Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

A sufficient plurality of insane, greedy people can tank any democratic system ever devised, apparently.

The new temporary speaker of the house is a spiteful little shit.

Thanks for reminding me that Van Jones needs to be slapped.

Every reporter and pundit should have to declare if they ever vacationed with a billionaire.

Happy indictment week to all who celebrate!

Let me eat cake. The rest of you could stand to lose some weight, frankly.

Damn right I heard that as a threat.

Nancy smash is sick of your bullshit.

Innocent people don’t delay justice.

Prediction: the GOP will rethink its strategy of boycotting future committees.

Since when do we limit our critiques to things we could do better ourselves?

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

… gradually, and then suddenly.

When we show up, we win.

Seems like a complicated subject, have you tried yelling at it?

I was promised a recession.

Insiders who complain to politico: please report to the white house office of shut the fuck up.

Something needs to be done about our bogus SCOTUS.

The cruelty is the point; the law be damned.

Glad to see john eastman going through some things.

It’s all just conspiracy shit beamed down from the mothership.

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

Whatever happens next week, the fight doesn’t end.

They traffic in fear. it is their only currency. if we are fearful, they are winning.

You are here: Home / Past Elections / Election 2016 / All Hat, No Cattle

All Hat, No Cattle

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Too f**king little awfully late in the game, but the Grey Lady has come up with another good story on the long-con that is Donald J. Trump.  Ross Buettner reports:

…an examination of his tax appeals on several properties, and other documents obtained by The New York Times through Freedom of Information requests, shows that what Mr. Trump has reported on those forms is nowhere near a complete picture of his financial state.

pietro_paolini_-_card_sharps

The records demonstrate that large portions of those numbers represent cash coming into his businesses before covering costs like mortgage payments, payroll and maintenance. After expenses, some of his businesses make a small fraction of what he reported on his disclosure forms, or actually lose money.

Donald Trump got his start in life with his dad’s money. The rest of us helped him out by paying his taxes for him for almost two decades.  Shafting his subcontractors and partners helped build the kitty.  And he still can’t actually make (much) money at his supposed vocation.  I loved this bit:

On the financial disclosure forms that Donald J. Trump has pointed to as proof of his tremendous success, no venture looks more gold-plated than his golf resort in Doral, Fla., where he reported revenues of $50 million in 2014. That figure accounted for the biggest share of what he described as his income for the year.

But this summer, a considerably different picture emerged in an austere government hearing room in Miami, where Mr. Trump’s company was challenging the resort’s property tax bill.

Mr. Trump’s lawyer handed the magistrate an income and expense statement showing that the gross revenue had indeed been $50 million. But after paying operating costs, the resort had actually lost $2.4 million.

Donald Trump is a bigot, a thug, the kind of man whom women know all too well.

He’s a braggart, a bully, and the least self-made alleged rich guy short of the Walton kids.

And through it all, he’s crap at the stuff of which he claims to be the world champeen.  Would you trust the coffee fund, much less the national budget, to this guy?

But time and again, what the form presented as income did not match what was reported in other documents. Mr. Trump also runs several publicly owned attractions — the carousel and ice rinks in Central Park and a golf course in the Bronx — under agreements with New York City.

Mr. Trump’s disclosure forms reported income from the Wollman and Lasker ice rinks of just under $13 million last year, and $8.6 million the year before. But accounting figures provided by his company to the city show that those figures represent gross receipts…Recent figures were not available, but a 2011 city audit showed that for the previous three years, an average of $25,340 a year for both rinks was left after expenses.

With Logan Airport charging roughly eight bucks a gallon for Jet-A fuel right now, that would pay for barely more than a quarter of a tank of gas for The Donald’s aging jet.  He’s a bust-out artist, not a businessman.

Last word to the magistrate who heard Trump cry poor on his misbegotten Doral Golf Course purchase:

“So he spent $104 million to lose two and a half million dollars a year,” Mr. [Leonardo[ Delgado said. “I know how to lose that money without having to spend $104 million. How ’bout you, Murry?”

I’d laugh, except for the non-zero (though still small) chance that this lying sack of ferret fæces could be President-elect next week.

Reader Interactions

281Comments

  1. 1.

    redshirt

    I can’t wait for Trump’s businesses to utterly collapse after he gets shellacked on Tuesday and then makes a fool of himself for the few weeks there after.

    *Spits!

    Also, Sam Wang has moved Clinton’s odds of winning to pretty close to 100%.

  3. 3.

    debbie

    What gets me the most is how the WWC continues to support him, even though they know he has stiffed other WWC. Trump is the epitome of everything they hate.

  4. 4.

    Trentrunner

    This afternoon I was doing the movie equivalent of “I wonder whatever happened to?…”

    I was wondering if the 1983 movie Testament was available on any of the services.

    I was living in SF when the original came out, and remember it being an overwhelming experience. I hadn’t seen it since it came out.

    So I searched around and I did find it on VOD. Just finished watching it, and it’s still overwhelming.

    And 100% relevant to this election.

    We. Must. Win.

  5. 5.

    kwAwk

    Keep in mind that this is a real estate/Fixed Assets heavy issue. Depreciation expense will take down the value of the building and other improvements and can result in a net loss on income for the year, but since the buildings and such don’t actually depreciate as fast as accounting schedules allow there is residual value in the property. The net income may be negative in a given year, but that doesn’t mean the true value of the assets on the balance sheet are going down.

    Think of your own house. You pay your mortgage year after year, a net loss for you, but at the same time you build up equity and have increased property values thus you’re actually building wealth while having a negative cash flow situation.

  6. 6.

    Baud

    Yep. Too little too late, NYT.

    I wonder if this is a hedge for the next false FBI leak they plan on publishing.

  8. 8.

    Major Major Major Major

    Some maroon on Facebook with an MBA is explaining to me how trump is going to take FL, NC, IA, OH, and NV and this thing all comes down to the fine people of New Hampshire. He laments that we had to pick Hillary (worst major party candidate since McGovern! No he didn’t say *that*) instead of Old Shoutypants McSocialism.

  9. 9.

    Elizabelle

    @Baud: Yup. I don’t trust the Addled Grey Lady one bit.

    @schrodinger’s cat: I think White Working Class. And should probably be small caps (very weak pun).

    Would be great to spell it out and then use the acronyms in subsequent references.

    Wankers in a Water Closet works for me, though.

  13. 13.

    HinTN

    You gotta understand. The business losses money because The Donald finds ways to extract it to his personal benefit. The bidness don’t mean nothin’ to him.

  14. 14.

    JPL

    @schrodinger’s cat: Why is my stomach in knots, if the news is so good? I’m still waiting for the FBI to drop another bombshell.

    BTW, According to NBC Trump is still ahead in GA by one percentage point. I know it’s bogus, and my son knows it is bogus, but he still just called and said it makes him hopeful for the future of the state.
    They are trying to pass an amendment for state takeover of failing schools, They already can send in additional help, but this would turn over public schools to private entities. Anyway, the governor spoke in favor and mentioned that it was to help the future of the colored people.

  18. 18.

    Betsy

    @debbie: Sorry — It’s Thursday, and late in the day — I know WWC doesn’t stand for World Wrestling Championship, but — ?

  20. 20.

    Elizabelle

    @debbie: The Stupid is frightening.

    We need to figure out a way to reduce it, for all our sakes.

    No pretending it away. Trump and the GOP turned over most of the rocks this year. (At least, I hope it’s most of the rocks.)

    The FBI stuff is awful. I’d expect we’ll see some pushback from good FBI sources to real journalists within a day or so, do you think?

  23. 23.

    hovercraft

    @Major Major Major Major:
    Texas Trump 49 Clinton 40 Romney won by 16 points in 2012
    California Trump 33 Clinton 53
    Orange and San Diego Counties Clinton 45 Trump 42
    The big blue states are becoming bluer, while the largest red state is becoming pinker. This shows more proof of the GOP’s looming demographic challenge. Trump may win more electoral votes, and win a higher number of electoral votes than Romney, but may lose the popular vote by a bigger margin, as she runs up the score in the big blue states, while his margin is cut down in the red states.

    Yes the signs are everywhere that the apocalypse is upon us.

    Perhaps it seems obvious that this year of all years would yield a historic turnout by Latinos, among the most maligned of groups by GOP nominee Donald Trump. Indeed the polling firm Latino Decisions (LD) is projecting a record turnout of between 13.1 million and 14.7 million Latino voters, up from 11.2 million voters in 2012.

    Latino Decisions also projects that 79 percent of Latinos will vote for Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton, 18 percent for Republican nominee Donald Trump, and the remaining three percent voting for other candidates. Clinton’s projected share is higher than both Latino Decisions’ estimated 75 percent Latino vote share and 71 percent exit poll share Democrat Barack Obama received during his 2012 re-election bid.
    What’s been interesting is how mainstream polling this year appears to have continually underestimated the Latino vote even as LD’s weekly tracking poll consistently demonstrated far greater intensity to vote among the population this cycle. Latino Decisions has repeatedly raised this point, noting how it will affect overall outcomes.

  24. 24.

    Baud

    @JPL: It’s the misinformation effect. It’d hard to know what’s real in today’s environment, so it leads to anxiety.

  26. 26.

    Karen

    I wish this wasn’t the case but this won’t move her numbers up and Drumpf’s down.

    No one will care. People can understand FBI and Clinton. This is too much effort to think about.

    Maybe last week it would. Too little too late.

  30. 30.

    debbie

    @geg6:

    Oh boy.

    “Well, I think I misspoke in that I didn’t use the entire name of the organization,” Deal told Fox 5, referring to the NAACP. “I don’t think I misspoke in terms of where I think they should be on this issue. … I think you know I’m not a person who has racially prejudiced or biased opinions.”

    A pitiful excuse.

  32. 32.

    redshirt

    @Elizabelle: What can we do if Nobel Peace Prize winner Barack Hussein Obama failed to bring these people back to the light?

    Unless we can somehow reform the media and campaign finance laws, we’re in this puke bucket until there’s nothing left to throw up. It’s gonna take a while. 2040 maybe?

  34. 34.

    FlipYrWhig

    @Karen: And yet somehow the fact that none of these SCANDALOUS NEW CLINTON EMAILS are, like, Hillary Clinton’s emails, that just doesn’t enter into the picture.

  36. 36.

    Karen

    @geg6:

    All the Dixiecrats are not in the Republican Party.

    Is there any wonder why African Americans may have low turnout?

  37. 37.

    T S

    @redshirt: If she wins, I’m going to come to balloon-juice, comment to you, and relish every second of you telling me I’m a pantswetter and a fool….but I’m afraid that’s 99% number is a bit too optimistic.

    And yeah, I am doing my part…a small part, but I’m not just moaning about losing.

  38. 38.

    different-church-lady

    @hovercraft:

    The big blue states are becoming bluer, while the largest red state is becoming pinker. This shows more proof of the GOP’s looming demographic challenge. Trump may win more electoral votes…

    That last thing cannot happen if the previous things are also happening.

  39. 39.

    FlipYrWhig

    @schrodinger’s cat: My hunch is that the Gary Johnson people pretty much en masse decided that if they would just vote for Trump they could barely manage to eke out a triumph over That Bitch ™. That’s what it looked like to me: a 6-8 point lead with 5-6 for Johnson becoming a 2-3 point lead with 1-2 for Johnson.

  41. 41.

    Elizabelle

    @redshirt:

    Unless we can somehow reform the media and campaign finance laws,

    Why couldn’t we? As Baud put it:

    It’s the misinformation effect. It’d hard to know what’s real in today’s environment, so it leads to anxiety.

    And this election year, it’s evident the misinformation is in the “premium” products too. I am sick about what’s going on and not going on over at The New York Times. The Snooze Hour. NPR. They’ve all slid downhill and are frequently inaccurate.

    You can’t have a democracy with so much anxiety and misinformation and anger around.

    We have to solve this problem, in part so we can come together and solve the even bigger ones we never get to.

  42. 42.

    Calouste

    Relevant to this topic:

    Trump International Hotel and something something something in Toronto is filing for bankruptcy a little over 4 years after the grand opening by the Groping Orange Pedophile. On one hand the G.O.P. didn’t have much money in it himself, on the other hand, the guy who did put up most of the money for it is a Russian, so quite possibly a mob-connected Putin crony, who might just be a little bit miffed.

  44. 44.

    NotMax

    @redshirt

    Trivia:

    Presidents who have been awarded the Nobel peace prize: T. Roosevelt, Wilson, Carter, Obama

    Vice-presidents: Gore (after term in office ended)

  46. 46.

    hovercraft

    @JPL:
    These people really do have their fingers on the pulse of America and all the best lingo. Btetween this reference to colored people, and the Secretary of State of Alabama “Cheapen the Work” of Civil Rights Heroes” saying that as long as he’s in his job there will never be automatic voter registration because that would advantage lazy people, with no initiative, if you want to vote you should have to work for it, it’s not your right to be registered just because you turn 18. Paging Mr. Khan, could you pleas send this asshole a copy of the constitution.

  48. 48.

    redshirt

    @Elizabelle: How? Campaign finance reform could maybe get done with a new Supreme Court. But how do we get a handle on a media that is at least a third dedicated to outright propaganda, and the rest wallow in “both sides!”. What laws could be passed to help?

  49. 49.

    Karen

    @geg6:

    Oh. I’m relieved. I hate that he said this but I’m glad it’s not one of ours. Thank you for letting me know.

  52. 52.

    Pogonip

    @schrodinger’s cat: Yes, during a long drive I was trying to think of institutions in our society that are not broken. So far I’ve come up with the post office (which Republicans are trying to destroy) and credit unions. Not much of a list.

  53. 53.

    Elizabelle

    @redshirt: I think you might break up the biggest media conglomerates, and go back to not allowing one magnate to own so many properties.

    They have become corporate and oligarchic microphones, and monopolistic to boot.

    Teddy Roosevelt knew a thing or two about monopolies, and we need to learn the whole lesson anew, it appears.

    I think you might start working to restore the Fairness Doctrine. It would take years to do so, and maybe you come up with a version that’s 21st century, but all this misinformation and infotainment is killing us.

    We can’t afford it. We have to solve it.

  55. 55.

    jenn

    Also, evidently the CMA’s have erased all reference to Beyonce’s performance due to racist backlash from country fans.

  56. 56.

    Elizabelle

    @Pogonip: On the same page. Was thinking a few minutes ago about the massive institutional fail.

    It’s almost easier to come up with examples of “NOT”, and I don’t have it at the moment.

    It’s like falling through space, with no net. They aren’t asking the same questions we are, but the Trump folks feel they are falling, too. They just have the wrong villains.

  59. 59.

    JPL

    @Karen: Deal also left Congress while being investigated on ethics charges. The charges were dropped since he was no longer a representative. He knows which way the wind blows.

  61. 61.

    cmorenc

    @schrodinger’s cat:

    I don’t buy that the race is fluctuating as much as the MSM national polls are showing. Don’t buy into the MSM narrative they are not Hillary’s friends.

    The goal of the MSM (outside of Faux News) is to provoke viewership by either of two approaches: 1) portray the race as a thrillingly close horse race; 2) portray the race as a series of sensationally scandalous revelations. The MSM will go back-and-forth or mix the two at any given time, in whatever combination they think will momentarily drive the greatest viewership or audience. Accurate portrayal of facts and policy comparisons is a very distant third, and since the MSM’s managing overseers see viewership as depending on the first two factors and not the third, gets readily displaced in the interests of driving viewership via the first two methods.

    Unfortunately, in a culture with sports contests and celebrity scandals being far more popular than substantive policy presentations, the overseers of the MSM may have a business point here in terms of what will draw an audience and what will cause them to tune out.

  62. 62.

    Villago Delenda Est

    Just when you thought irony could not be any more dead, Melania Trump gives a speech on how cyber-bullying needs to end.

  66. 66.

    FlipYrWhig

    @redshirt: And it’s really not that hard to tell the story so that it’s something more like “FBI agents are investigating whether Huma Abedin mishandled classified materials, which could raise further questions about what James Comey has called ‘reckless’ treatment of such information during Hillary Clinton’s tenure as Secretary of State.” That would at least be close to accurate. But they aren’t even THAT careful! And the ORIGINAL story was about Hillary RECEIVING classified materials! I guaran-damn-tee you that huge swaths of the public think the HILLARY CLINTON EMAIL SCANDAL is Hillary Clinton emailing classified materials willy-nilly because she’s too arrogant and stupid to use her computer properly or follow procedures. Like, “Is this the guy we’re trying to kill tomorrow? I can’t figure out how to rotate the photo. Call Geek Squad and get them to come out here to the top secret safe house on 123 Pine Street.”

  68. 68.

    Elizabelle

    @Baud: I don’t think our “own” media is the solution, because we do not consume it in the same fashion the right-wingers do. That’s why I keep hoping for a solution to restore fairness and accuracy.

    I could slap Jon Stewart and Colbert for bailing on Comedy Central this year. And isn’t that an insane comment? But they did provide accurate political and cultural information to their [skewing youngish] audiences, and there is nothing as widespread and good taking their place.

    Yeah, John Oliver. On HBO, once a week. Samantha Bee, OK. But the nightly broadcasts were important.

    Trump stepped in and filled the void, with all our sensationalist, money-grubbing cable channels.

    And we don’t have a BBC World News class of product ourselves, with well-produced and interesting news, presented by professionals (women, for example, not in cocktail attire or with constant bare arms).

  71. 71.

    hovercraft

    @different-church-lady:
    It can, Trump has a very good chance of winning Iowa, which has no people, sorry, and he may win Ohio in a squeaker it terms of the raw vote. Hillary is going to win California and NY, NJ, and IL by larger margins than Obama did, if Texas is much closer in the raw vote, then he gets more EV’s but loses the popular vote by a bigger margin.

  73. 73.

    Baud

    @Elizabelle:

    because we do not consume it in the same fashion the right-wingers do.

    We seem to be consuming a lot of the trash that’s currently being out out there.

  76. 76.

    SiubhanDuinne

    ferret fæces

    I do like the be-ligatured orthography. Gives shit some heft and gravitas.

  77. 77.

    different-church-lady

    I feel like I’m living in a bubble, but I don’t know whose bubble it is anymore…

  78. 78.

    Miss Bianca

    @Major Major Major Major: you know, it always blows me away when people insist that Sanders would be *totally* owning this election right now if ony…he hadn’t LOST the Democratic Party nomination by like, what…3 million votes? How was he supposed to be able to prevail in the general when he couldn’t clinch the primary?

    Also, how “anyone but Hillary!” can even be an option for BernieBros when, y’know, Bernie Sanders *himself* has endorsed HRC and is urging his supporters to vote for her. What, they know better than their hero? How do they justify that?

  79. 79.

    hovercraft

    @Baud:
    When they got rid of Schultz, Alex Wagner, and a bunch of other”liberal” voices they said they were turning into a straight news network with less partisan voices. They left Rachel alone because she had the highest ratings at the time, and there were rumors that they wanted to get rid of Chris Hayes, but then he won an EMMY so they left him alone, for now.

  80. 80.

    Elizabelle

    @Baud: Because the trash gets positioned as the frame for the news.

    That should not be happening. It’s all rightwing framing, and the “professional” journalists are doing it too. Who didn’t gag at the framing of debate questions that came up (well hello there, deficit scolds/Pete Peterson)?

    And then they never get to climate change.

    You mentioned the 4 folks on MSNBC, and it sounds like 3 of them let rightwing guests get on and Gish Gallop as long as they can. How good is that? Maybe the intent is to debunk the guest’s message, but it gets repeated and repeated and repeated?

    I will tell you, I would give some serious thought to living abroad in 2020, except that election will be just as crucial.

    I am sick of all this crisis, all the time. Because Republicans are trying to destroy our institutions and safety net and the public confidence, and succeeding enough that it makes it ugly for all of us.

  83. 83.

    GrandJury

    @schrodinger’s cat: It’s not.

    There is just a lot of noise out there. Sam Wangs site filters all that out.

    Hillary is going to win. It’s just a question of how big a win. Last week looked like a landslide. This week less so. Hopefully it moves a little back towards landslide territory before next week.

    Ignore the pantswetters and trolls around here. Just more noise.

    Remember that the diff between Obama and Romney was less than 4% in the popular vote and Obama won in a landslide. So just ignore the popular vote for starters.

    Nominee Barack Obama Mitt Romney
    Percentage 51.1% 47.2%

  84. 84.

    Elizabelle

    @hovercraft:

    they were turning into a straight news network with less partisan voices.

    translated: the usual Republican bubble. NBC is broadcasting for defense contractors, with Dateline thrown in.

  89. 89.

    hovercraft

    @different-church-lady:

    Pennsylvania has to go red first.

    No it doesn’t, Obama won PA, and all of the swing states last time, and he ended up with well over 300 EV’s, Trump can poach a couple of the swing states, in this case IA and OH, increase his EV total, but still lose ground in the popular vote.

  90. 90.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @Miss Bianca: yeah, the fact that we’re all hoping that Evan Bayh goes back to the Senate to get us to 50, and Maggie Hassan is tied with Teabagger Ayotte, and Patty Judge and Ann Kirkpatrick have faded out, and Rob Portman is up by double digits… all proof that America is ready for the Shouty Revolution!
    (See also, “this is the year of anti-incumbent anti-elitism!”)

    and this, for the “any other Republican would be beating HRC by …”

    James Downie ‏@ amescdownie 32m32 minutes ago
    Great note from @ KSoltisAnderson: One year ago, the RCP average was Clinton +2. Today, it’s Clinton +2.

    michaelbd
    It’s boring to say it. But the best explanation of how people are going to vote next week is their party affiliation, not their character.

  93. 93.

    different-church-lady

    @hovercraft: Ah, this is just my misunderstanding about what the “more” meant in “more electoral votes. You meant more than Romney did, and I thought you meant more than Clinton will.

  94. 94.

    redshirt

    @Elizabelle: I agree, but you need Congress to do that, don’t you? And they won’t help. And the tide is certainly strongly against breaking companies up these days. AT&T just bought who again?

    They’re all getting bigger and more powerful. Heck, how many domestic oil companies are there now? 3?
    Which in turn increases their lobbying power, which in turn ensures no laws will be passed against them.

  95. 95.

    Karen

    @FlipYrWhig:

    I’m sorry I wasn’t clear. Basically Trump’s new ad links HRC to Anthony Weiner. Trump calls Anthony Weiner a “pervert” so it’s guilt by association.

  98. 98.

    hovercraft

    @Baud:
    To the villagers anything left of FOX News is straight news, remember everything on FOX is straight news except for Hannity and BillO, and back in the day Glenn Beck.

  99. 99.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @NotMax:

    Trivia:

    Presidents who have been awarded the Nobel peace prize: T. Roosevelt, Wilson, Carter, Obama

    Vice-presidents: Gore (after term in office ended)

    Just FTR, President Carter received his Nobel Peace Prize in 2002, nearly 22 years after he had left office. In fact, it was awarded largely for his body of work in his post-presidency. (TR, Wilson and Obama were all serving POTI when they became Nobel Laureates.)

  100. 100.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Karen: You don’t do your final, mass driver style oppo dump until late tonight/tomorrow. You want to get past the World Series and you want to make sure nothing else can drown it out through election day. And you want to make sure its the biggest possible piece of ordnance.

    Eichenwald has tweeted out:

    Follow

    Kurt EichenwaldVerified account
    ‏@kurteichenwald
    Coming up tomorrow in @Newsweek: One of my most important stories so far pertaining to the election.

    I have no idea what it is that Eichenwald is going to report out.

  101. 101.

    Smiling Mortician

    @jenn: Not if they read the comments. The leftier-than-thou crowd is just rancid in its dishonest arguments. Really depressing to see lefties who are as deluded as Trumpsters.

  102. 102.

    Elie

    @schrodinger’s cat:
    I definitely share your concerns but I also think that we sometimes have strong work to do to fight for democracy and justice. It’s an honor to do this work. We should take it up without hesitation or whining. We have been reminded that the freedom, justice and democracy we cherish must be fought for and the battle essential. We have a pus filled wound that stinks. We gotta open it up and do a painful but necessary deep debridement followed by a course of systemic antibiotics and intense monitoring. We do it for ourselves and for the world that is keenly watching us during this challenge and will take lessons and warnings from what we do here.

  103. 103.

    redshirt

    @Baud: During the runup to the Iraqi invasion I watched French news (with subtitles) and the difference was shocking.

    We haven’t had a “4th branch of government” aka an independent and fair media in a very long time. And it’s killing us. Same is happening in the UK and Australia.

    I wonder what the common factor could be……

  106. 106.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @Adam L Silverman: Rick Wilson retweeted this right after teasing (again) the big oppo that’s out there. Like our pal Liz Mair, he says it’s two big stories, and the media has them

    Rick Wilson ‏@ TheRickWilson 3h3 hours ago
    I’ll say it for the 10th time:
    1. Media has the two story leads.
    2. Neither was the story from yesterday.
    3. I don’t control timing.

  110. 110.

    Miss Bianca

    @jenn: thanks for that -next time I will simply link to that article instead of ranting at my friends on FB.

  111. 111.

    Pest Bog Mummy, Frakensteinbeck

    @Karen:
    This is Sam Wang’s site. Historically, he is roughly as accurate as Silver, who is by no means the only polling aggregator with an excellent history. This year, Silver isn’t doing what he used to, and instead is employing a super-secret model that looks an awful lot like clickbait hype. They used to agree pretty closely.

  112. 112.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @geg6:

    All the Dixiecrats are not in the Republican Party.

    Huh? Deal is a Republican. He was a Dixiecrat but switched in the ’90s, I think.

    It’s ambiguous phrasing. There’s a huge difference between “All the Dixiecrats are not in the Republican Party” and “Not all the Dixiecrats are in the Republican Party.” I believe @Karen intended to convey the second meaning while using the first (could be very wrong, but that’s what I think).

  114. 114.

    Captain C

    @Miss Bianca:

    Sanders would be *totally* owning this election right now if only

    Not to relitigate too much, but no one, Clinton included, laid a finger on Sanders. Off the top of my head, I could think of 5 or 6 lines of attack ads on him that would destroy his chances in the general, even against Deadbeat Donald Gropenfuhrer the Bust-Out Artist.

  116. 116.

    Ruckus

    @Calouste:
    I made the point the other day that he may want to be president for the protection. SS and the military. That’s a reasonably strong safety net for someone who owes just a wee bit of money to people with less scruples than he has. He may also feel that he can do first strikes and eliminate the pressure. Of course he doesn’t understand that the presidential fallout shelter does him little good in the case of all out nuclear war, even if he lived, there would be little left to own. He may also be angling to improve his jet fleet, I’d venture that AF1 is a slightly better plane than his 25+ yr old third hand 757.

  119. 119.

    JMG

    Silver wrote a very fair piece on why his model differs from the others about a month ago, as did HuffPost polling chief Natalie Jackson: Long stories short, Silver’s model is much more responsive to short-term changes, and has assumptions of greater uncertainty built in. As races tend to get closer down the stretch, this benefits the trailing candidate. That last sentence is mine, not theirs.

  121. 121.

    GrandJury

    Lol….Bernie. That’s funny that some of the Bernie babies are coming out to play again. Never hear from them when the polls are up.

  122. 122.

    jenn

    @Smiling Mortician: I believe it. There’s a reason that, on a newspaper’s survey the other day on comment sections, I recommended they get rid of them. Awful things, and more or less meaningless now that we know how they are subverted by propagandists/trolls. Which is why, if I’m going to give weight to someones’ opinion, I want to know who the heck they are in some fashion or another.

  123. 123.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @JMG: As races tend to get closer down the stretch, this benefits the trailing candidate.

    The OBamaBros on the 1600 podcast have been saying for weeks that the race would tighten as Republicans came back to Trump. The email “scandal” gives them an excuse.

  124. 124.

    Anoniminous

    @JPL:

    the governor spoke in favor and mentioned that it was to help the future of the colored people.

    What color are we talking here? Chartreuse? Mauve? Royal Blue?

  126. 126.

    the Conster, la Citoyenne

    @Captain C:

    Bernie is just as thin skinned as Donald, and just as stuck on repeating things he knows that aren’t necessarily true as Donald, and has a lot of sketchy things in his background like Donald, and as secretive about what’s in his tax returns as Donald, plus, his entire platform is to be a “tax and spend” liberal – raising everyone’s taxes to have government take over giant sectors of the economy – and the country is definitely not there, considering the pushback about Obamacare. Plus his grifting wife’s actions would be under the microscope. Like Donald, Bernie also dismissed the voters that comprise the Democratic base – with no real way to connect with them since like Donald, they both would be appealing to the WWC.

  129. 129.

    MomSense

    Making calls from home. We are in the annoyance phase of phonebanking which means we are calling people until we confirm they have already voted. If you are not a phone banker or canvasser there are still many ways you can help. Data entry, rides to polls, poll watching, and hospitality. There will be long GOTV days now and having someone bring in some snacks, soup in a crock pot, pizza, fruit, sweets, etc can be a huge morale boost.

    The nice thing about volunteering is looking around and seeing that you are not alone. There are so many people who care who live near you. And then you don’t worry as much about the other states because you trust that the volunteers there are just as committed and fired up as you are.

    So please find a way to help in the last five days. It matters.

  130. 130.

    Ruckus

    @Miss Bianca:

    What, they know better than their hero? How do they justify that?

    He’s not really their hero. He just sounded like he might be and he isn’t burdened with the name Clinton so he was their best shot. Now that he’s backed Clinton, he’s dead to them.

  134. 134.

    Kay

    @Iowa Old Lady:

    It didn’t really go well. My GOP forum-partner started with the absentee returns in the county. So it’s about 70% for both Parties which she said she was “sure I would agree” was good for Republicans. I said I don’t agree because Ohio went to a system where they send everyone an absentee ballot application so I don’t know what “good” is – I have no idea why she thinks 70% returns for both Parties is “good for Republicans”.

    I got a question on “rigged” from one of the students and I got kind of worked up about that and explained to her that it’s run at the county level and with equal numbers of Democrats and Republicans and isn’t “rigged”. My R buddy there piped up with “and you need a driver’s license to vote” which is both wrong- you don’t “need a driver’s license” obviously, because that’s insane- and a bad thing to say around me, and I feel as if I corrected her too sharply. It was tense, over-all.

  135. 135.

    Anoniminous

    @schrodinger’s cat:

    According to Sam Wang the remarkable fact about this election is its stability. People decided early on who they were going to vote for and have stuck with the decision.

  136. 136.

    jenn

    @Baud: Sure. I’d say that’s realism far more than cynicism. But any voters that it may convince, I welcome.

    This whole election (and past couple of decades, really) has reminded me of the great Octavia Butler:

    “Beware, all too often we say what we hear others say. We think what we are told that we think. We see what we are permitted to see. Worse, we see what we are told that we see. Repetition and pride are the keys to this. To hear and to see even an obvious lie again and again and again, maybe to say it almost by reflex, and then to defend it because we have said it, and at last to embrace it because we’ve defended it.”

    She also wrote:

    “Choose your leaders with wisdom and forethought. To be led by a coward is to be controlled by all that the coward fears. To be led by a fool is to be led by the opportunists who control the fool. To be led by a thief is to offer up your most precious treasures to be stolen. To be led by a liar is to ask to be lied to. To be led by a tyrant is to sell yourself and those you love into slavery.”

    Yeah.

  140. 140.

    Ruckus

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist:

    It’s boring to say it. But the best explanation of how people are going to vote next week is their party affiliation, not their character.

    For the vast majority of republicans their party affiliation and their character are the same thing. And it ain’t pleasant.

  146. 146.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    I think the State Dept last week advised family members of US personnel in Turkey go home, now this

    Nate Schenken @ nateschenkkan
    Turkey appears to be arresting all the HDP MPs, third-largest party in parliament. This is it, people.

    so… Erdogan is pretty much going to formalize his dictatorship? Our NATO ally in the GWOT? Damn.

  147. 147.

    Redshift

    @JMG: Which translates to: it’s better for producing clickbait by exaggerating meaningless fluctuations. Short term changes are rarely real, so having a model that’s “more responsive” to them is a bug if your intent is actually accurate forecasting. That’s why I ignore 538 except for purely entertainment purposes.

    I liked him when he first started, but he first pissed me off when I realized most of his reputation derives from the accuracy of the “final prediction,” that is, the output of the model on Election Day, and milks this for the earlier period when it’s not particularly accurate at predicting anything. And his statements about what “caused” fluctuations in the polls are worth about as much as financial reporters “explaining” daily fluctuations in the stock market.

  150. 150.

    JPL

    @Anoniminous: Deal said he meant National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, not just Colored People. (of course that is a lame excuse, that doesn’t make sense in context) In GA there are several schools that are not performing and not all are populated by the Colored People.
    Public education is funded by property tax and lower income areas do not generate the tax necessary to improve education.

  152. 152.

    Mike J

    @Major Major Major Major: Silver also uses Student’s distribution, which has wider tails than the standard (which makes sense based on the lack of test runs we have to validate with.) It means he gives more weight to lower probability events.

  153. 153.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    Random question for the hive mind: I’m starting to get campaign begs addressed to Jim. My donor info, cc etc, is all “James”. Have they been digging around on me, or are they making a lucky guess, do you think? When the President emails, it’s always “James”. I chalk that up to his cool detached professorial formality.

  154. 154.

    StringOnAStick

    @the Conster, la Citoyenne: I remember a WaPo link (I think it was WaPo) that let you enter your family size and income, then see how the candidate’s tax proposals would affect you. The two rethugs would have dropped our tax bill some minor amount (we’re not in the 1% after all), Hillary’s would increase ours about $500, and Bernie’s would have increased it $16,000. Being good liberals, we would gladly pay that if it brought us functional and fair government spending priorities. What i saw when I did that little exercise was exactly why the rethugs wanted Bernie to win the primary: easy, easy pickings in the general. Americans are so well trained to hate on any tax increase that one that size would guarantee a rethug presidency, period. I was initially a Bernie supporter but once he lost the primary I didn’t miss a beat in turning my loyalty to Hillary.

  161. 161.

    bemused

    I had an dr appt and errands to do in a small town of close to 9,000 pop. The office was in a building that also houses a hair place and a deli. When I left after my appt, I noticed that another space was occupied by MN Republican campaign. I took a good look as I walked by and there were only two people in the place, one guy manning the joint and one other guy. I had to return there a couple of hours later and there were only two people again, the same guy in charge and one different old guy getting some lawn signs. Hardly SRO. I have no idea if the place has been that dead all along but it made me smile.

  162. 162.

    Redshift

    @MomSense: And it’s also good because you’re not stuck with the feeling that you’re just waiting for a result that’s completely out of your control. As an individual you may not make a lot of difference, but you make some difference, and you’re taking a bit of control of the outcome.

  165. 165.

    PPCLI

    @Adam L Silverman: Let’s hope that the Democrats have something or things that are really explosive. One would think it is a target-rich environment. Trump and Mobsters? Trump and the Russians? Trump on video fondling someone who is resisting? Trump on video with Russians and Mobsters? Trump fondling Russian Mobsters? Russian Mobsters fondling Trump?

    What will keep me awake tonight is the recognition that the Republicans operate by the same playbook… so let’s hope there is an oppo-dump gap in the Democrat’s favor.

  168. 168.

    SiubhanDuinne

    the Grey Lady has come up with another good story on the long-con that is Donald J. Trump.

    It is a good story, but I don’t think it’ll change the mind of a single one of his supporters. Heck, I doubt that any of them (assuming they read it in the first place) will do so much as stroke their chin in a quizzical and thoughtful manner.

    Too little too late indeed.

  169. 169.

    Kay

    @Iowa Old Lady:

    I left the high school and went immediately to a pretrial where I was basically accosted by an ancient wingnut lawyer I know about the Clinton Foundation. I was hungry because I skipped lunch to finish at the high school, which makes me short-tempered, so I argued with him longer than I usually would because he’s kind of a crank and I know that.

    I can’t wait until this is over.

  171. 171.

    Anoniminous

    @JPL:

    Most of the schools in the country are in trouble because the way we fund education in this country is moronically stupid.

    I got the Deal thing. I was being snarky.

  177. 177.

    Kay

    @Iowa Old Lady:

    I just felt like it was very partisan to inject that. I’m basically talking them down about the misinformation her idiot candidate has fed them- telling them how elections work- and she has to introduce voter ID as one of the reasons elections aren’t rigged. Ohio didn’t have voter ID until 2006. Was George W Bush’s re-election rigged? Where were the vans full of non-white felony committing voters that cycle?

  178. 178.

    JPL

    @Kay: I’m so sorry. Next time just say you haven’t read the right wing book filled with innuendos.

    I hope you had fun at the School though.

  179. 179.

    debbie

    @SiubhanDuinne:

    I don’t think it’ll change the mind of a single one of his supporters.

    I think you’re right. NPR interviewed two Ohio college conservatives this afternoon. One was a woman who defined herself as a Christian. She said she was taken aback when she heard the Trump/Bush tape, but because she was a Christian, she believed in grace and so she forgave him. I wished the interviewer had asked her why she had no grace for Clinton.

  182. 182.

    Anoniminous

    The older cat has now taken to meowing piteously at one door to my office until he is let in and promptly walks to the other door to sit and meow piteously to be let out.

    Bastard.

  183. 183.

    debbie

    @Kay:

    Something else is going on. They’re talking about how absentee and early voting is down this election compared to 2012. I’ll bet you five dollars they’re going to try to shorten the voting period.

  184. 184.

    Tilda Swinton's Bald Cap

    Along with Giuliani’s other connections to New York FBI agents, his former law firm, then called Bracewell Giuliani, has long been general counsel to the FBI Agents Association (FBIAA), which represents 13,000 former and current agents. The group, born in the New York office in the early ’80s, was headed until Monday by Rey Tariche, an agent still working in that office. Tariche’s resignation letter from the bureau mentioned the Clinton probe, noting that “we find our work—our integrity questioned” because of it, adding “we will not be used for political gains.”

    link

  185. 185.

    hovercraft

    So watching Tweety and Michael Steel, say that if only Trump had been a more disciplined candidate his economic message would have beaten Hillary because she has no message except Trump is terrible. Tweety says she has a vague message about women and children but no driving message. It’s almost like neither one of them has ever watched or listened to a Hillary speech, they just watch the highlights of her speeches where they play only her commentary on Trump. They both praise Melania for her comments on cyber bullying. Fucking Mark Halpern commented last hour on the irony of the world’s biggest cyber bullies wife talking about curbing the phenomenon. Apparently they like the Bernie bros don’t realize that you run against your actual opponent not some generic R or D, each campaign is tailored, Hillary’s policy positions would have been given more oxygen against any other opponent simply because the villagers wouldn’t have had a dumpster fire to cover. Bernie’s socialism would have been front and center, with Tweety leading the way. He made and still does make a huge issue of his socialism at every chance he gets. You would have had the media and Wall Street pounding away at him about his anti capitalism, and European Socialism.

  189. 189.

    p.a.

    In the spirit of “maybe he just wanted to steal our wirecutters. Ya ever think about that?”, maybe tRump really wants the job for the money and free housing.

  191. 191.

    Kay

    @JPL:

    I do like the students. I generally like kids. One of the girls asked me I ever just agree with people who disagree with me politically because “there are more of them” and I felt as if she was telling me she does that because she used a lunch table as an example :)

    I’ll have to show her the secret handshake.

  194. 194.

    bemused

    Tweety is a puke. He definitely has a grudge against Hillary. Don’t know what his beef is.

  197. 197.

    Kay

    @debbie:

    It’s so funny because the conventional wisdom always was GOP voters skewed absentee (older) so they never fucked with that. Now it’s a “Democrat” thing so they’ll turn against it.

  200. 200.

    Adam L Silverman

    Oh look Andrew Sullivan is on Hardball discussing race, ethnicity, and demographics. What could go wrong?

  204. 204.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Patricia Kayden: And there are two other ways into it. Here’s Mark Hosenball’s:
    http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-election-fbi-leaks-idUSKBN12Y2QD

    And here’s Spencer Ackerman’s:
    https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/nov/03/fbi-leaks-hillary-clinton-james-comey-donald-trump?CMP=share_btn_tw

    (Full disclosure: I know Spencer and once filled in for him at Wired for one article/post while he was on vacation.)

    ETA: Barrett’s been covering this stuff, specifically Trump’s ties to Giuliani and Trump’s ties to the mob for decades. He knows it cold. Amazing how so many people around Giuliani just happen to be connected to the mob and how he covers for them.

  205. 205.

    Peale

    @hovercraft: I really would like to hear what Tweety thinks Trump’s economic message is. NAFTA sucks. I’ll rip it up and renegotiate it. It’s Mexico’s fault. I’ll yell at Apple executives until they bring back the jobs. I’ll lower my taxes so low, but you folks will make up for it by paying higher prices for imported goods.

  206. 206.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @bemused: Tweety is a puke. He definitely has a grudge against Hillary. Don’t know what his beef is.

    The gossip is he really wanted to be WH press secretary in the 2nd Clinton term, also, dude has issues. In ’08, he was at a Clinton event and asked her I forget which question, she teased him about being obsessed with her, and then went to shake his hand as peace gesturer. While they were shaking hands, he fucking reached out and pinched her cheek. I still can’t believe it. If she had hauled off and popped him right there, she would’ve had my vote

  207. 207.

    debbie

    @Kay:

    Maybe they’re shooting themselves in their collective foot. All the reports here about the first day of early voting was that the lines were full of snowbirds.

  208. 208.

    Patricia Kayden

    @hovercraft: What Tweety is saying is that the next time the GOP nominates an awful Rightwing extremist, he and his fellow media buddies will push said GOP candidate to the max as long as he/she is more discrete about his/her bigotry than Trump.

  210. 210.

    Patricia Kayden

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist:

    he fucking reached out and pinched her cheek

    What the what?!! Naw. Even for Tweety that would be crazy.

    No wonder he has no problem with a man who gropes women without permission.

  211. 211.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Baud: We need better screening procedures and rules for who we allow to immigrate to the US from other Anglo countries. Sullivan, Frum, Krauthammer, Cooke, Yiannipulos (sp?), Brimelow, etc.

  213. 213.

    hovercraft

    @Adam L Silverman:
    Everything Katie.
    You just have to love the entire show, everything about Trump is him being positive, the AD he highlighted, whereas the AD from Clinton with his own words, is depicted as very negative. And now Sully, the epitome of I’ll take the knife wound over a bullet.

  214. 214.

    Fair Economist

    @the Conster, la Citoyenne:

    Bernie is just as thin skinned as Donald, and just as stuck on repeating things he knows that aren’t necessarily true as Donald,

    Bernie’s thin-skinned, yes, but he’s is in no way whatsoever similarly dishonest. Trump is the lyingest candidate ever to run for President, while Bernie is basically tied with Hillary and Obama as the most honest of this century. They are opposites in honesty.

  217. 217.

    ThresherK

    @hovercraft: The more vague Trump gets, the better he sounds. He’s the textbook definition of “your opponent is an actual person, not just a generic elephant or donkey”.

    The oddness of grown people (whom I know) that think Bernie, who hasn’t drawn anyone’s fire, would be winning, is cute. In a 17-year-old.

  218. 218.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @hovercraft: . And now Sully, the epitome of I’ll take the knife wound over a bullet.
    as in, she’s the ‘lesser of two evils’. He’s a very strange man.

  219. 219.

    Enhanced Voting Techinques

    @Baud: Damn it man, we could have been watching you do the State of the Union address from a hot tub while telling Putin to back off, or shit will happen! Tell me the dream still lives Baud!

  224. 224.

    Taylor

    @bemused:

    Tweety is a puke. He definitely has a grudge against Hillary. Don’t know what his beef is.

    It’s not hard to understand. All you have to see is the video of him pinching Hillary’s cheek. The guy is an unreconstructed misogynist.

    ETA Jim, Foolish Literalist got there first.

  225. 225.

    Peale

    @JPL: I find it quite funny that they think they’ll avoid this situation next time. The same thing will happen. Because they will read the polls and think Hillary is a weak candidate, they will run 18 clowns again and they will end up with a Sessions Chaffetz ticket. Everyone will be shocked that it doesn’t poll well.

  227. 227.

    FlipYrWhig

    @Peale:

    I really would like to hear what Tweety thinks Trump’s economic message is. NAFTA sucks. I’ll rip it up and renegotiate it. It’s Mexico’s fault. I’ll yell at Apple executives until they bring back the jobs. I’ll lower my taxes so low, but you folks will make up for it by paying higher prices for imported goods.

    Are you surprised that Chris Matthews thinks that yelling about things is a sign of a first-rate political mind?

  228. 228.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @Gin & Tonic: Yup. Fact is, if liberal media made money, Tweety would be out on the street faster than you can say “Joy Reid.” I’m not happy about it, but Air America tried, MSNBC tried…

  229. 229.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Gin & Tonic: You ever hear of this guy?

    Thomas Theiner is a writer and production manager. He has previously lived in Kyiv for 5 years and worked at a subsidiary of Ukraine’s biggest film company. Follow him at @noclador.

  233. 233.

    Patricia Kayden

    From the first link: @Adam L Silverman:

    Two law enforcement sources familiar with the FBI’s New York Field Office, which initially discovered the emails, said a faction of investigators based in the office is known to be hostile to Hillary Clinton.

    So basically Comey broke his neck to inform Republican Senators of this investigation to get ahead of his rogue, Rightwing employees who he knew would otherwise leak this info to the news for partisanship purposes? Another indication that Comey needs to step down. He has lost control of his subordinates.

    From the second link:

    “The FBI is Trumpland,” said one current agent.

    Yep.

  234. 234.

    Kay

    @debbie:

    Right now I think it hinges on Florida. Nate Silver is freaking me out because I generally agree with him that it’s a weird election. I can’t really just dismiss his “uncertainty” idea. The addition of the FBI really drove me ’round the bend. There’s nothing any regular person can do about so many of these kind of “variables”- Wikileaks, shitty reporting, the FBI. It’s horrifying to watch. They don’t care what they lay waste to. The gaslighting is killing me- Melania Trump scolding the country on civility. It’s crazy. It has no relationship to the truth.

  235. 235.

    japa21

    Totally, and I do mean totally, OT. I just found out that the community in which I reside is listed at 27 on Money magazine’s Top 50 Places to Live in the US. I am trying to figure out how this will impact my property taxes, as the only way that would make any sense is if they gave Money magazine a major bribe.

  238. 238.

    Peale

    @Adam L Silverman: I know it’s cruel to play with people’s lives. But let’s offer up the Syrian refugees that they are nuts over. We agree to send them back if the right agrees to let us send those six clods plus a few dozen others. “Immigration Crisis” over. Then due to some accidental bureaucratic snafu, the Syrian refugees are sent to Canada and the U.K., while Krauthammer and Frum can spend their final days living in a refugee camp in Syria near the Turkish border.

  239. 239.

    the Conster, la Citoyenne

    @StringOnAStick:

    There were so many problems with Bernie’s proposals, it was transparently ridiculous and indefensible – he was pulling numbers out of his ass, like assuming a 5% year over year growth rate or some such half baked pie in the sky to justify higher tax rates – for free college, most of which was pandering to his white millennial base who are shitty allies and unreliable voters.. He would have been a terrible candidate, since he only had one chord to play. Plus Trump’s misogyny really revealed itself with Hillary – a much better foil for him.

  241. 241.

    the Conster, la Citoyenne

    @Fair Economist:

    Yes, and we know how well the media does in examining closely the difference in the veracity of statements between Trump and his opponent.

  242. 242.

    Peale

    @japa21: don’t worry about it. My town made it ten years ago and as far as I can tell, the hip young professionals from the city nevEd made it up here.

  243. 243.

    Gin & Tonic

    @Adam L Silverman: I’ve read a few of his pieces. I don’t know him and he’s not mentioned by people I do know.

    He lived in Kyiv for five years and left. Draw whatever conclusions you want from that. While he seems to know some of the players, his view of the politico-economic situation is unrelentingly bleak. He doesn’t seem terribly relevant.

  244. 244.

    Kay

    @Patricia Kayden:

    Comey needs to step down

    Everyone keeps saying this but it’s “has”. Has lost control. Probably lost control in February. Has not had control for months. If what he says is true that was a last ditch effort to get control of his subordinates, people he has been attempting to placate since July with that ridiculous press conference and none of it worked.

  246. 246.

    Chris T.

    @redshirt: FBI guy: I FOUND A CLINTON EMAIL

    The actual email:

    From: Uncle Bob
    To: Aunt Bea
    Subject: Clinton

    Them Republicans sure is excitable about Clinton. Think they’ll finally get her?

  248. 248.

    hovercraft

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist:
    Sully said that fear of the black and brown people is what will make Trump win.
    ETA: Libtards are responsible for promoting identity politics, so now the white people are playing them, and the libs don’t like it.

  249. 249.

    Kay

    @debbie:

    I’ve sort of has it with the clever retorts from media commentators. Trump isn’t funny. They just sound weak to me, like throwing spitballs at a fucking tornado- powerless.

    They just fell short when faced with a Trump. They weren’t up to it. They chose to focus on Hillary Clinton and emails because that’s comfortable for them- they know how to do that.

  250. 250.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Gin & Tonic: If you’ve got a sec would you do me a favor and click over and read through his timeline today. There’s something he’s somewhere between suggesting and saying – you’ll be able to tell real quick, it starts with the tweet 11 hours back – and then let me know what you think? Thanks!

  253. 253.

    Lizzy L

    @Adam L Silverman: Andrew Sullivan is a fucktard.

    For their part, the feckless Democrats decided to nominate one of the most mediocre, compromised, and Establishment figures one can imagine in a deeply restless moment of anxiety and discontent. They knew full well that Hillary Clinton is incapable of inspiring, of providing reassurance, or of persuading anyone who isn’t already in her corner, and that her self-regard and privilege and money-grubbing have led her into the petty scandals that have been exploited by the tyrant’s massive lies.

  255. 255.

    the Conster, la Citoyenne

    @hovercraft:

    So, he’s in the Michael Moore/Scott Adams camp of “my white male perspective is the only one that counts” re this election. This is my shocked face.

  258. 258.

    Enhanced Voting Techinques

    @JPL: Oh Generic Republican Canidate, can’t you see how our nations punditry needs you! Must they never bask in the platonic glory of your ideas and always deal with these mear humans?

  259. 259.

    Peale

    @Lizzy L: and what “reassurance” is he looking for, exactly? That Clinton won’t release the hounds of the inner city upon them, take their businesses and send them to countryside for reeducation?

  261. 261.

    Gin & Tonic

    @Adam L Silverman: Somewhere between hyperventilation and fiction.

    From what I can tell, in 1987 this guy may have been in kindergarten. I see no evidence that he knows anyone who’d be privy to the kind of information he’s hinting around, if it exists. In terms of biography or publication history, he’s a cipher before a couple of years ago.

    This opinion is worth precisely what you paid for it.

  269. 269.

    Kay

    I found this comforting so maybe you-all will too:

    John Harwood ‏@JohnJHarwood 6m6 minutes ago
    top Dem pollster, asked if there’s significant movement in key states affecting Clinton lead over Trump: “not movement that matters”

    It’s so nice to have somewhere to fret freely after my awful Day With Republicans. An older friend of mine said in 2004 “they’re sore losers but they’re also bad and ungenerous winners” and that’s true :)

  270. 270.

    Major Major Major Major

    @Kay: Sam Wang says this has been the easiest election to predict since 1996, we’ll see if he’s right but Silver has turned into such a hack that I don’t even listen to him and everybody else has Hillary north of 80%…

  271. 271.

    the Conster, la Citoyenne

    @Kay:

    John Harwood has been solid this election, not normalizing Trump, at all. He’s been one of the ones who should be acknowledged as trying to live up to his profession.

  277. 277.

    a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)

    Thanks Gin & Tonic. It sounded too good to be true.But Rick Wilson’s been teasing a bombshell…

  278. 278.

    Joy in FL

    @Gin & Tonic: I’m glad I saw your comment about your email to a front-pager not getting a reply.
    I used that link last Sunday to email a front page writer and have not yet received a reply.
    I didn’t think BJ front pagers would ignore an email from a Juicer, and your comment makes me distrustful of that link

  279. 279.

    Kathleen

    @hovercraft: Love how media, the right and the left (St. Bernie included) define inclusion of people of color and other ethnic and religious backgrounds in a coalition “identity politics”. And endless “but what about the white people” laments are not tied to identity (white people). White people are really f****d up. And we as a group can never be de-f****d.

  280. 280.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Joy in FL: Depends. Most of us have a dedicated, only for Balloon Juice, email address for you all to contact us. I try to check mine once a day, but sometimes its only every other or so. I don’t know which one of us you emailed, but you’re probably not being purposefully ignored.

  281. 281.

    J R in WV

    @Comrade Scrutinizer:

    I once met Gus Hall. Didn’t realize who I was meeting at the time, but never forgot the event. Back in 1969, I was just becoming eligible for the draft at the time…

    I’m not sure if we shook hands, but we were certainly introduced.

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