Tag Archives: clinton

The next U.S. president could save or destroy the Arctic

by Brain5176z Posted on June 16, 2016

The next U.S. president could save or destroy the Arctic

By on Jun 16, 2016Share

The next president will decide the fate of pristine waters 3,000 miles away from the Oval Office — a decision that would resonate for decades.

Nearly 400 scientists sent a letter Wednesday calling on President Obama to close the Arctic to the oil industry. Right now, Obama’s five-year draft plan for offshore drilling offers two lease sales, one in the Beaufort Sea in 2020 and one in the Chukchi Sea in 2022.

But it’s not just Obama who will determine the fate of the Arctic; his successor’s choices will outlast his or her tenure by a long shot.

For her part, presumptive Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton has indicated that she would not allow oil and gas drilling in the region.

On the other hand, Republican nominee Donald Trump hasn’t taken a formal stance on the issue, though he has indicated support for offshore drilling in the Atlantic and that he would “absolutely” drill in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. “I’m a big driller,” he’s said.

For drillers, the Arctic is about the long game: From the time the leasing bid occurs, it usually takes about a decade for drilling to actually begin. 

“You’re putting into motion a process that will rattle on for decades,” Tim Donaghy, a senior researcher at Greenpeace who focuses on offshore drilling, told Grist.

Even if the Arctic were opened, no company has managed to prove that wading into its icy waters is a smart financial investment. Any project in the Arctic is bound to face similar hurdles and the kind of opposition Shell saw from climate activists, who blockaded the mouth of a river to stall the company’s ice breaker last year. Shell, after a series of mishaps, announced last May that it was packing up after blowing $7 billion in Arctic waters.

The Arctic Circle contains an estimated 90 billion barrels of oil, equivalent to 13 percent of Earth’s undiscovered oil, to be exact. Drillers (and future presidents) may be hard-pressed to let go of such a buried treasure.

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The next U.S. president could save or destroy the Arctic

Posted in alo, Anchor, Brita, Everyone, FF, GE, LAI, ONA, solar, solar panels, The Atlantic, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on The next U.S. president could save or destroy the Arctic

Trump Idiocy Roundup of the Past Six Hours

by JaredRichey Posted on June 14, 2016

Mother Jones

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OK, fine, back to Donald Trump. A daily roundup apparently isn’t possible anymore. I guess we need one each for morning, afternoon, and evening. Sigh. Here’s the latest:

Donald Trump announced Monday that he was revoking media credentials from the Washington Post, another sign that he does not tolerate criticism that often comes with presidential campaigns.

Trump has previously banned Politico, BuzzFeed, the Daily Beast, the Des Moines Register and other publications from attending his press events and rallies. But the Post ban is new territory, given the paper’s historic role in covering campaigns and setting the nation’s political agenda.

Hey! Don’t forget about us! Pema Levy has also gotten herself banned from Trump events, which makes me incredibly jealous. Still, I suppose it’s only fair. Pema actually tries to get into Trump events, which is probably a necessary first step to being banned. But I might still have a shot at making one of Trump’s enemies lists, right? I assume he’s got several.

What else? In the kind of plainly unfair reporting that got the Post banned, Max Ehrenfreund wrote an entire article this afternoon about the common Trumpism, “There’s something going on.” Ehrenfreund postsplains: “That phrase, according to political scientists who study conspiracy theories, is characteristic of politicians who seek to exploit the psychology of suspicion and cynicism to win votes.” Roger that.

Then, five hours later, Jenna Johnson followed up with another entire article on the even more common Trumpism: “A lot of people are saying….” That really is probably Trump’s favorite stylistic tic. Note, however, that when he’s referring to himself, it’s always “Everyone says….” As in, “Everyone says I won the debate.” Or “Everyone says the judge has been totally unfair.” Nobody ever asks him to name any of these people who are saying this stuff, of course. I guess that would be rude or something.

Finally, today brings a new study from the Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy. It’s worth a read, but my favorite part is the chart on the right. It relies on data from Media Tenor, so it hasn’t been cherry picked by the researchers themselves. It shows that (a) only a tiny amount of primary campaign coverage was devoted to issues, (b) of that coverage, Donald Trump’s was 57 percent positive or neutral (!), and (c) Hillary’s was 84 percent negative. That’s issue coverage. Hillary wasn’t just savaged on her tone or her clothing or her poll numbers. She was savaged on the issues, the one place where practically everyone agrees she’s strong and knowledgable. Even if you disagree with her—and that isn’t supposed to affect media coverage—she knows what she’s talking about.

And this wasn’t driven just by Emailgate or Benghazi or whatnot: “Even the non-scandal portion of Clinton’s issue coverage—what she was saying on trade, jobs, foreign policy, and the like—was reported more negatively than positively. Clinton was the only one of the major candidates whose policy platform generated an unfavorable balance of news coverage.“

And people wonder why she avoids the press. Maybe if they treated her with the same dignity and respect they reserve for Donald Trump’s deep and profound knowledge of the issues, she’d open up a bit.

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Trump Idiocy Roundup of the Past Six Hours

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Clinton Blasts Anti-Muslim Bigotry in Aftermath of Orlando Attack

by JacintoWare2 Posted on June 13, 2016

Mother Jones

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Hillary Clinton never mentioned Donald Trump’s name, but in her first speech since Sunday’s massacre at an Orlando gay club, Clinton sharply rebuked the anti-Muslim sentiment that has been at the center of his presidential campaign.

In a somber foreign policy speech in Cleveland on Monday, Clinton laid out a broad outline of her anti-terrorism strategy, one that mostly targets ISIS. “The attack in Orlando makes it even more clear: We cannot contain this threat, we must defeat it,” she said at a rally that had already been scheduled and was adjusted in the aftermath of Sunday’s events. Referring to the attacks in Paris and Brussels, as well as the one in Orlando, Clinton warned that the “threat is metastasizing.”

Clinton stressed that Muslim communities need to be treated as allies by law enforcement, because extra surveillance or profiling “plays right into the terrorists’ hands.” She noted that hate crimes against Muslims have increased after past terrorist attacks. She singled out Trump’s “inflammatory anti-Muslim rhetoric” and his call for a ban on Muslim immigrants, which Clinton said “hurts the vast majority of Muslims, who love freedom and hate terror.” With the threat of ISIS, she added, the country should be “strengthening our alliances, not weakening them or walking away from them,” a not-so-subtle rebuke of Trump’s penchant for dismissing the importance of NATO and other longstanding alliances.

When President George W. Bush responded to 9/11, she recalled, he reached out to the Muslim community, even visiting a mosque six days after the attack. “It is time to get back to those days,” she said, drawing another contrast to Trump, who reiterated his proposed travel ban over the weekend.

Clinton also used the speech to push for increased gun control, including reviving the ban on assault weapons that lapsed in 2004. “I believe weapons of war have no place on our streets,” she said, noting that the AR-15 rifle, which was used in Orlando, was also employed in the San Bernardino and Sandy Hook attacks. The presumptive Democratic nominee also pushed to bar individuals on the FBI watch list and the no-fly list from being able to purchase weapons. “If the FBI is watching you for suspected terrorist links,” she said, “you shouldn’t be able to just go buy a gun with no questions asked.”

Though the bulk of Clinton’s speech focused on the foreign policy implications of domestic terrorism, she did note that the attack in Orlando targeted the LGBT community. “To all the LGBT people grieving today: You have millions of allies who will always have your back,” Clinton said. “I am one of them.”

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Clinton Blasts Anti-Muslim Bigotry in Aftermath of Orlando Attack

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How Bernie Sanders made Hillary Clinton into a greener candidate

by CoralMill3 Posted on June 8, 2016

How Bernie Sanders made Hillary Clinton into a greener candidate

By on Jun 8, 2016 6:47 amShare

Hillary Clinton is her party’s presumptive nominee. Whether Sanders drops out tomorrow or the day he loses the roll-call vote at the Democratic convention in Philadelphia, his campaign is over.

But if ever there were a losing campaign that achieved some major wins, it’s Sanders’. Not only did he force Clinton to talk more about economic inequality, he pushed her to promise stronger action to fight climate change and rein in fossil fuel companies. If Hillary Clinton becomes president and keeps some of her more recent promises to restrict oil drilling and fracking, Sanders will deserve a share of the credit.

When Sanders first got into the race, it didn’t look like he would adopt climate change as a major issue. He was one of the strongest climate hawks in the U.S. Senate, having sponsored bills to promote clean energy, reduce carbon emissions, and end fossil fuel subsidies. But for the first few months of his presidential campaign, he did little more than make passing mention of climate change and its importance to young voters. In September of last year, I even wrote a post entitled, “Why is Bernie Sanders neglecting climate change?”

Then, gradually, Sanders started to focus on the issue and develop a strong climate agenda. In October, he said at a debate that climate change is the biggest threat to national security. In November, he cosponsored new Senate legislation, the Keep It in the Ground Act, that would have the federal government stop issuing leases for oil, gas, and coal extraction on public lands and in offshore areas. In December, Sanders rolled out a climate action plan that included the “keep it in the ground” proposal as well as a carbon tax, elimination of fossil fuel subsidies, and investments in renewables. He went on to talk more on the campaign trail about climate change and related issues such as reinvesting in mass transit and cities.

By January, the Sanders campaign was using the climate issue to attack Clinton, going after her for the vague and incomplete nature of her climate plan. The two campaigns battled on Twitter over whose climate and clean energy platform was stronger. Clinton clearly felt the need to start competing with Sanders for the votes of climate hawks.

Simultaneously, climate activists from groups such as Greenpeace and 350.org were stalking Clinton on the campaign trail and asking her questions about whether she would restrict fossil fuel extraction. The one-two punch of pressure from the green grassroots and pressure from Sanders pushed Clinton leftward on a number of energy issues.

First, last fall, Clinton finally came out against the Keystone XL pipeline, shortly before Obama rejected it. She also declared that she was opposed to offshore drilling in the Arctic Ocean. And she shifted her position on fossil fuel extraction on public land, from saying it was necessary to saying she wanted to move toward an eventual ban.

As Sanders picked up steam, she gave still more ground to climate activists. In February, she voiced her opposition to offshore drilling in the Atlantic. She also moved to assuage concerns that she is pro-fracking, saying in a March debate that she wants more regulation of fracking, and that she opposes the practice in instances when the local community is against it, it causes air or water contamination, or it involves the use of secret chemicals. “By the time we get through all of my conditions, I do not think there will be many places in America where fracking will continue to take place,” she said. Clinton had, in fact, started to say some of these things more than a year earlier, but her language has grown stronger and clearer during the primaries. In fact, she’s gotten so forthright about her plans to crack down on fossil fuels that she damaged her standing in coal country when she admitted in March that her administration would “put a lot of coal miners and coal companies out of business.”

Clinton even tried to get to Sanders’ left on climate and energy issues. During another debate in March, she accused Sanders of wanting to delay implementation of President Obama’s Clean Power Plan, which will curb pollution from coal-fired power plants. (Asked afterward to give a source for that odd claim, the Clinton camp pointed to an article I wrote about executive actions the Sanders campaign said he might take to crack down on fracking, which included potentially revising the Clean Power Plan. Some experts argue that such revisions would delay it. The Sanders team responded by saying their candidate would not do anything that would significantly delay the plan.) The Clinton campaign was also critical of Sanders’ proposal to swiftly phase out all nuclear power, noting that it would likely cause an increase in emissions from coal- and gas-fired power plants.

Finally, in April, the media recognized the salience of climate change to Democratic voters and let the candidates go at it over climate change in a debate. Thanks to Sanders, there was someone to push Clinton toward stronger stances as the two sparred over who would do a better job of saving the planet.

Last month, in recognition of Sanders’ strong showing in the primaries, the Democratic National Committee allowed him to appoint five members to the party’s Platform Drafting Committee, while Clinton got to appoint six. Among Sanders’ choices was Bill McKibben, the climate activist who founded 350.org, led the charge to block Keystone XL, and calls for dramatically reduced fossil fuel extraction. (McKibben is on Grist’s board of directors.)

It may be hard now to remember how unstoppable Clinton seemed only a year ago, when she was expected to dominate in the Democratic primary race. She had nearly tied Obama in the 2008 primary and then gone on to serve as his secretary of state, enhancing her stature and approval ratings while reaching out to die-hard Obama supporters. Her name recognition and fundraising connections alone put her at an advantage so steep that other nationally known Democrats, even those being drafted to run by supporters such as Joe Biden and Elizabeth Warren, declined to challenge her. Sanders, though, jumped into the race and showed that there is a real appetite for an agenda that more aggressively tackles inequality and climate change, and stands up to corporate power, especially fossil fuel companies. Clinton has moved in his direction to woo his supporters, and the next Democratic presidential nominee will probably start from an even more progressive place on climate and energy.

As Sanders said at a Monday night rally in San Francisco, “When we began our campaign, our ideas were considered a fringe campaign and fringe ideas. That is not the case today.” Sanders lost the primary race, but he has changed the Democratic Party and the politics of climate change.

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How Bernie Sanders made Hillary Clinton into a greener candidate

Posted in alo, Anchor, FF, G & F, GE, LAI, ONA, The Atlantic, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on How Bernie Sanders made Hillary Clinton into a greener candidate

Hillary Clinton Has a Shouting Problem

by WernerC49079418 Posted on May 29, 2016

Mother Jones

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A friend of mine sends me an email about Hillary Clinton:

I have two daughters, 28 and 25, who live in NYC and a son, 23, just out of college and soon to move to Washington DC. Last weekend we were with all three in Charlottesville. I brought up the subject of the election and they all three basically said the same thing: Trump is a jackass and they are going to vote for Hillary, but for god’s sake why does she scream and shout at her rallies, etc.

They say that virtually all of their friends are driven crazy by it and they basically prefer her to Trump except for the shouting and screaming shtick. My oldest says it is now considered a sexist term but, frankly, Hillary comes across as too “shrill.”

Listen, I like Hillary a lot but she has got to stop this shouting bullshit. It comes across as insincere and phony and—as Joe Klein puts it—it’s not necessary in the era of microphones. Hillary is at her most impressive when she just talks like a normal human—remember how she came across in the Benghazi hearings? I am confident that plenty of Hillary’s people read your blog, so please beg them to lean heavily on her to stop the shouting and just talk to people like they aren’t a bunch of deaf morons standing a half-mile away. Obviously Trump has picked up on the resonating significance of this shouting thing and if there is one thing we can agree on it’s that he has a intuitive ear for what gets people riled-up.

I could take the coward’s way out and say that I’m just passing along the observations of another person here, but the truth is that I find Hillary hard to listen to as well. The shouting is one part of it, but the other part (in victory speeches and ordinary stump speeches) is that she never has anything even remotely interesting to say. I know that these kinds of speeches are usually pretty canned affairs, but there’s no reason Hillary can’t mix things up a little bit. Stuff happens in the world all the time, and you can use this stuff as a hook to make your speeches more likely to drive ratings and get better TV coverage.

A lot of people will take this criticism as pure sexism. Maybe it is. It’s not as if Bernie Sanders has a carefully modulated tone of voice, and young people seem to like him just fine. Still, fair or not, sexist or not, this is a common observation about Hillary. And it’s hardly impossible to learn how to speak better in public. It just takes a little time and practice. In marketing—and that’s largely what politics is—you don’t complain about lousy customers if they turn out not to like your product or your advertising. The customer is always right, by definition. This is a weak spot for Hillary, and she ought to work on it.

And while we’re on the subject, Team Hillary really, really needs to get over its idiotic obsession with trying to hang a disparaging nickname on Donald Trump. All it does is validate his nicknames and put Hillary in the same gutter he works out of. In the end, that’s not what a majority of the public is likely to want. They want a president, not a game show host.

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Hillary Clinton Has a Shouting Problem

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Today’s Dose of Liberal Heresy: Campaign Finance Reform Isn’t That Big a Deal

by CindyParkhill Posted on May 28, 2016

Mother Jones

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I was musing the other day about something or other, and for some reason it occurred to me that there are several subjects near and dear to progressive hearts that I flatly disagree with. I’m not talking about, say, charter schools, where there’s a robust, ongoing intra-liberal debate and both sides already have plenty of adherents. Nor am I talking about things like Wall Street regulation, where everyone (including me) thinks we need to do more but we disagree on technical issues (Bernie wants to break up big banks, I want to double capital requirements).

I’m thinking instead of things that seem to enjoy something like 90+ percent liberal support—and which I think are basically a waste of liberal time and energy. So if I write about them, a whole lot of people are going to be pissed off. Something like 90+ percent of my readership, I’d guess. Who needs the grief? After all, for the most part there’s usually not much harm in spending time and energy on these things (though there are exceptions).

But let’s give it a go anyway. Maybe this will be the first entry in a periodic series. Maybe I’ll discover that I’m not quite as alone on these issues as I think. Here’s my first entry.

Campaign Finance Reform

Liberals love campaign finance reform. Citizens United is our Roe v. Wade, and it’s become an even more central issue since Bernie Sanders began his presidential run last year. As near as I can tell, Bernie—along with most liberals—thinks it’s the key foundational issue of modern progressivism. Until we seriously reduce the amount of money in political campaigns, no real progressive reform is possible.

I’m pretty sure this is completely wrong. Here are seven reasons that have persuaded me of this over the years, with the most important reason left to the end:

  1. Half a century has produced nothing. Liberals groups have been putting serious effort into campaign finance reform for about 40 years now. The only result has been abject failure. Ban union donations, they create PACs. Ban hard money, you get soft money. Ban soft money, you get Super PACs. Etc. None of the reforms have worked, and even before Citizens United the Supreme Court had steadily made effective reform efforts harder and harder. What’s even worse, the public still isn’t with us. If you ask them vaguely if they think there’s too much money in politics, most will say yes. If you ask them if they really care, they shrug. After nearly half a century, maybe it’s time to ask why.
  2. Other countries spend less. Most other rich countries spend a lot less on political campaigns than we do. Are they less in thrall to moneyed interests because of this? Some are, some aren’t. I’ve never seen any convincing evidence that there’s much of a correlation.
  3. Billionaires are idiots. Seriously. The evidence of the last decade or so suggests that billionaires just aren’t very effective at using their riches to win elections. This is unsurprising: billionaires are egotists who tend to think that because they got rich doing X, they are also geniuses at Y and Z and on beyond zebra. But they aren’t. This stuff is a hobby for them, and mostly they’re just wasting their money.
  4. The small-dollar revolution. Starting with Howard Dean in 2004, the internet has produced an explosion of small-dollar donations, accounting for over a third of presidential fundraising in 2012 and 2016. This year, for example, Hillary Clinton has so far raised $288 million (including money raised by outside groups). Bernie Sanders has raised $208 million, all of it in small-dollar donations averaging $27. Ironically, at the same time that he’s made campaign finance reform a major issue, Bernie has demonstrated that small dollars can power a serious insurgency.
  5. Money really is speech. Obviously this is an opinion, and a really rare one on my side of the political spectrum. But why should political speech be restricted? My read of the First Amendment suggests that if there’s any single kind of speech that should enjoy the highest level of protection, it’s political speech.
  6. We may have maxed out anyway. There’s increasing evidence that in big-time contests (governors + national offices), we’ve basically reached the point of diminishing returns. At this point, if billionaires spend more money it just won’t do much good even if they’re smart about it. There are only so many minutes of TV time available and only so many persuadable voters. More important, voters have only so much bandwidth. Eventually they tune out, and it’s likely that we’ve now reached that point.

    In the interests of fairness, I’ll acknowledge that I might be wrong about this. It might turn out that there are clever ways to spend even more; billionaires might get smarter; and Citizens United has only just begun to affect spending. Maybe in a couple of decades I’ll be eating my words about this.

  7. Campaign spending hasn’t gone up much anyway. I told you I’d leave the most important reason for the end, and this is it. It’s easy to be shocked when you hear about skyrocketing billions of dollars being spent on political campaigns, but billions of dollars aren’t that much in a country the size of the United States. In 2012, Obama spent $1.1 billion vs. Mitt Romney’s $1.2 billion. That’s about 1 percent of total ad spending in the US. Hell, in the cell phone biz alone, AT&T spent $1.3 billion vs. Verizon’s $1.2 billion. If you want to look at campaign spending, you really need to size it to the growth in GDP over the past half century or so.

So here it is. These two charts show our skyrocketing spending on presidential campaigns as a percent of GDP. Data for the chart on the left comes from Mother Jones. The chart on the right comes from the Center for Responsive Politics. Total presidential spending is up about 18 percent since 2000. I supposed I’d like to see this reduced as much as the next guy, but it’s hard to see it as the core corrupter of American politics. It’s a symptom, but it’s really not the underlying disease. There really are problems with the influence of the rich on American politics, but campaigns are probably the place where it matters least, not most.

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Today’s Dose of Liberal Heresy: Campaign Finance Reform Isn’t That Big a Deal

Posted in alo, Citizen, Everyone, FF, GE, LG, ONA, PUR, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Today’s Dose of Liberal Heresy: Campaign Finance Reform Isn’t That Big a Deal

Bernie Sanders Officially Admits He Lost

by AmparoTrn382087 Posted on May 24, 2016

Mother Jones

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Bernie Sanders gets tossed a bone today:

Top Bernie Sanders supporters Dr. Cornel West and Rep. Keith Ellison (D-Minn.) will be among those on the Democratic Party’s important Platform Drafting Committee after the Vermont senator won a key concession as he looks to leave his mark on the party’s platform. The roster of the drafting committee, released by the Democratic National Committee on Monday, reflects the party’s agreement that Sanders would have five supporters on the committee, compared to six for Hillary Clinton.

First off: If Bernie has officially agreed to accept five out of 11 members on the Platform Committee, isn’t that a tacit admission that he’s already lost the nomination?

But also: Does anyone care about the platform? Seriously. I know it’s a big fight every four years, but does either party platform ever have any effect at all on the election?

And as long as we’re talking about Bernie, Christopher Achen and Larry Bartels write today that his supporters don’t actually support his lefty politics:

In a survey conducted for the American National Election Studies in late January, supporters of Mr. Sanders…were less likely than Mrs. Clinton’s supporters to favor concrete policies that Mr. Sanders has offered…including a higher minimum wage, increasing government spending on health care and an expansion of government services financed by higher taxes.

….Mr. Sanders has drawn enthusiastic support from young people, a common pattern for outsider candidates. But here, too…the generational difference in ideology seems not to have translated into more liberal positions on concrete policy issues — even on the specific issues championed by Mr. Sanders. For example, young Democrats were less likely than older Democrats to support increased government funding of health care, substantially less likely to favor a higher minimum wage and less likely to support expanding government services. Their distinctive liberalism is mostly a matter of adopting campaign labels, not policy preferences.

That’s interesting, if not especially surprising. We’re all basically tribalists at our cores. Except for you and me, of course.

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Bernie Sanders Officially Admits He Lost

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Donald Trump’s Latest Attack Ad Is Really Ugly

by Neville11O Posted on May 23, 2016

Mother Jones

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Last week, Donald Trump promised he would soon go after Hillary Clinton by dredging up Bill Clinton’s past affairs, and boy did he deliver Monday morning. Trump posted an ominous video on Instagram that starts with a black-and-white photo of the White House as various women describe allegations against the former president. “No woman should be subjected to it—it was an assault,” one woman says. Then the image slowly fades into a cigar-smoking Bill Clinton.

The video closes with a picture of Hillary and Bill sitting together, superimposed with text asking, “Here We Go Again?” There’s audio of Hillary cackling.

Is Hillary really protecting women?

A video posted by Donald J. Trump (@realdonaldtrump) on May 23, 2016 at 8:27am PDT

Trump has a troubling history with women, so this line of attack has a certain irony. As The Daily Beast reported last year, Trump’s ex-wife Ivana* once said he had “raped” her while they were married—later distancing herself from that term, but still claiming that she had felt “violated” by her then-husband.

His regular disparagement of women—and persistent need to critique them based on their appearance—has been an issue throughout the campaign. And an extensive New York Times investigation into Trump’s behind-the-scenes conduct around women in his personal life and professional life concluded that his history is filled with “unwelcome romantic advances, unending commentary on the female form, a shrewd reliance on ambitious women, and unsettling workplace conduct.”

Clinton told CNN last week that she planned to avoid responding to Trump when he leveled attacks against her for Bill’s affairs. “I know that’s exactly what he’s fishing for,” she said, “and I’m not going to be responding.”

Correction: An earlier version of this article mistakenly referred to Ivanka Trump, who is Donald Trump’s daughter.

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Donald Trump’s Latest Attack Ad Is Really Ugly

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Does Donald Trump Really Have a 30% Chance of Winning?

by IonaMackinolty Posted on May 15, 2016

Mother Jones

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Sam Wang, my go-to presidential forecaster, says Hillary Clinton would have a 99 percent chance of winning if the election were held today. But the election isn’t being held today:

Historically from 1952 to 2012, the likely range of movement in two-candidate margin from this time until Election Day has been 10 percentage points, which is the standard deviation from the 16 past elections. Therefore, even though Clinton currently leads by a median margin of 7 percent (12 national surveys) and would certainly win an election held today, she could still lose the lead, and from a purely poll-based standpoint, is only narrowly favored to be elected President in November (probability: 70%).

It is also the case that Clinton is the only candidate who is poised for a blowout. Her “plus-one-sigma” outcome (current polls plus one standard deviation) is a popular vote win of 58.5%-41.5%. Trump’s plus-one-sigma outcome is a narrower win, 51.5%-48.5%.

In chart form it looks something like this: two bell curves centered 7 points away from each other, each with a standard deviation of 10 points.

The blue span from 48.5 to 51.5 is Trump’s 30 percent chance of winning—though it’s worth noting that Wang says the standard deviation in recent elections has been more like 4 points, which would give Trump virtually no chance of winning. Nonetheless, he also says this: “But considering the upheaval in the Republican Party, a little voice tells me to open my mind to a wider range of possibilities… including a Trump win.”

James Wimberley isn’t convinced. He takes a look at various upsides and downsides of the two candidates (gaffes, oppo dumps, unusual outside events, etc.) and concludes that virtually all of them favor Hillary:

Adding these pseudo-numbers up, I get the total risks to Clinton 39, to Trump 352. Really the only more than marginally possible future events in my categories that he has going for him are ISIS pulling off a big atrocity and economic collapse in China, both at long odds. I don’t claim credibility for my particular numbers, just that overall we have to put a very fat thumb on the probability scales in Clinton’s favour. So her chances to a sensible bettor are more than Wang’s 70%, a lot more.

Comments? I’m pretty astounded that after locking up the nomination Trump has actually gotten more out of control, not more restrained. Everybody sort of assumed that when it came time to widen his appeal beyond the Republican base, he’d be smart enough to dial things back a notch, but he seems to have taken this as some kind of schoolyard challenge. The last couple of weeks he’s been crazier than ever. If this keeps up, I’d be hard put to give him more than a 1 percent chance of winning.

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Does Donald Trump Really Have a 30% Chance of Winning?

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On Facebook, Trump’s Longtime Butler Calls for Obama to Be Killed

by AdelineTunstall Posted on May 12, 2016

Mother Jones

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Anthony Senecal, who worked as Donald Trump’s butler for 17 years before being named the in-house historian at the tycoon’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, has repeatedly published posts on his Facebook page that express profound hatred for President Barack Obama and declare he should be killed.

On Wednesday, Senecal put up a post that read:

To all my friends on FB, just a short note to you on our pus headed “president” !!!! This character who I refer to as zero (0) should have been taken out by our military and shot as an enemy agent in his first term !!!!! Instead he still remains in office doing every thing he can to gut the America we all know and love !!!!! Now comes Donald J Trump to put an end to the corruption in government !!!! The so called elite, who are nothing but common dog turds from your front lawn are shaking in their boots because there is a new Sheriff coming to town, and the end to their corruption of the American people (YOU) is at hand !!!! I cannot believe that a common murder is even allowed to run (killery clinton) OR that a commie like bernie is a also allowed to also run !!!! Come on America put your big boy pants on—this election you have a choice—GET YOUR ASS OUT AND VOTE !!!! Thank you !!!!

Though Senecal’s Facebook page is public, this message could only be read by his Facebook friends. In an interview with Mother Jones, Senecal confirms that those were his words: “I wrote that. I believe that.”

Here’s a screen shot of the missive:

A spokeswoman for the Trump campaign says, “This individual has not worked at Mar-a-Lago for many years.”

Senecal, who is 84, says he has been employed at Mar-a-Lago since about 1959. Trump acquired the property in 1985, and Senecal remained on staff. “As Trump says, I came with the furniture,” Senecal remarks. About seven years later, he became the butler for the celebrity mogul who is now the GOP’s presumptive presidential nominee. In 2009, Senecal informed Trump he wanted to resign as butler, and Trump persuaded him to stay on as the in-house historian at Mar-a-Lago. There is no salary for the job, Senecal says, but he makes money leading tours of the estate.

Senecal regularly posts screeds on his Facebook page from a far-right perspective in which he decries Obama and his wife—along with Hillary Clinton, other Democrats, and Republican leaders. He often refers to Obama as “zero,” and several times he has called for the president’s execution. He confirms that he has written all the posts on the page that have appeared under his name. “It’s all me,” he says.

On April 21, 2015, Senecal railed:

Looks like that sleezey bastard zero (O) is trying to out maneuver Congress again, if the truth be known this prick needs to be hung for treason!!!

On May 23, 2015, he published a post saying:

I feel it is time for the SECOND AMERICAN REVOLUTION !!!!! The only way we will change this crooked government is to douche it !!!!! This might be the time with this kenyan fraud in power !!!!! …With the last breath I draw I will help rid this America of the scum infested in its government–and if that means dragging that ball less dick head from the white mosque and hanging his scrawny ass from the portico–count me in !!!!!

On June 6, 2015, one of his Facebook friends wrote a comment on Senecal’s page saying, “We need to send the seals to SOROS and ROTHCHILD and REMOVE them and their cronies–then HANG BO and most of Washington–and we’ll have a CHANCE to get things straightened out.” This person added, “everyone knows they’re CRIMINAL – HANG ALL OF THEM.” Senecal replied, “I love the idea.”

On May 26, 2015, a commenter on the page excoriated Obama and his wife, Michelle (referring to the First Lady as “Sasquatch”): “If he gets hung, then Sasquatch does too.” Senecal responded, “Amen….Two of the most DISGUSTING individuals on the face of God’s Green Earth !!!! Puke !!!!!!”

Here are screen shots of these posts:

Asked why he has posted messages calling for Obama to be killed, Senecal says, “I cannot stand the bastard.” He continues: “I don’t believe he’s an American citizen. I think he’s a fraudulent piece of crap that was brought in by the Democrats.” Trump’s historian is a birther. Senecal notes that he has been suspended in the past on Facebook for publishing material that violated the service’s guidelines.

One recurring theme in Senecal’s messages is that Obama is a secret Muslim bent on destroying the United States. On September 18, he wrote, “Our current ‘president’ is a rotten filthy muzzie !!!!! Period !!!!!! He continues his war on Christians !!!!!! …zero is against the people of America !!!!!” Months earlier, he declared of Obama, “look at the number of goat screwing muzzies he is degrading our government with !!!!!” (One of Senecal’s Facebook associates replied, “We need to LYNCH that NIG — NOW!!”) In another post that day, Senecal suggested Obama was preparing to impose martial law on the United States.

On June 6, a commenter on Senecal’s page wrote, “I will gladly fight…to get rid of the commie muzzie and his vp in the white house…and we need to get rid of his whole administration and those that support and those muzzies he has put in highly senative positions in our government.” Senecal answered, “Exactly, Ruth !!!!!”

In a June 23 message, Senecal complained, “there are to sic many fkn muzzies in America !!!!!” Two days later, he wrote on Facebook, “muzzie shits…are invading our country.”

On August 12, he published a photo of Obama with this caption: “If ALLAH HAD AN ASSHOLE IT WOULD LOOK LIKE THIS.” On June 18, he referred to Obama as an “unfeeling sack of camel feces.”

Senecal’s Facebook timeline is loaded with assorted extremism. A year ago, he derided Clinton: “Stop the LYING BITCH OF BENGHAZI, NOW—killery clinton !!!!!! She should be in prison awaiting hanging !!!!!!!” Last summer, Senecal posted an image comparing Obama to Hitler and Lenin. On September 11, he groused about the Iran nuclear deal and assailed “the treachery of zero, the pig ‘president’ and traitor ketchup kerry.” And Senecal has taken shots at the GOP establishment. In a September 7 post, Senecal denounced then-House Speaker John Boehner and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and said both were “FKN CROOKS and should be run out of D.C, on a rail and covered in hot tar.” A few months prior to that, he proclaimed, “revolt and hang all of the a-holes in Congress and the crooked government !!!!! Let’s get ‘er done !!!!!!”

Senecal often has included links to articles about various right-wing conspiracies. On September 14, he cited an article that claimed that Obama “is leading the Muslim Brotherhood.” The day before, he had linked to a story from a conservative site claiming that nearly half of Americans would support a military coup against Obama.

He has regularly published images of the Confederate flag on his Facebook page. And in a May 10, 2015, post, he exclaimed, “Call me biased, racist…call me anything you want–I could care less !!!!!” The following month, he wrote on the page that once Obama leaves office, “only a FEW Negroes and josh earnest will even remember him.”

A lengthy and flattering New York Times profile of Senecal in March noted, “Few people here can anticipate Mr. Trump’s demands and desires better than Mr. Senecal…He understands Mr. Trump’s sleeping patterns and how he likes his steak (‘It would rock on the plate, it was so well done’).” The story reported that in 1990, Senecal “took a sabbatical to become the mayor of a town in West Virginia, where he gained some notoriety for a proposal requiring all panhandlers to carry begging permits.” The article did not mention his Facebook page.

The Times did point out that “Senecal’s admiration for his longtime boss seems to know few limits.” On June 16, Senecal exclaimed on his Facebook page, “Today, my employer and friend Donald J Trump announced he was running for the Office of President of the United States… NO ONE deserves to run for and be elected to this GREAT office, than Mr. Trump. !!!!!”

Here is a roundup of screen shots from Senecal’s Facebook page:

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On Facebook, Trump’s Longtime Butler Calls for Obama to Be Killed

Posted in alo, Anchor, bigo, Citizen, Everyone, FF, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, PUR, Radius, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on On Facebook, Trump’s Longtime Butler Calls for Obama to Be Killed