Since Republican primary voters nominated a racist, sexist, xenophobic conspiracy-monger as their party’s standard-bearer, we’ll have to put up with that asshole’s dangerous demagoguery until future President Hillary kicks his ass on November 8. That’s just the way democracy works when the electorate comprises millions of petulant, overgrown toddlers with massive persecution complexes.
But is there no recourse when public sector union officials lie to inflame anti-immigrant sentiment on a candidate’s behalf? That appears to have happened during a meeting today between Trump and several National Border Patrol Council officials.
Art Del Cueto, president of the Tucson chapter of the National Border Patrol Council, the union that represents U.S. Border Patrol agents, told Trump a big fat lie that fits right into Dainty Digits’ pre-butt-kicking “I wuz robbed!” fantasies:
Donald Trump says border patrol agents have been told to allow immigrants into the United States illegally “so they can vote in the election.” Neither Trump nor a border patrol union official supporting him offered evidence Friday to back up the claim.
Newly admitted immigrants are not eligible to vote, a right reserved to citizens.
Trump spoke Friday as he received the endorsement of the 16,500-person National Border Patrol Council on Friday at Trump Tower.
Union official Art Del Cueto says agents have told him they had directives to ignore immigrants’ criminal records, so they can quickly become citizens and gain the right to vote.
Trump called it a huge story. Trump has repeatedly said he fears the election will be rigged. He has made a hardline stance on immigration the centerpiece of his campaign.
Of course, anyone with even a passing familiarity with this country’s immigration processes would immediately recognize the absurdity of Del Cueto’s claim. It typically takes many months or even years to become a U.S. citizen, and only U.S. citizens are eligible to vote.
Del Cueto is therefore a liar, an incompetent or both. His claim caused enough of a stir when Trump ran with it that the union had to trot out a flak to walk it back a bit:
A Border Patrol union spokesman is clarifying a union official’s comments about immigration to Donald Trump.
Shawn Moran said some U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services employees have claimed they are being asked to ignore criminal histories for people applying for citizenship so they would be eligible to vote in the November election. There has been no evidence to support this.
Moran also said Border Patrol agents are seeing an uptick in the number of people trying to cross the border illegally.
Moran said union vice president Art Del Cueto inadvertently combined the issues when he met Friday with Trump. He wrongly suggested that agents have been told to admit immigrants into the U.S. illegally so they can vote, but provided no evidence to back up that assertion.
Those clarifying remarks are not good enough. These motherfuckers are playing with fire, and they know it.
In a bid to protect his exquisitely fragile ego against the possibility of a loss, Trump is traveling all over the country inciting the millions of bigots who support him by claiming that he can’t lose the election unless there is massive fraud. He has encouraged rural bumpkins to become self-appointed poll watchers in urban areas because what could possibly go wrong. And there’s apparently nothing we can do about that except hand Trump a resounding defeat.
But Del Cueto already has a job, and he is doing it irresponsibly — in a way that has the potential to bring great harm upon the country his organization’s members are hired to protect. If Trump’s deluded followers decide to target people based on these ridiculous lies after Trump loses the election, the Border Patrol union will have blood on its hands.
Ivan Ivanovich Renko
The FOP also endorsed the shitgibbon.
One wonders about the culture of American policing.
Or not…
Keith P.
How the fuck has Donald Trump gotten this far using the “I heard from some people that…” gimmick? He uses it more than grade school kids do, yet he still doesn’t get confronted on it when he trots it out.
singfoom
They’re like the idiots I heard on NPR before the first debate. “If Hillary wins, we’ll be ready for the revoultion.” The host asks what do you mean? “Well, there will be an uprising of patriots.” This shit just gives those morons more gasoline to throw on the fire.
When the orange haired shitgibbon loses mightily, a bunch of morons like the Bundy idiots will end up getting killed because freedumb.
raven
Look, the Bodhi makes the paper!
The Moar You Know
Local BP union rep took our local shit news channel (KUSI, motto “Fox is way too liberal”) out to the border and lied his ass off, saying that “all they have to do is say ‘asylum’ and we have to let them go” which goes to a new place where the word “lie” just does not adequately cover it. So it’s a agencywide issue with these guys lying their asses off.
ETA: not sure what their endgame is, to be honest. They already get so much funding they can’t spend it all.
Villago Delenda Est
All of them, Katie.
The Other Bob
I hope HRC is 10 percent as mean as they claim she is, so she can fire the entire border patrol as nazi sympathizers.
Patricia Kayden
@Ivan Ivanovich Renko: Hmmmm. Not really. There is nothing to wonder about.
Randi Rhodes covered White Supremacists infiltrating police forces throughout the country on a recent show.
ET
Not sure this is all that much of a surprise for me. Law enforcement of all sorts is filled with men who like to portray themselves as “manly men” who like the tough talk, straight take. They respond viscerally to people that talk like that too even if it is nothing but talk.
Chip Daniels
@The Other Bob:
First force these guys to build the FEMA camp they will be interned in.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@raven: Yay for the Bodhi looking dapper.
trnc
Yeah, yeah, and Clinton told the military to stand down in Benghazi.
Gawd.
Patricia Kayden
@raven: That is so sweet!! Love his hat.
Damien
Serious question, but how does this ever get any better? Many of us read the profile on that Trump voter who was involuntarily committed based on her online postings. The woman is convinced Michelle Obama used to be a man and they stole their kids from some poor family just for show. Reality is a distant memory for her and many, many others like her.
So how do we walk our country back from the brink of outrageous revolution when the revolutionaries are completely disconnected from evidence, facts or sanity?
raven
@Patricia Kayden: And my bride actually originated the idea of this event!
Ivan Ivanovich Renko
@raven: Now there’s a doggie who KNOWS he’s lookin’ fly.
the Conster, la Citoyenne
@Patricia Kayden:
Malcolm X talked about the KKK trading white hoods for blue uniforms 60 years ago. We’ve known this for a long time. We white people refuse to think about it, read about it, care about it, and especially don’t want our willful collective amnesia to be poked by an NFL quarterback, because that’s the most disrespectful thing evah.
JPL
@raven: What do you have planned for this year’s event?
Patricia Kayden
At the very least, Art Del Cueto should be penalized for lying about Border Patrol policies. I’m sure his job requires him to be forthcoming and honest and not straight up lie to push partisan fantasies.
JPL
@raven: That is definitely cool.
Patricia Kayden
@raven: Awwww. How sweet. Sounds like a delightful time for four and two-legged people alike.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@raven: I suspected as much.
raven
@Damien: Fuck em if they can’t take a joke.
the Conster, la Citoyenne
@Damien:
Alex Jones should be locked up. Lead story on Prison Planet is how the Clinton campaign is collapsing everywhere in the country, right now. Every single story on that site is the exact opposite of reality. We are really in a death match struggle for reality with these delusional idiots. I believe in my gut that it was Obama’s re-election that caused a psychotic break in the right – forcing the fact that whites have been sidelined as an electoral force down all their throats, and that Obama’s responsible for their fragile, insecure, mediocre, dimwitted egos to fracture, releasing a pure unfiltered inchoate raging id.
Shell
The only thing Im hoping is that these ‘patriots’ are just as big a bunch of chest-thumping cowards as their Fearless Leader.
Villago Delenda Est
@Shell: We shall find out in the weeks following 9 November. I think there’s a lot more bark than bite in this…most of them are, at heart, cowardly curs.
Apologies to curs.
Shell
@raven: Love his costume. Is he Czar Nicholas?
Botsplainer, Cryptofascist Tool of the Oppressor Class
Party internal polling must be looking awful – those fuckers are pre-spinning the loss.
There is going to be some nasty shit gone down after November. Hopefully, we’ve got some abandoned WalMarts to serve as FEMA camps.
ArchTeryx
Oh God, the Border Baboon Brigade. Of course they’re Trumpeters.
I’ve had occasion to cross into and out of Canada a few times out of Michigan and New York, and never once have I made a smooth crossing either way. I’ve had my car emptied, been detained and made to cool my heels 5 hours at at time, given the most hostile grilling I’ve ever had outside of a cop shop arraignment room, and generally treated like a Most Wanted. They never find a thing, and always eventually send me on my way – but I’ve learned never to cross a border, ever, unless I have 6 hours to spare and am prepared for the Third Degree. Doesn’t even matter which direction.
raven
@Villago Delenda Est: I’m goin fishin.
Redshift
Urban and suburban bumpkins, too.
raven
@Shell: I dunno, she’s handling all of this. I don’t like dressing my dogs up but I wasn’t asked.
Patricia Kayden
@Damien:
Why would that be our job?
SiubhanDuinne, liberal mob enforcer bitch
@raven:
Is there supposed to be a photo? All I’m seeing is the article about the Boo-le-Bark parade.
Patricia Kayden
@ArchTeryx: Why do you think the Border Patrol is targeting you like that? I go to Canada at least twice a year to visit family and only had one horrific incident (involving a Jamaican cousin whose Canadian visa had expired. Sigh). Otherwise, no problems. Knock on wood.
hovercraft
@the Conster, la Citoyenne:
And Rush is warning his audience today that the Paris Climate Accord which went forward today is an attempt by the UN to take away the ability to control the climate from God. If you can spout such nonsense and not be driven out of polite society*, then there is no such thing.
* By polite society I mean people who the main stream media treat as normal rational beings, instead of the rabid, braying sociopaths they are.
GregB
When you listen to these law enfrorcement union spokesman you come to almost believe the right wing rhetoric about how unions make life easy for unqualified incomptent losers to keep their overpaid jobs.
schrodinger's cat
@Patricia Kayden: Last time I crossed the border at Niagara, the border patrol guy didn’t even want to see my passport.
catclub
OT: I read the following in Kevin Drum’s catblogging post and thought a book paralleling the last part of the Divine Comedy – Paradiso – should be written.
Brachiator
@Damien:
Right now, I think that most of these revolutionaries-in-waiting will shoot themselves in the foot trying to start any kind of insurrection. The stupidity, the anger, the resentment is real, but not any actual competence at even waging a successful war of words.
Jeffro
@Patricia Kayden:
It’s not our job to make RW nuts sane again…not that we could if we wanted to.
But keeping the potential craziness & violence down is desirable in its own right of course. And to whatever degree we’re able to get political leaders of all kinds to vouch for the legitimacy of our elections is a benefit to the country in general and HRC’s terms of office in particular.
catclub
@ArchTeryx:
So both Canadian and US Border patrols? Wow, sucks to be you.
germy
@ArchTeryx: We drove to Plattsburgh NY one day; didn’t even attempt to cross into Canada. And we were stopped and questioned on the NY thruway.
catclub
@Jeffro:
I think the best way is to ask (and keep asking) innocent questions about how the rising up the patriots (TM) is going to happen after the election.
Simple explanations. Who would be organizing it. Funding sources. Logistics.
Bitter Scribe
“Inadvertently combined the issues”?
Yeah, I know how that goes. I meant to pay the rent this month, but I spent the money on beer instead because I inadvertently combined the issues.
hovercraft
Reposting Trump word salad from downstairs.
Patricia Kayden
@schrodinger’s cat: That’s good. You must have a very honest face. Most Border Patrol agents look bored, in my opinion, and seem to just want to get you through the line and out of their purview. Seems like a pretty dry job when it comes to the Canadian/US border. I assume the Mexican border is more exciting.
Mnemosyne
@catclub:
Apparently, Cat Heaven for our oldest cat is laying on our shoes.
It’s adorable until he decides that he has a hairball that needs to come up. ?
germy
I used to work with a guy during the W Bush administration, he was as non-political as you could get. He didn’t follow elections, didn’t give a crap about the issues. He had his family and his hobbies and that was it. Typical office co-worker, if you will. I doubt he’d ever voted.
One day he drove to Canada. Family vacation. On his way back to the states, he was stopped at the border and aggressively questioned. Boy was he pissed. He came into work the next day and couldn’t stop talking about it. They asked him all sorts of questions. What was he doing? Why was he in Canada? Why was he returning? He’d never experienced anything like it.
I remember him stopping at my cubicle to talk about it. He wanted to get it off his chest. “They kept asking me stuff; it was none of their business!” he said. It’s a brave new world, I told him.
Mike in Pasadena
This guy won’t produce one Border Control agent to testify about this because he would have to name the supervisor who made the alleged statements. Since the supervisor does not exist, we will not be seeing any agents willing to so testify.
manyakitty
@raven: Even cooler!
Poopyman
Going which way?
jonas
@the Conster, la Citoyenne: The only upside of this is that maybe these morons will be so convinced that their beloved Führer is about to cruise to an unprecedented victory that a bunch of them stay home on election day.
David ?▶️Hillary/Harley Quinn 2016▶️? Koch
It takes a minimum of 5.5 years to become a citizen:
It’s 5.5 years minimum after you’ve become a “permanent resident”. Obtaining that basic status itself is like walking through a maze.
Penn
I’m a white male. I basically never have issues at the Canadian border. I’m just here idly speculating if these two are connected.
sigaba
Josh Marshall is
shrillgrim:Are we really at this pass? Also Kurt Eichenwald is getting a lot of death threats lately:
catclub
@jonas: I think many are not even registered to vote.
I am a little worried that some (all white) will become enraged when they are told they cannot vote because they are not registered.
They will believe that since they are white and they were born in this country they should be allowed to vote.
schrodinger's cat
@David ?▶️Hillary/Harley Quinn 2016▶️? Koch: Becoming a permanent resident is the difficult part if you ask me.
hilts
Trump’s flagrant stupidity is a bottomless pit
h/t TPM
The Moar You Know
@Damien: When we get as desperate and angry as they are. Who survives that conflict dictates the direction in which things will be “made better”. Same way groups of humans have always resolved fundamental and incompatible visions of the societies they live in.
See: United States Civil War #1, 1861-1865.
Not looking forward to it.
tarragon
@germy:
When?
I’ve been stopped by border patrol inside the border in Arizona, but never NY.
Was it last summer? There was a weeks long man hunt for escaped prisoners that led to all kinds of road closures and stops.
SiubhanDuinne, liberal mob enforcer bitch
@sigaba:
There’s more in the Kurt Eichenwald piece. He has been open about the fact that he has epilepsy. Some unspeakable murderous Trump-loving asshole sent him an email (or tweet or FB or something) with basically strobe-like flashes that could easily induce an episode.
germy
@tarragon: About five or six years ago. It was before the manhunt.
Matt McIrvin
@Penn: I’ve had issues at the Canadian border on a couple of occasions. It was always when there were Asian people in the vehicle with me. Never tried it with a black person in the car.
Tilda Swinton's Bald Cap
@sigaba: Well if nothing else, it will be a test for law enforcement. Can they, will they, act against right wing terrorism in the same manner they act against foreign terrorism.
Cacti
@Ivan Ivanovich Renko:
Nothing to wonder about at all.
They’ve made their feelings about minorities crystal clear with their endorsements.
germy
@tarragon:
They didn’t search us or anything. They stopped our car and asked us if we were all american citizens. We said “yes” (we are) and they sent us on our way.
Jeffro
hey “deep bench” – how come you couldn’t find this slimy stuff about Trump?
schrodinger's cat
@Patricia Kayden: We were in car, and my friend was driving. Only he had to show his passport but none of the passengers had to (husband kitteh and I). He asked us one question, how do you know each other. From school, said my friend and then the BP guy said that we could go.
It was the end of the day and they were coping with a bus full of Chinese tourists in the other lane.
bystander
You have to love Donald Unscripted.
So Presidential.
JPL
@Jeffro: I hope that those with religious right friends, sends that article on.
Maybe someone needs to ask Pence what he thinks about his partners language.
Frank Wilhoit
@Brachiator: Yes, but there will be some collateral damage, and any collateral damage is too much.
bystander
@Jeffro: Missed your post. Who would think Access Hollywood and Billy Bush would end up nominated for a Pulitzer?
JPL
@bystander: The Washington Post article that Jeffro linked to, has more info.
? Martin
Looks like the whitey tape just dropped.
Guessing the Today show may be looking for a new host as well.
Botsplainer
@SiubhanDuinne, liberal mob enforcer bitch:
Hurr, hurr, hurr – pussy liberal can’t take a little joke…
/s
sigaba
@Jeffro: Among the Deep Bench, we might consider the possibility that Donald Trump was the only person on that debate stage who was actually running for President, everyone else was either grifting, or expected a coronation, or was too concerned about their own career and their future prospects to actually commit to the race.
Trump actually has a lot on the line in this race, and he’s risking a lot, I’m not sure what else he has to lose. You can tell people like Ted Cruz were simply too afraid of losing Trump’s supporters to actually run against him; people like Jeb Bush simply lacked the will or character to draw a hard line; and people like Ben Carson didn’t want anything to interfere with the Regnery book deals.
(Edit- This might play into my Grand Unified Theory of the modern Republican Party, namely, their vision is of the House running the country and they don’t actually think the Presidency is very desirable or worth winning. They’ve been so successful at short-circuiting the presidency, even when Bush was president, that Republican candidates may not actually see the job as worth running for.)
schrodinger's cat
@bystander: Eeww did not need to know that about the sleaze bag.
? Martin
@hilts:
That’s not stupidity. That’s white supremacy.
nonynony
@Jeffro:
Meh. The ones who cared about the fact that Trump is a pig towards women (including all of his wives) a) knew that and b) were voting for Cruz or Rubio or Kasich or Bush. This wouldn’t have done much to hurt his numbers with the 40% of the GOP base that was all-in for Trump.
I would be shocked that the GOP primary gaggle didn’t appear to do ANY opposition research except that I think all of their campaigns were infested with grifters looking to make a buck. I’m a bit surprised that the Bush Family didn’t have anyone on staff who could ratf*ck Trump, but then again the Bush Family isn’t known for doing serious oppo research and finding things wrong with their opponents but rather taking things everyone already knows and spinning them into something that sounds bad. With Trump you can’t make him look any worse than he already is, and that’s a look that appeals to 40% of GOP primary voters.
gogol's wife
@raven:
So cute!
Brachiator
@hilts:
This is beyond stupid. This is foul.
There are people who say that they want their president who is a guy (and it’s usually a guy) that they would want to have a beer with.
Trump is that drunken idiot bigot in the corner, puking up his beer in between rages against all the people he hates. Except instead of falling out dead drunk, he wakes up at 3 am and tweets bullshit.
Romney was despicable
Trump is Deplorable-in-Chief
Trentrunner
@? Martin: Would be bitterly ironic if that disgusting talk would get you fired from Today’s feature spot but not from the Republican nomination for President of the United States.
polyorchnid octopunch
@Jeffro: That’s because they’re all as lazy as Trump, but are simply better at not appearing that way.
Damien
@Patricia Kayden: because it is our mantel to carry the nation toward a more perfect union, in my opinion. And having an entire unhinged contingent defiantly ignorant of reality when we have evolved to the point of ludicrous, world-shaping power (not even talking politically; literally) inhibits that mission.
That’s what I mean: it seems like a huge proportion of our country is committed to lurching us off the cliff, so how do we act as the stewards of the Enlightenment?
? Martin
@Trentrunner: And I wonder how much pressure will be applied on NBC to fire him before a debate simply so that point can be raised.
liberal
@Jeffro: Yeah, that video was…touching, to say the least.
nonynony
@Trentrunner: I mean, it’s too late to fire Trump from the nomination. They’re stuck with him at this point.
I’m wondering if that recorded footage has been made available to any of the campaigns by the same person who dropped it into the WaPo’s lap.And if so, I wonder if Kelly Ayotte is going to get hit with a nice add that contrasts her affirming Trump’s status as a role model while Trump is talking about grabbing young women in the “p—y”. With bleeps added, of course.ETA: I didn’t even notice that the video is right there. Waiting for campaigns to grab it…
Jeffro
@Trentrunner:
I think it was Chris Rock who said recently that any one of a dozen things Trump has said in public would get him fired as manager of a Burger King, not hired to run the free world.
Hildebrand
Fahrenthold’s reporting sure knows how to press Trump’s buttons. Talk about something that will keep Trump fuming all weekend. The debate should be…interesting.
RaflW
@Jeffro: I look forward to however Speaker Ryan figures out to dodge the Elkhorn, WI rally with p**** grabbing top-of-the-GOP-ticket hellion Donald Trump.
And can anyone from the press please, please trap Ralph Reed in an elevator and make him give a statement on this. The Values Voters summit last month is a total, unconcealable sham/scam. Trump makes that plain almost every day.
Matt McIrvin
@Jeffro: The “deep bench” were going after each other. None of them wanted to touch the third rail of attacking Trump because they needed to win over his supporters, and figured anyone who went after Trump directly would alienate them. So they all assumed that somebody else would do it, or that Trump would sabotage himself, and they concentrated on attacking whoever else they thought would still be standing then.
Ted Cruz’s whole early strategy was to be the guy who was the nicest to Trump, so that he’d get the Trumpsters when Trump spontaneously deflated. Obviously that changed toward the end, when it actually became a contest between Trump and him–and by then it was too late. But that was where he started.
Remember Jeb Bush’s TV ads? The ones I saw were all ferociously attacking Marco Rubio.
ArchTeryx
@Patricia Kayden: I have no bloody idea. I actually have a spotless criminal record, I’m white and male (yeah, white privilege) I drive a decent-looking car, and I’m usually crossing the border in order to spend money in Canada. Yet always – always – I seem to get singled out. I’ve not tried crossing the border on an airplane or via Amtrak – maybe that’d be easier then driving across – but still, my experiences with both Border Patrols have been nothing but hostile. And I’m not the only one in my circle of friends with this experience.
For all I know, it’s because I’m a liberal activist. Not that they can tell by looking – my car has not a single bumper sticker or sign on it save my AAA sticker, because I’m unemployed and would like that to not be for a lifetime.
It’s an eye-opening experience to get treated like that. Made me appreciate Black Lives Matter all the more, and support them completely in what they themselves are trying to highlight.
eclare
@raven: Awesome!
catclub
@Hildebrand:
yep. It made it clear that none of this was for entertainment, just in case Trump tries that dodge.
hovercraft
@Jeffro:
msnbc has already played it a couple/three of times in the last 15 minutes, so you can bet it’s going to be all over cable and the networks news tonight. His response that it’s just “locker room banter, and apology to anyone offended” is an improvement from his usual bite me. But I don’t think it’s going to cut it.
Faranthold will get the Pulitzer.
tarragon
@germy:
Weird. Inside the border is crazy.
I’ve only ever had issues crossing at that end of the lake, never at the Buffalo crossings. Maybe it’s something about that end.
liberal
@nonynony: I thought the conventional wisdom was that the top candidates didn’t take down Trump because they were busy beating on each other and viewed him as a useful tool against each other.
nonynony
@Matt McIrvin:
I mean, yes, they couldn’t attack Trump for being out-of-touch with his so-called “policy” statements. And they had to be careful about going after him for being an alpha male moron. But something like this they absolutely should have been able to make hay out of with political ads through their superPACs targetting Trump in “values voter” states.
The fact is that Trump’s core voters wouldn’t care and the voters that would care were in the 60% of the GOP that didn’t want to vote for Trump until they were forced to choose between him and not voting/Gary Johnson/Clinton. What killed the “deep bench” was that it took too long to winnow them down to just one idiot against Trump and when they finally did it was Ted Cruz. And given a choice between Cruz and Trump you can almost understand how Trump would win it. (I mean, I’d take weeping softly into my pillow while reconsidering what my party had become, but I’m not a Republican voter, so…)
sigaba
@Matt McIrvin:
To their credit they may have also assumed that Republican primary voters weren’t so depraved and disgusting that they would have actually selected Donald Trump, some of them might have assumed he was such a ridiculous huckster that he had no chance with decent people voting. Maybe they thought Trump, as a man, would be rejected. Joke’s on them. And on us.
catclub
@Matt McIrvin: This makes sense, direct attacks were not their choice, but things like this need to turn up ‘anonymously’ in the press. Reports that Trump is a deadbeat with his contractors could have turned up in the press.
That was the political malpractice.
Jeffro
@sigaba:
I think several of them were quite serious – Cruz, Rubio, Kasich, Christie, Paul – and Trump may have in fact been running just to grift at the beginning himself. Funny how roles reversed along the way!
I dunno…I bet Trump sees and has seen only upside for himself here. You’re right about Cruz but he thought all along one of these Trump-quote-scandals would bring down DJT and leave Cruz access to that plurality of R voters. Bush tried to draw lines but whew, just no enthusiasm for the guy or for more of the same w/ the GOP base. Carson = yes, totally agree.
I think they’d very much like to have it, but know that larger demographic forces and a lack of GOP appeal (overall, nationally) make it out of reach. They (the Kochs especially) are simply playing the hand they’ve been dealt. No doubt they would find better cards very desirable and worth ‘playing’ for.
hovercraft
Remember when there was all the talk about e-mail October surprises and wikileaks dumps that would hurt Clinton? So far it’s been the team with a real campaign with a real opo research arm that is benefiting. Coincidence?
Tom Q
@sigaba: The Deep Bench made basically the same calculation Hillary made on the Dem side: that this guy getting a lot of attention wasn’t going to win the nomination in the end, so why antagonize his supporters by going after him too hard? The fact that Hillary was right in her calculation about Sanders and the GOPers were wrong about Trump speaks both to the asymmetry between the two parties and the greater political acumen of Hillary’s team.
nonynony
@liberal:
I think that was true at the start. They were seeing that he had 40% of the vote, saw that there was 60% up for grabs, saw his unfavorables among GOP voters, and decided to go for the big slice instead of trying to hit Trump.
And part of the reason for that is that maybe they realized that that 40% of voters were unreachable as long as Trump was in the race because if they were going to vote for Trump despite what an obvious phony he was, then how exactly are you going to convince them to not vote for him? It’s a tough move – one Clinton doesn’t have to worry about because she is never going to be able to get those votes anyway.
Gelfling 545
@raven: ?
Jeffro
@Matt McIrvin:
Ack – just had a note here that disappeared (FYWP!) but said the same thing. Both could have been possible, of course – Cruz ‘drafting’ behind Trump waiting for him to implode while also dropping stuff like these comments into the media.
Ah, I see Catclub at 99 said the same thing…you guys are faster AND sharper than me
? Martin
I have told numerous people here, but the GOPs original sin was to let go of all self-control in an effort to turn Clinton into history’s greatest monster. Once you convince enough of your party that she really is, then they’ll back literally any other candidate. They’ll assume everyone sees Clinton as a Vince Foster murderer, and in that context, Trump is perfectly acceptable. Once you are convinced that Clinton’s political superpowers allow her to make the media do your bidding and that she can airlift millions of illegal Mexicans to vote in Ohio, then you’re going to seek out someone like Trump to take her on.
But mostly you’re going to decide that policies don’t matter because you see this as an existential battle for power. You’re going to stop functioning as a governing body because a pissed off electorate that you believe see Clinton as history’s greatest monster is a winning electoral strategy. The biggest risk in it is electing a candidate that allows her appeal as a competent grandmother. You need an attack dog to pull it off. You need to force her into revealing the inner murder you believe she is.
The GOP never considered the consequences if this dumb fuck idea, 25 years in the making, backfired.
MomSense
@raven:
Bohdi! What a good looking pup you got there, Raven.
hovercraft
Oh and trying to defect by claiming Bill Clinton said worse things about women to him on the golf course is both stupid and offensive. My first question if he tried that defense is where’s the tape?
Humdog
@ArchTeryx: I too get pulled aside and grilled when going across borders. Even had a border patrol agent force me to push the cotton out of my factory wrapped tampons to prove they were just tampons (which ruins them, BTW). I am a white woman. All I can figure is I have a bad habit of not looking people in the eye and I have constant red eye, so I must look like a shifty drug user. Never ask me to hold any contraban. Nowadays I get to “enjoy” getting felt up by TSA,woo hoo!
Mnemosyne
@ArchTeryx:
I wonder if it’s something really weird, like you share a name with a wanted person or something.
catclub
Townhall debate:
Stagecraft Follies?
I remember that guys are not supposed to hold the mic at their crotch, while waiting to talk. Trump is probably enough of an performer to know this.
David ?▶️Hillary/Harley Quinn 2016▶️? Koch
Pivot
Trentrunner
Let’s be clear: Trump is talking about sexual assault. This isn’t locker-room banter & towel-snapping.
Saying you can do what you want “because you’re a star” is Bill Cosby’s fucking mindset.
Anoniminous
Everybody in and out of the GOP thought JEB! had the nomination locked. He had everything going for him. The only thing wrong was he was a total suck as a candidate.
When Trump first announced he was forming a campaign the Infotainment Mediums and everybody poo-poo’ed his chances. Then he got into the race in April and by July 6th had taken the lead with 14.7% and never relinquished it.
ETA: my own take is the rest of the Deep Bench totally sucked as candidates as well but for different reasons. For example, Rubio has no discernible personality.
Omnes Omnibus
@Trentrunner:
Yep, letting him do it is not consent.
raven
@JPL: You mean me personally? I’m going to walk my dogs.
germy
@hovercraft:
Why is this news? Anyone could hear drumpf on the Howard Stern show taunting A.J. Benza (remember him from the trashy “Mysteries And Scandals” tv show?) about fucking his girlfriend. Benza was pissed as hell while drumpf taunted him “I was doing things to her” etc.
raven
@MomSense: Yea, he and Lil Bit are sweet pups.
Jeffro
@David ?▶️Hillary/Harley Quinn 2016▶️? Koch:
Right now Mike Pence is shaking his head so vigorously his features are blurring…
Peale
@trnc: Directives from (_______). Jeebus. Maybe it was a post-it put on near the water cooler next to the EEO notice
germy
@Jeffro: Mike Pence. The good christian who maintains that smoking doesn’t cause lung disease, because the tobacco bizness has been berry berry good to him.
catclub
@Jeffro:
I am like a samurai sword at the keyboard – there are plastic bits everywhere.
Omnes Omnibus
@germy: I never listened to Howard Stern.
? Martin
@Trentrunner:
Absolutely. The question is when does it get called that in public? Does Clinton go there during the town hall? She should. It may not help her in the news cycle, but this is an opportunity to force society to deal with this.
I must say, it’s striking how frequently the media find their acorn 48 hours before debates.
hovercraft
@? Martin:
I agree, but I a further back. It started with Nixon, a combination of his paranoia and dog whistles made their base think they were under attack by the brown people. They hid it for a long time as Atwater told them they had to. Since the first Clinton presidency they have been becoming more and more blatant, and more and more angry about the two, two term democratic presidencies.
germy
@Omnes Omnibus: I used to have Stern on in my car back in the ’90s until I realized I couldn’t stand him or his guests anymore. But this A.J. Benza thing was news a few months ago, before it sank out of sight.
D58826
@germy: Not to worry Paul ‘grannie starver’ Ryan will keep his date with Trump tomorrow. Trump the gift that keeps giving.
catclub
@Trentrunner:
which works for 40 years… and then suddenly it doesn’t.
raven
Hell yes! We’ve been confused about our escrow from our refi. We paid our property taxes and just got a $2000 refund because escrow paid it!
germy
Omnes Omnibus
@germy: I also have no idea who A. J. Benza is.
Gelfling 545
@Poopyman: Yeah, there’s that. Mexico may decide they want to build a wall after all, should Trump be elected!
catclub
@? Martin:
Someone dropping acorns in front of blind pigs?
JPL
@raven: I mean what is Bohdi going to wear this year. The article said that the theme was Poe.
hovercraft
@germy:
The point Farenthold just made was that yesterday Trump claimed that his banter on Howard Stern was for ‘entertainment purposes’, this conversation was a private conversation between Trump and Billy Bush, so he cannot claim it was for entertainment, this is who he is.
raven
Boy, CNN is all in on this one.
germy
@Omnes Omnibus: Neither did I until I got fascinated with watching trashy documentaries about old Hollywood stars. These documentaries were invariably narrated by Benza.
You’re not missing anything; he’s as trashy and off-putting as drumpf is.
Peale
@Poopyman: Yeah. It is, umm, harvest season?
NorthLeft12
Frankly, it is pretty easy to understand why unions are quickly dying out in the US of A. If anyone in a union, especially a union leader, does not understand that the election of Republicans will result in right to work legislation, then they don’t really want a union or are too stupid to deserve one. Sad.
raven
@JPL: Oh, I dunno. She had me order this lions mane for him so I did. Lil Bit has some goofy feather thing that is supposed to be a Raven! The literary person on the committee pushed that theme but I don’t know how they will have different stuff for that many varmits!
catclub
@hovercraft:
AND that Trump also claimed he actually has the highest respect for women. yeah, right.
hovercraft
@? Martin:
She won’t have to, the two moderators will do it for her. They get to ask him questions too, approximately half the questions are from the moderators.
David ?▶️Hillary/Harley Quinn 2016▶️? Koch
Katy Tur lays into him (link) HA!
Gelfling 545
@Penn: A very pale, blond, blue eyed relative has had problems crossing back into the US for years. They have even gone so far as to search him….thoroughly on occasion. No one can figure out why. Our best guess is that he resembles the description of someone they are looking for. And we tend to cross the border with some frequency in these parts.
germy
@Gelfling 545: Sometimes they just want to fuck with people. Depends on who’s on duty.
Mnemosyne
@srv:
And yet Bill was smart enough not to say it when there was a tape recorder running. Sad!
? Martin
@catclub: Maybe. Though the media would be trying to push big stories knowing they’ll get a lot of play before the debate, so it may not be coming from Clinton, but just looking at how incredibly good they’ve been at message management, it’s hard to imagine they’re unaware, if not uninvolved.
And here’s the Clinton ad it gets contrasted to, which dropped today.
Clinton doesn’t need to push negative ads at this stage – it seems as though that now has a life of its own. A pivot toward positive messages, governance, etc. will make for a very striking contrast. She’s talking about making our country better for our children, and Trump is bragging about sexual assault.
germy
On October 7th at 3PM –
The New York Times has Clinton with an 82% chance of winning.
Five Thirty Eight has Clinton with an 80% chance of winning.
Daily Kos has Clinton with an 86% chance of winning.
The Huffington Post has Clinton with an 84% chance of winning.
The Princeton Election Consortium has Clinton with a 93% chance of winning.
Feathers
One note – police unions are where guys who need to get fired but can’t be fired find a new gig. It’s a well known place to run to while keeping the pension rights
CNN is on in the restaurant where I am, so little kids are hearing Trump’s trash talk unedited. Luckily they don’t seem to be paying attention.
MisterForkbeard
@The Moar You Know: When Bush increased the funding so much and mandated doubling the size, they dropped most of their hiring requirements and took pretty much anybody. In addition, they basically stopped firing people. It was more important to add more people than to hire good people.
There’s been a lot of documented racism from these guys, and a lot of documented lies.
David ?▶️Hillary/Harley Quinn 2016▶️? Koch
but, but… Hillary once said racism and antisemitism is deplorable so…. BOTH SIDES!
Hildebrand
@germy: I think people tend to give anything heard on Stern a pass – as they know the crew tend to bait the guests into a more, shall we say, ribald, sense of humor. This, with the now theoretically respectable Bush, smacks of something categorically different.
germy
Five Thirty Eight: Where Clinton Is Setting Up Field Offices — And Where Trump Isn’t
By Joshua Darr
In 2016, like in 2012, it is not close. Clinton has nearly three times the number of field offices as Trump nationwide (489 vs. 178), and her organization dominates Trump’s in every battleground state.
Omnes Omnibus
@Mnemosyne: I don’t believe anything Trump says. And srv is srv.
catclub
@Gelfling 545:
Julian Assange?
Cacti
Seriously FPers, where’s the post on Trump’s Whitey Tape?
scav
@David ?▶️Hillary/Harley Quinn 2016▶️? Koch:
So the tits are phony is the new the grapes are sour?
Hey Hey Hey! it’s all Enter-taaaain-ment!
Good old family G-Rated Fun.
germy
@Cacti: this should solidify the support from his base.
? Martin
@hovercraft: They may raise it, but they won’t call it sexual assault. She should be clear that’s what Trump is describing. She should be clear that it’s what Ailes and Cosby have been accused of. They’re all different forms, but they all go together.
I wonder how much digging is going right now into the rape suit against Trump. That’s been sitting there, mostly unspoken of, like a fucking landmine.
Maybe that’s all bullshit like so much of what was flung at the Clintons, but I bet a shitton of man-hours are being invested right now into breaking that story open.
Mnemosyne
@Feathers:
I’m volunteering with 10-year-olds here in blue California and, man, kids do NOT like Trump. They know he’s a rude bully and they don’t understand why adults are letting him get away with it.
Trentrunner
Please please can we have fresh thread? Must talk about Trump’s avowed penchant for sexual assault.
Mnemosyne
@Omnes Omnibus:
Oh, I don’t believe Trump either, but in the absence of direct evidence, I’m happy to emphasize that Trump is stupid and Bill is not.
Anoniminous
@germy:
With the news about the Gropentrumper you can amp those percentages up a couple of notches.
David ?▶️Hillary/Harley Quinn 2016▶️? Koch
I think the “Nancy” Trump is talking about is Nancy O’Dell, she was the long time host of the show “access hollywood” which captured Trump and Bush on mic.
She’s a beautiful woman and now we know she has good taste and rejected the phony loser.
gogol's wife
I just played it for my husband. He has turned every shade of green.
I think the coup de grace was when Trump dissed Gerald Ford.
Trump isn’t worthy of tying Ford’s shoe.
germy
US Formally Accuses Russia Of Interfering In The 2016 Election
The Obama administration has officially accused Russia of interfering in United States elections, specifically with regard to the information released to Wikileaks from the DNC hack this summer.
Central Planning
@srv: the non apology apology. Wouldn’t expect anything less from him
Brachiator
@hovercraft:
Nixon certainly played a key role, but he was the instigator of a larger racist counter-reaction to the civil rights movement. There have always been racists in America, and after Reconstruction, the Democratic Party was the big tent which held racists and non-racists. But beginning with the 60s civil rights struggles, racists were decidedly pushed out of the Democratic Party if they refused to behave. In 1964, Strom Thurmond and the other Dixiecrats formally took the racist conservative leadership to the GOP. The racist GOP base was looking for a chance to skip out and did so decisively in 1968.
Nixon exploited the fears on a national level, but he was neither the cause nor the chief instigator. And now we see the national Republican Party formally re-embracing white supremacist fantasies as a result of their anti-Obama hysteria. And topping it off with anti-woman, anti-gay, anti-Latino and anti-Muslim bigotry.
David ?▶️Hillary/Harley Quinn 2016▶️? Koch
@scav: he doesn’t seem to mind the disastrous bad boob job on his current mail-order wife. Sad!
germy
@srv:
jonas
@jonas: GOTV is a complicated endeavor and requires coordinating a lot of moving parts in a lot of places. Usually Democrats have more of an uphill battle on it than the GOP does given the demographics of the Dems’ base vs. the GOP, but I’m wondering if this isn’t really the Achilles heel of the whole Trump operation. He seems to be coasting on the idea that turnout at his rallies = massive Trump voter enthusiasm and that he doesn’t really need to pay attention to GOTV. I read that his canvassing and phone banking efforts have been haphazard and slap-dash at best (did you see Ted Cruz’s awesome stint at a Trump phone bank? Epic.), with the party trying to patch things behind him on a kind of ad hoc basis.
I suppose the current polling is supposed to account for this in some way (weighting likely vs. registered voters, etc.) but I wonder…
hovercraft
@raven:
It’s sex, of course they are.
sigaba
@srv:
Where?
gogol's wife
Mother of mercy, will this finish him finally? Finally?
satby
@raven: Nice! He seems less than enthused though.
David ?▶️Hillary/Harley Quinn 2016▶️? Koch
I guess David Price really does suck in postseason games.
raven
@satby: The pics were about 6 weeks ago and it was really hot.
catclub
@Brachiator:
This reminds me again of the article on the problem with having a near majority from one (not very heterogenous) group. 1) They think they ARE a majority.
2) They feel no need to compromise 3)They feel no need to find allies. 4)They don’t understand why they don;t get their way.
scav
“When you’re a star, they let you do it” just calls to mind “I could stand in the middle of 5th Avenue and shoot people and I wouldn’t lose voters,” although mixing the two images, well. It might not lose him any voters (in theory) but it certainly might frighten the horses.
or the horse-race.
I suppose it’s a philosophy of a sort. Too big to fail.
Also, to savor. Those very last two paragraphs of the WaPo
He is good.
Brachiator
@srv:
Yawn. You can’t make much of a case on what happens in New Hampshire.
? Martin
@Mnemosyne: There was tape of him visiting a 1st grade classroom and you could hear a little girl saying ‘I am very uncomfortable! He makes me very uncomfortable!’ It triggered a reaction in me as it sounded like the kind of thing we taught our kids to say when they were in a situation that made them scared/anxious, etc. Formal enough that the adults would immediately notice it, but not so much that it would cause a teacher to panic.
Gelfling 545
@catclub: No. not even close. He did experiment with Libertarianism when he was younger, so not wholly blameless, though.
FlipYrWhig
@jonas:
Yup. He’s an extremely vain and stupid person whose thought processes are dominated by whatever’s immediately in front of his face. So when there’s a crowd of people turning out to cheer for him, it means that _everyone who matters_ loves him.
Enhanced Voting Techinques
@? Martin: What, WTF the GOP nominated a man who appared on a damn cheesy soap opera for president? This is god damn bullshit nonsense. Seriously, Ted fraking Cruz, the most hated man in the Senate and alleged Zodaic Killer, has more gravitas than that Trump the clown. At lest Cruz can be counted on to find Washinton, DC on a map. The next time some Trumpledhead bleats at me I am going sneer back “Days of Our Lives”.
Darrin Ziliak (formerly glocksman)
@Patricia Kayden:
IANAL, but I am an ex-shop steward and know just enough about the subject to talk to a lawyer before I’d make statements like those.
If he’s employed solely by the union, the Feds can’t touch him employment wise. It’d be up to the union to slap him down.
If he’s paid by the Feds but gets paid time off for union activity (like stewards do), then it’s muddy and depends on what role he claims he was acting in and the terms of the collective bargaining agreement in place.
Soylent Green
The only instruction set in Trump’s operating system is “Baffle ’em with bullshit.” At the next debate he will set a new personal record.
SiubhanDuinne, liberal mob enforcer bitch
@scav:
Oh, nice Mrs. Patrick Campbell reference!
SFAW
@catclub:
To-MAY-toe, to-MAH-toe
Peter
As reflexively pro-labour as I am, if someone’s proposed breaking up law enforcement unions at this point, I’d be hard pressed to argue with them. They don’t share the history of traditional labour unions, they are no longer serving the function of a union, and they are an active impediment to sane social policy.
SiubhanDuinne, liberal mob enforcer bitch
@SFAW:
Ne-VAA-da, Ne-VAH-da….
Original Lee
@Patricia Kayden: The only time I had a problem going from Canada to the U.S. was once when I was coming back from shopping for books and yarn in Toronto. The rear end of my car was riding pretty low, and I think BP thought I had a trunk full of liquor. As soon as they went through all the shopping bags of books, and I showed them my receipts, I was good to go. I couldn’t be annoyed with them – I would have pulled me over, too.
evodevo
Whatever happened to the Hatch Act? I didn’t think gubmint employees were allowed to do this …or are they “contractors”….
SFAW
@SiubhanDuinne, liberal mob enforcer bitch:
Thanks for setting me straight.
I may have once been aware of all Internet traditions, but apparently I fergit ’em as soon as I larn ’em.
Mnemosyne
@Original Lee:
Stephanie Pearl MacPhee tells a story of being stopped at airport customs because they didn’t believe that the suitcase full of yarn was for personal use, so therefore she must be smuggling it for resale. She eventually convinced them otherwise, but it took a while.
(I think she was on her way home to Canada from Rhinebeck or a similar festival.)
chopper
“quickly”? have any of these schmucks ever talked to an immigrant trying to become a citizen?
Capri
@Damien: When Hilary is elected they aren’t going to do a damn thing. These folks have always been with us, probably in the same numbers. Anyone who works retail can tell you a thing or two about the mental health and intelligence of the average American. The only difference is that we now know about them because of the internet.
Original Lee
@Mnemosyne: I guess it was fortunate that I had spent most of my money on books and had only bought enough yarn to make a sweater, then.
Uncle Cosmo
@srv: Fuck off & die, shitstain.
SFAW
@Uncle Cosmo:
You seem kinda mellow this evening. Everything OK?
JR in WV
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