Josh Marshall on the “chain of custody” of the laptop featured in a New York Post story that Rudy Giuliani is trying to make happen today:
Right on time we seem to have our first Giuliani-linked foreign intelligence drops into the 2020 campaign. The New York Post ran a story today purporting to suggest Hunter Biden had introduced a Burisma colleague to his father in 2015. They appear to all be from the Ukrainian colleague thanking Biden for purportedly making the introduction.
I should note that the purported blockbuster only really amounts to anything of consequence inside the maze of Ukraine conspiracy theories but I want to focus on the alleged chain of custody. We’re told that an unidentified computer store owner had someone bring in three computers for data recovery. He/she thinks but can’t confirm that that person was Hunter Biden. They seem to base this on a Beau Biden Foundation sticker on one of the laptops. The unidentified computer store owner says the hard drives were subpoenaed by the FBI. But before turning over the drives he made his own copies of their contents and then gave a copy to Rudy Giuliani.
According to the Post, Giuliani gave the Post a copy after being alerted to their existence by Steve Bannon.
It’s about as absurd a tale as you’d imagine, given the story’s sources. The whole thing sounds like a “Plan C” that Rudy and Trump pulled out of their asses when the much-hyped Durham investigation and “unmasking” probe failed to pan out. [sad trombone]
Naturally, The Times’ crack Beltway squad amplified it. Things are going to get even stupider before this is all over with, aren’t they? Open thread.
Keith P.
I figured something fishy was going on when I got “Hunter Biden Smoking Gun Emails Found” on three straight Google News headlines, all from the NY Post. Alarm bells immediately go off, since it looks like an obvious news bomb.
germy
L85NJGT
I have Rudy as Trumptard most likely wearing a wire.
brantl
The lodestone of stupid that is both Trump and the current republican’t party can’t help but draw this toward greater and greater stupidity.
Kay
This week, here in 70% Trump country, we’re experiencing a giant spike in Covid cases and quarantines, so I’m not sure how many people will be following this insane convoluted conspiracy theory.
I swear to God it would be easier if the Trump Administration just did some work instead of all this other shit. What if they tried completing one actual task competently in the next 20 days? They’ve tried everything else.
L85NJGT
@brantl:
They’ve crossed the derp event horizon.
Geoboy
Are we at one of those tipping points where a particular form of communication (print newspapers) that has ruled unquestioned and unchallenged for so long suddenly shrinks into insignificance far more quickly than anybody would have predicted? In the words of Jim Carrey in The Mask, “I’d like to think so!”
RandomMonster
The unidentified store owner sounds totally credible. Game, set, and match, libtards!
Baud
I hope Biden doesn’t have a private Ukrainian on his basement.
dmsilev
The Post gets video of the honest-to-God actual Vast Right Wing Conspiracy:
Videos show closed-door sessions of leading conservative activists: ‘Be not afraid of the accusations that you’re a voter suppressor’
Much more at the link.
Mike in NC
Looking forward to the not-so-distant day when Rudi and Bannon and Gorka are all wearing matching orange jumpsuits.
L85NJGT
@Kay:
Aint that the truth. Crooks work really hard for shitty returns.
Hungry Joe
If this pans out, it means that Joe Biden’s son knew a guy who knew a guy, and may have introduced his dad to one of those guys. Whoa. This could be it — the smoking laptop.
Cheryl Rofer
My Twitter timeline is filled with debunkings of Rudy’s nonsense. Quite a change from 2016.
I recognize, though, that my curated Twitter follows would do that. I’m not sure how it’s landing elsewhere. I saw a couple of Haberman tweets that seem more (but not totally) credulous. Apparently Politico is willing to amplify it too.
You can do a disinformation operation once. The second time, it’s much less likely to work because people have become educated to it. That’s what happening now. Let’s hope that it’s thoroughly rejected.
brantl
@dmsilev: quel suprise!
Cermet
@Hungry Joe: Only if the lithium battery shorts … ;)
Capri
Biden won the election when he stood up for Hunter and related how he was proud of him for overcoming addiction during the debate IMHO
All this story does is help people remember that and the fact that with was the reason Trump was impeached.
In right wing world, these people are not clowns. Not the case in the rest of the universe.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@RandomMonster:
Like that salon owner that set up Pelosi with an appointment into an empty salon before releasing the surveillance video, civic-minded expressions of grave concern mandated their release regardless of consequences to libtards….
Baud
@Kay:
They would have to arrest themselves.
Kay
@L85NJGT:
Instead of paying all these grifters for another bullshit, sleazy tactic, what if they had just…come up with a health care plan in March?
They could have paid 10 policy people for what they’ve sunk into Rudy Guilianis mortgage payments and the polling would be better. They don’t even have to write it! Hire someone. Mitt Romney had one! Just steal it off his old website.
Baud
BUT HIS INTRODUCTIONS!
geg6
@Kay:
Even the one wingnut in my office (who, BTW, has announced she WILL NOT be voting for Mango Mussolini this time) has no patience for these mind numbing conspiracy theories. Whenever one of the many of them is brought up, even she rolls her eyes. She is especially incensed about the Q stuff because it makes a joke of child abuse (her son was sexually abused by a step-brother), makes a mockery of child sex trafficking and “anyway, Trump was an Epstein buddy,” so it’s obviously all made up. I knew when she finally turned on him that it was only a matter of time that people who don’t follow all these conspiracies on FOX and the internet but who are GOPers or voted for him in 2016 would start peeling away. Looks like I was right.
Spanky
@Cermet: Who wears lithium battery shorts?
(Narrator: “Baud does.”)
Kent
As a HS teacher I find the same thing to be true of kids who cheat. They often spend more energy figuring out how to cheat than it would have taken just to study the material in the first place.
Kay
Donald Trump and his team could have 1. stolen one of the 50 Right wing health care plans and presented it OR 2. repeat for a year that they would have one in 2 weeks, and invent a bunch of nonsense to cover that fact that they don’t.
They chose number 2. And spent a billion dollars on it.
MisterForkbeard
@Keith P.: We’ll see. I’m not seeing any news about this other than Talkingpointsmemo, though clearly that can change. But right now it doesn’t seem to be getting much play and hasn’t forced itself on my facebook feeds, etc.
The whole thing is dumb, of course. Haberman specifically fucked up on amplifying it, but the idea is that this is somehow a smoking gun where an unidentified man gave an unidentified laptop to an unidentified repair shop who gave it to unidentified FBI agents but also secretly made a copy and gave it to… Rudy Giuliana of all people whom we know has been working with Russian intelligence, and all we got was a… unsubstantiated e-mail stripped of identifiying and evidentiary metadata that says “Hey, thanks for letting me meet your dad.”
That’s it. They went through ALL THIS TROUBLE and that’s all they’ve got.
Spanky
@Kay: Mortgage payments? More likely alimony.
Baud
I guess this dropped today so Trump can spend an hour talking about it to regular voters at his town hall tomorrow.
Kent
It’s the cry wolf syndrome too. They have been spinning such a shitstorm of crazy lies in their fever swamp for the past year from Q-Anon to Ukraine that everyone who hasn’t drank the cool-aid just tunes it out and figures it is yet one more fraudulent Facebook scam. They are only preaching to the faithful. No one watching fox news or listening to Rush Limbaugh at this point is really an undecided voter.
Anomalous Cowherd
@Keith P.:
I for one am happy to see Rudy’s October Surprise is based on Hal Roach’s “Our Gang” movies. This is nearly as much fun as the circus episode.
geg6
@Baud:
Hilarious that the two town halls are at the same time. If Biden’s ratings are better than his, shit will be hitting the fan.
Ruckus
@brantl:
Absolutely.
The stupidest gang that couldn’t shoot at all.
PJ
Burisma was hacked in late 2019. We know Giuliani has been working with Russian agent Andriy Derkach for a while. https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2020/09/trump-lawyer-rudy-giuliani-worked-with-an-active-russian-agent-to-discredit-joe-biden/ My guess is that Giuliani received the emails (and who knows if they were doctored) and alleged video of Hunter Biden (the Biden family photos are all decades old and could have been sourced from anywhere) from Derkach a while back, and decided to release them with a completely bogus cover story now because Barr’s “unmasking” investigation went nowhere.
It’s good that people are seeing through this, but it’s a sign of how terrible the media still is that people like Maggie Haberman and organizations like Politico are promoting it.
Anonymous At Work
As punishment for this claptrap (and just this small part of everything), every Halloween, Guiliani should be forced to recite the entire story over the grave of Tom Clancy (John Le Carre if he dies before Guiliani). I can imagine an outraged zombie writer rising from the dead wouldn’t be too impossible here…
Benw
@Baud: INTRODUCTIONGATE!!!!11!
Searcher
I mean, I can’t even at this point, and if this has any impact on the election my plan is to just spend the rest of my life as the crazy old man walking around town yelling to himself, but I do love that their plan for an October Surprise was to find another laptop containing emails and SCANDAL!
They literally just can’t do anything but repeat their greatest hits.
patroclus
I’m not sure how Biden allegedly meeting one of his son’s colleagues rises to the level of the horrendous fact that Hillary Clinton sent and received e-mails.
Ken
@Kent: Terry Pratchett had a take on that in one of the Discworld novels. Road bandits do a lot of work felling trees or moving boulders to block a road, so they can stop a coach and rob it. The same kind and amount of labor in a forestry or quarry would net them about the same amount of money, with much less chance of getting a crossbow bolt through the gut or winding up on the end of a rope.
Ruckus
@Kay:
Let’s not ask too much of these highly overpaid, highly overrated gathering of undomesticated morons. It is not going to go well no matter what but they seem to take any negative attention as a challenge.
RandomMonster
@geg6:
I plan on tuning in to Biden’s even if I’m not actively watching it.
West of the Rockies
“So I’ve got some laptops that contain ultra secret and dangerous (to me) files that I want copied. I guess I’ll take them to some random repair shop in a strip mall between a Taco Bell and Suzy’s Nail Salon… Yeah, that’s the ticket!” said no one ever.
Ludicrous Rudy strikes again, panting and spitting and contorting his ugly face.
I am not Jon Snow
@geg6:
The NBC event is being carried across more platforms (CNBC, Telemundo, etc.), so it may have more eyeballs, but that may not do Trump much good. Underexposure is not exactly his problem right now. As a rule, the more people see of Trump the less popular he is. And even with a softball moderator/interviewer (follow ups? fact checking? from Savannah Guthrie? are we kidding?) and a friendly audience it will be almost impossible for Trump to avoid coming across as a zillion megaton asshole. It’s who he is, and the guy is not going to develop an entirely new personality in the next 24 hours.
MisterForkbeard
@West of the Rockies: Let’s follow that up with “and then never come back to actually GET the important laptops I dropped off”.
None of it makes sense. It’s insulting.
Baud
BREAKING: SMOKING GUN EMAILS REVEAL HUNTER BIDEN’S DRY CLEANERS’ CHICKEN KIEV RECIPE!!!
Biden can’t recall if he ever ate dish on family night.
Ruckus
@patroclus:
Obviously you are not the intended audience. They are going after the segment that “thinks” things like email is a foreign plot to overtake the US. After all they still believe Nixon was framed.
Gin & Tonic
@West of the Rockies: Olivia Nuzzi reporting on Twitter that in an interview, Rudy said that since Lev Parnas was no longer on his side, he was using Google Translate to figure out the Russian text.
Sparing no expense, our Rudy.
JanieM
@Searcher:
@patroclus:
Thanks for my laughs of the week. (So far.)
trnc
@Mike in NC: Mismatched. There I said it!
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@West of the Rockies:
To be fair, Rudy is such a moron that he’d do exactly that with his own laptops.
Kent
But just on twitter right? Haberman isn’t actually doing a NYT story on it is she?
Ruckus
@I am not Jon Snow:
Yep. He’s been the same asshole for at least 72 of the last 74 years and is jumping into dementia with the same gusto he’s screwed up everything else in his life.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@Gin & Tonic:
You’d think that he’d just call one of his buddies over at Brighton Beach; you know, the ones he carried water for at SDNY.
MisterForkbeard
Checked a few new sites. This isn’t on the front page of CNN, abcnews, new york times, cbsnews, or others that I can find.
It’s the top two items on FoxNews.com, alongside fawning media coverage of “Republicans refuting attacks on Amy Coney Barrett’s candor”.
I don’t think this is going anywhere, but you never know. One of those Fox stories about it is actually a meta-story, in which they complain that media and facebook are silencing the story.
EDIT: There does seem to be a concerted push to put the failure of a stimulus deal onto Pelosi. Not, you know, the guy who’s went on drugs and then changed his position 7 times in 2 days, in which he made an unacceptable offer to help primarily rich people that Republicans say won’t pass the Senate.
JMG
As I understand it, the town hall format is that the network selects a bunch of allegedly undecided voters who write down questions. The moderator then selects the ones he/she thinks are most pertinent, best TV, etc. and the lucky winners ask the questions directly to the candidate.
Ken
@Gin & Tonic: Hunter Biden was sending emails in Russian? Or do they mean receiving them, which might be slightly more plausible.
Also are they in Russian, or Ukrainian? The two are close but not identical. If it’s Russian disinformation, they would get the language right; if Rudy is off in la-la-land on his own, who knows.
Humanities Prof
@I am not Jon Snow: Isn’t Trump’s other problem that this is a town hall?
A friendly moderator can’t save you from actual, normal people asking you actual, normal questions. That’s why his last town hall performance was such a train wreck. He never actually interacts with ordinary people, doesn’t know how to do so, and tries to pull the same bullshit tricks with them that he does in interviews.
The trouble is that normal Americans respond a lot more negatively to that treatment than do professional journalists. This is simultaneously a positive statement about ordinary citizens and a damning indictment of journalists, but this is the world we live in.
OGLiberal
@Cheryl Rofer: It’s seems that Maggie rushed to retweet the NYP story, including a quote from the story and a link to it, with no commentary from her at all. After everybody beat the crap out of her for doing that she came in with her, “Well this is suspicious….this doesn’t seem right…etc.”, tweets. I get when reporters rush to get things out there so they get the “scoop”. But this wasn’t her story or reporting. Was her “scoop” seeing somebody else’s story and tweeting about it first? That’s impressive reporting, huh? She could have read the story, done a bit of research, then tweeted about it and included her “this doesn’t seem right” commentary. But, no, she had to get it out there first with no commentary, no questions. And now everybody is going to feel obliged to cover it not because the NYP published some BS story Rudy fed them but because the Grey Lady’s White House correspondent retweeted it.
Bravo, Maggie. Bravo.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@I am not Jon Snow: I think the combination of trying to act human for a town hall audience, plus euphoria-inducing steroids has the potential to make this an epic event, and not in the way they’re thinking
hueyplong
Laugh if you like, but this story is really going to resonate with the undecided Seth Rich conspiracy demographic.
Game changer!
FelonyGovt
I am not a wingnut myself, and have neither the time nor inclination to study their beliefs and habits. However, it seems to me that Trump and co. are playing exclusively to the people who have been following the convoluted conspiracy-riddled TV show that mystifies everyone not in the cult.
Real people are worried about jobs, health care and COVID.
MattF
And all this is done so Trump can accuse Biden of… greasing the skids for a son.
germy
This is the thread mentioned in the TPM article:
Immanentize
@I am not Jon Snow: Trump bombed his first “voter forum”. NBC would have to work night and day to produce questioners that he could tolerate.
Immanentize
@West of the Rockies: My favorite part of the story is RUDY! Says he gave the servers to the FBI. THEN?
Steeplejack
@Kay:
They didn’t even have to offer a good health plan. They could have rolled out any piece of shit and then just vilified anyone who dared to criticize it. Democrats would waste a lot of energy analyzing it on its merits (i.e., lack thereof), and the Republicans could just deflect, deny and repeat, “Hey, our plan is out there!”
Baud
@germy:
Why is he calling it a toxic story?
Eural Joiner
@Kent: You, me, same page. I preach that to my students all the time – spend half the time and energy just studying and you’ll get a lot more bang for your buck!
Immanentize
@Kent: Stay tuned on the Haberman page one above the fold investigation of both clouds and shadows!
MaryRC
@PJ: The funny part of Rudy waiting to release his October surprise at the last minute is that the last minute has already passed. People have already voted in the 100s of thousands. They’re voting right now. Too late, Rudy. Shoulda made it a September surprise.
Evap
@Kent: that’s true of college students, too. I just don’t get it.
Central Planning
@FelonyGovt:
That’s exactly what a wingnut would say.
L85NJGT
PINCHE TRUMP
Saw that on a t-shirt. I doubt the beltway media will be doing any stories about voters in taquerias.
Immanentize
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: many of those fellows are either sick with or dead from Covid. Or too busy threatening journalists.
PJ
@Kent: Just on Twitter for now. I would guess she and/or Dean Baquet are testing to see whether they should print a headline “Burisma Exec Email about Meeting Biden Raises Questions for Campaign” article.
Immanentize
@MisterForkbeard: Pelosi kicked Wolf Nazi Name all over when he tried that tired shit on her.
L85NJGT
@MaryRC:
America’s mayor is a sad old rummy.
Immanentize
@OGLiberal: I suspect “she saw it first” as part of a concerted effort to catapult the propaganda. And she complied.
artem1s
@PJ:
I assume it’s because they obtained something illegally, probably from a foreign agent/hacker and it involved private or classified materials they shouldn’t have access to but someone (Greenwald), somehow left lying around for them to find. It’s John Podesta’s pizza toppings emails all over again. /FFS
mrmoshpotato
Are these piles of Russthuglican Trump trash just plain stupid? Yes, I know.
Click through to learn about Graham’s “sarcastic” remark. What a dumbass.
PJ
@MaryRC: Somebody in the Trump campaign (Bannon, for sure) must realize how weak it is at this stage, but it’s probably better than nothing for them. It probably would’ve been better for them to release it before the first debate, so that Trump could use it against Biden then, but then Biden would’ve torn into him about it, there’s a good chance it would’ve been quickly debunked in the media (also a good chance it wouldn’t have), but in any event, it probably would’ve been forgotten by now.
piratedan
@dmsilev: sure sounds like someone’s organization needs to lose their charity status and get the ever lovin shit taxed out of them.
If Biden makes THAT change to the tax code, a whole lotta field levelling is gonna get done.
You run a charity you say? show us your good works and good works don’t include voter suppression, sorry chief.
I am not Jon Snow
@Immanentize:
You could have the audience packed with Russian plants personally hand-selected by Putin, and it probably wouldn’t save Trump from himself. The guy just doesn’t have a trace of empathy or understanding, and he’s not capable of faking it. If he were, he probably wouldn’t be eight to ten points down less than three weeks before election day.
Also, by holding the events in the same time slot they invite side by side comparisons. Not just ratings but in terms of how the two candidates answer the questions and handle themselves. You’ll see clips of Biden showing warmth, compassion, empathy and understanding, and clips of Trump acting like, well, a huge asshole. And if he get any hostile or skeptical questioners (and no matter how carefully they screen people they’ll be a few), he’ll lose his shit in a nanosecond.
opiejeanne
@Cheryl Rofer: Axios today said that Biden is the least scrutinized candidate, or something equally stupid.
brantl
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: Her salon went down the tubes, by the way. Nancy can find a place to get her hair done that isn’t run by a reptile.
Immanentize
(reposting from dead thread because….)
Hooray! My son, the Immp, just posted a pic of his hand complete with his voting machine finger condom, and his “I voted” sticker. His first Presidential election. One banked for Biden.
He’s helping to turn Texas blue.
Yutsano
@piratedan:
Spoiler: you don’t need to change the tax code to do this. You just have to give the division of the IRS that monitors all this the resources and manpower to execute these rules. Oh and STAND UP FOR THEM WHEN THE WINGNUTS HOWL LIKE PIGS. There are a lot of wingnut orgs that really should have had their status revoked after their activities came to light.
LongHairedWeirdo
What annoys me about this story is, lots of Yale law grads who are semi-famous get sinecures (like a board membership on Burisma), and one of the reasons they get such sinecures is, they might get a famous dad or other close relative to do a grip-and-grin with some clients (or other board members).
While we’d like to think there’s something dodgy about this, there isn’t. Look: if you found out that you could meet a celebrity, sports hero, or some bigshot VIP, if you worked with CompanyX, and CompanyY doesn’t have an equivalent possibility, then CompanyX has a marketing advantage.
There’s nothing *remotely* unethical about “would your dad be willing to do a grip and grin for us? These guys like to feel important, hobnobbing with people like a former VP.” Yeah, there’s a smidgen of “but Hunter Biden didn’t earn this on merit!” which is true but marketing is marketing.
If someone promised me a meet and greet with Mike Schmidt (my boyhood baseball hero), that would definitely help win my business – and if they were able to swing that by hiring a close relative of his, that just shows they’re canny enough to realize an advantage when they see it.
And yes, yes, yes, Mike Schmidt can’t do much besides offer me an autograph and a heartfelt thanks when he heard *I* never booed (the Phillies fans were sometimes called the “boo birds” because they had no problem letting the home team know they were disappointed); when Joe Biden was VP, it was *conceivable* that he could have done more.
But jeezum M. Crisco on a cracker, folks. The Republicans whine and whine and whine “innocent until proven guilty” for Republicans, but then say “there’s the tiniest *possibility* that something *might* have happened, in spite of there being no evidence it did, so THIS IS A MAJOR EVENT DESERVING OF ATTENTION AND INVESTIGATION, BECAUSE THE CONSTITUTION’S PROTECTIONS SHOULD ONLY COVER REPUBLICANS, uh, everything from ‘because’ onward is off the record.”
I could only wish editors and publishers/producers would recognize it’s bad for America to keep feeding this crap to the American people.
A Ghost to Most
Just went to my dentist for first cleaning since Covid. Everyone is wearing masks, but the receptionist is wearing hers under her chin, and is continually talking loud. Sit down and mention her to the technician, who says “Well, you know I see lots of people on the street not wearing masks.” I reply “But this is a dentist’s office.” Then she spills a cup of mouth rinse on me. At that point, I can feel my ears burn, say “You know what? This isn’t gonna work.”, And bail out while my mouth is still clenched.
That dentist is up in the Mtns. I’ll find one closer.
germy
@brantl: She made a fortune on gofundeme.
I forget the actual number, but it was in the six figures.
I believe she owns several salons.
Gin & Tonic
@Ken: Here’s Olivia’s Tweet, so you can figure out Rudy for yourself.
Um, you don’t have to explain this to me, OK?
brantl
Coons has been spectacular in all of this. He is respectful, and he doesn’t take any crap. And he beats her up, repectfully, when she sidesteps.
PJ
@A Ghost to Most: Good thing you got out before they started working on your teeth.
germy
@A Ghost to Most:
I wanted to bail on my local car dealership, but I needed the car inspected.
I drove in 7am. No one wearing masks. The tech who took my keys wore one, he was the only one.
Guy behind the desk put his on after he waved me over.
And now I see a different dealership, a few miles from us, has closed because of an outbreak.
Kristine
@RandomMonster: Me too.
SC54HI
The Stanford person’s assessment is wishful thinking at best, delusional at worst. Yes, religion runs ACB’s life and work but it’s all very calculated to promote her interests and those of her co-religionists and paymasters.
ACB has been lying through her teeth nonstop. She will probably justify the lying to herself and her co-religionists as a series of Rahab’s Lies — necessary for putting a righteous Christian on SCOTUS.
Immanentize
@PJ: “I see lots of people on the street with missing teeth these days.”
Marcopolo
@MaryRC: Actually, over 14 million folks have already voted. We are now over 10% of the total vote for 2016.
As someone who has voted in MO (and MO isn’t even included in those numbers, I feel comfortable saying that there’s a high probability we are actually over 15 million votes cast. For example, someone scraped all the TX county voting websites & added up them up which showed over 1 million Texans voted yesterday. This website is only showing about 750,000 votes for the state.
Ken
@Gin & Tonic: No offense intended.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@A Ghost to Most: I would have replied “if you are so unprofessional you can’t be bothered to follow some basic safety procedure like a mask, I can’t trust you to wash your hands when you take a dump so no way I am letting you put your hands in my mouth.”
dmsilev
@Marcopolo: And it was at 11.5 million yesterday, so we’re well into the “millions per day” range. Lots.
Edit: Texas is showing 900k just now, so I guess they added another batch in the last few minutes.
zzyzx
@Kay: well yeah. The actual conservative plan would be unpopular but people can read whatever they want into a mystery plan.
Sab
@Kay: For God’s sake please stay safe, Kay.
narya
@L85NJGT: When I worked at the bakery, several coworkers were Mexican, and used “pinche” that way. However, a woman who did some of the cake decorating was from Puerto Rico, and at first she was confused, because apparently the word isn’t used that way in PR. it was quite amusing.
Jeffro
@Kay: I really don’t know why they didn’t tweak Obamacare in some manner, good or bad, call it (blech) “trumpovCare” and been done with it. Declare victory and move on.
Oh wait…I remember why…they hate that part of what makes Obamacare work is taxes on higher earners. Never mind.
Danielx
@Marcopolo:
I confidently await howls about how “all those early votes weren’t actually on November 3rd and therefore should not be counted!” in the event (FSM willing) Trump gets hammered into the ground like a tent stake.
I am equally confident Team Trump will come up with lawyers willing to make that and other equally absurd arguments regardless of law or logic.
Marcopolo
@dmsilev:
Finally, a tweet on it so it must be true /s (tweeter is a senior advisor to Julian Castro)
Actually, speaking of October surprises this huge early vote is one of the best ones I can recall
Edited to add, with CA, TX, and FL all contributing to the early vote totals we should see at least a million new votes a day between now and the election. I am hoping we hit somewhere between 35-50% of the total 2016 vote by Nov. 3rd.
Kent
Probably not a good move for Haberman if she EVER wants anyone from a Biden Administration to ever return her phone calls.
Barbara
@Marcopolo: I think turnout is the wild card, but the turnout might be high for both sides so it’s really hard to interpret. Fingers crossed.
Jeffro
@Immanentize: “Wolf Nazi Name” – LOL
It just hit me that ol’ Wolf has been on the scene so long, he was doing reports on the first Gulf War back when I was an undergrad. We made up some sort of way-too-strong mixed drink one night while he was ‘reporting’ and called them “Wolf Blitzers”.
I’ll have to ask my buds what the drink was…
Timill
@Humanities Prof: Professional journalists want another interview from the subject. Joe Random doesn’t.
So Joe is willing to piss the subject off, but PJ isn’t
Betty Cracker
Huh:
Steeplejack
Jeffro
I haven’t been watching, but this is good to hear
PS Coons’ Wikipedia page says that while he is Presbyterian, his wife is Catholic and they attend a Catholic church. So this might be coming from the perspective that Barrett’s particular sect and their views are not appreciated by much more mainstream Catholics.
Barbara
@Kent: Last night there was a discussion about being “pot committed” in poker, basically staying the course because your losses are so large that you might as well take the tiny chance you will reverse them in the remaining hands as opposed to calling it a day and walking away with what you have left. There are problems with this analogy among pundits and other professional politicos, but it probably works for someone like Haberman. To reverse now would not pay enough dividends so she will keep spinning the wheel. OTOH, once Trump exits stage left, she can take time off to write her book, so she probably still has a lot of upside whether he stays or leaves. I try not to read her.
Kent
If you ever watch any Mexican gangster or drug cartel movies on Netflix you will notice that “pinche” is used about every 5th word. “Pinche gringos stole my pinche drugs…” etc. I expect you have to be fluent in Spanish to notice. But it seems to be the universal swear word in Mexico.
Spanish is super regional though. The core vocabulary is mostly the same. But the slang and swear words completely differ between regions and countries in Latin America. Far more so than in English differs between the US, Canada, UK, and Australia, for example.
Benw
@Betty Cracker: the Braves are coming up clutch in the playoffs and GA is in play! Did someone change the Coke formula down there or something?
Bluegirlfromwyo
@Kent: Same could be said of corporate tax avoidance. For what these businesses pay for lobbyists, lawyers, and campaigns, it’s probably cheaper to just pay taxes.
Jeffro
@Betty Cracker: Over that 50% mark – YES!
And this is while trumpov’s busy trying to hold on to PA, IA, and OH.
TIP THEM PURPLE STATES BLUE, TEAM D!
dmsilev
@Marcopolo:So here’s some additional encouraging Texas news:
Barbara
@Betty Cracker: There are a whole host of states that Republicans must win (just as there are states Democrats must win). Georgia is one of those states. Georgia and North Carolina are both vying to become the next Virginia. I think Georgia has a more talented bench, but I hope we can come up with some ideas for driving turnout in both places.
germy
@Jeffro:
I’ve noticed that. We’re told again and again that American workers shouldn’t expect to keep one job for thirty years and retire with a pension. We should expect, we should prepare for, many different career challenges. We should constantly retrain, reinvent ourselves.
And then I see people in the media and in government, ass-polishing the same chair for thirty or forty years.
Jim Appleton
Can we please make this a tagline?
“I saved your damn neighborhood, OK?”
JPL
@Kent: That apparently didn’t concern her when Hillary was running.
burnspbesq
@Yutsano:
TE/GE? It is to laugh. Those folks learned all the wrong lessons from the last time Cincinnati made the front pages.
Marcopolo
@Betty Cracker: The senate numbers were pretty eye popping as well. Ossoff is within reach of actually getting over 50% (this poll has Ossoff 51%-Perdue 45%) which would avoid the runoff. And when a the runoff head to head for the special election showed Warnock beating either Loeffler or Collins.
The caveat here is there was Monmouth GA poll yesterday or the day before that had Perdue 6% over Ossoff. In other words, this is a very good poll for the Ds.
Kent
@Barbara: Maybe so. You are talking about the sunk cost fallacy. But one assumes that she still wants to live in NYC and attend social events without being looked at like she is “Typhoid-Maggie”
One assumes that she is too young to become the next self-pitying wreck like Judith Miller that everyone points to and laughs.
dmsilev
@Betty Cracker: That poll was enough to push Biden (barely) over the 50 percent mark in the 538 model. Relatedly, their model gives Biden a greater chance of winning Alaska (22%) than Trump winning Wisconsin (12%).
All very good signs, but of course we don’t take anything for granted. Not after last time.
Martin
USC Dornslife polls have ticked up to Biden +14. I like the USC poll because it’s unique. They poll the same people over and over. It’s not great at predicting what the actual vote advantage will be, but it does a particularly good job of demonstrating how a fairly representative population are shifting. They release zillions of poll results as they break their population down into a bunch of cohorts, each getting polled on a different day of each week.
So, the +14 isn’t important so much as they’ve never shown a +14 before, suggesting that some Trump supporters are moving to Biden, even just this past week.
BTW, don’t worry about the GOP dropbox scandal in CA. It’s not huge in scale, got caught after like 2 days, and people will be indicted. There will be no impact on the outcome here. Unlikely even that the ballots they collected will be rejected since the Registrars will simply contact the voters and confirm their vote.
A big part of the GOP playbook isn’t just suppressing people’s ability to vote, but also discarding their votes after they’ve been cast (the hanging chad problem). CA addressed this in our last voting legislation by having the Registrars contact the voters and ask them what they intended. That’s why it takes a month to certify the election here – but it’s really hard to get a ballot thrown out here. That still varies a bit by county as we’re phasing this stuff in county by county but most big counties are already there.
Steeplejack
@Gin & Tonic:
Um, not everyone has your C.V. close at hand. I think you’re taking offense where there was none.
SiubhanDuinne
@Immanentize:
Please send that picture to a front-pager! Seeing the Immp’s hand and sticker (I hesitate to ask about the “voting machine finger condom”) would bring happiness to many of us.
Kent
Hey, I’m not in Maggie’s head. But the dynamic is all different today. Back in 2016 they thought they were taking the next president down a peg or two.
Anyone who runs blatant Russian disinformation in October 2020 needs to be permanently purged from polite society with extreme prejudice.
In any event, I agree with the assessment that this is a ridiculous and laughable nothingburger.
Croaker
Well this is useful
ALLEGHENY 370,595 161,863 43.7%
PHILADELPHIA 360,079 123,897 34.4%
MONTGOMERY 235,871 654 0.3%
Marcopolo
@dmsilev: Yeah, I have seen a number of TX politics folks on twitter commenting that what we are now seeing in TX is the result of at least 4-5 years of really hard work by Texas Ds to first, clean up their voter information, second, elect a bunch of great candidates to offices with real power (like Lina Hidalgo the 29 year old Judge in Harris County) in 2018, and third, to bust their asses in registering new voters (3 million new voters in TX since 2016–that is 1/3 the total number of folks who voted in TX in 2016) & putting infrastructure into place to make it easier for folks to vote.
I love it when a plan comes together.
VeniceRiley
The Lincoln Project is making serious bank for its founders from people who want to hit harder and like the style I guess
https://twitter.com/rpyers/status/1316359719225749506?s=21
clay
Taking this at face value (I know, I know), how did Bannon know about them? His name doesn’t come up in the story until now. And why did Giuliani have to learn about it from Bannon? Guiliani was the one who received the copy!
This doesn’t even make internal sense, much less any other kind of sense.
The Moar You Know
One of the things I do at work is digital forensics. The chain of custody as described in this bullshit story alone would preclude any of those drives from ever being used as evidence in court. Not that it will matter. The media will have its horserace and destroy the nation in the process.
Martin
@SC54HI: Yeah. It’s remarkable how every Republican originalist finds the Constitution to precisely align with their personal religious beliefs, without exception.
MomSense
There are some funny tweets to Maggie H
“I just found this thumb drive in a rest stop bathroom that contained signed confessions from Donald Trump and Donald Trump, Jr. in which they admit to being Russian agents.
Please retweet.”
Martin
@clay: Obviously they were Bannon’s laptops.
dmsilev
@Martin: One thing about the USC poll is that it’s a 2 week cycle for them to cover their entire panel, so that +14 is finally taking account the response to the first debate, which was two whole
yearsweeks ago. By this time next week, their poll will have fully accounted for Trump’s COVID bout…dmsilev
@Marcopolo: That’s very encouraging to hear.
MomSense
@clay:
She is wearing a red dress that looks so similar to the Handmaid dress, I can’t believe it. Is she trolling us?
clay
@Martin: Ugh. Please refrain from typing “Bannon’s lap” in the future.
Jinchi
He thinks that students who’ve been stuck in quarantine for a significant percentage of their college tenure will probably not vote? Does he think they’re not allowed to vote if they aren’t attending classes?
Shalimar
@geg6: The Trump goal with having competing town halls is to crow about how his higher ratings show he is really winning the election. Trump is totally convinced he is a terrific showman and everyone will tune in to hear what he says.
No one should hate-watch this trainwreck. Let his ratings crumble. Most of his supporters are not going to tune in to NBC, because they have been told for 4 years that NBC is the enemy.
Martin
Quinnipiac showing Biden +7.
In Georgia.
Marcopolo
@Martin: It’s also a 14 day running poll of the exact same group of people. So they call 1/14 of their cohort each day. Today is the first day that all of the polling is post the first debate. That being the case, it will be interesting now to see if it holds where it is or falls back a little bit as the debate recedes further. Though I guess there is still a day or two of polling before Trump was diagnosed with Covid left in this sample. Amazing the amount of shit that has happened so far this month
Edited dmsilev types a lot faster than I do lol.
germy
@Martin:
I hope all the votes are counted.
piratedan
@Yutsano: would that we could make it so! Its part of the white collar crime that these guys commit so casually, no one has ever enforced THE RULES before, it would be lovely to do so. So instead of paying the taxes that they should, they get a deduction for subverting Democracy and we ALL know its bullshit.
Cheryl Rofer
cope
@clay: Also, how was that subpoena handled…by mail?…email?…phone call?…”Our agent will be by some time next week to get these very important hard drives but don’t…DON’T copy them or anything or look at them before we pick them up”.
Geminid
@Martin: while actual polling numbers are conditioned by polling method, and I take them with a grain of salt, I take trend in the same poll over time as real information. Sounds like the USC poll is very telling.
Jinchi
Trump has already done a town hall and it didn’t exactly break records.
About 70 million people watched the train wreck of a debate at the end of September. About 4 million tuned in to his earlier town hall and slightly less than that for Biden’s. So yeah, he might squeak past Biden in the ratings, but he’s already giving up over 90% of his audience. Not sure why he thinks this will pay off for him politically.
Or for NBC for that matter.
germy
@Cheryl Rofer:
The fix is in!
Dorothy A. Winsor
@Immanentize: Yay for the Immp!
germy
Even the liberal Business Insider smells a rat:
Betty Cracker
@LongHairedWeirdo: I agree it’s not illegal, but there is something dodgy about it, IMO. It has the appearance of influence peddling, and that can undermine public trust in government, even if people who engage in it scrupulously avoid breaking the law.
I think the party would be stronger if more Democrats distinguished themselves from Republicans by not engaging in it or making excuses for it. Biden has said none of his family members will do business with foreign companies if he becomes president. Good!
I’m not sure how something like that can be enforced, but I’m glad he said it because it acknowledges a real problem. It’s an issue that extends to domestic as well as foreign companies. I suspect I’m not alone in thinking it’s gross when politicians’ relatives cash in on a family connection.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@A Ghost to Most: I’ll be interested to hear if they have nerve enough to charge you for a cancelled appointment.
Betty Cracker
@Martin: IIRC, that USC poll turned out to be pretty accurate in 2016 — showed a lot of undecideds breaking for Trump.
Another Scott
@Marcopolo:
Dave Wasserman guesses 150-160M voters this time.
NotLarrySabato says more.
Run up the score!!
Cheers,
Scott.
e julius drivingstorm
Ballot tracker for Miami-Dade says my mail-in vote has been counted. How could Trump win if Florida is called for Biden/Harris on election day – take California?
Leto
@Croaker: Wait, what is that? I’m in MontCo so trying to understand what’s being presented here.
FelonyGovt
@Marcopolo: I voted in California on October 8 by dropping my ballot in a (real) drop box, and my vote has not been counted yet (although my daughter’s has, and she dropped hers at the same time I did- I’m actually a bit worried). Many of my friends and acquaintances have also voted already.
There are a lot more early votes already banked in California.
Jinchi
If only there were a politically oriented news site that could dedicate some coverage to the Biden campaign.
Ah well, we can only dream I suppose.
Squid696
Here are a few extremely positive observations that I have seen here in Houston. There are good D candidates up and down the ballots and they have money to advertise. Republicans have predominated on TV ads in recent years, but not this one. I don’t remember ever seeing a commercial for a Democratic candidate for the Texas House of Representatives. Ever. This year I have seen a bunch of ads for Natalie Hurtado, who is running against Sam Harless. I don’t know if she will win, but I think she is going to do well. Our House candidate, Sima, is running a lot of ads against Dan Crenshaw. He has a ton of ads, too, though. I see many more Crenshaw yard signs than Trump ones. I think I have seen two Trumps signs and maybe two Trump flags in my NW suburban Harris county neighborhood. I have seen three Biden signs, including my own.
LurkerNoLonger
“Here’s a letter to the New York Post
The worst piece of paper on the east coast
Matter of fact the whole state’s forty cents
in New York City fifty cents elsewhere.
It makes no goddamn sense at all
America’s oldest continuously published daily piece of bullshit.”
Public Enemy
laura
@SiubhanDuinne: The Enforcer has spoken – and so say we all!
Sister Golden Bear
@narya: I sent a PR friend of mine a photo of a sign that said:
ChingatumaMAGA
Pendejo
No mas Narajara
(Roughly translated: Fuck you fucking idiot asshole MAGAs, no more Orange”)
She boricuafied it into PR Spanish before reposting with a subtitle.
catclub
@germy: well of course they should put on masks if a guy named germy comes in.
West of the Rockies
@Jinchi:
Charlie Kirk just finished his own collegiate experience a few years ago (assuming he has any) and is already pulling up the stairs behind him. Classic NIMBY Republican. He got to vote but wants to deny others.
Jinchi
@Kay: It doesn’t look at all suspicious that they’re rushing to get a conservative on the court a week before the election just in time to judge on the constitutionality of the health care law (coincidentally scheduled for one week after the election).
?BillinGlendaleCA
@FelonyGovt: Just checked my ballot has been received and verified.
Jinchi
You reminded me to check mine. I noticed that they list the date that the ballot was accepted. You should ask your daughter what date was attached to hers. I wouldn’t be too concerned unless it’s been more than 3 days since then.
Sister Golden Bear
@FelonyGovt: Same. I’m assuming my ballot will get picked up from the drop box, either when it fills up, or else when the county is allowed to start tabulating ballots. (10 days pre-election if I recall correctly.) I’ve got an email alert set up to let me know when delivered to the county election office.
debbie
These assholes who practically called Anita Hill a lying whore have a lot of nerve complaining about attacks against Barrett. I don’t know why I listen to this shit.
catclub
Does anyone know if the 2020 census can be redone (correctly) in 2021?
jonas
Yeah, that caught my eye, too. Little known fact about Hunter Biden: Ph.D in Ukrainian Studies from Harvard.
MattF
@?BillinGlendaleCA: I got an email this morning from the MD Board of Elections saying they have my ballot. My understanding is that the vote-counting (aka ‘canvassing’) will be started in a week, by the county.
sdhays
@catclub: I believe that the Census needs to be accepted by the House, so Nancy can reject the 2020 Census and, assuming Democrats get a trifecta, the next Congress can appropriate money to try again.
Betty Cracker
@sdhays: Interesting. I was wondering that too.
Mary G
@Immanentize: Huzzah! The kids are alright. I love how high school kids are stepping up to work the polls instead of the olds who are at risk.
mad citizen
@MaryRC: “The funny part of Rudy waiting to release his October surprise at the last minute is that the last minute has already passed. People have already voted in the 100s of thousands. They’re voting right now. Too late, Rudy. Shoulda made it a September surprise.”
(I don’t know how to do the quotes in a box thing)
Yes I was saying to my wife in the voting line Monday, what if aliens come down and tell us the orange one is their chosen leader, etc. She said if that happens you’ll have bigger problems.
SiubhanDuinne
@Croaker:
Not without column headings and a link, it isn’t.
Redshift
@Cheryl Rofer: The Twitter exchange between Habeman and Kevin Kruse was sadly hilarious. She got very huffy when he trashed her for amplifying disinformation, saying “didn’t you see my tweets questioning the information?,” leaving him to reply with the inescapable fact that the tweet he was commenting on contained only a quote from the disinformation and a link to the disinformation NYPost article, and any questioning was in tweets that were not connected.
So yeah, Maggie, posting disinformation first and giving it context somewhere else if people read everything you write is the very definition of amplifying.
a thousand flouncing lurkers was fidelio
OT but of interest—one of Governor Bill Lee’s security staff has tested positive for COVID-19, so Lee is now holed up awaiting his own test results. However will Tennessee cope without his firm hand on the tiller, especially with the forecasted cold snap, when we could really use a reliable HVAC guy?
https://twitter.com/tennessean/status/1316459286453800961?s=21
Cheryl Rofer
Eolirin
@Jinchi: Striking down the ACA will give us all the popular support we need to increase the size of the court. If we win the election it’d be suicidal for them to do that.
I don’t know that Gorsuch or Kavanaugh are stupid enough to go along with an attempt to scuttle the ACA. Roberts certainly isn’t.
That’s going to be the sword hanging over their heads for as long as we can hold a trifecta. If you make awful rulings that will piss off voters, you will be made irrelevant on the court. I think we may see the court moderate its positions more than we’ve been maybe anticipating, as long as we do well enough in the election.
Cheryl Rofer
@Redshift: I did not see that. Thanks. Kruse has been doing yeoman’s work putting context to all this. Good for him for going after Haberman.
dmsilev
More news from the early-voting front:
More than 1 million California ballots already cast, shattering records
Jinchi
I’ve been repeatedly shocked by the absurd arguments conservative judges have been willing to accept in these cases. Eliminating the health care law is one of the premier issues of their billionaire sponsors and it’s worth a lot for them to overturn it.
I know that, pre-election, Republicans will try to convince us all that Gorsuch, Kavanaugh and Roberts will save the ACA, but there is a reason Republicans desperately want a 6-3 majority on the court and not a 5-3 majority before the issue comes up.
That said, this is one of the reasons Democrats were smart to talk about expanding the court in recent weeks. Keeping fear alive in the minds of Republican justices may be the best way to save it.
Kent
This is the phenomenon I’m seeing here in the Vancouver area. No one is putting up Trump signs. At least in the suburbs. You still see people painting barns and putting up hay bale signs way out in the country. Instead, the local Republicans are sticking with signs for Herrera-Beutler, our local GOP Congresswoman, or for Culp, the waco “constitutional sheriff” running against Inslee for governor. Seems like Trump is too toxic even for the GOP faithful.
We don’t have that many Biden signs either, but I see a few. There are 3 on my block if you include mine. Our local Congressional race between Carolyn Long and Jaime Herrera Beutler is getting white hot with LOTS of TV ads from both running during NFL games which is the only time I turn on the TV. Last poll was a month ago and had Herrera-Beutler ahead by 2 points so the race is within striking distance. But still a longshot probably.
catclub
But the court with ACB will certainly knee cap any new Voting Rights Act,
also any representative re-districting plans. will still allow state laws the effectively forbid abortion clinics from operating. not to mention all the corporations and money are the only things that actually have rights to vote rulings. any new laws re-empowering unions? – lochnerism
Ken
@catclub: @sdhays: Congress rejected the 1920 census and didn’t reapportion for a decade. If they reject it I’d think there’d be strong pressure for a redo in 2021. I’d like that, both to get the numbers right and as a jobs program.
PJ
@Betty Cracker: The thing is, how do you distinguish between “cashing in” and “making a living”? Some of it is “I know it when I see it”, but many people who have a famous close relative have people doing business with them for that very reason. Do they need to get the people they do business with to pinky swear they are not doing it because they are related to someone famous?
It becomes even more difficult when someone is the child of a famous person, because they’ve probably spent their whole life being known for that. Any job that Chelsea Clinton, or the Bush daughters, or Sasha and Malia apply for, they will be getting in part because of who their parents are.
Kent
I sort of feel like this is similar to how the GOP House voted 100+ times to repeal Obamacare knowing that it would never pass the Senate or get signed by Obama. It was all virtue signaling to the faithful.
I gotta think these lower level judges are kind of doing the same thing. They know the consequence of their decision won’t be to actually repeal the ACA. It just kicks the ball down the road to the next higher court. But at the SCOTUS level they will actually have to live with the consequences of their decisions. It’s not just conservative performance art. Maybe they will still vote to repeal it. But it’s a lot more consequential.
And if they want to repeal the whole thing, rather than just make some technical argument about the mandate, then I don’t see how you repeal the ACA without also repealing Medicare. Either the government can run health care programs or it can’t. If it can’t then every senior in the country loses Medicare. Let’s see how well that plays to the GOP base in places like the Villages.
They are going to be like the dog that caught the car.
Kent
What Biden SHOULD do is pull the numbers back, declare them irrepairably flawed to prevent some court from trying to put them back, do a VERY generous statistical adjustment for undercounts, and then tell the GOP to take it or leave it. If you don’t like it then we do a new census in 2021.
catclub
The ACA is the easiest possible law to save if Biden is elected with the House and Senate. a one line law re-instating the tax penalty (at $1) for non-participation. Democratic politicians may be somewhat disingenous about the risk of losing it. If it polls well to say that, I have no problem with them doing it. When you cannot run against what the GOP actually promises, because voters recoil in horror and say ‘They couldn’t possibly mean that, so I’ll assume that they don’t.’ then running on what polls well is worthwhile.
Ken
Visual editor, highlight the text you want to quote and click the button with the ” symbol.
Text editor, put <blockquote> before the text to quote and </blockquote> after.
WaterGirl
@dmsilev: Holy fuck-ski, Batman!
catclub
@Kent: The ACA Medicaid expansion should have been a separate bill.
I do not follow how Medicare has to go if the ACA is overturned.
Kent
If they try to upend the entire ACA while leaving Medicare in place then they are creating a giant neon flashing sign that says to Democrats that Medicare for All is the only constitutional path towards universal health care.
Fine, we can do that.
And if they try to repeal Medicare they will literally be lynched.
Croaker
@Leto: From earlier posters above.
https://electproject.github.io/Early-Vote-2020G/PA.html
I pulled the data from PA for the following Counties (formatting issues related to this blog)
County
Mail Ballots Requested
Mail Ballots Returned
Percent Returned
ALLEGHENY
370,595
161,863
43.7%
PHILADELPHIA
360,079
123,897
34.4%
MONTGOMERY
235,871
654
0.3%
Kent
On what constitutional grounds can the government NOT provide health care under the ACA but still do it under Medicare and Medicaid?
If they declare that public heath care is outside the power of Congress to provide then they are ruling Medicare unconstitutional as well. Medicare also has taxes that we pay and a lot of similar things to the ACA like marketplaces and subsidized private insurance plans under Medicare Advantage.
Either they find some technical glitch in the ACA that is easily fixed by Congress. Or they rule the whole thing unconstitutional. If they do the latter then it is pretty hard to do so without also ruling Medicare unconstitutional.
Kay
@Sab:
I admit it’s a little alarming. Maybe I’m just in a small group of people who are ultra-peaking but all day all I have heard is so and so is positive or so and so is quarantined. This afternoon magistrate barked at us “no one takes their mask off- this county is about to go red”
I don’t take my mask off but a lot of these asshole Trumpsters do so I was glad he gave orders.
Ken
@Kent: I noted a couple weeks ago that (with one exception) none of the local Republican candidates identified themselves as Republicans on their yard signs. Also, none of them have Trump’s name on their signs – or perhaps they have them available but no one is using them.
Did you see the TRUMP/COLLINS signs in Maine? The Democratic party is distributing them, Collins’s own signs don’t include Trump.
Kay
Snicker. Daines was like their bright spot – “look at how popular! Only 2 points behind the Democrat!”
Jinchi
I think you’re assuming some good faith on the part of the conservative justices. Just because the tax issue was the argument they pushed forward last time, doesn’t mean they can’t make a broader finding if they overturn it.
Barrett for example, argued it also violates religious freedom and she’s of the opinion that if you find any part of the law unconstitutional, the whole thing has to go.
TiredOfItAll
Mid-afternoon musings: Who exactly is it who reads what regular folks tweet at tRump and prevent him from seeing stuff that doesn’t jibe with his narcissistic megalomania? Will that still happen post-election/post-inauguration if he loses? Like, will he have to pay someone to do that job? I plan to join Twitter then just so I can tweet “Don’t let the door hit your ass on the way out” at him. Would love it if he is exposed to the little people tweeting at him and decides it ain’t worth it, and is never heard from again. And don’t get me started on Ghouliani…
Ken
Oh, I hope not, both on moral grounds and because it’s a very very bad precedent.
But if it happens, we need some sort of monument in a highly visible place – perhaps two, on the Capitol rotunda and the Supreme Court steps – so the tragic, shameful event is never forgotten.
Betty Cracker
@PJ: Good questions, and I don’t have all the answers on how to prevent it. For the Bush, Clinton and Obama daughters, it’s not an issue, IMO, because their famous parents no longer hold public office. But it’s at best morally skeevy for an active politician’s relatives to accept bales of money for a low-show board membership at a company whose fortunes are in any way connected with government actions. At least one of Biden’s brothers was openly advertising the family connection to drum up business for a healthcare startup when the ACA was being implemented. Stuff like that is wrong, even if it’s not illegal, IMO.
Kathleen
Woo Hoo! Just checked https://votehamiltoncountyohio.gov/ and saw my ballot was ACCEPTED!!!!
Nora
@Jinchi: That is so not the rule of Constitutional interpretation in general. The rule is that you have to have a “saving construction,” and only if there is NO way the law can be Constitutional are you supposed to overturn it.
Nora
@Jinchi: That is so not the rule of Constitutional interpretation in general. The rule is that you have to have a “saving construction,” and only if there is NO way the law can be Constitutional are you supposed to overturn it.
Jinchi
@Nora: I think it’s a special rule for legislation passed by Democrats. The founding fathers tucked it away in the footnotes somewhere.
Leto
@Croaker: Ah, then yeah that makes sense. We’ve been waiting forever in MontCo to get our mail-in ballots and I’m just going to go out on a limb here and say it’s a targeted effort across the board.
Ruckus
@Kent:
White boy from Los Angeles and I’ve heard pinche for decades. Pinche cabron was quite common for a long time, haven’t heard that for a while.
Pinche cabron is fucking dude, as close as translation allows.
Kay
@Betty Cracker:
Agreed. Gross. Frank Biden is a pitchman for a junky chain of for-profit charter schools, also, or was.
Biden needs to get a handle on it. If he can’t persuade them to stay away from sleazy enterprises he has to draw some clear lines and enforce them, especially if there’s public funding of any of this shit.
Leto
@Croaker: @SiubhanDuinne:
This is the county right next door to Montgomery:
County: requested ballots: returned ballots: percentage returned
BUCKS
167,151
913
0.5%
I know our postal carrier also requested a mail in ballot but has yet to see/deliver any in our area. “Waiting on it just like everyone else.” We’re going to give it to the end of the week, and if it still hasn’t shown, we’re heading to the wife’s workplace which is a satellite voting location to do a provisional ballot. I’m really really pissed off about this.
Croaker
@Leto:
Something is extremely wrong. I have repeatedly called Board of Elections, contacted State Representatives, as well as, contacted Montgomery County Democratic party, etc.
Cannot get through to Dept of State. We have received multiple notifications by post. The latest arrived yesterday addressing Polling place change.
LongHairedWeirdo
@Betty Cracker: I don’t disagree with your main point; but I don’t like the word “dodgy”, because it suggests “kinda wrong”, and remember, this is purely about *appearances*.
I’m saying it would have been a positive thing if Hunter Biden hadn’t taken the position – not that it was a sin, a crime, a lapse, etc., that he did.
And I’ll grant you this: part of the reason I argue this issue relatively strongly is because the Republicans are advancing a bad faith narrative. If we were discussing this in isolation, I might agree that it was a tiny lapse, under the circumstances.
But we’re talking about the ethical equivalent of unshined shoes, a possible bad look. In the context of the Republican narrative – that it was reasonable to want an investigation – Hunter Biden’s a flippin’ angel.
So, while I don’t disagree with what you say, I’m rejecting the conventional premise of the issue, at least in context.
JPL
@Martin: Both local dems and reps laughed at that one. It will be close, and I hope that early voting is a good sign for Biden,
Leto
@Croaker: we received a letter today telling us about our voting location. It’s still the same place. Right after the court ruling regarding not putting the Green Party on the ballot, we received that letter stating ballots would be out in the next 10-14 days and we’re well past that time frame.
I’m contacting Senator Muth about this. She’s my next door neighbor and I might as well do directly to someone who might be able to look into this shit. To have MontCo and Bucks be this low is just absurd.
Fair Economist
@Martin:
I see Biden at + 12.5% on Dornsife. There was one day of +14 polling but it was only one day and there’s a lot of noise in the daily poll.
My take on Dornsife is that most, but not all, of the movement to Biden in the polls is not from people changing their minds but Trump supporters not answering polls. The past two weeks only moved Biden from +9.5 to +12.5 there, or three points. As Nate Silver pointed out, people avoiding polling might also avoid the voting booth, so there might be a turnout effect, but there are 3 weeks to go.
Humanities Prof
@Leto: For us non-Pennsylvanians, where exactly is Montgomery County, and why are its numbers so out of whack with Allegheny (which I assume is Pittsburgh?) and Philadelphia?
Just Chuck
@Yutsano: Do pigs howl?
Leto
@Humanities Prof: Montgomery County boarders Philadelphia. It’s where a lot of people who work in the city live, plus it’s a heavy Dem area. The SE portion of the state is very, very blue. The fact that our entire county, as well as a very large neighboring Dem county, is at 0.3% and 0.5%, respectively, return rate is just absurd and abnormal. The delays/shenanigans with the Postal Office caused by DeJoy have been felt for a while now in the form of delayed mail (bills, prescriptions, packages being weeks late).
While I’m happy that Philly has a better return rate so far (34.4%), the rest of us are potentially being cheated. Again, we have a backup plan for this but some type of fuckery is afoot and my local reps are going to hear about it
Edit: another note- we received an email from the County, on 9/21, stating that our ballots would be to us in 10-14 days. That was almost a month ago. Something’s going on.
Captain C
@West of the Rockies:
You may be underestimating the determined incompetence, thoughtlessness, and cheapness of people like Rudy and his business associates.
ETA: Which they then project onto everyone else.
Yutsano
@Kay: I have been telling everyone and their dog to not sleep on Montana. It’s only bright red on the Presidential level, but Democrats consistently win on the lower levels. The polls aren’t that good for the governor race, but apparently the Democratic candidate for the House has been consistently leading. I can see Bullock winning this with a “no one could have predicted!!!” stories all over the place.
Avalune
@Humanities Prof: Burbs of Philly.
OldDave
@Humanities Prof: Just NNW of Philly. Bucks is just north of Montgomery, or so I’ve been told.
Kent
Suburban Philadelphia and 3rd most populous county in the state after Allegheny (Pittsburgh) and Philadelphia. Was once a GOP stronghold but has trended blue in more recent times and (I think) is mostly blue at the local level.
Lots of corporate employers and colleges like Villanova, Bryn Mawr, Ursinus, and Haverford.
After Philly and Pittsburgh it is the next largest cache of Dem voters in the state.
Croaker
@Leto: Yes that is the one. Turn it over and carefully read through the back section. Make sure to read through the section referring to voting in person if you have received a mail-in or absentee ballot
When I called my rep voice mail. Office did contact back and took my complaint.
Yeah that is a huge problem. Going to eMail Dr. Arkoosh next.
https://www.montcopa.org/788/Dr-Valerie-Arkoosh-Chair
Bill Arnold
@dmsilev:
I get emails from Tom Fitton ([email protected]) (common name, original old gmail address) and in no fucking way is that a non-partisan educational organization, so how the F do they keep their non-profit status?
The latest starts with this about the Steele Dossier[1]
This is a nakedly partisan political operation.
https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/judicial-watch/
“QUESTIONABLE SOURCE”
…
Reasoning: Extreme Right, Conspiracy, Propaganda, Numerous Failed Fact Checks
Country: USA
World Press Freedom Rank: USA 45/180
[1] I have long suspected that the last page of that dossier is grounded in truth, that (perhaps!) the Trump campaign paid hackers in 2016, or more likely contracted to (informally), and stiffed them because they could.
Ken
@Leto: You remind me of a sign anecdote. I saw a “VOTE GREEN PARTY” sign yesterday – just that, no candidate name. I’m speculating that they’re saving money by re-using the sign every election, though I don’t recall seeing it two years ago.
Leto
@Croaker: thanks for the additional link. Added to the contact pile.
Elizabelle
Speaking of Pennsylvania: to remind: tonight is the Spinal Tap reunion, to benefit the Pennsylvania Democrats. Big Bottom, Big Bottom, talk about fascists, Republicans got ’em …. VOTE THEM OUT!
Donate any amount to see the live Spinal Tap Cast Reunion
Yutsano
@burnspbesq: Oh TE/GE needs a big management shake-up sure. You really think the Beverly Hills mob lawyer is going to pull that off? Hell Biden has justification to fire Rettig on day one just for defying the law about releasing Dolt45’s returns to Congress when asked. It wouldn’t surprise if the next Secretary of the Treasury drags him over hot coals for lots of mucks he’s pulled off.
J R in WV
@Croaker:
Actually, it isn’t useful at all, as we don’t’ know what those numbers represent. Hummingbirds per square mile? Number of frogs per mile of river?
What is “Montgomery” for example? Is that a county? What state? Philadelphia is pretty clear (unless we’re talking about the one in Mississippi!), but we still don’t know what the numbers mean.
But thanks for trying!
In other words, please tell us what you’re trying to inform us about here!!! I want to feel good about these numbers, but I can’t without knowing what they represent!
Jeffro
@Ruckus:
I thought it was “fucking a-hole” – at least that’s what they told me back in my restaurant management days. =)
Kay
Obama gets zero credit for this, but his administration was really clean. There wasn’t even an appearance of anyone close to him enriching themselves off it. We should have the same high standard for Biden.
Leto
@Kent:
It is. I know the mid-term (2018) virtually wiped them out in MontCo and some of the surrounding areas, including areas that were strong GOP before. I can’t remember where at the moment, but there was one locality that had been GOP held for almost 40 years that was basically wiped out. Republicans still hold state government by a slim margin, but I don’t think that will be for long.
Avalune
@J R in WV: Montgomery is the large county north of Philly in PA. It is largely democratic. The point I believe is being made is that loads of people requested mail in ballots but only a tiny percentage of these have been returned – primarily because no one has received the ballots which were sent out weeks ago.
All noted places above are counties in PA (including Philadelphia). Allegheny is Pittsburg.
Betty Cracker
@LongHairedWeirdo: Totally agree it’s a bad-faith argument from Republicans. It’s ridiculous for a Trump supporter to accuse anyone else of corruption, and I know they do it just to dirty up the opponent so the media can “both-sides” it.
That said, I think Democrats have an excellent and unprecedented opportunity to make rooting out corruption and restoring faith in clean government a part of their “brand,” and I hope they take it. Trump is the poster boy for such an effort, and I’m confident we don’t know the half of it — more will come out when he’s gone.
And it’s popular! Everyone hates corruption — it’s not a squishy liberal issue; it’s “law and order” of a type we really need because white collar criminals are looting this country. So, in that spirit, I want us to take a hard line — be absolutely squeaky clean. :)
Croaker
@Leto: I have tried the Dept of State.
I just stayed queued for hours on the phone.
Just think 1/3 of that is 77k and if those mail in ballots aren’t delivered in time….
Kent
Yes, cabrón translates better to “asshole” than “dude”. It’s a negative slur for males like asshole, bastard, or jerk. Literally it means male goat.
Avalune
@Croaker: We are definitely getting antsy about the ballots. I do not want to do provisional because of the uncertainty around whether we can really count on those being counted but if it comes to that ? I guess that’s what we will do. So angry. I was cheated out of my 2016 vote also – requested absentee in time (we were stationed in UK) but it never came (thank you South Carolina you do so love the troops – let me tell you about how Sumter county really sticks it to the troops re property tax someday).
Aleta
@Croaker:
“Texas is not reporting mail ballot requests.”
Total voted: 907,054
In person: 541,862
Returned Mail Ballots: 365,192
J R in WV
@Croaker:
OK, THAT is useful. What’s wrong with Montgomery county, anyhoo??? Data entry error, maybe?
Martin
@Betty Cracker: Yes. And it wasn’t so much that the polls were wrong in 2016, as people assume that the undecideds break more or less evenly, and in 2016, they didn’t – they all broke for Trump.
I’m expecting something similar this year but with undecideds breaking for Biden. Undecideds tend to be herd voters. They tend to go where the momentum is. I think that’s really how the ‘but her emails’ NYT did so much damage. I don’t think anything can drop late in the race here that will do the same to Biden given the sheer volume of momentum away from Trump.
Bill Arnold
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes:
Is that salon owner still in business? Any downturn in business due to a local boycott?
Croaker
@Avalune: Yep and you know what will happen with those provisionals. 2016 Vote by the top three Counties.
Vote by county
Trump
Clinton
Philadelphia
108,748
584,025
Allegheny
259,480
367,617
Montgomery
162,731
256,082
Amir Khalid
CNN is reporting that Barron Trump has tested coronavirus positive, according to his mother.
Kent
She fled the city after grifting a bunch of $$$ through gofundme.
opiejeanne
@Kent: I saw just a second or so of Loren Culp’s ad during the football game on Sunday, wasn’t paying attention, but the last item of 3 was something about maggot apples. I have no idea what that’s about unless he’s trying to bring back alar or DDT.
Humanities Prof
@J R in WV: Doesn’t seem to be, because Jackals who live in that county report that they haven’t received ballots yet, and they’re weeks overdue.
Kent
It was stupid and a bonehead move by Inslee. Apparently Inslee brought apples from western WA to eastern WA in violation of the apple maggot quarantine and there were maggots in them. It made the NYT: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/17/us/apples-maggots-washington-inslee.html
James E Powell
@FelonyGovt:
I dropped mine in a drop box at the local library on October 9. It has not been counted yet, according to Riverside County & ballot trax.
prostratedragon
@Another Scott: My fantasy has been 100 million to Biden/Harris. If 150 million or more are cast, they could get there or at least come very close.
WaterGirl
@Jeffro: Or it could just be that Covid Barrett isn’t fit for consideration as a justice on the Supreme Court.
J R in WV
@Croaker:
OK, maybe those ballots have been routed into a couple of tractor-trailers destined for a landfill, by a R-Trump postmaster for the county seat? Sounds probable to me. Something like that going on.
Sounds like a Law Enforcement agency should be interviewing people under oath, searching POs and election offices for ballots and data about mailing ballots. Once cops show up, I bet a flood of delivered ballots happens right away.
WaterGirl
@Croaker: What does that mean?
James E Powell
@Humanities Prof:
In Montgomery County PA in 2016, 22,658 votes were cast by absentee ballot, 424,311 on election day.
Montgomery County went 58.38% for Hillary Clinton, 54.87% for Katie McGinty.
I’m no expert, but I feel like that’s not where the problem was.
WaterGirl
@MomSense: Hahahahahaha
What Have The Romans Ever Done for Us?
@Jeffro: We did the same thing when I was in undergrad during the first Gulf War! I can’t remember what was in our version of the drink either, probably because it got me blitzed enough to affect my memory. Also because it was a loooong time ago.
H-Bob
@LongHairedWeirdo: Agree but I am more annoyed that the press completely ignores that in 2018, the Trump Organization received a $500 million loan from the Chinese government for a project in Indonesia and less than 3 days later, Trump rescinds the national security sanctions against a Chinese company. That is blatant corruption! It got reported in 2018 and then hasn’t been raised since!
Captain C
Captain C
@Captain C:
And from the
commentsreplies:Llelldorin
@James E Powell: Dropped mine off up here in Alameda County on Oct 10; it was just marked as in this morning.
JustRuss
@MisterForkbeard:
Well, it’s really not fair to expect journalistic competence from (checks notes)…. the New York Times White House correspondent.
Marcopolo
@Fair Economist: I don’t think you understand how the USC poll works. They have a static population that they poll continuously over a 14 day cycle. The folks being polled are aware they are in this group. Since 1/14 of the group get polled every day the changes in the numbers are generally closely related to the news cycle. The reason it has ticked up for Biden though today is that the days that were polled pre-debate have been falling off and replaced by post-debate days. Today the last pre-debate day went away and we are left entirely with polling after Trump set himself on fire (and btw catching the ‘rona–which was 1 or 2 days after the debate)
It is not a non-response bias issue.
Ruckus
@Jeffro:
Rough translation and street meaning are often different. I’ve heard other street translations as well, some more, some less colorful. Often depends on speaker/spoken about.
PJ
@Betty Cracker: I think it’s wrong, too, but, outside of public shaming, I’m not sure what you can do to prevent a relative from trading on their name.
Uncle Cosmo
IMO that is a great sign. Putin’s gang wouldn’t be caught dead tossing out anything this crude and obvious. Either Vlad has decided to cut Twitler loose because he has too many problems on the home front (COVID chief amongst them), or the Western intelligence services have joined forces to give him major agita that has him distracted. My guess is that Trumplthinskin is on his own this year – ain’t no one riding in from the Kremlin to bail him out by screwing with voting.