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Reblogged:Is Clinton the "Law and Order" Candidate?

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Two pieces I ran into today show us just how hostile a political landscape we now inhabit.

First, Tammy Bruce arguesthat the various anti-Trump riots aren't animated by leftist sympathy so much as orchestrated by leftists:

Make no mistake -- these supposed anti-Trump riots are not organic nor are they natural; they are the result of leftist organizing using paid stooges. Fox News reported in March a Craigslist ad posted by Bernie Sanders supporters offering $15 an hour to protest at a Trump rally in Wisconsin. They would also provide shuttle bus transport, parking if you needed it and ready-made signs. [links dropped]
In a sense, it is good news that these protests don't reflect any widespread tendency towards violent conduct. Indeed, they will probably benefit the Republican nominee, making him look like a voice of calm amid the storm. Too bad that nominee is Donald Trump, who the Washington Post notes, is ignorant at best of the law he may be charged with executing and (as I suspect) contemptuous of rule of law at worst:
The fact that Mr. Trump has not filed such a motion [regarding alleged bias by a judge hearing a case against him] says a lot about his attitude toward the rule of law and stable political processes -- more, in a sense, than his bigoted attacks on the judge themselves. When things don't go his way, Mr. Trump's first resort is not to use options for redress the system provides; it is, rather, to blame his problems on an enemy and whip up public hostility against him, in crude ethnic terms, if it seems advantageous. One implication of Mr. Trump's words, that he is the one with a bias, against Americans of Latino heritage, is bad enough; possibly worse is the ominous signal his behavior sends about how a President Trump would deal with any sort of opposition he might encounter. [links dropped]
So we have a candidate who will seek to intimidate opponents (but who might preserve political institutions she thinks can benefit her) versus one who doesn't know or care about our institutions. As bad as Clinton is, I think that under her, at least our institutions will suffer less damage than they will under Trump. Furthermore, at least Clinton won't be mistaken as an ally by Americans who value freedom and are suspicious of the left, whereas Trump apparently is, in large part due to the efforts of the left.

-- CAV

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Let's put it this way: the US, currently, is among the world leaders in terms of the rule of law, property rights and freedom from corruption. And yes, that doesn't mean it's an ideal system, but it's better than most other systems.

There is no reason to expect Clinton to make that imperfect system any worse. She's basically the same as Obama (slightly better, probably), Bush, or her husband.

But there is every reason to expect Trump to be very, very different. He has been threatening to use third world tactics throughout his campaign. And the end result of third world politics is a corrupt country, where force rules supreme over any law.

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Trump would be different, but they're comparatively similar. Trump is fascistic, but lacks the ability to implement or get people to do it how he wants. All bark, no bite. Hillary is certainly terrible too, she's a criminal and a threat to national security. Either Trump ruins diplomatic relations, or Hillary obliterates national secrets and doesn't care. Either of the two is absolutely horrible.

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9 hours ago, Eiuol said:

... Trump is fascistic, but lacks the ability to implement or get people to do it how he wants. All bark, no bite. ...

Depends on what you mean. Trump may never build a wall, will almost certainly not deport 11 million people, and won't raiser tariffs anywhere near his promises. He doesn't really have deep, durable opinions on anything: the ultimate pragmatist. However, I judge him to be someone who would take a risk to get a short-term outcome, at the risk of the long-term. And, I'm pretty sure he cares less about getting some gain by undermining some long-term principle. 

Existing politicians have definitely set precedent for Trump. The IRS under Obama appears to have let partisan bias guide its investigation into organizations claiming tax-exemptions. Obama's treasury department has stopped U.S. businesses from relocating outside the U.S. by changing the ground-rules retroactively. I'm pretty confident Trump will take this type of behavior to a new low. Ordering opponents to be hounded by the IRS is something that would seem natural to him, and in his "larger good". [Nixon is supposed to have done so too.] More direct pressure on businessmen not towing the line is right up his alley. 

I share DreamWeaver's fears that Trump will take us toward more third-world style displays of power, significantly faster than Hillary would. [Despite all the bad press from the GOP, despite her rhetoric, and in contradiction to her past, Hillary has evolved toward very centrist ideologies -- by U.S. standards.]

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Fascistic as in some things he says ring of fascism, but he is hardly an actual fascist in practice or philosophy. That's part of my point: his bark is terrible, his bite is only annoying. I'm not aware of any evidence of Trump following through on any of his threats in any area of his life, except suing people or using eminent domain. Lots of big talk, barely any action. His displays of power are weak and comical. Hillary I see as bad for different reasons, like ineffectual foresight and lacking foreign policy ability for new threats.

Edited by Eiuol
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8 hours ago, softwareNerd said:

I share DreamWeaver's fears that Trump will take us toward more third-world style displays of power, significantly faster than Hillary would. [Despite all the bad press from the GOP, despite her rhetoric, and in contradiction to her past, Hillary has evolved toward very centrist ideologies -- by U.S. standards.]

I know I had a Kanji avatar at one time, but I think you meant Nicky here.

 

On 6/7/2016 at 1:46 PM, Nicky said:

But there is every reason to expect Trump to be very, very different. He has been threatening to use third world tactics throughout his campaign. And the end result of third world politics is a corrupt country, where force rules supreme over any law.

 

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On 6/1/2016 at 0:53 AM, Nicky said:

(especially the US, if Hillary Clinton wins the elections...which she will)

This article ran back in March. There have been a couple of articles floated since that suggest Gary North may have something here, but nothing to really bite into.

November 2016 Depends on One Man. It Is Not Trump.

He  [James B. Comey] knows how the Department of Justice works.

If he decides that Hillary Clinton committed acts that endangered the security of the United States, he can submit this evidence to the Attorney General.

This places a very hot potato in Loretta Lynch’s lap. She will drop it into President Obama’s lap within 24 hours.

If Obama does nothing, Comey waits 30 days. Then he calls a press conference.

Goodbye, Hillary. Hello . . .

This depends on when he does this.

If he does it before the Democrats’ convention [July 25th-28th], Sanders will win the nomination. If he does it after the convention, the Republican will win the election. That probably means Trump.

Do you find any merit in this?

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1 hour ago, DonAthos said:

And you believe that this would remain true if he had the power of the modern US Presidency to back up his bluster?

Yes. He made most of his money from his loud bark, as in he uses charm and swindling, opting for the safety of words for ratings and attention. I bet he would be scared out of his mind if he actually had to follow through - he never had to follow through in his life before! We know this because of all the times he takes back what he says and changing the meaning of what he said in the first place. If we look at actual dictatorships, or actual fascist governments, the people do what they say, don't contradict themselves (regardless of how bad it sounds), and aren't afraid to actually kill people or expound their philosophy clearly. This is all before they are even in political positions of power.

 

 

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2 hours ago, Eiuol said:

Yes. He made most of his money from his loud bark, as in he uses charm and swindling, opting for the safety of words for ratings and attention. I bet he would be scared out of his mind if he actually had to follow through - he never had to follow through in his life before! We know this because of all the times he takes back what he says and changing the meaning of what he said in the first place. If we look at actual dictatorships, or actual fascist governments, the people do what they say, don't contradict themselves (regardless of how bad it sounds), and aren't afraid to actually kill people or expound their philosophy clearly. This is all before they are even in political positions of power.

You seem much more confident about Trump's nature than I feel. If Trump were elected (which I would like to say is unlikely, but then, nearly everyone thought the same about his winning the Republican nomination -- at first), I don't expect we would turn into a dictatorship overnight... or even in four years.

But in trying to imagine any incarnation of a Trump presidency, whether he is mostly full of the same sort of rhetoric and bluster, or whether he actually tries to push through some of his absurd ideas (armed with the precedent of former Executive Actions), I see nothing but bad results. I don't think he cares about any notion like "liberty"; I don't think he even understands such a thing.

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@Eiuol and DonAthos
I thought Trump would have run his course by now, or turned to an independent ticket to be used as a scapegoat for which ever party lost. Either way, in the minds of many people, a dictatorship isn't likely to happen here in the good ol' U.S. of A.

Perhaps the most craven attitude of all is the one expressed by the injunction “don’t be certain.” As stated explicitly by many intellectuals, it is the suggestion that if nobody is certain of anything, if nobody holds any firm convictions, if everybody is willing to give in to everybody else, no dictator will rise among us and we will escape the destruction sweeping the rest of the world. This is the secret voice of the Witch Doctor confessing that he sees a dictator, an Attila, as a man of confident strength and uncompromising conviction. (Lexicon)

Trump, as the pragmatist, appears to be the "nobody holds any firm convictions," portion of this excerpt. However, when he states things, he does so in language as if he is certain. Is this a cornerstone in a pathway for the man of confident strength and uncompromising conviction?

You who’re depraved enough to believe that you could adjust yourself to a mystic’s dictatorship and could please him by obeying his orders—there is no way to please him; when you obey, he will reverse his orders; he seeks obedience for the sake of obedience and destruction for the sake of destruction. (Lexicon)

So Trump gets told that a wall can't be built, or that the 11 million people can't be extradited. If it could be done, would it end there?

It is a sad sort of irony that I looked these two quotes up on the searchable CD, and subsequently find them correlated under "Dictatorship" in the Lexicon.

 

It is in posts like these my cynicism  kicks in, and I sometimes lose sight of what Nicky puts forth here:

On 6/7/2016 at 1:46 PM, Nicky said:

And yes, that doesn't mean it's an ideal system, but it's better than most other systems.

In terms of Peikoff's History of Philosophy parts I and II, philosophy is the motor of history. Considering Objectivism as a potential transmission (belt), could it just be that the transmission has only been recently shifted into second gear—considering the recent passing of its discoverer? I find it interesting to note that Peikoff emphasizes that skepticism is at a historical high water mark, something he viewed as an indicator of readiness for a new philosophy (not necessarily Objectivism) to begin its upswing.

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12 hours ago, DonAthos said:

I see nothing but bad results. I don't think he cares about any notion like "liberty"; I don't think he even understands such a thing.

I agree. I find that Trump isn't as scary as people make him out to be, but also that Hillary is worse than she looks. So on balance, I say both are just as bad.

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On 6/8/2016 at 11:54 PM, dream_weaver said:

 

This article ran back in March. There have been a couple of articles floated since that suggest Gary North may have something here, but nothing to really bite into.

November 2016 Depends on One Man. It Is Not Trump.

He  [James B. Comey] knows how the Department of Justice works.

If he decides that Hillary Clinton committed acts that endangered the security of the United States, he can submit this evidence to the Attorney General.

This places a very hot potato in Loretta Lynch’s lap. She will drop it into President Obama’s lap within 24 hours.

If Obama does nothing, Comey waits 30 days. Then he calls a press conference.

Goodbye, Hillary. Hello . . .

This depends on when he does this.

If he does it before the Democrats’ convention [July 25th-28th], Sanders will win the nomination. If he does it after the convention, the Republican will win the election. That probably means Trump.

Do you find any merit in this?

No. The details of the Clinton e-mail "scandal" have been public for a while now. What would one more press conference, repeating the same information, accomplish?

It's not a threat to her candidacy.

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Comey would need to come forth with something more concrete than just repeating what is already out there. Agreed.
Since I posted this, the Wall Street Journal ran a piece yesterday that was pretty much an overview and rehash of the known details.

Today, the sympathy violins struck up a tune of Slick Willey bragging about sleeping with 2000 women. Bill Clinton is 69 years old. If he started having sexual relations at age 16, that leaves a span of 69-16=53 years. 53 years divided by 2000 women is (I know, that depends on what is, is) 0.0265 multiplied by 365.25 days in a year results in an average of a different woman every 9.68 days. If you subtract 8 years of presidency, campaign time etc., it only reveals a shallowness of character.

Set aside her qualifications for the position, vote for her because she "deserves" better than what Billy-boy has put her through. God!—I hate this type of politics!

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I'd love to see an independent ticket this year. Bet it would have a chance. The key would be to beat both Trump and Hillary in a race to the middle. And it wouldn't be that hard: Trump is on the record with a bunch of lunatic right wing statements that will be played on a loop in political ads this fall, so he's definitely not convincing anybody that he's a moderate. That would leave Hillary...she wouldn't be as easy to out-middle as Trump, but she's on record with some pretty far left statements as well (mainly on guns, but also some economic stuff).

Fun fact about the electoral college: if no one wins the 270 majority, the winner doesn't become the President. The House gets to pick the next President out of the three front runners, instead.

So all an independent would need to do is win a few midwestern states (Utah would be the most obvious, because they really don't care for either Trump or Hillary, but there might be a few more), and cause a stale mate. Then he'd be the favorite to win the House vote by mentioning God and Obamacare a few times in a row, just before the vote.

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3 hours ago, Nicky said:

... Fun fact about the electoral college: if no one wins the 270 majority, the winner doesn't become the President. The House gets to pick the next President out of the three front runners, instead.

So all an independent would need to do is win a few midwestern states (Utah would be the most obvious, because they really don't care for either Trump or Hillary, but there might be a few more), and cause a stale mate. Then he'd be the favorite to win the House vote by mentioning God and Obamacare a few times in a row, just before the vote.

The tough part is this: one needs not just 5-10% of the popular vote, but one needs to win specific electoral votes. In 2000, Ralph Nader got 2.7% of the popular vote, in 1996 Ross Perot got 8.4% of the popular vote, in 1992 Perot got 18.9% of the popular vote. Each time, they got zero electoral college seats. One has to go back to George Wallace in 1968: he got 13.5% of the popular vote, but it was concentrated in the 5 states that he won. 

I heard the NeverTrump people in the GOP were thinking along these lines: put up someone who can actually win some delegates in targeted geographical areas. I think that's somewhat plausible (imagine Romney in Utah and a few other places). I don't think the Libertarians can get that geographical focus, even if they cross 10% of the popular vote.

Even if that were to happen, I suspect such a third party candidate would not get the vote of the house. The concept of democracy is so deeply ingrained that there would be significant popular resistance to the idea of voting for a person who won a small percentage of the overall seats. Congressmen would be under pressure to vote with their party or to abstain. In the end, the odds favor the GOP/Dem candidate. In addition, someone like Romney would be hesitant to run and win the presidency on those terms: as the guy who "stole" the job. That's probably why Kristol had to reach for an unknown like French, and even he backed down.

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1 hour ago, softwareNerd said:

The tough part is this: one needs not just 5-10% of the popular vote, but one needs to win specific electoral votes. In 2000, Ralph Nader got 2.7% of the popular vote, in 1996 Ross Perot got 8.4% of the popular vote, in 1992 Perot got 18.9% of the popular vote. Each time, they got zero electoral college seats. One has to go back to George Wallace in 1968: he got 13.5% of the popular vote, but it was concentrated in the 5 states that he won.

I think that an independent candidate could win some red states fairly easily, because, according to polls, almost half of Trump voters will be holding their noses while voting for him ...the tough part would be also winning some swing or blue states, to stop Clinton from getting to 270.

It's definitely tough to get any state away from an establishment candidate like Clinton, but if it's ever gonna happen, this is the year. I don't think there'll ever be two candidates this weak again.

Edited by Nicky
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2 hours ago, softwareNerd said:

Even if that were to happen, I suspect such a third party candidate would not get the vote of the house. The concept of democracy is so deeply ingrained that there would be significant popular resistance to the idea of voting for a person who won a small percentage of the overall seats. Congressmen would be under pressure to vote with their party or to abstain.

The reason why I think an independent candidate would likely win is because Hillary Clinton would have NO CHANCE. Dems are a minority in the House. By enough that there's zero chance Hillary wins. If they vote along party lines, that allows Republicans to decide the next President. And they would choose Trump. Nothing anyone could do to stop it.

That's why Dems wouldn't do that. Instead, they would try to recruit the independents (yes, the House has a few of those) and as many anti-Trump Republicans as they can, and get together behind the independent candidate. And they would face no backlash for it, they would be hailed as heroes for preventing what EVERYONE on the left agrees would be a catastrophic Trump presidency. I think even the Clintons would (in private, so as to not scare away Republican allies) support the ploy. So would Obama, and every notable Democrat. And you know Nancy Pelosi has a big enough ego to want to hang a big "I made that guy POTUS" trophee on her wall.

As for the Republican "rebels", you wouldn't need that many, because (as far as I read, at least) this isn't a straight up vote. Instead, each state's delegation gets one vote (so, in close states, one or two independents or Republican "rebels" can flip the results). I haven't done the research, but my best guess is that a dozen or so key Republicans, along with the Dems and independents, would be enough to to form an anti-Trump coalition.

And this isn't a rare practice...this is usually how stuff gets done in Washington. So it's definitely not something Dems would shy away from, when faced with the Trumpocalypse.

Edited by Nicky
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  • 4 months later...
On 6/10/2016 at 6:32 AM, Nicky said:

No. The details of the Clinton e-mail "scandal" have been public for a while now. What would one more press conference, repeating the same information, accomplish?

It's not a threat to her candidacy.

With less than a week until the polls open, once again Comey is making headlines. The net has been cast a little wider this time to include  top Clinton aide Huma Abedin, and to add an investigation into the Clinton Foundation. The FBI and Justice Dept are not seeing eye to eye. Per an evaluative line in a Washington Post article

If Clinton is elected, Comey might have to contend with one or more investigations involving a sitting president. If she is not, he might face criticism for upending her bid.

He seems to be adding just enough spice to make this little drama come across as another act in an ongoing play.


Threat or not, your candidness in these matters has been refreshing.

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The New York Times, and The Federalist Papers Project both report Hillary Clinton is blaming James Comey for her lost bid. Preferring how the latter source stated it:

This time she’s pointing a finger directly at FBI director James Comey. You would think she would be grateful that Comey pardoned her for her illegal mishandling of classified information, and maybe she would be if she actually won the election. But, since she didn’t, apparently Comey’s letter that cleared her once again just two days before the election actually ruined her.

Will Gary North be touting his vindication on this call?

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