The false equivalency election.

I just read a very passionate defense of Hillary Clinton and her presidential run, and it was quite persuasive.

I must admit , though, that I am not a huge fan of Hillary or her husband. I still can't get over some of the things that went down in 2008 when she ran against president Obama.

Still, given the choices we are faced with, ---e-mails or no e-mails---this shouldn't even be a close call.

Consider the following:

"Donald Trump's hiring of pollster Tony Fabrizio in May was viewed as a sign that the real estate mogul was finally bringing seasoned operatives into his insurgent operation.

But the Republican presidential nominee appears to have taken issue with some of the services provided by the veteran GOP strategist, who has advised candidates from 1996 GOP nominee Bob Dole to Florida Gov. Rick Scott. The Trump campaign's latest Federal Election Commission report shows that it is disputing nearly $767,000 that Fabrizio's firm says it is still owed for polling.

Trump campaign officials declined to provide details about the reason the campaign has declined to pay the sum to Fabrizio Lee, the pollster's Fort Lauderdale, Fla.-based firm. “This is an administrative issue that we're resolving internally,” said senior communications adviser Jason Miller. Fabrizio did not immediately respond to requests for comment." [Source] 

Translated: We are stiffing yet another vendor out of their money.

Then there are the latest incidents about trump: His computer server communicating directly to Russia; him throwing a black man --who drove 100 miles to see him ---out of his campaign and calling him a "thug";  refusing to release his tax returns; encouraging his supporters to vote twice; oh, and in very Hillary like fashion, destroyed e-mails and other evidence in court cases. (No doubt one of the instances when he sued to get out of having to pay someone he owed money.)

I could go on, but I think everyone gets the point.

*Pic from cnn.com


  

The face of voter fraud?

              I have always thought that all this talk of voter fraud was just a smoke screen set up by republicans to use as an excuse to suppress the vote of minorities. I thought this because I thought that they had to know that by all objective measures  there are something like approximately 31 incidents of real voter fraud out of every billion ballots cast.

This voter fraud meme has been one of the linchpins of the trump campaign, and he has been particularly vocal about "the blacks" voting in places like Philadelphia. (And this guy is not a racist? Please!) Anyway, now that he is only down by one point in the polls (Thank you Mr FBI man) maybe he will stop with all the cheating and rigged election talk.

It just so happens that I was thinking about all this voter fraud talk when I read the following story:

"A woman in Iowa was arrested this week on suspicion of voting twice in the general election, court and police records show.

Terri Lynn Rote, a 55-year-old Des Moines resident, was booked Thursday on a first-degree charge of election misconduct, according to Polk County Jail records. The charge is considered a Class D felony under Iowa state law.

Rote was released Friday after posting $5,000 bond. A preliminary hearing is scheduled for Nov. 7.
The Des Moines Register reported that Rote is a registered Republican who cast two ballots in the general election: an early-voting ballot at the Polk County Election Office and another at a county satellite voting location, according to police records.

Rote hadn’t planned on voting twice but said it was “a spur-of-the-moment thing” when she walked by the satellite voting location, she told The Washington Post in a phone interview Saturday.
“I don’t know what came over me,” Rote said.

She added she has been a supporter of Donald Trump since early in his campaign, after Republican candidate Mike Huckabee dropped out of the primary race.

Rote told Iowa Public Radio that she cast her first ballot for Trump but feared it would be changed to a vote for Hillary Clinton.

'The polls are rigged,' Rote told the radio station.

Leigh Munsil, an editor for the Blaze, noted on Twitter that Rote was the same woman who had caucused for Trump earlier this year."[Source]

Oh my! You mean a white woman in Iowa--- who happens to be a trump supporter--- was actually caught committing voter fraud? Well color me shocked. *sarcasm off*

Terri Lynn Rote is a long ways from one of those urban areas Donald likes to talk about. Maybe Donald is on to something. We were probably just looking in the wrong place to find what he was talking about.





 

CAPTION SATURDAY.

 

Give me a caption for this pic. 

*Pic from rt.com

Anthony's weiner and more e-mails.

*Poor Hillary, this e-mail story must feel like one of those villains in a bad action movie that just won't die. Even after the closing credits start rolling.

The latest in Hillary's e-mail saga comes courtesy of one Anthony Weiner and his sick proclivity for showing off his...ahem ahem, weiner, on his cell phone.  Anthony, right-wingnuts love you, you are the gift that keeps giving.

Anyway, something about his wife (or soon to be ex-wife) being a close aide to Hillary Clinton and the FBI investigating his alleged sexting to underaged girls on their computer.

To right- wingnuts this is a big deal. Over on FOX VIEWS they are calling it a game changer. And trump, after  months of bashing the FBI, now all of a sudden says that they are not so bad after all.  Let's see what he and his followers will say if this latest jaunt down e-mail road goes nowhere.

Their first mistake was declaring that the FBI is reopening their investigation. They are not. But this is where those famous Doobie Brothers lyrics comes into play: "What a fool believes he sees"

My gut tells me there is nothing to see here (although with the Clintons you never know), just the FBI director (pictured above) doing more damage to what has already been a flawed investigation. When he announced that there would be no criminal charges this summer, he should have kept his personal opinion to himself. Just tell us if there would be other charges and keep it popping. But he chose not to do that, and so this e-mail issue still lingers over the election. 

He has inserted himself in this election at every step of the way, and this latest stunt only confirms that.

We understand that he (Comey) had an obligation to tell congress of any changes in the investigation after he gave sworn testimony in Washington. But why the cryptic letter to Congress? Why not tell the country exactly what it is your agency saw in the e-mails and what your agency is looking for?

Anyway, as is to be expected, trump pounced on this story like Anthony Weiner reaching for his cell phone when Huma started looking at it.

“I have great respect for the fact that the FBI and DOJ are willing to have the courage to right the horrible mistake they made,” Trump said. “This was a grave miscarriage of justice that the American people fully understood, and it is everybody’s hope that it is about to be corrected.”

He continued to trash Clinton, saying her “corruption is on a scale we have never seen before. “We must not let her take her criminal scheme into the Oval Office,” Trump said, adding that “perhaps justice finally will be done.”

Donald, this e-mail story doesn't bother me; this one does. Because it shows that you are not only a sexual predator, but that you are quite possibly a sadist as well.

I can control how my president chooses to use her e-mails. I can't change or control what's in the sick heart of a 70 year old man.

 

*Pic from rawstory.com

 

,

Mike Pence's plane and Clarence Thomas's hands.

What a day.

In a way, Mike Pence's plane skidding off the runway this evening is a metaphor for the entire trump campaign.

I am glad everyone is safe, though. It could have been a very tragic situation.

Anyway, speaking of trump, apparently some of his operatives have been busy leading up to this election. Sadly, instead of leading a get out the vote campaign; they have been working hard to suppress it.

"The campaign of Donald Trump, who has been complaining that the election is rigged against him, is admitting that he’s doing everything he can to suppress voters who won’t vote for him.

A senior official admitted that the campaign has “three major voter suppression operations under way,” according to a report from Bloomberg, which focused on the campaign’s “Project Alamo,” a digital database and get-out-the-vote foundation.

A major part of “Project Alamo” is that it’s not a get-out-the-vote operation, though. It’s quite the opposite.

Instead of making sure that Trump supporters get to the polls — there aren’t many out there, the team realizes, noting that their internal polling is similar to that of FiveThirtyEight, which has Trump losing by a landslide — Alamo is devoted to keeping as many people as they can from the polls.

To discourage white liberals from voting for Clinton, the campaign has been mentioning some of the controversies connected to the hacked emails being published by WikiLeaks from the account of her campaign chairman, John Podesta." [Source]

And lets not forget, in order to discourage black voter turnout, trump is running ads on black radio and on facebook which focuses on Hillary Clinton calling black kids  "super predators" back in the day.

I gotta give it to the trump man, he is pulling out all the stops.

Then there is the story that broke today about our friend Clarence Thomas. Somewhere in America Anita Hill is saying I told you so.

"A woman has accused Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas of groping her in 1999, when she met him as a young Truman Foundation Scholar at a dinner party in Falls Church, Virginia.

On October 7, Moira Smith posted on Facebook -- her account is now deactivated -- that Thomas groped her at her boss' dinner party when she was 23. "He groped me while I was setting the table, suggesting I should sit 'right next to him,'" Smith wrote, according to the post as reported by the National Law Journal.

The Supreme Court declined to comment to CNN, pointing to a Thomas statement it provided the National Law Journal: "This claim is preposterous and it never happened."

Smith, who is now vice president and general counsel to Enstar Natural Gas Co., did not immediately respond to a request for comment from CNN. Laura Fink, a friend and former roommate of Smith, issued a statement to CNN on behalf of Smith saying that she stands by her allegations.

"I choose to speak out now in the hope that this will change; that my daughter will live never having to experience these wrongs, and so that both my children might experience a world where no one is above reproach or justice," Smith wrote in the statement." [Source]

My take: In the age of predator trump, more women are coming forward to tell about their horrifying experiences with powerful men, and that's a good thing. 

*Pic from abc7ny.com

  

Open Thread Wednesday.

It's hump day y'all, and so the floor is yours.

A couple of questions:

Do you think that Newt went over the line with Megyn Kelly? And, if he did, do you think it's part of a bigger picture with conservative men and sex?

What do you think of the fact that Barack Obama is the smallest government spender among presidents since Eisenhower? 

How Donald trump blew his chance to form a true populist movement.

Donald trump started it all off wrong from the get go. His misguided and racist declaration that rapist Mexicans are pouring into our country and are somehow taking away jobs and (in his twisted mind) even lives from Americans, was the catalyst for his race to the bottom campaign that had racists and neo -Nazis jumping for joy. Instead of unifying poor brown and white people so that they could all embrace his populist message together, he chose to use the tried and true formula of dividing people by race.

With the demographic that now chooses to follow him it was easy, and he chose the easy way out. That's what grifters do.

It was always going to e a tricky dance, regardless of who decided to go down this populist path. America is not Europe or Asia with its homogeneous populations, but it was doable. Surely someone could make poor people of all races realize that they were being played by the establishment. Surely someone could mobilize them into a true populist force.

Sadly,with an intellectually lazy person like Donald trump, a man with a huge and unchecked ego, the movement was doomed from the start. Donald trump was not going to be that leader. Donald trump needed a gullible audience, and with his "basket of deplorables" he got one.

The only thing some poor uneducated white people have to hold on to is their skin color and the place of their birth. We may be dumb ignorant and  poor,  but at least we ain't one of them Negroes or one of them immigrants from another country. It's really sort of sad, but the more things change...

Dr. King and the civil rights movement relied on Northern educated whites and intellectuals to help mainstream the movement and embarrass Southerners ---who were against change--- into doing the right thing. Some of those same Southerners now see a new leader in trump, and they will defend him and everything he stands for with their last dying breath. The more things change...

*Pic from slate.com

Grifter candidacy?

~Grifter~

"A grifter is someone who swindles you through deception or fraud. 

Synonyms include fraudster, con artist, cheater, confidence man, scammer, hustler, swindler, etc.

1) That grifter swindled me out of £250,000! 

2) "The first rule of grifting is, you can't cheat an honest man." 

A lot has been made of Hillary Clinton's duplicitous behavior and the perception of her being a politician first and  a person second. But on a second glance, after we cut through all the partisan bull crap, we learn that this is not necessarily true.  In fact, if we are really willing to take a look at her opponent -the Emperor without his clothes on- we would find that this scrutiny about  honesty should be directed at the other candidate in the presidential race.

Consider this:

"PALM BEACH, Fla. (AP) -- Donald Trump said he received a $17 million insurance payment in 2005 for hurricane damage to Mar-a-Lago, his private club in Palm Beach, but The Associated Press found little evidence of such large-scale damage.

Two years after a series of storms, the real estate tycoon said he didn't know how much had been spent on repairs but acknowledged he pocketed some of the money. Trump transferred funds into his personal accounts, saying that under the terms of his policy, "you didn't have to reinvest it."

In a deposition in an unrelated civil lawsuit, Trump said he got the cash from a "very good insurance policy" and cited ongoing work to the historic home.

"Landscaping, roofing, walls, painting, leaks, artwork in the — you know, the great tapestries, tiles, Spanish tiles, the beach, the erosion," he said of the storm damage. "It's still not what it was."

Trump's description of extensive damage does not match those of Mar-a-Lago members and even Trump loyalists. In an interview about the estate's history, Trump's longtime former butler, Anthony Senecal, recalled no catastrophic damage. He said Hurricane Wilma, the last of a string of storms that barreled through in 2004 and 2005, flattened trees behind Mar-a-Lago, but the house itself only lost some roof tiles.

"That house has never been seriously damaged," said Senecal, discussing Mar-a-Lago's luck with hurricanes. "I was there for all of them."

Just over two weeks after Wilma, Trump hosted 370 guests at Mar-a-Lago for the wedding of his son Donald Jr.

While part of that celebration did have to be moved away from the front lawn due to hurricane damage, wedding photographs by Getty Images showed the house, pools, cabanas and landscaping in good repair.

Valuations for Mar-a-Lago are subjective, but Forbes estimated the 110,000-square-foot property's value at $150 million in its most recent appraisal of Trump's net worth. The estate's historic nature would add to any repair costs, but Tim Frank, Palm Beach's planning administrator at the time of the hurricanes, said $17 million in work would have required "dozens, maybe scores of workers." In 2004, Trump built a 20,000-square-foot ballroom from scratch for less than $6 million, according to building permits.

Palm Beach building department records show no permits for construction on that scale after the storms. Permits reflected smaller projects, including installation of new grease traps in the kitchen and tree trimming along the road. The only permits that appeared hurricane-related were for $3,000 in repairs to storm-damaged outdoor lighting and the vacuuming of sand from the property's beachfront pool. Likewise, records of the city's Landmarks and Preservation Commission reflected no repair work conducted following the 2004 and 2005 hurricane seasons.

The $17 million Mar-a-Lago insurance payment surfaced during a 2007 deposition in Trump's unsuccessful libel lawsuit against journalist Tim O'Brien, whom Trump accused of underestimating his wealth. As part of the case, O'Brien's attorneys were permitted to review Trump's financial records, including some from the Mar-a-Lago Club. They asked Trump to quantify the damage and explain why he had pocketed money instead of spending it on repairs.

Trump said repairs were ongoing, but acknowledged he could not remember which hurricane had damaged Mar-a-Lago or when it hit.

"We continue to spend the money because we continue to suffer the ravages of that hurricane," Trump said. "We're continuously spending money. It really beat up Mar-a-Lago very badly."

The insurance adjustor who assessed the insurance claim, Hank Stein of VeriClaim Inc., said there had been damage to Trump's golf course in West Palm Beach and damage to Mar-a-Lago's roof and landscaping, but he could not remember details. Trump declined to provide the AP with records about the insurance claim or answer specific questions about damage at Mar-a-Lago.

Stein, who has since left VeriClaim for another firm, said he remembered water damage from rain after windows to an observation deck atop the mansion blew open. "I wish I could give you some more information on the breakdown," he said.

Under local rules, major repairs would have required Trump to request a permit and pay permit fees. If such work were performed without permits, that could have avoided as much as $450,000 in fees but would have likely been illegal.

The city's former planning administrator said getting away with such extensive, unpermitted work would have been unlikely. Frank cited both his own agency's vigilance and wealthy Palm Beach residents' habit of calling out each other's code violations. Once, Trump's neighbors hired lawyers to report suspicions that he improperly let guests sleep in poolside cabanas during a wedding.

"If there were $17 million dollars of damage, we sure as hell would have known about that," said Frank. "I would have known if there was anything in the magnitude of $100,000."

The Republican mayor of Palm Beach at the time — and Mar-a-Lago member — Jack McDonald, agreed: "I am unable to comprehend $17 million in reimbursable damage."

Jane Day, the city's former historical preservation consultant, who helped oversee Mar-a-Lago's conversion to a private club and who has visited in the years since as a guest, also was mystified. "This is the first I'm hearing of it."

Frank said the commission would have granted immediate approval to simple repairs, but Trump or his contractors would still have needed to file for permits.

"If they changed the door knobs I was supposed to review it," Frank said.

Much of Trump's property insurance business has long been handled by Pamela Newman, a leading insurance broker for Aon Risk Services Inc. Neither Newman nor AON would discuss the case with AP.

Two former Aon employees familiar with the company's work for Trump said Trump's company was routinely late on insurance premium payments and regularly threatened to take its business elsewhere. They spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss confidential business matters and because they feared retribution since they continue to work in the insurance industry. Representing Trump allowed Newman to bring up her work on behalf of Trump in sales pitches to wealthy clients, sometimes offering him as a reference, the employees said.

Newman's ties to Trump have endured. He and she both sit on the board of New York's Police Athletic League. She has attended galas at Mar-a-Lago and donated the legal maximum of $2,700 to his presidential exploratory committee before he announced his run. She followed up last July with $25,000 in donations to the Make America Great Again PAC, according to Federal Election Commission records.

According to the Trump deposition, Newman led the effort to obtain a payout on the Mar-a-Lago insurance policy. Trump did not identify which insurer actually footed the bill and the AP was unable to identify who paid the claim.

Documenting an insurance claim as large as the one that Trump made on Mar-a-Lago typically involves extensive verification of the damage. Stein said the process went smoothly and that he worked closely with both Newman and a senior Trump executive, Matt Calamari.

"It would have been myself along with an adjustment team," he said. "It was a thorough investigation."

In the depositions, Trump said he knew little about that process that produced his $17 million payday, but praised the policy and said Newman took care of it.

"We had a very good insurance policy, actually," he said." [Source]

 

*Pic from huffingtonpost.com

 

 

 

 

   

 

Donald and the dark-right movement.

Knowledge is power.

The Field Negro education series continues. 

The following article is from Mother Jones. 

"The first warning sign that something new was brewing came in June 2015, as Donald Trump joined the crowded field vying for the Republican presidential nomination. In the extravagant lobby of Trump Tower in New York City, he announced he would build a wall to keep out Mexican criminals and "rapists."

"I urge all readers of this site to do whatever they can to make Donald Trump President," wrote Andrew Anglin, publisher of the neo-Nazi site Daily Stormer, 12 days later. Anglin, a 32-year-old skinhead who wears an Aryan "Black Sun" tattoo on his chest and riffs about the inferior "biological nature" of black people, hailed Trump as "the only candidate who is even talking about anything at all that matters."

This neo-Nazi seal of approval initially seemed like an aberration. But two months later, when Trump released his immigration policy, far-right extremists saw a clear signal that Trump understood their core anger and fear about America being taken over by minorities and foreigners. Trump's plan to deport masses of undocumented immigrants and end birthright citizenship was radical and thrilling—"a revolution," in the words of influential white nationalist author Kevin MacDonald, "to restore a White America."

Trump's move was a "game changer," said MacDonald, a 70-year-old silver-haired former academic who edits the Occidental Observer, which the Anti-Defamation League calls "online anti-Semitism's new voice." Trump, he wrote, "is saying what White Americans have been actually thinking for a very long time."

"Stunning," raved Peter Brimelow, editor of the anti-immigrant site VDare.com. "The thing that delighted us the most," he wrote, was Trump's plan to close "the 'Anchor Baby' loophole," denying citizenship to the American-born children of immigrants—a policy that Brimelow said he had been advocating for more than a decade.

Trump "may be the last hope for a president who would be good for white people," remarked Jared Taylor, who runs a white nationalist website called American Renaissance and once founded a think tank dedicated to "scientifically" proving white superiority. Taylor told us that Trump was the first presidential candidate from a major party ever to earn his support because Trump "is talking about policies that would slow the dispossession of whites. That is something that is very important to me and to all racially conscious white people."

Trump fever quickly spread: Other extremists new to presidential politics openly endorsed Trump, including Don Black, a former grand dragon of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan and founder of the neo-Nazi site Stormfront; Rocky Suhayda, chair of the American Nazi Party; and Rachel Pendergraft, a national organizer for the Knights Party, the successor to David Duke's Knights of the Ku Klux Klan. Richard Spencer, an emerging leader among a new generation of white nationalists known as the "alt right," declared that Trump "loves white people."

But Trump did not become the object of white nationalist affection simply because his positions reflect their core concerns. Extremists made him their chosen candidate and now hail him as "Emperor Trump" because he has amplified their message on social media—and, perhaps most importantly, has gone to great lengths to avoid distancing himself from the racist right. With the exception of Duke, Trump has not disavowed a single endorsement from the dozens of neo-Nazis, Klansmen, white nationalists, and militia supporters who have backed him. The GOP nominee, along with his family members, staffers, and surrogates, has instead provided an unprecedented platform for the ideas and rhetoric of far-right extremists, extending their reach. And when challenged on it by the press, Trump has stalled, feigned ignorance, or deflected—but has never specifically rejected any of these other extremists or their ideas.

This stance has thrilled and emboldened hate groups far more than has been generally understood during the 2016 race for the White House. Moreover, Trump's tacit welcoming of these hate groups into mainstream American politics will have long-lasting consequences, according to these groups' own leaders, regardless of the election outcome.

"The success of the Trump campaign just proves that our views resonate with millions," Pendergraft told us. "They may not be ready for the Ku Klux Klan yet, but as anti-white hatred escalates, they will."

A three-month investigation by Mother Jones and the Investigative Fund—including interviews with white nationalist leaders and an analysis of social-media networks, nearly 100 hours of fringe talk radio, and dozens of posts on influential hate sites—reveals that what has largely been portrayed by the media as Trump "gaffes" has instead been understood by far-right extremists as a warm embrace by Trump. Extremists' zeal for Trump only grew with his decision in August to hire a new campaign chief, Stephen Bannon, the former publisher of Breitbart News and a big booster himself of far-right rhetoric. Trump's enduring campaign tactics—from calls for black protesters to be "roughed up" to the circulation of racist, anti-Muslim, and anti-Semitic language and memes—is proof for them that white nationalism has not only arrived, but has found a champion in a major-party nominee for president of the United States.

The Trump campaign did not respond to multiple detailed requests for comment regarding this story.
In early October, when bombshell archival video revealed Trump bragging about sexual assault and plunged his campaign and the GOP into chaos, that only further energized his extremist supporters. "Girls really don't mind guys that like pussies," influential alt-right video blogger RamZPaul said. "They just hate guys who are pussies."

Others celebrated Trump's angry, defiant debate performance on the heels of the video revelation. Spencer declared victory for Trump "because, basically, Trump fought back. He didn't abandon these issues that really define him and define our connection to him."

"The people believe Trump won the debate," Anglin posted. "It's really just an objective fact. Not sure how even liberal kikes could claim otherwise."

To understand how Trump's unspoken alliance with the far right has really worked, take one instance that caused a fleeting uproar last November, when Trump retweeted a graphic falsely claiming that black people were responsible for 81 percent of white homicides. Its source was a white supremacist Twitter feed whose logo is a modified swastika. Politifact and others quickly documented how "wildly inaccurate" the racist graphic was.

After a quick round of fact-checking and rebuke, however, the media moved on. But white nationalist news sites and radio programs were transfixed. "Now, you've touched the third rail of American politics by starting a real dialogue on race," Paul Kersey, of the racist blog Stuff That Black People Don't Like, wrote on VDare.

Trump had done the politically unthinkable—and then he doubled down, declining to delete the tweet (which remains live as of this publication) and asking rhetorically on Fox News, "Am I gonna check every statistic?" Even when Bill O'Reilly urged him, "Don't put your name on stuff like this," Trump didn't back down, saying, "It came from sources that are very credible, what can I tell you."

I can tell you that you (and people like you) are dangerous for America. [Read more here]