BBO Discussion Forums: Has U.S. Democracy Been Trumped? - BBO Discussion Forums

kenberg, on 2016-December-18, 09:32, said:

We are just old dogs trying to learn new tricks....lol
With Trump, we may have to jump through some hoops as well

My concern is how populism can be converted into corporatism and that is a greater risk and danger no matter who is CIC. Just what are the electorate willing to sell out to get what they want?

Kaitlyn S, on 2016-December-17, 22:49, said:

Well, I dismissed as ludicrous the early explanation that it was just too inconvenient to have to carry two communication devises. It is inevitable that I will on occasion be skeptical of something that turns out to be true, and on other occasions I will accept something that turns out to be false. When an ace drops a queen, sometimes the queen was singleton, sometimes it is a falsecard. That's life. We have to look at what seems likely. And in important matters, we have to check.

From the beginning, it seemed highly likely to me that the email choice was about control. Maybe not, but it seems likely, even if I cannot give full details about how this control was to take place. I can imagine that I, if I were told that all of my email correspondence was to be logged on some government server, would be looking for some way around this. I think it is in fact desirable for people to be able to speak in un-logged ways as they are in the initial stages of discussion. There should be a time when people can just say what comes into their heads, and then a later time when people are prepared, after some thought and discussion, to state on the record views. So being able to ditch the early stuff strikes me as not only acceptable but as useful.

But we live in an age where every utterance is sacrosanct. A mistake, I think, but it is the age we are in. So she had to conform.

Now here is what I think should have happened when the stuff hit the fan:
As soon as there was a demand for access to her emails, backed by legal authority (I won't check through the exact chronology here), I think she needed to get the message out, emphatically and immediately: Nothing more was to be deleted. Any deleted messages that could be recovered would be recovered. No scrubbing. Those entitled to access would have full access. She would demand that the emails be held secure, so only those entitled to see them would see them, but those who were so entitled would have full access. If stuff then gets leaked out, as it probably would have, it's not on her. She would make it clear that this was in no way to be cooperation in words only while ducking in reality. She would make it clear that she understood this had to be dealt with fully, and that under no circumstances should it be possible that down the line there should be messages found on another computer with her chief aide saying she just didn't know how they got there.

This happens over and over and over. Something that could have been an embarrassment, but a manageable embarrassment, becomes a disaster because someone thinks s/he can duck and weave. It does not show that she is running a child sex ring, it does show that she made poor choices.

kenberg, on 2016-December-18, 10:06, said:

What makes me sad is that the prevailing mood in both opponents and proponents of a H.C. presidency seem to hold her to a higher standard than others have been. IMO, Hillary Clinton is simply a tremendously aggressive and driven woman, and that combination is despised or deeply doubted by at least half of the population.

But beyond personal ambitions, I think Hillary's downfall came from an orchestrated attempt by opponents to claim that 2 plus 2 makes 5. The media dutifully reported on this "alternate view of reality" as if it were valid until facts, or the lack therof, no longer mattered - and everything else followed.

From CBS News*:

Quote

*Our official position here at CBS News is that we are 100% almost positive but not quite that Hillary Clinton won the popular vote unless by some miracle of mathematics and election fraud that the 27% of Republicans who hate Clinton so much they refuse to accept what appears to be reality but may not be turns out to have been right all along in which case we reserve the right to review our position.

Winstonm, on 2016-December-18, 10:26, said:

I single out this part. I think there is an important lesson here.

Opponent's will always oppose. Often opponents will exaggerate and distort. The media, much of it, is lazy. These things will not change.

So what to do. This is where I hope the thinking is. One can look for villains, but there will always be villains. It is more profitable to look for errors.

I am not a great bridge player. But also I am not awful. Despite what my partners might say. Books are helpful, but I think by far the most useful path to improvement is to look overe the hands that I have bid and played and dispassionately seek out my errors. If a partner analyzes a session of bridge and finds five of my errors and none of his own, I think he has the wrong focus. He might well be right about my errors, but the errors that he has the most control over are his own. Of course I have played with partners who make no errors. They are quite certain of this.

With the emails, Clinton came across as a lawyer. She is a lawyer, and the law was involved,so one might say of course she used her legal training. But she was running for office. Back in the Nixon days, a friend suggested that members of Nixon's inner circle be issued badges saying NYI. Not yet indicted. This friend was a Republican, I believe he voted for Nixon at least in '68, ,but he was also fed up with the legalisms.

At any rate, I strongly suggest to the Democratic leadership that they stop focusing on how unfair the world is and start looking at their own mistakes.

I do think that this hacking has to be most seriously addressed. Not just Russian hacking, and not just hacking of the DNC. Cybersecurity is an issue where the concern should be across the political spectrum.

This keeps getting weirder. From the Washington Post: (emphasis added)

Quote

My totally uneducated, biased conclusion is that immersion of oneself in polluted information produces total confusion. Indeed, Orwell was right that freedom means being able to say that 2 plus 2 makes 4.

When facts are no longer facts, freedom cannot exist. This, to me, is the great lesson of this election season. And we need to learn quickly how to reestablish fact from fantasy.

kenberg, on 2016-December-18, 11:17, said:

I agree that the hacking is important - though not the most important aspect of this election season. I think we are at a critical point in history. Take, for example, the North Carolina governor's race. Instead of a peaceful transition from one governor to the next, the legislature passed and the incumbent signed into law legislation to remove much of the governor's powers from the incoming governor.

This is beyond sour grapes and goes along with the obstruct-at-any-cost Congress that held President Obama in such contempt.

These kinds of mindsets are of the kind held by zealots for their ideology. Ideological zealotry is our common enemy, regardless of our political affiliations. We are supposed to be self-governed; zealotry wants to rule.

Kaitlyn S, on 2016-December-17, 22:49, said:

You are amazing, in the worst sense of the world. This seems to be a common way of thinking for you. 'I know there is NO evidence for proposition X, but all my friends believe in proposition X so there has to be a real chance that proposition X is true, and I am going to vote an utterly incompetent, dangerous demagogue into power because, you know, Clinton really might have been running a child sex ring out of a pizza restaurant'

Do you even THINK about your beliefs? That was a silly question. If there is one thing that one can safely infer from your posts, it is that you don't seem able to think critically. No wonder the USA has just screwed itself. I'd just laugh if it weren't so important to the rest of the world.

mikeh, on 2016-December-18, 11:33, said:

To me the question is much broader than simply Kaitlyn's beliefs. I think the question reaches right to the heart of American democracy, and that is how do we reach the millions of people who confuse even-handedness with granting equivalency to rumor, innuendo, and pure propaganda? There can be no doubt that this occurs else Donald Trump would not be PEOTUS.

When you look at the numbers from the election and then the way that information was transmitted the picture starts to clear. The reality is that at least 2.8 million more voters cast votes for Clinton than for Trump.

The objective reality of that basic set of facts has been denied by Trump himself in a number of tweets where he falsely claimed: 1) He won in a landslide and 2) He also won the popular vote once you subtract the millions of illegal votes for Clinton. Amazingly, new online polls show that 52% of Republicans believe Trump's lies and think he also won the popular vote.

Both accurate information and factual distortions were reported as equivalent, tweeted, and retweeted. We were left to chose facts based on which side we believed.

IMO, we have reached a critical point in U.S. history - world history, really - a point where objective reality is being abandoned in favor of a form of tribal group think. It reminds me of Orwell's 1984 admonition "Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two makes four. If that is granted, all else follows".

What is happening now is that the objective reality is no longer being granted. It is being denied as our basic starting point, and even more than denied it is being changed with claims that 2+2=3 today but we reserve the right to claim it will be 5 tomorrow if that is more advantageous. Without being able to state 2+2=4, and have everyone in agreement, how can there be freedom? Without objective reality, there is no critical thought; without critical thought, there are only ideological slaves.

mikeh, on 2016-December-18, 11:33, said:

Luv ya too, Mike ♡

Winstonm, on 2016-December-18, 11:32, said:

Just for the record North Carolina legislature did not remove much of the governor's power. What they did do was petty and silly.

-----------------------------


As for all the hacking stuff, just another Obama scandal that the press will somehow blame Trump not Obama who actually is the President and the democrats who did little but turn away or appease yet again in regards to non domestic issues.


See Obama and the Dems mocking Romney.

mike777, on 2016-December-18, 16:52, said:

You can't whitewash the symbolism of what the N.C. legislature did nor ignore how the Republicans in the U.S. Congress stonewalled the Obama administration once they had control.

mike777, on 2016-December-18, 16:52, said:

I suggest dividing responsibility this way:
Before Jan 20, Obama
After Jan 20: Trump

Not rigidly, as some inherited problems take time to resolve. I got very tired of the blaming of Bush after a couple of years of Obama, but some of it was indeed inherited. Details aside, I am fine with blaming Obama for lapses in cyber security before the upcoming inauguration and blaming Trump for what happens afterward.

I still hold out some hope that our leadership, in both parties, can see getting something done as more important than parceling out the blame when nothing gets done, but I suppose that is naive.

kenberg, on 2016-December-18, 21:14, said:

I suggest you familiarize yourself with the US constitution, and adjust your rules of responsibility accordingly.

Snark aside, it's clear that McConell, as always, put party first when he refused to support the administration on making a bipartisan statement on the Russian hacking based on the intelligence shared senate leaders of both parties.

As I wrote in the "How to fix it?" thread, US democracy and governance has a lot of institutional problems. These problems wouldn't have become as disastrous without McConell, who realised that Senate Republicans can get away with blocking (almost) everything since voters will hold Obama responsible for the (lack of) results.

cherdano, on 2016-December-18, 23:33, said:

Sure. I over-simplified. A lot. Yes.

Some years back there was a lot of talk of the imperial presidency. The idea was that the role of the president had evolved to a stage where nothing could stand in his way. Another exaggeration, of course. But we do elect a president to lead, and we hold him/her (sooner or later a her, I trust) responsible for what happens. This is a reasonable arrangement. It is understood that there are difficulties. The president is supposed to deal with them. This is not perfect, but it is also not crazy. It works best when we elect good presidents.

Added: While having morning coffee I read this:
https://www.washingt...m=.70af9e46dc40


It illustrates the view I refer to. The intervention worked. Obama gets credit. Of course he had help. Of course there was resistance. But largely, Obama gets the credit. When things don't work, then he is held responsible. Credit for what works, blame for what doesn't, sure, it is more complicated than assigning either blame or credit to one person. But Truman had the right idea. The buck stops here, where "here" means at the desk of the president.

kenberg, on 2016-December-19, 06:58, said:

As CIC, a war-time president was to politically control the armed forces. The US has engineered a constant war-time state so this plays into the picture. As Trump changes the field from political class to business class subordinates, corporatists will have a direct line of control. This will disenfranchise the careerists in DC and likely have effects from within the party ranks. Interesting times to come...

kenberg, on 2016-December-19, 06:58, said:

The economic legacy is what the video by Koo was all about. Japan had shown the effects of the massive housing bubble bust and "recovery" associated with typical central-bank methods. Koo shows what the ramifications are and how to fix them. Borrowing (for infrastructure programs) to keep the system running is key, NOT inflating the balance sheets of the banks.

mikeh, on 2016-December-18, 11:33, said:

I'm confused here mikeh. Kaitlyn clearly stated that she will not believe the child sex ring unless decisively convinced. You even quoted it. Why are you saying that she caters to this false belief?

As for HRC's emails, I don't think it is at all unreasonable to believe that she scrubbed them because there were things she did not want read by others. In fact I would say that is the most logical and obvious conclusion. Perhaps said things were merely personal communications. Perhaps not. Probably nobody will ever know.

billw55, on 2016-December-19, 10:54, said:

I think this notion is ridiculous because HC had been hounded since Oct. 2012 by the Benghazi investigation and to think any attorney as sharp and experienced would leave incriminating e-mails on a private server and then rush to illegally have them removed after a subpoena for them was issued - and the subpoena wasn't issued until March 4, 2015. To think she was that stupid is an insult not only to her but to those who voted for her.

Winstonm, on 2016-December-19, 14:14, said:

I do not claim that the content she (may have) desired to keep hidden had anything to do with Benghazi. Or with any other specific topic, publicly known or not. I only say that the logical reason for mass deletion is to conceal something - perhaps things that are innocuous but personal.

At times I have had thousands of emails piled up in the deleted items folder at my job. It never once occurred to me to go in and delete them all in mass and wipe the space. This is something that is done for a reason. I don't claim to know HRC's reason, or to know that it was malicious. But I do think there is a reason.

Winstonm, on 2016-December-19, 14:14, said:

I did vote for her. I do not feel the least insulted by what Bill said. I agree with what he said, although maybe not so much with your re-phrasing of what he said. As to HC being stupid, neither Bill nor I have said that. I do believe, and I said long ago, she handled the email matter very badly. And handled it badly from the very beginning. HC was a major party candidate for president. Huma Abedin was a top aide. Why, why, why on God's Green Earth would HA have been putting any HC emails about anything on AW's computer? Forget sexting. Imagine AW a perfect husband. Still! Could they not afford a computer for HA to store HC emails on? There was something about printing. HA's computer could not be configured to allow printing directly from her computer? If HA was to handle, or forward, or print, or whatever, email from HC, then HA needed a secure computer of her own, one set up to do whatever it is they wanted to do. The whole operation sounded like you might expect from the local PTA (no insult to PTAs intended here). Becky does stuff for a local book club. She uses her computer, not mine. Admittedly she does not have NSA level security apparatus on it. But it's for the book club. Let the Russkies hack it if they want to. I did not say "stupid", but I think she lacked good judgment. And really, I think that is a good part of what hurt her. People look at something like that and think "If she can't handle this problem effectively, should she be president?"

I repeat: The Dems need to start looking for their own mistakes.Or they couold just hire me to explain it all to them