More Political Silliness And Illogic

This is partly about "the political games" but also about the illogic and careless language used by the talking heads on TV.  And I don't like either side of both issues!

First, the "the political games".   The Facts:  FBI Director Comey sent a letter to "Congress advising them that more emails were found that might involve their previous committee investigations, as he had promised to do if new information was discovered.  No specific information was included, and he noted that the possibilility of misunderstanding.

The basis of concern is that Huma Abedin (wife of Anthony Weiner of sexting shame-fame) is an associate of Clinton and there MIGHT be some Clinton emails not yet discovered.  She used a family laptop to send some emails to Clinton.  The content has not been made public at this time is not known at this time. Nothing suggesting anything improper has been offerred. 

The FBI, after reviewing all the emails on Clinton's server, has found nothing of concern and closed the investigation months ago.  A very few emails with classified information were sent TO her without proper notifications.  Her replies were lawful; if you don't know received information was classified, YOU are not at fault. The FBI said so.

OK.  As far as I can think, if Huma sent Clinton any emails, they are on Clinton's email system and already examined by the FBI.  This starts to look like the Kevin Bacon game.  Can you connect anyone socially unacceptable to Clinton?  LOL!

As far as I can tell now, the letter was addressed TO House Committee Chairman, all Republican of course.  I will explain something about the details of Government letter-writing.  There is "TO", there is "cc" (courtesy copy), and there is "bcc" (blind courtesy copy) just like on emails.

Only in Government letters, the cc and bcc is not on the original TO letter.  The "TO" recipients do not know about the cc and bcc list unless they ask for a file copy of the letter.  The cc list does not know about the "bcc" list unless they ask (and the originators admit to it).

So, unless things have changed (and they might have - I've been retired for10 years),  the Republican Committee saw only that they had been sent the letter, the Democratic minority leaders saw they had been sent a copy of the letter to the Republican Chairmen, and only Comey and his staff know who got sent a bcc copy (bcc's are usually sent only to internal staff who need to know about such things for media questions and file-keeping.

Is that confusing enough?  I spent 30 years in Government and got very used to those kinds of subtleties, LOL!  It all makes sense to me!  LOL!

Second, the talking heads discussions...

Everyone I heard on MSNBC and CNN got it all WRONG!  Clinton mentioned the Comey letter send to the Republican Committee Chairmen.  As usual, she was utterly technically correct.  The letter was indeed addressed to the Republican Committee Chairmen.  She said that with the same accuracy I would in discussing "TO, cc, and bcc".  She understands that stuff  and speaks of it accurately.

The TV talking heads did not!  They said Clinton claimed the letter was sent "only" to the Republicans and casitigatd her for a deception..  The ccs were sent to the ranking Democratic Minority Leaders.  But they received cc copies; they were not the original TO recipients.

Meanwhile, Clinton is saying that she would like any available information to be released ASAP, as there is noactual information in Director Comey's letter but there are suggestions.  Trump, on the other hand is claiming the non-information in Comey's letter as some proof of guilt  

As odd as that might seem in the real world, it matters in Government.  Comey very DELIBERATELY and EXPLICITLY sent the official copies of the letter to the Republican Committee chairmen  and NOT the official copies to the Democratic Ranking Members.  But cc'd them to cover his ass.  A true Washington wimpy asshole who needs to be removed...

Conclusion:  Comey wished to try to stay out of trouble by playing it both too carefully and too ineptly.  Whoever wins the Presidency, he is going to be gone for the crime of political incompetence.  He can't claim it was urgent (the FBI had the information 5 weeks ago), and he can't claim any factul reason for presenting the mere statement that the FBI was investigating new information 11 days before an election. 

Ex FBI officials have said there is an informal, but previously modern unbroken rule of avoiding all political statements 60 days before an election.  That Comey broke that rule says a lot about his intent.