Barackface

Friday, October 28, 2016

Et Tu, Texas?

New Electoral College Ratings: Texas and North Carolina Shift in Clinton's Favor

Arkansas 1980

“I cannot tell you the number of times they would say to me, ‘If your husband wins, are you going to keep his last name?’ ” she told me. “I heard it over and over and over.”

Arkansas

The Road Trip That Changed Hillary Clinton's Life

After they made their way deeper into Arkansas, bypassing Little Rock and curving through the Ozarks, the women stopped at a ramshackle restaurant for lunch. Mrs. Ehrman was growing more alarmed as she took in the surroundings.

“I said to her, ‘Hillary, you’re never going to get French bread here. You’re never going to get Brie,’ ” she recalled in a final plea, but by then Mrs. Clinton had made up her mind. “She wasn’t even listening to me at that point,” Mrs. Ehrman said.

They arrived in Fayetteville, home of the University of Arkansas, on one of the rowdiest weekends of the year. The hilltop town, with its canopy of oak trees, had become a swarm of drunken football fans, their faces painted red and their heads covered with hats shaped like the university’s hog mascot. The Razorbacks were playing a major rival at the time, the Longhorns of the University of Texas.

“It was then that I broke down and cried when I thought, ‘She’s going to live here?’ ” Mrs. Ehrman said. “I just cried. I just absolutely cried.”

Mrs. Ehrman took a plane back to Washington and paid someone to drive her Buick home. “I thought, ‘I’m getting out of here tomorrow morning. I don’t belong here,’ ” she said.

Thursday, October 27, 2016

Texas Blues

Texas Republicans are slowly coming to grips with the unthinkable: Hillary Clinton has a shot at winning the nation’s most iconic red state.

Texas is the beating heart of the modern Republican Party, and the cornerstone of any GOP nominee’s electoral strategy. It’s also home to the most recent Republican president, George W. Bush, and to two serious recent GOP contenders for the White House, Sen. Ted Cruz and former Gov. Rick Perry.

And Texas is where the party’s most prominent donor base is clustered.

GOP Is Going To Be Three Parties After November

Don't kid yourself. This guy Trump is not going anywhere. He is going to launch a TV network and milk 20 million people all he can. Call that one party. It is going to be like one of those right wing parties in Europe.

Then there is the Utah guy McMullin. He is very clear he is not running to win. He is running to launch a center right political party.

The Libertarian party is a Republican party. I think it also wants to abolish the Education Department.

The GOP civil war begins after November. They need to lose to Hillary first. Then they can get on with the real competition.

Republicans made a fateful choice back then to tie their prospects to a medium addicted to rage and the conspiracy theories that fuel it. That came back to haunt them with the candidacy of Donald Trump. Now they find themselves between a rock and a hard place. Either they continue on the current path of promoting the rage-making machine, or they take Rampell’s advice and decide to go to war with right-wing media – which might actually become their final Waterloo.

Wednesday, October 26, 2016

A New Political Party?

Bald, wiry, and barely 40, McMullin is not a bomb-thrower by nature. He is polite and mild-mannered, and speaks in the earnest cadence of a Mormon missionary asking for permission to come inside and share a brief message about Jesus. As a Capitol Hill policy wonk, McMullin was a loyal cog in the Grand Old Party until he quit his job in August to launch a presidential protest bid under the #NeverTrump banner. Initially, he said, his campaign was intended as a vehicle of reform, meant only to remind the GOP of its conservative principles. But now, in the final weeks of this havoc-wreaking election, McMullin is scanning the wreckage of the Republican Party, and wondering whether there’s anything left to salvage........ He has become increasingly convinced that the rise of Trump “is just a symptom of a greater disease in the party” — one that can’t be cured “within the existing infrastructure.” ....... McMullin and his campaign are attempting something much more audacious than a fluke victory in a single state. While no one was watching, they were building an entirely new political party in the desert — and they don’t plan to stop when Trump loses. ........ McMullin spent the next two and half months listening to frightened lawmakers and calculating donors apologetically explain why they couldn’t break with Trump — a party paralyzed by fear and careerism. ....... For him, these craven capitulations have highlighted the need for a new center-right party in American politics ..... if Trump continues to exert his toxic influence after Nov. 8, “we are going to see a new party emerge.” ...... they’ve assembled serious state organizations across the country on a shoestring budget, enabling them to hustle their way onto 11 state ballots in the space of just 10 weeks. As Trump’s candidacy has imploded, McMullin has sought to take advantage with campaign stops throughout the Mountain West, where he’s often been greeted with large crowds and armies of eager volunteers. ........ fewer than 50% of Latter-day Saints now identify as Republicans. ..... he ticked off his support for traditional Republican causes — pro-life, pro-trade, hawkish on foreign policy— and they cheered even louder when he took on the failures of the current Republican Party. He called for a “new conservative movement” that welcomed Muslims, immigrants, and “people who don’t look like me.”

Russia, Syria, Donald, And War, And Cyber Espionage

Exclusive: Trump says Clinton policy on Syria would lead to World War Three

Syria is the number one hot spot in the world right now. The complication is that Russia is all out in support of its top regional ally Assad.

How does this game end? It ends with Assad gone. Assad will eventually go, but will also have lasting damaging effects on Putin's regime internally. It is expensive to support Assad.

The sad part is all the damage that is being done while Assad lingers on.

The forces of democracy will ultimately win. Because it is first and foremost about the people in Syria.