I think he's saying Hillary is too hawkish and hasn't learned from past actions.

Yeah something along these lines. The United States complaining that the Russians are meddling with our elections when we are directly involved in elections around the world and likely secretly involved in many other elections just makes me laugh. Like it's ok to mess with Libya or Syria because we the big bad United States but oh my God the Russians are hacking and messing with our elections!!! Freedom being questioned! Hillary being in the government for 20+ years makes her less sympathetic than the other candidates.

Totally agree with this. The whining is really poor form and makes her and the Democrats look really weak, which is the last thing we need given the current global climate.

Amazing that the conservative leaning folks are now okay with a candidate working with the Russians to illegally hack a party's computers.

I'm so old I remember when stealing from the DCCC led to a presidential resignation.

Yep. Apparently the #1 enemy of our country throughout most of my lifetime is okay if they are working against HRC. Seems like we should want whatever they least want for us, rather than having Putin's pet Trump in office.

My stance is not political at all (well it is political but not party based political) Ask me to rank the candidates: Johnson, Clinton, Castle, than Trump slightly over Stein. A Trump presidency would be an absolute disaster and Hillary would be as seemless a transition as Obama was. I actually feel like a lot of the hatred for Clinton is misogynistic and more often than not completely false.

All that said for a person whose career has been built on meddling in other countries polictics and actually openly overthrowing regimes (And that is just the stuff that is public knowledge... who in the hell knows what we don't know about?) I find the whining about the Russians "hacking" and basically releasing information our media and government won't is laughable. Pot meet the kettle.

predictit.com

My post Labor day thoughts, in no particular order:

The election has certainly tightened. Trump at ~1/3 chance feels about right. Which is kind of amazing considering where we were right after the conventions. I thought that he was too addicted to attention to stop saying stupid shit, but he's managed to find a group of advisers who have kept him muzzled, and that has been to his great advantage.

Trump will do well in the debates, mainly based on low expectations. The ratings will set records, and most people are going to tune in expecting him to call Clinton a cunt and look confused when asked to find Mexico on a map. He won't. He will stand on the stage in a nice suit, looking Presidential next to Clinton and give a pretty boring debate. And that will undercut the main argument against him--that he's fundamentally unfit.

Trump has been in the public eye as a non-politician for a long time. I am sure that Hillary's oppo research has an October Surprise or two to spring. Not sure the effect it will have, but there's probably some embarrassing videos or something to be leaked.

The #HillarysHealth thing was a brilliant move by the GOP. If she gets a cold or anything between now and November, it will be front page news.

This is the first election in my memory where one campaign has an obvious groundgame advantage over the other. Political scientists must be salivating over the data they will get regarding whether that actually matters in terms of outperforming polls.

This has to be the ceiling for the libertarians, right? The two most disliked major party candidates ever since records have been kept. Two former governors on the ticket--no crackpots. Neither major party is directing any fire at them. And they are running really, really well-done ads (by my subjective estimation). I can't see an election where they are likely to do better.

Slightly off-topic, but watched the Rob Lowe roast last night. I haven't seen anything more funny than the other roasters firing shots at Ann Coulter last night. Then she stood up and started roasting and I realized I haven't seen anything more uncomfortable at a roast than her segment. It was REALLY bad to the point that I felt bad that Donald Trump even had to be sitting at home saying 'sit down, you dumb bitch!'.

agreed with pretty much all of this...

There's a big difference between the Russians interfering, which we should stop, but yeah happens all the time, and a candidate working with a foreign government to undermine our elections. That really is new and should be condemned.

Hopefully GJ/BW forces the libertarian party to shift closer to the center next cycle. What's holding the party back are the crazy purists.

From a former Clinton advisor regarding Trump's chances......

http://www.wsj.com/articles/presiden...hed-1473203809

I still don't see the 1/3 chance. You lose the Northeast, the Great Lakes (minus Indiana) and the West Coast = there is not enough electoral votes elsewhere. Assuming, of course, nothing dramatic happens. Is that where the chance comes from?

No matter what, the media needs the narrative to be that it's close and getting closer. So look for the race to appear to tighten right up as it comes down to the line.

Turnout -- nor the lack of it -- probably what you have in mind as 'dramatic' but that's all it takes in the right demographics.

If Trump doesn't pay for some heavy cloudseeding on election day he's an absolute idiot.

Never thought I'd live long enough to hear a Republican say this about the Russian president,

Sounds similar to the Reagan/Gorbachev relationship.

Not quite. There was massive distrust between the two initially. And Reagan's comments about Gorby were not based on whether or not Gorby fed Reagan's ego.

Yes and no. Election models work a little bit like weather prediction. "Candidates in this position at this stage of the election with these fundamentals have won X% of the time."

So that's part of it. And part of it is the models extrapolating based on trend lines if the race is narrowing or widening according to the polls. The "unknown unknowns," if you will, where the model says "something could happen to continue or accelerate this trend."

Oh Gary....

"What Is Aleppo?" Libertarian Candidate Gary Johnson Stumped By Syria Question - YouTube

Last night Trump also threatened to purge the senior military command and replace them with people that have endorsed his candidacy.

yeah was watching when that happened, probably just cost him some votes. In fairness to him, it was a weirdly asked question, what about Aleppo? instead of what about Syria?, but still have known it.

My thing with him on the military is his insistence that he, who has no military/foreign service, has somehow more knowledge of the middle east, Isis, and military strategy than generals who have served 20+ years. And then to call them out for their performance during Obama's terms. It should be insulting to military leaders.

He watches the shows.

Ah, then I take back my criticism ;)

:D

Oh my... that's really not good when you want to hit that 15%...

NY Times doesn't know either.

The New York Times Doesn't Know What Aleppo Is, Either

{shrug} At some point you have to give the devil his due. Putin is far closer to sane than Obama.

Sanity probably isn't the dividing line. Do not suck me back into this shit.... :)

Yeah I have long grown tired of the "eliminators" for Libertarians. Like a huge leap to legal heroin or knowing Aleppo from a poorly worded question all of a sudden justifies not being in the debate while being a jackass all the time or people mysteriously dying in things you are involved with are just met with a shrug.

Should he have known it? Probably. Was it a gotcha? For sure, notice how quickly the graphic pops up like ZING we got you, unqualified. If elected president would he be surrounded by people who know this stuff? Sure.

Is there a small subset of the population like ISiddidui that really know this stuff. Absolutely and they should absolutely be able to criticize Johnson on this blunder. Does the majority of the voting population care about more than Sadaam starting 9-11 or Obama being from Kenya? You all know the answer to this.

Aleppo's also a province (governate), and ISIS controlled the largest suburbs until the last few weeks (and one of them today), plus despite the ideological differences at the top the difference between Al-Qaeda and Islamic State affiliated foot soldiers is negligible, so while mocking the NYT is fair, GJGE on the gotcha journalism Deadspin. Muphry's Law indeed!

So.Fucking.Embarrassing. :banghead:

Ya know, if this were an episode of The West Wing, and Josh Lyman was running the campaign for a 3rd party candidate, whom very few of the electorate were aware of, "Act like you don't know what it is", sounds like something he may recommend. And then CJ would say "You don't think that will make us look stupid!" and then Toby would say "Yeah....but at least people will be looking." And then Josh would say "You can't win if you aren't even in the game." And then a Snuffy Waldren tune would hit and even though it's only 2 episodes into the season, you know this guy is winning the election.

Mike Barnicle wrote this article after the interview. He said this:


"Much of the world wept for Omran Dagneesh but the tears and the heartfelt sorrow soon disappeared. Just the way ribbons of remembrance for those who serve and die in Iran and Afghanistan come untied in the winds of the changing seasons. Just the way the commitment of so many public people to remember the veterans and their families diminishes and then disappears once the election is over. Just the way they forget their duty to do their jobs, to make government work instead of trying to make it ungovernable."


"It wasn’t a trick question. It was the kind of simple question you might hear asked while standing in the checkout line of a supermarket. The kind of question that we might want answered when we are momentarily curious, thrown off our game by the image of Omran Dagneesh, his life fractured."

1) If you're going to get on your high horse, then know the difference between Iran and Iraq. We're in Iraq, not Iran.

2) What supermarket checkout lines are you going to?

I Asked Gary Johnson About Aleppo. I Don’t Blame Him For Not Knowing - The Daily Beast

Watching the whole interview, it was a rather poor interview by the hosts. They were talking about social and economic issues than suddenly randomly asked that question with no context or setup. Not the best response by Gary, though he finally did answer the question once he understood the context, but not exactly a great interview by the hosts.

Wednesday was embarrassing. Basic factual errors, self-contradictions, vague and crazy plans (somehow we're going to take oil from Iraq?), many moments of obvious BS, and more moments where his lack of knowledge went from obvious to blatant.

And 40% of the country (at least) is going to vote for this guy.

Because they want the OUTSIDER. (except in Congress).

Come on only one more post until Greta is off the last page. You can do it!!!

And HRC with a gaffe on the deplorable line. Will be interesting to see how it affects her.

Why would sit affect her. She had said half if his supporters are nut jobs that is quite accurate and she is not going to be stealing any of those who are in queue to vote for him.

It will hurt her because she's already apologizing for saying it. The next several days will be all about this and then it will come up again at the debates where it will be discussed anew each time. Each time it comes up she and her surrogates will apologize, further emphasizing the knock that Clinton isn't truthful and isn't strong.

We talked about it a few pages back, if the election is about Clinton, Trump can win. The past two weeks have been all about Clinton.

Yeah, not sure how it would be considered a gaffe when all Trump voters would consider such a statement a badge of honor ("whatever pisses off libruls") or identify as hardworking, "not racist," and all that other stuff.

Do not a large percentage of Trump supporters have a similar opinion of Clinton supporters?

Don't know and don't care.

Kind of the point though because, I suspect, a large number of those complaining do have similar opinions. I know my mother in law, for one, falls under this

I've kind of resigned myself to the belief that "the gaffe" is impossible this cycle.

If you read what she's saying, she's not actually apologizing. She regrets saying "basket of deplorables" but then double downs on the substance.

But look at all the headlines. That's all most people ever see.

Perhaps she should have said "binder of deplorables."