I just read through the big NYT piece on FBI investigations in the 2016 campaign. My big takeaway is that the FBI is afraid of Republicans in a way that they’re simply not afraid of Democrats. I’m not saying that they’re wrong to feel this way, just that it’s a fact.
Examples:
[W]ith polls showing Mrs. Clinton holding a comfortable lead, Mr. Comey ended up plunging the F.B.I. into the molten center of a bitter election. Fearing the backlash that would come if it were revealed after the election that the F.B.I. had been investigating the next president and had kept it a secret, Mr. Comey sent a letter informing Congress that the case was reopened.
Congressional Republicans were preparing for years of hearings during a Clinton presidency. If Mr. Comey became the subject of those hearings, F.B.I. officials feared, it would hobble the agency and harm its reputation. “I don’t think the organization would have survived that,” Mr. Steinbach said.
Comey made the announcement about potentially reopening the Clinton case because he was afraid of Republican reprisal. Full stop.
Fear of the right wing is an important part of the ethos of modern Washington, and it’s what swung this election.
Baud
I don’t think a Dem FBI director would have broken protocol though.
Doug!
@Baud:
I think Obama erred in picking a GOP daddy to run the FBI, yes.
Baud
@Doug!: Agreed. Although who could have foreseen this?
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Baud: The FBI would have been without a director if Obama had appointed a Dem.
sharl
On occasion – though of late more frequently I think – I’ve seen (twitter) and heard (podcasts) some really dark shit along these same lines from lefties, such as the 12-tweet thread from which this tweet was plucked.
guachi
Every time I read how Comey threw the election to Trump, I remember that Obama willingly nominated him to the position in some kind of moronic attempt at being bipartisan.
Obama’s bipartisan fetishism was his biggest failing and it fucked America in the end. No matter how much I like things Obama did I can’t ever forgive him for nominating Comey. And I’ve never seen him once take any responsibility for it, either.
patrick II
@Doug!:
As much as I like Obama his determination to prove his non-partisanship while holding the office of the president in spite of the determined, overwhelming, and traitorous negative response by the opposition was the one thing about him that I just got tired of.
Comey, nor any other modern republican, should ever have been anywhere near the office of the Director of the FBI.
oldster
This is what is meant by “working the refs.”
And Comey is a national disgrace for having suckered to it.
Frankensteinbeck
That article annoyed me. It’s a nonstop editorial assurance that Comey is faithfully nonpartisan and would never have meddled in the election, interspersed with the actual facts that yes, he totally did meddle with the election in a blatantly partisan way.
dr. bloor
@Frankensteinbeck: Watching the NYT try to unshit the bed re: Comey’s actions and their willingness to be played yet again (coughJudyMillercough) would be amusingly pathetic if not for the stakes. Glenn Thrush has been spinning himself into seizures all day on Twitter trying to cast those critical of the Times as being unreasonable and biased.
Starfish
@Frankensteinbeck: And there was no “We the idiots at the NYT apologize for being wall to wall e-mails.”
Frankensteinbeck
@dr. bloor:
It reminds me of all the articles about Hillary Clinton’s corruption, where twelve paragraphs into speculation about favors people might be buying, they admit that the people who gave money to the Clinton Foundation didn’t get what they want. Then back to speculation!
Or some of the articles about Snowden’s NSA revelations. Especially the story where the NSA came to the door of some guy because of his search engine queries, and waaaaaaay down at the bottom it said that he made the searches at work and it was actually his employer’s IT department that saw the search terms and called the county sheriff, who were the people that visited his home.
This is why I’ve learned to dismiss news articles I don’t read thoroughly.
The Dangerman
Comey’s perhaps biggest problem is shared by a lot of people; he didn’t see Trump winning. Very few did and most of those are whackjobs. We saw this last night on a taped SNL; Trump was dead fucking meat and, yet, he somehow won. Maybe Russia did find a way to hack the votes.
MisterForkbeard
@guachi: Comey’s nomination wasn’t a bipartisanship fetish. Republicans had signalled they wouldn’t approve anyone Obama nominated if he was a Dem, and would reject most moderate republicans as well.
Comey was (basically) the best that could be done. A loyal Republican, but also one that had demonstrated some level of independence and integrity in the past. Unfortunately, he’d ALSO been involved in the whole anti-Clinton movement in the 90s, but so was basically every Republican.
@The Dangerman: Nah, probably no hacking involved. What you DID have is a highly tribalized Republican voting base that hated Clinton but would also vote for a literal dog with a “R” next to its name on the ballot. You also had the out-and-out racists voting for him.
Combined with a load of russian and republican propaganda about how awful Hillary was, a media eager to take her down, a complicit FBI and a complete unwillingness by the media to actually discuss policy, the results make a lot of sense.
Doug R
@guachi: He was doing what’s necessary for governance. The fact that rich old white guys want to cling to power forever ain’t his fault.
Ian G.
@guachi:
@patrick II:
Funny, I feel that Lincoln was way too accommodating towards the violent traitors in the Confederacy, and his Obama-like approach is why we’re still dealing with this shit today. Had Thaddeus Stevens been president, we may not have assholes naming their children “Jefferson Beauregard” in this country any more than people name kids “Heydrich Stroop” in Germany today.
It’s really a shame that we managed to rebuild two violent racist societies into peaceful democracies after WWII, but royally fucked it up in our own country in 1865.
randy khan
@?BillinGlendaleCA:
There was a deputy. And odds are that a deputy wouldn’t have felt as cowed by Jason Chaffetz et al. as Comey.
But as others have noted, the Republicans signaled that they wouldn’t confirm any Democrat at all, and even a middle-of-the-road Republican, and Obama probably felt that leaving the FBI without a director for several years was not a good idea.
Adam L Silverman
@Baud: @Doug!: @?BillinGlendaleCA:@guachi: If he had to pick an identified Republican to serve as FBI Director, he should have picked Fitzgerald. As I’ve written here multiple times in response to questions on the various national security and CI investigations: Comey is predictable because he actually believes he is the last upstanding/honest/upright person in DC. And as a result he can be manipulated. That is what happened here.
jharp
Let me be the first to say I have no fear of those fuckers.
And I’m unarmed and in my late fifties,
Bring. It. On.
James E Powell
@Starfish:
Not to mention every single Clinton Foundation “pay to play” story. No evidence of any wrongdoing but shadows and clouds, shadows and clouds! I hate those fuckers.
The NYT has twice helped a popular vote losing Republican into office by running a smear campaign against his opponent.
The Dangerman
@MisterForkbeard:
True. Trump had one thing right; he could have shot someone (as long as it was a person of color) and still won. A lot of people held their noses (a lot of them aren’t THAT stupid) and voted Trump simply because they always vote and always vote R.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Doug R: also that a bunch of dumb people in Colorado and No Carolina got it into their heads that voting for Republican Senators would save them from Ebola and decapitation
Adam L Silverman
@MisterForkbeard: Actually the DOJ Civil Rights Division has responded to an inquiry that they can document voting machine issues. Whether this was hacking as we traditionally understand it or not is a different story. PDF images of the letter are at the link below.
http://occupydemocrats.com/2017/04/13/government-just-admitted-voting-machine-issues-5-trump-swing-states-2016/
MisterForkbeard
@James E Powell: The thing that most gets me about this is that not only was there literally no evidence of wrongdoing other than a few contributions that didn’t get reported right, Trump’s obvious own pay-to-play Foundation and business were largely ignored and treated as a non-scandal. Neither were his repeated attempts to renege on contracts, etc.
The media just didn’t care about any of it, because they had a “Corrupt Clinton” narrative on the Foundation and mail server and that’s all they wanted.
ETA: If major media had actually done something like started most reports off about the election with “Donald Trump made his stump speech again today, in which he is still repeating the following lies.”, I would have been a little happier. Seriously guys, the fact that the Republican nominee lied ALL THE TIME about policies, facts, and historical events should have been a major story. Here I am remembering that Gore got smacked for being dishonest after getting a name wrong in an anecdote.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Adam L Silverman: Still waiting for Fitzmas I see.
Goku
@The Dangerman: While I do place some of the blame on Russian propaganda a la bots and email hacking, I don’t think the vote totals themselves were altered, barring some new evidence. He won primarily because enough people, primarily whites, liked what he was saying and wanted the queers, Negros, libtards, Jews, and trans punished. Most will never admit that, not even to themselves. In addition, to this, there were plenty of idiot voters who went 3rd party or choose not to vote at all because “both sides, same thing”. The latter especially are lazy and do not like think very hard about weighty topics; they would prefer to watch their sportsball and get drunk.
As I’ve said before here, everyone, whether they want to acknowledge it or not, are responsible for the world we live in. Its the same thing in a democracy; it is a citizen’s duty to be informed about important political issues and to vote at the very minimum. As voters, we are also to varying degrees responsible for our leader’s decisions. Doubly so for someone like Trump, who was clearly unfit for office at the start. Whatever happens, will be on the heads of all those who voted for him, a 3rd party candidate with no chance to win, or did not vote at all.
cmorenc
@Baud:
…and chances are much better that neither would Comey have done so either, had Loretta Lynch not had to recuse herself from heading the investigation. Of course, Giuliani’s stooges in the NY office of the FBI could still have stirred up mischief with their purported “discovery” of Clinton emails on Huma Abedin’s computer (which were nothing but copies of ones the FBI already had) – but Lynch would have been the one the heat would have been directed at, and she wouldn’t have folded to their pressure in that circumstance.
Bill Clinton couldn’t keep his loud mouth and ass out of Hillary’s way at two key points – this one the most crucial, when his ill-advised schmooze with Lynch aboard her plane forced Lynch to recuse herself. The other was his ill-advised comment about – something about how Obamacare wasn’t working for many folks.
MisterForkbeard
@Adam L Silverman: If I had to guess, it’s likely that “voting machine issues” doesn’t mean hacking. It just means our awful, piss-poor voting machines are awful and piss-poor. And also unsecured. :)
But thank you! I’ll read through that later today. The link is appreciated.
ETA: Fixed a typo.
trnc
That may explain why he made an announcement the Clinton investigation, but it doesn’t explain why he didn’t make an announcement about the Trump investigation, especially when there is clearly much more evidence of wrongdoing on Trump’s part. If he really thought his decisions helped maintain a stellar reputation for the FBI, he’s a bigger idiot than any of us could possibly have imagined.
James E Powell
What have the Democrats ever done to make anyone afraid of their anger? They don’t even do a good job of defending their own. Ask Shirley Sherrod, or ACORN.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Do they still have their heads attached and are they Ebola free?
DanR2
@Doug!: Remember: Lefty just did what he had to do, and now he’s growin’ old.
mai naem mobile
@Adam L Silverman: Fitzpatrick or Fitzgerald? If Fitzpatrick who’s Fitzpatrick?
James E Powell
@The Dangerman:
I don’t think they had to hold their noses. I had a long breakfast conversation with a group of non-mouth-breathing Republicans, the kind I call country club Republicans (because that’s who goes to church with my mother). This was during they RNC. They were extremely pissed that their own Governor Kasich was not backing Trump. They just did not care one bit for any problems with Trump because Hillary Clinton represented the worst evil and the biggest threat to the American way of life that any of them (World War II generation, all of them) could ever imagine.
These people enthusiastically voted for Trump because he hates everyone they hate. That was the whole story.
David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch
This is a Comey/FBI narrative to deflect their culpability.
They know the Inspector General and historians will take a dim view of this episode, and they know the Dems may take control of Congress in 2018, so they want to establish a narrative that shifts responsibility — “they made me do it!”
Adam L Silverman
@?BillinGlendaleCA: Nope. I think President Obama should have stood McConnell down. But if he had to pick between Comey and Fitzgerald, I think Fitzgerald would have been a better choice. He isn’t high on his own supply.
MisterForkbeard
@James E Powell: The problem is that Dems are interested in actual good governance. That means they won’t destroy the FBI or other useful government actors, and will jettison an employee if they’re awful or racist. Of course, the problem with Sherrod is that they leaped to a conclusion. ACORN was basically all on the Republicans, though again it was all about a lie.
schrodingers_cat
Do you guys still believe that Vichy Times is non partisan? And take what they have to say, seriously?
Goku
@James E Powell:
The icing on the cake is that Trump and his most diehard, white nationalist supporters represent what they fought against. The fact that they could not recognize this is depressing
germy
@Ian G.:
Fun Fact: Harpo Marx was born Adolph Marx. He changed it to Arthur Marx.
Adam L Silverman
@MisterForkbeard: It’s complicated. Michigan’s vote tallies are all hosed up. Apparently if a machine has malfunctioned it can’t be used for certification of results purposes. Where were the bulk of the malfunctions? Detroit and Flint. Here’s the Independent’s reporting on it:
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-elections/us-election-michigan-recount-donald-trump-broken-voting-machines-hillary-clinton-a7458231.html
And we know that the entire GA voter database was hacked and the records sucked up by the hackers over a year ago. If you wanted data to do microtargeting via social media, that would be a huge help.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Adam L Silverman: Worked well with Justice Garland.
neldob
There were so many reasons Trump won. Partly it was that not enough Democrats voted, not enough were involved, active. I still feel like when Hillary said some of the Trump supporters were deplorable she should have pointed out that they in fact were contemptible neo-nazis and white supremacysts instead of apologizing. We should have rioted when Merrick Garland was sidelined by Mitch McConnell.
guachi
If Comey was the best the Republicans would allow then clearly Obama should have had a temporary person head the FBI.
It’s not like people didn’t warn him about it at the time.
Adam L Silverman
@?BillinGlendaleCA: It didn’t work at all because he largely didn’t do much. He had ways to squeeze McConnell. To make his life miserable. This didn’t require the bully pulpit. As an institutionalist, who believes Congress should do its job, and as a fundamentally decent human being who believes others are too, he had a huge blindspot. And McConnell and other took advantage of this over and over and over again. He was a very good president. He wasn’t perfect. And he consistently refused to lower himself to the level of his enemies and opponents. And all too often he lost as a result. And, unfortunately, because he lost the country lost too.
James E Powell
@MisterForkbeard:
Democrats had the White House, senate, and house when they voted to defund ACORN. The senate voted 83-7 to do it. Democrats are just fucking cowards who never stand up to press/media storms. That’s why Republicans whip them up, that’s why the press/media do them.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Good points, also, and I know I’m inviting the wrath of certain die-hards, Hillary Clinton could have just used a fucking State Dept email address for gov’t business, or kept the overly complicated Foundation at an arm’s length, or not gone a’buckraking in 2013, or…
this compulsion to blame Obama for Clinton’s loss baffles me
efgoldman
@cmorenc:
Or Lynch could have just told everyone to pound sand. If they came after here, it would have been just more angry unintelligible backround buzz from the RWNJs.
In fact the Dems could have countered with “racism! racism! racism!”
Adam L Silverman
@mai naem mobile: Sorry, that’s him Patrick Fitzgerald. I elided the first name into the last. Thanks, good catch!
sharl
@Adam L Silverman:
I’d been wondering about this new(?) use of the word hacking, which I only heard today from Elizabeth Warren in an interview she did with The New Yorker Radio Hour.* I later found that she had also used this same phrasing earlier in the week on Rachel Maddow’s show (You-Tube, 9m28s).
*I transcribed the relevant short segment from the New Yorker interview; this started at about 11m10s into the discussion between the interviewer (David Remnick, DR) and Elizabeth Warren (EW):
She went on to enumerate two other major Trump-Russia issues which have already been in the news, but this hacking thing seemed new (at least to me).
mai naem mobile
@schrodingers_cat: I’ve been thinking for a while that the NYT was probably hacked by the Russians as well. Maybe just some key people at the NYT. Whatever it is, I think it affected their coverage. I know i sound like a conspiracy nut.
Steve in the ATL
@James E Powell:
No kidding. That was indefensible. As was the official condemnation of Move On.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Adam L Silverman: Unless Harry had 50 votes to kill the filibuster at that point, I’m not sure what any President could do to the Turtle.
gwangung
@Goku:
They still don’ recognize it; they REFUSE to recognize it.
Adam L Silverman
@sharl: We know that a number of the department of elections in a number of states were hacked into in 2015 and 2016, I wrote about that in my first cyberwar post back in July (I think it was July). There were also hacks into other state computer systems. It was unclear in the reporting who, specifically, was responsible and what, specifically, they actually stole. What I think Senator Warren is indicating is that some of this, at least, was done by Russian Intelligence or the groups fronting for them.
gene108
I read the article. A long winded fluff piece trying to exonerate that motherfucker, James Comey.
I hope Trump and Sessions, literally, piss all over him, while making him watch the Trump Russian pee-hooker tapes and laughing at what a complete and total fuckwad he is.
I want to punch some thing now.
Fuck the Fucking New York Times.
JPL
In July Comey wanted to write a generic oped piece about Russian interference. Isn’t that nice.
In September and early October, they find possible collusion with the Trump campaign, and then he refuses to do so.
We all know what he did on the 28th.
The fix is in. If he didn’t have the courage to do something before the election, he won’t now.
JPL
oh no.. I’m in moderation at 56 and I didn’t even use a gambling word.
Now it’s back
germy
@Adam L Silverman: I notice in the footage of the French elections, voters slipping a piece of paper into a slot.
No electronic button pushing.
Adam L Silverman
@?BillinGlendaleCA: There are leverage points, they don’t run through the Senate. They are process based places to inflict pain. President Obama does not operate that way, McConnell does. You figure out who is going to win.
JPL
@gene108: In my dreams, Comey’s reputation could be repaired if he appeared at the Kennedy Center in a one act play.
All he would have to do is play the part of Trump while reading the latest AP transcript of a Trump interview.
Hillary could be the reported.
Here’s an example
TRUMP: Well in business, you don’t necessarily need heart, whereas here, almost everything affects people. So if you’re talking about health care — you have health care in business but you’re trying to just negotiate a good price on health care, et cetera, et cetera. You’re providing health. This is (unintelligible). Here, everything, pretty much everything you do in government, involves heart, whereas in business, most things don’t involve heart.
AP: What’s that switch been like for you?
TRUMP: In fact, in business you’re actually better off without it.
AP: What’s making that switch been like for you?
TRUMP: You have to love people. And if you love people, such a big responsibility. (unintelligible) You can take any single thing, including even taxes. I mean we’re going to be doing major tax reform. Here’s part of your story, it’s going to be a big (unintelligible). Everybody’s saying, “Oh, he’s delaying.” I’m not delaying anything. I’ll tell you the other thing is (unintelligible). I used to get great press. I get the worst press. I get such dishonest reporting with the media. That’s another thing that really has — I’ve never had anything like it before. It happened during the primaries, and I said, you know, when I won, I said, “Well the one thing good is now I’ll get good press.” And it got worse. (unintelligible) So that was one thing that a little bit of a surprise to me. I thought the press would become better, and it actually, in my opinion, got more nasty.
Adam L Silverman
@germy: Yep. Everything should be paper based. And there should be a complete moratorium on reporting until the last polls close in the final states to vote. Exit polling should either be embargoed until the last polls close or outlawed. Voting should be moved to a weekend, election day made a Federal holiday with a requirement that all businesses other than those required in case of an emergency are closed, or conducted by mail in ballot. Also, voting should be mandatory. Failure to vote should result in a penalty. That penalty should get progressively more painful for each consecutive election one fails to vote in.
Mike in Pasadena
Comey was and is a chickeshit motherphucker who fucked all us muthas. I hate that SOB like no other SOB I have ever hated. I hope he dies a long, lingering, painful death for what he did to this country.
germy
@Adam L Silverman:
All excellent points. I wonder if I’ll see any of this in my lifetime, though.
lamh36
Yes…yes…it’s Obama’s fault HRC lost…not cause of the fuckers who voted for Cheeto out of spite…and i’m not talking bout the 27% diehards.
But whatever…how about we talk about the Cheeto AP interview.
I’m telling ya Cheeto Prez is NOT mentally well!
Seriously i think dude is in early stages of D-E-M-E-N-T-I-A!!! And gawd help us all!
Adam L Silverman
@germy: Sure. If you move to Belgium.
Betty Cracker
@Adam L Silverman: Word.
lamh36
So what we need is a Dem willing to fight at the low levels GOP does right…oh but wait i’m just betting soon as a Dem does the usual suspects will be pissed as that Dem pol soon enough.
Folks claim to want someone to fight in the dirt but soon as they do…those same folks are the first to be outraged at a pol for doing so…
y’all can’t have it both ways…
germy
@JPL:
gene108
@neldob:
We are waking up the fact now, that we need to push a lot harder.
The right-wingers have had big money pushing them into the streets for decades, and will continue to have big money churning things up for decades to come.
We are really infancy of political organization, with regards to all the “Resistance” groups that are popping up. This is a baby just being able to sit-up and hold its head up, without help. I don’t think the ” Resistance” has even learned to crawl yet.
Achrachno
@gwangung: My only problem with this is that I don’t think there are many WWII vets left around — the war ended 75 years ago and surviving vets are all in their 90s. I think we need to blame the next generation or two.
Adam L Silverman
@lamh36: I read it. I’m still trying to make sense of it. It is as whacked in its way as Speaker Ryan’s “policy” proposal A Better Way is whacked in its way (as in it isn’t actually a policy proposal so much as pages of aspirational statements).
efgoldman
@mai naem mobile:
The NYT had CDS long before Putin.
As somebody else pointed out, their cheerleading for W’s little desert adventure was wholly self-inflicted.
I don’t know when the grey lady became the paper of record but they never deserved it.
dr. bloor
@James E Powell:
AKA “Mission Accomplished” at 242 W41st. They never reflect or apologize because this is exactly who they want to be. That they can continue to successfully scam left-leaning tote baggers out of their shekels is just icing on the cake.
sharl
@Adam L Silverman: Thanks; that added perspective is helpful. I just wanted to be sure I wasn’t reading too much into use of the word “hacking”. And while she has no experience with the world of intel and espionage, Warren isn’t too far behind Devin Nunes on that score, plus – unlike Nunes – she is honest, intellectually rigorous, dedicated to her oath of office, and determined. I am reassured by her interest in this issue, despite all the other humongously important stuff she is already dealing with.
JPL
@germy: Comey would be great in that role, although he might have trouble spitting out the paragraph on NATO. Who knew that NATO never understood what terrorism was.
The movie about Comey won’t be kind.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Adam L Silverman:
Uh, like what? I’m not being snarky this time.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
I’m willing to believe there were things that Obama could have done that might have worked, but I need specifics. “Have balls”, “fight back”, “tell people Mitch McConnell is an asshole” don’t cut it for me.
Adam L Silverman
@lamh36: I am personally okay with the next Democratic nominee, as well as Democratic candidates for every position from school board to Senator running as unreconstructed nut cutters. I, of course, make a living off of war, insurgency, terrorism, and other not so nice things. So I may not be the most representative of people on this.
Betty Cracker
@lamh36: I don’t think we — or at least I — want Democrats to be as nasty and amoral as the GOP. I just don’t want any Democrat — from county commissioner to POTUS — to forget who it is we’re dealing with, ever again. I don’t blame PBO. I was right there with him thinking this country wasn’t stupid, racist and sexist enough to elect a demagogic buffoon like Trump, with the help of a “moderate” incompetent hack like Comey. I just want us to learn our lesson and move forward.
Baud
@lamh36:
This.
lamh36
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Exactly but seems to me folks want someone who plays dirty…period. But ok fine then don’t come back and say “I’m appalled that such would and such would do…” then.
Let em play dirty if it gets you what you want…is the motto of McConnell and the GOP of the Obama era…all i’m saying is id folks want a Dem to do the same them fine…fuqn own it and then don’t come back outraged about it all
Adam L Silverman
@?BillinGlendaleCA: I know you aren’t. And I didn’t think you were being snarky before. A lot of it has to do with funding flows from DC to Kentucky. The President could have also had someone go looking for a DD 214 that has been missing for well over 40 years and that McConnell dearly wants and needs to keep missing. There are a number of dirty tricks that you can use if you are willing to abuse the process. They are ugly, they are nasty, they are not something that President Obama would do.
lamh36
comment in moderation
gene108
@JPL:
If there are any anti-Republican statements allowed to be uttered in public, in the future, that is.
They are fascists at heart, and would love nothing more than complete rulership of America, with no political opposition.
sharl
@sharl: Being stuck in moderation is annoying, but I find not being able to figure out the offending word to be particularly irksome. {shrug at puny problems…}
Corner Stone
That’s it. I finally realized it. The reason I can’t stand to listen to Sen Warren is because she has the exact same mannerisms and pronunciation tics as Peggy Fucking Noonan. My God.
Mike J
@germy:
They were handed 11 sheets of paper with the name of each candidate printed on one. So of course I saw people on twitter complaining about the huge waste of paper[1] since 10 of them are never used.
[1] Which, I will remind you, literally grows on trees.
lamh36
@Betty Cracker: naw folks want them to play the game like McConnell. All I’m saying is McConnell et al play dirty and so if y want some to play the game with him they’ll have to play dirty too.
i just want folks to own that and when the dirt spills out don’t then fake the outrage.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Adam L Silverman: I’m not convinced that toying with federal funding wouldn’t have blown back on Obama hard, with Joe Mancin, Steve Beshear and Allison Grimes standing there next to McConnell deploring this blah blah blah. As to the rumors about McConnell’s discharge and the soap party… wouldn’t bother me one bit if that info, assuming it exists, had slipped out.
lamh36
well dang 2 comments in moderation ??
Another Scott
@Adam L Silverman: OTOH, we’ve all seen reporting on elections in NorthEast Elbonia with paper ballots stuffed into voting boxes before the polls even open…
The integrity of elections depends on the people who run them – not the particular technology used.
I’m all for expanded voting access (some people shouldn’t have to stand in line for hours while other people a few miles away are able to vote in a few minutes). Giving people a month to vote by mail, and some sort of penalty or reward or recognition is OK with me too (but the devil’s in the details – who votes for impaired people in nursing homes?). I’m all for anything that increases people’s confidence that their vote is accurately reflected in the total and that no fake or erroneous votes are recorded.
But I don’t think that paper ballots are a requirement or a risk-free solution. (“OMG! I spilled a cooler of Gatorade on the ballots!!”).
Our best protection from corrupted national elections is that the polling places are run at the local level by grandmas and grandpas who overwhelmingly take their jobs there very seriously.
Cheers,
Scott.
Baud
@Adam L Silverman:
I can read the Greenwald article in my head.
Corner Stone
@Betty Cracker:
What do you think people were screaming about, in real time, over and over and over again?
Not Trump specifically, but come on. Everybody here so fucking smugly stating out loud Obama was a “Top 5 and all that” bullshit. Fuck that nonsense.
Doug!
@DanR2:
Yes.
Adam L Silverman
@lamh36: I’ve released you and everyone else. Would you all try to play nice with FYWP? Please? I’m gonna go make something to eat in a few minutes so won’t be able to spring you all from comment holding.
ThresherK
Fuck the NYT for not listening to a single goddamn liberal after Comey’s July shitstorm and pretending this makes anything better.
They will not learn a thing from this. And neither will NPR.
Doug!
@Baud:
Ha
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Adam L Silverman: Then you’re also aware of the consequences of doing that. The House could impeach and would for that.
lamh36
@Adam L Silverman: YAY!
lamh36
@Doug!: @Baud: HA. forget Greenwald…i can already imagine the FP posts and usual commenters about said “dirty plays”
Oatler.
Every time I see Dems on C-Span I hear uptalk vocal tones? It’s not a good way to come across as ballsy? I get pissed whenever I hear them speak? They’re not even asking questions?
Adam L Silverman
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: You don’t do it so that your fingerprints are all over it. You do it, make sure McConnell knows you’ve done it, and then just deny, deny, deny if there is public speculation.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Baud: Greenwald’s in your head? Seek medical attention Baud!
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Adam L Silverman: First of all, as I noted in my previous comment, the House would impeach; second, you’re assuming a pliant media that doesn’t exist in this country.
sharl
@Adam L Silverman: Thankya Adam! I promise to not use the word(s) that anger
Nurse RatchedFYWP, as soon as I figure out what those words are.Viva BrisVegas
@Adam L Silverman: Throw in preferential voting and you pretty much have the Australian system.
I could never see why voting is not regarded as a civic responsibility, like jury duty.
Baud
@?BillinGlendaleCA: The hack deficit really does bite us in the ass.
Corner Stone
@Adam L Silverman: You do it just like GWB did with McCain having a black illegitimate baby in SC. No fingerprints but it is done.
Corner Stone
?
geg6
@lamh36:
It’s ALWAYS the black guy’s fault. You know that.
Adam L Silverman
@Baud: I could care less. Eventually GG will cease to be the useful part of useful idiot, as will Snowden and Assange. At that point he will be hoping that he fits into one of the loopholes within the extradition treaty between Brazil and the US.
Doug!
@lamh36:
Ouch
Doug!
@Adam L Silverman:
He’ll end up at RT like Ed Schulz.
Corner Stone
@Adam L Silverman: Five Eyes from 2015 is calling.
Adam L Silverman
@?BillinGlendaleCA: I am aware.
Adam L Silverman
@?BillinGlendaleCA: He who does not risk, cannot win.
Corner Stone
@geg6: I dimly recall him swearing an oath. It’s fuzzy what it said but something about foreign and domestic.
Adam L Silverman
@Viva BrisVegas: We sometimes call what we have the Australian system because we adopted the “Australian style ballot” a while back. What we really have is 51 major different electoral systems: 1 Federal and 50 states. Then, within each state we have huge variations from county to county. No one in their right mind would design a system like this.
Adam L Silverman
@Corner Stone: Correct. Your proxies and trusted agents do it. They also know they are expendable if caught and that they will have to take one for the team. It is a highly unethical undertaking where the sole payoff is the belief that the end justifies not just the means, but any and all means.
dogwood
It would have been a disaster if Obama had played dirty because he would have been alone. His party in Congress wouldn’t have had his back. Republicans get away with all kinds of shit because they stick together and defend the indefensible at every turn. Democrats don’t do that and republicans know it. I learned a good lesson in’08. I had many reasons for supporting Obama over Clinton and stand by all but one to this day. I actually believed that the party in Congress would be far more likely to back him up than they would have with her. Now I know that’s silly. Democratic Presidents are on their own.
Goku
So, I found out tonight my parents are too stupid to live in a free society. My dad brought up something about two kids at a sporting event standing and taking off their hats for the nat. anthem. My mom replies that “that’s the way it should be”. This raises alarms for me. So I asked if people should be forced. I was expecting “no”, but I was horrified when they came back about bs about “respect”, and that people in other countries would be deported for not standing for the anthem. I was a little flustered when I started arguing that people should not be forced to stand for the national anthem, and that freedom of expression is a fundamental American value and is protected by the Constitution. I should have said that those countries are not free societies and that the governments are often corrupt as well as consequently unaccountable to their citizens, but things became heated and I couldn’t.
Very disheartening.
Adam L Silverman
@Doug!: Right now RT’s social media arm is trying to incite a rebellion in France against the first round outcome via social media:
Doug!
@Goku:
That’s a weird side of conservatism to me. ISIS and and North Korea are awful for enforcing a police state, so we should have a police state here too.
Corner Stone
@Goku: Are you a minor? Need their subsidy to live your life?
Taylor
@Adam L Silverman:
I had the impression that Hillary Rodham Clinton was prepared to fight that way.
It was one of the things I respected about her.
I also think it was what the Rethugs most feared about a Clinton presidency.
“Fuck the White House Correspondents Dinner,” indeed.
Adam L Silverman
@Taylor: I don’t know. I did get the impression that she had no illusions left about what kind of opposition she would be facing and who would be included within that opposition.
artem1s
Really I am bumfuzzled at this latest rash of ‘How Hillary Fucked Up’ and “the Dems are the worst’ narrative and how everyone is fawning over it. This BS is getting rehashed so all the usual suspects can wave off the impending hearings and indictments. the story that is going to be touted, no matter how much treason has been committed, will be ‘he would have won anyway b/c Clintons suck, so pay no attention to the
Putinman behind the curtain’.WHY THE FUCK IS THIS NOT
PART OFTHE WHOLE FUCKING CONVERSATION, ‘WHY DID THE GOP LET AN OBVIOUSLY COMPROMISED CANDIDATE TAKE OVER THEIR PRIMARY PROCESS AND PARTY?’ Why did it happen and who gained from it?Another Scott
@Adam L Silverman: Fitzgerald probably had done his job too well and had too many enemies.
ChicagoTribune in 2012:
I’m not sure what, exactly, is meant by “Obama kept his word”, but that may be another thing that was going on at the time.
Corn in MJ in 2013:
If one thinks that Comey is a schemer, then he put Fitzpatrick on the Plame case so that he himself wouldn’t have to be the one to bring down Bush’s mininons. If one thinks that he thought Fitzpatrick was the best guy for the job, one could point to that as well.
Realistically, Comey was probably Obama’s only choice. And based on his history he could be seen as a safe choice. After all, Richard Cohen thought he was a bad choice (because so many in the press were caught up in the Plame leak investigations), so that’s a point in his favor – right? ;-p
What was really going through Comey’s head in the 2nd half of 2016 is anyone’s guess. It’ll be really interesting to see Obama’s take – I sure hope he talks about it in his memoirs…
FWIW.
Cheers,
Scott.
Goku
@Doug!: It was weird, because my parents, while not bleeding heart liberals, were never far right conservatives, or so I thought. They voted for Hillary in ’16 and Obama twice. I believe they voted for Bill Clinton back in the day as well. My mother likes to live in her own little bubble and tries not think very hard about important (read:political) unpleasant subjects. She also tends towards social conservatism, more so than my father. He tends to keep up on politics and doesn’t like Repubs or Trump. Neither does my mother honestly. I think a vein of authoritarianism runs through a lot of people unfortunately.
That’s why I fear a more competent Trump-like figure that’s not nearly as outrageous could take over and transform the US into something unrecognizable. An American Putin if you will. My dad doesn’t want to see that the Republicans want to create a police state or that checks and balances won’t stop them
Corner Stone
@Another Scott:
Obama is going to do Obama in that book. Cancel your Rx for sleep assistance and just order his book when it comes out. Years and years of zzzzzzzzzz……
Corner Stone
Man, wtf is going on with FYWP tonight?
debbie
@Oatler.:
But was there fry?
FlyingToaster
I’m beginning to believe that not only is the US Constitution broken, but that it’s not possible to write a constitution for a large heterogenous country, without massive repression of most of the citizenry. Humans just suck too much.
AxelFoley
@guachi:
Fuck you. For one, Harry Reid suggested Comey to Obama. Two, Obama governed the best he could considering pussy ass Dems gave the House and Senate over to the GOP, so he had no choice but to be bipartisan, asswipe.
Goku
@Corner Stone:
I’m a legal adult, 21 going on 22. I live at home and go to uni. I still love my parents and are generally nice people. I was just taken aback by their fucked up opinion about something I thought we would be, as Americans, of like mind about.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
I heard this a lot during the Obama years, that HRC would’ve been willing to “fight” in a way that Obama wasn’t.
What in her history suggests that she was willing and (more importantly) would have been able to do this? In ’08 her close friendship with John McCain was one of her selling points, including what a great and civil general election campaign they would have conducted together.
ETA: It actually offended me in ’08 when she would describe herself as a fighter who’s been fighting for thirty-five years! I wanted to ask, so you just took the last eight off?
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Are you talking about federal funding or leaking his service record?
What the hell in that comment triggered moderation? “leaking”?
Chris
@Goku:
I’ve heard the same thing from right wing relatives about every act of police abuse from the U.S, from OWS to every black kid shot by the cops – “the problem is that society’s gone wild and nobody respects authority anymore.” It’s easy to forget, when you’re as saturated with right wingers throwing out “freedom,” “constitution,” “limited government,” and all the other things they use as buzzwords, but they fundamentally are just authority-worshiping thugs.
hitchhiker
So, I heard Brian Fallon (HRC Campaign Communications Director) on a podcast the other day. He was talking about Comey, and his take is that Comey was playing to his own teams when he released the letter in Oct. Fallon thought that Comey’s internal political position required him to screw her, both in the no-charges-brought press conference and again in the fall. Fallon believes that, like the rest of the sentient universe, Comey never thought that DT would have a chance — which is why he felt “safe” to use the HRC matter to boost his own cred w/his skeptical field offices.
Fallon also said, with full nod to the irony, that Comey really does see himself as a strict and moral person, which makes him the ideal guy to be running the current FBI investigation into DT’s doings.
I was pretty shocked at how not-furious the guy sounded. Just a realist looking at where we are, and how we got here, and what needs to happen next.
Taylor
@Goku:
Back in 2016, I compared Trump to Zhirinovsky. A former KGB guy, then liberal politician in Russia laughed when asked about Zhirinovsky, and said he was just there to prepare people for the real thing. Then they got Putin.
I’m still not sure I was wrong. The difference is that America elected its Zhirinovsky.
raven
Sunset on the gulf
Goku
@Chris:
I wonder, do they actually believe in those buzzwords? As in do they deep down believe in limited, constitutional government, or do they only believe in it for people like themselves? I can never decide which
Iowa Old Lady
@raven: Very nice!
Another Scott
@raven: Very nice. I hope the fishing was good and pain-free!
Cheers,
Scott.
MomSense
@lamh36:
I read the transcript and it was disturbing. As much as I want 45 and the whole traitorous bunch to go down, I really do wonder what he would do if he felt truly cornered. I hope someone can control him at that point.
SiubhanDuinne
@raven:
Beautiful! I love your photos.
Are you managing to stay pain-free? Or relatively so, at any rate?
Omnes Omnibus
@raven: Tape? Or pain?
raven
@Another Scott: I told my bride on our way up from the beach that I was really thankful I felt as well as I did. I don’t know if it was adrenalin (if it was I’m in for trouble later) or I just wasn’t hurt as badly as I thought. I iced and rested until 2pm and then went at it. I caught some really great whiting and we’re sitting down to that and a Pomp some folks gave me!
Taylor
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Remind me of which Democratic politician claimed on national TV that there was a “vast RW conspiracy” against her? Something we now know was absolute fact.
Unfortunately betrayed by her husband’s fecklessness.
Compare that with Obama’s 8 years of kumbuya.
Goku
@Taylor: Looked the guy up, wiki said that his views have been described as “fascist”. He seems like Trump, going on his descriptions there. The whole French elections have also gotten me spooked. If democracy can be undermined and destroyed there, then it can be destroyed anywhere.
Personally, I think Putin, if he lives long enough, will regret undermining the West. All he’s doing is making more places unstable and that will make the world as a whole a nastier place to live in. Maybe even world war that takes out modern civilization
raven
@Omnes Omnibussee above!
Goku
@raven: Beautiful! Where was it taken?
Jeffro
@Adam L Silverman:
I think we’re eventually going to find that by using those stolen databases, voters who rarely voted but could still plausibly be identified as R voters “voted” – had their votes added in later in the day, by remote or local means – in just-enough amounts to tip those few states. And then we had the Stein “recount” and other shenanigans to make a mess of things and cover the tracks. I’m not normally one for conspiracy theories, but it’s just too coincidental…Manafort telling Trump to focus on those three states, each of them coming in by the slimmest of margins (and almost the exact same margins)…and so on.
The tough thing is, to even begin to substantiate this (short of some conspirator breaking down and telling his/her role), we’d need a reporter to get a couple dozen voter rolls in each of those states, identify the ones who were in rural areas and had a R by their names (assuming each of these three states does that), and asking them if they voted at all. If the reporter started coming up with a bunch of folks who are like, “Nah, I hated that Hillary but I was too busy working that day to vote” and yet they were recorded as having voted…then we’d know we were on to something.
Anyway, if and when it comes out, great. There were too many other ways the election was rigged – Trumpov & Co colluding with a hostile foreign power, the FBI in a number of ways, McConnell and Ryan turning their blind and traitorous eyes to it all – to stress out about any one bit of it. If it takes until 2018 to neuter Trumpov and 2020 to just vote him out of the White House, that’s what it takes. Ideally, indictments drop tomorrow and he’s yanked out of the Oval Office in handcuffs by Friday. But if it takes a little longer, then justice will still have been served.
Aleta
The Hill
(Take that, Obama, and see if I care if you’re speaking tomorrow.)
Ohio Mom
@Goku: Give your parents some credit for raising such a clear, analytical thinker (you!).
I can’t help but think that finding out your parents aren’t everything you thought they were comes with the territory of young adulthood. There are things I still wish I didn’t know about my mom, and I am just about an old lady. But nowadays I have a lot more empathy for what it must have been to be her.
Kay
This gives me zero confidence in his ability to handle the Trump investigation.
He should stop trying to protect the institution and just do the job. If he does the job properly the institution will come out okay.
Jeffro
Oh great, I’m in moderation…was it “handcuffs”? LOL
neldob
@Goku: Practice makes perfect. Keep defending your ideas, and confronting the opposition.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Oh. Yeah. I forget about that. Changed the world and devastated the GOP for a generation. Then she voted for the Iraq War.
he got elected twice, he passed health care reform
she could barely stave off Bernie Fucking Sanders
Jeffro
@artem1s:
1) Because they haven’t had any principles other than Cleek’s Law for decades now
2) Because their big-money donors paid big bucks to keep people like Cruz in line and Kasich silent
3) Because History’s Greatest Monster was their opponent, and even people who knew better drank THAT Kool-Aid. Well other than Bill Weld and PJ O’Rourke, as if that matters
4) Because the GOP “establishment” had gone along with dumbing down/riling up their base on moronic causes and stupid claims that when the mouth-breathers finally got their guy – Trump – the establishment couldn’t risk going all-out on him or they’d lose that base and cause a long-overdue civil war in their party.
Chris
@Goku:
I don’t think they really understand what the hell any of those buzzwords mean. They’re tribal creatures, who know that those words are associated with the country’s values so they’re supposed to spout them. Doesn’t mean they’ve thought too deeply about what they mean, especially when it comes to being applied all around.
George
Jesus, with all the incessant whining people are doing about Comey and whatever, what we should do is think for a few moments what the political scene in America would be like had Clinton won Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin.
(1) Her victory would have been tainted because she would have won with far fewer electoral votes than projected prior to the election. The theme in the media, among the GOP, and even among some on the left who are fond of the shouty/pointy guy would have claimed that this was evidence of Clinton’s unpopularity. The media would portray her as a wounded victor. It is no stretch to think that soon after her inauguration, we would see headlines such as, “Does she have the political will to survive four years?”
(2) Every person she nominated for any position, anywhere in her administration would have been opposed by most if not all of the GOP in the Senate, as well as fans of the shouty/pointy guy. Nominating anyone with any ties whatsoever to Wall Street would have freaked out vocal leftists, and trolls posing as leftists.
(3) Benghazi would still be with us, as would the emails, and likely impeachment would be underway. Or, if not full-on impeachment, continuing assholishness by Chaffetz to prolong non-scandal indefinitely. It would not matter one bit that there was no substance to either the Benghazi thing or the email thing. If the media couldn’t leave those alone during the election, they sure as heck would not drop them if Clinton had won the electoral college.
(4) Russian interference and the treason of Carter Page, Paul Manafort, Jeff Sessions, Mike Flynn, and many, many more would not have been exposed to daylight. Those people would have continued to operate in the shadows and sown discord in American politics. Snowdenwald would not have been exposed for the swine they are.
(5) Russia would have immediately tested Clinton by creating an international crisis of some sort. A defeated Trump and his minions would have immediately criticized Clinton for being weak if she had a minimal response and for being a globalist unconcerned with issues here at home if she had a strong response. The media and leftist Greenwaldian whingers would have fallen in line behind Trump, Cokie Roberts, and David Brooks.
And that’s just for starters.
So yeah, I understand that Comey’s letter had an impact on the election, just like the shouty/pointy guy’s refusal to be a good loser had an impact, just as the media’s fascination with emails had an impact, just as people who furrowed their brows and said “I’m not sure Clinton has done enough to earn my vote” had an impact.
The fact is that if Clinton had won the electoral vote, we’d be fighting like hell on an entirely different front and the wake up call we got when Trump took the oath of office would have been delayed. My gut tells me that future historians will look back and realize that given the entirety of the American political scene, bad things were going to result from the 2016 election regardless of which nominee won, if for entirely different reasons.
Southern Beale
The article would have been more accurate had the NYT included their role in this with their over the top coverage of the Comey stuff.
Chris
@George:
Yeah. I think this explains a lot of the media’s behavior throughout the campaign. They didn’t believe anything could save Trump, so they were trying to “wound” Hillary Clinton as much as possible.
Omnes Omnibus
@George: Are you trying to make the argument that it is good that Trump won?
Adam L Silverman
@Corner Stone: I can’t leave you all alone for 1/2 an hour to make something to eat. You people…//
Adam L Silverman
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: I have no idea what keeps putting stuff in moderation. I have pinged Alain.
Ohio Mom
@George: I don’t know where to begin but I’ll start with, I wouldn’t be worrying about being uninsurable, and a lot of Obama’s Executive Orders would still be in place. People who have been deported in the last few weeks would still be with their families.
Yes, international relations are always dicey but all in all, I will always grieve Hillary not being our president.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Adam L Silverman: Corner Stone doesn’t eat any more.
Omnes Omnibus
@?BillinGlendaleCA: Hunger strike?
Goku
@Ohio Mom: Thanks for the compliment, and I suppose I should. I learned a lot from the internet and in school to be honest. Sometimes I just have a gut feeling about something that is wrong and I have to say something. That’ll probably get me killed someday. Oh well
Taylor
@George: Yes. I find theories that Comey schemed to throw the election are hopelessly naive. HRC was supposed to be elected, but too wounded and despised to be able to do anything.
In some sense, Republican politicians must be almost as angry as Democrats at his behavior.
Oh well, I’m just waiting for the day when Trump fires him. That’s when things will be getting interesting…..
Jeffro
@George:
Great point and great notes above in your post.
That being said, I’d still rather be fighting the barbarians at the moat than inside the keep.
Adam L Silverman
Alain is working to if not fix the problem, then mitigate it regarding comments and moderation.
I say mitigate and not fix, but it isn’t clear to anyone what the actual problem is…
Either way, he’s working on it!
Goku
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Since when were you anti-Hillary? Lots of Congresscritters voted to invade Iraq including Saint Bernard. As much I liked and still like Obama, he did make some mistakes, such as keeping Comey as director. There had to be somebody better. Clinton also made mistakes, but honestly being a woman and a democrat were the most devastating multipliers against her.
lamh36
It never fails that true to form, the usual persons turn to there “blame Obama” medley.
i wasn’t politically aware at the time as I am now but did folks vehemently blame Bill C for Gore’s loss to Bush? I know, I know Florida…but right after did Bill C get as much blame for Gore’s loss as Obama seems to get for HRCs loss from some folks.
i just want to know when the over/under is in when the HRC loss isn’t Obamas fault for some people?
Omnes Omnibus
@Jeffro: Yes, very seldom is a loss better than a win.
ArchTeryx
@Ohio Mom: It’s heightening the contradictions on the bones of hundreds of thousands. We did that in Iraq, and Granny Starver still wants to do it here, too.
The Bolsheviks must have their purges.
Adam L Silverman
Omnes Omnibus
@lamh36:
The usual suspects did. To govern, one must compromise. To compromise makes one impure. Therefore, governing makes one impure.
Chris
@Goku:
Wait, what?
I’ve become quite cranky towards Bernie Sanders, but I don’t think this is right – I’m pretty sure he voted against the resolution authorizing force in Iraq. He did vote for the resolution after 9/11 that led to the invasion of Afghanistan IIRC, though.
BlueDWarrior
@ArchTeryx: and the thing of it is, the contradictions can never be high enough unless they start causing the mechanics of society itself to rend. And at that point, you less have the Glorious People’s Revolution, and more total chaos.
Jeffro
Great passage from Trumpov’s recent AP interview, courtesy of TPM:
Second best quote:
It goes on and gets worse and is about as full of derp as you’d expect. Read, and be energized to fight these clowns!
Jeffro
@Adam L Silverman: NICE! Progress!
eclare
@raven: Wow, that’s some surf! Lovely picture, thank you.
ArchTeryx
@BlueDWarrior: And a vacuum in which will arise some strongman promising to make it all better. Plus ca change and all that.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Goku: I’m not anti-Hillary, and there’s not a doubt in my mind that sexism was one of the major factors in killing her campaign, one of the ones she had no control over. I just don’t think she’s a “fighter”, and the idea that Republicans are or ever were afraid of her is kind of silly. She’s a smart, diligent, determined technocrat who would have been, especially domestically, a good caretaker president.
And of course Obama made mistakes– from opposing a “devil’s advocate” in FISA hearings to ever even hinting at raising the age of Medicare eligibility; and I’m open to the argument that he should have done more to help underwater home owners though I think that’s a far more complicated issue, politically, than a lot of people are willing to admit. That’s just off the top of my head. And there are good arguments against the appointment of Comey, but the idea of his interference in the election was predictable strikes me as nonsensical. And the idea that Obama’s mistakes effected the election in any way even comparable to the way HRC’s (and her husband’s) did strikes me as both daddy-ism and excuse-making.
George
@Omnes Omnibus: I am not arguing that it is good that Trump won at all. I am making the point that a Trump electoral college victory has exposed weaknesses in our political system, as well as in the GOP and the media as institutions, that would have remained hidden or been ignored if Clinton had won.
Would a Clinton victory have been preferable? Of course.
However, it would have resulted in an entirely different set of challenges as well as allowing Russian interference to be dismissed as ineffective and allowing the GOP/media to continue to blame Democrats for everything. The problems we have before us now would not have vanished. They would have become more prevalent over time.
Adam L Silverman
@Jeffro: Considering there were something like 400,000 hacks/hacking attempts against Macron’s campaign by Russian Intelligence and/or their proxies, this doesn’t surprise me in the least.
Another Scott
@Ohio Mom: Well said.
Yes, the GOP was chomping at the bit at the prospect of attacking Hillary for
48 years. But the point of attacking her wouldn’t simply be to weaken her, it would be to win the Presidency. Because the way our system is, the President controls a lot of the direction of the federal government. Even a weakened Hillary would be much, much better than what we have now.And in addition to the things you mention, Gorsuch wouldn’t be on the SCOTUS.
Bottom line – we have to fight to elect our people no matter how much we assume the Teabaggers will attack them. Hillary won the nomination and was the most qualified and most transparent person to run in generations. She would have done a good job.
Her popularity would have increased over time (it always did when she wasn’t running for office) and with that would have come increased ability to push Team D’s agenda.
Cheers,
Scott.
Taylor
FWIW (maybe already discussed) the Observer today had a piece about Farage’s sneaking in for a meeting with Assange, and the light it shines on things. Are US media talking about this?
Millard Filmore
@Jeffro:
What is the correct sequence of actions, with the right timing, to preclude Trump announcing “Pardons all around!”? Deny him access to White House stationary? Lose his Presidential fountain pen? Break his arms as he resists arrest?
Jeffro
@Adam L Silverman: It’s just good to see that the Western democracies are getting wise to Russia’s techniques on multiple levels. And perhaps, getting a bit fired up too.
Goku
@Chris: http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2015/05/14/only-a-third-of-the-114th-congress-was-around-for-the-iraq-vote-but-a-lot-of-presidential-candidates-were
I think you are right. I think I am confusing Afghan and Iraq. Afghanistan seems to have worked out a little better than Iraq it seems. (Don’t beat on me too bad, my knowledge of Afghanistan is shaky)
randy khan
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
I agree with you on the speeches (presumably what you mean by buckraking), but the extent to which people on the D side give even the slightest credence to the email/server thing drives me crazy.
She had an issue that other Secretaries of State had addressed before by using insecure commercial accounts (Powell had a Yahoo! account, which literally gave thousands of Yahoo! employees access to his email). She addressed it by hiring an IT professional, who set up a private server, probably the most secure solution available to her (well, with one exception, but we shouldn’t be mad at her about it). A ridiculously long investigation turned up literally no evidence that the server had been compromised, which was no surprise, as nobody knew about it and it likely was set up with standard security precautions – Comey’s statement that she was careless betrayed that he didn’t know what he was talking about. The investigation also found no evidence that she’d ever tried to use the server for anything other than its stated purpose.
But none of this would have happened if the NSA had given her a secure Blackberry, which was her first – and most secure – choice. It continues to be utterly inexplicable to me that NSA would not give a secure Blackberry to the freaking Secretary of State.
raven
Just for fun, fresh caught pompano and whiting, corn and red beans and rice!
amk
It’s the corrupt white peeps in all 3 branches of government, in the admin, in the racist states and especially those in the voting booths who inflicted the most ignorant racist corruptest nutjob on the whole world. And yet somehow. it is all the black dude’s fault. Jeez, grow the fuck up.
Another Scott
@Adam L Silverman: Lots of things seem to get wonky whenever the code gets updated here. I’m seeing some weirdness on refreshing the page now, or whenever I post something – Chrome seems to lose track of where I was and the page position is 1-2 screens off. It could conceivably be related to Cleek’s pie filter, but it was working fine until the “updates” a week or few ago.
It’s not a big deal for me, but all of these things (the FYWPs, the inability to edit, the refresh issues) seem to crop up at the same time.
Here’s hoping Alain is able to fix these things easily.
Thanks.
Cheers,
Scott.
SiubhanDuinne
@raven:
Is that the real, genuine Fiesta ware, or a cheap knock-off?
Food looks GREAT!
Omnes Omnibus
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
FFS. This is not helpful. And I am not blaming Obama.
Another Scott
@Another Scott: And, of course, I get thrown in moderation! Hehehe.
:-/
Cheers,
Scott.
Jeffro
@Millard Filmore: My guess is that if Trumpov really goes there, actually tries to pardon people implicated in collusion/treason during the course of the campaign that elected him, then enough of the House would turn against him and we’d have articles of impeachment in short order. I think. Finally. And recent history is not a great indication of Republicans’ moral fiber. So…as Adam often puts it, we are through the map and off the looking glass here.
JPL
@Adam L Silverman: Good.
J R in WV
@Adam L Silverman:
This is absolutely correct!! “Voting Machines” are completely unnecessary, unreliable, expensive, and unsafe and insecure. People are able to hack money from banks and ATMs, therefore we know they can hack votes.
Diebold has an audit tape in every ATM they have ever sold. Why, therefore, do their voting machines not have any audit tape? Why, so they can provide a vote total as required, without regard to the actual votes cast, of course!!
Paper ballots, fill in the box/circle, optical counter, treat the ballots as the original documents they are, I’m fine with that. We have lots of experience with paper ballot fraud, it’s reasonably easy to protect against, election monitors all over the planet do it.
As a software guy, I’ve been pissed about “voting machines” for decades now. I’m not a bit surprised a security guy would agree about that. But it is gratifying that we agree on this too.
Adam L Silverman
@Goku: I fixed your link for you. It had possessed your entire comment.
As for Operation Enduring Freedom Freedom (in Afghanistan, there is also OEF with hyphenated designators for the Philippines, Horn of Africa, and about six other places) and now what we call Operation Freedom’s Sentinel, including NATO Training Mission-Afghanistan, it hasn’t gone particularly well. It doesn’t get a lot of coverage in the news, but if you read carefully and no where to find the reporting the bad news is there. The Taliban are holding there own in a lot of places, some of the Taliban have rebranded as ISIL or maybe that’s some of the AQ guys, or both… The Afghan National Forces still aren’t up to snuff and won’t be for a while despite a lot of hard work. And the Russians have reentered the theater of operations in support of the Taliban.
Corner Stone
@lamh36:
There is no comparison. Gore ran fast and furious away from WJC. He fucking picked the scold Joey Lieberman as VP for that very figurative purpose.
Obama knew at least as early as 2015 if not before. You can try this bullshit on but it ain’t flying anywhere.
mai naem mobile
@George: you can say whatever you want but,seriously ,I’ll take an injured HRC with the GOP blocking everything instead of crazy demented blackmailed Dolt 45 any day. ANY day . And don’t even mention Gorsucks.
TenguPhule
@?BillinGlendaleCA: For now.
/black gallows humor
raven
@SiubhanDuinne: The boss say it may be the new repo but not the old stuff. We are way out of synch on chow. I didn’t get back from the water until 8 and then had to throw it together. Tomorrow I’m going to fish from 7-noon or so, come back up and make a big din to eat mid afternoon.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Omnes Omnibus: there’s no more helping or hurting, the election is over and Hillary Clinton has retired from politics. But if we’re going to rehash the 2016 election and why it happened the way it did, it’s relevant that she made a lot of bad decisions in this campaign and throughout her career.
And if you’re not blaming Obama, quite a few people in this thread are.
Corner Stone
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Wait a second. He knew in 2015! He decided for image reasons not to say anything.
TenguPhule
@gene108:
I’d settle for a trial, a conviction and a sentencing for High Treason.
Omnes Omnibus
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Then they are are idiots. She was imperfect. He is imperfect. Voters are as imperfect as fuck. Russian influence. Voter suppression. Etc. I am tired of the rehash.
TenguPhule
@lamh36:
But then when they do pop up, they are immediately pilloried as “Republican lite” for even suggesting that guns be brought to a gun fight.
Another Scott
@raven: Not using radioactive plates is probably a good thing!
Cheers,
Scott.
TenguPhule
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Threaten, blackmail and sabotage. The executive branch can make any single individual’s life hell with the power at its disposal. Only the morals of the person running it serve as a safety measure. There’s measures to hold accountable and restrict, but those only really kick in after the damage is done.
Adam L Silverman
@Another Scott: For some reason I read that as radioactive pilates. For when you really want to burn those calories at the atomic level.
Goku
I’m don’t really blame Obama, there was only so much the man could do against the Grand Oligarchy Party. That asshole Mitch McConnell made it a promise to turn the Russian interference stuff into a “partisan” issue, because he’s a cynical partisan hack who only cares about money and power even if that comes from a foreign power hoping to destabilize America. There’s too many weak and craven people both in the political realm and society in general. Greatest country on Earth? What a load
raven
@Another Scott: Ooo, she liked that!
neldob
@Goku: Buzzwords are to keep a person from thinking. Time to read some George Orwell.
TenguPhule
@Betty Cracker:
You have to make up your mind. Do you want to play fair with cheaters? Or do you want those cheaters to be kicked in the balls and never ever given a fair shake? Because its one or the other, no middle ground. Its prisoner’s dilemma and our side always picks nice while the other side always picks nasty.
Doug!
@lamh36:
I feel like Bill was blamed a bit more. I heard a lot of “Bush would never have won without Monica Lewinsky”. And I think that’s true because that’s what convinced Gore to (stupidly) decide not to have Bill campaign for him.
It’s an awfully big stretch to blame Obama for Hillary’s loss IMHO. Yes, maybe he should have appointed someone other than Comey. But that would never have been relevant without Hillary’s stupid decision to have a private server.
J R in WV
@Adam L Silverman:
I also agree with all your other thoughts about voting, holiday, required voting, everything!!
Omnes Omnibus
@Doug!:
Don’t buy into the GOP frame. She did more or less what her predecessors in the email era did.
Goku
@TenguPhule: I think for a lot of people, as it is for me, I just don’t want to become like extreme right wing conservatives, in my tactics. I don’t want to be a hypocrite. I feel as though lately, I’m growing into a person I don’t like, who actively wishes death on Republicans, both politicians and their voters. Fundamentally, the center-left (make up the Dem base) are not violent people and do not like to play dirty. They believe in their principles
Doug!
I do feel like there’s something very stupid about blaming Obama for Hillary’s loss or Bill for Gore’s loss, but I know where it comes from too. Bill C and Obama are very good politicians so when they fuck something up, there’s a feeling they should have known better. Al Gore is a poor politician and Hillary a mediocre one so their screw-ups seems more excusable. It’s like how no one freaks out if Ted Ginn Jr. drops a pass, but if a good receiver does, it must have been a concenrtration lapse.
Omnes Omnibus
@Omnes Omnibus: Help, I am in moderation.
Corner Stone
@Doug!:
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAHAAAA!
Master Troll, strikes again.
catclub
@germy:
Gee, I don’t. I feel confident NONE of them will happen before the heat death of the universe.
Adam L Silverman
@Omnes Omnibus: Just freed you.
neldob
@raven: That does look very tasty!
Omnes Omnibus
@Corner Stone: Shit. He got me.
TenguPhule
@George:
Almost half of the American public is deaf and hit the snooze button.
catclub
@Goku:
That reminds me of this: “I don’t believe in God, but the God I don’t believe in is a merciful and loving God.”
I am not sure why.
Doug!
@Corner Stone:
I’m not trolling. It was dumb of her to do that and also dumb to give that Goldman speech (and others). I still think she would have been a good president and nothing she did remotely compares to picking Lieberman ad VP or running on “lockboxes” instead of fucking 3.9% unemployment, but those were errors.
catclub
@TenguPhule: If you are deaf, how would you know to hit the snooze button?
TenguPhule
@Goku:
The problem is that Republicans believe in their principles too. And they are violent and like to play dirty.
The Danes are here and the Saxons are still paying them Danegeld.
TenguPhule
Oh FYWP, D*nes is a ffffking bad spam word?!
TenguPhule
@catclub: Force of habit.
ETA: FYWP.
Corner Stone
@Doug!: No, it’s ok. I get it and apologize for stepping on your troll so early but this thread is already in the 200’s.
Adam L Silverman
@TenguPhule: I think it was are. Maybe and. Could be in or to. Anyway it is free. Also, I’m going to bed soon, so I expect everyone’s comments will just go into moderation.
Omnes Omnibus
@Doug!: Which speeches would have been okay?
TenguPhule
@Omnes Omnibus: Speeches she was not paid for, obviously.
/Trap set, who will I catch?
Mnemosyne
@Doug!:
And yet the only reason we know about the Goldman speech and other speeches is because she released her tax returns and neither of her opponents did.
She was forced to strip her finances totally naked and both Sanders and Trump refused to do the same — and the media didn’t give a shit! And Sanders and Trump voters held that stuff against her while defending their heroes’ refusal to do the same!
If that wasn’t a fucking double standard, with Hillary being held to a MUCH HIGHER ONE than either of her two opponents, then double standards don’t exist anymore and any politician who even tries to be honest and transparent is a sucker.
Another Scott
@Omnes Omnibus: She was doomed by her Women in the World Summit speech.
Doomed!!11
:-/
Cheers,
Scott.
Ksmiami
@sharl: We need to make Republicans afraid. Through available legal means of course. Hound them, stalk them catcall them. I revel in making them fearful
Ksmiami
@Goku: You will probably come to the conclusion though that Republicans today are very bad people the world would be better off without. But don’t worry, a lot of them will kill themselves off through lack of healthcare, opioids, gun accidents. Whether the country survives Trump and McConnell though is up in the air.
Omnes Omnibus
@TenguPhule: One can fight hard and viciously without breaking the rules. That, I am all in favor of. Becoming a left of center version of the GOP, no thank you.
Ksmiami
@TenguPhule: I want to kick them in the fucking teeth and keep on kicking. Treat the GOP like the traitorous fuckers they are and fight like hell against them
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Another Scott: That’s due to embedded tweets, always happens, especially on AL posts.
Mnemosyne
@Omnes Omnibus:
I think that one thing Obama let himself get away from as president that he did as a candidate was that he was a rules lawyer as a candidate — he and his team would read through the rules with a fine-tooth comb to figure out where their opponents might slip up. That’s how he won against Hillary and, in a weird way, I think that’s why the Republicans are having so much trouble repealing PPACA: there are so many interdependent parts that if they try to pull out just one or two, the whole thing collapses.
Omnes Omnibus
@Mnemosyne: You are contradicting yourself a bit. If he didn’t do it a President why is his doing it causing problems for the GOP with the ACA?
Answer: He had less room to operate as president than he did as candidate. It’s not that that he suddenly slipped up. He was working a different field.
randy khan
Random thought on the survey that shows Trump voters don’t regret their votes: It’s only been 100 days since he took the oath (with his fingers crossed, but whatever). Those of us who say how terrible he was from the start have hated every day of his maladministration, except possibly the day the AHCA vote didn’t happen. But his supporters have to realize what he’s actually doing, and that takes a while. It shouldn’t surprise anyone that the vast majority of them still support him.
Goku
@Ksmiami: Oh believe me, I’ve been there and will probably be there again when something else horrible happens that is Trump-altright-Republican related. I hate the Grand Oligarchy Party with a passion
Omnes Omnibus
@Goku: Marathon, not a sprint. You may well be my age before we fix this. But fix this we can. Fuck the the fascists.
Corner Stone
BLAAARRRGGGHH!!!
MaryLou
@Jeffro: “Green Earth, or Science in the Capital”, a sci-fi novel by Kim Stanley Robinson set in near-future, features a sub-plot describing exactly this kind of election hacking, picking a few critical but somewhat low-profile districts in swing states, then adding in just enough votes to influence the outcome of the election. The thought crossed my mind that this kind of scenario could have worked in Pennsylvania (Erie?), and maybe Michigan but at the time I discarded the suspicion as far too paranoid to be true. Now I wonder…
Omnes Omnibus
@MaryLou: Voting machines are not connected to the ‘net. If they are hacked, it is in the software. Audits are done by outside agencies. It doesn’t show up.
The issue in WI wasn’t hacking; it was voter suppression. Identify your enemy and fight accordingly.
Citizen Alan
@Betty Cracker:
I hate to say it, but I saw this coming. If you look back through the archives, you can find angry posts for me back as early as 2009 predicting that the next Republican to follow Barack Obama would be 10 times worse then George W bush as a result of Obama’s inability to understand what the GOP truly was. I no longer blame Obama for that like I did back then because I understand that he is a fundamentally decent and rational person, and people like that are incapable on many levels of recognizing nihilism when they see it. But yeah I pretty much predicted Trump or something similar in 2009.
Omnes Omnibus
@Citizen Alan: So what. What did you do to fight it?
Jim, Foolish Literalist
so how did this roll out in your view? people in Michigan, Wisconsin, Ohio, Iowa, Pennsylvania and Florida voted for trump in 2016, after having re-elected Obama in 2012, because Obama didn’t yell enough in 2009?
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Citizen Alan: and will we also find posts where you predicted that Obama would win reelection but then lose reelection when he wasn’t on the ballot because he wasn’t as smart as you?
TenguPhule
@Omnes Omnibus:
What rules? At this rate Trump and company are going to pull us out of the Geneva Conventions by Christmas.
Citizen Alan
@Omnes Omnibus:
My recollection was that most people blamed Gore for petulantly refusing to allow Bill Clinton to campaign on his behalf.
Citizen Alan
@Doug!:
You can’t say that bush would never have wo without Monica Lewinsky when polls indicated that Bill Clinton himself would have beaten bush had he been eligible to run for a third term. Gore’s mistakes were Gore’s mistakes. The worst was Lieberman. The second-worst in my opinion was refusing to engage in any meaningful way with the green party so it’s to neutralize Nader before he could become an issue.
danielx
@David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch:
It’s not like variations on that theme haven’t been around for a while, in one form or another. Guilt tripping is an old, old conservative tactic. ‘Our deplorable practice/belief/behavior is so important to us that we’re willing to blow shit up, and if that happens it will be your fault because you said we were cracker shitheads!’
JustRuss
Wait, he’s saying running a government isn’t like running a business? That can’t be right.
Citizen Alan
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
There is a difference between not yelling and being obsessively interested in bipartisanship. At the time I was beyond Furious at Obama because of his apparent unwillingness to pursue investigations of the Bush Administration. I agree in hindsight but doing so was probably impossible. But my ultimate prediction, but the next Republican to follow Obama would be worse than Bush by an order of magnitude, has been fulfilled. Then again, it seems at times that there is simply no limit to hello Republicans can go. Had Shitgibbon list, I honestly thought that Ted Nugent might take a run in 2020.
Citizen Alan
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Um, no? And I honestly don’t know what I said to piss in your Wheaties
trittico
you know, the mere fact that Comey decided to re-open the investigation because of the Huma emails shows you what a fucker he is.
He didn’t have to do that. He could have decided that after investigating for x months, that clearly there would be no evidence showing up anywhere that showed criminality, and hence warranted further investigation.
But he didn’t. Because he’s a fucking fucker.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
by that you mean, he recognized the simple fact that, with the exception of the six-week window when “we” had sixty votes, and even then those sixty votes included Joe Lieberman, Blanche Lincoln, Evan Bayh, Jim Webb, Mary Landrieu, Mark Pryor (I could go on), legislation needed bipartisan support to pass?
again: you predicted that Obama would be re-elected and then the Dem nominee in 2016 would lose to someone “worse than Bush”? Show me.
TenguPhule
@Citizen Alan:
No. Nader and the Naderites were entitled assholes who’s feefees were so fucking sensitive that they worshipped Purity Pony Dong because BOTH SIDES did it. I remember, I was there when those shits along with the fucking village media fucked us all.
And those that picked Nader, then went on to pick Jill Stein and Trump in 2016 need to lose every right as a citizen and spend the rest of their lives as authentic real life slaves. In every fucking sense of the word. No other punishment is suitable enough for that level of fecklessness that crosses the line into full fledged sociopathy.
Dave
@George: I have to agree with most of this. It’s why the heighten the contradiction folks while generally pollyanish idiots weren’t necessarily wrong in this case we’d be looking at an extremely ugly 2018 and 2020 on top of all that. Not that we should be at all copecetic about this and things can most certainly go extremely tits up and I’d be far more comfortable with the cost if McConnell handy managed to screw Garland, Obama, and really all of us. This election was a tipping point it’s just unclear which way it’s going to tip yet heaven help us.
neighborhood voice of morality and reason
@TenguPhule: “Vote wrong? Enslave them!” Yeah buddy this doesn’t sound unhinged at all. You seem like a rational person with a well-tuned set of morals and a good head on your shoulders. Hell, let’s just execute everyone who doesn’t think like us. Yeah on paper, well… actually it seems a lot worse than anything the Republicans would ever dream up, but we’re right! KILL THEM ALL! Let logic and reason reign, everyone who disagrees with me must die! People who vote incorrectly must lose their health insurance!
I am a compassionate, empathetic Balloon-Juice liberal! Hear me, people! I am here to help!
neighborhood voice of morality and reason
lol doug, you read a story about the FBI finding a document that indicated that Dem strategists were talking about how Lynch was going to make the investigation play to Hillary’s benefit, and which mentioned how Lynch and Clinton’s dumbassed runway get-together basically pigeonholed Comey into handling it the way he did, and your takeaway is a meme-ready cliche about how mean the FBI is to the Democrats and how scared they are of the Republicans? See I can be a reductionist too! It’s fun! Epistemic closure is real, zingggg!
Love too come to this website and watch the koolaid, I mean juice, factory at work. Yeah maybe the entire story is a neat little throwaway about how everyone is scared to cross the Republicans, one that leaves no Dem culpability here at all. Or maybe, once again, the Clintons stepped on their own junk and got in their own way. Who knows? Anything’s possible! It’s not like there’s a magnificently-reported story here that can be objectively interpreted by any sort of fair reading or anything right?
Real talk: you know you’re in trouble when Joel Pollak at Breitbart comes away with a more accurate interpretation of events than you, buddy. New ABC/WaPo Poll indicates that 67% of Americans think the Democratic Party doesn’t serve their interests, including a substantial and growing portion of liberals, independents, POC, etc. It’s up 19% from the last time the question was asked in the same poll in 2014. The 67% score is worse than Trump, and 5% points worse than the GOP (62%) but I tell you what. If you just willfully misinterpret a few more New York Times articles I’m sure everything will be fine.
I don’t know if the website is going to get mad at me if I try to link the poll but Google ABC Trump Poll First 100 days No Honeymoon if you want to see it. It’s from yesterday.
Have fun guys.
Goku
@neighborhood voice of morality and reason: Some people deserve to die and too often lately I’ve discovered that the ones who deserve it aren’t so much serial killers or rapists; they’re small time and can’t hurt a lot of people, not like elected leaders or those in government positions whose decisions can hurt (or kill) millions of people here and abroad. And do so with full knowledge that people will die. Its murder by proxy.
And don’t worry, the Republicans are working towards that; their policies already kill thousands every year and imprison thousands more for just smoking a joint. Police State here we come
Goku
@neighborhood voice of morality and reason:
Some people deserve to die and too often lately I’ve discovered that the ones who deserve it aren’t so much serial killers or rapists; they’re small time and can’t hurt a lot of people, not like elected leaders or those in government positions whose decisions can hurt (or kill) millions of people here and abroad. And do so with full knowledge that people will die. Its murder by proxy.
And don’t worry, the Republicans are working towards that; their policies already kill thousands every year and imprison thousands more for just smoking a joint. Police State here we come!
Goku
@neighborhood voice of morality and reason: And you know what else? The voters who elect Republicans who do that horrible shit are just as culpable for the lives that are destroyed or ended.
Maybe wanting all those assholes dead is wrong, but if that’s the case, then I don’t want to be right. The world would be a better place without them
TenguPhule
@neighborhood voice of morality and reason:
No, you execute people after a trial for crimes. Like High Treason. And Torture.
Those who enjoy punching down and refuse to change their ways need to spend their lives on the bottom. Once is an error, twice is intentional.