Tag Archives: Hillary Clinton

International news, national news

Petraeus gets a pass for mishandling classified info?

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Wait just a minute!

Donald J. Trump said Hillary Clinton should be in jail over the way she used a personal e-mail server. Now he’s considering a retired Army general for secretary of state who actually pleaded guilty to mishandling information and lying about it to federal investigators?

David Petraeus is being considered for the State job.

He’s a dedicated and highly decorated retired military officer. He served his country with great distinction. However, he got caught doing something he shouldn’t have done and then admitted to doing it.

Does the president-elect look the other way as it regards the general while insisting that his former campaign opponent should have been locked up?

http://www.politico.com/story/2016/11/donald-trump-david-petraeus-231909

As Politico reports: “The very consideration of Petraeus for a senior position reveals that the Trump campaign’s rhetoric regarding Hillary Clinton was totally bogus,” said Steven Aftergood, a specialist on government classification at the Federation of American Scientists. “Candidate Trump was generating hysteria over Clinton’s handling or mishandling of classified information that he likely never believed or took seriously.”

What am I missing?

national news, political news

President-elect shows how to win ugly

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Even in victory, the president-elect of the United States is continuing to defame, degrade and denigrate elections officials.

Donald J. Trump now contends — without a shred of substance — that millions of voters in California and New Hampshire cast their ballots illegally. He presumes, of course, that the illegal ballots were cast in favor of Hillary Rodham Clinton, who Trump defeated to win the presidential election.

With victory in hand, Trump now has decided to ratchet up the absurd, baseless and idiotic assertion that the election was “rigged” to favor his opponent.

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/trump-claims-with-no-evidence-that-%e2%80%98millions-of-people%e2%80%99-voted-illegally/ar-AAkP3mF?li=BBnb7Kz

Does this clown have any proof of what he’s alleging? No. He doesn’t.

He is continuing this ridiculous habit of making allegations with no basis upon which to back them up.

Trump’s list of people and groups that he’s insulted and defamed certainly must include the state and local elections officials he now has asserted are corrupt.

Can you even imagine what this guy would be saying if he had lost the election? He won it fairly and openly. Trump is going to be the next president.

Why in the world he makes these ridiculous assertions is totally beyond many of us.

You’ve heard of sore losers, right? We’re now witnessing the antics of a seriously sore winner.

national news, political news

Just maybe Trump should consider demanding a recount

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I’ve been rolling this around for a while.

Donald J. Trump has said two things about this effort to recount ballots in Wisconsin. They seem to be in direct contradiction with each other.

He calls former Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein’s request for a recount a “scam.” He dismisses the effort as futile, pointless and that it won’t change a thing. Trump will still win.

Then he said, via Twitter, that he would be leading the popular vote nationally if you deduct the millions of votes he said were cast “illegally.” He currently trails by 2.2 million votes nationally.

Do you follow that? Neither do I.

If Trump believes millions of ballots were cast illegally — and if he assumes most of them were cast in favor of Hillary Rodham Clinton — shouldn’t he demand a recount as well?

national news

Lack of election ‘acceptance’ bites Trump

A New York City election ballot shows the names of Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton and Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump on Tuesday, Nov. 8, 2016. (AP Photo/Patrick Sison)

Jill Stein won’t accept the outcome of the results that produced the election of Donald J. Trump as the next president of the United States.

No, the Green Party presidential candidate won’t go there — just as Trump himself said he wouldn’t do if he lost the election.

Stein has asked Wisconsin officials to recount the ballots in the state Trump won. The president-elect has called the recount effort a “scam.”

Here’s the fascinating turn, though: Trump’s campaign staffers are just all aghast — aghast, I tell you — that Democrats and others just won’t accept the result.

I’m one of those who didn’t want the outcome we got, but who has accepted the result. That is why I remain dubious about this recount effort. It won’t change the outcome. Trump will be able to take the oath of office on Jan. 20. Stein, though, wants to ensure the ballot-counting was done correctly, which is why — she says — she is getting the ballots recounted.

I believe, though, that Trump and his team ought to keep their heads down over this recount business. Back when the media and so-called “experts” predicted that Hillary Clinton would win, Trump said precisely the same thing that Stein and others are saying now.

Winning and losing a bitter political campaign do have this way of changing perspective.

national news, political news

Pollsters need a careful revamping of their methods

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If it sounds a bit familiar that public opinion pollsters are going back to the drawing boards after missing the call of the 2016 presidential election …

It’s because you’ve heard it before.

http://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/307111-pollsters-go-back-to-drawing-board

Virtually ever “reputable” poll had Hillary Rodham Clinton winning the presidency on Nov. 8. Some had her winning by a fairly comfortable margin. She, of course, didn’t. Donald J. Trump is now preparing to become the next president.

Why is this familiar?

I recall the 2004 election in which President Bush won a second term over Sen. John F. Kerry. The sticking point that year was in Ohio, where exit pollsters had Kerry carrying the Buckeye State. Then the votes started pouring in. Bush won Ohio. He was re-elected. Kerry and his team were stunned. They thought they had Ohio in the bag. Had they won, they would have had just enough electoral votes to defeat the president.

Those dismal exit poll results, along with other misfires around the nation, signaled the end of Voter News Service, the outfit that coordinated all the polling and vote tabulation around the country.

The screw-ups this time were much more severe. Even the once-highly regarded FiveThirtyEight.com poll done by Nate Silver missed by a mile. Silver’s analysis had Clinton with a 71 percent chance of winning on he eve of the election.

Of course, many of the pollsters are trying to cover their backsides. They say they predicted Clinton’s national popular vote percentage, more or less. They missed, though, in several key battleground states where Trump won: Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Florida — all states won by Barack Obama in 2008, who won all of them again except for North Carolina in 2012.

Polling has come a long way since the infamous “Dewey beats Truman” headline of 1948. However, as we witnessed during this election season, it still has some distance yet to travel.

national news, political news

Recount effort is far from a ‘scam’

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My feelings about an effort to recount the votes in Wisconsin are evolving … but only a little.

I am not overly suspicious of the balloting that took place in Wisconsin that granted the state’s electoral votes to Donald J. Trump. Yet, Jill Stein — the Green Party presidential candidate — says there is sufficient reason to doubt the integrity of the system. She has gotten the state to agree to a recount.

Hillary Rodham Clinton has joined in. She wants to ensure the votes are tabulated accurately and the system is audited properly.

Trump’s view? He calls it a “scam.”

OK, Mr. President-elect. You’ve bitched and griped during the entire campaign about it being “rigged” against you. Why not, then, line up behind this effort to ensure that the ballots were counted properly?

Trump was elected president. A recount isn’t likely to produce any shocking surprises … at least nothing as shocking as Trump winning Wisconsin’s electoral votes in the first place.

If the winner felt compelled to accuse state and local election officials of seeking to rob him of victory, then he ought to stand squarely behind Stein’s effort to ensure that it was all above board.

While I disagree with Dr. Stein’s effort, I don’t see it as a “scam.” Neither should the president-elect.

national news, political news

Stein wants to recount ballots … to what end?

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Jill Stein is so indignant at the voting process in Wisconsin she wants them to recount the ballots.

The Green Party presidential candidate isn’t doing this for herself. She finished fourth in the balloting there. No, she is doing it apparently on behalf of Democratic nominee Hillary Rodham Clinton, who lost the state to Donald Trump by about 25,000 votes.

Here’s the problem with Stein’s quest, as I see it: Clinton ain’t on board, at least not publicly.

Stein managed to raise about $5 million to pay for the recount. She figures there’s sufficient irregularities in the process that it could turn the state toward Clinton. Flipping Wisconsin’s electoral votes, a highly unlikely event, won’t reverse the election.

This is exercise isn’t going to change the outcome.

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/jill-stein-formally-files-for-wisconsin-recount-as-fundraising-effort-passes-dollar5m/ar-AAkKPWV?li=BBnb7Kz

Please — please! — do not misconstrue my own feelings here. I wish there was ample evidence of vote-tampering and “hacking,” as Stein has alleged. There isn’t. I also wish the outcome had turned out differently. It didn’t.

We’ve got Donald Trump getting ready to become the next president of the United States. Heaven help us.

As for Stein’s quest to reverse one state’s result — which, if successful, could produce recounts in at least two other battleground states, she is mounting the mother of futile challenges.

It strikes me as odd that she is proceeding without any public show of support from the candidate who continues to roll up a significant popular vote margin over the “winner.”

Why is that? My strong hunch is that Hillary knows as well that it’s a futile endeavor. As Stein herself as acknowledged, she has no “smoking gun.”

So … what’s the point?

national news, political news

Obama getting some belated love from citizenry

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Among the many conventional-wisdom notions that Donald J. Trump blew to smithereens while winning the presidency involves whether Hillary Clinton’s fortunes depended on President Obama’s poll standing.

The better the president’s approval rating stands, the better Clinton’s chances of winning the presidency … or so the theory went. Historians predicted as much. Political scientists, too. Pollsters said it as well.

Wrong!

Barack Obama is now enjoying the highest approval rating since the earliest days of his presidency. He stands at 53.9 percent of citizens approving of the job he’s doing, according to the RealClearPolitics average of polls. His percentage of approval-over-disapproval rating stands at 11 percent.

That’s a pretty strong standing, right? Right!

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/other/president_obama_job_approval-1044.html

It’s just a percentage point or so greater than where he stood on Election Day, meaning that Clinton was supposed to win the election.

Wrong again!

Trump insulted just about every voting bloc one can imagine, except perhaps white, rural voters who flocked to him by the millions.

African-Americans? Hispanics? Prisoners of war? Handicapped Americans? Muslims? Women? Gold Star families? They all got the treatment from the man who would become president-elect.

It didn’t matter. That was another supposed truth that Trump turned into a myth.

So it is, then, with this idea that Clinton’s fortunes rested with Barack Obama’s polling.

None of it mattered.

Go bleeping figure, will ya?

legal news

Trump gets ahead of himself over Clinton inquiry

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Donald J. Trump perhaps thought he was being magnanimous in declaring he wouldn’t seek a special prosecutor to examine whether Hillary Rodham Clinton broke any laws while she served as secretary of state.

Except for one thing … or so I understand.

The president-elect has no actual authority to make such a ruling.

That process starts and stops with the Justice Department and the FBI. Moreover, I am pretty sure the feds have determined already that Clinton didn’t commit any crimes while she used a personal e-mail server.

The FBI actually has made that declaration twice.

FBI Director James Comey said in July that “no reasonable prosecutor” would bring charges against Clinton. Eleven days before the election, Comey then said he was examining some newly discovered e-mails to see if they contained any new information. Nine days after that, Comey said his initial conclusion stood.

Of course, that didn’t stop the future president-elect from convicting Clinton of crimes she didn’t commit. He vowed to pick a special prosecutor.

Now he says he won’t.

That’s not his call to make.

national news, political news

When do the results undermine the winner?

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Believe me, I’m not going to belabor this point.

The thought just popped into my noggin, though, about the popular vote lead that Hillary Rodham Clinton is running up on the next president, Donald J. Trump.

It has passed 2 million votes. They’re still counting ’em. The lead might grow even more.

The thought is this: At what point does this circumstance begin to undermine the effectiveness of the “winner” of a presidential election?

http://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/307326-cook-clinton-passes-2m-in-popular-vote-lead

Trump won the votes that matter, in the Electoral College. Clinton won the actual balloting. Two million votes comprises a substantial margin … even for the “loser.”

I don’t necessarily want to see a change in the way we elect presidents. Nor do I think Clinton should challenge formally the results in three key swing states.

The issue, though, of this widening popular vote margin between the president-elect and the candidate he defeated seems to be inching closer to some critical mass that could undermine seriously the next president’s legislative agenda.