Bedwetters: You don't an extra big White House if you get over 270 EVs, Clinton Camp smart to lock down the states she needs to win
— Dan Pfeiffer (@danpfeiffer) November 1, 2016
Best media response of the week (if not longer):
@Smitter11 @MichaelRCaputo @Fahrenthold The Washington Post is an asswipe and a disgrace to real journalism.
— Steve Elliott (@SteveSanAntone) November 2, 2016
We welcome anyone who buys the WaPo print edition. No judgment. We don't ask what you do with it once it's yours. https://t.co/QXiYLG1YRy
— David Fahrenthold (@Fahrenthold) November 2, 2016
What’s on the agenda as we strive through this last week?
Oh, and speaking of long-awaited happy endings…
The fella at the next table was nice enough to help me hold the flag after the Cubs won!!! Go Cubs and fly the W!!#GoCubsGo #FlytheW #Game7 pic.twitter.com/QJVaPgOTDH
— Bob Newhart (@BobNewhart) November 2, 2016
Betty Cracker
In this final week of the campaign, I plan to devote all the time I might have spent watching horse race coverage doing GOTV activities instead. Let’s win this damn thing!
Tom Levenson
Jury duty for me today, and then (unless I get empaneled), ditto.
Leaving the Twitters altogether. Wastes aeons and makes me crazy.
Cermet
I see the Hoover lie, blackmail and dirty trick organisation known also as the fbi is still trying its best to throw mud at Hillary. Lets see, hoover was a closet homosexual who made sure that homosexual’s were either criminally prosecuted or forced to go into the closet – I see comely is following that asswipe’s sick example. After Hillary becomes President she needs to isolate that asswipe and make sure that all he does is sit on his worthless ass for her 8 years never allowed to make a single decision or even be asked a question. That would be proper payback.
NotMax
Still a few days left for Carrot Flop and his minions to stage a phony hijack attempt on his plane (Hair Farce 1) and have himself appear framed in the doorway, backlit of course, wearing crossed bandoliers and carrying a smoking AR-15.
rikyrah
Good Morning?,Everyone?
Betty Cracker
@Cermet: I’m hoping PBO fires Comey’s ass on November 9th, regardless of the outcome of the election. Whether through cowardice, incompetence or arrogance (or all of the above), Comey improperly injected himself into a national election. That is such a grave breach of trust that anything less than a firing is unconscionable, IMO.
mai naem mobile
I’m wondering( if Comey is being blackmailed by the Russians. No crazier than any other theory. Every body has some dirt. Maybe his was enough to get blackmailed over.
NotMax
@Betty Cracker
Prefer Dec. 20, the day after electoral votes are officially recorded and sealed.
Currants
Okay, please help: I’ve seen that W flag on a couple houses around here–what does it MEAN? It’s not a letter in either team’s name, but I saw the MLB insignia and figured it had to do with the game in some way. But what? (As you can tell, I watch baseball casually, and have been preoccupied this fall with other matters.)
Betty Cracker
@NotMax: That makes more sense.
@Currants: W = Win.
Baud
@NotMax:
I would like Obama to get Comey to wrap up the email review. I don’t want it to go on forever.
hueyplong
Still say the plan should be for Obama to pardon Comey on Dec 20 and then sit back and watch the RWNJs create their own fact pattern about why that happened.
OzarkHillbilly
@Baud: You expect the guy who’s kept it going on forever to wrap it up soon? No partisan political mileage in that.
Kay
@mai naem mobile:
I think it’s probably more stupid and petty than that. This is interesting though- the NYTimes rushed to exonerate Trump 2 days ago based on information given them to by unnamed sources (so the FBI).
But now they’re reporting Manafort is under criminal investigation:
So what happened there? Their original source at the FBI lied?
Baud
@OzarkHillbilly: Then no reason to keep him around.
Hal
Yet expect the village to say if Hillary Clinton wants to be trustworthy, she should keep Comey as a sign of no wrong doing on her part. Bipartisanship!
hueyplong
This highlights the difference between how investigations and disclosures go if someone worked for Trump (Manafort) or if they were married to someone who worked for Clinton (Weiner).
Baud
@Hal: That’s why Obama need to do it.
Taylor
@hueyplong: This.
Fire his ass and then pardon him. Let him know how the presumption of guilt feels.
Baud
@Kay: The NYT is garbage.
Tokyokie
The Cubs fly a flag with a blue W on a white background from the center field scoreboard after home victories, and a flag with a white L on a blue background after home losses. They’re the only team that does this, and I assume it dates back to when baseball games were all played during the day (and remember, Wrigley Field was the last MLB park to get lights) and it provided a way for passers-by to tell at a glance what the result of the day’s game had been. It’s the sort of quirky throwback tradition that baseball fans love, but unfortunately, the marketing boys have stripped it of some of its charm. Although Bob Newhart, a native of the Chicago area, makes everything charming.
Kay
The person who is doing the most damage to Comey’s reputation is Trump. Trump is telling people to change a vote they already cast based solely on Comey’s letter. Donald Trump believes Comey’s interference benefited Donald Trump.
Comey doesn’t know the Trump Rule- if you so much as brush up against Donald Trump, the Trump shit sticks to you. He’ll take lots of people down with him.
OzarkHillbilly
@Baud: Was there ever?
Kay
@Baud:
THAT was one of the most amazing things I’ve seen this whole election- two harmful pieces come out about Trump, 30 minutes later the NYTimes has a piece up exonerating him based on unnamed sources.
Wow. That’s some political operation they have. A rapid response team! I sure hope there’s no crime-fighting that requires attention while the FBI is busy politicking.
SFAW
@mai naem mobile:
Nah, he’s just a longtime Clinton hater, like Junior G-Man #1 Louie Freeh before him.
Betty and NotMax have it right, fire his ass. The only thing missing would be a public “execution” (in the sense of killing Comey’s chances of getting anywhere near power ever again).
The temptation is to have President Clinton’s AG hire a new FBI Director who understands that part of his/her job is to investigate whatever Rethug leadership is left. [Yes, I realize that’s no better than what Trump says he wants to do. Allow me my little daydream, OK?]
bystander
I got an email from my old pal Barack Obama. He told me to send Hillary Clinton $7 RIGHT NOW, so I did. She must be holding him hostage.
rikyrah
@Tokyokie:
I am so used to it that it never occurred to me that no other team did it. I had two friends from other cities ask me about it.
Kay
You guys might enjoy this. The context is this- John Weaver is John Kasich’s former strategist. Sean Spicer of the RNC said that Kasich’s “legacy” was at risk because Kasich wrote in McCain for President:
Betty Cracker
This surely won’t happen because of the politics involved, but it’s high time the FBI was dismantled and rebuilt from the ground up. It’s a thoroughly corrupt and ineffective organization. They can start by chiseling that bastard Hoover’s name off the goddamn building.
@Kay: LMAO!
Napoleon
So some Cubbie fan ran a W flag up the flagpole at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame last night after the game:
http://www.wkyc.com/img/resize/content.wkyc.com/photo/2016/11/02/W%20flag%20outside%20Rock%20Hall_1478082437170_6695075_ver1.0.png?preset=534-401
debbie
@Kay:
I’m kind of looking forward to 2020, if only to see how this works itself out.
Princess
@Kay:
This. It was also the most disturbing thing I have seen in this very disturbing election. Not only that the NYT is the FBI’s willing stenographer, but that the FBI itself is so corrupt and unmanaged that it has these leaks down to such an art.
Jeffro
@Betty Cracker:
AY-MEN! Canvassing on Sat, Sun, and Election Day here in VA…let’s pound ’em to rubble, Dems!!
Btw Betty I saw that Fahrenthold tweet last night too, great catch! He’s awesome.
JMG
The FBI has been overtly political since it was founded. Some of its directors have been better at politics than others, as we see now. But let’s not kid around. Much of the agency does valuable work, but a large part of it is basically our secret police.
Ken
@hueyplong: He could follow it up with “I am also issuing a pardon for Donald Trump, but only covering his activities in California during the 1985-1987 period.”
Botsplainer
@Tom Levenson:
Remember this answer if called into the venire on a case that seems like it will run for weeks (white collar fraud or complex financial, wrongful death, med mal, murder):
It seems dickish, but you’ll thank me later.
Kay
@Betty Cracker:
I understand why Kasich did it and his write-in of course is big principled maverick news but for most people the only person who sees their protest vote is the pollworker and they’re like “Spiderman on this one, McCain on this one, they both go in the ‘no vote’ pile”
It’s the ultimate in meaningless protest.
Waldo
Fine by me if PBO axes him, but I wouldn’t mind seeing a Dem Senate drag Comey in for a grilling before HRC fires him. Either way, Repubs are going to have a meltdown. Might as well give the people a show trial.
Botsplainer
I totally want a W flag.
Gin & Tonic
@Kay: The piece “exonerating” Trump, IIRC, was about that Slate piece alleging a secret back-channel e-mail connection with Russia. Two Times guys were also involved in researching that connection before the Slate piece went up and, unfortunately, the Slate piece was based on mis-interpretation of highly technical information. So the fact that they got someone to tell them it was BS is not surprising – lots of technical people were calling BS on the Slate piece from shortly after it went up, including one of their key named sources.
Not everything involving the media and Trump is a conspiracy. Sometimes you just have bad reporting.
Iowa Old Lady
@Betty Cracker: Plus he apparently has no control his people. He’s a bad manager.
OzarkHillbilly
@Princess: The NYT has a recent (?? since W at the least) but very strong record of printing stories based on pro GOP leaks as gospel.
Gindy51
@Botsplainer: Reminds me too much of Bush…
Kay
@Gin & Tonic:
No, it was really a blanket exoneration. That was listed in the exoneration, true, but it was much broader than that one story about the server. Here’s the paragraph they’re walking back today:
They actually changed the piece slightly after it went up- added modifiers- “conclusive or direct”.
Princess
@Gin & Tonic: The original NYT piece mentioned the Slate piece as one of the things the FBI has rejected, but it was a much more broad exoneration of Trump from any involvement with the Russians, including an exoneration of Manafort from any criminal wrongdoing. It argued Manafort’s offense was only poor reporting of income. Something here stinks.
Kay
Also, just so everyone knows, Comey is investigating the Clinton Foundation based on the book “Clinton Cash”. That was reported yesterday.
This is Breitbart from March of this year:
This is the NYTimes yesterday:
They’re bonkers in there. It’s like some nutty Right wing bunker. It should be terrifying to political dissidents, like, um, Clinton voters.
sherparick
@mai naem mobile: No, I just think he is blundering. And don’t forget the Village Media, particularly the NY Times role in this. As soon as Clinton announced she was going to run, they adopted the narrative that “an aura of corruption surrounds her.” Not that there is any evidence that she ever did anything corrupt or violated any law, despite 25 years of root canal coverage and investigations (see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whitewater_controversy), but that was the narrative line they took. .
tobie
@Gin & Tonic: You may well be right about the misinterpretation of technical data in the Slate piece. I can’t judge this. But you’re wrong to say this was the sole focus of the Time’s piece. The unnamed sources referred to in the article said that there was no connection between Trump and the Russian govt or people and individuals close to the Russian govt. The authors (Lichtblau and someone else) then edited the article to read: no “direct” connection between Trump and Russia. What the leakers told the Times is that there was no basis for any investigation of Trump/Russia ties. It was an exoneration of Trump, and it appeared a mere two or three hours after David Corn’s piece in Mother Jones and the Alfa Bank story in Slate.
Kay
@Princess:
I can’t wait for the trial based solely on information agents gleaned from the Right wing bestseller “Clinton Cash”.
They’ve made themselves ridiculous.
Gin & Tonic
@Princess: OK, I didn’t read the NYT piece. As to Manafort, he is an amoral, blood-soaked scumbag, as I have called him here for months. I have plenty of connections to and knowledge of Ukraine, so I’ve long know of his involvement. Thing is, though, even if he has worked for dictators, I think he is smart enough to always stay just on this side of legal. I welcome a criminal investigation of Manafort, but if it comes up with nothing I will more likely put that on his skill as opposed to the FBI’s incompetence or unwillingness.
Patricia Kayden
@Hal: Why should Clinton listen to anything the press has to say when it has played along with the Republican multi-decades hounding she and her husband have endured? She should simply do what is in her own interest and pay no attention to a media which hates her anyways.
Another Scott
@Betty Cracker: Dunno. I think that Comey needs to go, but easing him out of the position needs to be done the right way. The last thing we need is to ratchet up the political rancor in what should be a politics-free organization in the federal government – especially one as important as the FBI.
I’m reminded of what happened to Daryl Johnson at DHS when his 9 page memo about violent right-wing groups in the US was leaked to the RWNJ sites early in 2009. Not because the situations are comparable in terms of objective facts, but because of the potential reactions.
I believe it’s traditional for cabinet officers and other major appointees to submit their resignations when a new President is sworn in. I don’t know if that also applies to the FBI head (given their 10 year term), but Comey should do so automatically. And if he’s not thinking about doing so right now, then all of his friends and colleagues should be telling him to do so – ideally next Wednesday. Comey needs to fall on his sword himself, not force Obama or Clinton to do it. This is his mess and he needs to take responsibility for it – not force the President to inflame the RWNJs out there who look for reasons to hate the Democrats and the Federal Government as the first thing they do every morning before even getting out of bed…
That’s why I think it was smart of Lynch and Obama to say that they still have confidence in him. Make Comey do the right thing on his own.
Will he do so? Dunno. We’ll see.
Cheers,
Scott.
WereBear
Agreed. The things he was best at was PR and blackmail.
Betty Cracker
Might be wishful thinking on my part, but I predict the worm will turn once again on media coverage this week. Just as the political press was derelict in its duty to vet Trump for well over a year and then tried to cram months’ worth of coverage into a late flurry, they’ll grow bored of this email nothingburger and start focusing more heavily on the stench of malfeasance from Team Trump. We sometimes think of the Beltway boobs as partisan hacks, and in some cases, that’s warranted. But many of them are merely lazy, self-important jerks.
Patricia Kayden
@Jeffro: It would be great if Bennett could beat Comstock. That’s one Northern Virginia race that’s getting a lot of ad play. Comstock sounds awful (just like Trump).
Betty Cracker
@Another Scott: That would be fine with me as long as the end result is Comey’s exit. But if he doesn’t do the right thing, PBO needs to kick his ass to the curb.
Kay
I don’t know about other voters but the FBI deciding to join the Trump campaign inspires me.
Now we get to beat both them and Trump. I also appreciate finding out they work on behalf of a small segment of the public-the segment who share their far-Right political views. I won’t have any illusions about who they “serve and protect”. I do wish I wasn’t paying them, however. I resent that. The honorable thing for them to do at this point is to get on one of the Right wing grifter payrolls and off the public payroll. God knows there’s always work available over there.
Tilda Swinton's Bald Cap
@Patricia Kayden: From Wikipedia
Yes, she’s a deplorable.
Baud
Task 1 on November 9 — create our own mass media outlet.
Balloon Juice can’t do it all.
Cermet
@Another Scott: Fall on his own sword? LOL; this worthless asswipe is like any parasite – it will burrow in deeper to suck all the blood it can get. Comey is a low life – he should be sent on special assignment to investigate militia groups deep in the woods of Idaho – as a stupid asswipe he will quickly learn how little the alt-right considers him of any value – that will quickly eliminate that piece of floating shit.
Jeffro
@Kay:
That’s putting it mildly. Thanks Kay! Weaver’s the kind of salty old soul that, R or no, I’d be glad to have a beer with.
Baud
@Patricia Kayden: Because the media is powerful. We thought – I thought – our side was strong enough to bypass them, but we clearly are not.
satby
I’m going to early vote today, and I talked my oldest son into going in and early voting too. He’s funny, he called and said “tell me who I’m voting for, you pay attention to all that sh#t mom”. He’s got a good grasp of issues, and he’ll vote the way he wants, but it’s nice that he humors his political junkie mother by letting me expound on the subject for a few minutes.
EZSmirkzz
I’m hoping all my fellow baby boomers complaining about Social Security checks not covering their expenses so they have to go back to work vote Republican, because stupid is what stupid does.
Jeffro
@Patricia Kayden:
Oh heck yes, if Comstock can be beaten, that’d be huge. She is awful, but in a different way than Trump. Comstock’s basically got the exact same wing-nutty, religious right, business-interests-over-all-else views as Michelle Bachman but pretends to be a suburban moderate R every election time.
Steeplejack (phone)
@Currants:
Cubs “win” flag at Wrigley Field. Is it is a long-standing tradition there to run up the flag after each victory.
Botsplainer
Well I’ll be damned – Evan Baye released a commercial that isn’t warmed over conservatism (Louisville media market serves a large chunk of Southeast Indiana). He’s still a Broderist dem talking about “partisanship”, but it finally dawned on his ass to smack back at the trashing he’s receiving, and he’s finally drawn a line between the people trashing him and the whines of “hard working white voters” about here living conditions.
Welcome to the party, pal.
Also, in Indiana congressional news, who knew that an attractive blonde woman with a typically Hoosier name like Yoder (it is the Southern Indiana version of “Smith”) wants Isis to win? This douchebag Tennessee carpetbagger hopped into the Indiana race, and his commercials are hysterical.
Matt McIrvin
@Tokyokie: When the Red Sox won the World Series they added a new special “Sox win the World Series” pattern for the weather beacon on the old John Hancock tower.
FlipYrWhig
@Kay: Annoy G-men: Vote Hillary
satby
@Botsplainer: The ads his opponent, Todd Young, has been putting out are really nasty… And nothing but innuendo. Young is a true believing Teabagger, so I hope Bayh wins.
Baud
I’d like to believe the report that 28% of Florida early voting Republicans are voting for Hillary, but I can’t believe the polls are that far off.
Kathleen
@mai naem mobile: I keep wondering who in media Trump is blackmailing. It would be irresponsible not to speculate.
Fair Economist
@Kay:
The pro-Trump “leaks” from the FBI are obviously lying. For example, when it said it had been determined that Putin wasn’t favoring Trump – how would they know? His public pronouncements have explicitly favored Trump. Nobody but he knows what’s in his skull. So they’re making stuff up and “leaking” it from the FBI to pretend it’s true.
I’ll bet a lot more are lies too.
Bill E Pilgrim
Another clue about why Comey decided to violate dept rules and influence the election at the last minute.
The entire Republican party is run by extreme right-wing conspiracy theorists at this point. Even if a Republican doesn’t fit that description necessarily himself, or not blatantly so, the lunatic ravings of talk radio end up being common wisdom seen as perfectly logical and normal truths by virtually all Republicans.
Betty Cracker
@Baud: That seems too good to be true to me as well, though obviously I hope it’s accurate. I think Clinton is going to win Florida, and I suspect pissed-off women will put her over the top. I really hope the polls that show Rubio winning reelection are wrong. He’s such a do-nothing, hypocritical piece of shit who is obviously keeping the bench warm for another run in 2020.
El Caganer
@Taylor: How about offering him immunity from prosecution in return for his testimony about who (Chaffetz?) conspired with him to/bribed him to/pressured him to violate the Hatch Act?
hovercraft
Good morning.
Joe of the morning and Mark Halpern are both crowing that they were right and everyone else was wrong, the race is competitive. Halpern still says she’s the favorite, Trump has a ceiling. Joe jumps in and says he and Mika and Willie have been mocking the media for a year for talking about an imaginary ceiling that may or may not exist, we don’t know if it exists till people vote. Joe says he’s al about momentum, structurally Clinton is in a better position, but he’d rather be Trump. Because he’s got the momentum and the wind at his back.
Taylor
@El Caganer: If he’s pardoned, I assume he cannot claim any Fifth Amendment protection against testifying.
Tilda Swinton's Bald Cap
@hovercraft: Why do you guys torture yourselves watching these knuckleheads ? Honest to god they have to be some of the dumbest motherfuckers on the planet.
Mike R
@Tilda Swinton’s Bald Cap: May be not the dumbest, but certainly in contention. They are for sure assholes.
Jeffro
@Betty Cracker: I have Clinton winning Florida…Rubio’s race is going to be pretty close either way though. The primary ads that folks are going to run against him if he tries to run for president in 2020 will be pretty brutal.
Speaking of…I was trying to picture who falls into the ‘gray area’ for the GOP: not so close to Trump (like Christie) that they can’t wash the stink off, but not so anti-Trump that they become a target for the Trumpistas (like Jeb). Ernst and Cotton fit this bill, but not many others.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@hovercraft: I saw that before I closed the tv window; I don’t believe in momentum in sports or politics.
ETA: Meeka has a ‘concerned look’.
hovercraft
Mika says the reason she reacted to the FBI story the way she did, is because the story was real, it had to be covered and there are real questions that must be answered, and the reaction of the Clinton campaign was hollow and wooden, reactive and borderline dishonest. But now they are attacking Trump instead so she’s feeling better. Hey Mika STFU!
danielx
@Botsplainer:
True dat, and not only in that contest – political ads in my fair state seem particularly toxic this time around. Your uninformed voter might well be forgiven for thinking something along the lines of “why aren’t both these corrupt scofflaw bastards in jail instead of running for public office?”
You may be able to tell that election fatigue is setting in for moi.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Kay:
The Clinton e-mail story is getting boooorrring, so time to stir up another. It’s really that stupid with the MSM.
hovercraft
@Tilda Swinton’s Bald Cap:
It motivates me to get the hell out of the house, I generally only watch the last hour of it, by the time I’m watching they’ve honed their bullshit down to what the rest of the media will be harping about. I find it amusing that usually by the time I tune back in at 4, most of the shit they were talking about has been overtaken by the events of the day. But right now, I’m heading out the door, and am thankfully turning them off.
Do I need help with this problem, yes, then again that’s what all of you are here for. Now I get to go listen to the two security guards bitch that Trump should be winning but the world is rigged against him. Sigh.
Tilda Swinton's Bald Cap
@hovercraft: Stop torturing yourself, you seem way to nice to do this to yourself.
geg6
@Kathleen:
All of them, Katie.
different-church-lady
@Another Scott:
I suggest easing him out on a rail.
NotMax
@hovercraft
Ah, the Joementum gambit.
FlipYrWhig
@?BillinGlendaleCA: I really don’t understand the “momentum” theory. Doesn’t the fact that they’re also comfortable saying that a candidate can “lose momentum” mean that “momentum” isn’t something you can hold onto? Is “momentum” supposed to describe a process of persuasion, like a voter who didn’t like a candidate will see “momentum” happening and want to join in, but if the candidate “loses momentum” he’ll jump back off?
Botsplainer
For Dems at least, let this be the end of the era when all messaging is all about “commonsense (insert name of heartland/southern state) values”. Leave that to conservatives.
Instead, focus messaging about 45% pro policy, 35% “the other guy’s policies are stupid” and 20% raw attack. Leave the value shit to the conservatives and the simplistic stupidity of their base “hard working white voters” – they’re deplorable and cannot be sold without a baseball bat to the head.
Kay
@hovercraft:
I just wish Mika would stop grifting off “women’s empowerment” given the candidate she has promoted to advance her own career. No more speaking engagements or contests – just drop that aspect of her personal promotion.
She’s a terrible messenger for girls. They can succeed without kissing up to the likes of the repulsive Mr. Trump. It’s not 1956.
EZSmirkzz
Has anyone seen the odds of Trump appointing Putin to Sec of Defense, (SoD), should he win?
Botsplainer
@FlipYrWhig:
Momentum theory works in sports, but not in campaigns – the motivations aren’t the same. Problem is, our well paid elite political pundits are stupid, which is why we get horse race reporting.
Gin & Tonic
Amnesty International’s office in Moscow had the electricity cut off and the locks changed with no explanation (linked article is in Russian.)
FlipYrWhig
@Botsplainer: My counterintuitive thing is this. If the Republican Party were to become a white populist party agitating for the interests of white people who feel left behind… good! I still won’t vote for them and I’ll regard them with disgust, but it’d be a damn sight better than what it is now, which is a party that whips up those people with bullshit and then spends all its time and energy monkeying around with the tax code and judicial nominations. Thomas Frank et al. want the Democratic Party to champion those people. Fuck that. We’re taking care of other things. Let the Republican Party champion those people. It’ll give the Republican Party something to do.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Kay: Meeka ‘says’ she’s for Sec. Clinton.
AnonPhenom
GOTV;
Cuyahoga county, OH
Pinellas county, FL
Arapahoe county, CO
Clark county & Washoe county, NV
Durham county & Wake county, NC
Polk county IA
PPCLI
@Kay: Yes, that was disturbing. And presumably the “sources” were one or two parties with axes to grind. So they tell the NYT guys that “it looks like Russia is just trying to sow chaos, not to help Trump”. And what exactly gives this implausible impression? Why exactly was Clinton hacked material released and not Trump material? (Are we really to believe that the Russians hacking Clinton people would not also hack the Trump people? And so, why is Trump information not being released by these government-supported hackers?) What are the reasons for thinking this? And why should we think the FBI as a group thinks this? We just have the say-so of these unnamed sources. Yet it is presented as authoritative, and as the pronouncement of the FBI, by our reliable Judith-Miller-lite NYT stenographers, without addressing the most obvious questions.
philadelphialawyer
@Botsplainer: It IS dickish. It undermines the jury system, which means it undermines the Bill of Rights. Also, it is NOT foolproof. The judge might say something like, well, that’s too bad, I guess we will just have to keep you around until we find a case that you are not biased about. Or, the judge and the lawyers (who are not stupid, and have heard this little trick before) might not take your word for your alleged bias unchallenged, and interrogate you about it.
How about, instead, prospective jurors just do their civic duty? Ya’ know, like we all say Trump (and everybody else) should do when it comes to paying taxes?
NotMax
@FlipYrWhig
Standard politispeak for “He’s/she’s being beaten like the proverbial rented mule, but we daren’t say that straight out because it contradicts the narrative.”
Kay
@?BillinGlendaleCA:
Because that’s her character in the reality tv show. The deferring and smiling and her “goofy sidekick role on the all-male panel” role actually just makes me sad. It’s weird that they’re so conventional. I actually live in a small midwestern town and women don’t even act like that here. It’s an odd kind of play-acting, like they think this is “Main Street”. Normal people don’t actually stride around announcing their “values” like Scarborough does. It’s bizarre.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Botsplainer:
Worth noting all the political reporters who are worth a damn come from sports.
D58826
@Kay: If they investigate long enough they will discover the truly corrupt and immoral heart of Hillary Clinton. A secret so evil and immoral that she will kill to keep it hidden. The secret – One day on the kindergarten milk run she swiped an extra stale graham cracker for herself. Oh the humanity!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Comrade Scrutinizer
@Botsplainer: We get horserace reporting not because pundits are stupid, but because msm companies depend on traffic, and conflict and controversy lead to clicks and ad revenue. The late lamented Media Whores Online had it right: “The site that set out to bring the media to their knees, but found that they were already there.”
NotMax
@D58826
And greedily nibbled it while facing Mecca.
Kay
Clinton’s got a big job ahead of her explaining her policies. It’s a small sample but based on the people I talked to last night, people who have already voted for her, many of them,no one has any idea of what she plans on doing.
Maybe it’s a gift. She can’t be “held accountable” because there was absolutely no coverage of what she promised. She’s could go pretty far Left-they don’t know.
D58826
@Gin & Tonic: OK, I don’t understand the techno-babble on the ‘secret-server’. But my question is this – Was/is there a server in Trump Tower that is connected to a bank server in Moscow (for whatever reason)?. My second question then is if (1) is true then Trump must have some kind of business dealings in Russia even if it is only hotel span? Which leads to the observation that he has repeated said he has no business dealings in Russia.
gogol's wife
@D58826:
Just got in a screaming fight at work with someone who fled Putin’s Russia, but is spouting the “Hillary thinks she’s above the law! She violated national security!” line. I am so, so depressed.
Corner Stone
Oh, Chuck Todd. Trump is not going to win WI.
Botsplainer
@FlipYrWhig:
Yep. People like my mother cannot be reached, at all. The propaganda baked it in.
Best to quit trying to reach them and lift as many boats possible so as to diminish it.
Kay
@D58826:
The emails were originally supposed to provide the smoking gun on Benghazi, right? The entire premise of Benghazi seems to me to be they would find proof that the Obama Administration said vaguely politically-motivated things after the attack. I don’t think that’s a crime. It’s like the least-surprising thing I’ve ever heard. I assume they all craft statements on these things. I didn’t even know that was witnin the realm of “legal or illegal” and I’m not sure how it could be proven anyway.
Jorge P
Every tracking poll put today is 100% post FBI letter and Trump is only tied based on “lower enthusiasm” among HRC supporters.
Trump seems to be hovering at around peak 44% or
Corner Stone
It’s R’s coming home. As mad as hell as we all rightfully are at Comey, there is no Comey Effect on the national election. Nobody but political junkies are aware anything happened with the FBI Director. They have no clue who Comey or Huma is.
Yeah, and Michael Moore is a certified political genius. Jeebus.
Botsplainer
@Enhanced Voting Techniques:
Exactly. They came up doing actual “who, what, when, where, why” reportage.
Corner Stone
I sure hope Stephanie Ruhle has a license for those guns she’s packing!
D58826
OK, can’t begin to look at cable tv today. For those that have – two cops were ambushed and murder last night. Police have released a photo of the suspect – middle aged white guy in need of a shave. Is this story getting the play that a Muslim/POC suspect would get? It could still be ‘terrorism’ related if he is a sovereign citizen or Bundy supporter
bystander
@Botsplainer: Hallelujah. I was just about to be dragged into a med mal case involving a pregnancy. I told them I was too close to people in the medical profession to be impartial. Both plaintiff and defense were pissed, but better them than me.
Then I got called to grand jury. Ish. Bad law schools hypotheticals paraded around as reality.
D58826
@NotMax: Well obviously, that’s why I didn’t mention it.
Kay
Just a reminder:
If they get the chance to appoint anymore justices like Roberts, it will be harder and harder to beat them in an election.
Voting rights require federal protections. It isn’t just Presidential races either- these people are being prevented from voting for state reps, county commissioners, judges, school board members, etc. This will DIRECTLY affect their lives every single day.
Botsplainer
@philadelphialawyer:
Oh, please. “Civic Duty” is the fapfapfap phrase of those lawyers who fetishize the jury system and pretend that peremptory challenges haven’t watered everything down to empaneling people who are generally painfully uninquisitive, and have time to be burnt by lawyers who are in love with the sound of their own voices, love to waste people’s time and can’t value their cases or defenses appropriately.
The “sacred jury system” is more of a fetish than anything else. A trial represents a failure to negotiate a proper resolution. And yes, I’m qualified to say it – my longest jury trial was 5 weeks, and I have multiple 2 week trials under my belt, including some really nice wins.
There’s a reason why I gravitated to family law and business disputes.
Major Major Major Major
Je-sus. I just read an article at 538 about whether Democrats should panic and started getting upset (I know, I know). Then I checked the HuffPo aggregate and calmed down.
This was my first real exposure to Silver since like August. He’s gone so far downhill! I can see now how y’all would get worried and stuff if you paid attention to him, and triply so if you paid attention to the rest of the media.
Hal
When all is said and done and Trump loses the media is just going to act like it was obvious all along. Trump has crap for ground game and GOTV efforts, and he’s relying entirely on his persona and white male voters. He has no campaign apparatus anywhere near what he should have. Post election, the press reaction will be “Gee, of course he lost” for all the obvious reasons, but if money can be made by the hundreds of millions in the mean time, then there you go.
I said before, I’m so irritated with the bullshit that I’m definitely going to be in line at 6am next Tuesday to vote, go to work, come home and tune in at 10pm to watch Hillary Clinton become President elect. I cannot wait for this election to end.
hovercraft
@AnonPhenom:
Someone last night, maybe it was Cornell Belcher was saying that the presidential election is determined by six or seven counties in this country, I think the same ones you’ve listed. If democrats get a very high turnout in those counties then the GOP cannot win those states, because there are not enough voters to offset their democratic votes. It’s a sad thing when the fate of over 300 million people rests in the hands of so few, not even whole states, mere counties.
Gin & Tonic
@D58826: The explanation that best fits the observed facts is this: the Trump Organization had/has a send-only e-mail server that shoots out marketing materials to clients/prospective clients (you could call it spam.) These types of servers are set up to do one and only one thing. Mail servers which receive this marketing e-mail can (in the background, automatically) send a query back to the sending server to verify its identity. If someone from Alfa Bank stayed at a Trump property they might have gotten on this mail list. What kind of muddies the waters is that it seems like one or more of Alfa Bank’s servers was configured to do name lookups in a sub-optimal manner (either laziness or lack of knowledge are the best explanations), so that “please verify you are who you say you are” sent back to the Trump Organization created some records which could be misinterpreted.
The problem I have is that some of the sources for that Slate story are in a uniquely privileged position to look at system logs and shouldn’t be blabbing about what they’ve seen.
Botsplainer
@bystander:
Happily, in my jurisdiction, service is limited to two weeks unless selected.
Jeffro
Btw the Mustache of Understanding is just. so. cute today, trying to pretend that a) Trump supporters are primarily motivated by a loss of manufacturing jobs over the past 30 years (no, really) and b) give a shit what the Mustache thinks.
(To his credit, his column today – entitled “Trump Supporters, Hear Me Out” – starts off with an acknowledgement that they’re the least likely people to actually be reading his column. Kind of meta that way)
Kay
I find this as scary and disturbing as anyone, but it looks like the FBI is interfering in another race– in Florida, no less:
Someone has to get a handle on these people. This is third world country stuff. The national police force can’t be doing this. Put them all on lock-down or something until Tuesday. Do something.
Comrade Scrutinizer
@Major Major Major Major:
Sam Wang.
@Hal:
You think this will be over when the election ends? What planet are you on?
Major Major Major Major
@Kay: A lefty friend-of-a-friend on Facebook yesterday was trying to explain to me that, OK, sure, maybe Comey is biased, but you’re going to blame all of the FBI’s actions on one man? In the same breath he of course blamed Huma’s actions on her boss Hillary.
ETA: @Comrade Scrutinizer: Yes, I know, I’ve been reading him all along. I slipped today. It was early, I was tired. But man, if that’s what some of y’all have been reading, no wonder there are freak-outs.
Botsplainer
@Kay:
Next Wednesday’s 7 am meeting between Obama and Comey needs to be on pay-per-view.
Mark B
@Kay: Hopefully they won’t swing the election and we can clean out the rats under the Clinton administration. If Trump wins next week, it will become even more of a political arm of the right. I’m very concerned that we are seeing a repeat of what happened in Germany in the 30s, but if it happens, it’ll be much worse this time, because there aren’t any other military nations who can stop megalomaniac Trump from declaring himself world dictator.
hovercraft
@BillinGlendaleCA:
Yes she’s (Mika) for Hillary, the same way you are for antibiotics when you have a STD. She’s voting for her only because the alternative is so much worse. With a supporter like her, who needs enemies? She seems to be the most offended by Hillary than anyone else on this motley crew. I also love it when they bring on Nicole Wallace to hold up the Bush Family as paragons of virtue who would never do any of the things the Clintons do because they are much too noble to sully their hands with acquiring money. The Clintons are avaricious and crass, the Bush’s just mysteriously acquire money, they don’t apparently trade on their name or anything like that. I’m sure it’s true that Shrubs name had nothing to do with him becoming a millionaire, being brought in to the Rangers was because of his extensive baseball knowledge, Jeb! was a savvy businessman who companies just had to have on their boards because of his experience, and they paid him all of those speaking fees because of that, not his name.
Clinton Rules folks, it’s going to be a long 4 to 8 years.
Major Major Major Major
@hovercraft: And I’m sure Prescott would never have set up deals with all those Germans if he’d known.
Kay
@Botsplainer:
I thought Duncan was Obama’s worst hire. Arne Duncan is a moron. He’s just not smart. Nope. There was someone worse.
hovercraft
@Corner Stone:
Even if he squints and tilts his head 3 degrees to the right, while standing on his left leg in a broom closet?
Poopyman
@efgoldman:
So so so seconded.
I hate the Republicans for teaching me how to hate them. And still, I thank them for the useful lesson.
The Moar You Know
@Botsplainer: Word. We’re about to lose my local school board election – badly – because the incumbents are “old-school” Dems who refused to do any negative campaigning at all while their opponents were out maligning them to the skies. And the sad thing is that negative campaigning totally works. Sorry, True Dems, but it does. And you either need to embrace that or quit and get the fuck out of the way, because otherwise you will lose and a lot of people counting on you will get hurt.
Actually, I must confess that the worst part of this local race has not been the board members, it’s a fairly large contingent of the teachers who are broadly split into two camps:
1. The teachers who think politics is beneath the field. Newsflash: you’re paid by the public, that makes your job nothing but politics. The refusal to accept this is beyond my ability to comprehend.
2. The teachers who went for 12 years without a raise who are saying “yeah, the raise we just got was unreasonable”. It wasn’t even double-digits. I can’t even understand that line of thinking.
Can’t help people who don’t want to be helped, but they’re taking all their colleagues down with them too – and quite a few of those folks needed the money. Oh well. The contract will be cancelled and they will likely be asked to take a huge pay cut, even though the district is solvent and then some. Gonna get real ugly after election day here, between this and the city council race.
Kay
I watched the Whitey Bulgar documentary – sort of half-watching- and I thought “my, but the FBI seems horribly corrupt in this thing!” Then I forgot about it. Comes to mind.
JPL
@Botsplainer: The money could be used towards research for the zika virus.
Major Major Major Major
@hovercraft: No, but I hear that gets rid of warts if you do it under the light of a full moon.
Peale
@hovercraft: I propose we just let them choose the candidates in the primary, then. Award those six counties 10,000 super delegates. Simple, less drawn out primary, too.
Corner Stone
@Kay:
***sputters***
Point of order! Point of order!
Corner Stone
@hovercraft: HRC is going to win PA, MI and WI. And without at least one of them Trump is on the outside looking in to see who he can grope next.
D58826
@Gin & Tonic: Thanks. I had seen the term ‘spam’ used which is why I used it. But just like in my snail mailbox a good bit of what is in my outlook probably fits the description of spam/junk mail.
I had read the original slate article and whatever it’s technical merits/faults the writer was at pains to say this was not any kind of smoking gun. Just odd behavior on the part of a server setup under the control of a guy who claims not to have any business dealings with Russia but loves Putin. And maybe someone should dig a little deeper to see if there was something there. So by the time I finished reading it, I had filed it on my to be determined if this is important list.
hovercraft
@Kay:
This is the thing that’s never made sense to begin with. FFS even Tweety gets this when he’s having a lucid moment. What was her crime? Say we grant them their entire theory:
– Chris Stevens asks for more security, he is denied and or ignored.
– The attack takes place, a terrorist attack.
– Hillary says it was because of the tape, to the nation and to the families.
– Hillary tells Chelsea it was a terrorist attack.
– She told the Department of Defense and the CIA to stand down and allow Americans to die.
– Hillary has a secret server.
– Hillary says she is sorry, it was my responsibility, we will take steps to prevent a repeat of this tragedy.
Where is the crime, she was criticized in the independent report. Even if she is a lying callous, negligent bitch, where is the crime. We do not prosecute people for being evil or Cheney would be in jail right now, though I think he broke laws by authorizing torture, but that’s a whole different conversation.
They knew that beating her would be difficult, and they thought Benghazi was their ticket to disqualifying her in the eyes of the American people, it didn’t work, so they keep lashing out and yelling louder hoping people will see it their way.
The Moar You Know
OT: my local state Rep, Rocky Chavez, sold himself as a “bipartisan” (here it comes) Republican and acted as such his first term. He’s up for re-election. I get an Issa flyer yesterday saying Chavez has endorsed him.
So I call Chavez’s office – I’m a constituent. Ask if this is the case. They ask to call me back. They do. THEY REFUSE TO CONFIRM IF HE ENDORSED HIM OR NOT.
Worse: he has no Dem challenger.
Decision: By God next cycle I will pull papers and run against the dishonest sack of shit, even though I’ll lose and lose badly. He lied to every Dem in his district and is counting on him being the “sane Republican” and getting enough Dem votes to put him over the line. Fuck that and fuck him. He endorsed Issa. That makes him not just a man I have differences with, but an enemy.
Poopyman
Clinton will be in the White House, of that I’m sure. But if the Dems don’t take the Senate she’ll be dead in the water. That’s where I’m worrying. And I wish I had the luxury for worrying about taking the House. As if.
Since I voted yesterday I’ve caught the “Let’s get this over with” bug. I guess the fact that I’m done means that I’m done. Or should be.
hovercraft
@Major Major Major Major:
How dare you bring up that ancient history! We don’t mention things like that, or DWI’s or killing high school boyfriends, or youthful drug use at the precocious age of 40, or daughters drug addiction, all of those are signs of the life experience and real life struggles of a real family.
ETA: How are you doing this morning?
Major Major Major Major
@hovercraft: I’m absolutely terrible, thanks for asking.
Hill Dweller
@Kay: Duncan was worse, because he was Obama’s first choice, and a better nominee would have been confirmed when he first came into office. Comey wasn’t Obama’s first choice, and he was largely hamstrung by Republican obstruction at that point. Hell, Republicans filibustered Comey. There was no way PBO was going to get anyone to the left of Comey confirmed.
hovercraft
@Corner Stone:
I know it and so do they, they are just pretending that he still has a path. You notice that even as they present their ever ore fanciful paths to a Trump victory, in the end they do acknowledge how implausible they are. Even Joe of the morning had to say, after peddling the Clinton camp is panicking narrative for 20 minutes, that if he was in her shoes and Trump was going to states that she felt were safe, he would go back into those states if he had the money to make double, triple sure that there were no surprises election day. She has a ton of money and excellent surrogates, so she is going to leave it all out on the field. There will be no, why didn’t we shore up X, lament for her.
mike in dc
If we don’t get the Senate, Clinton and the entire Democratic establishment have to shift to mid-term campaign mode, keep the GOTV operation together, and work to find good candidates for all races and raise money to compete everywhere. It’s a long shot to win the midterm, but if we do we break the back of the GOP.
hovercraft
@Major Major Major Major:
Sorry for that, all I can say is that it gets better. Doesn’t feel like it now but it will. Now why don’t you tell me to GFMS. It may help a smidgeon.
Corner Stone
Wow. The voter suppression acts by the NC state lege is really working out for them. Early vote turn out by AA’s in NC is down 16% over 2012.
hedgehog the occasional commenter
@Major Major Major Major: Keep calm and trust Sam Wang :)
(hugs) Sorry you are going through a rough time.
Major Major Major Major
@hovercraft: yeah, I know. We would chat every morning and evening a bit, I miss him terribly.
As far as cussing somebody out, I’ll just wait for one of the trolls.
Jeffro
@Comrade Scrutinizer:
Yup, that’s right. It’ll be “well, Clinton only won because Trump was such an unbelievably poor, undisciplined, disorganized, offensive candidate” (Who nevertheless won his party’s nomination and had the support of 90% of its voters and 99% of its elected officials, PLUS a couple $B in free advertising and 110% name recognition)
But yeah, Nov 9th, it’ll be all about Trump sucking, Hillz having no mandate (remember, Dem voters and especially HRC voters don’t count; only GOP and air quote “independents” count)
Elizabelle
@Comrade Scrutinizer:
Love that quote. Wish MWO was still around. Never knew of it when it existed, but we need it.
Corner Stone
@mike in dc:
We have to take the Senate this election. There is no alternative.
Emma
@efgoldman: Can I join your club?
Major Major Major Major
@hedgehog the occasional commenter: I can’t trust Sam Wang the state polls haven’t caught up to the national polls (which are also fine but not if you listen to the media) arrrrrrggfghhhh
Also, am I misremembering that Silver used to be readable and interesting?
Corner Stone
@hovercraft:
Go Feed More Squirrels?
Well, I guess that could be good, in a therapy kind of way.
Major Major Major Major
@Corner Stone: fuck your squirrels.
The Moar You Know
@Hill Dweller: One thing I won’t miss about this administration, even a little, is their coziness with charter schools and their obsession with undercutting public school teachers. Duncan was a fucking nightmare, the GOP could not have done much worse if they’d tried.
Elizabelle
@mike in dc:
I’d say we do that even when we do take the Senate next week.
Keep those margins growing, through 2020 redistricting.
Got to break the GOP’s stranglehold and make our elections more representative, free and fair.
D58826
Local media is reporting that the cop killer is in custody. He had a run in with an A/A neighbor a few years back. Used the n word and threaten to kill him. There also was an incident over a confederate flag at a high school football game a few weeks back and a statement that he was angry about the ‘n*’ not standing for the national anthem.
No reason given why he singled out these two cops unless the cops were A/a.
Usual warning applies – still early. subject to change.
Bruce K
Okay, what the hell is going on with the FBI at this point? Now they announce that they’ve opened an investigation into some Saudi family that supports Patrick Murphy in Florida, but they’re not actually suspicious of Murphy wink wink nudge nudge. It’s like they’re not even pretending to be impartial at this point.
If someone tried to pull a stunt like that here in Greece, there’d be an uproar.
They won’t comment on the Trump/Russia thing because it’s too close to the election, but it’s fine to comment on the email mess (hey, I bet Huma Abedin and Hillary Clinton were on the same Land’s End spam list!) and to cast nebulous suspicion on candidates in closely contested races with less than a week until Election Day.
Oh, and in other news, the fbeeping Ku Klux Klan has been emboldened enough to publicly endorse Donald Trump for President. It’s almost as if they got the impression that their point of view was becoming respectable again.
Gee, I wonder how that happened?
SiubhanDuinne
@D58826:
They’ve caught the suspect.
Patricia Kayden
@Kay: Her policy’s are all over her website though. And she has tried to give some policy speeches (which were ignored by the MSM). Hopefully she’ll have the Senate to help her get some of her policies implemented.
Emma
@Poopyman: Like Obama was dead in the water? Have you looked at his list of accomplishments lately? And the best thing is, she really really knows they hate her. She’ll act accordingly.
Mike J
Greenville Church burned, spray painted “Vote Trump”
Corner Stone
@Major Major Major Major:
Well, I mean, if that’s your thing and all. Seems a little…awkward, but
Joel
@D58826: glad they nabbed that motherfucker
that is all
Gelfling 545
@Hal: The one good thing for HRC here is that she may do as she likes, in the knowledge that she will be suspected of wrongdoing no matter what she does, she may as well follow her own inclinations.
Corner Stone
@SiubhanDuinne: And he seems really nice. Passionate supporter of his country and its flag. Of course, his country turns out to be The Confederacy and the flag he loves so dearly is the Confederate one. But the man’s fired up about it!
Major Major Major Major
@Gelfling 545: this. She’ll be in NFLTG mode from day -1, and the Dems in congress might well agree with her.
Mark B
@Major Major Major Major: I think Trump vastly overperforming in the primaries has Silver spooked. As it does me. He’s a dangerous force, and he’s motivating the worst elements in society to come out from under rocks and do all sorts of things we aren’t used to seeing in a normal democracy. It’s a violent movement fueled by hate, and they’re capable of anything.
mali muso
@Tilda Swinton’s Bald Cap: Comstock is my deplorable rep, and I voted absentee for Bennett last week. This district is gerrymandered all to hell (legacy of the odious Frank Wolff), but apparently this year it’s actually a competitive race. Going to go donate again to Bennett’s campaign now…
Major Major Major Major
@Mark B: trump did not “vastly overperform” in the primaries. There were a lot of undecided voters who ended up breaking for the candidates proportionate to the polling. People just couldn’t believe what the polls were saying.
D58826
It would be funny if it wasn’t so dangerous and sad. Some militia leader was discussing his groups plans to monitor the election in A/A parts of Philly. He figures that since most polling places are in schools, his two man teams can walk into the school during lunch hour when the teachers are distracted by out of control kids, set up their cameras and be gone w/o being noticed. The ‘w/o being noticed’ is the first flaw in the plan. Two white guys wandering around an overwhelmingly A/A school and they won’t be noticed??? Also ignores the fact that the schools are routinely locked down to visitors and many of the polling places have moved to more open locations because of the school security.
Elizabelle
@hovercraft: Good morning there.
I don’t understand why so many of you watch or care about Joe Shits on the Morning.
Step away from cable TV. Make yourselves stay away. You will be so much calmer and happier.
And use the extra time to call Democrats in your state or others to remind them how important it is to vote. Even better, get out and knock some doors. Great exercise.
A lot of people think they are the only Democrats in existence, when all they see is Trump signs and angry neighbors/coworkers. Make their day. Contact them.
Cable TV, like Donald Trump, pretty much obfuscates and ruins everything it touches. We were better off without cable TV news, since it’s become so distorted. Time for another Jon Stewart moment. Major one.
Do something else. I am serious.
Larkspur
Has anyone seen the new-ish Save The Day video? It stars Chris Pine and it’s called “If Congress Was Your Co-Worker”. You can see it here at Entertainment Weekly”> or at the Save The Day “vids” tab. I laffed.
@rikyrah: Good morning!
Kathleen
@Comrade Scrutinizer: Oh how I loved that site. Righteous it was.
nonynony
@Mark B:
Except he didn’t vastly overperform his polling. He underperformed it. Consistently. Silver kept ignoring the data and relied on the conventional wisdom that Republicans wouldn’t “let” Trump win.
The lesson he learned out of that was apparently that he should ignore his data even harder. I can’t bother with Silver anymore – maybe he’ll learn a real lesson this cycle about the importance of actually listening to what your model is saying instead of falling into the pundit’s trap of assuming that elites control everything and won’t “let” anything terribly bad happen.
Major Major Major Major
@nonynony: except his model is terrible too.
Larkspur
@Elizabelle: I’m currently without a house-sitting gig, which means I’m in my tiny, pleasant apartment with no TV. Sure, I can chase down links and torture myself, but I’m not likely to search out Morning Jerk, and even the absence of Chris Hayes and Rachel Maddow has turned out to be less than tragic. If this level of detail fascinates you, go for it. But if it’s hurting you, you’re right, Elizabelle, turn away. I realize it was hurting me. I still need to look for facts and information – I’m obligated to keep myself basically informed – but stepping away from the carnival music and mayhem helps.
D58826
And from Sargents WAPO Plum line this AM on the GOP investigation/impeachment machine –
Brachiator
@Betty Cracker:
Not gonna happen. It would be too political and unseemly, and the Republicans would howl.
He should leave it for Hillary. That would make it more fun.
More seriously, I can see Comey resigning sometime after the election.
J R in WV
@Major Major Major Major:
Well, try to dwell on Darrell Issa, and Trump’s loss, instead of things closer to home, for now.
Tenar Darell
I’ve been on Twitter this AM reading & there’s a Vox article making the rounds of a interview with JD Vance (author of Hillbilly Elegy). And while I was deciding not to raise my blood pressure by reading it, I had a thought finally crystallize. You know, one that that would require lots more research than I have time for today. So I’m offloading it here where I think one of you all knows something about this topic.
If one does a deep dive into economics, between 1964 & 1965 Civil & Voting Rights Acts & the 1968 & 1972 votes for Nixon was the “White Working Class” in any significant economic distress? Because IIRC there wasn’t a recession until ’73 or ’74 whch basically blows up the excuse that economic distress in WWC is why WWC fall back into racist behaviors and to voting against their self-interest. Because that “pity the distressed WWC” argument is, as far as I’m concerned, a just so story to excuse the fact that this group does believe white supremacy is their primary self interest. And as you can probably tell it makes me cranky.
Eric U.
It would be obvious to Comey that he should resign if he was at all an honorable person. I’m not convinced that is the case, he didn’t resign from the Whitewater investigation after it became clear it was a fishing expedition
Calouste
@Major Major Major Major: Exhibit A: 538 has Delaware at 89% Dem and Rhode Island at 92% Dem. Everyone else has those states at >99%.
Barbara
@Major Major Major Major: Well, back in the day, he was a bit of a pioneer in that he heavily discounted pundits with a “just the data please” response, and that’s ostensibly whey the NYT did not renew its contract with him. I honestly have never found his narrative analysis to be all that interesting. I think he is really a data guy who does not have all that much insight into what the data actually means because when he tries to shape it he seems to have as much weakness as anyone else does, for instance, as has been noted, he underestimated the likelihood of Trump’s primary success.
hovercraft
@Corner Stone:
It’s worse than you think, not only is there voter suppression, there is also a “Hidden” Black Vote For Trump (VIDEO) according to Lewandowski.
Lying liar lies. Shocking!
Tremble in fear libtards!!
nonynony
@Major Major Major Major:
This is true – his model is way too volatile. If your model swings as much as Silvers is swinging that’s a bad sign.
He wasn’t that bad in ’08 or ’12 IIRC. Something’s changed. I’m assuming it’s that he became a pundit and everyone knows that when you become a pundit they extract most of your brain out through your nose since you won’t be using it anymore. (Or is that mummies? Maybe I’m thinking of mummies.)
nonynony
@Barbara:
Worse than that – his own model said Trump was winning and he ignored it. For a supposed “data-driven journalist” or even “data-driven pundit” that’s just stupid.
Gin & Tonic
@hovercraft: I would pay serious money to watch Lewandowski and Manafort and the Trump spawn in a re-creation of the Essex lifeboat story.
Barbara
@Tenar Darell: 1968 was a whole different world. No, there was no economic distress per se, but there was a definite increase in the rate of violent crime, and there was significant civil unrest in one large city after another. Los Angeles, Detroit, St. Louis, and Washington D.C. were especially noteworthy. I would go beyond race and say that cultural issues of all kinds were addling the brains of many people, and so, yes, the carving out of the WWC from the WC began in 1968, and it was based on racial and cultural issues, and not economic anxiety. It pisses me off daily that from an economic perspective, there is no daylight between what would help the WWC as opposed to the working class of all races and colors. Even carving out the notion of white working class as opposed to other members of the working class suggests that their issues are different or worse or more important because they are white. It’s obnoxious.
Brachiator
@Jeffro:
Hillary cannot have a mandate because she is not, in fact, a man. Or, presumably, dating.
More seriously, I figure that Hillary, or any president, has a mandate simply by virtue of being elected, even if by a single freakin’ vote. But, yeah, I expect the Republicans to come up with some new rationale for their obstructionism. It’s what they do.
hovercraft
@Mark B:
I’m going to root around and see if I can find it, but I’m pretty sure the meme that he over performed his polls is largely a myth. He got what the polls said he would get within the margin of error, the media simply refused to believe the polls, they kept telling us the polls were wrong. The polls were right, the pundits were wrong. Silver in particular kept predicting that any day now he was going to crash and the race would become a normal one. They all underestimated the crazy in the GOP.
FlipYrWhig
@Tenar Darell: The part of the white working class that votes Republican is “assholes.” I don’t see why there’s this whole cottage industry of trying to figure out what they really think and what they really want and how someone might appeal to them. Fuck it. Help them when it’s the decent thing to do, knowing that they hate us and won’t change and there is no hope that they will change because they are resentment-fueled assholes who take _pride_ in being that way. Black people and indigenous people have been beaten down and exterminated for 400 years in this country. Does anyone write emotive think-pieces about how Republicans are at an intellectual crossroads because they haven’t developed plans to help them? No. They just assume that they vote for who they like, and it ends there. The whole thing is such a waste of time.
NotMax
&Gin & Tonic
After the election they can work on forming their own shiny new political party, of course named after you know who.
The Donner Party.
Yeah, that’s the ticket.
FlipYrWhig
@Barbara: AND it’s based on 70-year-old lunchbucket stereotypes to boot.
JMG
@Barbara: There was also the Vietnam War and the King and RFK assassinations. Definitely felt like world was falling apart, and I was just a 19-year old kid. Now that I’m old, I’m even more alarmed. I sure as hell hope Clinton wins, but IMO she’ll only postpone the collapse of constitutional democracy. The Republican party, supported by an overwhelming majority of its voters, will either achieve its goal of total power or wreck our institutions so badly it’ll be basically the same thing.
Patricia Kayden
@hovercraft:
This made me laugh. You’ll be okay when you give up Morning Joe. As Trump would say: “Believe me!” I even gave up Good Morning America after I realized that they were interviewing Trump or his supporters all the time and never had anyone to speak for the Clinton camp. I would much rather watch Cesar Milan train dogs and people — at least until this election is over.
Elie
@D58826:
In a way by overpolitisizing the FBI he has taken some of the sting (and validity) from any negative findings – if there were any to begin with. I was struck that Huma said she didn’t know what her emails were doing on Wieners laptop. Wouldn’t surprise me if they were put there by people in the FBI rogue corp to set this up. Everything now is suspect. Add to that the mysterious release of info on the Bill Clinton investigation 15 years ago and you have to question the integrity of the FBI. It’s all now fruit from a poisonous tree. This is a huge deal in my opinion.
Anoniminous
@Barbara:
Martin Luther King’s murder was the trigger for that.
O. Felix Culpa
@mali muso: Hey, how are you doing baby-wise? Aren’t/weren’t you due sometime in the near future? Or am I misremembering.
Elie
@JMG:
Naw. It was always going to be that our principles and institutions would be tested. It is actually necessary to do that. We will have to work to shore things up and improve them for sure but I don’t give up that easy after witnessing some very long and hard fought successes in my lifetime. Sure, nothing is guaranteed but I am not quitting now and from witnessing the many people turning out to doorbell and who are already voting, I see determination and energy.
Botsplainer, Cryptofascist Tool of the Oppressor Class
@FlipYrWhig:
So you have met my mom and my extended family on her line, I see.
hovercraft
@Elizabelle: @Larkspur:
If that’s what works for you, great. I have for years listened to the bullshit that’s being puked into our public discourse, and it gives me a leg up knowing what the other side is saying. Years ago I used to spend my desk time listening to Hannity and Rush. Obviously I hated them, but I also found their desperation leading up to the 2008 election funny, listening to them spew hate while denying what was happening was fun. So to listen to the likes of Joe, and Chucky et al is no real hardship. Obama came out od nowhere for them back then, so they didn’t have tried and true attacks to level at him, and his personality is such that the vitriol they spewed did not comport with the person we saw in front of us. Hillary has been attacked for 25 years, and it shows, she is defensive and the press feels they have vested so much into her being a terrible person, that every time the GOP floats a new scandal they go after it, sure that this time they’ll get her, this time will be the one. The arsenal against Clinton is tried and true, and has succeeded in one way, people don’t like or trust her, they are not sure why, it’s just that aura of corruption, that they’ve cultivated around her. On the other hand they’ve failed, in spite of their best efforts, she will be elected the next president of the United States in 6 days.
Matt McIrvin
@FlipYrWhig: Pretending politics is physics always leads to tears.
Botsplainer, Cryptofascist Tool of the Oppressor Class
@Elie:
I wouldn’t be surprised if the sleazy little shit didn’t log in using her password and download them himself.
Never did think much of him, and saw him much the same way as I do Alan Grayson.
liberal
@JMG: there’s actually a line of work in political science that claims presidential systems are not stable because of the problems generated when the legislative branch and the executive are from opposing parties. Claim is that’s why most countries adopted a Parliamentary system.
hovercraft
@Patricia Kayden:
Yelling at the TV and furiously commenting about them is my morning coffee. I don’t drink coffee and my teas still too hot to drink, so yelling at the TV wakes me up.
gvg
@nonynony: 538 was great in ’08 so so on 12 as a web site. The polls and data were good both times, but the layout and presentation were quite different. Now I find it almost useless. In ’08 it was more like a blog with really good data explained well and then readers commenting and asking questions. Nate would explain how he got the number & what they meant and the commenters were pretty close to expert so their questions really were smart and then Nate’s answers even more so. I don’t know why theei was no commenting in 12 I missed it but the numbers were still there so I used int. that is also where I heard of PEC. Now it just seems like a regular news site, not a data site.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Somebody set fire to a historically black church in Mississippi after spray painting “Vote Trump!” on the wall, and the suspect in the ambush shootings of two cops in Des Moines is Confederate flag waver with a Trump sign in his yard, but let’s talk about how Hillary can’t prove there’s nothing incriminating in the emails on her aide’s husband’s laptop
I’m utterly shocked that this is not “Breaking News” and commercial-suspending coverage on MSNBC, and I’m sure the situation would be the same if the shooter had had a Black Lives Matter sign in his yard.
? Martin
I have no concern that Clinton will win on Tuesday, but the fact that Trump has an 8 point gap over Clinton on ‘honesty’ says that we’re pretty much fucked as a country.
Major Major Major Major
@gvg: I’d add to this that all of the posts that do touch on data have this really condescending “well, there’s this thing called a standard deviation…” sort of vibe that’s deeply annoying.
hovercraft
@J R in WV: @Major Major Major Major:
Doug Applegate turns up the heat on Darrell Issa with two new ads
Still andFace It
Barbara
@Anoniminous: No. MLK’s murder did trigger some of the rioting, for instance, in Washington D.C., but riots in the Watts neighborhood of Los Angeles began in 1965. Riots in various other cities during the summer continued every year thereafter through 1968. I was just a kid (under 10) and I remember watching the news with scenes of burning buildings. I also remember seeing scenes from the Chicago DNC in 1968. It wasn’t just MLK’s assassination that was triggering violence.
Comrade Scrutinizer
@Matt McIrvin: Entropy?
Comrade Scrutinizer
@Major Major Major Major: In fairness, that standard deviation thing is kinda important, though.
Matt McIrvin
@liberal: Yes, though it might also have something to do with the fact that 20th century presidential systems were overwhelmingly in Latin America and had the US mucking with their politics as Cold War pawns.
Shana
@Patricia Kayden: Comstock is truly awful, as is her husband who used to be an Assistant Principal at my daughters’ high school. Thankfully he’s retired.
Major Major Major Major
@Comrade Scrutinizer: I just picked something at random, you know what I mean.
Keith G
@philadelphialawyer: Amen.
Larkspur
@hovercraft: See, this is why I read this blog and your comments. I hope you don’t mind that I’m using you to bring back the information – the mangoes, I guess – so I can learn stuff that’s too upsetting for me to listen to directly. I mean, I read things, I look for information, but I can’t listen to those radio programs, and it hurts to watch FOX. So I depend on folks like you. I guess this is where I should say “thank you for your service” but that line’s been pretty well stomped on. Still, thanks to you and everyone else here, including the dogs and cats.
Aleta
I like this piece by Elaine Showalter.
D58826
@Barbara: In Philly the riot was in Aug. 1964.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@Botsplainer: I’m way late to the party here, but I gotta ask. Why, as trial counsel, would you want to lose a thoughtful, intelligent potential juror? If you had a case for which that would be helpful? That’s the obvious assumption I’m making.
I’ve certainly had cases in which a jury full of pens and erasers would have been the most helpful, but in general I’m opposed to your advice. Both because I’ve wanted a thoughtful jury, and on general principle. Litigants deserve to have better venires than those filled with people who don’t have a way to avoid hearing a trial. And I do think it’s kind of a civic duty.
Full disclosure: I have an idiot friend who is not registered to vote because she doesn’t want to risk being called for jury duty. Of course, with thinking like that we probably don’t want her voting.
ETA:
@Botsplainer:
I’ll give you that. In civil cases, it’s quite true that if you’re in trial you’ve already lost. And I say that having had some great fun in civil trials.
But criminal defendants deserve better. And even for the state, I wanted a thoughtful jury. But YMMV. I never did family law because criminal is so much more polite.
D58826
@? Martin: The fact that Trump will get between 40-45% of the vote means we are really really a FUCKED country
FlipYrWhig
@? Martin:
See, “honesty” is a slippery thing. It’s not exactly the same thing as truthfulness or the opposite of lying. Trump clearly lies all the time, and even his supporters would admit it–but they’d still score him as “honest” because the circumstances and contexts are slightly different. Trump cashes in points for being _blunt_, i.e., a dick, and that passes for “honesty.” Hillary Clinton tells the truth about things but is, you know, politic and careful, seeing as she is a careful politician, and that passes for dishonesty.
Elizabelle
@hovercraft: OK. Whatever floats your boat. And if you ever want to save on cable, you can get Joke’s and others’ greatest hits here.
@? Martin: Saw that about Trump leading on “honesty.”
We live among some stupid, stupid people.
glory b
@Corner Stone: Michael helpfully pointed that out last night on Chris Hayes’ show.
I’ve liked Chris, but his show is getting unwatchable.
Rachel Maddow says that we must have thoughts from Tom Brokaw (who said during the Dem convention that Hillary has a tendency to be “shrill” in large settings, she needs to watch that).
Still holding out a shred of hope for Lawrence O’Donnell.
Botsplainer
@a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q):
I feel that too many lawyers get addicted to the show, and really squander people’s time. I always tried to be polite about it and kept bench wrangling at a minimum, but saw far too many lawyers and judges who just really didn’t give a damn about people’s lives and schedules.
They took the attitude of “I’ve got you here, I own your hours in this building, just listen to me”.
Elizabelle
@Aleta: Ooh that looks good. Saved it for tonight.
Aleta’s link is the UK’s Times’ Literary Supplement: Hillary vs. Misogyny.
Aleta
(Conservative) David Frum put this out today, supposedly directed at Republicans:
Hal
A guy on twitter commenting on CNN polling actually said Trump will sweep Florida based on the Trump signs he sees on the I-4 corridor.
glory b
@Kay: No! Scott Pelley on cbs says it’s because of a lack of enthusiasm.
I watched him day before yesterday because they were going to report from “the ground” in Pennsylvania.
They noted that Clinton has a comfortable lead. Then, the only people they interviewed were 3 middle aged white coal miners (all for Trump), and the president and vice president of the Pitt U Young Republicans (who, kind of surprisingly, were voting for Hillary)!
No women, no people of color and no actual Dems. WTF
D58826
Kos has Hillary’s chances down to 91% from 96% last week. They also have the democrats with a 67% chance of a 51-49 majority in the Senate.
But given the way the year has played out I still worry about that ‘black swan’ event.
FlipYrWhig
@glory b:
On balance, I think O’Donnell has had the best show this year. Still gets wound up about legalistic minutiae but somehow it doesn’t seem as slapdash as Chris Hayes Talks To His Hipster Media Cohort or as self-satisfied as Rachel’s 22-Minute Deep Dive Starting From The Archive.
Shana
@efgoldman: I like how you think, nasty vindictive old man.
Elie
@Botsplainer, Cryptofascist Tool of the Oppressor Class:
Why? What would that do for him? Also, my guess is that it wouldn’t just be passwords for the most classified info.
Aleta
@Elizabelle: yes I highly recommend! Tried to quote some pieces of it, but hard to do justice. Starts out a little literary, a little historical, and then a lot more about H and politics (on several sides) since the 90s.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@glory b: I’ve seem to recall that early on, Maddow was required to host Pat Buchanan from time to time, and she drove him off by consistently referring to him as “Uncle Pat”, the “everybody’s crazy racist uncle” kind of implied. Maybe my memory is embellishing… but I like to think that dragging Brokaw out of the attic was a directive from upstairs, I only watched a bit of it, because I hate Brokaw’s guts, but it seems to me in the clip I saw, she was at least pushing back a bit at his Villagism.
glory b
@Jeffro: Yep, he’s in the same category as Michael Moore, Chris Matthews and Thomas Frank.
Those guys with the confederate flags and the pictures of the Obamas photo shopped on monkeys were actually expressing economic anxiety and concerns about trade deals.
Grrrrr
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@Botsplainer:
I think that’s completely accurate, and I do think it’s kind of a civil trial thing – in criminal court, there’s entirely too much to get done to waste time on silly shit (generally) even in a bench trial much less with a jury. But in my experience, opposing counsel in civil trials tended to have been folks who’d had much less actual trial experience and seemed to be enchanted with the notion of performance, while I just wanted to try the damned case. So I do understand your point.
Botsplainer
@a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q):
My perception is that the ones who survive voir dire are more rarely inclined toward forebearance or mercy in criminal cases. There are exceptions, but I have to look at the societal bias toward trusting law enforcement.
Tenar Darell
@Barbara: @FlipYrWhig: Yeah, I was a pretty much a toddler back when this was happening though I know about some of the history ex. multiple major riots (including by the police in Chicago). I also really do want to be able to point at a few history papers & say, “uh, no” the flipping of the parties etc. began before this whole poor economic prospects thing so let’s be clear about motivations. I’m just as tired of hearing the excuses (it’s the reason I avoided reading the interview which set off my question), but I still have rare discussions with people who can be convinced by the occasional evidence. Or ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
ruckus
@EZSmirkzz:
One boomer here, on SS, whose current expenses aren’t covered, who votes dem.
Sorry to disappoint you.
ruckus
@hovercraft:
That’s not the wind at his back, that’s the wind coming out of his backside.
Chris
@Kay:
I’ve been prejudiced against the FBI for a long time, but I tried to keep in mind that a lot of that was just osmosis from the fact that my field of study is foreign affairs/international relations. From the use of the Aldrich Ames investigation to tear the CIA apart in the nineties (all while Hanssen, still gainfully employed at the FBI, presumably continued to pass on whatever they found at Langley to the same people who’d run Ames), to the FBI’s role as hilariously shitty anti-gang advisers in Central America (where, instead of trying to tell the local cops “this is how a professional justice system that respects constitutional liberties works,” they seem to instead be telling them “this is what we’d do if all those limp-wristed cop-hating liberal judges and defense attorneys and Internal Affairs weren’t stabbing us in the back by alleging that people have rights!”), you quickly develop a picture that it’s never a good idea for the Bureau to stick its flat feet into the foreign stuff.
I don’t keep as current on the domestic stuff, so I’d hoped that the FBI was doing better at home, at least compared with their J. Edgar Hoover days. Apparently not. If anything, Comey might be even worse. For all the truly nasty stuff Hoover got up to in his forty years in charge, I don’t think he ever went to the extreme of applying COINTELPRO to a presidential race – that was a bridge too far even for him. The current FBI’s hubris and partisanship would seem to eclipse even their founder’s, which is, frankly, terrifying.
Brachiator
@nonynony:
If Silver is bad, why not simply exclude him and talk about other pollsters who are presumably more accurate?
Chris
@Brachiator:
Yeah, I’m not sure what’s so terrible about Silver. Last I checked, his site still gave Trump a 30% chance of winning only, and Hillary nearly 70% – whatever rhetorical bells and whistles he attaches to that.
louc
@Chris: Anyone who has read Tony Hillerman should be prejudiced against the FBI. He based his portrayal of the FBI on his experiences as a crime reporter in the Southwest.
Brachiator
@? Martin:
Trump has the demagogue’s advantage, and benefits from a self-defeating cynicism. I heard a couple of talk show hosts state that it was acceptable that Trump lie, cheat and steal and destroy information that lawyers are trying to obtain in suits against him because that is what a successful businessman does.
But they support him because he tells his supporters exactly what they want to hear, and he promises to do what all previous politicians failed to do with respect to immigration and national security.
These same people either distrust whatever Clinton says, or feel that she talks down to voters, at best promising to give them not what they want, but what she thinks is best for them.
The crazy thing, of course, is that people who acknowledge that Trump is dishonest in his business dealings think that he will be magically honest with them.
Also, I realize now that these people don’t care about Trump’s past business failures. They figure that if he has failed numerous times and is still fabulously rich, then he must know what he is doing.
philadelphialawyer
@Botsplainer: So, encouraging people to angle getting off juries is going to make the system work better? Sounds to me like you are the one doing the fapping, and the rationalizing.
And, frankly, I don’t care about your war stories, or your bullshit insider view. Juries are a bulwark against tyranny. And the Constitution guarantees our right to them in all felony cases. They are also important to keeping civil law at least somewhat in touch with non elitist opinion. Fuck you for encouraging folks here to undercut that.
waysel
@Kay: Kay, I could find no mention of attribution in the Hill article. Do you know if this is one of todays FBI leaks, or did they proudly tweet the announcement, or actually have a presser about it? Re: FBI investigates Patrick Murphy campaign contributions.
EZSmirkzz
@ruckus: Never disappointed with our side. That trap is too easy to fall into, and so easy to alleviate that those of our fellows voting Republican’t that vote against their own interests, (brother, sister,) tend to chap my ass.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Tenar Darell: Read Nixonland.