Agents are talking.
It is safe to say the vast majority felt she should be prosecuted.
Wikileaks, Hillary, Democratic tactics/strategy, and cynicism
One of the many very usedful functions of the Trump bimbo eruptions is to distract people from the constant revelations about Hillary—and not just Hillary, or even primarily Hillary, but the way in which the Democratic Party is helped along by institutions that should be objective but are almost wholly in the tank for liberalism and/or the left.
There’s so much it is difficult to assimilate even a small portion of it, or know where to begin. You can Google it yourself, or click here. The story is complex and many-faceted, as opposed to the more simple (not to mention, sexual) focus of the current Trump imbroglio, the timing of which is no accident.
I used the word “revelations” to describe the Wikileaks information. But it’s probably not a great word for it, because it implies something new and “not before realized.” However, I think most of this was realized by the right, if not all the details of it. At this point, however, the American public is so jaded, so partisan, so weary, so confused, so disinterested (take your pick, or a combination), that I doubt any of it will matter.
Years ago I wrote about the aptness of Hillary’s famous statement to Congress, “What difference does it make?” And now I’m going to quote myself:
If the public doesn’t care about a certain tree falling in the forest, does it actually make a sound, even if the right is fussing about it?
The right has been outraged by a sequence of events and statements that have occurred under Obama’s watch, beginning with his 2008 campaign. Some are rather trivial (“corpse-man”) and some important (“bankrupt” the coal plants; “spread the wealth”). All have gained traction only on the right, because a majority (perhaps a small majority, but a majority nonetheless, and I believe a growing one) has answered the question “what difference does it make?” with the words “none at all.”
These are things that would have outraged an earlier generation. In fact, they have outraged an earlier generation; older people did not vote for Obama in large numbers (among voters 65 and older, Romney won 56% to 44%). But Hillary is correct; to most voters, Benghazi, and a host of other things that used to be considered important, make no difference at all.
One reason, which may seem somewhat paradoxical but really is not, is widespread cynicism. If the public doesn’t expect integrity or truth from what used to be called our public servants (what a quaint phrase!), then lies and strategic stonewalling will not bother most people at all. What matters is what those public servants can get for you, and what they can scare you into thinking the opposition will take away from you (tampons, anyone?)
It’s only gotten worse since January of 2013, when that was written.
On grabbing someone by the pussy, and consent
Boy, that’s one title I didn’t think I’d be typing in this lifetime.
But politics makes strange—bedfellows. And so I’ll briefly deconstruct the phrase.
First, the actual quote by Trump:
Yeah, that’s her. With the gold. I better use some Tic Tacs just in case I start kissing her. You know, I’m automatically attracted to beautiful ”” I just start kissing them. It’s like a magnet. Just kiss. I don’t even wait. And when you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything”¦Grab ’em by the pussy. You can do anything.
Many Trump-defenders have said that this implies consent on the part of the women. “They let you do it” is most definitely the operative phrase. Is that consent? Let’s see.
These days, colleges seem to think that sexual exchanges must consist of a series of overt questions and answers, much as in a courtroom. “May I touch you on the shoulder?” “Yes.” [* see NOTE below] “May I put my arm around you?” “Yes.” May I kiss you?” “Yes.” “May I touch your breast?” “Yes.” Up and down and around what used to euphemistically be called “the bases,” I suppose it could also include—somewhere along the way—“May I grab you by the pussy?”
Hey, I don’t have my finger on the pulse of dating mores these days, but I think that’s the way it’s supposed to go in 2016. But among actual living, breathing human beings (which still constitute the majority of the human race, I believe), it doesn’t usually go quite that way. A lot of this back-and-forth is ordinarily unspoken and subtle, which makes the issue of consent a thorny one.
We’re not going to solve the issue here today, either, because the situation is far from crystal clear. But if we want to take the Trump/pussy controversy seriously (and why not?), it brings up very large questions involving sex and power, men and women, and how consent is perceived and granted or should be perceived and granted.
As I understand his words, Trump is talking crudely, but he’s talking about the interface between power and sex, how men (and probably some women) either use their power to exploit people or use their power to get more sex from others through implied consent, and whether their underlings (who may be ambitious and on the way up, and hope to get something from the interaction, too) freely acquiesce or feel coerced, and why.
I would add that there are good reasons why some professions that involve a great deal of power—that of therapist, for example—feature an absolute prohibition on sex with a patient or client, because the power differential and the possibility for exploitation is considered so very great. Of course, real estate developer/TV celebrity is not considered one of those professions.
I don’t pretend to know what actually happened between Trump and all these women, and whether there really was a lot of unwanted pussy-grabbing. As I’ve said before in other posts and comments, the incident tells me nothing I didn’t already know about Trump and nothing I didn’t already know about the intricate dance between men and women. What it does tell me is that most people don’t want that kind of talk from their presidents and that the release of this audio doesn’t help Trump, who was already in deep trouble. But those who defend him because they believe the word “let” implies consent, and those who excoriate him because they believe the word “let” is meaningless here and the operative word is “grab,” are both incorrect. We are actually treading in one of the most unclear areas in the realm of relations between the sexes, and that’s saying something.
[* NOTE: Apologies to James Joyce.]
The “Burn it down!” crowd seems to be getting its wish
I have watched this tragedy unfold for several years now.
By using the word “watched,” don’t think I mean I’m some sort of disinterested, Olympian observer. It has been very difficult, and this year it’s reached a crescendo, although I expect it to go on past this election cycle.
The tragedy I’m talking about is the purposeful whipping up of anger on the right by the right, for the purposes of taking out on the GOP what should be taken out on the Democrats. I’ve written countless posts about what’s happening and why, and countless others on the lies and distortions told by the people doing this. The idea is that the GOP could and should have stopped Obama and are therefore no different (or very marginally different) from the Democrats, and revenge must be taken on the former in order to purge the GOP and/or destroy it in order that a newer, brighter conservative movement could grow and take its rightful place as leaders, somehow convincing the greater voting public of its superiority to the Democrats, who after years in power would be proven to be failures.
Or something like that. I was never part of the movement—in fact, I actively opposed it and tried to correct its distortions with the facts—so I might not be stating the goals with perfect exactness. But I sure read a great deal of what was written by those who were part of the movement, and that’s what I saw, especially beginning in 2012 with the nomination of Mitt Romney, who seemed to them just one in a long line of worthless RINOs for whom they would no longer vote.
Now, of course, most of this group (perhaps all?) either support Trump wholeheartedly and have from the start, or support him merely as a tool to destroy the GOP, or both. They have been among the most vocal people singing Trump’s praises, and bullying and insulting and threatening others who won’t get in line. Who are they? Some are understandably disgruntled people on the right. Some are formerly apolitical people (or people who had become completely disillusioned) who have been energized by Trump. Some are white supremacists who see Trump as a way to power for them. Some are leftists toying with the right and successfully manipulating it, bent on its destruction. I believe that the first and second groups are by far the largest of the four, but the third and fourth groups are not infinitesimal and have been players in this who cannot be discounted.
Let me add right now that no one of the destructive “burn it down, watch the flames” sort remains among the regular commenters on this blog, although several Trump supporters do remain. The others have either left of their own accord or were banned by me without public fanfare. If I had not done that, this blog would have gone the way of many others and become some sort of Breitbart satellite.
Now that exactly what the rest of us predicted would happen has happened—Trump’s star is falling, the Democrats have trotted out the damaging stuff they have on him with much more to come before they’re finished, and it has been revealed (just as we said) that Trump was the one they were waiting for all along because he was the easiest to beat—I’ve noticed the anger coming out in the “Burn it Down!” (sometimes known as “Let it Burn!”) folks. You can see this rage on display rather prominently in the comments section of quite a few blogs. One of them I regularly frequent is Ace’s, which is hardly the only one or even the most rabid one, but it’s one I happen to read.
The chatter goes something like this: time to destroy Paul Ryan! The GOPe didn’t do what we wanted [see this, however]. They didn’t stop a single Democratic agenda [see this, however]. They never repealed Obamacare, even [see this, however]. They are the Dems-lite. Destroy them. Trump will get them after he’s elected. I’m enjoying this; such fun! Break out a beer and watch the festivities.
At the same time, the same people are saying that everyone on the right must vote for Donald Trump, because Hillary is worse, and she will (just as one example) get to appoint SCOTUS justices.
Hey, if you destroy the GOP lead in Congress, how would even a President Trump get his SCOTUS nominees approved? Or get any legislation passed? Or is he magical, doesn’t need legislation, and can just wave his kingly hand (Maine’s governor seems to think so)?
This has all been going on for years among the “Burn it down” crowd, which I see as mostly a bunch of nihilistic, angry infants. They have finally found their champion in the miraculous Trump—ironically, the biggest RINO of them all, who used to praise Hillary and Nancy Pelosi to the skies.
Ah, but it feels so good to be warmed by the “burn it down” flames. Especially when your candidate is looking weak. Polls, you say? When Trump was in front during the primaries, polls were golden. But ever since his nomination—funny thing, the polls have gone crooked. Not to be trusted. You’ll see. You’ll see. He’s really on top.
And the movement doesn’t need the likes of that traitor Paul Ryan, or a Republican Congress. Once Trump is inaugurated, that will be the moment when we begin to provide care for the sick and good jobs to the jobless; that will be the moment when the rise of the oceans begins to slow and our planet begins to heal; that will be the moment when we end a war and secure our nation and restore our image as the last, best hope on Earth…
Oops, wrong speech.
What’s someone like Ryan, or Cruz or Rubio, to do? Trump throws the entire GOP and all its elected officials into an insoluble quandary. Fail to support him and you’re accused of really being a Hillary-loving liberal at heart, showing your true colors at last. Support him and you’ve compromised nearly every principle you have. There’s no good way out, unless you want to go into the private sector.
As it is, we are now on track not only for the Hillary Clinton presidency I predicted back in December of 2012, but for Hillary Clinton plus a Democratic Senate and a relatively close House. Ah, that’ll show those GOPe RINOs!
Ode to a Frog
My ex-husband has been going through his papers, and yesterday he found something I thought had been long lost—a poem I had written as a 14-year-old sophomore in high school.
How it came to be in his stuff I don’t know, but he’s somewhat of a pack rat. Did he find it in some desk in my parents’ house many years ago? Did he rescue it, put it away, and forget he had it? I can’t recall having seen it since around the time I wrote it—and that’s a long, long, long time ago.
Before seeing it again, I had remembered that the poem once existed. I had remembered what prompted me to write it. But I remembered very little about the poem itself. So seeing it again was like reading something brand new—a note from my 14-year-old self, a glimpse into my fourteen-year-old mind.
The poem, which I will reproduce in its entirety here in a moment, wasn’t written as a school assignment. It was written for my own pleasure, and out of my own feelings of guilt. The occasion was an incident in school biology class that disturbed me greatly at the time. The description of it in the poem is what actually had happened in real life.
At fourteen, I was already familiar with a poem that is still one of my very favorites, Robert Burns’ “To a Mouse, On Turning Her Up in Her Nest With the Plough, November 1785” (I’ve previously written about the poem on this blog, with an excerpt, here). Burns’ poem is a long apology to a mouse whose home (“thy wee bit housie”—love those Scottish diminutives!) he had upended, and it ends with a meditation on the plight of man and beast in nature and in civilization.
My little verse isn’t up there with Burns’, not by a longshot (for one thing, I don’t have that wonderful dialect to work with). But I think that for a fourteen-year-old it’s not half-bad. I’ve resisted the urge to clean it up and improve it from the perspective of my much-older self. I’ll just add that although I use the word “experiment” in the title, the incident that sparked the poem was more of an exercise than an experiment. We were divided into pairs and each given (that is, loaned) a live frog. The phrase “prep sheet” refers to the instruction sheets we were given along with the frogs, and the instructions listed in the poem were what we actually were supposed to do. “Hubbard” is a pseudonym for the name of the real biology teacher.
Ode to a Frog: On Carelessly Breaking its Leg in a Bio Experiment
Frail thing, what did you ever do
To me, to have this done to you?
I never saw you ‘fore this day
And wish it could have stayed that way.The prep sheet said to pinch your toes,
To poke your eye, to tweak your nose,
To put some acid on your thigh,
To place ammonia in your eye.Hubbard didn’t show the way
We were to hold you down today
And so we squeezed a bit too much
We should have used a lighter touch.And when we put you back to rest
(Until your next sadistic test)
Oh, only then it came to light
We must have held you awfully tight.For (and we’re sorry, truly sad)
Your little leg looked really bad.
It seems in one unlucky stroke
Your tiny, fragile leg we broke.There is no justice on this earth
There seems no reason for your birth
That you should have to suffer so
Your life to be just filled with woe.We never meant it, never guessed.
We only had in mind the best.
O frog, forgive, I beg of you
The stupid things we humans do.
My guess is that the last line was inspired by Shakespeare’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” with which I also was already familiar when I wrote this poem: What fools these mortals be.
[NOTE: I don’t recall being the one to actually hold the frog and break its leg. But if I didn’t hold it, then I must have been the one to pinch its eye and poke its toes, etc. etc. and so forth. After this happened, I never again helped out a lab partner. In college biology lab—where it was required that we do dissections, although only on dead creatures, including a frog, a fetal pig, and a shark’s head—I was very fortunate to be paired with a dear friend who loved doing those dissections and didn’t at all mind doing them by herself. I let her do it, watched, and gave her moral support. Actually I’m not sure about the latter; I could barely stomach that lab, which was held right before dinner.]
Trump: doing it in the street and frightening the horses
Since the firestorm erupted around the release of the audio of Trump’s remarks to Billy Bush in 2005, there have been a number of arguments advanced to counter it. One very popular one involves comparisons to Bill Clinton’s misbehavior and the fact that Democrats circled the wagons to defend it, as well as that of JFK and other presidents alleged to have been philanderers. It’s said we should be more like the Democrats and Stand By Our Man. It’s also said that anyone who wasn’t scandalized by Bill Clinton shouldn’t be scandalized by Trump.
I’m going to point out some differences between the two situations.
The first is that when Bill Clinton was running for president in 1992—which is when news of his philandering first came out on a national level—he had been a multiple-term governor (starting at the age of 32, by the way), a founder of the Democratic Leadership Council, and the head of the National Governors Association. In other words, he had a ton of political executive experience and was widely recognized as a leader in the Democratic Party. He was a very successful politician, a loyal Democrat, and popular as well. Also, when he ran for president in 1992, he successfully squelched what were at the time only rumors of infidelity (for example, Broddrick didn’t make her allegations until a couple of weeks after Clinton’s impeachment, after previously filing a 1997 affadavit saying the rumors were untrue). At no point did we have raunchy audiotapes of Clinton bragging about his sexual exploits and how his power enabled him to get women. If we had had them back then, my guess is that it would have sunk him on the national level, although of course I have no way to know for sure.
So some of the differences are timing, type of allegation vs. actual tape in the person’s own words, and previous political experience/affiliation. Clinton was a Democrat through and through, a successful and popular one who had been a reliable standard-bearer for the Democratic platform and the Democratic agenda. Later on, by the time the Lewinsky affair occurred, Clinton was already well into his second term as a popular Democratic president. The Democrats would have had no reason except morality to have abandoned him at that point, and morality wasn’t going to be enough motivation. They had the numbers, too, to fight conviction in the impeachment trial, and so they knew if they could hang tough, Clinton was never going to be convicted.
In contrast, Donald Trump is none of those things. To tell Republicans to Stand By Their Man would probably cause the majority of Republicans to say “But he’s not my man!” It isn’t really clear that Trump is even a Republican, and he is certainly not a tested Republican leader, or any sort of Republican leader at all except at this point a titular one. He has no history of having held political office. He is the most unpopular presidential nominee in history, and that was true even before these tapes surfaced. He was nominated without getting a majority of Republican primary votes. He has never led Hillary Clinton in the polls except very briefly and by figures well within the margin of error. These are not opinions; these are facts.
And we have actual tapes of his voice, saying some things that indicate he is drunk with power and what it can do for him sexually. It is easy for the listener to extrapolate from the tapes and imagine that Trump’s drunk with power, period. Hey, let’s give him more power!
This isn’t just about sex; not by a long shot. The tapes are about power. And although saying this is just locker-room talk, just machismo bragging, may indeed by true, there is no reason to imagine that these tapes will enhance his already very uncertain electability, and many reasons to imagine it will cause him to drop further in a race that he seems to be losing.
So why should Republicans stand by him? The only reason I’ve ever seen stated (and it’s not a bad one) is that it’s Trump or Hillary, and that Hillary is unconscionable. That may be enough to convince a lot of people on the right who see her as almost a demon. But it’s not going to appeal to the vast middle and/or to moderates that Trump needs in order to win.
What’s more—and quite importantly, I think—those tapes aren’t just a one-off. They are completely congruent with the Trump we already know (if we’ve been paying any attention, that is) from other venues. Such statements weren’t limited to things said supposedly off-the-record, with a hot mic (the Billy Bush remarks, that is). Many were said in public broadcasts with widespread dissemination, as part of Trump’s approximately two dozen appearances over the years on the Howard Stern program.
That’s a lot of appearances, and there are a lot of Trump quotes from the show—none of them in the nature of “locker-room talk,” because the Howard Stern show is a public forum and no locker room. In fact, you could say it takes locker-room talk out of the locker room and into the public airways, and anyone who appears on the show has to know that’s what’s going on. I’ve read that Stern has cleaned up his act somewhat in recent years; I wouldn’t know, since I’m not a listener or a fan. But most of the time when Trump was on, it was the Stern of olden days.
If you want to see some of the quotes I’m talking about, take a look, and there’s probably plenty more where those came from (some of this was well known even during the primaries, by the way, because it was already in the public domain). Now, I haven’t spent too much time in men’s locker rooms (full disclosure: none). But my guess is that statements like this particular one from Stern about Trump’s daughter Ivanka, and the response from Trump, aren’t what most men would let slide even under those circumstances, and it really is creepy-crawly, even to those accustomed to locker-room talk:
In another interview, from September 2004, Stern asks Trump if he can call Ivanka “a piece of ass,” to which Trump responds in the affirmative.
“My daughter is beautiful, Ivanka,” says Trump.
“By the way, your daughter,” says Stern.
“She’s beautiful,” responds Trump.
“Can I say this? A piece of ass,” Stern responds.
“Yeah,” says Trump.
Bill Clinton, JFK, LBJ, and whatever other philandering president you want to mention maintained at least a facade of decorum. Clinton was caught; the others kept their secrets during the entire time of their presidencies. This was done with the cooperation of the press, to be sure (note that the three I mentioned are Democrats). But Trump flaunts his, at least he did up till now. It indicates a lack of boundaries that is not about sex, not about political correctness, but about dignity and judgment and public behavior, something some voters still care about.
It isn’t even really about whether you care about those things (particularly in comparison to Hillary’s offenses, which are of a very different and non-sexual nature), or whether I care about them, or whether Trump’s sexual behavior in private has been worse than that of other presidents or just as bad or even a little bit better. It’s about the public nature of the evidence. It’s about how no one but the most devoted Trump admirers really wanted him to be president in the first place, and how most people do not seem to trust or like him. In order to win the election, Trump had to earn their trust. He hasn’t done it. He had to earn their respect; instead he has repelled them. He started from a weak and one-down position, and he’s dug himself a deeper hole, and this incident (the Billy Bush tapes) dug it still deeper.
People don’t want to be repelled by their president. And yes, Hillary also repels, but it’s a different sort of repugnance she engenders, and not enough people so far seem to have found her more repugnant than Trump. A lot of people especially don’t want to be repulsed by Trump before electing him, and they don’t want to be repulsed by a political novice whom they already don’t trust anyway. They don’t want a president to do it in the street and frighten the horses.
And let’s say for the sake of argument that Trump’s “doing it” is mere talk—although we don’t know that, either. (By the way, for those who say that Bill Clinton raped someone and that Trump is guilty of “mere words”: Clinton is alleged to have been a rapist, and Trump is alleged to have been a rapist, and both of them have been unfaithful to their wives.) If Trump’s sex talk is “mere talk,” it’s still talk that repels a lot of the people Trump needed to attract in order to win this election.
Hmmm…
…I guess I won’t be moving to any of these metropolitan areas any time soon.
Unless my sugar daddy comes along.
We’re just talking about living at the two-bedroom apartment level, and it ain’t cheap:
In San Francisco, America’s most expensive city, workers need a $216,129 salary to not feel burdened by the cost of renting the average two-bedroom apartment at $5,043-a-month.
Households that spend more than 30 per cent of their income on housing and utility bills are considered ‘cost-burdened households’, based on a threshold set by The Department of Housing and Urban Development.
In the new report by SmartAsset, a 28 per cent rent-to-income ratio was used to determine how much money households need to afford a two-bed apartment in the largest U.S. cities without feeling ”˜cost-burdened’…
[In San Franciso,] [t]he median household income in the city is still only $78,378.
That’s household income, too, which often includes the income of two people.
More:
New York is the second most expensive place to live – with workers needing to earn a salary of $158,229 to make the cost of renting a two-bed apartment at $3,692-a-month affordable…
In Los Angeles you need a $145,629 salary to not feel burdened by the average cost of renting a two-bed at $3,398…
The fourth most expensive place to live is Boston, Massachusetts.
You’ll need a $120,900-a-year salary to find the average Boston apartment with a couple of bedrooms affordable at $2,821 per month.
Of course, it depends what you mean by “city.” You can live within commuting distance of some of those cities for less, but it also depends on what you consider “commuting distance.” For San Francisco, you have to get many hours away before things get at all reasonable, and they’re still not especially reasonable.
Happy post-modern, Indigenous People’s, Columbus Day
[NOTE: This is a repeat of a previous post.]
There, did I cover enough bases? Did I get it right (I mean left)?
Like many things, Columbus Day has evolved. And here’s a discussion of the postmodern Columbus Day (from Dr. Sanity, circa 2009).
As for me, since I live up in New England and the weather has been good, I’ll should just play it safe and call it Leafpeepers Day. They’re out in force now (both the leaves and the human peepers).
I plan to take an official leafpeeping drive some weekday this week in order to try to avoid the worst of the vehicular congestion over the holiday itself.
Here are some photos I’ve taken during previous New England falls. The first isn’t a leaf, it’s a berry in its fall raiment. But let’s not get technical:
The most spectacular colors are always the reds, which come first:
In the mist:
Fini:
Trump and jailing Clinton: how will it play in Peoria?
In case you’re unfamiliar with the somewhat archaic reference in the title of this post, it’s based on an old show biz term, “traditionally used to ask whether a given product, person, promotional theme, or event will appeal to mainstream…America, or across a broad range of demographic and psychographic groups.” In order to win a national election in this country, in what is still essentially a two-party system, a candidate needs a somewhat broad appeal (or, this year, a less broad disgust factor than his/her opponent) in order to win.
Parliamentary systems are different. Parties tend to proliferate, enabling a party to win with pluralities that are often significantly less than 50%, and then coalitions must be formed in order to govern. In our system there has been more of a tendency for the coalition to form within the party itself, and in the past this has been accompanied by a tendency to damp down extremism.
Something about that system has broken down, and it happened not that long ago. I’m not sure when I’d date it from, but certainly within my lifetime.
That’s all background to lead into a discussion of the statement of Trump’s in last night’s debate that if he were president Hillary would be in jail. If you look at the entire transcript, that was the last (and most extreme) statement of a much lengthier exchange that went like this [emphasis mine]:
When I speak, I go out and speak, the people of this country are furious. In my opinion, the people that have been long-term workers at the FBI are furious. There has never been anything like this, where e-mails ”” and you get a subpoena, you get a subpoena, and after getting the subpoena, you delete 33,000 e-mails, and then you acid wash them or bleach them, as you would say, very expensive process.
So we’re going to get a special prosecutor, and we’re going to look into it, because you know what? People have been ”” their lives have been destroyed for doing one-fifth of what you’ve done. And it’s a disgrace. And honestly, you ought to be ashamed of yourself.
RADDATZ: Secretary Clinton, I want to follow up on that.
(CROSSTALK)
RADDATZ: I’m going to let you talk about e-mails.
CLINTON: ”¦ because everything he just said is absolutely false, but I’m not surprised.
TRUMP: Oh, really?
CLINTON: In the first debate”¦
(LAUGHTER)
RADDATZ: And really, the audience needs to calm down here.
CLINTON: ”¦ I told people that it would be impossible to be fact-checking Donald all the time. I’d never get to talk about anything I want to do and how we’re going to really make lives better for people.
So, once again, go to HillaryClinton.com. We have literally Trump ”” you can fact check him in real time. Last time at the first debate, we had millions of people fact checking, so I expect we’ll have millions more fact checking, because, you know, it is ”” it’s just awfully good that someone with the temperament of Donald Trump is not in charge of the law in our country.
TRUMP: Because you’d be in jail.
I’m wondering which of Trump’s facts in that exchange Clinton would be able to specifically challenge as lies, because I don’t see any. Nor does she specify any.
If Trump had stopped just short of the “because you’d be in jail” remark, I doubt there would have been much controversy. But it was the “jail” remark that seems to have gotten most of the attention from both sides. On this blog, some commenters were very happy to hear it (and/or to hear he planned to appoint a special prosecutor, the less extreme of his statements), because they’re among those Trump was referring to when he said “the people of this country are furious.” And there’s plenty to be furious about.
I responded this way in the comments section:
I do not trust Trunp, his word, or his promises, and the only way I would ever trust him is if he had been president for several years and had consistently done what he said he would.
The only significance what he says has to me is that it helps me figure out his possible effect on other people, his style””what he projects to people, and whether it will help him win.
That’s where I’m at with Trump, and have been for months. It’s part of my observation that with Trump, everything is mutable. So to me the question of “how did it play in Peoria?” is the most important one (although not literally in Peoria), and I’m not sure of the answer. One small anecdotal bit of evidence came in today’s comment from “OM,” who said:
My 82 yr old father in law Republican from IL reaction to the debate :
“I watched the Creepy Clown Show on television last night. Oh, I was mistaken. It was the presidential election debate.”
By the way, Peoria is in Illinois.
As for what I wrote about the mutability of Trump’s promise, I offer this from Trump’s campaign manager:
Donald Trump campaign manager Kellyanne Conway dismissed as “a quip” the Republican nominee’s threat at Sunday night’s debate to “jail” Hillary Clinton for her handling of government secrets if he becomes president…
“That was a quip. And I saw in NBC’s own reporting it was referred to as a quip, so I’ll go with NBC on it. He had already finished his statement. She said something like ”˜that’s why you’ll never be president,’ and he said ”˜you’d be in jail.’ And so that was his answer,” Conway said Monday on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.”
But Trump’s own social media director and senior adviser, Dan Scavino Jr., tweeted out the “quip” at about 2 a.m. Monday, complete with a black-and-white photo of a resolute-looking Trump standing at a lectern.
Conway said Trump was not joking about the special prosecutor but was instead “channeling the frustration he hears from thousands of voters out on the stump every day. And they’re very frustrated that she has a different set of rules for her.”
So Conway is saying that the special prosecutor was a real promise, the “jail” remark a joke. Who knows, though, whether Trump would actually appoint one? And could he?:
But former attorneys general under Republican and Democratic administrations said presidents don’t get to decide on the appointment of a special prosecutor.
“I don’t conceive of that as something that’s in the authority of the president,” said Michael Mukasey, who was attorney general under President George W. Bush and has been an outspoken critic of Clinton for her use of the private email server.
Mukasey and other former Justice Department heads said the president can request a special investigator be named, but it’s up to the attorney general whether to actually appoint one.
Federal law states: “The Attorney General, or in cases in which the Attorney General is recused, the Acting Attorney General, will appoint a Special Counsel when he or she determines that criminal investigation of a person or matter is warranted.”
Mukasey told ABC News, “The president can say what they want to happen, but the attorney general’s proper response would be, ‘That’s interesting, I’ll take a look. But I decide that, you don’t.’
On the other hand—as the Obama DOJ has clear shown—because the president gets to appoint the Attorney General in the first place, he or she can appoint a simpatico political tool to do his/her bidding. That knowledge is one of the clearest legacies of the Obama administration.
Trump’s opponents have been quick to seize on his statement (or quip) as evidence of his banana republic extra-judicial tendencies—for example, here’s Ezra Klein:
…[T]hreatening to jail one’s political opponents ”” is how democratic norms die…
…[W]e believe that political disagreement should be legal.
Donald Trump doesn’t seem to care about all that.
In his last line ”” “you’d be in jail” ”” he is outright saying that he would imprison Hillary Clinton in office (if he could). This comes despite the fact that there is no evidence Clinton committed a crime in her handling of the email servers, despite lengthy investigations that found evidence of carelessness and dishonesty. That would be a politically motivated prosecution ”” retribution for daring to run against Trump and attack him during the campaign.
This is everything we feared about Donald Trump.
It’s Klein who should be ashamed of himself, but I won’t sit on a hot stove till that happens. From the context it is crystal clear what Trump was talking about, and of course it wasn’t his opposition to Clinton politically, it was her conduct re not complying with a subpoena and the rest. And obviously he was not speaking of an extra-judicial proceeding, he was saying that under his administration a special prosecutor would have recommended charges, and Trump believes she would have been found guilty.
But he didn’t exactly say it that way, did he? And the way he did say it left him open to sophists like Klein. That’s what Trump often does, and you either like it or you don’t; you either think it’s great or you don’t.
I don’t like Trump; I think I’ve made that pretty clear. But what I’m concerned with here is how the middle of the road undecideds will see it, not how partisans see it. Will they believe someone like Klein? Or will they applaud Trump’s ballsiness?
Or aren’t they paying much attention at all?
[NOTE: By the way, it’s hardly the first time Trump has talked about Hillary and jail.]
Sunday’s ordinarily my day off, but…DEBATE.
Yesiree, this evening we have another debate between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump.
I may or may not be able to bring myself to watch it. I will decide as the spirit moves me.
Here’s a thread for all of you to discuss whatever you want to say about this travesty of an election season.
I will update as needed as the debate goes on.
UPDATE 9:25 PM
My apologies, but so far I cannot find the stomach to turn it on. Maybe in a little bit.
I thought I’d do something I sometimes do, which is go to the comments of other blogs and read what people are saying, and get an idea of the debate that way. I figured it would be best to go to a blog where the comments are relatively objective and/or evenly balanced, but then I realized there was no such blog.
Except this one, of course.
Seen at another blog: “Trump is trying to appeal to the folks who are already going to vote for him.”
UPDATE 9:40 PM
Okay, I just turned it on, and they’re talking substance rather than sex (perhaps for the first time)—about Obamacare and pre-existing conditions. That’s a topic I know a lot about, it just so happens. It’s a pet peeve of mine that the lie keeps being promulgated that prior to Obamacare, people with pre-existing conditions couldn’t get coverage. In fact, most of them were covered, and I described how in some detail in this post.
Maybe no one cares anymore but me. But it seems emblamatic of what’s wrong with this election that Hillary is pretending that no one with pre-existing conditions could get covered prior to Obamacare and that Obamacare was the only reasonable solution to covering the ones who weren’t covered (there were actually other far better ways to do it). And Trump doesn’t seem to know much about the subject at all.
UPDATE 10:00 PM
Trump: “If you were an effective senator, you would have done it.” Huh? All by herself?
This was preceded by a fairly good attack by Trump on her for a host of things, but this king-senator suggestion of Trump’s is nonsensical, and opens the door for Hillary to describe in glowing terms her work as senator.
I keep wondering whether this debate would change a single mind. I don’t think so. Or, would it help an undecided person to make up his/her mind? That’s an especially important question, because there are enough undecideds that if they all end up swinging in one direction, they could decide the election.
UPDATE 10:14 PM
One of the moderators (Martha Raddatz) is arguing with Trump now in what sounds to me like a contemptuous tone. Then again, now that she’s talking to Hillary, Raddatz sounds petty grumpy as well. Turmp calls her on the fact that she seems to be giving Clinton more time than she gives him. I haven’t timed them both, but it seems as though it could be the case, although his complaint makes him sound whiny.
UPDATE 10:37 PM
Well, it’s over.
Trump may have arrested his slide, merely by seeming relatively sane and relatively composed. Hillary was Hillary.
I can’t stand to watch the wrap-ups and the focus groups, so I won’t.
The origins of Knopfler’s sound
Hey, let’s talk about something other than politics. It’s the weekend!
Whether you love Mark Knopfler (as I do), or have never heard of him before even though you may have heard some of his more famous songs like “Sultans of Swing” or “Walk of Life,” you’ll almost certainly notice when you do listen to him that he has a distinctive sound to his guitar playing. In his own words (from “Sultans”) he can make his guitar “cry or sing.” Continue reading →
FBI agents on Comey and the Clinton emails
Meanwhile, further evidence that the FBI has gone down the tubes.