I DON'T KNOW WHERE THE BOTTOM IS • US presidential elections part VIII

Yeah that's what everyone else has been saying

#FeelTheEvan

#McMomentum

(Selfishly, I wish there were a lot more support for McMullin so that there could be a counter-McMullin movement, which could be tagged #NevahEvan - which is an anagrammatic near-palindrome akin to Erewhon.)

Mmm, All Saints ear-worm.

PALO ALTO, Calif.—“God help us,” George Shultz said yesterday when asked about the prospect of a Donald Trump presidency.

Ronald Reagan’s secretary of state has compiled a 226-page “Blueprint for America,” with contributions from 10 scholars at the Hoover Institution—the conservative-leaning think tank where he is a distinguished fellow.

The book is intended to provide the next president with advice about how to ensure America’s long-term greatness, including sections on the importance of an open immigration system, free trade and entitlement reform.

But it is a little awkward because the GOP nominee is running against each of those three concepts. He also seems uninterested in the finer points of policy-making.

Shultz, who helped shepherd the Cold War toward a peaceful denouement, has not taken a side in the presidential contest. He watched his words very carefully when asked about the election during a two-hour roundtable with a group of reporters here on the campus of Stanford University. But for someone who has devoted the lion’s share of his life to public service, it seems obvious that Trumpism is frustrating, even distressing.

If Trump thinks he's getting pummeled now, just wait until after the election when the members of his party no longer feel the need to hold their tongues.

you lost me at "PALO ALTO"

George Schultz chillin with Zuckerberg?

Hoover is based at Stanford, right next door to Palo Alto.

Many years ago my father was the director of facilities at Stanford, and at the time Schultz was living in a campus-owned home. During a drought, dad had to read Schultz the riot act for watering his lawn when it was prohibited. As a lifelong Reagan-hater it gave him a great degree of satisfaction.

Thinking about Hoover and his Stanford connections and all led to a spelunking in his Wikipedia entry, and thus this classic 'unusual detail'

Hoover liked to drive his car, accompanied by his wife or a friend (former Presidents did not get Secret Service protection until the 1960s), and drive on wandering journeys, visiting Western mining camps or small towns where he often went unrecognized, or heading up to the mountains, or deep into the woods, to go fishing in relative solitude. A year before his death, his own fishing days behind him, he published Fishing For Fun—And To Wash Your Soul, the last of more than sixteen books in his lifetime.

Waiting on Trump's Tweeting For Fun--And Because You're Sad!

Anyway I demand Alfred read this and report back:

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/2/2c/Books_fishing_for_fun.jpg

I tried reading Hoover's Woodrow Wilson book a couple years ago.

Ned, you called it: This is the thread for unusual details in wikipedia articles.

wtf is going to happen in louisiana? i think it's incredible this isn't a bigger story generally. but damn that place is not going to be in shape to hold a vote in 80 days

there's 100k people displaced

It's pretty horrifying that it isn't as well known, what's happening in Baton Rouge. Give Rod Dreher this much -- he's been on it all by default, as he lives there now.

Fuck washing a soul.

whenever I see the "—And To Wash Your Soul" subtitle, I think of elderly Herbert Hoover, sitting in a dark, cold room all alone, the finished manuscript piled on his desk, rueing the state of his soul.

i saw someone on the news say that this is the worst flood in LA history but that... can't be true, right? unless it's true in the same way that there were no terrorist attacks under GWB's watch?

from PPP's latest poll in Texas:

"We continue to find that Trump voters overwhelmingly buy into his preemptive claims about the election being rigged. Just 19% of Trump voters grant that if Clinton wins the election it will be because she got more votes, while 71% say that it will just be because the election was rigged. More specifically 40% of Trump voters think that ACORN, which hasn't existed in years, will steal the election for Clinton to only 20% who don't think it will, and only 20% who are unsure. Some things Trump says are a step too far even for his support base though. We find that 'just' 35% of Trump supporters think Barack Obama founded ISIS, to 48% who don't think he's responsible for that."

i saw someone on the news say that this is the worst flood in LA history but that... can't be true, right? unless it's true in the same way that there were no terrorist attacks under GWB's watch?

― Mordy, Tuesday, August 16, 2016 6:12 PM (12 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

probably has an asterisks for 'non hurricane related flooding'

xp: New Orleans has been only lightly hit (though its pounding on the roof now), but Baton Rouge is home to some 50-60,000 that left in the aftermath of Katrina. A good number probably have been flooded out of different homes twice in 11 years.

ACORN...I remember in 2008 how Van Jones (first I'd ever heard of him) was put out there by Republicans as this shadowy, terrifying militant who was registering dead people and organizing a takeover of the government. These days, he's an affable, pretty funny (to me--I know he's been dismissed as a generic party hack by some on here) CNN commentator.

I don't dislike him but he's an awkward, halting, unimaginative speaker; often he just stammers.

I wonder if Trump has ever been confronted directly by Priebus or Ryan or some party higher-up on the idea that he's a plant for Clinton. I imagine him reacting like De Niro in Jackie Brown.

Priebus: Look, we know it's a ridiculous idea, we just want your personal assurance there's nothing there.
Trump: Fuck you for asking me that...How could you fuckin' ask me that?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eYYK1enVHNg

Video imbeds are still not working for me, is that still the case for everyone else?

Yeah, and/but honestly I'm happier for it.

I am mildly unsettled by people whose first name is Van. Van Jones, Van Morrison.

Keep thinking their name is like that of Dave Van Ronk or Vincent Van Gogh, but they're somehow being precious by withholding their true first name.

Totally irrational and probably exclusive to me. And yet: you never hear of people whose first name is De.

Vincent Van Heflin

DeWitt Clinton?

I hate that too. Knew a guy whose middle name was Van, so when you said his full name it sounded significantly fancier than it was.

My future son: first name Mr., middle name Van. Good luck explaining that one, kid.

My future son's first name will be "FullsizeCargo"

Meanwhile

http://www.politico.com/story/2016/08/hillary-clinton-prepare-trump-debate-lewinsky-227033

Who should play Trump in Clinton's debate prep sessions?

(The corresponding question - Will Trump's debate prep include a Clinton standin; if so, who? - is inadmissible. He will no doubt assert that if he just gets a good well-done steak and sufficient blow-drying he'll be good to go; he'll wing it.)

Who should play Trump in Clinton's debate prep sessions?

Will Trump's debate prep include a Clinton standi

Roger Ailes apparently

Van Diesel, De Kelley
http://i.imgur.com/I4SvjFX.png

I kinda think Clinton should do a round robin debate with various random Trump supporters. She'd be working with roughly the same level of rationality and knowledge and vehement distaste. Maybe throw a kid with ADHD and a few severely mentally ill people into the mix. She certainly shouldn't treat it like any kind of normal debate.

Donald Trump is expected to visit the FBI’s New York office on Wednesday for his first classified briefing as the GOP nominee, with New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and retired Army Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn in tow.

So what are the odds Trump emerges and just starts saying "People, it is so much worse than I thought, here's what we need to do ..." and then just doubles down on his BS claiming the classified info he was made privy to - which of course he can't reveal to Americans - justifies whatever his plans are that day?

i think it's more a matter of how long it takes him to dip into that well. will he leave the FBI for a campaign stop and start in immediately? i think the answer to this is almost surely yes

Kurt Eichenwald at newsweek kind of dances around the point: trump's doctor might not exist

http://www.newsweek.com/donald-trump-health-doctor-490836

Color me shocked that the bewigged flesh plug might not actually be the healthiest president ever.

omg that somehow seems as insane as anything that has happened re trump xp

ctrl f'd std, sex, hiv and aids

disappointed

demand to know who that jacoby-esque picture was of then

http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2015/12/15/23/2F5FF6DF00000578-3361739-Donald_Trump_s_doctor_Harold_Bornstein_seen_here_in_his_Twitter_-a-16_1450221682514.jpg

this "doctor's letter" was put out back in the primaries, and yeah i remember people finding something on a "jacob bornstein MD" at the time

him not existing (or at least the whole thing being fake somehow) is my gloss on the thing

er sorry, the other name on the masthead, harold

Trump's doctor either (A) Failed to detect the debilitating bone spurs that kept Trump out of the draft, or (B) Is a genius who has cured bone spurs but has kept this information from the general public for murky reasons.

Which is it?

I think Trump's claim is that (C) the bone spurs magically got better later in life because he is so extraordinarily healthy. But don't take his word for it - an extended correspondence with the invisible doctors should clear everything right up.