Month: April 2016

Classy little boys

by digby

Republicans hate political correctness and Trump is giving them permission to completely lose whatever manners they ever had:

Despite the potential for a gender gap in which more women decamp the Republican Party, many Trump supporters see him as the stronger general-election candidate, particularly when facing Clinton.

Bob Sutton, chairman of the Broward County GOP Executive Committee in Florida, voiced confidence that Clinton would be easy to defeat in a debate — with a comment not likely to endear him to some female voters.

“I think when Donald Trump debates Hillary Clinton she’s going to go down like Monica Lewinsky,” he said.

Trump surely got a big old chuckle out of that one and only regrets that he can’t use it on the campaign trail himself. Don’t be surprised if he finds a way to get it in — like that time he let the woman in the audience call Cruz a pussy and then repeated it.

Trump is undisciplined. He’ll never be able to contain himself. It’s going to be stomach churning.

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Who do you think you’re fooling?
by Tom Sullivan

Not that long ago, campaigns here fretted that black voters did not take advantage of early voting. With the exception of Sunday voting (souls to the polls), seeing neighbors at the polls on Election Day was a kind of communal celebration. Responding in the New York Times to Monday’s federal court ruling upholding North Carolina’s 2013 voting restrictions, Rev. Dr. William J. Barber II, president of the North Carolina N.A.A.C.P., notes how dramatically that changed:

The law eliminated voting rules that had enabled North Carolina to have the fourth best per capita voter turnout in the country. In 2012, 70 percent of black voters used early voting — and cast ballots at a slightly higher percentage than whites. Although black voters made up about 20 percent of the electorate, they made up 41 percent of voters who used same-day registration.

The North Carolina Legislature set out to change those figures and suppress minority votes. Its many impediments to voting all disproportionately affect African-American and Latino voters. None of their attacks would have survived pre-clearance under Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act. A Republican official defended the law this way: “If it hurts a bunch of lazy blacks that want the government to give them everything, so be it.”

Passed in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court’s Shelby decision, the North Carolina “voter ID” law did all of that and more, Barber writes. The bill also “reduces the early voting period and eliminates same-day registration. It expands the ability to challenge voters at the polls. It eliminates a successful preregistration program for high school students.”

Election “integrity”? Who do you think you’re fooling?

As Barber argues, there was never evidence for voter impersonation to justify the ID requirement. In a 2013 post on North Carolina’s Voter Intergrity Project (an offshoot of True the Vote), I wrote about a friend investigated for double voting:

As it happens, I know someone to whom that happened last fall, one of VIP-NC’s double-voters. After he voted, Herbert (not his real name) was informed that his vote was contested because records showed he had voted twice. It might be voter fraud.

Here’s what happened. Herbert’s son, Herbert Jr. (same address), voted earlier at a different Early Voting site, signed the log, and the elections clerk mistakenly crossed off Herbert’s name in the voting register. Because this was the Early Voting period, Herbert had time to clear up the mess with the Board of Elections before Election Day. His old ballot was voided and Herbert got to re-vote.

ID cards would have prevented the clerk’s error how?

Herbert is black. Early voting protected his vote. The GOP-led legislature slashed the early voting period by a week.

Barber continues:

Since the Shelby decision, many states have been emboldened to implement laws like North Carolina’s. Republican-controlled election boards have greatly reduced the number of polling places. Wisconsin recently passed a bill creating major hurdles to voter registration campaigns. Alabama closed driver’s license offices in several counties with high percentages of black voters. But after an outcry, it sent part-time license examiners to those counties.

Who do you think you’re fooling?

Two years ago, I wrote this after registration challenges in my county:

Their panic over alleged double voting, suspected voter impersonation (as elusive as space aliens), dead voters and messy voter rolls is because demographic trends show that the numerical edge to which many white Americans feel entitled will evaporate by 2043. They avoided looking at that fact square on for years.

No longer. Our half-black president embodies the trend Time and National Geographic predict will literally change the face of the nation, reducing white America to just another minority in this melting-pot country.

The fear behind the allegations is not about election integrity or race, but power. Who has it and who fears sharing it. (Hint: not Millennials. ) The GOP base knows how minorities are treated in America. For centuries, our European forebears did most of the treating.

Republican supporters and the Voter Integrity Project could register voters and invest more in get-out-the-vote efforts. But with weak faith in their own ideas, they throw smoke bombs into newsrooms and yell “Voter fraud!” loudly and often to create the perception that where there are smoke bombs there must be fire.

Who do you think you’re fooling?

“Newsflash: you’re the weirdos”

by digby

Stephen takes on the toilet police:

“To all those lawmakers out there who are so obsessed with who’s using what bathroom and what plumbing they’ve got downtown?”

 “Newsflash: You’re the weirdos.”

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Beyond Shakespeare

by digby

A little blast from the past:

Mr. Speaker, I am saddened that there is clear and convincing evidence that the president lied under oath, obstructed justice and abused the powers of his office in an attempt to cover up his wrongdoing. I regret that the president’s behavior puts me in the position of having to vote in favor of articles of impeachment and pass this matter on to the U.S. Senate for final judgment. In facing this solemn duty, I looked to the wisdom of our founding fathers.

According to Alexander Hamilton in Federalist 65, impeachment concerns offenses with proceed from the misconduct of public men — or in other words, from the abuse or violation of some public trust. The evidence in President Clinton’s case is overwhelming, that he has abused and violated the public trust. In this nation, all men are created equal. Simply put, the president in our representative democracy is not a sovereign who is above the law.

Tomorrow, I shall cast a difficult vote. The president’s inability to abide by the law, the Constitution and my conscience have all led me to the solemn conclusion that impeachment articles must be passed.

That was congressman Dennis Hastert announcing on the house floor that he would vote to impeach President Clinton for lying about having consensual sex with an adult employee.

That would be the same Dennis Hastert who was sentenced to 15 months in prison today for lying to the FBI about paying hush money to a man he sexually abused as a teenager while coaching high school wrestling.It turns out he abused a whole bunch of boys between the ages of 14 and 17 during his coaching career.

The Clinton impeachment was one of the most blatant acts of political opportunism this country has ever seen. And the public knew it at the time. But we had no idea of the scale of the hypocrisy. To make an actual sexual predator the Speaker of the House in the wake of all that moralizing is beyond Shakespearean. It’s Game of Thrones.

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The woman card

by digby

I am reliably informed that everyone in America is just waiting for the right woman so that’s nice. Just like every high school boy is waiting for a supermodel.  It’ll happen for sure.  It just has to.

In the meantime, we’ve got Trump.

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QOTD: Lindsey Graham

by digby

There’s no need to watch Trump’s “foreign policy speech”.  Just read Lindsey Graham’s tweets and you’ll get the gist:

Robert Costa put it more seriously:

Trump’s big picture critique of “Obama-Clinton” foreign policy: “humiliations” abroad and a lack of “respect” for U.S. has led to “weakness”

— Robert Costa (@costareports) April 27, 2016

The thing is that Graham, for all his protestations, has contributed to that belief among many, many Republicans by constantly going on TV and acting like Chicken Little, saying that we’re about to be overrun by ISIS and we should run for our lives. He set the table for this nonsense and Trump is just reaping the reward.

That notion that the country is being “humiliated” and “disrespected” by foreigners has historically led some dangerous demagogues to do some very bad things. I’m sure you some notorious examples come immediately to mind.

Update: Lol

GREATEST FOREIGN POLICY SPEECH SINCE WASHINGTON'S FAREWELL ADDRESS.— Ann Coulter (@AnnCoulter) April 27, 2016

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Trump’s big win

by digby

I wrote about last night’s big victory for Salon this morning:

When everyone woke up on Tuesday morning, the expectation was that Donald Trump was going to sweep the primaries. The RCP average had him winning Pennsylvania by 22 points, Maryland by 21, Connecticut by 27, Rhode Island by 29 and Delaware by 37. He actually did better than that in Pennsylvania, Rhode island and Maryland but anyone looking at those polls had to know it was going to be a Trump blowout. Nonetheless, the talking heads put on a good show and at least pretended to be surprised and impressed by Trump’s yuuuuge showing. And it’s clear that people are starting to fully grapple with the reality that he is more likely than not going to be the nominee.

In fact, some are saying it’s over. Sahil Kapur of Bloomberg reported that Scott Reed, Bob Dole’s 1996 presidential campaign manager and current political strategist for the Chamber of Commerce said, “Trump is now the inevitable GOP nominee.” Trump himself told the press at his “victory press conference” that he considers himself the “presumptive nominee.”

He’s probably right. But it’s not a shoo-in. This group of states was always very favorable ground for him as those pre-election polls showed. He’s been very successful at winning in the east. But the remaining states are west of there and it is still possible that he could be stopped, if every card falls exactly the right way. According to CNN’s John King, Trump started the night needing 58% of the remaining delegates and after his wins this week, he will need 50% of all the delegates going forward to win the nomination. That’s not impossible, of course. But if Ted Cruz were to eke out a Wisconsin-like win in winner-take-all Indiana, it would make California the last stand, a state with a complicated delegate process where Trump could come up short and go into the convention without the necessary 1237. (And they could still change the rules if they want to, which would probably turn the process completely upside down.)

So it’s not actually over and the next seven days are the most crucial of the GOP race. Indiana is really the last chance to stop Trump. Unfortunately, it’s dependent on people understanding the logic behind the Cruz-Kasich pact and that isn’t easy, mostly because Kasich is being cagey about it and people are naturally confused. According to Tony Dokupil of MSNBC, who spoke with Jim Brainard, Kasich’s own Indiana co-chair, nobody really knows what to say to the voters. After the announcement of the pact, he had been telling people to vote for Cruz. Then Kasich was on TV saying people should vote for him if they wanted to and he had to back away. It’s a mess, probably because of Kasich’s ego which seems to make him unwilling to really get with the program. In interviews he hedges on what he’s doing and so far has refused to admit that people have to vote for Cruz in order to stop Trump.

It’s hard to imagine that any of this will work, but one more week and we’ll know for sure. We do know a number of very disturbing things about Republican voters, however. Up until now, Trump, for a variety of reasons, has been kept below 50%. And one is tempted to assume that his recent success is a result of anger at the #neverTrump movement or the idea of the establishment putting its thumbs on the scale. But the exit polls last night showed that most Trump voters had decided to vote for him more than a month ago. They really like him. And more and more are liking him every day.

What this means is that a majority of Republicans apparently either like or don’t care that he thinks Mexicans are rapists and criminals. They are fine with someone as president who wants to torture terrorist suspects and kill their innocent children. They have no problem with someone who wants to use summary execution against accused deserters. It’s not a deal breaker to vote for someone who has a long history of sexism and misogyny to lead the country. They don’t find it completely unacceptable that he has no respect for prisoners of war, saying he “prefers” people who don’t let the enemy catch them. They are apparently not alarmed by the fact that he promises to change the libel laws so the press cannot freely write about him. They cheer when he eggs on violence at his rallies and don’t think his offering to pay the legal fees of someone who hit a protesters is a problem. They see nothing wrong in his pledge to kill oil truck drivers and seize oil wells in foreign countries. Sending Syrian refugees that have been properly vetted and are living in the country back to a war zone to be killed is fine with them. Reviving the 1950s plan called “Operation Wetback” to round up and deport millions of people doesn’t bother them either. Building a huge wall along our southern border sounds like a reasonable plan to them. These, and more, are all “politically incorrect” ideas that many GOP voters are happy to endorse.

They also apparently have no objections to voting for a man who lies as easily as he breathes and has demonstrated over and over again that he is completely unprepared for the job of president, has no idea what it entails entails and has the knowledge of world affairs and domestic policy of an average 16 year old boy, along with the adolescent temperament. He has shown not one bit of desire to learn about anything but his poll numbers and what TV pundits are saying about him.He is a proto-fascist demagogue who doesn’t even know what those words mean.And that’s a-ok with all those people who are voting for him.

There are some Republicans who understand that their party is putting the nation and the world at risk but so far they are impotent to stop him. Too many of their voters love what they’re hearing. Just ask them and they’ll tell you “he says what I’m thinking.”

Trump promises that soon he’ll be so presidential we’ll all be bored and begging him to entertain us again. His campaign manager says it’s all an act. I don’t believe it but it doesn’t really matter one way or the other. What’s really dangerous about Trump isn’t the man himself, it’s that millions of people in this country think just like him — and their numbers are growing.

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He came in like a wrecking ball

by digby

Before the speech this morning:

Andrea Mitchell: As we await the arrival of Donald Trump I think the foreign policy analysis of those of us who cover foreign policy may not be relevant to the way voters are responding to this man.

Richard Engel: Well, I was just listening to what Katy was saying and frankly, it’s very disturbing. If they think that a wrecking ball can come in with the power of the United States military the United States government, its diplomatic power its moral power and not make a difference, that one man can not change the course of history then they frankly don’t know the course of history. If you look at just what has happened over the last hundred years one person, hyper empowered with a fanatical support base has always been something that we need to be cautious about. So her idea that the people just want radical change we’ve heard that before, it hasn’t gone well.

Katy Tur said she hears people say over and over again on the trail that they have seen him on the Apprentice and they trust that he will be able to do the job and they don’t need to know the details.

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Thank you for not asking
by Tom Sullivan

This should come as no surprise:

Internet traffic to Wikipedia pages summarizing knowledge about terror groups and their tools plunged nearly 30 percent after revelations of widespread Web monitoring by the U.S. National Security Agency, suggesting that concerns about government snooping are hurting the ordinary pursuit of information.

A forthcoming paper in the Berkeley Technology Law Journal analyzes the fall in traffic, arguing that it provides the most direct evidence to date of a so-called “chilling effect,” or negative impact on legal conduct, from the intelligence practices disclosed by fugitive former NSA contractor Edward Snowden.

Author Jonathon Penney, a fellow at the University of Toronto’s interdisciplinary Citizen Lab, examined monthly views of Wikipedia articles on 48 topics identified by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security as subjects that they track on social media, including Al Qaeda, dirty bombs and jihad.

The study should support the American Civil Liberties Union filed against the National Security Agency last year:

At issue is the NSA’s “upstream” surveillance, through which the U.S. government monitors almost all international – and many domestic – text-based communications. The ACLU’s lawsuit, filed in March 2015 in the U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland, is brought on behalf of nearly a dozen educational, legal, human rights, and media organizations that collectively engage in hundreds of billions of sensitive Internet communications and have been harmed by NSA surveillance. The district court dismissed the case in October 2015, and we have appealed to the Fourth Circuit.

The ACLU lawsuit was filed on behalf of Wikimedia Foundation, the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International USA, the PEN American Center, the Global Fund for Women, The Nation magazine, the Rutherford Institute, and the Washington Office on Latin America. That list is available on Wikipedia, should you dare look.

Traffic to Wikipedia terrorism entries plunged after Snowden revelations, study finds: https://t.co/obzSufjouF pic.twitter.com/aL9PgCaB3H— Reuters Top News (@Reuters) April 27, 2016

Of course, if the ACLU really wants the government to listen on protecting citizens’ privacy, it should advise Wayne LaPierre that the NSA could soon be hacking
Air Force drones to peep down into NRA members’ gun safes and count their AR-15s. Watch Congress ask how high to jump.

Your moment of zen

by digby

Senator Tom Carper was introducing Hillary Clinton at a rally and for some reason came up with this:

I think somebody may have had a couple of extra glasses too many …

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