More broadly, Mrs. Clinton’s campaign is repositioning itself, after a year of staking out liberal positions and focusing largely on minority voters, to appeal to independent and Republican-leaning white voters turned off by Mr. Trump.
With the Democratic nomination in sight, Mrs. Clinton has broadened her economic message, devoted days to apologizing for a comment she previously made that angered working-class whites, and has pledged that her husband, former President Bill Clinton, who remains widely popular among the blue-collar voters drawn to Mr. Trump, would “come out of retirement and be in charge” of creating jobs in places that have been particularly hard hit.
Tuesday Reads: Is Donald Trump Cognitively Impaired?
Posted: May 10, 2016 Filed under: just because 57 CommentsGood Afternoon!!
Today is the West Virginia primary. As Al Giordano says, we are in “garbage time” now, and the Clinton campaign is focusing on the general election while Sanders tries to win delegates as the primary clock runs down. He has no chance to win the nomination, so Hillary is trying to let him and his followers down gently by not running a lot of ads in the state. Bernie is favored to win; but it will probably be close, and he will likely net just a few delegates–perhaps 3 or 6. That won’t put much of a dent in Hillary’s lead.
The time has come for Hillary supporters to project quiet confidence and ignore Bernie and his bros as they metaphorically throw themselves to the floor kicking and screaming in their childish tantrums. We are in a much bigger battle now. We have to focus on keeping an ignorant, narcissistic, sociopathic, megalomaniac and wannabe tyrant out of the White House.
Today I want to examine a very serious question: Is Donald Trump suffering from a cognitive disorder or some form of dementia? Donald’s father Fred suffered from Alzheimer’s disease. He was diagnosed six years before he died at age 93, but it’s likely he was experiencing symptoms before that. Wealthy and famous people tend to be protected in our culture even when they are behaving in ways that would be labeled as “crazy” in “ordinary” citizens.
Donald certainly shows a number of signs of having cognitive difficulties. He is 69 years old and, if elected, would be the oldest U.S. President ever inaugurated. Hillary Clinton is only one year younger than Trump, but she appears to be functioning at a very high level intellectually.
Clinton has no problem remembering names, no obvious difficulty with thinking and speaking coherently, and is obviously capable of making and understanding complex arguments. Donald Trump, on the other hand, appears to have difficulty staying focused on a subject or question; and either his short-term memory abilities are damaged or he’s an extremely unskilled liar.
Several writers addressed the possibility that Trump could be cognitively impaired early in his campaign. Here’s an example from an academic blog called Language Log: Trump’s aphasia, by Geoff Pullum.
The following word-stream (it cannot be called a sentence) was uttered by Republican presidential contender Donald Trump on July 21 in Sun City, South Carolina. As far as I can detect it has no structure at all: the numerous conditional adjuncts never arrive at consequents, we never encounter a main verb or even an approximation to a claim. The topic seems to be related to nuclear engineering, Trump’s uncle, the Wharton School, Trump’s intelligence, politics, prisoners, women’s intelligence, and Iran. But it’s hard to be sure:
Look, having nuclear—my uncle was a great professor and scientist and engineer, Dr. John Trump at MIT; good genes, very good genes, OK, very smart, the Wharton School of Finance, very good, very smart—you know, if you’re a conservative Republican, if I were a liberal, if, like, OK, if I ran as a liberal Democrat, they would say I’m one of the smartest people anywhere in the world—it’s true!—but when you’re a conservative Republican they try—oh, do they do a number—that’s why I always start off: Went to Wharton, was a good student, went there, went there, did this, built a fortune—you know I have to give my like credentials all the time, because we’re a little disadvantaged—but you look at the nuclear deal, the thing that really bothers me—it would have been so easy, and it’s not as important as these lives are (nuclear is powerful; my uncle explained that to me many, many years ago, the power and that was 35 years ago; he would explain the power of what’s going to happen and he was right—who would have thought?), but when you look at what’s going on with the four prisoners—now it used to be three, now it’s four—but when it was three and even now, I would have said it’s all in the messenger; fellas, and it is fellas because, you know, they don’t, they haven’t figured that the women are smarter right now than the men, so, you know, it’s gonna take them about another 150 years—but the Persians are great negotiators, the Iranians are great negotiators, so, and they, they just killed, they just killed us.
Here’s a response from another language blogger, Arnold Zwicky:
It seems to me that Trump was leaping aimlessly about from topic to topic and referent to referent, the mark of the flight of ideas.
Thought disorder. From Wikipedia:
Thought disorder (TD) or formal thought disorder (FTD) refers to disorganized thinking as evidenced by disorganized speech. Specific thought disorders include derailment, poverty of speech, tangentiality, illogicality, perseveration, neologism, and thought blocking.
[among the recognized derangements is the …]”Flight of ideas” – a form of formal thought disorder marked by abrupt leaps from one topic to another, albeit with discernable links between successive ideas, perhaps governed by similarities between subjects or, in somewhat higher grades, by rhyming, puns, and word plays (clang associations), or innocuous environmental stimuli – e.g., the sound of birds chirping. It is most characteristic of the manic phase of bipolar illness.
Now I’ve written here about “associative thinking”, in which someone moves through a chain of ideas, each one latching naturally to the one before, but easily capable of carrying someone far from a starting point. We all think this way, and everyday conversation tends to follow such paths, only for a group as a whole rather than for just one speaker. There is nothing disordered in any of that.
I’ve observed the flight of ideas up close in people in the manic phase of bipolar illness, and somewhat similar associations in classic schizophrenics, and indeed related disordered associations in people with dementia, including my partner Jacques (who was especially subject to intrusions of sounds and sights from the environment into his train of thought). Donald Trump looks distressingly familiar to me.
Is is possible that Trump suffers from bi-polar illness with mania being the main symptom? He says that he sleeps very little and he often tweets in the middle of the night. Or could it be dementia? I have no idea whether Trump has always spoken so incoherently or if his symptoms are increasing with age. I do think it is a serious question for voters to be aware of and for journalists to investigate.
There is also the question of Trump’s ability to lay down long-term memories. Is he just a blatant liar, or does he have difficulty recalling things he has said very recently? One egregious example of this is Trump’s claims that he opposed the Iraq war back when the Bush administration was ramping it up. From Eric Black at MinnPost in February:
Trump is great at non-answer word salads in which he not only interrupts the questioner but constantly interrupts himself, puts out little self-congratulatory asides and says whatever he wants, usually things he has said a million times before but which often qualify as non-answers.
Trump has made a yuuuge deal about how he warned in advance, long and loud, that the Iraq War would be a disaster. Joe asked him about why no one can find any transcript of him saying anything remotely along these lines until after the war started. His explanation, Thursday night and I guess every time he is asked this, is to say that because he wasn’t in public office or anything, his prescient warnings didn’t make it into any transcripts or video archives. Then he goes right back to claiming to have said it long and loud and in advance and doesn’t explain why so many of his later statements about the war (which are far more mixed than he describes them) manage to show up in the public record, since he was still not in public office or anything.
There is absolutely no evidence that Trump ever opposed the invasion of Iraq and plenty of evidence that he supported it. Is he deliberately lying or does he simply not recall what he believed back in the 2000’s?
Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump speaks during a campaign rally, Friday, Dec. 11, 2015, in Des Moines, Iowa. (AP Photo/Charlie Neibergall)
Another example from a February post at Daily Kos:
Trump has frequently bragged that he has“one of the best memories of all time.” However, that boast has been utterly demolished by his own words and actions. One notable example was his insistence that he had seen television reporting of “thousands and thousands” of Muslims celebrating the collapse of the World Trade Center towers on 9/11. That was an invented memory because there is no evidence that it occurred, despite the fact that television footage of such an event would be easily retrievable.
Trump’s memory was also noticeably deficient when he recently began hammering Ted Cruz as a “nasty guy” and “the single biggest liar” he ever met. Just three months ago he was lauding Cruz and floating him as a possible VP pick. Similarly he once praised Hillary Clinton as a “terrific” woman and a great Secretary of State. Now he is saying that she was the “worst Secretary of State in history.” And as for President Obama, today Trump tweeted that he is “perhaps the worst president in U.S. history.” But this is what he wrote in his book “Think Like A Champion:”
“What he has done is amazing. The fact that he accomplished what he has—in one year and against great odds—is truly phenomenal.” […]”Barack Obama proved that determination combined with opportunity and intelligence can make things happen—and in an exceptional way.” […]
“His comments have led me to believe that he understands how the economy works on a comprehensive level. He has also surrounded himself with very competent people, and that’s the mark of a strong leader.” […]
“He’s totally a champion.”
Clearly Trump has either a failing memory or mental blocks that render his memory unreliable. Many other examples exist. For instance, he said he couldn’t remember a disabled reporter that disgustingly mocked, but they had met many times; he threatened to sue Cruz three days after he promised that he never would; he complained that the media never reported a comment by Jeb Bush and seconds later, after Bush denied the charge, Trump defended himself by saying that the news reported it ten times.
There are numerous examples of Trump’s incoherent thinking. I’d strongly suggest that you read the transcript of his interview with The Washington Post editorial board if you haven’t done so already. This section of the interview has gotten quite a bit of attention:
RYAN: You [MUFFLED] mentioned a few minutes earlier here that you would knock ISIS. You’ve mentioned it many times. You’ve also mentioned the risk of putting American troop in a danger area. If you could substantially reduce the risk of harm to ground troops, would you use a battlefield nuclear weapon to take out ISIS?
TRUMP: I don’t want to use, I don’t want to start the process of nuclear. Remember the one thing that everybody has said, I’m a counterpuncher. Rubio hit me. Bush hit me. When I said low energy, he’s a low-energy individual, he hit me first. I spent, by the way he spent 18 million dollars’ worth of negative ads on me. That’s putting [MUFFLED]…
RYAN: This is about ISIS. You would not use a tactical nuclear weapon against ISIS?
[CROSSTALK]
TRUMP: I’ll tell you one thing, this is a very good looking group of people here. Could I just go around so I know who the hell I’m talking to?
This happened toward the end of the interview and Trump seemed unaware of how long he’d been talking. He also seemed unaware that he had time-limited the interview because he had to be at another meeting.
HIATT: Sure, then I’d like to let a couple of them get in questions.
LEWANDOWSKI: We have got five minutes, hard out.
HIATT: Okay.
TRUMP: Oh is it?
CORY: Yeah. You have a meeting you have to get to.
There are endless examples of Trump’s disordered thinking and use of language. There is clearly something wrong with him. In a few months, this man will be receiving confidential security briefings and there is even a chance that he could become President. I’m going to list more article for you to check out, and I hope you’ll read them, consider this question, and talk to your friends and neighbors about it.
Jennifer Rubin at The Washington Post: Trump’s word salads conceal his ignorance.
Max Eherenfreund at Wonkblog: Five times Donald Trump changed his position on a really big issue.
Steve King at Death and Taxes: Does Donald Trump have dementia?
The Inquistor: Does Donald Trump Have Alzheimer’s? Questions about the GOP Frontrunner’s Mental Fitness Arise.
Sophia A. McClennon at Alternet: Maybe Donald Trump Has Really Lost His Mind: What If the GOP Frontrunner Isn’t Crazy, but Simply Not Well?
Now what stories are you following today? Please post your thoughts and links in the comment thread and have a great Tuesday!
Monday Reads: Of Dismal Differential Equations and angry old men
Posted: May 9, 2016 Filed under: 2016 elections, Domestic Policy, Economy 68 Comments
Good Morning!
I’m still trying to get my thoughts together about the number of bomb throwers in both political parties that seem to want all levels of government to go to wreck and to ruin. They are being led by some of the most ignorant politicians I’ve ever had the displeasure to observe. Some folks are angry and eager for easy and very wrong answers.
It’s really easy for most people to confuse their personal pet experience with reality for the rest of the country as a whole. I get really tired of having anecdotal information put on the same level of seriousness as a peer-reviewed, published study. As an economist, I can tell you the number of people ignorant of generally well-known outcomes discovered through research and built up into theory in my field is highly limited. I shared this article by economist Greg Mankiw down thread over the weekend. I thought it was worth highlighting its main points.
I’ve said this a lot of times but the entire Sanders/Trump shtick on trade and the Sanders shtick on “big” banks is seriously out of step with reality. Mankiw succinctly writes about a few things that economists know that populist, anger-spewing office seekers don’t take time to learn. Now, Mankiw worked on the CEA for Dubya. He’s not the least bit politically Democrat but what he’s written here are things that economists and policy wonks know to be true from decades of study. Economists generally don’t argue on the facts on the ground or on theory. It’s how the policy should reflect that information that is usually a source of contention. There’s a lot of myths out there this election cycle. Here’s a few of them.
American manufacturing has disappeared.
The presumptive Republican nominee, Donald J. Trump, says, “We don’t make things anymore.” Judging from the surprising success of Mr. Trump’s campaign, this theme apparently resonates with many voters. But it is just not true.
When do you think manufacturing output reached its peak in the United States? The answer: right now. Manufacturing output achieved a record high in the most recent quarter of data. The nation’s manufacturers are now producing 47 percent more than they did 20 years ago.
What has declined is manufacturing employment, which is 29 percent lower than it was 20 years ago. Producing more output with fewer workers is called higher productivity, which in turn is driven by technological innovation. This change is hard on displaced workers, but it is good for the economy over all. Rising living standards are possible only if productivity increases.
Bad trade deals are what ails the economy.
Mr. Trump says he would negotiate better trade deals. Bernie Sanders brags about voting against the trade deals of the past. Hillary Clinton has split with President Obama and withdrawn her support for the Trans-Pacific Partnership.
The experts have a different view. Among those who devote their lives to studying the economy, there is a broad consensus about the overall benefits of free trade and trade deals. Of course, trade hasn’t been a boon for people who have lost their jobs because of foreign competition. But in 2014, the University of Chicago’s IGM Panel surveyed prominent economists about whether “past major trade deals have benefited most Americans.” A few respondents were uncertain, but most said yes. Not a single economist responded in the negative.
The economy is rigged.
To be sure, we live in challenging times. Meager growth and rising inequality have resulted in stagnant incomes for much of the working class and declining incomes for those with the lowest levels of education.
But to say that the economy is rigged, as Mr. Sanders and Mrs. Clinton have done, assumes that some small group of oligarchs planned this outcome. Clearly, the wealthy and powerful try to protect their interests, and they sometimes succeed. But the economy is a complex, decentralized system. Many outcomes are under no one’s control.
The biggest problem is that the devil is very much in the details which is where the challenges of policy exist. It used
to be–back in the day when I entered the business which is 1980 if you don’t count my undergrad stint as a teller–that every list of the top largest banks in the world had nothing but US banks. That hasn’t be the case for some time. China has now replaced Japan in the list but you’ll see that US banks have a presence on the list but don’t comprise the entire list. Australia, Canada and the UK also have some very large banks.
Countries and multinational corporations are huge and the amount of money they need to bank, borrow and use transactionally can only be handled by huge banks. The thing that makes them systematically dangerous is not their size. It’s the amount of ownership vs. deposits and their investing behaviors all of which are regulated internationally through the Bank of International Settlements and the Basil Committee recommendations.
Nationally, we have the Federal Reserve Bank where I have actually worked with regulating huge regional banks in the south. We have a number of laws on the books–most notably Dodd-Frank–that reflect international standards and our own goals for keeping systemic risk down in the financial system. It’s certainly not perfect and we do see many banks fighting some changes. We need to build on all of that and we need to pay better regulatory attention to the shadow banking industry. I’ve written extensively about that here since the Financial Collapse. Any one that suggests that it’s only size that matters needs to go back to school. We’ve discussed this before but the Clinton policy is subtle, nuanced, and up to the job if her administration can get it through a belligerent congress. I have more faith that she can do that than the bomb throwers who have challenged her for office.
Same with trade deals. There are many many aspects to trade that are good and it far outweighs the damage it can do to a few domestic industries. It’s a form of progress. Really. Every single consumer on the planet gets access to things cheaply that they never would which helps every one’s standard of living. I don’t think it’s a good idea to argue that jobs should only exist within your borders and every one else can just starve trying to make a living. We’re all better off through trade but there are people that are hurt by it. Again, it’s policy details that can see that trade does not ruin folks’ lives who are on the losing end.. It’s similar to what Clinton argues about transitioning Kentucky coal miners to clean energy industries. Technology is still a huge factor in job lose. Those folks in industries that lose domestically need to be helped by all levels of government. Even they will eventually see their paychecks access more as long as we can ensure they can still earn livings.
The problem that we see here is that we have a party that does not believe in a role for any form of government in anything and it stymies the kinds of policy details that ensure stability in big banks and ensure that our workers can find jobs and are trained properly for new industries if need be. None of this will happen if we elect politicians who are insurrectionists of one type or another.
Paul Krugman’s Op Ed today in the NYT calls Donald Trump an Ignoramus.
Last week the presumptive Republican presidential nominee — hard to believe, but there it is — finally revealed his plan to make America great again. Basically, it involves running the country like a failing casino: he could, he asserted, “make a deal” with creditors that would reduce the debt burden if his outlandish promises of economic growth don’t work out.
The reaction from everyone who knows anything about finance or economics was a mix of amazed horror and horrified amazement. One does not casually suggest throwing away America’s carefully cultivated reputation as the world’s most scrupulous debtor — a reputation that dates all the way back to Alexander Hamilton.
The Trump solution would, among other things, deprive the world economy of its most crucial safe asset, U.S. debt, at a time when safe assets are already in short supply.
Of course, we can be sure that Mr. Trump knows none of this, and nobody in his entourage is likely to tell him. But before we simply ridicule him — or, actually, at the same time that we’re ridiculing him — let’s ask where his bad ideas really come from.
Well, read the answer because it’s easy. It comes from republican lawmakers like Paul Ryan and Ted Cruz. Some of these Trumpisms even come from Romney. Krugman states that Trump’s “blithe lack of knowledge largely follows from the know-nothing attitudes of the party he know leads.” He concludes by being very complimentary to Clinton who’s economic policy is the only one rooted in reality and in accepted economic theory.
One of the wackiest things I’ve read in a long time is this story about how American Airlines handled an economist working on one of its flights. I fully admit to doing pretty much the same thing on long flights. I drag out my work. I’ve never thought you could be considered terrorizing a seat mate will doing Differential Equations, but I guess you can in the paranoid world of angry white people. Here we have an Ivy League economist of Italian descent causing panic in the skies.
What do you know about your seatmate? The agent asked the foreign-sounding man.
Well, she acted a bit funny, he replied, but she didn’t seem visibly ill. Maybe, he thought, they wanted his help in piecing together what was wrong with her.
And then the big reveal: The woman wasn’t really sick at all! Instead this quick-thinking traveler had Seen Something, and so she had Said Something.
That Something she’d seen had been her seatmate’s cryptic notes, scrawled in a script she didn’t recognize. Maybe it was code, or some foreign lettering, possibly the details of a plot to destroy the dozens of innocent lives aboard American Airlines Flight 3950. She may have felt it her duty to alert the authorities just to be safe. The curly-haired man was, the agent informed him politely, suspected of terrorism.
The curly-haired man laughed.
He laughed because those scribbles weren’t Arabic, or another foreign language, or even some special secret terrorist code. They were math.
Yes, math. A differential equation, to be exact.
Had the crew or security members perhaps quickly googled this good-natured, bespectacled passenger before waylaying everyone for several hours, they might have learned that he — Guido Menzio — is a young but decorated Ivy League economist. And that he’s best known for his relatively technical work on search theory, which helped earn him a tenured associate professorship at the University of Pennsylvania as well as stints at Princeton and Stanford’s Hoover Institution.
So, here’s a few other policy issues that you may want to read about today. More and more cities are realizing that 
AirBnb is just a way to get around local zoning and commerce laws. It’s pushing up rent and creating homelessness in all the major tourist destinations of the world.
A 20-year resident of San Francisco, Tarin Towers lived in a rent-controlled apartment in the Mission District. Her building, a six-unit Victorian, was home to people who had stayed in the Mission for decades as the neighborhood changed around them. Some of her neighbors were multigenerational families, some were elderly, some were disabled. As long as the building remained rent-controlled, they should have been protected from the city’s skyrocketing housing market. But in 2013, the building was bought by well-known real estate speculator Fergus O’Sullivan, who saw he could make more — a lot more — with new tenants. But first, he had to get the old ones out.
In some ways, San Francisco renters are lucky. Their city has rent-control laws, unlike most places in the U.S., where your landlord can get rid of you as soon as the lease ends. In San Francisco, in many cases, a landlord must pay for the privilege of kicking you out — sometimes handsomely. As Towers’ landlord started renovations on her building, turning it into an all-day construction site, her neighbors started taking buyouts — some as high as six figures. But when Towers looked around at San Francisco real estate, she realized that after splitting a buyout with her housemates and paying taxes and lawyers’ fees, the amount she would get for leaving wouldn’t enable her to pay higher rent elsewhere in the city.
Towers held out as her old neighbors left and new tenants started moving in. Unlike the old neighbors, these new people were young, mobile, transient. And there were a lot of them. O’Sullivan, it turned out, had leased the building to a startup called the Vinyasa Homes Project. Towers soon discovered that Vinyasa had listed her building on Airbnb, advertising it as a “co-creative house.” The listing made it sound almost like a commune. “You want to join a community of like-minded peers who are doing inspirational things?” it read. “This is the place for you.” Unlike in the communes of yesteryear, however, each bed is going for more than $1,500 a month — and these are bunk beds in shared rooms. That means each apartment could now be bringing in $10,000 a month in rent.
ca. 1958, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA — Dr. Norbert Wiener Standing at Blackboard — Image by © Bettmann/CORBIS
In recent years, few things have been as exhaustively debated or written about than the Iran deal.
That debate reignited this week after a long article about me included a section about the Iran deal. There are many issues raised in an article of this length, and I’m sure I’ll have plenty of opportunities to respond to those topics in the weeks and months to come.
However, given the importance of the questions raised about the Iran deal over the last few days, I want to make several points about one issue: how we advocated for the deal.
First, we never made any secret of our interest in pursuing a nuclear deal with Iran. President Obama campaigned on that position in 2008. We pursued several diplomatic efforts with Iran during the President’s first term, and the fact that there were discreet channels of communication established with Iran in 2012 is something that we confirmed publicly. However, we did not have any serious prospect of reaching a nuclear deal until after the election of Hasan Rouhani in 2013. Yes, we had discussions with the Iranians before that, but they did not get anywhere. After the Rouhani government took office, our confidential negotiations with the Iranians accelerated, and quickly led to public negotiations within the P5+1 process that began at the United Nations General Assembly in September 2013. Whatever your analysis of the relative weight of moderates or hard-liners in the Iranian system, there is no question that we were able to achieve a deal only after a change in the Iranian Administration.
Second, we did aggressively make the case for the Iran deal during the congressional review mandated by statute last summer, as it was imperative that the facts of the deal be understood for it to be implemented. Opponents of the deal had no difficulty in making their case — through commentary, a paid media campaign, and the distribution of materials making a variety of arguments against the deal. Tough and fair questions were raised; sometimes, there were also inaccuracies about the nature of the deal. Given our interest in making sure that any misinformation was corrected, and that people understood our policy, we made a concerted effort to provide information about the deal to any interested party, including to outside organizations and any journalists covering the issue. This effort to get information out with fact sheets, graphics, briefings, and social media was no secret — it was well reported on at the time. Of course the objective of that kind of effort is to build as much public support as you can — that’s a function of White House communications.
You can read more about Ben Rhodes and the controversies at these links. The NYT link at the top is the article that 
kicked off the latest controversy.
From the NYT: “The Aspiring Novelist who became Obama’s Foreign-Policy Guru”.
From Politico: “White House aide Ben Rhodes responds to controversial New York Times profile”
Jaws dropped in Washington’s tight-knit foreign policy community when Ben Rhodes, a deputy national security adviser and one of President Barack Obama’s closest aides, was quoted in the New York Times Magazine deriding the D.C. press corps and boasting of how he created an “echo chamber” to market the administration’s foreign policy.
Marbled with the kind of overly candid observations that sank Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the wartime general who was quoted mocking Vice President Joe Biden in a 2010 Rolling Stone profile, the article, written by David Samuels, hit like a bomb. It portrayed Rhodes as a real-life Holden Caulfield, a prep-school brat with literary pretensions whose greatest work of fiction was crafting the White House’s “narrative” to defend the Iran nuclear deal from its critics.
It’s really a shame that you can’t write analysis of complex policies like these on the back of a cereal box and expect every one to have enough background in the material to actually grasp it. It does seem to me, however, that as responsible voters in a democratic society that people could at least try to get better information. It’s not like it’s not easily accessible these days.
So there’s a few things on wonky policy to get us started today.
What’s on your reading and blogging list?
Saturday Night’s All Right For Fighting!
Posted: May 7, 2016 Filed under: 2016 elections, Afternoon Reads 43 Comments“Oh, don’t give us none of your aggravation
We had it with your discipline
Oh, Saturday night’s alright for fighting
Get a little action in”
Bernie Taupin
Good Afternoon!
I’m just going to continue with this year’s election theme of angry, straight white men behaving like toddlers throwing temper tantrums because they’re so damned used to getting their way all the time!
You’re not going to believe some of the stuff I’ve been reading today. Entitled little boys do all kinds of things like lying to cover up stuff they don’t want and sneaking around other people’s backs to try to bend results and rules to suit the goal of getting their way! No amount of rules, laws, reality and facts on the ground are going to come between bad little straight, entitled white boys and their toys! The headlines today are full of lies, lies and more lies and temper tantrums galore!!
Here’s a follow-up to an old story but one that shows how little boys that still play with 
balls in their old age can get away with anything unless the system starts to change or the Courts of Justice function for every one. Remember the child sexual assault scandals at Penn State with Sandusky and Paterno? Well, it turns out old Joe really knew about the abuse a long time ago and wanted the victims to just go away so the football program could go on and on and on …
After four years of feuding over the legacy of Joe Paterno, with a few vague details about what he may have known about allegations of sexual abuse by one of his coaches, it is becoming clear there may be much more.
There are now two allegations by men who say they were sexually abused by Jerry Sandusky, who also say they reported their abuse to the legendary coach in the 1970s.
One of those allegations was made public in a court order related to a lawsuit Penn State University filed against its former insurer over who should have to pay settlements to the more than 30 men who have come forward as victims of Sandusky. The victim was not identified, and the details come from a deposition that is sealed.
The other has spoken to CNN, in great detail, explaining how he was a troubled young kid in 1971 when he was raped in a Penn State bathroom by Jerry Sandusky. Then, he says, his complaint about it was ignored by Paterno.
For this story, we’ll call him Victim A — in keeping with the way that authorities have labeled the Sandusky accusers
“I’d be willing to sit on a witness stand and confront Joe Paterno,” he told CNN last year. “Unfortunately he died and I didn’t get to.”
Joe Paterno’s death in January 2012, just two months after Sandusky’s initial arrest, has greatly complicated his legacy. He died before he was able to be thoroughly interviewed by authorities.
And know we know that Lyin’ Donald Trump is going to get caught in a lot of lies beginning with a whopper about a conversation with Marco Rubio who denies it ever happened. This is from Red State which proves once again that politics makes strange bedfellows. Marco Rubio is not interested at all in being Trump’s running mate and we can only wonder what sick twisted little synapse is Donald Trump’s mind invented the conversation.
In case you missed it, on Thursday, Donald Trump told Bret Baier that he spoke with Marco Rubio and that Rubio was very supportive of him and even open to a VP spot. Late Friday night, Marco Rubio advisers not only denied that he was supportive, but flat out stated that no such conversation took place at all. Trump just made it up.
Also from the land of some one whose gone totally around the bend is Bernie Sanders on one hand inkling that he’s willing to be Hillary Clinton’s VEEP should it come to that.(Oh, HELL NO! Off to oblivion should Sanders GO!) while suggesting his ugly protesters can go right ahead and disrupt anything she does as long as they stay out side. He also didn’t tell them to stop frightening little children.
Democratic presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders on Friday left the door open to being Hillary Clinton‘s running mate if she were to offer him the position after the party’s convention this summer.“Right now, we are focused on the next five weeks of winning the Democratic nomination. If that does not happen, we are going to fight as hard as we can on the floor of the Democratic convention to make sure that we have a progressive platform that the American people will support,” Sanders said during an interview with CNN’s Wolf Blitzer broadcast on “The Situation Room.”“Then, after that, certainly Secretary Clinton and I can sit down and talk and see where we go from there.”Asked if Sanders would drop out of the race if he were offered the VP slot now, the independent Vermont senator responded, “I think that that is a hypothetical that will not happen.”Clinton has all but clinched the Democratic nomination but she has shied away from directly calling for her opponent to drop out of the race.Sanders has insisted that he’ll fight until the party’s convention in July, hoping to play a role in crafting a more progressive party platform.“We’re going to be in this until the last ballot is cast,” Sanders reiterated Friday.Sanders said that while he will continue to differentiate between his and Clinton’s positions, “What’s most important is we defeat Donald Trump.”“Hillary Clinton and I disagree on many issues, I think her judgement on the war in Iraq was bad, I think her judgement on trade policies where she supported virtually every one of these disastrous trade policies was bad, I think the fact that she supports a $12 minimum wage when clearly we need a $15 an minimum wage, I think that’s bad. I think her creating super-PACs and raising money from Wall Street and other powerful special interests, not a great idea,” Sanders said.
We discussed some of this last night down thread but I really want to reiterate how nasty Bernie Sanders supporters--likely accompanied by crazy ass anarchists–were to Hillary supporters–to include children–in a rally on Thursday. Boston 
Boomer put the images, the live tweets, and much information thread to include a video of a cry child dealing with obscenity shouting Bernie Bros. Rachel Maddow took a lot of heat on twitter to ask the DudeBro Whisperer about the incident and to draw the line between protests and criminal harassment. She asked a very milquetoast version of the question and his answer was jaw dropping for this veteran of many protests. You should watch the video for yourself. She characterized the protests as “acrimonious”. She did not mention the crying frighten children whose belongings were vandalized.
Senator Bernie Sanders makes clear in an interview with Rachel Maddow that he does not want his supporters to disrupt the meetings of other candidates, but he sees it as part and parcel of free speech for people to protest outside such events, even Hillary Clinton events.
Let’s continue in the vein of spoiled little whiny white boys by returning to the Bundys–the freeloading ranchers not the sitcom family–who are just not getting the VIP treatment in jail. Imagine that! “unpalatable food” and “poor treatment” in jail! Just think! it was a few months ago when they were sending out SOS messages for snacks and warm blankies to continue their illegal occupation of a federal wildlife sanctury.
Claims that former Malheur Refuge occupiers Ammon and Ryan Bundy are losing weight while in jail, don’t match with official paperwork. But attorneys insist jail conditions are less than ideal for the defendants.
Ammon Bundy’s wife, Lisa Sundloff Bundy posted on Facebook that the pair looked “skinny and frail” at a hearing last month.
“I could tell that they were not being properly fed,” she wrote.
Ammon Bundy’s attorney, Mike Arnold, also insisted at a court hearing Wednesday that the pair appeared “emaciated” after they returned from a court hearing in Nevada, where they face charges related to a 2014 standoff at Cliven Bundy’s ranch.
But Multnomah County jail booking information shows the brothers have gained 10 and 20 pounds.
Sheriff’s Office Capt. Steve Alexander said dietary needs — whether medical or religious — are met at the facility.
“All the inmates in our custody care receive three meals a day. Approximately 2,650 calories per day,” he said. “They also get milk, two to three times a week and some other things incorporated into the diet throughout the week.”
Meanwhile, for those of us that actually don’t feel entitled to every little thing or whine when something outside of the built in advantage for them designed into society, religion and everything else, there’s some work to be done and goals achieved! Hillary Clinton has won the Guam caucus! You might remember Guam voters being told they don’t count much by BernieBro white male whiner Tim Robbins.
Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton is projected to win the Guam caucus.ABC News called the race for Clinton just after 11 a.m. Eastern time, several hours after polling closed.The Western Pacific island has just seven pledged delegates, so the win will do little to boost Clinton’s delegate edge over rival Bernie Sanders.Clinton entered Saturday’s race with 1,683 pledged delegates, to 1,362 for Sanders, according to the Associated Press.There was no polling conducted on the island territory, but both Clinton and Sanders reserved five-figure ad buys, according to Politico.Actor Tim Robbins, a Sanders supporter, caused a flap on the island when he appeared to insult the importance of its caucuses in April.“Winning South Carolina in a Democratic primary is about as significant as winning Guam,” Robbins said dismissively.The actor later tweeted that he meant no disrespect to the island territory.But Madeleine Bordallo, Guam’s delegate to the U.S. House of Representatives and former first lady of the island, slammed Robbins for using Guam as a “political punch line.”“These remarks are an insult to our community and they trivialize the disenfranchisement of our people in selecting our president,” she added. “As a candidate for president of the United States, Sen. Sanders and his campaign should be working to be inclusive of all Americans, regardless of where they live.”Bordallo endorsed Clinton.
This is the a prime example to me of the word ‘symbolic’ as the much maligned Guam voters still carried on and made their voices heard to those of us that care.So, I’ve got one more example of the death throes of straight white male institutional privilege worth mentioning today. Here’s a happy headline from the NYT: Roy Moore, Alabama Judge, Suspended Over Gay Marriage Stance”.
An Alabama judicial oversight body on Friday filed a formal complaint against Roy S. Moore, the chief justice of the state’s Supreme Court, charging that he had “flagrantly disregarded and abused his authority” in ordering the state’s probate judges to refuse applications for marriage licenses by same-sex couples.
As a result of the charges, Chief Justice Moore, 69, has been immediately suspended from the bench and is facing a potential hearing before the state’s Court of the Judiciary, a panel of judges, lawyers and other appointees. Among possible outcomes at such a hearing would be his removal from office.
“We intend to fight this agenda vigorously and expect to prevail,” Chief Justice Moore said in a statement, saying that the Judicial Inquiry Commission, which filed the complaint, had no authority over the charges at issue.
Referring to a transgender activist in Alabama, Chief Justice Moore said the commission had “chosen to listen to people like Ambrosia Starling, a professed transvestite, and other gay, lesbian and bisexual individuals, as well as organizations which support their agenda.”
Yes! Imagine that! Some one other than straight white men want their government, laws, economy, jobs, school and lives to reflect something more than the privilege built into the system for these spoiled brats!
What’s on your reading and blogging list today?
Friday Reads: Weapons of Mass Disruption
Posted: May 6, 2016 Filed under: 2016 elections | Tags: Campaign Ads, Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton, The Republican Establishment 91 CommentsGood Morning!
I had a lot of work to do on Wednesday so I spent most of yesterday relaxing which in my world means I’m reading a lot and walking Temple around the hood. I tried to spent my reading time on things a bit more uplifting than politics but this year is so fascinatingly and abjectly horrid that it’s hard to turn away. I may actually pick up the Game of Throne books again just as a contrast to these real-life machinations.
I managed to tune in to Rachel Maddow long enough to watch her perform “anti-Trump Republican anguish” as beat-style poetry. Real quotes from Real Republicans Since Donald Trump was nominated is a total gas to watch. I laughed so hard that Temple nearly got a red wine shower. Speaker of the House Paul Ryan has withheld his support for Trump. Mary Matalin has jumped parties and is re-registering down here in the Big Easy as Libertarian. The entire krewe of Red State has entered a period of mourning and disgust. It’s hard to fight back smugness at this point.
House Speaker Paul Ryan’s extraordinary statement Thursday that he’s “just not ready” to support Donald Trump highlights a challenge for the real-estate developer and TV personality on the week that he unexpectedly eliminated his rivals and cementedhis status as presumptive Republican presidential nominee.
Ryan joined a growing list of Republican elites who have resisted supporting their new standard-bearer and made a variety of vague demands of him, such as proving he’s committed to conservatism and is White House material, before offering their support. Republicans have refrained from handing down straightforward ultimatums, which suggests many will ultimately get behind him. But the dissent from within is highly unusual for a major-party candidate who has locked up the nomination and is shifting into general-election mode.
“I hope to and I want to” support Trump, Ryan said on CNN. But he said the billionaire “needs to do more to unify this party” by demonstrating to conservatives that he “shares our values” and “bears our standards.”
Trump fired back by questioning Ryan’s fitness to be Speaker.
Roughly 90 minutes later, Trump came back with a sharp critique of another comment Ryan made Thursday.
“Paul Ryan said that I inherited something very special, the Republican Party. Wrong, I didn’t inherit it, I won it with millions of voters!” Trump wrote on Twitter.
The subtle difference Trump highlighted was a piercing remark that speaks to the rift between mainstream Republicans and the polarizing, unconventional candidate who has risen to become the face of the party. His proposal to ban Muslims from entering the U.S. and refusal to disavow David Duke and the Ku Klux Klan led to Ryan’s implicit rebuke of the candidate throughout the primary, but Trump’s rhetoric has resonated with millions of voters, who have come out in droves across the country to support his candidacy.
Trump spokeswoman Katrina Pierson went a step further than her boss, suggesting that the Wisconsin Republican is unfit for his leadership role if he can’t support the party’s presumptive nominee.
Asked plainly by CNN’s John Berman whether Ryan is fit to be speaker if he can’t come around to supporting Trump, Pierson responded, “No, because this is about the party.”
Ryan suggested the onus was on Trump to show he can unite the different wings of the Republican Party, but Pierson disagreed, noting that since Trump has yet to clinch 1,237 delegates, he’s only the presumptive nominee.
This should make all the Republicans crazy go nuts since Ryan is the party’s boy wonder atm. Trump has announced he will be fundraising a billion dollars to take on Hillary Clinton in the General. Sheldon Addison has decided to back Trump. I’m not sure if any of his other fellow billionaires will follow suit. The amount of stunned establishment Republicans Rejecting Trump the last two days is pretty jaw-dropping.
CNN reached out to 16 Republican elected officials, leaders and major fundraisers associated with former Presidents Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, George W. Bush and former Vice President Dick Cheney. Speaking on background, none of them said they were planning to go to this summer’s Republican convention. They didn’t say they would vote for Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton. But they said they were not yet supporting Trump.
2012 GOP nominee Mitt Romney declared he’d skip the convention, joining at least three prior Republican nominees — John McCain and both Presidents Bush — in declining to attend the event.
Arizona Sen. Jeff Flake told CNN’s Manu Raju that “some of Trump’s positions” make it “very difficult for me” to support him.
Meanwhile, Nebraska Sen. Ben Sasse went on a lengthy Facebook diatribe against Trump and conservative blogger Erick Erickson said some members of Congress have joined his effort to recruit a third-party candidate.
BB’s post yesterday had more information on the Bush rejection of Trump. Certainly, his behavior towards Jeb is a good rationale of the cold shoulder treatment. But so are the continual attacks Dubya for not preventing 9-11 and for the Iraq War. McCain may actually lose his Senate Senate over this.
The odd assortment of religious freaks, neoconfederates,greedy ass country clubbers, intellectually and emotionally stunted libertarians, and angry working class white men put together by the party to win elections from Nixon forward is coming
completely unglued. Watching all of this come to this year’s election–which I can only characterize as a bunch of white straight men throwing toddler-like temper tantrums for not getting their way on everything–has been enlightening.
Hillary Clinton is already making hay from Trump quotes and from quotes about Trump by fellow Republicans.
Talk about putting the opposition to work for you.
Hillary Clinton‘s latest campaign ad is the ultimate #TBT – to the past eight months of the Republican primary campaign and the GOP’s own most biting comments about its freshly minted presumptive nominee, Donald Trump.
The web ad that Clinton tweeted out Wednesday night showcases insults from the likes of Mitt Romney, Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz and Jeb Bush to argue that Trump is anything but the party “unifier” he now claims to be.
“Con artist,” “phony” “know-nothing candidate,” “bully” and “the most vulgar person to ever aspire to the presidency,” are just a few of the disparaging namesTrump’s Republican critics call him in the clip.
“He would not be the commander-in-chief we need to keep our country safe,” says Bush, pointing to what he calls Trump’s “deep insecurity and weakness.”
Some think this actually helps Trump since it actually quotes mostly the Republican establishment that the Trumpsters hate. However, I’m not thinking the die hard Trumpsters are the targeted voters right now. I think it’s the huge huge number of Republican voters that haven’t been paying real attention to what the party’s has been about for years.
The media is full of examples today of talking heads mansplaining to Hillary’s campaign how to deal with the Donald. I would like to add that they sure didn’t do a great job of dealing with The Donald before he metastasized into the Republican Presidential candidate for 2016 so why should we take any of them very seriously?
Now, with regard to the tough guy stuff. The way to shred that calling card is with the military. This may surprise you at first blush. Surely, you think, military types will prefer Trump to Clinton! He’s a man. He talks tough. He’s not gonna pussyfoot around with ISIS the way those Democrats always do.
If you think this, I implore you to read Trump at War by Andy Kroll. It’s about how military people are terrified at the thought of Trump becoming their commander-in-chief, because they think he knows nothing about their line of work and they fear that someone who talks like he does without understanding the consequences will start World War III. Some people quoted in the article spoke openly of having to disobey President Trump’s orders, which is not only permissible but called for when an officer believes that a president’s orders violate code and law.
“You bet your ass” I’d reinstitute waterboarding, Trump has said. Military and intelligence professionals are the last people in the world who want that. It violated international law, which most of them actually care about. And the controversy over it crushed morale. A former CIA general counsel told Kroll that if President Trump ordered water-boarding and other forms of torture, staff would abandon the agency. “At a minimum,” the lawyer said, “people would refuse to participate in anything resembling the former interrogation program and insist on a transfer to another part of the agency where they wouldn’t be involved in these things.”
Conversely, more military people than you’d expect kind of respect Clinton. No, not because she voted for the Iraq War. Because she sat on the Senate Armed Services Committee and got to know their issues. Knows the difference between a brigade and a regiment. Put in ample face time as senator at New York’s military bases. They respect her.
There’s even a more brutal ad that lets Trump be Trump. It’s like a montage of his most sexist, racist, idiotic
statements. I think it’s absolutely funny that it came out on Cinco de Mayo given some of the worst quotes in it are about Mexicans and Mexican-Americans. You can see the ad directly on BB’s post yesterday.
This is just a Web ad, but as Josh Vorhees notes, it’s reasonable to see this as a template for the massive onslaught of paid ads to come. And this ad also highlights a key dynamic in this campaign that continues to go under-appreciated.
As I’ve argued, the general election will differ from the primaries in an important sense: Unlike Republicans, Democrats will not be constrained from brutally unmasking the truly wretched nature of his racial appeals. Trump’s GOP rivals had to treat his xenophobia, bigotry, and demagoguery with kid gloves, because many Republican voters agreed with his vows to ban Muslims and carry out mass deportations. But the broader general electorate does not agree with those things. Indeed, many voters that populate key general election constituencies are likely horrified by them. As a result, Democrats will be able to prosecute Trump mercilessly in ways his GOP rivals simply could not — with a relentless, non-diluted, non-euphemistic focus on his white nationalism.
Cook Political Reports just released its first look at the Electoral Vote for the 2016 General and you’ll be surprised at the number of states that are in play that are usually solidly Republican. This general is shaping up to be an incredible state of affairs in many ways. Humor me for quoting this Joe Klein piece at Time Magazine that beckons’ with this bit of clickbait: “Hillary Clinton’s ultimate trump card will not be her gender but her relative humanity.”
In some ways, Hillary faces an easier task. Donald Trump is an implausible President of the United States. But she has a problem that Bill never had. He swept to the presidency on a wave of pure energy and enthusiasm–this was something new, the baby boomers were taking over! Hillary is the George H.W. Bush of this campaign, selling stability–which may prove to be a marketable asset, given the craziness on the Republican side–but momentum feeds on excitement. Core polling perceptions like “trustworthiness” can turn, but they need some impetus.
Her vice-presidential choice will be important. A traditional pick would be someone young and Latino and male, but Hillary’s equivalent of an Al Gore would be … Elizabeth Warren. Another woman, but an outsider; a candidate who could rally Bernie’s legions of new voters, and who would be an excellent attack dog (a crucial vice-presidential function). I know, I know: the Clinton camp mistrusts Warren. She’d be a loose cannon, a risk. Her presence on the ticket might limit Hillary’s attempts to woo moderate Republicans and foreign policy hawks, which raises another possibility: Why not pick a moderate Republican woman–Condoleezza Rice, South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley–to stem the barbarian tide? That would be unthinkably new.
Inevitably, the vice-presidential selection will take a backseat in the general election. The presidency is won in discrete moments, as the public gauges the humanity of the candidates. Donald Trump is more a brand than a person; given the spray tan and egregious comb-over, he looks more like a panjandrum in The Hunger Games than a regular guy. How many spontaneous, empathetic human interactions has he had with individual voters? None that I can remember. He is all facade.
There is a basic rule of politics in the television age: warm always beats cold (with the exception of Richard Nixon). Hillary Clinton’s ultimate trump card will be not her gender but her relative humanity–an ironic twist given her public awkwardness. Her decision to sit down with West Virginia coal miners and apologize for her harsh, but realistic, prediction that they’ll be losing their jobs is the sort of thing that would be unimaginable for Trump. In the amped intimacy of a presidential campaign, such moments matter.
I’m sure we’re in for quite the bumpy ride so buckle up and buckle down. Hang in here with us because we’ll be hanging in there with and for Madam President. There’s bound to be many revoltin’ developments in the near future and we won’t shy from them.
What’s on your reading and blogging list today?
Thursday Reads: The End of the Primaries and The Hard Road Ahead
Posted: May 5, 2016 Filed under: morning reads, U.S. Politics | Tags: 2016 presidential election campaign, Bernie Sanders, Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton, RIP GOP 89 Comments
Good Morning!!
So this is the new normal. Donald Trump is the nominee of the Republican Party. The candidate is wholeheartedly supported by white supremacists and KKK leaders. Serious politicians and journalists are referring to him as a tyrant in the making.
We’re being told this is unprecedented. I would argue that Ronald Reagan was close, but at least he had been Governor of California and had been involved in party politics for years. Trump is not a serious person by any stretch of the imagination, and he clearly knows nothing about politics or how the U.S. government works. His knowledge of foreign policy is limited to his own experiences as a businessman.
It’s well past time for the mainstream media to state bluntly what Trump’s campaign is about, but I don’t know if they will ever do it. The reason people are supporting Trump is because he represents and enables their racism, xenophobia, and misogyny. Period. Yet NBC News, a once venerable journalistic organization, chose to anchor its entire evening news broadcast from Trump HQ last night!
The “short-fingered vulgarian”
Mediaite: NBC Makes Curious Decision to Let Lester Holt Anchor Nightly News from Trump Tower.
Lester Holt interviewed Donald Trump in Trump Tower tonight, which is fine, but it came with the rather curious decision to anchor the entire NBC Nightly News broadcast from Trump Tower.
It’s not clear why this happened, but whatever the case, Trump Tower was visible in the background during Holt’s live reports on the news of the day, as well as the interior of Trump’s office during the interview….
Fun experiment: imagine how people would react if, say, a nightly network newscast anchored live from, say, Chappaqua.
You can read sample reactions from Twitter at the link. Many people wondered why Trump could not have walked the short distance to NBC headquarters at 30 Rock for the interview. It appears that the powers that be at NBC and MSNBC will continue to treat Trump as if he were on the verge of becoming king instead of running for president of a supposed democratic republic.
Also from Mediaite, Tommy Christopher explains what Trump is all about: Donald Trump’s Win Isn’t Some ‘Anti-Establishment’ Wave, It’s the Racism Stupid.
It’s all over but the crying, which will also be fun to watch, but even after all these many months of Donald Trump vanquishing foe after foe, the media still doesn’t get it. They still bang on about this anger at “the establishment,” and as a result, they are giving Hillary Clinton bad advice already. During CNN’s coverage of the Indiana primary Tuesday night, liberal commentator and Bernie Sanders supporter Van Jones became just the latest pundit to misdiagnose the Trump phenomenon, and connect it to Bernie Sanders. There is a similarity, but not the one Jones identifies.
The same rebellion is happening in the country in both parties. The reason Hillary is still fighting is the reason that Trump won. There is a big, big discontent in this country and tonight for Bernie Sanders and we can say the same thing about Bernie, he shouldn’t be here either. I just don’t think that people get it yet. You got people sitting on a white hot stove in their houses right now and they are mad… I do think (Hillary) has got to, tonight, show that she’s got the message from both parties, the message from the Republicans, they’re mad and hurting, the message from the Democrats, they’re mad and hurting.
Jones is so close to being right, he even calls the anger “white hot,” but he just misses the absolutely crucial key to Hillary Clinton’s eventual defeat of Trump.
And even Van Jones can’t see it and say it. It’s all about racism and white male resentment. Read the rest and watch video at the link. The reason why Jones can’t point out the obvious truth is that his candidate–Bernie Sanders–is also appealing to white male resentment. The only difference is that Sanders is focused on hatred of Wall Street instead of hatred of people of color. But Sanders has been attacking our African American POTUS over the years and in this campaign.
As for “giving Hillary Clinton bad advice,” she doesn’t take advice from the media and she is already calling out Trump’s racism and xenophobia as well as his misogyny and ignorance of world affairs.
Now that it’s too late, “reasonable” Republicans and conservatives are saying they won’t vote for Trump no matter what. Massachusetts’ {Gag} {Choke} Republican Governor Charlie Baker is one of them. The Boston Globe:
Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker said he will not vote for his party’s nominee Donald Trump and won’t support likely Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton.
“The things he said about women and Muslims and religious freedom, I just can’t support,” Baker said. “At the same time, I do believe Secretary Clinton has a huge believability problem.”
Is that so. Maybe you should just focus on your own party’s nominee, asshole.
And while endorsing New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie back in February, Baker specifically called out Trump.
“I think there’s a certain temperament and a certain collaborative nature that’s fundamental to somebody’s ability to succeed in government, and I question whether he has the temperament and the sense of purpose that’s associated with delivering on that,” Baker said.
Despite those questions, Baker acknowledged on Wednesday that Trump would be the nominee.
“I give him credit for it,” Baker said. “He earned it fair and square, and congratulations to him.”
F**k you, Charlie. If that’s all you have to say about this nightmare for the country, you’re nothing but a coward. And besides you endorsed Chris Christie, who could very well be the VP nominee! Trump even said he’s “open to Cruz” as VP!
Former Oklahoma GOP Rep. MIckey Edwards was on Chris Hayes’ show last night, and he looked like he was going to a funeral. I can’t find the video right now, but he told Hayes that he wouldn’t vote for Trump even if he were the only one on the ballot. Other serious conservatives are saying they’ll be too busy to attend the Republican Convention in July, including candidates running downticket. We heard yesterday that George W. Bush and George H.W. Bush have no plans to endorse Trump. It’s likely Jeb won’t be supporting him either.
Here’s Michael Cohen at The Boston Globe: RIP GOP.
Indeed, the biggest near-term question for Republicans is: How bad will the damage be? How badly will Trump lose? How many seats will the GOP lose in the House and Senate and farther down the ballot in state legislature races?
But the bigger question — and it’s one that we may not know the answer to for months or years to come — is how will the Republican Party survive what’s happened to it over the past year?
At one point, the Republican Party nominally stood on a platform of economic and social conservatism. At least that was the public face of the party. Today, with Trump at its helm, it’s a party of nativism, xenophobia, crudeness, and misogyny. Those elements were of course always present in the party — and are at the root of its modern political success. But they were generally hidden below the surface or utilized with dog whistles. With Trump, there is no mistaking the fact that what drives GOP voters is not conservative dogma, but rather resentment, anxiety, and fear, particularly of minorities, Muslims, and immigrants.
That post-2012 Republican Party autopsy that said the GOP must reach out to Hispanic voters if it wanted to win a national election again is dead and buried. Quite simply, the Republican Party cannot win national elections if it doesn’t find a way to broaden the party’s appeal. With Trump as the presidential nominee, that effort will be set back, perhaps a generation or more.
Even more searing than the electoral challenges, Trump has delivered a savage blow to the GOP’s conception of itself. Armed with a mere handful of endorsements from elected GOP officials, Trump has run a campaign aimed directly against the Republican establishment. And he beat the stuffing out of it. And by taking positions on everything from taxes and trade to transgender Americans and terrorism that run directly against decades of conservative orthodoxy, he’s left the Republican establishment with no clear ideological mooring. Is the GOP a party of small government conservatism or a party of nativism and white male resentment? For decades, Republicans tried to be both, and Trump has, with a single presidential campaign, exposed the fallacy that lay at the heart of the party — namely that its voters were only interested in conservative dogma insofar as it was married to those aforementioned feelings of resentment, anxiety, and fear. But when given a choice between dogma and dog whistle, they’ve chosen this year – overwhelmingly – to go with the latter.
We’ll just have to wait and see. It will likely be both interesting and horrifying.
I don’t want to spend much more time on Bernie Sanders, because he’s irrelevant now. Nevertheless, he’ll be with us at least until the end of the primaries, and that’s a good thing as long as he stops damaging the Democratic Party and its putative nominee. If he continues, it will keep Hillary in the news, and his supporters deserve the opportunity to vote for him.
It appears that at least some efforts have begun to get Sanders to calm down and stop trying to elect Donald Trump. Yesterday Greg Sargent wrote about what some Democratic leaders have been telling him.
Top Democrats to Sanders: Don’t drop out. But tone it down.
…top Democrats I spoke with today don’t feel any particular sense of urgency about Sanders getting out of the race. However, they are gently urging Sanders to take into account just how much higher the stakes are, now that Trump is the nominee, as the Vermont Senator calibrates his approach to the final stretch of the Dem campaign.
Those closely following the delicate dance underway among the key players — the Clinton and Sanders campaigns; the White House; major progressive figures such as Elizabeth Warren — say there are several factors about Sanders that are worth keeping in mind. One is that Sanders is not the type of guy who responds to pressure. He has long been a bit of a loner figure in Congress and the Senate, they say, and does not mind being at odds with the Democratic establishment — indeed, he relishes that position, as we’ve seen by his year-long campaign against it.
At the same time, however, top Dems also believe Sanders has an unappreciated pragmatic streak that tends to surface after he has pushed the envelope as far as possible and gotten all he could in the process. For instance, Sanders pushed very aggressively to make the Affordable Care Act as much to his liking as possible, frustrating some involved in the bill’s progress, but in the end, he backed the ACA and advocated for it.
Sanders might do something similar again now. Having spent a year building a national constituency behind his unabashed economic progressivism and calls for reform to our rigged political system, which very well could have an impact beyond the Dem primaries, he could continue to engage in a spirited contest of ideas with Clinton, but without suggesting she lacks integrity, and without forcing a contested convention in the end.
I suppose anything is possible, but IMHO Hillary is doing the right thing by simply ignoring Bernie and focusing on defeating Trump in the Fall. I think we should follow her lead and just let him do whatever he’s going to do. His donations are dropping and even the media isn’t following him as much as before.
U.S. Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton waves after leading a discussion on gun violence prevention at the Wilson-Gray YMCA in Hartford, Connecticut, U.S., April 21, 2016. REUTERS/Adrees Latif
Meanwhile, Hillary is focusing on the general election.
Politico: Clinton plots swing-state ambush for Trump.
In recent days, the Clinton campaign has finalized a series of senior hires around the country, expanded the size of her central swing-state planning team in New York, and hundreds of thousands of dollars have been transferred to strategically important state parties from the Democratic National Committee. She’s also scheduled a series of public speeches and private meetings in states that will be crucial to her general election campaign.
Many of the moves had been in the works since early spring, when campaign officials began the process of hiring swing state operatives and more closely coordinating with state parties — the building blocks of the fall campaign’s field organizing infrastructure.
According to operatives and elected officials in eight battleground states, the switch flipped after Clinton’s 16-point win in New York last month — and Trump’s own romp there. In the days after that April 19 victory, some of Clinton’s state directors — who had previously operated only informally and without the campaign’s imprimatur — started meeting with local political leaders and planning the fall fight.
It’s all over but the grieving process for Bernie and his most fervent fans. Quite a few have already seen the writing on the wall and joined the Hillary bandwagon.
What stories are you following today?
peej
Carissa
bostonboomer
dakinikat
ecocatwoman
mablue2
Mama Lopez
peggysue22
quixote
skydancingguestblogger
Mona (aka Wonk the Vote)
Sky Dancing 
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