Donald Trump's latest conspiracy theory

This just gets crazier and crazier, doesn't it?

Remember, birthers used to be an embarrassment to the Republican Party. Oh, sure, they encouraged it, but those Republicans who still kept in distant touch with reality were a bit embarrassed by it. Now, their candidate for President of the United States is a birther!

And not just that, either. Donald Trump is a conspiracy enthusiast to top all conspiracy enthusiasts. He's the National Enquirer of politicians. Reality has long since ceased to have any meaning for him. Yet this is the guy they want running the most powerful nation on Earth?

Of course, his fans, too, have long since parted ways with reality. And the rest of the Republicans would support Darth Vader if it would advance their political interests. They're Republicans, and they just don't care how crazy their party gets.

But this has stopped being funny, don't you think?

More problems with caucuses

Earlier this week, I mentioned how Bernie Sanders won Nebraska's Democratic caucus - and received most of our delegates - but Hillary Clinton's supporters actually bothered to vote in the primary.

So I was interested to hear another example of how caucuses are suppressing the vote and, this year, clearly in Sanders' favor:

What I am quite sure about is that primary process has not been 'rigged' as the Sanders forces claim. As I've argued, to the extent they're rigged, they're rigged in Sanders favor!. Last night's Washington state primary tells the story. Back in March Sanders got a huge morale boost and a minor delegate boost when he absolutely crushed Clinton in the state's caucus. Last night, when the state held a primary Clinton scored a solid win. The difference is that a bit over 200,000 people participated in the caucus and well over 600,000 voted in the primary. Unfortunately for Clinton, the delegates were all awarded on the basis of the low turnout caucus. Caucuses should be abolished in every state. They're just the best voter suppression method in politics today.

This is similar to what happened in Nebraska, where two and a half times as many Democrats voted in the primary as participated in the caucus. And those Democrats who actually voted chose Hillary Clinton, while Sanders was awarded two-thirds of our delegates because of the caucus win. [Note: My original figures were wrong, so check my revised post here.]

Votes matter. If you're not going to bother voting in a primary, why should we expect you to vote in the general election? Note that, there are other important political races, too, besides the presidential contest. Other issues, as well, in primary elections.

And what does it tell you when Sanders wins caucuses which have, in nearly every case, a very low turnout compared to elections?

I saw nothing about this in the media when Nebraska announced our primary results, absolutely nothing. I hope the same thing happening in Washington will get some notice, at least. I agree with Josh Marshall. Caucuses should be abolished.

I'm fine with getting rid of superdelegates, too, but caucuses are the bigger problem. Caucuses suppress the vote. That's not anything Democrats should be doing.

A big nothingburger

(Mother Jones)

The State Department released a report on Hillary Clinton's email server yesterday. Here's the article in the New York Times.

But to my mind, this comment by Josh Marshall at TPM sums it up pretty well:

Let's focus on the essential point: Despite the fact that there are some real questions about the impartiality of the IG, the report says the issues with the management of the Secretary of State's emails are of longstanding and go back with the last five Secretaries of State. The report also singles out Colin Powell, who had a similar set up. The criticism is there. It definitely wasn't a good arrangement. But to see this as a damaging report after the hyperbolic and frequently insane coverage of this issue is crazy. This was never more than some poor judgment overlayed by a big bureaucratic pissing match all slathered over by a thick layer of partisan game playing and media derp.

Like most Clinton scandals, if there there hadn't been months, maybe more than a year of weird conspiracy theories, expected perp walks and general nonsense, one might read this and say, wow, that's disappointing. But after all that, it's just a big nothingburger. Like it almost always is.

Yup, that about sums it up. But Republicans want political ammunition, so they'll manufacture it from whatever they can. And the media want viewers. The media want sensationalism. A story on "nothing to see here" is useless to them.

There's another thing that strikes me about this ridiculous 'controversy.' There were no negative results from it. Not even Republicans claim that anything actually happened as a result of her using her personal email account (as other Secretaries of State did, as well).

At least the Benghazi circus had four dead Americans to drag through the political muck. What does this have? Conspiracy theories?

Keep in mind that government officials still send personal emails. They're expected to keep official business separate, though that's entirely a matter of their own judgment. The fact that Clinton sent personal emails, too, is a complete non-issue, no matter how much her political enemies try to imply something nefarious.

Republicans have attacked Hillary Clinton nonstop for two decades now, and the media have gone along with it, because 'controversy' sells. Those attacks have had a real effect on Clinton's popularity (which Republicans have even admitted was the whole point), but they haven't found anything that's even slightly noteworthy.

Just a big nothingburger.

Trevor Noah: the NRA endorses Trump

Yesterday, I showed you the video clip of Seth Meyers covering this same issue. Today, it's Trevor Noah. I thought the similarities and the differences were interesting.

And both are quite funny, of course. Donald Trump is the gift that just keeps on giving, for comedians.

Let's put some soothing ointment on that Bern

I'm getting increasingly fed up with Bernie Sanders - well, with his supporters, mostly. But he's feeding this.

I liked the way he was running his campaign at first. But apparently, he doesn't play well with others. What is more important, his own political ambition or the possibility of a Trump presidency?

He's losing. It's almost over, in fact. But he's not losing because of any conspiracy against him. He's losing because more people voted for Clinton. That's how it works.

I mean, it's bad enough that voter suppression has been giving Bernie Sanders a boost. But those were the rules going in. They damn well should be changed for the next election (but probably won't be), but if he had won with those caucuses, he would still have won. But he didn't.

Throwing a tantrum because you're losing - or because your beloved candidate is losing - is not going to do anyone any good. Except the Republican Party, maybe.

Samantha Bee: the religious right, part 2

The above video clip is just the introduction, but I thought it was worth including here.

I posted the first part of Samantha Bee's The Religious Right last week (here). Now for Part Two:





It bears repeating. Abortion was just a convenient political issue for the religious right. Their real concern was keeping the tax breaks on their segregated, white-only schools.

Seth Meyers: the NRA endorses Trump

How could anyone support Donald Trump? How could anyone believe a word he says?

Republicans aren't just crazy; they're crazy even by their own standards of crazy, let alone mine. Of course, the NRA always takes crazy to a whole new level, but... sometimes they still surprise me.

Yes, I know that they're faith-based, not evidence-based. But is there no limit to what they'll swallow? Apparently not, huh?

Of course, this is Donald Trump we're talking about. Clearly, you must place no value in reality whatsoever in order to think that Donald Trump is presidential material in the first place.

John Oliver: primaries and caucuses

What a way to pick a president, huh?

I've blogged about this previously, how caucuses are voter suppression on steroids (not my phrase). In that post, I said:

And here in Nebraska, where the Democratic Party has had a caucus since 2008, party leaders are struggling to get voters to show up at the primary, where other offices are at stake, but not the presidential election. That can't be good.

So, how did that turnout? Just as bad as I expected.

Bernie Sanders won the caucus in Nebraska, and was awarded two-thirds of our delegates. But nearly half of his supporters couldn't be bothered to actually vote when the primary election came around.

Edit: My original numbers here were wrong. I'm not sure why. But I slandered Sanders supporters in that last sentence. My overall point remains valid, though. So let me continue with more accurate figures.

Bernie Sanders won the caucus in Nebraska, and was awarded two-thirds of our delegates. He received 57% of the vote, compared with Hillary Clinton's 43%. A solid win. But the turnout of 33,460 people is only 9.3% of registered Democrats in our state.

(Note that the graph here indicates a 2.5% "voter turnout" in Nebraska's caucus. But I don't know what numbers they're using. According to the Nebraska Secretary of State, there are 359,821 registered Democrats in Nebraska, so... check my math, if you like.)

A few weeks later, though, we had our primary election, and the presidential candidates were still on the ballot. Among Democrats, the turnout was 84,009 voters (again, from this document from the Secretary of State).

That's two and a half times the number of Nebraskans who participated in the caucus, and they gave the 'win' to Hillary Clinton. Of course, she didn't get any delegates from that. But in the primary, where two and a half times as many Democrats participated, 51% of Nebraska voters chose Clinton, versus 45% for Sanders. These were people who actually voted.

Note that there are 3500 votes missing (84,009 Democratic voters vs 80,436 who voted for Clinton or Sanders), with no explanation. Maybe some Democrats didn't bother voting for president, because our delegates had already been apportioned? Well, that's not enough to change the results, even if all of them were Sanders supporters.

Caucuses suppress the vote. That's bad in itself. But that voter suppression changed the outcome of the election in Nebraska (and in Washington state, as well). I don't know how common that is, but it's a serious problem.

And note that, in Nebraska, Democrats caucus, but Republicans don't. That's another problem, because it's hard to get people to the polls when the presidential race isn't going to matter. Republicans have a big advantage in registered voters here, anyway - 564,718 vs 359,821, which is a 22% difference.

But nearly two and a half times as many Republicans as Democrats actually voted in the primary. That's just an incredible difference.

I have to think that the caucus was a big part of the difference. On the Democratic ballot, the presidential contest was meaningless, since that had already been decided. (Not so on the Republican ballot.) There were other important - if not so exciting - political offices decided on that primary ballot, and issues, too. Why give Republicans an even bigger electoral advantage than they already have?

My original post continued:

And keep in mind that the caucus turnout was pathetic in itself - just 2.5% of eligible voters, apparently. [Again, I don't know what numbers they were using in that graph, since I make it 9.3%. But presumably they used the same calculation for each state, so the comparisons should still be valid.] Even that was more than they expected. Believe it or not, the headlines here in Nebraska were about the "big caucus turnout."

There are two problems with this. The first is that caucuses suppress the vote. Yeah, 2.5% turnout was considered huge (with a fierce presidential contest still undecided, too). Well, I don't want my presidential candidate determined by 2% or less of the Democrats here.

But the other problem is that there are other races and other issues, all of which need voter consideration, as well. However, when you take away the presidential decision from a primary election, how do you get people to show up for it?

As I say, here in Nebraska, nearly half of the people who gave Bernie Sanders that caucus win didn't even bother to vote a few weeks later.

And it's worse than that, because here in Nebraska, the Democratic Party caucuses, but the Republicans don't. Thus, Republicans do have the presidential contest to get them out to the polls. (As it turned out, Donald Trump was the only candidate left by the time Nebraska held its primary, so there wasn't much of an incentive for them, either. But that was pure luck.)

I've heard a lot about those notorious "superdelegates" this year, and I don't want our presidential candidate determined by them, either. But I think I'd rather have superdelegates - most of whom were elected, at least - making that decision than caucuses. Of course, I'd much prefer to have a primary election.

At least it's relatively easy to participate in a primary. At least you have to work at it to suppress the vote in a primary. And if you vote in a primary, maybe we can have some confidence that you'll actually show up to vote in the general election, too.

We've been here before

Do women walk around naked in women's restrooms? Are there no doors on the stalls? Do you just sit side by side, chatting with your neighbor?

Indecent exposure is still a crime. Nothing about transgender policy would change that. So what's the problem?

Now, in a men's room, there are urinals. But for some reason, we don't hear about the problem of women standing beside a man at one of those. (Admittedly, I probably wouldn't notice, because I don't look at the people peeing beside me, let alone at their genitals!)

As Trevor Noah points out, we've been here before. We've been here when racists were outraged about the idea of sharing a restroom with a black person. We've been here when homophobes were outraged at the idea of sharing a restroom - or a shower - with a gay person. It's the same thing.

Well, not quite, because transgender people are a tiny fraction of the population. If you're not one of them, chances are good that you will never have a problem or even anything that you could imagine as a problem. Indeed, they've always existed, and we've never had a problem before now. Do you routinely inspect the genitals of every person you share a restroom with?

For transgender people, this is a problem. It's a problem they face every day. But for the rest of us, it's not. For the rest of us, it's just bigotry or acceptance.

PS. If you haven't seen it, I highly recommend this video. Transgender rights haven't been on the radar for most of us for very long. Ignorance is understandable, but can - and should - be corrected.

Samantha Bee: the victims of super-PACs

Two video clips from the same show on the same day? Sorry, I couldn't resist. Samantha Bee is doing such a good job! Besides, it's not as though I've been posting all that much lately, huh?

I just thought this was funny. Mel Immergut seems like a good sport, at least, even if I can't stand his politics and hate the whole 'money is speech' idea that lets the wealthy buy our politicians. On the other hand, it cheers me up that they don't always get what they pay for.

Samantha Bee: the religious right

I knew all this, but I wonder how many people realize that it was racism that got the religious right active in politics. Abortion was just a happy (for them) accident, an issue that turned out to be popular (and better for their image than segregation).

Edit: Here's Part Two from Samantha Bee.

xkcd

(xkcd)

That's what I need.

The Republican Party's cancer train

Yup, this is kind of what I think about it (minus the peeing). Sure, it's embarrassing. Sure, it's dangerous as hell for America. But it's still hilarious.

The Republican Party brought this on themselves. And I really, really hope they end up regretting what they've done the past few decades.

Rising xenophobia

In another incident of hysteria and xenophobia - as we've seen in previous incidents like this one - a blonde passenger on an American airlines flight became suspicious of her seatmate:

On Thursday evening, a 40-year-old man — with dark, curly hair, olive skin and an exotic foreign accent — boarded a plane. It was a regional jet making a short, uneventful hop from Philadelphia to nearby Syracuse. ...

Had the crew or security members perhaps quickly googled this good-natured, bespectacled passenger before waylaying everyone for several hours, they might have learned that he — Guido Menzio — is a young but decorated Ivy League economist. And that he’s best known for his relatively technical work on search theory, which helped earn him a tenured associate professorship at the University of Pennsylvania as well as stints at Princeton and Stanford’s Hoover Institution.

They might even have discovered that last year he was awarded the prestigious Carlo Alberto Medal, given to the best Italian economist under 40. That’s right: He’s Italian, not Middle Eastern, or whatever heritage usually gets ethnically profiled on flights these days.

Menzio had been on the first leg of a connecting flight to Ontario, where he would give a talk at Queen’s University on a working paper he co-authored about menu costs and price dispersion. His nosy neighbor had spied him trying to work out some properties of the model of price-setting he was about to present. Perhaps she couldn’t differentiate between differential equations and Arabic.

Yes, that brilliant American passenger couldn't distinguish mathematics from Arabic. Not that it would have mattered if this man had been writing Arabic. So what? Not that it should have mattered if he'd been of Middle Eastern, rather than Italian, ancestry. What in the world has happened to us?

You can read the whole story here. But it's completely insane. Like Donald Trump's candidacy, it's a triumph of hysteria, xenophobia, and irrational fear over sanity, courage, and common sense.

Actual Islamic terrorists must be laughing their asses off. This is exactly what terrorism is designed to accomplish. It works best on cowards, because cowards overreact. And what better way to destroy America than to encourage America to destroy itself? (They must be overjoyed at the rise of Donald Trump.)

It's bad enough that we have to take our shoes off before boarding a plane, because one guy tried - unsuccessfully - to explode his shoes. And it was certainly disgusting that we were willing to torture prisoners of war because we were scared (or because the Bush Administration wanted to justify their invasion of Iraq, take your pick).

But this degree of hysteria is just ridiculous. Now an Italian economist can't even take a plane in America? Or anyone who speaks Arabic to a relative on a phone? Or any Muslim at all? (Or anyone who even looks Muslim?)

What has happened to the America I love?

Donald Trump: Republican Party unifier

This is a campaign ad from Hillary Clinton. Pretty good, isn't it? I don't think I've ever agreed with so many Republicans as much as I do here.

Of course, I don't see it changing any minds. If you supported that boastful clown in the first place, you're beyond reason. And the majority of these Republicans - who know exactly how bad Trump is - will still back him in the general election. Few will put country above party.

After all, this is the same party that deliberately used racism for political advantage. This is the same party that, as our country was collapsing in the worst economic crash since the Great Depression, pledged to do nothing to help, in order to make the situation as bad as possible for our first black president. This is the same party that committed treason against America to advance their own political ambition.

Donald Trump is a natural progression from that. So is Ted Cruz, who was Trump's only real rival on the campaign trail. This is the Republican Party Republicans have created from decades of their Southern strategy of deliberately wooing white racists.

It all comes back to that Southern strategy. In the 1960s, Democrats chose to do what was right, rather than what was politically advantageous. In response, Republicans chose to do what was wrong, because it would give them a lot of political power. (And it did. Using racism was wildly successful.) Today's Republican Party - Donald Trump and all - is the result of that.

The party of Donald Trump

"The Republican Party is the party of Donald Trump." Yup. Seth Meyers is absolutely right about that (as he proceeded to demonstrate).

A win for hate and nonsense

(Tom Toles)

Well, after losing Indiana, Ted Cruz has dropped out of the presidential race, so it's smooth sailing for Donald Trump to win the GOP nomination.

Wow! Hard to believe, isn't it? Republicans have actually chosen that clown to be President of the United States!  Who could have predicted this?

Of course, it's not that Ted Cruz would have been any better. In both cases, I'll refer you to my earlier post about how the Republican Party's hate and nonsense debt has come due. (And no, that's not my phrase. I was paraphrasing Josh Marshall at TPM.)

That's still my opinion, so I won't repeat myself here. I've done that often enough, already. But now, we'll see Republican Party leaders changing their tune about Trump, don't you think?

And really, he just does Republican hate and nonsense better than they do. They might be unhappy about that, but they'll get over it.

(Tom Toles)

Caucuses are voter suppression on steroids?

(TPM)

From Josh Marshall at TPM:

You know that I've been saying over and over that to the extent that the Democratic nomination process is 'rigged', the rigging has been a huge advantage to Bernie Sanders. As I've noted, that's mainly because of caucuses. It drives me crazy, candidly, when Sanders claims on the stump that where voter turnout has been highest, he's done best. That's not remotely true. Indeed, where it's been lowest, he's done best. Almost entirely because of caucuses, which are really the most effective voter suppression method in politics today.

And now here's a good visualization of this fact.

Jeff Stein at Vox highlights this study prepared by the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under Law which captures a lot of what's wrong with caucuses. Read the study itself because it goes into specific issues with complaints about disenfranchisement, complaints, reasons for the problems, etc. But the bare numbers tell the story clearly enough.

As you can see, with the single slight exception of Idaho, no primary state had a lower turnout than any caucus state. Most primary states were in the 30% or 30%+ ballpark, with two states (which Sanders actually won) around 50%. Most caucus states were under 10%.

If you care anything about voter participation or making sure people can vote even if they have a job or don't have a free evening to spend at the local YMCA or school gym, the case against caucuses is simply overwhelming.

That image probably isn't easy to see, but there's a larger version here. Or maybe this image will work better:

(Vox)

This isn't about the current election, not really. Caucuses have apparently helped Bernie Sanders this year, but both sides knew the rules before the election even started. No, this is about our democracy.

This is about encouraging more participation in our political process, rather than suppressing the vote (even if that's not the intent, it's still the result).

And here in Nebraska, where the Democratic Party has had a caucus since 2008, party leaders are struggling to get voters to show up at the primary, where other offices are at stake, but not the presidential election. That can't be good.

In state after state, the Republican Party has been trying to suppress the vote, especially the vote of Democratic-leaning constituencies. It's time for the Democratic Party to stand up for increased participation. Caucuses are not the way to go.

Angel

(BBC)

OK, this is weird:

Indonesian police have confiscated a sex toy from a remote village after its inhabitants and some on social media mistook it for an "angel".

The doll was found in March floating in the sea by a fisherman in the Banggai islands in Sulawesi province.

His family took care of the doll, and pictures soon spread online along with claims it was an angel.

Police investigated amid fears the rumours would cause unrest, and found it was in fact an inflatable sex doll.

Indonesian news portal Detik said photos of the doll dressed demurely and wearing a hijab spread on social media shortly after its discovery.

Rumours then began to spread that it was a "bidadari" [angel] along with unverified stories about how it was found "stranded and crying", prompting the police investigation.

OK, as the local police chief noted, "They have no internet." No doubt they find the whole concept of an inflatable sex toy to be bizarre. So do I. But it's the 21st Century, and they still believe in angels?

Well, so do most Americans, I suspect. It's crazy, but it's not limited to primitive people in Indonesia. (I do think it's funny that the doll was dressed "demurely" and wearing a hijab, but it was probably dressed that way by the villagers, don't you think?)

Furthermore, the belief in this "angel" did spread on social media, apparently. It wasn't just poor fishermen, not at all.

But you know what's most interesting to me? Stories were already spreading about how this angel was found "stranded and crying." But according to Christians, we're supposed to believe the magical stories spread by primitive, superstitious people 2,000 years ago?

This doesn't just show how superstitious people can be when they don't understand something. It also shows how people make up and spread stories about the supernatural. And this is the 21st Century, with widespread literacy even in Indonesia and far better access to news and information than existed in biblical times.

Well, I thought this was both interesting and instructive. And quite funny, too. :)

2016 White House Correspondents' Dinner

I always enjoy these. As usual, Barack Obama is a hard act to follow:





Larry Wilmore's speech is almost painful to watch, not because it isn't funny, but because the audience was not amused by much of it.

Well, he certainly didn't pull any punches, did he? And he deliberately kept it black, too.