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carbon-mantis Collector Of Fine Oddities from Trumpland Since: Mar, 2010 Relationship Status: Married to my murderer
Collector Of Fine Oddities
#192576: Jun 9th 2017 at 10:41:54 AM

They wouldn't survive long enough to be impeached.

sgamer82 Since: Jan, 2001
#192577: Jun 9th 2017 at 10:42:47 AM

How often did they try to call for Obama's impeachment? I'm sure it's happened.

Elle Since: Jan, 2001
#192578: Jun 9th 2017 at 10:46:22 AM

Is anyone else starting to think Comey's October Surprise blunder was stupidity rather than malice? I don't think he completely believed in the Justice department's decision to drop the Clinton investigation but his insistence on a need to publicly correct the record if evidence comes out contradicting a previous statement also appears to have been applied to his refusal to announce that Donald was not being personally investigated. "Correct the record" seems to be shorthand for "covering our asses". In short, he acted hastily to cover his/the department's ass when it came out more emails had been found and it backfired..

In other news, while we're distracted by this three ring circus, the Senate is making progress on the health care bill. From Twitter chatter calling for all hands on deck it sounds like they're trying to push out something by the end of the month.

edited 9th Jun '17 10:52:37 AM by Elle

Rationalinsanity from Halifax, Canada Since: Aug, 2010 Relationship Status: It's complicated
#192579: Jun 9th 2017 at 10:55:07 AM

Comey stepping in to help a candidate was an out of character incident for him. His reputation was solid until then.

Politics is the skilled use of blunt objects.
Elle Since: Jan, 2001
#192580: Jun 9th 2017 at 10:59:22 AM

Have any other investigations under his tenure been quite so public or high profile?

Gilphon (4 Score & 7 Years Ago)
#192581: Jun 9th 2017 at 11:10:15 AM

Re: PR becoming a state: How sure are we that it would be a blue state? 'cause I feel like people are just taking that for granted that they'd mostly vote Dem because they're not white-majority. Which doesn't feel like a rock solid assumption to me.

NativeJovian Jupiterian Local from Orlando, FL Since: Mar, 2014 Relationship Status: Maxing my social links
Jupiterian Local
#192582: Jun 9th 2017 at 11:12:36 AM

In short, he acted hastily to cover his/the department's ass when it came out more emails had been found and it backfired.
That's basically my take on it, yeah. I think his first loyalty is to the FBI as an institution, and he did what he did in an attempt to make the FBI seem above reproach. I'm not sure if he disliked Clinton and wasn't opposed to harming her campaign on the eve of an election, or he thought that it wouldn't make a difference and she'd win anyway, but it's clear at this point that he's not a Trump fan. But he still treated the two campaigns differently, given that he didn't make any public announcements about the fact that the Trump campaign was also under investigation.

Ultimately, I think he prioritized the appearance of neutrality over actual neutrality. If I had to guess, he didn't expect Trump to win and was trying to avoid accusations of partisanship in the form of concealing information about the Clinton investigation. What he should have done is kept his damn mouth shut and let the accusations fly, secure in the knowledge they were baseless. Instead, he tried to prevent the accusations from coming in the first place, and his actions in doing so were what gave the accusations weight.

Really from Jupiter, but not an alien.
sgamer82 Since: Jan, 2001
#192583: Jun 9th 2017 at 11:15:52 AM

"Exclusive: Trump targets illegal immigrants who were given reprieves from deportation by Obama" - http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-immigration-deportations-exclusiv-idUSKBN1902I4

Fighteer Lost in Space from The Time Vortex (Time Abyss) Relationship Status: TV Tropes ruined my love life
Lost in Space
#192584: Jun 9th 2017 at 11:16:25 AM

There's also reporting that Comey was influenced by a vocal minority in the FBI who wholeheartedly bought into the InfoWars/Breitbart propaganda about Clinton and were pushing for more aggressive prosecution. He believed that if he did not release information himself, they were going to leak it.

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"
NativeJovian Jupiterian Local from Orlando, FL Since: Mar, 2014 Relationship Status: Maxing my social links
Jupiterian Local
#192585: Jun 9th 2017 at 11:19:24 AM

Which is still prioritizing the good of the FBI over the good of the country. "If they leak it, we'll look bad, so better to hold a fucking press conference about it instead."

Really from Jupiter, but not an alien.
sgamer82 Since: Jan, 2001
#192587: Jun 9th 2017 at 11:25:47 AM

Any chance of bankruptcy or similar resulting?

Fighteer Lost in Space from The Time Vortex (Time Abyss) Relationship Status: TV Tropes ruined my love life
Lost in Space
#192588: Jun 9th 2017 at 11:47:10 AM

No. Robert Mercer backs the site and would presumably continue to do so even if it had zero advertising revenue. But it's definitely feeling the pinch, according to the WaPo article.

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"
Rationalinsanity from Halifax, Canada Since: Aug, 2010 Relationship Status: It's complicated
#192589: Jun 9th 2017 at 11:56:23 AM

Though the alt-right is ditching them for firing that genocide advocating nut.

edited 9th Jun '17 11:56:54 AM by Rationalinsanity

Politics is the skilled use of blunt objects.
Swanpride Since: Jun, 2013
#192590: Jun 9th 2017 at 12:09:40 PM

I do think that Comey is more Republican than Democrat and this might influenced his decisions. I also think that he is a man whose first priority is to protect his own career. Let's be realistic about it, if he hadn't gotten fired and Trump hadn't attacked him, he might have kept everything which happened secret. But I also think that he is a man of integrity in the sense that he would never do anything outright illegal.

Rationalinsanity from Halifax, Canada Since: Aug, 2010 Relationship Status: It's complicated
#192591: Jun 9th 2017 at 12:29:37 PM

A poll has Ossoff up 6 points, outside the margin of error. http://www.cnn.com/2017/06/09/politics/georgia-house-poll-jon-ossoff-karen-handel/index.html

Politics is the skilled use of blunt objects.
SeptimusHeap from Switzerland (Edited uphill both ways) Relationship Status: Mu
#192592: Jun 9th 2017 at 12:30:19 PM

When is that special election, again?

"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman
M84 Oh, bother. from Our little blue planet Since: Jun, 2010 Relationship Status: Chocolate!
Oh, bother.
#192593: Jun 9th 2017 at 12:33:18 PM

[up] June 20.

Disgusted, but not surprised
KarkatTheDalek Not as angry as the name would suggest. from Somwhere in Time/Space Since: Mar, 2012 Relationship Status: You're a beautiful woman, probably
Not as angry as the name would suggest.
#192594: Jun 9th 2017 at 12:35:08 PM

The 20th, I believe.

[nja]

edited 9th Jun '17 12:35:20 PM by KarkatTheDalek

Oh God! Natural light!
BearyScary Since: Sep, 2010 Relationship Status: You spin me right round, baby
#192595: Jun 9th 2017 at 1:20:07 PM

I hope that Ossoff kicks Handel's ass on election day. Metaphorically, of course.

I don't agree with Ossoff on everything, but we can't let any more people who don't believe in a living wage into politics.

Do not obey in advance.
Rationalinsanity from Halifax, Canada Since: Aug, 2010 Relationship Status: It's complicated
#192596: Jun 9th 2017 at 1:28:08 PM

[up]What, you don't think Combat by Champion is something to consider in terms of electoral reform?tongue

Politics is the skilled use of blunt objects.
BearyScary Since: Sep, 2010 Relationship Status: You spin me right round, baby
#192597: Jun 9th 2017 at 1:29:33 PM

...Well, it's tempting, but no. tongue

(I needed that laugh. smile)

edited 9th Jun '17 1:36:50 PM by BearyScary

Do not obey in advance.
SeptimusHeap from Switzerland (Edited uphill both ways) Relationship Status: Mu
#192598: Jun 9th 2017 at 1:38:58 PM

So, while writing about the British election, I had a thought about some recent elections:

Is it possible that we tend to overestimate how much policy governs voters' decisions?

Idea inspired by the fact that a number of UKIP voters in England (think a cross between Trumpism and the Tea Party) now voted for Labour (which is currently led by Jeremy Corbyn, think Bernie Sanders one quarter as controversial), as well as by some comments on Steve Bullock (Democratic governor of Montana) about why he gets elected in a red state. Basically, I think that some left wing parties have trouble picking up voters because they focus too much on policies and too little on all the other expectations some people have of politicians, such as listening to voters and relatability.

"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman
LSBK Since: Sep, 2014
#192599: Jun 9th 2017 at 1:47:06 PM

Stuff like that probably matters more depending on location. I'd image that place stereotypically associated with union-membership and such react better to thinks like that. Like the rust belt states Clinton barely lost or West Virginia.

Wryte Since: Jul, 2010
#192600: Jun 9th 2017 at 1:55:34 PM

I mean... duh? I didn't realize that was even a question. Of course policy is irrelevant to most voters. Most voters are utterly politically illiterate. Outside of maybe one or two issues they're personally invested in, they don't know what a candidate's policies are, don't know any of the intricacies of policy-making, and can't be arsed to go looking. They understand politics strictly in terms of which team they root for, which is usually whoever their parents rooted for.

This is, theoretically, one of the upsides of a two-party system. Having only two competitive parties allows the ill-informed to make at least a somewhat informed decision by being able to identify "this is the party that generally says more stuff I agree with than the other one," which while far from ideal, is at least better than "this is the candidate that says the nicest things about me/the meanest things about the people I don't like."

In the discussion earlier about how a certain percentage of voters can pretty much always be counted on to vote either D or R, with a smaller leftover percentage of undecideds making up the middle, the solid D and R voters are largely the first group, while the undecideds largely fall into the latter category. Without the two big parties, that latter category would then be flooded with people from the former category who wouldn't have the convenient D/R labels to use as a quick reference, and demagogues would become much more common.


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