Wednesday, August 31, 2016
Watch out, those tiny fingers will grab you!
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"... the big number was Trump's popularity numbers among black voters — 97 percent unfavorable, 3 percent unsure, and 0 percent favorable." What? 3% are unsure? How can that be?
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Rachel Maddow gleefully reads a list of terrible things more popular than Donald Trump
By Peter Weber, August 30, 2016
Public Policy Polling (PPP) is a Democratic polling firm with a good track record (Nate Silver's FiveThirtyEight gives it a B+ rating) and an idiosyncratic sense of humor, and Rachel Maddow had some new results she was excited to share on Monday night's Rachel Maddow Show. "I can now report, this year's Republican presidential nominee is less popular than middle seats on airplanes," she said, and she meant it literally. According to PPP's latest poll, American voters prefer getting stuck in the middle seat to Donald Trump, 45 percent to 43 percent, and Trump only beats bedbugs by 22 percentage points — though among black and Latino voters, not only bedbugs beat Trump, but also the bubonic plague, mosquitoes, Ryan Lochte, and carnies.
Now, maybe this isn't great news for Hillary Clinton, since she is only beating Trump by 5 points among likely voters, 48 percent to 43 percent, "but you know, the whole story isn't just the topline result, right?" Maddow said. "Obviously, the demographic breakdowns are interesting as well." Here, the big number was Trump's popularity numbers among black voters — 97 percent unfavorable, 3 percent unsure, and 0 percent favorable.
Maddow also was tickled by some of the "demographic groups you did not know could exist in nature," like the 2 percent of black voters who agree that Trump "cares about African-Americans and Latinos," and the 4 percent of Donald Trump voters who agree he "cannot be trusted with nuclear weapons." "Every year you have a new demographic," she said. "Sometimes it's soccer moms, this year it's the apocalyptically suicidal." The PPP poll was conducted Aug. 26-28, and has a margin of error of ±3.3 percentage points. You can watch Maddow giddily dig into the details below.
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Rachel Maddow gleefully reads a list of terrible things more popular than Donald Trump
By Peter Weber, August 30, 2016
Public Policy Polling (PPP) is a Democratic polling firm with a good track record (Nate Silver's FiveThirtyEight gives it a B+ rating) and an idiosyncratic sense of humor, and Rachel Maddow had some new results she was excited to share on Monday night's Rachel Maddow Show. "I can now report, this year's Republican presidential nominee is less popular than middle seats on airplanes," she said, and she meant it literally. According to PPP's latest poll, American voters prefer getting stuck in the middle seat to Donald Trump, 45 percent to 43 percent, and Trump only beats bedbugs by 22 percentage points — though among black and Latino voters, not only bedbugs beat Trump, but also the bubonic plague, mosquitoes, Ryan Lochte, and carnies.
Now, maybe this isn't great news for Hillary Clinton, since she is only beating Trump by 5 points among likely voters, 48 percent to 43 percent, "but you know, the whole story isn't just the topline result, right?" Maddow said. "Obviously, the demographic breakdowns are interesting as well." Here, the big number was Trump's popularity numbers among black voters — 97 percent unfavorable, 3 percent unsure, and 0 percent favorable.
Maddow also was tickled by some of the "demographic groups you did not know could exist in nature," like the 2 percent of black voters who agree that Trump "cares about African-Americans and Latinos," and the 4 percent of Donald Trump voters who agree he "cannot be trusted with nuclear weapons." "Every year you have a new demographic," she said. "Sometimes it's soccer moms, this year it's the apocalyptically suicidal." The PPP poll was conducted Aug. 26-28, and has a margin of error of ±3.3 percentage points. You can watch Maddow giddily dig into the details below.
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"... Clinton recently hit Trump in a major economic speech for his new tax position on what is known as pass-through income, calling it the 'Trump loophole' and arguing that the tax break would be extremely beneficial to Trump."
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Mark Cuban lays out why he believes Donald Trump 'won't and can't' release his taxes
By Allan Smith, August 31, 2016
Billionaire business mogul Mark Cuban explained in a series of tweets on Wednesday why he thinks Republican nominee Donald Trump "won't and can't release his tax returns."
Cuban, the owner of the NBA's Dallas Mavericks and a star of ABC's "Shark Tank," used a 2013 deposition from Trump — uploaded by The Washington Post as a part of its "Trump Revealed" project — to make his point.
In that deposition, Trump said in response to a question about the development of Trump properties in Las Vegas and Chicago that he set up single-use subchapter S corporations to develop projects. He said he did not use the Trump Organization for those types of projects.
As Cuban pointed out, with an S-corporation, "the entire financial performance of his company becomes part of his tax return."
According to the Internal Revenue Service, S-corporation shareholders must "report the flow-through of income and losses on their personal tax returns and are assessed tax at their individual income tax rates." And S-corporations are responsible "for tax on certain built-in gains and passive income at the entity level."
"His personal tax returns would show the financial performance of his development projects," Cuban wrote. "Not good given how much he gets sued."
"It may also explain why reducing pass-through taxes is important to him," he continued. "I say 'may' because taxes are only paid if he makes a profit."
Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton recently hit Trump in a major economic speech for his new tax position on what is known as pass-through income, calling it the "Trump loophole" and arguing that the tax break would be extremely beneficial to Trump.
Pass-through income "passes through" the business to the individual returns of its owners. CNBC's Robert Frank cast the loophole as the biggest tax break for the wealthy in Trump's plan. Though analyses have shown that a plan similar to Trump's would aid small businesses, most of its benefits would go to wealthier business owners.
Pass-through income today is taxed at individual rates, with a ceiling of 39.6%. Trump's plan slashes the tax rate for this income to 15%.
An analysis by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities showed that the vast majority of pass-through income goes to the top 1% of earners, with the top 400 earners in 2013 acquiring 20% of their total income this way. For those 400 people, that came out to slightly more than $94 million each on average.
Trump has repeatedly insisted he will not release his tax returns until after an audit by the IRS is completed, which he said may not be before the November election. All major-party presidential candidates since 1976 have made their tax returns public.
Cuban endorsed Clinton at a rally in Pittsburgh, his hometown, last month. In that rally, he referred to Trump as a "jagoff" — a demeaning slang term frequently used in western Pennsylvania — during the event. Cuban has ripped Trump repeatedly on social media in recent months.
Cuban expressed interest in serving as either Trump's or Clinton's running mate earlier in the cycle before souring on the real-estate magnate's candidacy. In a Monday tweet, he wrote that he knew there "was no chance" being picked as a running mate "was happening."
Read Cuban's tweets below:
Mark Cuban ✔ @mcuban
1) I'm going to explain, using a trump deposition, exactly why @realDonaldTrump won't and can't release his tax returns
6:57 AM - 31 Aug 2016
Mark Cuban ✔ @mcuban
2) Trump states in his attached deposition that he uses Sub Chapter S corporations for his development projects.
6:58 AM - 31 Aug 2016
Mark Cuban ✔ @mcuban
3) with a Sub Chapter S corp the entire financial performance of his company becomes part of his personal tax return https://www.irs.gov/businesses/small-businesses-self-employed/s-corporations …
7:01 AM - 31 Aug 2016
Mark Cuban ✔ @mcuban
4) His personal tax returns would show the financial performance of his development projects. Not good given how much he gets sued
7:05 AM - 31 Aug 2016
Mark Cuban ✔ @mcuban
5) it may also explain why reducing pass through taxes is important to him. I say "may" because taxes are only paid if he makes a profit
7:06 AM - 31 Aug 2016
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Mark Cuban lays out why he believes Donald Trump 'won't and can't' release his taxes
By Allan Smith, August 31, 2016
Billionaire business mogul Mark Cuban explained in a series of tweets on Wednesday why he thinks Republican nominee Donald Trump "won't and can't release his tax returns."
Cuban, the owner of the NBA's Dallas Mavericks and a star of ABC's "Shark Tank," used a 2013 deposition from Trump — uploaded by The Washington Post as a part of its "Trump Revealed" project — to make his point.
In that deposition, Trump said in response to a question about the development of Trump properties in Las Vegas and Chicago that he set up single-use subchapter S corporations to develop projects. He said he did not use the Trump Organization for those types of projects.
As Cuban pointed out, with an S-corporation, "the entire financial performance of his company becomes part of his tax return."
According to the Internal Revenue Service, S-corporation shareholders must "report the flow-through of income and losses on their personal tax returns and are assessed tax at their individual income tax rates." And S-corporations are responsible "for tax on certain built-in gains and passive income at the entity level."
"His personal tax returns would show the financial performance of his development projects," Cuban wrote. "Not good given how much he gets sued."
"It may also explain why reducing pass-through taxes is important to him," he continued. "I say 'may' because taxes are only paid if he makes a profit."
Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton recently hit Trump in a major economic speech for his new tax position on what is known as pass-through income, calling it the "Trump loophole" and arguing that the tax break would be extremely beneficial to Trump.
Pass-through income "passes through" the business to the individual returns of its owners. CNBC's Robert Frank cast the loophole as the biggest tax break for the wealthy in Trump's plan. Though analyses have shown that a plan similar to Trump's would aid small businesses, most of its benefits would go to wealthier business owners.
Pass-through income today is taxed at individual rates, with a ceiling of 39.6%. Trump's plan slashes the tax rate for this income to 15%.
An analysis by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities showed that the vast majority of pass-through income goes to the top 1% of earners, with the top 400 earners in 2013 acquiring 20% of their total income this way. For those 400 people, that came out to slightly more than $94 million each on average.
Trump has repeatedly insisted he will not release his tax returns until after an audit by the IRS is completed, which he said may not be before the November election. All major-party presidential candidates since 1976 have made their tax returns public.
Cuban endorsed Clinton at a rally in Pittsburgh, his hometown, last month. In that rally, he referred to Trump as a "jagoff" — a demeaning slang term frequently used in western Pennsylvania — during the event. Cuban has ripped Trump repeatedly on social media in recent months.
Cuban expressed interest in serving as either Trump's or Clinton's running mate earlier in the cycle before souring on the real-estate magnate's candidacy. In a Monday tweet, he wrote that he knew there "was no chance" being picked as a running mate "was happening."
Read Cuban's tweets below:
Mark Cuban ✔ @mcuban
1) I'm going to explain, using a trump deposition, exactly why @realDonaldTrump won't and can't release his tax returns
6:57 AM - 31 Aug 2016
Mark Cuban ✔ @mcuban
2) Trump states in his attached deposition that he uses Sub Chapter S corporations for his development projects.
6:58 AM - 31 Aug 2016
Mark Cuban ✔ @mcuban
3) with a Sub Chapter S corp the entire financial performance of his company becomes part of his personal tax return https://www.irs.gov/businesses/small-businesses-self-employed/s-corporations …
7:01 AM - 31 Aug 2016
Mark Cuban ✔ @mcuban
4) His personal tax returns would show the financial performance of his development projects. Not good given how much he gets sued
7:05 AM - 31 Aug 2016
Mark Cuban ✔ @mcuban
5) it may also explain why reducing pass through taxes is important to him. I say "may" because taxes are only paid if he makes a profit
7:06 AM - 31 Aug 2016
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"Every utterance and position that helped Trump win the primary is proving to be a complete and utter disaster for him in the general ..."
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‘AMNESTY DON’
Nobody’s Buying Donald Trump’s Immigration Lies
The words and positions Trump used to win over the enraged white people who put him over the top in the GOP primary aren’t flying with Americans now.
By Michael Tomasky, August 29, 2016
Surprising election indeed: Joe Scarborough has made an actual contribution to our national discourse. His “Amnesty Don” zinger Monday morning was great. He even aped Trump’s favored trope of assigning the appearance of this sobriquet not to himself, but to the same unspecified “people” Trump is always citing: “A lot of people are calling him Amnesty Don. People are saying it.”
It’s been a delicious spectacle these past few days, watching Trump try to say he didn’t really mean all that nasty stuff he said back when. It’s interesting too because arguably it’s a bit early for the pivot, or the “softening,” as he calls it—the move to the middle for the general election. Shouldn’t happen until after Labor Day. Mitt Romney waited until the first debate, which wasn’t until early October 2012, barely a month before the voting.
Do you remember? Boy, that was a shocking night. Romney had given absolutely zero indication up to that point that he had the remotest interest in pivoting. Zero. But he spent two hours doing exactly that, simply pretending that he’d never taken anything like those old, primary-era positions on immigration and taxes and the rest. He was amazingly smooth. And President Obama, of course, was disengaged and cranky that night, like he was pissed off that he was missing a game on TV or something.
It was a terrifying night for liberals, Democrats, and Obama supporters of all stripes. I remember being in the Beast’s offices that night. Andrew Sullivan was there. After it ended he stalked around the place like a man possessed by demons, caterwauling at the top of his lungs: “WHAT IS HE DOING? THAT WAS AWFUL! HE’S THROWING THE BLOODY ELECTION!”
Here’s what really made it scary, though, and why it’s relevant today: You had the feeling while watching it that Romney was finally saying what he believed. He was always a moderate-to-conservative man who wasn’t consumed with rage and who was obviously just saying that crap about “self deportation” and being a “severely conservative governor” to get on the good side of the red-hots. He seemed free. Finally, he seemed to be thinking, this is who I am, who I’ve wanted to be all along. I can say what I actually think, and it’s even good for me politically.
And it most certainly did work. It was the only moment in the race when he pulled ahead of Obama for a short period.
Now, with Trump, it’s just the opposite. He meant what he was saying then. Mexican rapists, deport them all, waterboard their asses...he quite obviously meant every coarse, sleazy, greasy, flatulent, and unconstitutional syllable. So now he’s lying, and now, unlike Romney, he looks miserable, not free. Just the way his face contorts when he’s forced to utter a word like “humane”…it’s obviously painful for him. And he’s fooling no one.
Except he is, perhaps, exasperating his base. Actually, you can read whatever you want to about that. Here’s one report on how his base voters are upset. Here’s another arguing that his base voters don’t seem to care.
Well, if they give Trump a pass on this stunning a flip-flop on the hard right’s core issue, these people are pathetic. My instinct is that they won’t, or enough of them won’t. None of these people will be Hillary voters, of course, but some may stay home, distraught that their hero caved into the very same dark forces he won their ardor by maligning. Illegal immigration is The Big Issue for the hard right. Has been for a decade. It was the No. 1 issue for Tea Partiers, despite much media misunderstanding about this; Tea Partiers viewed immigrants as a bunch of freeloaders.
If Trump drops deportation in his big speech Wednesday night, it’s hard for me to see how he doesn’t lose huge chunks of that base. Even if he speaks words something like “I’m not dropping deportation” but then proceeds to outline steps that smell like he’s dropping deportation, he’ll lose big portions of the base. And Clinton should be able to have great fun with it. This is a much grander flip-flop than anything John Kerry did in 2004, and it was the flip-flopper label that probably cost him that election.
During April and May, as it became clear that Trump was actually going to be the GOP nominee, I kept thinking to myself: Surely all these things he said that helped him in the primary have to hurt him in the general, right? Turns out I had no idea how much. Trump is getting pulverized among college-educated whites, who see him as the yahoo candidate.
Or let’s put the matter more bluntly: Every utterance and position that helped Trump win the primary is proving to be a complete and utter disaster for him in the general, because the voters who put Trump over the top in the primaries are a bunch of enraged white people with very deep suspicions and prejudices, while the bulk of Americans are fair-minded human beings who aren’t governed by fear and anger.
Romney almost convinced the latter group because, however conservative, he was fundamentally one of them. Trump is not.
Despite the fact that every word that comes out of his mouth is a lie, he nevertheless managed last year to tell us exactly who he is. We should believe him.
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‘AMNESTY DON’
Nobody’s Buying Donald Trump’s Immigration Lies
The words and positions Trump used to win over the enraged white people who put him over the top in the GOP primary aren’t flying with Americans now.
By Michael Tomasky, August 29, 2016
Surprising election indeed: Joe Scarborough has made an actual contribution to our national discourse. His “Amnesty Don” zinger Monday morning was great. He even aped Trump’s favored trope of assigning the appearance of this sobriquet not to himself, but to the same unspecified “people” Trump is always citing: “A lot of people are calling him Amnesty Don. People are saying it.”
It’s been a delicious spectacle these past few days, watching Trump try to say he didn’t really mean all that nasty stuff he said back when. It’s interesting too because arguably it’s a bit early for the pivot, or the “softening,” as he calls it—the move to the middle for the general election. Shouldn’t happen until after Labor Day. Mitt Romney waited until the first debate, which wasn’t until early October 2012, barely a month before the voting.
Do you remember? Boy, that was a shocking night. Romney had given absolutely zero indication up to that point that he had the remotest interest in pivoting. Zero. But he spent two hours doing exactly that, simply pretending that he’d never taken anything like those old, primary-era positions on immigration and taxes and the rest. He was amazingly smooth. And President Obama, of course, was disengaged and cranky that night, like he was pissed off that he was missing a game on TV or something.
It was a terrifying night for liberals, Democrats, and Obama supporters of all stripes. I remember being in the Beast’s offices that night. Andrew Sullivan was there. After it ended he stalked around the place like a man possessed by demons, caterwauling at the top of his lungs: “WHAT IS HE DOING? THAT WAS AWFUL! HE’S THROWING THE BLOODY ELECTION!”
Here’s what really made it scary, though, and why it’s relevant today: You had the feeling while watching it that Romney was finally saying what he believed. He was always a moderate-to-conservative man who wasn’t consumed with rage and who was obviously just saying that crap about “self deportation” and being a “severely conservative governor” to get on the good side of the red-hots. He seemed free. Finally, he seemed to be thinking, this is who I am, who I’ve wanted to be all along. I can say what I actually think, and it’s even good for me politically.
And it most certainly did work. It was the only moment in the race when he pulled ahead of Obama for a short period.
Now, with Trump, it’s just the opposite. He meant what he was saying then. Mexican rapists, deport them all, waterboard their asses...he quite obviously meant every coarse, sleazy, greasy, flatulent, and unconstitutional syllable. So now he’s lying, and now, unlike Romney, he looks miserable, not free. Just the way his face contorts when he’s forced to utter a word like “humane”…it’s obviously painful for him. And he’s fooling no one.
Except he is, perhaps, exasperating his base. Actually, you can read whatever you want to about that. Here’s one report on how his base voters are upset. Here’s another arguing that his base voters don’t seem to care.
Well, if they give Trump a pass on this stunning a flip-flop on the hard right’s core issue, these people are pathetic. My instinct is that they won’t, or enough of them won’t. None of these people will be Hillary voters, of course, but some may stay home, distraught that their hero caved into the very same dark forces he won their ardor by maligning. Illegal immigration is The Big Issue for the hard right. Has been for a decade. It was the No. 1 issue for Tea Partiers, despite much media misunderstanding about this; Tea Partiers viewed immigrants as a bunch of freeloaders.
If Trump drops deportation in his big speech Wednesday night, it’s hard for me to see how he doesn’t lose huge chunks of that base. Even if he speaks words something like “I’m not dropping deportation” but then proceeds to outline steps that smell like he’s dropping deportation, he’ll lose big portions of the base. And Clinton should be able to have great fun with it. This is a much grander flip-flop than anything John Kerry did in 2004, and it was the flip-flopper label that probably cost him that election.
During April and May, as it became clear that Trump was actually going to be the GOP nominee, I kept thinking to myself: Surely all these things he said that helped him in the primary have to hurt him in the general, right? Turns out I had no idea how much. Trump is getting pulverized among college-educated whites, who see him as the yahoo candidate.
Or let’s put the matter more bluntly: Every utterance and position that helped Trump win the primary is proving to be a complete and utter disaster for him in the general, because the voters who put Trump over the top in the primaries are a bunch of enraged white people with very deep suspicions and prejudices, while the bulk of Americans are fair-minded human beings who aren’t governed by fear and anger.
Romney almost convinced the latter group because, however conservative, he was fundamentally one of them. Trump is not.
Despite the fact that every word that comes out of his mouth is a lie, he nevertheless managed last year to tell us exactly who he is. We should believe him.
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"But, when it comes to the Clintons, Jesus God, the paper is one hot mess. That does not bode well for the next four to eight years, either." Shame on the NY Times!
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'The New York Times' Tried to Make the Weiner Story a Clinton Story, and the Result Is Embarrassing
By Charles P. Pierce, August 31, 2016
In other news, not only is Vladimir Putin not welcome in the Ukraine, he's not welcome in the grocery stores of West Palm Beach, either. This…is CNN.
The Times obsession with finding something-anything!-it could hang on the Clintons goes all the way back to that moment three editors ago when the paper realized that its big Whitewater scoop was little more than a bag of Arkansas hot air. It has continued through the coverage of the Benghazi nothingburger, the e-mail nothingburger, and now, the Clinton Foundation nothingburger. When it comes to the once and (perhaps) future president of the United States, the Newspaper of Record is the In-and-Out of nothingburgers.
I thought that Dowd's effort over the weekend-- which can be fairly summarized as "The Republican presidential campaign is an obvious freak show but Hillary Rodham Clinton Still Has Cooties"-- might have been the height of the form. However, I had not reckoned with the paper's coverage of the unfortunate episode currently ongoing between Huma Abedin and Anthony Weiner. You want to see some tasty nothingburger, check out this passage.
From the Times:
What "shadow," precisely, is it that her husband's misbehavior is casting over Ms. Abedin? Other than the fact that summoning up this "shadow" is a way to get the words "classified information" into a story about the sad public dissolution of a marriage, as well as a way to wedge in a reference to the Clinton Foundation. This is one large storage space of a "shadow." I mean it. Who in the unholy fck thinks like this?
Believe it or not-- and by now you should-- it gets even worse.
Further, was HRC's decision to stay married really "much-debated?" Were there really debates that "erupted" over HRC's handling of the Lewinsky affair? Were they loud enough that anyone remembers them well enough to use them in calculating for whom to cast a vote in 2016? They certainly don't seem to be relevant to this campaign anywhere save the Times newsroom, the universe of wingnut talk-radio, and the vast, echoing canyons of Maureen Dowd's mind.
The Times remains a great newspaper. I stand by my opinion that the Times can do one thing better than any other newspaper-- it can be The New York Times. But, when it comes to the Clintons, Jesus God, the paper is one hot mess. That does not bode well for the next four to eight years, either.
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'The New York Times' Tried to Make the Weiner Story a Clinton Story, and the Result Is Embarrassing
By Charles P. Pierce, August 31, 2016
In other news, not only is Vladimir Putin not welcome in the Ukraine, he's not welcome in the grocery stores of West Palm Beach, either. This…is CNN.
This Vladimir Putin was arrested after cops responded to a report that a man was screaming at employees at the grocery store in Florida. Putin told police he had missed his ride, which would never happen to the other Putin. According to a police report, he also refused to give officers his name. We can't imagine why. West Palm Beach Putin, which is a really great alias he should consider, was charged with resisting and/or obstructing an officer without violence. No word on whether he's retained a lawyer.Obviously, since this Vladmir Putin has nothing to do with Paul Manafort's good pal in the Kremlin, the Trump campaign should be badgered for four days for a reaction to this imperial aggression in the produce aisles of Florida. That, of course, assumes that The New York Times employs the same standards of journalism that are in play whenever it writes about the Clintons.
The Times obsession with finding something-anything!-it could hang on the Clintons goes all the way back to that moment three editors ago when the paper realized that its big Whitewater scoop was little more than a bag of Arkansas hot air. It has continued through the coverage of the Benghazi nothingburger, the e-mail nothingburger, and now, the Clinton Foundation nothingburger. When it comes to the once and (perhaps) future president of the United States, the Newspaper of Record is the In-and-Out of nothingburgers.
I thought that Dowd's effort over the weekend-- which can be fairly summarized as "The Republican presidential campaign is an obvious freak show but Hillary Rodham Clinton Still Has Cooties"-- might have been the height of the form. However, I had not reckoned with the paper's coverage of the unfortunate episode currently ongoing between Huma Abedin and Anthony Weiner. You want to see some tasty nothingburger, check out this passage.
From the Times:
Now, Mr. Weiner's tawdry activities may have claimed his marriage-- Ms. Abedin told him that she wanted to separate-- and have cast another shadow on the adviser and confidante who has been by Mrs. Clinton's side for the past two decades. Ms. Abedin was already a major figure this summer in controversies over Mrs. Clinton's handling of classified information as secretary of state and over ties between the Clinton family foundation and Mrs. Clinton's State Department.This is horrible. This is ghastly. This is cheap shot by deliberate imprecision. This is the kind of thing that would get thrown back in the face of rookie reporters in Seagoville, Texas.
What "shadow," precisely, is it that her husband's misbehavior is casting over Ms. Abedin? Other than the fact that summoning up this "shadow" is a way to get the words "classified information" into a story about the sad public dissolution of a marriage, as well as a way to wedge in a reference to the Clinton Foundation. This is one large storage space of a "shadow." I mean it. Who in the unholy fck thinks like this?
Believe it or not-- and by now you should-- it gets even worse.
Mr. Weiner's extramarital behavior also threatens to remind voters about the troubles in the Clintons' own marriage over the decades, including Mrs. Clinton's much-debated decision to remain with then-President Bill Clinton after revelations of his relationship with Monica Lewinsky. Ms. Abedin's choice to separate from her husband evokes the debates that erupted over Mrs. Clinton's handling of the Lewinsky affair, a scandal her campaign wants left in the past.Does the Times really believe that anyone needs "reminding" about the Lewinsky scandal? Do I need to remind the Times that, judging by the results of the 1998 midterm elections and by Bill Clinton's approval ratings when he left office, the country understood that scandal well enough to be thoroughly sick of it almost 20 years ago?
Further, was HRC's decision to stay married really "much-debated?" Were there really debates that "erupted" over HRC's handling of the Lewinsky affair? Were they loud enough that anyone remembers them well enough to use them in calculating for whom to cast a vote in 2016? They certainly don't seem to be relevant to this campaign anywhere save the Times newsroom, the universe of wingnut talk-radio, and the vast, echoing canyons of Maureen Dowd's mind.
The Times remains a great newspaper. I stand by my opinion that the Times can do one thing better than any other newspaper-- it can be The New York Times. But, when it comes to the Clintons, Jesus God, the paper is one hot mess. That does not bode well for the next four to eight years, either.
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"But one can’t talk about the alt-right knowledgeably without recognizing their racism." That's why Clinton is shining the light on Trump and the alt-right.
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By distinguishing the GOP from the alt-right, Hillary Clinton did what many conservatives won't
By Jonah Goldberg, August 30, 2016
Last week delivered one of the most remarkable moments in this most remarkable political season. A major politician defended the conservative movement and the Republican Party from guilt-by-association with a fringe group of racists, anti-Semites, and conspiracy theorists who have jumped enthusiastically on the Donald Trump train: the so-called alt-right.
“This is not conservatism as we have known it,” the politician said. “This is not Republicanism as we have known it.”
That politician was Hillary Clinton, and that’s astonishing. Clinton is normally comfortable condemning conservatism and the GOP for the sins of bigotry and prejudice, not exonerating it. After all, she coined the phrase “vast right-wing conspiracy.”
Her husband’s administration tried — unfairly — to pin the Oklahoma City bombing on conservative critics, specifically radio hosts such as Rush Limbaugh. A decade later, she revived the charge in her book “Living History,” tying the bombing to “right-wing talk radio shows ... [which] intensified the atmosphere of hostility with their rhetoric of intolerance, anger and anti-government paranoia.”
Just last year, Clinton was comparing the entire GOP presidential field to “terrorists” for their views on abortion.
This history suggests that Clinton’s attempt to distinguish the party of Paul Ryan from the alt-right was not the product of high-minded statesmanship, but political calculation. The goal was to demonize Trump so as to make moderate voters feel OK voting for a Democrat.
(Trump is not an alt-righter, but his political inexperience, his anti-establishment persona, and his ignorance of, and hostility to, many basic tenets of conservatism created a golden opportunity for the alt-righters to latch onto his candidacy.)
If I were a down-ballot Democrat, I’d be chagrined. By exonerating the GOP from the stain of the alt-right, Clinton has made it harder for Democratic candidates to tar their opponents. What’s truly extraordinary, though, is that Clinton is doing work many conservatives won’t.
There is a diversity of views among the self-described alt-right. But the one unifying sentiment is racism — or what they like to call “racialism” or “race-realism.” In the words of one alt-right leader, Jared Taylor, “the races are not equal and equivalent.” On Monday, Taylor asserted on “The Diane Rehm Show” that racialism is the one issue that unites alt-righters.
If you read the writings of leading alt-righters it is impossible to come to any other conclusion. Some are avowed white supremacists, some eschew talk of supremacy and instead focus on the need for racial separation to protect “white identity.” But one can’t talk about the alt-right knowledgeably without recognizing their racism.
And yet that is exactly what some conservatives seem intent on doing. For example, my friend Hugh Hewitt, the talk radio host, has been arguing that there is a “narrow” alt-right made up of a “execrable anti-Semitic, white supremacist fringe” but there is also “broad alt-right” — made up of frustrated tea partiers and others who are simply hostile to the GOP establishment and any form of immigration reform that falls short of mass deportation.
This isn’t just wrong, it’s madness. The alt-righters are a politically insignificant band. Why claim that a group dedicated to overthrowing conservatism for a white nationalist fantasy is in fact a member of the GOP coalition?
In the 1960s, the fledgling conservative movement was faced with a similar dilemma. The John Birch Society was a paranoid outfit dedicated to the theory that the U.S. government was controlled by Communists. It said even Dwight Eisenhower was a Red (to which the political theorist Russell Kirk replied, “Ike's not a Communist, he's a golfer.”).
William F. Buckley recognized that the Birchers were being used by the liberal media to “anathematize the entire American right wing.” At first, his magazine, National Review (where I often hang my hat), tried to argue that the problem was just a narrow “lunatic fringe” of Birchers, and not the rank and file. But very quickly, the editors recognized that the broader movement needed to be denounced and defenestrated.
Buckley grasped something Hewitt and countless lesser pro-Trump pundits do not: Some lines must not be blurred, but illuminated for all to see. Amazingly, Clinton is doing that when actual conservatives have not.
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By distinguishing the GOP from the alt-right, Hillary Clinton did what many conservatives won't
By Jonah Goldberg, August 30, 2016
Last week delivered one of the most remarkable moments in this most remarkable political season. A major politician defended the conservative movement and the Republican Party from guilt-by-association with a fringe group of racists, anti-Semites, and conspiracy theorists who have jumped enthusiastically on the Donald Trump train: the so-called alt-right.
“This is not conservatism as we have known it,” the politician said. “This is not Republicanism as we have known it.”
That politician was Hillary Clinton, and that’s astonishing. Clinton is normally comfortable condemning conservatism and the GOP for the sins of bigotry and prejudice, not exonerating it. After all, she coined the phrase “vast right-wing conspiracy.”
Her husband’s administration tried — unfairly — to pin the Oklahoma City bombing on conservative critics, specifically radio hosts such as Rush Limbaugh. A decade later, she revived the charge in her book “Living History,” tying the bombing to “right-wing talk radio shows ... [which] intensified the atmosphere of hostility with their rhetoric of intolerance, anger and anti-government paranoia.”
Just last year, Clinton was comparing the entire GOP presidential field to “terrorists” for their views on abortion.
This history suggests that Clinton’s attempt to distinguish the party of Paul Ryan from the alt-right was not the product of high-minded statesmanship, but political calculation. The goal was to demonize Trump so as to make moderate voters feel OK voting for a Democrat.
(Trump is not an alt-righter, but his political inexperience, his anti-establishment persona, and his ignorance of, and hostility to, many basic tenets of conservatism created a golden opportunity for the alt-righters to latch onto his candidacy.)
If I were a down-ballot Democrat, I’d be chagrined. By exonerating the GOP from the stain of the alt-right, Clinton has made it harder for Democratic candidates to tar their opponents. What’s truly extraordinary, though, is that Clinton is doing work many conservatives won’t.
There is a diversity of views among the self-described alt-right. But the one unifying sentiment is racism — or what they like to call “racialism” or “race-realism.” In the words of one alt-right leader, Jared Taylor, “the races are not equal and equivalent.” On Monday, Taylor asserted on “The Diane Rehm Show” that racialism is the one issue that unites alt-righters.
If you read the writings of leading alt-righters it is impossible to come to any other conclusion. Some are avowed white supremacists, some eschew talk of supremacy and instead focus on the need for racial separation to protect “white identity.” But one can’t talk about the alt-right knowledgeably without recognizing their racism.
And yet that is exactly what some conservatives seem intent on doing. For example, my friend Hugh Hewitt, the talk radio host, has been arguing that there is a “narrow” alt-right made up of a “execrable anti-Semitic, white supremacist fringe” but there is also “broad alt-right” — made up of frustrated tea partiers and others who are simply hostile to the GOP establishment and any form of immigration reform that falls short of mass deportation.
This isn’t just wrong, it’s madness. The alt-righters are a politically insignificant band. Why claim that a group dedicated to overthrowing conservatism for a white nationalist fantasy is in fact a member of the GOP coalition?
In the 1960s, the fledgling conservative movement was faced with a similar dilemma. The John Birch Society was a paranoid outfit dedicated to the theory that the U.S. government was controlled by Communists. It said even Dwight Eisenhower was a Red (to which the political theorist Russell Kirk replied, “Ike's not a Communist, he's a golfer.”).
William F. Buckley recognized that the Birchers were being used by the liberal media to “anathematize the entire American right wing.” At first, his magazine, National Review (where I often hang my hat), tried to argue that the problem was just a narrow “lunatic fringe” of Birchers, and not the rank and file. But very quickly, the editors recognized that the broader movement needed to be denounced and defenestrated.
Buckley grasped something Hewitt and countless lesser pro-Trump pundits do not: Some lines must not be blurred, but illuminated for all to see. Amazingly, Clinton is doing that when actual conservatives have not.
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Tuesday, August 30, 2016
Got that, #Lyin'Donald?
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"... there is no reason to believe that a Trump defeat would reverse the damage his campaign has already done, especially its impact on how young people view the political process."
...................................................................................................................................................................
Will Trump’s poisonous politics leave lasting damage?
By Katrina vanden Heuvel, August 30, 2016
Donald Trump is mainstreaming hate. That was the central message of Hillary Clinton’s speech last week in Reno, Nev., where she detailed Trump’s record of stoking racism and conspiracy theories. “From the start,” she declared, “Donald Trump has built his campaign on prejudice and paranoia.”
Clinton certainly had a point. Even before the start of his campaign, it was Trump’s disgraceful crusade to “prove” that President Obama was not actually born in the United States that laid the foundation for his victory in the Republican primaries. His most despicable statements of the election — from calling Mexican immigrants “rapists” to promoting the lie that “thousands” of Muslims in New Jersey celebrated the Sept. 11 attacks — have only cemented his hero status among bigots and cranks who were previously relegated to the fringes of society.
While past Republican nominees have flirted with extremists, none has embraced or encouraged them so openly. As Clinton pointed out, Trump has brought out of the online shadows an emerging movement known as the “alt-right.” Despite lacking clear leaders or a cohesive ideology, the alt-right “is bound together by common enemies: women, minorities, immigrants and national institutions that, by their worldview, threaten the freedom of white men with the toxic sword of political correctness,” Jack Smith IV writes. Notably, in his former role as the chairman of Breitbart Media, Trump’s new campaign chief executive Stephen Bannon boasted, “We’re the platform for the alt-right.”
Trump has not merely given voice to the visceral hatred in our midst. With his brazen lies and his childish taunts, Trump has also effectively given permission for people to say virtually anything in public without regard for facts or fear of repercussions. This could have a lasting impact on our public discourse regardless of how Trump fares in November.
Already, Trump has debased the political debate. As Felix Salmon observes, Trump’s outrageous behavior “tends to render invisible severe and important policy distinctions,” which is a problem especially in state and local races where Trump is not one of the choices. “This year, the effect is likely to be felt strongly in down-ticket races, where Democratic and Republican candidates are finding it incredibly hard to cut through the noise of the presidential race and to have substantive debates,” he writes.
Meanwhile, Trump’s impact is also increasingly apparent among our children. In April, the Southern Poverty Law Center released a report finding that many kids “have been emboldened by the divisive, often juvenile rhetoric in the campaign,” with teachers witnessing among their students “an increase in bullying, harassment and intimidation.” At the same time, members of the alt-right have turned online bullying and harassment into something of a sport; their unrelenting abuse of “Saturday Night Live” star Leslie Jones is the latest example in an ugly trend.
Some have expressed hope that, in the event that Trump loses, Trump-ism will go down with him. That may be wishful thinking. Even a landslide seems unlikely to deter Trump’s most rabid fans, especially if he continues to claim that the election was “rigged.” In addition, there are credible rumors that Trump’s fallback plan is to establish a media presence — possibly working with Bannon and former Fox News head Roger Ailes — that could compete with Fox News for supremacy on the right.
Regardless of the outcome, there is no reason to believe that a Trump defeat would reverse the damage his campaign has already done, especially its impact on how young people view the political process. Millennial voters, who were so energized by Bernie Sanders, are rejecting Trump in overwhelming numbers. But they could ultimately decide to reject politics altogether — both in 2016 and for years to come. With U.S. voter turnout hovering at just more than 50 percent, this would be devastating for our democracy.
Over the coming weeks, the election will only become more brutal. As Trump scorches the earth with his vitriolic tweets and verbal assaults, Clinton should guard against the cynicism his campaign has inspired by making a concerted effort to reach the millions of young people whose voices still need to be heard. And no matter what the polls say, Clinton and her supporters should remember that the danger in this election is not just that Trump could win. It’s that — win or lose — he could poison our politics for a generation.
...................................................................................................................................................................
Will Trump’s poisonous politics leave lasting damage?
By Katrina vanden Heuvel, August 30, 2016
Donald Trump is mainstreaming hate. That was the central message of Hillary Clinton’s speech last week in Reno, Nev., where she detailed Trump’s record of stoking racism and conspiracy theories. “From the start,” she declared, “Donald Trump has built his campaign on prejudice and paranoia.”
Clinton certainly had a point. Even before the start of his campaign, it was Trump’s disgraceful crusade to “prove” that President Obama was not actually born in the United States that laid the foundation for his victory in the Republican primaries. His most despicable statements of the election — from calling Mexican immigrants “rapists” to promoting the lie that “thousands” of Muslims in New Jersey celebrated the Sept. 11 attacks — have only cemented his hero status among bigots and cranks who were previously relegated to the fringes of society.
While past Republican nominees have flirted with extremists, none has embraced or encouraged them so openly. As Clinton pointed out, Trump has brought out of the online shadows an emerging movement known as the “alt-right.” Despite lacking clear leaders or a cohesive ideology, the alt-right “is bound together by common enemies: women, minorities, immigrants and national institutions that, by their worldview, threaten the freedom of white men with the toxic sword of political correctness,” Jack Smith IV writes. Notably, in his former role as the chairman of Breitbart Media, Trump’s new campaign chief executive Stephen Bannon boasted, “We’re the platform for the alt-right.”
Trump has not merely given voice to the visceral hatred in our midst. With his brazen lies and his childish taunts, Trump has also effectively given permission for people to say virtually anything in public without regard for facts or fear of repercussions. This could have a lasting impact on our public discourse regardless of how Trump fares in November.
Already, Trump has debased the political debate. As Felix Salmon observes, Trump’s outrageous behavior “tends to render invisible severe and important policy distinctions,” which is a problem especially in state and local races where Trump is not one of the choices. “This year, the effect is likely to be felt strongly in down-ticket races, where Democratic and Republican candidates are finding it incredibly hard to cut through the noise of the presidential race and to have substantive debates,” he writes.
Meanwhile, Trump’s impact is also increasingly apparent among our children. In April, the Southern Poverty Law Center released a report finding that many kids “have been emboldened by the divisive, often juvenile rhetoric in the campaign,” with teachers witnessing among their students “an increase in bullying, harassment and intimidation.” At the same time, members of the alt-right have turned online bullying and harassment into something of a sport; their unrelenting abuse of “Saturday Night Live” star Leslie Jones is the latest example in an ugly trend.
Some have expressed hope that, in the event that Trump loses, Trump-ism will go down with him. That may be wishful thinking. Even a landslide seems unlikely to deter Trump’s most rabid fans, especially if he continues to claim that the election was “rigged.” In addition, there are credible rumors that Trump’s fallback plan is to establish a media presence — possibly working with Bannon and former Fox News head Roger Ailes — that could compete with Fox News for supremacy on the right.
Regardless of the outcome, there is no reason to believe that a Trump defeat would reverse the damage his campaign has already done, especially its impact on how young people view the political process. Millennial voters, who were so energized by Bernie Sanders, are rejecting Trump in overwhelming numbers. But they could ultimately decide to reject politics altogether — both in 2016 and for years to come. With U.S. voter turnout hovering at just more than 50 percent, this would be devastating for our democracy.
Over the coming weeks, the election will only become more brutal. As Trump scorches the earth with his vitriolic tweets and verbal assaults, Clinton should guard against the cynicism his campaign has inspired by making a concerted effort to reach the millions of young people whose voices still need to be heard. And no matter what the polls say, Clinton and her supporters should remember that the danger in this election is not just that Trump could win. It’s that — win or lose — he could poison our politics for a generation.
...................................................................................................................................................................
"... Trump’s big lie about mass deportations ... is falling apart. And he’s now trying to replace that lie by foregrounding another lie."
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One of Trump’s biggest lies is falling apart. So naturally, he’s blaming the media for it.
By Greg Sargent, August 29, 2016
The Grand Trumpian Immigration Follies of 2016 are set to take another turn: Donald Trump has now announced that he will give a major speech (does any Trump speech fail to merit that label?) on the issue on Wednesday, in which he is expected to finally clarify his stance on mass deportations. Trump veep candidate Mike Pence promised yesterday that Trump would clarify it.
But it is more likely that instead of clarifying his stance on mass deportations, Trump will instead try to shift the subject away from them entirely. That’s because Trump’s big lie about mass deportations — i.e., that he would carry them out swiftly and humanely, thus Making America Great Again — is falling apart. And he’s now trying to replace that lie by foregrounding another lie.
Trump previewed his speech at a rally over the weekend, at which he said this:
Now Trump insists that the aspect of his plan that really matters is his pledge to secure the border. Now, it’s true that Trump has long emphasized border security. But Trump also frequently vowed mass deportations, and that probably helped him win the nomination. Poll after poll after poll showed that GOP voters supported this goal.
The real reason Trump is now shifting away from mass deportations is almost too obvious to restate: It is probably alienating the college educated whites and white women — swing constituencies — that he simply must improve among if he is to have a chance at winning. And so, Trump is now downplaying this goal, by saying that his priority is to remove “criminal” illegal immigrants. The game here is to sound more reasonable to swing voters who are horrified by mass deportations and generally support mass assimilation, by projecting a recognition that not all of them are full blown criminals. He compassionately understands that many of them are “good ones,” believe me! But in so doing, Trump is still preserving his underlying stance that all the 11 million generally remain targets for removal. He even told CNN that there’s a “very good chance” that all the rest would be deported later. This isn’t as crazy as vowing proactive, immediate mass deportations. But it still is not an actual solution. At best, it is tantamount to leaving them all in the shadows for an indefinite period, or a reversion to Mitt Romney’s absurd “self deportation” stance. In reality it probably means they’ll all have to go.
And this leads to the ultimate point: Donald Trump’s deportation problem is the GOP’s deportation problem. Many Republican lawmakers — including GOP leaders — generally support the goal of legalization. They recognize that the most realistic solution for the 11 million — the one that would best serve the national interest — is some kind of path to assimilation, combined with penalties and increased border security. They also recognize that long term demographic and political realities compel this stance.
But the party has refrained from embracing that solution, because the base won’t allow it. For years, that forced many Republicans to continue saying the 11 million should be subject to removal, but when pressed, they tended to fudge on whether this means they all should be deported right way, since that’s politically and substantively untenable. Instead they took refuge in the platitude that we should merely “enforce the law,” without saying exactly what that should mean. What it really means is, leave most of them in the shadows indefinitely.
Trump is now being forced to sever himself from his explicit mass deportations pledge. And this is forcing him to adopt the GOP’s platitudinous “enforce the law” position. We’ve come full circle: On deportations, the GOP nominee is now pretty much where most Republicans have publicly been. Thus, in his speech, he will probably revert to a vow to target criminals first while more generally promising to “enforce the law” to deal with the rest. But Trump — as the GOP nominee and as someone whose entire campaign is built on the idea that illegal immigrants are nothing more than criminal invaders — is facing a much higher level of media scrutiny on this issue than GOP lawmakers have to date, rendering that long-held GOP position untenable for him in a way it wasn’t for other Republicans.
...................................................................................................................................................................
One of Trump’s biggest lies is falling apart. So naturally, he’s blaming the media for it.
By Greg Sargent, August 29, 2016
The Grand Trumpian Immigration Follies of 2016 are set to take another turn: Donald Trump has now announced that he will give a major speech (does any Trump speech fail to merit that label?) on the issue on Wednesday, in which he is expected to finally clarify his stance on mass deportations. Trump veep candidate Mike Pence promised yesterday that Trump would clarify it.
But it is more likely that instead of clarifying his stance on mass deportations, Trump will instead try to shift the subject away from them entirely. That’s because Trump’s big lie about mass deportations — i.e., that he would carry them out swiftly and humanely, thus Making America Great Again — is falling apart. And he’s now trying to replace that lie by foregrounding another lie.
Trump previewed his speech at a rally over the weekend, at which he said this:
“In recent days, the media, as it usually does, has missed the whole point on immigration. They have missed the whole point. All the media wants to talk about is the 11 million people — or more, or less, they have no idea what the number is because we have no control over our country; they have no idea what it is — that are here illegally.The idea that we have “no control” over our border is not true. As Jerry Markon reported, as of one year ago, most available evidence indicated that thanks in part to stepped up border security efforts in recent years, “illegal immigration flows have fallen to their lowest level in at least two decades.” But beyond that, let’s pause to marvel at the spectacle of Trump blaming the media for this focus on mass deportations. That promise has been key to Trump’s candidacy for over a year. As early as August of 2015 Trump was already saying on national television that all undocumented immigrants in this country “have to go.” A month later he said that his plan was to round them up “in a humane way.” A couple months after that Trump indicated that “they’re gonna have to go out,” and if not, “we don’t have a country.” In February of this year Trump said: “We have at least 11 million people in this country that came in illegally. They will go out.”
“But my priority, and really, it’s for the well being of everybody, but in particular the 300 million Americans and more, and all of our Hispanic citizens, and all of our African American citizens, legal residents who want a secure border. And I mean secure….my goal is to provide good jobs, and even great jobs, good schools and safety, to every Hispanic community, African American community, in the country….we can’t do that if we don’t secure our border….On Day One, I’m going to begin swiftly removing criminal illegal immigrants from this country.”
Now Trump insists that the aspect of his plan that really matters is his pledge to secure the border. Now, it’s true that Trump has long emphasized border security. But Trump also frequently vowed mass deportations, and that probably helped him win the nomination. Poll after poll after poll showed that GOP voters supported this goal.
The real reason Trump is now shifting away from mass deportations is almost too obvious to restate: It is probably alienating the college educated whites and white women — swing constituencies — that he simply must improve among if he is to have a chance at winning. And so, Trump is now downplaying this goal, by saying that his priority is to remove “criminal” illegal immigrants. The game here is to sound more reasonable to swing voters who are horrified by mass deportations and generally support mass assimilation, by projecting a recognition that not all of them are full blown criminals. He compassionately understands that many of them are “good ones,” believe me! But in so doing, Trump is still preserving his underlying stance that all the 11 million generally remain targets for removal. He even told CNN that there’s a “very good chance” that all the rest would be deported later. This isn’t as crazy as vowing proactive, immediate mass deportations. But it still is not an actual solution. At best, it is tantamount to leaving them all in the shadows for an indefinite period, or a reversion to Mitt Romney’s absurd “self deportation” stance. In reality it probably means they’ll all have to go.
And this leads to the ultimate point: Donald Trump’s deportation problem is the GOP’s deportation problem. Many Republican lawmakers — including GOP leaders — generally support the goal of legalization. They recognize that the most realistic solution for the 11 million — the one that would best serve the national interest — is some kind of path to assimilation, combined with penalties and increased border security. They also recognize that long term demographic and political realities compel this stance.
But the party has refrained from embracing that solution, because the base won’t allow it. For years, that forced many Republicans to continue saying the 11 million should be subject to removal, but when pressed, they tended to fudge on whether this means they all should be deported right way, since that’s politically and substantively untenable. Instead they took refuge in the platitude that we should merely “enforce the law,” without saying exactly what that should mean. What it really means is, leave most of them in the shadows indefinitely.
Trump is now being forced to sever himself from his explicit mass deportations pledge. And this is forcing him to adopt the GOP’s platitudinous “enforce the law” position. We’ve come full circle: On deportations, the GOP nominee is now pretty much where most Republicans have publicly been. Thus, in his speech, he will probably revert to a vow to target criminals first while more generally promising to “enforce the law” to deal with the rest. But Trump — as the GOP nominee and as someone whose entire campaign is built on the idea that illegal immigrants are nothing more than criminal invaders — is facing a much higher level of media scrutiny on this issue than GOP lawmakers have to date, rendering that long-held GOP position untenable for him in a way it wasn’t for other Republicans.
...................................................................................................................................................................
"... Ginsburg was right about Hobby Lobby: It practically invited 'for-profit entities to seek religion-based exemptions from regulations they deem offensive to their faith.'"
...................................................................................................................................................................
Hobby Lobby’s slippery slope
By Boston Globe Editorial Board, August 29, 2016
American judges have long recognized that religion alone doesn’t provide a blank check to break the law. The First Amendment protects religious belief, but like all rights it has limits: You can’t claim a religious justification for counterfeiting or fraud or bigamy and get out of jail free.
But that common-sense standard is starting to erode, in pieces so small that each one may seem inconsequential. The latest was a judge’s ruling in Detroit that a funeral home may discriminate against a transgender employee — something that would otherwise potentially be illegal — by claiming a Christian religious justification.
Chipping away at the antidiscrimination law proves that the warning issued by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg in 2014 was prescient: In endorsing religious exemptions, the courts are starting the slide down a slippery slope, one that could endanger the equal enforcement of all manner of laws. The number of transgender undertakers may be small. But, as Ginsburg wrote back then, “Suppose an employer’s sincerely held religious belief is offended by health coverage of vaccines, or paying the minimum wage . . . or according women equal pay for substantially similar work?”
The most recent decision stems directly from the infamous Hobby Lobby case, a 5-4 ruling in 2014 that allowed an employer to evade a requirement that employee health insurance include contraception. That, in turn, followed an ill-advised religious freedom law passed by Congress and signed by President Bill Clinton in 1993.
Defenders of the Hobby Lobby ruling insist there is no slippery slope, and that warnings like Ginsburg’s are alarmist. Under the 1993 law and the Hobby Lobby ruling, they argue, the government merely has to prove that it couldn’t meet the goals of legislation in some other way that posed less of a burden on religious believers.
A problem is that there may be too much room for interpretation in applying the “least restrictive” standard. The judge in Michigan, for instance, faulted the government for, among other things, failing to address the specifics of the case, in which the funeral home fired a transgender female employee for failing to wear male clothing. Would it really be practical for the government to prepare a legal brief explaining why it should be allowed to enforce the law in every individual case?
The conservative Supreme Court, under Chief Justice John Roberts, has employed a clever strategy, issuing decisions that seem narrow yet contain the seeds of future mischief. The majority in Hobby Lobby, for instance, seemed to indicate that employment law protections would be unaffacted [sic], with some soothing language from Justice Anthony Kennedy about its purportedly narrow scope.
But the decision did not actually say explicitly that its logic couldn’t be turned against employment protections. That was a lacuna that the judge in Detroit, Sean F. Cox, seized on: If the court specifically wanted to protect employment law from religious challenges, he wrote, “the majority presumably would have said so. It did not.”
The decision may be overturned on appeal. But Ginsburg was right about Hobby Lobby: It practically invited “for-profit entities to seek religion-based exemptions from regulations they deem offensive to their faith.” That’s not a path to religious freedom; it’s a recipe for legal gridlock.
...................................................................................................................................................................
Hobby Lobby’s slippery slope
By Boston Globe Editorial Board, August 29, 2016
American judges have long recognized that religion alone doesn’t provide a blank check to break the law. The First Amendment protects religious belief, but like all rights it has limits: You can’t claim a religious justification for counterfeiting or fraud or bigamy and get out of jail free.
But that common-sense standard is starting to erode, in pieces so small that each one may seem inconsequential. The latest was a judge’s ruling in Detroit that a funeral home may discriminate against a transgender employee — something that would otherwise potentially be illegal — by claiming a Christian religious justification.
Chipping away at the antidiscrimination law proves that the warning issued by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg in 2014 was prescient: In endorsing religious exemptions, the courts are starting the slide down a slippery slope, one that could endanger the equal enforcement of all manner of laws. The number of transgender undertakers may be small. But, as Ginsburg wrote back then, “Suppose an employer’s sincerely held religious belief is offended by health coverage of vaccines, or paying the minimum wage . . . or according women equal pay for substantially similar work?”
The most recent decision stems directly from the infamous Hobby Lobby case, a 5-4 ruling in 2014 that allowed an employer to evade a requirement that employee health insurance include contraception. That, in turn, followed an ill-advised religious freedom law passed by Congress and signed by President Bill Clinton in 1993.
Defenders of the Hobby Lobby ruling insist there is no slippery slope, and that warnings like Ginsburg’s are alarmist. Under the 1993 law and the Hobby Lobby ruling, they argue, the government merely has to prove that it couldn’t meet the goals of legislation in some other way that posed less of a burden on religious believers.
A problem is that there may be too much room for interpretation in applying the “least restrictive” standard. The judge in Michigan, for instance, faulted the government for, among other things, failing to address the specifics of the case, in which the funeral home fired a transgender female employee for failing to wear male clothing. Would it really be practical for the government to prepare a legal brief explaining why it should be allowed to enforce the law in every individual case?
The conservative Supreme Court, under Chief Justice John Roberts, has employed a clever strategy, issuing decisions that seem narrow yet contain the seeds of future mischief. The majority in Hobby Lobby, for instance, seemed to indicate that employment law protections would be unaffacted [sic], with some soothing language from Justice Anthony Kennedy about its purportedly narrow scope.
But the decision did not actually say explicitly that its logic couldn’t be turned against employment protections. That was a lacuna that the judge in Detroit, Sean F. Cox, seized on: If the court specifically wanted to protect employment law from religious challenges, he wrote, “the majority presumably would have said so. It did not.”
The decision may be overturned on appeal. But Ginsburg was right about Hobby Lobby: It practically invited “for-profit entities to seek religion-based exemptions from regulations they deem offensive to their faith.” That’s not a path to religious freedom; it’s a recipe for legal gridlock.
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Alicia Machado, welcome to citizenship and the right to vote for Hillary Clinton!
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Alicia Machado, Former Miss Universe, Gains Citizenship To Vote Against Trump
The best reason to become a citizen, honestly.
By Sammy Nickalls, August 24, 2016
Just because Donald Trump bought the entire Miss Universe Pageant doesn't mean he's got the vote of all the Miss Universes. Alicia Machado, who won the pageant back in 1996, is celebrating her newly obtained U.S. citizenship...and is using it to vote against the Republican nominee.
Machado posted a picture of herself holding an American flag in a U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services building. Writing that she's "so proud" to be a citizen, she said she's throwing all her "power and support" behind Hillary Clinton.
Machado's views aren't just because Trump constantly contradicts himself, or because of his support of "extreme vetting" of immigrants, or any of the other disasters he's been pumping into the media on the regular—Machado and Trump have had a long-running feud. When Machado gained some weight after her victory, Trump called her "an eating machine" and "Miss Piggy." He even had her work out at a gym, then called papparazzi behind her back to show up and document her working out. He also called her "Miss Housekeeping" to mock her Venezuelan background.
"Miss Housekeeping and miss Piggy Can Vote @realdonaldtrump [sic]," Machado wrote on Instagram.
It's OK, Trump—at least you have those secret, ashamed voters your advisers keep going on about.
...................................................................................................................................................................
Alicia Machado, Former Miss Universe, Gains Citizenship To Vote Against Trump
The best reason to become a citizen, honestly.
By Sammy Nickalls, August 24, 2016
Just because Donald Trump bought the entire Miss Universe Pageant doesn't mean he's got the vote of all the Miss Universes. Alicia Machado, who won the pageant back in 1996, is celebrating her newly obtained U.S. citizenship...and is using it to vote against the Republican nominee.
Machado posted a picture of herself holding an American flag in a U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services building. Writing that she's "so proud" to be a citizen, she said she's throwing all her "power and support" behind Hillary Clinton.
Machado's views aren't just because Trump constantly contradicts himself, or because of his support of "extreme vetting" of immigrants, or any of the other disasters he's been pumping into the media on the regular—Machado and Trump have had a long-running feud. When Machado gained some weight after her victory, Trump called her "an eating machine" and "Miss Piggy." He even had her work out at a gym, then called papparazzi behind her back to show up and document her working out. He also called her "Miss Housekeeping" to mock her Venezuelan background.
"Miss Housekeeping and miss Piggy Can Vote @realdonaldtrump [sic]," Machado wrote on Instagram.
It's OK, Trump—at least you have those secret, ashamed voters your advisers keep going on about.
...................................................................................................................................................................
"... once you are the subject of a lengthy investigation, the press doesn’t like to report, 'Well, we looked into it and we didn’t find anything interesting.'"
...................................................................................................................................................................
Colin Powell’s foundation and Hillary Clinton’s are treated very differently by the media
By Matthew Yglesias, August 30, 2016
In 1997, after a distinguished career in military service that culminated with stints as national security adviser under Ronald Reagan and chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff under George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton, Colin Powell launched a charity. Named America’s Promise, it’s built around the theme of Five Promises to America’s children. And while I’ve never heard it praised as a particularly cost-effective way to help humanity by effective altruists, it was surely a reasonably good cause for a famous and politically popular man to dedicate himself to.
Needless to say, however, Powell continued to be involved in American political life. His sky-high poll numbers ensured he’d be buzzed about as a possible presidential or vice presidential nominee, either as a moderate Republican or as an independent. Realistically, that wasn’t in the cards, and Powell was smart enough to know it. But his support for George W. Bush during the 2000 campaign lent him valuable credibility, and his recruitment to serve as Bush’s first secretary of state was considered an important political and substantive coup by Bush.
So what about the charity? Well, Powell’s wife, Alma Powell, took it over. And it kept raking in donations from corporate America. Ken Lay, the chair of Enron, was a big donor. He also backed a literacy-related charity that was founded by the then-president’s mother. The US Department of State, at the time Powell was secretary, went to bat for Enron in a dispute the company was having with the Indian government.
Did Lay or any other Enron official attempt to use their connections with Alma Powell (or Barbara Bush, for that matter) to help secure access to State Department personnel in order to voice these concerns? Did any other donors to America’s Promise? I have no idea, because to the best of my knowledge nobody in the media ever launched an extensive investigation into these matters. That’s the value of the presumption of innocence, something Hillary Clinton has never been able to enjoy during her time in the national spotlight.
The value of the presumption of innocence
Because Colin Powell did not have the reputation in the mid- to late ’90s of being a corrupt or shady character, his decision to launch a charity in 1997 was considered laudable. Nobody would deny that the purpose of the charity was, in part, to keep his name in the spotlight and keep his options open for future political office. Nor would anybody deny that this wasn’t exactly a case of Powell having super-relevant expertise. What he had to offer was basically celebrity and his good name. By supporting Powell’s charity, your company could participate in Powell’s halo.
But when the press thinks of you as a good guy, leveraging your good reputation in this way is considered a good thing to do. And since the charity was considered a good thing to do, keeping the charity going when Powell was in office as secretary of state was also considered a good thing to do. And since Powell was presumed to be innocent — and since Democrats did not make attacks on Powell part of their partisan strategy — his charity was never the subject of a lengthy investigation.
Which is lucky for him, because as Clinton could tell you, once you are the subject of a lengthy investigation, the press doesn’t like to report, “Well, we looked into it and we didn’t find anything interesting.”
Instead we get things like:
Three of these stories, in other words, found no wrongdoing whatsoever but chose to insinuate that they had found wrongdoing in order to make the stories seem more interesting. The AP even teased its story with a flagrantly inaccurate tweet, which it now concedes was inaccurate but won’t take down or correct. The final investigation into the seat assignments at least came up with something, but it’s got to be just about the most trivial piece of donor special treatment you can think of.
Did one of Alma Powell’s donors ever ask for a better seat at a Powell-era function? Nobody knows, because nobody would think to ask.
Hillary’s problem is people "know" she’s corrupt
The perception that Clinton is corrupt is one of her most profound handicaps as a politician. And what’s particularly crippling about it is that evidence of her corruption is so widespread exactly because everyone knows she’s corrupt.
Because people “know” that she is corrupt, every decision she makes and every relationship she has is cast in the most negative possible light. When she doesn’t allow her policy decisions to be driven by donors, she’s greeted by headlines like “Hillary Blasts For-Profit Colleges, But Bill Took Millions From One.”
AT&T is one of the very biggest donors to America’s Promise, and for much of the Bush administration, Colin and Alma’s son Michael was chair of the Federal Communications Commission, which, among other things, regulates AT&T. I never saw anyone write a story investigating whether AT&T’s donations improperly influenced Powell’s pro-telecom regulatory stances. But it’s genuinely unimaginable that if Powell had chosen not to help AT&T with regulatory matters the press would have blasted him as a hypocrite. That would have been ridiculous.
But once you “know” that a putative charity is really just a nexus of corruption, then even the failure to be swayed by contributions becomes a news story. And of course once your decision-making is put under that kind of scrutiny, your impulse is to shut down and try to keep information close to your chest. But when you “know” that a person is corrupt, her lack of transparency is further evidence of corruption. And any minor information that does slip out is defined as news, even if the information does not actually contain evidence of anything all that interesting.
The press should contextualize Clinton stories
Hillary Clinton is running for president. Her opponent, Donald Trump, is unusually weak and will probably lose. Scrutinizing her, her activities, and her associations is appropriate, and it’s difficult for any responsible citizen to argue that the likely next most powerful person on the planet is under too much scrutiny.
But the mere fact of scrutiny can be misleading.
It’s natural to assume that where there’s smoke, there’s fire. But the smoke emanating from the Clinton Foundation is not a naturally occurring phenomenon. It is the result of a reasonably well-funded dedicated partisan opposition research campaign, and of editorial decisions by the managers of major news organizations to dedicate resources to running down every possible Clinton email lead in the universe.
Whatever one thinks of that decision, it’s at least appropriate to ask editors and writers to put their findings on these matters into some kind of context for readers’ benefit. To the extent that Clinton is an example of the routinized way in which economic elites exert disproportionate voice in the political process, that’s a story worth telling. But it’s a very different story from a one in which Clinton is a uniquely corrupt specimen operating with wildly unusual financial arrangements and substantive practices.
Much of what we’ve seen over the past 18 months is journalists doing reporting that supports the former story, and then writing leads and headlines that imply the latter. But people deserve to know what’s actually going on.
...................................................................................................................................................................
Colin Powell’s foundation and Hillary Clinton’s are treated very differently by the media
By Matthew Yglesias, August 30, 2016
In 1997, after a distinguished career in military service that culminated with stints as national security adviser under Ronald Reagan and chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff under George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton, Colin Powell launched a charity. Named America’s Promise, it’s built around the theme of Five Promises to America’s children. And while I’ve never heard it praised as a particularly cost-effective way to help humanity by effective altruists, it was surely a reasonably good cause for a famous and politically popular man to dedicate himself to.
Needless to say, however, Powell continued to be involved in American political life. His sky-high poll numbers ensured he’d be buzzed about as a possible presidential or vice presidential nominee, either as a moderate Republican or as an independent. Realistically, that wasn’t in the cards, and Powell was smart enough to know it. But his support for George W. Bush during the 2000 campaign lent him valuable credibility, and his recruitment to serve as Bush’s first secretary of state was considered an important political and substantive coup by Bush.
So what about the charity? Well, Powell’s wife, Alma Powell, took it over. And it kept raking in donations from corporate America. Ken Lay, the chair of Enron, was a big donor. He also backed a literacy-related charity that was founded by the then-president’s mother. The US Department of State, at the time Powell was secretary, went to bat for Enron in a dispute the company was having with the Indian government.
Did Lay or any other Enron official attempt to use their connections with Alma Powell (or Barbara Bush, for that matter) to help secure access to State Department personnel in order to voice these concerns? Did any other donors to America’s Promise? I have no idea, because to the best of my knowledge nobody in the media ever launched an extensive investigation into these matters. That’s the value of the presumption of innocence, something Hillary Clinton has never been able to enjoy during her time in the national spotlight.
The value of the presumption of innocence
Because Colin Powell did not have the reputation in the mid- to late ’90s of being a corrupt or shady character, his decision to launch a charity in 1997 was considered laudable. Nobody would deny that the purpose of the charity was, in part, to keep his name in the spotlight and keep his options open for future political office. Nor would anybody deny that this wasn’t exactly a case of Powell having super-relevant expertise. What he had to offer was basically celebrity and his good name. By supporting Powell’s charity, your company could participate in Powell’s halo.
But when the press thinks of you as a good guy, leveraging your good reputation in this way is considered a good thing to do. And since the charity was considered a good thing to do, keeping the charity going when Powell was in office as secretary of state was also considered a good thing to do. And since Powell was presumed to be innocent — and since Democrats did not make attacks on Powell part of their partisan strategy — his charity was never the subject of a lengthy investigation.
Which is lucky for him, because as Clinton could tell you, once you are the subject of a lengthy investigation, the press doesn’t like to report, “Well, we looked into it and we didn’t find anything interesting.”
Instead we get things like:
- An Associated Press investigation whose big reveal is that Clinton once tried to help out a Nobel Peace Prize winner who was in hot water with the ruling party of his home country.
- An LA Times story headlined “Billionaire’s Clinton Ties Face Scrutiny,” about a rich Lebanese-Nigerian man who appears to be genuinely somewhat shady, gave money to the Clinton Foundation, and received nothing in exchange.
- A Wall Street Journal story about how the crown prince of Bahrain scored a meeting with Hillary Clinton years after having donated to the Clinton Foundation. The story somehow forgets to mention that Rice, Powell, Madeleine Albright, and Warren Christopher had all also met with him during their tenures as secretary of state
- An ABC investigation that concluded a donor had used a foundation connection to get a better seating assignment at State Department function.
Three of these stories, in other words, found no wrongdoing whatsoever but chose to insinuate that they had found wrongdoing in order to make the stories seem more interesting. The AP even teased its story with a flagrantly inaccurate tweet, which it now concedes was inaccurate but won’t take down or correct. The final investigation into the seat assignments at least came up with something, but it’s got to be just about the most trivial piece of donor special treatment you can think of.
Did one of Alma Powell’s donors ever ask for a better seat at a Powell-era function? Nobody knows, because nobody would think to ask.
Hillary’s problem is people "know" she’s corrupt
The perception that Clinton is corrupt is one of her most profound handicaps as a politician. And what’s particularly crippling about it is that evidence of her corruption is so widespread exactly because everyone knows she’s corrupt.
Because people “know” that she is corrupt, every decision she makes and every relationship she has is cast in the most negative possible light. When she doesn’t allow her policy decisions to be driven by donors, she’s greeted by headlines like “Hillary Blasts For-Profit Colleges, But Bill Took Millions From One.”
AT&T is one of the very biggest donors to America’s Promise, and for much of the Bush administration, Colin and Alma’s son Michael was chair of the Federal Communications Commission, which, among other things, regulates AT&T. I never saw anyone write a story investigating whether AT&T’s donations improperly influenced Powell’s pro-telecom regulatory stances. But it’s genuinely unimaginable that if Powell had chosen not to help AT&T with regulatory matters the press would have blasted him as a hypocrite. That would have been ridiculous.
But once you “know” that a putative charity is really just a nexus of corruption, then even the failure to be swayed by contributions becomes a news story. And of course once your decision-making is put under that kind of scrutiny, your impulse is to shut down and try to keep information close to your chest. But when you “know” that a person is corrupt, her lack of transparency is further evidence of corruption. And any minor information that does slip out is defined as news, even if the information does not actually contain evidence of anything all that interesting.
The press should contextualize Clinton stories
Hillary Clinton is running for president. Her opponent, Donald Trump, is unusually weak and will probably lose. Scrutinizing her, her activities, and her associations is appropriate, and it’s difficult for any responsible citizen to argue that the likely next most powerful person on the planet is under too much scrutiny.
But the mere fact of scrutiny can be misleading.
It’s natural to assume that where there’s smoke, there’s fire. But the smoke emanating from the Clinton Foundation is not a naturally occurring phenomenon. It is the result of a reasonably well-funded dedicated partisan opposition research campaign, and of editorial decisions by the managers of major news organizations to dedicate resources to running down every possible Clinton email lead in the universe.
Whatever one thinks of that decision, it’s at least appropriate to ask editors and writers to put their findings on these matters into some kind of context for readers’ benefit. To the extent that Clinton is an example of the routinized way in which economic elites exert disproportionate voice in the political process, that’s a story worth telling. But it’s a very different story from a one in which Clinton is a uniquely corrupt specimen operating with wildly unusual financial arrangements and substantive practices.
Much of what we’ve seen over the past 18 months is journalists doing reporting that supports the former story, and then writing leads and headlines that imply the latter. But people deserve to know what’s actually going on.
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Just who is sick?
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Monday, August 29, 2016
"As a result, the Republican Party has little to nothing to spend on senatorial and congressional races -- races that, unlike the presidential election, can actually be won." In that case, keep paying for #TruthlessTrump's race!
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Donald Trump's Campaign Is Bankrupting the Republican Party
By Michael Van Der Galien, August 29, 2016
It's clear that Donald Trump is on course to lose this election -- badly. What's even worse, though, is that he's bankrupting the Republican Party in the process. As Open Secrets reports:
As a result, the Republican Party has little to nothing to spend on senatorial and congressional races -- races that, unlike the presidential election, can actually be won.
If the RNC doesn't intervene now -- by basically cutting Trump loose and forcing him to take care of his own campaign -- a wipeout is coming in November. Responsibility for that epic defeat will rest on the shoulders of Trump and Reince Priebus.
The only question is: While we know that Trump will disappear after November, what will happen to Priebus? Will he be allowed to stay put? Or will the Republican Party finally get its act together and fire this disaster of a man?
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Donald Trump's Campaign Is Bankrupting the Republican Party
By Michael Van Der Galien, August 29, 2016
It's clear that Donald Trump is on course to lose this election -- badly. What's even worse, though, is that he's bankrupting the Republican Party in the process. As Open Secrets reports:
Virtually every category of receipts shows a decline this year. Contributions from individuals where the amount given is less than $200 (the “unitemized” category) is less than half what it was in July of 2004, 2008 and 2012. There is a similar decline in direct contributions of larger amounts where specific information about the donor is included in the report. These itemized contributions total much less than July 2004 and 2008 and are even smaller than July 2012 when joint fundraising became much more important.
These joint fundraising efforts where the presidential campaign works together with the national party and state parties around the country are increasingly important, and the RNC total from those efforts also lags in July compared with 2012 and 2008. The Trump campaign has talked about huge joint fundraising successes, but neither the campaign nor the RNC has received all that much from this process so far comparatively.
People often look at cash balances and the end of the month to get a feel for how a committee is positioned for future spending. Here too, the RNC on July 31 was strikingly short of its own status on the same date in past campaigns. At a time when $70 to $90 million is the norm, the RNC finds itself with only $34.5 million in the bank.The Politics USA website explains:
The Trump campaign bragged about their uptick in fundraising, but a deeper look inside the numbers shows that the RNC only has $15 million in usable cash. That is $15 million for every race, data operation, voter registration, and get out the vote effort in the country. Donald Trump’s refusal to build a campaign operation in all 50 states has resulted in the RNC having to spend their resources. Trump doesn’t have a data operation, so the RNC is using party resources for that too.In other words, Trump is bleeding the GOP dry. He isn't doing anything to create a political machine. Everything has to be organized and paid for by the RNC.
As a result, the Republican Party has little to nothing to spend on senatorial and congressional races -- races that, unlike the presidential election, can actually be won.
If the RNC doesn't intervene now -- by basically cutting Trump loose and forcing him to take care of his own campaign -- a wipeout is coming in November. Responsibility for that epic defeat will rest on the shoulders of Trump and Reince Priebus.
The only question is: While we know that Trump will disappear after November, what will happen to Priebus? Will he be allowed to stay put? Or will the Republican Party finally get its act together and fire this disaster of a man?
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"... you need to look at what actually distinguishes Trump from other Republican candidates. And the key distinguishing factor here is race ..."
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You can’t explain Trump’s conservative media appeal without talking about race
By Zack Beauchamp, August 29, 2016
There are a lot of reasons why Donald Trump managed to take over the Republican Party. One big reason, as Oliver Darcy notes in a recent Business Insider piece, is the conservative media establishment. Darcy argues that Republican elites encouraged conservative voters to embrace alternative, hard-line right-wing media outlets — which made them powerless when those outlets turned on them by backing Trump.
Darcy’s piece is thoughtful and well sourced, and you should read it in full. But it misses a basic part of the story. To see why, look at this list of words that don’t appear in Darcy’s story: “race, racism, Mexican, Latino, black, African Americans, minorities.”
Race and racism are a huge part of the Trump story, inseparable from any meaningful account of how he succeeded. That’s because race remains a hugely important motivating force, independent of class or partisanship, in American voters’ political behavior. Ignore that almost entirely, as Darcy does, and you end up with a distorted analysis of Trump’s success.
How ignoring race distorts analysis
Here’s the big hole with Darcy’s analysis: It can’t account for why the media turned on elites.
He does try to explain this in the piece, arguing that the root cause is conservative media’s demand for a level of policy purity elected officials couldn’t match. The more Republican leaders kept disappointing their media allies, the angrier the media became, making some kind of backlash increasingly likely.
“To avoid being called a RINO (Republican in name only), a Republican would have to take a hardline conservative position on nearly every issue,” Darcy writes. “If, say, they were to hold conservative positions on 90% of the issues, the conservative press would focus on the 10% where there was disagreement.”
But the problem here is that Trump is quite heterodox on policy, opposing cuts to Social Security and neoconservative approaches to the Middle East. If it were really about policy purity, conservative media would have lined up behind Ted Cruz — as Darcy concedes in the piece: “It appeared that, for conservative media, only one candidate could be conservative enough to support for president: Cruz.”
But it didn’t do that. Instead, many of the best-read outlets backed Trump — a man who has zero interest in purity on conservative policy. Darcy’s explanation is that they were attracted to Trump because of his “combative style,” or because he was good for ratings.
But Ted Cruz was also combative: He was the ringleader, in case you’ve forgotten, of the 2013 government shutdown over Obamacare, and widely hated by the GOP elite. The ratings explanation is simply kicking the can down the road: It doesn’t explain why Trump was so popular with the conservative media audience.
To explain why conservative voters embraced Trump, you need to look at what actually distinguishes Trump from other Republican candidates. And the key distinguishing factor here is race: Trump is just far more willing to overtly engage in racist rhetoric than any Republican in decades.
This mirrors the conservative media outlets that have most nakedly embraced him. Ann Coulter, perhaps the most consistently pro-Trump commentator, has a history of comments like “there’s a cultural acceptance of child rape in Latino culture.”
If you look at Breitbart News, definitely the most consistently pro-Trump outlet, you see a long history of ugly rhetoric about Latino immigration and “black crime” (an actual category tag on the site). These outlets do racist stuff because they know their audience enjoys it. The racism brings the readers, listeners, and viewers.
This also tracks with what we know about Trump supporters.
Trump voters in the primary weren’t especially poor, but they do tend to come from the regions of the country with the highest scores of “racial resentment” (a political science measure of negative stereotypes of blacks). Research on attitudes about immigrants shows that racial and cultural anxieties play a huge role in creating the anti-immigration sentiment that Trump rode to the nomination.
American politics has always been about race
Historically, race has been an incredibly powerful structuring force in American politics. It is the root cause of the only civil war Americans have ever fought. It’s the reason the Democratic Party and the Republican Party transformed after the 1964 Civil Rights Act. Race matters, and not just as a subset of partisanship or class.
This means that analysis of race can’t be siloed to pieces on obviously race-related topics, like police violence. Every meaningful analysis of structural changes to American politics or shocking events like Trump’s rise need to grapple with the reality that politics in this country is deeply racialized.
This may make some white elites uncomfortable. But we need to do it if we’re to get American politics right.
...................................................................................................................................................................
You can’t explain Trump’s conservative media appeal without talking about race
By Zack Beauchamp, August 29, 2016
There are a lot of reasons why Donald Trump managed to take over the Republican Party. One big reason, as Oliver Darcy notes in a recent Business Insider piece, is the conservative media establishment. Darcy argues that Republican elites encouraged conservative voters to embrace alternative, hard-line right-wing media outlets — which made them powerless when those outlets turned on them by backing Trump.
Darcy’s piece is thoughtful and well sourced, and you should read it in full. But it misses a basic part of the story. To see why, look at this list of words that don’t appear in Darcy’s story: “race, racism, Mexican, Latino, black, African Americans, minorities.”
Race and racism are a huge part of the Trump story, inseparable from any meaningful account of how he succeeded. That’s because race remains a hugely important motivating force, independent of class or partisanship, in American voters’ political behavior. Ignore that almost entirely, as Darcy does, and you end up with a distorted analysis of Trump’s success.
How ignoring race distorts analysis
Here’s the big hole with Darcy’s analysis: It can’t account for why the media turned on elites.
He does try to explain this in the piece, arguing that the root cause is conservative media’s demand for a level of policy purity elected officials couldn’t match. The more Republican leaders kept disappointing their media allies, the angrier the media became, making some kind of backlash increasingly likely.
“To avoid being called a RINO (Republican in name only), a Republican would have to take a hardline conservative position on nearly every issue,” Darcy writes. “If, say, they were to hold conservative positions on 90% of the issues, the conservative press would focus on the 10% where there was disagreement.”
But the problem here is that Trump is quite heterodox on policy, opposing cuts to Social Security and neoconservative approaches to the Middle East. If it were really about policy purity, conservative media would have lined up behind Ted Cruz — as Darcy concedes in the piece: “It appeared that, for conservative media, only one candidate could be conservative enough to support for president: Cruz.”
But it didn’t do that. Instead, many of the best-read outlets backed Trump — a man who has zero interest in purity on conservative policy. Darcy’s explanation is that they were attracted to Trump because of his “combative style,” or because he was good for ratings.
But Ted Cruz was also combative: He was the ringleader, in case you’ve forgotten, of the 2013 government shutdown over Obamacare, and widely hated by the GOP elite. The ratings explanation is simply kicking the can down the road: It doesn’t explain why Trump was so popular with the conservative media audience.
To explain why conservative voters embraced Trump, you need to look at what actually distinguishes Trump from other Republican candidates. And the key distinguishing factor here is race: Trump is just far more willing to overtly engage in racist rhetoric than any Republican in decades.
This mirrors the conservative media outlets that have most nakedly embraced him. Ann Coulter, perhaps the most consistently pro-Trump commentator, has a history of comments like “there’s a cultural acceptance of child rape in Latino culture.”
If you look at Breitbart News, definitely the most consistently pro-Trump outlet, you see a long history of ugly rhetoric about Latino immigration and “black crime” (an actual category tag on the site). These outlets do racist stuff because they know their audience enjoys it. The racism brings the readers, listeners, and viewers.
This also tracks with what we know about Trump supporters.
Trump voters in the primary weren’t especially poor, but they do tend to come from the regions of the country with the highest scores of “racial resentment” (a political science measure of negative stereotypes of blacks). Research on attitudes about immigrants shows that racial and cultural anxieties play a huge role in creating the anti-immigration sentiment that Trump rode to the nomination.
American politics has always been about race
Historically, race has been an incredibly powerful structuring force in American politics. It is the root cause of the only civil war Americans have ever fought. It’s the reason the Democratic Party and the Republican Party transformed after the 1964 Civil Rights Act. Race matters, and not just as a subset of partisanship or class.
This means that analysis of race can’t be siloed to pieces on obviously race-related topics, like police violence. Every meaningful analysis of structural changes to American politics or shocking events like Trump’s rise need to grapple with the reality that politics in this country is deeply racialized.
This may make some white elites uncomfortable. But we need to do it if we’re to get American politics right.
...................................................................................................................................................................
"... eminent domain is just more evidence that he no more deserves the keys to the White House than he did to Vera Coking's home."
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Donald Trump's weird love affair with eminent domain
By Bonnie Kristian, August 29, 2016
JuACstice Antonin Scalia is dead. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is 83. Justice Anthony Kennedy is 80. And Justice Stephen Breyer is 78. With one Supreme Court seat vacant and three more vulnerable to the ravages of time, our next president may well be able to substantially shape American jurisprudence for decades to come.
The legitimately high stakes of the SCOTUS game constitute a difficult argument to dismiss this election cycle. That's particularly so on the right, where a conservative Supreme Court that could overturn Roe v. Wade or throw out some loathed legislation like ObamaCare is something of a white whale. As conservative pundit Hugh Hewitt argued at The Washington Examiner, in the 2016 election, "it's the Supreme Court, stupid." So if you have any sympathy for limited government, any concern for the Constitution and rule of law, Hewitt said, hold your nose and vote Trump.
That view has been echoed by other notable Trump backers, including theologian Wayne Grudem — which is to say, it's hardly a fringe perspective. Trump is collecting supporters, however reluctant, for whom SCOTUS is all that matters.
The major flaw in this line of reasoning is the utter lack of evidence to suggest Trump is capable of delivering the sort of nominees conservatives (let alone libertarians like myself) want. True, he has released a list of potential justices whose credentials have reassured some court-centric voters. But with a candidate as mercurial as Trump, that list is meaningless: Hastily composed, it includes a Texas judge who regularly mocks Trump on Twitter (sad!). Worse, within hours of sharing the list, Trump indicated he would not be bound by it once in office.
A better guide to Trump's SCOTUS potential is his weird love affair with eminent domain, and specifically, with Kelo v. New London (2005), the one Supreme Court case where we definitely know what Donald Trump thinks.
Trump has a well-established history of affection for eminent domain use and abuse. Most famously, he hounded an elderly widow, Vera Coking, in Atlantic City to give up her house so he could build a limousine parking lot for the now-failed Trump Taj Mahal casino. Coking refused, and with the help of the nonprofit Institute for Justice (IJ), she won her case.
That was in 1998. Seven years later, another case went to court in which a developer once again sought to use eminent domain to confiscate privately-held land for private building purposes. IJ again worked to defend against what amounts to state-facilitated theft, but this time the bandits won. That case was Kelo v. New London, and in the good company of about eight in 10 Americans, conservatives and libertarians were pissed.
But Trump loved it. "I happen to agree with it 100 percent," he said of the Kelo majority in an interview on Fox. His illogic was simple: If the government wants the development to happen, it should happen.
In fact, where SCOTUS nominations are concerned, it tells us all we need to know.
First, it says Trump is no originalist. Justice Sandra Day O'Connor was correct in her Kelo dissent argument that the "Founders cannot have intended this perverse result" when they included eminent domain for limited public use in the Constitution. O'Connor quoted James Madison, the father of the Constitution, in his description of just government as one "which impartially secures to every man, whatever is his own." Constitutional originalism has been the top criterion for conservative court nominees for years, but in Trump it is nowhere to be found. (He doesn't even know how many articles the Constitution contains.)
Second, Kelo tells us Trump defaults to defense of government rather than liberty. His approach to jurisprudence is the opposite of strict scrutiny, in which the burden of proof is placed on the state to justify alleged violation of our constitutional rights and freedoms. For Trump, the burden of proof is on the victim to explain why a tremendous, beautiful, huge, and — crucially — government-endorsed project or program should not occur.
With nominees in this mold, SCOTUS would become a rubber stamp of approval for every whim of the state.
Of course, there are plenty of other reasons to be skeptical of a Trump SCOTUS pick, not least of which is his disinterest in defending the First and Fourth Amendments. Meanwhile, if poll numbers continue as they have of late, Trump will lose so massively this November it will be laughable to think we once worried how his presidency might work. And, yes, Clinton's SCOTUS picks will certainly have flaws.
Still, all that together fails to vindicate a Trump vote on grounds of SCOTUS composition. On the contrary, Donald Trump's record on SCOTUS, Kelo, and eminent domain is just more evidence that he no more deserves the keys to the White House than he did to Vera Coking's home.
...................................................................................................................................................................
Donald Trump's weird love affair with eminent domain
By Bonnie Kristian, August 29, 2016
JuACstice Antonin Scalia is dead. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is 83. Justice Anthony Kennedy is 80. And Justice Stephen Breyer is 78. With one Supreme Court seat vacant and three more vulnerable to the ravages of time, our next president may well be able to substantially shape American jurisprudence for decades to come.
The legitimately high stakes of the SCOTUS game constitute a difficult argument to dismiss this election cycle. That's particularly so on the right, where a conservative Supreme Court that could overturn Roe v. Wade or throw out some loathed legislation like ObamaCare is something of a white whale. As conservative pundit Hugh Hewitt argued at The Washington Examiner, in the 2016 election, "it's the Supreme Court, stupid." So if you have any sympathy for limited government, any concern for the Constitution and rule of law, Hewitt said, hold your nose and vote Trump.
That view has been echoed by other notable Trump backers, including theologian Wayne Grudem — which is to say, it's hardly a fringe perspective. Trump is collecting supporters, however reluctant, for whom SCOTUS is all that matters.
The major flaw in this line of reasoning is the utter lack of evidence to suggest Trump is capable of delivering the sort of nominees conservatives (let alone libertarians like myself) want. True, he has released a list of potential justices whose credentials have reassured some court-centric voters. But with a candidate as mercurial as Trump, that list is meaningless: Hastily composed, it includes a Texas judge who regularly mocks Trump on Twitter (sad!). Worse, within hours of sharing the list, Trump indicated he would not be bound by it once in office.
A better guide to Trump's SCOTUS potential is his weird love affair with eminent domain, and specifically, with Kelo v. New London (2005), the one Supreme Court case where we definitely know what Donald Trump thinks.
Trump has a well-established history of affection for eminent domain use and abuse. Most famously, he hounded an elderly widow, Vera Coking, in Atlantic City to give up her house so he could build a limousine parking lot for the now-failed Trump Taj Mahal casino. Coking refused, and with the help of the nonprofit Institute for Justice (IJ), she won her case.
That was in 1998. Seven years later, another case went to court in which a developer once again sought to use eminent domain to confiscate privately-held land for private building purposes. IJ again worked to defend against what amounts to state-facilitated theft, but this time the bandits won. That case was Kelo v. New London, and in the good company of about eight in 10 Americans, conservatives and libertarians were pissed.
But Trump loved it. "I happen to agree with it 100 percent," he said of the Kelo majority in an interview on Fox. His illogic was simple: If the government wants the development to happen, it should happen.
"If you have a person living in an area that's not even necessarily a good area, and government, whether it's local or whatever, government wants to build a tremendous economic development, where a lot of people are going to be put to work and make [an] area that's not good into a good area, and move the person that's living there into a better place — now, I know it might not be their choice — but move the person to a better place and yet create thousands upon thousands of jobs and beautification and lots of other things, I think it happens to be good." [Trump, via RedState]Trump himself probably doesn't realize it, but his opinion here — which diametrically opposed the conservative minority in a remarkably anti-populist way for a candidate who relies on right-wing populists — is revealing.
In fact, where SCOTUS nominations are concerned, it tells us all we need to know.
First, it says Trump is no originalist. Justice Sandra Day O'Connor was correct in her Kelo dissent argument that the "Founders cannot have intended this perverse result" when they included eminent domain for limited public use in the Constitution. O'Connor quoted James Madison, the father of the Constitution, in his description of just government as one "which impartially secures to every man, whatever is his own." Constitutional originalism has been the top criterion for conservative court nominees for years, but in Trump it is nowhere to be found. (He doesn't even know how many articles the Constitution contains.)
Second, Kelo tells us Trump defaults to defense of government rather than liberty. His approach to jurisprudence is the opposite of strict scrutiny, in which the burden of proof is placed on the state to justify alleged violation of our constitutional rights and freedoms. For Trump, the burden of proof is on the victim to explain why a tremendous, beautiful, huge, and — crucially — government-endorsed project or program should not occur.
With nominees in this mold, SCOTUS would become a rubber stamp of approval for every whim of the state.
Of course, there are plenty of other reasons to be skeptical of a Trump SCOTUS pick, not least of which is his disinterest in defending the First and Fourth Amendments. Meanwhile, if poll numbers continue as they have of late, Trump will lose so massively this November it will be laughable to think we once worried how his presidency might work. And, yes, Clinton's SCOTUS picks will certainly have flaws.
Still, all that together fails to vindicate a Trump vote on grounds of SCOTUS composition. On the contrary, Donald Trump's record on SCOTUS, Kelo, and eminent domain is just more evidence that he no more deserves the keys to the White House than he did to Vera Coking's home.
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"The thing is: There is no cheating. The GOP could find absolutely no case of in-person voter fraud ..." Just because Trump cheats doesn't mean that everybody else does it.
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COMMENTS:
* Cheaters , Welcome to todays world . There allot of them out there . Problem is we allow it..
* We know who they are: they have an "R" on their voter registration.
* "...the liar's punishment is, not that he is not believed, but that he cannot believe anyone else..."--G. B. Shaw
* I've always said, "A man doesn't think to look behind doors or under beds unless he has had reason to hide there himself."
* ... So-called voter fraud doesn't exist for all intents and purposes, certainly nothing at a level that would actually change the results of elections. It would take millions of people trying to vote twice-- we know that doesn't happen. What does happen is voter disenfranchisement, which has been going on ever since African Americans won the right to vote, and is the Republican modus operandi.
* Republicans are con artists. They tell you that the governament is trying to take away your constitutional rights, but what they don't tell you is, that it's the republicans in government who are the ones trying to deny you your rights. Don't be fooled America. The biggest threat to American's freedoms are not terror groups like ISIS, but rather terror groups like the republicans. Protect your freedoms from radical republicans by keeping Trump and other hate filled republicans out of office. Vote Democrat. Do it for yourself. Do it for America.
...................................................................................................................................................................
Cheaters Like Trump See Cheaters Everywhere
By Leo W. Girard, August 29, 2016
Two Republican judges ceded their principles last week to Ohio Republicans intent on suppressing the African-American vote. The Ohio GOP, like their counterparts nationally, have decided that if they can’t win minority voters, they will cheat.
So over the past decade, Republicans across the country have perpetrated fraud in the form of voter ID laws, limits on early voting, restrictions on voter registration and other onerous requirements to make it difficult for minorities, young people and senior citizens to vote -– requirements described as voter suppression in numerous lawsuits filed to overturn them.
Last week, two George W. Bush-appointed judges said Ohio Republicans could eliminate “Golden Week” when registration and voting may occur on the same day. The third judge on the panel, one appointed by President Barack Obama, dissented, writing that abolishing the week “imposes a disproportionate burden on African-Americans.”
Now along comes Donald Trump claiming he’ll lose the election only if Democrats cheat at the polls. He pointed his finger at Pennsylvania and Philadelphia in particular. The City of Brotherly Love is a filthy den of schemers and scam artists, according to Trump. Pennsylvanians living west of the city line are little better in Trump’s estimation.
Trump besmirched Pennsylvania’s reputation despite the fact that Keystone GOP officials admitted in a lawsuit won by voting rights groups in 2014 that there was absolutely no in-person voter fraud in the state. None. But that doesn’t matter because when Republicans like Trump cheat, they think everyone else cheats too.
At an Aug. 12 rally in Altoona, Trump called on his supporters to sign up to stand sentry as poll watchers “in certain areas” which other speakers made clear was Philadelphia. So, essentially, Trump was asking white, rural residents to travel to Philly, which is 45 percent black, and try to intimidate voters. Good luck with that.
Here’s what he said: “We’re going to watch Pennsylvania. Go down to certain areas and watch and study and make sure other people don’t come in and vote five times... If you do that, we’re not going to lose. The only way we can lose, in my opinion – I really mean this, Pennsylvania – is if cheating goes on.”
U.S. Rep. Bill Shuster, a Republican from southeast of Pittsburgh, spoke on Trump’s behalf at the event, accusing Philadelphians of nefarious deeds:
“The people in western and central Pennsylvania have to overcome what goes on down in Philadelphia. . .The cheating, what they do – we’ve got to make sure we’re doing the job here in central Pennsylvania.”
The thing is: There is no cheating. The GOP could find absolutely no case of in-person voter fraud – not one – when it desperately needed one, just one, to justify its burdensome voter ID requirements after they were challenged in a lawsuit by the ACLU of Pennsylvania and other voting rights groups.
In the end, the state of Pennsylvania, then completely run by Republicans – governor and both houses of the legislature – stipulated in court that, in fact, there was no in-person voter fraud in Pennsylvania. So, of course, there was no way the GOP could justify its excessive voter ID requirements that would have disenfranchised as many as three quarters of a million Pennsylvanians.
In 2014, Pennsylvania courts overturned the voter ID law. This year, the Ohio decision aside, that has been the trend of most court rulings. Many judges have cited the disproportionate effect these voter suppression laws have on minorities. And just like in Pennsylvania, the laws’ defenders have failed to provide evidence of the in-person voter fraud that the legislation is supposedly intended to prevent.
The ACLU and voting rights groups have secured victories in Wisconsin, North Carolina, Texas and North Dakota this year.
In July, a federal appeals court struck down the North Carolina voter ID law, saying it deliberately “target[ed] African-Americans with almost surgical precision” in an effort to depress black voter turnout. As to the lawmakers’ contention that the legislation was needed to prevent in-person voter fraud, the judges said voter ID, “imposes cures for problems that did not exist.”
In the Badger State, the judge wrote, “The Wisconsin experience demonstrates that a preoccupation with mostly phantom election fraud leads to real incidents of disenfranchisement which undermine rather than enhance confidence in elections.”
In North Dakota, a federal judge found the voter ID law placed an undue burden on Native Americans and wrote, “No eligible voter, regardless of their station in life, should be denied the opportunity to vote.” He found that voter fraud in the state has been “virtually non-existent.”
On July 20, a federal appeals court ruled that the Texas voter ID law violated the U.S. Voting Rights Act. This was the fourth time in nearly four years that a federal court decided that the law discriminated against black and Hispanic voters. But, still, the Texas GOP wants to implement it.
They’re the cheaters. The North Dakota Republicans are cheaters for trying to prevent Native Americans from voting. North Carolina Republicans are cheaters for deliberately targeting African Americans with surgical precision to prevent them from voting. Pennsylvania Republicans are cheaters for trying to prevent African-Americans, students, seniors and other likely Democrats from voting in an attempt to assure Romney a victory and their own re-elections.
Trump is a cheater as well. He cheated small businessmen and craftsmen repeatedly during his multiple bankruptcies, denying them payment for work they performed for him in good faith. Likewise, Trump reported on his sworn financial disclosure forms to election regulators that the Trump National Golf Club in Jupiter, Fla., was worth $50 million, but when it came to paying taxes on the property, he told Palm Beach County it was worth a measly $5 million. Similarly, Trump bought $65,000 in jewelry from a New York store, then had an empty box shipped out of state to evade sales tax – in a scam he got caught at.
That’s how he can accuse Philadelphia and Pennsylvania – without any evidence at all – of trying to steal the election from him. He’d do it.
...................................................................................................................................................................
COMMENTS:
* Cheaters , Welcome to todays world . There allot of them out there . Problem is we allow it..
* We know who they are: they have an "R" on their voter registration.
* "...the liar's punishment is, not that he is not believed, but that he cannot believe anyone else..."--G. B. Shaw
* I've always said, "A man doesn't think to look behind doors or under beds unless he has had reason to hide there himself."
* ... So-called voter fraud doesn't exist for all intents and purposes, certainly nothing at a level that would actually change the results of elections. It would take millions of people trying to vote twice-- we know that doesn't happen. What does happen is voter disenfranchisement, which has been going on ever since African Americans won the right to vote, and is the Republican modus operandi.
* Republicans are con artists. They tell you that the governament is trying to take away your constitutional rights, but what they don't tell you is, that it's the republicans in government who are the ones trying to deny you your rights. Don't be fooled America. The biggest threat to American's freedoms are not terror groups like ISIS, but rather terror groups like the republicans. Protect your freedoms from radical republicans by keeping Trump and other hate filled republicans out of office. Vote Democrat. Do it for yourself. Do it for America.
...................................................................................................................................................................
Cheaters Like Trump See Cheaters Everywhere
By Leo W. Girard, August 29, 2016
Two Republican judges ceded their principles last week to Ohio Republicans intent on suppressing the African-American vote. The Ohio GOP, like their counterparts nationally, have decided that if they can’t win minority voters, they will cheat.
So over the past decade, Republicans across the country have perpetrated fraud in the form of voter ID laws, limits on early voting, restrictions on voter registration and other onerous requirements to make it difficult for minorities, young people and senior citizens to vote -– requirements described as voter suppression in numerous lawsuits filed to overturn them.
Last week, two George W. Bush-appointed judges said Ohio Republicans could eliminate “Golden Week” when registration and voting may occur on the same day. The third judge on the panel, one appointed by President Barack Obama, dissented, writing that abolishing the week “imposes a disproportionate burden on African-Americans.”
Now along comes Donald Trump claiming he’ll lose the election only if Democrats cheat at the polls. He pointed his finger at Pennsylvania and Philadelphia in particular. The City of Brotherly Love is a filthy den of schemers and scam artists, according to Trump. Pennsylvanians living west of the city line are little better in Trump’s estimation.
Trump besmirched Pennsylvania’s reputation despite the fact that Keystone GOP officials admitted in a lawsuit won by voting rights groups in 2014 that there was absolutely no in-person voter fraud in the state. None. But that doesn’t matter because when Republicans like Trump cheat, they think everyone else cheats too.
At an Aug. 12 rally in Altoona, Trump called on his supporters to sign up to stand sentry as poll watchers “in certain areas” which other speakers made clear was Philadelphia. So, essentially, Trump was asking white, rural residents to travel to Philly, which is 45 percent black, and try to intimidate voters. Good luck with that.
Here’s what he said: “We’re going to watch Pennsylvania. Go down to certain areas and watch and study and make sure other people don’t come in and vote five times... If you do that, we’re not going to lose. The only way we can lose, in my opinion – I really mean this, Pennsylvania – is if cheating goes on.”
U.S. Rep. Bill Shuster, a Republican from southeast of Pittsburgh, spoke on Trump’s behalf at the event, accusing Philadelphians of nefarious deeds:
“The people in western and central Pennsylvania have to overcome what goes on down in Philadelphia. . .The cheating, what they do – we’ve got to make sure we’re doing the job here in central Pennsylvania.”
The thing is: There is no cheating. The GOP could find absolutely no case of in-person voter fraud – not one – when it desperately needed one, just one, to justify its burdensome voter ID requirements after they were challenged in a lawsuit by the ACLU of Pennsylvania and other voting rights groups.
In the end, the state of Pennsylvania, then completely run by Republicans – governor and both houses of the legislature – stipulated in court that, in fact, there was no in-person voter fraud in Pennsylvania. So, of course, there was no way the GOP could justify its excessive voter ID requirements that would have disenfranchised as many as three quarters of a million Pennsylvanians.
This had followed a swirl of publicity around a videotaped statement by GOP leader of the Pennsylvania House, Mike Turzai, in which he announced that the then-new voter ID law was “gonna allow Governor Romney to win the state of Pennsylvania.”That would occur, of course, by disenfranchising people who intended to vote for President Obama’s reelection, including many Philadelphia residents. It would occur by GOP cheating.
In 2014, Pennsylvania courts overturned the voter ID law. This year, the Ohio decision aside, that has been the trend of most court rulings. Many judges have cited the disproportionate effect these voter suppression laws have on minorities. And just like in Pennsylvania, the laws’ defenders have failed to provide evidence of the in-person voter fraud that the legislation is supposedly intended to prevent.
The ACLU and voting rights groups have secured victories in Wisconsin, North Carolina, Texas and North Dakota this year.
In July, a federal appeals court struck down the North Carolina voter ID law, saying it deliberately “target[ed] African-Americans with almost surgical precision” in an effort to depress black voter turnout. As to the lawmakers’ contention that the legislation was needed to prevent in-person voter fraud, the judges said voter ID, “imposes cures for problems that did not exist.”
In the Badger State, the judge wrote, “The Wisconsin experience demonstrates that a preoccupation with mostly phantom election fraud leads to real incidents of disenfranchisement which undermine rather than enhance confidence in elections.”
In North Dakota, a federal judge found the voter ID law placed an undue burden on Native Americans and wrote, “No eligible voter, regardless of their station in life, should be denied the opportunity to vote.” He found that voter fraud in the state has been “virtually non-existent.”
On July 20, a federal appeals court ruled that the Texas voter ID law violated the U.S. Voting Rights Act. This was the fourth time in nearly four years that a federal court decided that the law discriminated against black and Hispanic voters. But, still, the Texas GOP wants to implement it.
They’re the cheaters. The North Dakota Republicans are cheaters for trying to prevent Native Americans from voting. North Carolina Republicans are cheaters for deliberately targeting African Americans with surgical precision to prevent them from voting. Pennsylvania Republicans are cheaters for trying to prevent African-Americans, students, seniors and other likely Democrats from voting in an attempt to assure Romney a victory and their own re-elections.
Trump is a cheater as well. He cheated small businessmen and craftsmen repeatedly during his multiple bankruptcies, denying them payment for work they performed for him in good faith. Likewise, Trump reported on his sworn financial disclosure forms to election regulators that the Trump National Golf Club in Jupiter, Fla., was worth $50 million, but when it came to paying taxes on the property, he told Palm Beach County it was worth a measly $5 million. Similarly, Trump bought $65,000 in jewelry from a New York store, then had an empty box shipped out of state to evade sales tax – in a scam he got caught at.
That’s how he can accuse Philadelphia and Pennsylvania – without any evidence at all – of trying to steal the election from him. He’d do it.
...................................................................................................................................................................
"... it’s getting easier to believe the entire Trump campaign is some kind of farcical performance-art project mocking the absurdities of our modern political system."
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COMMENTS:
* ... this doctor is just the latest in the absurdity that is Trump.
* He knows her physician? I doubt that. I also doubt that her physician would ever discuss anything , with possible exception of the weather, with this guy.
* THAT is a HIPAA violation, my friends. Plain and simple. Doctors may not share that information (which he mentioned about Hillary) without a compelling medical reason. To release it to his preferred political candidate's benefit is about as serious as it could get. There are fines and/or imprisonment for releasing such. I have not seen a more appropriate case for it.
* This is the kind of doctor that will write any prescription (or any letter) for money
* Trump is sleazy and associates with other sleazy people. He's comfortable with them, he speaks their language and he can count on them to support his sleazy nonsense. I feel like we're getting a glimpse of New York's underbelly the more we learn about Trump.
* No doctor wrote that. It is obvious Trump wrote it and had paid this bozo to sign it. Google Trump's fake doctor letter and see how real doctors break the letter down and say no way did a doctor write it.
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Trump’s doctor draws fresh scrutiny (for all the wrong reasons)
By Steve Benen, August 29, 2016
The story of Dr. Harold Bornstein, who says he’s been Donald Trump’s personal physician since 1980, has always been odd. Late last year for example, Team Trump released an unintentionally hilarious, four-paragraph letter from the doctor – the only medical information we have about the Republican candidate – asserting that Trump’s “physical strength and stamina are extraordinary” and his lab tests results were “astonishingly excellent.”
Bornstein added at the time, “If elected, Mr. Trump, I can state unequivocally, will be the healthiest individual ever elected to the presidency.”
Things got a little weirder when we learned the physician identifies himself with the American College of Gastroenterology, which isn’t exactly true. An NBC News report on Friday took the story in an even more jaw-dropping direction.
Bornstein added, however, “In the rush, I think some of those words didn’t come out exactly the way they were meant.”
But wait, there’s more.
In light of these new details, the Washington Post noted, accurately, that “it’s clear we don’t have a particularly serious evaluation of what condition Trump’s health is in.” Given Trump’s conspiracy theories about Hillary Clinton, it’s a curious dynamic.
But let’s not overlook the fact that Bornstein also told NBC News, in reference to Hillary Clinton, “I know her physician and I know some of her health history which is really not so good.”
After 14 months of Trump’s presidential candidacy, I can appreciate the fact that many of us have become slightly inured to the circus. We’ve come to expect daily nuttiness and those expectations prevent astonishment to circumstances that would otherwise surprise us during a normal election with a normal Republican nominee.
But the fact remains that Bornstein’s comments on Friday were so bizarre, it’s getting easier to believe the entire Trump campaign is some kind of farcical performance-art project mocking the absurdities of our modern political system.
...................................................................................................................................................................
COMMENTS:
* ... this doctor is just the latest in the absurdity that is Trump.
* He knows her physician? I doubt that. I also doubt that her physician would ever discuss anything , with possible exception of the weather, with this guy.
* THAT is a HIPAA violation, my friends. Plain and simple. Doctors may not share that information (which he mentioned about Hillary) without a compelling medical reason. To release it to his preferred political candidate's benefit is about as serious as it could get. There are fines and/or imprisonment for releasing such. I have not seen a more appropriate case for it.
* This is the kind of doctor that will write any prescription (or any letter) for money
* Trump is sleazy and associates with other sleazy people. He's comfortable with them, he speaks their language and he can count on them to support his sleazy nonsense. I feel like we're getting a glimpse of New York's underbelly the more we learn about Trump.
* No doctor wrote that. It is obvious Trump wrote it and had paid this bozo to sign it. Google Trump's fake doctor letter and see how real doctors break the letter down and say no way did a doctor write it.
...................................................................................................................................................................
Trump’s doctor draws fresh scrutiny (for all the wrong reasons)
By Steve Benen, August 29, 2016
The story of Dr. Harold Bornstein, who says he’s been Donald Trump’s personal physician since 1980, has always been odd. Late last year for example, Team Trump released an unintentionally hilarious, four-paragraph letter from the doctor – the only medical information we have about the Republican candidate – asserting that Trump’s “physical strength and stamina are extraordinary” and his lab tests results were “astonishingly excellent.”
Bornstein added at the time, “If elected, Mr. Trump, I can state unequivocally, will be the healthiest individual ever elected to the presidency.”
Things got a little weirder when we learned the physician identifies himself with the American College of Gastroenterology, which isn’t exactly true. An NBC News report on Friday took the story in an even more jaw-dropping direction.
Donald Trump’s personal physician said he wrote a letter declaring Trump would be the healthiest president in history in just five minutes while a limo sent by the candidate waited outside his Manhattan office. […]As for the letter itself, as Bornstein explained it, Team Trump dispatched a limo to the doctor’s Park Avenue office to pick up the statement at the end of the day. Bornstein threw the letter together without proofreading it. NBC News’ report added, “The doctor said he would not normally use such over-the-top language in a letter for a patient but he made an exception for Trump,” driven in part by a tweet the candidate had recently published, describing his medical history as “perfection.”
Asked how he could justify the hyperbole [about Trump becoming “the healthiest individual ever elected to the presidency”], Bornstein said, “I like that sentence to be quite honest with you and all the rest of them are either sick or dead.”
He went on to say that the Oval Office has been occupied by presidents with dementia or tumors or even men who were “paranoid” or “psychotic.”
Bornstein added, however, “In the rush, I think some of those words didn’t come out exactly the way they were meant.”
But wait, there’s more.
In light of these new details, the Washington Post noted, accurately, that “it’s clear we don’t have a particularly serious evaluation of what condition Trump’s health is in.” Given Trump’s conspiracy theories about Hillary Clinton, it’s a curious dynamic.
But let’s not overlook the fact that Bornstein also told NBC News, in reference to Hillary Clinton, “I know her physician and I know some of her health history which is really not so good.”
After 14 months of Trump’s presidential candidacy, I can appreciate the fact that many of us have become slightly inured to the circus. We’ve come to expect daily nuttiness and those expectations prevent astonishment to circumstances that would otherwise surprise us during a normal election with a normal Republican nominee.
But the fact remains that Bornstein’s comments on Friday were so bizarre, it’s getting easier to believe the entire Trump campaign is some kind of farcical performance-art project mocking the absurdities of our modern political system.
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