Comments

  1. Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls says

    Donald Trump wants to know why “some woman” doesn’t accuse President Obama of sexual assault.

    Humm…Maybe because Obama is a decent, honest human being, and understands the definitions of sexual harassment and sexual assault, so he doesn’t even think about going there, and simply doesn’t. Unlike Trump, who seems to only consider violent rape as mild sexual harassment.

  2. says

    This is a followup to comment 447.

    A white nationalist “alt-right” website, The Right Stuff, praised Trump’s dog whistles:

    [Trump’s speech was ] almost unprecedented in its militancy and vitriol for the luegenpresse and the brahmins.

    Nazis use “luegenpresse” to describe the “lying press” and this term has been revived for use on alt-right media outlets.

    David Duke, former KKK leader, also praised Trump’s speech:

    Donald Trump had an incredible speech last night in West Palm Beach […] He called them out, the bankers, the globalists, […]

    These Jewish supremacists and these Jewish radicals who have been dominating international banking, the financing of politics and leaders, bribing them in effect, the people who have controlled the media, the people who have controlled the political apparatus in so many countries, who have controlled much of the academia, much of the discourse, they’re crazy. […] they’re in a full court, all out war against Donald Trump and they’ve been planning this a long time. They have gone so overboard, that’s the problem that they face, though, because they’ve gone so overboard with this vicious attack against Trump that it’s becoming apparent to people. […] [Rense Radio Network, David Duke Show, 10/14/16]

    The neo-Nazi website Infostormer also praised Trump’s speech:

    […] it looks like Glorious Leader has exceeded our expectations once again, using the parasite-ridden city of West Palm Beach, Florida to deliver a scathing attack on the “interwoven thread” of international finance, Globalism, and the media.

    While he did not use the word “Jew” specifically in his speech, the vast majority of Christ-Killers with internet influence and access immediately jumped upon the awe-inspiring rally with a rabid rage not seen since the glory days of 1930’s Germany. […]

    When we’re busy rounding up the Kikes onto the deportation trains and planes, I want them to understand that it was their own overreaching and neurotic insanity that brought their schemes and hustles crashing down.

    […] instead of sitting back content with their profits and simple corruption of higher echelons of society, the Jew sought even greater upheaval and discord […]

    And now the sweet and wonderful backlash has arrived.

    And it tastes so unbelievably delectable. [Infostormer, 10/14/16]

    There’s more where that came from.

  3. blf says

    In the Granuiad, Ben Jennings on Donald Trump’s problem with women (cartoon). Amusingly, readers’s comments “were switched on in error.” A few good ones were made before commenting was disabled:

    ● “He doesn’t have ‘a problem with women.’ [… H]e’s a philandering, greasy, groping, sexual predator who thinks his celebrity and supposed millions give him power over others. He boasts of assaults and speculates on which ten year old he will fuck in a few years. Like all abusers, he won’t recognise the truth of his own actions and continues to insult and demean those who come forward with their histories of sordid encounters (and worse.)
      “Let’s stop the euphemisms, he’s a disgusting, dirty old man. I am appalled that the Republican Party, bewitched by the prospect of a tax cut or two for those who already have much, has not recognised that they selected a piece of shit as their candidate […]”

    ● Trumps Gonna Win.
    In reply: “Yup. Creepy Misogynist Of The Year is in the bag. […]”

  4. says

    The Slim allegations (are they supposed to cover all of the media outlets in which these stories have appeared?) among other things appear to reflect what Trump’s campaign and network are doing. As the article I link to and quote above @ #178 describes, Trump’s campaign is bankrolled in part by “reclusive mega-donors” the Mercers. For many years the family has funded, alongside “think tanks” that serve their economic and political interests, media outlets like Breitbart, books, films, and PACs dedicated to destroying the Clintons. Several of his top campaign officials and advisors have dedicated a good deal of their so-called professional lives to Clinton hate. “For them, it’s a war. And for them, nothing at all is out of bounds” accurately describes this group’s concerted efforts to destroy Hillary Clinton (and, as we’ve seen recently, the Republican Party leadership). It’s an actual, and not well hidden, conspiracy. Once again, the accusations Trump throws at others describe himself and his campaign quite accurately.

  5. blf says

    This is a long article, which I won’t excerpt, except for the end, A lifetime of misogyny catches up with Trump:

    […]
    The morning after the election, Americans will wake either to the first female president in their history, or one of the most regressive misogynists ever to hold office.

    If Trump is to lose, he will have been undone by the very groups he has sought to keep down — by immigrants, minorities and women, most especially by women.

    How will Trump feel, this man who has regarded women all of his life as mere adornments, to understand that he was beaten, at last, by a woman?

  6. says

    “‘She Would Not Be My First Choice’, Trump Says About Woman Accusing Him Of Sexual Assault”:

    At a rally in North Carolina on Friday, Donald Trump attempted to refute a woman who has accused him of sexual assault by saying, “Yeah, I’m going to go after her?! Believe me, she would not be my first choice that I can tell you. That would not be my first choice.”*

    Trump’s comments — referring to Jessica Leeds, the woman who recently told the New York Times that Trump sexually assaulted her on an airplane in the 1980s…

    He also appeared to address one of the two women who came forward Friday, where a woman told the Washington Post that Trump slid his hand up her skirt and touched her vagina through her underwear while he was sitting on a couch at a Manhattan nightclub in the 1990s.

    Gesturing with his hand to replicate the woman’s accusation, Trump said that the woman said, “Oh in 1992 he went like this.”…

    He also accused a former People magazine writer of being a liar after accusing Trump of forcibly kissing her at Mar-a-Lago while she was there to interview him and his then-pregnant wife, Melania Trump, on their first wedding anniversary in 2005.

    He also asked his supporters to “check out her Facebook page,” to understand why he wouldn’t have done what she was accusing him of.

    Trump also appeared to comment on Hillary Clinton’s physical appearance during the second presidential debate. Referring to her comments that he “literally stalked” her on the debate stage, Trump said, “I’m standing at my podium and she walks in front of me. And when she walked in front of me, believe me I wasn’t impressed,” he said.

    * Note the easy shift from “she” to “that.”

  7. says

    PZ posted Michelle Obama’s great speech from yesterday. In the previous chapter of this ongoing thread, a lot of positive comments were made about Michelle Obama’s speech.

    It’s hard to see how anyone could find her speech offensive, but some alt-right doofuses did.

    Reaching into the bottom of the barrel, the Jews have now brought out the man-ape Michelle Obama to complain about Trump’s alleged [P word]-grabbing.

    The nasty gorilla also repeated recent unfounded slander against Trump as if it were fact.

    Who are these men who don’t talk about sex when they’re alone with other men? . . . Certainly not the rappers that you and your husband have invited to the White House. [posted by Andrew Anglin, founder of neo-Nazi blog The Daily Stormer]

  8. says

    SC @5, Trump thinks that his opinion of Hillary Clinton’s physical attractiveness matters. He is so sure that his opinion matters that he included disparaging comments about Clinton’s looks (not being “impressed” etc.) in a rally speech.

    Trump is so petty, so small-minded. And he is ineffective. His intention was to dominate Clinton by dissing her appearance. As if Clinton cares about what Trump thinks of her (Clinton giving zero fucks is more likely).

    Trump bothered to hone in on the writer from People magazine some more. Having already disparaged her physical appearance, he has now called for Natasha Stoynoff to be put in jail. Link

    Trump also said, in effect, that any woman should be grateful because his sexual assault makes for a big story that will help a woman’s career. That’s also one of the ways he tries to bolster his claims that all of the women are lying. He thinks they would have come forward immediately with their stories because news of Trump’s attentions would have bolstered their careers.

  9. says

    I wonder if we might see something about Trump from Bo Derek at some point. Trump played himself in a 1989 film called Ghosts Can’t Do It, which starred Derek as a woman trying to find a body for her deceased husband, played by Anthony Quinn, to possess. Trump was one of the candidates. It won the 1990 Razzie Award for Worst Picture, with Trump winning for Worst Supporting Actor.

  10. Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls says

    I always get a belly laugh out of Trump’s defenders when they call Trump trustworthy. Evidently they are too busy fawning over him for some type of potential later payback to check whether or not he tells anything other than lies.
    Any rational person doesn’t t trust a word that comes out of Trump’s mouth without doing triple fact checks.

  11. Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls says

    Example of a probable Trump LIE.
    NYC Official: No Evidence Trump Gave $10K to 9/11 Fund

    New York City’s comptroller has found no evidence that Donald Trump gave $10,000 to a fund for 9/11 victims after the terror attack, and concluded that the GOP nominee “may have lied” about making a donation.
    The office of Comptroller Scott Stringer conducted a review of donation records to the Twin Towers Fund and the New York City Public/Private Initiatives, Inc., to see if Trump had donated after the 9/11 attacks.
    “Contrary to Donald Trump’s claims, the Comptroller’s Office found no evidence of a donation by Mr. Trump in the year following the attacks,” according to an “Information Sheet on 9/11 Donation Review” provided to NBC News on Friday that summarizes the office’s findings.
    “As first reported by the New York Daily News, Donald Trump may have lied about donations given to the Twin Towers Fund in support of 9/11 victims and first responders. While he claimed to make a $10,000 donation to that fund, the Comptroller’s review in response to Freedom of Information Law requests shows that no donation was made within a nearly 12-month window immediately following the tragedy,” the information sheet quoted Stringer as saying.
    Stringer said it was still possible that Trump made contributions at a later date, and if so he should come forward and show proof.
    The Daily News said that in the weeks after the attacks, Trump pledged $10,000 to the Twin Towers Fund as part of a charity effort that radio host Howard Stern was pushing. It linked to an Oct. 10, 2001 interview on Howard Stern’s radio show, in which Stern and co-host Robin Quivers thanked him for the donation.
    Said Quivers, “He gave us $10,000, that was beautiful.”
    “Yes he did, to our fund,” Stern replied, before asking Trump about other topics. Trump didn’t say anything in response to Stern or Quivers, or dispute that he’d made such a pledge.
    At the time, Stern was directing people to make out checks to the NYC Public/Private Initiatives, using the “Howard Stern Relief Fund” as a marketing hook, as the website for the charity efforts shows, according to the Daily News. The New York Post reported on Sept. 26, 2001 that Trump, “who often calls in to Stern’s show, kicked in $10,000.”
    The night before his Howard Stern appearance, Trump and then fiancé Melania Knauss had attended a Carnegie Hall benefit for the Twin Towers fund and the New York Police and Fire Widows and Children’s Benefit Fund. Tickets for the “Stand Up For New York” event ranged from $100 to $2500. Attendees, including former President Bill Clinton, were told they could also make checks out to the Twin Towers fund.
    The Twin Towers Fund and the Public/Private Initiatives were created in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks to raise money to support families of victims, first responders, and first responders’ families. The comptroller’s audit of the Twin Towers Fund covered from September 12, 2001 to August 31, 2002. The audit of the New York City Public/Private Initiatives, Inc. covered September 12, 2001 – June 30, 2002.
    Comptroller’s Office Press Secretary Tyrone Stevens told NBC News on Friday that the office manually reviewed approximately 1,500 pages of donor records, which contained the names of more than 110,000 individuals and entities that were collected as part of the audits.
    Stevens told NBC News it was highly unlikely that the review missed any money given by Trump or one of his entities, since virtually all of the donations came in the months following the attacks, and included identifying information about the donors. “We just don’t see a donation from any Trump entity—certainly there’s nothing that we can confirm from the time period covered by the audit,” Stevens said.
    The Trump campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

  12. says

    Last night or this morning, a man who was Stoynoff’s friend and mentor posted a series of tweets confirming that she told him about it at the time and they talked about it. I didn’t link to it because I didn’t want to feed the notion that a man needs to confirm a woman’s story for her to be believed, and now I can’t find it.

    Lynna:

    Trump bothered to hone in on the writer from People magazine some more. Having already disparaged her physical appearance, he has now called for Natasha Stoynoff to be put in jail.

    Everyone is talking about how dark his campaign has become, and it’s true, but the convention in July was not only sad and low budget but, like the rallies, super menacing. I had to turn it off when the “Lock her up!” chants started – couldn’t believe what I was watching.

    timgueguen:

    I wonder if we might see something about Trump from Bo Derek at some point. Trump played himself in a 1989 film called Ghosts Can’t Do It,…

    Interesting. Or from someone involved with I’ll Take Manhattan. I remember watching it when it was on (!), and thinking it was strange that this ad for Trump and his building just appeared in the middle of a miniseries.

  13. quotetheunquote says

    @SC #13
    The mentor’s name is Paul McLaughlin. He was interviewed tonight on CBC’s As it Happens. You can hear his story partway through Part 1 of this show. The interview begins around 11:20.

  14. says

    “Three members of a right-wing Kansas militia were just arrested for plotting to attack a mosque”:

    Three members of a right-wing militia group were arrested Friday for planning an attack on a Kansas mosque and apartment complex.

    Curtis Allen, Gavin Wright and Patrick Stein were arrested and charged with conspiring to use a weapon of mass destruction, prosecutors and FBI agents said at a press conference Friday afternoon in Wichita.

    The three men were targeting the Somali community in Garden City, Kan., a town of 27,000 people in the west of the state. They planned to fill four vehicles with explosives, park them at each corner of the apartment complex and detonate them, the officials said.

    The defendants, who allegedly called themselves “The Crusaders,” conducted surveillance of the building, stockpiled firearms, bombs, and prepared a manifesto, he said. About 120 people lived in the apartment complex, which also included a mosque.

    The attack was supposed to be carried out on the day following Election Day, Acting U.S. Attorney Tom Beall said, and was intended to “wake people up.” They suspects also allegedly considered attacking public officials who supported Somali immigrants and landlords who rented to Somalis.

    The arrests came after eight months of investigation, including undercover contact with the suspects, Beall said. He called the investigation one that took the agents “deep into a hidden culture of hatred and violence.”

    “These individuals had desire, the means, and the capability and were committed to carrying out this act of domestic terrorism,” said Eric Jackson, the FBI agent in charge of the investigation….

  15. KG says

    Donald Trump wants to know why “some woman” doesn’t accuse President Obama of sexual assault. – Lynna, OM@499

    This is a wild guess, but could it be because Obama doesn’t sexually assault women? I saw it noted somewhere yesterday that multiple such accusations have been made against Trump, and against Bill Clinton, but none against Obama, George W. Bush, or Ronald Reagan.

  16. blf says

    KG@20, Have there really been any credible accusations of sexual assault against President (Bill) Clinton? I might be mistaken, but as far as I know, everything was consensual — inappropriate, and, at least when he was president, perhaps exploiting that fact (i.e., maybe coercion) — but never forced or similar.

  17. blf says

    The führer of the UK nazis (Ukip) might be backing away from teh trum-prat — I doubt it, he’s as much of a liar as teh trum-prat — Nigel Farage backtracks on Donald Trump support amid groping claims (Jeremy Paxman is a generally highly-respected interviewer in the UK):

    Ukip’s temporary leader tells Jeremy Paxman he disagrees with Republican nominee on ‘lots of things’

    Nigel Farage has qualified his admiration of Donald Trump, saying he could not back his comments about groping women, banning Muslims from the US or derogatory remarks about Mexicans.

    The Ukip leader was pressed about his links to Trump in a new documentary presented Jeremy Paxman on the US presidential race to be shown on the BBC on Monday.

    Farage, who has appeared at a rally with Trump and praised him in the spin room after one of the presidential debates, came under fire from some of his Ukip MEPs this week for defending the controversial Republican.

    […]

    While Farage has not explicitly endorsed Trump, he has appeared alongside him during the campaign and said he could never vote for the Democratic candidate, Hillary Clinton.

    […]

    Earlier this week, two Ukip MEPs publicly condemned Farage for appearing to play down the Trump tapes, with one saying he was trying to “defend the indefensible”.

    Jane Collins, who represents Yorkshire and North Lincolnshire, said she had previously been a strong supporter of Farage, but “to make this kind of criminal behaviour seem normative makes me seriously question his judgment”.

    She said: “Trump’s sexist and derogatory comments have unequivocally proven he is totally unfit to be president of the United States, and Nigel Farage should think very carefully about defending him.”

    […]

  18. blf says

    I see light in the darkness — a backlash against bigotry is underway: “From Hillary’s resurgence to centrist fightbacks in Europe, there are signs that xenophobic populism is on the wane”…

    Due to lack of time on my part, I’ll excerpt only the conclusion:

    […]
    This is not to say that national populists or their authoritarian backers are about to be defeated or disempowered. The fuel that powers the far right has yet to be exhausted. But from Clinton’s lead to the surprising strength of Europe’s political centre-ground, and with the novelty of Russia being discredited on many fronts, the picture is not just doom and gloom for the democratically minded. If this is an interconnected world, then the pushback against national populism may be stronger than we think.

  19. KG says

    blf@21,

    I’ve taken another look, and the most credible seems to be the accusation by Juanita Broaddrick (her accusation that Hillary Clinton tried to silence her is much less so). I don’t think the other two mentioned in the linked article can be simply dismissed – there are “questions”, but nothing that would lead me to just dismiss such an accusation in the general case. There’s also an accusation relating to his time in Oxford, UK, as a Rhodes scholar, but in that case, the woman concerned has never made any public accusation, and even her existence is in doubt.

  20. Brother Ogvorbis, Fully Defenestrated Emperor of Steam, Fire and Absurdity says

    SC @25:

    Unspeakably evil and dangerous.

    Trump is helping to increase the likelihood of a post-election bloodbath. Do we really think that the right wing real American patriots terrorists in Kansas are the only ones out there? the only ones planning for an armed uprising that will magically recreate an America that has never existed? the only ones listening to the conspiracy rantings about voting, money, jobs, immigrants, ISIS, and the New World Order? the only ones who think that a handful of radical gun-fondlers can defeat the US military and law enforcement and overthrow a legally elected government?

    Trump has backed himself into a corner. He found the winning dogma to take the GOP primaries — he played to the basest instincts of the base: fear, racism, bigotry, xenophobia, a sense of disenfranchisement. And he rode those fears to the GOP nomination. And now that same base — a majority in the GOP, a minority in the nation as a whole — is his basement. Through personal turpitude, misogyny, racism, bigotry, and an inability to understand how government actually works, he has alienated a majority of Americans. Which means that the only way to stop his poll numbers falling further is to reinforce the base. To throw them red meat. To feed their fears.

    And, on Wednesday, November 9, when his radical base wakes up and realizes that Hillary Clinton is the President-elect and decide to go after the people that Trump demonized, the people that Trump told them will steal the election, the people who are different, I, and (I hope) most Americans, will lay that bloodshed at the feet of Trump’s ego, at the feet of Trump’s fear mongering, at the feet of Trump’s lies, at the feet of Trump’s debasement of the democratic process.

    How many murders will be committed in Trump’s name when he loses the Presidential election? I hope none. But I fear many.

  21. blf says

    KG@24, Thanks for the link. I myself have no confidence in the Huffington Post as a reliable source / reference, but I am not dismissing the claim out-of-hand: As I said, I may be mistaken, that is, there may be non-consensual incident(s?).

  22. says

    “CPJ chairman says Trump is threat to press freedom”:

    New York, October 13, 2016–In an unprecedented step, the Committee to Protect Journalists today released a statement recognizing that a Donald Trump presidency would represent a threat to press freedom. In response to Trump’s threats and vilification of the media during his campaign, the chairman of CPJ’s board, Sandra Mims Rowe, issued the following statement on behalf of the organization:

    Guaranteeing the free flow of information to citizens through a robust, independent press is essential to American democracy. For more than 200 years this founding principle has protected journalists in the United States and inspired those around the world, including brave journalists facing violence, censorship, and government repression.

    Donald Trump, through his words and actions as a candidate for president of the United States, has consistently betrayed First Amendment values. On October 6, CPJ’s board of directors passed a resolution declaring Trump an unprecedented threat to the rights of journalists and to CPJ’s ability to advocate for press freedom around the world.

    Since the beginning of his candidacy, Trump has insulted and vilified the press and has made his opposition to the media a centerpiece of his campaign. Trump has routinely labeled the press as “dishonest” and “scum” and singled out individual news organizations and journalists.

    Throughout his campaign, Trump has routinely made vague proposals to limit basic elements of press and internet freedom….

    While some have suggested that these statements are rhetorical, we take Trump at his word. His intent and his disregard for the constitutional free press principle are clear.

    A Trump presidency would represent a threat to press freedom in the United States, but the consequences for the rights of journalists around the world could be far more serious. Any failure of the United States to uphold its own standards emboldens dictators and despots to restrict the media in their own countries. This appears to be of no concern to Trump, who indicated that he has no inclination to challenge governments on press freedom and the treatment of journalists.

    When MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough asked him in December if his admiration of Russian President Vladimir Putin was at all tempered by the country’s history of critical journalists being murdered, his response was: “He’s running his country, and at least he’s a leader, unlike what we have in this country… Well, I think that our country does plenty of killing, too.”*

    Through his words and actions, Trump has consistently demonstrated a contempt for the role of the press beyond offering publicity to him and advancing his interests.

    For this reason CPJ is taking the unprecedented step of speaking out now. This is not about picking sides in an election. This is recognizing that a Trump presidency represents a threat to press freedom unknown in modern history.

    *He also then joked in a rally about wanting to kill some journalists himself.

  23. says

    “Clinton: I Take ‘No Satisfaction’ In Trump’s Scorched Earth Campaign”:

    As Donald Trump faces a barrage of accusations that he groped and kissed several women over decades and as Trump continued lashing out against the press, opponents and those within his own party, Hillary Clinton said Friday night that she got “no satisfaction” from how Trump had handled himself.

    According to the New York Times, Clinton told volunteers in Seattle that she would spend the final weeks of her campaign trying to help the country repair itself after a bitter election.

    “This election is incredibly painful. I take absolutely no satisfaction in what is happening on the other side with my opponent,” Clinton said, according to the Times. “I am not at all happy about that because it hurts our country, it hurts our democracy, it sends terrible messages to so many people here at home and around the world.”

    “I will be asking for your help. I need your help not just to win this election but to govern and to heal the divides that exist in our country right now,” Clinton said at a fundraiser earlier in the day, according to the Times. “I do believe there isn’t anything we can’t do once we make up our minds to do it.”

    “So make no mistake, we do have to repair the damage which he has done, which we will do. But on both domestic and national security grounds, repudiating his candidacy sends exactly the right message,” she said, according to the Times.

  24. Bernard Bumner says

    Ogvorbis @26:

    Trump has backed himself into a corner. He found the winning dogma to take the GOP primaries — he played to the basest instincts of the base: fear, racism, bigotry, xenophobia, a sense of disenfranchisement.

    I’very often seen it said this way, but it seems to me to imply that there is something cynical about Trump, not entirely genuine. I don’t think Trump crafted a personality to appeal to his supporters – he simply found a natural constituency for his own earnestly bigoted beliefs.

    He hasn’t backed himself into a corner: he has no wish to moderate his rhetoric to appeal to the mainstream. He thinks he can carry the mainstream through sheer force of argument and by humiliating his opponents, that there is a silent majority who are too downtrodden to speak the truth as he preaches it.

    If there was a cynical element that nurtured and formented the old bigotries for political gain, then it stretches back to Nixon, Reagan, Bush, and via Bush and Palin it became open and acceptable again. Trump is the culmination of one hundred years of criminalisation of minorities, impoverishment of the working classes, fetishisation of wealth and status as a prerequisite for power, and the definition of the US by its opposition to concealed enemies. It is also a movement galvanised by seeing a black president, by seeing black people protesting in the streets.

    Given that history, Trump seems almost inevitable. How many murders will be committed in his name? Probably a similar number to those that would have been claimed on behalf of an alternative dogma or figurehead. He is as much a symptom as a cause. Trump and his supporters are not radicals, they are conservative reactionaries.

    The canker has deeper roots than a mere dayglo huckster, and the blood being spilt is part of unbroken stream that flows from deep in the past.

  25. Brother Ogvorbis, Fully Defenestrated Emperor of Steam, Fire and Absurdity says

    Bernard Bummer @30:

    The only reason that Trump’s fear mongering, racism, xenophobia, etc., found so much support among the GOP base is because the GOP has been heading that way since they embraced the Southern Strategy in the late 1960s. I did not mean to imply that the field had not already been prepared to grow what Trump sows. Nor did I mean to imply that Trump does not believe that he is the saviour of the West, the one and only answer, and the only one who sees reality. His beliefs, fed by isolation and ignorance, meshed perfectly with the fertile ground prepared by the GOP during my lifetime. Never-the-less, he is, now, in a situation where any attempt to attract mainstream voters will destroy his base and he knows it.

    I apologize for my poor writing. I’ll bow out until I learn how to write.

  26. Bernard Bumner says

    Ogvorbis @31,

    No, I apologise if my post sounded like any sort of admonishment. There was nothing wrong with your post – I was simply riffing off it and expressing my anger about and directed towards Trump and his supporters, but more so his enablers (although it is unlikely to reach them from here, I admit).

  27. says

    Brother Ogvorbis @31, your writing, and your contributions to this thread are fine. I appreciate your contributions.

    Your comments often push the conversation forward.

    Speaking of racism, which Brother Ogvorbis highlighted, Trump called an African American contestant, Lil Jon, “Uncle Tom” on the Apprentice. Trump is not just stupidly racist, he is stubbornly stupid. It was hard for contestants, producers and other staffers to get Trump to stop using the derogatory phrase.

    “We kept trying to explain to [Trump] that that’s not a word you can use, that it’s offensive,” an Apprentice employee told The Daily Beast. “One of the executive producers had to call him up directly to [plead with] him not to say it, and Trump was like, ‘No, that’s a saying, it’s Uncle Tom.’ There are several takes in the footage of the dailies that has him trying to figure out the difference between ‘Uncle Tom’ and Uncle Sam. “

    Talking Points Memo link

  28. Bernard Bumner says

    Yes. My fault for picking up on a turn of phrase and expressing a train of thought not really aimed at the substantive content of that post.

    Again, Ogvorbis I’m sorry if it sounded aggressive or belittling of your perfectly well articulated points. I could easily have said what was on my mind without connecting a majority of it to your post, and where I was aiming to build on your points, I should have made that clear, rather than appearing argumentative.

  29. says

    “How Trump Took Hate Groups Mainstream.”

    It’s a long and thorough article. I’ll just quote one passage from the end:

    In late August, Occidental Dissent‘s Brad Griffin mused about the possibility of a Trump win: “Can you imagine a world in which White Nationalists have come out of the closet, the charge of ‘racism’ elicits only a ‘meh’ and shrugged shoulders, and we have begun to openly organize? Don’t underestimate the power of the presidency to legitimize marginalized people and deviant movements. If Barack Obama can legitimize gay marriage and transsexuals, Donald Trump can legitimize the Alt-Right.”

  30. says

    […] How many murders will be committed in his name? […]

    A lot of Trump’s followers are willing to take up arms, and/or to engage in other questionable strong-arm tactics. Here is one:

    “If she’s in office, I hope we can start a coup. She should be in prison or shot. That’s how I feel about it,” Dan Bowman, a 50-year-old contractor, said of Hillary Clinton, the Democratic nominee. “We’re going to have a revolution and take them out of office if that’s what it takes. There’s going to be a lot of bloodshed. But that’s what it’s going to take. . . . I would do whatever I can for my country.”

    Boston Globe link

    Here’s is another:

    “Trump said to watch you precincts. I’m going to go, for sure,” said Steve Webb, a 61-year-old carpenter from Fairfield, Ohio.

    “I’ll look for . . . well, it’s called racial profiling. Mexicans. Syrians. People who can’t speak American,” he said. “I’m going to go right up behind them. I’ll do everything legally. I want to see if they are accountable. I’m not going to do anything illegal. I’m going to make them a little bit nervous.”

    And here is another:

    “We’re going to have a lot of election fraud,” said Jeannine Bell Smith, 65-year-old longtime teacher in a red Trump shirt with a bucket of popcorn under her arm. “They are having illegals vote. In some states, you don’t need voter registration to vote.”

    Meanwhile, the Secret Service has added more agents to protect the news media pen at Trump rallies. In addition, both NBC News and CNN have added their own security to protect their camera people and journalists at Trump’s rallies.

    The blame falls on Donald Trump.

  31. says

    Trump speaking at rally – incoherent as ever. He was just talking about Clinton doing debate prep this weekend, and said he thinks what that means is that she’s “getting pumped up. You know what I mean.” He said he’d be talking about it more in a minute. I honestly have no idea what he means. Is he insinuating she’s getting steroids or something? Some drug? If it’s that, it’s likely another case of projection onto her of what he’s up to.

  32. blf says

    A snippet from today’s Granuiad Election diary: excusing Trump, (official) secrets of risotto, and Obama the linguist (quoted in full in with no edits by me):

    The Pentagon Papers … Watergate … Snowden … John Podesta’s risotto. A hack of the Clinton campaign chairman’s emails has failed to produce a smoking gun but it has delivered a steaming plate of Italian rice. It reveals how Peter Huffman, who used to work at the Clinton Health Access Initiative, wrote to him: “So I have been making a lot of risotto lately … and regardless of the recipe, I more/less adhere to every step you taught me. Why can’t you just add 1 or 2 cups of stock at a time b/c the Arborio rice will eventually absorb it all anyway, right”.

    Podesta wrote back: “Yes and no. Yes it with [sic] absorb the liquid, but no that’s not what you want to do. The slower add process and stirring causes the rice to give up it’s [sic] starch which gives the risotto it’s [sic] creamy consistency. You won’t get that if you dump all that liquid at once.”

    Podesta’s email is timed at 2.50am. Trump has been criticised for tweeting at 3am, but anyway. Good to know that if President Clinton has to take the 3am call, there will be a risotto chef on standby.

    I’ll have to try Podesta’s suggestion, since I tend to add most of the liquid at once. The resultant risotto seems fine, but if it can be made better…

  33. Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls says

    MSNBC went to commercial and then didn’t follow up, but evidently he made it explicit: “Trump accuses Hillary of drug use: ‘I think we should take a drug test prior to the debate…because I don’t know what’s going on with her’.”

    Given Trump’s attempts to preempt looking at him by accusing his opponent, Trump should take a drug test. What hallucinogen is he on?

  34. Bernard Bumner says

    Clinton seemed quite composed and direct in the debates so far. The only drug I can imagine she might have taken is a beta blocker.

    Trump on the other hand could easily be the antagonist in Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail ’16, but with characterisation taken directly from …Vegas .

  35. blf says

    The Granuiad is looking ahead, Life after Trump: Republicans brace for betrayal and civil war after 2016:

    At least three factions prepare to fight for the party, divided amid Donald Trump’s accusations of corruption and his appeals to fading demographics

    Accusations of betrayal. Demagoguery and hatred. The bunker in Berlin. Comparisons with Adolf Hitler have been tempting throughout Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign for the presidency — never more so than at its mad, destructive climax.

    The Republican’s presidential bid appears to have become the campaign equivalent of the last days of the reich, when Germany’s leadership raged at bearers of bad news from the battlefield, ordered non-existent divisions to launch counteroffensives, and embraced a nihilistic plan to burn it all down and take everyone along.

    The difference is, unlike then, there seems to be little awareness of impending defeat or understanding of how it came to be. Instead, attitudes are like those after the first world war when Germans on the far right coined a word for their myth of betrayal: Dolchstoßlegende.

    […] Who can avoid a historic fourth consecutive defeat in the election of 2020?

    Much depends on whether 2016 has an effect on the Senate, where Democrats stand a strong chance of taking control, and on the House, which may now be in play. The maverick businessman has already threatened to dispute the election’s result, claiming the election is rigged, and already lashed out at moderate Republicans for not backing him.

    […]

    After the defeat of Mitt Romney […] Republican officials produced an “autopsy report” concluding that to win back the White House, the party needed to appeal to young voters, women and minorities.

    “They did the precise opposite,” [Charlie Sykes, an influential conservative radio talkshow host] said, noting how Trump had alienated those precise constituencies. “They’ve got to get grips with the fact that if you want to be a national party you cannot win elections if you do not appeal to women, African Americans and Hispanics and young people.”

    […]

    The danger for the Republicans is that, should Trump lose, voters who have not believed the polls and the media will conclude that the party itself betrayed them. Instead of learning lessons, party members fear, Trump’s supports will believe they were stabbed in the back, as Trump has insinuated at rallies.

    At least three factions of the party will struggle for control: ideologues led by Ryan, an establishment embodied by former presidents George HW and George W Bush (neither of whom endorsed Trump), and a so-called “Breitbart wing”, led by Steve Bannon of the rightwing news network, now chief executive of the Trump campaign.

    “It’ll be a war,” said Rick Tyler, a political analyst and former spokesperson for the primary runner-up, Ted Cruz. “The Breitbart wing is going to try to impose its will on the party and its brand of Republicanism, which is win at all costs without a guiding philosophy. The establishment is well funded but represents the status quo. The conservatives are underfunded and underrepresented and lack a leader to convince Americans why it’s a winning strategy and philosophy.”

    […]

    There could be light at the end of the tunnel. Clinton, herself deeply unpopular, will be trying to defy political gravity if she runs for a fourth successive Democratic presidential term in 2020. Republicans could also learn from Democrats in 1992 who, after three losses, reinvented themselves and swept back into power with Bill Clinton.

    The Republican pollster Frank Luntz saw another historical parallel. “I am expecting a Republican insurrection similar to what happened to the Democrats after George McGovern lost in 1972,” he said. “Every component of the GOP will be at war with each other. There will be an attempt to unseat Paul Ryan as Sspeaker. You’ll hear ‘I told you so’ from Ted Cruz and John Kasich.

    “The House, which will still be controlled by Republicans [this must not happen –blf], will be at war with the Senate — which is truly up for grabs. It will be nasty, ugly and very personal. Far more effort will be spent blaming each other than trying to pull together.”

    [… P]art of the reckoning may have to be a realisation that Trump’s hostile takeover did not occur in a vacuum. Critics have argued that he merely said, in a crude and explicit way, what many rightwing Republicans have been saying for years in code resulting in racially charged anger, obstruction in Congress and cancer in the body politic.

    […]

    All the scheming of the thugs supposes they win some positions / offices — which is something that simply must not happen. Absolutely no republican whatsoever should be elected to any position. Full stop. No qualifiers. No caveats.

  36. says

    “Donald Trump campaign denounces, severs ties with Ohio Republican Party Chairman Matt Borges”:

    COLUMBUS, Ohio — Donald Trump’s Ohio campaign manager on Saturday renounced its relationship with the Ohio Republican Party’s top official, laying bare the long-simmering tensions over Trump’s candidacy within the state GOP.

    Bob Paduchik, a longtime campaign operative in Ohio, sent a two-page letter to the state GOP’s central committee members on Saturday saying Ohio Republican Party Chairman Matt Borges no longer has a relationship with the campaign. The letter accuses Borges of exaggerating his relationship with Trump in media interviews, and undermining Trump’s efforts to win in Ohio in order to advance his own candidacy to replace Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus.

    Paduchik writes that he spoke with Trump about Borges on Thursday, when Trump made a pair of Ohio campaign stops, and describes Trump as being “very disappointed with Borges’ duplicity.”

    “It’s no great secret that Chairman Borges was never fully on board, but his actions over the past week demonstrate that his loyalties to Governor John Kasich’s failed Presidential campaign eclipse his responsibility as chairman of the Ohio Republican Party,” Paduchik wrote. “The chairman is also apparently driven by an insatiable need for publicity.”

    The letter is a remarkable display of disunity between a GOP presidential campaign and the state party in Ohio, a key battleground state for Republicans, just 23 days before the election. Polling suggests Trump is competing better in Ohio than he is in other battleground states, although Clinton holds a narrow lead in an average of recent polls.

  37. tomh says

    @ #39
    Traditionally, risotto is made by adding the broth about a ladle full at a time. The broth should be barely at a simmer, next to the rice, and stirred in until absorbed. It’s a bit labor intensive, but worth it.

  38. blf says

    This is what rape culture looks like – in the words of Donald Trump (the following is heavily edited — the list is complete, but I’ve omitted all the examples of teh trum-prat engaging in the listed behaviour, and altered the formatting, including adding the emboldening):

    Look up objectification and victim blaming, and the Republican presidential nominee is a textbook case of offensive attitudes toward women

    Why are we all so shocked by the sexual assault allegations against Donald Trump? It has always been clear that his attitudes toward women are dangerously retrograde; he’s never tried to hide who he is. Quite the opposite in fact; he’s built a successful brand out of being an offensive playboy who’s allowed to get away with it. In short, he’s built his entire career on the foundation of what feminist academics call “rape culture”.

    If you’re confused by the term, “rape culture” describes the normalization of sexual violence in society — and it’s this very normalization that makes it a difficult thing to explain. Rape culture doesn’t so much actively encourage rape as passively condone it. You can’t pin it down to one particular thing; rather it’s the accumulation of a number of social norms that perpetuate the idea that women are sexual objects, and that sexual objectification is simply a fact of life.

    Trump is a one-man textbook of such norms. So let’s use him as such. I’ve broken down the various assumptions, stock phrases, and social expectations that, together, constitute rape culture. Trump has helpfully provided examples of each.

    ● Women are sexual objects, to be judged as such
    ● Young girls are sex objects in training
    ● Even Trump’s daughter isn’t exempted from objectification
    ● Objectification is actually an honour. No woman wants to be unfuckable
    ● Women are manipulative and use their bodies to control men
    ● Women can’t control their desires so men have to do it for them
    ● If you’ve got enough money or fame, women will let you do anything to them
    ● Women want to be degraded
    ● Women use their looks as currency, as a way to get ahead
    ● Women who like sex are sluts
    ● It’s just biology; men can’t help themselves from assaulting women [This one particularity offends me, which is not to demean any of the other points… –blf]
    ● Men decide when women can take offense
    ● Victim blaming
    ● Rape culture begets rape culture: The most pernicious thing about rape culture is that it’s self-perpetuating. Women are afraid to come forward about sexual assault because they’re worried they won’t be believed. When they do have the courage to come forward they often aren’t believed. Their characters are ripped apart; their motives are questioned; they’re told they were probably asking for it. And so other women decide they may as well just keep quiet. If we are to learn anything from Trump’s masterclass in rape culture it’s that none of us should keep quiet.

  39. says

    SC @37 and 38, Trump is the one who sniffs throughout every debate. Also, how on earth does he look at Hillary Clinton during a debate and think that she is on drugs?

    Trump must be having a hard time making it through the debates, and he hates seeing evidence that Clinton has more stamina than he does.

  40. blf says

    tomh@44, I just checked Harold McGee’s On Food & Cooking (Second edition), and he totally agrees with you, and explains why that is a superior technique (as broadly summarised by Podesta). I sometimes add the liquid in two or three batches, but am rather careless about it, and now must try the more traditional — albeit clearly more labour-intensive — technique. Thanks!

  41. says

    blf @39, I’m also going to follow Podesta’s risotto-making advice. What a good public servant! He has improved the cooking skills of all of us.

    SC @43, that almost sounds like it came directly from Reince Priebus, the current chair of the RNC. Maybe that’s why Priebus is riding Trump’s dirty coattails for as long as he can. He gets something for doing so, namely the dissing of anyone trying to take his job.

  42. says

    Here are some excerpts from President Obama’s weekly address (so much more uplifting than anything Trump has said):

    […] I traveled to Pittsburgh for the White House Frontiers Conference, where some of America’s leading minds came together to talk about how we can empower our people through science […]

    I had a chance to fly a space flight simulator where I docked a capsule on the International Space Station. I met a young man who’d been paralyzed for more than a decade – but thanks to breakthrough brain implants, today, he can not only move a prosthetic arm, but actually feel with the fingers.

    It’s awe-inspiring stuff. And it shows how investing in science and technology spurs our country towards new jobs and new industries; new discoveries that improve and save lives. […]

    That’s why it’s so backward when some folks choose to stick their heads in the sand about basic scientific facts. It’s not just that they’re saying that climate change a hoax or trotting out a snowball on the Senate floor. It’s that they’re also doing everything they can to gut funding for research and development, the kinds of investments that brought us breakthroughs like GPS, and MRIs, […]

    Remember, sixty years ago, when the Russians beat us into space, we didn’t deny Sputnik was up there. We didn’t haggle over the facts or shrink our R&D budget. No, we built a space program almost overnight and beat them to the moon. And then we kept going, becoming the first country to take an up-close look at every planet in the solar system, too. That’s who we are.

    And that’s why, in my first inaugural address, I vowed to return science to its rightful place. It’s why in our first few months, we made the largest single investment in basic research in our history. […] We’ve […] invested in STEM education and computer science so that every young person – no matter where they come from or what they look like – can reach their potential […].

    Thanks everybody. Have a great weekend.

    https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/weekly-address

  43. says

    One of Trump’s followers, a guy that is also a law enforcement official, is openly calling for riots if Trump loses the election (or maybe he is calling riots right now). <blockquote.

    Trump surrogate and Milwaukee Sheriff David A. Clarke, an elected law official, tweeted that it’s “pitchforks and torches time” with a (stock) photo of an angry mob.

    It’s incredible that our institutions of gov, WH, Congress, DOJ, and big media are corrupt & all we do is bitch. Pitchforks and torches time [from @SheriffClarke]

    Think Progress link

  44. Brother Ogvorbis, Fully Defenestrated Emperor of Steam, Fire and Absurdity says

    Just gave a tour. One man on the tour was wearing a “Make America Great Again” T-shirt, a button reading “REAL American Deplorable Trump Supporter”, and another reading “Trump: Respecting Women the Right Way!” And when I asked the group if they visited other National Parks, the Trumpist said that he loved National Parks and visited them whenever he traveled. I bit my tongue and did not ask him why he was supporting a candidate who has, as one of the planks in his campaign, the elimination of federal land agencies (such as the NPS) and the return of the lands to the states so they can sell them off to the highest bidder.

    (I know I said I was pulling back, but I had to rant this somewhere. Sorry.)

  45. Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls says

    A little speculation here. I’ve been contemplating why Trump is going off the deep end with the recent revelations, and not ignoring them, and talking about the issues, which was causing him to rise in the polls.
    What if he sees the Trump brand, probably a major source of his income, is under attack, win or lose? And he only ran for President to increase the value of his brand, and that it looks like his winning the election won’t happen. Then he has to protect the Trump brand at all costs, forget trying to win the campaign.
    Blame everybody but himself for his bad decisions.

  46. Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls says

    (I know I said I was pulling back, but I had to rant this somewhere. Sorry.)

    I’m listening, and think it is pertinent.
    Hopefully Lynna will say “rant away”.

  47. says

    “Trump and the Emasculated Voter.”: “The Emasculated Voter to whom no one pays any attention is the story of modern democracy. Instead of putting voters in charge, we tell them they’re in charge, and it’s just as good. That’s the Establishment’s great discovery in the Lois Lerner Age.”

    This guy’s a Yale professor. (Not of politics or history or sociology or any discipline relevant to these questions, but of computer science.)

    As is apparent from this piece of schlock, it isn’t marginalization or silencing or economic anxiety that’s at the heart of Trumpism. It’s authoritarianism and status anxiety. Clinton and Obama not knowing their place is unforgivable and dangerous presumptuousness. Trump’s base is not the most precarious or desperate workers but – like that of far-Right parties in Europe – higher-salaried workers and “petty bourgeois.” It’s largely white males, who’ve hardly been politically disenfranchised (unlike those they seek to repress, who’ve literally been disenfranchised). No one’s silenced them. Their status claims – their gender, racial, ethnic, nationalist, and religious bigotries – have been catered to, fed, and exploited by Republicans who’ve used their support to enact policies that have harmed them immensely. No one’s forced them to refuse solidarity with struggling people fighting for a more just society, or to vote for people who funnel riches to the 1% (as Trump would). No one’s forcing them to turn around and blame the most truly marginalized people – undocumented immigrants – for capitalist and imperialist politics. And no one and no circumstance is forcing them to follow this monstrous demagogue.

  48. blf says

    We’re like athletes: Trump proposes drug testing before final debate:

    Republican suggests Clinton may have taken performance-enhancing drugs in last showdown and at New Hamphire rally repeats suspicion of a rigged election
    […]
    Trump continued: We should take a drug test prior because I don’t know what’s going on with her, but at the beginning of her last debate she was all pumped up at the beginning and at the end if was, ‘Huh, take me down.’ She could barely reach her car. So I think we should take a drug test. Anyway, I’m willing to do it.

    Trump’s campaign has previously criticised the media for taking his rally statements literally, for instance saying that the candidate was being sarcastic when he said Barack Obama founded Isis [daesh –blf]. Aides have yet to say whether he was speaking tongue in cheek.

    […]

    Trump’s repeated sniffling during the first two debates has also drawn attention, and Howard Dean, the former governor of Vermont, was forced to apologise for tweeting a suggestion that it could be due to cocaine use.

    The Trump campaign did not respond to questions about what drugs the candidate was suggesting could have been used to enhance Clinton’s debate performance .

    A pro-Trump Super Pac, run by millionaire donor Robert Mercer, released an ad earlier this month questioning Clinton’s health. “If athletes need to be tested for drugs for the biggest race of their lives,” the ad says, “shouldn’t candidates be tested for the biggest race of yours?”

    [… discussion of teh trum-prat’s rigging nonsense …]

    The businessman [sic] has been widely condemned by members of both parties for seeking to undermine the legitimacy of the election. But introducing Trump on Saturday, Alabama Senator Jeff Sessions fueled the fire. They are attempting to rig this election,he said, shaking his fists. “They will not succeed [accurate, since the they being referred-to are not the ones attempting any rigging or disenfranchisement –blf].”

    […]

    Spokespeople for Republican National Committee chairman Reince Priebus, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and Speaker Paul Ryan, all of whom continue to support Trump even as many of their colleagues denounced him, did not respond to requests for comment about whether they agreed that the election is rigged.

    […]

  49. says

    These Podesta emails. In the end they could end up helping Clinton. Even if there’s something bad to come, it’ll be buried amongst the evidence of her campaign’s competence and professionalism and her own pragmatism and centrism (consistent with her public persona). The speeches are so far so innocuous that people are criticizing her for not releasing them in the spring.

  50. says

    Brother Ogvorbis @52, the combination of ignorance and misogyny that man displayed is just stunning.

    @53, Trump is hurting his brand. I’m sure he thought running for president would make his brand more valuable, but reality is biting him in the ass. SC started a discussion of the downturn in Trump’s business, using the Old Post Office (Trump’s hotel in D.C.) as an example.

    I think you are absolutely correct that he now trying to protect his brand at all costs. I hope he does not succeed. Maybe his post-election business (Trump TV?) in league with Steve Bannon (Breitbart) and the likes of Alex Jones (InfoWars) will be small and pathetic. One can hope.

    As Trump flails around trying to protect his brand, he seems to be succeeding at one thing: concentrating the Stupid into an ever-smaller cadre of followers.

    Several media outlets published stories of reduced crowds at recent Trump rallies. The people grow weary. A Shrinking Trump Mocks His Accusers to Shrinking Crowds by Joan Walsh is an example.

  51. says

    What if he sees the Trump brand, probably a major source of his income, is under attack, win or lose? And he only ran for President to increase the value of his brand, and that it looks like his winning the election won’t happen. Then he has to protect the Trump brand at all costs, forget trying to win the campaign.

    Happily, the brand seems to be circling the drain. One of the more amusing things I read yesterday concerned the “Scion” brand, mentioned in this article as well:

    For decades, everything sold by the company — even the water and the sheets — bore the Trump name. Last month, though, the company did an about-face, launching a hotel brand — Scion — that will offer the Trump experience minus the Trump moniker.

    “We wanted a name that would be a nod to the Trump family and to the tremendous success it has had with its businesses, including Trump Hotels, while allowing for a clear distinction between our luxury and lifestyle brands,” Trump Hotels CEO Eric Danziger said in a press release.

    Sure.

  52. Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls says

    Trump’s sons are a chips off the old blockhead.

    Women don’t belong in the locker room, the boardroom, or the golf course because they can’t handle “basic stuff” like sexual harassment, Donald Trump Jr. once suggested.
    In a March 2013 radio interview unearthed by Buzzfeed News, the GOP nominee’s son delivers an eerily similar defense of locker room banter while discussing how he felt about admitting women into all-male golf clubs.
    A host interviewing Trump on “The Opie and Anthony Show” rails against allowing women into the men’s clubs because “they complain and f–k it up … That’s why we hate having them around because they stop us from doing what we want to do and then they complain.”
    Trump agrees with the host, saying men need a “guy’s place” where “guys can be guys” because women ruin the punchline to jokes, he says.
    “You start including too many other things (women) and you start having a boring freaking conversation,” Trump says. “There’s nothing worse than starting to tell a joke and then you’re ‘Oooh’ … It kind of screws up that punchline,” he says.
    Trump’s defense of male-only spaces strikes a similar tone to the elder Trump campaign’s reaction to tapes leaked last week of the mogul, alongside former “Access Hollywood” host Billy Bush, bragging about sexually assaulting women.
    “This was locker room talk,” Trump said amid the firestorm over the 2001 footage — in other words, merely words exchanged between two men not meant for women’s ears.
    In the resurfaced 3-minute radio clip published Thursday, the Republican candidate’s son and the two male hosts transition into talking about how women who can’t put up with workplace harassment shouldn’t be working among adults.
    “If you can’t handle some of the basic stuff that’s become a problem in the workforce today, then you don’t belong in the workforce. Like, you should go maybe teach kindergarten. I think it’s a respectable position,” Trump says.
    “You can’t be negotiating billion-dollar deals if you can’t handle, you know,” Trump goes on to say, without elaboration. The callous comments bear a resemblance to the GOP nominee’s remarks in August suggesting that if his daughter, Ivanka, were sexually harassed at work she would simply “find another career.”
    Donald Trump’s other son, Eric, followed up those remarks a day later by saying Ivanka is too “strong” to be “subjected” to workplace harassment.
    In the 2013 radio interview, the hosts then joke about pulling up naked pictures of women inside the radio studio — and tease that Trump might sue them for harassment if they show him the X-rated photos.
    “This is my get rich scheme. I’m suing you guys because I feel uncomfortable,” Trump jests, seeming to mock women who bring suits about harassment. “By the way, that’s what happens in the world. I can play along, I can be fine, and then I can decide randomly that you now have crossed the line even though I have been going along with it.”

    Evidently they never learned any sexual harassment training.

  53. says

    Another woman adds her tale of Trump’s tendency to go for the non-consensual kiss.

    Cathy Heller became the ninth woman to allege Trump acted inappropriately toward her as the Trump campaign continues to deny any and all accusations.

    Heller, now 63, told the Guardian that two decades ago she attended a Mother’s Day event at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate when Heller alleged Trump grabbed her and tried to kiss he.

    “He took my hand, and grabbed me, and went for the lips,” she told the Guardian.

    She resisted his kiss.

    “Oh, come on,” Heller told the Guardian Trump told her.

    Eventually, Heller said Trump did kiss the side of her lips.

    “He was strong. And he grabbed me and went for my mouth and went for my lips,” she told the Guardian.

    Heller told her story to the Guardian after years of sharing it with family and friends. A family member who declined to be namde in the Guardian story, but was present at the event at Mar-a-Lago 20 years ago, corroborated her story. Heller told the Guardian she came forward to share her experience in an effort to add another voice to the host of accusers who Trump has dismissed.

    “He can’t claim we’re all liars,” Heller told the Guardian.

    Trump’s campaign vehemently denied the most recent allegation as it has with the others.

    “There is no way that something like this would have happened in a public place on Mother’s Day at Mr Trump’s resort,” spokesman Jason Miller told the Guardian in a statement. “It would have been the talk of Palm Beach for the past two decades.”

    Talking Points Memo link

    The Guardian link

  54. says

    Excerpts from The Guardian’s article (link in comment 62):

    “He took my hand, and grabbed me, and went for the lips,” she [Cathy Heller] claimed.

    Alarmed, she said she leaned backwards to avoid him and almost lost her balance. “And he said, ‘Oh, come on.’ He was strong. And he grabbed me and went for my mouth and went for my lips.” She turned her head, she claims, and Trump planted a kiss on the side of her mouth. “He kept me there for a little too long,” Heller said. “And then he just walked away.”

    “I was angry and shaken,” she continued. “He was pissed. He couldn’t believe a woman would pass up the opportunity.” She added that he seemed to feel “entitled” to kiss her.

    The Guardian heard accounts that matched Heller’s from two other people: Susan Klein, the friend who was emailing with Heller, and a relative seated at the table with Heller that day. The relative, who declined to be named for fear of retaliation, recalled that Heller sat back down with a stunned look on her face.

    “I remember she was really freaked out,” said the relative. The relative didn’t see Heller’s entire interaction with Trump, but saw him get “in her face” and saw Heller pull away. “He was very forceful … She really was definitely affected by this man who was very aggressive toward her.”

    Heller and the relative both recalled that no one at the table quite knew how to react. “I was shook up,” said Heller. As they all processed the moment, Trump had already left.

  55. says

    People have noticed that Trump’s drug-testing remarks are reminiscent of a Mercer-funded Super PAC ad. Seeing the cyclist silhouetted in the video about drug testing reminded me of Lance Armstrong. Trump, unsurprisingly, tweeted in 2012: “@lancearmstrong teammate is angry and jealous–he is no Lance.”

    Thinking about it, Trump has many similarities with Armstrong, not only in that they’re both arrogant-vindictive types* but in their methods. Armstrong’s approach in may ways anticipated Trump’s. He continued to “lead such an obnoxious life” (as I think Floyd Landis put it) even as he was perpetrating a massive fraud. He expected unwavering loyalty but offered little. He sought to charm people, and to coax potential leakers into agreeing to remain silent, and if that failed he saw them as enemies and had no qualms about destroying their lives. He lied brashly and without hesitation, even under oath. He engaged in a despicable campaign of character assassination against Greg LeMond. He smeared women like Betsy Andreu and Emma O’Reilly who told the truth with an extra zeal. He bullied other cyclists. He tried to intimidate people (as when he showed up when Betsy Andreu was being deposed, similar to how Trump brought the four women to the second debate). He threatened and attacked investigative journalists, seeking to publicly shame them, and used lawsuits and threats of lawsuits to prevent the publication of articles and books about his doping. He continued to lie arrogantly and confidently even as the evidence against him mounted. His admissions were tinged with self-pity and remorselessness…

    * When I wrote that post in 2014, Trump wasn’t even on my radar. The politician who seemed most similar to Armstrong at the time, as I wrote then, was Chris Christie.

  56. says

    Trump responds to his inner sense of worthlessness:

    Donald Trump appeared to question the legitimacy of Barack Obama’s presidency on Saturday, referring to him at a rally as the “quote ‘president.’’’

    “And she wants 550 percent more coming from Syria than the thousands and thousands that our president, quote ‘president,’ has coming in,” Trump said in attacking Hillary Clinton’s position on refugees during a rally at the Cross Insurance Center.

  57. quotetheunquote says

    @SC #60 , and other posts further up-thread.

    I’m surprised at all the crap DT gets away with (well, duh), but most of all by the understated reactions to his claims that “the only way we’ll lose is if the election is rigged” etc.

    Given that the legitimacy of the whole U.S. government rests on the fairness of the electoral process, it seems to me that inciting his supporters to ignore the results (if they go against HIM) is downright seditious.

  58. blf says

    Albeit this column is largely about the BBC and its coverage of BrExit, the following seems worth excerpting, US newspapers came up trumps on Trump where TV failed (the erratic italic usage is in the original):

    […] It’s undeniable that, on TV especially, Trump has got away with policy murder, and that Fox News has become a macabre joke. [“has become”? — that’s missing “… an even more” –blf] But two events in the past few days seem to have decided this whole campaign.

    One is the New York Times’s publication of a Trump tax return that reveals why and how he may have paid no federal taxes for 18 years. According to some, the decision to print this return broke American law — straightforwardly, deliberately, but for good purpose. […]

    And then there’s the foul tape of locker-room-bantering Trumpism that came out of NBC’s Access Hollywood archive. Who found it? A producer rummaging in cupboards? What did they do with it? Handed it up the corporate chain to top TV execs and their legal eagles. What did they do? They havered and pondered until someone sent a copy to the Washington Post, which promptly put the whole stinking package on its website.

    Full marks to the Times and Post. They did what journalists are there for. They reported the news. They changed this election. But TV and its learned friends behaved like huge corporations with something to lose. They sat on their hands too long.

    As something of an aside, regarding the claim the New York Times broke some law in publishing teh trum-prat’s leaked taxes, the Times itself published an interesting article by one of its lawyers on the point, Donald Trump Would Have Trouble Winning a Suit Over The Times’s Tax Article. Although that article is more about teh trum-prat’s threatened suit against the Times, and why it would be very very likely to fail, it also touches on law-breaking:

    Any effort to punish “publication of truthful information of public concern,” Justice John Paul Stevens wrote for the majority [Bartnicki v. Vopper (2001)], “implicates the core purposes of the First Amendment.”

    That is so even if someone broke the law in providing information to a news organization, he wrote. “A stranger’s illegal conduct does not suffice to remove the First Amendment shield from speech about a matter of public concern.”

    The article goes on to note, rather dryly, that teh trum-prat’s lawyer is incompetent — he claimed the Times broke a federal law against publishing, without permission, federal tax returns. The Times did no such thing, and the incompetent laywer did not cite any other law.

  59. blf says

    Oh for feck’s sake, another übergoon disguised as a law enforcement officer, Milwaukee sheriff says it’s pitchforks and torches time and stands by Trump:

    David A Clarke accuses media and government of corruption in tweet but scholars say a court would not rule that the comments are inciting violence

    It’s pitchforks and torches time, a prominent conservative sheriff tweeted on Saturday, with a condemnation of the government and media that echoes the increasingly heated rhetoric of Donald Trump’s presidential campaign.

    David A Clarke, the elected sheriff of Milwaukee County, is a leading Trump supporter who has previously called Black Lives Matter activists the enemy.

    Clarke paired what appeared to be an accusation of the corruption in most of the United States government with a photoshopped image of a crowd of people carrying burning sticks and pitchforks:

    It’s incredible that our institutions of gov, WH, Congress, DOJ, and big media are corrupt & all we do is bitch. Pitchforks and torches time

    Clarke’s comments come at a time of growing anxiety over Trump’s repeated claims, without evidence, that the presidential election is rigged against him. At least one Trump supporter at a rally in Cincinnati on Friday was quoted by the Boston Globe as saying that if Clinton is elected, I hope we can start a coup.

    We’re going to have a revolution and take them out of office, if that’s what it takes, the supporter said.

    […]

    Noting a history of violence at Trump rallies by his supporters, some online observers took Clarke’s call for “pitchforks and torches” seriously, asking whether he was inciting violence and whether his comments constituted sedition against the government. His remarks also raised concerns that it was inappropriate for a law enforcement official famous for his “law and order” political views to be calling for citizens to take to the streets.

    Robert Post, a first amendment expert and the dean of Yale Law School, said Clarke’s comments were “horrible and despicable” but that “an American court would view this as venting, basically.”

    […]

  60. says

    “Breaking: ND Prosecutor Seeks ‘Riot’ Charges Against Amy Goodman For Reporting On Pipeline Protest”:

    (Bismarck, North Dakota–October 15, 2016 ) A North Dakota state prosecutor has sought to charge award-winning journalist Amy Goodman with participating in a “riot” for filming an attack on Native American-led anti-pipeline protesters. The new charge comes after the prosecutor dropped criminal trespassing charges.

    State’s Attorney Ladd R Erickson filed the new charges on Friday before District Judge John Grinsteiner who will decide on Monday (October 17) whether probable cause exists for the riot charge.

    Goodman has travelled to North Dakota to face the charges and will appear at Morton County court on Monday at 1:30 pm local time (CDT) if the charges are approved.

    “I came back to North Dakota to fight a trespass charge. They saw that they could never make that charge stick, so now they want to charge me with rioting, ” said Goodman. “I wasn’t trespassing, I wasn’t engaging in a riot, I was doing my job as a journalist by covering a violent attack on Native American protesters.”…

  61. says

    “How Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter helped police target black activists”:

    The ACLU announced Tuesday that Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram gave Chicago-based company Geofeedia access to user information that helped law enforcement agencies monitor and target activists of color. Emails between law enforcement and reps for Geofeedia reveal the company’s “special access” to the social media sites, even referring to a “partnership” with Instagram and Facebook. In response to the findings, all three sites—Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter—have terminated Geofeedia’s access to their data.

    As uncovered by the ACLU, Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook have all provided Geofeedia with varying levels of access to this data, which it then used as a bargaining chip when negotiating with law enforcement. There are no exact numbers on how many people were targeted, but as discussed in a Geofeedia “case study,” they were directly involved in the Baltimore Police Department’s response to the Freddie Gray protests. Calling it a “stroke of luck” that the BPD renewed their Geofeedia contract only days before the protests, the study reveals that law enforcement used facial recognition software to identify specific protestors from social media photos. They then matched that information to outstanding warrants and arrested protestors “directly from the crowd.”

    The Washington Post reports that Geofeedia provides 500 law enforcement agencies with surveillance data, specifically boasting that the company has been “monitoring for protests” with “several DAs from around the country.” One email between Geofeedia and police says a product feature “covered Ferguson/Mike Brown nationally with great success.”

    Facebook and Twitter both release annual transparency reports detailing how often they release information directly to either local police or federal authorities. However, proprietary data sourced via a third party seemingly falls outside of official requests, thus leaving a blindspot in terms of the “transparency” that both companies have said they value.

    In joint letters to both Facebook and Twitter, the ACLU, Center for Media Justice, and Color of Change have called on both companies to advance new reforms. They seek an end to data access for surveillance software, more comprehensive transparency policies, and an audit of third-party developers for privacy compliance. In the meantime, Geofeedia’s CEO has agreed to a meeting with ACLU representatives at an unspecified point in the future.

    Most troubling is that Geofeedia is just one part of an entire economy of mass surveillance tools that source similar location-based social media information. Dataminr, MediaSonar, X1 Social Discovery, and Dunami, all have similar scanning, keyword filtering, and real-time geolocation features. Whether these services are collaborating with law enforcement for mass-surveillance has not been revealed, but the conversation on privacy and fears of police overreach continues.

  62. blf says

    Oh for feck’s sake, Trump allies warn of rigged election as Giuliani makes racially charged claims:

    Newt Gingrich says TV executives are trying to destroy Donald Trump as Mike Pence suggests so many Americans see a rigged system

    Donald Trump’s campaign allies joined his baseless accusation of a rigged election on Sunday, with Rudy Giuliani speaking in racially charged terms even as the top Republican in Washington rejected the attack on the legitimacy of US elections.

    Over the weekend, Trump described US democracy as an illusion and repeated his calls for people to watch the polls, which have raised fears of illegal voter intimidation on election day.

    Allies including running mate Mike Pence and top adviser Rudy Giuliani backed up that claim. On Sunday, Pence dodged Trump’s outright accusation, telling NBC: So many Americans feel like this election is being rigged.

    […]

    Newt Gingrich, a former House speaker and a periodic adviser to Trump, embraced Trump’s more conspiratorial tone, blaming the press for the nominee’s plummeting poll numbers. Fourteen million people, he told Fox News Sunday, picked Donald Trump. Twenty TV executives decided to destroy him. [Amusing considering the tax leak & sexual assault were reported by newspapers –blf]

    Since early October, when a 2005 video leaked to the Washington Post showed Trump bragging about groping women without consent, the candidate’s poll numbers have collapsed and at least nine women have accused him of doing exactly what he boasted of.

    […]

    Giuliani at first argued that the candidate was merely speaking about bias in journalism, telling CNN: When he’s talking about a rigged election, he’s not talking about it’s going to be rigged at the polls, he’s talking about 80%-85% of the media is against him.

    But then the former New York mayor jumped from media criticism into racially charged territory, saying there have been places where a lot of cheating going on, citing two cities with large black populations, Philadelphia and Chicago.

    Giuliani claimed, without evidence, that Pennsylvania Democrats bussed voters in from Camden, New Jersey, and that dead people generally vote for Democrats. To back up his claims of voter fraud, he said the Republican president of the New York Yankees had stopped bussing voters around the deeply Democratic city’s boroughs.

    To say Philadelphia and Chicago would be fair, I would have to be a moron to say that, Giuliani said. [We know you are moron & liar, partly because you aren’t saying that or many other truths –blf]

    […]

    Gingrich also said, without evidence, that fraud had taken place in cities such as Philadelphia, Chicago and St Louis, telling ABC that Ryan knows only “honest elections” in his midwest state of Wisconsin.

    Gingrich said he thought Ryan should go and look at the history of Philadelphia, including four years ago, the intimidation.

    Some of Trump’s own supporters have said they intend to go to polls to intimidate voters.

    Trump said to watch your precincts. I’m going to go, for sure, Steve Webb […] told the Boston Globe this week. I’m going to go right up behind them. I’ll do everything legally. I want to see if they are accountable. I’m not going to do anything illegal. I’m going to make them a little bit nervous.

    Giuliani tried to downplay similar remarks by Trump supporters about a coup and bloodshed.

    You can find just as many wacko nuts on her side, he said.

  63. blf says

    This is an amusing small excerpt from a longer article, Trump camp shows signs of fracture over sexual misconduct allegations:

    Other Trump supporters sought to cast doubt on the women’s claims and whether the media should report them. On CNN on Sunday, Renee Ellmers, a Republican representative from North Carolina, said: It is a ‘he said, she said’ situation.

    “To correct you,” host Jake Tapper interjected, “it’s a ‘he said, she said, she said, she said, she said, she said, she said, she said, she said, she said’ situation.”

  64. Brother Ogvorbis, Fully Defenestrated Emperor of Steam, Fire and Absurdity says

    You can find just as many wacko nuts on her side, he said.

    Gee, where have we heard that before?

    Hmmm.

    Oh, right. Yes, persons associated with the Slymepit, persons driving bloggers off the internet, persons developing dozens of pseudonyms to drop accusations on FreeThoughtBlogs, persons engaging in years-long patterns of harassment against A+ers and those who support atheism with human rights, persons intentionally trying to trigger panic attacks and PTSD, and then claiming, when called out on it, that FtB bloggers and commenters are “just as bad”. No matter how bad Trump and his supporters are, no matter what conspiracy theory they dredge up, no matter what they say, every time a part of the response has been “You can find just as many wacko nuts on her side”

    I wonder if there is a name for this Pravda-esque phenomenon? (Other than typical RWA behaviour.)

  65. Brother Ogvorbis, Fully Defenestrated Emperor of Steam, Fire and Absurdity says

    Sorry. That was my daily homage to Borkquotia. All after the frist sentence is mine.

  66. says

    On CNN on Sunday, Renee Ellmers, a Republican representative from North Carolina, said: “It is a ‘he said, she said’ situation.”

    “To correct you,” host Jake Tapper interjected, “it’s a ‘he said, she said, she said, she said, she said, she said, she said, she said, she said, she said’ situation.”

    As several people have noted, it’s actually a “they said” situation, since he said it’s what he does.

  67. says

    blf @76, Mike Pence trashed his own political career by joining Trump in the dangerous, not-fact-based claim that the election is “rigged.”

    Giuliani was already a nutcase. Gingrich was already recognized as a huckster.

    Pence is narrow-minded and wrong in many instances, but since joining Trump he has entered the seditiously-stupid zone.

    blf @70, I’ve heard Rachel Maddow make the point many times that newspapers deserve our support. They certainly earned it during this election campaign.

    SC @72, Holy crap! I had forgotten all about that. Trump was wrong on the facts, but that didn’t stop him from claiming the 2012 election was stolen by Obama. Sheesh. And you can tell from the number of posts, and from the tone of those posts, that Trump is serious. He believes what he is saying. That doofus probably had his feckless sons believing the same canards.

    Once again, we see a rare point of consistency with Trump: he has always believed that Obama was an illegitimate president. We see, in retrospect, that Trump’s obsession with “rigged elections” ties in nicely with Birtherism. Trump is Breitbrat with more cheap gold plating.

  68. says

    SC @60:

    Paul Ryan has come out in response to Trump’s claims of election-rigging with a statement saying: “Our democracy relies on confidence in election results, and the speaker is fully confident the states will carry out this election with integrity.”

    I’ve been thinking about this. Ryan is probably toast as far as the Trumpian base is concerned, but I am somewhat encouraged by the fact that he occasionally tells it like it is. It would be great if more Republicans would join Ryan in dissing Trump for fomenting “rigged elections” violence (a few Republicans have done that).

    Trump’s version of the “rigged elections” story is also strongly flavored with racism. That shows up especially strongly when he starts telling his white followers to “watch other communities” vote at the polls. I think Trump wants to start a race war. I think Trump wants to start an anti-liberal war. I think Trump doesn’t care if he burns down the Republican Party. He doesn’t care if he puts democracy in the USA in jeopardy.

    […] Anger and hostility were the most overwhelming sentiments at a Trump rally in Cincinnati last week, a deep sense of frustration, an us-versus-them mentality, and a belief that they are part of an unstoppable and underestimated movement. Unlike many in the country, however, these hard-core Trump followers do not believe the real estate mogul’s misfortunes are of his own making.

    They believe what Trump has told them over and over, that this election is rigged, and if he loses, it will be because of a massive conspiracy to take him down.

    At a time when trust in government is at a low point, Trump is actively stoking fears that a core tenet of American democracy is also in peril: that you can trust what happens at the ballot box. […]

    …And if Trump doesn’t win, some are even openly talking about violent rebellion and assassination, as fantastical and unhinged as that may seem.

    Boston Glob link, which was already referenced and quoted from up-thread.

    Republicans have started warning their increasingly ostracized nominee to stop stoking his supporters with claims that the 2016 election will be stolen, daring him to show proof or put a lid on it…

    …Somebody claiming in the election, ‘I was defrauded,’ that isn’t going to cut it,” said former Sen. Kit Bond, a Missouri Republican who earlier in the campaign endorsed Jeb Bush and then Marco Rubio. “They’re going to have to say how, where, why, when.”

    “I don’t think leading candidates for the presidency should undercut the process unless you have a really good reason,” Sen. Lindsey Graham, a South Carolina Republican [said].

    Politico link

  69. says

    SC @74, Trump has responded to that Saturday Night Live cold open:

    Watched Saturday Night Live hit job on me. Time to retire the boring and unfunny show. Alec Baldwin portrayal stinks. Media rigging election!

    Dear Mr. Trump, did you notice that the audience at SNL was laughing? You are a laughing stock.

    […] Trump hosted “SNL” last October, and writers MIchael Che and Colin Jost told POLITICO that during the editing process, he objected mainly to lines that would have made him “look silly.”

    “I don’t think he likes to look silly,” Jost said. “Nothing happened against his will, but that’s true for any host. Any host.”[…]

    Politico link

    Oh, my. Trump’s feelings are easily hurt. Does he realize that he makes himself look silly?

  70. says

    Trump comments on current polling results:

    Polls close, but can you believe I lost large numbers of women voters based on made up events THAT NEVER HAPPENED. Media rigging election!

    That tweet is from this morning.

    Steve Schmidt, a Republican strategist who worked for John McCain’s campaign, said:

    What this [Trump disputing election results] would be is an assault on the foundations of the long established traditions of the country, an assault on democracy, vandalizing it. It would be incumbent finally on national leaders in the Republican Party to speak clearly, unequivocally about not just the situation, but the totality of it.

    Tony Fratto, former aide to George W. Bush, said:

    You hate to have to fight something like this, but it is very corrosive, so you do have to fight it. You don’t want it to even pick up with a small segment of the population. Reince [Priebus] and Ryan and McConnell will have to concede for him, for the party. They just have to take things out of his hands.

    Republicans created this powder keg. They have to defuse it.

  71. blf says

    Republicans have started warning their increasingly ostracized nominee to stop stoking his supporters with claims that the 2016 election will be stolen, daring him to show proof or put a lid on it

    Apropos of nothing much, a very recent Granuiad headline: Trump warns supporters of ‘rigged’ election without showing proof.

    The article itself is a somewhat updated variant of that linked-to in @76, and does not, I think, containing anything new which is especially interesting; mostly(?) adding recent tweets from teh trum-prat (e.g., The election is absolutely being rigged by the dishonest and distorted media pushing Crooked Hillary — but also at many polling places — SAD), and comments from Senator Kaine.

  72. Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls says

    So much for the claim that faster naturalization processing is occurring so new citizens can vote for Clinton.

    Rudy Zamora, an immigrant from Mexico and a resident of Las Vegas, followed all the rules.
    He has lived in the U.S. since he was two years old and for years watched others cast votes that would directly impact his life. After submitting his naturalization paperwork the day he was first legally able, Zamora thought he would be able to participate in the Nevada caucuses on Feb. 20.
    But he saw that day and the state convention pass without hearing from the immigration agency.
    “I understand that a lot of people have also applied and that it could cause a backup. I keep thinking, as long as I can make it to November that’s when I’ll be relived,” he said.
    Over half a million immigrants, whose naturalization applications were filed months ago, are starting to make peace with the fact that, due to a backlog in processing applications, they may not be able to cast their first vote as American citizens in November.
    The tense political climate has thrown immigration issues into the national spotlight again and a recent application fee increase has motivated thousands of U.S. residents to apply for their citizenship to vote this year. But a swell in state level applications at the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) has led to backlogs that will prevent many from casting their vote.
    At the end of June 2016, 524,014 naturalization applications were reported under review across all 50 states according to the USCIS. Though the number does not represent the exact number of applications in the backlog, a review of the pending cases by state from this period to the third quarter of fiscal year 2015 does show a 31.2 percent growth in pending applications.
    USCIS spokesperson Jim McKinney says that the agency is on track to meet its goal of processing applications between five to seven months. He acknowledges that the agency has “experienced a significant increase in applications and petitions across the board” and attributes the discrepancy in processing times to geography and capacity in states.
    The agency has experienced similar backlogs for at least the past three presidential election cycles, NBC News found.
    Tara Raghuveer, deputy director of National Partnership for New Americans, said that the concurrent swell of backlogs during presidential election years are an example of corrosion in American democracy.

    I doubt if Trump has the honesty and integrity to admit he is wrong.

  73. says

    Ashby Law, a Virginia-based firm that specializes in political and election law, posted a refutation of Trump’s claim that the 2016 election will be “rigged.” Ashby Law is the law firm of choice for a lot of Republicans and for a lot of conservative/rightwing PACs.

    Let’s dispense with this notion that the election is rigged, shall we? First, US elections are held in public places, in open rooms, in plain view of all assembled. No back rooms, no secret doors or hallways. Ordinary citizens, not government bureaucrats, serve as election officials and conduct the election. They check in voters, confirm IDs, keep records.

    Laws require these election officials to be Republicans and Democrats, drawn from lists provided by local political parties. Laws also permit parties and candidates to place watchers in each polling place to stand over the election officials and monitor them as they work.

    Political parties can (and should) train their watchers so they understand how the election is supposed to be conducted. Watchers can challenge the conduct of the election by pointing out errors and irregularities to election officials and asking to have them corrected. If election officials refuse to correct errors, party lawyers are standing by to intercede with state election administrators and courts if necessary.

    Our elections are conducted on equipment that has been tested, in a public proceeding, that is observed by party and candidate representatives. Following testing, voting equipment is locked and sealed, then equipment keys are locked and sealed separately. Voting machines are equipped with multiple interconnected counters that make it impossible to add or remove votes secretly. Candidate and party representatives get to observe and cross-check those counters at testing, before polls open and after they close.

    When voting is complete, election officials count votes and tally results. Candidate and party representatives observe this process, too. […]

    Throughout the election, officials keep detailed records – who voted, where, when and how, and how many people voted overall. After the election, these records are open to public inspection. Anyone who knows what they’re doing can reconstruct the election.

    There is human error in every election […] But the election is not rigged. […]

    So any candidate who implies that his/her followers need to take the law into their own hands on Election Day is horribly manipulating them inciting them to disrupt the election, setting them up to break laws and be arrested. Which may be exactly what he/she wants.

    This doesn’t mean we shouldn’t watch the election. We absolutely should. But watching means signing up, getting trained, understanding the election process and conducting yourself appropriately on Election Day.

    Watching doesn’t mean loitering menacingly in and around a polling place. That’s not poll watching, that’s voter intimidation.

    Republican leaders and lawyers should speak out against this fantastical nonsense. In addition to undermining public faith and confidence in our electoral system, which is foundational to the legitimacy of our government, it is undermining legitimate efforts to recruit and train watchers to observe this election to ensure that it is free, open, fair and honest.

    Link

  74. blf says

    A short excerpt from the BBC, Trump says election is absolutely rigged (BBC edit in {curly braces}):

    […]
    Democrat vice presidential candidate [Senator] Kaine told ABC’s This Week Mr Trump was “swinging at every phantom of his own imagination” because “he knows he’s losing”.

    “He’s blaming the media. He’s blaming the GOP. He’s saying that America can’t run a fair election.

    “He’s making weird claims that, no, I couldn’t have assaulted this person, she’s not attractive enough to assault. How bizarre is that? {…} And this is what bullies do.”
    […]

  75. Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls says

    Let me take a try at TrumpSpeak&tm;

    The media is rigged: They say bad things about me, and won’t endorse me. I can’t control them. WAH.

    The election is rigged: A majority of the people don’t want me as President. I can’t control their votes. WAH.

    It’s all about The Donald and control, and being a crybaby about his lack of control.

  76. says

    Nerd 291, I agree. Trump’s whining, crybaby persona can be see to underlie most of his complaints.

    In other news, Josh Marshall, the editor of Talking Points Memo had a few things to say about open-carry gun laws and election law:

    […] Where do state laws on voter suppression and open-carry intersect with federal laws on voter intimidation and voting rights?

    You saw this incident last week where two Trumpers stood outside a Democratic campaign office in Virginia for twelve hours holding firearms. This was obviously menacing behavior. […]

    We know Donald Trump now repeatedly asks his supporters to go to minority precincts on election day to search for signs of voter fraud and attempts to steal the election. Today his chief surrogate Rudy Giuliani told Jake Tapper that Democrats are able to steal elections because they “control the inner cities.” So there’s no longer much attempt to be subtle about warning that black people are going to steal the election for Hillary Clinton.

    Voting officials in a number of open-carry states say it wouldn’t necessarily be against the law if Trumpers did some version of what happened in Virginia outside polling places. It wouldn’t necessarily be protected either. It would be up to the local election official to decide if it amounted to intimidation or interference.

    Under state law this may well be the case. But federal law trumps state law and the federal government has an extensive legal mandate to prevent election interference and voter intimidation, especially, though not exclusively, where African-Americans are the targets.

    The kind of ‘poll-watching’ Trump is encouraging is in the great majority of cases illegal – wildly more so if it involves doing so with firearms. So is the federal government taking steps now to protect the polls? How does it plan to approach cases where firearms clearly amount to menacing behavior but state law gives people the right to carry firearms pretty much wherever they want as long as they are not openly brandishing them or pointing them in a threatening manner?

  77. says

    One thing this election has brought to the fore is the pitiful state of the US Green Party. In the recent past I think they’ve been seen on the Left as an admirably conscientious group with quixotic aims. But it seems that the nature of US elections and the hold of the two major parties has kept them from political power and real political engagement for so long that they’ve become politically naive and stupid. Now Stein is going after popular and effective progressives like Sanders, while the party is allowing itself to be played and used by the (domestic and foreign) Right. This tweet might as well have been written by a Putin troll. (And to add to my irritation, the third item reads “she: Wall Street bought her.” There are only five items in the list – how did no one change it to “she: has been bought by Wall Street”?)

  78. Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls says

    SC#93 Just marked my ballot. If the Greens want to be viable in 20 years, they need to stop just running top level candidates, and start getting people elected at lower levels, like cities, counties, and state legislatures. Not one Green was running for any of those positions on my ballot. President, senator, and state comptroller only. Parties are built from the local level up, not the top down, if they wish to be effective in governing.

  79. says

    Well, this sounds really weird. It’s all wrong. Democrats firebombed the Orange County GOP headquarters? Call me skeptical, but we’ll see as more news comes in.

    Hillsborough police are investigating an apparent firebombing of the Orange County Republican headquarter, an incident that one state GOP official called an act of “political terrorism.”

    Police say the incident occurred when a bottle of flammable liquid was thrown through the front window of the office on Ja Max Dr.

    “The office itself is a total loss,” said Dallas Woodhouse, executive director of state GOP. “The only thing important to us is that nobody was killed, and they very well could have been.”

    Police said the words, “Nazi Republicans get out of town or else” were spray painted on the side of an adjacent building. […]

    In the meantime, Woodhouse said he’s sending an advisory to county Republican offices across the state warning them to take extra caution.

    Orange County News Observer link

  80. says

    The next presidential debate will be held in Las Vegas on Wednesday. Ahead of that debate, local gun stores are advertising in ways that are despicable.

    An ad in the Las Vegas Review-Journal this weekend advertised a “Pre-Hillary Sale” on the Smith & Weston M&P Sport II semi-automatic sporting rifle.

    “Don’t wait! Prices will skyrocket after Crooked Hillary gets in,” the ad says.

    This rhetoric is clearly aimed at Donald Trump supporters. Not only does it use his signature phrase “Crooked Hillary,” but it’s also playing on the fear that Hillary is going to ban all guns if she is elected President.

    Clinton is not trying to repeal the Second Amendment or ban all guns. She is, however, likely to support legislation that expands background checks and what she considers “commonsense reforms to keep guns away from terrorists, domestic abusers, and other violent criminals.”

    The ad is particularly dangerous because of the divisive, threatening rhetoric Trump and his followers have used throughout this campaign. […]

    Think Progress link

    The NRA is also putting out inflammatory and false ads about Hillary Clinton.

    Über rightwing donor, Sheldon Adelson owns the newspaper in which these ads are appearing.

  81. says

    SC @103, That’s such a good response to that situation. Democrats start helping to rebuild immediately, even before we know the whole story, and despite Trump tweeting out nonsense about animals spurred on by Hillary Clinton.

    He’s the one that is always encouraging violence.

    Hillary Clinton’s response was perfect.

  82. blf says

    I admit I have no recollection of ever hearing of this case, but it seems like the World Bank just did something quite reasonable (they do, sometimes, this isn’t a first) — and perhaps more surprisingly, told an exceptionally greedy corporation to, in essence, “go fuck yourselves” — World Bank tribunal dismisses mining firm’s $250m claim against El Salvador:

    OceanaGold ordered to pay $8m legal costs after claim that El Salvador’s refusal to let it mine gold caused huge loss in potential profits is thrown out

    An international tribunal has dismissed a multinational mining company’s demand that the government of El Salvador pay $250m (£205m) in compensation for refusing to allow it to dig for gold in the tiny Central American country where the slogan, “No to mining, yes to life” has become a national rallying cry.

    The tribunal, which ruled that OceanaGold’s case was without merit, also ordered the firm to pay the Salvadoran government $8m to cover the majority of the country’s legal costs.

    “For the people of Cabañas who have been fighting to defend their environment, it is mission accomplished,” said El Salvador’s attorney general, Douglas Meléndez Ruiz. “It is an important step for the country to have been victorious in this lawsuit.”

    […]

    In 2009, the Canadian mining company Pacific Rim — since acquired by the Australian-Canadian mining firm OceanaGold — filed a case at the centre claiming that El Salvador had unfairly refused to grant it a concession to start digging at its El Dorado mining project.

    The company said the government had encouraged it to spend “tens of millions of dollars to undertake mineral exploration activities” near the central Salvadoran department of Cabañas, only to withhold necessary permits once valuable deposits were discovered.

    At the same time, the firm sued El Salvador alleging the loss of potential profits. The sum sought by the company, which was revised several times over the course of the dispute, at one point exceeded $300m — almost twice the $158m in international aid that El Salvador received in 2014.

    El Salvador, where almost a third of the population lives under the national poverty line, spent more than $12m on its legal defence. It maintained throughout the case that OceanaGold failed to meet regulatory requirements for the requested permits. The country said OceanaGold lacked crucial environmental permissions, did not hold the rights to much of the land required for its project, and failed to submit a final feasibility study.

    The ICSID case against El Salvador is one of hundreds that corporations have filed against governments under the investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) system, a mechanism enshrined in thousands of international trade and investment treaties and some domestic laws.

    The system has become a flashpoint for opposition to the proposed Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership between the US and Europe, which would further extend the reach of ISDS.

    Jen Moore, Latin America programme coordinator at MiningWatch Canada, said: “This ruling is a relief, but it is not a win. This already costly suit should never have been able to take place. For seven years, it has put a chill on policymaking that could respect the decision of Salvadorans to prohibit metal mining and protect local communities and the environment.”

    Too many corporations, she added, have used the ISDS system to “bully governments and undermine local opposition to mining given its devastating impacts, and this must stop”.

    […]

    Much of the elucidated text further discusses the amount of time it took to resolve, the opaque and closed-door nature of ICSID / ISDS, and further condemnations of the abusive (and probably one-sided) nature of ICSID / ISDS.

    ICSID / ISDS itself is discussed further in this older article, The obscure legal system that lets corporations sue countries (June-2015): “Fifty years ago, an international legal system was created to protect the rights of foreign investors. Today, as companies win billions in damages, insiders say it has got dangerously out of control”.

    Why does ICSID / ISDS matter? From the second article:

    Most international investment treaties and free-trade deals grant foreign investors the right to activate this system, known as investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS), if they want to challenge government decisions affecting their investments. In Europe, this system has become a sticking point in negotiations over the controversial Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) deal proposed between the European Union and the US, which would massively extend its scope and power and make it harder to challenge in the future. Both France and Germany have said that they want access to investor-state dispute settlement removed from the TTIP treaty currently under discussion.

    Investors have used this system not only to sue for compensation for alleged expropriation of land and factories, but also over a huge range of government measures, including environmental and social regulations, which they say infringe on their rights. Multinationals have sued to recover money they have already invested, but also for alleged lost profits and expected future profits. The number of suits filed against countries at the ICSID is now around 500 — and that figure is growing at an average rate of one case a week. The sums awarded in damages are so vast that investment funds have taken notice: corporations’ claims against states are now seen as assets that can be invested in or used as leverage to secure multimillion-dollar loans. Increasingly, companies are using the threat of a lawsuit at the ICSID to exert pressure on governments not to challenge investors’ actions.

    There is also no appeals mechanism in the existing system (and also, presumably, in the mostly-still-secret, but known to be more intrusive, TTIP ISDS). The system as it currently stands has been used against European governments, including Germany, which is presumably one reason they are fighting back against the TTIP ISDS.

    As the second article points out, it’s quite hard to pull out of an ISDS — even canceling the treaty won’t do it — due to clauses which keep the ISDS in-force for multiple decades afterwards.

  83. says

    Great news about El Salvador, although Jen Moore is absolutely right that it’s a travesty that the country had to go through such a long and costly process in the first place.

    ***

    I like Bill McKibben’s response to Hillary Clinton’s alleged statement in a speech that some radical environmentalists should “get a life”:

    “We’d actually love to do something with our lives other than endlessly fight the fossil fuel infrastructure that will raise the planet’s temperature past the breaking point,” McKibben said. “If Secretary Clinton is willing to lend a hand in the task, we’d love to move on to things that are more rewarding, like building out a solar and wind-fueled future. In the meantime, though, someone’s got to do it. And the day the election is over and the creepy perv beaten, we’ll be back hard at work.”

  84. says

    The doughy demagogue is undermining democracy again on Twitter: “Of course there is large scale voter fraud happening on and before election day. Why do Republican leaders deny what is going on? So naive!”

  85. blf says

    The BrExit deplorables in the UK have jumped another shark, Calls for UK to rejoin EU ‘should be treason’, urges Tory petition:

    Christian Holliday seeks amendment to Treason Felony Act to include post-Brexit support for EU membership

    A Conservative councillor from Surrey has launched a petition calling for Victorian-era legislation to be amended to make supporting UK membership of the EU a treasonable offence.

    Christian Holliday has added the petition to the UK Government and Parliament website, and it calls for:

    The Treason Felony Act be amended to include the following offences:

    To imagine, devise, promote, work, or encourage others, to support UK becoming a member of the European Union;

    To conspire with foreign powers to make the UK, or part of the UK, become a member of the EU.

    […]

    It is becoming clear that many politicians and others are unwilling to accept the democratic decision of the British people to leave the EU. Brexit must not be put at risk in the years and decades ahead. For this reason we the undersigned request that the Treason Felony Act be amended as set out in this petition.

    […]

    Admittedly, this appears — at the moment — to be from a wingnut lunatic fringe.

  86. slithey tove (twas brillig (stevem)) says

    Since the topic is political madness, I’ll throw in my madness.
    Drumph first entered the race to mock it. Angry at the current system and narcissistic enough to present himself as “the answer”, “vote for an outsider, because I am outsider to the current broken system” and other bluster, not to get any where, just to mock the system.
    Shocked that voters started to vote for him, he saw the ground collapsing beneath him, dropping him into a hole. Trying to get out of the hole, out of the possibility of becoming POTUS, whose job horrifies him, he takes the desperation route of digging deeper (to get out. tsk tsk, we know that doesn’t work, yet desperation can drive people in contrary directions) by making himself more offensive and apparently demented and trying to get spooky, by looming behind his opponent during the 2nd debate. He doesn’t want to resign, himself, thinking it shameful. He’d rather be forcibly removed, unwillingly, by TPTB [The Powers That Be], so that afterwards he can complain about it and make lots of money as the goto pundit to criticize everything the current POTUS does and doesn’t. He is trying to abandon the POTUS race, not by leaving it, but by getting kicked out. Playing the long game. To get himself set up for his own show on (probably Faux Noise) to rant about anything and also to be approached by every journalist to express his opinion about every event. That way, he could start raking in speaking fees left and right in a steady stream, without having to deal with actual people to be paid and require him to make decisions about real structures. Just getting paid to speak opinions without need for rational analyses is his preference.

  87. says

    “Trump son-in-law makes approach on post-election TV start-up”:

    Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner has informally approached one of the media industry’s top dealmakers about the prospect of setting up a Trump television network after the presidential election in November.

    Mr Kushner — an increasingly influential figure in the billionaire [citation needed]’s presidential campaign — contacted Aryeh Bourkoff, the founder and chief executive of LionTree, a boutique investment bank, within the past couple of months, according to three people with knowledge of the matter.

    Their conversation was brief and has not progressed since, the people said. Mr Bourkoff and Mr Kushner both declined to comment.

    However, the approach suggests Mr Kushner and the Republican candidate himself are thinking about how to capitalise on the populist movement that has sprung up around their campaign in the event of an election defeat to Democrat Hillary Clinton next month. Mr Trump has in recent days ramped up his criticism of the “dishonest and distorted” mainstream media, which he accuses of being biased against him in collusion with the Clinton campaign.

    Talk about a Trump network has persisted, partly because of the fervent crowds that Mr Trump continues to attract on the campaign trail and his existing links to conservative media. Mr Bannon, the chairman of Breitbart, a network of rightwing news sites, was hired in August to run the Trump campaign. Breitbart is currently on a global expansion push, with the aim of adding sites in Germany and France to its existing operations in the US and Israel.

  88. blf says

    Breitbart is currently on a global expansion push, with the aim of adding sites in Germany and France to its existing operations in the US and Israel.

    Oh for fecks sake. France does not need a USAlien Le Penazi posturing phony phews phewing site, and I presume the similar is true for Germany.

    Keep These Kooks In Krazyland!

  89. slithey tove (twas brillig (stevem)) says

    re 111
    gee why am I not surprised (rhetorical, so; sans punctuation)
    @110 predicted it

  90. says

    Oh for fecks sake. France does not need a USAlien Le Penazi posturing phony phews phewing site, and I presume the similar is true for Germany.

    Yes, I quoted that last paragraph because it was maybe the most important aspect of the report, but buried at the bottom: the current attempts to develop transnational rightwing media organizations and political networks. (Funny how they’re not so anti-globalist when it comes to their own activities.)

  91. says

    Hillary Clinton is making a play for Arizona. Her campaign is increasing spending in that state by $2 million. And they are sending Michele Obama there to campaign for Hillary on Thursday. Bernie Sanders and Chelsea Clinton are also headed to Arizona.

    In other news, we now know what will occupy part of President Obama’s time after he leaves the White House. He is planning to work with former Attorney General Eric Holder to reform the redistricting process in the states. The idea is to have fair district maps representing diverse communities. Holder said, “This unprecedented new effort will ensure Democrats have a seat at the table to create fairer maps after 2020.”

  92. blf says

    More twittoids from teh trum-prat, taken from various points in today’s Granuiad live blog:

    Donald Trump seems almost to be free-associating now, on a busy morning on the candidate’s Twitter feed:

    Voter fraud! Crooked Hillary Clinton even got the questions to a debate, and nobody says a word. Can you imagine if I got the questions?

    Maybe someone showed him a flash card. Anyway, how the line about “Clinton even got the questions to a debate” relates to “Voter fraud!” is […] unclear.

    […]

    This morning, Trump has again decried the electoral system, alleging “large scale voter fraud” without offering any evidence to support this claim.

    Of course there is large scale voter fraud happening on and before election day. Why do Republican leaders deny what is going on? So naive!

    The Republican nominee also re-tweeted a link from a contributor to Alex Jones’ Infowars website […]

    Part of the text redacted in the above excerpt is this, not from teh trum-prat:

    Journalists have devoted unknown hours of deep investigative research to expose the large-scale voter fraud phenomena Trump keeps warning us about.

    The conclusion:

    Is there evidence of large scale voter fraud?

     

    No.

    […]

    You are more likely to be groped/sexually assaulted by Trump then you are to be the victim of voter fraud.

    Running the numbers quickly in my head (c.30 credible instances of voter fraud out of one billion votes, or one fraud every c.30 million votes), with c.120 million votes (last election 2012), suggests about four (c.4) fraudulent votes. So that last tweet is correct-ish: Based on historical patterns, a voter has a greater chance of being sexually assaulted by teh trum-prat than of being a vote fraud victim!

  93. says

    Ari Berman, “GOP States Keep Ignoring Court Orders to Restore Voting Rights: Wisconsin, Ohio, Texas, and North Carolina won’t stop suppressing the vote.”

    Florida, too.

    CNN had a guy from the NCGOP on a little while ago. He was remarkably ungracious about the Democrats who raised money to rebuild the office. Then, when asked about Trump’s preposterous election-rigging claims, he talked about how they were very concerned about (imaginary) voter fraud and lied about their voter-ID policy being supported by everyone – young and old, black and white,…

  94. blf says

    This is a long article which I won’t excerpt, covering the points I presume most readers here are familiar with, The man who cried rigged: the problem with Trump’s election claims. It points out teh trum-prat has a history of crying rigged, e.g., his claims about Iowa caucuses (which he lost to Ted Cruz), and even no Emmy for The Apprentice. The article covers many other points, such as the numerous disenfranchisement scams the thugs are operating.

  95. blf says

    A good point by White House spokesman Josh Earnest (today’s Grauniad live blog, 18:50 point), talking about teh trum-prat’s claims of rigging: “Earnest noted that many battleground states including Florida and Ohio have Republican governors so he assumes they have confidence in their systems.” (The “they” seems to refer to Pence, Ryan, and other thugs who publically say they disagree with teh trum-prat’s absurd claims.)

  96. blf says

    A bit of the follow-up to @119, I was skimming the more recent comments (most of which are sane), and found this gem (from reader greensox):

    Someone should tell Trump and remind some of the more sane Republicans that it isn’t holding elections that distinguish liberal democracies from banana republics (they hold elections in North Korea and Zimbabwe), it is the fact that the loser accepts the results.

  97. says

    This is not good. Trump’s constant repetition of “rigged election” claims, and of “voter fraud” (which doesn’t really exist, as blf and others have pointed out) … that constant repetition is having an effect. A recent poll shows that 41% of voters now believe that the election could be “stolen” from Trump.

    […] The poll, conducted by Politico and Morning Consult, also found that 73 percent of Republicans surveyed said they think the election could be stolen from Trump, while 17 percent of Democrats believe there will be widespread voter fraud.

    The Daily Beast link

  98. says

    The Clinton campaign has a new video out that firmly connects Donald Trump to Alex Jones. The ad is short (just over a minute), so they don’t present all of Jones’ oddball conspiracy theories, but it does hit the highlights.
    YouTube link

  99. says

    More details regarding Trump supporters that are threatening to shoot Hillary Clinton:

    A Donald Trump supporter told reporters at a campaign rally last week that Hillary Clinton “needs to be taken out” and that “she should be in prison or shot.” […]

    The Trump supporter, Dan Bowman, told the Wall Street Journal Thursday at Trump’s Cincinnati, Ohio rally that “I feel like Hillary needs to be taken out. If she gets in the government, I’ll do everything in my power to take her out of power.”

    “If I have to be a patriot, I will,” he added, before avoiding questions about whether he was threatening Clinton directly.

    “I don’t know. Is it?” Bowman, a 50-year old contractor, responded when asked if his comment represented a real threat to Clinton’s life.

    Link

  100. says

    John McCain says that Republicans in the Senate will unite to block any Clinton nominee for Supreme Court Justice:

    I promise you that we will be united against any Supreme Court nominee that Hillary Clinton, if she were president, would put up. I promise you. This is where we need the majority.

  101. says

    A social worker has come forward to back up Summer Zervos’ claim that Trump kissed and groped her without her consent.

    […] On Sunday, Allred [Gloria Allred, lawyer] held a press conference with Russo [Ann Russo], a licensed social worker who Allred said met Zervos years before the incident at the center of Zervos’ accusations.

    “In 2010, Summer told her that Mr. Trump had been verbally, physically and sexually aggressive with her,” Allred told reporters.

    “I have every confidence in Summer’s integrity,” Russo said. “I believe that she is an honest person with very high moral and ethical standards.”

    Russo said that she previously remained silent out of respect for Zervos’ privacy, but was “in tears” watching the Friday news conference in which Zervos made the accusations.

    “Immediately she was trashed. Immediately,” Russo said, explaining that she reached out to Allred as a result of the backlash against Zervos. “What Summer is saying is true.”

    Talking Points Memo link

  102. says

    Ten “Teachers of the Year” from Texas, Utah, New York and Florida have signed a letter “strongly opposing Donald Trump’s candidacy for president.” They do so knowing that as a rule most teachers are expected to remain “politically neutral” around their students. These teachers have crossed that line because they believe that the stakes are far too high to remain silent.

    […] We are teachers. We are supposed to remain politically neutral. For valid reasons, we don’t want to offend our students, colleagues or community members. But there are times when a moral imperative outweighs traditional social norms. There are times when silence is the voice of complicity. This year’s presidential election is one such time. […]

    We teach children that girls are just as smart, capable, and worthy of respect as boys. Donald Trump has mocked women in myriad ways, including his post-debate tirades against Alicia Machado, his off-color innuendo about FOX host Megyn Kelly, and his predatory boasts about groping.

    We teach children that the content of their character, not the color of their skin, determines their worth. Donald Trump has attacked Latinos, Muslims, and African-Americans. He has described Mexican immigrants as “rapists,” called for an immigration ban based entirely on refugees’ religious beliefs, and questioned our first Black president’s citizenship long after it became clear that Obama is indeed American. […]

    Washington Post Link

  103. tomh says

    @ #124
    Great news. So the SC will dwindle from 8 to 7 to who knows what, depending on how many seats open up. Maybe it will eventually get down to just Sotomayor and Kagan. That would be a treat.

  104. blf says

    More delusional lying, as reported at various recent points in the Grauniad’s live blog:

    Donald Trump has figured out why he likes some polls and hates all others: New polls are good because the media has deceived the public by putting women front and center with made-up stories and lies, and got caught

    […]

    I truly do believe that Donald Trump literally embodies the spirit of America, Pence said, continuing a trend of using the word “literally” to mean its antonym.

    […]

    It seems like everyday, the national media is doing half of Hillary’s work for her, Pence said. It really is amazing — they chase after every attack against my running mate.

    Note that teh trum-prat implies the media is making things up, whilst Pence said the media is reactively “chasing” “attacks”. However, as has been pointed out previously, newspapers having been uncovering well-documented incidents proactively.

  105. blf says

    Another delusion, this time from Melania Trump (Granuiad live blog, 21:11 point):

    They [Secretary Clinton’s campaign] started, Trump continued. They started from the– from the beginning of the campaign putting my, my picture from modeling days. That was my modeling days and I’m proud what I did. I worked very hard.

    Trump was referring to risqué photographs from her modeling career that were published in the right-tilting New York Post during the Republican primary campaign. […] The Clinton campaign has, so far, made no mention of Melania Trump’s past work as a model.

    I assume these eejits have no training in digging holes and similar, they seem to be naturally “brilliant” at it…

  106. KG says

    slithey tove@110,

    Oh FFS. I’m so sick of this stupid crap – which is, incidentally, totally unoriginal. There is absolutely zero evidence for it, and it’s blindingly obvious to anyone other than a complete fool that Trump is totally incapable of being “Shocked that voters started to vote for him”. And if he was capable of the kind of thinking you impute to him, he would know that the “Powers That Be” can’t remove him from the election. Moreover, nothing that he has said or done is in any way out of character. And do you suppose he leaked the “Grab ’em by the pussy” tape himself?

    This kind of garbage is also a fucking insult to all the people who have already suffered bullying, abuse and violence because of Trump’s campaign. Jesus wept! Here’s a man running what is in all essentials a fascist campaign for the most powerful office in the world, and you refuse to take it seriously.

  107. says

    Judge John Grinsteiner did NOT find probable cause to charge journalist Amy Goodman with a “riot” charge. Good news!

    “This is a complete vindication of my right as a journalist to cover the attack on the protesters, and of the public’s right to know what is happening with the Dakota Access pipeline,” said Goodman. “We will continue to report on this epic struggle of Native Americans and their non-Native allies taking on the fossil fuel industry and an increasingly militarized police in this time when climate change threatens the planet.”

  108. says

    Senator Elizabeth Warren, on the campaign trail for Hillary Clinton, is having fun baiting Donald Trump:

    […] The big brave Donald Trump is too chicken to release his tax returns. Bock bocka bock. […]

    Donald Trump’s words don’t make me sick anymore. They make me furious […].

    Video can be viewed here.

  109. consciousness razor says

    slithey tove:

    kg@132, please get your sarcasm meter recalibrated.

    It’s difficult when every topic gets treated with your patented brand of ridiculous, barely-comprehensible horseshit.

    How about this? Don’t follow it up with “it was sarcasm” or “just my opinion” or whatever new crappy defense you feel like offering any time you’re criticized. Start all of your comments with “do not take me seriously,” and only remove that disclaimer if and when you’ve decided, before posting, that in fact you do actually mean something contained within it. Then own that thing that you actually do mean and be aware that it is one of your genuine ideas that you may need to change when confronted with a reason to do so. But if you haven’t even figured out whether or not you’re full of shit, then certainly no else has any way of discerning that. And if it’s just a confusing part of your inner monologue that you’ll never be able to figure out (and we don’t have access to, fortunately), most likely no one else needs to hear about it anyway.

  110. says

    I could not believe that Melania Trump blamed Billy Bush for egging her husband on to say disgusting things:

    “So you can see from the tape, the cameras were not on, it was only a mic,” she said. “And I wonder if they even knew that the mic was on, because they were kind of boy talk, and he was egged on by the host to say dirty and bad stuff.”

    “You feel the host, Billy Bush, was egging him on?” Cooper clarified.

    “Yes,” she replied.

    Melania Trump went on to say that she has never heard her husband speak like that, but alluded to the “locker room talk” defense that her husband’s campaign has been using.

    “That’s why I was surprised. Because I don’t know the person that would talk that way, that he would say that kind of stuff,” she said. “In private, I heard many different stuff, boys talk. The boys, the way they talk when they grow up and they want to sometimes show each other, oh, this and that, and talking about the girls. But yeah, I was surprised, of course.” [….]

  111. says

    To comply with an order from the New York Attorney General’s office, the Trump Foundation has ceased all of its fundraising efforts (or so it says).

    The foundation was supposed to file paperwork, that among other things, detailed money it had solicited in New York. The foundation requested more time to file the proper paperwork.

    Backstory:

    […] The attorney general’s office issued the order after it was found that the foundation had been raising outside money without being properly registered to do so under state law. A broader investigation is underway by New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman after reports that the foundation engaged in other activities that appeared to be in violation of state charity law. […]

    Link

    My bet is that the Trump Foundation will just slowly close its doors and that it will never attempt to raise funds again. The requirement to provide details to the Attorney General’s office is just too much for Trump. More dirty laundry would be aired.

  112. says

    Well, this figures. A private prison company is bankrolling one of the pro-Trump Super PACs.

    […] in August, private prison company GEO Group steered $150,000 to Rebuild America Now, a pro-Donald Trump outfit launched by the GOP nominee’s longtime friend, developer Tom Barrack.

    The timing of the GEO Group’s contribution is significant. It cut a $100,000 check to the super-PAC on August 19, the day after the Justice Department announced that it would phase out the use of private prisons. (The company’s political action committee donated $50,000 to Rebuild America Now a week before the announcement.)

    The multibillion-dollar-a-year private prison industry has been under increasing scrutiny, in part thanks to a groundbreaking investigation by Mother Jones that revealed a litany of disturbing practices at a Louisiana prison run by the Corrections Corporation of America.

    GEO Group is one of just three companies that operate prisons and detention centers on behalf of the federal government

    It’s no surprise the company is putting its money behind Trump. While Hillary Clinton has sharply criticized private prisons, Trump has expressed support for expanding their use, and his policy proposals, including his plan to deport millions of undocumented immigrants, could be a boon for the industry.

    In addition to backing Trump, the company recently brought on three lobbying firms to represent its interests in Washington. […]

    Mother Jones link

  113. says

    Trump said some more stupid stuff that is revealing when it comes to his strange obsession with Putin:

    If I win on November 8th … I could see myself meeting with Putin and meeting with Russia prior to the start of my administration. I think it would be wonderful.

  114. slithey tove (twas brillig (stevem)) says

    re 139:

    Start all of your comments with “do not take me seriously,”

    Thank you for the advice. I’m sorry I thought my preface of “I’ll throw in my madness”, was sufficient.
    I guess I unconsciously assumed readers are psychic, to know that my use of “madness” does not refer to anger, but instead to unleashing ones imagination.
    oops. Sincere apologies for all the splash damage I caused.
    I promise to try to make my disclaimers more clear.

  115. says

    Andrea Mitchell delved into the details in order to debunk a “quid pro quo” story that righwingers (and some others) are promoting as a result of documents released today from the FBI’s investigation of Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server:

    ANDREA MITCHELL: What you’ve got here is the FBI and the State Department, who have been fighting for a year and a half over the classifications of these e-mails. The FBI and the intelligence communities are saying they should be more classified, and retroactively re-classifying some that had had not been. The State Department is saying “No, this is the way we do business, this is not something that should be classified, it’s simply mentioning a name here and a name there,” and the FBI basically winning all of these the arguments.

    So, the fact that there was this debate, this negotiation, is not anything unusual. We’ve been, in fact, told every day at the State Department “Hey, this is happening, we’re pushing back, well we lost this one, well, we lost another one.” This is an ongoing negotiation.

    What is unusual is this note from the FBI official saying that the agent saying that this happened, and in fact we were told it was exactly the opposite, that an FBI official brought up placing agents in Iraq, a country where they had not been able to get in, as an add-on to another conversation with Patrick Kennedy. He said “Now I’ve got you on your phone — on the phone, basically, we finally nailed you down here to talk about this, let me bring this up.”

    And so they brought it up from the FBI’s standpoint, it wasn’t Patrick Kennedy, there was no quid pro quo, there was no linkage, they were really separate issues, and that there was nothing at all nefarious.

    But that doesn’t mean that there won’t be attacks, and in fact we are told Donald Trump in his speech tonight is going to be jumping all over this.

    Link

  116. says

    My bet is that the Trump Foundation will just slowly close its doors and that it will never attempt to raise funds again. The requirement to provide details to the Attorney General’s office is just too much for Trump. More dirty laundry would be aired.

    Schneiderman’s larger investigation into the foundation, though, is ongoing. I suspect that the reason the foundation never registered to solicit money was that the auditing requirements could never have been met because no legitimate independent auditor would falsify documents under penalty of perjury (lost reputation, license, etc.). The failure to register, then, was part of the attempt to hide the foundation’s corrupt and illegal practices. Even if he shuttered the foundation, the corrupt/illegal practices themselves (and potentially the failure to register, if it could be shown to be part of a criminal cover-up) are still under investigation and could result in prosecution. In other words, closing the foundation won’t make it all go away – especially with Fahrenthold finding out more every day. (IANAL, so I’m open to correction.)

  117. Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls says

    I dropped our filled out ballots, which were each sealed in a signed and dated ballot envelope, which were each then sealed in a stamped mailing outer envelope, off at the post office to day. One political party will be very happy. The others, not so much.
    Be sure to vote yourself if you can.

    I would love to wake up Wed. 11/9, to the Chicago Tribune headline, “Electorate to Trump: You’re a loser”.

  118. says

    If I win on November 8th … I could see myself meeting with Putin and meeting with Russia prior to the start of my administration. I think it would be wonderful.

    His attitude toward Putin is so pathetic. “Will he become my new best friend?” “I hope he likes me.” He actually said these things about Putin, and has made up stories about having a personal relationship with him. Trump is such a perfect illustration of Erich Fromm’s argument about how the authoritarian character veers between dominance and submission – both tendencies grow out of a profound insecurity, such that a sense of security can only be found through others.

  119. says

    Today’s Republican Reminder:

    McCain promised that Republicans would be “united against any Supreme Court nominee” put forth by Clinton.

    “I promise you that we will be united against any Supreme Court nominee that Hillary Clinton, if she were president, would put up,” McCain said. “I promise you. This is where we need the majority and Pat Toomey is probably as articulate and effective on the floor of the Senate as anyone I have encountered.”

    A spokesperson from McCain’s Senate office later clarified his comments on opposing a Clinton-nominated justice.

    “Senator McCain believes you can only judge people by their record and Hillary Clinton has a clear record of supporting liberal judicial nominees,” said McCain spokesperson Rachael Dean. “That being said, Senator McCain will, of course, thoroughly examine the record of any Supreme Court nominee put before the Senate and vote for or against that individual based on their qualifications as he has done throughout his career.”

  120. says

    SC @152, wait a minute. What Senator McCain’s spokesperson said is not what McCain said earlier. Not even close.

    As a followup to comment 146, Rachel Maddow mentioned on her show tonight that there was no “quid pro quo” and that Republicans had it exactly backwards. The FBI asked for a favor. Hillary Clinton’s State Department did not ask for a favor. In the long run, the email in question remained retroactively classified.

  121. tomh says

    @ 154
    McCain is following in Trump’s footsteps. He says something plain as day, then his spokespeople “clarify” it by saying the exact opposite. Trump says voting will be rigged on election day, Pence follows by saying he really meant the media is against him. This happens over and over.

  122. KG says

    slithey tove@137,
    Since I have heard exactly the same stupid crap as in your #110 repeated numerous times in complete seriousness, there is nothing at all wrong with my sarcasm detector. I suppose you will point to your: “Since the topic is political madness, I’ll throw in my madness.”, but this does not identify what follows as sarcasm, because it looks to me more like giving yourself a figleaf of plausible deniability in case anyone called you out – it’s exactly the sort of bilge that’s used in attempts to pre-empt criticism. It’s not my sarcasm detector that needs adjustment – it’s your sarcasm producer – if indeed you are being honest when you describe #110 as sarcasm.

  123. KG says

    John McCain says that Republicans in the Senate will unite to block any Clinton nominee for Supreme Court Justice – Lynna@124

    What most telling about this is that the Republicans had been pretending that the choice of the new SC justice should be left to the new President so that “the American people” could have a say. Now, the supposedly moderate and responsible McCain says that if the American people choose Clinton rather than Trump, the American people can get stuffed.

  124. blf says

    Controversial Republican Mike Roman to run Donald Trump’s election protection:

    Operative best known for promoting video of apparent voter intimidation by New Black Panthers will oversee poll-watching efforts
    […]
    Roman is to oversee poll-watching efforts as Trump undertakes an unprecedented effort by a major party nominee by calling into question the legitimacy of the popular vote weeks before election day.

    […]

    Multiple sources have confirmed to the Guardian that Roman, who also previously ran the Koch network’s now defunct internal intelligence agency, will oversee the Trump campaign’s efforts to monitor polling places for any signs of voter fraud.

    Roman is best known for his role in promoting a video that showed two members of the New Black Panthers […] standing outside a Philadelphia polling place dressed in uniforms, with one carrying a nightstick. Police are called and the two men leave.

    I note that teh trum-prat’s brownshirts are threatening what they say is a very similar thing, but carrying guns — and doing so, very very probably, at polling stations in areas not expected to support teh trum-prat to any significant degree. That the districts just so happen to include many black, Latino, et al voters is a coincidence.

    But what teh trum-prat’s brownshirts say (which is appalling enough) and what they actually do (which often seems to be worse) are very very different things. As a result, I myself am expecting invasions of polling stations, and shots fired — I very very very much hope I’m mistaken, but I have considerable difficulty in seeing teh trum-prat’s brownshirts acting with anything other than superficial restraint.

    […]

    [Rick Hasen, a election law professor at the University of California, Irvine], who viewed the case as a “complete tempest in teapot”, said of Roman that he was “somebody who has been more willing to put forth more outrageous statements about voter fraud and election process”. Hasen added: “I don’t consider him a very responsible voice among Republicans on this question and I’m not surprised that Trump would be using him for polling related efforts.”

  125. bassmike says

    I was remembering the 2008 election and the fact that when Obama referred to a woman journalist as ‘Sweetie’ and it put his election bid in jeopardy……how times have changed!

  126. blf says

    Mexican brands mock Trump: “There’s a common sense he’s our enemy”:

    Companies including Tecate and Cucapá are using humor to push back against the Republican’s fighting talk (and market their products)

    When a group of young Mexicans began selling “I support Donald” T-shirts to people on the streets of Los Angeles last month they drew reactions of anger and disbelief from many passersby.

    The joke was on the buyers. As temperatures rose a clown nose appeared on the Republican presidential candidate and the wording on the shirts changed, crossing out “I support” and leaving “El Que Lo Lea,” which translates to “whoever reads this” but is a nod for any Mexican Spanish speaker to the popular phrase: “Whoever reads this is an asshole.”

    The prank was part of a viral marketing campaign by the Mexican craft brewery Cucapá, with the sales destined to fund free beer giveaways and a big party in Mexico City.

    Cucapá’s stunt was the latest in a series of advertising campaigns by Mexican businesses that have mocked and criticised the Republican candidate for his racist rhetoric.

    […]

    Tecate, a Mexican beer company owned by Heineken, released a commercial on Fox News during the first presidential debate that mocked Trump’s planned border wall. In its place, Tecate proposed a new wall, “tremendous” mini beer wall, more like a very long bar, where people from both countries could meet to share ice-cold Mexican lager. “This wall may be small but it’s going to be huge,” claimed the ad.

    […]

    It’s unusual for Mexican businesses to release such political commercials. Fernanda Guerra, director of the digital marketing firm Wawa, said Mexican companies normally avoid such delicate issues […]. While smaller, more irreverent brands like Cucapá have less to lose from releasing bolder adverts, Guerra said larger corporations tend to be more serious and risk averse. In Trump’s case, however, companies of all sizes are taking shots at him.

    […]

    The strength of anti-Trump sentiment on both sides of the border has created opportunities for philanthropy as well as publicity. Since launching a Trump-baiting viral campaign last year, John Rexer, founder of the Mexican liquor brand Ilegal Mezcal, has raised over $30,000 to provide educational opportunities for children in Guatemala and undocumented youths in Los Angeles and his native New York.

    […]

    Viva México

  127. slithey tove (twas brillig (stevem)) says

    KG @156 wrote:

    It’s not my sarcasm detector that needs adjustment – it’s your sarcasm producer

    I agree. apologies. Working on that sarcasm producer to make the sarcasm a little more clear, Just to be clear, I’m not being sarcastic. My writing skills are poor.
    Yeah, I was poorly trying to caricature Drumph as a character in a story that a reasonable author is trying to convey as absurd.
    Not trying to excuse him nor justify him …
    oh no, I’m digging deeper to escape this hole I’ve dug. nevermind, I’ll try to find a ladder elsewhere.
    *shrugs and exits*

  128. says

    Progressive economists sign public letter supporting Clinton:

    A group of influential progressive intellectuals are giving Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton their seal of approval ― and urging fellow progressives, including those who supported Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) in the Democratic primaries, to do the same.

    In a letter that went public on Tuesday and was provided in advance to The Huffington Post, more than 50 progressive economists and other policy experts endorse Clinton’s candidacy ― not simply as a way to defeat GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump, but also as a way to advance a liberal economic agenda.

    The letter warns that “drastic increases in income inequality have created a deep malaise among many Americans who are increasingly excluded from the promise of a better future.” Then it offers an overview of Clinton’s proposals ― including a higher minimum wage, big spending on infrastructure and new early childhood education programs ― that are designed to bolster economic fortunes for the poor and middle class.

    Of course, vouching for the progressive elements of Clinton’s agenda is one thing. Vouching for her commitment to enacting them is quite another. In Washington, progressives have made clear they plan to apply political pressure, should Clinton become president, to make sure she doesn’t walk away from her policy commitments ― or fill her administration with appointees uninterested in pursuing an aggressively liberal agenda.

    But Shearer, for one, thinks Clinton may surprise skeptical progressives.

    “I’ve long felt that Mrs. Clinton would make a more progressive president than her husband,” Shearer said.

  129. says

    “Stakes is High”:

    …Sunday night’s successful effort by some self-identified Democrats to raise money for the North Carolina Republican Party, to “rebuild” the county party HQ that was recently set on fire by an unknown party, is straight out of the West Wing. It’s a hand across the divide of that great fraternity. There’s a lot of weird things about the effort which I’ll skip over, except to note that the organizers didn’t seem to realize that any money dumped in the state party’s coffers at this point in the race would probably be going to support state lawmakers’ re-election campaigns, rather than reclaim office space for a local party that can probably get it for free as an in-kind donation from some local businessman.

    Are we making too much of the fundraiser? Sure, probably. It’s a thing people got mad about on Twitter, which they tend to do, and here I am writing a lot of words about it, so the joke is on me, really. I’m positive most people who chipped in a few bucks for the campaign did so with pure and admirable intentions, and in a way I admire the impulse.

    But I found the quick embrace of the effort by elite commentators deeply irritating, for reasons it took me a while to unpack. The overriding sense I’ve had this election is that despite Trump, and despite many bad years in Congress, the center-left hasn’t fully grappled with the meaning and consequences of the wave of reaction that has gripped the country since 2009. We don’t live anymore in a country with a ruling party and a loyal opposition. That will remain the case after Trump is defeated. And the stakes are really, really high.

    If you live in California or New York or Maryland or Massachusetts, as some of the fundraiser’s boosters do—like Professor Jeff Jarvis, who tweeted that his donation was “a blow for civilization and peace”—things are going OK for you, on the whole. There might be problems, and your state legislature might be weak. Your state Democratic party might be corrupt. You might be irritated by congressional dysfunction, and concerned about what it means for the country. But the level of basic services provided in your state is generally intact, or at least similar to what it was 15 years ago. It might well be that Trump’s campaign represents a kind of political insanity that is threatening to touch you, in a real way, for the first time.

    This is not true for many Americans. Since 2010, Republican state legislatures — comprised of Republican lawmakers that look very little like what Republican lawmakers used to look like — have inflicted massive harm on the social compact in states where a significant number of Americans live. Sam Brownback shattered Kansas, and Bobby Jindal left a smoking hole in Louisiana. The changes that have taken place in states like Oklahoma and North Carolina since 2008 have been so sweeping as to be revolutionary in nature. The “normal” flow of partisan politics in many of these places, and the minimal social safety net it used to support, has been broken in ways that Americans living in more stable states might have trouble even believing.

    Many millions of people live in states where lawmakers are, effectively, intentionally weakening public education. After the recession, Republican legislatures elected in the tea party wave hacked out huge portions of their budget for education and health care, and it didn’t come back when the economy improved. When the cuts create dysfunction, the proffered solution is to weaken public schools further by expanding charters and providing vouchers. There’s too many examples of this to list: Oklahoma has cut its per-student spending by 24% since 2008. State lawmakers and conservatives in places like Kansas have taken to calling public schools “government schools.”

    But there’s a lot of other programs that have been axe-chopped. Agencies that used to do a minimal job of rooting out child abuse and coordinating foster care for vulnerable kids are now non-functional. Nineteen states, including many of the country’s poorest, still haven’t taken money to expand Medicaid. It is somehow considered unchill to point out that this is a decision that has a death toll, but it does. But just as much, it means a lot of poor people living in pain, with ailments that are manageable or preventable: The difference between diabetes medication and an amputated foot.

    That’s what politics is — the way we distribute pain. It’s not a sport or a fraternity or a game. It’s how we determine who gets medication and who dies young, who learns in a class of twenty kids and who learns in a class of thirty, whose school has a counselor that’s trained to look for signs of sexual abuse and who doesn’t.

    To my mind, the most urgent priority for people on the left or the center-left in this country should be how to make inroads in places like North Carolina — and how to create a feeling of productive national solidarity. It’s a moral imperative, and we’ve done a pretty piss-poor job at it so far….

  130. Golgafrinchan Captain says

    Here’s a really good interview with John Cusack on The Young Turks

    They discuss Clinton, Trump, Obama, American exceptionalism, “signature strikes”, Snowden, and more.

    The main important takeaway for me is, election day is not the end of the fight, it’s just the beginning.

    One thing they bring up that I hadn’t really thought of before is that, with Clinton, there’s at least some potential to sway her with public protest. Trump is impervious to outside opinions (aside from lashing out when he thinks he’s been slighted).

  131. says

    Writing for The New Yorker, Margaret Talbot took a close look at “2016’s Manifest Misogyny.”

    […] In 2007, during the Presidential-primary campaigns, when she [Hillary Clinton] was the presumptive Democratic nominee, a supporter of Senator John McCain, the eventual Republican nominee, asked him at a gathering in South Carolina, “How do we beat the bitch?” McCain looked fleetingly uncomfortable, then called it an “excellent question.” The terms “bitch” and “witch,” and the associations they stir up, are slurs that Clinton’s detractors have resorted to freely. The political commentator Tucker Carlson said of Clinton, “Something about her feels castrating.” Rush Limbaugh asked his listeners, “Will this country want to actually watch a woman get older before their eyes on a daily basis?” Bumper stickers appeared bearing slogans such as “KFC Hillary Meal Deal: Two Fat Thighs, Two Small Breasts and a Bunch of Left Wings” and “Even Bill Doesn’t Want Me.”

    During Clinton’s lifetime, institutionalized discrimination against women has retreated markedly. So has the routine sexism that assumes that a woman can’t, by definition, do a given job as well as a man, or that she shouldn’t be working outside the home at all. But what lingers is misogyny—the kind of hate- and fear-filled objectification of women that flourishes in corners of the Internet, and in the rhetoric of Trump and some of his supporters

    It turns out that what some of them seemed to have meant when they said they were tired of being politically correct was that they were tired of addressing others with a modicum of respect. Trump encourages people at his rallies to chant “Lock her up!”—in the second debate, he vowed to do just that if elected. Such rhetoric, in its vulgarity and its rawness, is a radical break from conservative norms. Mitt Romney and Ronald Reagan are not exactly celebrated as feminists, but it’s impossible to imagine either of them publicly invoking a newswoman’s menstrual period, or calling women “fat pigs,” […]

    Clinton’s reputation has also been prone to another unfortunate pattern: she was often more popular when she was seen to be suffering a traditionally feminine humiliation. […]

    There’s something both grotesque and bracing about the confrontation between Clinton, with her disciplined professionalism, and Trump, with his increasingly frenzied assertions of male prerogative. […]

  132. says

    Writing for The New Yorker, Margaret Talbot took a close look at “2016’s Manifest Misogyny.”

    […] In 2007, during the Presidential-primary campaigns, when she [Hillary Clinton] was the presumptive Democratic nominee, a supporter of Senator John McCain, the eventual Republican nominee, asked him at a gathering in South Carolina, “How do we beat the bitch?” McCain looked fleetingly uncomfortable, then called it an “excellent question.” The terms “bitch” and “witch,” and the associations they stir up, are slurs that Clinton’s detractors have resorted to freely. The political commentator Tucker Carlson said of Clinton, “Something about her feels castrating.” Rush Limbaugh asked his listeners, “Will this country want to actually watch a woman get older before their eyes on a daily basis?” Bumper stickers appeared bearing slogans such as “KFC Hillary Meal Deal: Two Fat Thighs, Two Small Breasts and a Bunch of Left Wings” and “Even Bill Doesn’t Want Me.”

    During Clinton’s lifetime, institutionalized discrimination against women has retreated markedly. So has the routine sexism that assumes that a woman can’t, by definition, do a given job as well as a man, or that she shouldn’t be working outside the home at all. But what lingers is misogyny—the kind of hate- and fear-filled objectification of women that flourishes in corners of the Internet, and in the rhetoric of Trump and some of his supporters

    It turns out that what some of them seemed to have meant when they said they were tired of being politically correct was that they were tired of addressing others with a modicum of respect. Trump encourages people at his rallies to chant “Lock her up!”—in the second debate, he vowed to do just that if elected. Such rhetoric, in its vulgarity and its rawness, is a radical break from conservative norms. Mitt Romney and Ronald Reagan are not exactly celebrated as feminists, but it’s impossible to imagine either of them publicly invoking a newswoman’s menstrual period, or calling women “fat pigs,” […]

    Clinton’s reputation has also been prone to another unfortunate pattern: she was often more popular when she was seen to be suffering a traditionally feminine humiliation. […]

    There’s something both grotesque and bracing about the confrontation between Clinton, with her disciplined professionalism, and Trump, with his increasingly frenzied assertions of male prerogative. […]

  133. says

    Writing for The New Yorker, Margaret Talbot took a close look at “2016’s Manifest Misogyny.”

    […] In 2007, during the Presidential-primary campaigns, when she [Hillary Clinton] was the presumptive Democratic nominee, a supporter of Senator John McCain, the eventual Republican nominee, asked him at a gathering in South Carolina, “How do we beat the [B word]?” McCain looked fleetingly uncomfortable, then called it an “excellent question.” The terms “[B word” and “witch,” and the associations they stir up, are slurs that Clinton’s detractors have resorted to freely. The political commentator Tucker Carlson said of Clinton, “Something about her feels castrating.” Rush Limbaugh asked his listeners, “Will this country want to actually watch a woman get older before their eyes on a daily basis?” Bumper stickers appeared bearing slogans such as “KFC Hillary Meal Deal: Two Fat Thighs, Two Small Breasts and a Bunch of Left Wings” and “Even Bill Doesn’t Want Me.”

    During Clinton’s lifetime, institutionalized discrimination against women has retreated markedly. So has the routine sexism that assumes that a woman can’t, by definition, do a given job as well as a man, or that she shouldn’t be working outside the home at all. But what lingers is misogyny—the kind of hate- and fear-filled objectification of women that flourishes in corners of the Internet, and in the rhetoric of Trump and some of his supporters

    It turns out that what some of them seemed to have meant when they said they were tired of being politically correct was that they were tired of addressing others with a modicum of respect. Trump encourages people at his rallies to chant “Lock her up!”—in the second debate, he vowed to do just that if elected. Such rhetoric, in its vulgarity and its rawness, is a radical break from conservative norms. Mitt Romney and Ronald Reagan are not exactly celebrated as feminists, but it’s impossible to imagine either of them publicly invoking a newswoman’s menstrual period, or calling women “fat pigs,” […]

    Clinton’s reputation has also been prone to another unfortunate pattern: she was often more popular when she was seen to be suffering a traditionally feminine humiliation. […]

    There’s something both grotesque and bracing about the confrontation between Clinton, with her disciplined professionalism, and Trump, with his increasingly frenzied assertions of male prerogative. […]

  134. says

    This is a followup to comment 122.

    Alex Jones has responded to that new ad from Clinton Campaign that features Jones’ own words, and his claim to love and advise Trump

    Jones’ response expands on his whacko conspiracy theories about 9/11. Good strategy. (/sarcasm)

    […] I don’t know what happened, but I know the official story’s a lie. Now they’re going to misrepresent and say: “Oh my God, Trump supports this 9/11 Truther.” Trump is ready for that. Trump knows about 9/11. He brought up Jeb Bush, he brought up they were running security in the World Trade Center, he brought up the Saudi connection, he brought up the Carlyle Group meeting with Bush Sr. in D.C. the morning of 9/11, at the same table with them at the Carlyle weapons quarterly meeting, and that’s when you notice Jeb dropped out real fast. So you want to throw Trump in the briar patch, go ahead that’s exactly where he wants to go. You people are walking into our trap again, thank you, great job.

    Media Matters link

  135. says

    SC @165, this paragraph out of your longer post really summed things up for me:

    That’s what politics is — the way we distribute pain. It’s not a sport or a fraternity or a game. It’s how we determine who gets medication and who dies young, who learns in a class of twenty kids and who learns in a class of thirty, whose school has a counselor that’s trained to look for signs of sexual abuse and who doesn’t.

  136. says

    This is a followup to comments 142, 146 and 154.

    Republican politician Jason Chaffetz said, without having read the documents in question, some stupid stuff:

    “In return for altering the classification, the possibility of additional slots for the FBI at missions overseas was discussed,” Chaffetz said. The Utah Republican said documents recently released from the FBI’s year-long investigation into Clinton’s private email server proved it.

    CBS News link

    Chaffetz went on to say that there was enough material in that one email for “four more hearings.” No, doofus, there’s no there there.

    The FBI denied Sunday that the agency ever engaged in a “quid pro quo” arrangement with Hillary Clinton’s State Department over the classification of an email, […] the bureau is pushing back against that claim, saying that the email in question doesn’t prove any such arrangement.

    In a statement to CBS News, the FBI said that prior to the agency’s investigation into the Clinton server, the State Department asked them to “review and make classification determinations on FBI emails and information.” The State Department, at the time, was producing emails to publish in accordance to Freedom of Information Act requests.

    “A senior State Department official requested the FBI re-review that email to determine whether it was in fact classified or whether it might be protected from release under a different FOIA exemption,” the FBI wrote. “A now-retired FBI official, who was not part of the subsequent Clinton investigation, told the State Department official that they would look into the matter.”

    According to the FBI, in the same email, that official addressed a separate issue of employees abroad. […]

    The State Department also batted back Chaffetz’s accusation, with deputy spokesperson Mark Toner releasing a statement Sunday that “[t]his allegation is inaccurate and does not align with the facts.”

    “To be clear: the State Department did upgrade the document at the request of the FBI when we released it back in May 2015,” Toner wrote. Under Secretary Kennedy sought to understand the FBI’s process for withholding certain information from public release. As has been reported, there have been discussions within the interagency on issues of classification. Classification is an art, not a science, and individuals with classification authority sometimes have different views. […]”

    Sorry for the long block of text, but, as usual, anti-Clinton doofuses are ignoring the details. The original from CBS News is much longer, and it contains more telling details.

  137. Golgafrinchan Captain says

    Further to my #166.

    One of the things mentioned in that interview was that the Pledge of Allegiance was written as a marketting gimmick to sell flags.

    I did some further reading and it seems to be true. Link That link is the most clear on the issue but I found corroborating articles on NPR and SmithsonianMag.

  138. Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls says

    Obama has come out on Trump’s “rigged election” bullshit.

    President Barack Obama on Tuesday downplayed Donald Trump’s suggestion that November’s election is “rigged,” and said the GOP presidential nominee needs to toughen up.
    “I’d advise Mr. Trump to stop whining and try to go make his case to get votes,” Obama said at a White House news conference alongside Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi.
    “If whenever things are going badly for you, you start blaming somebody else, then you don’t have what it takes to be in this job,” Obama continued. “There are a lot of time things don’t go our way or my way … that’s OK, you fight through it.”

    Trump tweeted Monday about the “rigged system” that will impact the polls, although he gave no specific evidence for how results could be tainted. He also suggested that people who are dead are still able to vote and that undocumented immigrants will cast ballots.
    Voter fraud, he added, is “very, very common.”
    Obama on Tuesday said he would reserve more scathing remarks against Trump for the campaign trail, but insisted that American elections can’t be rigged because the process for voting for president is “so decentralized.”
    “One way of weakening America is if you start betraying those basic American traditions that have been bipartisan and have helped hold together this democracy for well over two centuries,” Obama added.

    Right, Trump is a cry-baby who isn’t getting his own way, and is trying to blame others for his mistakes.
    I’m still waiting for Trump’s conclusive evidence, which is MIA.

  139. Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls says

    logicalcat #175, I’m less than impressed with Johnson’s ideological answers. The market doesn’t always provide.

  140. says

    Reading this Guardian article about WikiLeaks, and with recent anti-Semitic WikiLeaks tweets and the Eichenwald episode in mind, it occurs to me that the relationships among WL, Trump/Bannon, and Putin might be of a different sort than people have been talking about. The article links to an older article about the WL representative in Russia, who is an avowed anti-Semite. (I don’t know why it doesn’t mention the established connections between WL and the Trump campaign, which have been made explicit by Roger Stone in his “back-channel” comments.)

    This article describes Steve Bannon’s aims:

    …Bannon embraced the growing populist movement in America, including the “alt-right,” a new term for white nationalists, who care little about traditional conservative economic ideas and instead stress the need to preserve America’s European heritage and keep out non-whites and non-Christians. Under Bannon, Breitbart promoted similar movements in Europe, including the United Kingdom Independence Party, the National Front in France, Alternative for Germany, and the Freedom Party in the Netherlands. Bannon likes to say that his goal is “to build a global, center-right, populist, anti-establishment news site.” After the election is over, Breitbart, which has offices in London and Rome, plans to open up new bureaus in France and Germany.

    Bannon has never been a campaign strategist. He is a right-wing new-media entrepreneur who is building a political and news infrastructure that mimics Europe’s nationalists….

    …Trump and Bannon have given up on trying to defeat Clinton. They seem more interested in creating a platform for a new ethno-nationalist politics that may bedevil the Republican Party—and the country—for a long time to come….

    It seems like all of them have connections to and through the alt-Right. Possibly Assange’s situation for the past four years has led him to form stronger links to that sphere. It’s possible that both Assange and Trump, driven by more personal motives, are simply being used by Putin. But it’s also possible that they have something of a shared political outlook and common project. Of course, Putin, as the vastly more powerful party, will exploit his “partners.” But the partners might be a lot more aware of what they’re engaged in than we appreciate. I don’t know if that’s the case, but it’s worth considering.

    (Oh! Here’s an article from a few months ago making some of these points in more detail.)

  141. says

    SC @178, I still hear Trump surrogates claiming during interviews that the charges of inappropriate behavior (sexual assault) on Trump’s part are “unsubstantiated.”

    It looks like Natasha Stoynoff’s lawyer is doing a very good job of substantiating her claims.

    Like Trump, Melania seems to have a selective memory. Maybe they are both so self-involved that they simply don’t notice most of the people around them, including people with whom they have friendly conversations on Fifth Avenue.

  142. says

    Trump tried to kiss a little girl at his rally in Wisconsin. See video:
    Link

    This video is a head-scratcher. Donald Trump held up a little girl at his campaign rally in Wisconsin and before setting her down he awkwardly tried to kiss her on the lips. Why? Who in the hell knows, but the little girl pulled away before he could land his Tic Tac-encrusted mouth hole near her lips.

  143. says

    Trump is adding hyperbole to his lies: he now says that about 1.8 million dead people will vote in the election.

    […] The statistic, which apparently came from a 2012 Pew study, found that up to 1.8 million active voter registrations came from deceased voters. Yet the study found no evidence of fraud or illegitimate ballots actually being cast, instead concluding that state voter databases were outdated.

    […] evidence he points to reflects a poorly managed, inefficient record-keeping system that keeps inaccurate, outdated or invalid voter registrations on the books. Contrary to Trump’s charge of an elaborate conspiracy of willful fraud, Politifact reported that clerical errors or confusion are most often to blame.

    Politifact, which rated Trump’s prediction of “large scale voter fraud” a “pants-on-fire” lie, noted that one well-known case of a dead person voting occurred because a poll worker misspelled his name by one letter (Alan J. Mandell vs. Alan J. Mandel).

    Still, the real estate mogul thinks that not only dead people but thousands of illegal immigrants will turn the election results against him. Trump suggested that Democrats and the Hillary Clinton campaign are helping to coordinate this intentional and widespread effort.

    “They even want to try to rig the election at the polling booths and believe me there’s a lot going on,” Trump said in Green Bay. “Do you ever hear these people? They say ‘there’s nothing going on.’ People that have died 10 years ago are still voting, illegal immigrants are voting—I mean, where are the street smarts of some of these politicians?” […]

    http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/trump-predicts-dead-people-wont-vote-for-him

    Okay. If Mr. Trump really cannot read for comprehension, perhaps he could hire someone who can. He could ask for an explanation so that he doesn’t get the facts wrong so consistently.

    1.8 million dead people, eh? I’m almost tempted to dress like a zombie from The Walking Dead to cast my vote. (Slight problem: poll watchers in my neighborhood would probably shoot me.)

  144. says

    Melania Trump tells us more about Donald Trump:…

    I’ve only seen clips from the Melania interview, but it’s hilarious that his own wife describes him as a child, and I’m sure that’s how she has to treat him – enduring his frequent tantrums, constantly needing to soothe his fragile ego,… (Not that that’s a healthy approach to raising children, mind you.) It’s unbelievable that this is the Republican presidential nominee.

    MSNBC just juxtaposed some short clips from her interview with ones from Clinton’s 1998 interview about her husband’s bad behavior. It’s almost like she plagiarized Clinton! You’d think they’d be a bit more careful about that given the convention fiasco and the fact that they’ve spent all this time presenting Clinton’s response in the ’90s as evil.

  145. says

    The mythical Ohio postal worker:

    We have watched with amusement as right-wing media personalities from Rush Limbaugh to Matt Drudge to Scott Baio have fallen for a Twitter user’s joke that he is an Ohio postal worker who is proudly “ripping up absentee ballots that vote for trump.” The right-wing panic over the joke tweet went so far that Ohio’s Republican Secretary of State spoke out on the matter yesterday.

    Conservatives were quick to run with a story that seemed to corroborate Donald Trump’s claim that the election has been rigged against him and that widespread fraud is taking place at polling sites. Not surprisingly, the fact that the story was clearly bogus and easily debunked did not stop them. […]

    Link

  146. says

    The moderator for Wednesday night’s debate, Chris Wallace of Fox News, is a sexist doofus. Here are some of his past remarks about women:

    […] Wallace […] has made numerous sexually charged remarks about women, such as calling the National Transportation Safety Board chair a “babe” and remarking that “you would not expect a government bureaucrat to be an attractive woman” […]

    Appearing on conservative radio host Mike Gallagher’s show in 2009, Wallace asked if Gallagher could “put in a good word” for him with Palin. Just a few months later, on Imus in the Morning, Wallace replied, “one can only hope” when asked if Palin would be “sitting on [his] lap” during an interview. […]

    In 2015, Wallace again stirred controversy when he remarked that singer Kelly Clarkson, who had already been fighting an onslaught of body shaming in the media, “could stay off the deep dish pizza.” […]

    Wallace’s history of making sexist comments taint his ability to confront Trump over the vulgar video of the candidate boasting about sexually assaulting women and the increasing number of women accusing him of inappropriate sexual conduct. […]

    Link

  147. says

    PZ, I don’t know if you are aware, or still care, but Gary Johnson finally answered the questions on sciencedebate you linked to a while back.

    Better to remain silent and be thought a fool…

    Seriously. Their claims for their proposed policies – privatize, marketize, deregulate – bear no relation to reality.

  148. says

    SC @165, this paragraph out of your longer post really summed things up for me:…

    Yes, it’s such a necessary point. (I’ve given the article a little thought: I don’t think I agree with his argument about the Democratic fundraising. He’s correct about the larger political situation and the high stakes, but in this specific moment, when the Trump campaign is doing everything it can to destroy the norms of political decency, a kind and compassionate act can have a lot of power.)

    It’s far from the point of the article, but that paragraph reminded me of what I (and maybe only I) thought was Clinton’s best moment at the convention – when she talked about how she’s a wonk because the details matter in people’s lives:

    So it’s true… I sweat the details of policy – whether we’re talking about the exact level of lead in the drinking water in Flint, Michigan, the number of mental health facilities in Iowa, or the cost of your prescription drugs.

    Because it’s not just a detail if it’s your kid, if it’s your family. It’s a big deal. And it should be a big deal to your president, too.

    It seemed like a genuine statement about who she is, presenting it as a positive and important thing. It annoys me when people say she should try to be more inspirational. She should be who she is, and encourage people to see the virtues in it.

  149. says

    Trump runs his email servers on outdated Windows server software. Win2003 in no longer supported, and no security patching is available.

    “Running outdated software and operating systems for your publicly facing email infrastructure is problematic, especially when you’re a high profile organisation,” security architect Kevin Beaumont, who highlighted the issues with Trump’s servers, told Motherboard in an email. “During an election where cybersecurity is such a big issue, I was a little amazed at what I saw.”

    A number of mail servers for TrumpOrg.com, a domain registered to The Trump Organization, are using end-of-life software, according to Beaumont. Those include the operating system Windows Server 2003 and IIS 6.0, which comes shipped with it.

    “IIS is a webserver, and it’s particularly dangerous to run unpatched,” Beaumont told Motherboard.

    http://motherboard.vice.com/read/trump-is-running-some-really-insecure-email-servers

  150. says

    Here are some interesting poll results. Registered voters were polled.

    The poll question: Do you think Donald Trump has strong moral character, or not?

    The results:
    Registered voters overall: 30% say yes
    White evangelical Protestant: 44% say yes
    White non-evangelical Protestan: 37% say yes
    White Catholic: 30% say yes
    No religion: 18% say yes; 78% say NO

    The poll was conducted by the Washington Post and ABC News.

  151. says

    A player for the Los Angeles Dodgers, first baseman Adrian Gonzales, refused to stay at he Trump International Hotel and Tower. His refusal was back in May, but the story is getting more attention now.

    […] “I didn’t stay there,” Gonzalez said at the time, when the team played at Wrigley Field in Chicago, according to the Washington Post. “I had my reasons.”

    Gonzales, a Latino like 40 percent of Dodgers fans, according to the Los Angeles Times, was born in San Diego and lived in Tijuana as a child. Both of his parents were born in Mexico.

    “I’m Mexican and I’m American,” he told the LA Times in 2013.

    Headlines about Gonzales’ refusal to stay at Trump’s Chicago hotel came as the New York Times explored a novel form of protest against Trump in a story published Monday: Would-be and former customers are boycotting his hotels, restaurants, and golf courses nationwide. […]

    “I wasn’t doing it for publicity, I wasn’t doing it for people to look at me or talk about me,” he told the Times on Monday. “That’s not who I am. I just have my own values and morals that I want to live by.”

    “You can draw your own conclusions. They’re probably right,” he said.

  152. Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls says

    Howard Stern says Trump’s remarks about grabbing p**** go beyond locker room talk.

    Shock jock Howard Stern on Monday refuted his friend Donald Trump’s claim that his leaked comments about grabbing women’s genitals were just “locker room talk.”
    “I have never been in the room when someone has said, ‘Grab them by the pussy,” Stern said on his Sirius satellite radio show, quoting Trump’s own words caught on a hot mic during a 2005 “Access Hollywood” appearance. “No one’s ever advocated going that step where you get a little bit, ‘Hey I’m going to invade someone’s space.'”
    Though Stern built his own career on jokes about mass shootings and raunchy interviews grilling celebrities about their sex lives, he said there was a line between lewdly describing women’s bodies and boasting about sexual assault.

  153. Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls says

    Interesting article about Elizabeth Warren. Title: Warren builds political capital _ to what post-election end?

    From liberal California to conservative Missouri, there are few places Sen. Elizabeth Warren won’t go this election season. The Massachusetts Democrat is campaigning for Hillary Clinton, for Senate Democratic candidates and for liberal policies.
    And she’s banking political capital that she could end up spending in ways that make Clinton and other Democratic leaders uncomfortable.
    Already Warren has been laying down markers for Clinton, in public and private, to consider activist progressives over Wall Street allies for appointments to key financial positions like Treasury secretary. The months to come will tell whether Warren serves as ally, antagonist, or both, to a new Democratic president and leadership in Congress.
    Warren’s stature has never been more evident. The wind-down of Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders’ presidential campaign has left her onstage as arguably the most influential liberal politician in the country.
    She gets rock-star treatment from Democrats everywhere she goes. “This is bucket list territory. … She is a hero!” Judy Baker, Democratic candidate for Missouri state treasurer, shouted to an excited crowd in Kansas City, Missouri, before Warren appeared last Friday with Senate candidate Jason Kander.
    She’s emerged as one of Donald Trump’s most pointed antagonists, attacking him over Twitter and goading him into labeling her Pocahontas, a reference to her disputed claim of Native American heritage.
    And hacked emails from Clinton’s campaign chairman, John Podesta, show just how anxious the Clinton team has been about keeping her happy. In one email, campaign manager Robby Mook frets about how it would be “such a big deal” for an early meeting between Warren and Clinton to go well. In another exchange, Clinton adviser Dan Schwerin details a lengthy meeting with Warren’s top aide, Dan Geldon, in which Geldon makes the case for progressive appointments to financial positions.
    It all underscores Warren’s role as what allies call the “north star” of the Democratic Party. Thanks to Sanders’ candidacy and her influence, many Democrats say the party’s center of gravity has moved to the left, away from centrist policies on health care and entitlements in favor of embracing expanded Social Security, a higher minimum wage, debt-free college and a new government insurance option in Obama’s health law.
    Now the question is how Warren, 67, will use her influence if Clinton becomes president. With Sen. Chuck Schumer set to become the Democratic leader in the Senate, the party would have two New Yorkers with Wall Street ties in top roles.
    At the same time, a whole group of Democratic senators from red states like North Dakota, West Virginia and Montana will be up for election in 2018. Will liberal policies on wages, tuition and other issues resonate in those states?

    I hope, if elected, President Clinton has her on speed dial.

  154. says

    The mayor of a town in Pennsylvania is resigning after posting images that compare President Obama and his family to apes. Mayor Charles Wasko also included a reference to a noose, just in case you missed his racist intent.
    Huffington Post link

  155. says

    Ha! I like this form of protest against Donald Trump: a wall of taco trucks will be built outside his hotel.

    The Culinary Union, long a Donald Trump antagonist in Las Vegas, is going to “build” a wall of taco trucks outside Trump’s hotel, just a couple miles from UNLV, site of the final presidential debate.

    The groups aim to have at least five taco trucks outside the hotel, in addition to a banner in the style of a wall that participants will be able to sign.

    “We’re reminding Mr. Trump that immigrant workers here and across the country will be watching the debate and voting in November,” said Yvanna Cancela, the political director for the majority Latino and predominantly immigrant union.

    BuzzFeed link

  156. says

    Republicans are trying another tactic to rig the election, they are directing Democratic Party voters to “online voting” sites. No state in the USA has online voting for the presidential election.

    Their bogus ad reads: “Did you know? Pennsylvania now has ONLINE VOTING. It’s critical we get out the vote this year to defeat Donald Trump. That’s why we’ve fought for and won the battle for online voting. To vote online, simply post “Hillary” with the hashtag #Presidential Election on Nov. 8 between 7am and 9pm.” [Photo of Hillary smiling, at a rally.]

    What a bunch of fraudsters. They’re trying to rig the Pennsylvania election, and they will disenfranchise some gullible voters.
    Link

  157. says

    Oh, FFS. Newt Gingrich is taking his scare tactics about a Supreme Court staffed with Clinton-nominated-judges way too far.

    Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich joined a teleconference last night hosted by the Association of Mature American Citizens (AMAC) to discuss the presidential election, warning the group that if Hillary Clinton is allowed to nominate Supreme Court justices, she could pick “fanatics who want to impose a secular America on the rest of us” and who might even go so far as to require churches to remove the words “our Father” from the Lord’s Prayer.

    Claiming that recent WikiLeaks emails show that Clinton’s aides are “radically anti-religious” and “radically anti-Christian,” Gingrich said that this means that Clinton’s court picks would be “people who do not believe in the right of religious liberty, people who believe that the government should define what you’re allowed to say, even in church.”

    “And, by the way,” he continued, “there’s an organization in Massachusetts now, a government commission on transgender rights, that’s looking at potentially defining for churches what kinds of pronouns they could use, raising the specter, for example, of eliminating ‘our Father’ from the Lord’s Prayer, because, after all, that’s a particular pronoun. This stuff, in my judgment, is madness, but nonetheless these are people who are dedicated, I think, fanatics who want to impose a secular America on the rest of us and who are willing to use the government to do it.” […]

    Link

  158. What a Maroon, living up to the 'nym says

    raising the specter, for example, of eliminating ‘our Father’ from the Lord’s Prayer, because, after all, that’s a particular pronoun.
    I never realized that anyone objected to the use of the first person plural possessive.

  159. says

    The latest claim seems to be that Democrats are hiring and busing in protesters and inciting violence at Trump rallies. I suspect this means that this is what the Trump campaign is up to (we already know about the payments for “Bill Clinton is a rapist” signs). If I were being super suspicious, it would make me question whether they were behind the NCGOP attack or know who was.

    One of the very best episodes of Columbo is “Candidate for Crime.” It’s about a “law and order” candidate who murders his sleazy, vulgar, dirty-tricks campaign manager (who is eerily similar to Bannon). I highly recommend it, especially for those stressed out by the campaign.

  160. Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls says

    A video by gun control advocates, Toddlers kill.

    Gun-control advocates are trying a new strategy to draw attention to the issue in the final weeks before Election Day: a provocative advertisement called “Toddlers Kill.”
    The tongue-in-cheek spot, commissioned by the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence and produced by a major New York ad agency, is a mashup of footage of young children handling guns with a narrator who portrays kids as dangerous criminals. A statistic flashes on the screen saying that an American is shot by a toddler on a weekly basis.
    “We need to lock them up,” the narrator says. “Not the guns. That’s just un-American. The toddlers.”
    Brady spokesman Brendan Kelly said the ad was meant to seize people’s attention during a tumultuous election campaign and persuade them to vote for candidates who support reforming gun laws.
    “Gun violence is bigger than toddlers,” Kelly said.

  161. says

    Vogue endorses Clinton:

    For all the chaos and unpredictability and the sometimes appalling spectacle of this election season, the question of which candidate actually deserves to be president has never been a difficult one.

    Vogue has no history of political endorsements. Editors in chief have made their opinions known from time to time, but the magazine has never spoken in an election with a single voice. Given the profound stakes of this one, and the history that stands to be made, we feel that should change.

    Vogue endorses Hillary Clinton for president of the United States.

    Perhaps that sentence won’t come as a surprise. Vogue has enthusiastically covered Hillary Clinton’s career, her rise from Yale law student to governor’s wife to First Lady to senator to Secretary of State. She has been profiled by the magazine six times.

    (For the record, we have also featured Donald Trump—or, more particularly, his family members Ivana, Marla, Melania, and Ivanka—multiple times in our pages.)

    We understand that Clinton has not always been a perfect candidate, yet her fierce intelligence and considerable experience are reflected in policies and positions that are clear, sound, and hopeful.

    She supports comprehensive immigration reform, including a path to citizenship. She speaks up for racial justice, for reforming policing and sentencing laws. Her years as Secretary of State have shown that she understands how to strengthen alliances abroad, respond to global crises, and continue American leadership in the world. She is forceful in her support for LGBTQ rights, including an end to discrimination against transgender people. She knows the challenges working women face. Her tax proposals and commitment to infrastructure investment will be a boon to the middle class. She will continue the important work on health-care reform begun by President Obama. She is a sane voice on guns.

    Can Clinton unify a deeply divided America? Heal the wounds of this unbearably fraught political season? Our divisions are real, and it will take more than one intensely qualified leader to heal them.

    And yet two words give us hope: Madam President. Women won the vote in 1920. It has taken nearly a century to bring us to the brink of a woman leading our country for the first time. Let’s put this election behind us and become the America we want to be: optimistic, forward-looking, and modern.

    Let’s head to the polls on Tuesday, November 8, and vote.

  162. blf says

    Follow-up of sorts to @193, Half of young Americans prefer meteor apocalypse to Donald Trump presidency:

    Third of 18- to 35-year-olds also thought ‘Giant Meteor’ would be better than Hillary Clinton getting into the White House

    Young Americans are so dissatisfied with the options in thepresidential election that nearly one in four would rather have a giant meteor destroy the Earth than see Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton in the White House.

    The tongue-in-cheek question was intended to gauge young Americans’ level of unhappiness about their choices in the 8 November election, said Joshua Dyck, co-director of UMass Lowell’s Center for Public Opinion […].

    […]

    Some 53% of the 1,247 people aged 18 to 35 said they would prefer to see a meteor destroy the world than have Republican Trump in the Oval Office, with some 34% preferring planetary annihilation to seeing the Democratic former secretary of state win.

    Some 39% said they would prefer that Barack Obama declare himself president for life than hand over power to Clinton or Trump, with 26% saying the nation would do better to select its next leader in a random lottery.

    Some 23%, nearly one in four, preferred the giant meteor outcome to either Trump or Clinton.

    “Obviously we don’t think that they’re serious,” Dyck said. “The fact that one in four of our young people pick ‘Giant Meteor’ tells you something about the political disaffection that is being shown by American youth.”

    […]

    When asked to choose between the actual candidates, Clinton easily led Trump with 54% of respondents to 21% in a two-way race.

    […]

    The poll, conducted from 10 to 13 October, intentionally included a large number of people seen as unlikely to vote, with just 680 [of 1,247 total] described as likely voters. It had a margin of error of 3.2%.

    The mildly deranged penguin is currently on the hyperspace telegraph, trying to arrange a bombardment of cheese. She was going to do comets, but then had a better, or at least tastier, idea…

  163. says

    “A People’s History of Donald Trump’s Business Busts and Countless Victims”:

    …To anyone who has watched Trump over the past four decades, none of this is a surprise. His presidential campaign is built on the claim that he’s a brilliant businessman worth $10 billion who turns every challenge into success, but Trump is none of those things. Instead, he was born into an exceedingly wealthy family and tried to build upon his father’s success with ever-riskier ventures, and by any rational measure, he failed again and again.

    He’d have done better if he’d never gone into business….

    …[I]f the Republican nominee had done nothing but mow his lawn for the past 35 years, he would be a dramatically wealthier man than he is today. The huge bonus in that scenario: Thousands of people would not have been ridiculed, ripped off or otherwise have suffered from encounters with Donald J. Trump.

    Donald Trump loves to put his name on buildings, but there are no hospital wings named for him. No museums have a piece of artwork with a plaque reading “A Gift of Donald J. Trump.” No buildings at the University of Pennsylvania bear his name, even though he constantly cites his graduation from its Wharton School as a sign of his intelligence. (Contrary to Trump’s suggestion, he attended the school for only two years as an undergraduate and did not obtain a degree from Wharton’s far more prestigious graduate business program.)

    “I love to have enemies,” Trump once said. “I fight my enemies. I like beating my enemies to the ground.”

    He uttered these words in 1989, about the same time he was in a series of pointless battles: with other billionaires, with midlevel executives, with nobodies whose lives he destroyed just because he could.

    Even in the greatest stock market ever, and in a business regularly described as a license to print money, Trump left only wreckage in his wake. And investors in Trump hotels saw nothing but losses.

    On the other hand, Trump did just fine for himself. Even as his company’s stock price was collapsing and annual losses were piling up, filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission show that during his years as chairman, more than $60 million poured from the public company into Trump’s pockets.

    This is the dirty secret behind Trump’s allegedly miraculous financial recovery. What he told the public was a fable: that he had fought his way back with perseverance and skill. In truth, he did it by snatching huge fistfuls of cash from a company that was wiping out the savings of millions of people.

    By then, most of the smart money had given up on Trump. To get a new personal credit line, he could no longer rely on handshake deals or personal guarantees with Chase Manhattan, as he once had. Instead, financial records obtained by Newsweek show, in 2003 he turned to the Cayman Islands’ branch of UBS, the Swiss bank. For that loan, however, he had to put up a large number of assets as security, including a portion of his interest in Trump World Tower, all of his investments in a Paine Webber brokerage account, mortgage notes and numerous other securities and property. Soon almost all financial institutions were passing on his deals, other than Deutsche Bank—and in a few years, he would default on a $640 million construction loan from it. The stock and bond markets, where every investor who had ever placed faith in Trump lost money, were closed to him. A fund financed by the billionaire George Soros agreed to invest in a Trump development once — but only once. A private equity firm, Colony Capital, backed out of a Trump project, forcing the Trump Organization to self-finance. Wall Street and financial institutions worldwide all knew that, as a businessman, Trump was a disaster.

    So Trump went in another direction , rebuilding his reputation on television. Beginning in 2004, around when his public company fell into bankruptcy, Trump began playing the role of a successful businessman on the NBC reality show The Apprentice. Unless it read the financial news religiously, the public could not know that this portrayal of Trump was a farce.

    The success of The Apprentice gave new credibility to Trump, which appealed to people looking to buy apartments and even products. That’s why Trump got into the business of selling his brand, letting other companies and developers use his name on their products for a substantial fee. The Trump steaks, the Trump water, the vodka, the chocolates, the mortgage company—all were attempts by Trump to make money off his name because he had few other financial options. In 2004, he also decided to launch Trump University, a for-profit education company that collapsed amid allegations it had defrauded thousands of people. Two class actions by former Trump University students are proceeding in California; a third case has been brought in New York by the state’s attorney general, Eric Schneiderman.

    The scam worked, again and again. Trump Hollywood failed, and the real estate mogul blamed Jorge Pérez, the developer who had paid to use his name. Trump International Hotel and Tower Fort Lauderdale fell into foreclosure, and 30 buyers lost $100,000 each. But this was not his fault, Trump said. The same thing happened with the Trump Ocean Resort Baja Mexico, which—though it attracted dozens of buyers who posted $32 million in deposits—never amounted to more than a hole in the ground. Again, Trump denied responsibility. Building after building, failure after failure, hundreds of millions of dollars lost. Each time, the buyers sued, saying they had been tricked into believing that Trump was the developer. And each time, Trump pointed to the fine print of the contracts, told the courts the buyers should have read them more carefully, and walked away. Potentially hundreds of people lost tens of millions of dollars while Trump pocketed huge sums through his licensing fees.

    Trump’s career has been much of the same kind of scam. He demands applause and annihilates those who refuse to give it. He preens about successes he obtained only by destroying the wealth, careers and reputations of other people. He takes credit for the victories of others and denies any blame for his many failures. In his impulsive pursuit of self-aggrandizement, his victims are legion.

    And now he vows to do to America what he did to them.

    The article describes several of Trump’s failures and rip-offs in detail.

  164. says

    “Rubio: I Won’t Talk About Wikileaks, and Neither Should Donald Trump”:

    Sen. Marco Rubio tells ABC News Republicans are making a mistake by jumping on allegedly hacked emails released by Wikileaks to criticize Hillary Clinton. In fact, he says he won’t talk about the hacked emails at all.

    “As our intelligence agencies have said, these leaks are an effort by a foreign government to interfere with our electoral process and I will not indulge it,” Rubio tells ABC news. “Further, I want to warn my fellow Republicans who may want to capitalize politically on these leaks: Today it is the Democrats. Tomorrow it could be us.”

    Rubio’s stand puts him directly at odds with Donald Trump and the Republican National Committee, which have been relentlessly hammering Hillary Clinton and her campaign over the contents of the hacked emails.

    [W]hile Trump regularly taunts the news media for not paying enough attention to the stolen emails, Rubio argues that making an issue out of the Wikileaks disclosures plays into the hands of the Russian government.

    “I will not discuss any issue that has become public solely on the basis of Wikileaks,” Rubio tells ABC news.

  165. says

    “The Unforgivables: Trump’s Top Collaborators: The top 25 politicians, institutions, and media personalities that aided and abetted the rise of Donald Trump—and should never be absolved for it”:

    When Donald Trump loses the presidential election, Republicans and conservatives will start looking for people to blame. That is, if Trump concedes. To the constantly growing list of outrages against common decency and democratic traditions Trump has committed throughout this campaign we can now add sowing mistrust about the legitimacy of our electoral system. Trump is fomenting an hysteria amongst his already fanatical supporters that, when he loses, could lead to civil disorder and even violent insurrection.

    The Trump campaign’s hunt for turncoats has already begun. Among Trump’s most die-hard supporters, literally nothing their candidate has done or could do will ever convince them that nominating a racist, dictatorial, misogynistic, conspiratorial, sociopathic, reality television show star for the highest office in the land might have been a bad idea, never mind unpatriotic. No, they will say come November 9, Trump’s loss will have been the fault of, in the words of Laura Ingraham, a “globalist cabal” of Republicans-in-name-only and highfalutin conservative intellectuals who refused to support the nominee. “I will hold all these arrogant ‘Never Trump’ people accountable after they have sabotaged DT,” Fox News host Sean Hannity angrily tweeted in August.

    Let’s be clear: Trump backers have no one but themselves to blame for having foisted a mentally unstable man-child with literally no redeeming qualities upon the country…. What’s needed after Trump loses isn’t, as writers more magnanimous than I have proposed, an amnesty wherein everyone simply forgives and forgets, but something closer to de-Nazification, or the “lustration” of communist officialdom that Central and Eastern European countries carried out after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

    For as much as the candidate and his supporters like to portray his campaign as a bottom-up movement that successfully seized the reins of power from a resistant cabal of Republican elected officials and conservative elites, the Trump phenomenon was all along aided and abetted by people in positions of influence and responsibility who repeatedly displayed a shocking lack of judgment, moral courage and patriotism.

    Herewith is a list of those individuals and institutions that made a conscious decision to enable a ludicrously unfit reality television show star in his quest to become leader of the free world, thereby conscripting themselves in what has become a Russian influence operation, and thus taking America to the brink of disaster….

    Ridding the GOP of Trumpism and its enablers means more than just a few pink slips. To heal the corrosive damage inflicted upon the body politic by the Trump campaign’s normalization of mendacity, rank bigotry and authoritarianism, conservatives must purge these people from polite society and shun them for the rest of their professional lives, much as William F. Buckley Jr. did with the John Birch Society. (Though I agree with George Takei, who writes in this space that those “transgressors and offenders” who “one day come to regret their actions and atone for their mistakes” ought be forgiven.)

    Everyone who played a part in this outrage, from the RNC bigwigs to the Breitbarters on down to the Pepe-the-Frog avatar-wielding Twitter trolls, need to face consequences for their dangerous and disgusting behavior. Let the record show that, when America came as close as it’s ever come to electing a bona fide authoritarian president, the above individuals collaborated with evil.

    There are a few irritating aspects of the piece, but overall it’s worthwhile. He does leave out the several of the surrogates/advisors/spokespeople – A.J. Delgado, Steve Cortes, Boris Epshteyn,… – who are as deplorable as those he mentions.

  166. says

    “Student: Jerry Falwell Jr. Axed Anti-Trump Story from Liberty University’s School Newspaper”:

    Joel Schmieg says he doesn’t know exactly what he wrote that made Jerry Falwell Jr. cut his article out of the Liberty University school newspaper. He just said that the school’s president told his editors his story criticizing Donald Trump couldn’t run.

    “[My editors] read the email to me. He said, basically, the gist was that there were two articles this week about Trump,” Schmieg told The Daily Beast on Tuesday. “One was a letter to the editor from a Liberty alum, and they didn’t want two things running about him.”

    Schmieg is the sports editor for the Liberty Champion, where he pens a weekly column. Not unlike national sports radio or talking head TV shows throughout the country this week, he decided to express himself about Trump’s “locker room talk” excuse for the leaked audiotapes where the GOP nominee appears to brag about sexually assaulting women.

    Falwell faced backlash from 2,500 of his students this week, who signed a letter criticizing him for continuing his support of Trump despite the tape’s release, according to The Daily Beast’s Betsy Woodruff.

    “We’re all sinners, every one of us,” Falwell said about Trump’s comments,… “We’ve all done things we wish we hadn’t.”

    Falwell’s Liberty University is notoriously strict about any sexual behavior, where even “attending a dance” is punishable by demerits and a fine.

    “Any faculty or staff member at Liberty would be terminated for such comments, and yet when Donald Trump makes them, President Falwell rushes eagerly to his defense – taking the name ‘Liberty University’ with him,” the letter reads.

    Schmieg called Falwell’s actions with his column “definitely very hypocritical.”

    “In a recent statement from Liberty University President Jerry Falwell, on students speaking their minds for Donald Trump, Jerry said, ‘It is a testament to the fact that Liberty University promotes the free expression of ideas unlike many major universities where political correctness prevents conservative students from speaking out,’” Schmieg wrote in a Facebook post on Tuesday.

    Schmieg then called Falwell’s quote “amusing” and posted his column on his personal Facebook page.

    The Daily Beast is now printing that column in its entirety below:…

  167. says

    Trump is bringing Patty Smith, the mother of a man killed in the Benghazi attack (she spoke at the RNC amid “Lock her up!” chants), and Obama’s half-brother to the debate. Katy Tur reports that there will be other “surprise” guests as well.

  168. says

    A thoughtful piece by David Dayen:

    …This is a fight over who dominates the Democratic Party’s policy thinking in the short and long term. In 2008 the fight was invisible and one-sided, and the fix was in. In 2016 both sides are angling to get Clinton to adopt their framework. Those predisposed to consider Clinton some neoliberal sap might not agree, but this is actually a live ball. Presidents lead coalitions, and they have to understand where their coalition is and how things change over time. Peter Orszag this week suggested a trade-off: Give the Warren wing its choices on personnel, in exchange for more leeway to negotiate an infrastructure package with Republicans that gives big tax breaks to corporations with money stashed overseas. While that deal needs more detail, it reveals the power the Warren wing has, relative to the Obama era, to make significant strides on appointments.

    Which side will win? The rank and file can actually have a voice in this, to make it known what personnel decisions would be acceptable or unacceptable. They can’t do it by ignoring evidence or sitting on their hands. The demand to only hold one thing in your head at a time—that Trump must be stopped—would squander this opportunity.

  169. says

    “ADL: Small Cohort Of Trump Fans Behind Anti-Semitic Twitter Abuse Of Journalists”:

    A small cohort of self-identified Donald Trump supporters, white nationalists, and conservatives are behind this election cycle’s barrage of anti-Semitic Twitter attacks on journalists, according to a new Anti-Defamation League report out Wednesday.

    Using a broad set of keywords to identify anti-Semitic language, an ADL task force found that only 1,600 Twitter accounts were responsible for directing 19,253 anti-Semitic tweets at some 800 U.S. journalists on the social media site between August 2015 and July 2016.

    The most common words in the bios for those accounts were “Trump,” “nationalist,” “conservative” and “white.”

    “I can’t say that there’s causation but there is certainly a very clear statistical correlation,” ADL President Jonathan Greenblatt told TPM in a phone interview, adding that the task force didn’t find any statistically significant evidence of Hillary Clinton supporters spreading anti-Semitic messages.

    Their research found the volume of anti-Semitic tweets directed at journalists soared from February onward, as election coverage intensified….

    The task force concluded that this surge points to an “intentional and coordinated” attack against Jewish journalists in order to intimidate them. While many of the users appear to be anonymous trolls, they take marching orders from white supremacist leaders who are themselves banned from Twitter….

    According to the ADL’s Greenblatt, though, the anti-Semitic abuse journalists received was often unrelated to the election itself.

    “Their message is ‘Jews control the media, Jews control global finance, Jews did 9/11.’ So they’re exploiting the election to push their prejudice,” Greenblatt said.

    The net effect is taking a toll. According to Greenblatt, the report was inspired by the stories of journalists who told the ADL that they were avoiding pursuing certain stories because they feared harassment or even were considering leaving their profession after Election Day.

    The report, he said, confirmed the group’s suspicion both that this hate speech is making some journalists feel unable to do their jobs and that anti-Semites are spreading their message to an even larger audience using online platforms. While over 19,000 anti-Semitic tweets were directed at reporters specifically since last August, an astounding 2.6 million anti-Semitic messages were sent in that time period overall, with over 10 billion impressions.

    “That’s an extraordinary degree of exposure that the extremists had not had,” Greenblatt said. “Because we as a society I think had relegated that kind of speech to the margins where it belongs.”

    The task force notes in the report that it “cannot and do not assign blame to Mr. Trump for these ugly tweets,” because those who share them are “solely responsible for their messages.”

    Yet Trump and his advisors have on multiple occasions retweeted images from unabashed anti-Semitic or white nationalist Twitter accounts. The real estate mogul came under fire earlier this year for sharing a meme calling Clinton corrupt that featured the candidate’s face on top of a pile of cash and next to six-pointed star that resembled the Star of David.

    Just last week, Trump gave a speech decrying the elite global conspiracy of bankers and media interests bent on defeating his campaign and electing the Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton….

  170. says

    Clinton’s guests at the debate tonight are (include?) Mark Cuban and Meg Whitman. I’m starting to think they might be setting the stage for some forthcoming revelations about Trump’s business activities.

  171. blf says

    Some snark from today’s Grauniad live blog (16:32 point):

    How do you one-up bringing Bill Clinton’s accusers to the second presidential debate? By bringing President Barack Obama’s Kenyan half-brother to the third presidential debate.
    […]
    Malik Obama, the president’s half-brother, reportedly stopped supporting the Democratic Party — a moot point since he’s not a US citizen and cannot vote, as it happens — when Obama (the president) came out in support of same-sex marriage rights.

    If Trump plays his cards right, Obama will be out of the White House by January!

  172. says

    “Trump in 2013: We must ‘leave borders behind’ because future of US ‘depends on a cohesive global economy'”:

    Donald Trump, who has championed anti-free-trade and hardline immigration rhetoric on the 2016 presidential campaign trail, had a starkly different tone about globalization in a 2013 op-ed published on CNN’s website.

    The Republican presidential nominee, writing about how Europe was a “terrific place” for investment, argued at the time that the 2008 recession had made it clear “the global economy has become truly that — global.”

    Trump wrote that “cultures and economics are intertwined” in today’s society, and that it was necessary to “work with each other for the benefit of all.”

    “My concern is that the negligence of a few will adversely affect the majority,” he wrote.

    Trump continued: “In this case, the solution is clear. We will have to leave borders behind and go for global unity when it comes to financial stability.”

    The real-estate mogul concluded his op-ed by writing that the future of the US and Europe “depends on a cohesive global economy.”

    “All of us must work together toward that very significant common goal,” he wrote.

  173. says

    The 2013 op ed is fairly meaningless; still, it’s nearly impossible to believe it wasn’t ghostwritten. The best part:

    The good news, in one respect, is that what is done affects us all. There won’t be any winners or losers as this is not a competition. It’s a time for working together for the best of all involved. Never before has the phrase “we’re all in this together” had more resonance or relevance.

  174. says

    This is a followup to blf’s comment 160.

    Rachel Maddow’s coverage last night of the “New Black Panther” and other supposed voter fraud schemes going on was great.

    Maddow connects Trump’s hire of Mike Roman (to oversee poll-watching efforts) to Breitbart, to Trump’s love of conspiracy theories, and to Fox News propaganda during the 2010 midterm election.

    Fox News covered two guys dressed as Black Panthers in 2010 with 95 “news” segments over a span of two weeks. Fox News created the “monstrous plot” conspiracy theory of militant black men intimidating white voters. There were two guys in Philly, folks. There was no nationwide conspiracy with tentacles that reached all the way to Alaska.

    Obama’s Justice Department turned a blind eye! Eric Holder (black guy!) turned a blind eye! /sarcasm.

    Mike Roman, Rachel Maddow just kicked your ass.

  175. blf says

    Bigots gotta bigidiot, Muslim women’s group inundated with hate mail after endorsing Hillary Clinton:

    ● Drudge Report link titled ‘Hijab for Hillary’ inspires threatening bigots
    ● American Muslim Women Pac was founded after recent party conventions

    A post on the aggregator site Drudge Report sparked a cascade of hate mail and phone calls to the American Muslim Women political action committee (Pac) on Tuesday.

    Mirriam Seddiq, a criminal defense attorney and the founder of the group, woke up to an email with a link to a site that sold ammunition covered in pork.

    “It’s bullets made to kill Muslims,” said Seddiq.

    After showing the email to her Pac colleagues, she realized that Drudge Report had highlighted their seven-week-old Pac at the top of its site. A link that read “Hijab for Hillary” referred to a press release of the group endorsing Hillary Clinton last week.

    […]

    Throughout the day, Seddiq and the Pac’s other board members received phone calls telling them to go back to their country, referred to them as towel heads, and some became threatening, Seddiq said.

    The American Muslim Women Pac was founded by Seddiq shortly after the Democratic and Republican conventions. The Pac aims to get Muslim women more involved in the election cycle, partly by ensuring more of them register to vote.

    […]

    In response to the hate emails, the Pac is selling pink “Hijab for Hillary” T-shirts that can be ordered on their site.

    “We thank Matt Drudge and the Drudge Report for that,” Seddiq said.

    The article notes the Pac is supported by Ghazala Khan.

  176. says

    Maddow covered just how alarmingly oblivious Trump is of the actions Russia is taking in Syria. Trump’s ignorance of the situation in Iraq is also covered.

    ISIS does not have any planes. ISIS does not have an air force. However, Russia is setting up an anti-aircraft system that uses missiles to shoot down planes. What is this anti-aircraft system for? Who has planes flying over Syria? The USA does.

    Trump: “Putin is going wild with bombing ISIS!” False.

  177. Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls says

    Evidently many Trump supporters are uninterested in poll monitoring.

    While Donald Trump often rails against a “rigged” election on Twitter and at rallies nationwide, he goes a few steps further in Pennsylvania, a state crucial to the Republican’s fading chances to win the White House.
    Here, he has made direct appeals since August to recruit voters as poll monitors on Election Day and has pointed specifically at Philadelphia as a city beset by voter fraud.
    Despite offering little evidence for any of his claims, his “rigged” election message is resonating with his followers in this traditional battleground state where Democratic rival Hillary Clinton has opened up a wide lead. But his calls for poll watchers on Nov. 8 is drawing a mix of confusion, concern and tepid support….
    In some cases, Trump’s talk of fraud appears to have made some of his own followers more resigned to an election loss, even though independent studies show U.S. voting chicanery is exceptionally rare and certainly never on a national scale.Trump supporter Mark Bowman, 53, says he isn’t the type to attend a political rally or put campaign stickers on his car. And he isn’t confident the election results will be correct.
    “I hate to say it, but I don’t have a lot of faith,” Bowman said. “Voter fraud is rampant especially in the cities.”
    But, in a comment echoed by nearly two dozen Trump supporters in the state’s reliably Republican central regions, he said he thinks nothing can be done to stop it and that becoming an amateur poll watcher is a step too far.
    “What authority do I have to confront someone?” said the resident of Shermans Dale, a rural community of about 5,000 people. “Your average citizen, you’re going to end up in a confrontation with someone. You’re going to end up in a bad situation.”
    There are official channels to monitor elections. Pennsylvania has a system that allows campaigns and political parties to designate official poll monitors, who are allowed into the polling places and can register official complaints if they think someone isn’t a valid voter.
    A form on the Trump campaign’s website asks voters to help Trump “stop crooked Hillary from rigging this election” by becoming a volunteer Trump election observer.
    But in an example of the Trump campaign’s near non-existent effort to organize field operations in key swing states, there is little evidence that the recruitment drive is translating into legions of officially sanctioned volunteers. Repeated inquiries from Reuters about efforts to staff polling places went unanswered by his campaign.
    The rules allow each candidate and the state parties to name monitors. With federal and local candidates both on the November ballot, there could be dozens of watchers in a single precinct. But those familiar with past elections say rarely does that happen. Instead, campaigns tend to focus on only the most fought over swing districts.

    Meanwhile, Civil Rights groups will also be out to check for intimidation and problems.

    Donald Trump supporters who plan to stake out polling sites on Election Day may find their own activities tracked closely by thousands of civil-rights activists who are mounting a nationwide effort to prevent problems at the polls.
    The Republican presidential candidate, who has repeatedly said that the election is rigged, has urged his backers to monitor voting sites for evidence of fraud, raising concerns that overzealous supporters could intimidate voters in the Nov. 8 election.
    They will not be the only ones out in force on Election Day. Civil rights groups say they plan to deploy thousands of volunteers on the ground in 27 states to ensure that voters will not be turned away by harassment, long lines or confusing rules. Teams of lawyers will file legal challenges if necessary.
    While previous elections have been marred by irregularities, Trump’s rhetoric might lead to greater problems at the polls this year, activists say.
    “When Trump says, ‘Go and watch certain areas of Philadelphia,’ that’s either intentionally reckless or it’s a thinly veiled call to engage in racial profiling,” said Dale Ho, the head of the American Civil Liberties Union’s voting rights project. “Whether people will heed it, I don’t know.”
    Non-partisan groups have mounted “election protection” programs since the disputed Bush-Gore presidential election of 2000, but they faced a more daunting landscape this year even before Trump began warning of a “rigged election.”
    The Supreme Court in 2013 weakened the U.S. government’s ability to monitor voting activity in states with a history of racial discrimination, and dozens of Republican-led states have also passed laws that require voters to present photo identification or that restrict voting in other ways.
    As early voting gets underway in many states, voting-rights groups are publicizing a national hotline, 866-OUR-VOTE, and establishing lines of communication with the election officials who are tasked with resolving problems.
    “We haven’t encountered a situation yet where we feel there’s a need to call the police,” said Marcia Johnson-Blanco, a co-director of the voting rights project at the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law.

  178. says

    “There’s a new ‘silent majority’, and it’s voting for Hillary Clinton”:

    …Trump-branded signs intoning the slogan “THE SILENT MAJORITY STANDS WITH TRUMP” festoon his rallies, and optimistic writers invoke the notion of a silent majority to tout theories that the polls are undercounting Trump voters.

    But though Trumpniks are certainly the demographic descendants of Nixon’s white working-class silent majority, the basic reality is that they are anything but silent….

    Nor, crucially, are the Trumpniks a majority. Polls give every indication that Hillary Clinton is going to beat Trump, just as she beat Bernie Sanders — who also drew larger rally crowds and more think pieces than she did — in the Democratic primary. Clinton crowds aren’t as big, and her voters aren’t as loud or as interesting to the media. But there sure are a lot of them. And it’s about time we acknowledge them and their emergence as a new silent majority that reelected America’s first black president and is poised to elect its first woman.

    In 1972, Nixon’s silent majority, grounded firmly in the white working class, delivered a smashing victory for the GOP, dashing the hopes of George McGovern supporters that a new coalition of young white professionals and racial minorities could upend American politics. Forty-four years later, America is facing another silent majority election — one in which the story has been all about Trump’s supporters but the victory will go to Clinton’s.

    Ironically, the basic contours of the coalitions are essentially the same as in Nixon’s day.

    Data from the Pew Research Center shows that Republicans enjoy the allegiance of the vast majority of white voters without a college degree — a trend that Trump will, if anything, accelerate. Democrats, meanwhile, enjoy overwhelming majorities among people of color, who now comprise almost 40 percent of their party — a trend that Trump will, again, accelerate. White Democrats these days are mostly college graduates, and mostly women. And while white male Democrats will back Clinton over Trump, they went pretty overwhelmingly for Sanders in the primaries. Clinton’s core coalition is composed of racial minorities and well-educated women, especially unmarried ones.

    Clinton also enjoys the support of more than 70 percent of LGBTQ Americans and is trouncing Trump with Jewish voters by higher margins than any 21st-century Democrat.

    Clinton led in the Democratic primary from the first day to the last, and has consistently led in general election polling since the beginning of the campaign. Yet the Clinton voter has not made the same kind of impression on the media, in part because the new silent majority voter offers less visible evidence of being fired up and the new silent majority’s signature politicians — Clinton and Obama — do not do grand performance of anger, even at a time when rage is all the rage in American politics.

    This is almost certainly not a coincidence….

    …[A]ability to perform anger without coming across as the wrong kind of person is still a privilege in the 21st-century United States, and the new silent majority values other forms of representation that a woman can bring to the table over the performance of rage that her rivals bring.

    Clinton’s signature weakness is that she is an ultimate insider — a veteran of a system many Americans have come to despise. This is, however, another way of saying that she has an unusually impressive résumé for a presidential candidate, with a longer and wider range of experience than any president since the Civil War. Clinton’s silent majority values competence and experience, and recognizes that it’s no coincidence the first plausible woman president had to be the most well-qualified candidate in generations and equally un-coincidental that in the hands of her enemies her great asset has been relabeled as a weakness.

    Black people are, of course, well aware that they continue to face a large number of important struggles on both economic and non-economic fronts. But the vast majority of black voters perceive themselves as having a great deal to lose from the election of Donald Trump. That includes the repeal of a health care law that’s reduced the uninsurance rate among African-Americans by more than one-third, an approach to housing policy that’s attempted to reinvigorate decades-old anti-discrimination legislation, and a Department of Justice that actually cares about protecting nonwhites’ right to vote.

    Latinos worry about losing these things, and they also worry about friends and relatives being deported and communities torn asunder.

    Clinton’s silent majority is at times caricatured by her critics on the left as complacent, but a better characterization of the predominant view would be that Clinton voters feel precarious.

    Clinton’s coalition is under no illusion that all is well in America, but it does believe the country is improving in important ways. It’s skeptical of the impulse to flip the table over and hope for the best, and absolutely allergic to the view that the current version of the United States is a fallen one and the country reached its peak in the days of Mad Men and union factory jobs.

    Many Clinton supporters — especially people of color who are not enjoying inordinately privileged positions in the American socioeconomic hierarchy — have become increasingly frustrated with an endless parade of pious calls from inside the elite media for elites to pay more attention to the real pain of Trump voters.

    Part of this is that even though Clinton has a winning coalition of voters behind her, it is a coalition of people who are traditionally marginalized in American society. It’s common for writers to start with the observation that Trump is popular among white voters with no college degree and then fall into shorthand describing his “working class” or “blue collar” appeal as if working-class black and Hispanic voters simply don’t exist.

    Women, famously, are quieter about their views — less likely to submit blind op-eds or send obnoxious emails — to the point that many of America’s Trump-voting husbands are unaware their wives are for Clinton.

    But Clinton’s silent majority is also hard to see precisely because it’s so diverse. There is not necessarily a “typical Clinton voter” in the sense that an older, white working-class person is a typical Trump voter and a young white college graduate was a typical Bernie voter. As a mid-30s, non-observant Jewish college graduate, I’m a very typical Clinton voter. But so is my older gay neighbor, and the black mom living a few houses down, and the house next door of single women roommates. The affluent DC suburb of Arlington County will deliver Clinton a hefty haul of votes, but so will the small, slightly-poorer-than-average city of Richmond, Virginia, and rural, poor areas like Holmes County, Mississippi, and Starr County, Texas.

    You can’t profile “Clinton Country” or the “Clinton voter” as a single kind of person or place. Clinton Country, instead, is like America itself — vast and diverse, incorporating a staggering range of disparate individuals and localities that do not have an enormous amount in common beyond allegiance to a common set of political ideals.

    …[T]he white working class is anything but forgotten — at times it seems the press can’t write about any other political demographic — but it’s no longer a majority.

    The Latino share of the electorate has grown. The Asian share of the electorate has grown. The African-American share of the electorate has grown. A new cohort of white voters — the most highly educated generation in American history — reached adulthood.

    The greatest difference between the new silent majority and Trump’s noisy minority is that Clinton’s majority is a coalition of minorities, and it is self-aware about that fact.

    Black voters, Latino voters, LGBTQ voters, Asian voters, Jewish voters, and all the rest demand respect and recognition from the politicians they support. But they are also tempered and realistic in terms of exactly how much respect and recognition a minority slice of the population can expect….

    Clinton’s voters, like Trump’s, experience economic challenges. But they are responding mostly by backing a candidate who is offering specific forms of assistance — middle-class tax cuts, more subsidies for child care and higher education, immigration reform, policing reform, etc. — rather than holding out for someone who will deliver an overwhelming message of cultural solidarity.

    Trump voters were surprised and alarmed to learn that Obama could win reelection with scant support from people like them, and have reacted with the Trumpian primal scream. To turn things around in the future they’ll have to learn the lesson that Hillary and Bill Clinton learned 44 years ago as organizers for George McGovern — just because the noise is on your side doesn’t mean the votes are.

    To win as a minority, you have to learn to play nicely and work well with others. Clinton’s voters — and Clinton herself — have mastered that, and in doing so made themselves the new majority.

  179. says

    The NAACP tweeted yesterday: “Reminder: Showing up at polls with the intent of stopping people from voting is punishable by up to a year in jail under Federal law.”

  180. blf says

    From today’s Grauniad live blog (18:34 point):

    […]
    In an email to supporters […] Vermont senator and former Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders said that House speaker Paul Ryan’s threat that Sanders could become the chair of the Senate Budget Committee sounded like “a very good idea to me.”

    “I heard what Paul Ryan said about me: that if the Republicans lose the Senate, I will be the chairman of the Senate Budget Committee,” Sanders wrote. “That sounds like a very good idea to me.”

    Such a promotion, Sanders continued, “means that we can establish priorities for working people, and not just the billionaire class.”

    “What would be equally exciting is if the Democrats took back the House, and Congressman Ryan was no longer Speaker. That would mean the clearest possible path to enact our agenda — the most progressive agenda of any party in American history.”
    […]

  181. blf says

    More from today’s Grauniad live blog (19:07 point):

    […]
    If you lay down with dogs, you get up with an approval rating that collapses on itself like a dying star.

    Buried in new poll results from YouGov […] are data showing that House speaker Paul Ryan’s favorability rating among Republicans has cratered. Last week, he had a net positivity of 23%.

    This week: -5%.

    And that’s not even counting Ryan’s popularity (or lack thereof) among Trump supporters. Last week, Ryan had a net 8% positivity rating, which has dropped to a negative 36% disapproval in the week since.

  182. says

    Nerd @226, from the descriptions in your comment, it sound like the good guys will outnumber the bad guys when it comes to poll-watching. Also, the good guys are organized while the Trump campaign is counting on a disorganized, hit-or-miss voter intimidation effort.

    The good guys:

    As early voting gets underway in many states, voting-rights groups are publicizing a national hotline, 866-OUR-VOTE, and establishing lines of communication with the election officials who are tasked with resolving problems.

  183. says

    Also, the good guys are organized while the Trump campaign is counting on a disorganized, hit-or-miss voter intimidation effort.

    And the Trump followers are probably cowards – they talk big and cheer voter intimidation when they’re in a big crowd but wouldn’t really try it unless they could round up a good-sized mob and be assured of police protection. I’m more concerned about terrorist acts and assassination attempts after the election.

  184. says

    Trump’s campaign manager, Kellyanne Conway, contradicted her boss. She said in reference to claims of widespread voter fraud, “No, I do not believe that.”

    In other news, a federal judge has ordered lawyers for Trump to appear in court in a case related to the rape of a 13-year-old girl.

    A federal judge in New York has ordered counsel for Donald Trump and the disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein to appear in court along with the attorney for a woman referred to only as “Jane Doe” who alleges the Republican presidential nominee raped her when she was 13.

    Judge Ronnie Abrams has slated an initial status conference in the civil lawsuit for 16 December in a New York district court. […]

    https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/oct/12/donald-trump-jeffrey-epstein-alleged-rape-lawsuit

  185. says

    Workers at one of Trump’s hotels in Las Vegas are speaking out about what a terrible boss Trump is. They are making the point that if he cannot be a good boss, how can he be a good president.

    Link

    Video available at the link.

  186. says

    I’m so tired of commentators talking about how they’re “two of the most unpopular candidates ever.” The last numbers I saw, Clinton was at -5 favorability/unfavorability and her numbers have been improving. Paul Ryan was at -9, Trump at -25, and the Republican Party at -26. (Michelle Obama, naturally, was at the top at like +33.)

  187. says

    Former president Jimmy Carter weighed in on the subject of the integrity of U.S. elections:

    Recent claims about rigging of U.S. elections are unfounded and irresponsible. […] Checks and balances within our electoral system exist to protect it against manipulation. These include processes and checks before and after election day to ensure the integrity of the election process, such as pre-election testing of voting technology and postelection audits that take place in some states; […]. The American electoral process also benefits from the hard work and dedication of hundreds of thousands of poll workers and election officials, who represent both parties and ensure the integrity of the voting and counting process.

    “The Carter Center has observed more than 100 elections around the world, some of them quite problematic,” said former U.S. President Jimmy Carter. “However, allegations of potential rigging of U.S. elections, as well as of widespread voter fraud, are baseless, serving only to undermine confidence in our democratic processes and inflame tensions.”

    The Carter Center notes that no election is perfect and that there will be isolated administrative incidents in U.S. elections as in every election conducted around the world. However, these incidents should not call into question the integrity of the entire election. […]

    Carter Center link

  188. says

    Oh, my, say it ain’t so. /sarcasm

    Here’s our schadenfreude moment for the day: Trump and Roger Ailes seem to be parting ways.

    Donald Trump has reportedly lost a key ally in former Fox News CEO Roger Ailes, who decided that advising the GOP presidential nominee was “a waste of time,” according to a Wednesday report.

    Ailes and Trump fell out after the former Fox boss learned “that Trump couldn’t focus—surprise, surprise,” New York Magazine editor Gabriel Sherman told attendees at the Vanity Fair New Establishment Summit, according to a report by Vanity Fair. “These debate prep sessions weren’t going anywhere.”

    Vanity Fair contributing editor Sarah Ellison reportedly offered an alternate explanation from the perspective of Trump’s campaign, saying that Ailes “kept going off on tangents and talking about his war stories” instead of helping Trump prepare. [Probably also true.] […]

    http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/trump-ailes-no-longer-speaking

    Two demagogic warhorses discover that they are both dunderheads.

  189. says

    Followup to blf’s comment 219.

    So Trump invited President Obama’s estranged half-brother, Malik Obama, to attend tonight’s debate.

    The Kenyan-born man, who is also a U.S. citizen, announced in July he would vote for the Republican nominee. Now he tells the New York Post he is “excited” to attend the debate in Las Vegas and believes Trump “can make America Great Again.” Trump tells the Post his guest “gets it far better than his brother.”

    Odd. In the past, rightwing media has seriously dissed Malik Obama.

    Egyptian military forces are clearly attempting to address the Muslim Brotherhood problem. Recently the Egyptian media reported proof that Obama is a Muslim Brotherhood member, and also posted an image of Obama as Satan. […]

    Walid Shoebat is now reporting that Obama’s Brother (Malik Obama) is headed for Egypt’s Terror Watch List and reminds the readers of all the evidence mounting for his involvement with the Muslim Brotherhood. [The Gateway Pundit, 9/6/13]

    And there’s this:

    President Obama’s half-brother in Kenya could cause the White House more headaches over new evidence linking him to the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and establishing that controversial IRS supervisor Lois Lerner signed his tax-exempt approval letter. […]

    According to the Daily Mail, members of his extended family in Kenya have accused Malik, a practitioner of Islam and a polygamist, of being a wife-beater and philanderer. Malik is accused of seducing Sheila, the newest of his estimated 12 wives when she was a 17-year-old schoolgirl – a crime in Kenya, where the legal age of consent is 18. [WND, 8/20/13]

    There’s more where that came from.

    In his partnership with the self-styled prophet of a polygamist cult in Texas, a half-brother of President Obama has expressed his support for the cult’s proposal to build the Third Temple in Jerusalem in fulfillment of biblical prophecy. […]

    Malik Obama, a professing Muslim, embraced Yisrayl Hawkins’ proposal to build the Third Temple next to the Al-Aqsa Mosque, or Dome of the Rock, in a Nov. 16, 2010, address to the First Annual Global Council of Peace in Washington, D.C., sponsored by the House of Yahweh. [WND, 4/16/14]

  190. says

    Trump’s surrogates are now claiming that Republican Secretaries of State are all lying when they claim that there is not a problem with voter fraud in their states. Why would those Republicans lie? Because they are part of the establishment, of course. /sarcasm

    One example:

    […] They are secretary of states, establishment politicians. They have not been for us since the very beginning. We don’t need them. We need the people. And those that are elected to the office that are paying attention to the people, they’re winning. They’re the ones actually going forward and moving forward with this. Secretaries of state, some are offended, some are not. Get over it. Just make sure your process is clean and we don’t have voter intimidation, which is probably one of the largest cases that we’ve seen in the 2012 election. […]

    That’s Scottie Nell Hughes speaking.

    Media Matters link

  191. says

    SC @239, I’m with you on that. FFS, they are promoting and extending the concept that Hillary Clinton is unlikeable, which is a Republican tactic that’s been used against Clinton for decades. They are hardening the framework through which people view Clinton. “Oh, everybody says she is not likable? Let me watch for evidence of that. Let me engage my confirmation bias filter.”

    I’m also heartily sick of hearing that both candidates are equally abhorrent. When you listen to interviews with prospective voters, that’s one of the concepts they offer up most often. No. Trump is odious. There is no equivalency.

    Even Michele Obama’s popularity would drop if she ran for president. Misogyny would rear its ugly head.

  192. says

    Thanks to Trump, fact-checkers are suffering. This is one group of people who will breathe a sigh of relief when they can finally take a day off.

    […] I’m now spending much of my time immersed in Trump’s dishonesty. I’m the Washington correspondent for Canada’s Toronto Star newspaper, and since September 15, I’ve published a daily tally—or as close to a daily tally as I can produce while also sleeping occasionally—of every false claim the Republican presidential candidate has uttered in a speech or interview.

    At the end of each day or the beginning of the next, I tweet a screenshot of the list, then publish it on our website, thestar.com.

    The fewest inaccuracies I’ve heard in any day is four. The most is 25. (Twenty-five!) That doesn’t include the first two debates, at which I counted 34 and 33, respectively. Over the course of 33 days, I counted a total of 253 (including some that repeat). […]

    Politico link

  193. blf says

    Follow-up to @242, itself a follow-up to @219 snark, which said “Malik Obama [… is] not a US citizen and cannot vote”. But the quotes in @242 and Ye Pffft! of All Knowledge state “Malik Obama is a United States citizen”, so it seems the Grauniad’s blogger made an error. There is still, however, some good snarking going on…

  194. blf says

    Thugs’s vote-suppression in action, Early voting lines are so long, people are fainting. That harms democracy:

    […]
    To the surprise of few and the consternation of many, thousands of voters in Georgia waited for hours to cast their vote during the state’s first two days of early voting. […]

    In four of the most populous counties in the state, Fulton, Gwinnett, DeKalb and Cobb, Georgians have been forced to wait for over two hours to vote, and in Gwinnett County at least three people collapsed while waiting in line due to heat exhaustion.

    Most early voters did not anticipate the long lines, and in fact decided to vote early in hopes of avoiding a lengthy wait. At one of the few polling locations in Fulton County the doors opened over an hour late. While many were undeterred, countless others went home or back to work with the goal of voting on another day. This is not how a democracy is supposed to work.

    “We definitely never had a line like this,” Gwinnett County’s communications director, Joe Sorenson, told Atlanta news affiliate WSB-TV. “I think a lot of people are interested in voting in this election cycle.”

    Feigning surprise and being wholly unprepared for a large number of voters in this situation is not only inexcusable, but also undermines the fabric of our democracy. While Sorenson is right about the large turnout, he is wrong to imply that this disaster is merely a byproduct of poor planning or a surprisingly overzealous electorate.

    In 2011, Georgia reduced early voting from 45 days prior to the election to only 21. And in this election cycle Gwinnett County currently has only one early voting location. Cobb County has only two voting locations. As we get closer to the election more polling locations are supposed to open up. But, until then, no one should be surprised about the large turnout of early voters. Especially considering that early voting days have been cut by more than half and that polling locations are few and far between.

    […]

    [… W]e should not overlook how Trump and the Republican party want to increase voter intimidation and suppression efforts as we get closer to election day.

    No one should have to wait for hours to vote, and the sight of people collapsing from heat exhaustion as they waited should outrage us all. These voter suppression efforts must stop — but can that ever happen when a major political party is campaigning to make them even worse?

  195. tomh says

    @ #233
    SC: Read the NYT in Incognito mode (Chrome), or InPrivate mode (IE), or whatever it’s called in Firefox. If you get up to 10 articles in one sitting, close the window and start again.

  196. says

    Thanks, tomh! In Firefox, would it be a private window?

    (Y’all have to admit – the article I linked to was pretty fun. Made me want to go to Prague, hotbed of espionage and intrigue.)

  197. says

    Mark Cuban was just talking about how much the Trump campaign has come to look like a Breitbart campaign. He points out that Bannon is much smarter than Trump, and I agree. To expand on what I was saying in #177, Breitbart has tags for their articles about those European far-Right parties. You can see a common thread in the way they report on those parties and Trump. They’re very concerned to present the neo-fascists in Europe as an energetic movement, using the term (invented by Geert Wilders?) “patriot spring.” They have a similar line about the “establishment.” I won’t link to them, but the rhetoric about the European parties is quite similar to the way Trump has come to talk in rallies. Trump is a true authoritarian (racist, misogynist), but he’s also a peabrain. It does look like he’s being used by Putin, Bannon, and the European and USian far Right.

  198. tomh says

    SC: That sounds right, but I never used Firefox. Whatever doesn’t keep a record on your own computer.

  199. says

    “Trump in 2008: Hillary Clinton will ‘go down at a minimum as a great senator'”:

    Donald Trump has attacked Hillary Clinton for her performance as the U.S. Senator from New York, calling her two terms a “disaster” during the second presidential debate.
    In an 2008 interview with NY1 reviewed by CNN’s KFile, however, Trump praised Hillary Clinton and her husband, former President Bill Clinton, for their time in elected office.

    Asked about Hillary Clinton’s legacy, Trump said, “Well, I think her history is far from being over. I’d like to answer that question in another 15 years from now. I think she is going to go down at a minimum as a great senator. I think she is a great wife to a president. And I think Bill Clinton was a great president.”

    “You know you look at the country then,” he continued. “The economy was doing great. Look at what happened during the Clinton years. I mean, we had no war, the economy was doing great, everybody was happy. A lot of people hated him because they were jealous as hell. You know people get jealous and they hate you.”

    While Trump and Clinton will go head-to-head in the final debate Wednesday night, he had nothing but nice things to say about her and Bill Clinton eight years ago.

    “Bill Clinton was a great president. Hillary Clinton is a great woman and a good woman,” he said in the interview.

    The Trump campaign did not return a request for comment.

    Trump wrote about the interview in a blog post at the time, saying, “Hillary is smart, tough and a very nice person, and so is her husband. Bill Clinton was a great President. They are fine people. Hillary was roughed up by the media, and it was a tough campaign for her, but she’s a great trouper. Her history is far from being over.”

    Trump echoed those same sentiments in an interview with CNN’s Wolf Blitzer a year earlier, in March 2007, saying, “I think she’s a very, very brilliant person, and as a senator in New York, she has done a great job. Everybody loves her. She just won an election with a tremendous majority and she really — she’s become very, very popular in New York. And it wasn’t easy.”…

  200. Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls says

    SC#256, Yep, Bad move by Rudy G. Definition of sexual harassment on many levels.

  201. says

    When asked, twice, Trump refused to say that he would accept the November election results.

    The Republican nominee for president refused to commit to a peaceful transfer of power following the election. [from Shane Goldmacher]

    Trump’s answer on accepting the outcome of the vote is the most disgraceful statement by a presidential candidate in 160 years. [from Bret Stephens]

  202. blf says

    Made me want to go to Prague

    Yes, recommended. Also, Bratislava, Slovakia. Useful trick is fly to Wien (much cheaper), and then go by train or (Wien–Bratislava) river cruise.

  203. blf says

    There’s apparently some sort of bruhaha in Ozland right now about “Gun Nuts want to be able to import an even shootier version” of a shotgun which is “right now quite shooty”, as per First Dog on the Moon, When I hear the words ‘smashed avocado’, I reach for my Adler 110 (cartoon): “The Adler shotgun issue is a sinister labyrinth of idiocy and greed. Let First Dog on the Moon, gun expert to the stars, explain it for you”.

  204. blf says

    Mansplaining as seen by First Dog on the Moon, A how not to guide on men’s violence against women. Thanks, Donald Trump (cartoon): “Binders and binders full of women are coming forward to talk about their experiences of assault and why they remained silent about it. So the important question is: what do men think about it?”

    Unusually for First Dog on the Moon cartoons, but sadly very predictably given the content, the comments are dire. You. Have. Been. Warned.

  205. says

    Holy shit – Mark Halperin on MSNBC just argued that the response to Trump’s answer about accepting the electoral outcome is all about “the elites” and how the elites never liked him. He said the word “elites” about ten times in a minute, before I shut off the sound. Joe Scarborough played it up, asking how many people in Scranton really care about what Trump said, as opposed to the elites sipping their lattes, and Halperin (Harvard grad and son of a foreign policy expert) scoffed at the notion.

  206. says

    Joe Scarborough is now essentially lying about what Trump said last night by divorcing one comment not only from what Trump’s been saying at rallies but from other comments he made in the debate.

  207. says

    “Turkish jets strike U.S.-backed Kurdish militia in Syria”:

    Turkish jets pounded a U.S.-backed group of Kurdish-led militia fighters in northern Syria with more than 20 air strikes overnight, highlighting the conflicting agendas of the two NATO allies in an increasingly complex battlefield.

    The jets targeted positions of the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) in three villages northeast of the city of Aleppo which the SDF had captured from Islamic State, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said late on Wednesday.

    The Turkish military confirmed its warplanes had carried out 26 air strikes on areas recently taken by the Kurdish YPG militia, the strongest force in the SDF, and that it had killed between 160 and 200 fighters.

    The British-based Observatory monitoring group reported a much lower toll of 11 dead and dozens wounded. Officials of the Kurdish-led administration that controls much of northeastern Syria said dozens had been killed.

    The United States has backed the Kurdish-led forces in their fight against Islamic State, infuriating Ankara, which sees the YPG as an extension of Kurdish PKK militants who have waged a three-decade insurgency in southeastern Turkey.

    Turkey fears the YPG will try to connect three de facto autonomous Kurdish cantons that have emerged during the five-year war to create a Kurdish-run enclave in northern Syria, stoking the separatist ambitions of Kurds on its own soil.

    The air strikes, the heaviest against the YPG since Turkey launched a military incursion into Syria two months ago, came hours after President Tayyip Erdogan warned that Turkey could act alone in rooting out its enemies abroad.

    They also came ahead of an expected visit by U.S. Defense Secretary Ash Carter to Ankara on Friday.

    “From now on we will not wait for problems to come knocking on our door, we will not wait until the blade is against our bone and skin, we will not wait for terrorist organizations to come and attack us,” Erdogan said in a speech on Wednesday.

  208. says

    Hillary Clinton’s defense of Roe v. Wade during the debate:

    CLINTON: Because Roe v. Wade very clearly sets out that there can be regulations on abortion so long as the life and the health of the mother are taken into account. And when I voted as a senator, I did not think that that was the case. The kinds of cases that fall at the end of pregnancy are often the most heart breaking, painful decisions for families to make. I have met with women who have toward the end of their pregnancy get the worse news one could get—that their health is in jeopardy if they continue to carry to term or that something terrible has happened or just been discovered about the pregnancy. I do not think the United States government should be stepping in and making those most personal of decisions. So, you can regulate, if you are doing so with the life and the health of the mother taken into account.

    WALLACE: Mr. Trump, your reaction, and particularly on this issue of late term partial birth abortion.

    TRUMP: I think it’s terrible if you go with what Hillary is saying in the ninth month, you can take the baby and rip the baby out of the womb of the mother just prior to the birth of the baby. Now, you can say that that’s okay and Hillary can say that that’s okay, but it’s not okay with me. Because based on what she is saying and based on where she is going and where she has been, you can take the baby and rip the baby out of the womb in the ninth month on the final day. And that’s not acceptable.

    CLINTON: Well, that is not what happens in these cases. And using that kind of scare rhetoric is just terribly unfortunate. You should meet with some of the women that I have met with. Women I have known over the course of my life. This is one of the worst possible choices that any woman and her family has to make. And I do not believe the government should be making it. You know, I have had the great honor of traveling across the world on behalf of our country. I have been to countries where governments either forced women to have abortions like they used to do in China, or forced women to bear children like they used to do in Romania. I can tell you the government has no business in the decisions that women make with their families.”

  209. says

    This is a followup to comment 273.

    A Utah woman posted her response to Trump’s rambling comments about late-term abortion:

    […] I had to have a late term abortion. It was the worst moment in my life. What made it even worse was the State of Utah had made it illegal. I had one dead twin. The other had severe Spina Bifida, and would only have lived with life support, in great pain, for a few days.

    I lay on the hospital floor, bawling hysterically, for twelve hours, waiting for an ethics committee of the health care corporation to decide my case justified what had to be done. My health was in danger due to the dead fetus. My husband and I consulted our LDS Bishop, who assured me I needed to do what I had to do, that it was even within LDS guidelines to do so. He reminded me I had six kids at home who needed their mother to live.

    The abortion was terrible. It was done very gently, by Caesarean section, leaving the babies in their amniotic sacs. The living baby passed very quickly.

    It was horrific. I think it even affected my dear physician, as he had never had to end a pregnancy before. I developed PTSD for which I had to be treated for years, mostly because of the fact I had to have it at all.

    No woman should have to have the state have a say in the most painful decision she will ever make. Nobody is tearing babies apart in late term. They are always humanely done, only in situations where there is a non-viable or severely defective fetus and/or the mother’s health is at risk.

    Please don’t vote for a candidate or a party that would make these decisions for the women who will die or be forced to carry unviable fetuses to term. This is a decision that is so painful and so terrible. Only the parents of the baby and a physician should be involved in the decision.

    This post is public. Please share it.

    Facebook link

    The author is a mormon woman name Alyson Draper.

  210. says

    Trump at a rally today in Ohio:

    I want to make a major announcement today. I would like to promise and pledge to all of my voters and supporters and to all of the people of the United States that I will totally accept the results of this great and historic presidential election if I win. […]

    http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/donald-trump-accept-presidential-election-if-

    Stephen Colbert said:

    Oh, suspense! Democracy’s going to end in a cliffhanger.

    I guess we’re all going to have to wait until Nov. 9 to find out if we still have a country… If Donald Trump is in the mood for a peaceful transfer of power, or if he’s going to wipe his fat ass with the Constitution.

    Link. Scroll down to see the video.

  211. says

    This is probably good news: religious right-wingers are praying for God to bring Hillary Clinton down. Last resort?

    Yesterday on “Trunews,” Rick Wiles said that he has been praying for Donald Trump before each debate to ask God to protect him and guard him against demonic attacks from witches.

    Before the third debate, Wiles decided that he will also be “praying that confusion would cloud Hillary Clinton’s mind and that fear would come upon her.”

    “I’m praying that Hillary Clinton will fall in this debate in whatever manner God chooses to bring her down,” he said. “If the witches can pray against Donald Trump, the Christians can pray that Hillary Clinton will fall.”

    Right Wing Watch link

  212. says

    More of Trump’s alt-right followers are supporting the idea of violence and “open race war” if Trump loses the election:

    […] Daily Stormer Posts Pictures Of Hitler Next To Guns And Writes: “If We Don’t Win This, It’s Going To Be Open Race War.” […] [posted back in August]

    This election is a referendum on the future of Western civilization.

    No, people aren’t going to quietly go home if the Jews steal this from us.

    They better be prepared for the wrath of the God Emperor once their schemes hatch and the whole world knows of their trickery. […]

    The reality is that people are really mad. They’ve been mad for a long time. They knew they were being dispossessed, and now Trump is showing them that they’re not alone.

    This Trump train can’t be stopped. Not even by a Hillary win. [The Daily Stormer, 10/17/16]

    Infostormer: “Are You Ready For WAR, White Man? Because Our Enemies Will Then Stop At Nothing To Exterminate Us.”

  213. says

    Trump’s view of the debate:

    […] “Just landed in Ohio. Thank you America- I am honored to win the final debate for our MOVEMENT,” Trump tweeted, citing unscientific polls like Drudge that showed the GOP nominee crushing Democrat Hillary Clinton in Wednesday night’s debate in Las Vegas. CNN’s poll showed that a majority of viewers said Clinton won. […]

    Politico link

  214. blf says

    #TrumpBookReport: great literature reimagined as a tweet from the Donald:

    Twitter users have seized on a tweet describing the Republican nominee’s vague debate responses as ‘like a book report from a teenager who hasn’t read the book’
    […]
    The idea seemed to have been spawned from a widely shared tweet from Antonio French, a city alderman and mayoral candidate in St Louis, Missouri, criticizing Trump for his vague, surface-level remarks during the debate.

    “Trump’s foreign policy answers sound like a book report from a teenager who hasn’t read the book,” French wrote on Wednesday night. “Oh, the grapes! They had so much wrath!”
    […]

    Some examples given in the article:

    ● “There was a Lion, okay? King of the Jungle. And the Witch? Lemme tell you, nasty. And the Wardrobe, so luxurious. The best.”

    ● “TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD? Believe me-if those mockingbirds had guns they wouldn’t have been killed.”

    ● “Little Women? Look at their Facebook page. That Jo walked in front of me, and I don’t think so, folks, I don’t think so.”

    ● “Lady Macbeth. Nasty woman. Blood coming out of her wherever.”

    ● “It took Low Energy Harry Potter 7 books to defeat Voldermort. Sad! I would have beat him in the first book!”

    ● “Oedipus. Tremendous leader. The best. I’ve always said that if Jocasta were my mother, perhaps I’d be dating her.”

    My attempt: “There was a dog. In Baskerville. Shouldn’t be allowed in. We have to figure out what’s going on.”

  215. says

    Trump tried in a rally today to exploit the WL emails, the Pew report, and the O’Keefe video to paint Clinton as corrupt and capable of organizing voter fraud. O’Keefe of course has no credibility. This is a response to the claim that Donna Brazile gave Clinton the questions to an earlier debate “word for word” and Clinton went along. This seems to be the email he’s referring to when he suggests that Podesta said undocumented immigrants could vote if they had a driver’s license. (It’s depressing to google it, because you just find one rightwing site after another making the same claims about it with just a short quote pulled from context and often no link to the email in question – whether or not that’s undoctored in the first place.) I think the Pew report has been referred to here, but just in case here’s one rebuttal of Trump’s claims of large-scale voter fraud.

  216. says

    blf @279, I like your addition to book reviews by Trump.

    SC @280, you would think that, by now, Republicans would know better than to rely on anything O’Keefe gives them. Sheesh.

    I’m growing weary of rebutting/debunking Trump’s various lies. For example, the lies about voter fraud were debunked long before Trump latched on to them. The debunking seems to make no difference whatsoever. Right-wingers seem to love a debunked lie even more. I applaud SC for hanging in there. She provided more links to debunk lies in comment 280.

    SC, I noticed that in his rally today, Trump repeated the lie about Donna Brazile multiple times. Yuck.

    In other news, Democratic Leader of the House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi, had something to say about Trump’s weasel words in response to a question about accepting the results of the election:

    Last night, Donald Trump once again threatened the foundation of American democracy itself, and Speaker Ryan and Senator McConnell can’t find the courage to stand by the sanctity of our electoral system.

    Never before in our history has a major party candidate refused to accept the results of an election. The deafening silence of Speaker Ryan and Senator McConnell only worsens the lasting damage that will be caused by this unprecedented assault on our values as a nation.

    Silence is complicity. Evasion is unacceptable. Speaker Ryan and Senator McConnell must make it unequivocally clear that they reject Trump’s horrifying attack on our elections.

    Democratic Leader web page.

    I like Pelosi’s “silence is complicity” dig at Ryan and McConnell.

  217. What a Maroon, living up to the 'nym says

    blf @279,

    The Two Towers! And there’s a wall between them. So beautiful!

  218. says

    I would like to promise and pledge to all of my voters and supporters and to all of the people of the United States that I will totally accept the results of this great and historic presidential election if I win.

    It’s like we’re all living in a sick joke.

  219. says

    This is a followup to comments 280 and 281.

    In May of 2015, the Trump Foundation gave $10,000 to James O’Keefe’s “Project Veritas.”

    […] Trump, who claimed in the same debate that Hillary Clinton “shouldn’t be allowed to run” for president “based on what she did with e-mails and so many other things,” was funding a convicted criminal. O’Keefe was sentenced to three years of probation, 100 hours of community service, and a $1,500 fine in 2010 after taking a plea bargain following a botched “sting” attempt at the office of then-Sen. Mary Landrieu. […]

    Think Progress link

    Trump is claiming that O’Keefe’s latest bogus video proves that Clinton and Obama hired and paid people that disrupted Trump rallies. Supposedly, the people paid by Clinton and Obama to “be violent, cause fights, [and] do bad things” were activists boasting about their bad actions on the video.

    Here’s the thing, even with the deceptive editing by O’Keefe, the video offers no proof, no connection at all to Clinton or Obama. There is no evidence that Clinton or Obama were aware of any dirty tricks planned for rallies, nor were they behind any dirty tricks.

  220. says

    From the rightwing swamps: radio host Jesse Lee Peterson organized a protest in Los Angeles to say that the women accusing Trump of sexual misconduct (and their lawyer, Gloria Allred) are waging a “war on men.”

    One of the protestors at the event said, “There’s a war on men in our country, and there’s this impression that there’s a rape culture, but it’s not true.”

    Video and explanatory text are posted on Right Wing Watch.

  221. says

    From the rightwing swamps: radio host Michael Savage thinks Trump can take Hillary Clinton down by asking her about the “many women lovers” she had while she was First Lady.

    The Lesbian Conspiracy! Yeah, that’ll work. /sarcasm

    All he’s [Trump] got to do is say, “Look, yesterday a big publication came out in the National Enquirer from a man who worked for you for many years which says that you had many women lovers while your husband was president, is that still true?” It would bring the house down. Tell me it wouldn’t bring the house down. “Do you still like women in that way?” Nothing wrong with it. We’re not saying it’s morally wrong, we’re asking you if you still like women after what your husband did to you. He could even leave it that way, now that I think about it.

    He could say, “Because your husband continuously wounded your pride by having everything with a pulse in the Oval Office, we understand that you were injured by that, do you, uh, do you still like women in that way? Or is that all false? Do you care to address those allegations?”

    Link

  222. says

    Earlier, Alex Jones told us his audience that Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama are possessed by demons, and that they “smell like sulfur.” President Obama even mocked that claim during one of his speeches.

    Yesterday, Alex Jones expanded on his Stink Conspiracy by claiming that Hillary Clinton is “totally filthy” and smells “like rotting meat.”

    Video and more explanatory text are posted on Right Wing Watch.

  223. says

    Chris Wallace’s question about the national debt falsely alleged that programs like Social Security and Medicare are going to run out of money. Wallace used Republican talking points to frame the discussion about entitlements, and to force acceptance of his false premise before the candidates were allowed to answer.

    […] Wallace [falsely claimed] “the biggest driver of our debt is entitlements” like Social Security and Medicare while falsely equating the nonpartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget (CRFB) analyses of Donald Trump’s and Hillary Clinton’s tax and economic policy proposals.

    Wallace claimed that the CRFB “has looked at both” the Trump and Clinton tax plans and concluded “neither of [them] has a serious plan” to address “the fact” that Medicare and Social Security are going to run out of money in the next two decades […]

    WALLACE: Secretary Clinton, same question, because at this point Social Security and Medicare are going to run out — the trust funds are going to run out of money. Will you as president entertain — will you consider a grand bargain, a deal, that includes both tax increases and benefit cuts to try to save both programs? […]

    First, the CRFB did not score the Clinton and Trump tax plans as roughly equivalent in terms of their impact on the debt and deficit. […] Trump’s economic agenda will create $5.3 trillion in new debt accumulation over the next decade — more than 25 times more new debt that Clinton’s more balanced plan. [handy chart can be viewed at the link] […]

    Second, […] Medicare and Social Security “DO NOT run out of money!!” [wrote Jared Bernstein] because they are paid for by secured trust funds and specific permanent tax provisions. Bernstein also noted that the Affordable Care Act, which Trump vowed to repeal during the debate, has actually extended Medicare “solvency by 11 years.” […]

    Third, […] The only reason Social Security faces a long-term revenue shortfall is because the payroll tax that funds it is only applied to the first $118,500 of individual earnings. If the payroll tax cap was lifted to include more taxable earnings, the program could bring in more revenue and be funded through the end of the century. […]

    Link

  224. says

    From President Obama’s speech today in Florida:

    […] Trump didn’t come out of nowhere, now. For years, Republican politicians and far-right media outlets had just been pumping out all kinds of toxic, crazy stuff. I mean, first of all, there was the whole birther thing. Then they started saying climate change is a Chinese hoax. And according to them, I have power enough to cause these hurricanes and I’m about to steal everybody’s guns in the middle of the night and declare martial law but somehow I still need a teleprompter to finish a sentence. So they’ve been saying crazy stuff and there are a lot of politicians like Marco Rubio who know better but they just look the other way. […]

  225. says

    Yeah, that’s to be expected. You saw this coming, right? Sean Hannity is promoting Trump’s idea that Hillary Clinton should not have been allowed to run for the presidency.

    Everybody knows she’s guilty. Everybody knows she lies. And polls show that even Democrats say she deserves to be prosecuted. But instead of heading off to a trial, and then later the big house, which is where the average Joe would be headed right now, she is now contending to be the next president of the United States.

    […] If the law has been followed the way it should have been, by law she would have been disqualified from running, another point Trump made last night.

    But because the strings were pulled, because access was given, because of the connections that are made, because the Attorney General was pressured, because the FBI took a dive, because the Justice Department, State Department and Obama White House were tipping off the Clinton campaign every step of the way, colluding with them — it’s like a criminal enterprise — and the president publicly announced that Hillary’s innocent in the midst of the investigation, unethical in its own right, justice, along with the integrity of our electoral process now has gone out the window.

    And let me say this: If Hillary Clinton wins this election 19 days from now, if she does, you could make a case that because of her ineligibility, […] we’re going to talk about the legitimacy of the presidency.

    A case could strongly be made that she would be an illegitimate president. […\

    Link

    Yes, that sounds like Trump’s goal. He wants to question the legitimacy of another President.

  226. Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls says

    Yes, that sounds like Trump’s goal. He wants to question the legitimacy of another President.

    Unless, of course, that President would be him, even with a large voter suppression (fraud) caused by his followers.

  227. Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls says

    Looks like long time Arizona Sheriff Arpaio, an anti-immigrant bigot, might lose his reelection bid.

    Embattled Arizona lawman Joe Arpaio, whose get-tough policies to fight illegal immigration and praise of Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump brought him nationwide attention, trails his opponent in this year’s election by nearly 15 percentage points, according to a Thursday poll.
    The poll, conducted by The Arizona Republic/Morrison/Cronkite News, shows Democratic challenger Paul Penzone has the support of nearly 45.9 percent of those surveyed as he attempts to unseat the six-term Maricopa County sheriff. Arpaio garnered 31.1 percent.
    Roughly one-fifth of those surveyed said they were still undecided on the Nov. 8 race for the top law enforcement job in the state’s most populous county. The poll’s margin of error was plus or minus 5.6 percent.
    The poll was taken as federal prosecutors announced that the U.S. Justice Department would seek a criminal contempt charge against Arpaio for violating a court order in a 2007 racial profiling case.
    The charges center on unlawful traffic stops and detentions by deputies of Latino drivers for 18 months after the judge ordered them to cease.
    Arpaio, who has denied any intentional wrongdoing, has already been cited for civil contempt stemming from his actions in the case.
    Political observers have said prospects of a criminal prosecution for the 84-year-old hardline sheriff seem to have raised the ante in recent days in what already promised to be Arpaio’s sternest election test.

    Like Trump, Arpaio thinks he is still winning. But I suspect taxpayers are tired of paying his legal fees, which are substantial.

  228. slithey tove (twas brillig (stevem)) says

    Drumph clarified his “suspense” answer by declaring he absolutely will recognize the results of the election <pause> <b if i win. further asserts how reasonable it is to be wary of the results. remember Gore v Bush, didn’t Gore challenge the results with full legal sanction? If Gore and Bush had declare before hand to blindly accept the results, then *you know* [paraphrased]
    glossing over the details of that challenge. It was not the general results of the election Gore challenged. A single state, that had a slim margin, that was before the challenge, known to be quite slippery. Recounts are often necessary and often mandated by slim margins. To pull out a single incident where the POTUS was enacted due to a disputable result, is following his MO of amplifying the probability of occurrence of things that are very rare.
    harrumph

  229. slithey tove (twas brillig (stevem)) says

    [html fart@295 corrected]
    Drumph clarified his “suspense” answer by declaring he absolutely will recognize the results of the election <pause> if i win.

  230. says

    Like Trump, Arpaio thinks he is still winning. But I suspect taxpayers are tired of paying his legal fees, which are substantial.

    To truly appreciate how awful Arpaio is, you have to read Johann Hari’s Chasing the Scream.

  231. says

    SC @301, Trump did make a joke about being modest. That was good.

    The “pardon me” joke in reference to Clinton was funnier before he followed up with a bit about asking him again after he was in office.

    Part of Trump’s presentation was good, and part of it was so mean that the audience started booing him and shouting at him.

    I liked Hillary’s joke about taking time out of her rigorous nap schedule to come to the dinner.

  232. blf says

    We are approaching the Trumpocene, a new epoch where climate change is just a big scary conspiracy:

    […]
    Some of the world’s most respected geologists and scientists reckon humans have had such a profound impact on the Earth that we’ve now moved out of the Holocene and into the Anthropocene.
    […]
    That’s all in the real world though, and sometimes you might get the horrible, chilling idea that when it comes to the production of our thoughts and ideas, that’s not the place a lot of us live anymore.

    So I’d like to also propose the idea of an impending new epoch — the Trumpocene — that in the spirit of the era itself is based solely on a few thoughts held loosely together with hyperlinks and a general feeling of malaise.

    In the Trumpocene, the epoch-defining impacts of climate change are nothing more than a conspiracy. Even if these impacts are real, then they’re probably good for us.

    […]

    So what are the things that might define the Trumpocene?

    Is it the point at which large numbers of people started to reject the views of large groups of actual experts […] in exchange for the views of anyone who agrees with them? (Brexit, anyone?)

    How about that point when a critical mass of people have become convinced that they can Google their way out of the laws of physics?

    […]

    There’s now a whole media ecosystem that climate science denialism can exist inside, where there’s little scrutiny of the views of deniers. US-based sites like the Drudge Report, Infowars, Breitbart and Daily Caller are part of that ecosystem.

    […]

    Another characteristic of the Trumpocene might be the heightened levels of hubris combined with triumphant rhetoric and the tendency towards insults.
    […]

  233. says

    The trend I noted last month continues. The Trump campaign escalated spending last month, with huge sums going to cronies:

    Mr. Trump’s top spending areas last month were advertising ($23.2 million), digital consulting ($20.6 million), air travel ($6 million) and data management ($5 million). It continued to spend big on campaign merchandise such as hats: more than $3.7 million.*

    Among the firms that drew the largest checks from the Trump campaign was Giles-Parscale, a San Antonio-based web-marketing company run by Brad Parscale, Mr. Trump’s digital director. The firm, which before 2016 had never worked for a presidential campaign, earned $20.6 million from the campaign in September—up from $11.1 million in August. The payments were categorized as for “digital consulting/online advertising.”

    Mr. Trump also dramatically escalated his payments to a data-analytics firm called Cambridge Analytica, which is partly owned by hedge-fund executive Robert Mercer, one of the nominee’s top donors, who has expanded his influence in the campaign in recent months. Mr. Trump paid the firm $5 million in September, up from $250,000 in August.

    The latest disclosure shows the Trump campaign ramping up payments to firms affiliated with campaign staffers. Mr. Trump paid $7.4 million to Jamestown Associates, a political consulting firm where top campaign aide Jason Miller is a partner….

    The campaign also paid $381,000 to the Polling Company, a polling firm run by Kellyanne Conway, Mr. Trump’s campaign manager….

    …Overall, it paid close to $990,000 to Trump-owned firms last month.

    * The owner of the company that distributes the hats, Christl Mahfouz, appears to be a family friend. As Rachel Maddow noted months ago, she’s on the board of Eric Trump’s foundation.

  234. says

    “At Al Smith Dinner, Donald Trump Turns Friendly Roast Into 3-Alarm Fire.”

    As someone was just pointing out on MSNBC, Trump was booed by a priest.

    Rudy Giuliani was also a jerk. Didn’t laugh or even smile at Clinton’s comments about him. During one of her best lines, about Trump’s rating the Statue of Liberty, the camera showed him scowling and saying “What?” He didn’t even get the joke.

    Dolan is saying that after the event, Trump told Clinton that she’s tough and talented, and Clinton responded that whatever happens they’ll find a way to work together. They also shook hands at the end of the dinner.

  235. says

    Republican Reminder:

    Republican Rep. Brian Babin on Thursday defended Donald Trump calling Hillary Clinton “a nasty woman” at the final presidential debate, saying “sometimes a lady needs to be told when she’s being nasty.”

    After Colmes repeatedly pressed the Texas congressman, he said he agreed with Trump’s assessment of Clinton as a “nasty woman.”

  236. says

    Report says Sheldon Adelson dropping Trump:

    …Fox Business reported that before Wednesday’s debate, Adelson had sent an email to Trump, telling him to stop attacking fellow Republicans like House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI), and to spend more time focusing on issues than complaining about media coverage. Though Trump has since quieted somewhat about his fellow Republicans, he continues to blame the national media for “rigging” the election.

    One anonymous Adelson associate told Fox Business that Adelson had told him “Trump doesn’t listen to anyone—not even his family or Steve Bannon.” That associated added that Adelson told him he liked the Republican nominee “less and less.”

    Adelson, like many others who would normally dump tens of millions of dollars behind a presidential candidate promising the largest tax break in American history, has instead shifted his focus to the fight for protecting Republican majorities in Congress, according to the CNN report.

    Sheldon Adelson complaining that Trump doesn’t listen to alt-Right media developer Steve Bannon is something else.

  237. says

    SC @308, thanks for that rundown of Trump’s “how to make money for yourself and your friends while running for president” approach.

    I can only hope that the brand name damage that is also taking place will mean that Trump loses money instead of making money off of an election campaign.

  238. says

    blf @307, when I wasn’t being horrified by part of your post, I was laughing at statements like this: “Another characteristic of the Trumpocene might be the heightened levels of hubris combined with triumphant rhetoric and the tendency towards insults.”

    I have noticed that Trumpocene “weather” in some of my neighbors.

  239. says

    Trump’s claims that the Emmys were rigged against him are making news again. Hillary Clinton first brought it up during the debate, and Trump confirmed her analysis of his character by interrupting with “Should have gotten it.”

    Here’s some backstory from 2011:

    “The public is smart. They know it’s a con game. I remember when I was originally nominated, everybody thought that ‘The Apprentice’ was going to win. It was the hottest thing on television, virtually,” Trump said in 2011. “Well, it didn’t win. They picked another show that frankly has been nominated many years and it’s like, an irrelevant show. I’m not talking about myself. I’m not talking about ‘The Apprentice.’ I’m just saying the Emmys have a become boring, boring, boring show, totally predictable, and they’re picking the wrong people.”

    Washington Post link

    Oh, yeah, that sounds so much like sore loser, Trump. We notice, Mr. Trump, that five years later your resentment over not getting an Emmy has not diminished.

    It’s funny, but it does make me worry that he will prolong his sore-loser campaign after the election. If a majority of the American people pick Hillary Clinton, if Trump going to tell us how boring we are?

  240. says

    Here are some of Trump’s “jokes” that bombed bigly at the Al Smith dinner:

    [Hillary Clinton is] so corrupt she got kicked off the Watergate Commission.

    I don’t know who they’re angry at Hillary, you or I? [in response to the audience booing him loudly]

    Here she is in public, pretending not to hate Catholics.

    Last night, I called Hillary a ‘nasty woman.’ This stuff is all relative. After listening to Hillary rattle on and on, I don’t think so badly of Rosie O’Donnell anymore. In fact, I’m actually starting like Rosie a lot.

    That last bit was better than the “pretending not to hate Catholics” bomb.

  241. says

    Michael Steele, former Republican Party Chairman, says he will not vote for Trump.

    I will not be voting for Clinton. I will not be voting for Trump either. […]

    [Trump has] captured that racist underbelly, that frustration, that angry underbelly of American life and gave voice to that.

    I was damn near puking during the debates.

    […]

  242. says

    “Mass Hacks of Private Email Aren’t Whistleblowing, They are at Odds With It”:

    …As Steven Levy has observed, this sort of leak is a digital counterpart to what had been sought by the Watergate burglars by bugging the offices of the DNC — occasioned through hacking, rather than breaking and entering….

    There might be cases in which a hacker’s breach of a private citizen’s email might reveal something so explosive, so terrible, that some might justify the ethics of the breach – or at least not deem the fruits of the breach off-limits from further coverage. But it’s worth noting that the Fourth Amendment’s broad prohibition against warrantless searches means that an unwarranted government hack of someone’s account, revealing terrible wrongdoing, would not only be cause for damages against the government, but exclusion of that evidence in any criminal case brought against the wrongdoer. The “exclusionary rule” was designed precisely for the purpose of vindicating individual rights, drawing a line with few exceptions where the ends cannot justify the means.

    Should we feel any differently when a private party – or a country other than the United States – conducts such a search? To bless it is to condone vigilantism, or intrusion by other states into our own citizens’ private affairs….

    To crack people’s online accounts is a moral wrong, full stop. And apart from the wrong to the people hacked — Colin Powell will surely get over it, though that’s less sure of the young advance team member whose personal emails were also compromised — it is a chilling reminder, and signal, that anyone can be similarly exposed….

    [T]o anyone who sees civic and political participation as the most important way to advance democracy, and to beat back any capture by special interests, this is not medicine. It is poison….

    This lack of empathy is corrosive, because over time continued leaks will lead people to keep their thoughts to themselves, or to furtively communicate unpopular views only in person. That’s profoundly unhealthy for a society. It calls to mind the Soviet Union or East Germany: environments representing the opposite of respect for human rights. We need the freedom to associate and communicate without constant fear of surveillance, whether from the state or from strangers. And worse, hacking and selective release means that the hackers and anyone they answer to — such as other countries — can intervene in our public discourse, and our elections, in ways that slant public perceptions and views to suit their own motives.

    Worse, there’s no reason to think that hackers who say they’re providing accountability will stick to politics. The tools can and will be deployed against anyone — any slight or grudge will do, no matter how personal….

  243. militantagnostic says

    Lynna @317

    If a majority of the American people pick Hillary Clinton, if Trump going to tell us how boring we are?

    Well, since many Americans are voting for Hillary Clinton to avoid living in “interesting times”*, Trump would be correct.

    *Chinese curse – “May you live in interesting times.”

  244. says

    Former Supreme Court Justice Souter talked about the erosion of civic knowledge, and he noted how a lack of civic knowledge can damage a democracy. Souter’s comments were made in 2012, put they are an absolutely eerie prediction that a Trump-like figure would appear and promise to fix everything. “It’s important to understand how government can and should function […]” Souter describes “civic ignorance,” and I just kept saying to myself, yes, that’s Trump and some of his followers.

    Rachel Maddow introduced David Souter’s comments by providing some historical background, going back to Bush v. Gore.

    Souter’s comments are well worth listening to in full. The video is 9:49 minutes long. Souter’s comments begin at about the 3:30 mark.

  245. militantagnostic says

    Worse, there’s no reason to think that hackers who say they’re providing accountability will stick to politics. The tools can and will be deployed against anyone — any slight or grudge will do, no matter how personal….

    Slights and grudges like being accused of sexual assault for instance. With absolute power comes absolute assholery.

  246. says

    Trump on M. Obama:

    “We have a president, all he wants to do is campaign. His wife, all she wants to do is campaign. And I see how much his wife likes Hillary,” Trump said. “But wasn’t she the one that originally started the statement, if you can’t take care of your home — right? — you can’t take care of the White House or the country.”

    “Where is that? I don’t hear that. I don’t hear that. She’s the one that started that. I said, ‘We can’t say that, it’s too vicious.’ Can you believe it? I said that,” he continued. “They said, well Michele Obama said it. I said she did? Now she said that, but we don’t hear about that.”

    Chris Hayes had a very good segment with Erin Gloria Ryan last night. Hayes pointed out how many of his digs at Clinton take the form of claims that “This person doesn’t like you!”

  247. says

    North Carolina cut early voting hours, and now voters have to stand in line for hours. These long waits are a disincentive to vote. And, of course, the problem is worse in urban areas where most Democratic-Party-voters live.

    Early voting kicked off on Thursday in the key swing state of North Carolina, and voters turned out to the polls in droves. Across the state, but especially in the urban centers of Charlotte, Raleigh, Fayetteville, and Winston-Salem, voters waited for hours to cast a ballot. […]

    After North Carolina’s attempt to eliminate an entire week of early voting was struck down by a federal court in July, many Republican-controlled county election boards tried to take matters into their own hands. Dozens of counties voted to slash the number of early voting locations — especially targeting areas of high Democratic voter turnout like college campuses and African-American neighborhoods. Many, but not all, of these cuts were blocked by the state Board of Elections.

    This year, 17 North Carolina counties will provide fewer total early voting hours than in 2012, and three counties that offered early voting on a Sunday in 2012 got rid of that option. Many counties are offering no evening hours, making access difficult for people who work one or more jobs. […]

    Think Progress link

  248. says

    This is a followup to comments 119 (blf), 125, 174, and 287.

    Alex Jones is now sure that if Trump loses the election, we will experience a world war. That war, Alex Jones says, will kill one third of earth’s human population.

    Alex Jones, the notorious conspiracy theorist who enjoys mutual admiration with Donald Trump, warned on his radio program yesterday that if Trump loses the presidential election, it will cause a “worldwide financial meltdown and probably a world war” in which one third of the world’s population will be killed.

    “We’re at a decision time,” Jones said, “and I think, in my gut, I know if we don’t elect Trump […] I believe we’re going to come under great judgment and I believe there’s going to be a total worldwide financial meltdown and probably a world war. And I think, like the Bible says, I think a third or more of the population’s going to be killed.” […]

    Right Wing Watch link

  249. says

    This is a followup to comments 163 (blf) and 228.

    CNN and Fox News are all over the mythical Black Panther threat to a free election.

    […] MCENANY [Kayleigh McEnany of CNN]: I think he’s [Trump] setting up a scenario where he wants supporters to be vigilant. He doesn’t want a scenario where there’s New Black Panthers outside with guns, essentially like intimidating people from coming into the polls. He wants people to be on the lookout.

    PETER BEINART: […] Where does this all of this voter fraud take place? Amazingly, only in urban areas populated by you know who, so he’s going to delegitimize Hillary Clinton’s victory because she won based on black voters. Only black people, like Black Panther Party people commit voter fraud? […]

    Media Matters link

  250. says

    Jesse Berney, writing for Rolling Stone, takes a closer look at the abortion policies Trump promoted in the last debate.

    […] nowhere in Las Vegas was his [Trump’s] ignorance on brighter, flashier display than on the subject of late-term abortion.

    It was shocking when moderator Chris Wallace asked a direct question about abortion, a subject debate moderators usually avoid like the plague. […] Clinton offered a full-throated defense of a woman’s right to access abortion, saying she “will defend Roe v. Wade” […]

    Trump said he’d appoint anti-abortion judges who will overturn Roe and then “the states will then make a determination.” Many states have already made that determination, putting strict anti-abortion laws on the books that would effectively end abortion rights the moment the Supreme Court reverses Roe.
    […]

    “The kinds of cases that fall at the end of pregnancy are often the most heartbreaking, painful decisions for families to make. I have met with women who, toward the end of their pregnancy, get the worst news one could get that their health is in jeopardy if they continue to carry to term or that something terrible has happened or just been discovered about the pregnancy. I do not think the United States government should be stepping in and making those most personal of decisions.”

    When Trump opened his mouth to respond, he released a flurry of ignorance so ugly it would have been shocking if it weren’t coming from the planet’s most ignorant excuse for a human being. “I think it’s terrible if you go with what Hillary is saying,” Trump said, lying about what Clinton had said: “in the ninth month you can take the baby and rip the baby out of the womb of the mother just prior to the birth of the baby.”

    “You can take the baby and rip the baby out of the womb on the ninth month on the final day,” he continued, getting the facts so deeply, offensively wrong you could smell his stupidity through the television screen. Of course, abortions do not take place at nine months.” […]

    If Donald Trump becomes president and fulfills his promise to appoint right-wing, anti-abortion judges to the Supreme Court, he’ll be in charge of these women’s decisions. He’ll have forced these women to carry their pregnancies to term, to carry a child who won’t survive, to put their own lives in danger. And in some cases, those policies will kill them. […]

  251. slithey tove (twas brillig (stevem)) says

    [paraphrasing] Drumph: Michele Obama. excellent woman in all respects. She gave a beautiful speech that everyone applauded and praised her about. Yet, when my wife Melania gave the exact same speech everyone booed her and said nasty things about her. huh? *grin*
    yuckity yuck
    making plagiarism into a joke to redeem his image and dis the person he plagiarized with a back handed compliment; warrants the response: “yuck foo Drumph”

  252. says

    Ha! Here is our schadenfreude moment for today. The total dunderheads at The Drudge Report have been caught posting fake news on their front page … again.

    This one is a doozy. The synaptic sludge honchos at Drudge wanted so, so badly to show black people being mean to nice, white Trump supporters that they posted a video that was so staged and so fake that there’s even video of the video being filmed.

    Wonkette posted excellent coverage, including the video, the video of the video being shot, and the eyebrow-raising explanation from Mr. Salads who arranged the whole thing.

    Monday, a YouTube vlogger who goes by the name “Joey Salads” (real name Joey Saladino), debuted what he claimed was damning proof that black people are super mean to Trump supporters and also their cars. That video was fake! Like, super-duper obviously fake. No one who has ever interacted with another human being would look at said video and think, “Yes, this seems realistic to me, and not at all like these are some very bad actors doing a weird fake video for some idiot’s YouTube channel.”

    Of course, people who desperately want to believe something is true are easily fooled. Such was the case with The Drudge Report, which eagerly posted the video right smack on its front page. You know, as proof black people are mean, violent characters who cruelly victimize the cars of nice white people who just want to express their deep and abiding love of Donald Trump. […]

    Furthermore, the infamously stupid Mr. Salads also shot a video of himself in a dress trying to prove that cis women do not want to share bathrooms with trans women. Obviously, Mr. Salads aspires to be James O’Keefe.

  253. says

    This is a followup to comment 324.

    Excerpt from former Supreme Court Justice David Souter’s 2012 speech:

    I don’t worry about our losing republican government in the United States because I’m afraid of a foreign invasion. I don’t worry about it because I think there is going to be a coup by the military as has happened in some of other places. What I worry about is that when problems are not addressed, people will not know who is responsible. And when the problems get bad enough, as they might do, for example, with another serious terrorist attack, as they might do with another financial meltdown, some one person will come forward and say, “Give me total power and I will solve this problem.”

    That is how the Roman republic fell. Augustus became emperor, not because he arrested the Roman Senate. He became emperor because he promised that he would solve problems that were not being solved.

    If we know who is responsible, I have enough faith in the American people to demand performance from those responsible. If we don’t know, we will stay away from the polls. We will not demand it. And the day will come when somebody will come forward and we and the government will in effect say, “Take the ball and run with it. Do what you have to do.”

    That is the way democracy dies. And if something is not done to improve the level of civic knowledge, that is what you should worry about at night. […]

  254. says

    Real billionaire, and real philanthropist, Richard Branson, posted some of his impressions from his first meeting with Donald Trump:

    Some years ago, Mr Trump invited me to lunch for a one-to-one meeting at his apartment in Manhattan. We had not met before and I accepted. Even before the starters arrived he began telling me about how he had asked a number of people for help after his latest bankruptcy and how five of them were unwilling to help. He told me he was going to spend the rest of his life destroying these five people. […]

    Virgin link.

    Here are some impressions of his meeting with Hillary Clinton:

    […] Here we talked about education reform, the war on drugs, women’s rights, conflicts around the globe and the death penalty. She was a good listener as well as an eloquent speaker. As she understands well, the President of the United States needs to understand and be engaged with wider world issues, rather than be consumed by petty personal quarrels. […]

  255. says

    SC @323, Wikileaks is destroying its reputation (which was already a little iffy). I hope they are still on the Trump train when it crashes. (The train crash is a metaphor, and is not in any way meant to promote violence.)

    Anyone who thinks Wikileaks isn’t in the tank for Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin, better think again. They tweeted last night that the election was rigged, agreeing with and spouting Trump’s talking points that directly attack our democracy.

    They deleted the tweet, but not before screenshots were taken. They then tweeted again, correcting the original tweet’s misspellings.

    Joy Reid weighed in by tweeting that “the tweet mirrors the language of their and /Putin’s preferred candidate”. Which is none other than Donald Trump. She’s right. […]

    Daily Kos link

  256. says

    Donnie Deutsch surprisingly lets loose on Trump, referring to Trump’s attempts to delegitimize democracy, and speaks for millions of others: “Who does he think he is? Just go away! You’re vile!”

  257. says

    Another piece about harassment by Trump followers – this one by David French (yes, a rightwing propagandist and likely unconcerned about years of harassment of feminists, but still worthy of sympathy even if he’s played a role in the emergence of Trumpism):

    I distinctly remember the first time I saw a picture of my then-seven-year-old daughter’s face in a gas chamber. It was the evening of September 17, 2015. I had just posted a short item to the Corner calling out notorious Trump ally Ann Coulter for aping the white-nationalist language and rhetoric of the so-called alt-right. Within minutes, the tweets came flooding in. My youngest daughter is African American, adopted from Ethiopia, and in alt-right circles that’s an unforgivable sin. It’s called “race-cucking” or “raising the enemy.” I saw images of my daughter’s face in gas chambers, with a smiling Trump in a Nazi uniform preparing to press a button and kill her. I saw her face photo-shopped into images of slaves. She was called a “niglet” and a “dindu.” The alt-right unleashed on my wife, Nancy, claiming that she had slept with black men while I was deployed to Iraq, and that I loved to watch while she had sex with “black bucks.” People sent her pornographic images of black men having sex with white women, with someone photoshopped to look like me, watching. When we both publicized some of the racist attacks — I in National Review and Nancy in the Washington Post — things took a far more ominous turn. Late the next evening — while Nancy was, fortunately, offline attending a veterans’ charity event in D.C. — the darker quarters of the alt-right found her Patheos blog. Several different accounts began posting images and GIFs of extreme violence in her comments section.

    I share my family’s story not because we are unique or because our experience is all that extraordinary, but rather because it is depressingly, disturbingly ordinary this campaign season. The formula is simple: Criticize Trump — especially his connection to the alt-right — and the backlash will come.

    And it never seems to stop. It certainly hasn’t stopped for us….

    The misery is compounded when longtime friends and allies dismiss my experiences and the experiences of my colleagues as nothing more than the normal cost of public advocacy. It’s not. I have contributed to National Review for more than ten years now, and have been deeply involved in many of America’s most emotional culture-war battles for more than 20. I’ve never experienced anything like this before.

    So, no, things have not “calmed down,” and I’m always amused when people tell me that I belong to Never Trump because it makes me feel good about myself. There’s nothing that gives me pleasure about this election season. But if I can do anything to expose and oppose this latest debasement of our politics and culture, and to defend my wife and daughter, then at least I will have purpose.

  258. Gordon Davisson says

    I have a question for those of you who aren’t in King County, Washington. My wife and I went through the down-ballot races last night, and two of the King County superior court races feature a current judge, and a challeneger who seems to be running solely because the current judge ruled against them at some point, and they’re pissed off about it. And then I realized that in both cases the current judge is female, and the pissed-off challenger is male (see The Stranger’s endorsements for superior court judges position 31, Helen Halpert vs. Marc Stern; and position 53, Mariane Spearman vs. Thomas Cline).

    I can certainly imagine a sexist reason for this – a man gets slapped down by a woman, can’t cope, sets out to assert dominance over her (and hopefully gets a second slap-down by the entire electorate, but I’m getting ahead of things). But I don’t really have enough data to say that this isn’t just a coincidence. If we assume 50% male / 50% female (not true, but it’s closer than I would have expected), there’d be a 1/16 chance of this gender distribution occurring by coincidence, so (despite having a completely post-hoc hypothesis) I couldn’t even hit a 95% confidence interval.

    The solution: more data, and data that’s independent of the data that inspired the hypothesis. Does anyone in a different district know of any similar pissed-off-challenger judicial races, and if so what’re the genders of the people involved?

    p.s. for anyone who is in King County, you should vote for Mariane Spearman even if her opponent wasn’t an unqualified probably-sexist twit. My wife was in the jury pool for one of her cases (but wasn’t selected), and thought she was excellent.

  259. John Morales says

    SC:

    Data.

    Obama is being used as a metonym for the USA.

    That won’t last.

    (But hey, faint praise is better than outright damnation)

  260. tomh says

    Good column by Paul Krugman in the NYT on “Why Hillary Wins.” Rather than the conventional wisdom that she just got lucky to run against Trump, “Maybe Mrs. Clinton is winning because she possesses some fundamental political strengths — strengths that fall into many pundits’ blind spots.”

  261. says

    Obama is being used as a metonym for the USA.

    That won’t last.

    (But hey, faint praise is better than outright damnation)

    First, one claim was specifically about Obama, “our president.” Second, some of the polling at the link is about Clinton (and Clinton vs. Trump). Third, some of the polling at the link is about current opinions of the US – whether those opinions will change in the future remains to be seen, but Trump’s claim about the current situation is false. (I was surprised at the extent of faint praise; the US is deserving of much more outright damnation. This world opinion corresponds with reality, but Trump probably wouldn’t cite it as it makes the US look more powerful than unpopular.)

  262. blf says

    A follow-up to @236 and @237, about the Russian arrested in the Cech Republic at the behest of the FBI, Russian man charged with hacking LinkedIn and other tech firms: “LinkedIn has suggested the 29-year-old’s arrest is tied to a 2012 breach that resulted in more than 100 million of its users’ passwords being compromised”. As per the New York Times report (@237), it does not appear to have anything to do with the DNC / Wikileaks incidents. Whether or not the LinkedIn angle is connected to that password theft (made trivially easy due to some appallingly bad security practices at LinkedIn) has not, contrary to LinkedIn’s suggestions, been confirmed.

  263. says

    “Breitbart escalates war on Paul Ryan”:

    A right-wing website closely tied to Donald Trump’s presidential campaign is taking its war against House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) to new levels.

    Breitbart News on Saturday published as its lead story an article written by Julia Hahn, headlined: “He’s with her: Inside Paul Ryan’s months-long campaign to elect Hillary Clinton president.”

    Accompanying the story is an image of a grinning Ryan beside the Democratic presidential nominee’s campaign slogan, “I’m with her.”

    The piece is brutal even by the standards of Breitbart’s proudly scorched-earth approach to journalism, asserting that Ryan “leads the pro-Islamic migration wing of the Republican party.”

    The 2,800-word attack on Ryan comes amid a concerted strategy by the pro-Trump nationalist wing of the GOP to ensure Ryan isn’t re-elected Speaker in January.

    The Breitbart piece, which claims that the Speaker has been conspiring for months to “sabotage” Trump, is straight from the playbook of Stephen Bannon, the Breitbart chairman who last month became CEO of Trump’s presidential campaign….

  264. says

    Good piece by Joy Reid at the Daily Beast“How Ivanka Sank From Millennial Womens’ Icon to Alt-Right Fellow Traveler: A year or so ago, Ivanka Trump’s last name was associated with luxury. Now it’s about racism, misogyny, and white-supremacist swamps. Hey—nobody made her play along.”

    …For Ivanka, who has been the most visible of the next-generation Trumps, a fall from cultural grace could be especially jarring.

    While her brother Donald Jr. has been exposed as every bit as crass, slithery, and sexist as his namesake father, and as the likely source of his dad’s strange affinity for alt-right Twitter; and while younger brother Eric remains a creepy shadow in the family portrait, Ivanka has been cast by admiring media, and by Republicans, as the family heroine. She was practically worshipped by an adoring pundit class for her speech at the Republican convention, and tasked with selling the Donald Trump candidacy to young voters.

    Even before the campaign, Ivanka played a prominent role in throwing the family’s money around to political players, and selling the licensing deals that are the Trumps’ bread and butter….

  265. blf says

    Bad hombre: restaurants make a meal of Donald Trump’s Spanish sideswipe:

    The Republican candidate’s comment about bad hombres from Mexico in the final debate inspired eateries and bars to create signature dishes and cocktails

    The bad hombre revolution is here and it’s delicious.

    Restaurants across the country have taken advantage of Donald Trump’s laughable attempt at speaking Spanish and cooked up some cheeky dishes at his expense. On Wednesday night during the final presidential debate […] Trump decided to test his entry-level español and uttered, We have some bad hombres here and we’re going to get them out.

    The problem is that what he actually said was hambres — hambre meaning hungry or hunger in Spanish, so food trucks and restaurants across the nation decided this was the perfect opportunity to showcase some ingenious menu specials.

    […]

    [… I]n Nashville, Rosepepper Cantina created two new cocktails. The Bad Hombre will most likely put you to sleep as it is made with “very, very strong, believe me, mezcal”, while the Nasty Woman is made with very strong tequila.

    […]

    There aren’t very many readers’s comments at the moment. Of the sane ones, I liked this one: “The orange vomitous volcano of mendacity isn’t content with murdering the English language now he has taken to mangling Spanish. […]”

  266. says

    Rachel Maddow last night talked about two blistering editorial statements from the New York Daily News and the New Yorker. The latter won’t be published until Monday (she read parts that had been provided to her exclusively), but here’s the long NYDN article – “Bury Trump in a Landslide”:

    …To take full stock of Trump must be to understand the urgency of barring him from the White House, as well as to reckon with how an authoritarian fabulist has gotten so close to leading the globe’s beacon of democracy.

    Herewith, we fervently pray, is the political obituary of Donald Trump and all that he stands for….

  267. blf says

    Not a surprise — given the available choices and the absolute necessity to keep teh trum-prat out — the Grauniad has endorsed Secretary Clinton:

    […]
    Americans should vote for Secretary Clinton as an able and proven politician. A Trump presidency would be bad for America and dangerous for the world, so a vote for Secretary Clinton is the most effective way of preventing it. […]

    However, there are fewer reasons to vote for Secretary Clinton than one would have hoped. For more than two decades she has been part of a political establishment that shaped a dysfunctional country. She has been unable to escape being tarnished by the most damaging policies — notably around criminal justice — of her husband’s administration. There are well-founded concerns, highlighted by transcripts of her speeches, that she is too close to Wall Street to be an effective check on its excesses if elected.

    […]

    […] The politician who has shaped the politics of the country and accounted for populist anger is Senator Sanders. The man from Vermont understood, earlier than most, that voters see the economy as rigged against them by a political system that has been corrupted by big money. His campaign was backed three to one by millennials in the Democratic primaries. This month his favorability ratings in opinion polls are only bettered by Michelle Obama.

    Senator Sanders’ insurgent campaign has transformed Democratic politics — forcing Secretary Clinton to adopt, albeit sotto voce, key planks of his program such as a federal minimum wage of $15 an hour, tuition-free public college and opposition to the Trans-Pacific Partnership — President Obama’s big trade deal. Until this week, Secretary Clinton failed to outline enough of a bold reform program. Tellingly, she offered signs of one in the final televised debate, making unprompted promises to push immigration reforms, a key Sanders point, within the first 100 days of her presidency.

    […]

    […] The US presidency is hugely powerful: 10% of all posts in federal government are allocated on the basis of political patronage. Secretary Clinton offers the best chance of ensuring those jobs go to competent people. Her choice of Treasury secretary in the aftermath of the banking crisis will be watched with special care, as will an olive branch appointment to Senator Sanders of the kind that president Obama made to her in 2008. She offers the greatest hope that the supreme court defends abortion rights and looks again at issues like campaign finance as well as background checks on gun owners. Yet America will soon find itself weakened at home and abroad if the new president is as badly served by congress as Mr Obama has been for most of his tenure.

    […]

  268. blf says

    Trump uses Gettysburg address to threaten to sue sex assault accusers (the Grauniad’s edit in {curly braces}):

    Candidate puts grievances before policy in proposing ‘contract’ with voters

    In what was billed as a policy speech to lay out his vision for the first 100 days of his administration, as part of a grand new Contract for the American Voter, Donald Trump first pledged to sue every woman who has accused him of sexual assault.

    […]

    [… T]he Republican presidential candidate also railed against the media, singling out the corporate owners of NBC, CNN and the Washington Post, all outlets he has complained about during his campaign, for special scrutiny under a Trump administration.

    […]

    Most of the policy proposals Trump eventually presented were a rehash of proposals that had already been made on the campaign trail. […]

    […]

    Christina Reynolds, a spokeswoman for the Clinton campaign, responded to the speech by saying in a statement: “Trump’s major new policy was to promise political and legal retribution against the women who have accused him of groping them.

    “Like Trump’s campaign, this speech gave us a troubling view as to what a Trump state of the union {address} would sound like: rambling, unfocused, full of conspiracy theories and attacks on the media […].”

    […]

  269. slithey tove (twas brillig (stevem)) says

    why was HRC wrong to go to wall street to tell them they had to fix their mess?
    EG: you have a clock that usually works well. You take it to a clock-maker for its annual maintenance.
    It comes back running backwards half the day and for the other half of the day, forward at twice the speed. Don’t you take it back to the clock-maker and tell him he broke it and has to fix it, that you’ll be watching him carefully from now on?
    You don’t just destroy the clock and give it all to some kid down the street expecting him to fix it all up; giving you back a working clock.
    I’m out of touch and can’t get past thinking of it in that analogous scenario. What am I missing?

  270. slithey tove (twas brillig (stevem)) says

    re @357:
    QFT
    Strongly recommend clicking the link in 357 to read that longish endorsement of HRC and vilification of Drumph.

  271. KG says

    why was HRC wrong to go to wall street to tell them they had to fix their mess? – slithey tove

    You don’t tell a gang of crooks they “have to fix their mess”. You send them to trial, jail them and confiscate their ill-gotten gains once convicted, and ensure that they are never in a position to resume their criminal careers. And i’m not being hyperbolic or metaphorical here: the last few years have exposed multiple criminal conspiracies among bankers, quite apart from their reckless gambling with other people’s money.

  272. consciousness razor says

    EG: you have a clock that usually works well. You take it to a clock-maker for its annual maintenance.
    […]
    I’m out of touch and can’t get past thinking of it in that analogous scenario. What am I missing?

    The clock represents what? It usually works well — does that correspond to anything in particular? Wall St. types get stupidly fucking rich … is that what “working well” looks like?
    The clock maker represents what? It maintains the clock? Do clocks make themselves or fix themselves?

    Maybe you’re missing that your analogy doesn’t make any fucking sense.

  273. slithey tove (twas brillig (stevem)) says

    @362:
    the clock represents the banking system and investment houses that not just crashed but has all these little wiggley “features” allowing the bankers and investment houses to screw their investors.
    clock makers are people skilled at servicing clocks and optimum for annual maintenance. representing the wall street “meisters” who maintain the value of wall street as a profitable place to invest.
    “working well” was meant to refer to using wall street “casually”, and still make a profit through investing in stocks and bonds, or earning interest on passively dumping funds into savings accounts. Wells Fargo has played too many games with that system. Part of the inspiration for the analogy of “backwards half the day, twice as fast, forwards, the other half”.
    nd the “works well” phrase was reference to ideal, working as originally intended. not historical reference.
    Still, we have a broken clock, do we take it to a skilled person, who builds clocks, to fix it, or do we call in an unskilled neophyte and expect an ideal repair?
    still stuck

  274. slithey tove (twas brillig (stevem)) says

    re kg@361:
    yes the guy that “broke the clock” did a criminal act and deserves to be taken to court. Doing that leaves you with a broken clock. Isn’t it better to watch the repairman fix the broken device and jail him if he continues to further his damages?
    Sometimes it’s worth clinging to the edge of the cliff and telling the guy that pushed you over to pull you back up. when no else is capable.

  275. says

    SC @347, sometimes I think the Breitbart people are running themselves for president (or emperor), and they are just using Donald Trump as a front.

    SC @340, in Joy Reid’s coverage of the alt-right attacks against David French, both she and French noted that he is not the only one. Other Republicans are receiving an onslaught of hate from the fringes of the rightwing. French did not blame Trump, but I do. Trump made it okay for these racists and anti-semites to show up in public proudly spewing hate.

    It was really disturbing to hear about the French family having their phone calls interrupted with hate speech. I don’t even know how that could be done. The alt-right extremists attacked French’s wife’s blog. They attacked his daughter.

  276. consciousness razor says

    On an unrelated note, a less rosy perspective on Clinton: Why should we trust you? Clinton’s big problem with young black Americans

    slithey tove:

    Still, we have a broken clock, do we take it to a skilled person, who builds clocks, to fix it, or do we call in an unskilled neophyte and expect an ideal repair?
    still stuck

    Government agencies and officials can implement various programs and regulations that would “fix” things, and they can enforce laws so violators will be held accountable. It is not the case that they are “unskilled neophytes” at doing that (i.e., what’s actually needed), by virtue of the fact that they are not the sort of experienced criminals, cheaters, liars and cranks you’re characterizing as a “skilled person” who may somehow repair the problem. The latter, and the institutions they’ve structured around themselves, are the problems to be fixed. What they do doesn’t usually “work well” in any coherent moral sense, and they are not interested in nor capable of fixing it. It is not broken to them, and nothing they currently do (which consists of breaking it for everyone but them) can bring it out of its broken state.

    I know your handle on logic is often shaky at best, but I have a hard believing you’re having any genuine trouble here. My guess is that you’re not arguing honestly, because you think Clinton must be defended with whatever bullshit you can conjure up. And in that case, I probably shouldn’t bother and should just tell you to fuck off.

  277. says

    SC @357, thanks for that link. I agree with you and with slithey tove @360 that the article is best enjoyed in its entirety. It is well written, and it builds its case well.

    I enjoyed this quick summary of Trumpishness:

    Trump is an old American story and a very new one—a familiar variety of charlatan blooming again in the age of social media. It wasn’t so long ago that he was a fixture of the local tabloids (“Best Sex I’ve Ever Had”), with a sideline as a cartoon tyrant on “The Apprentice.” Then, beginning in 2011, came the bigotry of his attempt to delegitimize the Obama Presidency through voluble support of the “birther” theory.

    We need to keep reminding ourselves that Trump always was, and he still is, a charlatan.

  278. says

    Yeah, I’m not buying this one bit.

    Trump and his campaign manager are claiming that they are too busy to sue all the women who accused Trump of sexual misconduct … too busy right now.

    The campaign manager, Kellyanne Conway, accidentally offered up the real reason Trump is including those threats to sue in his rally speeches now:

    When asked by “Meet the Press” host Chuck Todd, “Why not sue them now?” Kellyanne Conway responded: “Because we’re busy winning the presidency.”

    “We’re a little bit busy over here doing that,” she said.

    “He’s just putting people on notice that they can’t just falsely accuse him.”

    The Hill link

    Right. Read that last quote again. Translation: “Please, please, please! No more women accusing Trump of sexual molestation! I just can’t take it. I can’t make this go away, but we’re going to try by having Trump threaten to sue every female in the country, if necessary. We’ll sue! Shut the fuck up, you women who have been assaulted. We’ll sue. We’ll make you sorry if you talk.”

  279. Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls says

    This video is a prime example of how the Trump campaign refuses to answer simple questions.

    The surrogate talked about replacing ACA without a clear indication of how it would be done. Then they avoid answering a simple question. “Trump proposes a trillion dollars in infrastructure investment. WHERE DOES THE MONEY COME FROM? INCREASING THE DEFICIT?” Dodged the question totally.

    The answer according to past Trump: “Borrow, then declare bankruptcy.” Renegotiate the National Debt.

  280. slithey tove (twas brillig (stevem)) says

    re @366:

    Government agencies and officials can implement various programs and regulations that would “fix” things, and they can enforce laws so violators will be held accountable. It is not the case that they are “unskilled neophytes”

    Thanks for that. I agree, I mischarcterized government agencies as “neophytes”. That was the mistake I missed. oops,

  281. says

    I hope that Hispanic Democrats heard Jan Brewer’s stupid comment, and that if fires them up to get out the vote.

    The former Arizona Governor said this about Hispanic Democrats:

    They don’t get out and vote. They don’t vote. It’s wishful thinking on their behalf. Donald Trump is going to secure the border and that is a very important issue in Arizona.

    When Trump started his campaign by calling Mexican immigrants “rapists” and “criminals,” Jan Brewer thanked him for “telling it like it really, truly is.”

  282. says

    This is hilarious in a way. Donald Trump is softening his rallying cry in which he claims that Mexico will pay for the wall. He says that Mexico will “reimburse” us for the wall.

    […] Proposing a new piece of legislation called the “End Illegal Immigration Act,” the Republican nominee told a crowd in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania that Mexico would “reimburse” the U.S. for the cost.

    “The End Illegal Immigration act fully funds the construction of a wall on our southern border,” he said in a speech laying out his vision for the first 100 days of a Trump presidency.

    “Don’t worry about it,” he cautioned the crowd in an aside, holding up a finger. “Remember I said that Mexico is paying for the wall.”

    An audience member whooped.

    “With the full understanding that the country of Mexico will be reimbursing the United States for the full cost of such a wall, okay?” Trump continued, to a more muted cheer.

    If elected, Trump would need to persuade Congress to draft a law to fund his proposal. The Republican nominee has promised that the cost for the “big, beautiful” 50-foot structure would not cost more than $12 billion dollars. Fact-checkers have put forth higher estimates, ranging up to $25 billion. […]

    Talking Points Memo link

  283. says

    Wow. The Pennsylvania GOP is really serious about this poll-watching voter intimidation that Trump is recommending.

    The Pennsylvania Republican Party filed a complaint late Friday night asking a federal court to allow out-of-county poll watchers to monitor voting stations on Election Day.

    […] the suit alleges that state law restricting poll watchers to the county in which they’re registered violates the First Amendment and denies them their right to equal protection under the law.

    […] Republican Party of Pennsylvania GOP Communications Director Megan Sweeney [said] “a commonsense remedy to ensure the fairest election possible.”

    University of California law professor Rick Hasen, who runs the Election Law Blog, noted the “awfully late” date of the suit in a Friday post and said the U.S. Constitutional issues at hand seem “exceptionally weak.” […]

    Link

  284. says

    Well, this is just another layer of Stupid. Donald Trump is now suggesting that his supporters commit voter fraud in order to help him win. WTF?

    During a Saturday campaign stop in Cleveland, Ohio, Donald Trump doubled down on recent claims that the entire election is rigged, including what he baselessly argues is widespread voter fraud against him.

    In almost the same breath, he jokingly insinuated that his supporters could commit voter fraud to help him win, by illegally casting ballots in several locations.

    “Maybe they’ll vote for Trump, I don’t know, maybe I shouldn’t be saying that,” he said, shrugging and egging the crowd on. “I may be hurting myself, you’re right. You’re right. Maybe they’re going to vote for Trump. All right, let’s forget that. It’s okay for them to do it.” […]

    “Are these people playing games with us? Right?” […]

    Link

  285. says

    SC @347, sometimes I think the Breitbart people are running themselves for president (or emperor), and they are just using Donald Trump as a front.

    Oh, yes – as I suggested @ #257 above, I suspect he’s a tool used by Bannon and Putin to advance the global far Right. Something I think articles about a potential Trump TV might be overlooking is the era in which Trump/the Trump brand was forged – the ’80s. If you lived through the Reagan years in the US, you understand the worship of wealth, excess, and corporate criminals. Trump’s always been tacky as flypaper, but his dream was to be accepted by the elites. As I said before, I think he honestly believed his campaign would endear him to these people. His pathetic remarks at the Al Smith dinner showed his inner sense of disgrace and humiliation at their rejection.

    He’s always wanted himself and his brand to be associated with luxury, opulence, and glamor, and after the campaign and associated revelations, that association has been obliterated. And, importantly, psychologically there’s no real distinction between his self and his brand – he’s the epitome of Fromm’s “marketing personality.”

    Even if he can build a far-Right media network in the US, I don’t think he’ll ever be able to accept a rightwing populist role. He loves the adulation of the crowds at his rallies, but recoils at the thought of being one of them. I expect that any Trump media venture will become increasingly tied to Putin, Russia’s oligarchs, and the European far Right, which he can imagine as a rising and impressive new global elite – more Marion Le Pen than Pennsylvania steel.

  286. Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls says

    A group has endorsed Donald Trump: ISIS.

    However, interviews with ISIS supporters and recent defectors suggest just the opposite: jihadists are rooting for a Trump presidency because they believe that he will lead the United States on a path to self-destruction. Last week, an ISIS spokesman wrote on the ISIS-affiliated Telegram channel, Nashir, “I ask Allah to deliver America to Trump.” Meanwhile, an ISIS supporter posted on one of the numerous jihadist “channels” hosted by the Telegram messaging application, “The ‘facilitation’ of Trump’s arrival in the White House must be a priority for jihadists at any cost!!!”

    Donald, you are a tool of ISIS, as you play into what they want from the West with your rhetoric.
    Which is prima facie evidence you know nothing about ISIS. Typical alt-right headline ignorance….

  287. Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls says

    Video of The Donald talking about “phony polls” (scroll down for the video). He praises the Rasmussen poll. In typical Trump fashion, he likes what he hears, but doesn’t do any fact checking.
    The Rasmussen poll skews republican.

    Silver analyzed 105 polls released by Rasmussen Reports and its subsidiary, Pulse Opinion Research, for Senate and gubernatorial races in numerous states across the country. The bottom line is that on average, Rasmussen’s polls were off by 5.8% with a bias of 3.9% in favor of the Republican candidates….

    Just to look at one methodological issue, if no one answers the phone, Rasmussen picks a different random phone number instead of calling back two, three, four or more times as other pollsters do. Why does this matter? Because 20-somethings (who skew Democratic) are often out, whereas 60-somethings (who skew Republican) are often in. By not being persistent in finally getting through to a randomly chosen phone number, the sample is inherently biased towards Republicans because they are easier to reach. This may not have been intentional but it is understandable if you want to finish your survey in 4 hours. Nevertheless, cutting corners in the name of speed and cost don’t improve accuracy.

    Yep, a poll to be dismissed as inaccurate, but Trump likes it.

  288. says

    Nerd @377, Trump is going to have a hard time with that one. When he is accused of being supported by terrible people, he usually says he doesn’t know them (David Duke, for example), and then it turns out that Trump is lying.

    When Trump is accused of having done terrible things, he uses a combination of “I don’t know them, so I couldn’t have done terrible things to them,” “they are all lying,” and “Hillary Clinton’s sleazy campaign put them up to it.” (Not knowing the women he kissed and/or groped without their consent turns out to be a particularly blatant lie: one had interviewed him, one had appeared on his “Apprentice” show, etc.)

    With ISIS, Trump’s usual hit-back strategy is not going to work. They want the same thing he wants: ISIS wants Trump to win the presidential race.

    My bet is that Trump will still try to spin the ISIS endorsement as some kind of lie coming from the Clinton campaign.

    In other Trumpian news, here is one of his latest quotes about polls: “I really think those polls are very inaccurate when it comes to women. I think we’re doing better with women than with men, frankly.”

  289. consciousness razor says

    With ISIS, Trump’s usual hit-back strategy is not going to work. They want the same thing he wants: ISIS wants Trump to win the presidential race.

    How’s that a problem? He simply doesn’t need to agree with them (or doesn’t need to admit) that “he will lead the United States on a path to self-destruction,” which is supposed to be the reason for their “endorsement.” All he has to do is deny it, claim that their assertion is false, because it’s just presented as some unsubstantiated assertion which is allegedly coming from ISIS.

    It’s also a little uncomfortable that you’re putting yourself in the situation of implicitly saying “I agree with the official (?) ISIS assessment of our situation. We value the same things, to the extent that we see Trump’s presidency as being self-destructive to this country.” Why were we in a state of mind where we thought we should trust their opinions? Or why did we think anybody would be interested to know what those opinions are, so they’d form their own opinions based on that information? How is it actually useful to us? Are we trying to get the ISIS vote or something?

    Isn’t it easier and less confusing for everyone to leave ISIS out of it totally, because their opinions don’t mean shit and are not authoritative in any way? All you have to do is give some actual reasons why Trump would be a disastrous choice for president. Then he has to respond to that. I don’t know or care what kind of strategy he might apply then. It’s good enough that it’s true he’d be a disastrous choice, and that you’re able to support a claim to that effect. But however that goes, supporting it better not look anything like “because ISIS says so” or “because I say so” or “because Trump says so,” etc.

  290. tomh says

    Monday’s print edition of The New York Times includes a brilliant double-page spread listing “All the People, Places and Things Donald Trump Has Insulted On Twitter Since Declaring His Candidacy for President.” In alphabetical order. You can see it online as, The 281 People, Places and Things Donald Trump Has Insulted on Twitter: A Complete List, but it’s more effective in print. Of course, it’s only since 2015, so it’s missing a lot of juicy ones about Rosie O’Donnell, Obama and birtherism, etc. Pretty impressive, though.

  291. Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls says

    Addendum to my #382.
    Since this is election season, the Redhead, who Trump would consider a “nasty woman” as she sees through his lies, approves of Senator Warren’s message.

  292. says

    Bernie Sanders responded to the latest link of Clinton campaign emails by WikiLeaks:

    Trust me, if they went into our emails—I suppose which may happen, who knows—I’m sure there would be statements that would be less than flattering about, you know, the Clinton staff. That’s what happens in campaigns. […].

  293. says

    Lawyers are offering to defend, pro bono, the women who have accused Trump of sexual assault. That should take some of the sting out of Trump’s threat to sue all of the women. It sounds like some of these lawyers are also offering to defend journalists.

    I repeat: I will represent pro bono anyone #Trump sues for exercising their free speech rights. Many other lawyers have offered to join me. [from Ted Boutrous]

    You can count on me to help with this pro bono. [from Laurence Tribe]

    Laurence Tribe is a law professor at Harvard. Ted Boutrous works at the law firm Gibson Dunn.

  294. Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls says

    Lynna #385, I wonder if a counter SLAPP suit for say half a billion would make all litigation go away.

  295. says

    Another Trump scam has surfaced, as detailed by the Associated Press.

    Donald Trump said he received a $17 million insurance payment in 2005 for hurricane damage to Mar-a-Lago, his private club in Palm Beach, but The Associated Press found little evidence of such large-scale damage.

    Two years after a series of storms, the real estate tycoon said he didn’t know how much had been spent on repairs but acknowledged he pocketed some of the money. Trump transferred funds into his personal accounts, saying that under the terms of his policy, “you didn’t have to reinvest it.” […]

  296. says

    Nerd @386, Trump has a habit of threatening to sue people in order to pressure them to shut up, or to get contractors to accept less money than he owes them, etc. He has a history of slapping people with lawsuits, that’s for sure. I hadn’t thought about a counter SLAPP suit. That would be interesting.

    I doubt that the lawsuits against the women that accused Trump of sexual assault will ever be filed. I think he is threatening to sue in order to encourage his accusers to go away, and in order to make other women think twice about coming forward.

    His excuse for not suing them now, for saying he’ll sue them as soon as the election is over, is that he is too busy right now. After he is elected he won’t be busy? He would not be busy working with his transition team? Or, he thinks he would not be busy as President? He thinks it would not look bad for a sitting president to sue a lot of women? Or, maybe this is the clue that he really does not think he will be elected and that he is planning on taking some time off to relax and to sue people as soon as the campaign ends?

    In other news we don’t really need, Trump proved again today that he does not understand how polling works, nor does he understand the terms that pollsters use.
    http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/trump-polling-theory-debunked

  297. Brother Ogvorbis, Fully Defenestrated Emperor of Steam, Fire and Absurdity says

    Given the number of women that Trump has sexually assaulted, maybe they need to fold it into a class action lawsuit?

  298. Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls says

    Given the number of women that Trump has sexually assaulted, maybe they need to fold it into a class action lawsuit?

    Along with a counter SLAPP suit, which might be possible? I’m all for it.

  299. Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls says

    A Rachael Maddow segment where she and Steve Kornacki discuss what may be President Obama’s “retirement”. This appears to be setting up flipping state legislatures in 2020 from red to blue when the next census will be held, to obtain fairer and more competitive districts. Since 2020 is a Presidential election year, a large democrat turnout will happen (whereas 2010 was as off year with lower turnout favoring the rethugs) which could end with flipping a few states. Changing demographics will help too.

  300. says

    Donald Trump continues to cite endorsements from the United States military, from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), and from police unions that he simply does not have.

    Yesterday, he told an interviewer that the US military “conceptually” endorsed him. WTF does that mean? The Department of Defense enforces guidelines that restrict active duty military personnel from publicly supporting political candidates. The same is true for civilians that work for the military.

    What Trump does have is an endorsement from 88 retired military people. (He has inflated these 88 people to “200 retired generals,” which is not true.) To put his 88 endorsees in perspective, Mitt Romney was endorsed by 500 retired generals and admirals.

    When it comes to endorsements from police officers, we see Trump’s habitual hyperbole in action, with him claiming to have been endorsed by “virtually every police department.” He does have endorsements from the Fraternal Order of Police and from the federal police union. However, the largest police union, the Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association in New York (23,000 members), has not endorsed Trump.

    […] Police departments as a whole do not typically endorse candidates in elections. Though that has not stopped Trump from saying they do.

    After a meeting with first responders and law enforcement officials in northern Florida on Monday, Trump later boasted on Twitter that he was honored for being endorsed by the St. Johns County Sheriff’s Office. […]

    But the department did no such thing. The sheriff’s office took to both Facebook and Twitter to make clear that despite Trump’s comment, they have “NOT made any official endorsement.”

    NBC News link

    And now, let’s talk about ICE. No, despite Trump’s repetition of this lie, ICE has not endorsed him. Federal agencies do not endorse political candidates. The Hatch Act prevents such endorsements. What Trump does have is an endorsement from one union that represents ICE employees, the National Immigration and Customs Enforcement Council. That union represents about one fourth of the 20,000 people that work for ICE.

  301. says

    Republican dunderhead, Representative Darrell Issa from California, got on President Obama’s last nerve recently. On Sunday, President Obama responded to Issa latest hypocritical actions:

    […] I’m not going to belabor this point, but let me just point out that as far as I can tell, [Issa’s] primary contribution to the United States Congress has been to obstruct and to waste taxpayer dollar on trumped-up investigations that have led nowhere. And this is now a guy who, because poll numbers are bad, has sent out brochures with my picture on them touting his cooperation on issues with me.

    Now, that is the definition of chutzpah. Here’s a guy who called my administration perhaps the most corrupt in history — despite the fact that actually we have not had a major scandal in my administration — that, when Trump was suggesting that I wasn’t even born here, said, “Well, I don’t know”‘ was not sure…. This guy has spent all his time simply trying to obstruct, to feed the same sentiments that resulted in Donald Trump becoming their nominee…. And now he’s sending out brochures touting his cooperation with me. Now, that is shameless.

    https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2016/10/24/remarks-president-dccc-event

    The quote is from remarks by the President at an event in California.

  302. What a Maroon, living up to the 'nym says

    This is a few days old, but still newsworthy (apologies if I missed this upthread).

    Curt Schilling’s first interview as a Senate candidate, in which he tries to offend the five voters he’s left unoffended so far. Some lowlights:

    Like Trump, whom he has endorsed, Schilling put forward his plans to run as a political outsider, noting that he is registered as an Independent and is currently as fed up with the Right as he is with the Left. It didn’t take long for Tapper to bring up what would be one of Schilling’s biggest obstacles in getting deep blue Massachusetts to vote for him: his history of overt racism.

    Last year, Schilling was temporarily suspended by ESPN for sharing a meme that compared Muslims to Nazis. Earlier this year, the network ultimately fired him for a Facebook post that mocked transgender people. “You’re going to have to defend that post to progressive voters,” Tapper said.

    In an attempt to correct Tapper, Schilling said,I compared Muslim extremists to Nazis, stressing the extremist part of that equation. If you take the word ‘extremist’ out it’s incredibly racist post, which is why the word extremist is in there, he said. But in his next breath, Schilling added, There’s a very long standing connection between Islam and the Nazi party and you can go back to before the second World War and talk to that one.

    Schilling then defended the transgender cartoon by saying he was simply reposting someone else’s material, the same way Trump has defended retweeting white supremacists. My comment was men should use the men’s room and women use the women’s room, he said. Why do we need the federal government telling us otherwise?

    [….]

    I would like to ask you something as a person who is practicing the Jewish faith and have since you were young, Schilling said. I don’t understand, and maybe this is the amateur, non-politician in me, I don’t understand how people of Jewish faith can back the Democratic party which over the last 50 years have been so clearly anti-Israel, so clearly anti-Jewish Israel.

    [….]

    [from a later interview with Chris Matthews]

    In response, Matthews explained to Schilling that it may not be wise to “ask a person of a religious faith or a race to speak for that religious group and ask them to sort of account for it.”

    Not true! Schilling shot back, once more channeling Trump. Liberals do it to Christians all the time. As a white male Christian, he complained that people just assume he’s a racist, adding, I’m tired of hearing the media tell me what I should care about.

    Here’s a thought: Schilling was a hero in Arizona before he was traded to the Sox. Maybe he can return there and run for office.

    He’ll have to hurry, though. Arizona is starting to come around….

  303. militantagnostic says

    Lynna @393

    Republican dunderhead, Representative Darrell Issa from California

    The name rang a bell, so I searched Respectful Insolence (Orac) for them the name and yes, Issa panders to the anti vax loons to a degree that would make Jill Stein blush.

  304. says

    If you don’t like the facts, just refuse to report them. That’s what Kansas Governor Sam Brownback has decided to do:

    […] Brownback, despite promising to measure the results of a “real life experiment” in cutting taxes, has decided to cancel a quarterly report on the status of the state’s economy.

    Although Brownback’s spokeswoman said “a lot of people were confused by the report,” no one has been fooled. The problem was that the reports didn’t match the governor’s predictions for the state’s soon-to-be-booming economy. […]

    Bloomberg link, “Kansas Ends Bad Economic News by Not Reporting It.”

    […] Remember when Brownback said in his 2014 re-election campaign that “the sun is shining in Kansas”? Alas, all that sunshine has disappeared behind a big, dark cloud of obfuscation. […]

    Kansas City Star link

  305. says

    militant agnostic @395, It’s amazing that most of the rightwing dunderheads espouse a suite of bogus concepts. Do they want to be wrong at all levels on all issues?

    In other news, Marco Rubio was booed off the stage at a rally in Florida. I certainly hope that this is a sign he will lose his senate seat.

    […] when the emcee introduced the senator, they grew louder.

    “I’m going to introduce a man who represents Latinos, no matter where you’re from,” the emcee boomed in Spanish. The boos grew louder still. “Ladies and gentlemen, the senator for the state of Florida, a Latino like you and me … his name is Marco Rubio! Applaud!”

    Instead, the boos rained down on the senator, drowning out what appeared to be a handful of supporters in the crowd. […]

    NPR link.

    The setting was the Calle Orange Festival in Orlando. Rubio was looking for support from the Puerto Rican community there.

  306. says

    The New York Times published a series of old interviews with Donald Trump. Trump said, among other things, that “most people aren’t worthy of respect.”

    […] The interviews, […] were conducted by Michael D’Antonio, a Trump biographer and Pulitzer Prize winner. Unhappy with Trump’s campaign, according to the Times, D’Antonio gave transcripts of the tapes to the Clinton campaign, and he went to the newspaper when the campaign didn’t act on them.

    The quotes and audio clips published Monday, though occasionally lacking context, paint a picture of Trump’s worldview in the run-up to the start of his presidential campaign in June 2015. […]

    Trump brags about his presence in the media (“Well, most people aren’t in print, though. Don’t forget. How many people are in print?”) and of the manifestations of that fame when he walks into a star-struck room.

    “I think what would unnerve me is if it didn’t happen,” he recalled to D’Antonio about crowds of people watching his every move.

    He considered those who lose fame, like Arsenio Hall, who Trump called “dead as dog meat,” as not worth his time.

    “For the most part,” Trump said in a separate exchange, “you can’t respect people because most people aren’t worthy of respect.”

    The flip side, of course, is the Republican nominee’s inability to confront his own short-comings.

    “No, I don’t want to think about it,” Trump said when asked if he contemplated the meaning of his life. “I don’t like to analyze myself because I might not like what I see.”

    Asked by the Times about the interviews, Trump called the recordings “Pretty old and pretty boring stuff. Hope people enjoy it.”

    http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/trump-new-york-times-audio-dantonio

  307. says

    Here is Hillary Clinton’s new “closing argument ad.”

    In other news: we have more fodder for our “how to make money while running for president” file. Trump used money donated to his campaign to buy his own book:

    Donald Trump used small donors’ money to buy nearly $300,000 worth of books from the publisher of his Art of the Deal last month, continuing a pattern of plowing campaign money back into his own businesses.

    Huff Po link

  308. says

    Remember the emergence of the hashtag #blamebillybush that popped up after Melania implied that Bush had egged Donald on to make “dirty” comments about women?

    Well, conspiracy theorist and close buddy of Trump, Alex Jones, has taken the “blame Billy Bush” idea a step further. He says that Bush was acting as a secret operative for the CIA to set Trump up to make comments about sexual assault. Media Matters link

    […] Goading him and goading him, and tell me sex stories, tell me sex stories, it was all a set up folks. Him losing his job and all that’s just a foil to divert. That guy is CIA just like the sun came up this morning. […]

  309. says

    A former Trump rental agent described the racist policies of Fred Trump, and how Donald Trump (at Fred’s side) agreed with his father.

    The Maddow Show link.

    The video is about 13 minutes long. Maddow makes the point that Trump claimed that a lot of companies were being investigated at the same time, and that was not true. When the investigation of the Trump management company began, it was focused only on Trump. Also, after settling the first lawsuit with no admission of guilt, the Trump’s apparently broke the agreement, so they were investigated and sued again a year later.

    Lawrence O’Donnell discussed the housing discrimination issue with Joy Reid.

  310. says

    In reference to the last link in comment 403, I should have noted that the discussion of the housing discrimination issue begins at about the 9 minute mark in the Lawrence O’Donnell video.

  311. says

    Libertarian candidate for vice president, Bill Weld, is acknowledging reality, and is urging people to vote for Hillary Clinton:

    […] After careful observation and reflection, I have come to believe that Donald Trump, if elected President of the United States, would not be able to stand up to this pressure and this criticism without becoming unhinged and unable to perform competently the duties of his office. […]

    Every citizen must be aware of the power and responsibility of each individual vote. This is not the time to cast a jocular or feel-good vote for a man whom you may have briefly found entertaining. […]

    http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/bill-weld-tells-voters-pick-clinton-over-trump

    https://www.johnsonweld.com/statement_by_gov_bill_weld_regarding_the_final_weeks_election

  312. says

    You may remember Steven Colbert and others highlighting the fact that a white, middle-aged woman was holding a sign saying “Blacks for Trump” at some rallies. In addition to that woman, there’s often a single black man (and/or woman) standing in the audience just off Trump’s left shoulder. Who are these people?

    […] At Tuesday’s Trump event in Sanford, the Republican nominee praised the “great” “Blacks for Trump” signs behind him, one of which was held by a white woman and another by a man who goes by the name “Michael the Black Man.”

    […] the man, who also goes by the names Maurice Woodside and Michael Symonette, was a former member of the Yahweh ben Yahweh cult. In 1990, the group’s charismatic leader, Hulon Mitchell Jr., was charged for conspiracy to murder. He required inductees to kill people to gain entry to the cult. […]

    The newspaper reported that “Michael” made a name for himself in the Miami area in recent years as a virulently anti-gay, anti-liberal preacher who has opened a rally for Rick Santorum and earned praise from Glenn Beck.

    The Trump campaign has positioned him at the front of the crowd at multiple events, including a Sept. 17 rally in downtown Miami and another on Oct. 12 in Lakeland.

    The “Blacks for Trump” signs “Michael” passes out at rallies feature the URL to his website, Gods2.com, which is full of anti-Hillary Clinton conspiracy videos. Visitors can also purchase “Trump & Republicans Are Not Racist Gods2.com” shirts for $20.

    “Michael” told the New Times that he is supporting Trump in part out of his loathing for Clinton.

    “One reason is because Hillary’s last name is Rodham, and their family members are Rothschilds, who enslaved 13,000 slaves as collateral,” he said.

    Talking Points Memo link

  313. says

    Linda Harvey works for Mission America, and she writes for World Net Daily. Here are some excerpts from Linda Harvey’s latest column:

    […] Hillary hates you and fears your “toxic masculinity” (the feminist slur for almost any expression of male strength and principle). Her agenda will threaten your livelihood, limit your freedom and faith, endanger your children and misinterpret your motives.

    Hillary’s presidency will cast a spell over normal gender expression, the natural family and new human life. Her aura emits decay and rebellion, starting with her hatred of God the Father and Jesus Christ. […]

    Hillary is unsettled simply by a strong male nearby. She spent time on Ellen DeGeneres’ talk show obsessing about what she called Trump’s “stalking” demeanor on stage at the second debate. […]

    As she champions destructive movements like “Black Lives Matter,” Hillary adds saltpeter to the simmering stew that suppresses maturity in young black men, encouraging instead a pathological sense of entitlement rather than educational and professional achievement, respect for law enforcement and personal integrity. […]

    Hillary loves weak, feminized boys and men, not authentically masculine ones as designed by God. So she signed on to Obama’s illegitimate transgender bathroom mandate last spring, which allows males who are pretend girls to invade private female space, and for boys’ restrooms to be invaded by girls who are pretend boys. […]

    One strong male does stand up to Hillary Clinton. It’s Donald Trump. Despite his known weaknesses, Trump still displays many strengths important to a presidency. He advocates policies to affirm families, uphold religious freedom, encourage productivity, hold the media accountable and foster national security.

    Right Wing Watch

    In the past, Linda Harvey has also called Hillary Clinton “Jezebel” and a “deviant.”

  314. says

    Several late-night hosts covered Trump’s recent groping of the flag and other oddities in the Trump campaign. Jimmy Kimmel, Seth Meyers, Stephen Colbert, Jimmy Fallon and others are featured in this mashup video.

    Politico link.

  315. Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls says

    *rhetorical*
    Is it just me, or does it seem like the Trump surrogates in the last week are almost as arrogant and obnoxious as Trump himself? (look over there. didn’t look. rigged media.)
    */rhetorical*

  316. says

    Helen Mirren defends “nasty women”:

    […] “To make you proud that you chose to honor me tonight, I am going to be the nastiest of all nasty women.” […]

    She gave several tips to fellow “nasty women” on drinking, relationships and playing blackjack, before adding: “Ignore anyone who judges the way you look, especially if he or she is some anonymous miserable creep, lurking on the internet or is a bloated, small headed, dinosaur-y handed candidate for president.” […]

    The Hill link

    Miren was speaking at the Elle Women in Hollywood gala in LA.

  317. Brother Ogvorbis, Fully Defenestrated Emperor of Steam, Fire and Absurdity says

    vice Lynna @407:

    He advocates policies to affirm families[1], uphold religious freedom[2], encourage productivity[3], hold the media accountable[4] and foster national security[5].

    [1] He supports true biblical families. With multiple wives and concubines, women in their place (until they get too old), and treating women as subhuman.

    [2] He supports your freedom of religion as long as you are Christian. And don’t look or dress different. Or speak a language other than English. Or come from certain areas of the world.

    [3] He encourages greater productivity. Which means that fewer workers, who are paid less, produce more goods so that the 1%ers can absorb even more of the economy. And I guess that contracting at one price and then forcing the contractor to accept less means more bang for the buck, the very definition of productivity.

    [4] He wants to hold the media accountable. Which means that he is in favour of government censorship of the press? Does this mean Faux Newz and Breitbart are held accountable for their lies? Or only outlets that fail to toe the party line?

    [5] And he fosters national security. By promising to abandon our historic allies, encourage the proliferation of nuclear weapons, buddying up to right wing authoritarian dictators, and being racist and bigoted. But he is the choice of ISIS and Vladimir Putin, so . . .

    Yup. Sounds like a white nationalist/Christian nationalist wet dream.

  318. Brother Ogvorbis, Fully Defenestrated Emperor of Steam, Fire and Absurdity says

    vice Lynna @407:

    He advocates policies to affirm families[1], uphold religious freedom[2], encourage productivity[3], hold the media accountable[4] and foster national security[5].

    [1] He supports true biblical families. With multiple wives and concubines, women in their place (until they get too old), and treating women as subhuman.

    [2] He supports your freedom of religion as long as you are Christian. And don’t look or dress different. Or speak a language other than English. Or come from certain areas of the world.

    [3] He encourages greater productivity. Which means that fewer workers, who are paid less, produce more goods so that the 1%ers can absorb even more of the economy. And I guess that contracting at one price and then forcing the contractor to accept less means more bang for the buck, the very definition of productivity.

    [4] He wants to hold the media accountable. Which means that he is in favour of government censorship of the press? Does this mean Faux Newz and Breitbart are held accountable for their lies? Or only outlets that fail to toe the party line?

    [5] And he fosters national security. By promising to abandon our historic allies, encourage the proliferation of nuclear weapons, buddying up to right wing authoritarian dictators, and being racist and bigoted. But he is the choice of ISIS and Vladimir Putin, so . . .

    Yup. Sounds like a white nationalist/Christian nationalist wet dream.

  319. Brother Ogvorbis, Fully Defenestrated Emperor of Steam, Fire and Absurdity says

    Sorry for the double post.

    =======

    And what is it with having to prove my humanity before I can log in?

  320. says

    Lennie Gerber and Pearl Berlin have been together as a couple for 50 years. They are voting for Hillary Clinton, and, they may be old, by they will give you some trouble if you don’t get out there and vote for Hillary.
    Wonkette link

    Video of the ad Lennie and Pearl made for Hillary Clinton is also available at the link, along with other Lennie and Pearl videos.

  321. says

    Nerd @411, well put.

    In other news, Michelle Goldberg took a closer look at the interview in which Newt Gingrich blew up and verbally accosted Megyn Kelly.

    Tuesday night on Fox News, host Megyn Kelly drove Donald Trump surrogate Newt Gingrich into a contemptuous, finger-jabbing rage by insisting that Trump’s alleged history of sexual predation is a story worth covering.

    Gingrich, the thrice-married co-author of a novel featuring a “pouting sex kitten” Nazi spy, sneered at his uppity female interlocutor: “You are fascinated by sex and you don’t care about public policy.”

    Then, like a man barking orders in bed, he demanded that Kelly repeat his words about Bill Clinton: “I want to hear you use the words, ‘Bill Clinton, sexual predator.’ Say, ‘Bill Clinton, sexual predator.’ ” The segment ended with Kelly telling Gingrich, “You can take your anger issues and spend some time working on them.” […]

    Video is also available at the link.

    Donald Trump liked the verbal bullying techniques that Gingrich deployed. Trump said,

    Congratulations, Newt, on last night. That was an amazing interview. We don’t play games, right, Newt?

  322. says

    One way we can tell for certain that Republicans expect Hillary Clinton to win: they are ramping up talk of impeaching her as soon as she takes office.

  323. Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls says

    Lynna #415
    #411 Is Brother Ogvorbis, and I agree it is well put.

    Yes, Gingrich being an asshole with Megyn Kelly and and Trump’s positive response to Gingrich’s misogynist bullying lost Trump another 100,000 votes. Trump can’t see that the public doesn’t like overt misogynist bullies.

  324. says

    Hillary Clinton turns 69 today. To celebrate, she went to an Adele concert last night. From the stage, Adele said, “I am English, but what happens in America affects me too,” she said. “I am 100 percent for Hillary Clinton. I love her; she’s amazing.”

    Very nice.

  325. Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls says

    Joe Walsh says he is grabbing his musket if Hillary Clinton is elected. Joe Walsh was for a while the Congresscritter from the 8th district here in Illinois. Tammy Duckworth ran against him and won. Tammy Duckworth is now running for the Senate seat, and appears to the leading against the incumbent Mark Kirk.

    I guess that threat would make him a domestic terrorist threat. Maybe the Secret Service will pay him a visit.

  326. Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls says

    The RNC has been under a federal consent decree since the early ’80s to not do any racial profiling/intimidation in polling places after doing so in New Jersey. The order expires next year.
    Donald Trump is essentially resurrecting the same behavior that caused the suit resulting the consent decree with his “poll watching”. The democrats have filed suit in federal court to stop this behavior. The RNC is between a rock and a hard place due to Trump trying the same intimidation tactics that resulted in the consent decree. It will continue for another 8 years if Trump goes through with his idiocy.
    Rachael Maddow goes on about this court filing.

  327. quotetheunquote says

    @Lynna Re: #415: I know very little about Megyn Kelly, but I have to say (and I am shocked to find myself saying this about anyone at Faux) that I really admired her poise; made me wonder, does she have screaming toddlers at home? Because she sure seems to know how to handle one.

    As to her interlocultor, I think he needs to go sit in a corner for a while, to calm down.

    “She turned me into a newt! …. I didn’t get better.”

    “the”

    P.S. Ginger-rich can’t even keep his facts about BC straight – not that it’s relevant to this election at all – BC was NOT disbarred in Arkansas.

  328. Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls says

    Trump has nothing against the election being rigged, if he does the rigging and it helps him. In an article in Bloomberg, it is revealed that the Trump campaign is engaging in voter suppression.

    To compensate for this, Trump’s campaign has devised another strategy, which, not surprisingly, is negative. Instead of expanding the electorate, Bannon and his team are trying to shrink it. “We have three major voter suppression operations under way,” says a senior official. They’re aimed at three groups Clinton needs to win overwhelmingly: idealistic white liberals, young women, and African Americans. Trump’s invocation at the debate of Clinton’s WikiLeaks e-mails and support for the Trans-Pacific Partnership was designed to turn off Sanders supporters. The parade of women who say they were sexually assaulted by Bill Clinton and harassed or threatened by Hillary is meant to undermine her appeal to young women. And her 1996 suggestion that some African American males are “super predators” is the basis of a below-the-radar effort to discourage infrequent black voters from showing up at the polls—particularly in Florida.

    Yep, Crooked Trump showing his stripes.

  329. What a Maroon, living up to the 'nym says

    The Washington Post has an extensive article on the Republican war on women, now becoming a civil war. The whole article is well worth a read, but what really struck me was the response from a couple of BC accusers to the Kelly/Gingrich interview:

    Two of the women who have accused Bill Clinton of sexual misconduct piled on. Juanita Broaddrick tweeted: “Beauty is only skin deep. Megyn Kelly is ugly as hell on the inside.” Paula Jones wrote in a tweet that has since been deleted: “Woohoo, he slammed this nasty heifer!”

    I can understand their opposition to Clinton, but it boggles the mind that they would stand by Trump and echo his language in this way.

  330. says

    Hi, all! Back from a short trip to Montreal (where it wasn’t possible to escape even briefly the US election – not only was it covered on the news there in English and French, but if you watch any US TV networks there’s a constant barrage of ads from New York, New Hampshire, and Vermont).

    I see Nerd has just posted about the recent Bloomberg piece. Another interesting aspect is how clearly it sets out how Trump is doing exactly what he’s always done in business, as I described a while back: plundering organizations and operations for his own personal ends and enrichment while destroying them from within:

    …By Election Day, the campaign expects to have captured 12 million to 14 million e-mail addresses and contact information (including credit card numbers) for 2.5 million small-dollar donors, who together will have ponied up almost $275 million.

    Since Trump paid to build this audience with his own campaign funds, he alone will own it after Nov. 8 and can deploy it to whatever purpose he chooses. He can sell access to other campaigns or use it as the basis for a 2020 presidential run. It could become the audience for a Trump TV network. As Bannon puts it: “Trump is an entrepreneur.”

    Whatever Trump decides, this group will influence Republican politics going forward. These voters, whom Cambridge Analytica has categorized as “disenfranchised new Republicans,” are younger, more populist and rural—and also angry, active, and fiercely loyal to Trump. Capturing their loyalty was the campaign’s goal all along. It’s why, even if Trump loses, his team thinks it’s smarter than political professionals. “We knew how valuable this would be from the outset,” says Parscale. “We own the future of the Republican Party.”

    …“I told him he’s going to want to use the RNC once he’s the nominee,” says Newt Gingrich. “Reince has built a real system, and it can be very valuable to him.”

    Parscale was building his own list of Trump supporters, beyond the RNC’s reach….

    There are signs that Trump’s presidential run has dealt a serious blow to his brand. …Win or lose, Trump’s future may well lie in capitalizing on the intense, if limited, political support he has cultivated over the past year.

    Digital strategists typically value contact lists at $3 to $8 per e-mail, which would price Trump’s list of supporters anywhere from $36 million to $112 million. The Trump enterprise could benefit from it in any number of ways. The easiest move would be for Trump to partner with Bannon’s global Breitbart News Network, which already has a grip on the rising generation of populist Republicans. Along with a new venture, Trump would gain a platform from which to carry on his movement, built upon the millions of names housed in Project Alamo. “This is the pipe that makes the connection between Trump and the people,” says Bannon. “He has an apparatus that connects him to an ever-expanding audience of followers.”

    The final ignominy for a Republican Party brought low by Trump is that its own digital efforts may undermine its future. The data operation in which Priebus and the RNC invested so heavily has fed into Project Alamo, helping Parscale build Trump’s base. “They brought to the table this movement and people who were willing to donate and activate, and we brought to the table a four-year investment and said we can process that for you,” says Sean Spicer, the RNC’s chief strategist. “That willingness to embrace what the RNC built allowed them to harness that movement.”

    If the election results cause the party to fracture, Trump will be better positioned than the RNC to reach this mass of voters because he’ll own the list himself—and Priebus, after all he’s endured, will become just the latest to invest with Trump and wind up poorer for the experience.

    So – in addition to all of the campaign and public money being funneled to Trump and his cronies – the Republican Party is being exploited to build a platform/network explicitly dedicated to destroying it, while Trump’s small donors are milked to develop a database which will be used to get more out of them in the future. All in the context of feeding Trump’s personal grandiosity as he becomes a tool for Putin and the global far-Right.

  331. says

    Nerd @422, that presentation by Samantha Bee was so excellent! “Her name is Hillary,” Bee added. “Ms. Rodham, if you’re nasty.”

    quotetheunquote @424, I agree. Megyn Kelly looked like the adult with a brain that still works. Newt turned purplish-red and shouted about Kelly being supposedly obsessed with sex. That was Newt’s old-white-man way of telling Kelly to shut up, while simultaneously slut-shaming her. The way Newt tried to force Kelly to say what he wanted her to say was just creepy, and Kelly’s refusal to be forced to repeat Newt’s words was her best moment.

    What a Maroon @426, it sounds like Juanita Broaddrick and Paula Jones have drunk too deeply of the Newt-like sewer of rightwing misogyny. They bought into it. Not the only women to do so. (Phyllis Schlafly, etc.) It’s truly offensive to see Paula Jones calling Kelly a “heifer.” FFS.

    A lot of women are coopting the “nasty” label. That will lose its sting soon.

    In other news related to remarkably durable stupidity, Donald Trump has reprised his criticism of the Khan family. Trump is using this line to make his point: “Had I been president, Captain Khan would be alive today. We wouldn’t have been in this horrible, horrible mistake, the war in Iraq.”

    Trump said that in an interview with George Stephanopoulos of ABC News. I guess Trump still doesn’t know how offensive that is.

    As an aside, the voter suppression mentioned in comment 425 is so Trumpian. Slimy tactics.

  332. says

    Volunteers working for the Clinton campaign in Nevada are not taking anything for granted. This is amazing:

    […] Of Culinary’s 57,000 members, more than 30,000 are Hispanic and nearly 7,000 are African-American. And on the eve of the election, nearly 60 percent – 34,000 – of the union’s members are registered to vote, a record total for Local 226.

    You want more numbers? I have them: With 45 organizers, the team in Reno has knocked on more than 62,000 doors, and in the South, that number is an eye-popping 220,000 doors. […]

    The quoted text is from Jon Ralston, a journalist based in Las Vegas.

  333. says

    I am hearing from my rightwing neighbors that Hillary Clinton is selling plutonium to the Russians in order to get donations for the Clinton Foundation. Sometimes, I just want to give up.

    In other news, Gary Johnson decided to look even less presidential by shouting at a reporter, “Why are you even interviewing me?”

    […] The Libertarian presidential candidate’s interview with Guardian reporter Paul Lewis came on the heels of an exchange with HBO, which was apparently just as heated.

    “I could hear some loud voices just then,” Lewis joked. “Is is the same questions? You get the same questions again and again and again?

    “I’m an idiot,” Johnson responded. “Really. I’m the dumbest guy that you’ve ever met in your whole life.”

    “I’m trying to work out if that’s sarcasm or not,” Lewis replied.

    “It is,” Johnson said. “I hope it’s sarcasm.”

    He went on to reference his high-profile gaffe on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” in September, when he responded to a question about the Syrian civil war by asking: “And what is Aleppo?”

    “I’m not a dummy,” Johnson went on. “I’m not.”

    The interview devolved further when Lewis questioned Johnson about why he lags in fourth place in a race where both major-party candidates are unpopular.

    “Why are you even interviewing me? I don’t get it,” Johnson fired back. “If I’m doing so poorly, is this to preside over a funeral here? It’s not a funeral, it’s a celebration.”

    When pressed on his tax policy, which Johnson has said involves abolishing income tax and corporation tax, the Libertarian candidate segued into a bizarre metaphor about the legalization of marijuana.

    “Look, I came out for the legalization of marijuana. Let me just use that as an example,” Johnson barked. “And I will tell you that I had people in my face for years and years and years talking about how stupid and how idiotic it was that we should allow marijuana to be legal.”

    “But what’s that got to do with your tax policy?” Lewis asked.

    “It’s leadership,” Johnson said. “It is leadership.”

    Talking Points Memo link.

    Oh, FFS. That last bit sounds just like Trump. I’m throwing both of those guys in the same garbage bin.

  334. says

    Okay, what the bloody hell is it this time? Trump makes more cryptic and stupid comments about voter fraud:

    A lot of call-ins about vote flipping at the voting booths in Texas. People are not happy. BIG lines. What is going on?

    Talking Points Memo link.

    Here is a half-assed explanation from Texas Governor Greg Abbott:

    TEXANS: On a voting machine, check your confirmation screen before casting your vote. If you select a straight-party vote but then highlight the name of a candidate and press ENTER, you could remove the selection for that candidate. Make sure all of your selections are correct before hitting the button to cast a ballot. You can test your county’s voting system here before voting: http://www.votetexas.gov/voting/how

  335. says

    Trump made bellicose noises. This time he directed his aggression at Defense Secretary Ash Carter:

    […] “They wanted to get the ISIS leaders who they thought were in Mosul. Those people have all left. As soon as they heard they were going to be attacked, they left,” Trump said.

    When Stephanopoulos said Carter reported Tuesday that 35 Islamic State leaders had been killed in the run-up to the Mosul offensive, Trump scoffed.

    “Don’t talk about it,” the Republican presidential nominee added. “Element of surprise. So you can tell your military expert that I’ll sit down and I’ll teach him a couple of things.”

    But Trump’s assumption that ISIL leaders wouldn’t know about the Mosul offensive if American military officials hadn’t announced it has been called into question by experts.

    “An ISIS that didn’t know there’d be an attempt to retake Mosul would be an ISIS that was too stupid to have taken Mosul in the first place,” Professor Stephen Biddle, a professor of political science and international relations at George Washington University, told Vox. “If ISIS wasn’t already preparing, they’d be guilty of military negligence, and we would be delighted that they’re so incompetent.”

    Link

    In addition to the reasoning from Professor Biddle, several people have pointed out to Trump that are reasons to not spring a surprise attack on Mosul:
    – Surprise is not possible. Multiple allies are participating. It takes coordination, planning and staging.
    – The civilian population should be given a chance to escape, if possible.
    – Having some of your enemies run away before the battle can be a good thing.
    – ISIS would see the attack coming anyway as troops were staged in order to take control of outlying villages first.
    – Diplomatic goals may be served.

  336. Saad says

    Lynna, #432

    The civilian population should be given a chance to escape.

    Trump wouldn’t understand this one.

  337. a_ray_in_dilbert_space says

    Poor Gary Johnson. You just want to give him a hug and a pat on the head and say, “It’s OK. It will all be over in 2 weeks.” It’s like the one of the Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers wound up running for President.

  338. a_ray_in_dilbert_space says

    I want to start selling Trump hats that say, “Make America Grope again!”

  339. says

    a_ray @435, I know some guys who would wear that hat.

    Saad @433, right. Trump already told us that he thinks killing the families of terrorists is necessary.

    In other news, one of Secretary Clinton’s domestic policy advisors, Sara Solow, is on Daily Kos to answer questions about addiction and mental illness. Excerpt:

    […] More treatment—because only 10 percent of the people with addiction today are even getting treated. Addiction is a disease, not a moral failing. So we need more doctors, better insurance coverage rules, and support for recovery community organizations.

    Scaling up efforts at prevention—because there is far more we can do to educate our youth, as well as their families, teachers, and friends—to prevent drug and alcohol abuse.

    Better oversight of prescribers, to make sure they have adequate training and that they are not just writing prescriptions for controlled medications without reviewing a patient’s relevant history.

    Launching a national initiative for suicide prevention, headed by the Surgeon General.

    Enhancing early diagnosis and intervention of mental health problems, especially among our youth, so that school counselors and pediatricians are able to identify these problems early on and recommend services for parents.

    Promoting collaborative care models, in which a team of healthcare professionals work together to coordinate a patient’s care.

    Prioritizing treatment over punishment for low-level, nonviolent offenders with mental illnesses. […]

  340. says

    Ha! The editorial board at the Yale Record did not, no, they certainly did not, endorse Hillary Clinton. I love this:

    In its 144-year history, The Yale Record has never endorsed a Democratic candidate for president. In fact, we have never endorsed any candidate for president. This is, in part, due to our strong commitment to being a tax-exempt 501(c)3 organization, which mandates that we are “absolutely prohibited from directly or indirectly participating in, or intervening in, any political campaign on behalf of (or in opposition to) any candidate for elective public office.”

    This year’s presidential election is highly unusual, but ultimately no different: The Yale Record believes both candidates to be equally un-endorsable, due to our faithful compliance with the tax code.

    In particular, we do not endorse Hillary Clinton’s exemplary leadership during her 30 years in the public eye. We do not support her impressive commitment to serving and improving this country—a commitment to which she has dedicated her entire professional career. Because of unambiguous tax law, we do not encourage you to support the most qualified presidential candidate in modern American history, nor do we encourage all citizens to shatter the glass ceiling once and for all by electing Secretary Clinton on November 8.

    http://yalerecord.org/2016/10/26/the-yale-record-does-not-endorse-hillary-clinton/

  341. says

    This is a follow up to comment 431.

    Josh Marshall commented on the purported vote flipping in Texas, pointing out that it was voter error:

    In almost every election you see isolated reports of voting machines ‘changing’ people’s votes. In virtually every case, as Texas election authorities are explaining now, it’s human error. In exceedingly rare cases, it’s a mechanical malfunction. It’s never a conspiracy. Except this time, the candidate is Donald Trump so he’s tweeting about the ‘conspiracy’ to flip votes to Hillary.

  342. says

    Donald Trump has a long history of being sued by his own lawyers. Max Rosenthal of Mother Jones covered some of these “[Trump] is a deadbeat” lawsuits. Here’s one example:

    It wasn’t just big amounts Trump tried to get out of paying, either. Bill Scherer, a lawyer in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, had to sue Trump in 1994 to collect $5,000 in unpaid legal bills from a case Scherer won for the billionaire. The lawyer told Reuters last year that he had offered Trump a low rate to “curry favor” with the mogul, but still had to sue. “He’s a deadbeat,” Scherer told South Florida’s Sun-Sentinel newspaper. Trump told Reuters that he couldn’t remember Scherer or the case at all.

  343. says

    In order to pander to evangelical Christians, Trump repeated some bogus claims today. He was speaking on the “Brody File” which airs on the Christian Broadcasting Network.

    […] We’re going to all be saying Merry Christmas again,” Trump said. “The truth is, religious liberty is under tremendous stress. The Second Amendment is under stress. If Hillary Clinton gets in, you’re not going to have religious liberty, you’re not going to have Second Amendment. […]

    Link

  344. says

    Another woman has accused Trump of groping her. Ninni Laaksonen was Miss Finland in 2006. She appeared on the Late Show with David Letterman. Trump was there, and he posed for a photo with Laaksonen and three other beauty pageant contestants.

    Trump stood right next to me and suddenly he squeezed my butt. He really grabbed my butt. I don’t think anybody saw it but I flinched and thought: “What is happening?”

    That makes more than a dozen women who have come forward to say the Donald Trump subjected them to some kind of sexual assault.

  345. Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls says

    A couple of AP-GfK polls out, but not about who will win.
    The first is about the validity of the election. Is it “rigged”? Most Trump supporters believe so.

    Just 35 percent of Trump’s supporters say they will most likely accept the results of the election as legitimate if Clinton wins, while 64 percent say they’re more likely to have serious doubts about the accuracy of the vote count if the Republican nominee is not the victor.
    “Of course I believe it’s rigged, and of course I won’t accept the results,” said Mike Cannilla, 53, a Trump supporter from the New York borough of Staten Island. “It’s from the top: Obama is trying to take over the country, he’s covering up all of Hillary’s crimes and he’s controlling the media trying to make Trump lose.”
    “Our only chance on Nov. 9 is if the military develops a conscience and takes matters into its own hands,” Cannilla said.
    By contrast, 69 percent of Clinton’s supporters say they’ll accept the outcome if Trump wins. Only 30 percent of the Democratic nominee’s backers express a reluctance to accept the results if the former secretary of state loses on Election Day.
    Overall, 77 percent of likely voters say they’ll accept the legitimacy of the results if Trump wins, while 70 percent say the same of a Clinton win.

    The second is about bias in the media.

    Donald Trump repeatedly rages that the media is biased against him, putting claims of press prejudice at the center of his campaign for president. Most voters — and not just those who are backing the Republican nominee — agree with him, according to a new Associated Press-GfK poll.
    Overall, 56 percent of likely voters say the media is biased against Trump, just 5 percent say it’s biased in his favor and 37 percent say coverage is mostly balanced.
    Eighty-seven percent of Trump’s supporters see the media as biased against him, and even Hillary Clinton’s supporters are more likely to see bias against Trump than bias in his favor, 30 percent to 8 percent. Sixty percent of Clinton’s supporters see no bias in either direction.
    “The majority of the coverage is very biased — some of the stuff Clinton has done doesn’t even get reported on,” said Julius Villarreal, a 32-year-old Trump supporter from Houston. “Where is Benghazi? She thinks she’s above the law, and the media is definitely complicit in helping her get away with it.”
    By contrast, 51 percent say the media is biased in Clinton’s favor and just 8 percent see media bias against her, while 39 percent say the media is mostly balanced. Sixty-seven percent of Clinton’s supporters say media coverage of their candidate is balanced, while 87 percent of Trump supporters say the media is biased in her favor.

    I see the definition of “media bias” as being the media is not distracted by the Trump Campaign saying “look over there” when they refuse to answer direct questions about their questionable rhetoric and attitudes.

  346. Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls says

    Interesting segment from Steve Kornacki about the most interesting number of the day, 72.
    One of those polls came out, and 72% of the Trump supporters thought things were better back in the 1950’s. The Clinton supporters were the opposite, in that 70% thought things are better know than the 1950’s. That explains a big difference in attitude, and why the Trump supporters aren’t worried about institutionalized racism and misogyny. That was part of the 1950’s and simple accepted as the way it is.

  347. a_ray_in_dilbert_space says

    Nerd,
    And yet, an objective count of negative stories about the candidates finds twice as many against Clinton as against Trump!

    Just voted. Straight Democrat.

  348. says

    I hope this is not true. Some news reports say that ISIS militants are forcing civilians to move to Mosul. The idea is that those civilians will be used as human shields. Such evil.

    In other news, President Obama continues to do what he can to make a dent in reforming the justice system. He granted 98 commutations of sentences today. That brings Obama’s total of commutations for federal inmates to 688 for 2016, more than any other president in a single year.

    Nerd, the statistics you posted in 445 and 446 are so depressing. How can that many people be so wrong, so gullible? That’s a rhetorical question. I know how. They hear and see pseudo facts about rigged elections and media bias being repeated multiple times every day.

  349. says

    Trump said another stupid thing today:

    And just thinking to myself right now, we should just cancel the election and just give it to Trump, right? What are we even having it for? What are we having it for? Her policies are so bad.

    He was speaking at a rally in toledo, Ohio. That man harbors a lot of anti-democratic impulses.

  350. says

    Tashiliciously Shriked:

    You were in Montreal? Shit, had I known I’d have tried to see if we could go out for drinks or lunch!

    I didn’t know you were there! That would’ve been fun!

    It was a short but packed visit. We did get to see the Gardens of Light at the Botanical Garden and visit the Toulouse-Lautrec and Mapplethorpe exhibits, and also had some delicious chocolates and brownies (vegan for me). Everyone was so nice – it was a fun little trip.

  351. says

    timgueguen @452, WTF? That’s not what I expected.

    And what does this mean:

    A “stunning victory for rural America” is how Neal Wampler, one of the defendants, described the verdicts.

    And the Attorney Marcus Mumford had to be tackled and based by marshals? He was that disruptive in court? What a circus.

  352. says

    Overall, 56 percent of likely voters say the media is biased against Trump, just 5 percent say it’s biased in his favor and 37 percent say coverage is mostly balanced.
    Eighty-seven percent of Trump’s supporters see the media as biased against him, and even Hillary Clinton’s supporters are more likely to see bias against Trump than bias in his favor, 30 percent to 8 percent. Sixty percent of Clinton’s supporters see no bias in either direction.

    Honest question: How should the media be covering the Trump campaign? The candidate is recorded bragging about serially assaulting women, and multiple women have come forward to say he assaulted them. He’s minimized his comments, attacked his accusers’ appearance, and promised to sue them. He’s a pathological liar. His campaign is fascistic, and he regularly uses rhetoric and conspiracy theories straight out of the Nazi playbook. He encourages the alt-Right, and has one of its architects as his campaign “CEO.” He has a long record of dishonesty and fraud in business. He won’t release his taxes, and has numerous dubious financial relationships around the world. He’s raiding his own campaign and using it to build an operation aimed at destroying his own party. He has no consistent ideology or policy, and reverses his positions from day to day and even minute to minute. He’s unfathomably ignorant and arrogant. He’s dull-witted. He’s encouraged a foreign government to traffic in stolen documents in ways that will affect the election, then refused to acknowledge what intelligence officers have told him or to condemn the break-in. He has no respect for the Constitution. He tramples on the fundamental principles of democracy, and then laughs about it. He’s a thin-skinned and vindictive “libel bully.” He’s threatened to jail his opponent and coyly incited violence against her. He accuses the media of being part of a global conspiracy and invites and welcomes rage against them at his rallies. His campaign has led to a drastic increase in attacks on and fear among minorities. He’s a terrible human being.

    Isn’t treating him as anything approaching a normal candidate or decent person a form of bias in his favor?

  353. militantagnostic says

    SC

    Isn’t treating him as anything approaching a normal candidate or decent person a form of bias in his favor?

    This

    If sports reporting worked the way these people think election coverage should work, we would hear that every game ended in a tie.

  354. KG says

    It’s like the one of the Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers wound up running for President. – a_ray_in_dilbert_space

    Or Fat Freddy’s Cat?

    OT – I’m surprised you haven’t changed your nym, given what Scott Adams has revealed himself to be.

  355. says

    “Donald Trump isn’t opening his checkbook to save his campaign”:

    If Donald Trump were to honor his pledge to spend $100 million of his own money on his campaign, he would have to invest and spend $44 million at breakneck speed.*

    And even then, Republicans warn, it would not do much good.

    Trump, the billionaire [citation needed] businessman whose outsider appeal was bolstered by his seeming ability and desire to self-fund his campaign, only gave $31,000 to his effort over the first three weeks of October. This after as recently as Wednesday the Republican presidential nominee insisted he will cross the $100 million threshold by the end of the election, something GOP allies have urged him to do for months to resuscitate his stumbling campaign and augment their capabilities on the air and the ground.

    Now, though, it may be too late.

    Trump in fundraising emails Thursday promised to triple-match his supporters’ most recent contributions received through Monday — and he notably did not include a $2 million cap on that match as he has on solicitations throughout the year.

    “With Hillary Clinton dominating the airwaves thanks to her huge contributions from liberal elites, AND all her media friends lying about me on TV all day, our final ad blitz needs to be huge,” Trump wrote. “If you wait to contribute tomorrow, it will be too late, Friend. We need to buy more 30-second ad slots now.”

    And he repeatedly told CNN’s Dana Bash on Wednesday that the $100 million total was still accurate, flatly dismissing any skepticism and even suggesting he could give “much more.”

    “I will have over $100 million in the campaign, and I’m prepared to go much more than that,” Trump said.

    That hasn’t happened — and the Trump campaign did not respond to a request for comment Thursday evening if he still would.

    Many Republicans, at this point, don’t expect the major injection of cash to happen. And in fact, a rich irony was revealed thrust Thursday upon Trump, a candidate who has attacked Clinton for not investing more of her own money in his [sic] campaign.

    It was Clinton — with her $50,000 donation — who was the biggest self-funder in October.

    * Unfortunately, this article doesn’t mention all of the self-dealing involved in Trump’s campaign.

  356. says

    “Trump’s Campaign Might Not be Winning, But His Hotels Sure Are”:

    Donald Trump’s campaign may not be winning the presidential race, but it did a fine job this month of providing business to his hotels.

    Trump’s new hotel in Washington received $13,432, according to new Federal Election Commission filings late Thursday. His hotel in New York City received $18,014. And his hotel in Las Vegas was paid $79,044.

    The FEC filings cover the first 19 days of October and do not specify precisely what services were provided….

    Trump’s campaign further paid $8,544 to his golf resort in Potomac Falls, Virginia, and $6,040 to his son Eric Trump’s winery in Charlottesville, Virginia.

    These payments were on top of his monthly rental payments of $9,000 to the Trump Plaza and $169,758 to Trump Tower….

    Trump so far in October has contributed zero cash to his effort ― only $31,000 of “in-kind” contributions in rent and payroll, meaning office space and staff he was already paying for, but which now is being used for campaign purposes….

  357. Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls says

    SC #464, Kirk is the incumbent Senator, and he is trailing Duckworth by 14 points in the most recent polling I could find. It does sound desperate.

  358. says

    SC #464, Kirk is the incumbent Senator, and he is trailing Duckworth by 14 points in the most recent polling I could find. It does sound desperate.

    Desperate, reflexively racist, and really stupid. Aside from the fact that her last name is Duckworth, she had just said “There’s been members of my family serving in uniform on my father’s side going back to the Revolution” and that she’s a Daughter of the American Revolution. Transcripts I’ve seen haven’t capitalized “daughter,” but I believe she was saying she’s a member of the DAR – “a lineage-based membership service organization for women who are directly descended from a person involved in the United States’ struggle for independence.”

  359. says

    More on Trump campaign finances, from WaPo:

    Donald Trump raised just $29 million for his presidential campaign committee in the first 19 days of October, about half as much as his Democratic rival, putting him at a severe financial disadvantage in the crucial final days of the White House contest, new campaign finance reports filed Thursday night showed.

    The GOP presidential nominee had just $16 million left in his campaign coffers on Oct. 19, compared to Hillary Clinton’s $62 million. When the cash reserves of their joint fundraising committees are included, Clinton’s war chest grew to $153 million, while Trump’s totaled $68 million.

    The real estate billionaire is nowhere close to personally donating $100 million to his bid as he has claimed he will, an assertion he repeated Thursday at a rally in Toledo. Even though Trump’s website and email appeals have been promising to double- or triple-match the donations of his supporters, Trump gave his campaign less than $31,000 in in-kind contributions in the first 19 days of October. That’s down from the $2 million in cash he had been contributing each month.

    As Trump’s campaign contributions fell this month, the campaign spent more than it raised, shelling out $49 million in the first 19 days of October. Of that, $19 million went to American Media & Advocacy Group to place television ads and $14 million for digital consulting and ads went to Giles-Parscale, the firm of his digital director Brad Parscale.

    The campaign also spent $332,511 reimbursing Trump properties for expenses, including $13,431 to the new Trump International hotel in Washington for “facility rental and catering” on Oct. 17. Trump held a news conference at the hotel in September and appeared there again Wednesday for a formal ribbon-cutting….

    From what I understand, the final report doesn’t have to be submitted until a month after the election. He can’t take the money after the campaign’s over, so he’s probably planning to loot it fully by then.

  360. says

    Ugh – this new email thing. This is the letter from the FBI. It doesn’t say they’re reopening the investigation (which I guess wasn’t technically closed anyway) – just that they’ve found in another investigation some emails that might or might not be pertinent. Not changing their decision or altering their conclusions in any radical way. It’s outrageous for Comey to put this out there at this moment in this manner.

  361. says

    Josh Marshall:

    …I would recommend everyone look at what Director Comey actually said. It’s far more couched and limited than the way it’s currently playing in the politics and news world….

    We should note that the existence of a small number of emails with classified information that passed through Secretary Clinton’s server was not the factual matter that determined the FBI’s decision not to recommend prosecution. That fell on her intent, behavior in setting up the server, and what the FBI determined was her truthful answers during the inquiry.

    From what Comey said in his earlier comments recommending against prosecution, there was little reason to think that additional emails with classified information would have changed the outcome. That just wasn’t the basis of the decision. And determining whether there is any additional classified information on these newly uncovered emails seems to be the main focus of the review.

    Fourth and finally, Comey did not say he was “re-opening the investigation”. Rep. Chaffetz (R-UT) said that. It is to some degree a matter of semantics. The investigation was concluded and closed. Now there’s some new evidence they’re going to review. By some definition that is ‘re-opening’. But obviously the wording is far more explosive, as Chaffetz of course realized. Chaffetz defined the initial coverage because he had the first bite at describing what was happening.

    We all know that the substance isn’t the same as the politics. But the shockwave set off by this announcement and the headlines about ‘re-opening’ the investigation seem far, far out ahead of what Comey’s letter actually said. The significance of the letter (to the extent we can glean it, which is limited), based on Comey’s earlier explanation of the investigation, seems likely to be limited and procedural.

  362. says

    SC @471, it looks to me like Comey is trying to influence the election. He is also, stupidly, responding to Trump’s claim that the FBI’s previous investigation should be investigated.

    Trump and his surrogates are on this news hot and heavy. Trump is claiming that Comey has “reopened the investigation” into Crooked Hillary’s use of email. That is not true. Kellyanne Conway cannot contain her glee, calling this letter from Comey “a great day for the American people.”

    Trump is describing this as the FBI correcting what they did wrong in the past.

    This is also fucking confusing, incomplete, and likely to drag on well past the election.

  363. tomh says

    More of the ongoing political witch hunt. Comey: We don’t know if classified material is involved, we don’t know if anyone did anything wrong, but we’ll publicize it anyway so maybe Congress will get off my back. Let the idiot Republicans spend millions on another useless investigation.

  364. says

    SC @472, “limited and procedural” is right. However, this will definitely not play that way for Republicans. Jason Chaffetz, the guy from Utah that is mentioned in your post, is the same doofus that claimed he already had enough material for “four more investigations” of Hillary Clinton. No, he does not.

    Trump is saying that this is an opportunity for the FBI to correct its “horrible mistakes” of the past. Paul Ryan say that this is “long overdue.”

    Pseudo shit is hitting the fan and it is spreading everywhere.

  365. says

    Pete Williams seems to be getting the best information on this.

    Being the most generous possible with Comey, he could have felt he had an obligation to send the letter informing the committee of updates after his testimony (if it were leaked or discovered after the election that the FBI was looking into this in October and hadn’t revealed it, they would go on the attack claiming he was part of a cover-up). However, there’s no way Comey wouldn’t have known that his vague letter would be spun and exploited by Republicans to the hilt, so sending it to them in that form at this time was wrong.

  366. says

    Coverage of the Comey letter from Think Progress:

    […] The relevant paragraph in this brief letter is the middle one, where Comey writes that the FBI “has learned of the existence” of emails that it previously did not review. In response to this new information, the FBI will now “allow investigators to review these emails to determine whether they contain classified information.”

    The FBI, in other words, is not reexamining its previous findings. It is not questioning its previous legal conclusion that “no reasonable prosecutor” could determine that charges are warranted. Based on the letter, it appears that the FBI will simply provide the same scrutiny to these newly uncovered emails as it previously applied to the emails it already reviewed when it determined that criminal charges are not warranted.

    Though the initial narrative to emerge from this new letter — a narrative pushed by Republican House Oversight Chair Jason Chaffetz — is that the FBI has “reopened” the case against Clinton, several reporters did acknowledge on Twitter that this narrative is not true. […]

    Based on the letter’s actual content, however, there is no reason to believe that the FBI will change its ultimate conclusion that no reasonable prosecutor could bring charges against Clinton. […]

    More on what this is NOT (info from Pete Williams and Sam Stein):
    – not about Clinton withholding emails
    – not about the Podesta emails
    – the emails in question are not from Clinton.

  367. says

    Paul Krugman got it right:

    It’s bad enough having the media do the “raises questions,” substance-free innuendo thing. Worse when the FBI director does it. Disgraceful

  368. says

    Newsweek:

    Why did FBI Director James Comey shock Washington on Friday with an announcement that the FBI “has learned of the existence of emails” related to Hillary Clinton’s private email server, and what does it mean?

    The truth is Comey didn’t have a choice. Because the new information followed his sworn testimony about the case, Comey was obligated by Department of Justice rules to keep the relevant committees apprised.

    Under oath Comey had stated that the bureau had completed its review. Once he learned that there were new emails that required examination, Comey had to notify Congress that he had to amend his testimony because it was no longer true.

    Comey’s letter doesn’t say his agents have discovered new witnesses or documents suggesting a criminal act occurred. Rather, he only suggests that evidence that had not yet been examined and, because it was relevant to the case, needs to be reviewed.

    There’s also a political dimension. Had Comey not told Congress and it emerged after the election that new materials had come into its possession, the director and his entire agency’s credibility might have been questioned.

    In his letter, Comey did not use the phrase being touted by Republicans that the case had been reopened. Technically it was never closed. Nor did he signal at all about the importance or unimportance about the emails….

    But, as we’ve discussed above, the way he went about it couldn’t have been better designed to be used by Republicans in the election.

  369. says

    From Wonkette’s coverage:

    […] Despite how the FBI hardly said anything, that’s no reason for wingnuts not to party like it’s 1999, is it? HECK NO! Donald Trump just broke the news to his followers at a rally in New Hampshire, and they went APESHIT and started making love to their sisters, as if they had just won Powerball. […]

    They did go apeshit. I watched it. The crowd interrupted Trump several times with chants of “Lock her up!.” Trump could barely get the news out thanks to the howling audience. This was what they had been waiting for, or so they thought. However, I would not have used the “making love to their sisters” phrase … too general an insult, painting with a broad brush while having no data to back it up.

  370. says

    From the Daily Kos coverage:

    If FBI Director James Comey was not trying to create maximum damage with his brief, vague letter, he certainly gave it a good effort. Not only did Paul Ryan and Jason Chaffetz presciently have (inaccurate) statements ready to go at hand, the statement was issued while Hillary Clinton was still in the air, giving Donald Trump a clear field on which he could break, break, break like the wind.

    With Jim Comey under-handing a Day-Glo political football just moments before he stepped on stage, it’s not surprising that Trump lumbered out to show his usual tact and restraint.

    The FBI has just sent a letter to Congress informing them that they have discovered new emails pertaining to former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s investigation, and they are reopening the case into her criminal and illegal conduct that threatens the security of the United States of America.

    I have great respect for the fact that the FBI and the DOJ are now willing to have the courage to right the horrible mistake they made.

    […] The FBI could have looked at these letters first, and issued a statement after if they determined there was a connection to the earlier investigation. They didn’t do that. Like everything else Comey has done in this investigation, he’s gone for maximum grandstanding, minimum respect for legal protections or traditions. […]

  371. says

    Wikileaks seems to be determined to destroy whatever shreds of a good reputation it may have left.

    […]I n their vendetta against the Clinton campaign this afternoon in the wake of the new FBI letter from James Comey, they [Wikileaks] rushed to Twitter to send this message out about Robby Mook, the campaign director for Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign.

    Clinton campaign manager @RobbyMook just deleted all his tweets co-inciding with the FBI’s announcement of its re-opened investigation.

    Wikileaks sent out this tweet at 2:03 PM, shortly after people on the alt right movement started sending out tweets claiming that Robby Mook had deleted all of his tweets relating to the FBI investigation.

    Only problem is, that was majorly false. Robby Mook had joined Twitter last year, but actually sent out just ONE tweet yesterday about the importance of getting out the vote. And Even the subtweet that Robby Mook references is from Jennifer Palmieri welcoming him to Twitter. So it’s clear Robby Mook is new to Twitter and finally used his old account to start tweeting. […]

    This proves that Wikileaks is not neutral, is utterly partisan with a clear vendetta against Hillary Clinton, and will do anything they can to bring Clinton down, even if it means outright lying. If you don’t see this, and still defend Wikileaks, then you are defending an organization that does not have ethical guidelines when it comes to releasing private emails, names of agents, gay people, and feminist women in the Middle East.

    Link

    Ah, yes, Wikileaks is now trusting alt-right sources … just like Trump.

  372. says

    Donald Trump has been dissing military experts for some time, claiming that he knows more than the generals do about ISIS, and claiming that he could teach military leaders “a couple things.” Retired Col. Jeff McCausland has responded:

    […] I can’t wait to sit down with Mr. Trump and hear what he has to teach me about military strategy.

    He never served in the military and never served the government. Mr. Trump also made it very clear that he had no understanding of the nuclear triad or nuclear strategy.

    […] boggles the mind to imagine how many U.S. troops it would have taken to seize the oil in Iraq and how many U.S. casualties we would have suffered […]

    It is clearly the desire of the U.S. and Iraqi governments to eliminate collateral damage to the civilian population of Mosul. We do not want Mosul to look like Aleppo. It’s impossible to mask the fact that you’re hiding thousands of troops in the desert outside Mosul as you prepare for the attack and secure bases in the area for logistical support.

    I reassert my statement to The New York Times. Mr. Trump doesn’t know a damn thing about military strategy.

    The quoted text is from the website of Dickinson College, where McCausland is a visiting professor.

  373. says

    More from Paul Krugman:

    […] Comey needs to provide full info immediately. Otherwise he has clearly made a partisan intervention, betraying his office. […]

    So far this is a story about Comey and his behavior. We know nothing at all about what if anything this has to to with HRC. […]

  374. says

    This is a followup to comment 448.

    It is, unfortunately, true:

    The U.N. says ISIS has abducted tens of thousands of civilians whom it will likely use as human shields in the city of Mosul.

    The extremist group has forced almost 8,000 families to leave their homes, probably as a tactic to defend Mosul from the U.S.-backed offensive launched last week, a spokesperson for the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights said on Friday. […]

    NBC News link

  375. says

    A DOJ complaint has been filed against FBI Director James Comey for interfering in a presidential election.

    […] The Democratic Coalition Against Trump filed a complaint with the Department of Justice Office of Professional Responsibility on Friday against FBI Director James Comey for interfering in the Presidential election, following the FBI’s decision to open up an investigation into Secretary Clinton’s emails this close to Election Day. Federal employees are forbidden from participating in political activities under the Hatch Act.

    “It is absolutely absurd that FBI Director Comey would support Donald Trump like this with only 11 days to go before the election,” said Scott Dworkin, Senior Advisor to the Democratic Coalition Against Trump. “It is an obvious attack from a lifelong Republican who used to serve in the Bush White House, just to undermine her campaign. Comey needs to focus on stopping terrorists and protecting America, not investigating our soon to be President-Elect Hillary Clinton.”

    Politics USA link

  376. says

    FBI Director James B. Comey decided to inform Congress that he would look again into Hillary Clinton’s handling of emails during her time as secretary of state for two main reasons — a sense of obligation to lawmakers and a concern that word of the new email discovery would leak to the media and raise questions of a coverup. […]

    Oh, no, that is not a good excuse! Not a good set of excuses!

    As FBI Director, you are not supposed to be so sensitive to pressure from Republican lawmakers. Oh, no, as FBI Director, you are not supposed to make certain that the whole murky affair is leaked to the media via a bunch of Republican lawmakers!

    What the hell? The FBI cannot keep the details of its investigations from leaking?

    “Of course, we don’t ordinarily tell Congress about ongoing investigations, but here I feel I also think it would be misleading to the American people were we not to supplement the record,” Comey wrote to his employees.

    Washington Post link

    As Rachel Maddow said, Comey’s letter was “inflammatory and content-free.”

  377. Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls says

    Maybe Comey should start working on his resignation letter in case the likely happens, and Hillary Clinton is elected President. I don’t think he would be able to finish his term effectively.

  378. says

    Oh, no, that is not a good excuse! Not a good set of excuses!

    I’ll say.

    What the hell? The FBI cannot keep the details of its investigations from leaking?

    One could almost call them “extremely careless” with information.

  379. says

    Former prosecutors comment on Comey’s questionable actions:

    […] “I got a lot of respect for Jim Comey, but I don’t understand this idea of dropping this bombshell which could be a big dud,” said former federal prosector Peter Zeidenberg, a veteran of politically sensitive investigations. “Doing it in the last week or 10 days of a presidential election without more information, I don’t think that he should because how does it inform a voter? It just invites speculation … I would question the timing of it. It’s not going to get done in a week.”

    Nick Akerman, a former assistant U.S. attorney in the Southern District of New York, was more critical: “Director Comey acted totally inappropriately. He had no business writing to Congress about supposed new emails that neither he nor anyone in the FBI has ever reviewed.”

    “It is not the function of the FBI director to be making public pronouncements about an investigation, never mind about an investigation based on evidence that he acknowledges may not be significant,” Akerman added. “The job of the FBI is simply to investigate and to provide the results of its investigation to the prosecutorial arm of the U.S. Department of Justice. His job is not to give a running commentary about any investigation or his opinion about any investigation. This is particularly egregious since Secretary Clinton has no way to respond to what amounts to nebulous and speculative innuendo.”

    Link

  380. says

    SC @497, ha! Loved your last line. On point dry humor.

    As far as our agreement that Comey’s excuses suck, why is almost no one in the media highlighting that?

  381. says

    Josh Marshall:

    The fact it is possible that all of the new emails may be copies of the ones already reviewed in the original investigation strongly suggests that they know nothing more than that there are emails between the two women. And yet, the way this was announced presented it as the reopening of a closed investigation, which inevitably suggests that there was new information that might change FBI’s decision to recommend against prosecution. If they have not done a close enough examination even to know whether any of the emails are new, there’s simply no basis for any such conclusion.

    Comey: “At the same time, however, given that we don’t know the significance of this newly discovered collection of emails, I don’t want to create a misleading impression.”

    Dolt.