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

nige1, on 2017-May-29, 09:38, said:

No, but it is a conspiracy theory to ask rhetorically how A+B+C can fail to equal D.

RedSpawn, on 2017-May-29, 10:12, said:

No one is claiming that it was fine for Bill Clinton to meet Lynch. But that is an eternity away from claiming some causal relationship to Comey, the Justice Department's decisions, and Hillary Clinton.

Beside, neither Bill Clinton nor Hillary Clinton is in office.

The question is what happened in the past election concerning Russian interference, and what, if any, are the ties between the Trump administration and Russia.

Winstonm, on 2017-May-29, 20:50, said:

Fair enough. The missing links regarding Brazile, Wasserman Schultz, and the Clinton tarmac scandal are as follows:

http://thegrio.com/2...ils-dnc-clinton
http://www.CNN.com/2...reer/index.html
http://insider.foxne...n-lynch-meeting
http://en.wikipedia....i/Loretta_Lynch

I think the 1st two links solidly establish that the Democratic National Committee loaded the political dice in Hillary's favor.

It sounds like we are focusing on what conclusions, if any, we can draw from the Phoenix tarmac rendezvous. I think we agree that at a minimum an "ex-parte communication" appears to take place while the AG is still investigating Hillary. This action seems both unethical and professionally irresponsible. And as a result, AG Loretta Lynch recused herself from the investigation and agreed to blindly accept the recommendations of the FBI probe of Hillary Clinton's email server scandal.

Please click the link to get a better legal explanation of "ex parte communication" http://www.criminald...e-communication .

So we have to look at motive. What motive would a Former President have to arrange an unscheduled rendezvous on a Phoenix tarmac at night with the Chief Prosecutor of the U.S. when his wife is under investigation and could face criminal indictment? What would compel him to do this under the cover of darkness and in a clandestine way with no official record taking place?

It creates the appearance that he is about to interfere with, influence, or obstruct judicial matters to protect his wife from pending criminal charges. That is not a quantum leap of supposition, but it is definitely a more plausible explanation than the one AG Lynch provided. Are we to believe that Former President Clinton went through this rigmarole to discuss family matters and children with the AG for 30 minutes? That explanation insults the public's intelligence.

And why would other FBI agents on the tarmac clarify that the rules of engagement are "no photos, no pictures, and no cell phones" as reported by Christopher Sign of ABC-15? Was FBI Director James Comey aware of this clandestine meeting and how it casts a shadow over the entire FBI investigation? What did he know and when did he know it? His integrity is on the line now that the AG's integrity and independence seem compromised.

There is too much at stake here to let government officials provide weak, Dr. Seuss explanations for unethical behaviors. The scales of justice should not be for sale to the highest bidder or to individuals with significant political clout.

By the way, you are right. Neither Bill nor Hillary are in office but yet the AG decides to delay her schedule for 30 minutes to meet with the Former President anyway. The fact that the AG didn't end the meeting abruptly shows the political gravitational pull Bill Clinton has on people and his former subordinates. And I refuse to disassociate Bill from Hillary because both have significant political currency in the D.C. establishment. They have an seemingly unbreakable union that is stronger and deeper than marital ties. It survives and thrives despite family, financial, legal, and political turmoil. They are One.

What strikes me about Brazile, Bill Clinton, Lynch, and many other items is the invocation of the total moron defense. One can misplay a complex hand and later say "I made a mistake". But sending planned questions to one of the participants in a debate? The head of the Justice Department in a private meeting with an ex-president when the spouse of this ex-president is running for office and is under investigation? "Mistake" does not really cover this. Back in the 1940s there was this song, "I didn't know the gun was loaded, and I'm so sorry my friend. I didn't know the gun was loaded, and I'll never never do it again". Or for another example, in How to Marry a Millionaire, Betty Grable is having dinner with a married man and he says "This is all innocent, isn't it?" and she replies "If it is, this is the first time I have ever encountered it in similar circumstances".

Plausible deniability might keep a person out of jail, and even implausible deniability might suffice if you have a good lawyer, but it hardly takes a cynical mind to see through it.

kenberg, on 2017-May-30, 06:56, said:

Agreed, but here's the rub and yes it's conjecture. I honestly believe most of the "characters" in this story line use play books that have worked before. So, they believed the same strategy (program) should work this time. However, they have missed a very important paradigm shift.

With the advent of technology, we the people, have swift, ubiquitous access to information. We can use that information as a wedge against "power play" moves that masterminds successfully used in the past despite the flowing stream of propaganda. Also, we have stronger and more coordinated networks courtesy of our technology so our ability to gain access to previously "private" information is tremendously larger. All of this helps intelligence gathering services in our journey toward a surveillance state, but it also empowers the populace. This is a double-edged sword.

No one was supposed to know about the tarmac meeting (regardless of what was actually discussed between AG Lynch and Former President Bill Clinton). Just because the FBI (agents) controlled the rules of engagement between the two parties under the cover of darkness doesn't mean they can control ALL of the possible outcomes of this unethical meeting. What was supposed to be a "harmless" private rendezvous entered the public domain and consciousness. They tried damage control to stem the tide, but it's too late, the damage was irreparable. And worse yet, their own horribly constructed narrative doesn't even reconcile with the optics!

I could choose to believe the misrepresentations I am told from government officials about this matter, but I'd rather believe a much simpler answer. We have just witnessed a sneak preview of how dirty the politics can get in the D.C. establishment!

RedSpawn, on 2017-May-30, 08:15, said:

If by "private information" you mean made-up stories and outright lies then you are indeed correct. The previous American election showed that for large swathes of the country, their ability to access accurate, independent information and be able to recognise it for that is close to nil.

RedSpawn, on 2017-May-30, 08:15, said:

Whatever else you believe about Bill Clinton, one thing he most certainly is not is stupid. He has enough experience to know that the chances of a meeting between two such high-profile characters going unseen during an election cycle were negligible. If you serious think that this was meant to be a secret rendezvous invisible to the media then you really are quite clueless of the way this game works I think.

Exactly what has changed and what hasn't is worth thinking about. Clearly we all get far more news now than we used to. Some pages back there was a reference that noted the innovation of a nightly 30 minute television program devoted to news. See https://en.wikipedia...BS_Evening_News

Growing up I read the paper, morning and evening, from when I was quite young. The landing at Inchon was when I was 11, for example, and I don't need the internet to tell me this. Otoh, I also delivered papers, also both morning and evening, and I remember the Saturday paper as being 14 pages. Including sports, comics, want ads, crosswords, etc. Wednesday was much larger, but this was because of the ads. So we got news, but limited news.

Now we are flooded. We could spend all our waking hours reading news. But most of us don't. Most of the grandkids seem to me to spend far less time than I did reading/watching the news. So there is more stuff out there, but whether people are better informed is far from clear.

Skepticism is real, and probably growing. People understand that politicians shade the truth, or at least try to frame it to benefit them, but they react strongly when these politicians act as if the people will believe anything. Of course some people will believe anything. Those people are in the bag, They are going to vote for the candidate no matter what. But other people react badly if Bill and Loretta explain that since they were at the same airport they just thought it would be neat to get together and talk about their grandkids for a while. If Bill and Loretta could not see that this might not look right, then they are total morons. And they are not total morons. So it looks bad. And it hurt Hillary badly. Self (or in this case spouse)-inflicted injury. This reaction hasn't changed, although I agree that in an earlier era people might not have learned of it. Bill and Loretta were aware that this was 2016, were they not?

It is some sort of arrogance, where the principals simply convince themselves that they can do whatever they wish, and so they will. They are then amazed when it goes badly. The Betty Grable comment "If this is Innocent it's the first time I have ever encountered it in similar circumstances" occurs to just about everyone, and they don't need to have seen the movie for them to think this way.

As for using a well-worn playbook, I offer the full version of the cited song.
https://www.youtube....h?v=SGJMtnRMpjM
If nothing else, it might be a fun glimpse into another era.

RedSpawn, on 2017-May-30, 03:22, said:

First of all, just a correction, is that the link you provide shows that the Clinton/Lynch meeting was not legally ex parte, as no judge or juror was present.

Now, as to your argument, let me propose a simple experiment followed by a question: assuming that the meeting was as Lynch-Clinton described, i.e., innocent, what could falsify that claim? I would say a witness, a tape of the conversation, or a video would all disprove the claim of innocence.

Now, as to the claim that this was a conspiracy to protect Hillary from prosecution: what would you say could falsify a conspiracy idea? Would you accept the same proofs that a conspiracy did not occur?

Zelandakh, on 2017-May-30, 09:08, said:

I think you missed what the American election was about. It's always about the economy as the global economy is making American jobs evaporate faster than they can be replaced. People who have worked their whole lives and watched their jobs evaporate before their very eyes feel that they have been sold a false bill of goods. They feel the rules of the game have been changed midstream and the American dream is now a moving target.

Further, the explosive growth of the internet is vertically integrating a lot of industries and ruthlessly decimating others. It is eliminating certain parties in the distribution chain so retail and "middle man" jobs are drying up as retailers close some of their retail outlets and opt for a regionally located warehouse with a small complement of staff to ship goods via internet.

Also, the populace is upset about the child-like infighting and political dysfunction of our government where politicians appear more beholden to lobbyists and special interests than governing of the people, by the people, and for the people. If you look at the last 16 years, both Democratic and Republican Presidents have run up our federal public debt by $13.8 trillion!

Yet we have repeated war mongering, ambiguous immigration enforcement, an all-out assault on the financial stability of the middle class, out of control military spending with annual unreliable DoD financial statements to conceal potential savings opportunities, increased mandatory entitlement spending for Social Security & Medicare as the biggest generation begins to retire from the work force, and the turtle-paced replacement and reinvestment in critical infrastructure. The Treasury and Federal Reserve Bank have misplaced priorities as they assume we can "quantitatively ease" and deficit-spend our way into economic prosperity. Silly rabbit, financial magic tricks are for kids.

Both sides of the aisle are having problems keeping appearances with their constituents. The Tea Party movement on the Republican side was born from the out of control spending by George W. Bush, the Iraq War intelligence failure, and the housing bubble massacre before the November 2008 election. In this last election, the media cast Bernie Sanders as the inexperienced anti-establishment hero on the Democratic side and Trump assumed the same role on the right--even though he was an alleged billionaire who fraternized with the D.C. establishment.

The election of Trump was a sordid way for the populace to give the middle finger to the establishment since the nomination process to the Presidency is fundamentally flawed and broken. They want more than the predictable career politician who caters to lobbyists and deficit spends to oblivion. But its very possible Trump will give us more of the same if we can get past the political kabuki theater of the last five months.

Finally, my main premise about the tarmac rendezvous is that one of the parties appears to be obstructing justice; therefore, we should reject the propaganda-like explanation provided by the AG. The rabbit hole on this matter may be even deeper than what I have provided and may involve planned leaks as well, but I am not required to reveal my entire line of thought on this matter. I just know the one supplied by our government doesn't pass the smell test; thus, we must do our due diligence and dig deeper.

Winstonm, on 2017-May-30, 11:20, said:

Red can answer for himself and you probably can guess my answer, but I'll lay it out anyway.

1. With nobody monitoring it, there it is no way to know what they talked about.

2. If it was all innocent they would have to be a couple of morons to not realize that it would look bad.

3. If they wanted to discuss the email investigation it is possible, although really stupid, that they thought that they could get away with it.


So we are left with two choices. The did something reckless although there was no purpose but they were just too stupid to know better, or they did something reckless because there was a purpose to it and they hoped that they could get away with it.

It's true that we will never know. We do know that it hurt her, and if Bill and Loretta did this on a whim, there are not words to describe how dumb it was.

RedSpawn, on 2017-May-30, 08:15, said:

Describing belief in "a much "simpler answer" is actually pretty funny when you break down what that means:

A) "Official version": Two old friends met on a runway and visited for 30 minutes about family and old times.

B) "Coonspiracy version": Two old friends, one beholding to the other, planned a clandestine meeting by arranging to land two large aircraft at the same airport in order to hide from view, when any number of truly secret methods of communicating were available, and in 30 minutes concocted a plan to protect Hillary from prosecution regardless of what the FBI investigation found, knowing that the head of the FBI was rigorously straightforward and unafraid to back down powerful people who tried power plays, and these two people who were so smart to be able to compromise the FBI and Justice Department were too stupid to keep their meeting a secret, knowing that if came to light that it would probably cost Hillary dearly.

Yet B is the simple answer? Also, the use of the typical conspiracy website close: how can we trust the government? doesn't help the argument

Now, with that said, I agree that the was a monumentally stupid thing to do - and it looks quite suspicious on its face. And it was the one act that probably did cost Clinton the election. None of that rises to the level of conspiracy.

If you have listened to John Dean, you would know that he time and again talks about Watergate being a series of blunders by the White House - not the well-orchestrated cover-up it is sometimes presented as. Smart people do stupid things all the time - there is no reason to believe that Clinton/Lynch were any less susceptible to random stupid acts than anyone else.

kenberg, on 2017-May-30, 11:43, said:

Ken, I think you are falling into a trap that easily gets all of us now and again - that this is a binary problem. But maybe it is something else, not right, but not concerning Hillary - so they could have deniability and not be lying. Maybe he wanted to know if there was anything new on the Russia-Trump collusion front. Maybe he wanted information about another investigation. Maybe he was asking for a job for someone he owned a political debt to. Perhaps he wanted to know the status of Hillary's investigation - secure in his belief in her innocence - but wondering why it was taking so long.

You get the point. It probably cost Hillary the election. He probably doesn't know why he did it.

But to say if it was not A then it had to be B is clearly wrong.

kenberg, on 2017-May-30, 11:43, said:

There are other times too that Bill Clinton did stuff that I found unbelievably stupid. On the other hand, I've done stuff myself that I immediately realized was unbelievably stupid (like ruffing prematurely when I could beat the contract by discarding). Of course, I've never been interested in running for office...

When it comes to doing unconscionable things and unbelievably stupid things, Donald Trump beats out the presidents before him by a quite a bit. Seems that's not really a bar to being elected.

PassedOut, on 2017-May-30, 12:06, said:

I also have dome unbelievably stupid things. No debate on that score. But I imagine the following.
Becky is being investigted by the FBI and the Justice Department.
I am at an airport.
My old friend Lorreta Lynch is at the airport. gee, I wonder ow het grandkids are. I think I will have a private chat with my friend Lorreta.

No. As the old expression goes, I may be dumb but I am not stupid.

I can only offer one actual experience. At one time I held a position in the math department that gave me considerable influence over what textbooks would be used for which courses. Shortly after assuming this position someone came around from a text book company and offered me a good fee for reviewing a new text. Without thinking, I said sure. Within hours, I came to me senses and called him back. I explained that I would be happy to accept such an offer as soon as my term in this position ended. Of course I could render an impartial decision about texts to be used, . But you might or might not believe this, and that's the point. I did not want anyone wondering how my decisions were made. It took me a few hours to realize this because such an event is rare for me, I rarely have power over anything. It is not at all rare for a person with political power to encounter such a conflict. It is inconceivable to me that such a thing did not occur to someone as experiences as Bill Clinton. I regard this as impossible.

Winstonm, on 2017-May-30, 11:52, said:

See my response above to PassedOut

Winstonm, on 2017-May-30, 11:20, said:

The Prosecutor and Judge are both Department of Justice agents of the principal which is the sovereign entity of the United States of America. Ex parte applies to both. But let's move beyond mere conjecture.

Please click the following link http://congressional...60/document.php for information about the McDade-Murtha Amendment, 28 U.S.C. 530 B which contains a "no contact rule" for state and federal prosecutors. This federal law was passed by Congress to hopefully curtail prosecutorial misconduct.

Under the no contact rule, they suggest that the Attorney General should only be talking to Hillary Clinton's lawyer not Bill Clinton even if the contact occurs pre-arrest and pre-indictment. Again, the judge and prosecutor are to avoid even the slightest appearance of impropriety. The Department of Justice doesn't like this amendment, but those are the ethical standards and federal laws by which we must abide. We picked a very contentious area of the law.

kenberg, on 2017-May-30, 12:33, said:

You are still missing my point, Ken. Does (A) being impossible automatically mean (B), a conspiracy, occurred? That is my point.

Updated proverb: Be sceptical of ascribing to unlikely coincidence what you can, instead, attribute to stupidity, ignorance, deadly sin, or (usually) all of these. .

Winstonm, on 2017-May-30, 12:53, said:

Of course not. We will never know if a conspiracy occurred. This means that if it comes to a jury trial I will acquit. If saying I would acquit if on a jury suffices, then yes, I would acquit.

RedSpawn, on 2017-May-30, 12:52, said:

Now find a reason for Jared Kushner to clandestinely meet with the Russian Ambassador, have a second clandestine meeting with a representative from a Russian bank that is sanctioned in the U.S., and then for Kuchner to suggest to the Russian Ambassador that they allow Kushner a clandestine back channel contact with the Kremlin using Russia's communication systems.