One week out, Don’t Panic….?

by

by Ugh

Grab your towel it's one week to go and per the radio this morning Trump leads by 1% in at least one poll among likely voters post-James Comey's stupidity (I'm being generous, but, please resign, thx).  

In the latest news, unsurprisingly, Trump's tax losses may not be kosher for tax purposes.  Will he release his returns and prove the haters wrong? No.  The Nixon Administration wasn't a cautionary tale, it was a how-to manual!  

More broadly, it seems the GOP has realized a few things.  One, they will not be punished by voters for blocking any and all Democratic SCOTUS nominees, so why not?  Even showing their "letting the voters have their say" via the Presidential election rhetoric was transparent BS is not going to stop or harm them (and, I mean, sh1t, "let the voters have their say" and then decide that you're not going to let voters have their say after all really should be beyond the pale).  I predict if Hillary wins and the GOP retains control of the Senate, we will have an 8 member (or fewer) SCOTUS until after the 2020 election, absent something extraordinary happening.  

Two, that the Democrats weakness is, in the immortal words of General Zod, that they "actually care[] about these . . . . . .these People. These earth People."*  Whereas the GOP, ISTM, in large measure does not, in a kind of "fnck this we're shutting down the federal government and let people suffer, they mostly vote Democratic anyway."  See also, aforementioned SCOTUS nomination, vote suppression, opposition to LGBT rights, promotion of torture, etc.

Three, there is no penalty for straight out lying to the public.  The GOP has so severely discredited the dreaded MSMTM that even indisputable proof will not impact the minds of the GOP base, which is unsurprising, but also it seems large swaths of independent voters.  So, if the NYTimes, or WaPo, or ABC/NBC/CBS or heck even the WSJ report that X is not true with proof, it's just more lies.  

I could go on, but why?

UPDATE:  To go on, one party seems to think widespread, organized, and invidious voter suppression and intimidation is just fine and dandy, thank you. Lying to the federal courts, also, too. But both sides, people, both sides.

*To which Ursa responded in a GOP tone perfect "Sentimental idiot."

390 thoughts on “One week out, Don’t Panic….?”

  1. You: “I predict if Hillary wins and the GOP retains control of the Senate, we will have an 8 member (or less) SCOTUS until after the 2020 election, absent something extraordinary happening.”
    Me: Nuclear Option for SCOTUS nominee within 6 months post election.

  2. Except if the GOP is in control there will be no nuclear option. If the Democrats win then yes, that will be the end of the filibuster for SCOTUS nominees if the GOP goes that route. Dems need 50 senators first (and Hillary). Comey may have prevented it.

  3. If the Democrats win then yes, that will be the end of the filibuster for SCOTUS nominees
    indeed.
    and, i wonder who will get the blame for that…

  6. i wonder who will get the blame for that
    For the last month or so, OBWI has been pretty much unusually amped up but otherwise universal (and risible) partisan hyperbole, but every once in a while a point emerges.
    By declaring their unwillingness to consider any HRC nominee, the GOP is inviting the nuclear option and it is on them.

  7. the GOP is inviting the nuclear option and it is on them.
    i suspect this opinion will make you unpopular at GOP gatherings, come 2017.

  10. I have voted early, due to a short-lead-time business trip next week.
    It’s over. I didn’t vote for Trump. I didn’t vote for Clinton, either. I could not in good conscience vote for either.

  11. This would be true if I attended GOP gatherings. I don’t.
    it will always be true, regardless if you attend or not.

  12. Nothing but 100% truth here at ObWi Intergalactic HQ.
    I report, y’all decide.
    That said I’m happy to correct the record.

  13. The current Senate filibuster rules have become a political joke, and they should be thrown out…same goes for “holds”. Small population states (cf. Vermont, NH, Idaho, etc.) will still have an outlandishly overstated amount of political power, but the institution is on the verge of self immolation.

  14. “risible”….I love the drive by contempt conveyed with those soft vowels. You and Scott Lemieux have more in common than you think.

  15. “we’re shutting down the federal government and let people suffer, they mostly vote Democratic anyway.”
    It occurs to me to wonder what the effect will be if, rather than a shutdown, there is simple refusal to pass a farm bill. If that can’t get out of the House, it might cause a sea change in the politics of a lot of (small) farm states.

  16. I predict if Hillary wins and the GOP retains control of the Senate, we will have an 8 member (or less) SCOTUS until after the 2020 election, absent something extraordinary happening.
    Does having another of the conservative Justices be the next to die count as “something extraordinary”?

  17. I predict if Hillary wins and the GOP retains control of the Senate, we will have an 8 member (or less) SCOTUS until after the 2020 election, absent something extraordinary happening.
    Does having another of the conservative Justices be the next to die count as “something extraordinary”?

    Could be! But for extra extraordinariness, it would have to be John “lawless” Roberts that descends to his well-earned spot in Hel.
    A Supreme Court without a Chief Justice? That would be new.

  18. 1) I voted today, well I mailed my absentee ballot.
    2) It really didn’t feel much like voting. So I sent several more just in case they got lost.
    3) No one cares who I voted for, unless Hillary(or Trump but I am speaking of mostly people here) loses Florida by one vote. Then I really didn’t vote at all, wait that doesn’t help. Oh well, what are the chances there would be a recount in Florida in my lifetime anyway?

  19. I think it is entirely too hard to capture the SCOTUS with nine so we should just go back to 5, I get to pick who stays.

  21. I get to pick who stays.
    Nope. Let it go to zero. Who cares, right? And let’s choose Senators by random lot while we’re at it.
    Government should be fun.

  23. Whomever it is at the FBI that thinks things will be better for them under a Trump rather than Clinton administration will be sorely mistaken, especially when someone informs President Trump that J. Edgar Hoover no longer runs the place….

  26. If the GOP holds the Senate, then we’ll probably have a full Supreme Court earlier than 2020… because after Clinton and Kaine get impeached in the first 100 days, the Senate will rubber-stamp whatever Federalist Society drone gets nominated by President Ryan.

  27. Thanks for the link to LGM provided by bobbyp, (2d of 3 above), with two caveats:
    1) The list of newspapers endorsing Trump omits The Crusader, official organ of the Ku Klux Klan.
    2) Bobbie Joe McAllister did not jump off the Waxahachie Bridge (in Texas), but the Tallahatchie Bridge (in Mississippi)
    If you can’t trust Lawyers, Guns, OR Money, whom can you trust?

  28. Per the Constitution, the Senate would have to cough up a 2/3 majority for conviction of an impeached Hillary Clinton.
    Ain’t gonna’ happen. + the fact that the last time they (GOP) tried that stunt it didn’t turn out so well for them.

  31. Lots of people eagerly awaiting a Trump victory so they can take the mask off.
    Must be another economically anxious person. No? Oh, surprise!

  35. Well, if the “Freedom Caucus” has its way, Ryan won’t have to agonize over trying to work with lunatics for much longer. Not that it’s obvious who might be able to square the necessary circles any better.

  36. “risible”
    hey, that’s my 25 cent word!
    I got dibs on “mendacious”, too.
    In any case, we’ll see what there is to laugh about this time next week.

  37. I have to say it would be very strange to have Clinton plus a democratic Senate and “Freedom Caucus” led House, all after a single election. Would say something about how gerrymandered the House is.

  43. Would say something about how gerrymandered the House is.
    i haven’t seen a single commercial for any NC House races. i see dozens per hour on the Senate race. quite a few Clinton, fewer Trump. but no House races at all. i don’t think i have seen signs for either person in the House race in my district. and apparently there hasn’t been any polling done.

  47. Donald, that NYMag piece starts:

    Michael Morell is a former acting director of the CIA and a national security adviser to Hillary Clinton — one who is widely expected to occupy a senior post in her administration.

    i looked, briefly, but found no evidence at all that Morell is linked in any way to the Clinton campaign, that he ever worked for her as an advisor, or that he was “expected to occupy a senior post in her administration”.
    do you have any info on this?

  48. Anil Dash’s 10 Rules of Internet include what he calls “The Law of Fail”:

    Once a web community has decided to dislike a person, topic, or idea, the conversation will shift from criticizing the idea to become a competition about who can be most scathing in their condemnation.

    I’ve seen this play out in all kinds of communities, from elementary school onward, so I figure there should be a sociology/social psych term for it. What is it?

  53. Russell:
    It’s not bullying, because it’s not necessarily directed at a *person*. Also, bullying is often done where no-one but the target can see. I’m talking about a kind of performative hate, where status in a social group is enhanced by how nastily/creatively you hate the right thing/person.
    McKinneyTexas:
    I don’t think that’s what social psychologists call it. And I don’t really see the connection between “privilege” and performative hate, either.

  55. Risible privilege in a white wine sauce.
    Even better.
    I don’t think that’s what social psychologists call it. And I don’t really see the connection between “privilege” and performative hate, either.
    Doc, I’m having a bit of fun in these unfun times. You raise a very real point and it deserves serious discussion. Everyone is a little batty these days. Maybe in a couple of weeks you can post on this topic in more detail and maybe we can all talk about how we start talking to each other again.

  56. (OT: Just out of hospital, bleeding and miserable, a much bigger deal than I expected. Plus, mouse situation is yuuuge and we have had to call in professionals who will charge a fortune, but are much more au fait with what needs to be done with an infestation of this sort.)
    But, more to the point: I have a feeling that the kind of partisan ObWi comment that McKT found risible could have been exemplified by one of mine, in which I said that even a criminal HRC (if that is what she turned out to be) would be much preferable as President to a Trump as President. I actually hold to that comment, with even more certainty than when I made it. Whatever her (arguable) malfeasance, the record shows she has devoted a large part of her professional life to what she (and many reasonable people) think is the common good: e.g. women’s rights, child health etc. Trump has devoted himself to bugger all except Trump, his whole entire life. His lies dwarf hers, many of his supporters are the lowest of the low (KKK etc), and his knowledge of the world (economics, international affairs etc) is the truly risible thing. Risible if it wasn’t so serious. Whatever Marty, McKT or any other conservatives may think, Trump is a danger to the world, and HRC (pace NV and Donald) is not. The rest of the world knows this, and is watching in horror. Marty, IIRC, says he doesn’t care about the opinion of the rest of the world, but repercussions in the wider world affect the US, just as the reverse is true. Whatever Marty or McKT say about the moral equivalence between HRC and Trump, one of them is going to be President, and anybody who thinks there is nothing to choose between them is not living in the real world. I’m with sapient, this is the most nervewracking and terrifying US election (or any election) I have ever seen.

  59. I’m talking about a kind of performative hate, where status in a social group is enhanced by how nastily/creatively you hate the right thing/person.
    Like making fun of Kenny G and/or his music?

  60. Risible if it wasn’t so serious
    indeed.
    but, those of us who can stomach a little compromise will do our best to keep Trump out of office – even if it means we have to accept the responsibility of allowing Clinton to disappoint us all somehow.

  61. Like making fun of Kenny G and/or his music?
    Sorta’. But do people derive status from deriding G’s stuff, or is it just the right thing to do?

  62. Whatever Marty, McKT or any other conservatives may think, Trump is a danger to the world, and HRC (pace NV and Donald) is not.
    Have I ever argued against this statement? Interestingly, I was visiting with a client yesterday–a Balkans intervention vet (and no fan of HRC) and as conservative as anyone in TX–who, like the majority of conservative Texans I speak to, raised exactly the point you make here.
    Whatever Marty or McKT say about the moral equivalence between HRC and Trump, one of them is going to be President, and anybody who thinks there is nothing to choose between them is not living in the real world.
    Again, these are not my words. Even if I find HRC to be less distasteful than Trump, which I do, I’m not voting for her.
    I get it from both sides that my decision is tantamount to a vote for the greater of two evils. Ok, fine. Sue me.
    If we get HRC as president, it’s because the idiot Republicans picked Trump as their candidate.
    If we get Trump as president, it’s because the idiot Democrats picked HRC as their candidate.
    We are in an election in which the principal driving factor in favor of the two major candidates is the pitiful state of their respective opponent.
    I’m not dropping in to tell HRC’s supporters why she’s awful anymore than I look for opportunities to argue with Trump supporters (most of whom NV/HRC analogues).
    In fact, I’m through with discussions about how shitty people are who don’t agree with X, Y, Z or me, which is becoming the default position in almost any discussion about current affairs, regardless of where people fall on the political spectrum.
    I’m also out on discussions that begin and end with name calling and assumptions of bad faith.
    I think the Doc’s idea is a good one and one well worth keeping in mind.

  63. I’m also out on discussions that begin and end with name calling and assumptions of bad faith.
    When you start by terming discussion as ‘risible’, that seems like you are asking for it…

  64. I certainly don’t think you’re shitty, McKinney, despite the fact that you (mostly) don’t agree with me, specifically about not taking the opportunity to make the only meaningful vote against Trump. And I don’t assume bad faith on your part, just lack of imagination. Perhaps it’s easier in Europe to see how even mediocre demagogues like Trump, appealing to people’s worst instincts, can morph into, or at least usher in, something really, truly horrific? Whatever the reason, roll on the 9th, when we can go back to arguing about less weighty matters.

  65. DocSci – I’ve seen this play out in all kinds of communities, from elementary school onward, so I figure there should be a sociology/social psych term for it. What is it?
    Don’t know about the soc/psych term for this, but in the literature of online interactions they refer to these pile-ons as “cybercascades.”

  66. I certainly don’t think you’re shitty, McKinney, despite the fact that you (mostly) don’t agree with me, specifically about not taking the opportunity to make the only meaningful vote against Trump. And I don’t assume bad faith on your part, just lack of imagination.
    GFTNC, I was speaking generally, not to any one person and certainly not you. You’re one of the kindest people here.

  70. To hear NC officials say it, those letters are being sent out by “private” parties, so the local government officials are responding with the old, “What? Who, me? How dare you!” line (what I think I heard on NPR this am).
    Yeah, some guy(s) in a garage just decided to mail out thousands of letters at considerable expense to randomly chosen names on the rolls fishing for “undeliverable” returned mail.
    Riiiiiiiiiigght.

  71. I’m also out on discussions that begin and end with name calling and assumptions of bad faith.
    Hell’s bells, man. All I want to do is swindle you on the golf course.

  73. So I see a tweet that says Trump said today there will be additional WikiLeaks emails released later today and he will comment on them tomorrow. WTF?

  74. prediction: they contain absolutely nothing. but the press will wet themselves in glee over having another reason to say “Hillary Clinton” and “email” in the same sentence.

  75. Hell’s bells, man. All I want to do is swindle you on the golf course.
    If I can find a business reason to get to Seattle with a day on one side or the other, you will have an unrestricted shot at my wallet. I will take only 2.5 extra strokes a side (in addition to the handicap differential) to balance out the home course advantage, even if honor compels you to demand that I take more. And, you will need to publicly declare your handicap in advance. You may send me your GHIN in a private email.
    Seriously, I’d love to play a round with you and have no objection to a modest wager.

  78. A recent poll had Hillary at 59% disapproval — just like Donald Trump.
    Treating this sort of poll as non-risible (pending McKinney’s infallible judgement) it would be nice to know which of the following extreme inferences is closer to reality:
    1) Maximum overlap: about 60% of the electorate disapproves of both candidates and will let the other 40% decide the election.
    2) Minimum overlap: about 20% of the electorate disapproves of both candidates and will let the other 80% decide the election.
    I find it hard to believe in the maximum-overlap case, myself. But even in the minimum-overlap case, it would be interesting to compare the reasons the 20% give for disapproving each candidate at the same time. Given the completely different personas and histories of HRC and DJT it seems unlikely that a rational, reasonably-informed 20%er disapproves of both for the same reasons.
    The validity of the reasons is of course irrelevant at this point. We’re holding an election next week, not refereeing an Oxford Union debate. Still, some poor sap a hundred years from now will be trying to write a history of early 21st century America. From the vantage point of a century later, the reasons will be judged, and some of them will surely seem risible.
    –TP

  79. McKinney,
    In the spirit of being a gracious host, no problem. Looking forward to it. You’ll lay me 10-1, right? If I ever get to Dallas (I think that’s where you reside?) you will undoubtedly give me 5 strokes at the start in exchange! Thanks.
    Best Regards,
    theonlyalmostmarxistgolferyouwillmostlikelyeverencounter.

  80. There’s been a lot for f interesting stuff in the wikileaks emails, though I suppose if people only look at it for the pov of how it helps or hurts Clinton in the election attitudes will differ. But it does show how the sausage is made on some issues or shows people saying in private things they deny in public. One email says the Saudi government supports ISIS, for instance. In a normal world that would be front page stuff and people would be asking Clinton and/or Obama to confirm or deny it. Another shows Clinton admitting that a no fly zone would involve killing many Syrians. And here is a piece about the behind the scenes politicking and lobbying about Israel that one sees in the emails–
    http://www.jta.org/2016/10/20/news-opinion/politics/leaked-emails-show-hillary-clinton-eager-to-patch-things-up-with-netanyahu

  81. “If I ever get to Dallas (I think that’s where you reside?) ”
    watch out man, you’re getting close to fighting words!

  82. In a normal world that would be front page stuff and people would be asking Clinton and/or Obama to confirm or deny it.
    In a normal world, people wouldn’t be celebrating the fact that private correspondence is published on the Internet.

  83. In a normal world, people wouldn’t be celebrating the fact that private correspondence is published on the Internet.
    Let me revise that: In a normal world, people wouldn’t be celebrating the fact that private correspondence is stolen, and then published on the Internet by foreign gangsters eager to see a right wing dictatorship take over the U.S. government.

  85. So…we should ignore it sapient?
    Well, I am not giddy about reading all of it, but if you are, go right ahead. It’s “out there” and obviously we can’t put it back. But cherry picking whatever seems sensational during an election in order to help out the perpetrators of the crime seems in bad taste. (And, by the way, it is a crime to steal electronic information, so thanks, FBI!) Publishing stolen private information is also rather sketchy, and I’m not sure the First Amendment really was designed to suborn theft, although that’s all the rage now.
    Ignore it? I guess we can’t ignore it, but putting it into very careful context, and keeping in mind that its value as “truth” is questionable, since much of it might be gossip, or banter, or just a free exchange of ideas, or misinformed opinion, or careless speech, or whatever. If you like spying on other people’s private conversations, it’s certainly a goldmine.

  86. I also love the fact that so many people here have held Snowden in such high regard and were shocked, just shocked and appalled that the NSA might have been collecting people’s metadata in order to search it (with a warrant), but are perfectly fine with Russian agents collecting actual private data in order to embarrass people.
    And Donald loves calling people hypocrites.

  87. Got back a little bit ago from 3 hours of phone banking. I’ll go again on Friday eve & Saturday afternoon, and then put in LOTS of hours on Tuesday. I’m not pollworking this year, my health has been too fragile this summer & fall to sign up for a 16-hour work day. Working the phones for Hillary I can take breaks & stretch from time to time. Also, we’re working out of an office upstairs from a brewpub. *G*
    Yo, is Marty around? I’d be interested to hear how his SO’s volunteering for Trump in FL is going, for comparison purposes.

  91. sapient, there is perhaps a tiny sliver of daylight between the government clandestinely monitoring private conversations of all sorts between EVERY. CITIZEN. IN. THE. COUNTRY. and private work conversations between public officials on matters of national policy, proposed or otherwise. Should either be happening? No. Is one more troubling than the other? Yes. Is it the violation of poor Senator Clinton’s privacy that is the much more dire, and far more upsetting of the two? I really can’t see that there’s any question there – and neither can you, albeit for all the wrong reasons.
    Also, WTH do you mean “might have been” collecting domestic metadata (to say nothing of your risibly underqualified “with a warrant” parenthetical)? That much is not controversial. You want to sit and fling brickbats at Donald for being a hypocrite for not professing to adhere to the same moral outlook as you? Feel free to take one to the back of yer own noggin for professing to not adhere to the same reality as the government you so eagerly carry water for… Or in case I’m being too “vague”, you’re lying, sapient. You’re lying about matters of well-established public record, and you’re doing in the same breath that you’re casting yourself as morally superior to those who disagree with you. Which, I will also note in the interest of not being vague, falls quite neatly under the other sense of the word “hypocrite”…

  92. sapient, there is perhaps a tiny sliver of daylight between the government clandestinely monitoring private conversations of all sorts between EVERY. CITIZEN. IN. THE. COUNTRY. and private work conversations between public officials on matters of national policy, proposed or otherwise. Should either be happening? No. Is one more troubling than the other? Yes. Is it the violation of poor Senator Clinton’s privacy that is the much more dire, and far more upsetting of the two? I really can’t see that there’s any question there – and neither can you, albeit for all the wrong reasons.
    Also, WTH do you mean “might have been” collecting domestic metadata (to say nothing of your risibly underqualified “with a warrant” parenthetical)? That much is not controversial. You want to sit and fling brickbats at Donald for being a hypocrite for not professing to adhere to the same moral outlook as you? Feel free to take one to the back of yer own noggin for professing to not adhere to the same reality as the government you so eagerly carry water for… Or in case I’m being too “vague”, you’re lying, sapient. You’re lying about matters of well-established public record, and you’re doing in the same breath that you’re casting yourself as morally superior to those who disagree with you. Which, I will also note in the interest of not being vague, falls quite neatly under the other sense of the word “hypocrite”…

  94. watch out man, you’re getting close to fighting words!
    Apologies…old and forgetful. Hey, how ’bout those Cubs? Great 7th game.

  96. Who says Trump is not a uniter? It seems he is supported by black supremacists too not just the KKK. 😉
    http://www.miaminewtimes.com/news/the-blacks-for-trump-guy-at-florida-rally-is-former-yahweh-ben-yahweh-cult-member-8843111
    Rachel Maddow had a long segment on that but I know that some here won’t go near anything MSNBC.
    In all seriousness this is just another example that in cases of doubt extremists will unite against the moderates over fighting each other (like there were informal alliances between Nazis and communists in Weimar Germany to fight the Social Democrats).

  97. Doc just phone bank work, three hour shifts.
    The summary was that a few answer, most were polite, one started swearing. I didn’t get much more, we avoid politics pretty much this election.

  98. the government clandestinely monitoring private conversations of all sorts between EVERY. CITIZEN. IN. THE. COUNTRY.
    the government storing metadata, not clandestinely monitoring private conversations, just as it now scans the outside of every envelope at the post office

  100. and private work conversations between public officials on matters of national policy, proposed or otherwise
    Podesta is not a public official. the emails published were not produced as official government business. he is a private citizen, working on a political campaign. that makes him a juicy target for opposition larcenists, sure. it doesn’t give us any right or justification or excuse to see his emails; and it certainly doesn’t lessen the crime, which was perpetrated by a foreign power for the sole purpose of influencing our elections.

  101. Sapient, I think it was wrong for wikileaks to publish everything they get– lots of private stuff should have stayed private. Should the hackers be prosecuted if caught? Yes, especially if they are working for Russia.
    Should people ignore information obtained about policymaking if the information is obtained illegally? If the government finds info o genuine terrorist plotting through its illegal spying, should they ignore that? No. I have read speculation that the material on Trump’s taxes might have been obtained illegally. If so, should the NYT not publish it?
    Since politicians regularly lie about the most serious things imaginable and spy on people and since the government often punishes whistleblowers who go through channels, I am not going to get real upset if various journalists publish what one can learn about what the Clinton people say on policy matters behind closed doors. The purely gossipy stuff Which doesn’t touch on policy doesn’t deserve comment, but that seems to be what many journalists focus on and I suppose it is what Clinton defenders also prefer to talk about, since then they can focus on its triviality and the violation of privacy. One would expect some backbiting in any group.
    But anyone interested in the Israel Palestine issue will find it interesting how positions are put together and how it came about that Clinton says the BDS movement is antisemitic. Anyone interested in Clinton’s Syria policy will want to know that she privately acknowledged that imposing a no fly zone would kill many Syrians. Anyone would want to know that privately they talk about how the Saudi government supports ISIS. This is called news.

  103. Sam Wang currently has Clinton at 98%
    http://election.princeton.edu/
    i don’t know who is better at this prediction stuff.
    but, the damage is already done. the GOP has effectively destroyed several long-standing norms about what is acceptable in a candidate and a campaign.

  104. Thanks cleek, that has steadied me a bit, although I have a high regard for Nate Silver after his astonishing success last time. But what you say is right, and I guess that’s also partly what Frum is saying.

  106. “If I ever get to Dallas (I think that’s where you reside?) “
    Actually, it’s Houston. Dallas is somewhere north of here. I’m not sure how far. Or where exactly. Technically it’s part of TX. Technically.
    Most of my golf is in Austin. Hill Country golf is pretty impressive stuff and if you are ever in Austin, I can put you on two of the finest courses in the state. Once I have your handicap, we can negotiate from there. For a semi-commie, you have some fairly mercenary, capitalist instincts. I like that.
    it doesn’t give us any right or justification or excuse to see his emails; and it certainly doesn’t lessen the crime, which was perpetrated by a foreign power for the sole purpose of influencing our elections.
    Two items here. First, there is an invasion of privacy, which all of us should be concerned about. Obama was elected to the senate, in part, because sealed family court records somehow got unsealed. One of the Clinton scandals of yesteryear was the mysterious appearance of FBI files in the White House. So, yes, there is a lot to be said on the topic of privacy and it’s my non-risible, infallible opinion that sensitivity to privacy invasions is often a matter of convenience and expediency. It would be nice if we could move to a one-size-fits-all rule of thumb and stick to it.
    The second point here gets minimal play and analysis, which is an embarrassment to the right. The Russians are screwing with us across the board in every way they can. With zero pushback. What are we going to do about it? Does anyone think this is going to end? That Putin is going to find Jesus, so to speak, and turn away from his nefarious ways?

  107. For a semi-commie, you have some fairly mercenary, capitalist instincts. I like that.

    Most communists are capitalist where their own money is concerned.
    >:]

  108. What are we going to do about it? Does anyone think this is going to end? That Putin is going to find Jesus, so to speak, and turn away from his nefarious ways?
    I can think of one way of interpreting “find Jesus” that would imply something we could “do about it” that would “end” this. But, like George H.W. Bush said, we don’t do that.

  109. HRC’s “work emails” are certainly a matter of public interest: she was employed by ‘the people’ at the time.
    And yet, as Sec. State, she was the US top diplomat. You know, like the classic definition: “An ambassador is an honest gentleman sent to lie abroad for the good of his country.”
    So, seeing lies and duplicity in the work emails? That means she was DOING HER JOB. Sheesh. She doesn’t get that “license to kill” thing until NEXT year.
    Personal emails should be out of bounds.

  110. Is this overly speculative, or is it just speculative enough, given the lack of sharing of tax returns?
    I’d say the odds that Trump avoided or evaded (one being legal the other not) Medicare taxes are probably close to 100%. It was (and probably is) very common to do this via an S-corp for personal services by having the client hire the S-Corp and then taking a small salary from the corp – which is subject to Medicare taxes – and the rest in dividend distributions which are not. That Trump, as it seems, took a paltry salary while also making millions edges would probably push Trump toward the evasion side of the avoid/evasion divide.
    John Edwards used this approach to avoid Medicare taxes, IIRC. Not sure he was quite as egregious though.

  111. which is an embarrassment to the right
    the way the right has abandoned so much of its identity in order to fit behind Trump is shocking.
    the thought that the US right would tolerate Russian meddling in an election would’ve been unthinkable – and given Manafort, there’s a chance it wasn’t indirect. OK, maybe if Russia was being led by someone more friendly to the west and who was a champion of Freedom™, i could kindof see it – but Putin is a caricature of a Russian strongman. and Trump has praised him, repeatedly; just as he’s praised Kim Jong Un, and Saddam, and Qaddafi. even though his praise of those people was qualified, what he did say would’ve been effectively disqualifying for anyone, left or right, in past elections.
    but that norm is gone. the GOP is now undoubtedly the party of strongmen who love other strongmen.
    disrespecting vets, disrespecting Purple Heart recipients, disrespecting everyone who served by claiming sleeping around was his ‘personal Vietnam’, disrespecting the current military leadership, disrespecting the intelligence services, disrespecting our treaties and alliances – the GOP endorses him loudly and proudly.
    nobody needs to ever again bother with the fiction that the GOP is the party who loves the military the most.
    any one of Trump’s ever-growing number of marital and sexual transgressions would have caused the leading lights of evangelical right-wing Christianity to weep and gnash his teeth, in any other candidate. multiple rape charges, sexual assault alleged and bragged-about – even with underage women! but suddenly they’ve realized that Jesus was all about forgiveness of past sins! bygones!
    let us never hear the phony moralizing of frauds like Franklin Graham or Bill Bennett ever again. never again will appeals to your religion get an ounce of respect out of me.
    Trump’s religiosity is clearly bogus. but we had to listen to months of criticism of Obama’s churchgoing habits and years of speculation about who he truly worships? i guess we can thank Trump for blowing the issue of candidates religion off the table.
    taxes? no candidate should ever have to release his/her taxes again.
    his foundation is clearly a piggy bank that he cons other people into funding so he can by gaudy trinkets for himself. he’s a third-world dictator in training. GOP? “cool with us”!
    he has no fixed opinions (except his own opinion of himself). is there any he hasn’t flip-flopped on? taxes, abortion, war, conservatism, liberalism, the Cubs ? more than one politician has gone down for the sin of changing his/her mind on something.
    never again!
    he’s a con-man. he’s a cheat. he’s a serial philanderer. he’s a sexual predator. he’s ignorant about everything except how to swindle people out of their money. he doesn’t seem to know how government works.
    his lying is off the charts in frequency and magnitude. it’s not even news anymore when he tells the kind of lie that would have sunk any other candidate in the history of US politics. he lies and lies and lies, constantly.
    and the Republican party cheers.
    and that’s the one that’s going to leave the biggest mark, IMO. he has shown that the taboo against lying is toothless.
    the GOP has abandoned all of the moral standards it used to at least aspire to abide by and enforce. and now it fully embraces Trump’s cult of personality – top to bottom.
    and should it go back to its finger-wagging, moralizing and scolding about any of that stuff, i’ll feel fully justified in dismissing it as hypocrisy.
    i feel for those of you who won’t drink the kool-aid. but i’m sure you know that you’re in the minority.

  112. Ugh, I thought under ACA that dividends now attract the Medicare tax.
    If Trump is evading–illegal–or avoiding–legal–can’t the IRS figure that out?
    He has reasons–not good ones–for nondisclosure, but it’s doubtful we are going to see nefarious activity that the IRS hasn’t already had a look at.

  114. “So, seeing lies and duplicity in the work emails? That means she was DOING HER JOB.”
    And exposing current or former government officials who lie is the job of the press, or is supposed to be. Russians or other foreign countries trying to influence us in various ways, some nefarious, is their job, as our sometimes nefarious influence on them is our job. A separate tape from an interview Clinton had with an obscure New York magazine shows her saying we should have made sure that the right people won the Palestinian election. She wasn’t in a position to do that in the mid 00’s, but if she were it would have been her job and exposing it would be the job of journalists.
    So everyone has a role to play. Glad we settled that.

  115. HRC’s “work emails” are certainly a matter of public interest: she was employed by ‘the people’ at the time.
    her time as a public servant stopped when she left the State Dept.. after that, she’s a private citizen. Podesta’s emails are from the latter time period, right?

  117. He has reasons–not good ones–for nondisclosure, but it’s doubtful we are going to see nefarious activity that the IRS hasn’t already had a look at.
    I lean that way, myself. But it doesn’t mean it wouldn’t look really bad politically for this self-purported Man of the People to be operating this way. The hardcore supporters will just say he’s smart, but some number of the more wishy-washy fence-sitters might choose not to vote for him.

  118. Ugh, I thought under ACA that dividends now attract the Medicare tax.
    Could be, but even if the ACA has put a stop to this kind of thing (although not sure how it applies to S-corporations), it’s almost certain that he was doing this pre-ACA, although not the focus of Goldberg and Graetz’s editorial. BTW, both of whom are esteemed in the tax community, Goldberg being the only person, I believe, to ever service as IRS Commissioner, IRS Chief Counsel, and Assistant Treasury Secretary for Tax Policy (the highest tax post at Treasury). And now I see that they mention Edwards in Gingrich in the editorial.
    If Trump is evading–illegal–or avoiding–legal–can’t the IRS figure that out?
    You mean the well functioning and fully funded IRS that all Americans, especially those currently in control of Congress, hold in high regard and thus attracts some of the top talent to enforce the nation’s tax laws? That IRS?
    The issue here is that the Code requires people who are “employed” by their wholly owned corporation to declare and pay taxes on a “reasonable” salary. That’s a squishy standard and so anytime the IRS wants to bring up the issue – except in egregious cases of which Trump’s might be one – they’re in for battle over reasonableness that is messy and time consuming and often doesn’t involve a lot of tax, especially if they’ve got bigger fish to fry with the same taxpayer, which also seems to apply in Trump’s case.
    But maybe they did figure this all out and Trump paid back taxes plus penalties and interest – but we don’t know because Trump won’t release his tax returns.

  120. I think some of those private emails are about public policy issues. For instance, I am not sure which category the Syrian no fly zone or the “Saudi govt supports ISIS” falls into. I read the reports for the content and didn’t pay attention to whether the emails were private or government. The distinction blurs anyway– Blumenthal was writing to her about Libya during the period of our glorious intervention there. Were his emails private or public?
    The Israeli-Palestinian emails are all campaign documents from 2015 and maybe later and you get to see who influences her and what they want her to say and do on Netanyahu, BDS, the Iran deal and so forth. That’s news. I would expect every blogger and/or journalistic outlet which is interested in that subject would be looking at the relevant emails and so far as I can tell, this is true. I cited the JTA above. I would assume “Electronic Intifada” wrote about it.
    Most of what I have seen in the mainstream has focused either on the gossipy trivia (Neera said this or that nasty thing about her boss) or about the real or alleged influence peddling and most of the mainstream liberal Democratic Clinton supporters focus on that stuff too, in order to dismiss the leaks in toto as worthless nothingburgers. Well, the Syrian no fly zone may be what we are talking about next year. There is clearly a push by the mainstream foreign policy “community” to push the US into a more militaristic posture. Obama is seen as too passive, too weak. Clinton is more their style. We see some of this push for a more aggressive position in the emails. Whether they are State Dept or later, they are still relevant. The only way they wouldn’t be is if they are forged.

  121. I lean that way, myself. But it doesn’t mean it wouldn’t look really bad politically for this self-purported Man of the People to be operating this way. The hardcore supporters will just say he’s smart, but some number of the more wishy-washy fence-sitters might choose not to vote for him.
    If my magic wand was even semi-functional, it would be law that a candidate for elective federal office had to produce his/her last five year’s income tax returns, and their tax returns while in office would be public record.

  122. McTX wrote:
    “If we get HRC as president, it’s because the idiot Republicans picked Trump as their candidate.
    If we get Trump as president, it’s because the idiot Democrats picked HRC as their candidate.”
    Several paragraphs later he concluded:
    “I’m also out on discussions that begin and end with name calling and assumptions of bad faith.”
    Do we not find such close juxtaposition of those three sentences highly …. r-r-risthable?
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kMGu-55sKJs
    Watch to the end if you aren’t familiar with the clip.
    I suppose, in lawyerly fashion, McTX would counter that the utterance of the word “idiot” in reference, twice, to nearly the entire American electorate occurred in the middle of the thread discussion AND the middle of his comment, and thus is not in strict violation of the rule laid down about the beginning and end of discussions he is out on.
    There must be a Latin legal term for that.
    ad trumpus hillarum
    Me, I go for it and egregiously violate the posting rules bang up front and at the bitter end of virtually every comment.
    Carry on.
    Enjoy the risibility while we can.
    Because the introduction to life in America after next Tuesday, regardless of who loses, is “And now for something completely different.”
    Anyone who laughs will get a bullet to the brainstem.

  123. Remember the good old days when a little bit of Monkey Business was enough to destroy a promising candidacy?
    Good times.
    But I do take some issue with cleek above. The GOP realizes it is in a political fight for its life. They’re looking at a possible final and irrevocable permanent consolidation of the New Deal state (ACA), and the tipping point of the road toward the end of white supremacy (demographics).
    They’ve backed themselves into a corner over the last 30 years. They are desperate.
    Desperate times call for desperate measures.

  124. I would also not that, unlike the FBI currently leaking like a sieve, no one at the IRS has leaked Trump’s tax returns. Despite the GOP rhetoric that the Obama Administration has used the IRS as a political weapon.

  125. Is Trump on Medicare, at least Part A?
    If an accident befell him, say, a nuclear warhead piercing his forehead while, one can hope, he’s kissing every Republican baby in the land, would he be eligible for Social Security disability?
    While I’m at it, will Marty’s insistence and yet anger at receiving government subsidized healthcare for his unfortunate, and I mean that, pre-existing conditions, which the private sector would force him to succumb to, left to his own devices, subside once he is eligible (and I dearly hope he is) for Medicare, the largest and most successful socialized insurance scheme on the planet?
    Or did he arrange his business affairs so that he doesn’t pay Medicare taxes, which would presumably leave him on the dole?

  126. Desperate times call for desperate measures.
    “True character is revealed in the choices a human being makes under pressure – the greater the pressure, the deeper the revelation, the truer the choice to the character’s essential nature.”
    — Robert McKee

  128. Marty:
    Thanks for the report! What I’d like to know even more is how large/busy the office is. Last night at my office there were maybe 8-12 of us making calls; staffers answering phones, planning, & troubleshooting; a couple of kids playing on the floor; and people steadily dropping by to buy yard signs, do some phone banking, sign up for GOTV shifts, drop off pizza or donuts. Basically, the joint was jumping — and in a non-battleground state, though one that can easily send a lot of volunteers over to a truly critical state.

  129. Dallas is somewhere north of here. I’m not sure how far. Or where exactly. Technically it’s part of TX. Technically.
    If you ask folks from Dallas, they’ll tell you that Dallas is Texas. Just one of their many faults.

  130. cleek: Trump’s religiosity is clearly bogus.
    Oh I think it’s totally sincere. Trump worships:
    a) Trump,
    b) money — at least Trump’s money
    No question at all.

  131. Nice quote there, cleek (really). Now place that in the context of the Dem Party lurch to the right under the onslaught of the Reagan “revolution”.
    It was, in my opinion, shameful pandering. But thanks to Ross Perot, we managed to get Bill Clinton elected twice.
    It could have been worse I guess.

  134. Now place that in the context of the Dem Party lurch to the right under the onslaught of the Reagan “revolution”.
    you mean when they got slaughtered in 84 and 88 ? the people didn’t buy it.
    Trump might lose, but he’s not going to get slaughtered.

  138. McTX wrote:
    “If we get HRC as president, it’s because the idiot Republicans picked Trump as their candidate.
    If we get Trump as president, it’s because the idiot Democrats picked HRC as their candidate.”
    Several paragraphs later he concluded:
    “I’m also out on discussions that begin and end with name calling and assumptions of bad faith.”
    Do we not find such close juxtaposition of those three sentences highly …. r-r-risthable?
    Several things. First, I called the Repubs and the Dems idiots in *the middle* of the discussion, not at the beginning or the end. Second, for every rule, there is an exception. Third, I used idiot as an adjective, not a noun. Last, *idiot* is pretty mild descriptor given the candidates we’ve been given. Still, you have a point, Amigo.

  140. I actually agree with McKTx on both parties having chosen a candidate that will win only because the other party did the same and even that the reasons were in both cases ‘idiotic’ (although very different).

  141. Chait is definitely wrong about one thing. He wrote “There is no longer any such thing as a Republican who is not conservative.” Which is obvious hogwash. This election is demonstrating conclusively that many (most?) Republicans are nothing that approaches the definition of conservative.

  142. And fifth, amigo, I agree with you on both counts, though of course more on one hand (where we could use a less mild descriptor) than on the other, where my relatively minor idiocy resides.
    Anyway, where declaring an era of good feeling to come and a decrease in partisan rancor, it is best to address the complete assembly as “My fellow idiots”.
    That is all, until next Wednesday when the long knives come out.
    I’m thinking of taking up a life of meditation, garden tending, constant reading and hog splitting far from this mess, unless I become a full-scale revolutionary (no lone wolf operations, but among a loose, anonymous federation of fellow warriors and snipers) who sallies forth without warning from time to time from the sheer square mileage of forested and mountainous hiding places in this country to wreak mayhem on those who I believe are enemies of this country.
    I see no middle ground. After next week, what little middle ground is left will be a lake of fire.
    Blogging would cease either way.

  143. Still too much general anaesthetic and morphine in the system for a long depressing Chait read, I have discovered. It’s probably just as well. Hear hear to cleek’s excellent 11.33 rant however.

  145. It’s possible that He, Trump will win the presidency.
    Does McKinney (or Hartmut) think the above statement would be inoperative if the Democrats had nominated Bernie Sanders?
    Why was it “idiotic” of the Dems to nominate Hillary — aside from the fact that Republicans have been accusing her of everything up to and including murder for nigh on a quarter century?
    What are we to make of a party that nominated the Birther-in-Chief? To call it “idiotic” is to damn it with faint praise, if you ask me.
    –TP

  146. “Whomever it is at the FBI that thinks things will be better for them under a Trump rather than Clinton administration will be sorely mistaken, especially when someone informs President Trump that J. Edgar Hoover no longer runs the place….”
    Posted by: Ugh | November 01, 2016 at 03:21 PM
    Somebody pointed out that under a GOP -well, tyranny – the FBI would get to be enforcers. They are probably drooling at the prospect.
    And it’s clear now that right-wingers don’t mind an administration with Russian ‘influence’.

  147. I wish I could apply a tool that measures tone to just this one blog. It is interesting how much more angry and virulent the discussion gets as the polls get closer. Every comment has a little more edge, every rant a little more personal.
    I say here but I noticed it first on my FB page. Last week everyone was happy and glowing, talking about how to expand the trouncing.
    This week not so much positive. Do you feel it? Is it just underneath, a little doubt, panic trying to creep in? Feeling a little testier this week? The building rage against the other is palpable.

  148. Hey, I’m the other. Who are you?
    Actually, speaking for myself, I’m restraining myself pretty well this week. I’ve deleted some real humdinger comments of my own before the monkeys could fly.

  149. Marty–I think that’s right and it’s because the Comey FBI thing has people worried it is a closer race and from what little I have heard from the polls that’s correct. The previous few weeks Clinton seemed to be pulling away because of the Tump sex assault tape. So it’s not the right time to expect people to understand the other side. I’m worried too, actually, but hope Sam Wang is right.

  150. I’ll also bet there are more testy folks on the right than on the left literally cleaning and loading their weaponry, because, you know, the latter don’t have any.

  151. I think the comments are getting more emotional (not sure “angry” is the term so much as horrified) because the probability of a Trump win is apparently rising. Even most of the folks here who are strongly anti-Clinton think a Trump presidency would be a disaster for the nation. (And for the rest of the world as well… although not for some individual dictators.)

  152. This:
    http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/heritage-action-calls-on-gop-to-block-lclinton-s-scotus-noms-for-years
    … in addition to calls by right wing government officials for HRC’s death by firing squad and hanging, the possibility raised by sitting members of Congress that impeachment proceedings against Clinton could begin next week when she wins, the very real possibility that Trump will not recognize or concede the election when he loses, and her face depicted on right wing gun show and gun shop target posters, and I’m just scratching the surface of the daily, despicable republican vermin behavior in this joke of a country.
    Maybe it makes folks a little jumpy. Capiche?
    And anyone who asserts anything close or equal to that violence-craving threatening behavior is occurring among Democrats/ politically correct sucker liberals towards Trump is willfully blind and knows f*ck-all.
    Here’s a swooping reconnaissance monkey for ya:
    I want to even those odds up real quick.

  153. Neither of them getting elected will be a disaster in the sense that they will significantly effect our lives or the balance of world power in the short term
    Trump will, if elected, have almost no impact outside the standard policy differences between right and left. He will end up being an entertainer, foreign dignitaries, WH parties and bragger for the nation. The downside would be minimal, primarily an undercurrent of anxiety that he might embarrass us more any day. The upside wwould be some conservative on the Supreme Court.
    Hillary’s downside potential is pretty big outside the normal policy difference things. The normal stuff. Programs and spending go up, ACA supports get expanded so it can survive, taxes don’t go up because the House, but she could get two years to do that in too. Deficits rise, but not for the first time ever and some stuff she does will be fine. Short term she is just another big spending Liberal expanding the mess to clean up we already have.
    But she will not be the entertainer President, she will be the politician President anxious to establish her legacy on the international stage. She will assume the mantle of imperial president with some skill and subtlety so that she will have gained practically unlimited power before the public at large knows it, if they ever process it. Our liberty will be constantly eaten away in “defense” of one minority or another until everyone wakes up on day and realizes their liberty is gone, along with all the other “others”.
    Her SCOTUS picks put us on the road to true socialism, everyone will become in practical terms a ward of the state. Protected into subservience.
    People keep telling me that the reason they are voting for her is that she is smart, if she were stupid I would be confident she would do less harm. There is nothing more dangerous than a smart person without a conscience.
    Having said all that, I am not convinced that with a Republican Congress there won’t be limits she cant pass, so that is very important as far as I am concerned.
    And lastly, she probably cant fire everyone in the FBI so there will remain scrutiny which is absolutely essential in proving here with some conscience.
    So the Republic doesn’t crumble either way, Tt is actually tested more by Clinton than trump.

  154. Oh, I think some dictators will do just fine under Clinton.
    I was just at Pat Lang’s blog ( which is interesting on foreign policy) which has a fair number of Trump fans in the comments and they seem to think he is going to win. One is borderline alt right and one reason ( perhaps not the most important) I hope Trump loses is just to see this guy’s reaction. Though on a national scale that won’t be funny.

  156. I forgot about this stuff:
    http://talkingpointsmemo.com/muckraker/more-gop-emails-emerge-that-urged-nc-elections-officials-to-limit-early-voting
    And the attempted FBI coup of a Presidential election, like we’re f*cking Egypt or Turkey.
    Black and minority voters need to show up at the polls armed and ready to assert their voting franchise by force, just like conservatives would in the same situation.
    ‘Our liberty will be constantly eaten away in “defense” of one minority or another until everyone wakes up on day and realizes their liberty is gone, along with all the other “others”.’
    Horse pucky.
    After the Bundy court travesty, federal employees, whose lives are in peril, need to carry weaponry at all times while on the job and anyone suspected of being Republican should keep their hands where I can see them.

  157. Why was it “idiotic” of the Dems to nominate Hillary — aside from the fact that Republicans have been accusing her of everything up to and including murder for nigh on a quarter century?
    Because either “electability matters”, or the same establishment that backed her has been full of $#|+ for the last quarter-century plus when it came to arguing down anyone to their left as too dangerous to nominate. Clinton was a candidate with extremely obvious points vulnerable to attack before the cycle even started, and she was also deeply disliked and distrusted outside the party. One can argue that the weaknesses and unpopularity were unfair or just plain wrong, but that doesn’t actually matter; just as she has been attacked for decades w/o being “taken down” (by which I suppose the Clintonistas meant charged with something? I guess? I mean, the attacks did a perfectly workable job of making her widely disliked, so I’ve always wondered at their claims that they “didn’t work”), she’s also rebutted many of the same attacks for the same period w/o ever rehabilitating her popularity outside partisan circles. She was the very image of the sort of a candidate the establishment cliches warn about (albeit in warnings aimed at DFHs, not NRLs): one who can do well in the primary, but who has glaringly obvious vulnerabilities that will be savaged in the less-convivial general.
    Again, BLUF: whether or not Clinton’s aura of unpopularity was “unfair” or the product of decades of witch hunting, or just plain wrong was irrelevant. It was a very real, obvious thing to anyone outside establishment Dem echo chambers, and there was absolutely no reason to believe it would get better, not worse, by running in the general. Nominating her was “idiotic” because she brought a mountain of obvious, well-known, unresolved, inflammable baggage to the table, with absolutely predictable results.

  158. Why was it “idiotic” of the Dems to nominate Hillary — aside from the fact that Republicans have been accusing her of everything up to and including murder for nigh on a quarter century?
    Because either “electability matters”, or the same establishment that backed her has been full of $#|+ for the last quarter-century plus when it came to arguing down anyone to their left as too dangerous to nominate. Clinton was a candidate with extremely obvious points vulnerable to attack before the cycle even started, and she was also deeply disliked and distrusted outside the party. One can argue that the weaknesses and unpopularity were unfair or just plain wrong, but that doesn’t actually matter; just as she has been attacked for decades w/o being “taken down” (by which I suppose the Clintonistas meant charged with something? I guess? I mean, the attacks did a perfectly workable job of making her widely disliked, so I’ve always wondered at their claims that they “didn’t work”), she’s also rebutted many of the same attacks for the same period w/o ever rehabilitating her popularity outside partisan circles. She was the very image of the sort of a candidate the establishment cliches warn about (albeit in warnings aimed at DFHs, not NRLs): one who can do well in the primary, but who has glaringly obvious vulnerabilities that will be savaged in the less-convivial general.
    Again, BLUF: whether or not Clinton’s aura of unpopularity was “unfair” or the product of decades of witch hunting, or just plain wrong was irrelevant. It was a very real, obvious thing to anyone outside establishment Dem echo chambers, and there was absolutely no reason to believe it would get better, not worse, by running in the general. Nominating her was “idiotic” because she brought a mountain of obvious, well-known, unresolved, inflammable baggage to the table, with absolutely predictable results.

  160. “And the attempted FBI coup of a Presidential election, like we’re f*cking Egypt or Turkey.”
    Horse puckey. The FBI is rebelling against the current administration fixing the election by refusing to indict a criminal.
    In Egypt or Turkey they would have tried to take the WH and been turned back and then executed.
    So you can pick your bad guy, the AG who refuses to do her job or the FBI agents that are keen on pointing out that she is refusing to do it.
    I come down on the side of enough agents, the guys doing the investigating, saying she is guilty to warrant having to deal with it internally and externally.
    You want to talk about the Hatch Act, lets talk about the charade in front of Congress and the American people laying out a skinnyed down version of what they did and then the FBI Director declaring that although she clearly did it, and clearly lied about it, we are not going to recommend charges.

  161. Marty: The upside would be some conservative on the Supreme Court.
    “Upside” depends on which way water runs on your planet.
    Also, “conservative” is usually code for “somebody who thinks women should have the right to keep and bear arms but not the right to have an abortion”, when it isn’t code for “corporations are persons for 1st Amendment purposes but not for 16th Amendment purposes”. But Marty may mean something different by “conservative”.
    –TP

  162. “The FBI is rebelling against the current administration fixing the election by refusing to indict a criminal.”
    This is the kind of statement that is simply trolling: the blatant assumption of guilt, followed by motivated reasoning to get to the predetermined conclusion.
    But hey, the FBI/DOJ is also not indicting Trump for his notorous crossing-state-lines for the purposes of having deviant sex with goats, which only an blind ignorant partisan could not see, because it’s OBVIOUS, amirite?
    I mean, just look at his FACE. It literally screams “foat gucker”.

  163. Yes those things are exactly the same as dozens of FBI agents are actively angry that no charges have been brought against the goat for prostitution.

  164. NV, I don’t usually wade in on this, but isn’t it problematic to view the nomination into a single choice rather than a whole series of decisions and events? I think Biden would have ran had he not lost his son, I think Bernie might have had a better chance had he gone outside his narrow frame of economic populism, I think Hillary might not have run had Obama simply accepted her refusal to be SecState. It is both fortunate and unfortunate that these decisions are not stand-alone. Fortunate in that it very rarely results in a make or break situation, unfortunate in that things like Yemen or Standing Rock can go the wrong way without the sort of pushback that should be there.

  166. http://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/first-fake
    Now, maybe leaks from within the FBI regarding traitor ratf&cking Putin stooge Trump and his entourage.
    The FBI has completely compromised its reputation. Stay the f*ck out of this election or else.
    Abolish the agency and fire all of them. Surely, conservatives would be relieved at the crippling of federal police powers so the Feds couldn’t look into the firebombing of black churches and conservative Republican terrorists using deadly force against federal employees.

  167. lj, Clinton’s run was telegraphed years in advance. It was not in question, and its inevitability and the internal groundwork she laid to avoid another ’08 sucked a lot of oxygen out of the room (and IMO empowered Sanders; had there been a broader field, I don’t think we’d have seen him surge). The party’s broad internal decision to go along with it rather than resisting her organization was not a single decision, but everyone who eventually decided the path of least resistance was best knew (or should have known) what they were buying into.
    Also, I agree that viewing the nomination as a discrete event is extremely problematic. However, the question posed (“why was it ‘idiotic’…”) treated it as such, and that defined the framework in which my answer rests…

  168. http://www.politico.com/story/2016/10/wikileaks-russia-hillary-clinton-campaign-democrats-229707
    Shouldn’t we start looking into how many thousands of prominent Republicans and their apparatchiks in the federal bureaucracy are Russian agents and moles controlled by Putin’s intelligence agencies seeking to undermine the democratic process.
    Probably should look into your everyday, seemingly innocent citizens trolling the internet to plant memes favorable to the Russians and their dupes in America as well.

  169. Clinton’s run was telegraphed years in advance.
    The reason it was “telegraphed” was that huge numbers of people wanted her to run. It wasn’t some kind of Democratic Party conspiracy. It was that many, many people my age wanted her to win in 2008, and when she didn’t get the chance because Obama defeated her [and I was an Obama person] they wanted her to win in 2016.
    I was not a Hillary supporter in 2008, but things were tense between me and some people (especially my gay friends) who were absolutely devoted to her. So “telegraphed” and “inevitable” – this was not directed by some DNC conspiracy – it was something that many people wanted.
    I liked her more than Bernie (because, honestly, she’s smarter), but would have been zealously supporting Bernie if he had won the primary, and I would have been accused of Bernie-bot-ism, no doubt. That’s because we have to find solidarity in order to fight, and once we have a person, we have to fight to get that person elected, and freaking stand up for that person. You were a soldier, NV. I don’t mean to diminish what you experienced, but as my father (also an actual soldier) believed, we all have to be soldiers. Sometimes we have to get in line. Time to do that behind Hillary.

  171. Trump will, if elected, have almost no impact outside the standard policy differences between right and left.
    And the reasons for believing this would be what?
    Would the Senate refuse to confirm whatever yes men Trump nominates for AG and FBI director? Or SecDef or the Joint Chiefs? If so, it would be the first time those whimps have stood up to him.
    And when (not if) some reporter or columnist says something negative about Trump? Or when (also not if) a foreign government head is less than obsequious, let alone says something negative? The former become the focus of FBI investigationso (at least for whatever resources aren’t being devoted to Clinton). And the latter discovers that alliances and treaties are meaningless if a Trump-led US is involved.
    Trump’s most consistent characteristic is his reflexive determination to get revenge. Against anyone who doesn’t kowtow (and I picked the term deliberately) to him. Especially against anyone who says or does anything he construes as an attack — and anything even slightly contrary to his slightest whim is an attack.
    Would he start a nuclear war? Almost certainly he wouldn’t launch a nuclear first strike on a country which has nuclear weapons (and the means to deliver them; North Korea however…). But he has already said he would use nukes in wars with others. At which point, any nuclear power with two brain cells would go on permanent hair trigger high alert. What’s not to love about that? (And before you ask, yes I am being completely serious.)

  173. There is no world leader or other country that believes that Trump would nuke them any faster than Obama would. It is as if you never met a blowhard, braggart before. He is definitely the least likely guy around to do any of that stuff. It just sounds like it makes him tough in a campaign speech, off the cuff.
    He is likely, however, to spend an inordinate amount of time tweeting insults at the late night comedians.
    Clinton has actually recommended bombing people, like in real life.

  174. NV: Nominating her was “idiotic” because she brought a mountain of obvious, well-known, unresolved, inflammable baggage to the table, with absolutely predictable results.
    Nice democracy we have here, NV. Be a shame if anything happened to it.
    Sorry, but this attitude is accomodationist. It is appeasement. It is horsepuckey. And in case that expression is new to you, it is balderdash, poppycock, imported French merde, and other derogatory expressions. I sniff down my nose at it.
    Seriously, I come back to the operative question: do you honestly imagine that some other Democratic nominee would be less “disapproved” by fewer of the “conservatives” who have swallowed He, Trump’s line of bullshit?
    You disapprove of Hillary Clinton — I get that. You disapprove of Democrats for nominating her — fine. Okay: who the hell would YOU have wanted us to nominate? And if we nominated whoever met with YOUR approval, what in creation makes you think the right wing would be appeased?
    –TP

  175. Clinton has actually recommended bombing people, like in real life.
    Because maybe Clinton has dealt with “real life”?

  176. TP,
    Her disapproval rating is in the 60% range, Democrats disapprove of her at a 25% clip. Independents almost 50/50.
    The question is whether there is a candidate who would have been more popular with Democrats and independents, not right wingers.
    It is a valid criticism to think that the party should not have been so focused on her getting her chance that they essentially made sure no one else ran, and did what they could to block Bernie.

  177. It is a valid criticism to think that the party should not have been so focused on her getting her chance that they essentially made sure no one else ran, and did what they could to block Bernie.
    It’s not valid criticism for you, a Republican, to say anything at all about the Democratic candidate. You are not welcome in that conversation,

  178. Oh, sorry, Marty. I guess I’m supposed to empathize with you, a Republican, about your thoughts on the Democratic Party process.

  179. Well you certainly don’t have to empathize, but you don’t have to be a horses patoot. But then it isn’t the first time I have been told I am not welcome in a conversation. And I got a good chuckle out of you telling me I had no right to an opinion.

  180. Marty,
    While sapient is right that we Democrats have no obligation to give a crap who Republicans would rather see us nominate — certainly no more of a crap than Republicans need to give in the other direction — I am nevertheless interested, just out of curiosity, who YOU would have supported for president had we Dems nominated him.
    –TP

  182. “The FBI is rebelling against the current administration fixing the election by refusing to indict a criminal.”
    if so, f**k them. it”s not only not their place to do so, it”s against the law.
    if they want to get involved in partisan politics they can resign their position and do so as private individuals.
    short of that, they should do jail time.
    my overall analysis of the political situation is that we’re rogered. too much ignorance of really basic factual information, too many people who don’t give a crap, too many people whose motivation for engaging in public life at all is their own sense of peevish resentment.
    it’s not going anywhere good.

  183. And I got a good chuckle out of you telling me I had no right to an opinion.
    Glad. Wouldn’t have wanted to hurt your feelings.

  184. it’s not going anywhere good.
    Hoping that the fascist doesn’t get elected, but barring that, it’s up to us to take it somewhere good. We have to do that, and we have to figure out how, fast.

  185. Honestly, at least the Nazis were stopped. Can we be stopped? I think this is a DYI thing, and we have to read the instructions now.

  186. “Because maybe Clinton has dealt with real life?”
    I’m sure it must seem that way to the very serious people who populate DC and are itching for this country to get over its Iraq syndrome.

  187. “There is no world leader or other country that believes that Trump would nuke them any faster than Obama would.”
    Oh come on! A little faster at least? Mosul would be a nuclear grease spot by now, right? Hell, Trump would be in there with a geiger counter by now figuring the radiation half life so we could build casinos there soon. None of this pansying around with host country troops taking on ISIL with American support far behind the lines.
    True, he might miss Aleppo with the big one given that he would have consulted Gary Johnson for the coordinates.
    Have you been offered a major ambassadorship by Trump, given your intimate knowledge of every world leader’s thoughts on the subject?
    Or is he going to appoint you to shut down the United Nations?
    I’m outta here. Got hogs to split and chickens to bifurcate.
    I hear gunfire in the near distance.

  188. NV, I tend to disagree with you here. If she hadn’t been SoS, I don’t think she would have done it. There are a few articles I would like to cite here, but trying to find them is impossible. I think that after she experienced the high approval ratings of SoS, she thought that she could and she went through it step by step, in a very methodical manner. That this becomes a minus seems to be at least partly the reflexive problem folks have with women being ambitious. In that sense, she (and any woman who runs for president) is tied down a lot more than Obama, imo.

  189. I’m sure it must seem that way to the very serious people who populate DC and are itching for this country to get over its Iraq syndrome.
    Donald, maybe you should run!

  190. Actually, Donald, you should run. What’s stopping you? Do you hold elective office, or have you thought about it?
    Perhaps you’re working at an NGO?
    “Real life” is an actual path.

  191. Marty: As you assumed, the answer to that is no one.
    So, tell us again about rabid partisanship on the Left, uncle Marty.
    –TP

  192. You often post like that late at night, sapient.
    Someone who actually shares some of my views about the DC crowd did run for President. His name is Obama. He refers to the kneejerk militarism as the Washington playbook. You love him, but you have moved on to your next political hero and she is definitely closer to you on this.
    http://www.salon.com/2016/03/12/forget_the_washington_playbook_how_the_obama_doctrine_is_so_vastly_different_from_what_americans_are_used_to_in_the_oval_office/

  193. There is a difference between rabid partisanship and disagreeing with basic planks in the party platform.
    I did not vote for Trump, but there really is no way I would vote for anyone that was tied to the Democratic Party platform.
    I’m not sure which thing I said caused the uncle Marty stuff. But if it is related to supporting Hillary out of blind partisanship,I find no space between that and supporting Trump for the same reason.

  194. Besides, what would America be without a Secretary of State or President who doesn’t recommend bombing people?
    The first thing they do for their first day on the job, even before the coffee machine, is show them how the bomb bay doors work.
    It certainly wouldn’t be Republican or conservative Democrat, which is all we have now and all the American people can barely tolerate.
    It wouldn’t even be America, but there goes the Donald Johnson in me. America without bombs would be like Dunkin Donuts without the donuts.
    A brand without a product.
    Imagine the revolt among the mass of empathy-starved bloodthirsty masses if a guy stood up and campaigned on a pledge to never bomb no one no how.
    Gary Johnson kind of intimated that, but my problem with him is that he couldn’t name or locate the places he wasn’t going to bomb.
    Name one place you wouldn’t bomb, they asked him, and his brain went all vacant.
    He seemed to know the names and addresses of all the people he was going to deny health insurance, so it’s not like he’s dumb.

  195. That was good, count. That was the problem with Gary. I was encouraging a Republican friend to vote for him the other day, as a step above Trump, but since I am neither a Republican nor a libertarian maybe this was a Bad Thing to do.

  196. Well I realize that I’m barely conservative compared to Marty. But I might well have voted for O’Malley, vs any of my fellow Republicans who were contending for the nomination.
    Trump was definitely the worst of the bunch (closely followed by Carson). But none of those guys were particularly appealing. Even those who had decent records in office as a governor proved unable, or at least unwilling, to smack down the utter bullsh*t being put out by Trump, Cruz et all.

  197. You love him, but you have moved on to your next political hero and she is definitely closer to you on this.
    You’re assuming a lot here, Donald, and obviously you haven’t read a lot of what I’ve written, even this evening.
    You’ve criticized Obama for as long as I can remember, so don’t pretend you’re now his champion.
    The reason, late in the evening, that I ask about your actually doing things that you advocate for, is that you have no one to turn to for your objection to, say, Obama’s use of drones, which Bernie supported. You love to criticize and opine, but you never come up with positive answers. We’ve had decades of relations with the Saudis. If you were President, would you just cut them off? Israel too? Good luck with all that. You’re not ever really available to construct a new policy – its just “OMG, our leaders are crap!”

  198. “He seemed to know the names and addresses of all the people he was going to deny health insurance, so it’s not like he’s dumb.”
    yeah I just looked. there is no longer a 0 deductible silver plan, in FL or MA. The lowest deductible is 13k,@ 800 a month for 1. anything that resembles insurance is $1000, 2k for a couple. 34%increase, only 2 plans in gold with zero deductible.
    My doctors office told me they cant guarantee they are in any plan because the insurance companies keep changing what they pay. I should verify with my insurance company before every appointment.
    Now back to trying to find some other group plan to buy into.
    ACA is a nightmare and MA was just as bad.
    Don’t talk crap about saving the ACA to me.

  199. Marty: There is a difference between rabid partisanship and disagreeing with basic planks in the party platform.
    True. And it works BOTH ways.
    I’m not sure which thing I said caused the uncle Marty stuff.
    Try: “The building rage against the other is palpable.” You preen by the meta-comment, you get laughed at by the meta-comment.
    –TP

  201. No, I have no option. No private insurers want to insure me now that they can point me to the marketplace. Although, now I will have to go see if that’s still true.

  202. I am not Obama’s champion– wouldn’t dream of it. But he hit the nail on the head in what he said about the playbook.
    And you pose a false dichotomy, which is the usual way to defend bad policies. Supporting the atrocities in Yemen was a bad idea, full stop, but that doesn’t mean we cut ties. We can have relations with Israel and a lot of other countries with crummy human rights records without embracing them as our fellow defenders of democratic values or defending their war crimes. I suppose we could embrace them with a sense of irony–we have ou own war crimes too after all, apart from the ones they commit and we support. Much of this has more to do with domestic pressures than any real need to stand by either Israel’s or Saudi bad behavior, I have pointed to people whose writings made sense to me and btw, on Yemen there were dozens of Democratic senators on my side, not yours. But sure, tell yourself that we are supporting what could accurately be called crimes against humanity because all serious people think we should. As it happens,, since the funeral bombing the Obama administration is backpedaling, trying to extricate itself from the moral pit it jumped into. It was mainstream Republicans who have been the strongest Saudi supporters, along with some Democrats like one of my senators and my congressman.

  203. Trump will, if elected, have almost no impact outside the standard policy differences between right and left.
    This is so absolutely wrong on so many counts that I cannot believe somebody who is so attuned to actual politics as Marty is actually wrote it.
    For example.

  204. And that, btw, is why some of the wikileaks emails deserve much more attention than they have gotten, Why does Clinton take the positions she takes on Israel? Domestic politics. The campaign talks about this, they pass emails back and forth with their donors and discuss when and with whom she should touch on the issue, given that Israel is less popular with the liberal base. The idea that this has some deep connection with national security (whatever the hell that phrase means) is laughable.
    I only wish some wikileaks documents would come out about the war on Yemen.

  205. Chait is definitely wrong about one thing. He wrote “There is no longer any such thing as a Republican who is not conservative.” Which is obvious hogwash. This election is demonstrating conclusively that many (most?) Republicans are nothing that approaches the definition of conservative.
    Asserts facts not in evidence. If this were even remotely true, Trump would be 40 points behind in the polls.
    Here’s a clue: HE IS NOT.
    For crying out loud, wj.

  206. Marty: No private insurers want to insure me now that they can point me to the marketplace.
    I seriously want to know, Marty: who do you think sells policies in “the marketplace”? Is it …uhm… insurance companies maybe?
    And what makes you think that any insurance company would be willing to sell you a policy at a premium and with a deductible that YOU consider fair if there was no “marketplace”?
    Don’t get me wrong: I agree with you that insurance companies are greedy bloodsucking capitalists. But you seem to think they’d be your allies and saviors if not for that blasted ACA. I can’t see how you figure that.
    –TP

  207. Bobby, which of Trump’s positions fits your view of “conservative”? Since the vast majority of the party (with some very visible exceptions) have signed on.
    Because as far as I am concerned, making radical changes doesn’t qualify — and from dumping our allies to starting impeachment proceedings before the next President’s term even starts to threatening to use nukes to changing the libel laws to make it easier to sue those who say things he doesn’t like, that’s what Trump says he wants to do. No way anyone who embraces those kinds of changes is a conservative.
    So, which facts are not in evidence? The utter disconnect between conservative principles and Trump’s positions? Or the embrace of the man and his positions by a substantial portion of the GOP?

  208. we all have to be soldiers. Sometimes we have to get in line. Time to do that behind Hillary.
    You know the nice thing about being a Soldier? It’s the clear chain of command and lack of choice in your actions. The liberation that offers is – in a truly depressing way – glorious. You do what you do because you cannot do otherwise, not because you chose to.
    However, that’s pretty much the exact opposite of what’s in question here. So, no, your analogy fails, and just comes across as patronizing and a bit vulgar.
    I’ll stick with vote-swapping, TYVM.
    —
    TP –
    Marty pretty much hit the nail on the head. Not one word I said was meant to address a potential nominee’s popularity with the Republicans. The issue was Clinton’s popularity with everyone left of the self-identifying Republicans. While a non-Clinton nominee might have prevented a few Republicans from “coming home” to Trump in the last few weeks (especially if their alternative was feeling disgusted and not voting – quite predictably, Clinton’s name on the ballot is a wonderful GOP GOTV measure), the effect I was addressing was more on the independents, wishy-washy sometimes-Dems, and others who sympathize with the easy, simplistic pop-culture one’s-as-bad-as-the-other formulations that abound. You know. The “middle”. That swathe of the electorate that the 3rd-Wayers loved to tell us we had to tack right IOT attract…

  209. Marty, is your annual income above the level by which you would receive the federal subsidy under Obamacare, if you will pardon my French, which will increase according to the increases in your premium, thus limiting your out of pocket expenses to the low single digits, which varies by state I realize, and which is a whole other kettle of stupid fish.
    How close are you to qualifying for Medicare?
    I just signed up, after wiping a large part of my savings out paying full premiums for my insurance these past years.
    I look forward to my first appointment under my Medicare Advantage coverage, in which Donald Trump, he of the no Medicare tax liability, sends Paul Ryan and Sarah Death Palin to walk in to the checkup room clad in rubber gloves and BDSM masks and together roger me and declare me dead expensive meat to be sacrificed to the gods of states rights, probably Texas.
    You seem to be hankering for free health care.
    Get in line.
    You do realize that it’s the private sector that is raising health insurance premiums in the exchanges and would be raising premiums considerably even without Obamacare and refusing to insure you, not fucking Barack Obama?
    You do realize that the private health insurance market, which is a variably calibrated wood chipper, wants to insure only the healthy, not those sick losers among us who actually require healthcare, especially on a chronic basis?
    You do realize that they employ mostly healthy young self-interested American human fucks who have been calibrated by business schools to fuck the chronically sick and pre-existing conditioned over because Milton Friedman, that sadistic fuck, mandated that business has only one existential purpose … to enrich shareholders.

  210. That first paragraph is off.
    Obviously, if you are below the income threshold, then your subsidies will increase to largely cover the premium increases.
    If you are above the threshold, whatever it is, and only 15% of Obamacare are situated that way, you are screwed.
    Do you know who is responsible for that fucking compromise?

  211. That first paragraph is off.
    Obviously, if you are below the income threshold, then your subsidies will increase to largely cover the premium increases.
    If you are above the threshold, whatever it is, and only 15% of Obamacare are situated that way, you are screwed.
    Do you know who is responsible for that fucking compromise?

  212. http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2016/11/where-are-all-fake-docs-coming
    How are we going to parse which of the tens of millions of Republicans in this country are carrying water for the Russian government to fuck our democratic process, since just about all of you seem to be good to go with this traitorous behavior and even cheering it on or ignoring it?
    Are all of you named Rosenberg?
    Not you, the all the other yous, the 42% and growing voting for Vladimir Trump.
    It may be more efficient from a tax and deficit perspective to forego trials and hang the lot of you en masse, or were you hoping for vigilante action to keep costs down, as I am?
    Hiss all you want. The Trump Republican Party, enabled by Putin’s spies in the FBI, will be liquidated.
    You know, I’ve missed my calling, not the first by any means. I could have a radical political talk show with twenty million listeners eating this shit up and affording me luxury housing in a flood plain while I deny the existence of water.
    America is eating itself, ass first.

  213. It is a valid criticism to think that the party should not have been so focused on her getting her chance that they essentially made sure no one else ran, and did what they could to block Bernie.
    it’s invalid because it’s not even close to reality.
    four other people ran – which is fewer than the 18 that the GOP ran. but then again, the Dems don’t have quite the number of grifters the GOP does and Dems don’t use a Presidential run as a way to sell books or audition for a TV pundit spot.
    nobody “Blocked” Sanders. nobody blocked anybody. Sanders lost because he didn’t appeal to Democrats as much as he appealed to people who aren’t Democrats but who voted in the Democratic primary. he did very well with lefty-‘independents’ and Paulites and college-age voters. but that’s not enough to win in the Democratic primary.
    he started with zero name recognition and gave the most famous eligible Dem a run for her money. if he was blocked, none of that would have happened.
    shorter me: knock it off with the Trumpian conspiracy theories.

  215. “I find no space between that and supporting Trump for the same reason.”
    I realize you consider Clinton to be one of the horesemen of the Apocalypse, but to any reasonable observer, the choice between the two requires no consideration.
    We don’t all live in Breitbart World.
    Also, given your age and what you have shared about your medical history – not that there is anything particularly bad about it – your insurance options absent the ACA would likely be non-existent.

  216. Near term, Trump is worse. The upside is that he’s so unfiltered and outlandish, there is a decent chance he’d be impeached before doing irreparable harm. It’s a moot point. HRC will win. She’s taken on so much water, it may well be a hollow victory.

  217. russell, yes my insurance options at this point are realistically equal to what they were before. Non-existent.
    The arrigance of the first half of your statement is the primary reason there is even a race.
    Reasonable observers numberibg in the tens of millions agree and disagree with your assessment. Some number of non-reasonable observers agree and disagree with you.
    Continuing to define 40 million+ people as deplorables or nonreasonable people, or per Louis CK, not adults, pretty much makes you the problem.
    I get lots of hyperbolic fb stuff about Clinton, and not much, not none, about Clinton supporters. It tends to fall into the how could you kind of stuff.
    I get tons of stuff on Trump and almost all of it includes some level of hatred and disdain for his supporters. They are stupid, hate mongeribg, racist, deplorable human beings. A vote for Trump makes you bad.
    Just for me, it came close to making me vote for him to give all of the generic you the finger.

  218. My auto insurance premiums and apartment rent have gone up considerably the past two years.
    For the former, I was told it was because of hail damage in my part of the country. Not on my car, but on someone else’s. I’d like to find that jackass and ask him why I am forced to pay for the dents in his car, when he was not smart enough to park and drive it out from under clouds, like I do.
    Why does the hapless gummint build roads under storm clouds when there so much blue sky elsewhere?
    My long term care insurance rates just rose @65% annually despite the private sector insurance company promising years ago that would not happen.
    I can’t squint quite enough to read those f*ckers’ small print, which they write in disappearing ink on edible paper.
    None of this would have happened if Barack Obama’s mother hadn’t married that Kenyan dude.
    I blame Loving versus Virginia for that, but what do we expect when we allow Presidents the travesty of nominating even slightly left of center judges to the Supreme Court?
    Better to never confirm anyone to the Court ever again or the next thing you know Christians will be forced to cater dog biscuits to woman-on-companion-dog weddings.
    “I realize you consider Clinton to be one of the horesemen of the Apocalypse,”
    Not only that, they are outraged that she dares to not ride side saddle. By God, the woman sits right down on the horse, straddling the animal!
    Get a room, woman!
    Republicans are torn between being fearful for her virginity and hoping they can catch a peek up her skirt.

  219. A vote for Trump makes you bad.
    there’s a strong case to be made that the guy wants to fuck his own daughter. he peeps on underage beauty contest contestants. he said his position gives him the ability sexually assault women, and that he does it. he’s a con man, a tax cheat, a fraud, a liar, a coddler of racists and has apparently never met a conspiracy theory he didn’t fall for.
    a vote for Trump doesn’t necessarily make you bad – but only because, if you want to vote for that revolting piece of shit scumbag you are probably bad already.
    yes, Clinton is a Democrat.

  220. I’ll stick with vote-swapping, TYVM.
    Just for me, it came close to making me vote for him to give all of the generic you the finger.
    Voting as performance art.

  221. “a vote for Trump doesn’t necessarily make you bad – but only because, if you want to vote for that revolting piece of shit scumbag you are probably bad already.”
    Yes, that’s pretty much how it all sounds, thanks for the example.

  223. not hard at all. Its just wrong. It is the antithesis of the righteous right. Who he is doesn’t change what policies he supports, if he was a Democrat all that stuff would be irrelevant to you. Since everyone knows they won’t change what policies each other supports the only way to switch a vote is to create Satan. Something the Clinton campaign had planned since before she was a candidate.
    His private conversations are the baseline for her campaign against him, her private emails should be off limits.
    It is all crap. Both sides. If character matters you can’t vote for either. So just vote for the Democrat and quit calling other people names.

  224. From http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2016/11/andrew-sullivan-trump-america-and-the-abyss.html

    Anyone paying attention knew this before he conquered the Republican Party. Look at what has happened since then. He sees the judicial system as entirely subordinate to his political and personal interests, and impugned a federal judge for his ethnicity. He has accused the Justice Department and FBI of a criminal conspiracy to protect Hillary Clinton. He has refused to accept in advance the results of any election in which he loses. He has openly argued for government persecution of newspapers that oppose him — pledging to open up antitrust prosecution against the Washington Post, for example. He is the first candidate in American history to subject the press pool to mob hatred — “disgusting, disgusting people” — and anti-Semitic poison from his foulest supporters. He is the first candidate in American history to pledge to imprison his election opponent if he wins power. He has mused about using nuclear weapons in regional wars. He has celebrated police powers that openly deploy racial profiling. His favorite foreign leader is a man who murders journalists, commits war crimes, uses xenophobia and warfare to cement his political standing, and believes in the dismemberment of both NATO and the European Union. Nor has he rejected any of his most odious promises during the primary — from torturing prisoners “even if it doesn’t work” to murdering the innocent family members of terror suspects to rounding up several million noncitizens to declaring war on an entire religion, proposing to create a database to monitor its adherents and bar most from entering the country.
    We are told we cannot use the term fascist to describe this. I’m at a loss to find a more accurate alternative.

    Marty: “a vote for Trump doesn’t necessarily make you bad – but only because, if you want to vote for that revolting piece of shit scumbag you are probably bad already.”

    Yes, that’s pretty much how it all sounds, thanks for the example.

    Jesus, Marty, despite your no doubt wonderful significant other, at least try to understand how hard it is to believe that someone OK could support him. We’ve discussed exhaustively the reasons it might be so, but still when you see in black and white all the things he himself has actually said, not what has been said about him, the mind truly boggles. Surely you see this, given what you have yourself said about him in the past?

  225. Life isn’t black and white, there are equally scary things about Clinton and there is nothing fascist about Trump. In fact, pretty much everyone I know ha san uncle, cousin, father, brother etc. that use the same hyperbolic rhetoric to express their frustration with America today. And most people don’t think they would blow up the world or throw people in camps if they were in charge.
    It is only hard to believe because you think the alternative is a good one. Choosing between a realistic look at Clinton and a realistic look at Trump makes reasonable people pick different scary futures. Nothing about that makes them bad people.

  226. Who he is doesn’t change what policies he supports
    yeah, it kindof does, because what he supports changes constantly. name pretty much any a policy, and he’s changed his mind on it.
    what he is is a celebrity confidence man who has constructed a cult of personality around himself.
    His private conversations…
    if we exclude his private conversations, that excludes the “grab them by the pussy” line and what else?
    everything else he said on-camera (or on the radio). he has been saying this crap for decades, in public and in interviews.

  227. there is nothing fascist about Trump
    Actually, I have resisted calling him fascist in the past because I think it’s dangerous to continue to ratchet up the increasingly febrile rhetoric, but the truth is that when you look at a list of the things he himself has said, as in the piece I quoted above, lots of them are straight out of the fascist playbook. Whatever your misgivings about Clinton, and as you know quite a few people here share at least some serious doubts about her, she has never said or implied anything of the sort.

  228. GftNC,
    Some of that stuff just isn’t true, he is far from the first candidate in the US to complain about the press,
    He may be the first candidate to threaten to imprison his adversary, but how many of those have been under FBI investigation with very public crimes committed? It isn’t like he is threatening her with jail because she opposes him.
    Stop and frisk was in place for years in NY, its not exactly a concept unique to him in America
    His favorite foreign leader? He says nothing about engaging with foreign leaders different than Obama.
    He has said nothing about dismembering NATO except that they should pay their fair share. I am not sure his opinion on the EU is unique or relevant.
    etc.

  229. Snarki: “Conservative” != “Radical Right”, but they are too often conflated.
    Not least by the self-same radical right, who have nearly succeeded in expropriating the label. One of the (many) things I have against liberals is that they have been accomplices in this.

  230. His favorite foreign leader? He says nothing about engaging with foreign leaders different than Obama.
    Come on, Marty, get real. Have you ever seen anything from Obama which would even come close to the kind of praise for Putin that Trump puts out? Just to take the most obvious example, not even mentioning Trump’s comments about Kim, etc.
    At some point, the “Oh he just said these things; he would never actually act on what he says” excuse starts to look seriously threadbare.

  231. I think he is not worthy of the term ‘fascist’ because that would assume that he has some actual ideological beliefs that go beyond ‘whatever suits my ambitions’.
    He is a self-worshipping authoritarian with no self-restraint; everything else is window dressing that can and will be changed at a whim.
    If it would improve his election chances, he would bus ‘illegals’ into the US by the millions and would expand into the ‘abortion business’ (making it a truly commercial enterprise).
    What he would not do is rise his own taxes or limit his own access to ‘fresh meat’.
    And that’s why the GOPsters on top have no real problems with the guy because their goals either rhyme with his perceived self-interest or do simply not interest him (so he will sign the bills unread in exchange for some ego boosts). For them he is the ‘mere hand with the pen’ they have sought so long and Pence will do the actual wet work.
    If I was a US citizen and it was Cheney/Bush vs. Trump/Pence with no alternatives, Dubya would have my vote. Heck, I’d rather entrust the country to Benito Mussolini (who left his country at least some things worth keeping) than to Donald Trump.

  232. he is far from the first candidate in the US to complain about the press
    Marty, unfortunately I am too under the weather at the moment to sit searching for examples to rebut, but this is a complete misrepresentation of his stated attitude to the press. As Sullivan says above, and as we surely all remember, “He has openly argued for government persecution of newspapers that oppose him — pledging to open up antitrust prosecution against the Washington Post, for example., and there are other examples that we have all heard in the last few months.
    Re NATO, whether members pay their fair share or not:

    At issue is NATO’s Article 5 on collective defense, which states that an “armed attack against one or more of them [members] in Europe or North America shall be considered an attack against them all…” The article was invoked once: by the U.S. after the attacks of September 11, 2001—which explains why NATO was involved in the U.S.-led war on Afghanistan. A NATO official, speaking on condition of anonymity, pointed out that after the attacks NATO sent AWACS planes to patrol American skies and deployed a third of the troops in Afghanistan for more than a decade; more than 1,000 soldiers from non-U.S. NATO allies and partners were killed there, the official pointed out.

    Re your “He says nothing about engaging with foreign leaders different than Obama”, you surely are kidding. When did Obama praise Putin? When did Obama ever say anything that can possibly be compared to the extraordinary litany of praise listed e.g. here:
    http://edition.cnn.com/2016/07/28/politics/donald-trump-vladimir-putin-quotes/

  233. He is a self-worshipping authoritarian with no self-restraint; everything else is window dressing that can and will be changed at a whim.
    If it would improve his election chances, he would bus ‘illegals’ into the US by the millions and would expand into the ‘abortion business’ (making it a truly commercial enterprise).
    What he would not do is rise his own taxes or limit his own access to ‘fresh meat’.
    And that’s why the GOPsters on top have no real problems with the guy because their goals either rhyme with his perceived self-interest or do simply not interest him (so he will sign the bills unread in exchange for some ego boosts). For them he is the ‘mere hand with the pen’ they have sought so long and Pence will do the actual wet work.
    I agree with all of this, I just don’t think it makes him particularly dangerous.

  234. but how many of those have been under FBI investigation with very public crimes committed
    please list the crimes.

  235. 1. He would sign anything a GOP Congress put on his desk. Makes him dangerous enough in my book.
    2. Would he start WW3? I suspect most likely not.
    But that leaves a lot of room as between 1 and 2 for substantial mischief.

  236. This massive Russian campaign has led to significant disputes within the Kremlin. Russian officials originally believed it could be conducted without any significant blowback from the United States. According to information obtained by the Western intelligence source, Sergei Ivanov, the chief of staff for the presidential executive office in the Kremlin, came to believe this summer that the hacking and disinformation campaign, which has been orchestrated in part by Peskov, had gone too far. Articles implying that Russian had been trying to split the supporters of Democratic primary runner-up Bernie Sanders and Clinton while building up Trump set off fears among Peskov and others that they would be held responsible for the backlash from the United States, according to the information obtained by the Western intelligence source.

    but remember, Donald Trump refuses to admit that Russia has been meddling in the campaign. even after being told by US intelligence that it is.
    but, emails.

  237. Voting as performance art.
    sapient, you telling me to vote Clinton instead of what I’m doing is also performance art (Yay, another number after Clinton’s name! Oh, and also another after Trump’s, but let’s not mention that…), but by doing so my vote would reduce chances of federal funding for a third party next cycle. So, my course of action is performance art, except for the part where it’s totally not.
    You’re being petty and spiteful.

  238. wj,
    The utter disconnect between conservative principles and Trump’s positions?
    To paraphrase Ross Douthat, there are no such things as conservative principles.
    But all kidding aside, Trump is the vessel of what passes for a “conservative” party in this country. Most of the self-identified Republicans, i.e. conservatives, are going to vote for him.

  243. Matt Yglesias is just stupid if he believes ten words of what he wrote.
    Confidential sources at VOX inform me that he believes somewhere between 9 and 2,000 words in the article, and is highly confident that it will go over much better with his audience than his mistaken analysis of foreign trade.
    But, ya know, it’s Hillary.
    Yes. We know.

  244. “Continuing to define 40 million+ people as deplorables or nonreasonable people, or per Louis CK, not adults, pretty much makes you the problem.”
    that is not a hat i’m wearing, dude.
    I can easily see why HRC is not appealing to lots of people, and I also see why Trump appeals to a lot of people.
    some of the reasons Trump appeals to people seem legitimate to me, although I don’t think Trump is either capable of or even particularly interested in delivering on his promises of winning bigly. he doesn’the seem all that interested in *being* president, I think he just likes winning stuff.
    and, as a point of fact, many of the reasons Trump appeals to people have to do with their own bigotry.
    I didn’t cause that, and my pointing it out doesn’t make it any better or worse.
    some people are bigots. many or most of the folks who vote based on their bigotry are gonna vote for Trump. because he strokes their prejudices.
    youcan vote for whoever you want. vote for Trump if you want, if it will float your freaking boat to flip the bird to all us liberal elite meanies.
    but there is no fucking way you’re hanging Trump on me, and there is no way you are hanging anybody”s support for Trump on me.
    folks need to own their own crap and not whine about whoever the hell they think is ‘looking down on them’.
    do you have any freaking idea how many people look down on me, or assume that i’m some kind of pampered entitled no-nothing asshole, because I live in MA, don’t hunt, and eat arugula?
    the answer is millions. and I don’t give a flying f###.
    and neither should they.
    if people think Trump is a better candidate, they should vote for him. if they vote for him to annoy me, or because I annoy them, that’s on them, not me.
    not my freaking circus, pal.

  245. “do you have any freaking idea how many people look down on me, or assume that i’m some kind of pampered entitled no-nothing asshole, because I live in MA, don’t hunt, and eat arugula”
    Yes. I do. I know lots of them. I tell them that they are full of sh!t. Same, Same.

  246. Hi Marty! In case you didn’t see it earlier: can you tell me anything about the Trump Campaign office where your SO is volunteering? Are there are a lot of volunteers & activity? Are they sending people out to do door-to-door canvassing?
    I’m going to make tuna salad for Mr Dr, then head over to the Hillary office to make more calls. vote, vote, vote like a stoat. (?)

  247. Doc, We just talked about it this afternoon. Lots of volunteers, two good size rooms of phone banks, lots of canvassing, less traffic for signs and etc. now than two weeks ago, mostly volunteers focused on getting the vote out. Lots of excitement for whatever weekend activities(no details but all hands request for Saturday)

  249. Hadn’t seen that sapient. But then I try to avoid anything that purports to have more inside info than can be verified. I like to read things that have some factual content and then make up my own conspiracy theory.

  251. I thought that, when it comes to conspiracy theories, going totally fact-free was best practice. It certainly characterizes most of the ones I am subjected to hearing about.

  253. “if he was a Democrat all that stuff would be irrelevant to you. ”
    trump has been a democrat. so what? you are wrong. I would not vote for Donald Trump, for anything, under any circumstances.
    the two candidates are not equivalent. I don’t find the claims of clinton’s criminality convincing, so it doesn’t bother me to vote for her.
    you can vote for whoever you like.
    if it bugs you when people say disparaging things about other folks based on who they vote for, perhaps you might consider not doing so yourself.
    thanks

  254. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-intersect/wp/2016/11/04/no-john-podesta-didnt-drink-bodily-fluids-at-a-secret-satanist-dinner/?postshare=5491478295312195&tid=ss_tw
    Just to be clear, none of the Clinton haters here at OBWI attended that dinner either, nor did they consume bodily fluids in Satanic rituals.
    I wasn’t there either, because Marty didn’t invite me, and besides I knew the attendees were not his kind of people, so I can attest under oath that he did not attend either.
    Drudge, whose mother has been intimate with various species of lifestock and specialized oil and gas fracking implements, and the other eminently and imminently killable Republican conservative vermin who are spreading these rumors about Clinton and other prominent Democrats somehow neglected in the news reports to let the public know that no Clinton haters at OBWI attended those Satanic functions nor participated in any way, shape or form in the entertainment.
    I find it an egregious oversight that we and our families were not eliminated by name by Drudge et al as participants, thus giving the American public the false impression that we were indeed frolicking with Satan’s hindparts.
    Since we were not eliminated by name, now most Trump followers believe we took part. Not even our Clinton-hatred can now save us from their wrath.
    I demand a correction at gunpoint.
    I’ve read most of the Chait article. Will go back after and read again after loosening the noose around my neck and purging the hemlock I quaffed at another, more fun party, but I wanted to highlight this bit:
    “Trump’s campaign chairman, the Breitbart media chieftain Stephen Bannon, apparently has plans to build a cross-border movement of right-wing nationalist parties. (The editor of Breitbart UK is running to lead the UK Independence Party, under the slogan “Make UKIP Great Again.”) A recent Bloomberg Businessweek feature on these plans predicts Trump’s organization could evolve into “an American UK Independence Party that will wage war on the Republican Party.” But there is a crucial difference in design between the British political system, in which third parties win representation, and the American one. Trumpism (or Breitbartism) cannot win power without the Republican Party, just as the Republican Party can no longer win power without the extremists that define it. The overwhelming gravitational force of the American two-party system delivered to Trump an endorsement from a former rival he had once called “Liddle Marco,” taking care to spell out the insult to his jeering supporters. (“L-I-D-D-L-E. Liddle, Liddle, Liddle Marco.”) And it brought the endorsement of another whose wife he labeled ugly and whose father he insinuated may have conspired to assassinate JFK. A party that can contain, on the one hand, a presidential nominee who denounces shadowy global financiers and media elites and, on the other, Sheldon Adelson (who has donated millions toward his election) can withstand enormous internal tension.”
    Particularly that lead sentence wherein Trump’s Brietbartian jewburning, nigger-lynching, liberal-shooting, wetback taco poisoning, Muslim cornholing, fag-shivving white nationalist butt chewers (but, as Marty has advised us, NOT fascists) are planning on building a transnational fascist white nationalist movement, but Ben Carson gets to serve drinks at their fetes.
    It looks as though the brutal, meatgrinding Civil War that is looming in the U.S. will spill across borders into World War as the savage, noble, patriotic, necessary butchering of these despicable subhuman enemies of civilization commences and is taken directly to their homes, work cubicles, think tanks, mother’s basements, places of worship, the cheap hotels where they f*ck each other’s wives, sisters, daughters, and pets, any gummint offices they dare to occupy, their so-called media platforms, and the streets to create rivers of their blood flowing into the sewers where it belongs.
    I’m starting a list of the individuals who will be dispatched with their own weapons purchased from approved conservative gun runners and machete collectors. It’s already 10,000 names long and does not yet include any foreign right-wingers or their little pig get’s names.
    I strongly suggest that any misguided moderates and empathy mongers attracted to these monsters’ welfare in the face of what’s coming to them decline to serve as human shields to protect these prey from their savage, bloody end days.
    It’s nice of you to be so thoughtful, but America is plum out of politically correct nice.
    Besides, like ISIL, those model right-wingers of the Mideast, the Republicans wouldn’t appreciate your efforts anyway.
    Stay the f*ck out of the way.

  256. http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/05/world/middleeast/aleppo-syria.html?ref=world
    America’s future– urban liberal sophisticates vs. religious conservatives part of whose base has been in the economically suffering rural areas, who were hurt by both natural forces ( drought) and government policies which increased inequality. And there has been a longstanding dangerous religious right movement.
    If the Count can do it, so can I. The point of the heavy handed analogy is that the Syrians fighting with al Qaeda did and do have legitimate grievances and demonizing people even when they do behave badly leads to no place good. In Syria’s case, to a situation where ordinary people on both sides see the other as pure evil.

  257. The point of the heavy handed absurd analogy
    FTFY
    This visit has been even more tightly orchestrated than usual. Journalists are always required to move around with a government-approved minder. This time, a dozen uniformed soldiers and several Ministry of Information employees have kept us to a tight schedule of planned stops, and refused to let us even walk briefly around the streets without an escort.
    Hmmm.

  259. If George Zimmerman has been wearing a clown suit while he stalked Trayvon Martin with a weapon, law and order conservatives would have risen to the murdered Martin’s defense.
    Presentation is everything.

  260. Of course it’s absurd, sapient. I don’t think we are going to have a civil war, but I seem to recall you talking about joining the resistance if necessary, so I was just following in your footsteps. If you wish to think in those terms, then the analogy is apt. Take your choice.

  261. And what was your point about the government minders? You think that in reality everyone loves the rebels and the death tolls inflicted by them are purely imaginary? Virtually the only Western reporter who has been wandering around Syria is Cockburn and he has reported the brutality of all sides.
    What is fascinating about Syria is how the propaganda memes are swapped. There is barely a word about “human shields” and a ” rain of rockets” from terrorists in the Western press regarding Aleppo. And guess which side Hamas supports? The rebels. I don’t mean that as anything shocking, but they would be regarded as moderate in a Syrian context. And on the other side, the pro Assad far left, they write about the rebels using the same demonizing language we normally see the Western press use about the Islamists we or Israel bomb.

  263. Augustus is the typical case of a strongman who is given power to solve problems which are not being addressed.** What we face the prospect of a strongman who, unlike Augustus, is also a clueless incompetent. Thus giving us the worst of both worlds.
    And yes, I do think that Trump is incompetent, in addition to being unarguably clueless. I see zero prospect that anybody exists in the US government who could guide, let alone control, his impulses. It would certainly be a wild ride, but so is being in a car that has just gone off the edge of a mountain road. It’s the hard stop at the end that gets you.
    ** You have to be exceptionally lucky to get a strongman like Ataturk, who will at least try to build a system of government that will prevent future dictators.

  264. Just when you thought that this election couldn’t get any screwier, something like this comes along:

    The Hatch Act, which bars federal employees from running in partisan elections, recently ensnared two Bay Area incumbents who faced a stark choice — either withdraw from the race or quit their jobs.
    But John Swett Unified School District board President Jerrold Parsons and Pacifica Councilwoman Mary Ann Nihart did not do anything wrong. Although both elected officials were candidates in nonpartisan contests, under the Hatch Act the election became partisan once the local Democratic Party endorsed their opponents.

    Catch that? It’s a non-partisan election. But because a political party chose to make an endorsement anyway, suddenly the incumbents’ day jobs are at risk.
    “[Sometimes] the law is an ass.” Truer words were never spoken.

  267. And what was your point about the government minders? You think that in reality everyone loves the rebels and the death tolls inflicted by them are purely imaginary?
    I think that the reporter here was doing a terrific job, but was talking to people who were approved by the Syrian government, so certainly would have been biased toward the viewpoint of the Syrians.
    I’m sure that there are brutal, innocent, desperate people on both sides. It complicates matters that many foreign interests are also playing a role, but the conflict isn’t just a civil war because its impact affects the entire region as well as wherever refugees are trying to go. And, yes, some of the blame for the destabilization of Syria was the Iraq War.
    I’m not sure what your point is, constantly posting links to articles on Syria and Yemen, when the conversation is about other issues. Do you think that people here aren’t aware of the conflicts? Clearly they involve complicated issues to which people in our government and elsewhere are having a difficult time figuring out how to respond. You advocate (as far as I can tell) not responding at all, or merely welcoming refugees. That’s cool – unfortunately, it’s not going to happen, especially the refugee part, and the responsibility for that attitude can be placed at the feet of the kinds of Trump supporters who you think deserve so much empathy.
    We’re there trying to fight ISIS and al Qaeda people, and obviously it’s difficult when some of them are allied with rebels in Syria, and when many powerful royals in Saudi Arabia, our historical ally, support them, and while at the same time there are religious conflicts with Shiite countries, and Russia is involved. It’s not news that this is a mess. Hillary Clinton has advocated a no-fly zone. It’s no secret that there are many who question whether that would be constructive. I, myself, don’t know. What’s happening now certainly isn’t promising, and the situation doesn’t seem to be improving.

  268. omg, why did sitting in a chair making cell phone calls for a few hours yesterday leave me so TIRED and achy today? You don’t suppose having bronchitis for almost a month could have lingering effects, do you?
    I planned to do more GOTV today but I think I need to rest up for tomorrow.

  270. The only certainly in Syria is that there isn’t a good, simple solution. Not for the people of Syria. Probably not for most of Syria’s neighbors.
    If anyone has come up with a (plausible) plan for what the US could do to improve things, I have yet to see it. Just walking away might, might!, reduce the negative impact on us. Or not. But definitely wouldn’t improve things for the Syrians. Ditto the suggested massive bombing campaign.
    The closest I can see to a constructive path would be to support the Kurds, who at least have a positive track record from our perspective. That has the downside that it would seriously irritate (actually infuriate) the Turks. But Turkey is moving briskly towards becoming the kind of dictatorship we barely get along with.
    Yemen is another story. But one thing at a time.

  271. Like Marty, I greatly prefer locally-sourced artisanal conspiracy theories, rather than the bland mass-market variety.
    Accept no substitute.

  272. Re: Syria. Just go back and look at the history of the Lebanese civil war, next door to Syria.
    Reagan tried to get involved; it didn’t turn out so well. History doesn’t repeat itself, but it does rhyme a lot.

  273. Just go back and look at the history of the Lebanese civil war, next door to Syria.
    That was a very different war, and the US had a very different role than anything suggested for Syria. Also, the refugee crisis was much smaller (in part because Lebanon is smaller than Syria).
    I’m not suggesting that I agree with Clinton. The belated Bosnian intervention worked out well though, and there are some rhymes there too (including the fact that Russia was supporting the Bosnian Serbs). My main point is not so much a defense of Clinton (fine with me if we minimize our involvement) so much as the fact that Donald posts foreign policy articles in order to prove that Clinton is one of the worlds great monsters for suggesting intervention. She might be wrong; it does not make her loathsome.

  274. I’m not sure what your point is, constantly posting links to articles on Syria and Yemen, when the conversation is about other issues. Do you think that people here aren’t aware of the conflicts?
    I’m not sure what your point is, constantly responding to them with mealy-mouthed handwringing about how it’s just such an awful situation, with no good answers, except maybe escalation, because that’s what She, Clinton advocates and surely this time, this time it’ll work better than all the other times (e.g.). And I actually do think a number of people here would be quite content to be unaware of the conflicts, because they’re politically inconvenient… as – natch – evidenced by your disingenuous descriptions of our goals and involvement above.

  275. The Bosnian intervention worked out well?!?!? Serious analysis puts our involvement in the realm of theater, but sure, if pro-interventionist analysis says in worked out well, I suppose the serious analysis must not have been performed by grown ups

  276. NV,
    I gather you think the intervention in Bosnia (separate from or inclusive of Kosovo?) did NOT “work out well”. I would sincerely, honestly appreciate knowing your reasons for thinking that. And I sincerely, honestly apologize if I have misread you.
    –TP

  277. Off topic, but on the money:
    “I put this on another thread, but I think it’s worth discussing here because there’s a lot of confusion. Our current governing apparatus is neoliberal. What does that actually mean? What is neoliberalism?
    Neoliberalism is a kind of statecraft. It means organizing state policies by making them appear as if they are the consequences of depoliticized financial markets. It involves moving power from public institutions to private institutions, and allowing governance to happen through concentrated financial power. Actual open markets for goods and services tend to disappear in neoliberal societies. Financial markets flourish, real markets morph into mass distribution middlemen like Walmart or Amazon.
    This definition is my paraphrase of Greta Krippner’s “Capitalizing on Crisis”, a pretty good book about what happened from the 1960s to the 1980s in terms of financial politics. Her thesis is that the liberal democratic system was dismantled because it was too explicit about who was making choices. People would get mad at politicians when they didn’t have, say, mortgage credit, or when the price of milk went up too high. The answer came to be neoliberalism, or creating a veil of financial markets to make all those decisions seem apolitical. Milk too expensive? Ah, those darn markets. Sure you can get mortgage credit, but market is going to charge you 19%. Can’t afford that? Oh those darn financial markets.
    Neoliberalism is not faith in free markets. Neoliberalism is not free market capitalism. Neoliberalism is a specific form of statecraft that uses financial markets as a veil to disguise governing policies.”
    Matt Stoller, quoted at Eschaton.

  278. Count, I’m not a Stoller fan, and I wish that people would leave the term “neoliberalism” to economists, because I’m constantly seeing it used to describe “any policy that I don’t like” (and I’m stealing that from someone who commented on LGM, but I forgot who).
    Also, I’m waiting for NV to answer Tony P.

  279. Yeah, tic toc. I also see that no one else has risen to the occasion of arguing that our hugely successful (although should have happened sooner) intervention into the Yugoslav war was a mistake.

  280. No disrespect to wonkie on the other thread, whom I respect immensely, but I want to keep this thread going to the point that either NV defends her statement, or that somebody else does, or that we establish that US actions against Slobodan Milošević were not only justified, but spectacularly effective in saving huge numbers of lives from atrocious right-wing thugs (of the kind that Putin specializes in supporting throughout Europe).
    We need to nail this down: whether the US was just “doing theater” or whether we did the right thing.
    I don’t expect NV to be tuned in 24/7, so it’s possible she just hasn’t had time for this. But people should not be afraid to say that, yes, sure it’s dicey, but sometimes the US can interrupt in a war, and prevent further atrocities. Not a given, but certainly it has happened. And it happened in Bosnia.

  281. Another interesting question would be: what are the characteristics of situations where interventions are successful? And what differentiates successful vs unsuccessful interventions? Answers to those questions would likely be seriously inconvenient for some. But it seems like it would be good to know nonetheless.

  282. sapient, yes, sometimes one draws to an inside straight.
    But that’s not the way to bet.
    Now, if you’ve got a sure-fire set of criteria that can distinguish “which interventions are going to work” vs. “all the others”, let’s hear it.

  283. Now, if you’ve got a sure-fire set of criteria that can distinguish “which interventions are going to work” vs. “all the others”, let’s hear it.
    If your answer is “don’t play” than I’m not spilling my cards.

  284. By the way, Snarki, it wasn’t just luck, although partly so. It was the fact that Bill Clinton made a decision with the advice of people who had a good plan and could execute it well. (Wes Clark, for example.) This isn’t stuff that “just happens”.
    And if you’re conceding that Bosnia worked, then thank you for weighing on Tony P.’s question.
    [also, with regard to an earlier comment “then” not “than”. So hard to have the will power to proof before posting.]

  285. Also, too, these people – the ones who saved so many lives – are heroes.
    Bill Clinton, Wes Clark. Establishment Democrats.

  287. Sapient, I think Clinton is history’s second greatest monster, so given the tightening in the polls with history’s greatest monster lately I have been giving her money. I think I did that during the 2012 campaign, when it looked like Romney was closing the gap with Obama at one point.
    I might or might not type a longer rant later in response to some of the other issues, but it’s a nice pleasant Saturday evening so not now.

  290. She was quite fulsome in her thanks.
    But yeah, I don’t want Trump in there. It would be interesting to see what he does, but then I think a large asteroid impact would be a fascinating thing to observe. On the whole, it’s probably more fun to imagine than actually experience.

  291. “I think a large asteroid impact would be a fascinating thing to observe.”
    It is! Comet Shoemaker-Levi impacting Jupiter, for example.
    But it’s one of those things you want to try out “one someone else’s planet”, like a Trump presidency.

  292. “Nothing about that makes them bad people.”
    I continue to be unable to get my head around this.
    it’s not about whether voting for one person or another makes you a bad person. lovely people will vote for both candidates, and utterly horrible people will vote for both candidates.
    because some people are wonderful, some are total shits, most are somewhere in the middle, and political affiliation is distributed more or less arbitrarily across all of that.
    my niece, at whose wedding reception I officiated last year, is by God voting for trump. most likely her father, my brother in law, who is a great guy, and probably my sister, who taught me to read and drive a car.
    my godfather, the former John birch society chapter leader, is I am sure voting for tru,p, but only because W can’t run again and Rudy isn’t running.
    most of us have people we love and respect who are voting for trump. we understand that voting for Trump doesn’t make them bad people.
    the issue is that Trump has no fucking business being POTUS.
    it’s not about who is a nice person, or who was mean to somebody else.
    it’s about who is going to be the POT by god freaking US. that is what it us about.
    and I recognize that you think Clinton is Satan on wheels, but there are a hell of a lot of people who don’t find the claims if her criminality persuasive.
    not because they are mindless partisan sheeple, but because they don’t find the arguments that have been presented to be persuasive.
    Donald trump is a horrible, stupendously and almost mind-bogglingly inappropriate candidate for president. he sucks. him, not the people who want to vote for him. him.
    if elected, he will no doubt screw this nation to the freaking wall.
    he should not be president. that is the issue, not whether anyone is saying mean things about your SO, or my family members, or anyone else.
    people say mean stuff about everyone, every day. cest la vie.
    the fucking world us at stake. that’s no exaggeration.
    my feelings, your feelings, anybody else’s feelings, are kind of not the point.

  293. he sucks. him, not the people who want to vote for him. him.
    Never disagreed with this for a second.
    if elected, he will no doubt screw this nation to the freaking wall.
    This is probably over the top.
    , not the people who want to vote for him. him.
    Then I am not sure why you and I are disagreeing. Should I go back and quote the insults of those people in this thread?
    not because they are mindless partisan sheeple, but because they don’t find the arguments that have been presented to be persuasive.
    Both ways.
    This week a woman said on a comment on someones FB post:
    “Trump? He is an idiot but I’m voting for him. He at least doesn’t hate me.”
    Words matter. Feelings matter.

  294. I think Clinton is history’s second greatest monster
    Donald, I simply have to asked. Who do you consider the one and only greater monster? (I just can’t figure out whether Stalin or Hitler fails to make the cut. Although I suppose one could argue that Mao outdid them both….)

  295. That was a joke, wj. Sapient accused me of thinking Clinton was history’s greatest monster, which tickled me and I said she was number two, with Trump being one.
    Monster is not a useful category except in extreme cases like Hitler. I do suspect there is less difference between American politicians and the run of the mill dictators we demonize when they aren’t our allies. It’s more the circumstances. I think I linked to an interview with Assad’s wife that I listened to recently in some earlier thread. She could have been any Western politician’s spouse. Her husband’s government tortures and murders dissidents. But she was originally planning on going to Harvard business school, if I recall correctly.
    Snarki -lots of papers on comet impacts here–
    https://arxiv.org/find/all/1/all:+AND+Jupiter+AND+Comet+impact/0/1/0/all/0/1

  297. I agree with every word of what Loomis says here.
    http://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2016/11/why-america-sort-of-works
    feelings matter. fine, whatever. there are things that matter more, much more.
    want to know my feelings? here they are.
    i’ve spent the last 15 years of my life watching my country lose its damned mind. now i’m watching it teeter on the edge of flushing itself down the toilet.
    think that’s over the top? not even close.
    I hope your Facebook friend enjoys giving me the finger. what the fuck does she think us going to happen when Donald “he’s an idiot” trump is president?
    has she thought of that? does she even give a shit? or is her whole thought process a matter of who she thinks likes her more?
    what kind of president do people think trump is going to be? do they care? do they think it will all just work itself out, sonehow?
    I simply don’t know what to think about this stuff anymore. nations fail. history is full of political and social shipwrecks. we’re not immune.
    this is not some kind of feel-good thing. people need to grow up and think beyond their personal agendas.
    if not, we’re on our way out. there is nothing whatsoever that says we have to continue to enjoy the success we’ve enjoyed as a nation, or the place we hold in the world.
    pissing it all away is the easiest thing in the world.

  298. what kind of president do people think trump is going to be? do they care? do they think it will all just work itself out, somehow?
    Of course it will all just work itself out. If you barely have a clue about how the government actually works, it’s hard to understand how that working could be screwed up. And it’s hard to grasp how the government stopping would impact you personally. Lots of folks laughed at the guy with the sign reading “government hands off my Medicare!” But there really are a lot of people out there who don’t know enough to see why that was ridiculous.
    I guess what I’m saying is that we have done a rotten job of teaching what used to be called civics. That failure has been hurting us in Congress the past couple of decades. And now is on the verge of bitting us, or at least coming dangerously close, on the Presidential level.

  299. Sapient, you might want to look up what happened to Serbs and the Roma in Kosovo after our hugely successful intervention. Ethnic cleansing and murder continued, but this time by the KLA, who were no slouches at it before.
    I never took a strong stand on our Yugoslavia adventures because there really were bad guys on the Serbian side, but as usual, once it became a Western crusade most of the coverage was childishly one sided with good guy Westerners vs evil enemies. The evil committed by the good guys gets lost. Messes up the storyline.

  300. On Syria, the Us supported the al Zenki movement until 2015. They turned out to be nasty. A few months ago they chopped off a teenager’s head. Robert Ford supported another “moderate” by the name of Alloush. You can read about him( he is dead now) here–
    http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Security-Watch/Backchannels/2014/0815/Could-arming-the-moderate-Syrian-rebels-have-changed-history
    The point being that we really don’t do a good job on this intervention thing, not if the idea really is to bring democracy and puppies and unicorns. I doubt that is the main reason. In the case of Syria I think the chief goal was to weaken Iran, Hezbollah and Russia. Certainly that is how some Israelis see it and it is how the Saudis see it and they happen to be our allies with a lot of influence in DC.
    If humanitarian goals were paramount, after all these years you would think people would notice what a lousy job we do when we support guerillas. Suppose we far lefties persuaded everyone in the US that Israel was the chief bad guy in the IP conflict and suppose Israel became Putin’s ally. How many people think we could bring a one state democratic solution by arming moderate Palestinian rebels like Hamas or the PLO if it went back to its terrorist roots? We would of course avoid arming Isamic jihad, who are the extremists. How would the Israelis react? Wouldn’t peace and puppies and unicorns be just around the corner? Yes this is crazy but it’s hardly any crazier than our seemingly endless willingness to arm rather dubious groups while claiming noble motives.

  301. One final post. I don’t consider these rants, btw. I bring up Syria and Yemen because they are issues and people are supposed to talk about issues in elections, even if Trump is one of the candidates. So for instance, if people are going to criticize Trump for his support for Putin and for Trump’s willingness to commit war crimes and say how awful all that is, it should be pointed out that for over a year we have been supporting the Saudis as they commit war crimes. Childen are literally starving to death and this is barely covered in the US. And yes, the Saudis give a lot of money to various Americans and their human rights record stinks in their own country. So how exactly is it that people get so outraged by Trump and Putin and Russian bombing in Aleppo and say nothing about Yemen?
    What really inspires the inclination to rant is reading people complain about the press’s obsession with silly nonissues when they show very clearly where their own heads are with the behavior described above. Or watching Rachel Maddow. She did a short piece a few days after the Saudi bombing that killed 140 people. The Houthis apparently fired at US warships a few times later that week. Maddow reported on that. Her sole point was that we need a calm head in the WH under those circumstances, That is fine as far as it goes. . Who knows what Trump would do? But she said not one word about the bombing, the famine, or the US role in supporting the Saudis or State Dept lawyers concern we could be implicated in war crimes or the Senators who voted against arming the Saudis or the Obama Administration’s belated decision to review our support. Maddow is just a TV hack, but I know liberals in real life who think highly of her. And why not? Some liberal bloggers get far more outraged by celebrity Berniebusters saying dumb things than about Democratic politicians supporting policies that are bet described as immoral. The priorities here seem screwed up..
    Daniel Larison has become my favorite foreign policy blogger mainly because I agree with him but also because of his approach. You might disagree with his views, but he puts issues first and then evaluates what various politicians say about them. This ought to be the norm, but it isn’t..

  302. “Then I am not sure why you and I are disagreeing. Should I go back and quote the insults of those people in this thread?”
    Please do. It’ll save me the time of repeating myself.
    “Words matter. Feelings matter.”
    I think I’ve been listening to conservatives tell me for 40 years that liberals care only about feelings and emotions, while conservatives are pure rationalists.
    If you have to lay someone off from their livelihood, who gives a f*ck about their feelings about losing their employee-subsidized healthcare, we’re running a rationalized business over here, emoted Milton Friedman.
    Donald Trump will fire you and enjoy it.
    So, now Republicans are the ones with the feelings?
    Well, get use to having those feelings ignored and hurt, you losers, and maybe even shot at. Now, you want empathy?
    By the way, as of Wednesday morning if Clinton wins, I’m a Donald Johnson liberal on foreign policy and believe getting in Clinton’s face on this stuff is a righteous cause.
    If she loses, I believe in overthrowing the Trump Administration and the Republican Party, from local dogcatcher to President, via savage violence and re-installing Clinton as President, so we can reap the good of some of her domestic policies and impeach her for her foreign policy brutality, unless it’s not as bad as predicted.
    Syria is a meat grinder. There are no best and brightest American best intentions that will not end up with Apocalypse Now in that wood chipper.
    I can hold two thoughts in my brain at once.
    LBJ was a master at domestic progressiveness and a malign fool and jackass in Vietnam.

  303. I read and agree for the most part with Larison as well, except when I don’t.
    Then I peruse the rest of the Pat Buchanan, barking mad, lock and lead nonsense at that site and try to figure out how I can blow up their offices while preserving Larison’s cubicle and parking space.

  305. Austyn Crites is an American patriot, despite his Republican persuasion.
    http://heavy.com/news/2016/11/austyn-crites-donald-trump-reno-nevada-polls-rally-austin-protester-video-rushed-off-stage-secret-service-republican-democrat-dnc-hillary-clinton-plant-allegations/
    If we was a true Republican, he would have been carrying a gun and used it on the Trayvon Martin Trump vermin who assaulted him and falsely accused him of having an NRA weapon instead of a fucking liberal protest poster.
    Trump is reported to have shot Crites with his very small index finger.
    More of this. Much more.

  306. Sapient, you might want to look up what happened to Serbs and the Roma in Kosovo after our hugely successful intervention. Ethnic cleansing and murder continued, but this time by the KLA, who were no slouches at it before.
    I don’t need to look it up – I know about it. Our intervention didn’t create instant Nirvana, but we were instrumental in making peace happen. And your point that no one was without fault in that war is yet another “rhyme” with Syria. Yet, refugees who still live in my town can go back to visit their relatives in a peaceful country now, and they credit the United States.

  307. “Trump? He is an idiot but I’m voting for him. He at least doesn’t hate me.”

    then she must not be a Muslim, a Mexican, or a women. but you identified her as a “she”, so that must be confusing for her. because Trump (by his own goddamned words) has no respect for women.
    Stern: “I see. So you treat women with respect?”
    Trump: “Uh, I can’t say that, either.” [Laughs]
    but Clinton thinks bigots are deplorable, so, same-same.

  308. And your point that no one was without fault in that war is yet another “rhyme” with Syria.
    And yet, I realize that there are enough differences between Yugoslavia and Syria that there are strong reasons why we wouldn’t be able to succeed. So I’m not banging a drum here. I do think it’s worth the attention of our political leaders to consider if there’s a path forward.

  310. Yes, bobby, as we’ll find out Wednesday.
    Meanwhile, we are treated to this fascist election-stealing kabuki performance art … befitting brownshirted late Weimar Germany, or current events in despotic Turkey … by scum pigs who plan to kill Americans via policy (but not only) once elected:
    http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2016/11/trump-not-assassins-target
    These vermin believe a protest sign carried by a fellow Republican, the First Amendment, is a murder weapon.
    If only.
    Meanwhile, the hurt feelings of America, graphed:
    http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2016/11/preelection-report-economy
    The better is gets from where their Republican precursors left us, the more they want to kill Obama and Clinton.
    They’ll fall back on the Second Amendment to accomplish that, however.
    Meanwhile, all liberals do is run down to the speech store and stock up on large word-capacity mouth clips.
    That doesn’t work against killers, as conservatives have tried to tell us.
    If Trump is elected, he has promised to invoke a forever-waiting period on speech by destroying what’s left of our free press.
    Drudge, that dead rat, will be permitted to talk automatically with unlimited ammo, while moderate organs who dare to criticize a Trump Administration will have their speech confiscated.

  311. sapient, I understand you would like us all to agree that the “Yugoslavian intervention” was a success.
    When compared to all the other interventions over the past few decades, yes, it was a rousing success. Which does not mean it is without flaw; more like the others set a VERY low standard.
    And when we ask for a metric by which one can tell if a specific intervention will be a “good intervention”, it doesn’t mean “Ask Wes Clark” (although, yes, do ask him, but that’s an ‘argument from authority’ which just doesn’t fly so well around here)
    Even Wes Clark had to have some way to separate “good” from “bad” interventions, unless he has heretofore unmentioned god-like powers. (He doesn’t; I asked Odin, he got a good laugh out of it).
    Now, you could certainly take the position that “us peons” don’t have all the super fancy sekrit info from the CIA, NSA, NRO, ETC to make a good informed decision, and that’s fine. But looking at the history of US interventions over the past few decades, the people who DO have that info haven’t done so well either.
    So, Rule #1: if a Texan President wants a war, it’s a bad idea.
    I think that’s a good start, at least.

  312. So, Rule #1: if a Texan President wants a war, it’s a bad idea.
    I think that’s a good start, at least.
    We can agree on that, I think.

  313. Apparently, carrying an AR-15 on your shoulder into Chili’s ain’t threatening to these Trump c*cksuckers, but the waitress advancing on you waving a menu and telling you racism and hate are not the specials today is a time to kill in self-defense.
    America is full of sh*t.
    My feelings are bruised.

  314. Policy choices? Graphs? What do these have to do with an election between an Astronomer and an Astrologer?
    Astronomy hurts (some) people’s feelings: the math it involves is hard, and it does absolutely nothing to support their belief that they are the most important feature of the universe. No wonder they find it off-putting.
    Astrology appeals to (some) people: it teaches that the planets and stars take notice of their personal lives, and offers the hope that some astrologer somewhere is a prophet and not a swindler. What’s not to like?
    How in tarnation can the Astronomy Party discuss “issues” with the Astrology Party without hurt feelings all around?
    –TP

  315. I was very disappointed in the last Trump/Clinton debate, when they didn’t get into their policy differences on whether “Pluto is a planet”.
    Clinton: “I am firmly in the ‘planet’ camp”
    Trump: “Sure, that’s crooked Hillary for you, EVERYONE knows that Pluto is a cartoon dog. Disney. Really great, amirite?”
    Go ahead, tell me that the actual debate was more rational than that.

  316. I wonder if Kelly Ann Conway, who I expect is a pleasant enough lady in her down time, whose husband collects Bill Clinton dick pics, will receive the last paycheck Trump owes her, especially if that c*nt b*tch Clinton wins Tuesday.

  317. Kelly Ann Conway is The Church Lady with a motor mouth. But sure, probably pleasant in her down time.
    –TP

  320. Good lord, Comey is a numpty.
    Ought to have kept his trap shut from the start.
    I sincerely hope one of president Clinton’s early actions is to fire him.

  321. More on that:
    https://www.balloon-juice.com/2016/11/06/senator-franken-presents-the-reckoning/
    Purge the FBI, Comey first. Prosecute the rogue elements in the New York Bureau for interfering in an election of a U.S. President.
    Hatch Act? Fuck that. Execute them for espionage, treason and sedition.
    Open Congressional hearings, appoint an independent prosecutor, and form a brand new federal law enforcement agency separate from the FBI and staffed with retired FBI officers with impeccable reputations to scour all of their communications, even their grocery lists and their children’s schoolyard love notes for evidence of collusion between Russian hackers, Julian Assange, Vladimir Putin, Russian intelligence agencies and FBI personnel, the RNC, all Republican officeholders at all levels of government, and all Trump campaign personnel above the rank of bathroom attendants.
    Chase trump around with machetes until he begs to be killed.
    Giuliani is mine. It’s going to be very special. I’ll be inviting Michael Milken, every minority New Yorker who was harassed during his reign as Federal prosecutor and Mayor, and his former wives into the room to carve pieces off of his carcass.
    I’ll save the last bits for Hillary Clinton to pardon.

  323. If Trump is elected Tuesday and appoints Giuliani as Head of the Justice Department and his henchmen to head up the FBI, make sure to forward that comment of mine above to the lot of them.
    It will serve as a good lesson in what happens to citizens who speak up against corruption when Republican filth are given the reigns of government to come after me and abuse my rights.
    I can’t wait to read the OBWI thread from my jail cell as my testicles recover from their bout with the car battery.
    The empathy alone from some will be spellbinding.

  327. Well, then Democrats who are denied Senate seats should contest the elections in perpetuity and refuse to concede, ever.
    The seats should remain vacant.
    If fewer or no Supreme Court Justices are a good thing, then we’re way over staffed with one hundred Senators.
    And what’s with all of those deadbeat Republican House members living off the public titty? Contest those races too.
    Let’s whittle government institutions down to the nub so that they are powerless to adjudicate, represent, and decide between any of our differences.
    That way, we ourselves can settle our differences and what’s what with the Republicans’ basic tools of civil discourse: guns.

  328. I sincerely hope one of president Clinton’s early actions is to fire him.
    Actually, I think it would be better if Obama fired him.
    A) It looks less like straight revenge than if Clinton does it.
    B) It can happen lots sooner

  329. I wonder how, and how often, apart from obsessives like us, the great American public consumes its news. That is, what proportion of voters, particularly in different demographic groups, will actually hear about this latest dispatch from Comey before election day, and when will they hear it? After all, many or most people are pretty uninformed, and many, like millenials, apparently have no regular news sources apart from Facebook. I am not on Facebook myself, so have only a sketchy idea of how it works; will this be all over everyone’s pages? I am trying to understand how much of a difference it will make, given that there seems to be some ambiguity about how much his initial intervention ended up making on a race that was already tightening, apart from making a considerable difference downballot. Nate Silver, my guru in these matters, says:

    So will the latest Comey letter help Clinton? That’s also hard to say, and any change will really come too late to be picked up upon by most polls. It’s also plausible that the headlines themselves aren’t particularly helpful to Clinton, even if the news itself is. The Washington Post’s current web headline, for instance, is “FBI Director Comey says agency won’t recommend charges over Clinton email,” which reminds readers that Clinton was being investigated by the FBI for her email practices. Still, betting markets show Clinton’s probability of winning the election improving by about 3 percentage points on the news.

    But somehow, I do not feel that relieved, particularly since I gather African Americans have not been turning out in particularly impressive numbers in early voting, even in places where their vote was not being actively suppressed.

  330. Yeah, tic toc.
    sapient, I find myself glad that I had things to do last night (and today) other than waiting on your tender whims. Four comments in three hours crowing about how I wasn’t rising to your “challenge” and then waggling your eyebrows about that? What is wrong with you? Are you actually that impatient, petty, and childish? Seriously, go look in a mirror, look at how you’re behaving, and ask yourself why. I could say more, but you’re reminding me that there are better things to do with my time. So thanks for that, I guess.

  331. I gather African Americans have not been turning out in particularly impressive numbers in early voting, even in places where their vote was not being actively suppressed.
    I’m not so worried about this. Nate Silver is being extremely bearish this time, and there have been quite a few articles as to why that is, but I’m hopeful. The Comey disaster may have eaten away at a Clinton blowout, and may have cost us in the Senate, and it will certainly be horrible if we don’t get the Senate back. But there were two Hillary canvassers knocking at our door the past week, so that made me happy. I made phone calls, although most of the folks I called didn’t answer. One NC voter called me back to tell me that he’d already voted for Clinton.
    waiting on your tender whims.
    My whims aren’t a bit tender, and I see that you still have no answer to Tony P. Other folks have mentioned the horrible massacre that happened under the UN supervision of Kosovo. So, yes, it’s true that our intervention didn’t bring an end to all of the horror, but it saved a lot of lives. You are welcome to live in your alternate reality. I will continue to amuse myself as I like, including taking moments at the mirror.

  333. Thanks for responding sapient, and I am reassured that you are not too worried, because I know that you have been pretty frantic at times and would be still if it was looking as dark as I occasionally fear. Re your two canvassers, I forget where you live (does your mention of NC mean you live in North Carolina?), but what I was particularly worried about was the states which were supposed to be reasonably safe for HRC, but which have looked in play the last few days (e.g. New Hampshire). I know that people have been critical of Nate Silver’s approach, but since I am effectively innumerate I have decided to play it safe and go with his more conservative approach on the basis that his predictions were so on the money last time, better than anybody else’s IIRC.
    It’s interesting to me that some of us on ObWi seem to regard the possible election of Trump as an existential threat to the whole American project, and actually to the Republic (as in the Frum piece from the Atlantic I posted a few days ago, and the Souter interview I posted from Hilzoy’s feed yesterday), while some, although they might be anti-Trump, see it as undesirable but effectively almost just another unwanted election outcome that can be weathered. I wonder whether this is down to differences in character and temperament (I have certainly been feeling pretty apocalypic since Brexit for example), or whether one group or the other has more historical perspective and insight. Whoever’s in the right, the genie of racism, antisemitism, misogyny and nativism is well and truly out of the bottle now, and it’s hard to see how it can easily or quickly be put back.

  334. Whoever’s in the right, the genie of racism, antisemitism, misogyny and nativism is well and truly out of the bottle now, and it’s hard to see how it can easily or quickly be put back.
    I agree with this, but am not sure what to make of it. Elizabeth Warren, early on, made a speech that was really wonderful, talking about how Trump’s Republican Party is the same as Mitch McConnell’s Republican Party. It was so true, and see how many of the most popular Republican primary candidates have endorsed him. And Paul Ryan (who has wavered, but … has been a total coward).
    In a way, it’s good that Republicans have shown who they are. Obviously, that means it’s way more important that Democrats win. But it also means that Republicans, if they lose, are called out for what they’ve been doing (more and more) since the late 1960’s.
    I would prefer that we not be a country where racism and xenophobia is a political issue. But it always has been in my lifetime.
    GftNC, I live in Virginia, the state north of North Carolina. The capital of Virginia (Richmond) was the Capital of the Confederacy during the Civil War. It is now a swing state, but almost reliably Democratic. Our cities (even the small ones, like Charlottesville, where I live) are blue. Our outlying counties are still red. The Civil War is still a thing here. When the Supreme Court of the United States held that public schools had to be integrated, there were whole counties in Virginia that closed public schools (obviously, I’m sure you know, there is a difference between “public school” in the US v. UK). Tim Kaine’s story has an interesting intersection with all of this.
    Long comment, but I have been buoyed by the podcast “Keepin It 1600”. Maybe it’s too late for you to enjoy it, because the folks there have kept me company real time. But listen, at least, to the most recent one if you can. If you google it, it’s available on several online media.

  335. I am not on Facebook myself, so have only a sketchy idea of how it works; will this be all over everyone’s pages?
    Pretty much, yes.

  336. ” After all, many or most people are pretty uninformed, and many, like millenials, apparently have no regular news sources apart from Facebook.”
    This is pretty much just not true. Especially for millennial’s who eschew FB in droves.

  339. OK Marty, so if not political obsessives, or not even particularly politically engaged most of the time, and not Dem-leaning, how do millenials (or much less educated white or AA people) get their news? This is a serious question -will they hear about the FBI turnaround in time for it to have any impact on their vote if their vote is still undecided?

  340. The answer to the last question is probably not. But mostly because even the Clinton campaign understands that just talking about it is bad for her. It just seems keeps the focus on one of her negatives, trust. So she, nor her campaign, really made a point if it.

  341. Neither she.
    Talking about emails is just a negative, even if seemingly the news would be good. The people who like her already think it’s a witch hunt, the people that don’t will say it’s rigged and the rest here another story about Clinton’s emails. No upside for her.

  342. Thanks Marty. Yes, that had occurred to me, but I think there may still be people who were swayed by Comey’s intervention before, and could potentially be swayed back if they heard about this. I guess we’ll see….

  343. “and could potentially be swayed back if they heard about this.”
    I think not.
    His rally supporters are now kicking the wheelchairs of kids with cerebral palsy. If the parents of the kid had brought loaded weapons to the rally to defend themselves, which should be the de rigueur fashion statement from now on when in the vicinity of any tenderly and emotionally wounded filth Trump Republicans, that never would have happened.
    Why was the Secret Service not arresting these animals during that assault? Where are the law and order stinking Republicans when you need them?
    Probably busy shooting unarmed blacks in the back, so I understand they have their hands full.
    http://www.cltampa.com/news-views/politics/article/20840971/trumps-probably-last-tampa-rally-a-gas-gas-gas
    Ted Nugent managed to grab his own pussy during the rally.
    I thought he had been shot in the head already.
    I’m sorry, excuse me, but I need a hanky … my feelings are so damaged my comments from now on may only consist of emoticons.
    Pat Buchanan declared “Lock and Load!”
    Trump vermin say instead “Weep and Load!”

  344. It is incumbent upon to be, because of the feelings of all involved, to present a balanced case for both sides in this incident. I will do so in the language that Republicans have now made the civil discourse and rhetoric of the land, which will continue after the election at all public political events and around their Aunt Luella’s dinner table.
    First, examine the photograph in this article:
    http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/obama-meets-kid-cerebral-palsy-kicked-out-of-trump-rally
    It is obvious that Barack Obama is smiling maniacally while he is leaning in and strangling that little spastic liberal get and only making US think he is being nice to the kid. And get a load of the Commie Muslims behind Obama cheering the throttling of the kid on. Some of them want to behead the kid; you can see the scimitars! His sister is paralyzed with fear at the darkie Stalinist assaulting her brother.
    When the tapes of the encounter are released, people, I promise that it will show the kid squeaking (face it, the kid is faking his herky-jerky movements) out the following at Kenya boy there: “That c&nt Clinton deserves to hang, Barry! I’m Vince Foster’s bastard son and I saw that bitch put the bullet in my Dad’s head in the Lincoln bedroom and then drag him out by the ankles to the White House motor pool and stuff him in the trunk of a limo and then (she was wearing her bathrobe and there a cigarette dangling from her witch lips) drive the thing away. Bill Clinton was cheering her on from an upstairs White House window overlooking the scene. Now get you’re hands off my neck and breathing tube, Trayvon! And one more thing, you swarthy witch doctor, my Obamacare premiums are rising and my parents are paying twelve grand a year to insure my frail little body. Twelve grand! Do you realize that’s a whole one percent of the cost of my annual care, I want absolutely free care, you socialist Mugabe! “Geez stop that!”
    I swear to you that’s what happened. I saw it with Roger Stone’s own eyes and heard it with Sean Hannity’s own ears.
    Also, I’m releasing this important tape today. People have until the polls close to prove the tape is not authentic. I know it’s true.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J87y3DOL11g

  345. The people who like her already think it’s a witch hunt, the people that don’t will say it’s rigged and the rest here another story about Clinton’s emails.
    Quite true. But the relevant audience is those who are “neither of the above”. So the decision on whether to publicize would rest on how it would be seen by them.

  346. My whims aren’t a bit tender, and I see that you still have no answer to Tony P.
    What’s it like living in your alternate reality where shame and courtesy are things that only happen to other people? You are a partisan weasal and proud hypocrite; you chastised me for not responding to you in a timely manner, and drew Deep Implications from that (despite your history of deep resentment when people read anything at all into what you say) even as you ignored everything I said that didn’t channel into what you’d decided was a clear rhetorical “win” for “your team”. Even more richly, you did this in the context of complaining that DJ was contributing nothing to the conversation by being enough of a bore to mention that your preferred policies were not perforce the best of all possible policies.
    As to my continued “failure to respond to TP” – give it a rest. You’re being an ass. You are grotesquely selective about what you do and don’t respond to, and you really don’t give a damned that I’m not responding to TP – you just think you have a “clear” “win” on me and can’t help but gloat, because you’re in your 12-yo-and-spiteful mode. As far as I’m concerned, DJ and SCoL hit enough of the broad points that TP should be satisfied, and while I could add more specific points, they’d almost certainly be ones that mean nothing to you, and you’d like as not reject my sources. Because that’s what you do: you don’t provide your own sources, because your POV is “conventional wisdom”, but you endlessly demand sources from the DFHs who have the gall to question your received reality, and find their quality lacking (often to the point where you won’t read them at all, like the good little pure-minded ideologue you want us all to be). Which is entirely in keeping with your behavior. You’re better than us, and your time is worth far more than ours. So why should a DFH like me waste your precious time or sully your beautiful mind with filthy unorthodox lies when you can just save us both time by skipping ahead to the part where you cast aspersions on my character while preening about your moral superiority?

  347. Mazel tov and molotov to all:
    http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/scottie-nell-hughes-mazel-tov-cocktail
    In answer to the question, what the hell is a mazel tov cocktail, everyone knows it is apertif consisting of two fingers Manischewitz into which Breitbartian Trumpster Steve Bannon has coughed a meaty hocker.
    When David Duke takes the helm of the American Embassy in Israel the first words out of his fascist mouth will be “D’jou guys got any regula food around here, like possum ass over grits?”
    Netanyahu and the right wing rabbis who have polluted Israeli politics in much the same way as right-wing filth here have polluted ours (it’s a worldwide phenomenon), will celebrate their hurt feelings with a round of killing of Palestinians and nuking Tehran.
    Right wing filth among the Palestinians and the Iranian clerics will like it.

  348. NV: … DJ and SCoL hit enough of the broad points that TP should be satisfied …
    TP is indeed “satisfied” in the sense of having received a broad answer. Let’s not jump to conclusions about what TP thought of the answer.
    –TP

  349. The people who like her already think it’s a witch hunt
    I don’t particularly like her. Not at a personal level, she strikes me as a perfectly nice person. But as a public figure, she’s not my idea of what I’d like the (D) leadership to be.
    FWIW.
    And, I think it’s a witch hunt. Not just sort-of, I think it is blatantly a witch hunt.
    How many times has this stuff been gone over? How many bites at the apple do these guys want?
    People talking about “email” should really put up or shut up at this point.
    But we live in Cokie “it’s out there” world, so the facts don’t matter.
    I’d also like to return to the “I’m voting for Trump because liberals hate me” thing.
    Amazingly, I have my own circle of FB friends. Among them, one friend reports her kids being scared to death of a possible Trump presidency.
    “Why would anyone vote for him?” asks my friends 12 year old daughter. “He hates all of my friends”.
    She lives in a city where there are lots of Hispanics, and Russians, and Asians of all sorts. She goes to school with their kids, and those are her friends.
    All the people Trump says are rapists and criminals, all the people he says need to be removed from the country. Those people are her, and my, friends acquaintances co-workers and neighbors.
    They are people I know, respect, and care about.
    I’m kind of sick and tired of hearing the “somebody was mean to me” thing from people who are fine with demonizing anyone who isn’t like them. People whose entire world-view appears to be based on how dangerous and evil anyone is who was born in a different country, or who comes from a different religious tradition, or who has a funny accent or last name.
    That’s the crap that Trump appeals to, and brings out in people. The man is freaking poisonous.

  352. If your friends 12 year old is afraid of Trump then their parents suck. Because they aren’t explaining that difficult things are said in a campaign and he doesn’t hate all her friends. But they don’t say that, because they want people to believe, including their child, that he actual hates those people. Her parents are teaching her to hate, just different people. That’s the crap the left has come to. I remember when the left at least espoused understanding. No matter how stupid their actual policies were.
    Trump caveats everything he says with “some Mexicans” and “illegal” immigrants at that, and “radical” Muslims. The limiters are taken off by the left trying to create Satan. I bet there are a lot of terrified kids, mostly with parents who can’t do their jobs. I can assure my grandkids don’t get to watch all that, which is the most offensive commercial on tv. The one with 5-10 year old kids watching him on tv. Where are their parents?
    But the fact of bringing up one terrified child is exactly the left way. Fear and Satan creation. All of our policy should be built around the feelings of one insulted person or one poor child that has suffered couched in the worst light and declared to be universal. Lets set policy by anecdata, and pretend that the solution even fixes that problem.
    See: the utter fing failure of the ACA. Those Republicans are going to cut off the insurance to poor people everywhere, whose insurance might as well not exist if it is the ACA’s policies. So what’s the answer, well its the insurance companies raising the rates and opting out of the exchanges, its not the ACA’s fault. No it is the fault of the arrogant dumba$$e$ that designed it and forced it down everyone’s throat, propped it up by government subsidies just long enough to declare it a success and then watched it crumble. Oh, that does make it the ACA’s fault.
    And no, he doesn’t actively denounce the alt right, and yes he is an ahole blowhard, but he doesn’t hate all the 12 year olds friends. That is just the convenient meme of the day from the left.

  353. TP, out of respect for you, I’ll be slightly more specific as to why I chose the word “theater”. Bosnia gets trotted out as an example of “what an intervention should be” a lot by the strategic-air-power-as-a-hammer-and-the-world-as-a-nail crowd (who by relevant coincidence, overlap rather heavily with liberal hawks). However, serious analysis does not really agree with this. Air power did not in any non-controversial sense cause FRY capitulation to terms; that came about from Russian pressure. It did not seriously degrade FRY military capabilities, it inflicted civilian casualties at an alarmingly high rate in comparison to the military casualties inflicted, and it changed the hats of the human-rights violators on the ground rather than eliminating them. It was theater. It was Friedman Doctrine crap. And yet it gets endlessly trotted out as “proof” that bombing campaigns are a cheap and effective solution to problems both military and diplomatic.

  354. Oh, and significantly, it didn’t eliminate popular support for Milosevic, which is a staple argument for the disproportionate value of “clean” aerial interventions.
    There is also the whole discussion of its questionable status in terms of international law.

  355. That’s the crap the left has come to. I remember when the left at least espoused understanding. No matter how stupid their actual policies were.
    Marty, the Left is not monolithic. This sort of crap is a lot more common (though not exclusively so) in the center-left. Majoritarian political status makes it a whole lot easier to “other” those you disagree with, as you can quite easily lose sight of what it means to hold minority viewpoints.
    Don’t get me wrong, this crap happens further out from the center as well. Membership in small, unpopular groups and notions of purity lead to elitism just as surely as loud, gratifying echoes telling you you’re right. This is an American disease, not unrelated to Sebastian’s recent post. We love us a nice little two-minute hate, and that requires a Goldstein…

  356. Trump caveats everything he says with “some Mexicans” and “illegal” immigrants at that, and “radical” Muslims. The limiters are taken off by the left trying to create Satan.
    Marty, your naivete is astonishing. He “caveats”, but the modifiers are taken off by his audience and supporters, as he clearly intends. Innumerable interviews with them show this. As for your touching faith that parents can prevent kids from sensing and fearing what’s out and about in the zeitgeist, it again is not supported by what happens in the real world (e.g. school). A (measurable) rise in incidents of openly racist, sexist and homophobic behaviour has occurred in the UK after the Brexit vote, and in the US during the course of this election. Open bigotry begets consequences – one cannot eradicate bigoted attitudes, but one can make their expression generally unacceptable, and in the end perhaps they can become less prevalent.

  357. If your friends 12 year old is afraid of Trump then their parents suck.
    This is Marty trying to understand other people.

  358. As far as “trying to create a Satan” goes, it wasn’t “the Left’s” idea for him to run for president. No one would be all that afraid of a blowhard reality-show star.

  359. If your friends 12 year old is afraid of Trump then their parents suck. Because they aren’t explaining that difficult things are said in a campaign and he doesn’t hate all her friends.
    Marty, you do realize that a lot of people, some of them very bright people who actually pay attention to politics and the details of what is said, also think that Trump either
    a) does hate those people,
    b) is cheerfully pandering to those who hate them, or
    c) both of the above.
    You may be sure he doesn’t mean the nasty things he says. But there is lots of room to disagree there.

  360. No, GftNC, they aren’t taken off by his audience. In fact, in large part his audience adds them when he forgets too in their mind. The vast majority of them make very clear distinctions between the Mexican living down the block and the illegal that keeps getting arrested, deported and comes back to commit another crime.
    Yes, there are actual racists. There are people who have prejudices, they are called people and then there are people who simply afraid.
    His intention is to play to the afraid. It doesn’t hurt that the racists will vote for him, which sucks, but Trump doesn’t hate any of those people.
    The speeches he gives to blacks and Mexicans and Cubans about how he will represent them and make their lives better never get quoted.
    In the end, he is unlikely to matter 10 days from now. But what the parents of those kids are saying will last a lifetime.
    I am fully aware of what happens in schools, again, parents are responsible for both protecting their children and teaching them how to react and feel about the real world.
    Being afraid of Trump is not a productive or positive lesson.

  362. “Trump caveats everything he says with “some Mexicans” and “illegal” immigrants at that, and “radical” Muslims. The limiters are taken off by the left trying to create Satan. I bet there are a lot of terrified kids, mostly with parents who can’t do their jobs. I can assure my grandkids don’t get to watch all that, which is the most offensive commercial on tv. The one with 5-10 year old kids watching him on tv. Where are their parents?”
    Trump had them shot and then adopted the little girls among the kids and makes them watch those commercials while sitting on his lap at a Trump resort:
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TjSshSvQWQA
    “In the end, he is unlikely to matter 10 days from now. But what the parents of those kids are saying will last a lifetime.”
    I doubt it for some of those kids. All of we liberals try to brainwash our kids against demagogic filth but some of them will inevitably grow up and vote for the next Trump monstrosity.
    Marty, just to show that things are not personal, if I were President I would grant you early access to full Medicare coverage where you would unfortunately then have to choose among Medigap or Medicare Advantage policies and their various deductibles.
    I would then ignore your cranky kvetching, knowing you were better off medically the rest of your hopefully long life.

  363. propped it up by government subsidies just long enough to declare it a success and then watched it crumble
    so silly.
    the ACA’s problems are entirely fixable with minor tweaks. the GOP doesn’t want to make those tweaks because they find it better for their electoral prospects to have yet another thing for the party faithful to scream and rant about than they do making anyone else’s life better.
    i’m sure it’s Obama’s fault. always is.

  364. “If your friends 12 year old is afraid of Trump then their parents suck. Because they aren’t explaining that difficult things are said in a campaign and he doesn’t hate all her friends. But they don’t say that, because they want people to believe, including their child, that he actual hates those people. Her parents are teaching her to hate, just different people. That’s the crap the left has come to”
    Really, you know all of these things about her parents?
    A 12 year old is not capable of listening to the things Trump says and having her own, personal responses to them, independent of what her parents do or don’t say?
    Her parents suck? Says the guy who wanted to give me shit for being arrogant because I said Clinton was a more reasonable choice than Trump.
    You don’t know them, and you have fuck-all to say about them.
    If you want to vote for Trump, vote for Trump. But don’t give me any more crap about how mean and intolerant all of us lefties are.
    I don’t know if you have any freaking idea how much of a hypocrite you are on this thread.
    Whoever wins tomorrow, this election is exposing divisions that are not going to be papered over. We, as a nation, are by-god going to have it out, and it’ll end up wherever it ends up.
    Lefties are intolerant because Clinton says homophobia racism and misogyny are deplorable, and the people who indulge in them are deplorable.
    A 12 year old kid finds a Trump presidency disturbing because many of her friends are *exactly* the people he says are criminals, rapists, “bad hombres”. and threats to the nation.
    So her parents suck.
    Really man, what the fuck. Listen to yourself.

  365. “This is Marty trying to understand other people.”
    In about two minutes Marty is going to cite this as another example of The Left’s intolerance.

  367. Trump lies about those he and ALL of his supporters hate right down to the wire:
    http://washingtonmonthly.com/2016/11/07/trumps-closing-argument-hate/
    To Marty’s credit, Trump did discriminate that ONLY SOME of the Somali refugees, once they were done getting up after kissing the sweet ground of Minnesota USA, were joining ISIS.
    Since he didn’t precisely identify which refugees he was referring to by “some” nor specify whether “some” meant 12% or 83% of the refugees, “some” of his followers set out directly his statements afterward to shoot to kill as many Somali refugees and their children as they could locate, or finding random swarthy stand-ins to gun down, probably named Trayvon, or maybe just hunt down Al Franken on Wednesday.

  371. “I don’t know if you have any freaking idea how much of a hypocrite you are on this thread.”
    Yes, I know I am pushing the boundaries here russell.
    I have no idea what her parents said or did when she broached the subject. They could have advised her to understand the complexities of the things all those other kids are hearing and tried to get her to understand that Trump, while not a person to emulate is also not a person to fear.
    I am making no actual judgement of her parents.
    But do you realize how hypocritical you have been on this subject for weeks?
    Hate is hate. Your hate is no “better” than the next guys. It is no more deserved. There is a very small delegation of hateful racists out there and all the rest of his supporters are on a continuum that deserves respect for their conclusions as to what is worse and better for America. Just like those of her supporters.
    I understand and sympathize with your fear.
    I don’t think the situation is as dire as you do.
    But as much as I dislike Hilary I don’t hate the people that are voting for her. Nor do I assume anything about their character.
    You say you don’t like him. I don’t either. But there is not one person I dislike because they are voting for him. Nor do I assume anything about their character based on that vote.
    The world is in a virtuous cycle of building hate unless some of us decide to stop it.
    I hope you feel better come Wednesday.

  372. Hate is hate. Your hate is no “better” than the next guys.
    What hate are you speaking of? I smell a false equivalency.

  373. Of course you do hsh, because people hate Trump supporters for a “reason”. That’s not a false equivalency, its taking a side.

  374. But who hates Trump supporters, categorically? I know the following phrasing has some bad history associated with it, but some of my best friends are Trump supporters.

  376. And so it begins: Trumps is really a Democrat!
    4 years for now many people will wonder how it came to pass that two Democrats were nominated for President in 2016….just like how Bill Clinton was President on 9/11/2011.

  380. I am making no actual judgement of her parents.
    really? Then explain this:
    If your friends 12 year old is afraid of Trump then their parents suck.
    sounds non-judgmental to me! Yesserie!
    But really, broad brushing “the left” and then turning around and lecturing others on how Trump and/or his supporters really “aren’t like that” is simply bullshit.
    Is it, at bottom, a matter of “taking sides”? I’d say, yes, there is a large element of truth to that. Politically driven ideological cohesion will lead to a sharpening and exacerbation of differences.
    But you know, it takes at least two parties to have “sides”.
    The math is not very hard.
    I am as comfortable with my side, as you are with yours. If you’re going to make me “own” my side, then in return, I insist you own yours.
    Fair enough?

  381. More from Ana Navarro:
    http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2016/11/gop-latina-ftw.html
    Minorities in America are no more exceptional than minorities in any society … they know when they are hated … and they know who hates them.
    Jews know reflexively, instinctively, and historically when are hated, except for Sheldon Adelson, who apparently can put up with Trump’s campaign consigliero, Jew-hater Breitbartian Steve Bannon, but Adelson’s, that kapo, other hatreds and agendas take precedence over Bannon’s danger to him.
    As I’ve pointed out, the Republican Party has long been a big tent haven of haters (along with those many who are not haters but have been willing to play along to get the votes necessary to limit hated taxes and regulation, of all races, religious denominations, ethnicities, gender, and sexual persuasions.
    They are multicultural swamp of hatreds held in common, but they will hate their own kind, such as RINOs. Even that tendency has accelerated as Trump hates on far right Republicans who don’t back him full-throatedly and publicly, even tight wing brutes like Paul Ryan, who believes he can control Trump to rubber stamp his hateful agenda.
    Ann Coulter is a woman, but she hates human beings with vaginas who are permitted to vote and make other decisions.
    If Marty showed up at a Trump rally and stood and vocally begged Trump to soften his rhetoric, at the very least, Trump would unleash viral hatred toward Marty from the podium and Trump’s followers would unleash violent hatred toward Marty.
    Trump hates Marty.
    Kudos and other granola bran bars to Marty for his Jesus-like understanding and turning the other cheek at Trump’s dyspeptic hatred toward so many, while of course casting Clinton into deep burning Hell with no forgiveness.

  382. Here’s why 12-year-olds are eminently qualified to fear Trump.
    They have met the 13-year old too big for his britches bullying Trump on the playground.

  384. Marty: There is a very small delegation of hateful racists out there and all the rest of his supporters are on a continuum that deserves respect for their conclusions as to what is worse and better for America.
    Right, Marty: the conclusion that the Birther in Chief would be a better president for America deserves tons and tons of respect.
    Never mind the vendor stiffing, the tax avoiding, the cripple mocking, the woman dissing, the POW insulting, or the midnight tweeting. People who support He, Trump are just as rational as the people who don’t.
    –TP

  386. But there is not one person I dislike because they are voting for him. Nor do I assume anything about their character based on that vote.
    That’s great. Me either.
    As I’ve tried to make as clear as I possibly can here, I don’t have any particular animus toward people who vote for Trump, just because they vote for Trump.
    I think that people who are voting for Trump are making a profound mistake. I think that people who are voting for Trump with the full understanding that he is not qualified to be POTUS – who believe, in the words of your FB acquaintance, that “he’s an idiot” – are, in addition to making a mistake, acting in a profoundly irresponsible manner.
    It’s entirely possible for people who aren’t evil stupid bastards to (a) make mistakes and (b) act in an irresponsible manner.
    It’s not only possible, it happens every day. I’ll go out on a very tiny limb and say that every person reading this has, at some point, made mistakes and acted irresponsibly, without simultaneously being an evil stupid bastard.
    Donald J Trump is *profoundly* unqualified to be POTUS, and is a *profoundly* inappropriate choice for that position.
    The issues that a lot of people who are going to vote for Trump are facing are legitimate, and deserve consideration. And, in many cases they have not received the consideration they deserved. Many of Trump’s supporters have good reason to be pissed off.
    So do many people who are *not* Trump’s supporters. Trump folks are not the only people on the face of the planet who have suffered from crappy national policy making over the last generation or two.
    Electing Trump is *not going to solve a single one of their problems*. Because he does not have the skill set to address them. He doesn’t have the domain knowledge, he doesn’t have the political consensus-building skills, he doesn’t have the patience or discipline to actually make hard things happen.
    I say this with some confidence because he has lived his life, vividly, in public, and we can all readily see his track record.
    He is good at leveraging his personal brand to enrich himself. That is his skill set.
    It is completely possible for me to say everything I’ve said here, and not hate anybody. And in fact, I don’t hate anybody. Maybe Dick Cheney, or Richard Perle, or perhaps Henry Kissinger, but those guys are, thankfully, not involved in any of this.
    As far as the people we are talking about, there is no-one I hate, or even have strongly negative feelings about personally.
    I don’t even have strong negative feelings toward Trump personally, he’s an entertaining guy as long as you know where your wallet is and your wife or daughters are not in the room.
    He’s just an astoundingly, mind-bendingly bad choice for POTUS.
    It’s nice that you don’t think the situation is as dire as I do. Good luck with that.
    No matter who wins, we are in for years of incredibly dysfunctional social and political shit, because all of the problems that *everybody* is concerned about are not going away.
    Whoever wins it’s going to be a mess.
    You have a strong dislike of Obama. I would say that Obama’s greatest contribution of the last 8 years was keeping the wheels on.
    That’s over now.
    Whoever wins tomorrow is going to start with about half the country disgusted with the outcome, disgusted by the sorry spectacle of the last year and half, and pissed off at at least half of the other people who live here.
    It will be miracle if we will be able to get anything constructive done at all.
    It will, frankly, be a miracle if people don’t end up dead or damaged in large-ish numbers.
    Yes, I think it’s freaking dire. It’s been dire, and tomorrow is not going to make any of it any better, no matter what the outcome.

  387. Amazingly enough, it is entirely possible to
    A) hate Trump, and
    B) hate those Trump supporters who are bigots (of whatever variety).
    And yet not hate Trump supporters per se.
    Of course, you can argue that A) and B) amounts to hating all Trump supporters — and express outrage accordingly. But it doesn’t seem that way from outside the Trump camp. Instead, it seems like the folks who show up wearing “I’m a deplorable” T-shirts. If they want to embrace that description of themselves, who are the rest of us to argue? Someone who wants to feel put upon will generally find a rationale.

  388. I would say that Obama’s greatest contribution of the last 8 years was keeping the wheels on.
    ***
    Yes, I think it’s freaking dire. It’s been dire, and tomorrow is not going to make any of it any better, no matter what the outcome.
    I think that Hillary will keep the wheel on too, and the economy is improving (at the moment), so some of the people who feel aggrieved should be starting to feel better. (I don’t completely agree that such a huge number of people “have suffered from crappy national policy making over the last generation or two” or are still in that boat, or that this grievance is driving the Trump movement. And we should be talking about that more than we do.)
    I worry, of course, about people and their guns, and the Oregon standoff, etc. We are in for an incredibly tough time, but not because of the economy. It’s because people with a persecution complex base all of their decisions (including their electoral choices) on resentment, and those people want revenge. They’re nihilists, and they willfully believe lies.
    By the way, I’m kind of tired of Hillary Clinton being hated. She’s not hate worthy.

  389. “I think that Hillary will keep the wheel on too”
    IMO Clinton has the inclination and the skill set to do exactly that.
    My comment was more about the environment she would be stepping into. From day one, she will be dealing with people whose number-one priority will be finding ways to undermine her and, if possible, remove her from office.
    I say this because they’ve said so themselves. there is no mystery here.
    Obama had that, too, but I think for at least the first couple of years everyone was so sick of the sordid legacy of Bush’s foreign policy, and so freaked out at how close we came to the financial brink, that he got something of a pass.
    Clinton won’t.

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