Among his many other excellent qualities, my husband, Mr. Not-Cracker, makes a great bellwether for how political stories are playing among people who don’t pay close attention to the daily campaign grind and media treatment thereof. He doesn’t read blogs or follow anyone’s Twitter feed. He’ll watch Rachel Maddow or Chris Hayes if I tune in but doesn’t pay close attention. He scans headlines and reads political articles only if they look entertaining.
Of course, he knows Trump is an appalling buffoon. He voted for Sanders in the primary and is looking forward to voting for Clinton in the general. But he’d never heard of Breitbart and had no idea that Trump had appointed a white nationalist as campaign chief until I mentioned it. And when he heard about the AP report on the Clinton Foundation on NPR, he thought it looked pretty bad but figured that’s how politics work: influence peddling is the norm.
So I was happy to be able to forward these pieces by Yglesias at Vox, the first of which ably demonstrates that the AP “exposé” on Clinton’s meetings with Foundation donors is a giant nothingburger, and the second of which explodes the AP’s feeble defense of its original reporting. If you know any non-political junkies who find the Clinton Foundation story troubling, I heartily recommend forwarding the Vox articles, which plainly indicate there is no “there” there.
On to the dog spa: A couple of days ago, I described a conundrum: Our vet recommended that we soak our dog’s injured paw in a medicated solution for 10 minutes twice a day, but I wasn’t sure how to get the dog to sit still for it. Here’s how:
It turns out she’s willing to just sit there and allow the paw to soak…as long as I keep feeding her (and our auxiliary boxer dog — hind foot and tip of tail visible in the photo above) Goldfish crackers at 60-second intervals. Thanks for all the advice, though.
Open thread!
David ?▶️Hillary/Harley Quinn 2016▶️? Koch
every politician can have a super pac and take unlimited money from a billionaire or from multinational corporations for the sole selfish purpose of getting elected. Oh, but take money for a highly regarded charity and the media screams bloody murder.
David ?▶️Hillary/Harley Quinn 2016▶️? Koch
trump has a charitable foundation, but the “liburel media” won’t even bother to look into it.
Baud
The push back has been excellent. This is yellow journalism.
Baud
Food is the answer to every dog question.
jacy
Snacks For the Win! The only way I ever get my critters to do anything.
In my circles all the Benghazi/Emails/Clinton Foundation stuff has just become white noise. Trump and the media keep hitting it all so hard without any actual payoff that it’s now met with a resounding yawn. I also know quite a few people who are very religious, and by that I mean serious about the positive aspects of their faith (helping the poor, loving your neighbor, all the kind of squishy, feel-good stuff) and they’ve been turned off by the Republican party as a whole. While there is a segment that would never pull the lever for any Democrat, a not insignificant majority of them seem to be quietly turning away and have started talking about the Democratic party as a whole in a much more positive light. One of the things that I think has helped here in Louisiana is that everybody realizes what a disaster Jindal was, and now that we have a Democratic governor, they’re seeing somebody who they feel understands their concerns and who actually makes sense. It’s taken some brutal reality to get them to examine their unwavering support for the Republican party, but it’s happening.
gogol's wife
The NYTimes letter section today was all “disgruntled voters” who just can’t bring themselves to vote for either candidate. Because e-mail.
gogol's wife
Great picture!
p.a.
@David ?▶️Hillary/Harley Quinn 2016▶️? Koch: they MUST have a horse race. The MSM may have to start ‘unskewing’ the polls thenselves this time to make it look close.
NorthLeft12
The AP loudly proclaims their integrity and independence, but when you look a the record for the last five years or more they are pretty much Fox News Jr. All the right wing hackery you could want, with an added dollop of Republican water carrying to boot.
Pardon me for my lack of knowledge, but is this due to some kind of ownership change or is it more due to a few particular reporters or editors?
NorthLeft12
@jacy: Well, actually voting for a Democratic Governor is a pretty good start. Even if that Governor would never pass the purity test demanded by the anti-Hillary Dems.
one_particular_harbour, fka Botsplainer
@NorthLeft12:
It’s the Fournier influence throughout the staff. Where are the Charlotte Cordays we need to deal with the Fourniers, the Limbaughs, the Ailes of the world?
amk
@NorthLeft12: ron fucking fournier. enough said.
MattF
@one_particular_harbour, fka Botsplainer: @amk: Well, Fournier didn’t just walk into the AP and take over, he was hired by someone. Who was that someone? And how did that happen?
eric
i look forward to the AP headine: at least 17 people now dead and who knew the Clintons are all dead after meeting with the Clintons, including Vince Foster, Princess Diana, and a former US president.
Blueskies
Just last night I watched ABC evening news run with the AP tweet, not the actual information in the AP article, but the TWEET that was a blatant lie about the Clinton Foundation.
We now see that tweets made by the “news” organizations now join disingenuous headlines in the toolbox of lying liars who lie. It’s a self-feeding monster.
rikyrah
The dog picture is cute.
Face
@NorthLeft12: Here’s my (very simple) hypothesis: Media orgs are, with little exception, large corporations. Corporations skew, largely for tax and regulation reasons, Republican. Also, too, that Republicans are, with little exception, old retired people, who have ample time to call, email. protest, and write LTEs when they sense an article or investigation isn’t how their Faux Noobs would report it. So these media orgs are likely flooded with pissed off GOPers every time they write anything favorable to the Dems. Over time, this aversion to criticism causes them to shift their tone to favorable GOP pieces, if for no other reason than to placate the assholes.
rikyrah
Ann Coulter and Trump’s Can of Worms
by BooMan
Thu Aug 25th, 2016 at 08:34:42 AM EST
I learned a long time ago not take any bait Ann Coulter is offering because that’s how she makes herself rich. But it’s kind of fun to see Josh Marshall having so much fun at her expense. The way Trump “softened” his immigration stance at the same moment that Coulter’s new book was launching was kind of exquisite, considering that the book praises Trump above all for his hardline anti-immigrant stance. Even so, I’d let this whole episode pass without noting if it didn’t tie into something else that was in the news yesterday.
Here’s how Marshall characterizes Coulter’s discomfort:
That thunder is something Glenn Beck is warning about in his typical apocalyptic tones. He invited Trump voters to call into his show yesterday and explain their support for him, and he seems to have been badly rattled by the experience. He even agreed to go on Lawrence O’Donnell’s MSNBC show last night to talk about it. I guess Beck has a variety of concerns about Trump and his fans, but what’s really got him going is the realization that there are hordes of people out there who took Trump seriously about his mass deportation promises, and they’re going to be irate if Trump doesn’t follow through. To demonstrate the point, let’s look at a caller named “Nate from Virginia.”
SteveinSC
As I have said on this blog many times and for several years, AP is the body-guard of lies for the Republicans masquerading as just a collection of independent “journalists.” One only needs to be reminded of that great scribe and “graduate” of the AP Bodyguard University Ron “Both sides do it” Fournier.
JasonF
It’s very curious to me that in all this talk of Clinton’s charities, nobody mentions the fact that George H.W. Bush started a charity (Points of Light) while he was still the president and continued to serve in its leadership throughout his son’s presidency. Nobody mentions the fact that then-Senate Minority Leader (and 1996 Republican Party presidential nominee) Bob Dole’s wife Liddy was, for years, the head of the American Red Cross.
I wonder why so much attention is being paid to Clinton yet people are ignoring clear precedent?
WereBear
That is what brutal reality is for. It’s just that some of us prefer plain ol’ reality. It is much less painful.
hovercraft
Poor America’s Mayor, he’s lost the Washington Post editorial board.
When you’re being trolled by editorial boards…….
SAD !!
jacy
@NorthLeft12:
Liberals here are pretty happy with Edwards. May not agree with him on everything, but he’s a smart, compassionate, pragmatic man. And being a liberal or Democrat in Louisiana, the majority of them realize that any move away from the crazy conservative obstructionist nonsense of the political landscape here is a huge win. Slowly, I think that people are relying less on blind ideology and more on pragmatism, because they’ve had a good hard dose of blind ideology in practice and it’s been a shitshow. Even Trump supporters spit every time they say JIndal’s name.
Kay
The shit sticks to everyone even tangentially connected to Donald Trump. He’s bringing them all down with him. There’s not a lot of comfort in it though, because it isn’t a game and I don’t actually care about their careers.
Hal
@hovercraft: Has Giuliani brushed his bottom teeth yet?
rikyrah
How Trump Damages Human Intelligence Capabilities
by Benjamin Haas
August 25, 2016
Most of the words that issue from Donald J. Trump’s lips are disjointed nonsense, and his recent “national security” speech was no exception. Occasionally, however, Trump utters a notion that carries a modicum of truth. As a former Army intelligence officer who served in Afghanistan, I can say that this time he was right about one important but seldom-discussed assertion—that the United States should “place a renewed emphasis on human intelligence.”
Many terrorists are savvy enough to evade other intelligence collection measures, and the “Going Dark” phenomenon provides an opportunity for terrorists to hide behind increasingly sophisticated encryption. Consequently, the United States law enforcement and intelligence communities should embrace and invest in human intelligence (HUMINT).
Yet, as much as Trump was right to emphasize HUMINT, his own Islamophobic rhetoric and outrageous policy proposals are counterproductive to the goal. When Trump targets Muslims and promotes a culture of fear, he creates an environment—both domestic and foreign—that presents significant challenges for intelligence collectors who need to retain and develop sources.
catclub
@rikyrah:
translated from the German, I see. Pat Buchanan was too early!
hovercraft
@SteveinSC:
Joe told me yesterday morning that Ron is actually a democrat who admires the Clintons, and has done so for many years.
Dmbeaster
@eric:
Even worse! None donated to the Clinton Foundation, having turned down an offer they couldn’t refuse.
catclub
@hovercraft:
The WaPo editorial board is doing good work in this case. Wow. I also recommend their: “Donald Trump is a unique threat to democracy”
from a few weeks back.
Kay
@rikyrah:
They don’t care. It’s about their careers. Can they get out of this thing with their career okay?
hovercraft
@JasonF:
Mika kept repeating that the Clintons are just “sketchy”, so they must always be held to a higher standard. People accuse them of being up to no good, and they know the accusations are going to come so they should anticipate the attacks and be extra vigilant. With sketchy people you don’t give them the benefit of the doubt, they must prove their innocence. People making an accusation is sufficient cause for taint.
EDIT: The Bushes and the Doles are old patrician families whose activities are always deemed to be above board. Any problems there are the result of understandable mistakes. The Clintons are scheming social climbers who will do anything for money and power.
Kay
Ann Coulter. Another dope who got played by a person who is not even clever or smart.
tobie
@Face: I haven’t seen anyone mention this but the ex-president, CEO and chairman of NBC (which includes MSNBC and CNBC) until 2007 was on Chris Matthew’s show a few weeks ago to discuss a book he wrote and basically outed himself as a Republican. A middle-of-the-road Republican according to him but with all the ‘small government’ rhetoric introduced by Reagan, which has turned out to be a hate for government at all. So in my book I’d say he’s a conservative Republican even if he isn’t jumping up and down about the usual conservative social issues. The name of the guy is Bob Wright. To me it was a pretty clear sign that mainstream media is controlled by corporate Republican lite types.
rikyrah
@jacy:
250K+ of their fellow Louisianans now have access to healthcare because of the new Governor. They have to know SOMEONE he’s helped.
ET
‘Cause of course bribing with food works for dog.
shomi
Haha…the media is getting desperate for a horse race. CNN talking about Clinton facing challenges because……….although she leads in key battleground states, she is tied in Nevada. LOL. Guessing it’s probably just one poll but whatever. That is like totally horrible apparently because Obama easily won that state twice. So clearly a canary in the coal mine.
There there you have it folks. The race is like totally tightneing. It’s horserace fer sure yup you betcha.
SRW1
@hovercraft:
That’s what makes Ron so credible.
Betty Cracker
@Kay: I love this whole Coulter vs. Trump thing. Trump is a brainless buffoon with no animating principles aside from an instinct for grift. He’s a windsock on issues, equally comfortable calling for a deportation round-up force or adopting Rubio’s immigration stance, depending on whom he listened to last. I wonder if his current vacillation on immigration is due to conflicting advice from Conway and Bannon. If so, I expect Bannon will eventually prevail.
hovercraft
For those of you who missed the discussion last night, Kellyanne Conway is not getting rave reviews for her Maddow appearance last night.
Trump Campaign Manager Fumbles Through Searing Interview With Maddow (VIDEO)
Chris
In re yesterday’s burqini thread, a comment from a friend on Facebook today:
“Coming home from vacations, I am happy to see that France is doing much better! Since burqinis have been the major controversy of the summer, I take it that unemployment, terrorism, inequality, the destruction of the environment, the failures of the European project, the crisis in our democracy, and so forth, are no longer a problem.”
hueyplong
Really excited to see whether the actual reaction of neo-Nazi types to the immigration flip-flop is to shriek that Trump’s campaign is a false flag operation.
Sure to have a nice effect on GOP turnout and, of course, good news for John McCain.
glory b
Nicholas Trombetta, president of the Pennsylvania Cyber Charter School, pled guilty yesterday to tax fraud and conspiracy concerning siphoning off $8 million from the network of schools and other entities he created.
I believed shortly after charter schools were created that they would be ripe for scamming. The state just gave out this money with almost no oversight that I could see. Even when test scores showed the students were doing worse than they did in their neighborhood schools, they could never close them. I knew once they got started they would never be able to get rid of the program. It was always a way to weaken public schools and teacher unions. It’s also the BIG disagreement I have with Obama. I wish someone would ask him why he is still so enamored of them.
What really irks me is that these mediocre schools use tax dollars they get to create television ads for themselves. The governor is going to introduce reforms for charter schools, I think one aspect of this is that they should be banned from advertising for themselves.
D58826
@Baud: Now they both will go out and hurt their paw so that the goldfish continue. They have their human well trained
Sondra
@David ?▶️Hillary/Harley Quinn 2016▶️? Koch: Every administration awards plum jobs, ambassadorships etc. to their good friends and sometimes their good friends are even qualified to do the jobs they are awarded. So there is that…not to mention cabinet posts and close working relationships within an administration and even within congress itself so the whole thing is silly. But tempest in a teapot is easy – horserace analogies are fun – bothersiderism rules – and “let’s all gang up on Hillary and annoy the hell out of her until she says something nasty out loud that we can print” is the name of the game.
D58826
@JasonF: Beat me to it. Or that Alma Powell (Colin’s better half) ran a charity while he was Sec. of State and Justice Thomas wife runs either a charity or a pac of some sort while he still hears cases on SCOTUS.
But Clinton rules
MattF
@JasonF: Note also that Bush staffers were active in Points of Light while he was in office. Just imagine the scandal if White House staff in the forthcoming Clinton administration were found to be doing tasks for the Clinton Foundation. Horrors!
D58826
St Ronulus the Unready appointed a number of the friends that helped him get rich to top jobs and ambassadorships. The publisher Water Annenburg was appointed the ambassador to Great Britain, if if remember correctly.
The entire issue is past absurd but the DC VSP optics are more important than getting meds to people with Aids/HIV in Africa.
And Betty your better half is probably smarter than all of us to just ignore it all.
ruemara
Glad it worked. That treat speed timing is key.
Today, I turn in my resignation and probably deal with a shit storm from the leadership. For a few days I did feel guilty and wonder if I should stay, but then we reviewed our sick days and vacation days and found the new accounting firm we.switched to hastily cut all our sick leave to a cap of 24 hours and tossed our accrued vacation hours completely. They also have not calculated accrual for either benefit in over a month. I’m looking forward to less unforced errors in this vein.
Have been trying to organize a little celebration but no one has time. I guess I’ll do take away and buy a party hat to eat it in.
jacy
@rikyrah:
I’ve been helping some people negotiate how to get healthcare now that it’s available. I’ve come across numerous people who were SHOCKED that they could now have healthcare. They just took it as a given that if they were dying, they’d go to the emergency room, but other than that they had no options. It’s been a revelation for them. I’ve had to help people who didn’t even know how to make a doctor’s appointment. It’s mind-boggling that people just accepted that there was nothing for them and got so used to doing without that it seems like a miracle now. Let’s hope that opens their eyes to other possibilities.
madmommy
Goldfish crackers for the win! I knew we had a good dog when our new puppy (now 12) sat on the floor with my youngest, who was less than 1 at the time, and let him share his goldfish crackers with her, one at a time. She could have taken the whole bowlful in a gulp, but was happy to let the baby feed them to her. The only downside I can see to this is that they are now going to expect to be fed snacks like this regularly.
Barbara
@Baud: This was exactly what I was going to say! My very disturbed corgi actually looked forward to taking his Prozac because we packed it in the middle of a slice of Kraft cheese. When we ran out of cheese and used bread instead, he would continue sitting there, waiting for that cheese.
Hal
I didn’t realize the feticide conviction for Purvey Patel had been over turned.
http://www.nbcnews.com/news/asian-america/indiana-declines-appeal-purvi-patel-s-overturned-feticide-conviction-n637106
I’m sure a certain Governor, now running for President, I mean Vice President, is deeply disturbed Indiana will not appeal the overturned verdicts either, though I still think it’s ridiculous for someone to be charged with child neglect of a still born fetus.
eclare
My dogs will do anything for a Cheeto…
kindness
AP was a big part of the digging up of dirt in the Clinton 42 presidency. Ron Fournier played a huge part of making the Clintons look bad for doing what politicians are supposed to do. Ron left to go to Politico and continues to try and torpedo Democratic politicians and apparently the AP holds the same attitudes.
I find it revealing that neither the AP nor Politico or Ron Fournier never applied the same rules to the Republican party that they apply to the Democratic Party. That tells me everything I need to know right there.
Linnaeus
More on welfare reform at FiveThirtyEight:
lollipopguild
@Barbara: Who moved my cheese? Bring it back right now!
JR in WV
@NorthLeft12:
The AP is a co-op, owned by the “members” and always has been. When the owners change, gradually that change is reflected in the co-op. The last big management change at The AP was when old line AP managers retired, and the new appointed manager (CEO) was a Gannett executive who know nothing about managing a newswire co-op.
Running newspapers by selling ads is all different from running an organization that is not intended to make a profit, doesn’t sell ads but sells great news coverage to other news organizations. Plus the innertubes began happening.
Here in WV when Mrs J was a 30-year AP new correspondent, there were something like 16-19 staffers, state house reporters, sports guys, photo guys, and IT guys.
Now there are 2. And that’s what happened to The AP. No staff, which means now all they do is provide all commercial news orgs’ news to all the other news orgs. That’s kind of how they started, trading news from Albany NY with news from NYC.
If most of those news orgs are right wing, and when owned by rich people as they are, why not expect them to be right wing? then the news they exchange will be Faux slanted garbage.
Sad…
Steeplejack (phone)
@JasonF:
Or that right now there is a sitting Supreme Court justice whose wife is the head of a right-wing lobbying organization whose stated goal is to “use [her] ‘experience and connections’ to help with ‘governmental affairs efforts’ and political donation strategies.”
Glidwrith
@ruemara: Um, I don’t think it is legal here in CA to do away with PTO on the company’s whim. My company cut back accumulated time as well but they couldn’t take away what was already awarded. I don’t know if it is worth a fight for you, but I suspect that is a violation of labor law (IANAL applies).
rikyrah
@glory b:
Amen. Bothers me too – taking public dollars to advertise a scam.
JR in WV
@D58826:
Our Airedale mix, Anne, cut her paw on something in the woods just as she was getting a hand on being house trained. Visited the vet, of course, and bought dozens of pairs of kiddy socks. Duct taped those socks onto her damaged paw.
One thing she learned was if she favored that paw, she got special treatment. She would limp for sympathy and a treat. We took her to the vet, her act was flawless. The vet could NOT find anything wrong, so grabbed her good front leg and pulled to see if she would but her “bad” front paw down… Nope, fell right over.
Academy award dog acting!
So watch out for brain washing, they will work the levers. Your brain, not the dog’s brain!!!
EBT
Ah goldfish, what don’t they solve.
D58826
@JR in WV: A friends doxy would shiver and cry when put out in the yard during the winter. His human would promptly let him in out of sympathy for the poor little guy. . Unfortunately (for him) when he pulled the same stunt in July his human caught on and no more sympathy.
And yes they will work the leavers. Who goes out in the dead of winter to buy dog food? And who stays curled up in front of the fire?
Shana
@ruemara: re: treat speed. I remember an episode of All Creatures Great and Small where the vet shows up to treat a rather large pig and the two sisters who own the farm are slowly moving the pig into the barn to be examined. One of the sisters is laying digestive biscuits (kinda like graham crackers, FYI) down on the ground for the pig to follow. The process is taking forever with biscuits being laid down every 2-3 feet or so. The vet asks why don’t you put them down farther apart and get the pig moving faster? The sisters tell him that they’ve tried that in the past but the pig knows she’ll get fewer biscuits that way and refuse to move at all. It’s every 2-3 feet moving slowly or not moving at all.