The Glade 4.0

I realize that the Director of the FBI has all kinds of IT specialists working for him, and does not need to be one himself.

This is entirely irrelevant. Hillary Clinton had a server in her home, the contents of emails can be read by anyone with access to them (since, you know, non IT people can read emails just fine) and the FBI has no shortage of appropriate technicians to provide the Director with that expertise.



A) There were no orders. There was a recommendation - one he did not accept because he had told Congress, in sworn testimony, he would update them if things changed.
B) Loretta Lynch is to blame for him talking to Congress in the first place, because she met with Bill Clinton in a manner that compromised the investigation. Comey had to do her job for her in making the initial recommendation against charges because she was compromised
C) Said initial testimony was what made it necessary for them to "recommend" he not speak to Congress the second time
D) None of this has any bearing whatsoever on the fact that she had a server with classified emails on it.

You are not only not aware of the rules for classified information, you evidently did no bother to acquaint yourself with the facts of the case itself, either.



No, you couldn't, because you didn't use any logic.

The real problem here is that you knew none of the facts, formed an opinion based on your intuition, and now won't give it up because you can't stand admitting you don't know what the ****.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

There's some truth there, but that was almost certainly unavoidable given their actions in the South China Sea.


China maintains a "minimal deterrence" posture. Their nuclear deterrent is completely incapable of a meaningful first strike, except as a means of national suicide. It lacks both the numbers and accuracy to perform one.



Maybe Mexico should stop coming up with reasons why its their right to ship illegal immigrants they don't want to deal with here then.



Perhaps China ought to rethink its behavior then, since it lacks meaningful military options. Has it occurred to you that maybe China ought to worry about whether things will go to absolute **** if they keep exploiting trade and currency rules? We don't have some national obligation to appease them.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

I give Trudeau respect here. He probably doesn't like Trump, but he's quick to work it to his benefit. It's wise of him to know when to bend the knee.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

I missed this reply, but I was actually being snarky here. You were supposed to laugh.

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Holy shitsnacks!

If Clinton is guilty of major crimes simply for having the classified information on her email server, doesn't that also mean that literally every single person that ever sent her an email with classified information in it (or at least did so from the secure servers at the State Dept) is also guilty of a major crime?

The irony here is amazing.

All I've said is NONE OF US know the facts. You included. People with no access to information love to pretend they know what's going on in cases where all the details of an investigation are sealed and private, and even that investigation isn't necessarily turning up all the facts. Everything you've stated about this is conjecture. It's not a matter of public record. We don't know the facts. You're just repeating FauxNews talking points. You've formed an opinion solely based on the fact that you don't like Hillary Clinton, and nothing more.

I don't like her either. I'm not an armchair judge and jury like you, however. You sound just like the people on the other side accusing Trump of rape based on a few accusations that came after his rather disgusting comments came to light. Mind you, a legitimate recording of Trump admitting to sexual assault is more damning than what we on the outside actually know about Hillary. (And it's still not that damning.)

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Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
█ ♣ █

Potentially, that is in fact the case.

Ideally Obama will pardon all of them, thereby saving everyone the time, expense, and effort of further investment in the issue.

In my personal opinion, and to be fair to Hillary and the Democrats concerned, I think the rules for classified information are heavily outdated, and the apparatus for security clearances and rules itself needs a good housecleaning, but I haven't been asked to head up the agencies involved (and most likely won't ever be) so that remains DE's feelings on the matter. That does not mean I think the rules were unfair to Hillary (I still wouldn't condone having private servers, which are a federal records issue even without classified info) but I do think there's room for reform in the future, once the political aspects lose their currency.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Nice meltdown.

Jim Comey testified before Congress to this. That makes it public record. Congressional testimony is testimony just as court testimony is; you can be supoenaed, held in contempt, or prosecuted for perjury just as in court. The facts I'm relying on are a part of the official, historical record of the Congress of the United States of America. Period, end of story.

The real irony here is that you like complaining about "irrational" people, yet you're behaving utterly irrationally and retreating into bluster about FOX News because you want to defend an utterly hogwash comparison of Swiftboat and Hillary's email server. By continuing to post you're demonstrating that you think everyone on the Glade is an idiot, and embarrassing yourself in the process. Don't ever complain about anyone being irrational again.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Meltdown? I'm just calmly stating the only fact anyone here knows: that we don't have the facts.

You kinda sound like Donald Trump in the debates saying "wrong!" in response to Hillary directly quoting him. You have no facts to back up anything you have said. You can keep incoherently shouting the same bullshit, but it still smells every time. You're The taxi driver pretending to have grand wisdom about stuff none of us, including you, know **** about. You are not on the inside. You weren't part of the investigation. The investigation gave away no notable details, and even if it did, until it plays out in court we don't know that the details are right or wrong. You are not special, here. None of us are. You can continue to take your conclusions on faith, I expect nothing less, but stop mistaking them for fact.

_________________
Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
█ ♣ █

We do know that clintonemail.com was wiped of federal communications messages in violation of laws requiring retention of same. That came out as a result of the FBI investigation.

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In time, this too shall pass.

The Keystone pipeline isn't "Bending knee." Trudeau tried to get that through and Obama wouldn't play ball.


There's an irony here that Trudeau will likely work better with Trump than he would have with Hillary. Oh, he certainly won't like Trump, but the Liberal party of Canada and Donald Trump have one thing in common when it comes to policy, and it's the only thing that really matters in Canada-USA relations:

The economy comes first.

(Also, the pipeline is environmentally friendlier than the current process of sending the oil by train.)

_________________
Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
█ ♣ █

You're right. I was blatantly trolling you.



That is true.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

I've given you the facts, and directed you to the appropriate Federal record involving Comey testifying before Congress.

All you're doing is pretending I didn't to avoid losing an argument on the internet. You're behaving exactly like the people you claim to dislike.

And by comparison to you.. I am indeed on the inside. I'm a security manager. I hold 2 different Top secret/SCI clearances. You have absolutely no idea what I know or don't know because I don't talk about things on here that I'm not supposed to. We're not equals here. I'm in a position to be vastly better informed than you are. I don't normally even address the fact that I have access to classified information since it's not fair to refer things there's no way you guys can access. However, in this case, you're trying to argue your Google search is equal to my decades of experience and training, so I'll waive that.

The amusing thing is, I don't need to. You can find the information you need just by watching Trey Gowdy question Comey on YouTube.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

And again, Comey's does not in any way prove Clinton broke the law.

You need far less than proof to get an indictment. They didn't have enough to proceed with an indictment, let alone get a conviction.

_________________
Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
█ ♣ █

Your initial statement was that this was the equivalent of "Swiftboating" - i.e., the invention of fraudulent allegations.

The allegations were not, in fact, fraudulent. The fact that they did not elect to prosecute does not, in any way, mean the evidence did not exist.

Hillary Clinton benefited from a very lenient application of discretion in that regard. Classified information cases are among the easiest for the government to prove. It is entirely irrelevant whether she was convicted or not - she was running for President, and the FBI director testified to her mishandling of classified information in sworn, duly recorded, solemn testimony, that she had engaged in actions that constitute mishandling of that information under the present rules in that regard. I will point out once again - since you are not at all familiar with the subject matter - that revocation of a security clearance could easily have been done on this basis, and is an administrative action, not a criminal punishment. Official sanction was WELL within the normal realm of possibility even without an actual conviction.

It happened, period. The fact that an event has not been proven in a court of law does not mean it did not happen; it just means it has not been found to positively constitute a crime. No one here is talking about whether she was found guilty- we are talking about the fact that her actions are a known matter of public record, which the public and Congress had a right to know, given that she was running for President.

As for "not having enough to convict", the only reason we don't know that is that she was running for President and the AG engaged in an improper meeting with her husband. This is not even slightly exculpatory; it is a combination of HIGHLY unusual circumstances, and she deserves no special benefit of the doubt in that regard, any more than Trump should be excused from the Trump University lawsuit.

She was not - in any way - "swiftboated".

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

The lefties and the Canadian and European communities have largely decided they wanted Hillary Clinton, and nothing and no one can change their mind. They are beyond reason.

Donald Trump ran his campaign with bigoted rhetoric, and was caught boasting about blatant sexual harassment. Like with Hillary's email scandal, these are also facts. Because of these facts, you will absolutely never convince them of Hillary's wrongdoings. This is the sad consequence of our party duopoly. Either Hillary Clinton has never participated in any government corruption of any kind, or you are a racist and a misogynist. The left, and large swaths of the international community have therefore embraced the version of reality where Hilary Clinton should be regarded as a saint.

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Buckle your pants or they might fall down.

Hillary Clinton should never have received the nomination. That's what the left should be crying about. Hillary lost because by way of being Hillary Clinton. Folks can be distraught all they want that Trump is our President Elect, I can dig. But an unsullied candidate on the left should have smoked Trump.

Apparently the left can't examine themselves with the same level of criticality as they do the right. For example -

Trump has no record of civil service. (one can make the argument that's he's never been civil, but that's besides my point)
Hillary has quite a record.

Based on the experience and history "we the people" have with the two candidates, we picked the devil we don't know over the devil we do.

Bernie was going on about his party not getting the "working man's" vote... but we know by the wikileaks disclosures that Bernie isn't the DNC fair haired boy when compared to the baggage lady herself.

Trump is the fault of the progressive left, clearly.

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In time, this too shall pass.

Uhm, no **** the EU decided they wanted Hillary Clinton. Trump is running on a heavily protectionist economic platform. Protectionism hurts the overall world economy, that's Economics 101. That means the best case scenario for Trump is he improves the US economy and makes the economy worse for everyone else. Worst case is he hurts the US economy and hurts everyone else even more.

Trump also campaigned on making NATO countries pay more on their militaries. I don't think you quite get how utterly **** the EU is if he actually goes through with that. Several NATO countries don't even have militaries and many others are just structurally unable to put together one worth anything.

Interesting you should say that. I'm taking the equivalent of Economics 101 this semester (courses not using that numbering system) but I haven't found the chapter where it says "protectionism hurst the world economy." Can you tell me what page its on?



Then those countries should not be in NATO or relying on its protection. NATO countries obligated themselves to 2% GDP spent on defense. They need to live up to that.

If that means taking a gigantic **** on their own social welfare programs, then they need to take that ****. A country that is "structurally unable" to have a military has no business being a country at all. They should ask for protectorate status. They don't need to have a gigantic military; but they do need to spend 2% on Defense and be able to at least field something reasonably competent as part of a NATO coalition.

Or, they may as well go bend the knee to the czar Putin.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Protectionism removes comparative advantages, whereby Mexico can benefit from trade with the US even if they're much less efficient at making anything than the US is.

With regards to the EU, It's not so much a matter of money as it is a matter of the environment many EU countries have raised their military-age generation in.

Germany is a country that has built its entire national identity out of anti-militarism. Their 18-25 generation has essentially been raised as a generation of SJW pacifists for whom even the slightest hint of violence has been sanitized out of everything. Pretty much all German media accessible to teenagers and children is heavily censored to remove anything more explicit than cartoon violence, and they're repeatedly and unceasingly taught that violence is never an acceptable answer to anything.

Even when they become adults, this doesn't stop. As another example, it's a very long and involved approval process if you even want to buy a paintball gun, and once you have one there are tons of strict rules like it has to be painted in garish colors and you can't target shoot against anything that even resembles a person and you're not allowed to play any games where you pretend to be military or police forces or engage in any kind of real-world violence. You hand these kids real guns and send them off to boot camp for Wehrmacht 2.0 where they actually have to learn how to kill people and the result is going to be a bunch of Gomer Pyles.

On top of that, Germany is an export driven economy whose prosperity is dependent on manufacturing things for other people. Germany's latest generation is tiny, with birth rates dropping below 1.2 children per woman. They desperately need these kids to get jobs making things, they're so desperate for warm bodies to man their factories they gambled on letting in a million Muslims.

I mean, you could make a good case for why they should have to deal with all of this regardless. But you can't really fault them for really, really favoring the US Presidential candidate that's not going to force them to do it.

Really that was just about me wanting to make a joke about my textbook.



Actually, I can.

Although your points about Germany are well-taken, this basically falls into the category of "not our problem".

With respect to the military, Germany did just fine with contributing adequately to defense in the latter part of the Cold War. This cultural objection to it is, in part, a product of not having a serious enemy for 25 years, and being allowed to just skate by.

Other NATO nations don't even have the Nazi Excuse Germany has. They've been able to get away with underspending on defense because there really wasn't a serious threat and a large, powerful ally (and a couple lesser, but still formidable partners) did the heavy lifting. We let them skate for 2 decades because the Bear was asleep as long as they gave up a few troops here and there for A-stan, but now its time to get serious again and they want to stay on the gravy train.

The fact is that the U.S. didn't elect the candidate they'd have preferred, and now they need to make a choice - do they want U.S. protection, or not? There's not much reason we should care about our obligations to them if they want to make excuses like "We raised a generation of peaceniks and don't let them buy paintball guns so..uhhh.. can you just do the military thing FOR us?" Poland is one of the few countries meeting its obligations, if it makes you feel any better, Germany would be helping out the Poles against possible aggression. It could sort of make up for that.. err.... rather impolite incident back in 1939.

Also - they might want to consider that their preferred candidate wanted to start an air battle with Russia over a shithole in Syria (or at least was claiming to) and was having the vapors over Putin's nefarious schemes, so they'd probably have ended up with this choice anyhow - to say nothing of the fact that Putin isn't obligated to make things convenient for NATO in the first place.

As to the trade thing, I haven't heard Trump really take it to Europe in the way he has Mexico or China on trade. Part of this is that German products are generally perceived as high-quality, even premium goods, where as China is the source of Wal Mart junk, like $1.99 flip flops, and Trump perceives his businesses as premium brands.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

I feel pretty confident that within the next several months the DNC will cannibalize its power structure because of the shenanigans that were allowed to happen. Unfortunately, I see Pelosi somehow managing to survive.

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The Dude abides.

The DNC is suffering from a severe talent deficit due to putting everything on hold for 8 years to allow Hillary to run. There's a gap between people who will be too old in 2020/2024 and people who will still be not quite old enough. There's a few names, but they're really going to have to be careful not to run any of them as the "first XXX president". Tammy Duckworth comes to mind, but I can already see them running her as an Asian Female Disabled Veteran For President, rather than on her actual talents.

Ideally Jim Webb will switch parties in the meantime. The "progressive" wing right now is acting like they were right all along, but really Bernie only appealed because of the after-effects of the 2008 banking/housing crisis and his fantasy proposals for young adults. Going that route won't work out in the long run any better than going hardcore conservative would for Republicans.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

The GOP has a pretty good chance of ending the DNC entirely in 2020. The GOP controls ALL branches of government in 25/50 states, and is dominant in 37 of them. If this year's gains aren't reversed, when the 2020 Census comes around these Republican governments will gerrymander/redistrict their states so they can never lose again. The only election the Democrats will be able to win after that is President, because it's not subject to this.