The 2016 US Election (Part III)

[Elfdart]

In the meantime I think I'll be making an update to the "Agnew for vice president?" political ad.

https://youtu.be/Qwk_epMblW4

Won't stop the slide into Trump hell, but at least I can die hearing laughter.

It's a funny ad but Nixon/Agnew won. Twice.

[The Romulan Republic]

Its rather irritating how many people seemed to have resigned themselves to a Trump victory when the polls still have Clinton ahead, overall.

I don't know how much is pessimism and how much is people who, even if they oppose Trump, would rather the world burn than Clinton win, but its really quite silly either way. I mean, if the orange fascist wins just because enough people arbitrarily decided Clinton couldn't win...

For the record, fivethirtyeight has it thus (updated ten hours ago):

Nowcast: 60.3% chance of Clinton victory.
Polls-only forecast: 61.1% chance of Clinton victory.
Polls-plus forecast: 60%chance of Clinton victory.

Model of National polls: 42% to 40.4%, 42% to 40.1%, and 42% to 40.2%, respectively, in Clinton's favour.

And aside from Nevada (which is leaning red slightly in the Now-cast and blue in the others), none of the states leaning blue in any of the above look in imminent danger of flipping.

https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/20 ... -forecast/

I mean, they could be wrong, but considering how all over the map the polls have been, and that the last few days have not seen a significant Clinton drop (she's even been going up a little at times), I would not call that inevitable defeat.

I would even surmise that a close race may help Clinton in a way, given that she supposedly has a much stronger get out the vote organization, and while a lot of people who are only voting for her grudgingly to stop Trump might not bother if her win seemed assured, potentially leading to a Brexit-style surprise, a close race will keep the pressure on them to vote for her.

And this is pre-any effect the debates have, which could add a few points at least either way.

[The Romulan Republic]

Of course, a close race is its own kind of disaster, as it still establishes Trump's bigotry, violence, and authoritarianism as the new norm in American politics. Which pretty much means we probably do this whole thing all over again, only worse, in four years.

[Alferd Packer]

Of course, a close race is its own kind of disaster, as it still establishes Trump's bigotry, violence, and authoritarianism as the new norm in American politics. Which pretty much means we probably do this whole thing all over again, only worse, in four years.

Nah. 2016 is really the high water mark for this white nationalist, populist movement. The country is getting less white so rapidly that by the time 2020 rolls around, it will no longer make sense to pursue such a strategy on a national level. The white supremacists themselves see this election as their last chance, because they know the long-term demographic trends do not favor them. Their voices will get smaller and less important with every passing election.

[Simon_Jester]

Of course, a close race is its own kind of disaster, as it still establishes Trump's bigotry, violence, and authoritarianism as the new norm in American politics. Which pretty much means we probably do this whole thing all over again, only worse, in four years.

There are a lot of moderate Republicans who seem to be holding their noses and voting for Trump even though they don't like him and don't trust him. If his style does become the "new normal" in the Republican Party, I suspect that many of those people will become disaffected from the party itself.

[Elheru Aran]

Of course, a close race is its own kind of disaster, as it still establishes Trump's bigotry, violence, and authoritarianism as the new norm in American politics. Which pretty much means we probably do this whole thing all over again, only worse, in four years.

There are a lot of moderate Republicans who seem to be holding their noses and voting for Trump even though they don't like him and don't trust him. If his style does become the "new normal" in the Republican Party, I suspect that many of those people will become disaffected from the party itself.

In time, if that speculation works out, there is room for a 'moderate conservative' party as opposed to 'extreme conservative/right-wing' elements, which are too antagonistic to each other to really coexist peacefully.

The key point would be that the 'moderate Republicans who seem to be holding their noses' need to recognize the slide that their party has taken to the extreme right, acknowledge it, and consciously shift back to the left. There needs to be a very clear tacit understanding that the extremism of the modern Republican party isn't going to work for them in the long term and they need to step it back.

[SolarpunkFan]

It's a funny ad but Nixon/Agnew won. Twice.

Hence why I said it "won't stop the slide to Trump Hell".

[MKSheppard]

The Combetta Episode.

Some background:

Paul Combetta is the IT guy who erased Hillary's emails off her private server.

Well, recently some people noticed that the Wikileaks of Hillary's emails contained Paul Combetta's email address.

So, some enterprising redditors and 4channers decided to type in his email into google and see where it went.

They found a reddit thread started on 24 July 2014:



LINK TO REDDIT THREAD

Which coincidentially is the day after the Benghazi committee reached an agreement with the State Department on the production of records.

It seems to me that Combetta wanted to 'scramble' Hillary's emails so that a simple "name search" for keywords in the header/sender field of the email database wouldn't turn up anything by overwriting the original header/sender fields in the Exchange database with quite possibly random gibberish.

Thus, he could turn over the database and satisfy the Benghazi committee legally, but they'd be so messed up that it would take an immense amount of man-effort or analysis to reconstruct who sent what and who received what.

But when he was told:

There is no supported way to do what you're asking. You can only delete emails after they're stored in the database. You can't change them. If there was a feature in Exchange that allowed this, it could result in major legal issues. There may be ways to hack a solution, but I am not aware of any.

and

Just because you have the messages available in multiple formats and locations doesn't change that it's an attribute of the envelope not meant to be rewritten. The functionality is just not built into any tool I know of. Having that functionality would create the ability to screw with discovery (I mean, there could be mitigation with versioning, but that would need other configuration)

he went to plan B: simply nuke the emails.

Best part:

While trawling the intertubes to "doxx" Combetta, the 4channers and redditors discovered that he used the same "ID" (stonetear) everywhere, even on BDSM smut fic websites.

Anyway, it appears the redditors/channers discovered this late last night and spent the late evening/early morning hours building up everything, and when Combetta woke up at around maybe 9:45 AM, he immediately started destroying his digital presence at anywhere he used the "stonetear" ID.

But the internets never forgets, kek.

[Simon_Jester]

I am very much not a fan of doxxing. Nothing Combetta did justifies publicly humiliating him.

As to the email scrambling thing, it seems to me you're constructing a motive for him (foil email address searches in an investigation) that doesn't make sense. If he released a scrambled database, it would be immediately obvious he'd done so, and by doing this he and Secretary Clinton would be painting huge bullseyes on their foreheads and carrying signs saying "HI! WE ARE OBSTRUCTING AN INVESTIGATION!"

And for what? What evidence do we actually have that there was anything worth taking such a risk over?

It's hilarious that we're still circling back to try and find more than the vaguest, most circumstantial evidence of actual wrongs committed by Clinton over the Benghazi crisis (or anything else). And this in an election cycle where the opposing candidate is an open fraudster who can't keep his mouth open for more than five minutes at a time without a blatant lie coming out.

[The Romulan Republic]

Of course, a close race is its own kind of disaster, as it still establishes Trump's bigotry, violence, and authoritarianism as the new norm in American politics. Which pretty much means we probably do this whole thing all over again, only worse, in four years.

Nah. 2016 is really the high water mark for this white nationalist, populist movement. The country is getting less white so rapidly that by the time 2020 rolls around, it will no longer make sense to pursue such a strategy on a national level. The white supremacists themselves see this election as their last chance, because they know the long-term demographic trends do not favor them. Their voices will get smaller and less important with every passing election.

Hell, it doesn't really make sense now.

But that isn't stoping the nut jobs. Because, you know, they're nut jobs.

I do expect the chances of them winning a fair election to diminish over time, barring some catastrophic change.

But I also expect the chances of more of them turning to violence will increase.

[Simon_Jester]

At least when they get violent everyone will know how to handle them?

[The Romulan Republic]

Well, yes.

I'd rather we not have to deal with any more of that, though.

[Grumman]

I am very much not a fan of doxxing. Nothing Combetta did justifies publicly humiliating him.

Doxxing Stonetear - linking the online name to an offline individual - is how we know "Stonetear"'s questions about rewriting email addresses were an attempt to forge government records being demanded as evidence by the FBI.

And for what? What evidence do we actually have that there was anything worth taking such a risk over?

That Combetta and his client agreed there was something worth taking such a risk over is evidence that there was something worth taking such a risk over.

[Simon_Jester]

If the FBI hasn't done a similar level of investigation into Combetta's affairs himself, they are singularly inept investigators. They have had months (in this case, years) to do so, whereas Reddit and 4chan and so on appear to have done it literally overnight.

Combetta is not, so far as we know, going to be charged with conspiracy to commit obstruction of justice or anything of that nature. Presumably there are reasons for that.

If the FBI says it's done looking into this matter, then this obsessive need to dig deeper and deeper in hopes of finding evidence of a dreaded, nameless crime is profoundly unhealthy. It is poor form to go fishing looking for motes to remove from someone's eye, when someone else is walking around strutting and striking poses about the beam in theirs.

[Flagg]

I am very much not a fan of doxxing. Nothing Combetta did justifies publicly humiliating him.

Doxxing Stonetear - linking the online name to an offline individual - is how we know "Stonetear"'s questions about rewriting email addresses were an attempt to forge government records being demanded as evidence by the FBI.

And for what? What evidence do we actually have that there was anything worth taking such a risk over?

That Combetta and his client agreed there was something worth taking such a risk over is evidence that there was something worth taking such a risk over.

Wow, circular logic.

[Simon_Jester]

I mean, the point is that IF Combetta wanted to do this to hide something that Congress and the FBI had reason to think was there, then he'd be in very hot water if he actually went through with that plan. Or with the thing he actually did.

Whereas if the FBI and Congress had no reason to suspect there was any evidence of wrongdoing present, why are we assuming there was?

By the standard Grumman is applying, everyone who's ever shredded documents is obstructing justice. Because MAYBE there was something incriminating in there, we don't know, and why would you destroy things if you have nothing to hide?

This is a great example of a fishing expedition. Fishing expeditions for evidence of secret crimes are not a good way to practice politics, especially when they act as a smoke screen to cover for the indisputable and concrete crimes committed by another candidate.

[Flagg]

I mean, the point is that IF Combetta wanted to do this to hide something that Congress and the FBI had reason to think was there, then he'd be in very hot water if he actually went through with that plan. Or with the thing he actually did.

Whereas if the FBI and Congress had no reason to suspect there was any evidence of wrongdoing present, why are we assuming there was?

By the standard Grumman is applying, everyone who's ever shredded documents is obstructing justice. Because MAYBE there was something incriminating in there, we don't know, and why would you destroy things if you have nothing to hide?

This is a great example of a fishing expedition. Fishing expeditions for evidence of secret crimes are not a good way to practice politics, especially when they act as a smoke screen to cover for the indisputable and concrete crimes committed by another candidate.

The right wing in the US aka inbred troglodytes, will never stop going after Hillary Clinton until they can find even the tiniest little bit of wrongdoing whether it has anything to do with her job or not, just like they did to her husband. And if something isn't there, they'll make it up, even if it means politicizing a tragedy like Benghazi. They are the lowest scum on Earth.

[Simon_Jester]

What's frustrating isn't that they do it themselves, it's that they've got a lot of other people who are not actually scum doing it too.

Basically, if you set up a smoke generator, other people will start wondering if there's a fire. That's natural. But after the smoke generator is revealed for what it is, it's depressing to watch people keep wandering around looking for the fire.

[TimothyC]

I mean, the point is that IF Combetta wanted to do this to hide something that Congress and the FBI had reason to think was there, then he'd be in very hot water if he actually went through with that plan. Or with the thing he actually did.

Whereas if the FBI and Congress had no reason to suspect there was any evidence of wrongdoing present, why are we assuming there was?

Because, IIRC, he already got immunity. Also, the guys on /pol/ and other places came at this from a different angle than the FBI did. I'm not surprised if they got different results. Also, this might be getting picked up by the media in which case, Trump gets another few cycles of the media bashing/questioning her, not him.

[Simon_Jester]

If they gave him immunity, presumably that was in exchange for him telling them what he knew about what really happened.

Which makes their decision not to prosecute nearly inexplicable, assuming there was in fact some kind of ghastly secret crime being covered up here.

We are left with the conclusion that either the FBI had Clinton dead to rights and just... walked away, when they didn't have to, or that there was in fact nothing they deemed worth trying to prosecute.

[Flagg]

What's frustrating isn't that they do it themselves, it's that they've got a lot of other people who are not actually scum doing it too.

Basically, if you set up a smoke generator, other people will start wondering if there's a fire. That's natural. But after the smoke generator is revealed for what it is, it's depressing to watch people keep wandering around looking for the fire.

You're more charitable than I am. I mean how many legislative inquiries into Benghazi have there been where they all but drag the corpses of the dead into congress? I'm surprised they haven't gotten Clinton staffers into the basement where a fat ugly bitch hits them with a ladle saying "confess".

[Terralthra]

So Reddit's immediate reaction to finding out a username was to search the internet for any other uses of that same username. Given that, can't you imagine a less nefarious reason to want to strip out personal email addresses of any number of people from a PST that had the potential to go public? The leap to "he was asking Reddit for help obstructing justice, because there's no history of mass doxxing and harassment on the internet," seems entirely unwarranted.

[Flagg]

If they gave him immunity, presumably that was in exchange for him telling them what he knew about what really happened.

Which makes their decision not to prosecute nearly inexplicable, assuming there was in fact some kind of ghastly secret crime being covered up here.

We are left with the conclusion that either the FBI had Clinton dead to rights and just... walked away, when they didn't have to, or that there was in fact nothing they deemed worth trying to prosecute.

Because it's all a conspiracy by the Obama (The Anti-Christ Kenyan with blood of a Jackal) DoJ to cover up how Hillary was there firing RPG's!!!

[Mr Bean]

So lets review, today we got stories about Trump having mob ties, mafia ties, running six different scams one involving his charity events for veterans and a few other issues not worth covering for how pedestrian they are.

And on the flip side we have Clinton campaign strategy memo "leaking" (AKA they handed it directly to politico so they would report this exclusive on their front page I hate our media) oh and as Shep covered we have another bit of fallout from Team Clinton and her disdain for security. I was already proven wrong on the fact she was not prosecuted so this interests me little, she already won on the issue. She got away with it and this latest little thing just demonstrates that either the FBI was garbage at investigation or had already decided that charges would not be forthcoming. I'm still waiting on the official explanation on why people like Combetta, Sydney and the rest could see and read Secretary Clinton's email and not be required to be submitted for security clearances but again rules are for other people.

Same verse same as the first, less than fifty days until the election and every time Secretary Clinton gets into the news Trump benefits. If she could vanish for 40 days, like hop on the slow boat tour of the Pacific and come back in the week before the election she might beat Trump by sixty points. But she can't because if she vanishes everyone will assume she's dead because she tried working when she should have been resting.

[Lonestar]

It's a funny ad but Nixon/Agnew won. Twice.

Yes, because running against someone installed by LBJ for the DNC candidacy and...George McGovern is a similar situation to today.