Tuesday, July 05, 2016

James Comey saves Hillary's bacon

Takes the heat off Loretta Lynch and any federal grand jurors in the process.  It was a pretty harsh scolding the FBI director gave the former Secretary of State in his public statement moments ago, but that's all it was.

I don't think the fire has been extinguished, but the bad weather is blowing over.

In chronological order:










So it was necessary, as referenced here, for there to be malfeasant intent, not just sloppiness or incompetence.  That's the part I got wrong; she didn't mean to, and that's okay.

I suppose there would have had to have been evidence that somebody died as a result of her mishandling of classified information.  But perhaps not even then.  Killing your own credibility and trustworthiness is no crime, after all.

Especially when it was already dead.

Update: It seems the law is quite clear about intent.
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Scattershooting President Clinton's first hundred days

-- This, via here, only succeeds in making me nauseous.  They left out 'start a war on Iran' for openers.  At least she might accomplish what Obama has failed to do on Guantanamo.  But she'd negotiate away an unfettered right for a woman to choose if she is left to drink alone with the GOP at White House happy hours.  (Yes, her call to abolish Hyde is a very good move.)


-- No, she won't. Because she understands what would happen if she did.

Texas Republicans, of all groups, are perhaps the most enthused over the idea that the state could be in play in the fall.

Republicans say they would love to see Democrats drawn into what they view as a hopeless money pit. But also, within a state GOP torn over its own nominee, a Clinton offensive could be just what it takes to rally an otherwise morose group.

“The quickest way to activate disenfranchised GOP donors who won’t give to Trump would be an aggressive effort by Democrats to win the state,” said Brian Haley, a Texan who was a top fundraiser in two previous GOP presidential campaigns.

Abbott is one of multiple Republicans who have already sent fundraising emails on the notion.

“She has already made it known that winning Texas will be a focus of her campaign,” Abbott campaign director John Jackson wrote in a recent missive, referring to Clinton. “It’s clear that Hillary will not only continue Obama’s liberal leadership—she will be even worse!”

Stay out of Texas, #HRod.  Democrats here have it bad enough as it is, and they might make up a little bit of ground  (scroll down to Mark Jones' assessment at the end) if you could just, you know, keep using the state as an ATM like always.

-- Some people are really mad about white privilege, brute-force capitalism, and Independence Day.

Call it the land you love, but make sure the drones are loaded, the poisons shipped off in container ships potent, the pestilence of capitalism fully armed with the parasitic power of one global power, my country tis of thee.

I could hammer and hammer the prison industrial complex eating the American Black Male. I could rattle on and on about the United States of Debts, all the trillions homeowners “owe” the financial loan sharks, thugs, or the trillion plus students owe for virtually worthless degrees in this precarious, at-will, dead-end job America.

I could rattle on how insipid and violent forgetting is, and knowing just enough of the foundations of the lies of history to get a young and old person steaming. Imagine, the state of the world with Hollywood, Big Sports, Bubble-head Big Media, Vapid Mainstream Academia weighing in on the vast sucking sound that is America’s presidential-congressional-gubernatorial set of mistakes called elections (sic).

Bombs bursting in air, as I cruised down from a pretty cool spot in the mountains, supposedly away from the ghastly 7-11-Walmart-Texaco-McDonald’s dervish of hyper-stupidity, also called mainstreaming, mainlining consumerism.

I certainly think that any of the morons advocating for #Texit -- even Greg Abbott knows better, for fuck's sake -- should have been compelled to go into the office or the plant for the entire three-day weekend, but this is simply too much hyperbolic exaggeration (two "trillions" is two too many) and way too angry.  Right message but absolutely the wrong messenger.

Dude: drink more America this Labor Day, mkay?

-- None of the above, thanks, but absolutely not Ron Green.
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Monday, July 04, 2016

"Battleground bloodbath"

Put down that hotdog and take a look at this.  Via Politico, Ballotpedia's most recent state polling shows Hillary beating Trump ...

  • in Florida by 14 percentage points, 51-37
  • in Iowa by 4, 45-41
  • in Michigan by 17, 50-33
  • in North Carolina by 10, 48-38
  • in Ohio by 9, 46-37
  • in Pennsylvania by 14, 49-35
  • and in Virginia by 7, 45-38

Landslide territory -- which is to say that she has no place to go but down from here.  Look at all the states in which she registers 50% or nearly; that tells you they surveyed just two horses in the race.  Hilariously, Ballotpedia also polled John Kasich and Paul Ryan against Clinton, and did include Gary Johnson in a separate three-way (but not Jill Stein).  Here's how that more realistic view of the landscape appears:

  • Clinton 47, Trump 34, Johnson 12, neither/refused 7, MOE +/- 4% in Florida
  • Clinton 38, Trump 36, Johnson 16, neither/refused 9 in Iowa
  • Clinton 47, Trump 30, Johnson 14, neither/refused 9 in Michigan
  • Clinton 44, Trump 37, Johnson 10, neither/refused 10 in North Carolina
  • Clinton 41, Trump 34, Johnson 15, neither/refused 10, MOE 3.9% in Ohio
  • Clinton 46, Trump 32, Johnson 13, neither refused 9, MOE 4% in Pennsylvania
  • Clinton 43, Trump 35, Johnson 11, neither/refused 11, MOE 3.9 in Virginia 

Update: If you feel like sanity-checking one state, look at RCP for the Tarheels.  Two late-June polls gave Hillary just a two-point lead there ... and one had Trump ahead by 2.

I've been reading some things that say Johnson pulls votes from Clinton in similar numbers as he does Trump, but Ballotpedia's results here suggest that's not enough to keep her from a very large Electoral College victory in November.  If you're one of those people who likes to parrot that "polls this early don't mean anything", then you might be a junior political consultant or a Trump voter.

As for surveying Kasich and Ryan as the GOP nominee, maybe Ballotpedia should just go ahead and do a Mitt Romney versus Joe Biden head-to-head, no third party candidates.   Because we wouldn't want reality to intrude in any way.

Update II: NPR's magic tool lets you  manipulate data like voter demographics and turnout to predict the winner.  Nutgraf:

"I will win New York against Hillary Clinton," Trump promised at a campaign stop this spring. It's a claim he's fond of reiterating, and since he has articulated a specific desire to win New York, we wanted to see what it would take for him to turn his home state red. Assuming all other demographic groups vote exactly as they did in 2012, and assuming turnout also remains constant, Trump would need to win 97 percent of white men in New York. 97 percent.

Here's your takeaway:

If Clinton somehow loses this election, it would qualify as the most stunning collapse in political history.  And that shame would be all on her.  No more Green excuses, Hillbots.  Look above at how the party and its nominee are still being ignored, after all.
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