2016 elections - because it's never too early

[CountDeMoney]

If Comey a'int careful, they'll find him hanging in a freezer truck ala Goodfellers.

Oh, he knows exactly what he's doing.  11 days left?  The nature of these emails aren't even going to be hinted at before the election.  They're just going to be laying out there, on the front page, every day.  Just the way they want it.

[Zoupa]

Can a 'Murican explain to me why Democrats have a net advantage (nowadays and looking forward) in terms of Presidential elections but struggle so much in Congress?

The Senate I can understand but Congress? What's going on there? It can't be all gerrymandering can it?

[Fate]

Pretty much. Democrat votes are concentrated in urban districts. When you're winning a place like Baltimore city with 90% of the vote, 39% is wasted.

[CountDeMoney]

The Senate I can understand but Congress? What's going on there? It can't be all gerrymandering can it?

To a great degree, yes; excellent piece in this past Sunday's New York Times on this very subject, Z.  Good read on the subject.

Go Midwest, Young Hipster: If you really want Democrats to win in Iowa, move there.
 

[HVC]

How'd the democrats let that happen? Or are they old districts that just turned out that way due to demographic drift?

[The Minsky Moment]

Why?

As I understand it, the FBI is investigating Senor Danger for sexting with underage girls.  They seize his phones.  They find Clinton emails not previously disclosed.  Comey decides they have to take a closer look at the emails, but is worried that his previous testimony to Congress is no longer true.  So he sends the briefest possible note, on a Friday afternoon, to congress.

Hard to know where to begin here

First we have this thing in the US called the 4th amendment and it remains unexplained how a warrant presumably directed to Weiner's texts to an underage girl captured emails about the Secretary of State.  Last I checked HRC was above the age of consent and i doubt Anthony was sexting her.

Second it's not Comeys call to make, this kind of communication with Congress is supposed to go through the office whose entire purpose is to handle communications with Congress

Third the whole premise is BS.  No one was going to go after Comey for perjury because he truthfully said an inquiry was complete and then many weeks later authorized his people to take a look at an entirely new set of emails that came to their attention after the testimony..  It is a pretextual excuse offered to evade responsibility for following protocols

Fourth there was no need to do it publically .  He could have confidentially informed the chairman and ranking member.

This is actually a great illustration why the rule against commenting on investigations exist.  The disclosure is totally uninformative.  But it creates a huge cloud of stink and suspicion.  A cloud that the putative target can't dispel or respond it because she doesn't even know what it is, or even if there is anything at all to repose to in the first place.

And sure enough, because the disclosure just raises a bunch more questions, we are already seeing the inevitable flood of additional unauthorized leaks from unnamed "sources"

Complete clusterfuck that could have been avoided by following protocol.

[Fate]

How'd the democrats let that happen? Or are they old districts that just turned out that way due to demographic drift?

I'm sure there's a million reasons, but I remember reading that the Voting Rights Act had some part to play in the current situation. The act forced the creation of majority-minority voting districts where blacks or Hispanic candidates had a chance at winning a contested election.

The more proximate cause is that Democrats got decimated in state level legislatures under Obama's tenure and state house Republican majorities got to control redistricting after the 2010 census.

[The Minsky Moment]

NYT now has story up with on record quote from Comey saying he did this because "I feel an obligation to do so". Not HAVE an obligation, FEEL an obligation.

Did I mention this is supposedly the Director of the FBI

What a fiasco

[CountDeMoney]

If you monkeys spent the time to read the Politico Magazine piece I posted recently, you'd know that it's all probably already out there--

http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/09/hillary-clinton-emails-2016-server-state-department-fbi-214307

Abedin, for her part, found that it was difficult to print from the State Department email system, so she'd often forward emails to her Yahoo email, Clintonmail.com accounts, or even another account that she'd previously used to support the campaign activities of her husband, Anthony Weiner. And there was a lot to print: Clinton didn't like reading long emails—the BlackBerry font was too small—so she'd often forward such stuff to staff to print. Deluged by tasks and information, Abedin reported that she'd often print and pass along documents to Clinton "without reading them." The FBI also uncovered hundreds of emails sent to one of the Clinton family's staff on the presidentclinton.com domain requesting that he print emails for her to read. Printing problems dogged Clinton's team as they traveled the world, too. While special Mobile Communications Teams would outfit hotel rooms overseas with computers hooked up to the State Department network for Abedin or Hanley to use, the FBI found, "it was not uncommon for [aide Monica] Hanley to use her personal Gmail account to print from the mobile DoS unclassified terminal because even though she was using a DoS computer, the DoS connection was unreliable."

...

The next year, when her staff tried to upgrade her to an iPad 2, they had even less success. Abedin emailed Cooper on August 18, 2011, saying simply, "She doesn't like ipad 2." Clinton instead gifted the brand new device to Monica Hanley. There was no mistake that Hanley got a hand-me-down: When she logged on for the first time, the device still said "H's iPad," so Hanley wiped it clean before using it. As Hanley told the FBI, "It was not uncommon for Clinton to gift Abedin and Hanley with some of her personal items she no longer wanted."

Inert grenade thrown and "Fire in the hole!" shouted anyway.

[Zoupa]

The Senate I can understand but Congress? What's going on there? It can't be all gerrymandering can it?

To a great degree, yes; excellent piece in this past Sunday's New York Times on this very subject, Z.  Good read on the subject.

Go Midwest, Young Hipster: If you really want Democrats to win in Iowa, move there.

Hmmmph. Just read it. There must be something else than "move there"... If there isn't then I can see both parties moving to let more and more powers and jurisdictions go to the individual states.

No system is perfect, but currently the polarization is getting into a feedback loop.

[The Minsky Moment]

So huma has an email account on Weiner's laptop.  But clearly it is not suspected that she would be communicating lewd messages to minors.  So why were the people supposedly investigating that reading those files?

[HVC]

She can't use an iPad and you want her to be your president? For Shame CdM

[alfred russel]

How'd the democrats let that happen? Or are they old districts that just turned out that way due to demographic drift?

I'm sure there's a million reasons, but I remember reading that the Voting Rights Act had some part to play in the current situation. The act forced the creation of majority-minority voting districts where blacks or Hispanic candidates had a chance at winning a contested election.

The more proximate cause is that Democrats got decimated in state level legislatures under Obama's tenure and state house Republican majorities got to control redistricting after the 2010 census.

Living patterns also favor republican districting. If it is a 50-50 country, at a high level it isn't too inaccurate to say it is a 60-40 republican country excluding the big cities which are 80-20 democrat.

[CountDeMoney]

NYT now has story up with on record quote from Comey saying he did this because "I feel an obligation to do so". Not HAVE an obligation, FEEL an obligation.

Did I mention this is supposedly the Director of the FBI

What a fiasco

Yup; the Director just un-FBI'd the FBI.  So much for non-partisan objectivity when it comes to investigations.  J. Edgar would be proud. 

Read the letter Comey sent to FBI employees explaining his controversial decision on the Clinton email investigation

To all:

This morning I sent a letter to Congress in connection with the Secretary Clinton email investigation.  Yesterday, the investigative team briefed me on their recommendation with respect to seeking access to emails that have recently been found in an unrelated case.  Because those emails appear to be pertinent to our investigation, I agreed that we should take appropriate steps to obtain and review them.

Of course, we don't ordinarily tell Congress about ongoing investigations, but here I feel an obligation to do so given that I testified repeatedly in recent months that our investigation was completed. I also think it would be misleading to the American people were we not to supplement the record.  At the same time, however, given that we don't know the significance of this newly discovered collection of emails, I don't want to create a misleading impression.  In trying to strike that balance, in a brief letter and in the middle of an election season, there is significant risk of being misunderstood, but I wanted you to hear directly from me about it.

Jim Comey

[CountDeMoney]

She can't use an iPad and you want her to be your president? For Shame CdM

It's like watching my mother with Dad's iPad.

"But where's the 'X' to close the thingy?"
"There isn't one, because it's an Apple."
"Well that's stupid. Here, fix it."