Category Archives: Election

Mad Propaganda

Ladies and gentlemen: your GOP candidate.

This is not funny. It is terrifying. The Russians engage in a sloppy disinformation effort and, before the day is out, the Republican nominee for president is standing on a stage reciting the manufactured story as truth. How did this happen? Who in the Trump campaign was feeding him falsehoods straight from the Kremlin? (The Trump campaign did not respond to a request for comment).

The Russians have been obtaining American emails and now are presenting complete misrepresentations of them—falsifying them—in hopes of setting off a cascade of events that might change the outcome of the presidential election.

Not perfect.

Timing 

Whoever got the Pussy video into the WaPo's hands really should've done it a year ago. Would've saved everyone a lot of trouble. 

Debate

There's a debate tomorrow, right?

When they walk out, I hope Clinton and gives him only the most cursory of acknowledgements - maybe a grunt a little shrug - instead of smiling and shaking his hand as per tradition. He doesn't deserve courtesy.

The Party Of Lincoln

The one time, pre-2000, I put my real name on a political letter-to-the-editor for our local paper, I got hate mail from some anonymous local yahoo. Never did that again.

I can't imagine being a reporter these days.

Because I have written critically about Trump, I have received innumerable death threats, sometimes just general invocations that I should die, sometimes more specific threats that I should be shot or “lynched,” as one Trump fan wrote. I have been called “kike,” “Jew” and “anti-American Zionist,” even though I’m Episcopalian with a Jewish father (as if that makes a difference). I have received video cartoons that look like they are from Nazi Germany of hook-nosed men dressed in Jewish garb rubbing their hands greedily over piles of money. I have been told to go back where I came from, whatever that means. I have been called “fag,” “pedo,” and once—in an email that made no sense—“nigger-lover.” One Trump fan mentioned he knew which schools my children attended, and correctly named them. Topping it off, some Trump fans have even gone after one of my sons online, although he knew enough to immediately block them.

Ladies and gentlemen: your modern GOP.

And the man they love:

In that audio, Trump discusses a failed attempt to seduce a woman, whose full name is not given in the video.

“I moved on her and I failed. I’ll admit it,” Trump is heard saying. It was unclear when the events he was describing took place. The tape was recorded several months after he married his third wife, Melania.

“Whoa,” another voice said.

“I did try and f--- her. She was married,” Trump says.

Trump continues: “And I moved on her very heavily. In fact, I took her out furniture shopping. She wanted to get some furniture. I said, ‘I’ll show you where they have some nice furniture.’”

“I moved on her like a bitch, but I couldn’t get there. And she was married,” Trump says. “Then all of a sudden I see her, she’s now got the big phony tits and everything. She’s totally changed her look.”

When the conversation turns to the looks of Arianne Zucker, the "Days of Our Lives" actress waiting for them on the set, Trump says, “You know I’m automatically attracted to beautiful — I just start kissing them. It’s like a magnet. Just kiss. I don’t even wait.”

"And when you’re a star they let you do it. You can do anything," he later adds. "Grab them by the pussy. You can do anything."

Fucker needs to be on a sexual predator list.

Not a choir boy, but at least he's not a Democrat, right, suckers?

Peak Cynicism ?

How can Trump 'win' the next debate?

Deny reality!

“I think he can hold his own,” Krauthammer said in a panel discussion that aired Thursday on Fox. “He just needs to be—to ignore, as everybody here has said—ignore the bait. He should just dismiss all the quotations that he hears, the way that Pence did. Deny it ever happened and then ignore the fact checkers the next day.”

Ladies and gentlemen: your modern GOP!

Winning is everything. And if winning means Trump needs to pretend his own past statements do not exist because they are indefensible, so be it. All that matters is that the GOP wins. That Trump is absolutely unfit for the job is totally irrelevant.

Not Very Good At The Cyber

Donald J. Trump’s hotel chain agreed to pay a $50,000 penalty and revamp its data security policies after a couple of breaches exposed 70,000 credit card numbers and other personal information of its customers.

Attorney General Eric T. Schneiderman of New York, who announced the settlement on Friday, said in a news release that banks tracing fraudulent card use last year determined that the cards had last been legally used at Trump hotels, indicating the security breach had happened there. Further investigation found malware at several Trump hotels and that an attacker in 2014 had gained unauthorized access to steal sensitive information.