soon as he realized he had it.
Furthermore, at this point, just how “shocking” will any revelation be? We’ve been sprinkled with the email controversy for this entire election cycle.
Smoking gun to murder? Okay, that wouldn’t already be baked in.
But, still, who knows how many early votes will have been made already by the time he releases it?
Mac, if Assange had released this a month ago, it would have as much impact as it will in the imminent future: Zilch. You would still have to acknowledge Assange is wise to wait till the last minute as most Americans have a three day attention span anyway.
nothing will come of this
I suppose you mean that, although this revelation will undoubtedly cause the race to tighten, and will fill Trump partisans with hope and Hillary supporters with dismay, ultimately it won’t cause Hillary to lose.
In the home gym there is pandemonium; the home team is trailing, but has just stolen the ball and scored; your cheering companion smiles over at you with excitement in his eyes: and you sit there with your arms folded.
Perhaps the hometown star is a suspected molester. Perhaps the visiting team’s coach is rumored to pay off the referees. Perhaps that is why you keep your arms folded and cannot even smile.
Whoever wrote this for Trump back in August when Huma left Weiner should be getting a bonus right about now:
For anyone who could use a laugh at this news as it unfolds, take a glance at David Burge’s twitter page through the last couple of hours.
Guess Comey is trying to scrub some off some of the stink.
Maybe Obama will let her twist in the wind, then pardon her just before inauguration. We could watch history unfold with a President Elect under Federal Indictment.
As for the election, I doubt that individual Americans are tuned in sufficiently enough to react; and the voting blocs will vote in lock step, as always.
Huma Abedin turns out to be more akin to Pope Julius III’s Innocenzo Del Monte than anyone could possibly have guessed. But cling on, Mrs. Clinton, cling on for all you are worth.
On some reflection, maybe . . . just maybe . . . rather than the Kang and Kodos election, this hummer is turning into the Kaine and Kodos election, if only ultimately willy-nilly so. We can hardly escape at least some recollection of Bob the Torch, can we?
Oh, c’mon, Neo. You make it seem you believe Trump is responsible for Hillary’s riding high.
It is much more the fault of the NeverTrumpers, among which I think you have placed yourself.
If anyone other than Trump were the nominee, Hillary’s crimes would have had a different outcome? Really?
sdferr Says:
October 28th, 2016 at 5:50 pm
For anyone who could use a laugh at this news as it unfolds, take a glance at David Burge’s twitter page through the last couple of hours.
* * *
FWIW, Scott Adams has declared war on Twitter and other parts of the internet Left-o-verse.
Also see this, not that it is a surprise to anyone here.
http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2016/10/study-google-searches-favor-left-wing-content.php
http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2016/10/free-kim-strassel.php
…nothing will come of this in terms of the election.
That is correct. Comey is doing his best to help Hillary across the finish line.
There is a lot of turmoil in the FBI right now. Investigators have threatened to resign en masse over the non-indictment. Others have threatened to leak damaging evidence.
This shuts all of that down. Leaking evidence during an active investigation would have serious consequences for any offender, no matter how high-ranking. And resigning while the investigation is ongoing looks rather foolish.
The new investigation will not go any differently than the previous one. If Hillary wins, everything goes away. If Trump wins, Obama pardons her while claiming she did nothing wrong. Trump’s comments during the recent debate will “prove”, you see, that this is all a Republican witch-hunt, so the pardon won’t even convey any more guilt on her in public opinion than she already has.
This is all just more soap for the opera.
Camille Paglia weighs in on the First Woman President. RTWT, but this is a great commentary on Feminism Inc:
http://www.spectator.co.uk/2016/10/the-woman-is-a-disaster-camille-paglia-on-hillary-clinton/
‘My philosophy of feminism,’ the New York-born 69-year-old explains, ‘I call street-smart Amazon feminism. I’m from an immigrant family. The way I was brought up was: the world is a dangerous place; you must learn to defend yourself. You can’t be a fool. You have to stay alert.’ Today, she suggests, middle-class girls are being reared in a precisely contrary fashion: cosseted, indulged and protected from every evil, they become helpless victims when confronted by adversity. ‘We are rocketing backwards here to the Victorian period with this belief that women are not capable of making decisions on their own. This is not feminism – which is to achieve independent thought and action. There will never be equality of the sexes if we think that women are so handicapped they can’t look after themselves.’
Frog – you need to be nicer to your host.
Why does Trumpism have to poison everything?
Regarding the emails – I’ve long been dismayed that Hillary isn’t already under indictment. But I have family members who don’t understand the big deal here – classified information is classified for a reason, it’s very dangerous to put it in a position where it can be hacked.
The fact that she did shows a) terrible disregard for her country and b) stupidity. And for what? To protect herself from FOIA requests?
Lots of people had to go along with it too. No one ever thought to say “this doesn’t look right?”
Will be an interesting next week and a half.
Will also be interesting after the election. Both Hillary and Trump are under investigation or court proceedings. If Trump is elected no way his cases are ruled against him – would anyone want to be put on the enemies list of this guy? Ditto for her.
I hate this election. Everything about it.
McMullin/Finn 2016!
Frog:
You appear to be out of touch with reality.
First of all, I’ve made it crystal clear many many times on this blog that I’m not a NeverTrumper, and that I have no idea what I’m going to do in that voting booth.
Secondly, dream on if you think it’s the small group of NeverTrumpers responsible for the abominable showing of this abominable candidate. Trump was sold to the right on the idea that he could win by getting large number of blacks, Hispanics, and Democrats to vote for him, and that he would make true-blue states such as New York competitive for the GOP.
The number of Republicans in this country is small. Any Republican who would win the election for president must appeal to independents and moderates. Trump has not done so on anywhere near the scale he had to in order to win. His polling among blacks is abysmal. New York? Faggetaboutit.
It was all a stupid lie. His poor showing is not about the small number of NeverTrumpers at all. You delude yourself if you think it is. But hey, if you want to make them your scapegoat instead of the people who promoted Trump with lies to begin with (and the people who naively believed those lies), go right ahead.
And yes, Hillary’s problems would have gained a lot more traction if she was running against someone who wasn’t so vulnerable to attack. I’ve written about that, too. Would that person—whoever he or she was—be attacked? Of course. But not with such success. I know many many people who can’t stand Hillary and were very much interested in voting for her opponent, but who could not even consider doing so once that opponent was Trump.
Bill:
Thanks for defending me, but “Frog” has been here for many years, long before Trump, and he’s always been very argumentative and sometimes insulting. Why don’t I ban him? I think he’s an interesting guy, with interesting things to say. So although I agree that Trump has poisoned things, I wouldn’t say he’s poisoned Frog. Frog has been a curmudgeon from way back, and I can’t blame him on Trump.
Frog,
Several things….
Nevertrumpers are responsible for “Hillary’s riding high”? What magical powers do nevertrumpers have to elevate hrc or influence the msm? I have stated I will vote for djt if its close in my state. Am I helping hrc riding high or is the djt campaign train wreck and the totally predictable easy target djt is for the msm sinking Trump and elevating Clinton?
However, I agree that the big msm yawn about the never ending Clinton scandals and crimes would not change no matter who her opponent might be.
If the mainstream media and the democrats (redundant isn’t it) were able to demonize and destroy both McCain and Romney with their squeaky clean personal records then blaming Trump for being a bad candidate isn’t really relevant.
The amount of ammunition they have and expend on him is really independent of his actions. You may think he made it easy but I contend that it made no difference at all. All it did was slightly change the wording on the omnipresent negative headlines but it didn’t change the substance. Whatever did or was, they would have made him sound the same. We have to win in spite of the media just as we have for the past 50 years.
Irv Greenberg:
Perhaps you missed this post of mine. I suggest you read it.
The Hillary stuff came up incidentally in an FBI investigation of Anthony Weiner, which may be quite serious — involving child porn or child exploitation.
This would be serious mud thown on Hillary’s campaign. It could even be worse if Weiner might testify against Huma and Hillary to get a lesser charge and as revenge for his up-and-coming who-knows-how-messy divorce with Huma.
Sadly, I doubt it will make any difference in the election.
We may see another tranche of Trump smears released as a distraction forthwith.
The only October surprise that would influence election would be if Hillary drop into coma in coming days. That would require a miracle to happen, but who knows? Sometimes, miracles occure when enough is on stake.
Neo – I read that post when you wrote it and I read it again today. While I agree with everything you said, what I disagree with is the significance of it in this election.
What type of candidate Trump is is irrelevant to the press; the attacks will be the same. In fact, if he had been a better candidate he wouldn’t have gotten the nomination because they would have considered him a threat and taken him out early in the process. It’s precisely because they were sure he was beatable that they wanted him to run and they somewhat held their fire until he got the nomination. It’s the fact that his appeal was so populist that enabled him to remain standing while the others killed each other.
After he got the nomination his appeal for many became the fact that they considered him less a threat to the nation than Clinton. Accepting someone by default doesn’t mean you wanted him, it means you accepted him because he was all that was left.
I contend that it’s the unique circumstance of who and what Trump is that got him the nomination and just possibly might now enable him to be the next president. The race seems to be a lot more up in the air than it was yesterday morning. Also, Wikileaks has said the releases next week will be the most devastating to her. Who knows if that’s true, or if it will be enough, but she’s more vulnerable now, after the FBI resumed its investigation, than she was before.
My fervent hope is that, if Trump should happen to win, the people will give him a chance to become a better man than he was when he was younger. Many people in the past have risen to the occasion and I think it’s possible for him to do the same.
“If the mainstream media and the democrats (redundant isn’t it) were able to demonize and destroy both McCain and Romney with their squeaky clean personal records then blaming Trump for being a bad candidate isn’t really relevant.” – Irv
AND, they demonized Reagan, GB Sr, and GWB.
YET, they WON elections! Fancy that!?
There is a HUGE difference between McCain, Romney and trump. Much of what the MSM demonized them with was trivial untrue, or a partial truth blown out of proportion, thus, easily disproved, or seen for what it is by anyone not already fully bought into the dem candidate.
With trump, they use his own words. There isn’t much for the media to hyperbolize or make up.
The issue is not the “demonization”, itself, but the media time they occupy with it, taking time away from promoting the GOP candidate’s positive message, or covering for the dem candidate’s bad news.
trump has been the one to seek the 24/7 attention by any means – much of it not helping to move the ball forward.
“I contend that it’s the unique circumstance of who and what Trump is that got him the nomination and just possibly might now enable him to be the next president.”
I agree. If you look at Trump and Pence in comparison, you have to wonder why in the world is Pence not the top guy. It could be because people like Pence (Romney,McCain,Cruz)don’t have the force of a personality honed by a lifetime of embracing conflict. And ousting establishment elitist backed by a blatantly corrupt media is one hell of a conflict.
McCarthy: James Comey’s Dereliction
My fervent hope is that, if Trump should happen to win, the people will give him a chance to become a better man than he was when he was younger. Many people in the past have risen to the occasion and I think it’s possible for him to do the same.
Irv G: Why is it up to other people to give Trump a chance?
Trump has been running for President of the United States since June 16, 2015. If there were ever a chance, even an obligation, for Trump to become a better man, this was it.
He didn’t. He failed that test in spades with his vicious, impulsive, often nonsensical attacks on everyone who got in his way, his constant lying, his slipshod campaign, his crummy debate preparation, his ignorance of how the American government works and foreign policy. etc.
I’m sick of people giving Trump every benefit of the doubt, while browbeating the rest of us reluctant to support this horrible man who wants to be president and has made almost no effort to improve.
My fervent hope is that people like Irv notice how much Trump has let his supporters down and thrown away an election which was otherwise quite winnable.
Irv Greenberg:
I could not disagree with you more.
Trump’s “unique” qualities got him the nomination only because there were so many competing candidates splitting the non-Trump vote. His “unique” characteristics appealed to a minority of voters who were very angry at the GOPe, but that minority turned out to be enough.
And those unique qualities have also made him uniquely vulnerable in the general election. During the primaries, he consistently did worse than the other candidates in match-ups against Hillary. I believe that it is fairly clear—actually, clear, and forget the “fairly”—that nearly all of them would be doing far far better than he is against her now.
We would be sailing to victory with a decent human being at the helm. Instead, we have this travesty.
What makes anyone think Trump would become a better man after he became President?
Supposedly he has been pivoting to presidential since last April. It was essential to his campaign to do so.
He could manage it for a few weeks at a time before the bile rose and he had to attack someone viciously or start babbling about rigged elections.
But make Trump the most powerful man in the world without any constraint to be reelected in the immediate future, and I’m sure we will see a better, nobler Trump rise in his place.
This is the way battered wives talk.
“This is the way battered wives talk.”
Power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely and all that.
70 year old people don’t generally have seasons of personal growth and change. Who he is is pretty well set in concrete at this point.
Vote for Trump if your conscience or your strategy or pragmatism tells you to. But I would recommend facing up to the fact that this is who he is. He isn’t going to become Reagan, he’s not going to be reigned in by a suddenly less supine GOP congress, we’re not going to have a handy impeachment option to keep him in line, and the all-powerful MSM (which isn’t as powerful as many of you seem to think) which – in this scenario – couldn’t prevent him from winning the Presidency isn’t going to do much. What other character-hits could come out about Trump that haven’t already?
He is who he is. If that’s what you want, by all means vote for him. But don’t pretend he’s going to be someone he isn’t.
Also – forgot to mention in my comment (or skipped right over it) excellent insight Huxley!
Lol. A lot is already coming of this in terms of public perception! I am willing to bet that a number of formerly leaning HRC voters might be having second thoughts about a candidate who is, evidently, still being investigated by the FBI! Even if these voters can’t bring themselves to vote for Trump, maybe they will be sufficiently disgusted to vote for Stein or just stay home.
Is this your way of saying that if HRC wasn’t such an obvious criminal that Trump’s gaffes would have done him in by now? Are you seriously trying to make some kind of equivalence between Trump being held accountable for his gaffes and HRC being held accountable for her crimes? Talk about losing perspective…
Trump got the nom because he took the strongest stance against open borders. The likes of Walker and Cruz couldn’t bring themselves to do this and that’s why they aren’t running for president right now.
Supposing I grant your point; therefore, we should do what exactly? Not vote for either Trump or HRC? The former may lack the temperament needed to be a great President, but the latter is an obvious criminal and warmonger. And since one or the other of these two will be the next President, I have a hard time seeing why voting for Trump is not the best course of action given the circumstances.
Who are you going to vote for this year Bill? I am afraid Reagan isn’t on the ticket this year.
On a relatively light-hearted note: The problem with “Kang or Kodos” is that we can’t tell which one is Kang, and which one is Kodos.
So I suggested some alternatives back in May.
Some of you can probably think of even better pairs than “Hugo and Evita” or the two classical possibilities I suggested.
I would like to repeat this one more time:
A lot is already coming of this in terms of public perception! I am willing to bet that a number of formerly leaning HRC voters might be having second thoughts about a candidate who is, evidently, still being investigated by the FBI! Even if these voters can’t bring themselves to vote for Trump, maybe they will be sufficiently disgusted to vote for Stein or just stay home on 11/8.
Serious question: Does anyone around here feel comfortable voting for a candidate who is still being investigated by the FBI for crimes committed while in public office? And if not, then why not think that a great many voters feel the same way as well?
For the record, I didn’t say I expect him to become a better man after being elected. What I said was if he was given the chance he might become one. I’m always for allowing people the opportunity to change. It does happen after some significant event and being elected president is pretty significant.
And I get that many of you don’t approve of the way he’s run his campaign. All I can say to that is look where he is now. Perhaps his campaign has been appropriate to these unique circumstances. He’s never been conventional in any other way, why would you excoriate him for not being so now considering the results so far?
Big Maq – Maybe the Russians have’t given Assange the emails, or whatever, yet.
By their own admission, HRC’s media propagandists don’t care if their candidate killed Vince Foster or has JonBenet Ramsey in her basement. Does it really make sense for us to wait (like Bill) for the second coming of Ronald Reagan in terms of character/temperament and cede the election to these people in the interim? Is that really the moral thing to do?
The debate format is probably the worst possible forum to flesh out a candidates positions. It’s like reality twitter and Trump excelled at it.
16 candidates also worked against the process.
Front loading the primaries was a bad idea.
Meh:
You may be under the misapprehension that a lot of people here are considering voting for Hillary.
They’re not. If a single person here is, I can’t recall, but I don’t think there’s anyone.
As for the rest—no, the Comey announcement is unlikely to change anything for the vast majority of Hillary voters, who think Trump is quite literally a reincarnation of Hitler. Compared to him, her crimes seem like chicken feed to them.
Meh:
No, Trump did not take the strongest stance against open borders.
That’s a lie I’ve been fighting since the fall of 2015, and I see it’s still being perpetuated.
I refer you to this and this, for example.
Meh:
I have noticed that Trump supporters love to trivialize the objections of non-Trump supporters to Trump. You are right in that mold when you refer to Trump’s flaws, offenses, problems, character deficits, etc. as “gaffes.”
Another favorite ploy is for Trump supporters to act as though people are objecting merely to his crudeness, or his nastiness, or something of that sort. While those are among the objections, they are relatively minor ones compared to his other more important problems and flaws. I have described those deeper Trump problems and discussed them ad nauseam on this blog, so I’m not going to waste a great deal of time doing it again here.
But I am heartily sick of this mischaracterization and trivialization of the profound objections to this profoundly awful candidate.
All I’m going to say is that 2016 is going down in history as the “WTF election”.
Sorry, but I followed this aspect of the primary very closely and Ted Cruz, in his own characteristically calculated way, waffled on the issue; the others didn’t even try. Immigration was not a major plank of Ted’s campaign until the very end when it was all but certain that Trump would win.
If that’s true, and these people form a majority, then it was always impossible for the R candidate to win the 2016 presidential race. The notion that Trump is the “reincarnation of Hitler” is completely ridiculous–anyone who could be manipulated into believing that could have been manipulating into believing something similarly horrible about the other candidates.
This may not change the vote but it might reduce the turnout for Clinton. That might be enough to swing the election. Hop springs eternal!
Make that ‘hope’
Meh:
Trump only emphasized immigration AFTER he got a lot of attention regarding the “rapist” remark. I documented that in one of those posts I linked to.
Cruz had many things he talked about, and he did not emphasize immigration as much as Trump did. But he had been clear for years, had actually done things in Congress on the issue, and wasn’t waffling. Originally you didn’t say that Cruz didn’t emphasize it the way Trump did; I wouldn’t have disagreed on that. You wrote: “[Trump] took the strongest stance against open borders. The likes of Walker and Cruz couldn’t bring themselves to do this.”
Cruz’s stance was very strong; it just wasn’t as loud and obnoxious. and it wasn’t covered by the press as much. It was just as strong as Trump’s if not stronger. If you consider the definition of “strong” to be loud, strident, and publicized more, then I guess I’d agree that Trump’s was the “strongest.” But that’s not what I mean by “strong,” nor is it what I’m looking for.
Just as one example of the lack of “strength” of Trump’s actual stance was the open door in the middle of the wall, the deporting people and then letting them back in again, etc.. Nothing “strong” about it—just demagogic.
And no, those same people who think Trump is Hitler absolutely do not and would not have considered someone like Rubio or even Cruz (a person they also demonize, but not as much as Trump) to be Hitler, and the media could not have convinced them of it. You are delusional if you think Rubio could have been portrayed as Hitler with any success.
Trump, on the other hand, fits much more easily into those shoes. Unfortunately, he is very easy to portray as bigoted, etc. (I happen to think he’s not particularly bigoted, but I’m not the target audience) and it’s most definitely easy to portray his supporters in the alt-right as bigoted.
Trump was a sitting duck.
But that’s what they are. Just so many reckless words said in the heat of the moment to one person or another, either on the campaign trail or to Billy Bush a decade ago. On the other hand, we know that HRC is a corrupt pay-for-play politician, warmonger, and criminal who provided cover for her rapist husband for reasons of personal self-interest. Some things are just words and some things aren’t–it’s too bad you have such a hard time telling the difference.
Lol. That you are taking the time to write this in 2016 about Trump when he is running against HRC is kind of funny to me.
Meh:
Oh yes, so very funny, LOL.
You are a troll at this point.
meh,
I’ve probably been making the case from “holding our noses and voting for Trump” to “he’s a flawed man, but his policies are right for the country”, but to characterize what Trump has been doing as “gaffes” is dishonest or naé¯ve.
At best Trump is a NY liberal republican, though definitely not the Wall St. side of town.
His gaffes are character flaws- low impulse control, thin-skinned, contradictory.
I don’t think you’re going to get any traction here with that idea.
Supposing I grant your point; therefore, we should do what exactly? Not vote for either Trump or HRC?
meh: That’s something for others to discern for themselves. It’s not a simple decision IMO.
I don’t demand people vote as I do or accept my reasoning as the only way to consider it. And that’s how I’d like to be treated in return.