(For what it's worth, the funniest piece of political news of the week has been Trump inciting Russian intelligence to pirate Clinton's e-mails. Because it's such a perfect sort of Trump-thinks-about-as-far-as-the-tip-of-his-of-course-it's-not-tiny-it's-YUUUGE-penis thing that Trump does all the time. In that the fucking dope has, in effect, just given the Russian commo intel people an open invitation and excuse for when they hack President Trump and Secretary of State Gingrich's private e-mails.What kinda gripes me, tho, is to hear my Bernie pals griping about how Sanders would have done SO much better in the general.
The laugh is in watching Trump thinking how that Trump - being the Smartest Guy in the Room - is SO going to "out-deal" Putin because he knows Putin and he's such a smart deal-maker, while watching Putin's smile of contempt for the combed-over skinsack that is so immense that it's practically visible from orbit.
The old KGB operative knows perfectly well that he's going to play the simpleminded egotistical blowhard like a fucking ocarina, and he smiles and nods and just knows that he has to sit there and the boob will trigger the booby trap and blow himself and his country sky-high. Watching Trump think he's playing Putin is kind of like watching Wile E. Coyote setting an Acme trap. Or it would be, if the dumb fucker wasn't within one standard deviation of being leader of the Free World...)
Seriously, folks? Given that the GOP Pretty Hate Machine never really spun up against Bernie we have no idea what would have happened once the swiftboaters and ratfuckers and liemeisters started in on him the way they have on HRC for the past 20 years.
But let me take a guess.
Socialist? COMMIE! Ranty Grampy? Hippie tax-and-spender? Free college? JEW!?
Think that might have come spewing 24-7 from Fox and Fat Rushbo and Beck and Breitbart and all the other flying monkeys of the Right? Think that the "mainstream media" might have picked up on that? Think that might have been hammering into the U.S. Publc's teensy tinsy brains from CNN and MSNBC and freaking ESPN for all I know.
So. Be proud of Bernie for what he represents.
But don't kid me you KNOW he'd have cleaned up in the general. Because you know as well as I do that the Public is an Ass and the GOP is a bunch of mad renegade proctologists.
15 comments:
Well, at least Bernie isn't guilty of gross negligence dealing with America's national foreign policy. I am gobsmacked that Ms. Clinton ran the State Department of the USA from a personal computer running in her broom closet (and administered by a part time staffer). I am further gobsmacked that she retains a security clearance.
Apparently, Ael, that isn't uncommon at State or a lot of other federal outfits. The problem being that it's damn near impossible to run any sort of operation without access to e-mail 24-7, and you can't live in your office. I suspect that if you yanked the clearance of every federal official that used their home PC or laptop or Ipad you'd end up with three guys from the Bureau of Reclamation and a staffer at the Mint.
And my question would be; in what way did HRC fuck up grossly during her tenure at State? She didn't oversee any particular triumphs, but I don't recall her being responsible for any notable disasters. "Benghazi" is a complete nothing burger cooked up from the usual Republican bullshit. Most of the sources I've read consider her a pedestrian but capable SecState.
And, FWIW, HRC's qualifications or lack of same are the polar opposite of the point of this post, which is about the potential vulnerability of Sanders in the general. The guy has a LOT of handles to throw him around with. Whether the GOP could have done that effectively we'll never know. But compared to HRC's email server Sanders' "socialism", his associations with the Sixties counterculture, and his Jewishness - in THIS country, with this public - are ticking bombs and the BernieBros seem to completely gloss over all that.
Look, as an IT professional, there is a *hell* of a difference between running a client on your home PC and running a personal domain with an email server your in your closet. Can you tell me of *one* other official that has done the same thing? Securing an email server is *hard* and never ending work. The Secretary of State is a high value target, therefore running all her correspondence through a commercial grade server is incredibly negligent. I was not surprised that the server administrator never said boo to the FBI He simply shut up and plead the fifth until he got immunity.
Further, she did it because she intended to continue running the family business while she was also running America's foreign policy.
Bringing it back to Bernie, yes he can have tags applied to him, but those tags (like socialist, hippie, jew) had remarkably little traction in this cycle. I have read quite a number of articles by surprised reporters that the socialist label had lost its sting. I guess the end of the Soviet Union really is old old news.
Whereas Clinton is ultra-establishment and her influence peddling friendly email arrangement is truly red meat to anti-establishment rhetoric.
"...those tags had remarkably little traction..." purely because 1) the GOP never bothered to use them - they had Clinton pegged as their November opponent from the jump, 2) the HRC campaign didn't for obvious reasons, and 3) this was in a Democratic primary where the typical voter isn't going to rise to those flies.
Had Sanders taken the nomination you'd have seen all that crap go viral, and if you think that the American Public is above being Red-baited and Jew-baited...well, it seemed ridiculous to think that race-baiting would work in 2016, right?
As for the whole e-mail thing...meh. IMO it's only a thing if you want to find a reason not to accept that, at this point, it's a choice between Clinton and Il Douche. I very much doubt the NSA will allow a President Clinton 45 similar security lassitude.
email thing - meh!?
I have run commercial grade email servers with ordinary routers and firewalls and I know how porous they are. I fully expect that every intelligence chief in every country with a GDP greater than or equal to North Korea's (including America's allies) got a daily newsletter of "what's happening in the State Department today" based on that email server.
Furthermore, if I was an intelligence chief and I *wasn't* getting a daily briefing from that server, I need to fire my current set of geeks for utter incompetence.
Yes, it is that bad.
That email server does, however, accomplish one of Obama's campaign promises. It makes his administration the most transparent one in history (just not for the American people).
Look, I happily don't get a voice in the election, but I do think that Sanders would have been a better choice for the American people and that in these anti-establishment times, would have been a stronger candidate.
I also agree that Ms. Clinton is better than Mr. Trump. But that choice is more one of food poisoning vs cancer. I would prefer to avoid both, but given a forced choice, I'll give food poisoning a whirl.
AEL, your comment is full of all the “ this could have happened”, “ system was vulnerable”, “ action was dangerous and foolish” “what if somebody hacked” etc. etc. hysterical stuff the Rs have been blathering. Despite all that and despite general agreement that HRC could have handled things better and despite the fact that many other senior g’ment officials acted similarly, nothing happened. Nothing. There has never been any finding or any evidence that any damaging consequences ensued as a result of the questionable email policy. I don’t care how many servers you’ve tweaked. There’s no there there. It’s over. Let it go.
Also, if the Rs had been so inclined, or if Sanders were to have run in the general election, he would have been absolutely buried in an avalanche of shit the likes of which you have never imagined. He is so vulnerable on so many fronts that the only problem the Rs would have in smearing him is the question of where to start. And don’t start with the “Bern isn’t establishment” crap. He’s been in Vermont politics for ever and in the Congress for over 16 years.
MichaelG (see me at Nancy Nall’s page) I’m not really anon I just don't have any of those accounts.
Sorry, gross negligence is gross negligence. You don't have to be able to prove that something bad happened for it not to be negligence. Leaving a loaded pistol under a four year old's pillow isn't ok unless the kid actually shoots their sister.
Email servers advertise their presence in every email transaction. The Clinton server practically invites hacking. Furthermore, a major reason that there is no evidence to be found is that the server was forensically cleansed. Yes, it was carefully scrubbed clean.
Like I said, if it *wasn't* penetrated, the Russians/Chinese/British/Israelis/Germans/etc are all incompetent boobs.
Another we'll-never-know hypothetical of a Sanders presidency is whether he really WOULD be better for the U.S. My take on him as a legislator is that he is more of a gadfly than a negotiator. He tends to hector and lecture his colleagues when they disagree with his proposals.
As President - barring an electoral miracle - Sanders would have to deal with a House packed with Joni Ernst-grade wingnuts whose sole purpose would be to 1) undo every progressive thing Obama did and 2) frustrate every progressive thing Sanders and the Congressional Dems would do. The obstruction and debt-ceiling fucktardry would be epic.
Can you picture Sanders confronting Ted Cruz's smarmy mug, or Ryan's meeching ass, and going into full Ranty Grampy mode on national television? How that'd play? The "Dean Scream" would be a lullaby compared to that mess.
Again, HRC is a sad comment on the state of the Democratic seniority, culmination of years of DLC triangulation.
But I'm skeptical of the magical Bernie powers being projected onto Sanders. Remember how Occupy was gonna bring the Day of Economic Jubilee? How'd that work out..?
I like what Occupy, and Sanders, accomplished in pushing the debate to the left. But I don't like how many of their partisans are framing far-fetched, best-case outcomes as the better alternatives to what we got...
As the Dictator for Life of GET I hereby proclaim the entire Clinton e-mail debate over, guys. Was she lax about her e-mail security? Yes. Was that the equivalent of Charles Lindbergh palling around with Nazis? No.
Frankly, I'm less impressed w HRC's judgement in her policies than this whole e-mail nonsense. My take on "security" is that it's typically WAY overrated as a factor in geopolitics. I'm far more concerned about HRC's lack of concern over the intellectual property rights section of the TPP than her carelessness with her emails.
And, frankly, we have no proof one way or another that Sanders or Trump would have done better. Hell,give Trump's notariety in mixing shady business with politics it seems entirely likely he'd have done something significantly worse...
Fair enough about the email debate.
I just read that Senator McCaskill (Missouri) is suggesting Mr. Trump is a criminal by violating the Logan Act by negotiating with a foreign state (Russia) Furthermore, the New York Daily News has a front page accusing Mr. Trump of being a traitor!
I guess the high road wasn't working out.
Trump's footsie with the Russian oligarchs is disturbing, but no more than Bush's leechlike relations with the Saudi royals. The degree to which a fairly significant number of GOP A-listers (and, to be fair, no few of the Democratic Davos-jaunters) seem to feel that canoodling with fairly shady overseas types is perfectly jake is one of the less-pleasant aspects of the New Gilded Age.
As for McCaskill and the Daily News...well, there's always a couple of fools fit for fooling.
But...one huge difference between the U.S. left and right has been the utter and immediate willingness of the Right to consider their opponents little better than traitorous criminals. "Lock her up!" is the rational culmination of the way the various spokesweasels for Wingnuttia have been delegitimizing their opponents since Reagan's days.
If there is finally a similar aggression from the Left, well...when you use a hammer to train your dog you shouldn't be shocked when Bowser finally tries to bite you.
Ael said...
"Well, at least Bernie isn't guilty of gross negligence dealing with America's national foreign policy. I am gobsmacked that Ms. Clinton ran the State Department of the USA from a personal computer running in her broom closet (and administered by a part time staffer). I am further gobsmacked that she retains a security clearance."
Powell used Yahoo.
Rove did his dirty work (such as firing Deputy Attorney Generals for refusal to commit crimes) through an e-mail server run by the RNC. They 'lost' 21 freakin' f*ckin' ***million*** e-mails.
-Barry
FDChief: "But I'm skeptical of the magical Bernie powers being projected onto Sanders. Remember how Occupy was gonna bring the Day of Economic Jubilee? How'd that work out..?"
It worked very well - they changed the conversation from 'how much should we crush the 99%'.
As for Sanders, he's accomplished a lot. He influenced the debate, he's changed the platform, and if the Dems take the Senate he'll be part of a 2-3 (at best) majority margin. That will make him a very powerful person.
-Barry
Barry: You are a more sunny optimist than I am. IMO Occupy "changed the conversation" from "how much should we crush the 99%" to "Crush? Who, me? Nope, didn't see any crushing around here...now excuse me, my limo is here. I'm late for running down some homeless..."
While I agree that Sanders has done a good job bringing up structural inequality and the tilted playing field, he's going to have to bring more than slogans and speeches if he's gonna continue to be a player in the next Congress.
Mind you, I want him to. But I think that the hope that a slim Senate majority means Bernie gets things done is overegging the pie. The GOP can still filibuster and there's no cloture without 60. I think that whoever gets elected will see another four years of appalling deadlock and bullshit. And Bernie's vulnerability to all the usual GOP baiting is far too obvious for me to kid myself about his ability to stroll in November, whether it would be to a Senate power seat or the Presidency...
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