Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Impressively dumb. Congratulations.

I am pretty sure Katy Tur wasn’t always such a bootlicking sycophant.

If you still can’t see these things even now, maybe politics isn’t your forte and you should stop writing about it.

It’s not hopeless, and we’re not helpless.

The next time the wall street journal editorial board speaks the truth will be the first.

Donald Trump, welcome to your everything, everywhere, all at once.

A snarling mass of vitriolic jackals

Our job is not to persuade republicans but to defeat them.

Stamping your little feets and demanding that they see how important you are? Not working anymore.

I wonder if trump will be tried as an adult.

Russia bombs Ukraine’s maternity hospitals; Republicans in the House can’t sort out supporting Ukraine.

“They not like us!” (that’s for sure!)

It’s a doggy dog world.

Optimism opens the door to great things.

The most dangerous place for a black man in America is in a white man’s imagination.

My years-long effort to drive family and friends away has really paid off this year.

Take hopelessness and turn it into resilience.

Republicans would impeach Biden if he bit into a whole Kit Kat rather than breaking the sections apart.

You can’t attract Republican voters. You can only out organize them.

Following reporting rules is only for the little people, apparently.

Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

A consequence of cucumbers

Meanwhile over at truth Social, the former president is busy confessing to crimes.

Republicans want to make it harder to vote and easier for them to cheat.

You are here: Home / Elections / Election 2016 / Thursday Morning Open Thread: Compare & Contrast

Thursday Morning Open Thread: Compare & Contrast

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(via Huffington Post)

From the NYTimes, “Hillary Clinton Twists the Knife in Donald Trump’s Tax Proposals“:

Hillary Clinton leaned into her plans to raise taxes on the wealthiest Americans on Wednesday, denouncing Donald J. Trump’s tax proposals as a boondoggle for billionaires.

“We’re going to tax the wealthy who have made all of the income gains in the last 15 years,” Mrs. Clinton told a crowd in Cleveland. “The superwealthy, corporations, Wall Street,” she declared emphatically, “they’re going to have to invest in education, in skills training, in infrastructure.”…

Mrs. Clinton’s spending plans, including a $250 billion investment in infrastructure and a $350 billion plan to make college more affordable, rely largely on changes to the tax code that would raise rates on the affluent and corporations.

She supports the “Buffett rule,” which would require millionaires to pay at least 30 percent of their income in taxes, and wants to close the carried interest loophole that lets hedge fund managers pay a lesser tax rate on much of their income. She has also proposed an “exit tax” on corporations that move jobs overseas, and wants to limit tax deductions, impose a 4 percent tax surcharge for income over $5 million, and close corporate tax loopholes to help pay for her costly domestic agenda…

While on the other team…

… In his conversation with Yahoo, Cohen also said he does not trust the polls Keilar referenced during the broadcast…

He specifically pointed to Trump’s poor numbers in the African-American community as evidence that the polls may be off. Cohen, who has been working with Trump since 2006 and describes himself as fiercely loyal, has helped coordinate some of the candidate’s African-American outreach efforts and said his anecdotal experience contradicted the poll data.

“When they say that Donald Trump has a 1 percent favorability amongst the African-American community, I know from my own interactions that that number is absolutely and unequivocally inaccurate,” Cohen explained. “I speak on a weekly basis to more than 100 African-American Evangelical preachers who are all committed to ensuring Donald Trump becomes the next president of the United States.”…

… Pull that string, pretty soon…

Reader Interactions

130Comments

  3. 3.

    Schlemazel

    @divF:
    I thought the best line, where he tags USSR as “a nation of walls” gets lost a little by being too early and not as projected but, yeah, this is a good ad.

    riky: hey to you too

  4. 4.

    Aimai

    @divF: i love baryshnikov but i wish the ad had had some stills/ newspaper clipping of baryshnikovs youth, shots with reagan, anti soviet stuff–because lots of republican voters dont know who he is.

  6. 6.

    Kay

    I read some Trumpsters on Twitter and they just discovered this:

    The Supreme Court on Monday declined the Republican National Committee’s request to lift a three-decade-old court order that limits the national GOP’s ability to challenge voters’ eligibility at the polls.
    The case, Republican National Committee vs. Democratic National Committee, dealt with a consent decree issued in 1982 that prevents the RNC from engaging in some voter fraud prevention efforts without prior court consent. It specifically said the RNC could not engage in ballot security efforts (later defined in 1987 as “ballot integrity, ballot security or other efforts to prevent or remedy vote fraud,” according to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit opinion), especially in areas where racial or ethnic makeup could be considered a reason for the activities.
    A response to claims of voter intimidation in minority areas in the 1970s and early 1980s, the decree allowed the RNC to continue “normal poll watching” operations while barring activities that could be aimed at voter suppression, though the RNC complained to the courts that the distinction was unclear and difficult to follow. The decree effectively put the national party on the sidelines as concern about voter fraud became more and more pronounced in GOP ranks in recent years and as states passed a series of voter-identification measures.
    In deciding the case, which stems from a 2008 lawsuit brought by the DNC, the district court clarified ballot security efforts as “any program aimed at combating voter fraud by preventing potential voters from registering to vote or casting a ballot,” and upheld the consent decree while adding a Dec. 1, 2017, expiration date.
    The RNC appealed, saying that its decades-long compliance and good faith should justify ending the consent decree.
    The Third Circuit upheld the district court’s decision and modification, saying that just because the RNC had largely complied with the order, the “mere passage of time” does not count as a change of facts that would warrant lifting the order.
    The Supreme Court, as is customary, did not offer an explanation for declining to hear the RNC’s petition.

    This came about because Republicans were “caging” AA voters in NJ. Caging is when political operatives send a piece of mail to a voter on a registry list. If the mail comes back they make a “caging list” and challenge those voters. Deciding who votes and who doesn’t is a state function, not a political Party function, obviously, so Republicans agreed to stop caging voters. The SCOTUS declined to hear the RNC petition in 2013.

  8. 8.

    SFAW

    @rikyrah:

    You know, we curmudgeons are starting to get a tad annoyed at your cheerfulness.

    Just kidding, of course — Good Morning, youngster!

  9. 9.

    SFAW

    @Kay:

    The RNC appealed, saying that its decades-long compliance and good faith should justify ending the consent decree.

    As Inigo Montoya might say “You treasonous motherfuckers keep using those words …”

  10. 10.

    OzarkHillbilly

    Kay bait, I give you school choice: Getting to school becomes harder for Riverview Gardens transfer students

    For the past three years, Kennedi Moody walked a few blocks from her north St. Louis County home to catch a bus for a high school about 20 miles away.
    …
    But now, Kennedi, a sophomore at Mehlville High, must walk 3 miles along a highway, another busy thoroughfare and streets without sidewalks to catch a 6 a.m. bus. The changes, which are the result of cost-saving efforts by the Riverview Gardens School District, are making it difficult for some families to continue in the transfer program.

    Venezia McKinney, Kennedi’s mother, was able to rework her schedule to drive her daughter on Wednesday. But most days, she cannot drive her to the designated bus stop at Riverview Gardens High School. McKinney’s night shift at an area hospital doesn’t end until 7 a.m., almost one hour after the bus leaves.

    ….

    Changes made to bus schedules this fall have angered other parents, who say reducing bus stops makes it harder for their children to continue in schools outside the district. They argue it whittles away the rights promised in the school transfer law, which opens the doors of more successful schools to students in unaccredited districts.

    Riverview Gardens took multiple cost-cutting measures this year to offset the continued drop in property tax revenue. Salaries are frozen. An administrative building is being closed. District staff are shouldering greater expenses in health benefits. Bus routes and bus stops were eliminated districtwide. Bus routes for all students were reworked so there would be few, if any, empty seats, said Anna Munson, chief financial officer.

    Designating one pickup and drop-off point for high school transfer students, and eliminating other stops for middle and elementary transfer students, could save the district around $250,000, Munson said. Busing students to Mehlville and Kirkwood — the only two districts where Riverview Gardens sends buses — results in inefficiencies that bring annual financial penalties from the Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education. The bus route changes aren’t expected to eliminate the inefficiency penalties, but they should reduce them, Munson said. Of the 550 transfer students, about 170 of them take buses to Mehlville or Kirkwood schools. The rest attend schools in districts where transportation isn’t provided.

    ….

    Both Riverview Gardens and Normandy officials have struggled for years with how to meet the requirements of the school transfer law, while also trying to improve their schools. The financial dollars that leave as the result of student transfers result in reductions for the vast majority of children who stay. Student transfers are expected to cost Riverview Gardens $5.5 million this year, an amount that’s roughly a third of what it was three years ago.

    The number of transfer students has dropped to 550 from roughly 1,200 in 2013, when the Missouri Supreme Court upheld the school transfer law. Normandy’s numbers are also down. The district has 611 transfer students, down from about 1,000 three years ago.

    That’s a feature, not a bug. The whole damn thing is infuriating, as tho the law was designed to bankrupt these poorer (predominantly black) school districts while just pretending to do something for some of the students. The reality is they are all getting fucked, but a few can afford the lube.

  11. 11.

    Kay

    @SFAW:

    What’s interesting (and sad) about it is how much absolute bullshit they have been able to throw up around this issue.

    So here we have a consent entry, an agreement, where the RNC AGREES to stop caging voters in a publicly available court filing and yet they were able to turn this around and accuse AA voters of violating the law with voter fraud.

    They got caught suppressing AA voting! The national GOP was so bad they need court approval before they put any of their bullshit anti-fraud schemes in. Yet all anyone talks about is alleged voter fraud. CNN had a serious discussion on whether Trump would lose PA because of voter fraud. There was no discussion of the RNC’s long history of voter suppression, which is not “alleged” but instead the subject of a consent decree. Incredible.

  12. 12.

    Kay

    @OzarkHillbilly:

    It’s so complicated, because there’s a “striver” argument. The idea is the “strivers” will leave the underfunded district so a kind of triage is better than nothing.

    Ohio actually has open enrollment – we have “sending schools” (schools that lose kids) and “receiving schools” (schools that gain kids) and it works exactly like that transfer situation. The people who can take advantage of it are better off because they have to provide transportation. It’s had one other effect here- the district with the largest concentration of Latino students is becoming more and more Latino-concentrated. White parents are pulling their kids and open-enrolling. It’s a weird situation, because (anecdotally- talking to them) the Latino parents don’t mind this- they say their kids will be better off in a majority Latino school. That kind of makes sense- if most kids in a school are Latino the Latino kids won’t be disfavored. That’s their thinking anyway.

    Schools are so hard. Fixes so often have unintended consequences.

  13. 13.

    SFAW

    @Kay:

    What’s interesting (and sad) about it is how much absolute bullshit they have been able to throw up around this issue.

    I was going to quibble about your word choice, but realized it IS sad: sad that the electorate is so clueless and/or racist that a not-insignificant portion of them still buys into the Big Lie that TTM have been promulgating for who-knows-how-many years. And, at the moment, I don’t know which is worse: the cluelessness of the electorate, or the cynicism of TTM.

    I am hopeful — but certainly not anticipating — that this will be a wave election, and that we end up with Minority Turtle and Minority ZEGS.

    [TTM = Those Treasonous Motherfuckers (since it probably wasn’t obvious)]

  14. 14.

    amk

    @Kay: What an odious logic. We have been good boys so far, can we now have our treat? Power mongering assholes.

  15. 15.

    Kay

    @OzarkHillbilly:

    Also, public schools get dinged for inefficient energy use, and that includes buses. They suffer on funding if they don’t try to run “greener” because there are incentive programs to run the system with less energy use. We used to have little kids start later than the older kids so there wouldn’t be a huge age range on the buses and all entering and leaving at the same time with little kids who need more supervision getting trampled or ignored, but that’s not energy efficient so we put them all on the same start time.

    Parents don’t like tiny 5 year olds mixing it up with giant 17 year olds :) They want them separated.

  16. 16.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Kay: Do you think the consent decree applies to the Trump campaign, or is that too distinct from the RNC?

  17. 17.

    Kay

    @amk:

    It’s the same “logic” they used to gut the VRA. I would argue they have only been “good boys” because they needed prior court approval.

  18. 18.

    Baud

    He specifically pointed to Trump’s poor numbers in the African-American community as evidence that the polls may be off.

    Trump: “I have a great relationship with the blacks. I’ve always had a great relationship with the blacks.”

  21. 21.

    amk

    I speak on a weekly basis to more than 100 African-American Evangelical preachers

    Is that like the imaginary friends the libtards speak to all the time?

  22. 22.

    debbie

    As much as I hate Bill Kristol, the title of this Breitbart article is really offensive. We better be hearing from the ADL today.

    If this doesn’t show the true face of the Trump campaign, nothing will.

  23. 23.

    Kay

    @Matt McIrvin:

    I don’t think it applies to a campaign automatically but the Trump campaign may be different because it’s so heavily dependent on Party infrastructure.

    Don’t be freaked out if you read that there are Republican lawyers poll watching. As long as I have been involved there have been Republican poll watchers in Ohio, so the last ten years. I know the lawyer here who volunteers to do it and he thinks it’s dumb. He does it because he’s a well-connected Republican and they ask him every 4 years. I see him on election day. It’s friendly. He spends the whole day chatting up poll workers he knows. He’s just checking the box so he can tell them he was there. Anyway, it’s not new.

  25. 25.

    Kay (not the front-pager)

    OT but I’m just now listening to Morning Joke (I know, but my husband has turned into a Fox Dad in reverse). They are moaning and tut tut-ing about how we “paid ransom for hostages” because we refused to pay the $400,000,000 we owed to Iran until they released the American prisoners (hostages, in their parlance).

    Is it just me, or does it look like they have it exactly backwards? Didn’t Iran pay ransom in the form of release of prisoners in order to get their cash back?

  26. 26.

    amk

    @debbie: It’s no more dog whistles, from now on, it’s going to be 24×7 racist/xenophobic/misogynist foghorns. Great job, founding dads.

  27. 27.

    droog

    I speak on a weekly basis to more than 100 African-American Evangelical preachers who are all committed to ensuring Donald Trump becomes the next president of the United States.

    Name five. You know, for fact checking.

  28. 28.

    Comrade Nimrod Humperdink

    I mentioned to my wife when the “Hillary = Hermione Granger” meme floated around for a few days that if we were going with relatively contemporary pop culture characters to describe this election season, then Trump was Eric Cartman with an inherited fortune and a Breibart addiction, complete with the sad note that only some of Cartman’s “fans” recognize him as basically the worst in us. And then Trump goes and makes the guy that runs Breitbart his new campaign manager. Just wow…

  30. 30.

    debbie

    @Kay:

    I wasn’t aware of this going on three decades ago, being on the East Coast where no one is able to intimidate anyone else. Did the intimidation extend beyond the South? And would it have had an impact on Reagan’s reelection?

  31. 31.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Kay:

    Parents don’t like tiny 5 year olds mixing it up with giant 17 year olds :) They want them separated.

    Which probably just leads to more parents driving their kids to school, which is less energy-efficient across the whole community.

    Though I’ve also heard that it really should be the other way around: the little kids should be the ones that start early, and the high-school kids late. Everyone knows that 5-year-olds like to get up at dark o’clock in the morning, and teenagers can’t think properly unless they can sleep in a bit.

  32. 32.

    Kay

    @rikyrah:

    We have one district that is heavily Latino. It actually straddles 2 counties. It’s not a poor district. They’re solidly middle class primarily because there are three large union employers in the area. They have an amazing sports and music program. They pour money into football and band programs. It’s becoming almost a go-to district for Latinos. Maybe that’s why the parents don’t object to what looks to me like “white flight”- the district is solid.

    We did a cross-district English program for middle schoolers last year. It was voluntary. Our kids went to their school and worked with their kids – read a book together, discussion, then writing. My son loved it but he said all the kids from his school were white and all the kids from their school were Latino. He had a “progressive” English teacher. She’s great. She’s been around forever so she takes no shit from administrators – she’s always doing things like that.

  33. 33.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Kay:

    It’s so complicated, because there’s a “striver” argument. The idea is the “strivers” will leave the underfunded district so a kind of triage is better than nothing.

    Ah yes, the “strivers”. Ever notice how they never apply the “striver” solutions to their own children? If it works so well for economically disadvantaged children, just imagine what it could do for children who have all the advantages of wealth and social position our society can bestow! Why we’d be swimming in Warren Buffets’ and Steven Jobs’ (not to mention Einsteins and Salks) instead of the steady stream of mediocrity that our finest business schools produce.

    As you say, the problems of failing schools is very complex but at their very root one always finds the economically disadvantaged. It is never a Clayton, or Ladue, or Kirkwood or any of the other rich, well funded districts in the STL area having problems. Here in MO the majority of the school funding comes not from the state, not the feds, but from local property taxes. How is a failing school district with falling revenues due to lousy property values supposed to turn it around with a law that not only does not address their falling revenues, but reduces them even further? In what possible way does that make sense?

    All of which doesn’t even touch on what is the plain and simple abandonment of those children who for whatever reason have no choice but to stay in that school district.

    That “striver” argument is nothing more than unmitigated, morally bankrupt, Darwinian bullsh!t, designed to allow the powers that be to say “See? We’re doing something!” without it actually costing them anything, outside of allowing a few of “those people” to attend school with “our precious little children” for a few years anyway.

    That kind of makes sense- if most kids in a school are Latino the Latino kids won’t be disfavored.

    This is America Kay. That makes no sense at all. If nothing else history has taught us, and is reinforced daily by current events, that if most kids in a district are minority, all of the kids in that district will be fvcked.

    ETA: if it comes across that I have very strong feelings about this, I do. I hope you know that these feelings are not directed at you but rather those who pushing this “if your going to make an omelet you have to break a few eggs” solution. These eggs they are breaking are children.

  34. 34.

    NorthLeft12

    As a near sixty year old, some of those childish expressions and comebacks have faded from memory due to disuse. Thanks to the Trump campaign for bringing them back.
    Or I could just watch a bunch of Three Stooges and Little Rascals black and white shorts.

  36. 36.

    D58826

    OT and irrelevant at this point I guess but for the Bern worshipers still out there a bit of hypocrisy in the morning:

    As a Democratic presidential hopeful, Sen. Bernie Sanders vociferously argued for political transparency, especially when money was concerned.

    Sanders insisted, for example, “on complete transparency regarding the funding of campaigns.” He decried “huge piles of undisclosed cash” benefiting candidates.

    But when federal law required Sanders to reveal, by May 15, current details of his personal finances, his campaign lawyer asked the Federal Election Commission for a 45-day extension.

    Request granted.

    On June 30, Sanders’ campaign requested a second 45-day extension, saying the senator had “good cause” to delay because of his “current campaign schedule and officeholder duties.”

    Again, regulators said yes.

    Now that Sanders’ second extension has expired, spokesman Michael Briggs confirmed to the Center for Public Integrity that the senator won’t file a presidential campaign personal financial disclosure after all.

    Click here to read the Center for Public Integrity version of this story.

    “We were told that since the senator no longer is a candidate there was no requirement to file,” Briggs said.

    FEC spokesman Christian Hilland verified that Sanders has not filed a personal financial disclosure. He likewise confirmed that Sanders, who technically ceased to be a presidential candidate when Hillary Clintonsecured the Democratic nomination on July 26, is no longer required to file one.

    http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/how-sanders-avoided-disclosing-his-personal-finances/ar-BBvLcU3?li=BBnb7Kz&ocid=iehp

  39. 39.

    Kay

    @OzarkHillbilly:

    That makes no sense at all. If nothing else history has taught us, and is reinforced daily by current events, that if most kids in a district are minority, all of the kids in that district will be fvcked.

    But you can see the logic of the parents, right? We’re a majority in this school. There’s some pride attached to it. It’s a big school – they offer a lot of programming because they have economies of scale. I’m in the area all the time- it’s on my “court rounds” and the school has a huge impact on the community. I can see how the parents could see Latino dominance as a benefit- they’re the rising majority in that district catchment area and they dominate the school now. That’s not a bad thing as to individual Latino parents. It’s easier for kids to be in the majority in a school.

    This stuff is really difficult. You’re constantly balancing the needs of the individual and the requirements to meet the broader idea.

  40. 40.

    matryoshka

    @Matt McIrvin: You are correct about the research regarding kids mental “start” times, and educators have known this for well over two decades, but it seems Scandinavian countries are the only ones who actually apply our research to their school systems. When I was teaching, we were unable to adjust the school day because of the football team’s schedule. Tells you everything you need to know about priorities here, doesn’t it? As far as I can tell, meaningful change in education is impossible because we are clinging to 19th century structures and assumptions.

  41. 41.

    David ?▶️Hillary/Harley Quinn 2016▶️? Koch

    @D58826: he also repeatedly lied promised to release his tax returns from prior years – repeatedly lied promised – but didnt

    Of course he didn’t want to reveal that a life long socialist became a multimillionaire with stock holdings in multinational corporations that abuse labor and the environment. In other words, he didn’t want to reveal that he’s a fraud.

  42. 42.

    fladem

    I have been doing voter protection in Florida for a while. In 2012 the Tea Party types in Florida said they were going to show up at the polls and make sure people who shouldn’t vote didn’t.

    One of them showed up at an early voting site I was at. And they did absolutely nothing.

    The main thing that happens at polling places that you need watch is people being forced to take provisional ballots. There are number of reasons why this happens – the most infuriating of which is a name mismatch. This would happen with Hispanic voters who frequently had long names that didn’t match the registry list. I spent most of 2012 on the phone with the Sec of State verifying voters were who they said they were so they didn’t have to take a provisional ballot.

    It would take a lot of organization to cage votes. My experience in Florida is the GOP doesn’t have it. They rely on bureaucratic obstacles pre-election.

  44. 44.

    Patricia Kayden

    “I speak on a weekly basis to more than 100 African-American Evangelical preachers who are all committed to ensuring Donald Trump becomes the next president of the United States.”…

    Cohen knows that there are millions of African Americans, right? Idiot.

    That Mikhail ad is pretty powerful. Trump going after immigrants in a country where almost one in three Americans are either immigrants or children of immigrants is a dumb move.
    http://www.migrationpolicy.org/article/frequently-requested-statistics-immigrants-and-immigration-united-states

  45. 45.

    Immanentize

    @debbie: Later-day USSC Chief Justice Rhenquist was involved in serious voter suppression efforts in Arizona in the 60’s, I believe. IIRC the Republican Party program was named “Operation Eagle Eye” and guys like “Renchburg” (nixon’s name for him) would sit in polling places and challenge all minority voters.

  48. 48.

    SFAW

    @fladem:

    One of them showed up at an early voting site I was at. And they did absolutely nothing.

    I think it would have been fun if you started demanding ID from the Teabagger, then gone over it in great detail. Especially if the address was out-of-precinct. Hilarity would ensue.

    The only thing which would make that experience even better would be if a New Black Panther — who lived in the precinct, was properly registered, etc. — was there standing by, giving the Teabagger the Stare (assuming the Teabagger was NOT registered in that precinct, of course).

  49. 49.

    David ?▶️Hillary/Harley Quinn 2016▶️? Koch

    David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch says:
    April 12, 2016 at 7:19 pm

    @Cacti:

    Why is the transparency candidate lying and obfuscating about his personal finances?

    It will show that he has given very little to charity over the years. It will look bad for a life long socialist, who makes hundreds of thousands of dollars a year and touts redistribution of income, to be exposed as phony, who’s a greedy miser.

    He likely will never release them – it’s that bad.

    He’s obviously stalling, hoping to get pass New York. But he’s going to lose NY, the only question is will it be by 8 pts or 18 pts. Then he’ll lose Maryland and Pennsylvania. Once this happens interest will melt away and he can get though the next 5 weeks without having to release the returns.

    It was predictable.

  50. 50.

    Bruce K

    @debbie: I’ll bet a wooden nickel against a No-Prize that the ADL has already responded to that article … which was apparently posted to Brietbart in May.

    Then again, it was posted on Breitbart, and I can’t imagine the ADL has the resources to challenge every execrable thing that bubbles out of the sump of the wingnut sewer…

  51. 51.

    Immanentize

    @OzarkHillbilly: I share your views. Thankfully, here in MA, our charger program is both limited and within school districts. Still bad but better. Meanwhile, the Democratic Party in MA just came out against charter school expansion being pushed by our republican governor. Yea Dems!

  52. 52.

    Patricia Kayden

    @debbie: Trump started his Presidential campaign by calling Mexican immigrants “rapists” so he’s shown his colors up front. Now his campaign is being run by a news outlet which suborns White Supremacy. That should be enough to completely kill any alleged voter outreach to minority groups for Trump.

  53. 53.

    PaulWartenberg2016

    “I speak on a weekly basis to more than 100 African-American Evangelical preachers who are all committed to ensuring Donald Trump becomes the next president of the United States.”

    THAT’S YOUR 1 PERCENT, YOU IDIOT. There’s more than enough wiggle room there for 99 percent of the rest of the African-American community to piss on Trump’s head.

    Good Lord. We’ve got statistical proof the numbers can be THAT BAD for Republicans: in 2012, Mitt Romney only got 6.1 percent of the Black vote. There is NO WAY TRUMP IS DOING BETTER AMONG BLACKS THAN MITT. At least Mitt proved some level of humanity…

  55. 55.

    SFAW

    Patricia Kayden @42

    Cohen knows that there are millions of African Americans, right? Idiot.

    Well, it’s not as if you people are REAL Americans who should be allowed to vote.

    (By the way, the Reply button sent me to your “Immigration Policy” link.)

  56. 56.

    FlipYrWhig

    @PaulWartenberg2016: Not one of the Trumplings understands that even if crowds come to their events and cheer, MUCH MUCH MUCH VERY MUCH LARGER GROUPS OF PEOPLE thoroughly despise them.

  58. 58.

    Iowa Old Lady

    I don’t care how R politicians react to Bannon’s hiring. They’ve already shown us who they are. However, it will be interesting to see how R voters react. How many of them are crazified and how many still think they’ve been voting in the party of Eisenhower? Will the latter group notice and care that their candidate is running a white nationalist campaign?

  59. 59.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Immanentize: The pro-charter-expansion people have been running a lot of slick TV ads, I’ve noticed. I’ve seen nothing from the anti side.

  60. 60.

    Nina

    So Donald of Orange got his classified briefing yesterday. What’s the over/under that he spills something he shouldn’t by day’s end?

  62. 62.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Kay: Yes, I can see where the parents are coming from and I understand their feelings about it, but my inner cynic says, “How long can this last?” You posted that their financial security was do to a trio of strong union shops in the area. In this country we have either anti-union people or union apathetic people, with a smattering of pro union people. I am all too aware of what a small smattering we are.

  63. 63.

    NorthLeft12

    @Patricia Kayden: What you saying would normally make sense, but there are a large number of those immigrants who rationalize their hatred for new immigrants, that they are different. My father [a WW2 refugee from Poland] explained to me that there are good immigrants and bad immigrants. The new immigrants [the brown ones specifically] are pretty much all bad [according to him] because they just come to Canada to mooch off our generous social programs.
    Lets just say that he and I don’t talk much anymore.
    Unfortunately, this is the same spiel I have heard from many others……particularly immigrants to Canada.

  64. 64.

    Patricia Kayden

    @SFAW: Not sure why the reply button worked like that. Interesting,

    @PaulWartenberg2016: I’m not shocked that only 1% of Black Americans are planning to vote for Trump. I’m a bit surprised that upwards of 20% of Latinos are voting for him though. That’s incomprehensible to me given how nasty he has been to Mexicans (and other immigrants).

  65. 65.

    drdavechemist

    @Kay (not the front-pager): I would say it’s called Negotiation: each side had something they had seized that legitimately belonged to the other and they traded. Both parties were in the wrong, and one could argue that “we started it” because we had the money for decades before they detained our people. But of course if you are a Republican, the U. S. can never be wrong, so (in their minds) we must have just given them money they didn’t really deserve as “ransom” to get back the people who were “kidnapped” which means Obama is weak.

  66. 66.

    Patricia Kayden

    @NorthLeft12: You should tell him that anti-Polish sentiments were what led to BREXIT and that there were several anti-Polish attacks following BREXIT.

    As an immigrant and a daughter of immigrants, I have nothing but empathy for people who leave their countries to live here (or in Canada where I grew up). I understand that the U.S. has the right to limit immigration but don’t understand the disdain for immigrants that so many on the Right exhibit.

  67. 67.

    Mary G

    I’m not sure everyone who goes to a Trump rally is even going to vote for him. It’s a free show with a famous entertainer. There’s no fun in actually voting and he has no GOTV operation nagging them to follow up.

  68. 68.

    D58826

    @Nina: He also said that he doesn’t think the IC knows what it’s talking about and as POTUS will not listen to them. So I guess he will listen to the voice in his head, i.e. Putin?

  69. 69.

    Kay

    @OzarkHillbilly:

    I asked a lady I know once why there were so few Latinos in my county- why most seem to have settled one or two counties over. She’s a big landowner- they don’t “farm” anymore- they own the land and other people farm it. She said it went back to what was grown at one time- my area grew crops that could be machine harvested so they didn’t bring migrant workers in. The counties east of here grew vegetables that had to be picked (prior to long haul trucking and such) – the migrants came and some stayed and now it’s generations later and the pattern persists.

  71. 71.

    Mark B

    Hmm, the tiny minority of evangelical Blacks that self-select to reach out to the Trump campaign aren’t representative of Blacks in general. That seems … not odd at all.

  72. 72.

    Kay

    @OzarkHillbilly:

    There “where people settle” story is interesting. There’s always some completely reasonable explanation. There are communities in western MI that are heavily Latino and it’s rural- they’re surrounded by majority white communities. They grew (and grow) cherries and asparagus and blueberries- stuff they brought migrant workers in for. Some stayed and presto- there’s a public school with lots of Latinos of Mexican descent generations later. No longer farm workers but now part of the mix.

  73. 73.

    Immanentize

    @Kay: When I lived in San A to up Texas, my next door neighbor came from a migrant farming family. He spent most of his youth in Michigan and Ohio in the fall for potato harvesting. Then spring between Texas and those states for planting. Then south to Texas for summer harvesting (lots of cotton picking). He still has relatives who live in Michigan because one day they just decided to stop moving.

  75. 75.

    Peale

    @D58826: so once he gets it in his head that the Philippines full of terrorists, there’s not much that’s going to change his mind.

  77. 77.

    SFAW

    @Kay:

    The late, unlamented John Silber, around the time he was running for MA Governor, put forth the idea that there was such a large Cambodian/Lao/Vietnamese community in Lowell (a large, formerly-industrial city in north-central MA) because of the great welfare benefits in the People’s Respublik.He lost the election — I think to Bill Weld — but he was running as a Dem. Oy.

  78. 78.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    I speak on a weekly basis to more than 100 African-American Evangelical preachers

    When does he have anytime for anything else? Schmoozing does take a while. Sounds like one of Cohen’s canned BS lines to impress The Donald that Cohen is HUUUGGEE enough to be a Trump Minion.

  79. 79.

    Amir Khalid

    @Nina:
    I dunno. I’m pretty sure they read him the riot act at the start of the briefing, warning him of potentially dire personal consequences should he leak sensitive information from the briefing. As they would surely do with any nominee of either party.

  80. 80.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Kay: People of all ethnicities have a preference for others of their own kind especially when they first arrived here. (it is nice to able to speak and be understood in one’s native tongue)(my wife really feels the loss of her native Mallorcan) The patterns persist for generations. My grandparents came from Slovenia in 1900 and 1904 (I grew up on those stories) and settled in Joliet. A large number of Poles and Hungarians did too. Over a century later, those communities still thrive there, tho over the years there has been more than a little intermingling.

  81. 81.

    scav

    @Kay: The same can happen around meat-packing (the life-saver that allowed me to find good chili rellanos in Iowa) and similar foci. Much easier to see in small rural towns as the other inhabitants are so often getting out. New stores etc can open up on the main street (because there are empty storefronts) instead of being tucked away in a neighborhood to preserve the lily-white delusion.

  82. 82.

    bluefish

    @Baud: “Where’s my African American? There’s my African American. Look at him, folks. What a great guy!”. Trump. So blatant, so disgusting.

  83. 83.

    rikyrah

    @Matt McIrvin:

    @Immanentize: The pro-charter-expansion people have been running a lot of slick TV ads, I’ve noticed. I’ve seen nothing from the anti side.

    The Pro-charter people have conned as much as they can from the ‘Urban’ areas. Now, there is data to be against them.

    Their bit for expansion is into school districts where people specifically moved there BECAUSE THEY LIKED THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS.

    Harder for them to run their scam on them. And, they actually resent those parents clapping back at them.

  87. 87.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Patricia Kayden: I’ve been trying to figure out for a while whether those figures of 20+% Latino support for Trump are true or not. These tend to be crosstabs in polls of the general population, there are small-sample-size effects, and Spanish-speaking Americans can be notoriously hard to contact. Polls designed specifically to gauge Trump’s Latino support tend to give lower numbers, and I get the impression they’ve been dropping.

    That said, Latinos are not a homogeneous bloc; there are groups like older Cuban-Americans in Florida that have a long history of voting Republican. It may take a lot to completely overcome that.

  89. 89.

    Kay

    @SFAW:

    It’s a shame because the real stories are much more interesting. We have a Laotian community here. They were brought to the US in the Reagan era and they tell me they started in the DC area- Virginia, Maryland. I have done done some uncomplicated immigration work for them and relatives and the paper always leads back to entry in that area of the country. They came here for cheaper property (houses- they all buy rather than rent) and factory jobs and then they tell relatives and so on. I have kind of a radical view on immigration. I think human beings have a right to move. I know there have to be rules and order around it but I think there’s a basic human right to get the hell out of one place and go to another.

  90. 90.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Kay: When my grandfather came he went to work at a steel mill where there were other Slovenians already working. That’s how he got the job. 4 years later a coworker was unable to pick up his sister at the train station upon her arrival in the new land and asked if Gramps could pick her up. That’s how he met my Grandmother. (Love at first sight)

  92. 92.

    Immanentize

    @SFAW: it is from LBJ (fuck him! — Raven) who famously said that you should never trust a man unless you have his pecker in your pocket. Don’t kids today learn any of these things in school anymore?

  93. 93.

    scav

    @OzarkHillbilly: Chain migration. And don’t forget the material benefit of showing up and having a pre-built network for finding jobs (and references) and being able to rely on the co-ethnic neighbors almost immediately as a safety net for illness and lack of funds. Moving in cold means you have to spend a lot more time building such relationships.

  95. 95.

    Jeffro

    @OzarkHillbilly:

    As you say, the problems of failing schools is very complex but at their very root one always finds the economically disadvantaged. It is never a Clayton, or Ladue, or Kirkwood or any of the other rich, well funded districts in the STL area having problems. Here in MO the majority of the school funding comes not from the state, not the feds, but from local property taxes. How is a failing school district with falling revenues due to lousy property values supposed to turn it around with a law that not only does not address their falling revenues, but reduces them even further? In what possible way does that make sense?

    This is exactly right. Money’s not the only problem a troubled school/school district has, but it’s always one of the main problems.

    If the system were just, public schools would be funded entirely through state funds (plus appropriate federal funds) – NOT local taxes.

    One additional step that would help would be if all schools within a state had to be built/furnished/maintained at or above a certain standard, to help keep legislators’ and DOE planners’ feet to the fire and ensure that schools in, say, northern Alabama were on a par with those in southern Alabama. Same thing with class sizes and staffing of programs like AP, IB, foreign language, music, etc.

  96. 96.

    SFAW

    @Immanentize:

    Don’t kids today learn any of these things in school anymore?

    Sure. But who’s this “LBJ” that you seem to want to fuck? (Or have raven fuck him? I don’t get it.)

  97. 97.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @scav: Yep. All the more surprising that 2 of Gramps brothers who came after him ended up in Pittsburgh.

  98. 98.

    Gin & Tonic

    For those among us who are getting a lot of enjoyment out of watching Paul Manafort twist slowly in the wind, Serhiy Leshchenko, the activist/journalist/MP in Ukraine who initiated the National Anti-corruption Bureau has said he’s holding a press conference tomorrow morning (0900 Kiev/Kyiv time) to, as he put it, “publish transactions for Manafort” from the Yanukovych party.

    Who said August was a slow news month?

  99. 99.

    Pangloss

    Saw a tweet today from @IndRule4080: “The GOP is looking like Jonestown.”

    Stark. Accurate.

  100. 100.

    Immanentize

    @OzarkHillbilly: in my family it was the shoe factories in Binghamton New York that brought all my Czech, Moravian, and Slovak relatives. Just a day’s trip from NYC to the Endicott/Johnson shoe factory towns.

  101. 101.

    Immanentize

    @Gin & Tonic: I’ve been wondering if the new people at Trumptown actually were not a shakeup but rather a necessity given Monafort’s imminent departure from the campaign due to the Ukraine problem.

  104. 104.

    Shalimar

    @droog: This is politics, so most likely he’s talking about a weekly conference call the campaign has set up. I doubt he knows any of their names, but the weekly conference call he oversees is the Trump campaign’s entire outreach to the African-American community.

  106. 106.

    hovercraft

    @D58826:
    Next year they need to pass legislation making it mandatory for all presidential candidates to release both their taxes and their financial disclosure forms by the date of the first primary or caucus. There should be no extensions allowed, if you decide to run for president, you and your spouse relinquish any and all rights to financial privacy. We need to know who is paying you and where your money so that we can decide if there are any conflicts for ourselves, not have to take a candidates word.

  107. 107.

    rikyrah

    @Matt McIrvin:

    Polls designed specifically to gauge Trump’s Latino support tend to give lower numbers, and I get the impression they’ve been dropping.

    The only polls of Latinos that I trust are those completely focused on Latinos.

  108. 108.

    hovercraft

    @David ?▶️Hillary/Harley Quinn 2016▶️? Koch:
    The new right wing talking point I’ve seen over the last few days is that the left is responsible for Trump because we’ve been calling them racists for so long that now that the real thing is here, no one believes us because we’ve cried wolf too many times. I’ve yet to see anyone push back forcefully by saying that while they were using dog whistles, Trump is using a foghorn, thereby depriving them of any deniability.

  109. 109.

    Shalimar

    @Jeffro: Alabama is an example of why you would think conservatives would be for state funding for education. Rural Alabama is overwhelmingly Republican, yet it’s also a wasteland of dying counties and barely-funded schools. Statewide standards would help Republican areas, if Republicans weren’t more concerned with making sure little Johnny doesn’t have any negros in his underfunded private schools.

    In other words, white kids don’t go to the public schools if their families have any money at all. There is always a private school in the county seat that is a joke compared to the prestigious private schools in the major cities. In general, the education at these private schools isn’t any better than the local public school, but at least it is still segregated.

  113. 113.

    scav

    @Immanentize: Another interesting pattern to watch in those ethnicities is who went where and the varying streams. More Bohemians had money and education so more (not all) ended up doing the farming route (My Antonia), Some bohunks didn’t have the cash or farming gene so factory jobs (cigar rolling, etc), Greater proportion of Slovaks, Ruthenians didn’t have the money or education — lots more of them ended up in the mines (both PA and IA) and factories.

  114. 114.

    Mr. Mack

    @Patricia Kayden: That doesn’t surprise me at all. There is plenty of IGMFY within the Latino community, I saw far too much of it in my aunts/uncles. The thing is, it obviously isn’t a racial thing, but even my own mother could not stand to go to Mexico, her country of birth, because of the poverty. They do not want to be reminded.

  115. 115.

    SFAW

    @FlipYrWhig:

    On the other hand, maybe we’ve been crying racist because they’re a bunch of racists.

    No, it’s because LIBERALS are the real racists. Haven’t you learned anything from coming here?

  116. 116.

    Jeffro

    @Shalimar:

    Alabama is an example of why you would think conservatives would be for state funding for education. Rural Alabama is overwhelmingly Republican, yet it’s also a wasteland of dying counties and barely-funded schools. Statewide standards would help Republican areas, if Republicans weren’t more concerned with making sure little Johnny doesn’t have any negros in his underfunded private schools.

    In other words, white kids don’t go to the public schools if their families have any money at all. There is always a private school in the county seat that is a joke compared to the prestigious private schools in the major cities. In general, the education at these private schools isn’t any better than the local public school, but at least it is still segregated.

    Yes…it’s all about keeping things segregated (and about keeping the top 10%’s taxes at rock-bottom, too). This could and should be a major civil rights issue in many states.

  117. 117.

    NorthLeft12

    @Patricia Kayden: He knows all about Brexit and “approves” of what the Brits [mainly England] are doing. My oldest daughter teaches just south of London and has experienced the immigrant hate [she has a Polish surname too] first hand. When I explained this to him, he pretty much waved it away as an aberration. I explained to him that his first grandchild [my daughter] is exactly one of those immigrants that are “taking” jobs from the English. Even thought they do not have enough [15% are deemed to be unqualified] qualified Math and Science teachers in England. He does not get that to the English, my daughter sticks out as not one of them every time she speaks.
    Freaking hopeless.

  118. 118.

    FlipYrWhig

    @SFAW: That’s right, I forgot! The telltale sign of racist attitudes and practices is caring about racist attitudes and practices. That’s according to the Gospel of (Chief Justice) Roberts.

  119. 119.

    Immanentize

    @scav: so true. I might even change my number to bohunk. I heard that throughout my youth as a term of affectionate put down.

  121. 121.

    The Other Chuck

    @Mustang Bobby: As long as they get “Department of Justice” and “Federal Marshals” thrown back, I really don’t care what these screaming nincompoops emit from their pieholes.

  122. 122.

    Applejinx

    @D58826: You know, if Bernie’s whole argument was ‘look, the megawealthy and the millionaires totally control our government, rise up against the bastards!’ and then we find out that EVEN HE is most definitely one of those millionaire bastards, I don’t see how that proves his chosen message wrong. Maybe he’s mad because even after Burlington College, everybody else in Washington still has far more millions than him.

    All it means is, we clearly picked right when we picked Hillary and NOT him to fight that battle. Because yeah she’s another kabillionaire, probably a lot more than even Trump, but I still think it’s possible that she’ll stick with it (like only Nixon could go to China?) because, you know, while saying these things SHE is not lying about being the class expected to start pulling the damn plow.

    Bernie had the nerve to start that ball rolling. I guess it’s up to more honest, sincere people to keep it rolling.

    (before you ask, no, you still can’t have him: I’m still voting to keep him in office. He’ll be a reliable anti-wingnut-economics vote in the Senate, and there may come a time when we need the nerve to say the politically impossible again. Nobody would be talking about the Buffett rule if Bernie hadn’t demonstrated a groundswell of popular support for it. We’re just lucky we didn’t have to depend on him to follow through on that initial spark)

  124. 124.

    SFAW

    @Applejinx:

    Did Bernie ever say anything like “I’ve been fortunate in that I’ve made a shitload of money in my career. But lots of people, no matter how hard they work, will not be able to get to where I am, because of system-rigging”?

    That was a serious question, I don’t know the answer, but the point — in case it was not obvious — is that it’s OK to be a (presumed) millionaire, and still fight for economic equality. But if you are a millionaire, and you try to hide it, because you think it will result in ad hominem attacks attempting to delegitimize your argument, then you should either “nut up” as they say, or maybe you’re in the worng business.

  125. 125.

    Miss Bianca

    @Kay:

    I have kind of a radical view on immigration. I think human beings have a right to move. I know there have to be rules and order around it but I think there’s a basic human right to get the hell out of one place and go to another.

    How very Libertarian of you! (no, really…that’s basically the actual Libertarian platform plank on immigration). It’s one of the few things in there that I find myself in whole-hearted sympathy with.

  126. 126.

    FlipYrWhig

    @Applejinx:

    Nobody would be talking about the Buffett rule if Bernie hadn’t demonstrated a groundswell of popular support for it.

    I don’t remember Bernie Sanders talking about the Buffett Rule this time around. I do remember Hillary Clinton talking about it repeatedly, leading to a cluster of news stories in mid-December 2015, including this one. Sometimes people other than Bernie Sanders think and do things!

  127. 127.

    Applejinx

    @SFAW: And if you’re a socialist, people might not unreasonably have questions like ‘what the actual fuck?’

    I’m hoping Hilz will have better luck with a redistributionist tactic. This country will crater if we don’t: it’s gone beyond stupid, the ‘slant things to benefit the rich, because profit!’. We’ll collapse if we keep trying to drink that kool-aid: it’s from Jonestown, and corporations don’t have nationalities.

    There might be a ‘crying wolf’ factor. No matter what Hillary does, she will be accused of outright communism, so there’s no real upside to trying to Third Way it. That’s so two decades ago, anyway. We might get out of this one without total societal collapse, apart from right wing terrorism which is going to be very ugly.

    I read on Facebook (so it might be just bullshit) that it’s now legal to buy ex-mil flamethrowers. Hello, domestic wingnut terrorists, new toys?

  128. 128.

    PST

    @Bruce K:

    I’ll bet a wooden nickel against a No-Prize that the ADL has already responded to that article … which was apparently posted to Brietbart in May.

    The David Horowitz article calling Bill Kristol a “renegade Jew” got a great deal of adverse attention, including some from the ADL, when it was new. It is absolutely clear in context that the author means that Kristol is acting against the interest of the Jewish people, and is hence a renegade, not that Jews collectively are somehow renegades. Nevertheless, many took offense, and no wonder. You string words together like that and they sound like an insult directed at a group. Which brings us, of course, to the reason responsible leaders like PBO and HRC avoid the phrase “radical Islamic terrorists.” The Trumpeteers can yammer all day about how this distinguishes the bad Muslims from the good, but that’s not how it sounds to anyone at all sensitive to being characterized as a threat. So if we desire help from Muslims and majority Muslim countries in fighting ISIS and its like, then we avoid the insult. Imagine if we all started calling the Westboro Baptist Church “radical Christian terrorists.” Even if it was in some sense true, it would sound enough like an insult or even a threat to raise hackles. Like renegade Jew, the combination of highly pejorative words with the name of a religion is bound to cause offense and should be avoided unless offense is intended.

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