Monday, November 07, 2016

So Many Emails, So Little Time.


It's the favourite food of conspiracy theorists and their zookeeper, Donald J. Trump. "The fix is in." The proof - the massive number of emails the FBI would have had to read in order to clear Hillary Clinton of any criminal conduct.

By some accounts there were upwards of 650,000 emails. In standard copy paper that would be a stack of emails just over 400 feet in height. Yes, there are online calculators for this sort of thing.

Clinton was secretary of state for almost four years which, at 650,000 emails, would mean a hundred foot stack of paper generated each and every year. Busy lady. That would mean writing a rough average of 160,000 emails each year. If she was really, really diligent that would mean about 440 emails Hillary would have to write each and every day, 7 days a week, 12 months a year, year upon year. She would probably have to read at least as many more. Hmm, that doesn't sound right.

But that's the number that Trump & Shills bandy about so let's go with it. How do you go through a 400 foot high stack of emails in just over a week? Easy. You don't. That's the magic of emails, they're electronic. They're made up of computer food commonly known as data. Which means computers can digest them about as fast as the programmers can unleash them to the job.

They can quickly identify which emails were sent by Clinton, which came from her server, and those gosh darn amazing computers can scan those emails can use search parameters to scour the messages for critical words or phrases. Sort of like those TV shows where a mystery fingerprint is fed into a computer and, within minutes, the match is found.

This is a good time to recall the theory of the crime. Hillary was thought to have acted carelessly, recklessly endangering government information by using a less than secure email server. No one has ever said that she set out to harm the US government, just that she was unacceptably insecure. That's still a crime when, through conduct in the range of careless to reckless, secret information is leaked even if inadvertently.

So the computers, and a dedicated brigade of FBI specialists, did their work, pored over the emails, and came up with nothing approaching criminal culpability. Easy, peasy. Which is why the beached whale and his coterie were left with nothing to say except the investigation was rigged, the results pre-ordained and Hillary is still a crook who got away with the greatest crime perpetrated on the United States since the secrets of the atom bomb were leaked to Stalin.

So, I'm sorry Trumpeteers, but you're left with the cold reality that you're supporting a narcissist, misogynist, fascist, racist, lecher with a serial sexual assault history (self-admitted), no experience of government, a sterling record (Cheney standard, no less) of ducking military service in his time, and an unrivalled record of massive financial disasters from which he alone walked away with pockets of cash leaving his fellow investors, suppliers and creditors to feast on his ruins. Oh, did I mention that he's also a sociopath and a pathalogical liar? Yeah, he's the guy who stands for everything you believe in. I'm not sure who's creepier, you or him.

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