Sometimes I think it’s going to be really hard to explain this era to people in the future and then I think, oh please let it be really hard to explain. I hope it makes no sense.
— Jon Lovett (@jonlovett) July 23, 2018
Now we just have the Media Village Idiots, doing their best to make news Silly (even Stupid) all year ’round. But there is still pushback…
“Most Republicans support Nixon” was an accurate statement the day he resigned. pic.twitter.com/fnhatuB3WS
— Matthew Yglesias (@mattyglesias) July 22, 2018
Recent polling on President Donald Trump has increasingly been covered in a way that emphasizes Trump’s high numbers with self-identified Republicans rather than his low numbers with the American public…
American politics has grown more polarized over time. It’s become easier for presidents to maintain the political support of their co-partisans than it was in the days when both party coalitions were regional hodgepodges with little underlying ideological coherence. This, combined with Trump’s personal focus on his base, has enabled Trump to mostly hang on to his GOP supporters.
The truth, however, is that Trump is an unpopular president by historical standards, and his party appears to be suffering predictable consequences….
… The economy is growing, and American soldiers abroad are not dying in large numbers. We would normally expect a president enjoying those conditions to have pretty good approval ratings. Trump’s are terrible.
And it seems plausible to attribute those numbers to the all-base, all-the-time refusal to do anything on either a symbolic or a policy level to try to reassure people who aren’t in his base that their worst fears about him are mistaken. Trump’s strength with his base, meanwhile, isn’t a mitigating factor — it’s part of the overall problem. In a divided country, he makes no effort to serve as a unifying figure…
In other news, David Koresh had a 98% approval among Branch Davidians.
— David Oppenheim (@DavidMOppenheim) July 23, 2018
An interesting issue these polls rarely address is: Are fewer people identifying as Republicans as Republicaness comes to be associated with Trump’s misconduct?
— Matthew Yglesias (@mattyglesias) July 22, 2018
As I recall, after Nixon fled the White House in disgrace, the number of polled voters who remembered they’d voted for McGovern increased by a factor of… many. George got to joke that if only the election could be held retroactively, he’d have won in a landslide!
rikyrah
Good Morning, Everyone ???
satby
@rikyrah: Good morning rikyrah ?!
Baud
@rikyrah: Good morning.
OzarkHillbilly
Blech.
satby
@Baud: and back to you too ☺!
satby
@OzarkHillbilly: ??
satby
The last few days have been cooler and cloudy with frequent light rain and occasionally drenchers. It’s been such a relief from the heat and sun! I wish I could send this weather to everyone out west who needs it.
Baud
@satby: Good morning, satby. I hope you’re feeling better.
satby
@Baud: I am, thanks. The tendonitis is subsiding thanks to regular doses of generic Aleve.
p.a.
Well ‘Tea Party’ has been used, so how will the ship-jumping rats rebrand this time? Shay’s, and Whiskey, Rebellions aren’t well known, and failed. Guess they’re stuck with the confed battle flag. Don’t forget, it’s all about culture after all. Or is it kultur? Maybe that flag gets a rebrand too. After Charlottesville, anything is possible.
OzarkHillbilly
@satby: This summer has been very moderate for the Ozarks, only one short spate of 95+ degree days. Today will be our 4th day in a row with a high in the 80s and northerly winds (which means low humidity). We don’t usually get spells like this until late August/early Sept. I’ll take it and keep it all to myself. Those folks out west will just have to lump it.
rikyrah
@satby:
satby,
You’ve been under the weather?
Feel better.?
msb
@ p.a.
Well, “Whigs” and “Constitutional Union” have been used …
satby
@rikyrah: nah, just overdid all the house and yard stuff once the weather broke and gave myself a killer case of tennis elbow on my dominant side. I’m a solo act, so it has to heal with very little rest. Naproxen is wonderful for tendon inflammation, it was the only thing besides a cortisone shot that gave me any relief when I ruptured the tendons in both shoulders (one at a time, thank goodness).
Thanks!
satby
@msb: so has Know Nothings, which is the most appropriate name.
bjacques
I was saying the same thing to friends last night. Here in the Netherlands there used to be something called komkommertijd (“cucumber time”), when all the news reporters are on vacation because the government’s in recess and nothing happens. So much for that. It also used to be when all the construction workers and contractors took vacation. Now it’s year-round. At least there’s festival season. The Dutch are so good at it they hire out their festival organizers abroad.
NotMax
First world problems.
Decent after dinner nap; woke up and realized *must* finish what’s left of the triple chocolate cake in the fridge before leaving, as it would never remain edible after a few weeks sitting ignored when am away.
:)
satby
@NotMax: darn! What a terrible problem. I suppose freezing it isn’t an option ?
Baud
Kevin Drum disagrees that party identification has changed much. At this point, I don’t really care about analyzing polls.
https://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2018/07/republicans-have-mostly-stayed-loyal-to-their-party-in-the-trump-era/
Tony Jay
Oh come on. We all remember the daily articles reminding everyone how popular Obama was with Democrats, don’t we? Back in 2016 you could barely get through five minutes of political coverage without the talking-heads “Yeah-Butting” the e-mail scandal merchants with polling about Clinton’s support amongst Democrats. We all remember this, don’t we?
What do you mean, no? I demand to see your credenza immediately. s/
satby
There’s nothing more peaceful than softly falling rain complemented by the soft snores of sleeping dogs. So relaxing I can barely get up to get more coffee.
James E Powell
I get what everyone cited in this post is saying about the polls, but what about 538’s poll averages showing a persistent +40% approval? That hasn’t changed in response to events.
And Kevin Drum cites and discusses a poll that shows not much change in Republican party ID at all. He had an early post discussing Trump’s consistent support.
NotMax
@satby
It doesn’t thaw well. Sour cream chocolate cake Bundt batter with extra included chocolate pudding mix and chocolate chips (no icing, that would be overkill).
Shall just have to man up and choke it down. Luckily, what’s left is what would normally be about 2½ servings.
:)
bjacques
@p.a.:
National Southernists
Baud
@James E Powell: Yeah, I think that’s our reality until the economy turns. That said, a steady 40% approval is not good, even though we think it should be worse based on our values.
satby
@NotMax: I’d be happy to help, but those buzzkill TSA dweebs wouldn’t let it on the plane. Stay strong!
satby
@Baud: I suspect that 40% includes a lot of low info voters who rely on our failed TV media to keep them informed. There’s a dearth of information on what the outcomes will be from the Tangerine Traitor’s behavior and policies there, it’s all shouty he said-he said heavily dominated by Republicans with no push back or fact checking. It’s been our continued national travesty that the propaganda pushing still dominates.
Baud
@Baud:
Just to clarify, I meant not good for Trump. Which is good for us, although not as good as we think we should have.
Baud
@satby: Yeah, not only do most people not pay attention to politics, a lot of them don’t even pay a lot of attention to news. They just get glimpssles, and often from conservative media.
Kay
This is an editorial in the Washington Post but they’re all doing the same thing, and they have to stop- they conflate “voter registration” with “voting” and those are two separate things. They targeted voter registration databases. Names and addresses. They didn’t target vote recording and tabulation. Voter registration databases will always be electronic.
Voter registration tampering would be the easiest way to rig an election, because we know which voters are likely to live in which neighborhoods. Paper ballots don’t reach the issue of who can and cannot vote, which is what they actually targeted.
This is insanely consistent in discussions of election process, where we refuse to distinguish between registration and voting. I don’t know why we can’t get it straight. “Vote totals” would never have been “changed” had they succeeded in tampering with registration, because the person targeted wouldn’t have been able to vote. Their registration would have been changed or eliminated. Paper ballots are great but they don’t touch registration tampering, they don’t touch this:
This is always how they try to influence results- whether “they” is the Russian government or Republicans suppressing AA votes- they don’t “change vote totals”, they tamper with who “can and cannot vote”.
Baud
@Kay: I wish we could keep Republicans away from voting registration databases.
pluky
@satby: When one can just eat it? Don’t be silly.
NotMax
Heh. Looks as if Amazon Prime’s AI giving recommendations “More like [what you watched]” was forced ’round the twist. Included for “More like The Prisoner” is a mixed bag of offerings such as The Astounding She Monster, SpaceDisco One and, completely incongruously, The Royal Hunt of the Sun.
That last, for those unaware, is based on the play of the same name about Pizarro conquering the Incas and claiming Peru for Spain.
debbie
@satby:
Also those who support out of stubbornness and refusal to own up to a mistake.
Kay
@Baud:
Tampering with “who can and cannot vote” makes a lot more sense for hackers, too. They can do it ahead of time. They have weeks instead of a 12 hour window.
You could change an outcome in a close election in Michigan by excluding the registrations of 20,000 voters in majority AA neighborhoods in cities across the state, and the numbers in any one city would be so small there wouldn’t be enough of a disruption to cause suspicion. I chose AA because we all know that’s majority D votes, but you could do it any D area. That’s how I would do it, and that’s how the Russian government wanted to do it, so they went after registrations, not vote tabulation.
In Ohio you wouldn’t even have to exclude the registration. You could cause a real dropoff just by changing the address, because then the listed address and the voter’s ID wouldn’t match, or the voter could be told they’re in the wrong polling station. Ohio has about 8 million registered voters. If you spread the tampering over 10 cities you could easily lop off 20,30,50K and it wouldn’t get attention without after-election analysis.
Paper ballots are fine but they’re not a solution to what actually occurred.
Baud
@Kay:
Yeah, we’ll need to find a way to give people a physical “right to vote” card that trumps what the registration database says.
Amir Khalid
Further to Yglesias’ point in that second tweet: Or could it be the despicable conduct of the Republican Administration and Congressional caucus, not just the President, that is driving people away from identifying with the party?
debbie
@Kay:
Kay, what do you think is the best way to vote to ensure it’s counted? I’ve always voted in person on Election Day because I like the ritual of pushing buttons and pulling levers. But how do I know my vote actually gets counted? Would absentee or voting early be better?
Baud
@debbie: Voting early is always better for the GOTV people because you’re one less person they have to worry about on election day.
OzarkHillbilly
@Baud: Have to kick a majority of Republican Reps out of state Leges before we can accomplish that.
Kay
@Baud:
That wouldn’t solve the jurisdiction problem. The address is more than an identifier. It can mean “you vote for THIS city council member who reps your area and not THIS one who doesn’t” – if they changed your address they changed your polling station and for local races they changed your ballot.
You can’t write the opening paragraph in that op ed “Russians tampered with voter reg databases- solution: paper ballots” and actually be thinking about what you’re writing. They wouldn’t make this same mistake a thousand times a day for years if they were actually putting any of their own thought into how the process works. It’s not complicated. It’s an ordinary state recording process. It’s less complicated than a car title. Yet it’s always presented wrong.
Immanentize
@NotMax: Is Patrick McGoohan in all of them?
Baud
@Kay: My proposed card would give the jurisdiction too. I’ll let my people fill in the details.
Also. more vote by mail.
rikyrah
Thanks Kay,
For spelling out the program.
Will point out again,
That in the questionable states, the number of people who were denied the franchise was two to three times the margin of Dolt45’s”victory’ in those states.
debbie
@Baud:
If GOTV checks records, they’ll see I’ve voted every single year since 1972. I’m more worried about my vote counting.
Kay
@debbie:
Counting, tabulation, doesn’t worry me that much. Here are the safeguards. Every ballot in Ohio is numbered and if a ballot is issued there’s a corresponding tab and those have to balance at the end of the night. If there’s a ballot that went to a voter there has to be a vote (or an explanation- ‘spoiled ballot’). It’s the most simple accounting system in the world it’s 1= 1.
Ohio bds of elections (and pollworkers) are R and D, even-steven. They watch each other. In addition to the board there are full-time public employees who don’t give a shit who wins (they really don’t) they just want a clean count and a good audit.
Don’t worry about the count so much. Worry about who gets to vote at all. That’s the weakness. All of the mayhem is at the national and state level. That’s where they tamper with “who gets to vote”.
We had a small school district here about ten years ago where they had a very close levy vote and they “missed” 2 absentee votes. The votes were set aside because they had irregularities (they weren’t sealed) and the poll workers intended to deal with them after the main vote tally and just forgot. It was a big deal! There was an audit, it went all the way to the Sec of State. The COUNT is transparent and rule-bound and lots and lots of people are watching. The count is the LAST place anyone would tamper with.
MattF
The hard part of drawing conclusions from polling is figuring out what’s happening at the margin– i.e., what does ‘independent’ really mean, how is that changing (if it is), where will it end up? If someone is a self-identified R or D, it’s easy to guess how they will vote, and the margin of error is small. But for independents, that reasoning runs the other way– the numbers are smaller, the errors are bigger, the consequences are greater.
Basically, no one really knows what’s happeining on the margin, and I see no evidence that will change.
JPL
Today GA votes. It’s a runoff primary, and on the republican side, you have Trump endorsed Kemp. He’s the gun nut, running against Cagle who was caught on tape mocking the gun nuts. Kemp was seen as a long shot, but now will probably win easily.
We are a red state, and it will take a major Trump error, to change that. Maybe tapes will be released where Trump is mocking the crazy factor in the republican party. That would help.
debbie
@Kay:
Thanks!
Immanentize
@debbie: In Mass., We have paper optical scan ballots that you feed into the reader yourself and you get to see the number tick up — it was 235, now it’s 236!
I don’t worry about that ballot counting. But what Kay and rikyrah are talking about — just messing with rolls, is an easy way to mess with the vote. Not only do people taken off rolls not get to vote, but they create long lines and increase frustration at polling places which turns people off and turns them away….
Kay
@debbie:
As I said I don’t worry about not counting votes, but I early vote which is “in person absentee” so a paper ballot. BUT the paper ballot is scanned, so it’s also electronic. I just do it for convenience. You scan your own election day so if I were worried about counting I would probably vote election day.
Matt McIrvin
@debbie: I figure any form of early or mail-in voting is better if you’re allowed to do it, because as Kay said, registration/eligibility is the weak point. If you try to vote early and something goes wrong with your registration or ID or whatever, you have more chances to rectify it before the election is over.
Kay
@debbie:
I would think in-person election day would be MOST reliable. There’s a physical numbered tab, they’re handing you the ballot, and you are scanning it. The pollworker who handed you that has to balance the numbers at the end of the night, and submit that to a “judge” (the head pollworker) and they basically can’t go home until it balances.
The paper ballot is the backup. They can also use the paper ballot for an audit. They would take a sample of paper ballots and see if it matches with the electronic total. If it doesn’t they do a count of paper.
Look where there has been tampering – Florida 2000. They suppressed votes and used a confusing ballot to exclude votes from a tally of any kind. They didn’t throw votes in the dumpster.
Baud
Since so many people have smartphones, I wonder if it makes sense for the Dems to create a voting app that makes it easy for people to find out what they need to do and when and to check their registrations.
Msb
@ satby
Mugwumps has been used, too.
OzarkHillbilly
@JPL:
Won’t help, fake news and they’ll know it because trump will tell them.
Matt McIrvin
@Immanentize: I live in Mass. and I suspect the biggest potential problem here is not the counting, but the town census/inactive voter list system. You get a town census every year by snail mail that you have to fill out and return. If you forget that, for a couple of years I think, you end up on the inactive voter list, and then you have to present proof of address at the polling place, or else you have to vote with a provisional ballot and straighten it out later.
This has actually happened to me, and it was easy for me to deal with because I had a driver’s license with a current address on it. But, of course, one might not. Things like utility bills count, but paper utility bills are rarer than they used to be. And there have been incidents of right-wing groups’ “poll observers” hassling people over their proof of address.
Early voting became generally available for the first time in the 2016 presidential election, and I tried it out mostly because I was curious about how it worked, but also for the reason I mentioned above: that if there’s some registration problem like that, you have more time to straighten it out and vote.
It was peculiar: early voting in Massachusetts is basically in-person mail-in voting. You get the mail-in ballot, and a manila envelope with an affidavit on the outside; you fill it out in a voting cubby, seal it, fill out the affidavit, then stick it in a box. It actually gets sent back to your normal voting precinct to get counted with the other ballots on Election Night.
If you’re suspicious of election shenanigans, I suppose the main thing about it that might raise eyebrows is that, like mail-in voting, you can’t prove to yourself that it’s anonymous because your name and address are on the outside of the envelope. But if, like me, your main concerns are about registration and inactive-voter lists, it makes sense.
H.E.Wolf
@James E Powell:
The 60 out of 100 people polled who disapprove are half again as many as the approvers.
To me, the numbers look like this:
20 + 20 = 40
20 + 20 + 20 = 60
60 is 150% of 40.
If we in the 60% spend our time doing the unglamorous work to register new voters and GOTV – and re-register current voters and monitor election operations, if need be – the candidates approved by the 40% minority will lose at the ballot box.
As the crocodile said to Captain Hook: Tick tock.
OzarkHillbilly
From 1 August, thanks to the Trump administration, a commercially available software blueprint will allow people to make their own guns using ABS plastic resin and a 3D printer..
JPL
@OzarkHillbilly: The pee pee tape won’t sway voters, even if they involved young girls. They will excuse it and say well the girls looked older.
rikyrah
Monuments For All (@MonumentsForUSA) Tweeted:
“The new documents show that as @SecretaryZinke conducted his four-month review, @Interior officials rejected material that would justify keeping protections in place & sought out evidence that could buttress the case for unraveling them.” https://t.co/yJrbDkITMH #MonumentsForAll https://twitter.com/MonumentsForUSA/status/1021434670876102657?s=17
OzarkHillbilly
@JPL: Far too many of them will excuse it and say, “I would too, if I could!”
waratah
@NotMax: Max you have very good Kalua coffee To go with that cake. One of my favorite chocolate cake recipes is very rich, I could not eat it with frosting. I love the Kalua coffee and drinking some now. Have a safe trip and hope your mothers gift arrives in time.
rikyrah
Uh huh
Uh huh ? ?
Shannon Watts (@shannonrwatts) Tweeted:
“Butina courted conservatives because she recognized her new friends were engaged in a racial struggle and culture war so intense that they might be open, even eager, to align with Putin to defeat their real enemy: fellow Americans.”
https://t.co/STfuohM4St https://twitter.com/shannonrwatts/status/1021057708613500928?s=17
rikyrah
Um, FrontPagers:
Greg Sarafan, Esq (@GSarafan) Tweeted:
Late on Friday, Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin quietly announced that the Trump administration was considering the possibility of removing sanctions from an aluminum company, Rusal, which is owned by Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska. https://t.co/v3tQsXEPSi https://twitter.com/GSarafan/status/1021099636336013314?s=17
Kristine
@satby: Good to know about the Naproxen. I’m prone to tendonitis–right elbow is currently bugging me, and like you, I can’t stop because solo act. Just popped one.
Hope you feel better. The weather that’s followed the rain here has been pretty pleasant.
Kay
Look how unpopular far Right national celebrity Kobach is! He’s a Trumpist thru and thru. I was told the President has such awesome numbers with the GOP base- Kobach shoukd be benefitting from that.
sheila in nc
@debbie: I understand about the appeal of voting on election day; I’ve heard it many times when I’ve been out canvassing. But the way I look at it, my vote counts the most if it’s combined with those of my fellow citizens, and if I can vote early, then that’s one more place in line on election day for someone else. In NC, an early vote is (like I think Kay said) an in-person absentee vote. I volunteered to be an election official this year, so I’ve seen enough of the system (in my county) to be confident that my vote will count whether it is cast early or on Election Day.
BTW, volunteering at the polls is fascinating. I highly recommend it. It’s also a great way to feel like you are pushing against the forces that are trying to keep our democracy from working.
ETA to be clear, being an election official isn’t “volunteering”, strictly speaking; I get paid a royal sum that works out to about $8-10/hr.
Frankensteinbeck
@James E Powell:
Republicans are not going to abandon their team in any significant numbers, and frankly most of them like what Trump does, they just wish he’d be less embarrassing about it. How Trump gets less and less popular is that the people who disapprove of him get more and more angry and determined. Since we outnumber them 3-to-2, that’s a very good sign. Republicans have been chasing a larger share of a shrinking demographic, and it has worked well enough because they’re desperate and enraged at the loss of their white nation. Getting a larger share of a growing demographic sounds like a winner to me, but it may well be impossible without the liberal-leaning realizing they’re fighting for their lives. Signs suggest Trump and this GOP congress are accomplishing that.
O. Felix Culpa
@satby: Thanks! We finally got rain last night. Santa Fe and northwards were pummeled by hail and flooding rains, but we had the perfect level of steady rainfall nearly all night long. The wind tipped over one of my potted tomatoes, but it seems no worse for the wear. I’ve turned off the automatic drip irrigation for today. Living in the southwest has taught me to be grateful for every drop of moisture.
Baud
@Frankensteinbeck: I agree.
FlipYrWhig
@Frankensteinbeck: And a lot of the ones who’d probably admit to a friend after a few drinks that they don’t like some of what Trump does _aren’t going to tell a pollster that_. For some reason we feel like people tell pollsters the candid truth. Republicans know polls shape coverage, and that if Trump’s polls sag (wink) it’ll result in bad headlines and smirky coverage from the people they hate, so when they end up with a chance to express support they take it, for the good of the team and/or for spite.
Kay
This was funny. I’m not a famous Right wing activist like Ginni Thomas and I recognized them as likely stock photos immediately.
They just phone this stuff in.
Baud
@Kay: I believe that’s akin to how Thomas sets forth his reasoning in his opinions.
Kay
@sheila in nc:
Yay for you. Everyone should so a stint as a pollworker, like jury duty. For one thing it takes some of the mystery out- you’ll feel BETTER about voting when you see the process.
I quit as a pollworker because I was getting too upset about horrible, suspicious Right wing pollworkers making people feel unwelcome and (in my view) doing poor customer service. I got really unpopular, to the extent that they stuck me over at handing out the I Voted stickers.
I still feel bad about quitting. I had to get out of there, though. I was going to get arrested for disorderly eventually. NOTHING makes me madder than that snooty demand for belt and suspenders “proof” that isn’t in line with the statute. It’s so disrespectful and it’s ONLY applied to people the pollworker deems “marginal”. You could strangle them.
WaterGirl
@satby:
Sadly, the same set of uninformed voters won’t let that stop them from voting on election day.
Also, your suggesting that NotMax could freeze the chocolate cake is the meanest thing I have ever seen from you, and it didn’t have a lot of competition, obviously! :-)
rikyrah
@JPL:
I want the pee pee tape for the following reasons:
1. It will humiliate Dolt45
2. I want to throw it in his supporters faces, especially the evangelicals
3. It will be yet another FACT from the Steele Dossier. (already told you, I believe that 95% of it is true)
westyny
@Kay: But Orman is ratf*#%ing Kelly’s numbers, right?
rikyrah
@NotMax:
Definitely a First World Problem :)
WaterGirl
@Baud: Next thing we know, you’ll be saying you meant “wouldn’t” instead of “would”. :-)
rikyrah
@Kay:
WHO is the Independent? What the phuck kind of vanity candidacy is this?
rikyrah
Meghan Markle’s half-sister Samantha Grant addresses ‘cashing in’ on the royals: ‘We all have to survive’
By Stephanie Nolasco
Baud
@WaterGirl: At least I can blame spell check if that happened.
cmorenc
@bjacques:
I was lucky enough to have unwittingly scheduled a visit to Amsterdam that included Queen’s Day. (Fortunate too that I had a prepaid hotel room far in advance – I only found out about Queens day on the train ride a couple of hours out from Amsterdam when my compartment-mates mentioned that there wasn’t a hotel room to be had the next night in the entire country of the Netherlands, let alone Amsterdam).
BEST STREET PARTY EVER! I still have the orange cat-in-the hat stovepipe hat I bought from a street vendor that day. The canals were full of jam-packed boats full of drunken costumed revelers, with bands playing on every street-corner. It’s like Fourth of July, Halloween, and Mardi Gras combined in orange hue. The holiday is nominally in honor of the Queen’s birthday toward the end of April- not the current queen, but one a way back, but it’s a huge prideful national celebration, devoid of the militaristic bombasity of the American fourth.
rikyrah
I wish it were that simple. Russian government has indicted many innocent people for political purposes, including many foreigners. then they abuse Interpol to detain them in third countries. Ask @Billbrowder or Ukrainian government officials. https://t.co/3bIcuJkckv
— Michael McFaul (@McFaul) July 23, 2018
satby
@Kristine: hope it helps you as much as it did me!
rikyrah
Pres. Trump’s threat to revoke security clearances of his critics is a “distraction and diversion”@DonLemon: “Just making the threat to take action changes the subject from serious issues facing the country, like the fallout from Helsinki or the upcoming trial of Paul Manafort” pic.twitter.com/0f3F8sGGmc
— CNN Tonight (@CNNTonight) July 24, 2018
rikyrah
@JPL:
I am curious. How was he caught on tape? Where?
satby
@WaterGirl: ???
Jeffro
More of this please: VA GOP Senatorial candidate Corey Stewart openly laughed at when praising Trumpov for “standing up to the Russians”
Hey Corey – just ’cause it sounds good in The Bubble don’t mean it’s going to play well with actual thinking human beings.
Frankensteinbeck
@FlipYrWhig:
Lying about who you vote for and why is a hallowed American tradition.
Amir Khalid
@rikyrah:
She’s right: she has every legal right to cash in on her sister’s marriage into British royalty, and there’s no one and nothing to stop her. Nothing, that is, except a desire not to be crass, which she seems to lack.
rikyrah
Tom Watson (@tomwatson) Tweeted:
Holy cow – Our Revolution local chapter rejects hand-picked Sanders candidate in #WI01 – folks, Cathy is on the move in that district. https://t.co/BS1k7ku2Np https://twitter.com/tomwatson/status/1021740355098734592?s=17
Kay
@Baud:
I read a whole thread of MAGA’s on Twitter retweeting the same “person” who was allegedly leaving the Democratic Party because we’re too mean to Trump. It was weirdly addicting, because there’s this fake “good faith” thing they do – “I respect both sides…” that sort of thing.
I have canvassed enough where I feel I can recognize the language of fake bipartisanship. I don’t know why they bother. I don’t pretend to be bipartisan. It’s not true and why would I do it anyway?
laura
@Baud: here ya go:
https://www.usa.gov/register-to-vote
rikyrah
Dog resolves case on Judge Judy??
https://youtu.be/bG0a6Oy7rfA
Kay
@rikyrah:
Well, it’s Kansas. People who are Republicans but can no longer vote for A Republican because Republicans destroyed the state have to have someone to vote for. Independent candidates are opportunistic. They see a disaster and take advantage of it.
Frankensteinbeck
@Kay:
It’s an abuser technique.
Kay
I’m going to a meeting with these people tonight, the Galbraith for Congress people.
Ohio being what it is, a split state, the newer political volunteers will tell me he can win because they will look at voters in the district and see the Democrat can come w/in 5. That DOES look doable, so I get it. But “5” is the whole thing. The last 5 is the hard part :)
They don’t win and then they get discouraged, because they think they “came so close” but they never were close. It was always the last 5. For the last 20 years.
rikyrah
This resignation letter from a Department of Homeland Security employee to @SecNielsen is absolutely incredible: pic.twitter.com/CTb8bJKnnm
— Andrew Wortman (@AmoneyResists) July 23, 2018
Chyron HR
@Kay:
Your liberal contempt for honest working-class stock photo models is probably why they’re leaving the Democratic party.
rikyrah
They are Traitors ALL ? ?
Washington Post (@washingtonpost) Tweeted:
Opinion: How long will Republicans debase themselves to Trump’s petty whims? https://t.co/4nz6rAFPSr https://twitter.com/washingtonpost/status/1021748844898541573?s=17
Kay
@rikyrah:
Oh, good. I find her just appalling. ESPECIALLY because she was sold to us as some sort of decent person, a “moderate”
She’s awful. A MAGA parrot who also seems to be incompetent.
Jeffro
Michelle Goldberg, killing it as usual: Democrats are Moving Left. Don’t Panic
I’ll take newspaper columnists over frickin’ cable news panelists any day:
FlipYrWhig
@Kay: It reminds me of their weird fetish for conservative children like the original Ben Shapiro. They want to believe that their views are inherently right and that they show up spontaneously as soon as you snap out of the mass liberal brainwashing everyone ELSE receives. The funny part of course is that to tell them that their views are naturally, spontaneously correct they built a self-brainwashing media machine.
rikyrah
Giuliani to Mueller: question Trump about collusion, not obstruction
07/24/18 08:40 AM—UPDATED 07/24/18 08:42 AM
By Steve Benen
Donald Trump and his legal defense team still haven’t agreed to answer Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s questions, despite months of back-and-forth negotiations. A Washington Post report noted two weeks ago that the talks “have been at an impasse” since March, in part because the president’s lawyers are worried about what Trump might say about obstruction of justice.
With this in mind, the Wall Street Journal reported overnight that the president’s attorneys have “submitted a counteroffer” to the special counsel’s team: Trump might be willing to sit down for an interview, but only if investigators agreed in advance not to ask questions about some of the things the president may have done wrong.
Manyakitty
@Kay: Thanks for this. I was contemplating switching over to absentee voting. To be fair, my precinct workers here outside Akron seem to take their jobs seriously.
satby
@rikyrah: my union friends are pretty pumped about Bryce. I kind of dislike Meyer’s continuous running against Bryce, instead of focusing on Paul Ryan’s hand picked successor. It’s a seat we need to flip, and we need to run against Republicans, not other Dems, even in the primaries.
That tweet is disingenuous, because Our Revolution didn’t endorse anyone yet. Like all brave revolutionaries, they’re ready to jump as soon as they know who’s likely to win.
rikyrah
Trump thinks abortion is ‘a 50-50 question,’ polling shows otherwise
07/24/18 08:00 AM
By Steve Benen
Earlier this month, Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), a pro-choice Republican, told the New York Times that Americans are roughly divided equally on the issue of reproductive rights. The Maine senator said it’s “something like a 51-49” issue.
Two weeks later, during Donald Trump’s trip to the U.K., someone asked the president whether he can understand why American women are concerned about the future of the Roe v. Wade precedent, given Republican efforts to push the Supreme Court further to the right. “I do understand,” Trump said, “but I also understand that you know, that’s a 50/50 question in this country.”
Collins and Trump were both very wrong about public attitudes on the subject.
rikyrah
Bad news for Manafort seen in naming of new witnesses
Rachel Maddow reports on the latest developments in the prosecution of former Donald Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort, including the revelation witnesses being granted immunity to testify.
rikyrah
Warrants show Trump camp adviser was believed to be Russian agent
Rachel Maddow reports on the FISA warrant application for Trump campaign foreign policy adviser Carter Page.
sheila in nc
@Kay: Fortunately, I live in a pretty “blue” county. Since we won the gubernatorial race last year, the policy has been to facilitate voting for all legal voters. Officials at polling sites have wide latitude regarding whether they will go through all the hoops of permitting the casting of a provisional ballot; they are a total pain and a half (you have to collect basically registration information on the would-be voter, fill in extra forms, allow them a separate corner to fill their ballot and seal it in a special envelope, write the ostensible correct precinct on the outside, and by all means, never let the voter get up and put the ballot in the tabulator while you’re not looking!) So when several voters show up at the wrong polling place within a minute of closing time, we go through a lot to accommodate them, whereas I kinda think previous administrations would not have made it a priority.
The other thing I noticed, working the primary, is that there were multiple instances where people had registered at the DMV (motor-voter), but for some reason, those registrations never made it into the database, even with six months’ or so lead time. It happened often enough that I have gotten suspicious about the whole process. I now always recommend that people send their own registration to the Board of Elections or register through a solid third party like League of Women Voters.
rikyrah
FISA applications’ release tests bounds of protecting FBI sources
David Kris, former head of the National Security Division at the Department of Justice, talks with Rachel Maddow about the unprecedented nature of the declassification of the Carter Page FISA warrant applications and how the FBI is limited in how it can refute invented claims by Donald Trump.
rikyrah
Kavanaugh voicing of uncommon view on Nixon tapes sparks furor
Joyce Vance, former U.S. attorney, talks with Rachel Maddow about a view expressed by Donald Trump Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh that the decision to force Richard Nixon to produce his Oval Office tapes was incorrect – an uncommon perspective and one sure to be probed in the confirmation process.
rikyrah
Big week of news in store with Manafort and Butina court dates
Rachel Maddow alerts viewers that jury selection in the Paul Manafort trial starts Tuesday, and Wednesday will see another hearing in the Mariia Butina case.
rikyrah
White privilege is when the whole system bends over backwards to defend a white President who openly colludes with a foreign power that is actively trying to attack American institutions while declaring a black President a traitor for trying to provide affordable healthcare.
— ✊?Black Aziz aNANsi✊? (@Freeyourmindkid) July 22, 2018
bemused
Last Friday Mpls Star Trib had a front page piece on MN Trump voters support holding with cracks after Helsinki. Many of Trump voters interviewed said they had not been paying close attention to the situation. Duh, like that’s surprising news. They don’t care enough to pay attention and even if they did, they wouldn’t care what Trump does.
A guy from Fridley said the president’s core values continue to align with his own. “I believe in good old American values, a hard day’s work…a hand up rather than a hand out”. Amazing how these Trumpers just imagine Trump has their values or any values or morals for that matter. I’m guessing Fridley guy’s idea of a “hand up” is minuscule monetary aid, a lecture on pulling oneself up by bootstraps and a few thoughts and prayers.
tobie
@Jeffro: Out of the park, indeed. Thank you, Michelle Goldberg, for pointing out the gross hypocrisy of our media yet again.
Ruckus
@Immanentize:
Ken Blackwell screwed up elections in my area of OH in the national election for 2004. Consolidated an extra precinct or two into the same voting place and then cut the number of machines in half. The prior election I voted in the same place and it took about ten minutes. For the second election, with 2 machines, extra precincts, I was there for 4 hrs. In the rain. I saw people leave, a lot of people. Lot of people wanted to vote but didn’t. As you might imagine this was a very democratic leaning area. One doesn’t need outside assistance to screw the voting.
trollhattan
FWIW
The play for independents in California is a very important component of statewide races, including initiatives, which are a blood sport here.
Calouste
@rikyrah: That just shows that the shitgibbon only had one interview question for the “Supreme” Court candidates: “Do you think the President is above the law?”
tobie
@satby: My understanding is that Myers has been tough on Bryce but not about his driving record. I believe she’s gone after him for things he said in the past about ICE and unions. I could be wrong here. In these dark times, however, I agree that Dems should be aiming all their firepower at the GOP, not fellow Dems.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Baud: That’s why I’ve long been in favor of a national ID card, just stop the bullshit with proxies and do it.
Leto
@bemused: There was an article last week in the WaPo asking if/how Evangelicals still supported Trumpov. It was in some southern town. Basically it came down to what we already know: 1) they’ll rationalize it away 2) it’s all fake news 3) it was better than Hitlery winning, but the most/least surprising was 4) just basic racism. About halfway through the article they spoke with these two older women and the blatant racism was basically coming off every quote. Fears about brown/black people, POC being too uppity, demanding too much, police violence being overblown…
The reason why Trumpov will still be popular and not lose a good percentage of these people is exactly because, like the guy in your article, he continues to share their core moral value: racism. I’ve stopped talking about this with other people because I feel like it’s too damn painfully obvious. Trumpov is their George Wallace. Yeah they’re hurting financially, our standing in the world is going down, but the blahs, browns, liberals, etc… will sure as shit know their place again. That’s all that matters to them.
Leto
@?BillinGlendaleCA: But then that’s big gubmint coming with their databases, and collecting all the names! Then they’ll know where you live! And that’s just one step away from national healthcare/soshul medicine, as well as losing all your rights! And what about the states??? The Constitushun doesn’t say anything about IDs, so of course the states have to do that… /s
JPL
@rikyrah: Sorry it took me so long to reply. Cagle was trying to get the endorsement of another candidate, and that candidate taped the conversation.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Leto: Heh, the Constitution is silent on quite a few things. It talks about an Army and Navy, but no Air Force(or Space Force). //
Leto
@?BillinGlendaleCA: I already know what the Space Force uniform will be! I can’t wait! =)
rikyrah
@JPL:
So, it was a setup…uh huh
jake the antishoshul soshulist
@bjacques:
National Anti-Socialist.
debbie
Thanks, everyone.