Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

No one could have predicted…

Fuck these fucking interesting times.

White supremacy is terrorism.

“Jesus paying for the sins of everyone is an insult to those who paid for their own sins.”

My right to basic bodily autonomy is not on the table. that’s the new deal.

Oh FFS you might as well trust a 6-year-old with a flamethrower.

The gop is a fucking disgrace.

I’d like to think you all would remain faithful to me if i ever tried to have some of you killed.

Pessimism assures that nothing of any importance will change.

Elections aren’t won by handwringing, cowering, and/or bashing your own candidates.

This really is a full service blog.

Peak wingnut was a lie.

Let me file that under fuck it.

At some point, the ability to learn is a factor of character, not IQ.

Biden: Oh no. We’ve upset Big Pharma again.

with the Kraken taking a plea, the Cheese stands alone.

I was promised a recession.

In after Baud. Damn.

“And when the Committee says to “report your income,” that could mean anything!

Putin must be throwing ketchup at the walls.

Let’s show the world that autocracy can be defeated.

The revolution will be supervised.

Be a traveling stable for those who can’t find room at the inn.

The current Supreme Court is a rogue court. Very dangerous.

You are here: Home / Elections / Election 2016 / Thursday Morning Open Thread: Rejoice (But Keep Working, Too)

Thursday Morning Open Thread: Rejoice (But Keep Working, Too)

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And TIL (today I learned) something that might come in handy for people, as the election gets closer:

(I know I know, but the Washington Post is still the company paper for the town whose industry is national politics. And there’s lots of worthwhile reporting apart from the more obtuse columnists — I’m very happy with my own paid digital sub!)

***********

What else is on the agenda for the new day?

Reader Interactions

259Comments

  1. 1.

    Baud

    LOL. Stein doesn’t even deserve a numerical odd.

    All those people who said summer polling is not reliable may be right.

  2. 2.

    Punchy

    Heading to Chi-town in a few so the spawn can see the g-rents, I can race a local tri, and the wife can have a micro vacay. Also, heard amazing things about Maggie Daley Park, so theres that.

  4. 4.

    Eric S.

    I bought it yesterday after work. I drove it for a couple hours until my bladder forced me to stop. It’s 30 minutes before my alarm and I just want to go drive some more.

  7. 7.

    Bill E Pilgrim

    I’ve never subscribed to the WaPo which works fine since I can’t take the conservative Villager lecturing for more than the handful of articles it allows without forcing you to pay up and log in, but I check in every now and then including by coincidence just before coming here, and I saw this:

    It has been well said that “sooner or later, we all sit down to a banquet of consequences.” The Republican Party’s multicourse banquet has begun.

    Who was that you might ask? Well that was George Will.

    Chad ‘n Freud is not just a pop-psych duo from the 1960s, it’s what’s for breakfast.

  8. 8.

    Patricia Kayden

    Good morning, rikyrah. And it really is a good morning given the great polls for Secretary Clinton!!

  9. 9.

    Eric S.

    @Punchy: I work in the Aon Building and look down on Millennium and Maggie Daley parks. Both very, very cool.

    What Tri are you doing? I’ve never done one, I’ve just done half marathons, but have been considering it. Sadly I severely pulled a quad 5 weeks ago and have been sidelined since.

  11. 11.

    David ?▶️Hillary/Harley Quinn 2016▶️? Koch

    Today began like any other for 214 federal inmates across the country, but ultimately became a day I am confident they will never forget. This morning, these individuals received a message from the President: your application for clemency has been granted.

    This news likely carries special weight to the 67 individuals serving life sentences – almost all for nonviolent drug crimes – who, up until today, could only imagine what it might be like to once again attend a loved one’s birthday party, walk their child to school, or simply go to the grocery store.

    Commutations by President:

    Obama……….…562
    Bush Jr…………….11
    Clinton…………….61
    Bush Sr…………….3
    Reagan…………..13
    Carter……………..29
    Ford………………..22
    Nixon…………….…60
    LBJ………………..226
    JFK………………..100
    Ike…………………..47
    Truman…………118

    show-off

  12. 12.

    Eric S.

    @raven: I was a reasonably decent swimmer as a child, 30 to 35 years ago. I’ve rarely been horizontal in the water since. The swim is the leg that worries me.

    Edited to correct the math about my age.

  13. 13.

    OzarkHillbilly

    Heh. Found this in the STL Post Disgrace this morn: Missouri’s head public defender assigns case to Gov. Nixon, cites overburdened staff

    Fed up with what he says is the governor’s failure to properly fund his overwhelmed office, the state’s lead public defender ordered Gov. Jay Nixon this week to represent a poor person in Cole County this month. Michael Barrett said he was using a provision of state law that allows him in extraordinary circumstances to delegate legal representation “to any member of the state bar of Missouri.” He’s starting with the state’s highest-profile lawyer: Nixon. Barrett says the governor has repeatedly declined to give the public defender system the money it requests and is withholding promised funding increases this year.

    Just this June, the legislature granted the public defender system a $4.5 million increase, which would’ve helped in hiring 10 more employees and some private attorneys on a contractual basis. The office currently employs more than 370 attorneys. Officials with the public defender’s office had asked for a $23.1 million boost, while Nixon recommended a $1 million increase. Last month, Barrett and the Missouri State Public Defender Commission filed a lawsuit claiming that Nixon withheld $3.5 million of that $4.5 million increase.

    That’s a REPUBLICAN legislature, and a DEMOCRATIC governor. (the gov has the legal authority to do this)

    A 2014 study found that the state’s public defender system needs almost 270 more attorneys to meet its current case volume, which fluctuates between 70,000 and 100,000 cases every year. In 2009, Missouri’s was the second-lowest-funded public defender system in the country.

    Now, Barrett says that he has even fewer lawyers than when that study was done. He’s lost 30 lawyers because he doesn’t have the money to hire replacements as employees leave for private law firms. Meanwhile, the system’s caseload has gone up 12 percent over the past year to about 82,000 cases, Barrett said. Each of his lawyers has to handle 125 to more than 200 cases at a time.

    As one might have guessed, Nixon is a former AG. I am so sick and tired of this d!ckwad, he gives DEMS a bad name. So happy my state will soon no longer be afflicted with his incompetence even if it is better than a GOP incompetence.

  14. 14.

    Schlemazel

    @Bill E Pilgrim:
    Back in the early ’90s I subscribed to the WaPo weekly. Living in Florida I found the papers (Florida Today was local Orlando Sentinel was close by) to be insepid and dull. The weekly was a roundup of editorials and cartoons from the week. I loved it because they did have a fairly broad range. I dropped it when they started to enclude Rush Limbaugh and others like him and they started lying about the Clintons. For a time it was a really nice service. Now with the Internet who would need a compelation like that?

  16. 16.

    Baud

    @Cat48: They were barred from Trump’s rallies. Remember when the media was outraged that Obama was boycotting Fox News.

  17. 17.

    Bill E Pilgrim

    The controversy over the size of Trump’s hands dates back to the 1980s, when journalist Graydon Carter referred to the billionaire as a “short-fingered vulgarian” in Spy magazine. In 2015 Carter revealed that Trump has been sporadically sending him pictures of his hands for the last 25 years, insisting they are not as small as Carter made out.

    No I’m not making this up.

  20. 20.

    hellslittlestangel

    So Johnson’s odds are what — a rounding error? A quantum fluctuation? Still he’s doing better than Dr Fuckwit.

  21. 21.

    hellslittlestangel

    @Bill E Pilgrim: The controversy over the size of Trump’s hands …

    For fuck’s sake, does no one on Earth have a motherfucking tape-measure?

  22. 22.

    OzarkHillbilly

    In 2007 I was in Arlington National Cemetery…

    That morning, there was a slender, stern-looking man in section 60. At first, from a distance, I thought he was a Protestant priest because he was dressed so somberly. From the side of the headstone I was on, you could only see a number, not the crescent moon and star that showed it was the grave of a Muslim soldier. It was only when I saw the man’s posture that I realised what his faith was.

    I suspect from looking at the picture now that I took it before I spoke to him. I would have watched him to ascertain whether he would mind – if there is a sense of discomfort, you don’t take a picture like this in a cemetery. Afterwards, I remember he didn’t give me his name, but just said his son was buried here. All the people we met that day would do that – they would not speak about themselves, only the person they were here for, often as though the person was still alive.

    He was a very subdued, almost fearsome-looking man, so I didn’t know what to expect. When he spoke, he was very kindly and quiet. You could tell he was a very private man. I didn’t know who his son was then – Humayun Khan,

  23. 23.

    Bill E Pilgrim

    @Schlemazel: I usually end up there when the economist Dean Baker Tweets a link to a blog post he wrote dismantling yet another baffling article by the WaPo economics writer Robert Samuelson, who Baker then goes on to demonstrate (with charts and evidence) hasn’t got the slightest idea what he’s talking about, just peddling knee-jerk trickle down pablum. Okay that may be the most interesting yet somewhat repulsive mixed metaphor I’ve come up with yet, don’t even want to try to picture that.

    Paul Krugman insists that the only reason Samuelson gets a prominent platform like that despite knowing so little about economics is because people vaguely think it’s Paul Samuelson, or are impressed by the name.

  24. 24.

    Ceci n'est pas mon nym

    @hellslittlestangel:

    a rounding error? A quantum fluctuation?

    I’m going with “quantum fluctuation”. Kind of like when any poll shows more than 0% black supporters of Trump. That means that in that same instant, an anti-voter was created in somebody else’s poll.

  26. 26.

    Bill E Pilgrim

    @hellslittlestangel: For me any controversy about that is far less interesting than the revelation that this man has been sending pictures of his hands to the editor of Vanity Fair for twenty-five years out of pure defensiveness. Anthony Weiner has nothing on this guy.

    I can’t imagine why anyone thinks Trump is insecure to the point of mental and emotional instability.

  27. 27.

    Cat48

    @Baud:

    There was such a backlash that BO didn’t bar Fox from WHPress. He refused to go on Fox until this year though. Heh. The press that is banned usually just get a ticket given out for rally’s & go report anyway. Dana Milbank did that the other day & they mistakenly gave him his press pass back, so he just set with the press again. Trump still running a crappy campaign.

  28. 28.

    hellslittlestangel

    @OzarkHillbilly: Interesting. Most tape measures come in units of 12 inches. But that one should be more than sufficient to measure Little Gloves’ teeny paws.

  32. 32.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @hellslittlestangel: That is what his paws measure. Mine, I’m 5-8, are 7 5/8 ( it’s a dick measuring contest and I’m a man, can’t help it) Always felt mine were on the small side.

  33. 33.

    hellslittlestangel

    @Bill E Pilgrim: I revel in the thought of him lying on his deathbed, hating on Obama and Clinton and Cruz and that bastard Pence who lost the election for him.

  39. 39.

    Kay

    The poll contains many troubling signs for Trump’s White House campaign, including a “shocking” lead for Clinton in the Republican strongholds of west and southwest Michigan, pollster Richard Czuba said.

    Indiana Gov. Mike Pence’s daylong trip to Kent County last Thursday — a week after the Republican National Convention — was “an illustration that they know they have troubles,” Czuba said.
    “If your vice presidential nominee is spending an entire day in west Michigan after the convention,” the Republican region is not locked up, he said.

    So someone knows.

  41. 41.

    Baud

    @Kay: There’s a big Muslim contingent in Michigan that helped give Bernie the win there. But I don’t know what part of the state they are in.

  44. 44.

    Eric S.

    @RSA: Thank you. A life time of lusting and dreaming and the last couple years studying, searching and saving.

    (Funny I post in the morning thread where the men are deciding to measure their hands.)

  46. 46.

    Anne Laurie

    @Schlemazel:

    Back in the early ’90s I subscribed to the WaPo weekly.

    Yeah, I subscribed to the WaPo Weekly starting in the early 1980s, and always enjoyed it — the format probably had some influence on my blogging style, for better or worse.

  47. 47.

    David ?▶️Hillary/Harley Quinn 2016▶️? Koch

    Detroit News President Poll — Michigan — July 30 thur Aug 1

    Clinton…..41%
    Trump……32%

    Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton has widened her lead over Republican Donald Trump in Michigan as 3-in-5 likely voters say the New York businessman is not qualified to be president, according to a new poll conducted for The Detroit News and WDIV-TV.

    The poll contains many troubling signs for Trump’s White House campaign, including a “shocking” lead for Clinton in the Republican strongholds of west and southwest Michigan, pollster Richard Czuba said.

  48. 48.

    The Ancient Randonnuer

    @OzarkHillbilly:

    ( it’s a dick measuring contest and I’m a man, can’t help it).

    Yep. That y-chromosome does funny things to a person. I’m the same height as Trump and my fingers are almost an inch longer which probably makes mine about average for my height. Poor Donald, he probably still hasn’t recovered from the first time someone said, “it looks like a penis, only smaller.”

  57. 57.

    Punchy

    @Eric S.: I’m doing the Naperville Sprint Tri on Sunday. Im a better Olympic distance racer (the longer the swim, the better!), but this is all I could find in the metro area this ‘kend.

  58. 58.

    Eric S.

    Alright, juicers, I have a something more important than admiring my new car and my mighty hands. I have a major ant invasion in my 3rd floor condo. The brazen little bastards are marching right down the middle of the floor and invading Ozzie the Cat’s dishes. There are sprays and traps but which are cat safe?

    And I mean middle of the floor. No place to spray or trap that Ozzie won’t be able to get to and investigate.

    Thanks,
    E

  59. 59.

    Kay

    @Baud:

    Dearborn, in the eastern part of the state. They should poll Dearborn. It would be funny.

    The poll is “shocking!” because western Michigan either leans R or is solidly R. I spend quite a bit of time there in the summer and I noticed the lack of Trump signs. There were business-backed billboards for Bush and lots of giant home made signs in the rural areas. Rural people with property that abuts a highway put their own giant signs up – they’re always too long- “Bush to Save America for God and Protect Babies and The Constitution” :)

  60. 60.

    Splitting Image

    @Iowa Old Lady:

    Detroit suburb Dearborn has a strong Muslim population. Some R fool claimed it was a no-go zone. Ford’s World Hq is in Dearborn.

    For a second I thought it was Bobby Jindal, but he made the claim about Paris, France. It turns out that it was Frank Gaffney who said it about Dearborn. The original claim was a story by “humour” site National Report.

  61. 61.

    debbie

    @Eric S.:

    I don’t know if it’s safe around cats, but I sprayed Formula 409 on what looked to be where the ants came from and their trail. Worked right away.

  62. 62.

    satby

    @Baud:

    : There’s a big Muslim contingent in Michigan that helped give Bernie the win there. But I don’t know what part of the state they are in.

    They’re in the eastern part of the state, near Dearborn.

  63. 63.

    OldDave

    @Eric S.:

    … I just want to go drive some more.

    As well you should. Last year, after 18 years of Miatas I traded up to a Cayman. Love the car, miss the toplessness. Enjoy your 964 and consider joining PCA.

  64. 64.

    satby

    @David ?▶️Hillary/Harley Quinn 2016▶️? Koch: This part of SW MI is a mix of farmers, Chicagoan ex-pats like me, and former union guys from the old Clark Equipment and other manufacturing plants that are long gone. It’s a Republican area but purple, and Obama won it both times. And they’re pretty familiar with Pence, the area of IN just south is riddled with “fire Pence” signs that have been up for the past year.

  65. 65.

    TS

    @Baud:

    I know it’s just one poll, but 32℅ for a Republican in New Hampshire is shocking

    I see it as expected and worth celebrating – anything but shocking. The media’s actions in supporting Trump and providing him free coverage is going to be rewarded by the GOP losing the Senate and the House.

  66. 66.

    satby

    @Eric S.: Try 90% rubbing alcohol. It will evaporate fast, kill whatever ants it lands on, and disrupt their chemtrail so the rest go to the bait traps. I use it in a spray bottle for finishing loaves of soap, but it also works well on bugs, which I found out by accident. Cheaper too.

  67. 67.

    rikyrah

    Happy Birthday to the 44th President of the United States : Barack Obama ????

    The last one while you are in office.
    Sigh.?

  68. 68.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Eric S.: I use traps. I don’t have a problem with my cat getting into it. So get a box, cut a small arc on one side, place the trap on their parade route, place the box over it, put something heavy on top of it.

  69. 69.

    Kay

    @Baud:

    You have to remember, Trump doesn’t really know anything about any of these places. Grand Rapids is in the western part of the state- it’s where Gerald Ford was from- his presidential library is there. Because of my work I have spent some extended time there and I wouldn’t say it’s anti-immigrant at all. He’s just pulling all these characterizations out of his ass- this stuff is complicated. WTF does he know? He doesn’t even talk to people in these places. He holds rallies and bellows at them for 2 hours. There’s no back and forth.

  70. 70.

    Eric S.

    @OldDave: I’m on Rennlist which is where I did a lot of my research. I may very well join PCA too.

    @debbie: @satby: I’ll give the rubbing alcohol and 409 a try. I’m beginning to think they’ve established a nest in my floor boards. Little bastards.

  71. 71.

    Cat48

    The MoJo crowd was near tears bc PA is Clinton 49 Trump 38 and Halperin says the GOP parts of Iowa that they need to win have dropped for Trump. He’s headed to Iowa today for townhall.

    Well, the Dem Convention was a success.

  72. 72.

    debbie

    @Eric S.:

    Should the need ever arise, rubbing alcohol is also good on stink bugs. Flattens them immediately. Don’t forget with rubbing alcohol, you have to be careful because it will damage finished surfaces.

  73. 73.

    Patricia Kayden

    @Cat48: I recall President Obama being rudely grilled by Bill O’Reilly, with Billy interrupting POTUS during the entire interview. I see no upside to Democratic politicians going on Fox News in the first place. They will never get a fair hearing.

    @rikyrah: Good on you for keeping up with such an important B’day. And Happy B’Day to the greatest President of my lifetime.

  75. 75.

    Kay

    @Baud:

    Trump doesn’t do local interviews, but if he did it would be fun to ask him about the places he’s parachuting into “who is the largest employer? What is the name of the local public commuter college? What are they growing in those fields you passed on the way in?” Hillary Clinton would know because she assumes she’ll have to know something in a job interview. I bet Obama could credibly discuss the western Michigan economy right now, off the cuff, no preparation.

  76. 76.

    mike in dc

    Last weekend, after the convention, the Clinton campaign believed they could win the campaign within the next two weeks. So far, that looks pretty prescient.

  78. 78.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Eric S.: Some traps say they will get the queen too. I had to put some out on my countertop and in 2 weeks they were gone. For whatever that is worth.

  79. 79.

    mike in dc

    Just saw a commercial with Cornel West stumping for Stein. Going forward, any candidate who associates with him(or Nina Turner) instantly loses my support. And I say that as someone who voted for Sanders.

  80. 80.

    Eric S.

    @Punchy:

    Naperville Tri Sprint

    Surprisingly, to me anyway, Naperville is a hot bed of triathlon training. There are write a few top racers out there. I know 2 (not top) racers out there. I’ll have to ask them if they are running.

  81. 81.

    Patricia Kayden

    @Cat48:

    Well, the Dem Convention was a success.

    It’s amazing how much good an uplifting Convention can do for a Presidential candidate. I chuckle every time I think about the fact that the RNC was the first Convention in history which resulted in a decrease of support for a Presidential candidate. That’s what four days of ugly chants, lies, hatred and hostility get you.

  82. 82.

    The Ancient Randonnuer

    @Patricia Kayden:

    Good to see that Ayotte may lose her Senate seat. Her endorsement of Trump should be hung around her neck like an anchor.

    Yep. And Maggie Hassan would make a very fine Senator. She’s only 58 so I could see her staying around for at least two terms if she wins.

  89. 89.

    gogol's wife

    @Bill E Pilgrim:

    He’s editor of Vanity Fair now. They go after Trump in pretty much every issue. They had a great article about what might be in his tax returns.

  91. 91.

    OldDave

    @Eric S.: More of a general gearhead. Owned three Miatas over nearly twenty years before buying a Cayman S that looks exactly like this. Same color, same wheels, etc. And yeah, maintenance and tire replacement costs can be a surprise (ask my wife). For me it was a “dude, you’re running out of runway” sort of thing, as I’m in my sixties. Downside of living in Florida? Nearest twisty roads are a full day’s drive away.

  92. 92.

    Baud

    @Kay:

    Trump doesn’t do local interviews,

    Interesting how you always hear about Clinton not doing press conferences, but not about this. IOKIYAR.

  95. 95.

    Kay

    There are now questions on Melania Trump’s visa situation when she initially worked in the US. When she’s interviewed she makes it sound like she had the 6 month visitor visa rather than a work visa. If she had the visitor visa and worked that’s fraud.

    I swear to God you could not make this up. I just cannot imagine what they were thinking. No one would question any of this bullshit when he’s running for President? It’s arrogance is what it is- they believe we’re all marks just waiting to get fleeced.

  96. 96.

    Quinerly

    @Bill E Pilgrim:
    There was an interesting list out Monday. Can’t remember where I read it but it was an old list of what could and couldn’t be used in a Comedy Central Roast a few years back. Trump okayed jokes about his bankruptcies, his sex life, Melania, his other wives. He also okayed jokes about his having said he would date his daughter if she wasn’t his daughter. No mention of his hands. There was one thing, though, that the roasters were forbidden to joke about…his wealth. No one was allowed to speculate/joke that he was less wealthy than he said he was.

  98. 98.

    Cat48

    @Patricia Kayden:
    Rucker, at Washington Post had a blaring headline that based on the numbers, “Trump’s Convention Was a Failure”. It cracked me up bc the GOP thought everyone needs some more Hillary Hate & dished it out daily. It was revolting. I don’t even remember anyone mentioning jobs that much.

  99. 99.

    Kay

    @SFAW:

    Oh, it’s definitely Right-leaning. Shall we say. But pro-business! :)

    I took my kids to the Gerald Ford museum when they were younger- it’s very low-key and Republican cloth coat. I’m an idiot so I was a little sad there were so few people there. I felt bad for him.

  101. 101.

    Eric S.

    @OldDave: The LSD s-curve not withstanding, twisties aren’t exactly common in Chicago or anywhere in Illinois, the flattest state east of the Mississippi.

  103. 103.

    Bruce K

    @Kay: I suspect it’s more like the GOP got caught between a rock and a hard place. Either they run Trump out of the party before the convention, in which case he goes third-party and takes the Southern Strategy base with him, and the GOP is guaranteed to get camshafted in the general, or they stick with him and try to run the standard GOP playbook, and if by some miracle Trump plays ball, they’ve got a chance to fudge their way past the problems.

    Of course, looking back with a few days of hindsight, the choice boiled down to heads Hillary wins, tails the GOP dies, so I’ve got a thin schmear of sympathy for the Republican apparatchiks. A very thin schmear; they created their nightmare scenario with their eyes wide open over the last few decades, and they’re welcome to the consequences so long as the rest of us don’t get caught in the blast radius…

  104. 104.

    Riley's Enabler

    @satby: Good morning, sunshine. Been meaning to write to tell you how much I’m enjoying the latest batch of soaps and emulsions. You do such great work. Thank you!

  105. 105.

    hovercraft

    Re-posted from an overnight thread. From the GOS

    Franklin and Marshall has a new poll out showing Hillary leading Trump in PA 49-38 among LVs and 48-35 among RVs. The “other” vote (which I take to mean 3rd party) is 6% LV, 9% RV. Undecided are at 8% in both. The poll was taken from July 29-August 1st (weekend following the convention).

    Some notable data points:

    *Clinton leads among women by 31 points. Trump leads among men by 6 points. Among white voters, Trump leads by 10 among white males. Clinton leads by 28 among white females.

    *Clinton leads among white voters by 9 points. She leads among non-white voters by 69 points.

    *Clinton leads in every age demo.

    *Clinton leads among married and unmarried persons.

    *Clinton is winning big in the Southeast suburbs (outside of Philly) by 40 points (60-20). This would include places like Bucks County where Romney was much more competitive in 2012.

    *Trump leads among non college educated voters by 18 points. Clinton leads among those with some college by 9 points, and with college educated voters by 33 points.

    While this poll says 11-13, I think these subgroup numbers point to a potentially even larger lead of 15 points or higher. Frankly, I have never ever seen results like these in a PA Presidential poll….ever.

  106. 106.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Kay:

    When she’s interviewed she makes it sound like she had the 6 month visitor visa rather than a work visa.

    That doesn’t surprise me. I suspect it’s rather common. It wouldn’t even be a problem except for the way he’s gone after undocumented immigrants.

  109. 109.

    MattF

    @Kay: There wouldn’t have been any point in asking Trump about it, since he’d just lie. And then get pissed off at you. And then never forget you raised a question or ever just let it go.

  110. 110.

    Baud

    @hovercraft:

    Trump leads by 10 among white males. Clinton leads by 28 among white females.

    *Clinton leads among white voters by 9 points.

    I don’t understand this math.

  111. 111.

    hovercraft

    @Kay:
    Your mistake is in using the word “thinking”, I doubt that was involved in this process.

  114. 114.

    Cermet

    Despite its issues, the WP is now very anti-tRump and supports Hillary overwhelmingly.

  117. 117.

    Kay

    @OzarkHillbilly:

    It wouldn’t even be a problem except for the way he’s gone after undocumented immigrants.

    Well, and the way she said she’s a good immigrant because she played by the rules.

    I don’t know if it’s true-there should be a paper trail though so it should be cleared up here shortly.

    Trump’s hired hack who now works at CNN was questioning the President’s legal status again this week, too. So there’s that. Fucking AMAZING, the arrogance.

  118. 118.

    hilts

    The only joke subject that was off-limits at Donald Trump’s Comedy Central Roast

    Any joke that suggests Trump is not actually as wealthy as he claims to be

    h/t Vulture

  121. 121.

    MattF

    @Cermet: I think Krauthammer (and maybe Thiessen) are the only two WaPo opinionizers who haven’t come down hard against Trump. And Krauthammer is hard-core NeverHillary– considering that he once wrote that Hillary is a ‘pathological liar’. Hard to back off from that.

  122. 122.

    hilts

    @Cermet:

    That’s because Trump is such an unprecedented and unmitigated asshole by every imaginable metric that even the Washington Post has to recognize that his victory would be an existential threat to this nation and to the world.

  123. 123.

    Kay

    @MattF:

    We all know what the GOP response will be if it’s true. Liberals are the hypocrites. They will ignore that Trump made his name in politics by 1. questioning the President’s birth certificate 2. attacking immigrants.

    The inconsistencies come on top of reports by CBS News and GQ Magazine that Trump falsely claimed to have obtained a college degree in Slovenia but could be more politically damaging because her husband has made opposition to illegal immigration the foundation of his presidential run.

  124. 124.

    satby

    @OzarkHillbilly: I do use the ones that let the ants carry some of the poison back to the nest. Within a couple if days it usually gets rid of all of them.

    I do spray, and then wipe the alcohol up fairly fast if it’s on a wood surface. The disruption to the ant path is immediate and seems to last long enough that they get attracted and established at the bait traps. Eric, I probably would take up the food when your cat isn’t eating for a couple of days too.

  125. 125.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Kay:

    Well, and the way she said she’s a good immigrant because she played by the rules.

    Ah, I am not surprised. Even still, I can see her thinking at the time, and maybe even now, that she was playing by the rules when doing a little side work while on a tourist visa. Still again, it is the hypocrisy and the absolute rich white people arrogance on full display.

  126. 126.

    Betty Cracker

    @Kay: Last week, there was an item about the Trump campaign yanking Mrs. Trump’s business website, which contained a bio repeating the lie that she’d obtained a degree in architecture before immigrating to the states (in fact she dropped out freshman year, IIRC). They didn’t think people were going to go over every website associated with the Trumps with a fine-toothed comb? Arrogance, definitely, but stupidity also. The only reason stuff like this isn’t a bigger deal is that the sheer volume of lies has overwhelmed the media and the voters.

  127. 127.

    raven

    This Michael Wolf dude is a fucking moron. He’s pissed because the Dems didn’t have Trump people on stage at their convention???

  129. 129.

    JosieJ (not Josie)

    @Eric S.:

    A few drops of lavender essential oil in a spray bottle of water (and a drop of dish soap to get it to mix) works fairly well in conjunction with the traps OzarkHillbilly mentioned. Peppermint or spearmint essential oils work well, too. Spray all areas where the ants could be entering. Cinnamon or lemon is good, too: leave lemon peelings or cinnamon sticks around areas like window sills where ants get in.

    Just be careful with the traps. Most contain chemicals toxic to pets, so you want to make sure your cat can’t get to them. OH’s box solution seems fine. I’ve had good luck with Terro baits and traps; you can get them at your local hardware store.

  130. 130.

    Cat48

    @Patricia Kayden:

    The Iran Deal is controversial bc some people think Obama is responsible for our Foreign Policy, others feel the decision should have been made by Netanyahu bc he wants to bomb Iran. Anyway, when the president knew the hostages were in liftoff, he came out & announced it. He also said we would be paying Iran $400M to settle an old debt with Iran, etc. When they took over our embassy when Carter was Prez, we had $400M of their money bc they wanted to buy weapons. We both broke off ties, but Iran wanted their $$$ & sued the US at The Hague. The statement that the State Department issued sort of explained that.

    In order to pay Iran the money after the agreement had been signed, we needed to pay them with cash bc the Sanctions were so harsh that they were completely outside the banking system, including credit cards or bank wires. It was a plane full of Euros I think for settlement of the case at The Hague.
    Laura Rozen would know, but she hasn’t been on Twitter. She followed the entire deal from start to finish & wrote about all of it.

    So, that’s all I know for sure from what’s avail. Prez did mention the money though .

  131. 131.

    Kay

    This is what I have learned so far as a result of Trump’s run. If a Presidential candidate is perceived to be popular among white men, media will do absolutely no due diligence until he is perceived to be unpopular.

    Rich white men don’t require any backing for their claims. Their word alone is enough along with the fact that they are popular among OTHER white men. Everyone else needs to provide hundreds of character witnesses and reams of documentation and even then we can spend two years on whether or not their birth certificate is authentic.

    It’s disgustingly inequitable.

  132. 132.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    One wonders is was that brief period in when the election was tied from the initial shock over the wikilleaks bringing Hilary down and less Trump being momentarily liked?

  133. 133.

    OldDave

    @Eric S.:

    Illinois, the flattest state east of the Mississippi

    . You should visit Florida sometime. The total elevation change, lowest to highest point, is less than 400 feet.

  134. 134.

    rikyrah

    I have become a single-issue voter in this election year and that issue is preventing the total destruction of human civilization.

    — CHRlS ROCK (@chrisrockyoz) August 2, 2016

  137. 137.

    Kay

    @Betty Cracker:

    The only reason stuff like this isn’t a bigger deal is that the sheer volume of lies has overwhelmed the media and the voters.

    I think they were also relying on competition- political markets. That’s what primaries are for. The opposition turns up problems with the candidates. Except the GOP isn’t a real political Party anymore- it’s a bunch of loosely affiliated grifters angling for their next big paycheck.

    The GOP itself is what inevitably happens in unregulated markets, really. It’s a race to the bottom. A market failure.

  141. 141.

    Barbara

    @Baud: They sampled more white men, which would likely be significant error because women vote more than men, typically. The thing to remember about Pennsylvania, above all, is that it is old. Sixth oldest average age in the nation. So while in theory rust belt sensibilities might sway some to Trump (though they have not been enough to make the state tilt R at the presidential level in a long time) there are two counterweights: A lot of old people loathe Trump’s personal style. He is coarse, crass, and crude, and while they might not think his style is as bad as, say, hip hop music, to name another cultural icon they find bewildering, it is not as if they have been yearning to go back to a time when people talked like Trump. Also, there are a lot of old ladies — old white ladies — who have been yearning for the opportunity to vote for a woman at the presidential level for a long time. My mother is one of them.

  142. 142.

    TS

    @Baud:

    I don’t understand this math.

    I don’t much understand it either, but it seems to be correct based on a 50/50 population of males/females

    Assume 100 of each
    Females 64 to 36 Clinton (margin of 28)
    Males 55 to 45 Trump (margin of 10)

    Clinton has total votes 64 + 45 = 109
    Trump has total votes 36 + 55 = 91

    In 200 votes Clinton is ahead by 18, thus as a % ahead by 9.

  144. 144.

    Baud

    @Barbara: Right. I was only wondering how an 18 point advantage for Clinton when the sexes were polled separately turned into a 9 point advantage when combined. They must behave oversampled white men by a lot.

  146. 146.

    hovercraft

    @David ?▶️Hillary/Harley Quinn 2016▶️? Koch: @David ?▶️Hillary/Harley Quinn 2016▶️? Koch:
    On I think it was Monday morning Sam Clovis (national co-chair for the campaign) did the rounds on the cable morning shows to tell us that the polls at this point were meaningless and should be ignored, I said that they were seeing a big bounce for her in their internal post convention polls. That’s also when everyone in Trump world started peddling the system is rigged bs and whining about the debates.

  148. 148.

    hovercraft

    David ?▶️Hillary/Harley Quinn 2016▶️? Koch

    : @David ?▶️Hillary/Harley Quinn 2016▶️? Koch

    :
    On I think it was Monday morning Sam Clovis (national co-chair for the campaign) did the rounds on the cable morning shows to tell us that the polls at this point were meaningless and should be ignored, I said that they were seeing a big bounce for her in their internal post convention polls. That’s also when everyone in Trump world started peddling the system is rigged bs and whining about the debates.

  149. 149.

    Barbara

    @rikyrah: Whereas, Paul Ryan apparently thinks he can still hold court from an underground bunker outside the Beltway and that is more important to him than the rest of us who end up being vaporized.

  151. 151.

    Quinerly

    @Betty Cracker:
    Big piece in Politico (yes, I know…Politico) about possible questions about Melania’s immigration status.
    Oops, I see someone already mentioned this. I was scrolling up on comments, not down.

  152. 152.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Kenneth Kohl: I’ve got a buddy with really small hands that match his body size perfectly (he’s about 5-1) As soon as he drops his trousers…. well let’s just say women run away screaming in terror.

  153. 153.

    Cat48

    @MomSense:

    Good, because I remember the president talked about old debts & we were paying some. I guess they rode the Benghazi investigations to death, so we’re moving back to Iran bc the GOP & Chuck Schumer didn’t get their way. We have to re-argue it now with a false accusation. I would rather not.

  155. 155.

    Eric S.

    @satby:

    I probably would take up the food when your cat isn’t eating for a couple of days too.

    Here in lines one of the problems. Ozzie is a nibbler. He only eats a couple of bites then walks away and goes back again 30, 60, 90 minutes later for another couple of bites. Rinse and repeat throughout the day. I am picking it up but he’s a very unhappy camper.

  156. 156.

    TS

    @raven:

    This Michael Wolf dude is a fucking moron. He’s pissed because the Dems didn’t have Trump people on stage at their convention???

    I had to turn it off when he said Hillary didn’t have any policies for the Trump supporters – his explanation of same had a rather racist tinge.

    Sounds like those who want Hillary to nominate a RW SC Justice as a thank you to any GOPers who vote for her.

  157. 157.

    NorthLeft12

    @Anne Laurie: Anne, this is not in reply to this comment but I just wanted to ask you and others to expand on this comment you had in a post yesterday;

    And in a culture like ours that’s turned its military into a weird fetish

    This is one of the few times that I have seen an American own up to this. Frankly, as a foreigner, this worries me more about the US and its future than the bigotry and ignorance [okay that is a very close second] that I see currently running rampant.

  158. 158.

    hovercraft

    @Baud: @TS:
    Mine too, way too much logical thinking before I’ve finished my first drum of morning tea. But thank you.

  159. 159.

    scav

    @hovercraft: Have to go all the way to the bottom, but here’s the gist. 48% men, 52% female, 93% white, 7% non-white, no crosstabs that I saw but I was skimming fast.

    ETA and a thanks to TS too. we should all play more recreational math. Sneeky little numbers.

  161. 161.

    raven

    @NorthLeft12: I was with a group of Italian Soil scientists at a Georgia football game on Veterans Day last year and they were stunned by all the rah-rah bullshit. I tried to explain that it was usually only half that bad!

  164. 164.

    hovercraft

    @TS:
    This seems to have become a thing in the last couple of days, yesterday it was Ryan Lizza of the NewYorker asking if she should throw the a supreme court justice, there was also a former governor of Minnesota who endorsed her yesterday and suggested that to bring unity to the nation she should put RMoney in charge of the economy and put John McCain in charge of veterans and military stuff. Do these people not understand they are in the process of losing? When the house is burning down around you don’t get to dictate to the fire department how they are going to put the fire out.

  167. 167.

    Quinerly

    @OzarkHillbilly:
    For me too. I live in the city (Soulard …diverse area) so the Ferguson stuff hit kinda close to home. Glad we are almost done with Jeremiah.

  169. 169.

    scav

    @TS: I was also thinking it somehow ties into Sam Wang’s the importance of one vote measure. When differences (between candidates) are small, the single vote makes a bigger swing in the stats. (which would also explain why states move in and out of the running.) Never bother thinking about it before.

  170. 170.

    Kay

    @Tenar Darell:

    I just had to run up the cthouse and overheard Prominent Respectable Republican begging wingnut (who is on the Bd of Elections) to support Trump. She’s skeptical. “my people are conservatives”

    We have to fully enjoy this while it lasts :)

  173. 173.

    TS

    @hovercraft:

    There is never a suggestion that a GOP administration should include any democrats – nor any acknowledgement that President Obama HAS included republicans in his administration. One rule for them & another for us – or some such thing.

  174. 174.

    Cermet

    @hilts: On some days, it would appear I and tRump (excluding threat to the US!) have something in common, at least relative to my step-daughter’s point of view – sigh

  176. 176.

    Iowa Old Lady

    I think Trump’s long time status as a public figure led both him and the press to think he’d already been scrutinized. It turns out a presidential candidate gets a whole different level of examination with plenty of chance for the candidate to reveal themself. Whoever said our endless presidential campaign system provides an x-ray of the soul was right.

  177. 177.

    The Ancient Randonnuer

    @Kay:

    It’s disgustingly inequitable.

    Example 1: Carly Fiorina. She didn’t get a pass. The media personalities of DC stuck a shiv in her from almost the moment she hit the campaign trail. Several articles describing her as scheming, less than truthful, opportunistic, etc and that was the nice stuff. Every bit of it most likely true but Trump didn’t get the same coverage during that period.

  178. 178.

    hovercraft

    This is from last week but it’s Margaret and Helen, so enjoy.

    Trump is no Reagan. No Kennedy. No Clinton. No Obama. He’s not even a Bush.

    FROM HELEN:

    Margaret, I watched that jackass in Cleveland and lost my voice. I saw a Presidential nominee paint a picture of an America I don’t know and have never known. I tried to respond but I couldn’t find the words. I watched his wife lie to a reporter saying that she had written every word of her speech. When she hadn’t, I watched the media say it wasn’t her fault. I tried to respond but couldn’t find the words. I listened to children who have known only life’s riches praise a father who had made his riches by cheating others. I tried to respond but I couldn’t find the words. I watched an audience shout down a Senator when he told them to vote their conscience. I tried to respond but I couldn’t find the words. I watched amazed as Trump got more popular rather than less and truly I couldn’t find the words. But last night, I watched a battle-worn President who had been unjustly treated and unfairly maligned rise above it all. I watched Barack Obama, my President, paint a different picture, a beautiful picture of hope, kindness, forgiveness and humility. And now I am going to respond because I have indeed found my words. Screw you, Mr. Trump. You better give your heart to Jesus because your butt is mine and I plan to kick your ass from the bottom floor to the top floor of Trump Tower and then down again. As I live and breathe, you will never be President. Never.

    I have always said that even when I watch my P’s and Q’s, I can still spell bullshit. Eight years ago, Sarah Palin walked onto the world stage and American politics hit a new low. I saw a bitch and I called her a bitch. Trust me. She spewed hatred, fear and ignorance better than any hillbilly I had ever known. I have no regrets for calling her a bitch. Palin was a joke. Trump, however, is no joke. He is the real deal when it comes to divisive politics. Trump has an ego the size of my ass (and trust me when I tell you that is one yuuuuuuuuge ass). Everything he does is for selfish reasons, fueled by greed and motivated by power.

    Salty language and a strong opinion don’t bother me. Saying what’s on your mind is usually a good thing. Usually. But what’s on Trump’s mind isn’t fit for human consumption. It’s just hatred, fear and plain old racism. He put together a carnival in Cleveland to make the case that America has become a horrible place that no longer has time for political correctness. But I am here to tell you that speaking your mind and being politically correct are not mutually exclusive. Political correctness is having the emotional intelligence and decency not to use language, evoke images or take actions that marginalize, offend or otherwise insult people who are socially disadvantaged or discriminated against. Kind of sounds like something Jesus would support if you ask me.

    The America he described is not the America I know. In fact, it’s not the America anyone knows. The rest of us know an America of hard-working, compassionate people who no longer have time to hate and who don’t aspire to harass and humiliate their fellow countrymen. The America we know wants to end poverty, end war, educate our children and take care of our elderly. We welcome diversity because we are and always have been the world’s great melting pot. Our America has been and always will be great. Trump sees America as some ugly girl just waiting for him to take her to the prom. It’s bullshit and we all know it.

    Trump takes offense that President Obama and Secretary Clinton don’t use the expression Extreme Islamic Terrorist, suggesting, I guess, that all Islamic people are terrorist but some are just more extreme. Funny. Whenever another old, white man blows up an abortion clinic, I don’t hear anyone calling him an Extreme Christian Terrorist. Why? Because you don’t attribute the bad actions of a few Christians to the entire Christian faith any more than you should attribute terrorism to the entire religion of Islam. You don’t, of course, unless you are trying to stir up a bunch of ignorant mouth breathers that have been drawn to the talk radio/Fox News/Sarah Palin/Michelle Bachman brand of Republicanism that is today’s Republican base. Trump’s America seems to be one filled with roaming bands of brown gypsies raping and pillaging at will. I guess the view from Trump Towers is somewhat skewed when you watch Fox News and listen to talk radio all day. To him, there is evil in anyone who doesn’t bow to his perceived greatness.

    Trump is partly right. Evil is indeed alive and well in America. It’s just not as widespread as he would like to scare us into believing. It seems to be alive and well in about 4% of the population – roughly equal to the number of votes cast for Trump during the primaries. Coincidence? I think not. And funny enough, the worst of them all decided to travel to Cleveland last week.

    Donald. You sir are no Reagan. You are no Kennedy. No Clinton. You are no Obama. You aren’t even a Bush. You are a self-aggrandizing, hatred-spewing, lying sack of shit. And yes, I realize that my name- calling is just as bad as yours. But I am not running for President. You are. So be a man and act like it. Sadly, I sincerely doubt you can.

    The Republican Party, the party that likes to think it has a monopoly on God, family values and patriotism, owes America an enormous apology. Palin was bad enough, but Trump is inexcusable. I mean it. Really.

    ma FROM MARGARET:

    Helen, you had better sit down for this. I have news. It’s happened and we’ve both lived to see it. After watching three nights of the Democratic convention, my Howard woke up this morning and told me that he, a dyed in the wool Republican, will be voting for Hillary Clinton in November.

    Helen, dear, I have now seen it all and I am planning to wear my Sunday best everyday because i could now drop dead at any given moment. He’s with her. I couldn’t be happier. You should be too. Have some pie. We’ve got this.

    (PS from Helen – for those of you who ask if you can copy my writings – just like when I bake a pie, it’s always better when shared)

  179. 179.

    Weaselone

    @Baud:

    Assuming a 50/50 split white men/to white women as voters (generally not accurate as women vote in slightly higher percentages we would get

    .5 *(-9) + .5*28 = -4.5 + 14 = 9.5 lead among all white voters.

  180. 180.

    Patricia Kayden

    @hovercraft:

    Do these people not understand they are in the process of losing?

    It’s hilarious that Republicans think that Secretary Clinton has to do anything to cater to their interests. If Trump was polling well, there is no way that they would be demanding that he make any concessions to get Democrats to vote for him. The hypocrisy is striking.

  181. 181.

    Schlemazel Khan

    @hovercraft:
    I assume gov Pawlenty? Not Carlson. But it was such a big story it didn’t make the news here on the tundra, this is the first I heard of it

  182. 182.

    hovercraft

    @Baud:
    I didn’t realize that Baud was still so bitter from the primary, she beat you fair and square, and you can still run next time. But to wish such a fate for your opponent is too much. Please for the sake of world unity let it go.

  183. 183.

    Kay

    The political dynamics of the Republican Party’s so-called Wisconsin Mafia have been fascinating to watch this year, but never more so than this week.
    RNC Chairman Reince Priebus’ anger at Donald Trump over his failure to endorse House Speaker Paul Ryan, who is being challenged in next week Republican primary by businessman Paul Nehlen, has to be understood in the context of the chairman’s relationship with Ryan.
    Priebus and Ryan are both from the Badger State, and are friends. They also both have deep connections with Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker.

    Donald Trump knows nothing about these states or these relationships and it turns out knowing something is important!

  184. 184.

    Patricia Kayden

    @hovercraft:

    After watching three nights of the Democratic convention, my Howard woke up this morning and told me that he, a dyed in the wool Republican, will be voting for Hillary Clinton in November.

    We’re seeing a lot of Republicans leaving the dark side. YAY! Republicans are going to rue the day they elevated such an unqualified man to be their Presidential candidate. Sad.

  185. 185.

    hovercraft

    @Iowa Old Lady:
    It was pure media malpractice, all they had to do was comb through the Post and Daily News archives and they would have hit pay dirt. Lazy incompetent media.

  186. 186.

    TS

    @scav:

    Have to admit I would have loved to have a job doing the statistical analysis of voting. I think Nate Silver’s gone too far away from the original stats (his analysis/explanations have never been impressive). Sam Wang seems to stay with his expertise.

  187. 187.

    hovercraft

    @Schlemazel Khan:
    No it was some old dude didn’t catch his name, he said Trump wasn’t an option for him, but Clinton should sweeten the pot to solidify republican support for her.

  188. 188.

    Patricia Kayden

    @Iowa Old Lady: Ironically, I think Trump would have gotten away with his past indiscretions. The media adores him and would have looked past his prior missteps. Trump’s problem is that he’s an awful campaigner who only attracts people who share his bigotry and small mindedness. He has no message to attract a huge swath of the American public, which is multicultural, multiracial and religiously tolerant.

    There just aren’t enough angry White males to elect Trump.

  189. 189.

    Kay

    Trump has been making stuff up about voting at rallies- claims people can vote ten times, other assorted lies.

    Which made people wonder if he knows how to vote. Nope.

    Watch him bully ordinary officials and expect special treatment, way back in 2004.

    Back in 2004, Billy Bush followed Donald Trump as he was going to vote in New York City, but things turned sour very quickly when a mix-up occurred with The Donald’s polling location. Check out Billy trying to stay out of Trump’s way as The Donald gets more and more heated due to being turned away from the polls!

  190. 190.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @NorthLeft12: I don’t talk about it much, but yes, it has gone beyond ridiculous to obscene. My WW II father and uncles would all be embarrassed by it.

  191. 191.

    hovercraft

    Old media question: why isn’t Hillary leading by double digits? Um, she’s up by 10 in new Fox poll and sailing in the states. New media question: why isn’t Hillary leading by 35?

    from GOS

  192. 192.

    Schlemazel Khan

    @hovercraft:
    Kinda round faced? Had to be Arne Carlson. That asshole left the DFL when the going got rough. Only got elected as an R because the endorsed family values guy was caught groping his teen daughters schoolmate. They refused to endorse Carlson for re-election but he won the primary.

    Did some ling lasting damage to the state. I see him downtown Mpls from time to time and enjoy pointing out some of his failures to him

  194. 194.

    Gelfling 545

    @satby: It will kill bedbugs ( per the exterminator we had in at the housing for formerly homeless when I was working on a project there a few years back) so why not ants.
    ETA the other fun insect related fact I learned was that beagles can be trained to detect bedbugs. It was cool watching those dogs go to work.

  195. 195.

    Soylent Green

    her husband has made opposition to illegal immigration the foundation of his presidential run.

    As has been noted here, white people are not immigrants.

  196. 196.

    rikyrah

    @Patricia Kayden:

    Do any of you read Salon? Look at how a “liberal” blog handles the Iran deal “scandal” which broke yesterday. With friends like these …

    Salon has been off the rails this entire election season.

  197. 197.

    rikyrah

    @Kay:

    I swear to God you could not make this up. I just cannot imagine what they were thinking. No one would question any of this bullshit when he’s running for President? It’s arrogance is what it is- they believe we’re all marks just waiting to get fleeced.

    dare I say it….

    cause they’re White.

    ANYONE with a non-White immigrant spouse..

    EVERY INCH of their immigration status would be poured over with a fine-toothed comb.

    period.

  198. 198.

    Kay

    Trump Mistakenly Claims He Saw Video Of Cash Being Delivered To Iran

    “Mistakenly”. Certain people get the benefit of the doubt. Meanwhile, FOX News is reporting it like Iran-Contra every 15 minutes.

    Lock. Her. Up. – the actual chant of the Trump campaign.

  200. 200.

    Dadadadadadada

    @Kay: Aargh! All during the RNC convention, I was waiting for the Clinton people to leak a story about Melania and/or Ivana having committed some kind of immigration irregularity back in the day. Wouldn’t that have been something? Melania speaking at the convention about the importance of enforcing immigration law, and while she’s talking, reports emerge that she herself was “illegal” or some such. I can’t imagine why they waited until now.

  201. 201.

    rikyrah

    @Riley’s Enabler:

    @satby: Good morning, sunshine. Been meaning to write to tell you how much I’m enjoying the latest batch of soaps and emulsions. You do such great work. Thank you!

    satby,

    you make soaps?

    do you have a website?

  203. 203.

    Kay

    @Dadadadadadada:

    I can. It’s supposedly dicey to go after the spouse. Never applied to Hillary Clinton or Michelle Obama, but you know there are two sets of rules.

    I don’t hold it against Laura Bush that she screwed up and tragically killed someone, but ask yourself for a moment if Michelle Obama had done that. In Hillary Clinton’s case, she didn’t kill anyone and they said she did.

  205. 205.

    nonynony

    @hovercraft: I’m a bit surprised that the new media question isn’t “why isn’t she over 50%” yet?

    (To expect a candidate to be at over 50% in averaged LV polling at the start of August is ridiculous – hell to be at over 50% in multiple polls at the start of August hasn’t happened that often – but the bar for Clinton is higher both because Clinton rules are in effect and because Trump is ridiculous. So I’m a bit surprised we don’t see more press suggesting that she should be at at least 52% by now in the polling averages and that it’s very worrying that she only crosses the 50% threshold in a handful of polls.)

  207. 207.

    Iowa Old Lady

    Manafort on GMA this morning re Obama and Clinton time traveling:

    the main issue isn’t this family, it’s the main issue that caused the suffering of this family which is the war in the middle east, the destabilization and the policies of Obama and Clinton that caused them.

  208. 208.

    Quinerly

    @OzarkHillbilly:
    I think you and I have a mutual musician friend. Years ago, when I was quietly lurking (since the Bush Adm.) you posted a You Tube clip on a music open thread. I went, “Wow!”…”small world that someone here would know Charlie.” Pretty sure it was you….venue might have been “The Focal Point.” I then signed up so that I could make a comment and did. Pretty sure the thread was dead, so I went back to lurking until about 6 weeks ago. As for the Venice, was just there last Saturday. And as for Charlie P, will see him at HH at Sqwires in Lafayette Square. His regular Thursday gig❤ We go back to the fun days at McGurks…the fabulous ’80’s.

  209. 209.

    hilts

    Clint Eastwood is defending Trump’s racism. Just another reason not to watch his films.

    The other reason is that Clint Eastwood is not even an actor, he’s just an archetype and virtually every role he’s ever had is the same damn archetype.

    I’m disappointed that he felt compelled to expose his toolishness one more time with the Esquire interview. I thought his chair routine told us all we needed to know about his political philosophy.

  210. 210.

    scav

    @Dadadadadadada: Well, it might be that it would only have muddled the impact of the plagiarism kerfuffle that erupted after her speach. Hold it in reserve and roll it out later (she’s not going anywhere) when things are quieter. Some prefer massive combined sledgehammer, tank and sink blows in the noisy din of battles on multiple fronts, others keep things in reserve for tactical high-visibility strikes. It’s at least a possibility.

  211. 211.

    nonynony

    @Dadadadadadada:

    All during the RNC convention, I was waiting for the Clinton people to leak a story about Melania and/or Ivana having committed some kind of immigration irregularity back in the day.

    I mean, maybe someone had planned to do something like that but then saw all of the spontaneous negative press that the convention was generating and decided to stand back and let them step on their own dicks?

    I know that when your opponent is drowning you should hand them an anvil, but the GOP convention showed the GOP drowning after they’d already tied an anvil to their own feet, had swallowed a few boxes of ball bearings, and while engaging in an anvil catching contest amongst themselves. Frankly I’m not sure between Melania’s plagiarized speech, Cruz’s middle finger to Trump speech, and Trump’s own “Bizarro Ronald Reagan” acceptance speech there was any room in the media cycle to slip in something as relatively mild in comparison as “immigrant basher Trump’s own wife broke immigration laws when she first came to the country”.

  212. 212.

    hovercraft

    @Dadadadadadada:
    That would have been too obvious, the Clinton people know how to drop little grenades without them blowing up in their face. josh Marshall over a TPM is pissed, he says they had the story back in the spring but didn’t have confirmation.

  214. 214.

    hilts

    @hovercraft: @nonynony:

    Given the fact that Trump has exposed himself to be a racist, sexist, anti-semitic knuckle dragging neanderthal and serial liar, I’m demoralized that he’s only trailing Hillary by 10 points. She should be up by 20 points. I wish some retired Republican senators would have the fucking guts to publicly endorse Hillary and shame the RNC, Ryan, and McConnell to withdraw their endorsement of this scumbag.

  215. 215.

    Dadadadadadada

    @Kay: I noticed that 50% of those poll workers were black. Think that contributed to Donnie’s foul mood? I think it did.

  216. 216.

    Barbara

    @hovercraft: On the one hand, yes, the double standard is ridiculous. On the other hand, you have to walk a fine line between pointing out her own questionable status working on a tourist visa (remembering that the average person doesn’t have a deep understanding of who gets to work and who doesn’t) while not demonizing her as an undocumented worker. After all, one of our goals is to regularize the status of many people who lack documentation under rational immigration reform legislation. What they might have done was give the news to the WaPo (and maybe they did), because it did a very in-depth look at how models get to work in the U.S. If she had abused a tourist visa, it’s that kind of piece in which it would have fit perfectly.

  218. 218.

    James E Powell

    Where does CNN go to find Democratic spokespeople who are neither informed on the subject nor able to speak on television?

    I’m watching this D representative trying to explain the Iran $400MM thing and he is completely unable to say:

    The Republicans are lying, again. They know it and shame on you for letting them do it on your show.

    This money was explained, in detail, back in January. But you are calling it a “breaking” story because the Republicans told you to call it that.

    This money was not a payment, it was America giving Iran their money back. They paid us for military hardware, but we never delivered. We’ve been holding on to it all these years and – as part of the deal we made – we are finally giving them their money back.

    Now that was explained back in January. Did you not understand it then?

    But no, let’s have a bumbling bonehead stammer through a paragraph while the CNN anchor interrupts him with GOP talking points.

    Fuck me running! I should not watch cable news.

  219. 219.

    Capri

    @Barbara: So is my mother – 92 years young and some one who has lived in the western Phila suburbs for 58 years.. One year in the ’90’s (when Bill was president and the Hillary hate was ramping up) my birthday present from her was a membership in the Hillary Clinton fan club. It was shocking because she is not a political person at all and this was out of the blue. She and all of her friends have been in Hillary’s corner for a long, long time.

  220. 220.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Quinerly: Yeah, I’ve known Charlie since dirt was new and he was playing with Jim R and…. damn i hate when my brain farts like this… Higgens? Anyway, Geyer Street Sheiks forever! I was one of the happy hour crew at the Venice for years and Red is one of my all time favorite people (don’t tell her I said that, it would ruin her image)

    I’ve been out here for almost 15 years and I still miss the old neighborhood.

  221. 221.

    Miss Bianca

    @Baud: @NorthLeft12: Not only the only public institution we’re allowed to believe in, but the only public institution that gets *funded* in anything like adequate fashion. Whether that’s a result of the fetishization or some part of its cause, I’m not sure. Adam S. made some reference, a while back, to the fact that the military, for better or for worse, is our only real public works program left extant. Perhaps we’ll start to see some pushback under a Clinton administration. I dunno, tho’ – we are a militaristic culture, even tho’ (again, perhaps because) only a very small percentage of the population actually goes into the military.

  222. 222.

    SFAW

    @Dadadadadadada:

    I noticed that 50% of those poll workers were black. Think that contributed to Donnie’s foul mood? I think it did.

    That’s because they were (obviously) New Black Panthers, scaring away “real” voters, causing trouble by doing things such as holding doors for elderly white women, being courteous — you know, thugs.

  223. 223.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Kay: via TPM:

    masse.

    The key is this passage in that interview …

    “I came here for my career, and I did so well, I moved here. It never crossed my mind to stay here without papers. That is just the person you are. You follow the rules. You follow the law. Every few months you need to fly back to Europe and stamp your visa. After a few visas, I applied for a green card and got it in 2001. After the green card, I applied for citizenship. And it was a long process.”

    and

    “I followed the law. I never thought to stay here without papers. I had a visa, I traveled every few months back to the country to Slovenia to stamp the visa. I came back, I applied for the green card, I applied for the citizenship later on after many years of green card. So I went by system, I went by the law. And you should do that, you should not just say let me stay here and whatever happens, happens.”

    Signed.Sealed.Delivered.

  224. 224.

    Quinerly

    @OzarkHillbilly:
    I went to law school with Renz. Higgins is a dear friend. Just doing the FB chat thing with him this morning. Geyer Street Sheiks have played their final gig, I think. No more reunions. As for Red, she’s a close friend. Been doing mosaic here in my home since 1993…we have now moved on to my courtyard after a kitchen, two bathrooms, and a hallway. Back to Renz, got to know him real well first year of law school. They seat you alphabetically by last name. We had a blast with a bottle of smuggled champagne at graduation…they also again seat you alphabetically at the “hooding ceremony” so again we were side by side. Great memories!

  225. 225.

    hovercraft

    @Patricia Kayden: From The New Republic

    Brian Beutler

    20 hours ago

    Anti-Trump conservatives want Hillary Clinton to negotiate the terms of their surrender. A strange line of thought has emerged in the midst of Donald Trump’s latest and most broad-spectrum meltdown: that Hillary should offer Republicans a kind of buyout in exchange for their one-time support this November.

    “She’s happy to make right-leaning voters feel a little better about fleeing Trump,” complained New York Times columnist Ross Douthat, “but she isn’t offering them substantive concessions, or seeking a grand centrist coalition.” He suggests she consider a more moderate reproductive rights, immigration, and fiscal policy agenda.

    This thinking isn’t limited to conservatives with a rooting interest in seeing Hillary Clinton move right.

    It’s in some ways reminiscent of the way John Boehner and Mitch McConnell would try to mind-trick Barack Obama into weakening his own hand, by warning him that sticking to his guns was tantamount to provoking a wild animal. Conservatives will stick with this manifestly dangerous candidate, and might even get him elected, unless Clinton volunteers a ransom of some kind.

    I can think of three reasons why this is ridiculous.

    1. Abandoning Trump is its own reward. Have you seen that guy? He’s crazy. Helping to defeat him is its own reward, when the alternative is being leashed to his candidacy for life.

    2. The terms are asymmetric. Clinton should make lasting policy concessions for a one-time alliance of necessity? This is playing Clinton for a sucker. The very next time Republicans nominate a non-madman for the presidency, nearly all of these anti-Trump conservatives will flock back to their party, but the setbacks to, say, Medicare will be fixed in law. The conservative justice on the Supreme Court will be there for life. The terms Clinton is offering are more symmetrical: you make peace with freezing your priorities for four years, and in return we’ll distinguish between you and the Trump loyalists in our rhetoric.

    3. This would be the greatest moral hazard created by man since Fox News paid Roger Ailes tens of millions of dollars for being a serial sexual harasser. It creates awful incentives to tell Republicans they can cater to the worst elements of their party for as long as its useful, because when things spin out of control, Democrats will enact their policies for them.

    The right offer is nothing.

  226. 226.

    nonynony

    @hovercraft:

    josh Marshall over a TPM is pissed, he says they had the story back in the spring but didn’t have confirmation.

    This just speaks even more obviously to the shockingly inept ability of Republican primary candidates to punch Trump.

    Seriously – this is the kind of thing that either of W’s or HW’s campaigns would have been able to make a ton of political hay about. Not obviously, but with whisper campaigns and push polls somewhat disconnected from the official campaign. How could they not be able to make hay out of the fact that Donald Trump was married to an “illegal immigrant”? Even if it isn’t true, it’s the kind of truthiness that caused Colbert to coin the phrase in the first place (remember W’s campaign and the “John McCain has a black child” rumor that they spread through third parties?)

    Jeb was even running this year and yet somehow none of these guns got turned onto Trump. He didn’t need to have that rumor confirmed – just make it the basis of an ongoing campaign to tie Trump to a whole lot of benefits from “illegal immigrants” – his wife was an illegal immigrant, he’d rather hand good jobs in his hotels to illegal immigrants than employ Americans, etc. Previous Republican candidates have had no problem tapping into that Republican Id to kill opponents dead, and yet all of them to a man just stood around and let Trump beat the crap out of them without even trying a single dirty trick.

    Every day it gets more and more shocking to me that the GOP candidates were so inept at fighting Trump. I’m not talking about fighting him in a general election sense – Clinton was going to have the advantage in that battle and she’s not only retained it she seems to be improving on it faster than I expected – but in the Republican primary itself. It’s like they forgot the last 40+ years of Republican-on-Republican dirty tricks and just let Trump have a pass expecting their own voters to, for the first time ever, be able to use good judgement and reject Trump as an obvious nutter.

    (And yeah, I know they were all standing back expecting Trump to implode and then pick up the pieces. But by NH they should have all realized that he wasn’t going to do that. So they needed to hit is “strength” – his appeal to immigrant hating white supremacists.)

  227. 227.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @schrodinger’s cat: Yes I know, and if this is all factual and true, even her citizenship is in ‘danger’. My point was that it is w/o a doubt a common practice and your avg American voter wouldn’t care that much one way or the other except for Donnie’s immigration position. Or at least, I wouldn’t.

  228. 228.

    schrodinger's cat

    @OzarkHillbilly: If you are a citizen of another country you have to be in
    ” legal status” always. You can legally change from one legal status to another i.e. student status to work status, while being in the United States. However to renew your visa you have to leave the country and go to a consulate or US embassy. Prior to 9/11 you could go to either Canada or Mexico but since 2001 you had to go back to your home country to get your new visa.

    I have had friends who changed their status from F-1 to H-1B (student to work) and had to go back to their home country (China, India, Germany etc.) to get their new visas. Sometimes this resulted in delays of months. One Chinese student I knew couldn’t come back because his company grew tired of waiting for him to return and they just hired someone else.

    Your multiple entry visa is what allows you to leave and return at will.

  229. 229.

    schrodinger's cat

    @OzarkHillbilly: If you are a citizen of another country you have to be in
    ” legal status” always. You can legally change from one legal status to another i.e. student status to work status, while being in the United States. However to renew your visa you have to leave the country and go to a consulate or US embassy. Prior to 9/11 you could go to either Canada or Mexico but since 2001 you had to go back to your home country to get your new visa.

    I have had friends who changed their status from F-1 to H-1B (student to work) and had to go back to their home country (China, India, Germany etc.) to get their new visas. Sometimes this resulted in delays of months. One Chinese student I knew couldn’t come back because his company grew tired of waiting for him to return and they just hired someone else.

    Your multiple entry visa is what allows you to leave and return at will.

  230. 230.

    hovercraft

    @SFAW:
    He’s preparing his hordes for hi loss, New Republic

    There is no telling what Trump will do or say on election night if, as expected, Hillary Clinton defeats him. But all along we’ve known two things: Trump can’t stand losing, and he steeps himself in right-wing grievance politics. Combined, they provide him the motive and the means—the vocabulary—to violate the fragile norms governing our elections. He’s stipulating in advance that Hillary Clinton is a crook—that if she wins, it means the election was stolen. And in so doing, he’s co-opting the language and tactics influential conservatives have been using, less overtly, to undermine President Obama and liberal governance for years.

    Obviously, opposition parties can profit indirectly from the kind of mass denial, and thus the intense opposition, that Trump is trying to sow. During the Obama years, Republicans have done just that, in their own norm-violating way. They’ve vouchsafed conspiracy theories about the president’s birthplace, and insinuations that groups like the New Black Panthers (which barely exists) and ACORN (which no longer does) are intimidating Republicans out of voting or stuffing ballot boxes for Democrats.

    For years now, too, Republicans have comically exaggerated the extent of election fraud, and voter-impersonation fraud in particular, to advance Voter ID and other state laws aimed at suppressing turnout. Lower turnout helps Republicans win elections, and the central criticism of these laws is that they systemically disenfranchise minority voters. But the strategy has another malign effect, which Trump is now amplifying: By lying about the scope of election fraud, Republicans have eroded their supporters’ faith in the integrity of the vote. They’ve laid a seedbed for sprouting doubts about the legitimacy of our elections, and Trump is now covering it with his own distinctive fertilizer.

    The right has long attacked the legitimacy of liberal rule in other, subtler ways, too. It’s an article of faith among influential members of the conservative legal establishment that the liberal vision of a strong federal government—one that regulates industry and redistributes income—is fundamentally at odds with the Constitution. In the face of Trump’s utter indifference to constitutional limits on state power, many of these conservatives have nonetheless coopted the mantles of “rule of law” and “law and order,” the latter of which was an official theme of the Republican convention two weeks ago. The purpose here is to equate Republican rule with legitimacy, and Democratic rule with lawlessness and plunder.

    For all his supposed deviations from GOP orthodoxy, Trump has unquestionably absorbed the language and conceits underpinning conservative opposition strategy—if not the finer points of it. Trump quite naturally feels entitled to appropriate that strategy in service of making excuses for his own likely defeat.

    “The whole thing with voter identification I think is really—I mean people are going to walk in, they are going to vote 10 times maybe,” he told Bill O’Reilly on Tuesday.

    If you want a demonstration of Trump’s Republican provenance, look no further than this statement, which uses GOP pro-voter ID language in service of protecting his own ego. It mimics the Republican Party platform, which falsely bemoans “a significant and growing form of voter fraud.”

    But when this comes out of the mouth of a presidential nominee, it imperils one of our most vital traditions, the peaceful transition of power. And it’s put mainstream Republicans in a quandary of their own making: While Trump has taken their arguments a step too far, from delegitimizing liberal rule to delegitimizing democracy in a far more basic way, Republicans like House Speaker Paul Ryan have a stake in allowing Trump to undermine Clinton’s legitimacy in advance of her inauguration. They understand that Clinton will meet deeper-than-usual resistance to her agenda in the first months of her presidency if she enters office under a pall rather than with a mandate.

    That may explain why, on top of refusing to repudiate an increasingly offensive and erratic Trump, Ryan has so far declined to stand up for the integrity of our elections. He may figure that at this early date he doesn’t have to. As the political scientist Brendan Nyhan has pointed out, “bipartisan consensus is the most powerful force in public opinion.” If Ryan and other Republican leaders validate the election results as soon as they’re clear, it will go a long way toward discrediting Trump’s efforts to undermine them. But by then, who knows how many millions of people will have been convinced that the process was perverted?

    GOP leaders, heavily invested in avoiding a complete breakdown of party cohesion, are unlikely to disavow Trump before the election. But it will be a capstone to their disgrace if they allow this particular Trumpian affront to stand after all the votes are counted.

    See how it works, first you have to adopt our policies to get us to dump Trump (maybe they think because she let Bernie get so much into the platform, that she’s a pushover, Pro tip, she was wooing democrats, not the same thing) . Then even if you win you didn’t really because only voter fraud won it for you, so you have no mandate. The silent majority was silenced, because you know we are a center right nation.

  232. 232.

    nonynony

    @hilts:

    Given the fact that Trump has exposed himself to be a racist, sexist, anti-semitic knuckle dragging neanderthal and serial liar, I’m demoralized that he’s only trailing Hillary by 10 points. She should be up by 20 points.

    I would suggest that this is only because you have a high opinion of your fellow human beings and are shocked to see that they aren’t living up to it. :)

    I myself am a misanthrope, so I’m actually mildly surprised that Trump seems to be stuck at about 40% of the vote in the polling averages. I figured he’d be pushing around 42-45% for most of the race because the Republican voters will vote for literally anyone with an R next to their name. I’m happy to be proven wrong on that – I’ll be even happier if it holds out and he actually gets lower vote totals than McCain got in 2008.

  233. 233.

    hovercraft

    @nonynony:
    This stupid wall was his biggest thing and in the GOP primary that could have really hurt him outside of his core supporters. Such ineptitude and arrogance, even if you weren’t going to attack him initially, you still should have done your due diligence. Jeb ! had a shit load of money and he wasted it all on hitting Marco.
    SAD!

  235. 235.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Quinerly: I met Jim when he was teaching at Music Folk (a buddy’s teacher) I last saw the Sheiks when they were still together, never caught any of the reunion gigs :-( but I play their CDs regularly. Going to L school with Jim had to be a hoot. My sister went to HS with Higgins, something I didn’t know until I took her to one of their Mule gigs when she came down for a visit and it turned into a HS reunion.

    I helped Red on a project or 2 of her’s, even did some work on their place (Heh: Red in an old convent, almost enuf to convince me there is a God and she has one wicked sense of humor) I last saw her about a year ago when Mark took a turn for the worse and they thought he was going to be confined to the downstairs. Wanted me to came and look at things to see what it would take to fix things up, then Mark got better. Here’s hoping that is still holding.

    I’m beginning to think we know each other if only in passing. Too many connections, not even STL is that small a town.

  237. 237.

    The Golux

    @Bill E Pilgrim:
    What tickles me is that he gets so bent out of shape over the “short-fingered” part of the insult, but apparently has no problem with the “vulgarian” part.

  238. 238.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @schrodinger’s cat: My wife is an immigrant from Spain. I convinced her to become a citizen back when Bush was the reigning disaster. I told her, “It can’t get any worse.” Now she points at Trump and says, “OH, really? You know, I can always go back but you, you could be stuck with him!”

  240. 240.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @hovercraft: Better, but I still have a ways to go. It is why I can still be here at 10:30 in the AM. As to the nice lady, I has a grand daughter I can hold over her head.

  241. 241.

    Quinerly

    @OzarkHillbilly:
    We do know each other! St. Louis is such a small town. I’m not a native (didn’t go to high school here?). Just came out here in 1982 for SLU Law, thinking I would go back to the coast of NC after finishing. Well, I finished and here in Soulard since 1984. Funny story, Red was here hanging a couple of weeks ago and we were going over this next project..I asked her what happened on the project that I’m assuming you were to work on at the convent. I guess I had never realized it never even got started. I go so far back with Mark V…when he was married to Bonnie and the Children’s Hospital days. Can proudly say that I was with the crowd at Molly’s when Red was tending bar there and Mark started pitching woo in her direction after his divorce. Ah, the fabulous ’90’s.

  244. 244.

    ruemara

    @Cat48: That’s fake Chris Rock. He’s been pretending to be Chris Rock for years and he’s notorious for stealing people’s tweets. The person who originally said that a week ago was not that guy.

  246. 246.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @schrodinger’s cat: Only vicariously ;-) It was very frustrating for my wife at times, moral support was the best I could offer her and reassurances that she was indeed reading the paperwork correctly.

  247. 247.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Quinerly: .

    Can proudly say that I was with the crowd at Molly’s when Red was tending bar there and Mark started pitching woo in her direction after his divorce. Ah, the fabulous ’90’s.

    I didn’t hang at Molly’s often but I did play more than a little pool upstairs. Did Red ever tell you about “Pissing for Distance I Got the Blue Balls Blues”? Still makes me laugh!

    I go so far back with Mark V…when he was married to Bonnie and the Children’s Hospital days. Can proudly say that I was with the crowd at Molly’s when Red was tending bar there and Mark started pitching woo in her direction after his divorce. Ah, the fabulous ’90’s.

    Damn, we do go back a ways. It took a very brave man to date Red.

  248. 248.

    grandpa john

    @Kay: Hilarity from farther in the article;

    Walker, who dropped out of the presidential race early, waffled on endorsing Trump before eventually doing so, and in the weeks leading up to the Republican convention was said by multiple sources to be exploring whether it was possible for him to emerge at the convention as an alternative to Trump.

  249. 249.

    catclub

    @nonynony:

    just let Trump have a pass expecting their own voters to, for the first time ever, be able to use good judgement and reject Trump

    This.

  251. 251.

    Quinerly

    @OzarkHillbilly:
    Mark’s wife, Bonnie, was my best neighborhood friend in the late 1980’s…when she had left Children’s and had the Framery. I actually first met her through Mark when he was shop sitting one day and I carried my diplomas and license in for framing. We became fast friends but later grew apart…. so by 1993 or so when Mark had his eye on Red, there were no problems. Red looks after my house and the kitties when I go back to NC and when I take the month of February in NM. Well, this has been a grand morning! I’m glad we made the connections…all because of your long ago music post that made me say, “Wow.” Have a wonderful day!

  253. 253.

    Shana

    @Eric S.: We had an ant problem recently and used Terro which worked perfectly. Our cat doesn’t jump up on counters so it wasn’t an issue for us whether or not it’s safe around pets, but if you do the box over the trap thing it would be what I’d suggest.

  254. 254.

    Shana

    @Eric S.: Having grown up there, I can tell you the Mississippi Valley has a fair number of hills too. Trying to drive up those hills in winter without the benefit of 4 wheel drive was quite an experience.

  255. 255.

    grandpa john

    @Iowa Old Lady: What a lying sack of feces.
    When this event that caused sorrow to this family occurred , the war criminals of the bush administration were the hands that set policy and fomented a totally unneeded war. I’m sure that the hosts of the show did not point out that little fact,since to the media, fact are irrelevent

  256. 256.

    NoraLenderbee

    @Eric S.: Can you move the cat’s food dish to another room for a day or two? IME, the cat will still be unhappy, since he’s a cat, but he will at least have access to food.

  257. 257.

    Bess

    @Eric S.:

    Try placing the catfood dish in a shallow pan of water. A small enough pan so that your cat can easily reach across.

    Create a moat for the ants

    Common Asian solution for crawling insects and food. You can buy little stands for cabinets that hold water around the edge.

  258. 258.

    J R in WV

    @Feathers:

    When I put my index finger tip on Trump’s index finger tip, my wrist was down on the laptop, clear to where the F-unction keys are. I’m a little under 6 ft now, but I have a 19.5 inch neck. I enjoyed heavy work, construction, tractors and backhoes, digging with a shovel and using a hand sledge with chisels to cut bedrock. All behind me now, arthritis got me by the joints.

    My fingers are not long, but my hand is big anyway.

  259. 259.

    Anne Laurie

    @NorthLeft12:

    This is one of the few times that I have seen an American own up to this. Frankly, as a foreigner, this worries me more about the US and its future than the bigotry and ignorance [okay that is a very close second] that I see currently running rampant.

    Waaaay late to this (sorry!) but… Basically, I think the “bigotry and ignorance” is responsible for a good chunk of the RAH RAH OUR SACRED MILITARY yack. If “we” (white men and their enablers) are under unremitting assault by Those People, then of course we must have a big scary military machine to defend ourselves. Ask any anthropologist: the more patriarchal the culture, the more obsessed with “warriors” it is. In response — as other commentors have pointed out — those of us who are not white men have veered between defensive “well, we’re patriots too” and pointing out — as the Khans did — that the True Patriotic Military Heroes are not by any means “natural allies” for jingoist xenophobes such as the entire current GOP.

    We Americans badly need to deescalate, but it’s going to be a slow and careful process, like defusing any other bomb…

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