Writes Bill Clinton in his new book, quoted in "Bill Clinton makes stunning confession about his bizarre behavior after Hillary's defeat in America's 'darkest election'" (Daily Mail).
Presumably, he means he didn't sleep well. The assertion that he couldn't sleep for 2 years is patently untrue. He's still alive.
Clinton also writes in a mode that would be called "election denialism" if it were pro-Trump: "Almost two years after the election, Kathleen Hall Jamieson, a highly regarded social scientist said Russia's cyber attacks piled on top of Comey's interventions were effective enough to persuade voters in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin to vote for third parties or stay at home. If so, Putin's enablers were Comey and the political press."
What about the Russia hoax that Hillary participated in?! Shouldn't that balance the effect of "Russia's cyber attacks"?
What were the "cyber attacks"? Here's Kathleen Hall Jamieson's book, "Cyberwar: How Russian Hackers and Trolls Helped Elect a President: What We Don't, Can't, and Do Know" (Amazon Associates link). From a 2018 New Yorker article about that book:
What were the "cyber attacks"? Here's Kathleen Hall Jamieson's book, "Cyberwar: How Russian Hackers and Trolls Helped Elect a President: What We Don't, Can't, and Do Know" (Amazon Associates link). From a 2018 New Yorker article about that book:
[Jamieson's] case is based on a growing body of knowledge about the electronic warfare waged by Russian trolls and hackers—whom she terms “discourse saboteurs”—and on five decades’ worth of academic studies about what kinds of persuasion can influence voters, and under what circumstances. Democracies around the world, she told me, have begun to realize that subverting an election doesn’t require tampering with voting machines. Extensive studies of past campaigns, Jamieson said, have demonstrated that “you can affect people, who then change their decision, and that alters the outcome.” She continued, “I’m not arguing that Russians pulled the voting levers. I’m arguing that they persuaded enough people to either vote a certain way or not vote at all.”
The words "Steele" and "dossier" don't appear in that article, and I'm not going to buy Bill's book on Kindle just to do a search. Amazon used to let you search for a word before buying a book.
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A little over one hundred years ago what Theodore Roosevelt thought was very important, and then it wasn't. Perhaps Alice would want to be Commander in Chief in these times.
Political dynasties are a hard thing to pull off. Bill would be well served to count his blessings. After all, he got so very much of what he wanted.
I would find this stuff a lot easier to swallow if they dealt with the herd of elephants stampeding through the room. But the way this is written, it carefully steers clear of actual examples of this "persuasion." For example, is it "Russian persuasion" to note how many countries that the US and NATO have attacked since the fall of the USSR compared to Russia, or is it just a brutal hangover from one's support for these wars that we now know was predicated on lies and nefarious motivations?
I guess the answer is to call me "Ivan." Maybe "Crazy Ivan," I really liked "The Hunt for Red October."
Trump is the real "light bringer." Bill Clinton started the cycle of endless wars that we have been in since, since the military industry was on hard times post Cold War. Clinton, and every president since, other than Trump, have been "hood winkers," not light bringers.
To avoid FOIA discovery, Clinton ran an email server from her bathroom - an unsecured, unpatched version of Microsoft Exchange. This is what got hacked. (Bush Secretary of State Colin Powell also did this.)
She was committing numerous felonies by this, beginning with storing highly classified secret US government documents on an unsecured off-site server. This is classical evidence of espionage. Once the server was discovered, she had her lawyers go through its contents and delete about half the emails it contained ... AFTER the server had been subpoenaed ... yet another felony that anybody not named Clinton would go to prison for.
This is the "hacking" and "cyber" that Bill Clinton is complaining cost Hillary the election. If her server hadn't been hacked and its damning contents revealed, then it's true ... Hillary might have hoodwinked the nation into electing this monster.
Fuck Bill Clinton. He should be in prison right alongside his crooked wife and they should rot there. It's a goddamn shame that Donald Trump doesn't have the balls to put her there.
He needs to be put under oath, and under a very bright light, and be forced to tell what he knows about the activities on Jeffrey Epstein's island.
That probably wouldn't be legal to do. And yet it should be done nonetheless.
Wandering in the woods is a good look for them…
God help us all! The Clintons ARE thinking to have another go.
The Russians tricked the Democrats into nominating Hillary by manipulating the primary process. It was the slickest election interference ever.
Dixcus, couldn't agree more. Only this time the deposing attorney needs to sure of his verb tenses in asking questions.
What about the Russia hoax that Hillary participated in?
It's okay when we do it.
I don't doubt that people told Bill that Russian influence kept voters from voting for Hillary. Anyone who is still hanging on to Bill isn't going to tell him that Hillary lost because, despite what Obama said, she really isn't likeable enough.
That meme of Jesus arm wrestling Satan to defeat Hillary should have been declared an act of war
When will we be free of these grifting Clintons? Bill wanted Hillary to win so that he could fuck interns on the Resolute desk.
The reality is that more people in more states preferred a non-political former tv show host and lifelong developer and self-promoter over the arrogant, entitled bureaucrat who thought just being the first woman was enough.
They claim it was the Russians who swayed people toward Trump, but cannot fathom that people might have just come upon their disgust for Hillary on their own.
And even today, they still cannot get their heads around the fact that they had nothing to sell but abortion and- again- the first woman thing. It's not enough. There has to be some meat in the sandwich. Russians or no, substance and likability go a long way in a campaign.
[Jamieson's] case is based on a growing body of knowledge about the electronic warfare waged by Russian trolls and hackers—whom she terms “discourse saboteurs”—and on five decades’ worth of academic studies about what kinds of persuasion can influence voters, and under what circumstances. Democracies around the world, she told me, have begun to realize that subverting an election doesn’t require tampering with voting machines. Extensive studies of past campaigns, Jamieson said, have demonstrated that “you can affect people, who then change their decision, and that alters the outcome".
This has to be the most lightweight "case" ever presented. Also known as the "No shit, Sherlock" thesis.
The 2016 Russian bot claim was another hoax, as was revealed in the Twitter files. The hoax was hatched by Bill Kristol and a group that called itself Hamilton68, an obvious CIA front. With the help of “ex-FBI” agents planted in Twitter, the hoaxers falsely labeled pro-Trump U.S. Twitter accounts as originating in Russia. With the help of the FBI moles, the hoaxers even created a fake “Dashboard” to track these accounts as “proof.” This was discovered by Yoel Roth, head of Twitter security, and a Trump hater. There was no great Russian bot swarm. It’s another hoax. The hoax was based on slandering Trump supporters on Twitter as Russian agents.
To give Billy credit, he had at least some idea of persuading people who didn't agree with him. Very few people think that way today. But for him and Hillary to make the "discovery" that voters can be swayed by emotion and cliches or memes is pathetic. They're supposed to be the bright Ivy Leaguers. And he cites some kind of peer-reviewed literature? Bullshit--selectively stating the obvious.
The Clintons failed to pass health-care reform. Obama barely achieved something. There are still problems, but the issue wasn't mentioned in the election. Why don't the Dems try some persuasion on that?
Trolls? You mean like Inga and Freder? Aren’t those Russian names?
Having listened to Hillary's audiobook, I can state with confidence that no elephants were examined in the making of any book with the name Clinton stamped on the cover. The Zambezi is not just a river in Africa, after all.
It would be nice to live in a world where everyone is as free to speak their mind as Bill Clinton. And that everyone would have their thoughts accepted, agreement not necessary, like the chattering class will accept and analyze Clinton’s comments.
The US govt lies and censorship against the truth in 2020 about H Biden’s laptop, and bribery, was far far worse than any Russian stuff in 2016.
Look the entire charge of Russian support for Trump’s election is, and always hss been, ridiculous on its face. Democrat trolls will pontificate how Putin hated Hillary. And so he might have, but so what? Thanks to her total disregard of the most elementary cybersecurity precautions Putin (and a lot of other state actors) surely had enough material to blackmail her for the next 50 years. Nor would it surprise me if the SVR succeeded in running a honey trap (or two or three) on Bill himself. I mean, I taught the basics of cybersecurity for a while as an adjunct professor in a business school and the near total lack of security awareness exhibited by Hillary and her minions is simply mind-boggling.
By contrast, to Putin himself Trump would have been seen as a wild card — totally unpredictable. Does any sane person think Putin would have wanted that? Might he nuke Moscow? Trump himself claimed to have threatened to bomb the city, (type of bombs not specified) and Vlad seems to have taken him seriously.
No, the whole notion of Russian interference on Trump’s side is simply preposterous.
Hillary lost because she is tremendously unlikeable and terrible at retail politics — only Harris showed herself to be worse. She is dishonest, and personally corrupt, and cares not at all who knows it. I’d have crawled five miles over hot coals and broken glass to vote against her, and I am far from being alone.
Nothing more outraged than narcissists deprived of something they thought they were entitled to. Hillary lost only because the machine didn’t cheat hard enough. Hence, her shock and delayed concession. Hill and Bill truly thought the system had it in the bag for them. In 2020, overdrive prevented a repeat, delivering Biden's 81 million votes.
In the last few years, I have had it hammered in to this 71y/o brain how powerful, how unassailable, selective memory is.
Come on Bill Clinton is a compulsive liar. He was just saying all this stuff to make Hillary happy. Or perhaps he's telling the truth and the only reason he couldn't sleep for 2 years is he was worried about Trump revealing the Jeffrey Epstein videos
"President Bill Clinton was so enraged by the treatment of his wife,"
This is hard to believe. Bill never seemed like the enraged type. And he didn't seem to even like Hillary much.
Bill does have a good argument with regard to how Hillary was treated. Obama got fawning press and very little criticism. Biden received unprecedented support from the US intelligence community along with the cooperation of corporate and social media. All Hillary got was a free pass on her shenanigans.
"Bush Secretary of State Colin Powell also did this.)"
Powell's non-classified system was set up and maintained by State tech people.
It's indisputable that the Clinton campaign and the DNC promoted Trump as a plausible candidate in 2015, in order to throw the Republican primaries into chaos. If you don't like Trump, your enemies are the people who did that
My theory is that Bill has to watch his step because Hillary still has his balls in a vise.
Remember after 9/11 Bill Clinton lamenting that he didn't get to be a wartime President and how unfair it was that W did?
No President has allowed that to happen since.
'Rules based order' brought home to domestic politics.
Bill didn't dare sleep when post-election Hillary was stalking the halls.
I suspect the real truth is that he was enraged because they didn't take his campaign advice.
Wish both Clintons would shut up and retire from public life. Both Bill and Hillary are extremely fortunate to have had no lawfare legal actions directed at their Clinton Foundation influence-peddling financial crimes, Hillary is super lucky to note have been prosecuted for her destruction of evidence, Russia-Gate sponsorship, illegal campaign financials, and accessory to murder of US ambassador to Libya. Bill has been accused of rape by several women, without consequences, brokered influence upon Obama administration via Clinton Foundation, and benefited from donations intended for Haitian victims. They stole furniture and household items from White House when Bill's term was over. Their shenanigans likely emboldened the Bidens own criminal enterprise.
No, Freder is German.
The assertion that he couldn't sleep for 2 years is patently untrue. He's still alive.
Well, just barely ...
and accessory to murder of US ambassador to Libya. Bill has been accused of rape by several women
Trump is an accessory (after the fact) to the murder of Khashoggi and Trump, too, has been accused of sexual assault, including rape, by more than three dozen women (including his first wife). Of course, in Trump's case, all the women are liars.
I think that particular quote is showing up right now to try to talk distraught Dems off the ledge. The idea is: "Bill Clinton went through this, so, yes, there can be a tomorrow." The Dem party leaders lied about Kamala's chances and so their voters received a terrible shock on November 5th. It's now quite evident to all thatTrump has increased his strength in all groups since 2016 and the true belivers cannot explain this growing strength to themselves nor can they accept it since they were encouraged to think of Trump supporters as garbage and losers. And so, the sky-screamers.
I'm sorry to say that I'm enjoying it all, especially the sky-screamer videos now circulating. I'm sorry to see it in myself because I don't think triumphalism is a good mind set. BUT - what haven't those people put me through, mentally and emotionally, especially over the last four years? and what haven't others gone through - the J6ers - jailed for four years in DC jails? grandmothers hunted down? all the people called racists? all the people DEI'd? all the Jews assaulted and derided? all the people in small communities invaded by immigrants? all the conservative PhD's turned down by their own state colleges and by newspapers and other media for jobs because they were conservatives? None of us went on TikTok and screamed in that revealingly childish way. But we all felt the smug stupidity and the boredom of living with petty, malicious oppression.
Now like Dante, at the end of the Inferno, we have come out again under the stars. "E quindi uscimmo a riveder le stelle."
A difficult purgatorial ascent lies before us as we struggle for America to realize its best self. Let's just forget about the Conan move, however natural. At least we can start forward under the sweet sapphire sky of dawning hope.
If you spend enough time online to see a Russian bot's tweets or posts, you've probably seen a lot of other tweets, posts, and articles? What are the odds that enough people to make a difference were influenced by Russian disinformation (if that's what it was)?
Right on time the Russian troll (who claims, without evidence, that his name German) shows up.
Trump was not a war time president and explicitly campaigned as the anti-war option in this year's election.
Thanks althouse for "fact-checking" Bill Clinton. This is same technique the MSM has been using on Trump for the last 9 years. Clinton asserts he didn't sleep for two years - factcheck? Wrong.
As for Clinton, could he and hillary just go away? Hillary lost 8 years ago. Bill's been out of office for 24 years. Just dry up, and blow away.
Hopefully, the Bill Barr whitewash will be throw in the trash and the new AG will launch a TRUE and EFFECTIVE investigation into the Steele Dossier, Hillary's funding of it, and the whole sordid, and possibly illegal surveillance of Trump by the intelligence agencies.
And we need to start using "Without evidence" as a qualifier. As in "Without evidence, Clinton asserts Russia cost HIllary the election".
I considered calling you a dolt in my original response, but I thought I would be nice (or at least not overtly nasty). But you really are a dolt.
While he arguably didn't start any new wars and has opposed the GWOT forever wars, the Afghanistan war was still going on in Trump's first term. We were also fighting in Iraq, Syria, Yemen when he was in office. So yeah, he was a war time President.
One coin, two sides.
My thought, too
I recall it being said quite often that he was raising hell about the way Hillary's people were ignoring white working class voters in 2016, and I don't recall him ever buying into the Russia hoax prior to this.
I think somebody finally noticed how many times he shivved Harris while ostensibly campaigning for her.
If people could realize how much all countries engage in Mad Magazine “Spy vs. Spy” election subversion, we could contextualize it better.
Bush Secretary of State Colin Powell also did this
=================
has it been subject FOIA'd to what results?
can DoS decide on its own or need consult with higher-up?
Because it was so skewed towards the wealthy and non-contributing poor that it made health insurance unaffordable for the self-employed and small business middle-class.
I lost my doctor of 25 years. I can no longer afford health insurance. I know trust-fund artistes who pay $40 a month for platinum level care with eye, dental, and annual deductibles that cost less than one month of minimum coverage for me with a 9K deductible with no eye or dental coverage.
Try justifying that.
Yes, this. It’s not called disinformation for nothing.
Jesus arm wrestling Satan
========
was it clear who it is Jesus/Satan was subbing for
True. Plus he’d lose his “first African-American President” status.
No more saxophone solos, of any kind.
Yes. If one thing needs to be investigated by Congress now, it’s this. Relentlessly.
Genes can trump lifestyle. Fast food lover The Donald is two months older than Bill yet presents as several years younger.
Trump was a world wide celebrity for decades before becoming a politician. He still has a string of businesses, even his home Mar a Lago is a business. He has to ensure the club maintains a standard that others will lay out big money to attend. When Bill left office the only dream he had left was to get back in the WH through his wife. Trump crushed that dream - of course the man is bitter.
define 'sleep'
What they lament is that the "uneducated" are no longer just going along with the gullible college-edumedicated. The "educated strata" are storied in their ease of being gulled. They were, and still are, the most ardent supporters of socialism, Nazism, and communism.
“Why you fool, it’s the educated reader who CAN be gulled. All our difficulty comes with the others. When did you meet a workman who believes the papers? He takes it for granted that they’re all propaganda and skips the leading articles. He buys his paper for the football results and the little paragraphs about girls falling out of windows and corpses found in Mayfair flats. He is our problem. We have to recondition him. But the educated public, the people who read the high-brow weeklies, don’t need reconditioning. They’re all right already. They’ll believe anything.”
— C.S. Lewis, That Hideous Strength
The fading of the critical sense is a serious menace to the preservation of our civilization. It makes it easy for quacks to fool the people. It is remarkable that the educated strata are more gullible than the less educated. The most enthusiastic supporters of Marxism, Nazism, and Fascism were the intellectuals, not the boors. The intellectuals were never keen enough to see the manifest contradictions of their creeds. It did not in the least impair the popularity of Fascism that Mussolini in the same speech praised the Italians as the representatives of the oldest Western civilization and as the youngest among the civilized nations. No German nationalist minded it when dark-haired Hitler, corpulent Goering, and lame Goebbels were praised as the shining representatives of the tall, slim, fair-haired, heroic Aryan master race. Is it not amazing that many millions of non-Russians are firmly convinced that the Soviet regime is democratic, even more democratic than America?
--von Mises, Ludwig (1945). Bureaucracy
The professors. and their acolytes imbued with the importance of the campus, screwed up. They made is so that those who work with things, deal with the reality of inflation, government interventions, etc. had to stop and deal with the government and its nagging nannies.
Never force working people to take time out of their day to deal with your foolishness. But they have. With luck we can crush the edumedicators over the next couple years as they will not be able bring themselves to even remain quiet as America, or should I say 'merica, celebrates 250 years of the Declaration of Independence and her semiquincentennial
Althouse: have you tried both the Kindle and hardback searches on Amazon? If they have removed them both, that’s terrible. Worldcat (a substantial search catalogue of all academic and public and some private libraries, great function for finding the geographically closest copy of any book) has a rudimentary term search function that still works.
Big words from an anonymous.
Russia owned the Clintons. The notion that Putin would prefer the loose cannon Trump has always been absurd.
For many years I have lives with the maxim that "No relationship makes sense unless you are in it." I don't know of any relationship that it applies to more than the Clintons. What a hound dog like Bill ever saw in Hillary is beyond me. At no time was she an attractive woman physically. And why did she put up with the serial humiliations he visited upon her. Obviously behind closed doors they were up to something, but I suspect it was more about scheming than screwing. I felt like Hillary believed that the American people owed her the Presidency as recompense for Bill's all too visible philandering. Perhaps the French expression folie a deux best describes them. They in some manner or another egged one another on. Bill was a political talent who may or may not have managed to climb the greasy pole without her, but Hillary's political ceiling without having married Bill was probably the state senate in a reliably blue district in a reliably blue state. Despite Obama's testimonial that she was "likable enough" she wasn't. Despite being propped up and glammed up by the media she really wasn't likable at all. That's the one thing she and Kamala had in common. If anyone needed to run a basement campaign it was those two. The more you saw, the less you liked.
I think if Hillary had used Bill as a campaign manager she might have won, because Bill, no matter what he thought about us yokels in the privacy of his house, would never have disrespected have the population. While Michael Jordan may have stayed out of politics because "Republicans buy shoes too." Bill understood that you denigrate your opponent, not his supporters.
Like many other of my fellow citizens I wish they just would fade away. To paraphrase Cromwell "It is not fit that should remain for all the good you have done lately. In the name of God, go."
'The whole thing is hard for me to write,'I couldn't sleep for two years after the election."
>Ann Althouse said...
Presumably, he means he didn't sleep well. The assertion that he couldn't sleep for 2 years is patently untrue. He's still alive.<
Yeah, presumably - since that's what that idiom that he used means, and not that he actually did not sleep for one single minute for an entire two years. Was that really worth the "ink"?
Vote hyperlocal, local, and in state races. That’s our strength against the edumedicated.
Mine, too. Hillary turns the reptile gaze toward JD Vance, and concludes that the infant will be easy game. She doesn't lick her lips, so much as flick her tongue.
I think people voted for Trump in 2016 and 2024 for many of the same reasons - perhaps more so in 2024
I am laughing at you, Freder. Every sensible Althouse commentator laughs at you.
"With the help of “ex-FBI” agents planted in Twitter, the hoaxers falsely labeled pro-Trump U.S. Twitter accounts as originating in Russia."
That's the really unbelievable part. If Russia wanted to influence the election via the Internet it would certainly be able to the disguise the source of the accounts. A VPN tunnel to some small businesses in the US that were Russian fronts is all it would take.
Imagine trying to sleep next to that.
Clinton also writes in a mode that would be called "election denialism" if it were pro-Trump
It's not wrong when the good guys do it. (Also, you're a racist.)
It's hard to take Bill's sense of grievance seriously. He was an incredibly nimble and talented politician who had the good fortune of running against two notably unexciting GOP opponents who were each a generation older. OTOH, his wife was a charmless shrew with obviously poor political instincts, who also happened to be running at a time when support for globalist establishment types like her was collapsing both here and in Europe (remember Brexit?). For Bill to suggest that Hillary somehow got rooked out of the presidency in 2016 on account of Russian hackers or anyone else is preposterous. Just makes him sound like an old fool.
And yet Trump won again in 2024. Losers make excuses.
>he was asked if he had ever apologized to Lewinsky.<
Oh stop with this. She was an adult. His behavior, given its venue, was very unseemly for a President and he should have apologized to the American people, if to anyone. But Monica Lewinsky was an adult woman who engaged in an affair. Do men generally have some strange obligation to apologize to women when those things end? Please.
"the near total lack of security awareness exhibited by Hillary and her minions is simply mind-boggling."
I have a MS in information assurance and my mind is also boggled. Its as if she wanted the server to be hacked. Perhaps if she had attended the security briefings she blew off she might have learned about things like how formidable nation-state-sponsored threat actors can be.
A word of advice to Slick Willie. It's time to go. And as for your wife, it would be better for the Republic if she had never existed.
Well, at least he could eat.
Bill. Your wife lost because she was thoroughly unlikeable. A social climbing middle class Park Ridge c*nt. Even a child could see it.
So. A nazi, then. Makes sense.
Can't the Clintons just, oh, I don't know, GO AWAY!
All this Russia interference talk sounds pretty serious. Maybe we need to study the impact on 2008, 2012 as well. I mean, if the Russians could get their preferred candidate elected while expending a small fraction of resources blown by our national parties, they likely began honing their skills long before 2016. Strange how there’s no desire to investigate this.
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