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

One way of getting around it for years was appointing a campaign manager to postmaster general, in charge of federal patronage.

My niece is starting her freshman year at the University of Akron this week, and she tweeted "The fact that Donald Trump was literally just here makes me sick to my stomach." So proud of her, especially since she comes from the right-wing redneck part of my family.

Maybe she was nervous and excited about the prospect of meeting him

hey Phil, are your redneck family family members actually excited to vote FOR him or more voting against Hillary?

Oh, they are all in for Trump. He's their dream candidate!

splitting hairs there really - who in their right mind sees Trump as the "lesser of two evils"?

xpost

In fact there's a good chance they think he isn't racist enough. I have family members that are neo-Confederates, Birchers, etc.

People not in their right minds. I know plenty.

Yglesias is having none of this Clinton Foundation reporting: http://www.vox.com/2016/8/24/12618446/ap-clinton-foundation-meeting

As the AP puts it: "[T]he frequency of the overlaps shows the intermingling of access and donations, and fuels perceptions that giving the foundation money was a price of admission for face time with Clinton."

With that lead-in, one is naturally primed to read some scandalous material — a case of someone with a legitimately crucial need to sit down with the secretary of state whose meeting is held up until he can produce cash, or a person with no business getting face time with the secretary nevertheless receiving privileged access in exchange for money. Instead, the most extensively discussed case the AP could come up with is this:

Muhammad Yunus, a Bangladeshi economist who won the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize for pioneering low-interest "microcredit" for poor business owners, met with Clinton three times and talked with her by phone during a period when Bangladeshi government authorities investigated his oversight of a nonprofit bank and ultimately pressured him to resign from the bank's board. Throughout the process, he pleaded for help in messages routed to Clinton, and she ordered aides to find ways to assist him.

I have no particular knowledge of Yunus, Grameen Bank, or the general prospects of microcredit as a philanthropic venture. I can tell you, however, that Yunus not only won the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize but has also been honored with a Presidential Medal of Freedom and a Congressional Gold Medal. In 2008 he was No. 2 on Foreign Policy’s list of the "top 100 global thinkers," and Ted Turner put him on the board of the UN Foundation. He’s received the World Food Prize, the International Simon Bolivar Prize, and the Prince of Asturias Award for Concord.

In other words, he’s a renowned and beloved figure throughout the West, not some moneybags getting help from the State Department in exchange for cash. On the level of pure politics, of course, this is exactly the problem with the Clinton Foundation. Its existence turns the banal into a potential conflict of interest, and shutting it down is the right call. But the fact remains that this is a fantastically banal anecdote.

Equally banal is this finding: "[I]n December that same year, Schwarzman's wife, Christine, sat at Clinton's table during the Kennedy Center Honors. Clinton also introduced Schwarzman, then chairman of the Kennedy Center, before he spoke."

Of course the secretary of state introduced the chair of the Kennedy Center when she attended the Kennedy Center Honors. More substantively, Braun and Sullivan also note that "the State Department was working on a visa issue at Schwarzman's request." One could imagine a scandal here, but the AP doesn’t produce one — was a visa wrongly issued? Or was the State Department simply doing its job and fixing a problem?

The State Department doing its job seems to clearly be the story of the time "Clinton also met in June 2011 with Nancy Mahon of the MAC AIDS, the charitable arm of MAC Cosmetics, which is owned by Estee Lauder." Was the meeting about Mahon trying to swing a plumb internship for a family member? Nope! As the story concedes, "the meeting occurred before an announcement about a State Department partnership to raise money to finance AIDS education and prevention."

Meeting with the head of a charity as part of an effort to raise charitable money is just the system working properly. Read the meat of the article, and the most shocking revelation is what’s not in it — a genuinely interesting example of influence peddling.

The State Department is a big operation. So is the Clinton Foundation. The AP put a lot of work into this project. And it couldn’t come up with anything that looks worse than helping a Nobel Prize winner, raising money to finance AIDS education, and doing an introduction for the chair of the Kennedy Center. It’s kind of surprising.

Pierce:

If you want a perfect example of what corruption-by-access can do to journalism, you have it right there. The authors know that candidates come and go, but that the permanent class of consultants, advisors, lobbyists, strategists, and other species of political Remoras will be with us always. So you decide that the candidate (and her husband) are to blame for not being ready for another onslaught of thinly sourced investigative offal. That way, your friend in the permanent political class will still return your calls.

It's a wonderful life, truly.

splitting hairs there really - who in their right mind sees Trump as the "lesser of two evils"?

― Neanderthal, Wednesday, August 24, 2016 12:35 PM (4 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Not in their right minds, but it's mostly the most deeply entrenched Berniebros and the conspiracy nuts and plenty of overlap there too.

Must be a lot of people who dislike trump but literally believe doing anything to help clinton to the white house would condemn them to an eternity of hellfire.

or berniebros as they're known lol joeks

When the rhetoric got them to those depths during the primaries, the idea of changing their tune now is a major case of cognitive dissonance constipation.

Oh look, horrible people made a horrible version of a horrible song:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C7aG-VQYGhA

why do i read comment sections, i know what will happen and every time it happens and i think "you could have prevented this"

cool revolution, bro: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/25/us/politics/bernie-sanders-our-revolution-group.html?_r=0

Huh, that may be the first time I saw a plane hit the towers.

The announcement of the group, which will be livestreamed Wednesday night, also comes as the majority of its staff resigned after the appointment last Monday of Jeff Weaver, Mr. Sanders’s former campaign manager, to lead the organization.

jeff weaver obv a very popular boss

uncucked and hellbent

“I left and others left because we were alarmed that Jeff would mismanage this organization as he mismanaged the campaign,” she said, expressing concern that Mr. Weaver would “betray its core purpose by accepting money from billionaires and not remaining grass-roots funded and plowing that billionaire cash into TV instead of investing it in building a genuine movement.”

I thought people were supposed to resign in protest over things that had actually happened, not in protest over things you projected happening at some unspecific future time. So, yeah, he's probably just a really crappy boss.

Paul Waldman cautions everyone to get ready for what'll happen in the Senate with President Clinton:

And what about the Supreme Court? We’ve all but forgotten that there’s still an open seat, since Republicans refused to consider the nomination of Merrick Garland. Some have suggested that if Clinton wins, they’ll quickly confirm Garland during a lame duck session, since he’s a moderate who’ll turn 64 years old just after the election and would thus be better for them than whoever Clinton were to nominate in his place. But Mitch McConnell has ruled that out.

There’s another possibility to consider: Don’t be surprised if Republicans suddenly decide, once Clinton makes her nomination, that the Court is functioning perfectly well with eight members, and we should really wait until President Ryan gets elected before we fill that seat. That might sound absurd, but every time people have said, “Republicans would never go that far” in recent years, Republicans have replied, “Hey, that sounds like a good idea.”

But since in our scenario Democrats control the Senate, that would mean Republicans would need to take the almost-unprecedented step of filibustering a Supreme Court nominee. My guess is that if they were about to try, new majority leader Chuck Schumer would pull McConnell aside and say, “If you do this, we’re just going to change the rules to eliminate filibusters for Supreme Court nominations,” which is something Democrats already did in 2013 for some other executive branch appointments. McConnell would say, “You’d better not!”, Schumer would say, “I’m gonna!” and then Republicans would proceed in retaliation to be even more obstructionist than ever, perhaps even shutting down the government (again) and threatening to default on the United State’s debt (again). Sounds like fun, right? And that’s not to mention the investigations. Republicans will impanel so many special committees they won’t be able to keep track of them all. I fully expect them to begin drawing up articles of impeachment before Clinton even takes the oath of office.

sounds pretty accurate lol

i've been thinking for a while that they might just not meet w/ any SC nominee

why even have a supreme court really

there's no fucking way they budge on the supreme court. this is how the republic is gonna go down in flames.

like you can't have the second of two parties basically declare the president illegitimate for 16 of the last 24 years and have no reprocussions

I think the lockstep discipline of the Obama-era GOP, partially founded on fear of Tea Party primary threats, might very well evaporate after November. Waldman's prognostications sound plausible but it could also happen that the whole GOP "coalition" no longer coalesces in the wake of the Trump

holy shit that video, kingfish

i thought it was a joke, but then looked at american renaissance's other videos and...no it's not

odds of Clinton winning and Senate staying GOP seem p low to me but idk. If she doesn't have a Senate majority she's in for a world of hurt and obstruction, no doubt about that.

No one posted about the lesbian-farmer invasion yet? Could become an important election issue soon.

xp With a Republican-controlled House she's in for a world of obstruction, regardless. Luckily, the House has no say in executive branch appointments, but the Senate has showed itself more than willing to obstruct those for years, if necessary.

OTM. And there has always been a world of hurt and obstruction from the Senate no matter who POTUS is, it's only in the past 20 years that the Internet has added a small amount of transparency to the proceedings and handjobbing.

right re: the House, but Waldman's scenarios about impeachment and judicial appointments all hinge on the Senate.

I'm assuming a Clinton presidency will basically pass no legislation (and possibly not even budgets) with a GOP controlled House. But if she has the Senate than she should at least be able to get SC appointments, avoid impeachment, etc.

the lockstep discipline of the Obama-era GOP, partially founded on fear of Tea Party primary threats, might very well evaporate after November.

dunno what you're basing this on. You think all of a sudden Ryan's gonna start bringing bills to the floor without a GOP majority + Dem votes? I don't see it.

it'll take a larger contingent of forward thinking republicans than exists on earth at this time to gather sufficient momentum to push the party away from obstruction-as-platform before any meaningful changes can come to the gop approach to governance.

I just think it could very well be every GOP rep for themselves. There won't be any control. Deals with individual reps might be possible.

Dems can't bring a bill to the floor without the Speaker, so idk where these deals would happen. Ryan has two options: 1) jettison the Tea Party/Freedom Caucus and rely on Dem votes to get a majority for compromise bills or 2) attempt to keep his caucus unified with an explicitly osbtructionist policy with the goal of cementing his rep as the sole defender of freedom against the evil socialist feminazi matriarchy for the 2018 midterms and the 2020 Prez election, for which he wants the nomination.

Which of these do you really think is more likely, cuz it isn't even a contest in my mind

even if the GOP coalition falls apart as a national party apparatus, rules of the House are still going to be in place, and they invest all the power in the Speaker for the majority party. There's no Speaker-less (or majority-less) version of the House.

Just going to leave this here..

UKIP's Nigel Farage to speak at Donald Trump rally

CALL HIM MR BREXIT (for some reason)

Farage is an appropriate speaker. Good model of Trump's intention: start a ruckus, fuck up the country, (wipes hands) 'Welp...looks like my job is done here!'

whole lotta talk about the clinton foundation(S) today

this one's hard to summarize but it's festooned with links and the subheads are grim-funny enough:

http://www.ibtimes.com/political-capital/clinton-foundation-investigation-update-key-details-about-financial-political

will bunch summarizes:

http://www.philly.com/philly/blogs/attytood/What-does-Hillary-have-to-do-for-it-to-be-corruption.html?mobi=true

this twitter thread (don't know who it is) gets pretty messy but there's links throughout

https://twitter.com/ActualFlatticus/status/767871619213692928

seems p clear to me that a president can't have a fundraising institution of any kind up and running. that goes for someone running for president too. and a secretary of state, if u think abt it

CF defenders sound a bit like Nixon fans in the '70s snarling "They all do it!"

Nixon broke the law.

I took four years of Latin in high school. I'm pretty sure that's what quid pro quo means.

whew! I was worried.

to quote Mr Bumble, "the law is a ass"