It was strangely quiet this weekend politically, right? I’m saying that as someone who has been sort of shellshocked by how quickly the news cycle has been moving for the past few months. The rapidity of the news cycle has benefitted Donald Trump: we get outraged about some deranged thing he says or does and before we can even properly assess why that one thing should be the dealbreaker, he does something completely new which is equally if not more appalling. But it was a little bit quieter this weekend, possibly because everyone is gearing up for the final debate on Wednesday. After that, I guess all hell will break loose? Who knows. So here are the political stories going around:
Another woman has come forward. Her name is Cathy Heller and she says Donald Trump tried to forcibly kiss her at Mar-a-Lago in the 1990s. Her story sounds completely believable.
Peter Thiel is still pro-Trump. Thiel is the shadowy billionaire who succeeded at closing down Gawker, and the same guy who laments the fact that women have the right to vote. Thiel is donating $1.25 million to Trump’s campaign.
What Trump will do when he loses. Political commentators – even Joe Scarborough – have been openly discussing the crapfest that will go down on Election Night if and when Trump loses. Will he even concede to Hillary Clinton? Will his supporters call for armed revolution when HRC is declared the victor? A new poll says that 41% of the electorate believes that the election “could be stolen from Trump.” Stolen in the sense that people will vote for who they think will be a better president, then yes. That’s not stopping Trump surrogates from feeding the conspiracies that somehow millions of dead people will vote for HRC. Dem zombies!
A local GOP office was firebombed. The GOP office was located in Hillsborough, North Carolina and no one was hurt, although there’s a lot of damage to the building. Whoever firebombed the office also left some graffiti: “Nazi Republicans get out of town or else.” Both sides have issued statements, etc.
Nicki Minaj dragged Melania Trump. She rapped at the Tidal X weekend concert, “Ya’ll got the audacity to be intimidated by a bad motherf—king queen and get your motherf—king feelings hurt. But it’s O motherf—king K, ’cause Barack needed a Michelle, bitch, and Bill needed a motherf—king Hillary, bitch. You better pray to God you don’t get stuck with a motherf—king Melania.” When people accused Minaj of dragging Melania (which she was), Minaj tweeted: “Wasn’t ‘dragging’. She seems nice. But a smart man knows he needs a certain ‘kind’ of woman when running for President/attempting greatness.” Which is still dragging.
Speaking of violence. After the Arizona Republic, a right-leaning newspaper, endorsed Hillary Clinton, they’ve been getting death threats. You can read the publisher’s response to those threats here.
John Oliver on the third-party candidates. Here you go.
Photos courtesy of WENN.
“Ya’ll got the audacity to be intimidated by a bad motherf—king queen and get your motherf—king feelings hurt. But it’s O motherf—king K, ’cause Barack needed a Michelle, bitch, and Bill needed a motherf—king Hillary, bitch. You better pray to God you don’t get stuck with a motherf—king Melania”
Huh? And that is why I don’t listen to rap. I can’t get past all the non-normative lexicon.
Hilarious!
I haven’t had my obscenity filter have to work so much overtime since Deadwood went off the air….
I think there was a point in there somewhere….
😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂
Mr. EmmGee and I just finished Deadwood last night 🙁 . It was a great escape to watch a couple episodes and forget about the real world for awhile. What an awesome series that was!
I think I need a Trump trigger warning. All of this is really starting to affect me. There have been plenty of politicians who I didn’t like who were elected into office, but never did I feel a sense of real terror when one of them took office. I am so afraid that he is going to win.
All these articles about him are overwhelming. I think we already know enough.
Yep. I feel the same way and actually said out loud, “can we just assume that he groped and grabbed his way through literally every woman he encountered and have a radio silence?”
I mean, it’s safe to assume that right?
This election has really gotten to my mom and I finally had to be like, “Mom! You have to stop watching the news! You already know he’s an awful garbage monster. All this is doing is making you more upset.” Seriously, it reminds me of after 9/11 where all you did was sit in front of like CNN and you couldn’t turn away.
@meredith You could be my kid! Haha. This morning I said that and then my 13yr old said verbatim what you told your mom to me. He’s HAD IT.”
And then MY mom and I are both absolutely addicted to CNN and election coverage. We can not get enough indignation out between the two of us!
Yeah, I’m starting to need a “safe space” from all things Trump.
I’m a left leaning Arizonan and I have been very proud of the way the journalists at the AZ Republic have covered this election. The responses of the staff to the truly appalling threats were beautiful, courageous and respectful. They are absolutely right to stand up and say that Trump is not Republican and he does have the values of their conservative staff. Good for them for standing up for their beliefs instead of towing the line.
agree! (*toe the line)
I read the response yesterday and was deeply impressed with while simultaneously concerned for them. People need to calm down
Their response was amazing and perfect. Gave me chills and reminded me why I love this country.
Their response was so well written. It really moved me a lot, and reminded me how important (and sometimes dangerous) it is for the press. They are SO VITAL to democracy.
Are we Gonna do Another month of this descent into hell??! *rubs Temples ( also For the Record I’d sooner believe self sabotage than even a Bernie Bro doing that stuff in NC.. cause this is where we’re at now
THREE WEEKS, QQ! Three weeks. I wonder how many people are going to spend them drunk. I’m tempted.
Who would’ve thought that Sarah mamaf*ckinggrizzly Palin would seem harmless in hindsight. Not me.
Honestly, I Have my Weed and Wine Routine down pat, every am I wake up and Brace for the News Charlie Gayle and Norah have for me
Bet your ass I’ll be drunk on election night.
I’m honestly scared of what’s going to happen when we loses. Do you guys really think there’s going to be violence? I wish I had some kind of comfort to hold on to here, because the idea truly freaks me out.
“I’m honestly scared of what’s going to happen when we loses. Do you guys really think there’s going to be violence? ”
The US president doesn’t have much domestic power. Congress has the power to control the president. So I actually don’t think Trump winning would be the end of the world. I am pretty sure he is going to lose, though.
I don’t expect any riots if Trump loses. I live in Texas. It is all just talk.
The US president power is mostly in foreign policy. And I can tell you, as a Russian, I am scared to death of Hillary. She doesn’t like Russia at all. I am very scared she will do something that will provoke a war.
For me there is no good outcome in this election.
I don’t see any Trump supporter out there who looks energetic enough, frankly. I highly doubt we have to fear a Trump loss because of that but at this point, I make no predictions. 2016 is the year of the crazy.
Sasha, you don’t have to fear Hillary. Neither the US nor Russia can afford it. They can’t afford the wars they have going on right now.
Sasha – the truly scary thing is the President’s access to those nuclear codes. The fear of Trump firing off those missiles is very real. The President does not have to consult with anybody to do it. So instead of tweeting at 3am when he’s feeling angry and vengeful, he could be starting WWIII in a snit and making large parts of the world (including the USA) uninhabitable. He also can definitely send troops off to war on a whim – other Presidents have done it without the consent of Congress, despite the violation of the Constitution . They just claim an emergency and off they go, invading and occupying another country again. I complained to my Congressman about that long ago and he said I was right about the illegality of it, but there just isn’t the will in Congress to impeach on that basis.
It was the invasion of little Grenada that finally woke me up about such things. Reagan had been falsely claiming the tiny island was a danger for months and then boom – the troops were there and the place was taken over. The Reagan Administration falsely claimed that US citizens in medical schools there were in danger during an attempted coup, when actually they were quite safe until the US invaders came and started shooting. We were condemned by most other countries in the world except a few that depended heavily on US government money.
The President can also order covert operations that are highly illegal and cause tremendous damage. Read the history of the CIA in Guatemala in 1954, or the support and training provided to mercenaries trying to overthrow the elected government of Nicaragua during the Reagan and Bush Administrations. Not legal but devastating for the people in those countries. I had contacts at the time that provided evidence that the US government was illegally engaged in combat in El Salvador as well. One friend’s brother was in the Army and sent there, and had told her that if anything happened to him, not to believe he was killed in a “training accident” (that was the cover used at the time). A friend had pictures of US officers in a hotel in San Salvador (the officers were in the background, not the focus of the pics) which mysteriously vanished or were overexposed (can’t remember which) when sent off for development back in the US. Those officers weren’t legally supposed to be there, so my friend was tracked when he came back to the US. Since he wasn’t trying to hide anything, it was easy to find out where the film was developed. Only the roll with those particular pictures was affected. Others reported similar incidents.
Don’t underestimate the actions of our government in such cases. When the Administration is willing, ordinary citizens are targeted for surveillance and illegal phone taps, so who gets into the White House does matter. We had a similar situation here when we took some pictures of dented, rusted containers of low level radioactive waste (destined for the Fernald Ohio weapons plant, later sued by Ohio for safety violations) at a nearby rail yard. The proper papers were missing on the rail car. I’m a physicist and was concerned about the security of the containers and the local emergency response capabilities in case of an accident, since they were sitting just a couple of blocks from my house on one side and downtown on the other side.
We talked to the local newspaper, which surprisingly was not interested in the pictures we took that were being developed at K-Mart (where all the spies go, of course). My friends (who had accidentally discovered the tanks while taking a shortcut through the rail yard, and had come to me to check it out and take photos) walked out to K-Mart to pick them up and were then followed back by the local FBI agent (we confirmed that later) who had to slowly keep down with the walkers, zipping in and out of side streets and then parking near the Dairy Queen where they had stopped to look at the pics. One of the guys was ticked that they weren’t offered a ride… I was ticked because as a good citizen, I would have happily made extra copies for the agent if he had only asked nicely. I complained about this to the editor at the paper, telling him we were being harassed by the FBI, and he was very flustered and blurted out that WE were “harassing the government”. Obviously the local FBI had had a disturbing little chat with him, which is why he was so uninterested in followup. That’s when my phone began to be tapped, starting with some guy working on the telephone poll from a van curiously marked generically “cable” instead of with the local cable company name. This was happening to others elsewhere who were drawing attention to unsafe transport of radioactive materials through residential areas also. The tap was done on old equipment, so there were tell-tale noises for years when it kicked in (apparently it was triggered by certain key words). The tapping apparently stopped only when I casually mentioned to my Congressman’s aide that I was keeping track of the noises for a future court case. (He was shocked, “They need a warrant! You’re not doing anything illegal!”. He was more shocked by me being illegally tapped than by all the stuff I was relaying from contacts in Honduras about death squad activity…)
I submitted an op-ed to the local paper describing the peculiar events, but they sat on it for months despite inquiries by various other people who had copies (including a city councilwoman). Much later the city council was considering legislation to prevent such shipments from coming straight through town, and I passed around copies of the still unpublished op-ed to the council. Then I mentioned the lack of publication in a local peace newsletter and said if it wasn’t published soon by the paper, I would publish it in the newsletter. That finally got it published.
We discovered that the local civil defense person had sic’d the FBI on us because we had called her to ask that she run a Geiger counter over the tanks to verify that there was no leakage, they really were in bad shape. I actually had first called a former colleague in the college physics department where I had taught, asking if I could borrow a Geiger counter to do it myself, but he suggested the Civil Defense person would be appropriate. I was busy flea bombing my house at the time and couldn’t leave the cats unattended on the porch anyway…
So you would be surprised at how your tax dollars are put to work, spying on the likes of little old me.
I am completely prepared to believe they firebombed the office themselves in order to blame it on HRC supporters.
It reminds me of the woman who cut up her own face and claimed Obama supporters attached her.
It reminded me of the Reichstag fire in Berlin.
Oh thank goodness I’m not the only one QQ who has some questions about the bombing of that office. Horrific event but it seems a little too convenient and related to recent hate rhetoric, which is coming from 1 side almost exclusively. Like most of us I’m overwhelmed by the amount of crazy vitriol in attitudes, comments and actions this election. I’m having to limit my time watching and reading news. Every time I read something negative. I try to read, post or do something positive. It’s the only way I’m sane at this point. If there are violent incidents at polling stations or post election, then DT should be held criminally accountable.
Agree
Honestly, I never thought I would be a False Flag person, but here we are (thanks, 2016 election). I’ll wait for the investigation to run its course, but I will be 100% unsurprised if a right-wing person/right-wing people committed this attack. I mean, there’s only one group of people who have been threatening violence during this election and it wasn’t Bernie or Hillary supporters.
Yes, it doesn’t sound real, especially the graffiti. A real Trump hater would have a much more vulgar comment to make, this sounds like someone closer to retirement age who has watched too many old movies. They also were claiming they lost a bunch of completed absentee ballots, which would be illegal for them to even have.
I know it’s awful to call Trump supporters dumb… but like… the ignorance it takes to acknowledge all of Bill Clinton’s accusers (and say it disqualifies Hillary); yet, simultaneously ignore and/or question Trump’s accusers is… STUNNING. It’s mindboggling.
It’s really not that strange once you realize that these are essentially amoral people who simply don’t care about Trump’s crimes and all-round reprehensible behavior. They imagine that they will get what they want from a Trump presidency and in their short-sighted rush to the trough are willing to ignore everything else. Elites in Germany and Italy thought they could control Hitler and Mussolini too. How that work out for everyone? In the end, the only thing that Trump has ‘achieved’ is the mainstreaming of fascism in the U.S. with all the terrible damage to our institutions and democracy that will inevitably ensue. Make no mistake, rather than slide into demographic irrelevance, the GOP will embrace it’s fascist wing and we will be dealing with these people for many years to come at the state government and congressional level if not nationally.
@ELX, at this point I’m not sure many of the most extreme believe they will get anything positive from a Trump presidency. I think those extremists are just all lathered up at the thought of someone sticking it to whatever boogeyman (or woman) they’ve created in their tinfoil wrapped noggins. Royally screwing anyone who is not them is part of the appeal.
Then there are some who are just trying hold their noses and vote based on one or another of his positions (I know some small business owners who think his tax policies will be more favorable to them – not 1%ers but just people who have worked decades building businesses and worry that a HRC led administration will squeeze any profits from them when they go to sell, and leave them with nothing left when they go to retire. Though, TBH, I haven’t caught up with them recently, since Trump latest horrible statements, so I’m not sure even they are supporting him at this point)
I am very worried about what comes next.
I’m sure there are scores more going back many decades. And I believe them all. It doesn’t bother me that they waited to come forward. If I called the press every time some pervert was inappropriate when I was younger I’d have had little time for anything else.
I agree although I don’t think they “waited” for anything. Most anyway. One woman said that her entire family knew, they were all there and it was a story “Remember that time when Trump kissed & grabbed you?!” But there was no reason for her to ‘come forward’ (media, police- I am not sure what people expect). Why would they call up a paper for this guy when it would be non-news then? He was a rich celebrity and a pig by all accounts (his divorce to Ivana was not pretty- rape, cheating & reading Hitler books) so nobody would care until now. Which is why they called the papers now and the papers picked up the phone and wrote about it. It was Trump that made them come out to the media right now with his denial that he ever sexually abused a woman during a presidential election- not them waiting.
Yup.
Yes, what I meant by waited, was waited to go to the press. I think most women tell someone, like a friend or partner.
22 days.
Democrats raised $13,000 to replace the Republican headquarters that was firebombed. I thought that was awesome.
Early voting in Texas starts a week from today, October 24. Can’t come soon enough. Polls open at 7 am, and that’s exactly when I’ll be there, with my husband, ready to vote.
And Trump and his deplorables, being deplorable, will twist that into an admission of guilt.
“The US president power is mostly in foreign policy. And I can tell you, as a Russian, I am scared to death of Hillary. She doesn’t like Russia at all. I am very scared she will do something that will provoke a war.”
She is a bit hawkish.
But way better than the oompa-loompa.
She’s more likely to do something that will keep Putin from provoking a war. He doesn’t want to fight, he just wants to weaken some boundaries so he can let out the Russian belt a little — i.e. expand. That’s why Trump wants to weaken NATO – it serves Putin to weaken the European alliances.
“She’s more likely to do something that will keep Putin from provoking a war”
No. Hillary completely misreads Putin and Russians. She is very dangerous exactly because she doesn’t see the situation in the real light. She sees it the way she wants to see it. But she is bold enough to start a war.
Very often American politicians seem to be lost in an echo chamber because they are so used to political spin, they start believing their own spin.
I remember Hillary telling a story about meeting Putin and Putin was excited about showing her something about Russia. And the way Hillary was telling the story it was very obvious she felt superior and pretty much laughed at Putin being excited about Far East tigers, I think. it was completely tone death. I cringed.
LOL Putin said this about meeting HRC:
“It’s better not to argue with women. But Ms. Clinton has never been too graceful in her statements. Still, we always met afterwards and had cordial conversations at various international events. I think even in this case we could reach an agreement. When people push boundaries too far, it’s not because they are strong but because they are weak. But maybe weakness is not the worst quality for a woman.”
But HILLARY’S remarks are the ones that have you cringing? O_O
She once said this about Putin: “He is very difficult to read personally. He is always looking for advantage. So he will try to put you ill at ease. He will even throw an insult your way. He will look bored and dismissive. He’ll do all of that. I have a lot of experience with people acting like that. Go back to elementary school. I’ve seen all of that, so I’m not impressed by it.”
She actually sounds like someone who has a pretty solid understanding of Putin’s motivations.
No, Kitten. She doesn’t.
What Hillary is dealing with, and again I am shocked she is not aware of it, or maybe she intentionally misrepresents the situation – the difference in body language. Putin is very easy to read for a Russian. But American micro-expressions are very hard for Russians to read, and the other way around. it is the differences in body language.
I am not defending Putin’s statements. He dislikes her and plays it for the audience at home, makes her appear foolish and weak.
But Hillary being tone deaf when it comes to Russia is very worrying. She is not as competent as she is portrayed to be. I watched her when she was a Secretary of State. She wasn’t a good one. Kerry is the competent one.
P.S. My criticism of Hillary is not an endorsement of Trump.
Sasha – the problem of misinterpreting body language between cultures is very real. If Hillary wins, you should write a letter to the White House (with copies to her Secretary of State and anyone else you think should see it) focusing exactly on that point and the problems you see. Keep it focused, don’t stray into saying anything about her competence as a Secretary of State or your worries about her starting a war (that can be for a later letter if you see war looming). Just focus on the body language issue and perhaps suggest that when dealing with Putin in particular, that she be careful to have with her someone expert in Russian body language who can properly advise her about what is going on. You make good points and express them well, and if you write a coherent letter about it then the proper people are likely to see it.
I think both Trump and Hillary are scary for different reasons.
Really. Please let us know what they are so we can compare and decide which are worse.
God, I know, right? Hillary’s competence and stability are horrible.
I heard the normally unflappable Cokie Roberts almost lose her s$%t this morning on the radio about this whole “stealing the election” crap. Then I regrettably stumbled into a little wormhole on the topic online and found that people think that’s how Obama won his two terms. WTF?
When the lunatic fringe turns into “41% of the electorate,” we have a real problem. People have got to stop relying on memes and their slanted silo of info they’re getting as actual news or facts. I can’t look at FB anymore, there’s so much garbage being posted as legit.
Now the perv is going after Joe Biden. It’s on DM.
Melania dismissed Trump’s abhorrible admittance to sexual assault as “boy talk.” She also said that Trump was “egged” on by Bush to make lewd comments.
of course bill Clinton is never accused of raping anyone.
Bill has never been accused of rape by anyone credible. Juanita switches her story often, and was covering up an affair at the time. She later swore an affidavit that nothing happened. Ken Starr approached her to reverse that during the impeachment, but he decided she wasn’t a reliable witness. The Trump campaign decided to use her anyway.
The only thing we know for sure is that Bill Clinton was an unfaithful husband. I’m no longer so sure that the stories about him making obnoxious advances to uninterested women are true, but even those stories make it clear that he wasn’t angry or aggressive and was not vindictive when rejected. For what it’s worth – I’ve been creeped out by Trump every time I’ve seen him on tv for years, but I honestly don’t get any kind of feeling like that when I see and hear Bill Clinton. I know I’ve always been pretty much on the mark when I’ve felt creepy vibes from people on tv (for instance, Bill Cosby) long before their creepy activities became known. As a child, I even sensed something wrong with Nixon from just listening to him on tv. Nobody was talking politics to me and I lived in a Republican environment, so I don’t remember anybody saying anything bad about him.
“Nazi Republicans get out of town or else”?!? I’m sorry, but that doesn’t sound like a Democrat of the type to fire bomb …. No f-words, way too polite and vague, it sounds like an old movie western. So I’m wondering – did Republicans fire bomb their own office to try to pin it on the Hillary Clinton campaign?
They were claiming there were completed absentee ballots in there that were destroyed, which makes no sense at all except to give the impression that some awful Democrat ruined some Republican votes. Completed absentee ballots only belong in the mail stream or in the proper government office. The rules are very clear. No political office or anybody else would just happen to have a stack of them. The rules are very strict about who can even hand deliver them to the proper office for the voter, usually a close relative. Certainly not a campaigner. So if that office had them, it was highly illegal.
It was kind of sad to see Melania Trump “standing by her man” on CNN this evening. It means that once again Donald is making a fool of her for his own benefit. “Boy talk?” “He didn’t say he actually did those things” – oh yes, he did. “He was egged on” – nope, didn’t sound that way to me.
I hope the women he has kissed, groped or grabbed continue to speak out!
And for those of you who are worried about an “armed revolution” – don’t be. We have a fine system of police protection in our country. And we have the National Guard and the military if things ever got really dicey.
My fondest hope would be that when some of these Trump supporters actually get into the voting booth all by themselves that they come to their senses.