Hil blames...

[William Thornton]

Hillary comey and Putin. No mystery here.

It strikes me that both the clintons and their machine lack the capacity for any reasonable self criticism.

Nonetheless, I am delighted she's mired in justifying her stunning loss against her preferred opponent rather than accepting genuflexions from adoring media and sycophants and picking a business as usual cabinet.

[Tim Bonney]

[Sandy]

The difference in the combined vote total in thethree states that make the difference between the candidates winning or losing, PA, MI, WI, is, as Chris Hayes said the other night, not enough to even half-fill Lambeau Field, home of the Packers. Could Comey's statement seven days before the election, which turned out to point to more nonsense, but which once again refocused negativity on a non-existent email "scandal" make enough of a difference to sway 35,000 votes across three states in a different direction, or keep just enough people at home to make a difference. Absolutely. Likewise, the wikileaks hacks, which are also illegal, spewed out all kinds of falsehoods and innuendo. 35,000 votes is an infinitesimal number in an election where ten million votes were cast in those three states.

I've grown kind of cynical over the years when it comes to believing that the truth makes a difference to people, especially singularly-focused conservatives, and most conservative evangelicals, when it comes to politics in particular. I read the reports from Gowdy's Benghazi committee, and the conclusions of the FBI investigations into Hillary's private email server. From the comments made here, it's clear that few members of this board read even the news briefings, much less the reports themselves. I suspect Keith did, and perhaps Haruo did as well. Comey knew the contents of the report, and the findings of the investigation into the emails, and then went in and lied through his teeth to Congress for two hours. If there had been even the slightest irregularity related to any federal law associated with that email server, the rabid hatred of Republicans directed toward Hillary would have taken full advantage of it, and they would have brought charges. Trump's apparently magnanimous gesture after winning, not to conduct an investigation or prosecute her, isn't all that generous in that you can't just decide to prosecute someone if they haven't committed a crime and he and his staff know full well the findings of the FBI report. That, of course, didn't keep her enemies, or Trump, or the right wing conservative fake news media from insisting on pushing all sorts of lies. Comey stood with them.

It's hard to gauge how much damage was done by the hacking into the DNC and the various ways all of that information was spread out, including inserted into what Wikileaks was pushing. People tend to believe anything on the internet, and anything that supports their own preconceptions. In the Christian community, we train people to "think with their heart" and check their brains at the door. I know a lot of Christians who would be insulted and offended if you accused them of gossip, who eagerly passed along rude, ugly, nasty memes, fabrications and lies about Hillary Clinton and believed every word of the stuff on wikileaks.

Does all of that add up to flipping a mere 35,000 votes?

[Stephen Fox]

It's out of Thornton's hands now

Billy's son Frank Graham will be in Mobile in a few days on the Trump election celebration tour to certify the Win, What's the electoral College Got to do with It.

Billy worked with Mohler and Adrian to takeover the SBC.

Now Frank carries on with Trump.

What the BGEA has joined together, let no man or Hillary cast asunder.

The marriage has been consummated.

The orgasms will be with us for at least four years.

[Stephen Fox]

http://religiondispatches.org/how-to-ta ... christmas/

And Jerry Vines, and Nelson Price and the Adrian Rogers that remain.

[KeithE]

There is plenty of blame to go around. Much on Hillary's campaign part: (1) lack of clear economic message, (2) focussing on "Trump’s temperamentally unfit message”, and over the longer term (3) her own record of hawkish behavior, and (4) true/perceived ties with Wall Street. Some on Trump’s part: many lies and promises that he seems to backing out of now.

But operating over several years created the “unpopular" Hillary Clinton. Her unpopularity grew over the last 20 years as these fake news items grew. Just this year the emails leaks (that came from Russia Hackers/Putin/Wikileaks) added to that unpopularity - only DNC hacks were used. That Republican Noise Machine is primarily responsible (or to blame) with Hillary's defeat.

The fact that Trump lies/Republican Noise Machine’s fake news were responsible is a matter of great national shame.

For the record, soon after the election, I became ambivalent about Trump beating Hillary - his statement of massive government rethinking, his call out of Boeing and Lockheed Martin overcharging (theft in reality) and his purported $1T infrastructure spending, cautiously turned my mind. But with all the Cabinet picks (to be discussed elsewhere in time) and recognizing that Russia wants Trump as President (whether as a “useful idiot” or as an enabler of oil deals, or whatever), Hillary would be far less bad.

With voting margins as small as
0.2% in Michigan
0.7% in Wisconsin
0.7% in Pennsylvania
1.2% in Florida
and many others states within 10%,
Source: (click on states)
it is entirely possible that the election results would be the opposite if those fake news had not ever happened. That too is in part Hillary’s fault for not effectively countering.

[Sandy]

[KeithE]

[William Thornton]

Her negatives weren't due to fake news. She should have buried the most flawed candidate the GOP ever ran.

But, excuses abound in this business.

[Sandy]

[KeithE]

[Tim Bonney]

[Jim]

From the Washington Times 10 December:

“As recently as Nov. 17 [more than a week after the voting], James Clapper, the nation’s top intelligence officer, told Congress his agencies 'don’t have good insight' into a direct link between WikiLeaks and the emails supposedly hacked by a Russian operation from Democrats and the Hillary Clinton campaign.”

Even Wicki-villain Assange insists that his outfit did not leak any Russian stuff. On the Hannity clambake 15 December (Fox), he said nothing he offered came from Russia...believe him or not, or Hannity, for that matter. I don't watch that program but read about the Assange interview. One hopes that the CIA routinely hacks into the affairs of all the nations in the world that have electronic facilities and attempts to effect whatever objective is at hand, including elections. So...much ado about nothing. The people voted and didn't wonder WWPD (What would Putin do?) about the matter.

[KeithE]

[William Thornton]

Indeed, the clamor has been, "take back our country," so now my mod/lib friends can take their turn. Election coming up in two years. See if you can find candidates who can win.

[KeithE]

[William Thornton]

Looking like a serious case of confirmation bias. You really ought to see someone about that.

[KeithE]

[William Thornton]

[Sandy]

Republicans have come to the conclusion that they can't win when there's a large turnout, so when they can, they implement ways to suppress the vote. The silver lining is that awareness of that usually generates some change. The silver lining in the dark cloud that is the impending Trump presidency is its built-in incompetence, which should lead to a nice Democratic majority in both houses in 2018. There are lots of good places that will keep open political battles going that keep things stirred up, and the confirmed word about Russian hacking will be on the table constantly. Watergate is going to fade into the pages of history with this, and if the connection directly to Trump is established, and I think it's there, this could be fun to watch.

[William Thornton]

It's already fun.

[Jim]

In watching the numbing boringness of Obama's final (at least hopefully) press conference, I kept waiting for him to blame Hillary's defeat on George Bush, like he blamed George Bush for the housing bubble-burst wrought by Congress and the truth-gang blamed him for colluding with the fat Sheiks to cause 9/11. Alas, he chose to blame Putin, a flagrant act of ingratitude to Vladimir for covering his derriere vis-a-vis the “red lines in the sand” that somehow never got crossed even though they did. So now the word is that Trump has colluded with Putin—his bosom buddy—to set up both the FBI and CIA, letting them become the scapegoats for the defeat of what has to be the emptiest pants-suit that ever waited for the 3:00 a.m. call.