There's so much going on just now that it's not easy to focus on any single issue for long.
Brexit and the fall-out from that : who will be the new Prime Minister? How will she/he deal with what has to be dealt with in regard to the UK's exit from the EU, not forgetting that Scotland, and possibly Northern Ireland are likely to try (again) for their own independence from England/Wales, so that they could remain part of the EU. That internal UK tangle really needs sorting out first! Some establishment members of the opposition Labour Party want its current leader to stand down, but he, Jeremy Corbyn, is reluctant to do so - rightly, because his supporters, and the unions still believe in him. Then there's the Chilcot Report due for release this week; possibly fear of what the Report will reveal has been the driver of goings on in the previous sentence.
Nearer to home: Hillary Clinton's three and a half hour interview with the FBI on Saturday, result due in weeks to come. Bill Clinton's rather (ahem) opportune meeting with Attorney General Loretta Lynch at an Arizona airport the day before Hillary's interview. Party Conventions later this month. What will Bernie do? Will Donald Trump ride out his storms with the RNC? Who will be chosen as Vice Presidents for the two nominees?
SCOTUS is still a Justice short of a full court. Republican congress is still being as obstructive as ever, if not more so.
Outside of the political, I'm still keen to know what caused the Egypt Air plane to crash into the Med. a few weeks ago, as well as being still bugged by the disappearance of MH370, 2+ years ago, presumably sunk deep in the Indian Ocean. Those matters have disappeared from news media.
And: ISIS, Olympics, climate change, Zika virus......PHEW!
Brexit and the fall-out from that : who will be the new Prime Minister? How will she/he deal with what has to be dealt with in regard to the UK's exit from the EU, not forgetting that Scotland, and possibly Northern Ireland are likely to try (again) for their own independence from England/Wales, so that they could remain part of the EU. That internal UK tangle really needs sorting out first! Some establishment members of the opposition Labour Party want its current leader to stand down, but he, Jeremy Corbyn, is reluctant to do so - rightly, because his supporters, and the unions still believe in him. Then there's the Chilcot Report due for release this week; possibly fear of what the Report will reveal has been the driver of goings on in the previous sentence.
Nearer to home: Hillary Clinton's three and a half hour interview with the FBI on Saturday, result due in weeks to come. Bill Clinton's rather (ahem) opportune meeting with Attorney General Loretta Lynch at an Arizona airport the day before Hillary's interview. Party Conventions later this month. What will Bernie do? Will Donald Trump ride out his storms with the RNC? Who will be chosen as Vice Presidents for the two nominees?
SCOTUS is still a Justice short of a full court. Republican congress is still being as obstructive as ever, if not more so.
Outside of the political, I'm still keen to know what caused the Egypt Air plane to crash into the Med. a few weeks ago, as well as being still bugged by the disappearance of MH370, 2+ years ago, presumably sunk deep in the Indian Ocean. Those matters have disappeared from news media.
And: ISIS, Olympics, climate change, Zika virus......PHEW!
The number of resignations related to Brexit leave me suspicious of even greater malfeasance below the surface. It's as if Brexit is a foil.
ReplyDeleteThe Chilcot Report is so watered-down at this point with its inherent non-disclosures, due to top-level censoring of "secrets", too "secret" to reveal. I'm sure there will be turnip's blood of some sort, enough to make the report appear fruitful and not a waste of the actual time and money it required. An attempt to dampen the war crimes' charges that float around the top authorities like flies on excrement.
I'll be VERY surprised if Hillary faces anything above a reprimand from the FBI. As you would say, Twilight, the pudding has been over-egged with this email scandal. Let's move-on. The CIA was caught spying on congress via computer files and emails, so maybe Hillary knew that the antiquated government servers were vulnerable [http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/03/11/cia-spying-congress_n_4945584.html]. Congress has given the FBI and CIA almost unlimited powers to snoop, so is it any wonder Homeland Security would spy internally? I'd rather have Homeland Security scrutinized as thoroughly as Hillary is over her alleged abuse.
Too many news-worthy topics disappear from the public's attention span. Conversely, some of the most important items go right over the heads of the Twitter and Facebook consumed collective. TMI - Too Much Information. Yet, if the news concerns a famous Hollywood star or musician, tell me more...and in excruciating details...LOL. That even includes non-star stars, such as any member of the Kardashian family...at least we've moved onward from Paris Hilton and her brat-pack.
“I'd have a longer attention span if there weren't so many shiny things.” Darynda Jones
mike ~ I've gathered from Twitter that James Comey has just spoken on News TV about FBI's investigation into Clinton's e-mail mis-handling. I think you are correct in your prediction, but haven't read anything in detail.
ReplyDeleteHe recommends no charges be brought.
ReplyDeleteThat's one item off the "too much news" list, I guess - apart from the shouting that will follow, and rightly so. I'm left with the question: would I vote for a person proved beyond all reasonable doubt to be "careless" as president of the USA? Easy answer.
LOL...you've said you wouldn't vote for Hillary, regardless her email scandal! Hillary's GOP induced, so-called scandals seem a bit trivial to me. Even Benghazi, as much as the GOP wants that to be a focus and has spent millions trying, should never have been centered on Hillary. Instead, why was embassy security defunded by the congressional GOPs [http://voices.washingtonpost.com/44/2011/02/secretary-clinton-house-republ.html] that allowed Benghazi to happen? If Benghazi and email security are the best dirties the GOP has on Hillary, then they are in big trouble.
ReplyDeleteIn thinking of Hillary vs Donald and relating it to Brexit...would not voting on the Brexit referendum been better than voting one way or the other?
BTW - I see that another headline is the potential collapse of the Italian banking system, with their 17% volume of bad loans, now being blamed on Brexit, though the crappy loans were there well before the Brexit vote.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2016-07-04/brexit-is-a-lehman-moment-for-european-banks
mike (again) ~ That's why it was an easy answer - but now it has backing from none other than the FBI! I do not understand your "trivial" remark, mike! You call what she did trivial? Anyone else would be in jail already. She is likely to be Commander in Chief! In what kinf og world would Commander in Chief and "extremely careless" go well together?
ReplyDeleteI shall probably not vote at all for president, if it's Clinton or Trump. The choice is farcical. Maybe I'll vote for down-list positions - it depends how much more pissed off I've become by November.
Brexit, Hillary, Donald - all a huge and potentially disastrous farce for us all, and for the planet.
Hadn't read about the Italian problem. Not surprised, and there'll be more, no doubt.
Yes, I consider Clinton's private email server use trivial, Twilight. There was precedent before her with Colin Powell using a private server, too. Apparently, the use of emails was a fairly new concept within that department during Powell's tenure:
ReplyDelete"He came into office encouraging the use of emails as a way of getting the staff to embrace the new 21st information world."
http://www.politico.com/story/2015/03/colin-powell-personal-email-secretary-of-state-115707
It was stupid and inexcusable, but worthy of jail time?...I don't think so. She was simply following protocol her agency had established under Powell. I don't believe she or Powell had malicious intent with their private email servers. Existing policy for computer-derived information was nebulous while Clinton was SoS, and did allow usage of personal servers under very particular conditions, and her server met those specifications. She did surrender the content of her server after she left office.
"'At a minimum, Secretary Clinton should have surrendered all emails dealing with Department issues before leaving government service,' says an audit by the State Department Inspector General, obtained by NBC News. 'Because she did not do so, she did not comply with the [State] Department's policies that were implemented in accordance with the Federal Records Act.' The audit found that the non-compliance over personal email went beyond Clinton, and that former Secretary of State Colin Powell, a Republican, also failed to preserve government-related emails when he was secretary of state. The State Department asked Powell to try to receive relevant emails from his internet provider, but 'as of May 2016 the Department has not received a response' from Powell, the audit said."
http://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/clinton-broke-federal-rules-email-server-audit-finds-n580131
I would imagine that many of Republican Colin Powell's non-existent emails from his personal server would have been valuable toward the Chilcot Report.
ReplyDeleteWhy aren't the Republicans upset over Powell's personal email server and more importantly, that he hasn't surrendered any emails from it?
mike (again) ~ As I understood it, there was no private e-mail server in Colin Powell's case. The circumstances there were quite different.
ReplyDeletePerhaps no malicious intent - but a serious amount of bad judgment and extreme carelessness and a feeling that she is above the law and can do whatever she wishes, and command her staff to do so too.. Not something I'd wish to see in the next President.
It ain't over yet. Wait and see.
" The US needs its own Chilcot report" by Trevor Timm
ReplyDelete"As the UK parliament released its long-awaited Chilcot report on the country’s role in the Iraq war on Wednesday, there have been renewed calls all over Britain to try former prime minister Tony Blair for war crimes. This brings up another question: what about George W Bush?
The former US president most responsible for the foreign policy catastrophe has led a peaceful existence since he left office. Not only has he avoided any post-administration inquiries into his conduct, he has inexplicably seen his approval ratings rise (despite the carnage left in his wake only getting worse). He is an in-demand fundraiser for Republicans not named Donald Trump, and he gets paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to speak at corporate events. The chances of him ever saying in public, “I express more sorrow, regret and apology than you can ever believe,” as Blair did on Wednesday, are virtually non-existent. ..."
Colin Power most definitely used a private email server and he has never provided the contents of that server, claiming they no longer exist. The circumstances were no different.
ReplyDelete"On ABC’s This Week, former Sec. of State Colin Powell admitted that he used a private email account for public business. Powell’s explanation of why he used a private email account amounted to a death blow for Republicans who are trying to build a scandal out of Hillary Clinton’s emails."
http://www.politicususa.com/2015/03/08/republican-colin-powell-deals-death-blow-hillary-clinton-email-scandal.html
mike (again) ~ A private e-mail account is not the same as using a private e-mail server though. I've read in numerous places the argument you are making and it has always come down to the fact that other government people mentioned as using private e-mail used private accounts, but not private servers. I dunno. Doesn't matter much now anyway, it has all been swept under the carpet - as will be the content of Chilcot Report no doubt.
ReplyDeleteOne rule for them, another for the rest of us.
mike (again) ~ This, by "Mason" seems to me a fair assessment - i.e. that it has been left to the voters in November to decide whether this woman is fit to be their President.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/mason/67963/hillary-clinton-difference-between-gross-negligence-and-extremely-careless-behavior
mike (again) ~ and from here today:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.truthdig.com/report/page2/is_hillary_clinton_too_big_to_indict_20160705
Clinton’s oft-cited defense that her predecessors at the State Department also utilized personal email is similarly misleading. While Colin Powell conducted official business via a private email account, as did certain aides to Condoleezza Rice, the installation of a private server was unprecedented.