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Month: October 2016

Trump’s idea man

Trump’s idea man

by digby

Yeah, this is a guy millions of people tune in to every day:

ALEX JONES (HOST): I’m never a lesser of two evils person, but with Hillary, there’s not even the same universe. She is an abject, psychopathic, demon from Hell that as soon as she gets into power is going to try to destroy the planet. I’m sure of that, and people around her say she’s so dark now, and so evil, and so possessed that they are having nightmares, they’re freaking out. Folks let me just tell you something, and if media wants to go with this, that’s fine. There are dozens of videos and photos of Obama having flies land on him, indoors, at all times of year, and he’ll be next to a hundred people and no one has flies on them. Hillary, reportedly, I mean, I was told by people around her that they think she’s demon-possessed, okay? I’m just going to go ahead and say it, okay?

They said that they’re scared. That’s why when I see her when kids are by her, I actually get scared myself, with a child — with that big rubber face and that — I mean this woman is dangerous, ladies and gentleman. I’m telling you, she is a demon. This is Biblical. She’s going to launch a nuclear war. The Russians are scared of her.

[…]

Imagine how bad she smells, man? I’m told her and Obama, just stink, stink, stink, stink. You can’t wash that evil off, man. Told there’s a rotten smell around Hillary. I’m not kidding, people say, they say — folks, I’ve been told this by high up folks. They say listen, Obama and Hillary both smell like sulfur. I never said this because the media will go crazy with it, but I’ve talked to people that are in protective details, they’re scared of her. And they say listen, she’s a frickin’ demon and she stinks and so does Obama. I go, like what? Sulfur. They smell like Hell.

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It’s the incompetence, stupid

It’s the incompetence, stupid

by digby

Image result for trump humping stool at debate

Matt Yglesias made an important observation about the debate last night and the campaign in general, one that should be made more often by everyone. Trump is an imbecile.

The most telling exchange of the second 2016 presidential debate came in the midst of an extended exchange over tax policy, about an hour of the way into the debate:

CLINTON: Well, here we go again. I’ve been in favor of getting rid of carried interest for years, starting when I was a senator from New York. But that’s not the point here.

TRUMP: Why didn’t you do it? Why didn’t you do it?

CLINTON: Because I was a senator with a Republican president. I will be the president.

TRUMP: You could have done it if you were an effective; if you were an effective senator, could you have done it. But you were not an effective senator.

RADDATZ: Please allow her to respond. She didn’t interrupt you.

CLINTON: Under our Constitution, presidents have something called veto power.
This was a bizarre exchange. And not bizarre in the sense of the 2016 freak show focused on beauty queens and pussy grabbing and decades-old rape allegations. Bizarre in the sense that Trump, an actual major party nominee for president, appears to genuinely not understand why it is that Clinton, as a junior senator from New York, was not able to single-handedly overhaul the tax code.

Because Trump, it turns out, doesn’t really understand anything about how the American government or American public policy works. That the former host of The Apprentice isn’t really up to speed when it comes to the details of managing public affairs is a bit dull and unsurprising. But it deserves to be front and center in a campaign in 2016.

Above and beyond the wilder and more outrageous sides of Donald Trump’s history and persona is the simple fact that he has no idea what he’s talking about. You wouldn’t ask Barack Obama to pilot a submarine — he has no idea how — and Donald Trump has no more business piloting the ship of state.

He has no business running a business either apparently. The man is an heir to a fortune and he used it to buy some real estate in Manhattan and some golf courses. My cat could have done that. He’s lost billions at everything else he tried to do.

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Meanwhile, in America the Real by tristero

Meanwhile, in America the Real

by tristero

You want a break from Trump’s Delusional America? Here you go, here’s America the Real.

Sorry. I know you wanted something really pleasant and heartwarming. Yeah, we all all need it and I wish I could deliver.

But the truth is that this country has major, serious problems, not one of which has gotten serious sustained attention from anyone in the past umpteenth months except from a few comedians:

The report found a number of instances in which influential health groups accepted beverage industry donations and then backed away from supporting soda taxes or remained noticeably silent about the initiatives. 

In one instance cited in the study, the nonprofit group Save the Children, which had actively supported soda tax campaigns in several states, did an about face and withdrew its support in 2010. The group had accepted a $5 million grant from Pepsi and was seeking a major grant from Coke to help pay for its health and education programs for children. 

Responding to the new research, Save the Children said, in a statement, that the group in 2010 had decided to focus on early childhood education, and that its decision to stop supporting soda taxes “was unrelated to any corporate support that Save the Children received.” [ROTFLMAO, then crying]

When New York proposed a ban on extra-large sodas in 2012, the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics cited “conflicting research” and didn’t support the effort. The academy accepted $525,000 in donations from Coke in 2012. The following year it took a $350,000 donation from the company. 

The academy said it no longer has a sponsorship relationship with the beverage firms.

The N.A.A.C.P. and the Hispanic Federation have publicly opposed anti-soda initiatives despite disproportionately high rates of obesity in black and Hispanic communities. Coke made more than $1 million in donations to the N.A.A.C.P. between 2010 and 2015, and more than $600,000 to the Hispanic Federation between 2012 and 2015. The groups did not respond to requests for comment.

The next president will have a lot of work cut out for her. Suggestion: Michelle Obama has done wonders on health and food issues. Hire her for this.

Whatever you say honey

Whatever you say honey

by digby

Hahahaha:

This says it all:


Body language expert said she was worried that Donald Trump might physically assault Hillary Clinton during Sunday night’s presidential debate.
Janine Driver — a former investigator with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives — said Trump loomed and lurked behind Clinton in response to her power move.
“Look at what happens, Hillary is going to his side of the stage,” Driver said. “She’s standing in front of him — what’s he going to do? Sit down? Go to her seat?” 

Clinton effectively prevented Trump from interrupting her by standing in front of him, said Driver, president of the Body Language Institute and a frequent talk show guest. 

“That’s her power move,” Driver said. 

Trump tried to lower his stress by pacing around behind Clinton, but she said his movement was also “a pre-assault indicator.” 

“So at some parts of watching last night, I was really getting nervous,” Driver said. “Because she was in his space. He’s like a dog who’s starting to get anxious, he’s being backed in a corner. So I had a little anxiety during these moments.”

I get nervous every time see him.

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Burn it all down

Burn it all down

by digby

Image result for digbysblog clockwork orange

Jesus:

Yeah, these are the kind of people you want running the world.

Good call Republicans. Excellent work.

What did you think “Lock her Up!” was all about?

What did you think “Lock her Up!” was all about?

by digby

Image result for clinton orange jumpsuit

I wrote about the debate for Salon this morning:

I don’t think there’s ever been a more highly anticipated presidential debate than the one that happened Sunday night in St. Louis. The Trump campaign had been drastically losing altitude since the first debate and the week after when he proved that he was unprepared, unknowledgeable and unfit for the job. Everyone wondered if he could pull out of it. And then Friday happened. That tape showing Trump coarsely bragging that he could kiss women against their will and “grab ’em by the pussy” sent the campaign into a full tailspin.

By Sunday, GOP leaders were defecting en masse, with many demanding Trump withdraw from the race. Nobody knew if he would broach the tape or fulfill his threat to go after the Clinton scandals of the ’90s in the debate, now that these new and disturbing revelations about his own behavior had been seen by millions.

Well, he did. Just before the event he held a “press conference” in what appeared to be an airport hotel conference room with four women who say Hillary Clinton viciously attacked them for accusing her husband of sexual harassment and assault. (I’m not going to litigate those cases here, but suffice to say that they were part of Ken Starr’s through investigation and the details are easily accessible online.) In what looked disturbingly like a North Korean hostage video, the women spoke about their complaints against Clinton while the man who had just been revealed on tape saying that he liked to grab women “by the pussy” sat in the middle.

It was, to say the least, a bizarre tableau that electrified the political world and signaled that Trump planned to take the gloves off in the debate. (Robert Costa of the Washington Post reported late last night that the campaign had planned to put the women in the family box and confront Bill Clinton on national TV until the debate commission pulled the plug.)

Trump was asked about the tape right off the bat and he dismissed it as “locker room talk,” then did an impressively weird pivot to ISIS chopping off heads. It didn’t improve from there. Trump stalked Clinton around the stage, constantly sniffing for emphasis, whining to the moderators and basically reprising his grotesque caricature of a presidential candidate on the national stage one more time. For reasons that remain obscure, many pundits declared that he performed well, suggesting that unless his head had twirled around on his shoulders and he vomited Andersen’s split pea soup all over the stage there was no way he could have failed.

He did come close to an “Exorcist” moment at one point, in claiming that Clinton had stolen the election from Bernie Sanders and saying, “I was surprised to see him sign up with the devil.” He even said she had “tremendous hate in her heart.” But then Trump made a specific threat that finally got the attention of the political world. He said:

I’ll tell you what, I didn’t think I’d say this and I’m going to say it and hate to say it: If I win, I’m going to instruct the attorney general to get a special prosecutor to look into your situation because there’s never been so many lies, so much deception.

Clinton said a few minutes later: “It’s just awfully good that someone with the temperament of Donald Trump is not in charge of the law of our country,” to which Trump interjected, “Because you’d be in jail.”

A lot of people are horrified by this statement and rightfully so. Former Attorney General Eric Holder sent out this scathing tweet:

Threatening to jail your political rivals is something you don’t see in advanced democracies. That’s the way it’s done in banana republics and totalitarian dictatorships, and it says everything you need to know about Trump.

But I cannot help but wonder, what did people think all those “Hillary for Prison” t-shirts and “Lock her up” chants at the Republican National Convention were about? Did they not hear the speeches by former prosecutors Rudy Giuliani and Chris Christie “making the case” to put Hillary Clinton behind bars?

If this is really the first time people have heard Trump saying this, they haven’t been listening. I wrote about thislast June for Salon, quoting Trump saying these words at a rally in San Jose, California:

I used to say, leave it up to the lawyers. I have watched so many lawyers on so many different networks. I have read so much about the emails. Folks, honestly, she’s guilty as hell. She’s guilty as hell … It’s called a five-year statue of limitations. If I win … everything’s going to be fair but I’m sure the attorney general will take a very good look at it from a fair standpoint, OK? I’m sure. I think it’s disgraceful.

He told John Dickerson on “Face the Nation” last June:

[W]hat she did is a criminal situation. She wasn’t supposed to do that with the server and the emails and all of the other. Now, I rely on the lawyers. These are good lawyers. These are professional lawyers. These are lawyers that know what they’re talking about and know — are very well-versed on what she did. They say she’s guilty as hell … I would have my attorney general look at it. Yes, I would. Because everyone knows that she’s guilty. Now, I would say this: She’s guilty, but I would let my attorney general make that determination.

In February, Trump had this exchange with Sean Hannity on Fox News:

Hannity: If you win, you’ll have an attorney general. The statute of limitations will not have passed. 

Trump: Six years, actually. Well, look, you have no choice. We have to solve all sorts of problems. In fairness, you have to look into [Hillary]. Maybe she can prove her innocence, but it just seems to me that I think the public knows everything that they are going to know.

One of Trump’s major campaign promises, as he put it last November, is “to look into that crime very, very seriously, folks.” The fact that so few people heard this or noticed it until last night’s debate is astonishing. It’s Exhibit A of Trump’s authoritarian impulse and when people ecstatically chant, “Lock her up,” this is what they’re talking about. It’s never been a joke. The good news is that people have finally stopped laughing.

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Well, of course it’s all about dat base

Well, of course it’s all about dat base

by digby

basket of deplorables donald trump david duke roger stone

I feel like I’m losing my mind. Of course the problem is the base. That basket of deplorables love their guy a lot more that they love their congressmen. Did anyone doubt it? What did they think was going to happen?

They are screwed and they deserve to be screwed. 90% of them went along with this, joining in the “festivities” of Trump’s Nuremburg Convention, saying nothing all these months as long as Trump had a chance to win. Now that he looks like he’s finally gone too far, they’re rats deserting a sinking ship.

Cry me a river.

Update: lulz

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“A Pure Distillation” of Republicanism by tristero

“A Pure Distillation” of Republicanism

by tristero

Paul Krugman, in the wrap up to today’s column:

Assuming that Mr. Trump loses, many Republicans will try to pretend that he was a complete outlier, unrepresentative of the party. But he isn’t. He won the nomination fair and square, chosen by voters who had a pretty good idea of who he was. He had solid establishment support until very late in the game. And his vices are, dare we say, very much in line with his party’s recent tradition. 

Mr. Trump, in other words, isn’t so much an anomaly as he is a pure distillation of his party’s modern essence. 

[Emphasis added.]

Absolutely true. He is the ultimate standard bearer for modern Republican ideas. He is also the ultimate standard bearer for modern Republican behavior, behavior which is racist, sexist, paranoid, vindictive, greedy, and takes pride in its ignorance.

Yes, he is sickening to watch, but he is not the real problem. The modern Republican party is the problem. The short term solution is to deliver a resounding national defeat to the party – and not just at the presidential level. The party has begun to realize just how disastrous this election could be:

…senior party leaders privately acknowledged that they now feared losing control of both houses of Congress.

The long-term solution will require fundamental changes to the GOP. I’m not holding my breath.

When El Presidente speaks by @BloggersRUs

When El Presidente speaks
by Tom Sullivan

Donald Trump declared last night he is no longer running for president of the United States. He is running instead for El Presidente in some backwater banana republic. Or else to be appointed the corrupt sheriff of Silverado.

Cobb: We’re gonna give you a fair trial, followed by a first-class hanging.

Early in last night’s town hall presidential debate in St. Louis, Trump again brought up Hillary Clinton’s emails. He was attempting to divert the conversation from the tape released Friday in which he bragged about sexually assaulting women. Moderator Anderson Cooper asked if he understood that’s what it was. Trump multiple times dismissed it as “locker room talk.”

Trump pivoted to the emails. He announced that if elected president he would appoint a special prosecutor to investigate Clinton. Moderator Martha Raddatz invited her to respond:

RADDATZ: Secretary Clinton, I want to follow up on that.

(CROSSTALK)

RADDATZ: I’m going to let you talk about e-mails.

CLINTON: … because everything he just said is absolutely false, but I’m not surprised.

TRUMP: Oh, really?

CLINTON: In the first debate…

(LAUGHTER)

RADDATZ: And really, the audience needs to calm down here.

CLINTON: … I told people that it would be impossible to be fact-checking Donald all the time. I’d never get to talk about anything I want to do and how we’re going to really make lives better for people.

So, once again, go to HillaryClinton.com. We have literally Trump — you can fact check him in real time. Last time at the first debate, we had millions of people fact checking, so I expect we’ll have millions more fact checking, because, you know, it is — it’s just awfully good that someone with the temperament of Donald Trump is not in charge of the law in our country.

TRUMP: Because you’d be in jail.

The Washington Post Editorial Board writes:

Mark the moment. A major-party presidential nominee is officially promising to lock up his political opponent, despite the fact that an impartial federal investigation concluded that no fair prosecutor would have charged Ms. Clinton in the matter of her e-mails. If anyone needed any more proof that Mr. Trump does not understand the meaning of rule of law as opposed to arbitrary rule of autocrat — that he would use the levers of the federal government in a vindictive, self-serving and corrupt manner — Mr. Trump provided it.

For their part, members of the audience (favorable to Trump, one presumes) applauded but were called down by Raddatz. At Trump rallies, their response is to chant “Lock her up!”

Trump is from the “everybody knows she’s guilty” school of jurisprudence. Of what doesn’t matter. He’ll be the Red Queen in charge. That’s all that matters.

Trump called Clinton “all talk and no action” and challenged her on why in 30 years in political life and in the Senate she had not single-handedly passed laws to solve problems she raises. Twitter users wanted to hear Trump asked if he knows how a bill gets passed. Likely, he doesn’t know and doesn’t care.

There were the usual lies wholly fabricated from Trump’s febrile imagination. Trump claimed to have seen “vicious commercials” made in 2008 by Michelle Obama against Clinton — video that like the Muslims celebrating 9/11 in New Jersey no one else has seen. David Axelrod responded:

Not an especially good strategy to attack Michelle Obama, either. But Trump was flailing.

Jamelle Bouie at Slate writes of the night’s events:

On Sunday, to an audience of tens of millions of Americans, Trump voiced his contempt for the norms that define and safeguard our democracy with a promise to jail his chief political opponent. This, again, was the most important moment of the debate. Nothing else—not Clinton’s poor answers for her private speeches, nor Trump’s abject ignorance—comes close. And it’s all the more important given Trump’s larger platform. If elected, the Republican would use the force of the state against nonwhites and religious minorities, from forced deportations of unauthorized Hispanic immigrants to surveillance of Muslim Americans and a return to stop-and-frisk. Trump already promises an authoritarian state for millions of Americans. This statement—planned and strategically deployed—just shows the scope of his vision.

Clinton was forced to respond to Trump’s attacks and had trouble getting across her message. Trump’s message was clear. He expects if elected to inflict blunt-force trauma to the country, to its people, and to its democratic principles.

And you might have to change your underwear every half hour.

Did you know that Clinton has done dozens of townhalls all over the world?

Did you know that Clinton has done dozens of townhalls all over the world?

by digby

I didn’t. But apparently, this was one of her big things when she was Secretary of State:

The serious challenge Trump faces Sunday is that few candidates have ever been better prepared for this format than Hillary Clinton. Her secret weapon is that she revels in town halls—and she has practiced for them far more than people realize.

All told, Clinton held 60 town halls around the world in her four years as secretary of state, an average of more than one a month, and got a lot of practice answering tough questions, especially about women’s issues (a topic certain to be front and center Sunday night after Trump boasted in a video about groping women’s genitals). As a diplomatic correspondent who traveled with her, I was there for many of them, including her first and last town halls abroad, in Japan and Latvia. Clinton may have challenges seeming “relatable” to ordinary people, as comedian Kate McKinnon has mined for laughs on “Saturday Night Live” and as Clinton’s newly disclosed Goldman Sachs speech transcripts may suggest (or at least as some Republicans are contending). She also may not be the greatest public speaker or political talent of her time, especially compared with Barack Obama and her husband, Bill Clinton. But if you thought she was well prepared for the first debate with Trump, that’s nothing compared to the hundreds of hours she’s spent in town halls.

Clinton’s town halls—dubbed “townterviews” by her canny media adviser Philippe Reines—were a unique and distinctive feature of her tenure as secretary of state, a chance for her to engage with ordinary people around the world and State Department employees back home. Other secretaries have taken questions from foreign audiences, but Clinton embraced town halls like no one in that job has before or since, making them her signature form of “public diplomacy.”

From Nairobi to Moscow to Kuala Lumpur, she practiced the art of the town hall—attentive listening, empathizing with people’s problems and offering policy prescriptions. Speaking without notes or a teleprompter, she parried unscripted questions that were often surprising, usually policy-oriented, sometimes hostile, and occasionally quite personal. In this particular format, she has an edge on reality TV star Trump, whose role on “The Apprentice” was at least partly scripted, and whose trademark campaign event is a stream-of-consciousness arena speech—not a nitty-gritty Q&A with skeptical voters.

It is true, of course, that a town hall of undecided American voters is not a perfect analogue to an audience of foreigners hosting a visiting dignitary. By her own admission, Clinton is far more in her element when she’s serving in public office than when she’s running for it. Having covered her presidential campaigns as well as her time as secretary, I can safely conclude that Clinton seems palpably more comfortable in her own skin when she’s doing a job than when Americans who’ve scrutinized her public and private decisions for a quarter-century question her judgment and fitness for office.

And as challenging as town halls could be when she was secretary, crowds overseas treated her respectfully, and questions were generally about U.S. policies or her experience as a woman in politics. She never faced affronts to her character or challenges about paid speeches on Wall Street or her husband’s infidelities—issues that may come in the next debate.

Still, Trump should beware: Clinton is fully primed for the inevitable questions about the treatment of women. At nearly every event, women in the audiences, both in first-world and developing countries, asked Clinton about obstacles faced by her and women in general, and about issues ranging from work-life balance and workplace bias to barriers to girls’ education, honor killings and sex trafficking. The sexism highlighted by Trump’s crude comments is something she has heard and talked about a lot with ordinary men and women in town halls around the world.

At a girls’ school in Kolkata, India, she talked about a powerful meeting the day before with girls who had been rescued from the sex trade, and was asked numerous times about additional scrutiny and double-standards faced by women in politics in the U.S. and India, not to mention misogyny and gender-based attacks.

“It’s true globally; it’s not limited to any one country,” Clinton replied. “Violence against women, unfortunately, is still a problem everywhere. … We do have a big agenda ahead of us, and it’s very important that both men and women be invested in changing the underlying attitudes that lead to these discriminatory practices.” A lot of heads were nodding at that moment, among both women and men in the audience.

Maybe Trump will show the discipline to try to win back some of the officials who’ve been deserting the sinking ship by showing contrition and humility. But if not, it seems likely that Clinton is prepared to meet the challenge.

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