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Edited by Mrph1 on Nov 30th 2023 at 11:03:59 AM
Everything she did was legal, and everyone else does it anyway. Every investigation has exonerated her.
Writing a post-post apocalypse LitRPG on RR. Also fanfic stuff.She and her husband did not murder anybody; the Clinton Foundation has a stellar integrity rating; nobody "bought access" to any greater degree than the usual exchange of political favors among the elite; the email scandal is completely toothless; there was no malfeasance with Benghazi; giving speeches for money is a standard exercise among politicians; etc., etc.
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"![]()
Why? Some inherent distrust founded on what, exactly? The secret fear that she's some kind of mole for Big Money? Get over it.
Specifically, forcing politicians to accede to these kinds of demands gives legitimacy to the conspiracy theories that give birth to them. Much like the birther controversy, it's a tactic designed to tie people up in knots disproving wild accusations instead of governing or discussing policy.
"Prove you didn't murder your wife." "She died of cancer." "See? You won't give us proof, therefore you must be guilty."
edited 9th Sep '16 12:01:19 PM by Fighteer
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"@Jovian: The anti-globalist left calls themselves such so I would do so also. What you're describing is nativeisim, which can be a reason for anti-globalization. (And in some cases they're actually presenting themselves as allies of people in areas that are nativist.
@Cap: The Clinton Foundation stuff is even more of a mountain out a molehill than the email, IMO, given how weak the examples given were (many of the people who donated and asked for something got turned down, or those that didn't had other legitimate and more obvious reasons for having the State Department's attention).
edited 9th Sep '16 11:59:24 AM by Elle
Especially if they're an empty boring collection of buzzwords. That would be a point in her favour; in my view, she would be scamming them.
@Fighteer: Again, you seem to be under the impression that I'm an idiot with no intellectual integrity. I can't speak for others, but I for one don't intend to move the goalposts from that. Show me the speeches, and I won't treat the absence of foul play as proof of any foul play, because that would be idiotic.
Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.In a nutshell, there is a conspiracy at play here, but it's so simple and obvious that our usual ideas of what constitutes a conspiracy sort of gloss over it.
From the time that the Clintons first appeared on the national stage, certain powerful interests on the right (including one very specific, wealthy gentleman whose name escapes me but who was recently featured by Rachel Maddow in her "how we got here" segments) have devoted immense resources to discrediting and smearing them. The basic tactic of this group is to throw such an immense volume of phony dirt into the air that it contaminates them in the public's eyes regardless of whether anything actually sticks.
This group was behind Whitewater, the Gennifer Flowers thing, the Lewinski scandal, you name it. In fact, it's not entirely inaccurate to say that part of the early success of Fox News was its willingness to feed and feed on the phony Clinton scandals.
Part of the motivation is a pure, ideological hatred of liberalism and those who would dare bring it to the White House, and part of it is a deliberate, planned attempt to make the country ungovernable by Democrats.
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"Here's a thing about the speeches...does any other politician get this sort of scrutiny to private speeches they give? Is there any hint they have an effect on what hr actual policy is?
There's a pretty realistic chance they're just generic, boilerplate motivational stuff. But stuff that could easily be whipped out of context. I think, if nothing else, some can agree that Clinton has damn good reason not to trust the media.
That Clinton continues to not speak badly of the media is a mark in her favor, of a sort, but no politician who survives long ever really trusts them.
@Handle: I would only accede to the idea that Clinton should release her speeches if that same standard were applied to every politician running for the Presidency, sort of like the tax return thing. "Disclose everything you've ever done for money," would be the idea. But again, why? To feed your paranoia?
edited 9th Sep '16 12:16:13 PM by Fighteer
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"Email thing. Clinton ran a private (ie, not government-controlled) email server while Secretary of State and used it for non-classified government business. The accusation is that this was a bad thing because it's an attempt to do an end-run around security procedures (necessary to protect classified information) and/or public records laws (to make sure government officials are accountable). Ultimately, the accusations are bullshit because 1) no material that was actually classified at the time it was sent actually passed through the server in question note , 2) Clinton actually made a point of keeping the emails around rather than getting rid of them, in deference to public records laws, and 3) other Secretaries of State had private email accounts of their own (though none of them ran their own server — they used public services instead) and done a less-thorough job of following department guidelines with them.note There was an FBI investigation into the whole thing, and they came to the conclusion that while using a private server wasn't a good thing, no laws were broken, either in terms of public records or classified information handling. That hasn't stopped Republicans at rallies from chanting "lock her up" in reference to the whole ordeal.
There's also the Clinton Foundation thing. The Clinton Foundation is a charity set up by Bill and Hillary Clinton, and there's been suggestions that major donors to the Foundation were given preferential treatment by the Clintons, suggesting that they were essentially accepting bribes in exchange for favors. No one has actually been able to point to any of these supposed incidents, and journalists investigating the foundation looking for them have come up basically dry, but that doesn't stop people from saying "they accepted all that money from all those people! Of COURSE they must have given stuff back in return! Wake up, sheeple!" Not to mention that donations to the Clinton Foundation go to the charity and not the Clintons personally, so they couldn't use that money for themselves anyway. The Clinton Foundation also has generally good ratings from independent charity watchdogs.
Along a similar vein, there's Hillary's speeches to various Wall Street corporations. Basically, after she left her position as Secretary of State, she accepted some paid speaking engagements at events put on by some large Wall Street companies. This is nothing particularly heinous — famous people accept money to talk at events at all the time. But during the primary, Bernie Sanders tried to use it to paint Clinton as a corporate shill. Same deal as the Foundation stuff — basically "she accepted money from them, she must be in their pocket!" without any actual evidence of her giving them any preferential treatment. Sanders tried to get Clinton to release transcripts of the speeches she made, but she refused (likely knowing that any such release would be quote mined to hell and back to paint her in the worst possible light). The Republicans don't hit this one too hard, but it's a common refrain among Bernie supporters who refuse to support Clinton.
Before that was the Benghazi thing. A few years ago, an American embassy in Benghazi, Libya was attacked by militants and several US diplomatic personnel were killed. Much effort was spent trying to blame this on her, such as suggesting that she personally rejected requests by the embassy for additional security (such a request was made and was rejected, but at a far lower level in the State Department than Clinton — she never saw the request) or that she was slow to respond to the situation as it unfolded (this has been thoroughly debunked — she was informed of the attack as it happened and remained abreast of events as they unfolded).
You can keep going back farther if you want — the GOP has been trying to smear Clinton for literally decades. Probably the oldest thing that people still remember is the Whitewater thing, supposedly a real estate development business that the Clintons were involved with. The conspiracy theories go deep on this one — all the way to accusations that the Clintons had people murdered to cover their tracks. This goes all the way back to the 70s and 80s. It occasionally resurfaces at random points — the Clintons were recently accused by some of the more fringe elements of murdering supposed witnesses again, when someone (can't remember who, sorry) was supposedly killed when he was about to testify against them. (In reality, it was a suicide, and I can't even recall the connection to the Clintons.)
Really from Jupiter, but not an alien.
He most certainly did
That was basically the first moment of the two that won me.
I don't know about others, but I'm not demanding anything. I'm making a request.
edited 9th Sep '16 12:44:12 PM by TheHandle
Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.

What I'd fear is this hypothetical socially left/economically right party (probably the democrats) also inheriting the GOP's jingoism. I'd find it extremely difficult to vote for either party were that the case.
edited 9th Sep '16 11:31:34 AM by CaptainCapsase