In Michigan, where the election was so close that the Associated Press still hadn’t called the result until some time after the election. Trump was ahead by about 12,000 votes at that time. That was significantly less than the 242,867 votes that went to third-party candidates in MichiganSince electoral votes are generally allocated on an "all or none" basis by state, the election of a U.S President is about winning the popular vote in enough states to achieve 270 electoral votes, a majority of the 538 that are available. Receiving the most votes nationwide is irrelevant, as we have seen in two of the most recent five presidential elections where the electoral vote winner and the popular vote winner were different.There are a lot of other problems with trying to blame the Third Parties for Clinton's loss (especially since Gary Johnson received a larger percentage of the vote than Jill Stein).
Since the final vote count did, indeed, put her well above 2 percentage points ahead of Trump, her margin went beyond those of winning presidential nominees Jimmy Carter in 1976 (2.07 percentage points) and George W. Bush in 2004 (2.47 percentage points). And all this is not to mention the presidents who’ve been elected without winning the popular vote at all. That’s a list that includes Bush in 2000, and Trump.James Garfield in 1880: 0.09 percentage pointsJohn F. Kennedy in 1960: 0.17 percentage pointsGrover Cleveland in 1884: 0.57 percentage pointsRichard Nixon in 1968: 0.7 percentage pointsJames Polk in 1844: 1.45 percentage points
"Shortly after 8pm on Election Night, when the unexpected trend - Trump might actually win - seemed confirmed, Don Jr told a friend that his father, or DJT, as he calls him, looked as if he had seen a ghost. Melania was in tears - and not of joy. There was, in the space of little more than an hour, in Steve Bannon's not unamused observation, a befuddled Trump morphing into a disbelieving Trump and then into a horrified Trump. But still to come was the final transformation: Suddenly, Donald Trump became a man who believed that he deserved to be, and was wholly capable of being, the president of the United States."
There were a number of fact check failures for Trump, most notably that he was wrong on ISIS controlling oil in Libya, he was wrong on blaming Obama for the way we left Iraq, and he was especially wrong about Clinton and her campaign starting birtherism.TRUMP STATEMENT: ISIS has “oil all over the place, including the oil, a lot of the oil, in Libya.”and
FACT CHECK: According to a Bloomberg analysis, Libyan oil fields and pipelines are controlled by a combination of the Government of National Accord, allies of the Tripoli Petroleum Facilities Guard, and the Libyan National Army (and groups aligned with them).
Claudia Gazzini, a Tripoli-based senior analyst at the International Crisis Group, told the Washington Post that it was simply not true that the Islamic State has control of any Libyan oil.
“While it is true that ISIS has attacked oil fields in the Sirte basin area and destroyed key equipment there, they have not sought to keep control of the oil fields,” Gazzini said.
Patti Solis Doyle, Clinton’s 2008 campaign manager, told Wolf Blitzer a volunteer forwarded an email promoting “birtherism” and that that person was fired. “The campaign nor Hillary did not start the ‘birther’ movement, period, end of story,” Solis Doyle told CNN, saying the volunteer’s actions were “beyond the pale” and that Clinton called Obama campaign manager David Plouffe to apologize.
Blumenthal, a longtime Clinton confidante but not a current campaign staffer, denies ever contacting McClatchy; the former McClatchy bureau chief, James Asher, recently said he clearly recalled the conversation with Blumenthal.What CBS either omitted or did not know is that James Asher no longer is making the claim of recalling the Blumenthal conversation, and that the investigatory mission to Kenya by McClatchy news was the result of multiple stories being published at the time.
FACT CHECK: Clinton is correct. When Politifact looked into this issue, they found six times that Trump has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection: The Trump Taj Mahal in 1991; Trump Castle in 1992; Trump Plaza and Casino in 1992; the Plaza Hotel in 1992; Trump Hotels and Casinos Resorts in 2004; and Trump Entertainment Resorts in 2009.
Manterrupting, defined by journalist and author Feminist Fight Club Jessica Bennett as “unnecessary interruption of a woman by a man,” is a phenomenon that many professional women are (unfortunately) familiar with.Although to be fair, Trump also talked over the moderator, and Hillary Clinton in the second half of the debate did interrupt Trump a few times as well, 17 total to Trump interrupting her 51 times.
A 2014 study found that women are significantly more likely to be interrupted than men are, and research has shown that when women do speak up, their words are given less weight and treated as less valid than men’s. This phenomenon is especially problematic in fields ― like politics ― which are dominated by men’s voices just by virtue of the numbers.
Women who want to circumvent these professional obstacles have to learn to play the game, and part of that game means dealing with the frustrating habits of one’s male colleagues ― or in the case of a presidential race, one’s political opponents. As Clinton well knows, in order to avoid having her words dismissed, she has to modulate the way she presents her ideas in a way that male candidates simply don’t.
To Clinton’s credit, she appeared unperturbed by Trump’s attempts to verbally bulldoze over her. Each and every time, she kept speaking, often with a sly smile. Because as any professional woman knows, the best way to shut down a manterrupter is to simply refuse to acknowledge him.
Counting the interruptions of both candidates by moderator Lester Holt, Clinton was interrupted a total of 70 times, and Trump was interrupted 47 times.Some of Trump’s interruptions of Clinton featured outright lies, like insisting that he never said climate change was a Chinese conspiracy, or denying that he ever said some of the offensive things about women that Clinton called him out on saying.Some of his interruptions were petulant asides; at one point he even threw in a one-word, schoolboy-like “Not.”
Other interruptions turned into loud, insistent filibusters, with Trump barreling over Clinton until she finally smiled and relented to let him keep talking — or until Holt interjected to insist that Trump give Clinton her allotted two minutes to talk.If anything renders someone "unpresidential" it would be this Trump failure to control his mouth and his toxic attitudes of special entitlement towards others.
The left side of our blog demands critical thinking and evidence. We mean it.From CBS news: The head of a charity in northeastern Ohio where Republican vice presidential nominee Paul Ryan and his family were photographed cleaning dishes over the weekend said Monday that Ryan was not authorized to be on the premises and "did nothing" while there. Brian J. Antal, president of the Mahoning County St. Vincent De Paul Society in Youngstown, told the Washington Post that the Romney campaign had not asked to make the Saturday visit to the soup kitchen. He said that he runs an apolitical faith-based organization which has bylaws barring it from hosting political candidates, and that the visit jeopardized donations from private individuals. "They showed up there and they did not have permission," he said. "They got one of the volunteers to open up the doors." Antag added that Ryan and his family "did nothing" while on the premises. "He just came in here to get his picture taken at the dining hall," he said.To elaborate on just how staged the exploitative and manipulative Ryan/Romney non-event was, a parallel to the later Trump event in Louisiana, demonstrating a pattern of conservatives and natural disasters:
The Vinidicator, in Youngstown, reports that according to Juanita Sherba, the coordinator who gave Ryan permission to come to the soup kitchen, Ryan did wash dirty dishes while he was there. The newspaper reports that Ryan's staff asked volunteers "to leave some pots and pans unwashed so the VP nominee and his family could do something when he arrived." "We had to save dishes," she said. "We would have gone home by the time he arrived. We didn't need him to do the dishes. It was getting late, and I said that we were closing in five minutes. I waited longer than that, and he finally arrived." Sherba expressed regret that she had allowed the visit to take place. "It was the phoniest piece of baloney I've ever been associated with," she said. "In hindsight, I would have never let him in the door."We are seeing that again from the right with the performance of GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump showing up in Louisiana in spite of the expressed request of the Governor that he not do so. What did he do? Trump passed along a few boxes of playdough for about a minute. Then he left. Where he went to after his little exploitive photo op was here in Minnesota, hitting up people here to fund that campaign he keeps claiming is self-funded. Yeah. That campaign. The one where he insists he won't lie, and the lies like a cheap rug. Here is Trump in similar inaction, dragging along Mike Pence his Veep candidate. THIS is the level of help, the level of incompetence, that the nation can expect in the event of a national tragedy. Trump would be like Dubya, and like Ryan / Romney, only WORSE.
Ezekiel 18:20 “The soul who sins is the one who will die. The son will not share the guilt of the father, nor will the father share the guilt of the son.”
Apparently the radical right - which is the dominant conservative majority for the moment, in the era of Donald Trump, has gone off their nut over the appearance of the Muslim father of the Muslim Orlando mass shooter at a Hillary campaign appearance (as distinct from the other mass shooters in Florida during the same time frame).But focusing on this is preferable to conservatives to the latest Trump scandal.Clinton kicked off her Florida rally by talking about the massacre, offering condolences to those still grieving and pledging to “be with you as you rebuild your lives.” ...Seddique Mateen told the reporter that he is a Clinton supporter and even held up a sign he had made touting her as “good for national security” as well as her call for more aggressive gun control laws. “Clinton is good for United States versus Donald Trump,” he said. The father said he had been invited to the event as a Clinton supporter but had not received any special invitation from the campaign. The rally was open to the public and the Clinton campaign told WPTV that it did not know that Seddique Mateen was at the event until it had ended. "The rally was a 3,000-person, open-door event for the public,” a Clinton campaign official told the station. “This individual wasn't invited as a guest and the campaign was unaware of his attendance until after the event."That part Politico got right. What Politico did NOT get right was this, apparently repeating a story from CBS without fact checking it:
...
Asked by the WPTV reporter if he thought the public would be surprised to see him at a public event so close to Orlando, the gunman’s father responded that he was puzzled by the question’s premise.
“Why they should be surprised?” He said. “I love United States and I’ve been living here for a long time.”
While he appeared patriotic at Monday’s rally, Seddique Mateen has a history of offering pro-Taliban and anti-U.S. rhetoric on his satellite TV program, which is based in the U.S. but geared toward Pashtun Afghans living in America and Europe.In fact, quite the opposite, Mateen senior was strongly anti-Taliban and anti-Pakistani intelligence associated with hiding bin Laden. In fact it makes sense that Mateen would be pro-Hillary, given she was part of the administration and specifically in the situation room when bin Laden was attacked and killed by US special forces. From Reuters:
Khatab said Seddique Mateen's political views were largely anti-Pakistan. A YouTube channel under Mateen's name had more than 100 videos posted between 2012 and 2015. One of the videos refers to the "killer ISI" - the acronym for Pakistan's main military-run intelligence service - and says the agency is the "creator and father of the world's terrorism." U.S. officials have accused Pakistani intelligence of backing violence against U.S. targets in Afghanistan, although Pakistan denies the allegations. n a February video on his Facebook page, he addresses Taliban members and castigates them for being the "servants" of the ISI. In a June 11 video posted on Facebook, Mateen is dressed in military fatigues and says Afghanistan must "punish the traitors."This was confirmed as well by the Florida Palm Beach Post interview:
“He’s obviously against Taliban and ISIS and all that,” said Qasim Tarin, a fellow Afghan expatriate who appeared on Seddique Mateen’s YouTube show and followed him on Facebook.Mir Siddique Mateen is apparently in denial about his son's sexual orientation, which follows a pattern of denial that was observed when the shooter, Omar Mateen, was a child. But equally, his father and brother in law no longer claim that homosexuality was the cause of the shooting. Further while Mir Siddique Mateen is far from enlightened as regards LGBT sexuality, he does himself leave it to God to address rather than humans. So the man's a homophobe, but not one of the more virulent who wants them discriminated against in some way. Nor did he attend a radical mosque as the far right wing rags falsely reported, pandering to ginning up Islamophobia .
“I’ve known him for a long time. To his Facebook and all, he is absolutely against ISIS and Pakistanis and, of course, ISI intelligence,” the Pakistani security agency some suspect of involvement in terrorism.
Though on television it appeared that Mateen was close to Clinton, he was well outside of the security buffer zone in a location that a longtime Republican presidential campaign advance staffer described as a "tapestry" -- an area where a diverse group would be seated to reflect wide-ranging support for the candidate.
Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) continued her effort on Saturday to tank a potential 2016 presidential bid by Hillary Clinton, telling the crowd at the Conservative Political Action Conference that a woman should eventually be president -- but not the one many Democrats are rooting for.Michele Bachmann has low approval ratings - and has had them for quite a long time. The same is true of her buddy in politics, Sarah Palin, unless you get your fake reality from the right wing media.
"We will have a woman for president, just the right one," she said, adding that Republicans are the only party that had a woman on the presidential ticket this century: former Gov. Sarah Palin as the vice presidential nominee in 2008.
Bachmann, who ran for the Republican nomination unsuccessfully in 2012 and declined to run for reelection in Congress this year, was invited to CPAC as a guest of Jenny Beth Martin, the president and co-founder of Tea Party Patriots.
She went on to attack Clinton's work as secretary of state, including relations with Russia and the Benghazi attacks in 2012 that killed four Americans.
"She's going to have to answer a very tough question: Did she pick up the phone and call the secretary of defense and the president of the United States and demand that they send a military rescue operation into Benghazi to rescue Americans that were under fire?" Bachmann said.
The best liked person we tested on this poll with Republican primary voters is actually Sarah Palin who has a 70/20 favorability rating. She's followed by Huckabee at 64/18, Ryan at 58/18, Paul at 58/21, Bush at 56/18, Cruz at 45/20, and Christie at 40/38. Most of those numbers are similar to what they were a month ago but Christie's seen a substantial drop from +18 at 47/29 a month ago to his new +2 net favorability.From PPP - in February:
-Sarah Palin continues to be so unpopular in her home state that she trails Hillary Clinton in a hypothetical contest for President there. Only 39% of voters in Alaska have a favorable opinion of her to 55% who see her in a negative light, and she trails Clinton 44/43 in a head to head. Palin does worse in her home state than any of the other potential Republican candidates we tested. Jeb Bush is the strongest, leading Clinton by 8 at 47/39, followed by Rand Paul who leads her by 6 at 47/41, and Chris Christie and Mike Huckabee who both lead her by 4 points at 43/39 and 45/41 respectively.
The Republican primary field is a jumble with six potential candidates polling in double digits. Rand Paul leads with 15% to 13% for Sarah Palin and Ted Cruz, 12% for Jeb Bush, 11% for Mike Huckabee, 10% for Chris Christie, 6% for Marco Rubio, and 4% each for Paul Ryan and Scott Walker. Even among GOP voters only 28% think Palin should run for President in 2016, compared to 62% who think she should sit it out.
