5 ms·
> Start blathering about Hillary's emails, as if that were somehow important. Well, it was certainly an incident of corruption and/or incompetence. People do (
by humanrebar 9y ago
> Start blathering about Hillary's emails, as if that were somehow important.
Well, it was certainly an incident of corruption and/or incompetence. People do (and should) get fired for mishandling sensitive information.
Maybe the HN community in general wants to give Clinton a pass on it, but investigating facts that illustrate the character and competence of presidential candidates is certainly newsworthy.
There was plenty of similar corruption and incompetence to report on for Trump, but its generally easier and more salacious to report on his Cinco de Mayo taco salad.
- seanmcdirmid 9y agoI yearn for the Obama days when this and Beghasi were the biggest scandals that anyone could come up with. Now it’s collusion, financial opacity in business dealings, sex with playmates, etc... it really is too much.
- jessaustin 9y agoI thought it was kind of scandalous that Guantanamo never closed, contrary to campaign promises...
- seanmcdirmid 9y agoIsn't "not keeping campaign promises" in a different league from "not using email correctly", which in turn is in a different league from colluding with Russia and using government office for personal gain?
- jessaustin 9y agoCertainly. The first scandal was easy for voters to see: closing Gitmo was kind of Obama's thing, from the very beginning of the primaries. The second scandal required a fair amount of investigation, but that investigation was fairly legible to voters. The third requires voters to believe what they're told by unnamed sources: thus far no one will go on the record with any proof of anything. The fourth should be easy to see, so I look forward to hearing more about it. I would love to see a precedent set that corruption leads to impeachment; I'm not holding my breath.
- seanmcdirmid 9y ago> The first scandal was easy for voters to see: closing Gitmo was kind of Obama's thing, from the very beginning of the primaries. Campaign promises are usually seen as best effort. Are we still waiting for Mexico to pay for that wall? > The second scandal required a fair amount of investigation, but that investigation was fairly legible to voters. Yes, it is very straight forward and the FBI went over it multiple times, to the point that Comey had to be extra diligent in reporting the investigation's progress to avoid a tinge of bias in the FBI. > The third requires voters to believe what they're told by unnamed sources: There has been plenty of "coincidences" thus presented so far. I for one would apply Hanlon's razor: Trump and his advisers were just being very stupid and don't think any malice was involved, though breaking the law is breaking the law regardless (see their opinion on stupidity and Hillary's emails). Besides, thou dost protest too much, so maybe there is more to this than we can see right now. I don't think any of this leads to impeachment, which really isn't in anyone's interests anyways (Pence?). Instead, Trump will be a two year lame duck after the midterms with little public support left.
- davvolun 9y agoThat's an interesting corollary... Hanlon's razor applies to sentencing, but not to guilt.
- seanmcdirmid 9y ago"It depends", some offenses require malice, some can driven by negligence and ignorance alone. I'm not sure what category the Hatch Act is in.
- davvolun 9y agoI suppose I should say, "Hanlon's Razor often applies to sentencing, only occasionally to guilt"
- jessaustin 9y agoI don't really disagree with any of that, with the exception of the wishful thinking about the next two elections. It just seems that this whole thing was conjured up to explain an event that didn't need explaining. It isn't surprising that one unpopular candidate beat some other unpopular candidate, when the winner was on TV all the time. The surprising thing was that he didn't win by more, but that may be because people pay less attention to TV news than they used to.
- mmjaa 9y agoI found the "one bomb dropped every twenty minutes, mostly on innocent people" statistic to be the most scandalous issue of Obama's presidency, personally ..
- humanrebar 9y agoWell, Obama's policies were plenty controversial if people wanted to fight about politics. You're also leaving out Guantanamo, assassination of American citizens without a trial, and the Fast and the Furious scandal (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ATF_gunwalking_scandal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ATF_gunwalking_scandal).