The Assassination of Hillary Clinton

[Paul Rigby]

I readily admit that I was unaware of this practice. I still find it corrupt, even if it may not be against US law. I may well be that Trump will engage in the same practice, which I still will find corrupt. We have to see, and it will not be easy, for all.

For we Europeans Carsten, it is corrupt and would lead to public outrage and resignations, if not criminal charges.

For America it is simply business as usual.

Which is another way of saying that corruption in American is the way of life.

Just curious -- how are British diplomats chosen?

They're usually recruited by the Foreign & Commonwealth office from university and rise on the greasy pole of that institution as civil servants.

Political appointees are far less common here in the UK, but not unknown. One that comes to mind was the "Prince of Darkness", Peter Mandelson who was appointed by the awful Neil Kinnock, one time Labour Party leader as his "spin doctor". Tony Blair later appointed him Minister Without Portfolio and then a State Secretary and finally nominated him for Enoblement. He is today Peter Benjamin Mandelson, Baron Mandelson, Lord Prince of Darkness.

Lots of rumours and speculation that he was very, very close to Britain's intelligence establishment, who ensured Blair's victory in 1997.

Frequently abbreviated, by the envious unwashed, to "breeding & buggery."

Or have I confused the FO with the Charlatans (MI6)?

[Cliff Varnell]

I'm disgusted and appalled, but not 100% surprised. I've been dreading an outcome like this off and on all year. There are a lot of hateful, ignorant, uneducated people in this country who will believe what a reality TV star tells them.

He's gonna lose the popular vote. I don't blame Americans for the Clinton fatigue the Sinister Six (Assange/Putin/Comey/CNN/MSNBC/Fox) inflicted on us.

Anyone who thinks Trump is less corrupt hasn't been paying attention to the really good investigative journalism that's been done in the print media (magazines more than newspapers). Little of it ended up on TV. In a couple of weeks he'll be in court in NY having to defend his Trump University scam. He'll probably spend a large chunk of his presidency in court.

I also wonder how long it will be before his instability leads certain elements in the military to remove him from power one way or another.

They'll find some ceremonial functions to keep him busy while Pence runs the show.

We have to organize for 2018 and 2020.

Trump is not my President!

[Magda Hassan]

Julian Assange, Vladimir Putin and James Comey rigged the 2016 election and I will never accept this scumbag as my Prez.

:hock:: ::face.palm::

[David Guyatt]

For we Europeans Carsten, it is corrupt and would lead to public outrage and resignations, if not criminal charges.

For America it is simply business as usual.

Which is another way of saying that corruption in American is the way of life.

Just curious -- how are British diplomats chosen?

They're usually recruited by the Foreign & Commonwealth office from university and rise on the greasy pole of that institution as civil servants.

Political appointees are far less common here in the UK, but not unknown. One that comes to mind was the "Prince of Darkness", Peter Mandelson who was appointed by the awful Neil Kinnock, one time Labour Party leader as his "spin doctor". Tony Blair later appointed him Minister Without Portfolio and then a State Secretary and finally nominated him for Enoblement. He is today Peter Benjamin Mandelson, Baron Mandelson, Lord Prince of Darkness.

Lots of rumours and speculation that he was very, very close to Britain's intelligence establishment, who ensured Blair's victory in 1997.

Frequently abbreviated, by the envious unwashed, to "breeding & buggery."

Or have I confused the FO with the Charlatans (MI6)?

Apologies Tooth. I misread your name and thought it was, you know, a n other. I've deleted my response.

[Magda Hassan]

In the UK establishment buggery has long been the norm and results from the elite public (exclusively male) schooling system - where "public" actually means very, very private and very, very expensive and exclusive.

Yes, that's weird. The public private thing that is. Not this ::that is weird in another way.

A sound beating on the bottom never did a boy any harm!

Gracious! What's the world coming too? Next thing you know the little people in the village won't wait on us and vote the way we tell them....

[Cliff Varnell]

Julian Assange, Vladimir Putin and James Comey rigged the 2016 election and I will never accept this scumbag as my Prez.

:hock:: ::face.palm::

Comey's announcement 11 days before the election that there were more e-mails to check out (there were not and he knew it, they were duplicates) killed Clinton's momentum and gave Trump life.

This was a coup d'etat.

[David Guyatt]

Julian Assange, Vladimir Putin and James Comey rigged the 2016 election and I will never accept this scumbag as my Prez.

:hock:: ::face.palm::

Yes, I saw that too. My eyes watered.

[Cliff Varnell]

Forget Canada. Stay and Fight for American Democracy.

By Jonathan Chait
Photo: The Washington Post/Washington Post/Getty Images

Before the election, like many liberals, I made a lot of jokes about moving to Canada. It was a way for people to deal with our anxiety. It's not funny anymore, and people discussing it reportedly, Canada's immigration website has crashed due to excessive interest are beginning to disgust me. I love this country. I believe in it. I'm not leaving. I'm sorry to sound hokey, but I'm going to stay and defend truth and democracy.

Never in my lifetime has the United States seen a period of darkness like the one that lies ahead of us. But we have seen periods of darkness before segregation, McCarthyism, the internment of the Japanese, the Civil War, slavery. The American story is fitful progress punctuated by frequent reversals, some of which appeared at the time like they would last forever. None of them did.

The Trump years will be a horror. When I set out to write my long story in the magazine about Trumpism and the future of the Republican Party, I originally intended to focus on the immediate possibilities that lay before the Republican Party if it could capture full control of Washington. As this scenario grew less likely, I gave it less emphasis, but it is there. The Republicans will pass massive regressive tax cuts; they will take access to medical care from the poor and sick; they will deregulate the financial industry and fossil-fuel emitters.

And that is just the beginning, the best-case scenario. Trump is an impulsive, egotistical bully, intolerant of criticism and dissent and drawn to the ruthless application of power. Many liberals have been warning that American democracy is far weaker than we believed, and this was before any of us imagined a monster like Trump commanding the Executive branch. Trump will shake the Republic to its foundations. And the Republicans will shake it with him. If there is a central point I tried to drive home, it is that Trumpism grows out of a decades-long trend toward authoritarianism as the dominant tendency of Republican politics. I don't know what American government will look like after four years of Trump or if it will only last four years, or even if it will only last eight.

But I do not believe that the people who elected Trump will be helped by his program in any way. Trump avoided policy specifics to a comical degree. His health-care plan is "something terrific" that will take care of everybody at no cost to anybody. His wall paid for by Mexico is not even a punch line it is a symbol of his supporters' fascistic willingness to subordinate all critical faculties and endorse an obvious absurdity. What he will do is sign a quick succession of donor-driven laws written by Paul Ryan whose authentic support is confined to a trivial proportion of the party outside its big-money wing. To whatever extent people voted for Trump for reasons other than racial and cultural resentment, Trump will do nothing for them. He is a buffoon surrounded by a party apparatus that is unable to govern, as the Republican elite demonstrated during the George W. Bush era, and that has grown worse.

At the end of this month, the president-elect of the United States will face trial for committing massive fraud through Trump University. He openly vows to have his children run his family business, which will enrich him through his office in the manner of a post-Soviet kleptocrat. The depths of a Trump presidency defy our imagination. It is safe to assume it will not be popular. Trump and his party will probably respond with vicious anti-democratic measures. But fighting for democracy is part of America's heritage, from abolitionists to suffragettes to the progressive reformers. Maybe you thought that fight was confined to history. It will go on.

And Trump does not represent the future. He only barely represents its present. His party controls all three branches in large part because its voters are overrepresented in the House, the Senate, and the Electoral College. He represents a rage against the direction of America they have no way of stopping. Even a complete halt to all of illegal immigration and a total deportation of every undocumented immigrant will not prevent the growth of nonwhites into an eventual majority. Republicans are increasingly focused on voter suppression and other anti-democratic measures to allow their shrinking cohort to rule. Trump is the perfect champion of their project.

But I do not believe they will win, at least not over the long run. As the shock of a Trump presidency set in, I told my children Tuesday night that I did not want to hear anything about fleeing. We are not going anywhere. And the America I have raised them to believe in will one day prevail.

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/201...cracy.html

[Cliff Varnell]

Julian Assange, Vladimir Putin and James Comey rigged the 2016 election and I will never accept this scumbag as my Prez.

:hock:: ::face.palm::

Yes, I saw that too. My eyes watered.

You don't live here, you have no idea what this election was like to live thru.

Hillary's e-mails were obsessed over by the media and the Republican lies about them were never vetted, only repeated endlessly, relentlessly.

[David Guyatt]

Julian Assange, Vladimir Putin and James Comey rigged the 2016 election and I will never accept this scumbag as my Prez.

:hock:: ::face.palm::

Yes, I saw that too. My eyes watered.

You don't live here, you have no idea what this election was like to live thru.

No, I'm a modicum bit closer to Syria, Libya, Ukraine and other war zones America has chosen to export overseas for reasons of profit and greed.

You appear to have no idea (nor care a jot) what these wars must have been like to live through - 2 + million deaths, millions of suffering and starving, homes ruined beyond repair, kids blown to smithereens by invisible drones from above and listed as collateral damage. The list would take pages and pages to complete.

But all you gripe about is poor you.