The Commentariat -- November 2, 2016
Afternoon Update:
Trump Alt-Right Allies Plan Election-Day Mayhem. Ben Schreckinger of Politico: "Neo-Nazi leader Andrew Anglin plans to muster thousands of poll watchers across all 50 states. His partners at the alt-right website 'the Right Stuff' are touting plans to set up hidden cameras at polling places in Philadelphia and hand out liquor and marijuana in the city's 'ghetto' on Election Day to induce residents to stay home. The National Socialist Movement, various factions of the Ku Klux Klan and the white nationalist American Freedom Party all are deploying members to watch polls, either 'informally' or, they say, through the Trump campaign. The Oath Keepers, a group of former law enforcement and military members that often shows up in public heavily armed, is advising members to go undercover and conduct 'intelligence-gathering' at polling places, and Donald Trump ally Roger Stone is organizing his own exit polling, aiming to monitor thousands of precincts across the country." -- CW
** Gardiner Harris & Adam Goldman of the New York Times: "President Obama sharply criticized the decision by his F.B.I. director to alert Congress on Friday about the discovery of new emails related to the Hillary Clinton server case, implying that it violated investigative guidelines and trafficked in innuendo. 'We don't operate on incomplete information,' Mr. Obama said in an interview with NowThis News, broadcast Wednesday. 'We don't operate on leaks. We operate based on concrete decisions that are made. When this was investigated thoroughly the last time, the conclusion of the F.B.I., the conclusion of the Justice Department, the conclusion of repeated congressional investigations was that she had made some mistakes but that there wasn't anything there that was prosecutable,' Mr. Obama said." -- CW ...
... Jessie Hellmann of the Hill: "House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) floated the possibility Wednesday that FBI Director James Comey could be one 'the casualties' of the 2016 election.... 'Maybe he's not in the right job,' Pelosi said to CNN. 'I think that we have to just get through this election and just see what the casualties are along the way.'" -- CW ...
... Josh Gerstein of Politico: "The FBI never asked Hillary Clinton's top aides to turn over all the computers and smartphones they used while Clinton was secretary of state, an omission that is now triggering questions from Republican lawmakers." CW Translation: We fucked up, so now we're obliged to fuck up the election. ...
... David Mack of BuzzFeed: "The teenage girl who allegedly received indecent messages from Anthony Weiner said she is 'upset' with FBI Director James Comey after she found out via the media that her case had been tied to the use of Hillary Clinton's private email server.... 'The FBI asked for me to speak to the media as little as possible. I have tried to stay quiet, but Comey has upset me,' the teenager told BuzzFeed News. 'The last thing that I wanted was to have this become political propaganda.'" -- CW
The Trumpster Hosts the Mobster. Michael Isikoff of Yahoo! News: "A newly uncovered video appears to contradict Donald Trump's claim that he never knew a high-stakes gambler who was banned from New Jersey casinos for alleged ties to organized crime. The reputed mob figure, Robert LiButti, can be seen standing alongside Trump in the front row of a 1988 'WrestleMania' match in Atlantic City, N.J.... Edith Creamer, [LiButti's daughter...,] also attended the event. 'We were his guests,' she told Yahoo News in a text message this week.... The video appears to lend new support to assertions Trump once had close relations with LiButti, who was banned from the state's casinos in 1991 because of his ties to Mafia boss John Gotti, then the chief of the Gambino crime syndicate. Separately, the New Jersey Casino Control Commission that same year levied $650,000 in fines against the Trump Plaza hotel over its dealings with LiButti, who gambled huge sums at the hotel's casino. LiButti died in 2014." CW: Maybe dead men tell no tales, but videotapes and daughters do.
Josh Gerstein: "Lawyers suing Donald Trump for fraud over his Trump University real-estate seminar program say his campaign trail statements -- including some alleged whoppers -- should be fair game at a civil trial set to start later this month. Last week, Trump's attorneys asked that all his comments connected to his presidential campaign be off limits in the class-action lawsuit, along with all discussion of what his legal team euphemistically called 'personal conduct accusations.'... 'Donald Trump's dizzying array of objectively false, contradictory, and self-defeating statements have left him so flummoxed he is demanding that the Court create a new category of immunity to protect him from himself,' the plaintiffs' attorneys wrote. 'As a key witness in a case about his deception of others, Trump's representations, acts (or lack thereof), and credibility will be among the most important issues for the jury to determine. Trump wants to rig the deck by hiding from the jury his own words.'" -- CW
Brian Stelter & Tom Kludt of CNN: "Hulk Hogan and the remnants of Gawker Media have struck a confidential settlement agreement, rewarding the wrestler with millions of dollars. 'After four years of litigation funded by a billionaire with a grudge going back even further, a settlement has been reached. The saga is over,' Gawker founder Nick Denton wrote in a blog post on Wednesday.... As part of the settlement, Hogan, whose real name is Terry Bollea, will receive $31 million in cash, according to a court filing." -- CW
Allegra Kirkland of TPM: "A historically black church in Greenville, Mississippi was set on fire and vandalized with graffiti reading 'vote Trump' on Tuesday night. 'It is being investigated as a hate crime,' Greenville Mayor Errick Simmons told TPM on Wednesday...." -- CW
*****
** Dina Bass of Bloomberg: "Microsoft Corp. said a computer-hacking group that has previously targeted government agencies attacked its Windows software and Adobe Systems Inc.'s Flash program. The company will release a security patch for its operating system on Nov. 8, Windows chief Terry Myerson said Tuesday in a blog post on Microsoft's website. Users of Microsoft's Edge browser on the latest update to Windows 10 are protected from the flaw, the company said. The security exploit, by a group Microsoft calls Strontium, was discovered by Google's Threat Analysis Group and announced on Monday." CW: Several sites (here's one) recommended disabling Flash. I just uninstalled mine. I hope Adobe gets its fix up soon, as I need Flash to cover the election results since I don't have cable TV where I am. If you depend on Flash, at least make sure you have the latest update. If you're using Windows 10, Microsoft Edge is supposed to protect you.
Presidential Race
Nate Silver: "Trump remains an underdog, but no longer really a longshot: His Electoral College chances are 29 percent in our polls-only model -- his highest probability since Oct. 2 -- and 30 percent in polls-plus.... This isn't a secure map for Clinton at all." -- CW ...
... Evelyn Rupert of the Hill: "More than a quarter of Republicans who have already voted in Florida cast their ballots for ... Hillary Clinton, according to a new poll. A TargetSmart/William & Mary poll released Tuesday showed 28 percent of early Florida voters picked Clinton over ... Donald Trump.... The poll also showed Clinton ahead of Trump 48 to 40 percent overall, with a larger lead -- 55 to 37 percent -- among those who said they already voted." -- CW ...
... Matthew Burns of WRAL Raleigh: "With a week to go until Election Day, Republican Donald Trump has seized control of a tight presidential race in North Carolina, according to an exclusive WRAL News poll released Tuesday. SurveyUSA polled 659 people statewide Friday through Monday who have already cast their ballots or are likely to vote in the election and found Trump with a 51 to 44 percent lead over Democratic rival Hillary Clinton." -- CW
Matt Flegenheimer & Yamiche Alcindor of the New York Times: "Hillary Clinton moved on Tuesday to return the nation's focus to the character and behavior of Donald J. Trump, hoping to define the presidential race again as a referendum on her opponent after spending days in open conflict with the F.B.I.... Her remarks [in Dade City, Fla.,] signaled the campaign's direction in the homestretch: a barrage intended to disqualify Mr. Trump with brutal efficiency.... Mr. Trump, campaigning on Tuesday in Pennsylvania before Mrs. Clinton took the stage, made clear his intent to keep the pressure high. He fused a policy speech, ostensibly on health care, with his more typical broadsides against Mrs. Clinton, briefly holding forth on his announced subject, the Affordable Care Act, but quickly meandering to other topics." -- CW ...
... John Wagner, et al., of the Washington Post: "... Hillary Clinton made her most direct appeal yet Tuesday for women to reject the candidacy of Donald Trump, recounting at length a history of degrading statements about women made by her Republican rival, as well as allegations of unwanted sexual advances.... Trump, meanwhile, concentrated his rhetoric of the day on the Affordable Care Act, saying he would call a 'special session' of Congress to repeal and replace the law that he says is causing rising health insurance premiums, an issue he is trying to weigh down the Clinton campaign with." -- CW ...
... CW: A "special session"? Really? Paul Waldman: Well, yes, "apparently because he has no idea how Congress works and thinks it's like the Texas legislature that only meets for a short time every two years." -- CW
Juliet Eilperin of the Washington Post: "Speaking to a boisterous crowd at Capital University [in Columbus, Ohio,] Tuesday, President Obama told attendees they need to be as galvanized about the prospect of electing Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton as they are about cashing in on a free Taco Bell offer.... Before addressing the main crowd, Obama dropped by the overflow room, where hundreds of supporters screamed and snapped photos on their phones as he told them this election 'is too important to sit out.'... During his speech, Obama joked repeatedly with the crowd, making fun of Trump for suggesting he identifies with working Americans.... Trump never donned a baseball hat, Obama joked, 'until he started selling them.'" -- CW
Ashley Alman of the Huffington Post: "Vice President Joe Biden ... told attendees at a rally [in Charlotte, N.C.,] that the whole world is watching the presidential race, and 'what happens here matters to them.' He chastised Trump for his relationship with Russian President Vladimir Putin.... [He also said,] 'Can you imagine any president in the history of the United States of America, all the way from George Washington to Barack Obama, assuming the technology existed, can you imagine any president getting up at 3:30 in the morning and tweets vitriol, attacking a woman for her weight? Talks about women being pigs?" -- CW
Halimah Abdullah of NBC News: "Attorney General Loretta Lynch and FBI Director James Comey met Monday to discuss reviewing as swiftly as possible the newly discovered emails that could be related to their probe of Hillary Clinton's private server, officials told NBC News. Lynch and Comey spoke following their regular national security meeting at the Justice Department. During the meeting, which FBI and Justice Department officials described as cordial, Lynch expressed her continued confidence in Comey, one Justice Department official told NBC News.... Officials tell NBC News the process of combing through the emails [in Huma Abedin's folder] is ongoing and is taking longer than originally anticipated.It is likely that a relatively small number will be related to that case, a law enforcement official familiar with the investigation into emails related to the probe of Clinton's private server told NBC News on Monday." -- CW ...
... Now is the time for the New York Times to come to the aid of the Republican party....
... If yesterday's story clearing Trump of "inappropriate" ties to Russia weren't enough -- it was -- today's story fingers Clinton for Clinton Foundation wrongdoings. Read on ...
... Matt Apuzzo, et al., of the New York Times: "The F.B.I. and Justice Department faced a hard decision in two investigations this past summer that had the potential to rock the presidential election. The first case involved Donald J. Trump's campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, and secretive business dealings in Ukraine. The second focused on Hillary Clinton's relationships with donors to her family foundation. At the urging of the Justice Department, the F.B.I. agreed not to issue subpoenas or take other steps that would make the cases public so close to the election, according to federal law enforcement officials. Against this backdrop, the decision of the F.B.I. director, James B. Comey, to send a letter to Congress last week about a renewed inquiry concerning Mrs. Clinton's emails is not just a departure from longstanding policy; it has plunged the F.B.I. and the Justice Department directly into the election, precisely what Justice officials were trying to avoid." ...
... CW: Wait till you read the "evidence" the FBI gathered on the Clinton Foundation: "The investigation, based in New York..., was based mostly on information that had surfaced in news stories and the book 'Clinton Cash.'" Right. Because news stories produced zero evidence of wrongdoing -- all they had was headline innuendo, and Clinton Cash is an "error-filled" right-wing screed. But that's okay, NYT, slime Hillary with it in your lede graf. ...
... WTF? Tom LoBianco of CNN: "The FBI on Tuesday -- one week from Election Day -- released heavily redacted files from its 2001 investigation of President Bill Clinton's pardon of Marc Rich.... The release was posted on Twitter by @FBIRecordsVault, an account that posts material from FOIA requests on subjects of public interest.... Prior to Sunday, however, the account hadn't tweeted since October 2015.... Bill Clinton pardoned Rich on his last day in office, one of his most controversial decisions as president. 'Absent a (Freedom of Information Act) litigation deadline, this is odd. Will FBI be posting docs on Trump's housing discrimination in '70s?' tweeted Brian Fallon, a spokesman for Clinton's campaign." Comey had pursued Rich when Rich was a fugitive from the U.S. Thanks to BobbyLee for the heads-up. -- CW: Looking forward to seeing a link to the Starr Report prominently placed on the FBI's home page. And more pix of the blue dress, please. (Also linked yesterday.) ...
... It Gets Worse. Dara Lind of Vox: "... federal investigators ultimately concluded that the Clintons hadn't done anything wrong. That federal investigation, incidentally, was supervised by then-US Attorney James Comey.... The problem is that the documents the FBI just released don't actually establish that there wasn't any wrongdoing -- because they don't cover the end of the investigation. This is 'part 1' of the document dump (presumably other parts will be released later). Instead, what we get are 64 entirely redacted pages, followed by 100 heavily redacted pages -- with the exception of passages outlining Clinton's pardon of Rich, and saying 'it appears that the required pardon standards and procedures were not followed.'" CW: The unusual release is just a coincidence, I'm sure. (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ...
... Rosalind Helderman, et al., of the Washington Post: "For the second time in five days, the FBI had moved exactly to the place the nation's chief law enforcement agency usually strives to avoid: smack in the middle of partisan fighting over a national election, just days before the vote. The publication of the files related to the Marc Rich pardon inquiry, which agency officials said was posted automatically in response to pending public records requests, came as the Clinton campaign and Democratic lawmakers continued to fume over FBI Director James B. Comey's decision with less than two weeks before the election to announce that he was effectively resuming a review of Hillary Clinton's email practices.... FBI officials said the timing [of the Rich pardon release] was coincidental.... As of Tuesday morning, an official said, investigators had found no sign that the computer contained 'new and bigger' evidence about Clinton." -- CW ...
... Charles Pierce: "Clearly, there are FBI sources dissatisfied with decisions made not to keep investigating Hillary Rodham Clinton's e-mails and/or the Clinton Foundation. They're talking. There also seem to be FBI sources who are frustrated with what they see as the too-close-by-half relationship of the Donald Trump campaign to Russian oligarchs up to and including Vladimir Putin. They're talking. And there are people completely outraged by the bungling attempts by FBI director James Comey to involve himself so directly in the presidential election, and they're all talking. The FBI, in short, is out of control.... They can do more damage by accident than any terrorist can do on purpose. Like it or not, and I don't, the FBI is a player in the 2016 presidential election.... This is damage that will last." -- CW ...
... Greg Sargent: “Donald Trump has run what is easily the most dishonest presidential campaign of our lifetimes.... Yet in spite of this, today's Post tracking poll finds that Trump holds an edge of eight points over Clinton on the question of which candidate is viewed as the more honest and trustworthy one.... Just look at this new ad that the Trump campaign rolled out this morning.... It repeats a barrage of charges about the Clinton Foundation and supposed pay-to-play, and then tacks on the claim about the FBI, as if she's being just investigated for general corruption, with the details not mattering in the least.... The point is that the vagueness of Comey's letter is precisely what made it possible for Trump and Republicans to hype the precise significance of the new discovery into something much greater than the sum of the known facts.... Meanwhile, the media played a role here, too." Includes ad. -- CW ...
... Dan Merica of CNN: "Huma Abedin, Hillary Clinton's longtime -- and arguably closest -- aide, has stepped off the campaign trail in the wake of the FBI's announcement last week that it was investigating thousands of emails found on a laptop shared by her and her estranged husband, Anthony Weiner.... A Clinton aide said Tuesday that Abedin was working from the campaign headquarters in Brooklyn." -- CW
Margaret Hartmann of New York: "Libertarian vice-presidential nominee Bill Weld says he thinks running mate Gary Johnson would make a good president, and he still has campaign events scheduled through Election Day. But with just one week to go in the election, he's devoting an awful lot of time to explaining why voters should support Hillary Clinton over Donald Trump. Tuesday night on The Rachel Maddow Show, the former Republican governor of Massachusetts gave his most pro-Clinton interview yet, saying, 'I'm here vouching for Mrs. Clinton, and I think it's high time somebody did.'" -- CW
Frank Bruni: Hillary Clinton's "journey doesn't only reflect the advances of women. It has also been shaped by the appetites and anxieties of men.... And it has exposed gross male behavior while prompting fresh examples of it. Prominent men on the edge of obsolescence have never acted so wounded, so angry, so desperate. Yes, Newt Gingrich, I'm looking at you.... Donald Trump's candidacy is an unalloyed expression of male id: Yield to me, worship me, never question the expanse of my reach, do not impugn the majesty of my endowment. It's less a political mission than a hormonal one, and it harks back to an era when women were arm candy.... Clinton gets under Trump's skin in a way that male rivals didn't. In that sense, her gender is not a weakness but a weapon. It's about time." -- CW
Chris Massie of CNN: "Ed Rendell, the former governor of Pennsylvania and former Democratic National Committee chairman, said Tuesday that Hillary Clinton's campaign was making a mistake by attacking FBI director James Comey over how he handled recent developments into the investigation of Clinton's private server." CW: Could somebody please take this old boy to a communications-free location? He's become a danger to democracy.
Louis Nelson of Politico: "Donald Trump has a message for voters in certain states who already cast a ballot for Hillary Clinton and are beginning to feel buyer's remorse: it's not too late. 'You can change your vote in six states,' Trump wrote on Twitter Wednesday morning. 'So, now that you see that Hillary was a big mistake, change your vote to MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!'... Trump made that case in person Tuesday night in Wisconsin, a state where early or absentee voters can cast a ballot up to three times, canceling their previous one. Other states, including Minnesota, Michigan, Pennsylvania, New York, Connecticut and Mississippi have similar laws." -- CW
Washington Post Editors: "'I MEAN, who does that?' That was the question posed by Hillary Clinton at the last presidential debate about Donald Trump's use of charitable funds to purchase a six-foot portrait of himself.... It is someone who uses $264,631 of foundation funds to renovate a fountain outside one of his luxury hotels. It is someone who pulls a bait-and-switch on a public school chess team. It is someone who shamelessly hogs the spotlight at a charity function for sick children without having given a dime. Mr. Trump's approach to charity is that of a charlatan -- further evidence of a lack of character that makes the Republican nominee uniquely unfit for the Oval Office." -- CW ...
... The Tax Cheat, Ctd. New York Times Editors: "The latest disclosures about Mr. Trump's taxes ... further undercut the argument that he is uniquely qualified to fix what he has called a rigged system. Why would a man who has spent most of his professional life avoiding the shared responsibility of taxes all of a sudden care about helping others, especially those less fortunate? The truth is, of course, that he has no intention of doing so; according to a recent analysis by the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center, Mr. Trump's tax proposals would confer by far the greatest advantages on the wealthiest Americans." -- CW ...
... Who's Corrupt? Digby, in Salon: "As Media Matters laid out on Monday, Trump is currently facing 75 different civil lawsuits for matters including fraud, breach of contract, nonpayment, sexual harassment and defamation. He has three pending Trump University fraud suits and is suspected of perpetrating a 'pay-for-play' scheme with Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi and possibly others to shut down a state investigation into the same fraudulent enterprise.... Trump has dealings with shady characters in various countries around the world that would greatly complicate American national security and its relationship to its allies. At the moment he has refused to give any information about his foreign holdings and media outlets have been strangely passive about asking him about it.... How is it possible that Clinton's email brouhaha has marked her as thoroughly corrupt and dishonest, while Trump's monumentally nefarious past, present and future are overlooked?" -- CW
Dana Milbank: Thanks to Roger Stone, Alex Jones & Co., the "Bill Clinton's black son" nonsense is back. "If past is prologue, Trump will, in this final week of the campaign, find a way to mention the story of Bill Clinton's love child. Stone to Jones to [Steve] Bannon to Trump: This is how Trump legitimizes the fringe. There's nothing furtive about this vast, right-wing conspiracy: Trump relies on the private advice of Stone, Jones and Bannon, and he has made their conspiracy theories mainstream." -- CW
Adam Raymond of New York: "... the Trump Organization already owns three key URLs that could point to a future in the media business: TrumpTelevision.com, TrumpNetwork.com, and TheTrumpNetwork.com. The latter two addresses once hosted content for a multilevel marketing company that sold vitamins and licensed Trump's name to help dupe people into joining. TrumpTelevision.com, on the other hand, appears to have never hosted anything, according to Yahoo. The Trump Organization has owned these sites since at least December 2012, but they've taken on a new relevance in light of Trump's rumored television ambitions." -- CW
The Appeasers. Adam Edelman of the New York Daily News: "House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) and Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) have already cast their votes for Donald Trump, they said Tuesday." -- CW
Meet Your Trump Surrogates. Jordan Rudner & Lauren McGaughy of the Dallas Morning News: "Texas Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller blamed hackers and then an overzealous staffer for a tweet from his campaign account that called Hillary Clinton a 'c[unt].' The tweet referred to presidential poll results in Pennsylvania: 'TRUMP 44' and 'C[unt] 43.'... Last year, [Miller] shared a post calling for the United States to bomb 'the Muslim world,' although he later attributed the post to a staffer. On another occasion, he compared Syrian refugees to rattlesnakes. Miller, who in recent days has emerged as one of Trump's most vocal Texas surrogates, has been tweeting rapidly for the last 24 hours, sharing poll results that show Clinton trailing Trump and sharing rumors about FBI Director James Comey.... Last week, Miller mocked the Clinton team in another tweet for being overly cautious about the Democratic candidate's Twitter account. 'My thoughts are my own,' he wrote." CW: Now that I believe. ...
... Patrick Svitek of the Texas Tribune: "In recent days, [Sid] Miller has become Trump's go-to guy when it comes to arguing that the presidential race in Texas and elsewhere is not exactly what polls say it is, an on-message ally in Trump's pursuit to convince Americans it ain't over 'til it's over.... And he seems to have seriously caught the attention of the nominee, who has not only shouted him out at multiple rallies but also personally sent him an email thanking him for his help." CW: Anyone who calls his opponent a cunt is a Trump kind of guy.
Meet Your Trump Supporters, Ctd. Peter Holley of the Washington Post: "Among the small number of American newspapers that have embraced Donald Trump's campaign, there is one, in particular, that stands out. It is called the Crusader -- and it is one of the prominent newspapers of the Ku Klux Klan. Under the banner 'Make America Great Again,' the paper's current issue devoted its entire front page to a lengthy defense of Trump's message -- an embrace some have labeled a de facto endorsement." -- CW
Annals of "Journalism," Ha Ha Ha. Brian Stelter of CNN: "Radio host Sean Hannity on Tuesday embraced a piece of fake news about President Obama deleting endorsements of Hillary Clinton from his Twitter account. Hannity used the made-up news to claim that President Obama's legacy might be 'jail.' The deleted-tweets claim could have been disproven by a quick Twitter search. Later in the day, Hannity tweeted a correction and apologized." ...
... CW: Maybe we should mention here that besides being a radical confederate assbag, Hannity is a stupid, radical confederate assbag. Even the lamest of lamebrains would question a story about Obama's de-endorsing Clinton on a day he was out campaigning for her. ...
... CW: What a nice roundup: A Trump-approved guy who calls Clinton a cunt, the KKK & the Dumbest Man in Media. There's your Trump base: misogynists, foaming-at-the-mouth racists/xenophobes/anti-Semites & ignoramuses.
Annals of "Journalism," Ctd. Michael Calderone of the Huffington Post: " CNN president Jeff Zucker described former network commentator Donna Brazile's interactions with the Clinton campaign as 'unethical' and 'disgusting' during a Tuesday editorial meeting, according to a source with knowledge of the matter.... On Monday, CNN announced Brazile resigned on Oct. 14 ― three days after the first email surfaced ― and reiterated that the network hadn't provided her with questions.... On Monday, Brazile referred questions back to her Oct. 11 statement in which she said that 'as it pertains to the CNN Debates, I never had access to questions and would never have shared them with the candidates if I did.' The revelations that Brazile tipped off the Clinton campaign has drawn attention to the common practice of networks hiring partisan operatives whose loyalties may be more to their parties or desired candidates than the audience." Corey Lewandowski. -- CW
Congressional Races
Ryan Lizza of the New Yorker: "... one simple factor that [has created gridlock] has received [little] attention: partisan control of the House and Senate is up for grabs more often than in previous eras. When the party that does not control the White House has a realistic chance of winning a congressional majority in one or both chambers, the incentives for House members and senators to cooperate with the President of the opposing party plummet. When that happens, all of the familiar elements of the permanent campaign -- fund-raising, releasing attack ads, using Congress to highlight ideological differences -- become more important, while serious efforts at legislating diminish." -- CW
Election News & Views
Laura McCrystal & Angela Couloumbis of Philly.com: "Pennsylvania state police have raided a Delaware County political field office seeking evidence of possible voter-registration fraud, according to court records. In a warrant filed late last week in County Court, investigators said they were seeking documents, financial information, and lists of employees at the Norwood office of FieldWorks LLC, a national organization that often does street work for Democrats, records show.... FieldWorks describes itself as 'a nationally recognized grassroots organizing firm founded to help progressive organizations, advocacy groups, and members of the Democratic family take their public engagement and electoral strategies to the next level.'" -- CW
** "Here's What Happens When You Forget to Vote." Brian Beutler: "... now, we're seeing leaks to news outlets from FBI officials that reflect generously on Donald Trump and negatively on Clinton. The New York Times' FBI sources, for instance, are at pains to insulate Trump from politically damaging evidence that he and Russian intelligence and propaganda outlets are operating symbiotically. And this Wall Street Journal article details an intense appetite, in FBI field offices across the country, for pursuing every possible investigative avenue related to Clinton.... There is a through line connecting all of these inconsistent election-season dynamics. It extends all the way back to 2010, when complacent Democrats didn't show up to vote, handing control of the House to the Republican Party, and makes a stopover in 2014, when many of these same complacent Democrats didn't show up again, and ceded the Senate to Republicans as well.... The only way for Democratic voters to tidy this up, and put safeguards in place to prevent similar outrages going forward, is to vote in overwhelming numbers and retake Congress altogether." -- CW
Other News & Views
Sam Levin of the Guardian: "Barack Obama has suggested the Dakota Access pipeline could be rerouted around sacred Native American lands in comments that are the president's first on the controversial oil project since police arrested hundreds of indigenous protesters during violent clashes. After months of pleas from activists in North Dakota to stop construction of a pipeline that the Standing Rock tribe says could contaminate its water supply and threaten its cultural heritage, Obama said in an interview released on Tuesday night that the government was 'going to let it play out for several more weeks and determine whether or not this can be resolved in a way that I think is properly attentive to the traditions of the first Americans'." -- CW
Matt Apuzzo & Adam Goldman of the New York Times: "A federal judge has rejected the settlement of a lawsuit stemming from the New York Police Department's surveillance of Muslims, saying the proposed deal does not provide enough oversight of an agency that he said had shown a 'systemic inclination' to ignore rules protecting free speech and religion." -- CW (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)
What Is Wrong with Us? Liam Stack & Christine Hauser of the New York Times: "Adam Crapser was adopted from South Korea nearly four decades ago, but today he languishes in an immigration detention center in Washington State awaiting deportation because his American parents never filed citizenship paperwork for him.... According to the Adoptee Rights Campaign, an advocacy group, there are about 35,000 people in the United States who were adopted by American couples as children but who do not have citizenship." -- CW (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)
Laurie Goodstein of the New York Times: "The Roman Catholic Church's teaching that women cannot be ordained as priests is likely to last forever, Pope Francis said on Tuesday as he flew back to Rome from Sweden. Francis had traveled to Sweden for a historic ceremony commemorating the year leading up to the 500th anniversary of the Protestant Reformation. He was embraced at an ecumenical church service by the primate of the Church of Sweden, Archbishop Antje Jackelen, who is a woman." -- CW
Beyond the Beltway
There Are Still Heroes. Travis Andrews of the Washington Post: A San Francisco cop, Sgt. John Cagney, would not give up on finding men who in 2014 brutally beat to death a disabled homeless man for the fun of it. This year he arrested two of the three (alleged) murderers.
Time for Another Armed Standoff. Kevin Sullivan & Juliet Eilperin of the Washington Post: "Less than a week after being acquitted at a trial over last winter's armed occupation of an Oregon federal wildlife refuge, Nevada rancher Ryan Bundy said another protest action will be justified if President Obama goes ahead with plans to create a huge national monument abutting the Bundy family's ranch here." CW: Thanks, Oregon jurors!
News Ledes
ESPN: "After a century and eight years, the Chicago Cubs are world champions, and they did it by surviving a game for the ages, a contest in which they finally slew demons that refused to be exorcised. The baseball facts matter, especially these, though they hardly do justice to the scale of the outcome or the level of drama that unfolded. In what seemed like the most heartbreaking yet of nightmarish Cubs postseason games gone wrong, Ben Zobrist's 10th-inning double off Bryan Shaw broke a 6-6 tie, and the Cubs outlasted the Cleveland Indians 8-7 in a title-winning, drought-breaking, impossible-to-believe Game 7 of the World Series on Wednesday." -- CW
Washington Post: "Two police officers in central Iowa were shot and killed early Wednesday morning in a pair of 'ambush-style attacks,' the Des Moines Police Department said. Police said both officers were sitting in their squad cars when they were killed. Authorities on Wednesday morning named Scott Michael Greene, 46, as the suspect in the shootings that killed the officers from Des Moines and Urbandale, a nearby city." -- CW ...
... Des Moines Register Update: "The suspect in Wednesday's killings was removed [by police] from Urbandale High School's football stadium Oct. 14 after he claimed his Confederate flag was stolen by other spectators, authorities said. The stadium is at the intersection where one of officers was found dead early Wednesday." Clarke apparently took videos of parts of the incident. In the videos, he accused the police of abuse & of violating his civil rights." -- CW
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Reader Comments (17)
So it's official, the FBI is a political organization.
And the new business enterprise, the United States of Trump would be managed by a person who has no idea how the system works.
Well, finally! Obama has weighed in on the Dakota pipeline situation––you mean there is another alternative? After all this time someone actually offers up another way of implementing this. Good grief!
The adoption story is heartbreaking, but I'm confused. Aren't there regulations in place when the initial adoption takes place to automatically have children become citizens?
Frank Bruni mentions "an era when women were arm candy" as though that kind of thing is passé. He evidently doesn't know about an organization called "Sugar Daddies" where men in high places buy the services of women for whatever they need or want women for. It's a lucrative business for these women who make mucho $$$––as they say, "it beats working at Wal-mart."
And here is a long, long list of Trump's catastrophic misdeeds compared with Hillary's "flaws." Print out and disperse to whomever you know is going to vote for someone who will run roughshod over our democracy that is already in a fragile state.
http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/11/perspective-on-the-flaws-of-hillary-clinton-and-donald-trump/506042/
And if Emperor Trump is in charge, the State Dept. will have a new rule which does not allow other countries leaders to bring women to the Trump House.
This is driving me insane. And the FBI, especially poor put-upon Comey, is so useless and toxic, it's hard to breathe. Last night there was fleeting good news from FL, that a poll of people having already voted showed that 28% of registered repugnicans had voted for Hillary, and they put their ratio at 48% for Hillary, 40% for dumpster. Don't know how much faith I have in it though-- I can't get to the remote fast enough to squash that nasty, smug voice of his when I hear it. And only 75 lawsuits pending? What a despicable person. I'm sure hundreds more people than that gave up suits because they were driven bankrupt. This week is horrendous...
On another matter: A clinical trial of contraceptives for men was halted because of side effects. Ah, gee–––! "It was believed women would tolerate side effects better than men, who demanded a better quality of life."
http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2016/11/the-different-stakes-of-male-and-female-birth-control/506120/
Jon Stewart shows how to win a Twitter war with Trump.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/jon-stewart-donald-trump-twitter-war_us_5819a04fe4b0f96eba96e507
News flash: The FBI under orders from James Comey has secured warrants to examine the high school, college and graduate school transcripts of Bill, Hillary, and Chelsea Clinton. Information leaked from a penthouse in a high rise building in midtown Manhattan was the source, insinuating that some of the grades may have been unfairly inflated. "We're not sure if there's anything there" said Comey, pausing only to check his hair in a mirror held up by an accompanying agent, "but the American people deserve to know everything about a candidate."
Asked whether this means that the FBI would now be looking into the transcripts of Donald Trump who has been touting his intellectual superiority while hiding his records, Comey declared "No. Certainly not. The American people don't get to know everything about a candidate. Let's have some decorum here, shall we?"
When asked why Chelsea Clinton's records were being investigated Comey said that if the Clintons had sent a dog to obedience school, its records would have been investigated as well. "The American people....blah, blah, blah."
The FBI has now joined the Secret Service in degrading and disgracing itself. In my lifetime, these were agencies, at least by reputation, that were the good guys. Lets see, the Secret Service employees get drunk and bang prostitutes while protecting the President, afterwards they refuse to pay for their services, and race to spill salacious tales about those they have protected. Yeah, I'd trust these clowns with my life. You betcha. The FBI decides who they will investigate based on their own individual political preference, their boss has no cojonnes, no integrity and no clue about how to conduct himself. I expect a tell all FBI book momentarily.
These Secret Service and FBI used to represent honor and professionalism. Their merely offshoots of the Kardashian clan now.
Sincerely, we're now living in an advanced country that has a 3rd world mentality. The US is a country too ignorant to handle the advances in technology and too stupid to protect ourselves. We're addicted to being outraged. Unfortunately, to continue having the feeling of outrage, it takes ever more, bigger and wilder tales to fill the hole.
A black church in Mississippi was burned and vandalized with pro-Trump graffiti late Tuesday. No arrests have been made as yet.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/mississippi-church-burned-vandalized-trump_us_5819ef95e4b01f610e393372
@Diane: Maybe, just maybe, this chaos will lead to something finer in the end. The "always look on the sunny side of life" makes us laugh, but the continued feeling of outrage needs to be counteracted with some of Monty P's melodies–––otherwise...
Here's a question I haven't seen asked yet.
After the final "debate", the Orange Headed Bigot whined that Hillary Clinton had received advanced notice of the questions. Now it appears that she may have gotten a peek at one question at least, courtesy of Donna Brazile (who is now being slammed by CNN head and Trump BFF, the execrable Jeff Zucker). It's not clear yet whether Brazile's confidence was based on her having direct access to the questions (which brings up a whole 'nother set of questions) or whether it was a very good guess on her part. I think most of us could have come up with a pretty good guess about many of the questions asked of both Clinton and the Creep.
Now it's come out, through, as far as I know, another Wikileaks Exclusive that Brazile had communicated this question via e-mail to Clinton.
So here's my question. How did Trump know about this e-mail? Was it just him being his paranoid lying self, or did he get word from his buddies Assange and Putin that Brazile had indeed sent Clinton a heads up?
The Trump ticket, which is now Trump-Pence-Putin-Assange-Comey-KKK-NYTIMES, continues to grow.
If anyone has a legitimate complaint about unfair piling on, it sure ain't Donaldo. But he's right about one thing. This election is being rigged. Just not by Democrats.
The recent mad flurry of bad press against Clinton is designed to do two things, affect the votes of the barking mad undecideds and depress the vote of so-called independents. Either way--and I don't care what anyone says--Comey's faux investigation and his trumpeting of same was designed to change the outcome of the election and it's working. The same goal can be laid at the doors of Assange and Putin.
The only remedy is for Democrats to come out like crazy and vote. We can't have 35% of registered voters showing up. Trump has called out the Evil Cavalry and they've all arrived with timing that would please DW Griffith no end*. We need--the country needs--voters to show up and do the right thing. This morning I was thinking about the unthinkable. Well, if Trump is elected--which seems more a possibility by the day--the country will fall apart but four years from now, we'll get someone new.
Then I thought of the Supreme Court.
GOTV. Trump may do a lot of damage in four years but the worst thing he can do is put a couple of Nazis on the court and that damage will go on long after his flabby orange ass has been shoveled over.
*If' you've seen Griffith's "Birth of a Nation" you may recall that the "cavalry" that arrived just in time was the KKK riding to rescue the noble southern whites from black union soldiers depicted as vicious beasts. The same KKK that now supports Donald Trump.
A quote from the man himself re: his baseball acumen on MTV in 2010:
"I was captain of the baseball team. I was supposed to be a professional baseball player. Fortunately, I decided to go into real estate instead. I played first base and I also played catcher. I was a good hitter. I just had a good time.”
@Akhilleus: As far as I can tell, Trump didn't start accusing Clinton of having a cheat sheet until after the first WikiLeaks docudump fingered Brazile for giving Clinton a question during a March debate with Sanders. That e-mail exchange was vague enough that it left Brazile with some plausible deniability even tho Clinton did get a very similar question in the debate.
But -- and this I didn't know till just now -- Hadas Gold did some digging & found nearly irrefutable evidence that Brazile got the question from Roland Martin, who works for TV One, which co-hosted the CNN debate between Sanders & Clinton. It turns out that Martin, who claimed during the debate that no one, not even his producer, had seen the questions he would ask, had sent a copy of his planned questions to CNN. The one Brazile sent to Palmieri was identical to the one Martin sent CNN, right down to the punctuation marks. Copied & pasted. Politico published Gold's story on October 12.
So I was wrong when I dinged Gold the other day for failing to include Brazile's denial in her report on the 2nd WikiLeak leak about another question Brazile gave Palmieri. Brazile's denial is just bullshit.
Brendan Morrow of Heavy reports on the second WikiLeaks e-mail exchange, which is about another primary debate, this one in Flint, Michigan. It was from his report that I got the Trump timeline.
It's true that there has been a well-developed conspiracy theory out there in Right Wing World that dates to September & followed the first Clinton-Trump debate (i.e., pre-Wikidump), but I don't see where Trump himself ever articulated it. The initial basis for the charge was that Hillary did so well & was so composed that she must have cheated. Pretty soon we find out that in Right Wing Fantasyland, an NBC intern disguised as a FedEx employee brought Robby Mook an envelope with the questions a week before the first debate (what with Hillary's "e-mail problem," they were only going with hardcopies!). The conspirators would have got away with it, too, if not for a sly Fox reporter who recognized the intern! Maybe when the political season is over, these guys will get back to writing comic book scripts.
Marie
With this unprecedented situation, I feel like some good comparative analysis can come from a similar situation going on with our neighbors to the South. While this election is certainly no coup d'état, it does bear striking resemblance to what just transpired in Brazil with the ouster of a dubiously compromised Dilma Rousseff by an infinitely more scandalous and corrupt Michel Temer.
In Brazil, similar to the US, the mass media is highly centralized within a small but enormously powerful group of socially conservative families and associates. When the Petrobras scandal broke, businessmen and politicians threw up any smoke screens they could find to divert attention from the hard evidence implicating a huge swath of sitting elected representatives. By innuendo, as Rousseff had been the head of the company during the time of the monumental kickback scandal, the media began the narrative that she should be held accountable...Yet her successful impeachment, voted on by the same corrupt snakes implicated in the kickback scandal, was only indirectly related to the Petrobras scandal, as she was ultimately ousted on trumped up charges of rigging the budget books before the election, a practice that already had supposed precedence.
To put the nail in her presidential coffin, a rouge judge broke protocol and illegally published personal conversations of Rousseff alleging corruption by trying to give political cover to her predecessor Lula da Silva, but the recordings were ultimately left to pundits to speculate what the conversation meant.
The media whipped up the story by constantly speculating on unknowns until the people spilled out onto the streets, masses of them calling for Rousseff's ouster while knowing that even more corrupt politicians would take her place and do all they could to shut down any chances of bringing justice to the true criminals.
I'm not saying that Rousseff and her party didn't participate in the money grab bag, we ultimately won't know until the investigations are over, but the way she went down, with so many seemingly disparate actors and institutions each tearing off their bit of flesh, seems remarkably similar to the different forces teaming up against the liberal agenda represented by the Clinton campaign.
In Brazil, the conservative parties had been exasperated by the fact that they couldn't win the presidential vote, blaming their losses on the votes of the poor northeasterns who received "free handouts" from social policies aimed at alleviating poverty. They wanted power, regardless of the immediate damage this power grab would cause to their shaky democratic institutions.
In the US, with their electorate shrinking by the day, many of the confederate diehards have openly lamented that this is their last opportunity to fully implement their regressive policies and mold the future of America in their own perverted vision. While I first took these shrill cries as just another cycle of their whining and hand-wringing, I'm beginning to think that they truly do see this election, collectively as a unified spirit, as a sort of political and social Armageddon. As they can't compromise their policies to expand their tent, "non"-Americans getting more numerous by the day, and the kids aren't alright, we're witnessing a primal rage where customs and norms lose all relevance and mass smoke bombs cover up any and all trickery employed to place the sacred power of presidential power in their hands once again. In our new instant gratification world, desires need to be appeased immediately, and we're seeing the sum of these phenomena frighteningly unfold before our very eyes.
Marie,
Thanks for the clarification. I had thought Trump's claims came right on the heels of the debate. It's so hard to keep up with all his lies and the conspiracy theories fomented on his behalf.
The worst thing about all of this is the stunning normalization of Trump over just the last week. Since Comey's hyper-partisan witch hunt announcement, plenty of Never Trumpers have become Well, Shit, Okay, Trumpers. Of course that shouldn't surprise anyone given the number of rank liars on the right and the total lack of integrity and ethical standing of all (and that's not hyperbole, I mean ALL) the leaders of the party (guys like Jeff Flake are not leaders in the same way Ryan, Cruz, and McConnell are). It seems that even those who have only recently been able to have their noses surgically removed from Trump's ass (lookin' at you, Kelly Ayotte), have received some kind of benediction and a kind of winger nihil obstat that now allows her to pretend that she was never, ever, ever, well, not really, on Trump's side. His scowling visage should hover over her name on every ballot. But it won't. Not now. It's all cool.
There have been some murky things on the Democrats' side, no doubt. The e-mail clusterfuck is all on Hillary. That should never have happened. And Donna Brazile floating her debate questions was just wrong. But to compare these things to Trump's flagrant abuses of the law, his serial lies, and his outrageous stances both foreign and domestic is like saying that someone who cheats at canasta is the exact same as a career criminal with decades of bad acts tattooed on his forehead. And in this way, the exhaustive (and exhausting) litany of Trump foibles, follies, and felonies are shuffled off the front page and helpfully replaced by EMAILS, EMAILS, EMAILS. The funniest (if I were in a mood to laugh about any of this) thing concerning the Comey Email conniption is that I will bet you that only a tiny percentage of StormTrumpers know that this latest eruption has really nothing whatsoever to do with Clinton. It's all about what Huma Abedin might have stored or saved on the computer she shared with her fuckstick husband.
It doesn't matter how many stories about Trump's lies, scandals, evasions, lies, and oh, did I mention lies? come out. All the press cares about now (lookin' at you New York Timorous) is Clinton and the Emails!
If Bryan Cranston is serious about moving to Canada, he better be looking at properties real soon. Cape Breton Island is quite nice this time of year. Get in before the snow and you'll be doing fine, eh?
Wikileaks dumps more Podesta emails (AP) and promises more each day. Seems like common inside the campaign stuff and frankly, irrelevant. Wikileaks must be down to complete nothing burgers now and really, does it matter?
There are a lot of people who have facilitated an enormous shitstain on the US that will live on. A lesser person than Hilary would have given up by now in the face of such an alternate universe. I regret anytime that I piled on the Hilary-is-flawed bandwagon. (no regrets over snake oil salesman Bill though). I still hold out hope that she'll win. The dumps, leaks and reveals are just getting to be too much for anyone to process. I think Wikileaks and the FBI may have overplayed their hand.
GOTV is our best bet. My local US rep is in a tough race and even here in CA, we're in an intense GOTV effort. Hopefully, the Courts will come down on our side in the voter suppression cases that are pending.
Trumpado has his very own stripped down version of the Gestapo (the Comey FBI), his brownshirts ready to descend with weapons brandished, upon a multitude of "undependable" polling stations (those in areas where voters are not likely to vote robotically for Herr Drumpf), and an exhausted and supine press happily pillorying his rival for the latest pile of shit served up by his servants and supporters.
Right about now, he's looking for a venue similar to Nuremberg at which to hold his own coronation at which he will descend from the skies in Trump One. Breitbart has hired O'Keefe do his own version of "Triumph of the Will". Stalin, er, Putin, will be a guest of honor.
Say what? Political coverage is beginning to read like the old Abbott and Costello 'who's on first' story.
What is it with writers? Just filling space? The contract calls for you to produce two 800 word articles each day? I puzzled over two articles that appeared on CNBC.com within two hours of each posted from the same writer: Everett Rosenfeld:
First article, he highlighed why "Trump loses". Six states look to be election toss-ups, according to NBC: Florida, North Carolina, Ohio, New Hampshire, Arizona and Utah. Importantly, even if Republican nominee Donald Trump wins every single toss-up contest, he’d still lose.
Two hours later, he now sez:
The most recent (Quinnipiac) poll was conducted between Oct. 27 and Nov. 1. On Oct. 28, the FBI disclosed that it was probing newly discovered emails related to Clinton's use of a private server,. "potentially altering" the course of the race.