Hullabaloo

Sunday, August 14, 2016

 
The Insult Dog conducts a focus group

by digby

I don't honestly know if this was staged although it doesn't seem so. Either way, it's totally believable:



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digby 8/14/2016 05:30:00 PM

 

Lies and damn lies and Pinocchios 

by digby

Poor Adam. Duped by a liar. Never again.

There’s never been a presidential candidate like Donald Trump — 

--- someone so cavalier about the facts and so unwilling to ever admit error, even in the face of overwhelming evidence. As of August 9, about 65 percent (39 of 61) of our rulings of his statements turned out to be Four Pinocchios, our worst rating. By contrast, most politicians tend to earn Four Pinocchios 10 to 20 percent of the time. (Moreover, most of the remaining ratings for Trump are Three Pinocchios.)

Politifact has over 40 "pants-on-fire" total lies listed. Here's Trump's scorecard:

Compare that to Clinton's 

Here's President Obama's:

And yet:

As you can see Clinton and Obama are rated similarly and are probably fairly typical. Trump is not. And yet Clinton rates as more dishonest than Trump and twice as dishonest as Obama.

The Washington Post attempted to figure this out and they didn't get very far:

Clinton’s deceptions tend to be defensive — her reputation is under attack and she’s trying to save face. As determined by PolitiFact, a political fact-checking service, her false statements often come in response to scandals and allegations against her. For instance, with regard to her private email server, she has said she “never received nor sent any material that was marked as classified” and that the server “was allowed” at the time. Both proved false. 

Trump’s deceptions, by contrast, are more on the offensive, more self-promotional. He exaggerates his successes in the business world. He called his book "The Art of the Deal" the “best-selling business book of all time.” It’s not, according to PolitiFact.

 And he creates allegations against his political opponents and minority groups out of thin air, making himself appear better by comparison. Among his false statements, according to PolitiFact: Hillary Clinton “invented ISIS,” even though the group predates Clinton’s tenure as secretary of state. The United States is allowing “tens of thousands” of “vicious, violent” Muslim terrorists into the country every year. This attempt to justify his ban on Muslim immigration was also found false.

That distinction between Clinton and Trump — offensive vs. defensive — has major implications for whether people view their lies as “legitimate” and morally acceptable, according to Matthew Gingo, a psychology professor at Wheaton College. 

“Me lying to get myself out of trouble is not nearly as bad as me lying to get someone else in trouble,” Gingo said. “People view defense as more legitimate, such as physical self-defense.” 

This has long been the consensus of psychological research. A 2007 study presented scenarios where people lied with varying motivations and interviewed people about how “acceptable” each lie was. They found self-protective lies (think Clinton) to be more acceptable than self-promotional lies (think Trump on his business record), which are more acceptable than self-promotional lies that harm others (think Donald Trump on Mexicans). A similar 1997 study of women found the same result, as did a 1986 study. 

So Clinton’s omissions of fact, research tells us, should be perceived better than Trump’s flagrant scapegoating. Especially considering this disparity: PolitiFact has evaluated 203 of Trump's statements and 226 of Clinton's. It rated just fewer than a third of Clinton's as "mostly false" or worse but rated 71 percent of Trump's the same way.

They're not perceived as better, however. The Post concludes that it's Clinton's desire to be honest that makes people think she isn't. Or something. They do note that experts in this across the board say that trump is completely off the charts and they all seem to wonder why it is that Clinton has such high numbers even when compared to a pathological liar.

I think Rebecca Traister has the right answer in her latest piece which delves into this growing theme of Clinton stealing the election:

It’s true that the major hit on Hillary Clinton has long been that she is untrustworthy, which makes it a short step to suggesting that her electoral victories are fraudulent. Surely some of this stems from a reputation and history particular to her. But it seems unlikely that Clinton is, by political standards, uniquely dishonest; former New York Times editor Jill Abramson has written of how her many journalistic investigations into Clintonian malfeasance revealed that Clinton was “fundamentally honest and trustworthy.” The fact that “she can be so seamlessly rendered synonymous with all things untrue,” says Tillet, is at least in part because “religious narratives tell us that women are inherently untrustworthy … The idea of woman as a liar and as evil goes back to the Bible.”

This is some deep primal stuff and non-GOP voters should take a gut check on this Clinton meme and ask themselves some hard questions. There's something wrong with it and it's not that Hillary Clinton is unusually dishonest or untrustworthy. I expect right wingers to say that. They have primitive views of women. Liberals and progressives should know better. Her policies and her record are all fair game and should be criticized. But this rampant "she's a liar" character smear is something else altogether.

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digby 8/14/2016 04:00:00 PM

 
Policy advisers

by digby

digby 8/14/2016 02:30:00 PM

 
Politics and Reality radio with Joshua Holland: Tomasky on Trump’s Meltdown; Locked-up Asylum Seekers on Hunger Strike; The Green Party

by Joshua Holland

This week, we welcome Daily Beast columnist Mike Tomasky back to the show to talk about how low Trump might go.

Then we're joined by Adanjesus Marin, director of Make the Road PA, who will tell us about a group of mothers who fled violence for asylum in the U.S., only to find themselves pointlessly detained with their children in a for-profit facility in Pennsylvania.

Finally, we'll speak with Truthout's Candice Bernd, who attended the Green Party's annual meeting in Texas last weekend.




Playlist:
The Civil Wars: "Billie Jean"
Fun Boy Three & Bananarama: "Ain't What You Do"
Southern Culture on the Skids: "El Mysterioso"
Mike Post: "Theme from Hill Street Blues"
digby 8/14/2016 12:30:00 PM

 
He's winning! Really!

by digby

This exciting prediction is taking the wingnut fever swamp by storm:

Republican Donald Trump should win the presidency by a slim margin according to a model that has accurately predicted the popular vote since 1988.

Using several standards to make his prediction, Alan Abramowitz's "Time for Change" model done for the University of Virginia's Center for Politics "Crystal Ball" shows Trump winning 51.4 percent to 48.6 percent for Hillary Clinton.

He added that the model shows a 66 percent chance of a Trump victory.

"Based on a predicted vote share of 48.6 percent for the incumbent party, these results indicate that Trump should be a clear but not overwhelming favorite to defeat Clinton: There should be about a 66 percent chance of a Republican victory," Abramowitz added.

So interesting! Except when you click through to the link you actually get something quite different. Yes, he does say that. But then there's this:

The Time for Change forecasting model has correctly predicted the winner of the national popular vote in every presidential election since 1988. This model is based on three predictors — the incumbent president’s approval rating at midyear (late June or early July) in the Gallup Poll, the growth rate of real GDP in the second quarter of the election year, and whether the incumbent president’s party has held the White House for one term or more than one term. Using these three predictors, it is possible to forecast the incumbent party’s share of the major party vote with a high degree of accuracy around three months before Election Day.
[...]
Despite the excellent track record of the Time for Change model, there are good reasons to be skeptical about the 2016 forecast. For one thing, the overwhelming majority of national polls during the spring and summer of 2016 have shown Clinton leading Trump. National polls completed shortly before and after the national party conventions gave Clinton an average lead of about five percentage points, and Clinton is up by about eight points now. Beyond the poll results, the Time for Change forecasting model is based on two crucial assumptions — first, that both major parties will nominate mainstream candidates capable of unifying their parties and, second, that the candidates will conduct equally effective campaigns so that the overall outcome will closely reflect the “fundamentals” incorporated in the model.
[...]
The nomination of Trump by the Republican Party in 2016 appears to violate both of the Time for Change model’s key assumptions. Trump is clearly not a mainstream Republican and he does not appear to be running a competent campaign — he has lagged far behind Clinton in both fundraising and grassroots organizing in the swing states, and his rhetoric on the campaign trail has frequently brought sharp criticism from prominent Republicans as well as Democrats. In fact, there has never been a major party nominee like Trump — a reality TV star and wealthy businessman with no longstanding ties to the Republican Party, no political experience, and a penchant for insulting major voting groups. As a result, many prominent Republican leaders, including the last two Republican presidents, and the party’s 2012 nominee have refused to endorse Trump...

The question is how much the Republican Party’s nomination of Trump will move the needle away from its slight tilt toward the GOP based on the fundamentals in 2016. There is no way to answer this question until after the election. Based on the results of other recent presidential elections, however, as well as Trump’s extraordinary unpopularity, it appears very likely that the Republican vote share will fall several points below what would be expected if the GOP had nominated a mainstream candidate and that candidate had run a reasonably competent campaign. Therefore, despite the prediction of the Time for Change model, Clinton should probably be considered a strong favorite to win the 2016 presidential election as suggested by the results of recent national and state polls.

 Oops. They must not have room to include that part.

Unfortunately, these are the sort of articles that will lead some people to believe that Trump is winning and he can only lose if the election is stolen from him.

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digby 8/14/2016 11:00:00 AM

 

About that "voter fraud"

by digby

Trump, pimping civil unrest around the election:

Speaking in Altoona, Pa., Trump said it was "shocking" that Pennsylvania does not require photo identification to vote. The state's voter ID law was struck down in 2014. 

"I hope you people can sort of not just vote on the 8th -- go around and look and watch other polling places and make sure that it's 100 percent fine," Trump told his supporters. 

He argued that he has strong momentum in the state and that, "the only way we can lose, in my opinion, I really mean this, Pennsylvania, is if cheating goes on." 

Trump said: "We're going to watch Pennsylvania. Go down to certain areas and watch and study make sure other people don't come in and vote five times."

Except, you know:

I’ve been tracking allegations of fraud for years now, including the fraud ID laws are designed to stop. In 2008, when the Supreme Court weighed in on voter ID, I looked at every single allegation put before the Court. And since then, I’ve been following reports wherever they crop up. 

To be clear, I’m not just talking about prosecutions. I track any specific, credible allegation that someone may have pretended to be someone else at the polls, in any way that an ID law could fix. 

So far, I’ve found about 31 different incidents (some of which involve multiple ballots) since 2000, anywhere in the country. If you want to check my work, you can read a comprehensive list of the incidents below. 

To put this in perspective, the 31 incidents below come in the context of general, primary, special, and municipal elections from 2000 through 2014. In general and primary elections alone, more than 1 billion ballots were cast in that period. 

Some of these 31 incidents have been thoroughly investigated (including some prosecutions). But many have not. Based on how other claims have turned out, I’d bet that some of the 31 will end up debunked: a problem with matching people from one big computer list to another, or a data entry error, or confusion between two different people with the same name, or someone signing in on the wrong line of a pollbook.

I've been writing about this vote suppression tactic (which is all "voter fraud" is) for many years on this blog. But I'm afraid it's going to take some kind of a serious turn this time with a whole bunch of people from different directions screaming about the election being "rigged" and "stolen." It's worrying.

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digby 8/14/2016 09:30:00 AM

 

And in non-Trump news...

by Tom Sullivan

Screen cap via Kurdistan24.

The GOP's idiot vivant lied about something somewhere. This morning, Ross Douthat can have him.

Good news from Syria. US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) pushed ISIS out of the northern town of Manbij after a 73-day campaign. The town declared liberated on Friday was on an important ISIS supply route between the Turkish border and its stronghold of Raqqa. Reuters reports that Washington, which has lacked effective proxies in the fighting "has found its first strong allies in SDF."

From the Independent:

Ecstatic Syrian civilians have been shaving off their beards, burning their burqas, smoking and dancing in the streets after being freed from Isis.

The jubilant celebrations were seen in the Syrian city of Manbij on Friday, where militants have been driven out after months of fighting by US-backed rebel groups.

Families ran through rubble-strewn streets, past the ruins of buildings destroyed in air strikes, carrying their babies and belongings.

Men jubilantly had their beards cut off as women ripped off their veils and set them on fire in an act of rebellion after years living under Isis' brutal interpretation of Sharia law.

Reuters has video and photo spreads here and here.

Civilians used as human shields by retreating ISIS fighters

The Guardian reported on Friday:

“While withdrawing from a district of Manbij, Daesh [Isis] jihadis abducted around 2,000 civilians from al-Sirb neighbourhood,” said Darwish. “They used these civilians as human shields as they withdrew to Jarabulus, thus preventing us from targeting them.”

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which relies on sources inside Syria to cover the war, gave a similar report, saying Isis forced about 2,000 civilians into cars it confiscated and headed for Jarabulus.

The jihadis, who have suffered a string of recent losses in Syria and Iraq, have often staged mass kidnappings in the two countries when they come under pressure to relinquish territory.

Al Jazeera reports that the civilians were freed on Saturday:

One of the key reasons for the success of the ground forces fighting ISIL in Manbij was the US-led coalition's air support.

In confirming the capture of Manbij, US military officials said that during the operation the coalition launched 680 air strikes destroying more than 680 ISIL fighting positions and 150 ISIL vehicles and heavy weapons.

The UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR), a monitoring group that records daily developments in Syria, said the fighting in Manbij claimed more than 1,700 lives, including more than 400 civilians.

The Sunday Telegraph profiles "a 29-year-old former currency trader from Oxfordshire" who traveled to Syria to fight other countrymen who had taken up arms for ISIS "to brutalise and terrorise the innocent people here." Sometimes it is good to be reminded that Donald Trump and the United States are not the center of the universe.


Undercover Blue 8/14/2016 06:00:00 AM

Saturday, August 13, 2016

 

Hitch by ten best

By Dennis Hartley

Today is Alfred Hitchcock’s 117th birthday (well, would have been). It’s a good enough excuse for me to share my picks for the top 10 from the Master’s catalogue of 50+ films:

The Lady Vanishes – This 1938 gem is my favorite Hitchcock film from his “British period”. A young Englishwoman (Margaret Lockwood) boards a train in the fictitious European country of Bandrika. She strikes up a friendly conversation with a kindly older woman seated next to her named Mrs. Froy, who invites her to tea in the dining car. The young woman takes a nap, and when she awakes, Mrs. Froy has strangely disappeared. Oddly, the other people in her compartment deny ever having seen anyone matching Mrs. Froy’s description. The mystery is afoot, with only one fellow passenger (Michael Redgrave) volunteering to help the young woman sort it out. Full of great twists and turns, and the Master keeps you guessing until the very end. The production design may be creaky, but it’s clever, witty and suspenseful, with delightful performances all around.

Lifeboat – This taut, suspenseful 1944 Hitchcock classic (adapted from a John Steinbeck story by screenwriter Jo Swerling) is essentially a chamber piece at sea, centering on a small group of passengers who survive the sinking of their vessel by a German U-boat, which also goes down in the skirmish. A floundering survivor who is later pulled aboard the already overcrowded lifeboat turns out to be a member of the U-boat crew, which profoundly shifts the dynamics of the group. A sharply observed microcosm of the human condition, with superb direction, great cinematography (by Glen MacWilliams), imaginative staging (especially considering the claustrophobic setting) and outstanding performances by the entire ensemble, which includes Tallulah Bankhead, William Bendix, Walter Slezak, John Hodiak, Mary Anderson,  Canada Lee, and Hume Cronyn.

The Lodger: A Story of the London Fog – Mrs. Bunting is a pleasant landlady, but we’re not so sure about her latest boarder. There’s a possibility he’s “The Avenger”, a brutal serial killer who is stalking London. Ivor Novello plays the gentleman in question, an intense, brooding fellow with a vaguely menacing demeanor. Is he or isn’t he? This suspense thriller has been remade umpteen times over the last eight decades, but for my money, none of them can touch this 1927 Hitchcock silent for atmosphere and mood. Novello later reprised the role of the mysterious lodger in Maurice Elvey’s 1932 version.

Marnie – I know it’s de rigueur to tout the (dizzyingly overpraised) Vertigo as Hitchcock’s best “psychological thriller”, but my vote goes to this  underappreciated 1964 entry, which I view as a slightly ahead-of-it’s-time pre-cursor to dark, psychosexual character studies along the lines of Roman Polanski’s Repulsion and Robert Altman’s That Cold Day in the Park. Tippi Hedren plays the eponymous character, an oddly insular young woman who appears to suffer from kleptomania (which turns out to be the least of her “issues”). Sean Connery plays a well-to-do widower who hires Marnie to work for his company, despite his prior knowledge (by pure chance) of her tendency to steal from her employers. Okay, he’s not blind to the fact that she happens to be a knockout, but he also finds himself drawn to her as a kind of clinical study, due to her bizarre behavioral tics. His own behaviors begin to slip as he tries to maintain roles as Marnie’s employer, friend, lover, and armchair psychoanalyst all at once. One of Hitchcock’s most unusual entries, bolstered by Jay Presson Allen’s intelligent screenplay.

North By Northwest – I’m hard-pressed to name a more perfect blend of suspense, intrigue, romance, action, comedy and visual artifice than Hitchcock’s 1959 masterpiece. Cary Grant, Eva Marie Saint, James Mason and Martin Landau head a great cast in this outstanding “wrong man” thriller (a Hitchcock specialty). Almost every set piece in the film has become iconic (and emulated again and again by Hitchcock wannabes). Although I never tire of the exciting crop dusting sequence or the (literally) cliff-hanging chase up Mt. Rushmore, I’d have to say my hands down favorite is the dining car seduction scene. Armed solely with Ernest Lehman’s clever repartee and their acting chemistry, Cary Grant and Eva Marie Saint engage in the most erotic sex scene ever filmed wherein the participants remain fully clothed (and keep hands where we can see them!). Frequent Hitchcock collaborator Bernard Herrmann’s score is one of his finest.

Notorious – It’s a tough call to name my “favorite” Hitchcock movie (it’s like being forced to pick your favorite child). I would narrow it down to three: North by Northwest, To Catch a Thief, and this superb 1946 espionage thriller (no, I don’t have a man-crush on Cary Grant…not that there would be anything wrong with that). To be sure, Grant makes for a suave American agent, and Claude Rains a fabulous villain you love to hate, but it’s Ingrid Bergman who really, erm, holds my interest in this story of love, betrayal and international intrigue, set in exotic Rio. Bergman plays her character with a worldly cynicism and sexy vulnerability that to this day, few actors would be able to sell so well.

Psycho – Bad, bad Norman. Such a disappointment to his mother. “MOTHERRRR!!!” Poor, poor Janet Leigh. No sooner had she recovered from her bad motel experience in Touch of Evil than she found herself checking in to the Bates and having a late dinner in a dimly lit office, surrounded by Norman’s unsettling taxidermy collection. And this is only the warm up to what Alfred Hitchcock has in store for her later that evening. This brilliant thriller from the Master has spawned so many imitations, I long ago lost count. While tame by today’s standards, several key scenes still have the power to shock. Twitchy Tony Perkins sets the bar for future movie psycho killers. Anyone for a shower?

Strangers On A Train – There’s something that Wim Wenders’ The American Friend, Rene Clement’s Purple Noon (and Anthony Minghella’s 1999 remake, The Talented Mr. Ripley) all share in common with this 1951 Hitchcock entry (aside from all being memorable thrillers). They are all based on novels by the late Patricia Highsmith. If I had to choose the best of the aforementioned quartet, it would be Strangers on a Train. Robert Walker gives his finest performance as tortured, creepy stalker Bruno Antony, who “just happens” to bump into his sports idol, ex-tennis star Guy Haines (Farley Granger) on a commuter train. For a “stranger”, Bruno has a lot of knowledge regarding Guy’s spiraling career; and most significantly, his acrimonious marriage. As for Bruno, well, he kind of hates his father. A lot. The sociopathic yet silver-tongued Bruno is soon regaling Guy with a hypothetical scenario demonstrating how simple it would be for two “strangers” with nearly identical “problems” to make those problems vanish…by swapping murders. The perfect crime! Of course, the louder you yell at your screen for Guy to get as far away from Bruno as possible, the more inexorably Bruno pulls him in. It’s full of great twists and turns, with one of Hitchcock’s most heart-pounding finales.

The 39 Steps – Many of the tropes that would come to be so identifiably “Hitchcockian” are fomenting in this 1935 entry: an icy blonde love interest, a meticulously constructed, edge-of-your-seat finale, and most notably, the “wrong man” scenario. Robert Donat stars as a Canadian tourist in London who is approached by a jittery woman after a music hall show. She begs refuge in his flat for the night, but won’t tell him why. Intrigued, he offers her his hospitality. He awakens the next morning, just in time to watch her collapse on the floor, with a knife in her back and a map in her hand. Before he knows it, he’s on the run from the police and embroiled with shady assassins, foreign spies and people who are not who they seem to be. Fate and circumstance throw him in with a reluctant female “accomplice” (Madeleine Carroll). A suspenseful, funny, and rapid-paced entertainment.

To Catch A Thief – This is one of the Hitchcock films that are more about the romance, scenery and clever repartee than the chills and thrills, but that makes it no less entertaining. Cary Grant is “retired” cat burglar John Robie, an American ex-pat and former Resistance fighter living on the French Riviera. A string of high-end jewel thefts (resembling his M.O.) put the police on Robie’s back and raise the ire of some of his old war buddies. As Robie tries to clear his name and find the real culprit, a love interest enters the picture to further complicate his situation (an achingly beautiful Grace Kelly). To be sure, it’s fairly lightweight Hitchcock, but holds up well to repeated viewings, thanks to the  chemistry between Grant and Kelly, intoxicating location filming (courtesy of Robert Burks’ colorful, Oscar-winning cinematography), and the delightful supporting performances (particularly Jessie Royce Landis, as Kelly’s mother). The witty, urbane screenplay is by John Michael Hayes (he also scripted Hitchcock’s Rear Window, The Trouble with Harry, and the director’s 1956 remake of The Man Who Knew Too Much).

More reviews at Den of Cinema

--Dennis Hartley

digby 8/13/2016 06:00:00 PM

 
A nothingburger

by digby

Love this:

from a friend in Hamburg@dandrezner pic.twitter.com/3fVQXlCmSo

— slt (@sarahlt__) August 12, 2016

digby 8/13/2016 04:00:00 PM

 
Shut up and sing

by digby

In the wake of Trump saying President Obama is the founder of ISIS and his crowd's shrieking "hang the bitch!" at the mention of Hillary Clinton's name, I can't help but recall this from a few years back:

The Dixie Chicks were performing at the Shepherd’s Bush Empire theater in London, England, as the kickoff to their international Top of the World Tour, in support of 2002’s multi-platinum selling album, Home. News was buzzing all over the globe about the United States’ impending invasion of Iraq, under the leadership of then-President George W. Bush. 

Natalie Maines said to the audience: 

“Just so you know, we’re on the good side with y’all. We do not want this war, this violence, and we’re ashamed that the President of the United States is from Texas.”

You'll remember what happened:

Country stations across the United States have pulled the Chicks from playlists following reports that lead singer Natalie Maines said in a concert in London earlier this week that she was "ashamed the president of the United States is from Texas."

Station managers said their decisions were prompted by calls from irate listeners who thought criticism of the president was unpatriotic.

The group, which got its start in Texas, was one of the darlings of this year's Grammy Awards. The three-woman band that blends blue grass and pop hooks has spawned legions of fans who embrace the ideals of strong women celebrated in some of the trio's songs.

One station in Kansas City, Missouri held a Dixie "chicken toss" party Friday morning, where Chick critics were encouraged to dump the group's tapes, CDs and concert tickets into trash cans.

Houston country station KILT pulled the band's records from its playlist -- at least temporarily -- after 77 percent of people polled on its Web site said they supported the move.

"We've got them off the air for right now," said Jeff Garrison, program director at KILT, which is owned by Viacom's Infinity Broadcasting Corp.

"People are shocked. They cannot believe Texas' own have attacked the state and the president," Garrison said.

Their careers were never the same.

And I'm going to guess that the people who issued death threats against them are the same people who are voting for Trump today.



"Not Ready To Make Nice"

Forgive, sounds good
Forget, I’m not sure I could
They say time heals everything
But I’m still waiting

I’m through with doubt
There’s nothing left for me to figure out
I’ve paid a price
And I’ll keep paying

I’m not ready to make nice
I’m not ready to back down
I’m still mad as hell and
I don’t have time to go round and round and round
It’s too late to make it right
I probably wouldn’t if I could
‘Cause I’m mad as hell
Can’t bring myself to do what it is you think I should

I know you said
Can’t you just get over it
It turned my whole world around
And I kind of like it

I made my bed and I sleep like a baby
With no regrets and I don’t mind sayin’
It’s a sad sad story when a mother will teach her
Daughter that she ought to hate a perfect stranger
And how in the world can the words that I said
Send somebody so over the edge
That they’d write me a letter
Sayin’ that I better shut up and sing
Or my life will be over

I’m not ready to make nice
I’m not ready to back down
I’m still mad as hell and
I don’t have time to go round and round and round
It’s too late to make it right
I probably wouldn’t if I could
‘Cause I’m mad as hell
Can’t bring myself to do what it is you think I should

I’m not ready to make nice
I’m not ready to back down
I’m still mad as hell and
I don’t have time to go round and round and round
It’s too late to make it right
I probably wouldn’t if I could
‘Cause I’m mad as hell
Can’t bring myself to do what it is you think I should

What it is you think I should

Forgive, sounds good
Forget, I’m not sure I could
They say time heals everything
But I’m still waiting





digby 8/13/2016 03:00:00 PM

 
You talkin' to me?

by digby

Award winning actor Robert De Niro on Saturday compared Donald Trump to his mentally unstable character Travis Bickle in the 1976 movie "Taxi Driver," calling the Republican nominee "totally nuts."

"But I think now they are really starting to push back, the media ... finally they are starting to say: Come on Donald, this is ridiculous, this is nuts, this is insane," said De Niro at the Sarajevo Film Festival, according to Reuters. 

"What he has been saying is totally crazy, ridiculous, stuff that shouldn't be even ... he is totally nuts." 

"I don't know, it's crazy that people like Donald Trump ... he shouldn't even be where he is, so God help us," De Niro said as the Sarajevo National Theater erupted in applause.

The movie festival also marked the 40th anniversary of "Taxi Driver," where De Niro played the main character Bickle.  

"One of the things to me was just the irony at the end, he (Bickle) is back driving a cab, celebrated, which is kind of relevant in some way today too," De Niro added, according to the Associated Press.

I've been seeing a vigilante fantasy in Trump for a while (as has Rick Perlstein.) Law and order is only for the kind of folks who live in Ferguson.

On the stump last week-end, Donald Trump entertained his followers in the wake of the massacre in Oregon with colorful fantasies of him walking down the street, pulling a gun on a would-be assailant and taking him out right there on the sidewalk. He said, “I have a license to carry in New York, can you believe that? Somebody attacks me, they’re gonna be shocked,” at which point he mimes a quick draw:

As the crowd applauds and cheers, he goes on to say “somebody attacks me, oh they’re gonna be shocked. Can you imagine? Somebody says, oh there’s Trump, he’s easy pickins…” And then he pantomimes the quick draw again:

Everybody laughs. And then Trump talks about an old Charles Bronson vigilante movie and they all chanted the name “Death Wish” together. Keep in mind that this sophomoric nonsense took place just two days after a disturbed man went into a classroom and shot 17 people.

Taxi Driver fits in nicely.

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digby 8/13/2016 01:00:00 PM

 

Keepers of the conservative flame

by digby

In case you were wondering, the conservative movement con men are keeping the deficit flames alive to use against a Democratic president when the time comes. From my wingnut emails:

The Congressional Budget Office has released its long-term fiscal outlook, and the news is incredibly bad, though unsurprising for anyone who has been paying attention: 

First, and most important, we have a very important admission from CBO that the long-run issue of ever-rising red ink is completely the result of spending growing too fast 

As it has been for years. The federal government takes in gobs of tax dollars -- and the take is projected to get even bigger in the years to come. But spending is growing even faster, and the primary culprit is...entitlements: 

Medicare, Medicaid, Obamacare, and other government health entitlements are projected to consume ever-larger chunks of economic output. 

This should come as no surprise, either. Nor should the idea that Obamacare has utterly failed to curtail the rise in health care costs.
The fiscal mess is compunded by the political class -- of both parties, and all persuasions -- that seems utterly unable, and unwilling, to curb spending. Doing this isn't just politically difficult. It's often professionally suicidal. No member of Congress wants to be seen as a perpetual Grinch who refuses to throw money at the problem of the moment in order to avoid the fiscal reckoning that will come some day. 

That, many electeds believe, will be someone else's problem. Let them fix it. 

Far better if we insisted on fixing problems now -- even a little bit would be a great start.

Trump's "populism" doesn't seem to have taken hold in the conservative movement which will still be here long after he's retreated to Mar A Lago to hole up in his room to eat Haagen Dasz and listen in on his guest's phone calls.

digby 8/13/2016 11:30:00 AM

 
QOTD: Katrina Pierson

by digby

Pierson with her bullet necklace

Trump surrogate Katrina Pierson:

“Remember, we weren’t even in Afghanistan by this time. Barack Obama went into Afghanistan, creating another problem.”

The host followed up:

“You’re saying Barack Obama took the country into Afghanistan post-2009?” Pierson said, “That was Obama’s war, yes.” 

Watch it here.
digby 8/13/2016 10:00:00 AM

 

Good night and good luck, Don

by Tom Sullivan

NC Coordinated Campaign office opening in Asheville on Thursday.
Photo by Anna Hitrova via Facebook.

At Political Animal, Nancy LeTourneau observes that with all the focus in the press on rallies and polling numbers, there aren't many stories on the Clinton and Trump ground games. In Ohio, for example, Daily Kos blogger “mt41w” attended the Wednesday opening of a Clinton field office in Mason, Ohio just northeast of Cincinnati in southern Ohio:

In the room where I stood and sweated — the A/C was overwhelmed — I counted 35 people, including the Channel 12 CBS Local News crew and cameraman. And I was in the smaller of six rooms in this converted house on Mason’s Main Street. I could see more people outside on the porch and sidewalk unwilling or unable to brave the crowded rooms, so I’d take a guess of perhaps 100-125 people in attendance.

It was one of seven Clinton field offices opening in Ohio on Wednesday, according to the post. Just east of there, another Clinton field office opened in Chillicothe. (I dropped in for the opening of the Clinton/NC Coordinated Campaign office here on Thursday. North Carolina is another battleground state.)

A report out of Cincinnati cites a Trump spokesperson saying he plans 25 "Victory Centers" in Ohio, but:

With the presidential election 90 days away, the Donald Trump campaign is scrambling to set up the basics of a campaign in Hamilton County, a key county in a swing state crucial to a Republican victory, a recent internal email obtained by The Enquirer shows.

The campaign has yet to find or appoint key local leaders or open a campaign office in the county and isn't yet sure which Hamilton County Republican party's central committee members are allied with the Republican presidential nominee.

"If they are against us, we just need to know," wrote Missy Mae Walters, Southwest Ohio regional coordinator for the campaign.

New York magazine reports that at present:

Donald Trump has one field office in Florida, a state of 65 million square miles and 29 electoral votes. Which is to say, the GOP nominee barely has a campaign in a state he needs to win to have any real shot at the White House. And yet Trump would like the Republican National Committee to devote its limited resources to funding a get-out-the-vote operation for him in Hawaii.

Clinton has fourteen field offices open in Florida, according to the Miami Herald.

Politico reports:

The Trump campaign has asked the RNC to open offices in all 50 states, a move one party aide told Daniel is a “complete waste of resources.” For example, why boost resources in a state like Idaho, which is going to vote for Trump, or states like Hawaii or Massachusetts that certainly will not? An RNC source said it was a “fool’s errand” and more for Trump’s “ego” and for “bragging” purposes, instead of deft campaign strategy. The source said it was a “personal request” by Trump to have offices in all 50 states.

This is classic rookie thinking. Novice candidates (and cheap ones) sometimes believe that the party exists to raise their money and run their campaigns for them. Uh, no. The party assists with GOTV efforts. Candidates run their own campaigns and raise and spend their own money. And if they cannot manage that, how can they be expected to manage anything else?

From an NBC News report on Friday:

"These are supposed to be battleground states, but right now, they don't look that way," says Lee Miringoff, director of the Marist College Institute for Public Opinion.

Indeed, if Clinton ultimately wins all four, Trump has no realistic path to getting the 270 electoral votes needed for victory. And even if Trump is able to win in Florida and its 29 electoral votes, he has to run the table in the other battlegrounds, including in Pennsylvania.

Donald Trump seems to think unsubstantiated allegations of cheating before the fact are all it will take to get voters to the polls in the battleground state of Pennsylvania where one poll show him trailing by 11 points and Clinton running the table in others.

In another report, Politico quotes an Iowa Republican on the state of Trump's efforts:

“While it's true that previous candidates have come back from greater deficits to win, it won't happen in 2016. The electorate is far more base-driven, with fewer persuadables,” said an Iowa Republican. “Trump is underperforming so comprehensively across states and demographics it would take video evidence of a smiling Hillary drowning a litter of puppies while terrorists surrounded her with chants of ‘Death to America!’ But in 2016, stranger things have happened.”

Clinton has both money and a field campaign. Trump has money he won't spend and a campaign based on rallies where he can be surrounded by admirers. Good luck with that.

Update: Corrected to clarify who is "running the table" in battleground states.


Undercover Blue 8/13/2016 06:00:00 AM

Friday, August 12, 2016

 
Friday Night Soother

by digby

Panda brats:



kids...
digby 8/12/2016 05:00:00 PM

 
The ultimate endorsement

by digby

RuPaul is all-in for Clinton:

What do you think about Hillary Clinton and the Democrats? 

[Laughs.] I fucking love them. I have always loved them. And let me just say this: If you're a politician — not just in Washington but in business and industry, you have to be a politician — there are a lot of things that you have to do that you're not proud of. There are a lot of compromises you have to make because it means that you can get this other thing over here. And if you think that you can go to fucking Washington and be rainbows and butterflies the whole time, you're living in a fucking fantasy world. 

So now, having said that, think about what a female has to do with that: All of those compromises, all of that shit, double it by ten. And you get to understand who this woman is and how powerful, persuasive, brilliant, and resilient she is. Any female executive, anybody who has been put to the side — women, blacks, gays — for them to succeed in a white-male-dominated culture is an act of brilliance. Of resilience, of grit, of everything you can imagine. So, what do I think of Hillary? I think she's fucking awesome. Is she in bed with Wall Street? Goddammit, I should hope so! You've got to dance with the devil. 

So which of the horrible people do you want? That's more of the question. Do you want a pompous braggart who doesn't know anything about diplomacy? Or do you want a badass bitch who knows how to get shit done? That's really the question.

Well when you put it that way ...

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digby 8/12/2016 03:30:00 PM

 
It turns out Trump's a founder

by digby

He's saying today that he was being sarcastic. He's quite the comedian. In case you missed Trump's full comments to Hugh Hewitt about Obama and Clinton founding ISIS, here they are. You be the judge:

HH: I’ve got two more questions. Last night, you said the President was the founder of ISIS. I know what you meant. You meant that he created the vacuum, he lost the peace. 

DT: No, I meant he’s the founder of ISIS. I do. He was the most valuable player. I give him the most valuable player award. I give her, too, by the way, Hillary Clinton. 

HH: But he’s not sympathetic to them. He hates them. He’s trying to kill them. 

DT: I don’t care. He was the founder. His, the way he got out of Iraq was that that was the founding of ISIS, okay? 

HH: Well, that, you know, I have a saying, Donald Trump, the mnemonic device I use is Every Liberal Really Seems So, So Sad. E is for Egypt, L is for Libya, S is for Syria, R is for Russia reset. They screwed everything up. You don’t get any argument from me. But by using the term founder, they’re hitting with you on this again. Mistake? 

DT: No, it’s no mistake. Everyone’s liking it. I think they’re liking it. I give him the most valuable player award. And I give it to him, and I give it to, I gave the co-founder to Hillary. I don’t know if you heard that. 

HH: I did. I did. I played it. 

DT: I gave her the co-founder. 

HH: I know what you’re arguing… 

DT: You’re not, and let me ask you, do you not like that? 

HH: I don’t. I think I would say they created, they lost the peace. They created the Libyan vacuum, they created the vacuum into which ISIS came, but they didn’t create ISIS. That’s what I would say. 

DT: Well, I disagree. 

HH: All right, that’s okay. 

DT: I mean, with his bad policies, that’s why ISIS came about. 

HH: That’s… 

DT: If he would have done things properly, you wouldn’t have had ISIS. 

HH: That’s true. 

DT: Therefore, he was the founder of ISIS. 

Hewitt doesn't ask him why he uses Obama's middle name when he talks about this on the stump --- the only time he does it. But then this is Hewitt who, for some reason, is a big favorite among the Villagers and has been mainstreaming fever swamp nonsense throughout this election.

By the way, here's what Trump said about withdrawing from Iraq in the past:

“First, I’d get out of Iraq right now,” Trump said to British GQ in a 2008 interview. “And by the way, I am the greatest hawk who ever lived, a far greater hawk even than Bush. I am the most militant military human being who ever lived. I’d rebuild our military arsenal, and make sure we had the finest weapons in the world. Because countries such as Russia have no respect for us, they laugh at us. Look at what happened in Georgia, a place we were supposed to be protecting.”

Later, Trump said he wished Arizona Sen. John McCain, whom he was backing in the election, had supported pulling troops out of Iraq faster.

“I wish he would promise to get us out of Iraq faster,” said Trump. “I am not in love with that aspect of what he represents.”

Those comments echoed similar remarks in March 2007 when he said forces should be immediately withdrawn from Iraq.

“You know how they get out? They get out,” Trump said to CNN’s Wolf Blitzer. “That’s how they get out. Declare victory and leave, because I’ll tell you, this country is just going to get further bogged down. They’re in a civil war over there, Wolf. There’s nothing that we’re going to be able to do with a civil war. They are in a major civil war.”

Speaking with Howard Stern in October of that year, Trump said McCain’s support for keeping troops in Iraq was costing him the Republican nomination.

“Anybody who stays in Iraq — look at what happened to McCain — he want to show how tough he is, he’s sunk, immediately, and that’s with the Republicans.”

By late 2011, Trump notoriously began saying the U.S. should take Iraq’s oil before withdrawing. Trump also told CNN’s Piers Morgan in February of that year he would get of troops in Iraq “out real fast.” By 2016, he completely adopted the conservative critique of the Iraq withdrawal.

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digby 8/12/2016 02:00:00 PM

 
Witch or devil? Let's dunk her in the pond and find out!

by digby

She might be a terrorist too! From Peter Montgomery, we find that certain members of the right are engaged in a lively debate about whether Clinton is the anti-Christ or an Illuminati witch. Seriously:

That provocative question headlines a new Jennifer LeClaire column for Charisma, which promotes what she calls a “documentary” titled “Hillary Clinton – The Antichrist Or the Illuminati Witch?” LeClaire writes:

I don't believe Hillary is the Antichrist, but the fact that so many people are utterly convinced is telling. The chatter continues. One thing is clear, believers are paying close attention to the signs of the times—including the rise of the Antichrist.

The video, though, does offer some shocking info about Hillary. Check it out for yourself.

“Documentary” is a far too generous term for the incoherent 22-minute mash-up of right-wing Hillary-hating news clips, interviews, and voiceovers that appears on the End Of The World YouTube channel.

Disappointingly, the video doesn’t directly address the question of whether Clinton might be the Antichrist. It does recycle conspiracy theories like Clinton’s supposed plan to confiscate everyone’s guns and talks about “that sexual relationship with Huma Abedin that is whispered about in the dark corners of Washington.”

The video includes snippets from Benghazi hearings, attacks on Planned Parenthood and its founder Margaret Sanger, right-wing news coverage of the Clinton’s email problems, and old news clips about the Whitewater scandal. It includes bits of video and audio from some recognizable speakers like Dick Morris, Robert Novak, Phyllis Schlafly, Glenn Beck, and Ben Carson. Oddly, it ends with a number of somewhat endearing clips of Clinton gamely dancing with celebrities during speaking appearances like Ellen DeGeneres’s television show.

The most inflammatory comments seem to have been snagged from an Infowars video featuring Larry Nichols, who is identified by Infowars as a former “Clinton machine insider.” Nichols says of Hillary Clinton, “she’s an animal.” He says that when the Clintons were still in Arkansas, Bill told him that Hillary would go to Los Angeles once a month with a group of women to be “part of a witches’ church.”

This is looney tunes fringe stuff. But the chants of "lock her up!" and "hang the bitch!" at Trump rallies are definitely echoes of witch hunt frenzies of the past. The "powerful woman must be a witch or the tool of the devil" archetype goes way, way back.

Here's the "documentary"


digby 8/12/2016 12:30:00 PM

 
No Trump's not destroying the Democratic Party

by digby

I wrote about the ongoing pundit obsession with the votes of white men for Salon:

Ever since Ronald Reagan enticed many traditionally Democratic white working class voters over to the Republican Party political observers have been intensely interested in what makes this particular faction tick. Indeed, one might even call it an obsession.

There have been different ways of looking at this group over the years. The so-called Reagan Democrats were studied like a lost Amazonian tribe for decades, most famously by Democratic pollster Stan Greenberg who focused on one county in Michigan and found that these voters believed the Democratic party didn't care about their needs and instead were working on behalf of people of color, feminists, poor people and those who refused to work. They also believed that America was weak, wanted to bring back law and order and hated paying taxes, mostly because they believed they went to help all those other people the Democrats cared about more than them. Sound familiar?

In the 90s the concerns about this group were defined more as a regional problem and the loss of the Southern white rural male became more of a focus with much rending of garments over how to get them back into the fold. Acclaimed Democratic strategists such as Dave "Mudcat" Saunders explained the problem this way:

I don’t know how many northern Democrats who have tolerance for my kind...We’ve got an affection for big guns and fast cars. It’s a macho thing. I’ve not seen any attempt by the Democrats to get into that culture.”

But there was more to it than that, as Saunders explained in his colorful way:

Bubba doesn’t call them illegal immigrants. He calls them illegal aliens. If the Democrats put illegal aliens in their bait can, we’re going to come home with a bunch of white males in the boat.

The Democrats tried very, very hard to respect that culture but they were unwilling to "put illegal aliens in the bait can" to attract these disaffected white males. Neither were they willing to throw feminists, African Americans or any other member of their base over the side and all the NASCAR and bird hunting in the world couldn't make up for it. The more diverse the Democratic coalition became the less these folks wanted to be a part of it. (Saunders, by the way, was last heard from predicting that Donald Trump would beat Hillary Clinton "like a baby seal.")

In fact, in the last three presidential races the Democratic candidate lost among non-college educated whites by an average of 22 points. In 2012 it was a record 26 points. However, you'll notice that the Democratic candidate won those last two races pretty handily. Nonetheless, despite their winning record and a diverse coalition that looks like 2016 America, the Democrats are still seen to have a big "problem" because they are allegedly ignoring the plight of the white working class and failing to attract their votes. This season, with Trump electrifying this cohort with his calls for deporting Mexicans and banning Muslims, the genre is especially plentiful.

Just this week we had Thomas Edsall of the New York Times fretting that Trump was not only ruining the GOP but was also destroying the Democratic party by making it a party of urban and suburban dwelling high earning college educated whites and working class people of color. This is a coalition that apparently cannot work because the higher earning whites are socially distant from the lower earning people of color and somehow this will result in "a base split between the well-to-do, many of whom seek to protect their enclaves against the interests, needs and classically American ambitions of the other half of the party — low-to-moderate income African-Americans and Hispanics and the truly poor." It remains a mystery how or why Democratic pursuit of the white working class would make a difference in this scenario but it's clear these voters are still considered the holy grail. It's almost as if a winning majority doesn't count unless these white men are among them.

The fact is that the white working class is shrinking in size and is expected to drop to 30 percent of the voting population and 44 percent of white voters. And according to the Economic Policy Institute, these trends are accelerating, with people of color projected to become the majority of working class citizens very soon:

The age cohort projected to make the earliest transition to majority-minority is the one that includes workers age 25 to 34. These are today’s 18- to 27-year-olds and for them, the projected transition year is 2021.

In other words,  the Democrats have not abandoned the working class in favor of urban sophisticates. It remains the backbone of their coalition as it's always been. It's just that the working class is not as white as it used to be. (And neither is the white college educated cohort as conservative as it used to be.)

Throughout all these decades of stewing over the loss of the working man the Democrats have been the party that better addressed their economic interests. They have not been perfect by any means but there's no comparison to the trickle down, starve the government philosophy of the GOP. The Democrats have protected and expanded the safety net and supported unions, workplace safety, environmental regulation and legal protections for working people throughout the time that these same working people were refusing to vote for them. And they will continue to do so. It's fundamental to the party's ideology and the presence of this large group of working class people of color will ensure that they don't forget it no matter how many urban hipsters decide to become yuppies in the next few years.

And contrary to what Edsall says, Trump may have actually ended up having a salutary effect on the GOP.  The white working class that doesn't want to join any coalition that contains people of color and feminists has had its economic consciousness raised. They may just want their party to be a little less libertarian and a lot more populist going forward. And that may open up some areas in which the two parties can cooperate. If nothing else it might put to rest the deficit fetish of the past few years and allow some government spending on infrastructure to create jobs that would benefit working people of both parties.

White working class voters have been drifting to the GOP for decades. And Democrats cannot morally abandon their multi-cultural, female majority in order to attract them back if that the price they are expected to pay. You can't be all things to all people.  But the Democratic Party will worry about them and look out for their economic interests anyway because it's in the interest of everyone that the working class has jobs that pay a living wage and their children have education, health care and opportunity regardless of party, race, ethnicity, gender or religion. White working class Americans will get those same benefits --- whether they like it or not.







digby 8/12/2016 10:30:00 AM