News 2016 U.S. Presidential election - the highs and lows

When House Republicans created the Select Committee on Benghazi two years ago, tasking the panel to investigate a deadly attack that had already been thoroughly investigated by other committees, GOP activists, conspiracy theorists, pundits, and election staffers had high hopes of what Rep. Trey Gowdy’s (R-S.C.) committee could accomplish.

That was quite a while ago. More than two years and $7 million later, the Republicans’ Benghazi panel has wrapped up the longest congressional investigation in the history of the United States, and it couldn’t avoid this lede in the New York Times.

Ending one of the longest, costliest and most bitterly partisan congressional investigations in history, the House Select Committee on Benghazi issued its final report on Tuesday, finding no new evidence of culpability or wrongdoing by Hillary Clinton in the 2012 attacks in Libya that left four Americans dead.

The full report, which is over 800 pages long, is online here. By all accounts, the GOP members of the panel raised a variety of criticisms and concerns, including inadequate security resources in Libya, bureaucratic inertia, and breakdowns in coordination between agencies.

Or put another way, the Select Committee on Benghazi came to the same conclusions all of the other investigations reached quite a while ago, raising questions anew about why in the world this committee was necessary in the first place...
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Republican Benghazi Committee ends with a whimper
 
The FBI does not recommend bringing charges against Clinton over the private email server:
Although we did not find clear evidence that Secretary Clinton or her colleagues intended to violate laws governing the handling of classified information, there is evidence that they were extremely careless in their handling of very sensitive, highly classified information.
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With respect to potential computer intrusion by hostile actors, we did not find direct evidence that Secretary Clinton’s personal e-mail domain, in its various configurations since 2009, was successfully hacked. But, given the nature of the system and of the actors potentially involved, we assess that we would be unlikely to see such direct evidence. We do assess that hostile actors gained access to the private commercial e-mail accounts of people with whom Secretary Clinton was in regular contact from her personal account. We also assess that Secretary Clinton’s use of a personal e-mail domain was both known by a large number of people and readily apparent. She also used her personal e-mail extensively while outside the United States, including sending and receiving work-related e-mails in the territory of sophisticated adversaries. Given that combination of factors, we assess it is possible that hostile actors gained access to Secretary Clinton’s personal e-mail account.
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More: Statement by FBI Director James B. Comey on the Investigation of Secretary Hillary Clinton’s Use of a Personal E-Mail System (5. July 2016)

For left-leaning voters who were still hoping for a miracle so that Sanders would be nominated instead of Clinton, this is bad news.

For Republicans, this provides plenty of ammunition for the election campaign.
 
Donald Trump praises Saddam Hussein’s record on terrorists
Donald Trump praises Saddam Hussein’s record on terrorists
“Saddam Hussein was a bad guy, right?” Trump asked, speaking at a campaign rally on Tuesday in North Carolina. “But you know what he did well? He killed terrorists. He did that so good.”

An estimated 50,000 to 182,000 Kurds were killed during Hussein’s genocidal Anfal campaign and more than one million were displaced as Iraqi security forces destroyed thousands of Kurdish villages.

Well, Saddam was the US's man for many years - specially so after Iran kicked out the Shah (another buddy of the US).
 
Indian Summer said:
The FBI does not recommend bringing charges against Clinton over the private email server:


More: Statement by FBI Director James B. Comey on the Investigation of Secretary Hillary Clinton’s Use of a Personal E-Mail System (5. July 2016)

For left-leaning voters who were still hoping for a miracle so that Sanders would be nominated instead of Clinton, this is bad news.

For Republicans, this provides plenty of ammunition for the election campaign.
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Yeah, aggrieved Americans turned out in record numbers at FBI headquarters to protest. Pathetic Republican Protest Draws One Person After FBI Decides Not To Charge Clinton

:p
 
She may not be criminally culpable, but her gross negligence in handling the emails should be of concern to the voters.

If she can't handle something as simple as emails, what else can't she (or her staff) handle?

I just hope the top secret ones were not compromised.
 
I hate to admit it, but Trump was right on one account.

We've reached a point of such extreme partisanship, that a candidate can do just about anything, and his/her supporters will either willfully ignore it, or find some excuse to justify and/or downplay it.
 
beancounter said:
She may not be criminally culpable, but her gross negligence in handling the emails should be of concern to the voters.

If she can't handle something as simple as emails, what else can't she (or her staff) handle?

I just hope the top secret ones were not compromised.
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She wasn't the only one using a personal email account. If they want to make her criminally liable, they have to include everyone else who did the same thing as well, and there's no way the Republicans are going to charge one of their own, or in this case, two of their own.
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/05/u...kerry-condeleezza-rice-colin-powell.html?_r=0
 
Since we're discussing emails...

Even for a Republican White House that was badly stumbling through George W. Bush's sixth year in office, the revelation on April 12, 2007 was shocking. Responding to congressional demands for emails in connection with its investigation into the partisan firing of eight U.S. attorneys, the White House announced that as many as five million emails, covering a two-year span, had been lost.

The emails had been run through private accounts controlled by the Republican National Committee and were only supposed to be used for dealing with non-administration political campaign work to avoid violating ethics laws. Yet congressional investigators already had evidence private emails had been used for government business, including to discuss the firing of one of the U.S. attorneys. The RNC accounts were used by 22 White House staffers, including then-Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove, who reportedly used his RNC email for 95 percent of his communications.

As the Washington Post reported, "Under federal law, the White House is required to maintain records, including e-mails, involving presidential decision- making and deliberations." But suddenly millions of the private RNC emails had gone missing; emails that were seen as potentially crucial evidence by Congressional investigators...
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FLASHBACK: When Millions Of Lost Bush White House Emails (From Private Accounts) Triggered A Media Shrug
 
So in the end, Bernie Sanders endorses Hillary Clinton's bid for president. Presumably it took a while for all the back room dealing to be concluded! Not surprising, since the two are at opposite ends of the democratic political spectrum.
 
^ I hope some of his fans will support HC as well now.

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Amy SF said:
That's one of the most childish and immature things I've ever read during this current election cycle - on the Democratic side.
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Saul Alinsky pioneered this technique and threatened to use it in his community struggles against Kodak in Rochester, NY.

As an example, after organizing FIGHT (an acronym for Freedom, Independence [subsequently Integration], God, Honor, Today) in Rochester, New York,[15] Alinsky once threatened to stage a "fart in" to disrupt the sensibilities of the city's establishment at a Rochester Philharmonic concert. FIGHT members were to consume large quantities of baked beans after which, according to author Nicholas von Hoffman, "FIGHT's increasingly gaseous music-loving members would tie themselves to the concert hall where they would sit expelling gaseous vapors with such noisy velocity as to compete with the woodwinds."[16] Satisfied with his threat yielding action, Alinsky later threatened a "**** in" at Chicago O'Hare Airport. Alinsky planned to arrange for large numbers of well-dressed African Americans to occupy the urinals and toilets at O'Hare for as long as it took to bring the city to the bargaining table. According to Alinsky, once again the threat alone was sufficient to produce results.[16] In Rules for Radicals, he notes that this tactic fell under two of his rules: Rule #3: Wherever possible, go outside the experience of the enemy; and Rule #4: Ridicule is man's most potent weapon.
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Saul Alinsky - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
 
Indian Summer said:
So in the end, Bernie Sanders endorses Hillary Clinton's bid for president. Presumably it took a while for all the back room dealing to be concluded! Not surprising, since the two are at opposite ends of the democratic political spectrum.
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I think they agreed on a few really good things that will help all of us ( if they can be passed ): Free college for families making $125,000 and less (80% of US families), and increased healthcare and a public option. I hope she can get the public option passed, Obama tried and failed. But, if we can get a majority of Democrats in congress it shouldn't be a problem.
 
Calliegirl said:
I think they agreed on a few really good things that will help all of us ( if they can be passed ): Free college for families making $125,000 and less (80% of US families), and increased healthcare and a public option. I hope she can get the public option passed, Obama tried and failed. But, if we can get a majority of Democrats in congress it shouldn't be a problem.
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It's a step in the right direction, but $125K is not that much relative to college tuition. A 4 year college is about $25-30K per year, a substantial percent of the maximum proposed $125K. It's just unrealistic to believe that someone making $125K can write a check for $30K without it causing substantial financial issues.
 
I would be more than happy to have that problem. I remember not being able to finish my last semester at a community college because I couldn't afford the $300 tuition, plus the cost of books. A 4 year college was never even a possibility, and isn't for my daughter as well. She also had the same problem and couldn't afford to finish community college which makes me beyond sad. She wanted to be an ASL interpreter.
 
All this talk about Donald Trump's VP choice. Doesn't anyone realize that he's not going to pick any of the usual suspects? He's going to announce tomorrow that he's going to pick Ivanka. Or, if she's doesn't qualify because she's not 35, Donald Jr.
 
Poppy said:
All this talk about Donald Trump's VP choice. Doesn't anyone realize that he's not going to pick any of the usual suspects? He's going to announce tomorrow that he's going to pick Ivanka. Or, if she's doesn't qualify because she's not 35, Donald Jr.
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Well, that would have been true to the spirit of his campaign so far, but it really sounds like he's going for Indiana governor Mike Pence:
Indiana Gov. Mike Pence is Donald Trump's VP pick

... which means Pence will have to give up his bid to be re-elected as governor, so not altogether a bad thing?
 
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