2016 Presidential Election Thread

So what is your explanation for why the US intervened in Libya only after Qaddafi threatened to cancel all the oil contracts with the European companies? Is it because Obama loves oil companies?

What is your explanation for why Hillary or her staff edited the e-mails they turned over?

What is your explanation for why Hillary turned over paper copies of the e-mails and not the digital forms?

What is your explanation for why Hillary tried to wipe her entire e-mail server?

What is your explanation for why she refused to turn it over, forcing the FBI to seize it with a warrant?

What is your explanation for why she went on TV for weeks blaming Benghazi on an Internet video when she she'd told her own daughter and the heads of Egypt and Libya that it was a terrorist attack?

What is your explanation for why the State Department delayed almost a month before allowing the FBI to go into our consulate in Benghazi?

What is your explanation for why we didn't try to arrest the people responsible for the attack even as they gave interviews to the New York Times in the lobby of a swanky Benghazi hotel?

I'm all ears.

I'll defer to Hillary on all of that, as, unlike you, I don't presume to know things that aren't in evidence.

True. It's amazing you don't take flight with those Dumbo-esque appendages.

Why the fuck would you defer to someone who has committed repeated felonies by her own admissions? For example, Obama and the White House have said they were unaware she was using a private e-mail server. Not telling Obama what she was doing was a felony on her part, carrying a ten year jail sentence.

She's done no such thing, save in your deluded little mind. You, on the other hand, lie almost incessantly, so why would I believe anything you say regarding the matter?

Riiiiiigggghht! While I imagine a deluded nut-job like yourself could spin the rules enough to make that interpretation sound almost plausible, no one else buys that bullshit.

Sorry, but that dog won't hunt. It's a felony for a senior government official not to notify their superior of a potential security lapse. Her e-mail server was a huge security lapse, had no protection against hacking, and the NSA thinks it probably was hacked by Iran, North Korea, China, and Russia. It was also a felony to run a private, unsecured e-mail server, which she admitted she did about a dozen times now. Her server is an established fact. It might as well be a dead body in her closet. Her server contained over 700 classified e-mails. Having a classified e-mail on an unsecured network is also a felony. Someone had to move those e-mails from a secure network to an unsecured network is also a felony. A lot of her aids will have to go to prison for a long time for that one, because we jail people who aren't named Hillary for that offense. Some of them are rotting in jail even as we speak. Hillary needs to join them for doing things a hundred times worse.

Sorry, but Powell didn't violate any laws, nor did he keep any e-mails after he left office. Kerry might, in which case he'll go to jail too. Somebody will certainly talk to him about it.

And again, why did Hillary go to such lengths to keep her deals secret from the Obama Administration? How did she make $2 Billion dollars over the same period that Obama only made $3.2 million in salary?

Holy shit stop the presses!

People think a politician is a liar!

Is it too late to run with this for the Sunday edition?

It's not that they think Hillary is a liar, which she unequivocally is. It's what she lies about, which is her own unbelievable corruption that nets her billions as hundreds of thousands die in her schemes, each one of which nets her millions.

If during the Iraq War we found out that just tens of thousands of dollars in reconstruction contracts went to Dick Cheney's wife, both of them would be rotting in jail. Hillary rakes in money a thousandfold larger and Democrats don't blink an eye, and she does it over and over again, to the tune of $2 Billion as Americans are stuffed in caskets and she tells their parents that some random dude in California is responsible, and that she'll make sure he stays in prison. The only person who belongs in prison is her.

A politician profiting from people dying?! Holy shit call fucking Deep Throat this is bigger than Watergate.

In fairness to gturner on this, you've got to admit that investigations of Hillary Clinton have tended to be.

Hillary Clinton gets investigated. She and her people put up a staggering number of roadblocks to the investigation by all means possible.

Then after a prolonged period of these delaying tactics, Hillary and/or her people start carping that the "investigation has gone on so long" and thus should be ended.

Nobody died because of Watergate; it was just a burglary. But there was a cover-up and attempts to derail the investigation.

Benghazi is about an attempt to hide the nature of the attack on a US consulate that resulted in four deaths so that it wouldn't hurt Obama's re-election. The investigation didn't start until word started leaking out from people on the ground, including the Libyans, that there had been no protest that night and that nobody over there was upset about a Youtube video that none of them had heard of.

During that investigation it was discovered that Hillary was hiding key documents from both the Administration and Congress, and then we found out that she'd been illegally using her own e-mail server for official correspondence. In trying to get to the bottom of that she threw up ever more obstacles and stonewalled with more and more lies. As Congress tried to penetrate all her obfuscations and started getting a hold of e-mails that by law should already have been US government property, they started finding out that she was illegally accepting all kinds of money from foreign governments and foreign oil companies in return for granting them exemptions to US trade sanctions and the like.

It's much worse than Watergate.

There hasn't been a single new thing in three years yet Republicans already have the next investigation authorized before this one, the sixth, is even finished. It truly is nothing but a partisan witch hunt, just like their fake l whitewater witch hunt in the 1990's. There are no road blocks because there is nothing to block as all the details were known years ago.

After the tens if not hundreds of millions Republicans have wastes here they never again get to claim they give the slightest shit about deficits.

They have never ever, ever been even slightly trustworthy on budgets or the economy. I truly believe if they all died tomorrow America would be a better place and I am far from the only one so they should remember that before they start babble about wanting a new civil war.

A whole lot of people went to federal prison in the Whitewater "witch hunt". Unfortunately a bunch of them took the fall for Hillary. That pattern continued in scandal after scandal.

And almost nothing we're discussing regarding Hillary's e-mails was known years ago. Some of it wasn't even known last week. The State Department still hasn't finished releasing her e-mails, which it's only doing because a judge ordered them to or go to jail for obstruction.

Not a week goes by without him screaming "HILLAREEEEEEE!!!11!" Somebody buy the poor man some lozenges...

I reiterate my request to split this thread. Chardman and gturner, take it elsewhere.

Yes, because nobody should discuss Hillary in relation to the 2016 elections. It's what Hillary and the media insist on.

Democrats should have shown the Clinton's the door in the aftermath of the Lewinsky scandal, just letting them fade into the woodwork like so many other corrupt politicians (Clinton was only the second President ever to be impeached).

It's not like Democrats haven't done that with countless other politicians like Alcee Hastings (bribery), Rod Blagojevich (sentenced to 14 year for trying to sell Obama's senate seat), Dan Rostenkowski, Jim Traficant, William Jefferson (all bribery), Gary Hart (sleaze), John Edwards (sleaze), but too many got so sucked up into defending Bill that they won't stop protecting Hillary from her own scandalous behavior.

As Frontline put it

Ethics investigations have become routine and toothless. The Democratic Party has accepted corruption as the new normal. Like Captain Renault in Casablanca, it hardly even bothers putting on a show of outrage when its corruption is brought out into the light.

The Democratic Party has become comfortable in its disgrace. It no longer even bothers to deny the charges; instead like Obama or Clinton it shrugs off each charge and asks what difference does it make?

Hillary Clinton’s question at the Benghazi hearing gets right to the root of the problem with the Democratic Party. For her, what happened at Benghazi made no difference because she knew that she could not and would not be held accountable for it. That arrogant attitude has been the public face of the Obama Administration in response to every scandal.

The threats of Congressional investigations have become impotent in the face of a Government-Media complex blocking reporting on the latest scandal and leaving the Democratic Party free to be as corrupt as it wants to be.​

And the Clintons are the most successful at it in history, which is how they amassed hundreds of millions of dollars, much of which can't even be found by auditors. $50 million is just missing. Bribes? Offshore accounts? Nobody knows.

But honest Democrats who might have run in 2016 know that money is out there, and knew they didn't have a chance in hell against Hillary. She would happily destroy anyone in her quest for more money and more power.

Even if she wins, would would probably be a worst-case scenario for the long-term prospects of the Democrat party, she will likely be impeached and removed from office. You can't sell US foreign policy in return for bribes, speaking fees, and under the table payouts.

Team Bush is getting REALLY desperate. His debate attack on Rubio backfired and now his attempt at smearing Rubio via whispers isn't working either.

http://www.politico.com/story/2015/11/mitt-romney-jeb-bush-marco-rubio-215423

He is awhiney little twatwaffle, ain't he?

It is getting tiresome.

Lying and smear campaigns have always worked for the Bushes in the past. That is not desperation, that is business as usual. Remember in 2000 when George Jr smeared McCain claiming he had a half black love child?

True to form this caused McCain's polls to tank just days before the South Carolina primary.

I voted for him in the 2000 primaries because he might have a half black love child.

"brogressives"

http://www.salon.com/2015/10/30/let...ks_down_aide_for_gross_clinton_condescension/

You can shoot a guy in the face accidentally and get away with it. Have you ever hunted pheasants? You have a couple of seconds to react and hit a moving target - statistically dangerous hunting no matter how you slice it. And evidence? If all the evidence is covered up or not released then you can never be convicted of a crime. High up people (like Hillary) have enough connections and intimidation to make sure no evidence sees the light of day. Scotter Libby didn't have the power to manipulate the system as well as Hillary. Unless you were born yesterday you know this.

I can't argue with you there.

A look at why Sid Blumenthal matters

Blumenthal was an aide to President Bill Clinton from 1997 to 2001 and one of his most reliable hatchet men. Luca Brasi without the charm, Blumenthal had smeared Monica Lewinsky, Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr, Republicans — and, when the time came, presidential candidate Barack Obama himself. His nickname: “Sid Vicious.”

E-mails show Hillary Clinton wanted him hired at State. But still smarting from Blumenthal’s attacks during the campaign, the administration nixed the appointment.

Clinton was undeterred. Despite telling the Benghazi committee that Blumenthal was “not my adviser, official or unofficial,” records show the Clinton political machine paid him at least $320,000 a year.​

Then they give three examples of Blumenthal's involvement with Hillary, and one of those is Libya.

A LIBYAN CONTRACT

In Libya, Blumenthal promoted a deal sought by US defense contractor Osprey Global Solutions. According to its Web site, Osprey offers a wide variety of services — including “security, training, armament” — as well as the sale of assault rifles.

In an Oct. 7 letter to Benghazi committee ranking minority member Elijah Cummings, the panel’s chair, Trey Gowdy, noted Blumenthal “acknowledged a personal stake in Osprey.”

In hundreds of pages of e-mails, Gowdy noted, Blumenthal served as Secretary Clinton’s “primary adviser on Libya” and pushed her hard “to intervene” as Khadafy was going down.

But Blumenthal’s real motivation, Gowdy claims, was “money.”

Specifically, a deal to bring Osprey together with the fledgling transitional government in Libya.

Gowdy wrote that “at the same time Blumenthal was pushing Secretary Clinton to war in Libya, he was privately pushing” the Osprey deal in Libya.

Blumenthal lobbied for more aggressive military action. In a March 2011 e-mail, he urged “another round or two of ferocious bombing” of Khadafy’s army. He also advised Clinton to take credit for Khadafy’s eventual fall.

“You must go on camera,” he e-mailed her in August 2011, two months before the dictator’s gruesome death. “You must establish yourself in the historical record.”

Meanwhile, in a July 14, 2011, e-mail cited in the Gowdy letter, Blumenthal wrote Clinton that “Osprey will provide medical help, military training, organize supplies and logistics” to the post-Khadafy government.

He and his colleagues, Blumenthal wrote, “acted as honest brokers, putting this arrangement together through a series of connections, linking the Libyans to Osprey and keeping it moving.”

“Got it,” Clinton wrote Blumenthal. “Will follow up tomorrow. Anything else to convey?” Clinton forwarded the Blumenthal e-mail to a top aide, Jake Sullivan.​

So Obama was being dragged into intervention by the Secretary of State, and she was being dragged into intervention by the corporate profit motives of Sydney Blumenthal, a hatchet man Obama had forbade her from hiring.

I couldn't make it to the end of that article. It was just too smug, arrogant, and filled with snark so much so it makes much less likely to eventually hold my nose and check the box for Hillary Clinton. If she really wants to be president then she cannot play this crying to the media because someone said something mean to me game. As Truman said if you can't stand the heat then get out of the kitchen.

If you actually believed that, you wouldn't be hiding under the bed whimpering "HILLAREEEEEEE!!!11! "

So, Clown Car or sit this one out?

Quite true. I've known of a number of people who shot someone dead during a hunting season and never served a day in jail.

I remember one teenager who shot and killed a man in the deer woods and fled in panic after apparently performing CPR on the guy for a prolonged period (autopsy indicated this).

The teenager never served a day in jail. The police sent him home and the investigation subsequently rule in an accident.

Never could understand why you mock a group including several senators and governors or former governors as the "clown car".

It does not speak well of you.