In which I taunt a second time my friend Ruben in Brooklyn, the
aforementioned guy who loudly supports the short-fingered vulgarian.
----- Forwarded message from Rick Moen <rick(a)linuxmafia.com> -----
Date: Sun, 6 Nov 2016 21:34:00 -0800
From: Rick Moen <rick(a)linuxmafia.com>
To: hangout(a)nylxs.com
Subject: To summarize the summary of a summary:
Deirdre Saoirse Moen retweeted:
Victor Laszlo @Impolitics - Nov 2
This will always be remembered as the presidential election in which the
KKK, the KGB, and the FBI all supported the same candidate.
Also recently retweeted by the same worthy:
Dear Americans:
Go ahead, vote for the guy with the
loud voice who hates minorities, threatens
to imprison his opponents, doesn't give a
f?ck about democracy, and claims he alone
can fix everything. What could possibly go
wrong? Good luck.
-- The people of Germany
#beentheredonethat
----- End forwarded message -----
----- Forwarded message from Rick Moen <rick(a)linuxmafia.com> -----
Date: Thu, 3 Nov 2016 18:32:48 -0700
From: Rick Moen <rick(a)linuxmafia.com>
To: skeptic(a)linuxmafia.com
Subject: Re: [skeptic] Fw: Re: Check out WikiLeaks
Organization: If you lived here, you'd be $HOME already.
Quoting Terry W. Colvin (fortean1(a)mindspring.com):
[Snip conspiracy-minded material from one George Armstrong]
> This reply by George Armstrong makes several assumptions about the
> e-mail server(s) used by Hillary Clinton. I can't follow the history
> at all. Perhaps Rick Moen and others can inform us of what may have
> happened in this chain of events.
I don't follow the loose talk about this stuff very closely, but perhaps
I'm qualified to comment because I own/operate an e-mail server. ;->
Some law enforcement agency, perhaps NYPD, is claimed at some point in
the recent past to have executed a search warrant on home computers
owned by ex-Representative Anthony Weiner and his estranged,
now-separated wife Huma Abedin. Huma Abedin is now Secretary Clinton's
top aide. The actual investigation appears to be over claims that
Weiner e-mailed lewd photographs to a 15-year-old girl.
The only thing otherwise that's recently happened is that FBI Director
James Comey, who is coincidentally a longtime Republican Party member,
sent an extremely vague single-page letter to Congress on Oct. 28 that
caused all sorts of uproar. It said that new emails had surfaced in a
case unrelated to the closed investigation into whether Hillary Clinton
or her aides had mishandled classified information, and that the
messages “appear to be pertinent to the investigation”, but that "the
FBI cannot yet assess whether or not this material may be significant".
You can read that here, but it really doesn't say anything more
specific:
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/10/28/us/politics/fbi-letter.html
Speculation is that he's referring to some e-mail or e-mails from
someone to someone else about something that (as it turned out later)
was found on one-time couple Weiner and Abedin's laptop computer, but
neither Comey nor anyone else is saying anything else at all, and it's
quite possible that Director Comey doesn't even know those things.
Anyway, Federal agents have been going through what are said to be a
fairly incredibly large number of e-mail on Weiner and Abedin's laptop
computer -- I saw "650,000 emails" mentioned in a _Wall Street Journal_
story -- and that thousands of out of those hundreds of thousands might
have been to of from the Clinton private e-mail server during the period
when Secretary Clinton was Secretary of State during the first Obama
administration, which might have been work-related for Clinton or of
course not. There's a prediction that figuring out what if anything is
of interest to the FBI in that avalanche of e-mail will occupy many
weeks, but the point is that there's no indication that Secretary
Clinton is the focus of any investigation in this matter at all.
It is entirely against all norms for FBI to make comment on
investigations, especially if it might raise waves right before an
election, and Comey has gotten strong criticism from predecessors and
pretty much everyone else for doing so, some of that criticism kindly on
the order of "Jim Comey's a good guy but he really made a bad mistake
here" and some a lot less so. Standard procedure is for FBI to
investigate wherever the leads seem to indicate, using warrants and
other legal means, and eventually those either produce indictments or
don't.
When FBI is doing its job, people they're looking into don't know that
they're under investigation until long after the fact when they've been
either indicted or not.
Separately from that, Russian computer criminals furnished WikiLeaks
with a dump of e-mails to/from Democratic campaign manager John Podesta
after he was tricked into clicking a "phishing" e-mail in his GMail
account, giving the criminals access to all mail he'd sent or received,
and a bunch of those were internal campaign communication for the
Clinton campaign.
For the Secretary of State to operate a separate private e-mail server
and send/receive work e-mails there is against department policy but _not_
criminal behaviour, i.e., not a violation of law. Which is how it's
been done many times in the past, e.g., by Colin Powell and others.
And separately from -that-, there's been a whole lot of loose blather
accusing Secretary Clinton of destruction of evidence or various
alleged crimes for operating a family e-mail server at all on which
sometimes mails related to her job arrived or originated, none of it
really amounting to anything. See this column by conservative legal
scholar Eugene Volokh, for context:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/2015/08/26/no-hill…
And Benghazi blah blah blah blah blah.
I might have missed what the question was. ;->
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----- End forwarded message -----
----- Forwarded message from Rick Moen <rick(a)linuxmafia.com> -----
Date: Thu, 3 Nov 2016 20:27:08 -0700
From: Rick Moen <rick(a)linuxmafia.com>
To: skeptic(a)linuxmafia.com
Subject: Re: [skeptic] Fw: Re: Check out WikiLeaks
Organization: If you lived here, you'd be $HOME already.
Because I'm occasionally a bit of a masochist, I've been teasing my
Trump-supporting friend Ruben Safir of Brooklyn. Since some of what I
replied to him in the latest of a long series of exchanges is probably
relevant to Terry's query, I reproduce that below.
Date: Tue, 1 Nov 2016 11:54:50 -0700
From: Rick Moen <rick(a)linuxmafia.com>
To: hangout(a)nylxs.com
Subject: Re: [Hangout-NYLXS] Meanwhile, in the land of 'Who, me?'
Hey, look whose killfile doesn't work! Maybe you've decided you'd like
a lifeline back from CloudCuckooLand to conventional reality?
Quoting Ruben Safir (mrbrklyn(a)panix.com):
[...]
> Meanwhile, this is not the role of the Secretary of State so either it
> is lost upon you, which I doubt because your a very smart man, that
> she is under criminal investigation....
This is not clearly the case, at all.
FBI is attempting to determine whether unstated persons might have
committed unstated crimes. Certainly Clinton _might_ be the focus of
FBI's current interest. But nobody outside the alt-right, white-power
Trumpista crowd has said so, and certainly the FBI hasn't.
In the current matter (the mind-bogglingly vague Director Comey letter,
dropped into the press 11 days before the election), there has been no
indication whatsoever about what is being investigated, nor what was in
the e-mails Comey spoke of on Anthony Weiner's computing device. It's a
whole lot of non-information and innuendo. He said merely that e-mails
had been found on Weiner's computer that 'could be linked to the probe
of Hillary Clinton’s emails', but absolutely nothing about what on God's
green earth that means, nor about what those e-mails contain or who sent
what to whom. And he lamely added, "I don't know whether or not this
[new] material may be significant." And then he refused to explain
himself, and waltzed off in a cloud of zero public transparency
(the same transparency that he claimed was his byword and objective, a
few months ago during his July public appearance).
There is actually no reason to believe that he even knows _what_ the
mysterious e-mails say -- judging by his comprehensive talking around
that point.
It is inherent in FBI 'investigations' that one often has no clear
idea whether a criminal indictment will be issued by some AG at the end
of the process or not, and if so against whom. You always have to wait
until you see whether FBI have decided there's something to refer to the
Justice Department, and if Justice Department decides to open a case.
What _is_ clear is that Director Comey went (through misadventure?)
rogue, ignoring long-standing guidelines that the Justice Department or
the FBI not release information about investigations within 60 days of
an election. And Comey's publicly a longtime Republican. What's bad
about that is that this is indistinguishable from a Joe McCarthy slur
in violation of the ethics of his office, and against the advice of the
Justice Department, tactically timed so that the truth cannot be known
until long after the innuendo's damage has occurred. I don't think it
_was_ that (but rather a mistake), but it's unfortunately
indistinguishable in its effects from one.
Comey's basically made sure nobody will ever respect or trust him again.
He'll be paying the personal cost the rest of his life, including
probably losing his job shortly after the election no matter _who_ takes
the Presidency. Because at best he's revealed to be a political
liability, loose cannon, and clumsy hack, and at worst a hatchet-man
rather than an FBI Director.
This colossal professional mistake -- again, being decently charitable
about it being a gaffe rather than a tactic -- provably isn't anywhere
near enough to change the election outcome for the Presidency, in part
because there just aren't undecideds left unless a few hermits and
fishermen swept out to sea suddenly show up -- and because 22 million
people have already cast early-voting and absentee ballots.
But it's possible a few Senate seats might swing.
I honestly do feel bad for Director Comey. Pretty much everyone has
commented that this was a clear, large blunder, but I doubt he has any
avenue remaining for fixing that mistake.
> they are investigating her __routinely hiding government documents__
> on her private email server in order to hide them from other
> government agencies which are assigned to oversee her in her role as a
> government official.
No, they haven't said what they're currently investigating. Nor whom
they are currently suspecting, and what they're suspecting that person
or persons of.
> One is private business. The other is government business. Even you
> can understand they are not the same thing.
As has been repeatedly established including by the head of the FBI,
this is a bad practice indulged by her and by many at the State
Department, before her -- that is not illegal in itself, but against
State Department guidelines having no legal force. And she stopped
doing it because it was a bad idea, and admitted that it had been a
mistake, period. Following which an investigation occurred concluding
in no grounds for prosecution. (Which can change in the future, but
that is always the case.)
All of the efforts to turn that into criminal activity have so far been
as laughable as the "Hilary assassinated Vince Foster" and 'Hillary
assassinated Ron Brown" idiocy, and I have little expectation that the
unbelievably non-specific Comey letter will do so, either. It seems
obvious to me that the idea is to drum up a furious round of innuendo
for nine more days, and then it'll all vanish into Breitbart / Infowars
conspiracy hysteria, and no longer have big money behind promoting it.
And you'll have been among the many who'll have been played for a
sucker.
So, you willing to bet that $100, or not? I'm willing to take your
money at the end of 2017. [RM note: Safir had claimed Secretary
Clinton would be 'in jail' in the near future]
Oh, and by the way, you never addressed upthread questions like:
So, here's a question that I figure even a voter willing to fall for the
Border Wall Paid for by Mexico scam can understand: Let's say you're an
Algerian ISIS terrorist looking to commit destruction inside the USA.
Do you (1) apply for immigration to the USA, going through the current
incarnation of 'extreme vetting', or (2) get a tourist visa?
Speaking of that, the very easiest way (out of many) to see that the
Border Wall Paid for by Mexico is idiotic is to remember that over half
of all illegal immigrants in the USA arrived lawfully and merely stayed
after their visas expired. Border walls inherently cannot address that.
Mr. Trump:
Thinks global warming is a hoax invented by the Chinese(!).
Seriously alleged in public that there is no California drought.
Doesn't understand the military and intends to 'fire generals'.
Thinks he understands military matters better than professional
military people do (and in that as so many other things is
a poster child for Dunning-Kruger effect.
Has been a serial abuser of women and then lies about that.
Has a cavalier attitude to the use of nuclear weapons.
Would casually take steps to undermine NATO.
Proposes massive deregulation to benefit the rich.
Is incompetent in foreign affairs.
Is incompetent in basic economics.
Wants to introduce economic protectionism and thinks this won't hurt us.
Has the self-control of a two-year-old.
Is delusional (or worse) about immigration.
Is happy to base his entire campaign on sexism, racial hatred,
religious bigotry, nativism, hatred of immigrants, and
conspiracy thinking.
Encourages lawbreaking.
Uses the rhetoric of a 1930s dictator, except dumbed down to 4th
grade reading levels.
Whimsically wants to discard just about every democratic norm,
the First Amendment, and peaceful transfer of Executive Branch power.
Wants to send reproductive freedom back to the Dark Ages.
Goes into Twitter rage-spews over 1970s beauty contestants at 3-5am.
Goes on Twitter attacks against bereaved Gold Star parents.
The list can go on and on. One of these candidates is flawed but
competent, the other would be a menace even as dogcatcher, and cannot be
taken seriously. He's not the leader of anything. He's an emotionally
labile buffoon.
And the Comey bullshit is a fart in the wind, compared to that.
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To reach the listadmin, mail rick(a)linuxmafia.com
----- End forwarded message -----
I just went to bed, and then I dreamed this.
Or is it real?
A country gone to the dogs. Pauline Hanson stands tall in front of the pack,
holding the sausage promising legislation going through the Senate.
The Turnbull dogs gets pushed forward by the leading attack dog Tony He
would grab the sausage anytime. Brandis dog and Dutton dog have their
day in the sun. Morrison dog just behind. One day he will lead the
pack, today he smiles seeing how Turnbull dog gets agitated. So close
to the sausage Pauline is holding! Woof! Woof! He knows he would be
the same.
A bit further away the Labor pack. They do not like the food Pauline is
dishing out. But one day she will be needed, in case Shorten dog has its
day? Shorten dog is sniffing the bums and wonders what to do next. He
always thought, the fish & chips lady is harmless for dogs. After all,
that is not the favourite dog food! Bummer. She managed to get the key
to the dog food shed. That makes the kennel pretty wild! Woof! Woof!
In the corner sits John Howard, the dog whistle in his hand. From "We
decide who comes" to "Pauline decides who comes" in just 15 years.
I am waking up and feel proud. Finally, it is time to get the brown shirts
out. Proudly looking into the mirror before I am striding out into the New
Liberated Australia! One Woman. One Voice. One Nation. One Führer.
Pauline, I am ready. Just start kicking, as we did before! Asians, Muslims,
Jews or refugees, whatever. Go Pauline!
Heil Pauline!
