freeman3 wrote:Certainly, it would be a crime to interefere in an investigation. But merely talking to a person in control of the investigation is not enough. We are making inferences--logical inferences to be sure--but not the kind of inferences that hold up in court. For example, in California juries are instructed that if they can make two reasonable inferences from the same set of facts--one pointing towards innocence and the other towards guilt--they must accept the one pointing towards innocence. I'm not really sure that you can really do anything against Bill over this.

freeman3 wrote:Yes, but what is really going on here? People did not all of a sudden decide to go crazy and nominate Trump.

We are in a dangerous process where we are delegitimizing the government. The Citizens United case and the super-pacs coming out of that decision make it manifest that government is for the privileged few.

Congress is becoming a do-nothing Congress because there is no sense that we have the same values as a country and should try to work together to get things done.

I venture to say that are a substantial group of Americans--mostly male, a lot of them from the south, religious, gun owning, anti-gay marriage, want immigration control, don't want people getting freebies they don't deserve--who do not think that Obsma legitimately represents them as president.

Anything done by Congress is going to help people who don't have their values. In fact, they are unhappy that Republicans have worked with Obama at all--hence the need for Trump.

So I think we have three things that are delegitimizing the government and they are somewhat inter-connected: (1) Wealth has increasingly gone towards the top, towards those who invest instead of work, and towards Wall Street, (2) With all that extra money going around and the Citizens United decision we are seeing a government that is increasingly influenced by monied interests, (3) most people are seeing their economic futures threatened and so they either blame the rich (the Sanders people) or blame the other who has different values (The Trump people).

Hillary is the establishment candidate and Sanders people don't like her because she will keep the status quo with regard to economic policy and Trump people don't like her because she will continue to pursue the liberal/centrist consensus with regard to values that is changing America (in their minds). The economic issues are causing these fractures to a large extent, I think.

Government being delegitimized by being bought by a few, by not reflecting the views of the working class (Sanders) or social/cultural/religious views of primarily white southerners (Trump) All this would be helped (I think) if we act to prevent so much wealth going towards the top.

freeman3 wrote:Well, put it all together--what is making so many people so angry that they would gamble the country on a Trump presidency? What is the overarching principle that unites Trump voters? This is not anger over something small--they have to see something deeply important to them being threatened. What is it?

danivon wrote:Hasn't there been at least one President with a conviction?

GWB has a DUI on record.

Doctor Fate wrote:

danivon wrote:Hasn't there been at least one President with a conviction?

GWB has a DUI on record.

Relevance?

danivon wrote:

Doctor Fate wrote:

danivon wrote:Hasn't there been at least one President with a conviction?

GWB has a DUI on record.

Relevance?

Relevant to moans about standards for candidacy. If you think it is bad that someone not charged with a crime is able to be President, is it not worse that you can have someone convicted of a crime?

Doctor Fate wrote:

danivon wrote:

Doctor Fate wrote:

danivon wrote:Hasn't there been at least one President with a conviction?

GWB has a DUI on record.

Relevance?

Relevant to moans about standards for candidacy. If you think it is bad that someone not charged with a crime is able to be President, is it not worse that you can have someone convicted of a crime?

Irrelevant.

A DUI from many years ago is not the same as flouting national security so recently.

Doctor Fate wrote:The requisite for President: nothing provable on your record.

Can we move the bar any lower?

danivon wrote:Maybe the US did not treat drink driving as seriously then as it does now, but it seems the answer to your question is, yeah you can. The bar seems to be "only have been convicted for something 20 years before that involves endangering lives".

Doctor Fate wrote:

danivon wrote:Maybe the US did not treat drink driving as seriously then as it does now, but it seems the answer to your question is, yeah you can. The bar seems to be "only have been convicted for something 20 years before that involves endangering lives".

No one you have ever interacted with hates drunk drivers as much as I do.

However, and I'm willing to be proven wrong, I'm pretty sure GWB's DUI did not endanger national security.

There’s no way of knowing for sure if Bush could have stopped the September 11 attacks. But that’s not the right question. The right question is: Did Bush do everything he could reasonably have to stop them, given what he knew at the time? And he didn’t. It’s not even close.

When the Bush administration took office in January 2001, CIA Director George Tenet and National Security Council counterterrorism “czar” Richard Clarke both warned its incoming officials that al-Qaeda represented a grave threat. During a transition briefing early that month at Blair House, according to Bob Woodward’s Bush at War, Tenet and his deputy James Pavitt listed Osama bin Laden as one of America’s three most serious national-security challenges. That same month, Clarke presented National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice with a plan he had been working on since al-Qaeda’s attack on the USS Cole the previous October. It called for freezing the network’s assets, closing affiliated charities, funneling money to the governments of Uzbekistan, the Philippines and Yemen to fight al-Qaeda cells in their country, initiating air strikes and covert operations against al-Qaeda sites in Afghanistan, and dramatically increasing aid to the Northern Alliance, which was battling al-Qaeda and the Taliban there.

But both Clarke and Tenet grew deeply frustrated by the way top Bush officials responded. Clarke recounts that when he briefed Rice about al-Qaeda, “her facial expression gave me the impression that she had never heard the term before.” On January 25, Clarke sent Rice a memo declaring that, “we urgently need…a Principals [Cabinet] level review on the al Qida [sic] network.” Instead, Clarke got a sub-cabinet, Deputies level, meeting in April, two months after the one on Iraq.

When that April meeting finally occurred, according to Clarke’s book, Against All Enemies, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz objected that “I just don’t understand why we are beginning by talking about this one man, bin Laden.” Clarke responded that, “We are talking about a network of terrorist organizations called al-Qaeda, that happens to be led by bin Laden, and we are talking about that network because it and it alone poses an immediate and serious threat to the United States.” To which Wolfowitz replied, “Well, there are others that do as well, at least as much. Iraqi terrorism for example.”

The warnings continued. On July 11, the CIA sent word to the White House that a Chechen with links to al-Qaeda had warned that something big was coming. On July 24, the Daily Brief said the expected al-Qaeda attack had been postponed but was still being planned. Finally, on August 6, the CIA titled its Daily Brief: “Bin Ladin Determined to Strike the US.” The briefing didn’t mention a specific date or target, but it did mention the possibility of attack in New York and mentioned that the terrorists might hijack airplanes. In Angler, Barton Gellman notes that it was the 36th time the CIA had raised al-Qaeda with President Bush since he took office.

On September 4, the Cabinet met and despite Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld’s insistence that Iraq represented the greater terrorism threat, it approved Clarke’s plan to fight al-Qaeda. On September 9, the Senate Armed Services Committee recommended taking $600 million from the proposed missile defense budget and devoting it to counter-terrorism. According to Gellman, Rumsfeld recommended that Bush veto such a move.

On the morning of September 11, 2001, Clarke’s anti-al-Qaeda plan was sitting on Bush’s desk, awaiting his signature. It was the ninth National Security Presidential Directive of his presidency.

Would the Bush administration have stopped the 9/11 attacks had it taken the threat more seriously? Possibly. On August 3, a Saudi named Mohamed al-Kahtani tried to enter the United States in Orlando, Florida, allegedly to participate in the 9/11 plot. He was sent back home by a customs official whose only concern was that he might become an illegal immigrant. On August 16, FBI and INS agents in Minnesota arrested another potential hijacker, Zacarias Moussaoui, after being tipped off by his flight instructor. But despite numerous requests, they were denied permission to search his apartment or laptop. These incidents “might have exposed the” 9/11 plot, writes Eichenwald, “had the government been on high alert.”

Clarke makes the same argument. When the Clinton administration received word of a potential attack in December 1999, he notes, President Clinton ordered his national-security adviser to “hold daily meetings with the attorney-general, the CIA, FBI.” As a result, the leaders of those agencies instructed their “field offices to find out everything they can find. It becomes the number one priority of those agencies.” This vigilance, Clarke suggests, contributed to the arrest on December 14 of an Algerian named Ahmed Ressam, who was arriving from Canada with the aim of detonating a bomb at Los Angeles International Airport.

The Bush administration could have done similar in 2001.

danivon wrote:

Doctor Fate wrote:

danivon wrote:Maybe the US did not treat drink driving as seriously then as it does now, but it seems the answer to your question is, yeah you can. The bar seems to be "only have been convicted for something 20 years before that involves endangering lives".

No one you have ever interacted with hates drunk drivers as much as I do.

However, and I'm willing to be proven wrong, I'm pretty sure GWB's DUI did not endanger national security.

No, although he did later have an impact - when his administration reduced spending and focus on Al Qaeda in favour of Iraq, before 9/11.

Doctor Fate wrote:

danivon wrote:

Doctor Fate wrote:

danivon wrote:Maybe the US did not treat drink driving as seriously then as it does now, but it seems the answer to your question is, yeah you can. The bar seems to be "only have been convicted for something 20 years before that involves endangering lives".

No one you have ever interacted with hates drunk drivers as much as I do.

However, and I'm willing to be proven wrong, I'm pretty sure GWB's DUI did not endanger national security.

No, although he did later have an impact - when his administration reduced spending and focus on Al Qaeda in favour of Iraq, before 9/11.

Thank you for illustrating BDS.

That Atlantic piece has nothing to do with GWB's DUI in 1976. Then again, that's not surprising.Trying to link 9/11 with a DUI some 25 years earlier . . . that's about as nutter as it gets.