2016 elections - because it's never too early

[Martinus]

Obama is a class act.

[Hamilcar]

Apparently Zizek would have voted for Trump if he was an American citizen.

Zizek is a top level troll. He and Raz should do a podcast.

[Syt]

Goring's life going down the tubes?

Two former aides of New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie were found guilty of closing down Fort Lee, NJ, lanes to the George Washington Bridge to punish that borough's mayor for not endorsing the governor's re-election.

http://nypost.com/2016/11/04/chris-christie-aides-found-guilty-in-bridgegate-trial/

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2016/11/bridgegate-would-have-destroyed-a-normal-candidacy.html?mid=facebook_nymag

Bridgegate Would Have Destroyed a Normal Candidacy

The news that two aides to Chris Christie were convicted today of a scheme to punish his political enemies by creating traffic problems is the sort of story that would shake up an ordinary presidential election. It won't, and the reasons it won't help explain the surreal conditions that pertain to this election. Here are a few oddities:

1. Ethical and legal propriety is the most prominent theme of Trump's campaign. The alleged abuse of power committed by Hillary Clinton by using a private email server has supplied what passes for a factual predicate for his demands to "lock her up!"

2. Trump appointed Chris Christie as his transition director. Christie's history of illegitimately using power to reward friends and punish enemies made him an especially alarming choice for that position.

3. Compounding the ethical concerns, Christie plans to change civil-service laws, as Emily Flitter reported, so that Trump could more easily fire government employees and install his own loyalists. In particular, Christie "wants to let businesspeople serve in government part time without having to give up their jobs in the private sector." Trump's plan for staffing the government would open up vast new opportunities for conflicts of interest — since businesspeople would make regulatory decisions that would impact their own wallets — and it would be overseen by a man with a long history of abusing state power.

4. Normally, a scandal like Bridgegate would intersect with the presidential campaign in one of two ways. Either the presidential nominee (Trump) would cut loose the scandal-tinged hireling (Christie). Or else, less likely, the candidate would stubbornly defend his underling's innocence. But Trump is doing neither of these things. He has openly stated that Christie is guilty. ("He totally knew about it," Trump said publicly, "They're with him all the time, the people that did it.")

So, to summarize, Trump pronounced Christie guilty of legally abusing his power, then appointed him to a position where he would have immense latitude to abuse his power, whereupon he announced a plan of action that would make such abuses virtually inevitable even if an ethical politician was handling it, and then ran a campaign centered on "draining the swamp."

5. The most amazing thing about this is that nobody will care. In a normal year, a sequence of events in which a candidate's central theme is contradicted by a dramatic legal scandal would be a crushing blow. But the news media has figured out that Trump's supporters' beliefs about his ethics, and the criminality of his opponent, are not subject to amendment on the basis of evidence. Journalists have internalized this reality to the extent that, while they do try to hold Trump accountable, they're not going to play up the Bridgegate indictments because they correctly realize it won't change Trump's support. Because it won't have any impact on Republicans, it's not a campaign-changing event, and ergo merely a second-rank news story.

Somewhere around the time he attracted a massive conservative following by promoting the birther hoax, Trump figured out that the Republican electorate was the biggest pool of suckers in America. It's a cohort that resides within a hermetically sealed counterfactual universe. Within the world, the corruption and illegality of Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, or any Democratic official is a metaphysical reality. The emails, the birth certificate, the Constitution, and any other totem of this belief are merely symbolic gestures affirming this larger truth, not indictments that rest upon verifiable evidence.

It follows that if you are the champion of the Republican side, provided you have demonstrated your team loyalty, you can do or say anything whatsoever. You can be facing trial for massive fraud, you can have a crook promising a crooked governing scheme, and still be the candidate of good government. Good government, by definition, is Trump.

[Zanza]

That article shows again that a Trump presidency would be a corrupt banana republic.

[Syt]

That article shows again that a Trump presidency would be a corrupt banana republic.

I think you're being unfair to some banana republics there.

[Syt]

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/04/opinion/who-broke-politics.html?smid=fb-nytimes&smtyp=cur

Who Broke Politics?

As far as anyone can tell, Paul Ryan, the speaker of the House — and the leader of what's left of the Republican establishment — isn't racist or authoritarian. He is, however, doing all he can to make a racist authoritarian the most powerful man in the world. Why? Because then he could privatize Medicare and slash taxes on the wealthy.

And that, in brief, tells you what has happened to the Republican Party, and to America.

This has been an election in which almost every week sees some longstanding norm in U.S. political life get broken. We now have a major-party candidate who refuses to release his tax returns, despite huge questions about his business dealings. He constantly repeats claims that are totally false, like his assertion that crime is at record highs (it's actually just a bit off historic lows). He stands condemned by his own words as a sexual predator. And there's much, much more.

Any one of these things would in the past have been considered disqualifying in a presidential candidate. But leading Republicans just shrug. And they celebrated when James Comey, the director of the F.B.I., broke with policy to lay a heavy thumb on the election scales; if Hillary Clinton wins nonetheless, they have made it clear that they will try to block any Supreme Court nomination, and there's already talk of impeachment hearings. About what? They'll find something.

So how did all our political norms get destroyed? Hint: It started long before Donald Trump.

On one side, Republicans decided long ago that anything went in the effort to delegitimize and destroy Democrats. Those of us old enough to remember the 1990s also remember the endless series of accusations hurled against the Clintons.

Nothing was too implausible to get on talk radio and get favorable mention in Congress and in conservative media: Hillary killed Vince Foster! Bill was a drug smuggler!

Nothing was too trivial to trigger congressional hearings: 140 hours of testimony on potential abuse of the White House Christmas card list. And, of course, seven years of investigations into a failed real estate deal.

When Mrs. Clinton famously spoke of a "vast right-wing conspiracy" out to undermine her husband's presidency, she wasn't being hyperbolic; she was simply describing the obvious reality.

And since accusations of Democratic scandal, not to mention congressional "investigations" that started from a presumption of guilt, had become the norm, the very idea of bad behavior independent of politics disappeared: The flip side of the obsessive pursuit of a Democratic president was utter refusal to investigate even the most obvious wrongdoing by Republicans in office.

There were multiple real scandals during the administration of George W. Bush, ranging from what looked like a political purge in the Justice Department to the deceptions that led us into invading Iraq; nobody was ever held accountable.

The erosion of norms continued after President Obama took office. He faced total obstruction at every turn; blackmail over the debt ceiling; and now, a refusal even to hold hearings on his nominee to fill a vacancy on the Supreme Court.

What was the purpose of this assault on the implicit rules and understandings that we need to make democracy work? Well, when Newt Gingrich shut down the government in 1995, he was trying to, guess what, privatize Medicare. The rage against Bill Clinton partly reflected the fact that he raised taxes modestly on the wealthy.

In other words, Republican leaders have spent the past couple of decades doing exactly what the likes of Mr. Ryan are doing now: trashing democratic norms in pursuit of economic benefits for their donor class.

So we shouldn't really be too surprised that Mr. Comey, who turns out to be a Republican first and a public servant, well, not so much, decided to politically weaponize his position on the eve of the election; that's what Republicans have been doing across the board. And we shouldn't be surprised at all that Mr. Trump's lurid personal failings haven't caused a break with the leaders of his party's establishment: They decided long ago that only Democrats have scandals.

Despite Mr. Comey's abuse of power, Mrs. Clinton will probably win. But Republicans won't accept it. When Mr. Trump rages about a "rigged election," expect muted disagreement at best from a party establishment that in a fundamental sense never accepts the legitimacy of a Democrat in the White House. And no matter what Mrs. Clinton does, the barrage of fake scandals will continue, now with demands for impeachment.

Can anything be done to limit the damage? It would help if the media finally learned its lesson, and stopped treating Republican scandal-mongering as genuine news. And it would also help if Democrats won the Senate, so that at least some governing could get done.

[mongers]

Joan was right and I was wrong.  Talking to folks at the Regal Beagle, Hillary is getting crushed by Comey's announcement.

You see this worries me, at this stage of the election news from the ground trumps polls.

[CountDeMoney]

Joan was right and I was wrong.  Talking to folks at the Regal Beagle, Hillary is getting crushed by Comey's announcement.

You see this worries me, at this stage of the election news from the ground trumps polls.

[CountDeMoney]

An election so toxic that it stopped an elementary school class project

When fifth-graders at a Maryland elementary school started an election project this fall, they expected it to last through Tuesday's presidential vote. But as the language and tone of the presidential campaign grew more disturbing, school leaders pulled the plug in October.

[mongers]

An election so toxic that it stopped an elementary school class project

When fifth-graders at a Maryland elementary school started an election project this fall, they expected it to last through Tuesday's presidential vote. But as the language and tone of the presidential campaign grew more disturbing, school leaders pulled the plug in October.

Damn that's sai, I remember us 10 year-olds doing mock elections at junior school for the 74 Wilson-Heath election and we had a ball, great fun.   

[CountDeMoney]

Damn that's sai, I remember us 10 year-olds doing mock elections at junior school for the 74 Wilson-Heath election and we had a ball, great fun.   

Yeah, we did the 1980 election in 5th grade, but I don't remember Reagan grabbing the pussy and John Anderson saying "Crooked Carter" all the time.  He had lust in his heart, but that was about it.

[jimmy olsen]

Trump got crushed in Nevada last night.

http://www.ktnv.com/news/ralston/the-nevada-early-voting-blog

Donald Trump will be in Reno on Saturday, but the Republicans almost certainly lost Nevada on Friday.

Trump's path was nearly impossible, as I have been telling you, before what happened in Clark County on Friday. But now he needs a Miracle in Vegas on Election Day -- and a Buffalo Bills Super Bowl championship is more likely -- to turn this around. The ripple effect down the ticket probably will cost the Republicans Harry Reid's Senate seat, two GOP House seats and control of the Legislature.

How devastating was it, epitomized by thousands of mostly Latino voters keeping Cardenas market open open in Vegas until 10 PM? This cataclysmic:

----The Democrats won Clark County by more than 11,000 votes Friday (final mail count not posted yet), a record margin on a record-setting turnout day of 57,000 voters. The Dems now have a firewall -- approaching 73,000 ballots -- greater than 2012 when Barack Obama won the state by nearly 7 points. The 71,000 of 2012 was slightly higher in percentage terms, but raw votes matter. The lead is 14 percentage points -- right at registration. You know what else matters? Registration advantages (142,000 in Clark). Reminder: When the Clark votes were counted from early/mail voting in 2012, Obama had a 69,000 vote lead in Clark County. Game over.

----The statewide lead (some rurals not posted) will be above 45,000 -- slightly under the 48,000 of 2012, but still robust. That's 6 percentage points, or right about at registration. The GOP turnout advantage was under a percent, worse than 2012.

----The Dems eked out a 200-vote win in Washoe and lead there by 1,000 votes. It was even in 2012. The rural lead, before the stragglers come in, is 27,500. It probably will get above 28,000.

----Total turnout without those rurals: 768,000, or 52.5 percent. If overall turnout ends up being 80 percent, that means two thirds of the vote is in -- close to 2012. Republicans would have to not only win Election Day by close to double digits to turn around the lead Hillary Clinton almost surely has in early voting, but they would have to astronomically boost turnout. The goal for the Dems during early voting was to bank votes and to boost turnout as high as possible to minimize the number of votes left on Election Day to affect races. Folks, the Reid Machine went out with a bang.

As an exclamation point to a historic night in Nevada, in which Clinton essentially locked up the state and Hispanics, insulted all cycle by Trump, streamed into the market, here is what the final Cardenas numbers showed (tallied by an on-the-ground activist):

1,904 voted
1,258: Ds, 66%
165: Rs, 9%
481: NPs, 25%

So Cardenas was responsible for adding 1,000 to the Democratic lead.

Trump has almost no path to the presidency without Nevada. He can say whatever he wants in Reno on Saturday and boost rural turnout a lot, but he made his own bed when he announced his candidacy. 

I'll dive deeper into the numbers later to show just how deep the wave could be Tuesday.

[jimmy olsen]

Joan was right and I was wrong.  Talking to folks at the Regal Beagle, Hillary is getting crushed by Comey's announcement.

Regal Beagle?

[Legbiter]

Yeah. 

[CountDeMoney]

Regal Beagle?

You can't even begin to fathom the depths of Yi's pop culture references.  Don't even try.