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2:00PM Water Cooler 4/18/2017

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By Lambert Strether of Corrente

Trade

“TRUMP TO SIGN EXECUTIVE ORDER ON ‘BUY AMERICAN, HIRE AMERICAN’: President Donald Trump will act on one of his signature campaign promises today when he signs an executive order aimed at promoting “Buy American, Hire American” practices. The order, which Trump will sign in Wisconsin this afternoon, will direct Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross to lead an investigation into government procurement practices at federal agencies, with a focus on rooting out weak monitoring, enforcement and compliance efforts. It will also task four agencies with re-examining all programs under which workers enter the United States from abroad” [Politico].

Politics

New Cold War

“US deploys ‘a few dozen’ troops to Somalia: Pentagon” [Al Jazeera]. Swell.

2016 Post Mortem

“Trump’s Wisconsin win was an aftershock of the Great Recession” [WaPo]. Eight years later… Some shock! About a new book on Janesville, Wisconsin, which nearly flipped to Trump. This: “To this day, most Washington elites don’t fully grasp just how painful the Great Recession was for tens of millions of Americans. Government spending increased, and the military-industrial complex prospered, so D.C. denizens were mostly insulated from the economic crisis.” And this: “Importantly, Janesville is not part of the Rust Belt. Places like Youngstown, Ohio, and Pittsburgh have been decaying for decades. But this area was faring relatively well until the 2000s. Generations of Janesville kids, going back to 1923, grew up excited to follow their dads onto the assembly line so they too could make Chevys. They saw a union card, not a college degree, as the ticket to a respectable middle-class livelihood. So the plant closure was a profound shock to the system.”

“‘Shattered’ Charts Hillary Clinton’s Course Into the Iceberg” (ha) [New York Times]. “In chronicling these missteps, ‘Shattered’ creates a picture of a shockingly inept campaign hobbled by hubris and unforced errors, and haunted by a sense of self-pity and doom, summed up in one Clinton aide’s mantra throughout the campaign: ‘We’re not allowed to have nice things.'” No nice things. So Clinton delivered the same message internally she delivered to voters.

“‘Shattered’ offers a number of gratifying revelations. Among them: Mrs. Clinton’s tinkering with a certain computer server. Not that server—a different one” [Wall Street Journal].

After losing to Mr. Obama in the protracted 2008 primary, she was convinced that she had lost because some staffers—she wasn’t sure who—had been disloyal. So she “instructed a trusted aide to access the campaign’s server and download the [email] messages sent and received by top staffers.” This tells us, first, that Mrs. Clinton possesses an almost Nixonian paranoia about treachery and, second, that her use of a private email server at the State Department was never the naive “mistake” she pretended it was. In fact, she didn’t want anyone reading her emails the way she was reading those of her 2008 staffers.

Plausible, at least.

2017

GA-06: Voting today.

GA-06: “It’s not clear what to expect Tuesday night, however. It’s hard to estimate how many people will vote, and the public polls are of fairly low quality. One prediction: It’s likely that the first votes counted will be misleadingly good for Mr. Ossoff” [New York Times]. “There is no reasonable way to look at the polls and conclude that Mr. Ossoff is likely to get to 50 percent. But it would not take an especially unusual polling error, at least for a special election, for him to pull it off.”

GA-06: “WaPo’s Bob Costa gives us his take: ‘This district has been the launching pad for big foot conservative Georgia Republicans ever since Gingrich won the seat in ‘78. Then came Johnny Isakson and Tom Price. As Ralph Reed told me, this explains why 11 Republicans are clamoring to be the next congressman. Get a base in the wealthy Atlanta suburbs and you’ve probably got yourself a political future. The chaotic GOP scramble hasn’t been pretty but as long as Ossoff remains below 50 percent Tuesday, it’ll still probably be a GOP district come June, when and if the run-off comes. Ossoff has done well but the Atlanta ‘burbs aren’t the swing Philly ‘burbs… yet.'” [Politico].

GA-06: “Georgia special election: one local penny for every $10 in national cash” [Center for Public Integrity].

GA-06: Ossoff: “I’m focused on bringing fresh leadership, accountability and bipartisan problem solving to Washington to cut wasteful spending and grow metro Atlanta’s economy into the Silicon Valley of the South” [Newsweek]. Eesh. Sounds like the Dems backing Ossoff read Listen, Liberal and said “Yeah, let’s do more of that.”

Realignment and Legitimacy

DNC Deckchair Perez and Sanders kick off the DNC unity tour in Portland, Maine:

Be interesting to see if this keeps happening…

“And in recent weeks, former President Bill Clinton told new Democratic National Committee Chairman Tom Perez that he didn’t want the Democratic Party ‘to be simply the party of Bernie,’ according to a source familiar with that conversation” [The Hill]. Marching orders? “An aide to Clinton refuted the characterization, saying the former president has always said the strength of Democratic Party is its inclusiveness. A DNC spokesperson said Perez says the conversation didn’t happen.”

“DNC Announces Members Of Unity Reform Commission” [HuffPo]. “The commission will now begin the process of discussing reforms to the party’s presidential nominating process, including hot-button issues like the role of super-delegates and caucuses. It will present its recommendations to the DNC by January 2018.”

Sanders had also already named his selections to the commission. They are Cohen, the vice chair; former Ohio state Sen. Nina Turner; former Sanders campaign manager Jeff Weaver; former Sanders New York delegate Nomiki Konst; Jim Zogby, founder of the Arab-American Institute; former Berkeley, California Mayor Gus Newport; former Nevada Assemblywoman Lucy Flores; and Nebraska Democratic Party Chair Jane Kleeb.

The DNC declined to name the three members Perez picked and a spokesman for Clinton did not respond to a request for information on her appointments.

“The Upstate New York congressman who faced overflowing crowds of protesters at town hall meetings managed to raise a record amount of money after the protests gained national attention” [Syracuse.com]. “U.S. Rep. Tom Reed raised $585,282 in the first quarter of the year, a personal high for the fourth-term Republican from Corning.” What if Dems had a positive, policy-driven message? I guess we’ll never know.

“Moderate Republican House members have had a much tougher recess than conservatives when it comes to Trumpcare. Members from purple districts have had to weather angry liberals and disappointed conservatives, while conservatives have largely emerged as heroes” [Axios]. “With different factions of the GOP pointing fingers at one another, the blame game is only effective if members’ constituents are angry with their representative. Right now, it seems like the Freedom Caucus is actually being celebrated for blocking Trumpcare, which was extremely unpopular nationally.”

And then there’s this:

Clearly, Democrats need to talk more about Putin and keep pushing for war.

Stats Watch

Industrial Production, March 2017: “A weather-related surge in utility output masks what is otherwise a weak industrial production report for March” [Econoday]. “[M]anufacturing production, where a small gain was expected, fell. … [I]t’s manufacturing that represents the vast core of this report and it points to a quarter-end fizzle for a factory sector where unusually strong readings in sentiment reports have not panned out to strength in definitive data like today’s report.” And: “Very modest growth continues from the lows following the crash in oil capex, and note that the numbers are not inflation adjusted” [Mosler Economics].

Housing Starts, March 2017: “The first quarter ended with a thud for housing starts which fell a very steep 6.8 percent” [Econoday]. “[S]trength is entirely on the multi-family side… March data are often difficult when seasonal factors, including heavy weather, are often at play. But the weakness in starts and strength in permits do point to a possible and favorable theme for the first-half economy in general: weakness in the first quarter followed by a sizable rebound in the second.” Huh? “Favorable theme”? Huh? But and: “Multi-family is frequently volatile month-to-month, and has seen especially wild swings over the last six months” [Calculated Risk]. “Starts were up 9.2% in March 2017 compared to March 2016, and starts are up 8.1% year-to-date. My guess is starts will increase around 3% to 7% in 2017. This is a solid start to 2017, however the comparison was pretty easy in March.”

Retail: “Warehouses like these are becoming a way of life for many urbanites. Instead of spending the afternoon choosing items off store shelves and standing in a checkout line, city dwellers of the future will tap a few buttons on hand-held devices and a part-human, part-machine warehouse crew in a nearby industrial district will handle the transaction from start to finish. The weekly shopping is done in 10 minutes, and the shopper never has to leave the house” [Wall Street Journal].

Debt: “Loan growth stalls despite profit, trading gains at some U.S. banks” [Reuters]. “Big U.S. banks revealed more evidence of a slowdown in loan growth in their earnings reports on Thursday, though executives assured there is still healthy demand from borrowers and no reason to worry about the state of the economy.” I’m not an expert in bank executive-ese. Is “no reason to worry” like “the dreaded vote of confidence” in baseball?

Commodities: “Companies controlled by Israeli mining magnate Beny Steinmetz sued fellow billionaire George Soros, claiming he cost them at least $10 billion through a defamation campaign that stripped them of rights to an iron ore deposit in Guinea and other business opportunities around the world” [Bloomberg].

Shipping: “Within the maritime industry, non-compliance in container packing comes in several flavours, such as container weight mis-declaration, cargo mis-declaration, undeclared hazardous cargo, and lack of identification marks such as proper labelling” [Lloyd’s Loading]. “Whatever the flavour, this non-compliance has caused, and continues to cause, a lot of damage across the shipping and freight industry, both in terms of money and lives, and places the entire supply chain under risk.” No hard numbers, though.

Shipping: “Los Angeles reported a 29% year-on-year rise in containers handled in March to 788,524 teu due to a post-Lunar New Year jump in cargo from Asia as well as more US retailers transporting goods before the new vessel alliance network operations kicked in on April 1” [Lloyd’s List].

Shipping: “J.B. Hunt operated fewer trucks last quarter, and the results show few signs that the carrier will want to add capacity anytime soon” [Wall Street Journal].

The Bezzle: “Do Independent Directors Curb Financial Fraud? The Evidence and Proposals for Further Reform” [The Harvard Law School Forum on Corporate Governance and Financial Regulation]. “One would have hoped these SOX-created independent watchdogs would reduce the incidents of securities fraud and result in better governance. Yet, our analysis of the number of class action settlements for claims of financial fraud for settlements greater than $10 million shows no significant decrease since the adoption of SOX.”

Labor Power: “The Boeing Co. will shed more employees as it faces new orders and production slow down for some of the company’s current commercial jets. According to reports Monday morning, the company plans to fire ‘hundreds’ more engineers this year with the cuts scheduled to begin on June 23” [247 Wall Street].

Mr. Market: “A measure of implied volatility known as the CBOE VIX surged to five-month highs before the Easter long weekend, sending a clear signal that anxiety was returning to the market” [Economic Calendar].

Rapture Index: Closes unchanged (“The higher the number, the faster we’re moving towards the occurrence of pre-tribulation rapture”) [Rapture Ready]. Record High, October 10, 2016: 189. Current: 184.

Today’s Fear & Greed Index: 27 Fear (previous close: 30, Fear) [CNN]. One week ago: 31 (Fear). (0 is Extreme Fear; 100 is Extreme Greed). Last updated Apr 18 at 12:10pm.

Health Care

“How Dumping ACA Exchanges Boosted UnitedHealth’s Profits” [247 Wall Street].

“Trumpcare’s demise offers an important lesson about economic policy more generally. The more universal a program is, the greater the number of Americans will become advocates for its preservation. This is a fact that conservatives know and fear thanks to Medicare and social security, but many establishment liberals since the Democratic Party’s neoliberal turn have failed to understand — or perhaps some Clintonites understand it all too well” [Jacobin].

Gaia

“Gas Leak At BP Oil Well In Alaska Has Been Stopped” [NPR].

“Bacteria-busting toothpastes that help prevent cavities in your teeth could be making small dents in the community of microbes in your gut—possibly allowing antibiotic-resistant bacteria to fill in—preliminary data suggests” [Ars Technica]. “The data is preliminary—it has not been peer-reviewed or published in a journal yet—and the study was small, including women and infants from only 39 households. But, the findings fall in line with several other studies that found that triclosan and other common antimicrobials can cause subtle disruptions in all-powerful gut microbiomes.”

“It stands to reason that as global warming intensifies certain weather patterns and creates stronger storms, inflight encounters with strong turbulence will increase. Until recently, however, there haven’t been any formal studies linking climate change with rougher flying. Now there are. A new paper published by atmospheric scientist Paul Williams from the University of Reading suggests that instances of strong, potentially dangerous turbulence will increase significantly by the middle of the century” [Ask the Pilot]. “I’ve been flying across the North Atlantic since 1997. My observations are just that, and are purely anecdotal, but what I’ve experienced more or less meshes with the research. It’s become bumpier and windier, on average, and storms seem to be larger and more widespread. Most notably, it’s no longer uncommon to encounter thunderstorms even in the colder months.”

Class Warfare

“In a survey of Americans ages 31 to 37, the Fed bank found that, although having a college degree substantially boosted one’s likelihood of owning a house, those still paying off debt for their bachelor’s degrees had homeownership rates several percentage points lower than that of their peers without student loans. The gap was larger among graduates with associate’s degrees, and the homeownership rate of associate degree holders who took on student debt was closer to that of Americans with no degree than to that of their fellow associate’s degree grads with no debt” [International Business Times].

“Andrew Sullivan has a post where he argues that the economic success of Asians in the United States suggests that the lack of financial success of other groups cannot be chalked up to racism” [Jacobin]. “Asian economic success also varies a lot by group…. Some Asian groups are doing well, but others are doing very poorly. Cambodians and Hmong people, for instance, have poverty rates that are similar to those of blacks, Natives, and Latinos. Statements like the one Sullivan made do not just wave over the complicated history of the matter. They also mislead people about the current situation of Asians in America.”

The rise of the robots:

News of the Wired

“Email, in other words, is regulated like a physical record, but we treat it as a conversation. And that causes problems small and large” [New York Magazine]. “In a survey of 586 companies from 2009, 6 percent of workers admitted to sending customers’ confidential information to outsiders, 14 percent said they shared proprietary company information, and 14 percent said they shared embarrassing company correspondence. Nearly everyone — 89 percent — admitted to using company email for gossip, jokes, and insults, and 9 percent shared romantic or pornographic material. It’s no wonder that a quarter of companies reported having employee email subpoenaed and another quarter reported firing someone that year for email misuse.”

“But there’s a dark side to [FaceBook’s] Free Basics that has the potential to do more harm than good — a side that suggests that Zuckerberg doesn’t get Africa after all. The app is essentially a cheap version of the internet, a fact that by itself implies that some people aren’t good enough to merit the whole thing. Even worse, it’s a version of the internet that gives Facebook — and by extension the corporations and governments that partner with Facebook — total control over what its users can access” [Foreign Policy].

The original “I have several tabs open”:

* * *

Readers, feel free to contact me with (a) links, and even better (b) sources I should curate regularly, and (c) to find out how to send me images of plants. Vegetables are fine! Fungi are deemed to be honorary plants! See the previous Water Cooler (with plant) here.

And here’s today’s plant (via):

California poppies!

* * *

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About Lambert Strether

Readers, I have had a correspondent characterize my views as realistic cynical. Let me briefly explain them. I believe in universal programs that provide concrete material benefits, especially to the working class. Medicare for All is the prime example, but tuition-free college and a Post Office Bank also fall under this heading. So do a Jobs Guarantee and a Debt Jubilee. Clearly, neither liberal Democrats nor conservative Republicans can deliver on such programs, because the two are different flavors of neoliberalism (“Because markets”). I don’t much care about the “ism” that delivers the benefits, although whichever one does have to put common humanity first, as opposed to markets. Could be a second FDR saving capitalism, democratic socialism leashing and collaring it, or communism razing it. I don’t much care, as long as the benefits are delivered. To me, the key issue — and this is why Medicare for All is always first with me — is the tens of thousands of excess “deaths from despair,” as described by the Case-Deaton study, and other recent studies. That enormous body count makes Medicare for All, at the very least, a moral and strategic imperative. And that level of suffering and organic damage makes the concerns of identity politics — even the worthy fight to help the refugees Bush, Obama, and Clinton’s wars created — bright shiny objects by comparison. Hence my frustration with the news flow — currently in my view the swirling intersection of two, separate Shock Doctrine campaigns, one by the Administration, and the other by out-of-power liberals and their allies in the State and in the press — a news flow that constantly forces me to focus on matters that I regard as of secondary importance to the excess deaths. What kind of political economy is it that halts or even reverses the increases in life expectancy that civilized societies have achieved? I am also very hopeful that the continuing destruction of both party establishments will open the space for voices supporting programs similar to those I have listed; let’s call such voices “the left.” Volatility creates opportunity, especially if the Democrat establishment, which puts markets first and opposes all such programs, isn’t allowed to get back into the saddle. Eyes on the prize! I love the tactical level, and secretly love even the horse race, since I’ve been blogging about it daily for fourteen years, but everything I write has this perspective at the back of it.

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133 comments

  1. Tertium Squid

    Steve Ballmer creates US data trove. Way more interesting that it sounds.

    First off, this is awesome and I’m glad it’s being done.

    Secondly, Ballmer is really something:

    As he looked for a new endeavor — before he decided to buy the Clippers — his wife, Connie, encouraged him to help with some of her philanthropic efforts, an idea he initially rejected.
    “But come on, doesn’t the government take care of the poor, the sick, the old?” Mr. Ballmer recalled telling her. After all, he pointed out, he happily paid a lot of taxes, and he figured that all that tax money should create a sufficient social safety net.

    Reminds one of The Christmas Carol.

    And he also dumps on his own search engine:

    His first instinct, naturally, was to go to a search engine. “My favorite one, of course: I go to Bing,” he said. “And by the way, I check it with Google, just to make sure there’s nothing I’m missing.”

    Nobody goes from Google to Bing to make sure they didn’t miss anything.

    1. jCandlish

      Secondly, Ballmer is really something:

      Ballmer is an abject c***, so there must be more to the backstory.

      He is certainly a good bull for the china shop.

    2. John k

      Great effort, could be very useful.
      I have this fantasy of a billionaire progressive that starts organizing funding third party…
      I’ve always been a dreamer.

              1. HopeLB

                Alan Grayson was a real hero at eviscerating and unmasking the bankster bailout stooges during the Congressional hearings (as was Marcy Kaptor). It was must see tv (c-span)! The Dems wanted him gone after that and ran a newly minted, ex-Repub to run against him for senate. Reid told Grayson to F!@# off. (I’ll try to track down the footage in the archive.) I gave him money and affixed his bumber sticker though I am not in Fla after viewing his righteous contempt.

          2. Massinissa

            Hes about as close as a billionaire can get to progressive though. Which is ‘not very’.

      3. Kramer

        To me this is oxymoronic. To amass such a personal hoard amidst so much need seems to be an impossibility for a person of even average empathy.

    3. Kurt Sperry

      From the NYT story linked to above about USAFacts,

      “Want to know how many police officers are employed in various parts of the country and compare that against crime rates? Want to know how much revenue is brought in from parking tickets and the cost to collect? Want to know what percentage of Americans suffer from diagnosed depression and how much the government spends on it? That’s in there. You can slice the numbers in all sorts of ways.”

      My search fu is usually decent but i couldn’t find the answers to any of those specific questions using the search box and entering likely keywords. In fact, I thought the results were almost completely off-point and useless. Anyone doing better with it?

    4. Yves Smith

      Wash your mouth out. You have been conned.

      This is another Pete Peterson, deficit hawkery project.

      And the “facts” there are bogus. Everything he presents about the budget is wrong because:

      1. These clowns pretend we need to tax to spend at the Federal level. We don’t. No one goes rooting around looking for quarters in the couch to fund the next billion dollar bombing run in the Middle East.

      2. The published budget figures are wrong. They exclude the military black budget and combat budgets.

      1. Bugs Bunny

        Excellent!

        I wanted to do a search for “compare NSA black budget to overall DOD black budget” but I guess that’s “out of scope” for USAfacts.

        The word “facts” has been weaponized!

    1. shinola

      If you read the NYT review in the links, you may notice that it mentions “other factors” contributing to HRC’s loss; and, of course, one of those other factors is “Russian meddling” in the election.

      They just can’t help themselves I guess.

    2. montanamaven

      But still this conclusion:

      But 25 years from now, women will learn about the woman who was able to win the Democratic nomination, a hurdle no one had ever achieved. At the end of the day, she’s the most accomplished woman of her trailblazing generation in the field of politics.

      Really? That’s their conclusion? That she’s the most accomplished woman of her “trailblazing” generation in politics? A real “trailblazer” was the first woman elected to Congress from Montana, Jeannette Rankin, who had the gumption to vote against both WWI and WWII.

      As far as the Boomer generation is concerned, who could have risen in the ranks and ran in both 2004 and 2008 if Hilary had bowed out of politics? I remember in 2004 how much fun Carol Mosley Braun was in the debates. When the men were squabbling, she acted like a great den mother. She was bright and funny. Oh, where were all the precious darling glass ceiling breaking supporters for Carol?
      The bigger picture always is that the most interesting original people do not enter the “field of politics”, so we get, as Not Tim Geithner says, “the front row kids”. So maybe she was the most accomplished of a not very accomplished pool or swamp called politics.

  3. ChrisAtRU

    Bernie & Garfunkel Unity Tour – Part 1

    For those in the commentariat yesterday who asserted that it was difficult if not impossible to reform the Democratic Party from within, this tweet pretty much nails the “reboot” metaphor.

    This is what happens when you reboot without getting rid of the virus first. https://t.co/OgAIfVmPEm— Amir (@amiraminiMD) April 18, 2017

    #WinsTheInternetTodayIMO

    1. steelhead23

      XLNT. The unity the Democratic Party is seeking is the unity you feel when there is a gun to your head. I don’t think it has dawned on Sen. Sanders that he diminishes himself by standing hand in hand with the Dems. It was he, not the blue signs that attracted folks to his rallies last year. It is true that his policy prescriptions are more in line with the Dems than the Republicans, but that is scarcely reason enough to join with them. Ditch the Dems, Bernie!

      1. Carl

        I’m at a loss for words at this “unity tour” crap. I got an email from Bernie last night asking for money…my response: you don’t need me, you’ve got Tom Perez and the DNC.

      2. Adamski

        For ballot access reasons he had to run as a Dem, and more publicity reasons. Seeking the Dem nom was the only reason you’ve heard of him unless you’re a Vermonter because it got him on TV. The Greens have ballot access in 40-odd states and offered him their nom when Clinton won, I assume he didn’t take them up on it because if Trump won a three-way race the Dem establishment would use Sanders as a lesson in why you gotta STFU and GOTV or else you get the GOP. In 2020 he would have popularity from the very start, though.

  4. Alex Morfesis

    American acceptionalism…does ossoff actually live in the district he is running in…seems he is claiming he is living with his girlfriend outside the district for her finishing up in medical school and “vows” to actually move into the district once “she” graduates…

    Kyffhauser in america…that stuff is end of empire nonsense…having empress alexandra married into the romanov dynasty from queen victorias spreading of her seeds across europe did not really work out to well 100 years ago…

    Haven’t people gotten into trouble once or twice for trying to get elected in a congressional district they don’t live in…??

    The hill has a blub about it on its 1230

    1. Vatch

      The only legal requirement is that the representative must be an inhabitant of the state that she or he represents — residency in the district is not required, unless there’s only one district in the state (Montana, for example). But politically, it’s a very good idea for a representative to live in the district, and historically, when someone from outside of a district is elected, he usually has relocated to that district rather quickly.

      1. alex morfesis

        sadly I stand corrected…was probably thinking of in state elections…although…this does make for some interesting third party moves in the era of social ladidadidadia…getting someone inside a state who has some popularity to run for an office in a less populated, less contested part of the state…sounds like a strategy…

  5. hemeantwell

    Clearly, Democrats need to talk more about Putin and keep pushing for war.

    It’s never too early to start blowing money on consultants and focus groups. Has anyone seen indications they’re polling on warmongering? The HRC/Trump Tomahawk Chopfest is going to be a tough stain to get out of her $14,000 pantsuit.

    And, re Bill Clinton on Sanders: I can only expectantly wonder what’s the average life expectancy after a quadruple bypass.

    1. polecat

      ‘Clearly, Sanders needs to talk more about how Assad has to goooooo !’

      This is your GOD, progressives !!

    2. JTMcPhee

      Will Bill “lie in state,” and get a state funeral, when he finally croaks for the last time? Maybe Monica could head the cortège, in a nice tasteful blue dress. ..

      And if the protocol mavens decide he warrants the traditional horse with the reversed boots in the stirrups– maybe add knee pads astern of the saddle, and elegant skimmers, posed toes-down, at the rump?

    3. Kurt Sperry

      Why would the Democrats waste money on polling (except as a patronage tool to reward loyal insiders) when they already know what their base wants but can’t deliver because the people that actually decide the party’s policy agenda aren’t the voters but instead a small handful of gazillionaire mega-donors?

      What’s the value of polling data of public opinion when you don’t give two familyblogs what the people think? Democrats spending money doing public opinion polling is pointless. Better targeted IDPol? C’mon.

      1. LT

        They poll for narrative to influence what people think, which is why some people will never be polled.
        We could go all day about the way the questions are worded and what questions they choose to ask.

  6. Christopher

    HRC & “Shattered” – “no nice things” = the first campaign where austerity was the guiding principal?

    Neoliberalism truly run amok.

  7. craazyboy

    Robots Taking Over ™

    Well, I refuse to believe my Walmart self checkout computer terminal is a robot.

    Until it can say, “Warning [Will Robinson], your credit and/or debit card has been rejected by your bank. Please take your self driving grocery shopping vehicle and re-stock the shelves with our/your items. We have you covered with the ceiling mounted, automated, 20mm canon subsystem and customer tracking video cams.

    A laser pointer will point to the correct shelf location for each restockable item. The items will self identify automatically via their personalized embedded RFD chip. Resistance is futile.”

    1. cocomaan

      But seriously, the last self-checkout I went to the damn thing had to have its digital balls held up by an attendant who looked ready to crack.

      If that’s how your average self driving car functions, I’d rather drive with my feet.

      1. JerseyJeffersonian

        I completely refuse to go through one of those self-checkouts. I am not going to be shanghaied into being a scab undermining the employment of check-out personnel.

        And, additionally, I have seen the same thing as you report; the check-out stations are served by one person constantly at a kiosk, slowing down and complicating the process anyway. Why not have that person running a check-out in the first place. More assininity from some tool in the C-suite.

        1. Carolinian

          Personally I love self-checkout because I don’t like standing in line. I suspect stores provide this more as a convenience for the impatient as most customers still prefer human cashiers and there’s often no waiting at the diy lanes.

          1. Blkwhiskey

            Read “Shadow Work” by Ivan Illich.

            It will challenge your perspective on the checkouts.

          2. a different chris

            Nothing personal, but you’re delusional.

            I check on and regularly beat anybody who goes self-checkout at the same time I get in the regular line. A human cashier is so much faster processing your crap than you are it isn’t even funny,

            I get my stuff checked thru and get entertained by the self-checkouters at the same time.

            1. Carolinian

              I’m probably as fast as the regular cashiers but the point, as I said above, is that there’s hardly any line waiting for the self-check. Of course when stores are very busy and there is a line waiting for self-check then you may well be stuck behind some person fumbling for the code of that cucumber.

              And the reason there’s less of a line at the self-check is that most people do indeed prefer a human cashier to an intimidating machine. Which is why I believe that stores have these things to be competitive with other stores, not necessarily to screw over their workers. Convenience is a selling point and for some customers the self-check is more convenient even though you refuse to believe it (I won’t call you delusional).

        2. a different chris

          Lowe’s didn’t have anybody, zero, nada, at the regular checkouts last time I went. I do not do self-checkout “no matter what” now – or at least that’s what I thought until I had no other way of buying the bolts/washers/nuts I needed.

          Yes there was one lady standing at a little table between the 4 self checkout units. And guess what? — if you had something that didn’t have a barcode on it, you had to take it over to her and she would pound on some keys and then send that back over to your now obviously misnamed “self” serve station which you would return to and… gah it’s all just so sad.

          And of course bolts/washers/nuts don’t have barcodes on them. But you know, who goes to Lowes to buy stuff like that? Besides everybody.

      2. polecat

        Make sure you wear a pair of those tire-tread sandals first … better traction on uneven Olduvai ground ! Is your Flintstone 2000plus gonna have a brand new Nauga hide top, or the standard Theropod option … ?

    1. FluffytheObeseCat

      Impressive. Note how much effort the author put into slicing and dicing an already favorable dataset in order to make it squirt out the answer he wanted, and clearly started with as his operating premise.

      The hair fine distinctions between Lies, Damned Lies, and Statistics are rarely so well illustrated as in this article.

  9. oho

    >>“‘Shattered’ Charts Hillary Clinton’s Course Into the Iceberg

    allegedly per “Shattered,” Hillary read the emails of the employees from her 2008 campaign.

    —-
    According to Shattered: ‘The men and women she met with, apparently unaware she has access to their emails, were amazed that a woman who had been traveling the country in pursuit of the presidency had such a detailed grasp of the machinations at the campaign’s command center in the Washington suburbs’.

    Shattered does not offer any examples of the emails that Clinton obtained.

    Nor does it make clear if Hillary sorted personal emails her staff sent through their campaign email from professional ones.

    —

    http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4421582/Hillary-downloaded-staff-emails-against-her.html

    Presumably the campaign employees had enough sense to know that there are zero expectations of privacy when using a workplace server.

    1. Darius

      Yeah. But she must have had a lot of time on her hands to snoop through underlings’ old emails. I suppose she delegated coups and such to assistant secretaries.

      1. Lambert Strether Post author

        Makes you wonder if it was only old emails the campaign looked at. Eh?

        And speculating very freely… Remember the theory that an insider leaked the Podesta mail?

    2. alex morfesis

      not to stir up the altbrownshirt lock her up krewe…but $hillary$ testimony to fibber employees that saturday after the tarmac dance bill did…the time she told fbi/govt officials she has no real clue about that email server kinda stuff and thingees…considering her work at state when emails had slipped out, it seemed a bit of a stretch…but now we know even better…

      thinking martha stewart is gonna want to put in for an official pardon soon

  10. MyLessThanPrimeBeef

    Love that 18th rotating reading table.

    “Why can’t we make stuff like that anymore?”

    1. craazyboy

      “I have several tabs open”:
      ————-

      hahaha.

      “Please select your preferred reading speed.”

      Slow/TBD

      “Do you wish to be notified when you close a tab?”

      Yes/No

      Guess what happens next. Ouch.

      1. MyLessThanPrimeBeef

        Didn’t Newton discover the theory of Gravity under one of those ‘do you wish to be notified’ reading desks?

  11. dandelion

    Per this morning links regarding “truth” at the Claremont Colleges: this just in from the Wellesley Student Newspaper:

    “We have all said problematic claims, the origins of which were ingrained in us by our discriminatory and biased society. Luckily, most of us have been taught by our peers and mentors at Wellesley in a productive way. It is vital that we encourage people to correct and learn from their mistakes rather than berate them for a lack of education they could not control ….

    This being said, if people are given the resources to learn and either continue to speak hate speech or refuse to adapt their beliefs, then hostility may be warranted. If people continue to support racist politicians or pay for speakers that prop up speech that will lead to the harm of others, then it is critical to take the appropriate measures to hold them accountable for their actions. It is important to note that our preference for education over beration regards students who may have not been given the chance to learn. Rather, we are not referring to those who have already had the incentive to learn and should have taken the opportunities to do so….

    We at The Wellesley News, are not interested in any type of tone policing. The emotional labor required to educate people is immense and is additional weight that is put on those who are already forced to defend their human rights. There is no denying that problematic opinions need to be addressed in order to stop Wellesley from becoming a place where hate speech and casual discrimination is okay. However, as a community we need to make an effort to have this dialogue in a constructive and educational way in order to build our community up. Talk-back, protest videos and personal correspondences are also ways to have a constructive dialogue. Let us first bridge the gap between students in our community before we resort to personal attacks.”

    http://web.archive.org/web/20170414124916/http://thewellesleynews.com/2017/04/12/free-speech-is-not-violated-at-wellesley/

    All righty then. I have 1000% confidence that none of these students ever read Mao. And yet…. Some students and professors are clearly headed for the re-education camps.

    Can it also be said that the writing is atrocious? Wellesley’s supposed to be a Tier 1 SLAC.
    If indeed what is to be done requires re-education, I’d volunteer to head Grammar & Syntax Camp.

    1. JTMcPhee

      Looks like the re-education has already been completed. I’d say the next step is intervention and de-programming.

      1. JerseyJeffersonian

        So, while their proficiency as writers is certainly open for critique, their qualifications as Orwellian SJWs are established beyond question; their mastery at simultaneously holding two entirely contradictory thoughts is not to be doubted.

    3. Carolinian

      Yes the “writer” probably shouldn’t be getting on their high horse about other people’s learning skills.

    4. flora

      Does Wellesley promote a single point of view that all good-thinking students must accept? This editorial sounds, to me, intellectually limp and dogmatic. I’d expected Wellseley would do better than this to strengthen her students’ individual critical thought and response abilities.

    5. Alex Morfesis

      methynx the wellesley post here is a bit out of context (disclosure, my cousins daughter graduated a year ago from there)…have been on campus a few times these last few years…I think the issue with the editorial is there are some trannies and semi-adjusteds who insist that since they know how to put on eyeliner and have a boob job, they should be admitted to the historically female only college…

      it is a college designed to create a safe educational environment for natural born females…$hillary will be giving this years commencement speech at her old alma…it seems her wing of the alums is pushing this “inclusion” agenda to change the admissions to wellesley to allow female wannabeez & shoodahbinz…

    6. Lambert Stretherl

      “Tone policing” as “emotional labor” though. That’s very interesting framing. I agree the grammar is sludgy, but I think they’re coming to a policy conclusion I’m more supportive of, than not.

    1. MyLessThanPrimeBeef

      Democratic or Roman Triumvirate of Elites?

      “DNC Announces Members Of Unity Reform Commission” [HuffPo]. “The commission will now begin the process of discussing reforms to the party’s presidential nominating process, including hot-button issues like the role of super-delegates and caucuses. It will present its recommendations to the DNC by January 2018.”

      Sanders had also already named his selections to the commission. They are Cohen, the vice chair; former Ohio state Sen. Nina Turner; former Sanders campaign manager Jeff Weaver; former Sanders New York delegate Nomiki Konst; Jim Zogby, founder of the Arab-American Institute; former Berkeley, California Mayor Gus Newport; former Nevada Assemblywoman Lucy Flores; and Nebraska Democratic Party Chair Jane Kleeb.

      The DNC declined to name the three members Perez picked and a spokesman for Clinton did not respond to a request for information on her appointments.

      What happened to the popular vote?

      Just 3 ‘super delegates’ in this one or there are more ‘super delegates’ to pick, appoint and name?

      1. DJG

        Sure makes Perez look like a progressive, independent, edgy voice for change, now doesn’t it? Or maybe a hood ornament.

        It is unclear if the Clintonians didn’t make appointments or if the people publicly listed in the article as Clinton loyalists were not appointed by Clinton. Or the forward-looking Perez. Or that we are all fooled once again.

        The Clintons are more toxic than Brezhnev. All they want to do is preside over the decline. And skim.

      2. polecat

        All that’s needed is a giant IGNSOC banner, flanked by slightly smaller posters of a bunch of ‘rainbow-hued’ hands clasping with the words ‘Strength in Snowflake Unity’, to complete the show !

        So who gets the job of HowHigh Chancellor ??

        1. Another Anon

          Don’t forget the “two minute hate” which I think should be filled by Putin.
          Meanwhile, I will be in the back swilling some Victory Gin.

    2. DonCoyote

      I have high opinions of Nina Turner, Jim Zogby, and Nomi Konst. Not so sure about Jeff Weaver. In any case, many if not most of the eight I would identify as Bernie “stalwarts”, that is, the same ones who represented him at the convention and Party Platform meetings.

      The HRC/TP list does not have the same recognition level, at least for me–anyone else? Although here’s a “fun” quote from the website of the one Clinton member identified (the chair):

      When the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee wanted to rethink how midterm organizing is done, we created a model for new state-by-state programs and prioritization of data. Yeah, I remember those big gains the Democrats made in the Senate in 2016… nevertheless, of course, ka-ching. (big analytics requires big data and big donors).

      However, I expect about as much from this group as from the Democratic Party Platform Committee (another group with rhetorical declarations of “unity”) . Although I don’t see Wendy Sherman on the list…so maybe we need a betting pool on who will wield the off-camera “thumbs-down” on all the good stuff. I pick Maya Harris.

  13. DJG

    Jon Ossoff or Dilbert?

    Ossoff: “I’m focused on bringing fresh leadership, accountability and bipartisan problem solving to Washington to cut wasteful spending and grow metro Atlanta’s economy into the Silicon Valley of the South”

    Scott Adams? Paging Scott Adams.

    1. Deadl E Cheese

      One of the more frustrating things about Scott Adams devolving into the stereotype of the arrogant, libidinally paranoid, know-nothing-know-it-all engineer is that Dilbert used to be an absolutely vicious satire of capitalism, especially meritocracy and hierarchy in general. When Adams was REALLY on a roll in the late 90s, I think even Engels would’ve told him to take it easy.

      1. MyLessThanPrimeBeef

        It’s a race btw:

        1. “I was a drug addict once. Let me warn you. I’ve been there.”

        or

        2. Converts are always more zealous.

      2. DJG

        Deadl E (if I may first-name you): A classic of Scott Adams.

        http://dilbert.com/strip/2009-03-07

        Pie-chart worship. Something that is likely to be detailed in the “Shattered” book and at the Ossoff web site.

        The problem is that Adams is a disaffected Republican, much like Hillary’s core. They are not happy people, and they are wandering around looking for someone to save them from themselves and their choices in life. And don’t get in their way as they do so.

      3. NotTimothyGeithner

        Adams strikes me as believing in a magical goldilocks capitalism. I could see how he might have worked for sane people at a sane company then had the GE types come in during the corporate buy out phase of the 80’s and 90’s. Within his perceived environment, he can make rationale observations, but he doesn’t care for the troubles of others outside of his view.

      4. Sandler

        Then he got rich himself and turned into a typical rich right wing prick. He said in his videos, “I busted my ass off from 4:30am every day, im voting for Trump because it’s low risk and high reward for me because he’ll repeal the estate tax.”

        1. Marina Bart

          I am confused by this. He has no children. Even if he still has a relationship with his former step-children, this seems like an odd rationale.

    2. TK421

      Wow, that’s an inspiring call to action. And we’re living in such a good time for bipartisanship, too.

    3. Lambert Stretherl

      Rereading that, I see that I missed “grow… [the] economy,” which is a bullshit tell. It’s a dead metaphor, and a bad metaphor, absent a showing that economies are like plants. Exactly like “grow your business” is a bullshit tell.

  14. Jess

    Concerning housing stats: Anybody know how duplex townhomes figure, category-wise? Reason I ask, in my city we have thousands of duplex townhomes, two on a lot. But except for one common wall and a two-party HOA for common areas like the front lawn and the driveway, they are single family residences. Normally square footage range is about 2,200-2,500, with at least one and often two ample second floor decks (usually off the master suite and the living room). Some also have yards or ground floor patios. And they have become pricey as demand for beach property just grows and grows. Now most of them are around $1,020,000 – $1.2 mil, with the older, smaller, lesser ones in the $850K-$925K range.

      1. MyLessThanPrimeBeef

        Makes one wonder why the Dutch bother with reclaiming land from the sea.

        Will we see a Great Sea-Wall of Southern California one day?

        “Gov. Brown, I think a wall is a great idea.”

      2. Jess

        In my particular case, I’m sitting pretty good. I’m on top of the highest hill in the area. Sea Level would have to rise more than 100 feet before I get wet. While that may happen, I doubt I’ll still be here to witness it. (Of course, if it rises far enough and I live long enough, I might have to commute by boat, like they do in the bayou country.)

        1. juliania

          How near are you to the edge of the cliff? Or, I should say, how near will you be next year?

          High hills are not all they used to be.

    2. MyLessThanPrimeBeef

      I think they are listed under multi-family residence.

      “The rich shall inherit beach or beach front properties.”

  16. paulmeli

    Post Mortem 2016:

    “Government spending increased…”

    Over the 8 years of the Obama Administration federal spending increased at a rate much lower than the average since WWII…an average of 3.8% per year in nominal terms compared to 7% since WWII and 5.5% since 1980 (about the time Reagan cut spending and loosened credit).

    Over Obama’s last 4 years federal spending increased at the pitiful rate of 2.8%

    GDP can’t grow faster than spending without magical arithmetic. Credit expansion (thankfully) has hit a wall:

    https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CMDEBT

    Drowning government (and citizens) in a bathtub.

  17. neighbor7

    BUY AMERICAN, HIRE AMERICAN
    –investigation into government procurement practices
    –task four agencies with re-examining all programs

    How will this not backfire, with firms requiring personnel ranging from software engineers to low-end labor unable to maximize their “competitive advantage”?
    Procurement guidelines forbidding the cheaper product, plus new layers of bureaucracy….

    1. Steve

      My understanding is there are plenty of bi-literal trade deals where the agreement specifically notes the goods (polish steel) was to be treated as US made (steel). I remember sourcing for a government project black in early 2000’s when I found this out. Trump’s EO is a nothingburger.

    2. Cujo359

      As someone who worked in defense contracting for 25 years, I can tell you that “buy American” won’t be enough to keep wages high. Many contract personnel work on time and materials contracts, meaning that they do the same work that civil service employees of the Dept. of Defense might do, not build products for DoD. For any DoD facility that is in an area where it is one of few employers, or the only major employer, contract changes are inevitably a race to the bottom when it comes to salary and benefits for the contract employees. They either accept the new terms that the contract winner offers, which is almost inevitably less than the old contractor offered, or they look for work elsewhere.

      1. Christopher Fay

        The central government will go bust one day, so the winning contractor has to keep as much of those federal contract earnings to itself as possible. Carpenter ants on the ground have to fend for themselves, of course.

        1. AbateMagicThinking but Not money

          Maybe it could go bust if it went back to the gold standard and all the gold silver leaks out of the country throught trade imbalance or renting foreign mercenary armies like royalty of old.

          The more sophisticated dogs of war understand this – especially when there is no treasure to be had from the people they hope to subjegate, and it is an ideological war anyway (eg Vietnam 1971).

  18. McWatt

    I can’t get over the fact that all of these politicians embrace and honor the American flag
    but continue to hang it backwards when flying it vertically.

  19. diptherio

    the reality is that “Asians” refers to many different groups that have very divergent economic situations.

    Yup…and you can replace “Asians” with any other racial group you care to name and that statement is equally correct. Also, it may just be selection bias, but it seems to me that way more than 12% or white people are poor, which makes me think that all the numbers are probably way off from reality. Isn’t it 60% of everyone who has less than $1000 in the bank? Seems like the definition of poverty should be “if your health insurance deductible is more than your savings account balance.” Or maybe that’s just precarity…is there a difference?

    1. Lambert Strether Post author

      > You can replace “Asians” with any other racial group you care to name and that statement is equally correct.

      Why, it’s almost as if identity politics were a ginormous distraction!

    2. JTFaraday

      Although many seem to be using them as synonyms, poverty and precarity are not the same thing. Think about it.

    1. meeps

      Surfing in “messy vitality.” I like that for its playful diplomacy given the bergs to circumnavigate in this phase transition.

  21. jawbone

    Caller to The Take Away today noted that The Donald was visiting a Snap On Tool factory which has not made any products there in several years…NOT MANUFACTURING THERE. Engineers, developers, and upper level management work there, per the caller.

    Anyone know any more about this site?

  23. Plenue

    “Bacteria-busting toothpastes that help prevent cavities in your teeth could be making small dents in the community of microbes in your gut—possibly allowing antibiotic-resistant bacteria to fill in—preliminary data suggests.”

    You shouldn’t be using mouthwash either. Your mouth has evolved to be a jungle of bacteria; killing them just makes room for potential invasion by things you haven’t developed an alliance with. Save the Listerine for its proper function: being the nuclear option for jock itch. If it’s burnin’, that means it’s workin’.

  26. Marina Bart

    Help! I need computer/OS purchase advice.

    I’ve been babying a dying laptop that’s been having charging problems, and now it won’t take a charge at all — meaning with or without the battery in, no electrical power runs through the machine.

    I had been planning, when this day came, to buy a used Thinkpad pre-installed with Linux, probably Mint 18. I’m a pretty vanilla user. But I love Scrivener, and really want to keep it. Literature & Latte has cancelled its plans to do a Linux version. There are people who use Scrivener on Linux, but it doesn’t look like a very active community. I am not a programmer. I would like my programs to run with minimal tweaking on my part.

    Any advice? My goal was to give at little money as possible to Silicon Valley, protect my privacy as best I can, and have a machine to write on, surf on, etc. Any thoughts on the Scrivener problem? If I abandon Scrivener, does a Thinkpad with Mint 18 seem like the best choice for someone like me?

    3. Carolinian

      I’m not familiar with Scrivener but I do run more than a handful of Windows programs on my Chromebook converted to Linux. XP era programs seem to give the best luck with Wine. Note the WineHQ page says you will have to add the Windows version of Quicktime and some extra Windows elements via a Linux program called Winetricks. That done, looks like it should run and you won’t have to put up with Windows.

    4. carycat

      I’m typing this on an older laptop with Mint 18. It is recycled Dell with an SSD instead of spinning rust (a 128 GB one is now under $50 USD or a 256GB one for $80 USD if you keep an eye out for periodic sales). I have been using Thinkpads since the 90’s and still have 3 in the house, of recent vintage, with various flavors of Linux on it and they are still very solid machines, especially the W and T series. The Lenovo X series are relatively flimsier, but they also weight a lot less. Just search to see if any peripherials you want to keep will work with the Linux of your choice. Most do so out of the box these days, usually with less hassle than with Windows. But there are some (Canon, I’m looking at you) that doesn’t. I have a Canon printer/scanner/fax combo which works only with Windows, until a Windows 10 upgrade broke the scanner also. And the user experience with common flavors of Linux is actually closer to Windows 7 or Windows XP than Microsoft’s recent offerings.
      Please search the web for “scrivener wine” to see how Scrivener fans have been coping with no official support for Linux. There are even you tube videos.
      You don’t even need the used Thinkpad to come with Linux pre-installed. You just need a USB stick (at least 8 GB in size) and create a bootable USB from the downloaded Linux image (plenty of tutorials on the web). You can then install via the USB stick, which can be repurposed after the installation. I can tell you, from personal experience of installing both Mint 18 and Windows 10 within the last month that the Mint 18 installation took much less effort in front of the box and clock time to go from bare metal to a working system compared to Windows 10.
      I strongly recommend an SSD upgrade if your “new” laptop does not have one, it gives a noticable performance boost. And the small form factor hard disk in laptops do have a relatively short service life because it has to work in a fairly harsh environment.
      Good luck.

    5. bob

      dead power supply?

      The power “brick”. Try swapping that out with one that you know works.

      They make universal power supplies, if you have to replace it, and can’t find, or don’t want to pay for a new one from the original manufacturer.

      1. Cujo359

        I was going to offer this advice, plus, if the old laptop has a battery that can be removed and replaced easily, there’s a good chance that Batteries Plus has a replacement. If the laptop is more than five years old, odds are pretty good that this will be necessary.

      2. Lambert Strether Post author

        This does seem like the simplest and cheapest. And it’s not a bad thing to have an extra power supply (as long as its universal, which I take to mean with plugs for any brand of computer).

    6. Marina Bart

      YOU GUYS ARE MY HEROES.

      I still have to process all of this advice, but if I understand things correctly so far, I’m going to buy some laptop with Mint 18 on it or get a separate stick with Mint 18 on it, then I’m downloading Wine after installing Mint, then I’m installing my existing Windows copy of Scrivener. Then I’m probably coming back here to whine and beg for help because some tiny patch or bit of code or driver is off somehow.

      Then I get to go back to writing long screeds on here in the middle of the night. It’s win/win — for me, at least.

      1. Mark Alexander

        Your plan sounds right to me. I did essentially the same process for my wife’s ThinkPad running Mint 17: installed Wine, then installed a Windows-only weaving program via Wine.

        If you happen to have a generic Windows installation disc (not a Lenovo-specific one) and a license key, you could also install VirtualBox in Mint, then install Windows in a virtual machine. That would provide a better level of compatibility if you have trouble with specific applications running on Wine.

        BTW, on Linux you don’t download programs in the same way you do on Windows, where you have to visit the software manufacturer’s web site and then download some monster installer. On Mint there are two programs: “Software Manager” (somewhat user-friendly) and “Package Manager” (less user-friendly), both under the the “Start Menu”. They offer thousands of pre-built programs to install. The only ones I haven’t found this way are proprietary or closed-source things like Chrome.

  27. allan

    Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s memoir made him $245 a copy [Gannett]

    Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s low-selling 2014 memoir netted him another $218,100 last year, pushing his total book payments to $783,000 over the past four years, according to his tax returns.

    Cuomo’s 2016 tax records, which his office made available for review Tuesday, showed the latest round of payments from HarperCollins, the major publisher that gave him a lucrative book deal in 2013.

    The governor’s memoir — All Things Possible: Setbacks and Success in Politics in Life — did not perform well: Just 3,200 copies sold since its release, including just 100 copies over the past two years, according to NPD Books, which tracks book sales nationwide.

    It was a money-loser for HarperCollins, which ultimately paid Cuomo about $245 per book sold. It retailed at $29.99. …

    Sad.

  28. Kim Kaufman

    From an email I received this morning:

    Polling equipment stolen before Georgia special election:

    Comment: Cobb County voter rolls stolen. To what end, I wonder? Weighting voters by party affiliation, by precinct, with a program using the decimal function in the tabulation of Diebold votes? Changing addresses to increase provisional voting? Mimi Kennedy

    Polling equipment stolen before Georgia special election
    By Associated Press April 18 at 6:05 AM

    “MARIETTA, Ga. — Polling equipment containing information on every Georgia voter has been stolen just before Tuesday’s special election.”

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/polling-equipment-stolen-before-georgia-special-election/2017/04/18/8170ddbe-241e-11e7-928e-3624539060e8_story.html?utm_term=.b44a41d48e8e#comments

    Election Equipment Stolen In Georgia Ahead Of Tuesday’s Special Election
    April 17, 2017 by Mindy Fischer

    “State officials are insisting that this theft will not affect the voting results. But when voter confidence in our election system is at an all-time low, a theft like this raises all kinds of alarms.”

    http://mindy-fischer-writer.com/2017/04/election-equipment-stolen-georgia-ahead-tuesdays-special-election/?utm_content=buffer0139f&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook.com&utm_campaign=buffer

  29. Altandmain

    Apparently Bernie Sanders doesn’t consider himself a Democrat:

    http://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/329418-sanders-i-do-not-consider-myself-a-democrat

    Oh and apparently during the campaign, he refused to say “I’m with Her”:
    http://forward.com/fast-forward/369288/bernie-sanders-refused-to-use-im-with-her-in-hillary-campaign-ad/

    Finally Senator Feinstein of California gets booed for opposing universal healthcare:

    http://freebeacon.com/politics/feinstein-says-she-is-not-there-on-single-payer-health-care-system-town-hall-crowd-boos/

  30. kimsarah

    Some folks are still stuck in a stage of grief:
    From AlterNet:
    24-HOUR FLASH POLL
    EXPIRING SOON!
    Do you think Hillary Clinton is the rightful President of the United States?
    YES >>
    NO >>
    FACT: Hillary Clinton won the popular vote by over 3 MILLION votes.
    FACT: Russia RIGGED our election to help elect Donald Trump.
    FACT: Trump’s ties to Russia have been under FBI investigation since JULY of 2O16.
    Look, we need to hear from our top supporters RIGHT NOW.
    Let us know: Do you think Hillary is the Rightful President of the United States?
    Thanks for your quick response,
    National Democratic Training Committee

    1. Lambert Stretherl

      > “National Democratic Training Committee”

      Legit? I agree that reality and parody are hard to distinguish these days, but please, let’s try to keep our sourcing straight.

      1. Marina Bart

        It’s real.

        It’s a PAC.

        http://www.traindemocrats.org/

        There’s a Facebook page, too.

        The treasurer is linked to Patrick Murphy — yes, that Patrick Murphy, the Republican “turned” Democrat who lost to Rubio. He also used to work for Joe Lieberman.

      1. Marina Bart

        Tom Perez got booed again.

        So a couple of good things happened today.

        And I am fairly confident the DLC is nowhere near hitting bottom.

Comments are closed.