The 2016 US Election (Part III)

[Flagg]

Honestly, I think one of my biggest problems with Hillary is her continued association with Bill. I consider him a thoroughly odious man.

I don't think it's fair to hold it against a woman for remaining married to the father of her child, especially when we do not know the private intricacies of their marriage.

To be frank, unless they themselves choose to share the details, I consider a marriage to be pretty much the exclusive personal business of whatever persons are directly part of the arrangement. And it should be pretty much irrelevant to a person's political career unless their spouse does something that compromises carrying out their duties in a responsible manner.

This will be the first time that a President is also the spouse of a former President. So it's a pretty interesting case study and will definitely set a precedent one way or another.

Whatever arrangement Bill and Hillary have with each other, I don't care, unless Bill starts sleeping around with other heads of state's wives and spreading state secrets or something. I would expect the same of say Michelle Obama.

Yeah, I'm in full agreement. Even public servants deserve some level of privacy in their personal affairs, including whom they are fucking (as long as it's consensual) and as you said, as long as it doesn't interfere with their responsibilities as elected officials. And the only reason the Monica BlewClintsky affair effected the duties of Clinton as POTUS is because a whale that washed up on Fugly Beach illegally recorded conversations as part of the Republicans unrelenting hounding of both Clintons since 1992. And they haven't stopped for 25 goddamned years.

[Elfdart]

I'll give a small tiny rabbit poop of a shit about improper email usage when the ones so hell bent on nailing Clinton over it demand we have US Marshals go to the homes of, arrest, and put black hoods over the heads of anyone in the Bush 43 Administration that played even a cunthairs part in starting an illegal war of aggression in Iraq...

We can't even get you people to agree not to elect one of those assholes as President, and you think we've got enough support to get them arrested for crimes against peace?

Bit of a difference between the People Who Lied to Start the War, and the People Who Were Lied To, in Order to Start the War.

Congress was lied to, in several ways. The first about the WMD intelligence, and then with the purpose of the force authorization (threat, rather than intent to actually use).

Oh please!

They knew goddamn well Dubya and his henchmen were lying and gleefully played along. Hillary coughed up the same pro-war furballs on the floor of the Senate as Dickless Cheney was on Meet the Press. She only turned against the war when the country turned against it. If you believe for an instant Hillary was hoodwinked by Bush ("Vote for me, I was outsmarted by George W. Bush!" isn't very inspiring), I have four Brooklyn bridges for sale at a reasonable price.

[Elfdart]

What misconduct? Having his dick in the mouth of a Jewish intern on Easter in the Oval Office?

And Bill Clinton wasn't a liability when he helped Obama get elected twice. Nor was he a liability when he helped get his wife elected to the Senate twice.

I think he's referring to Juanita Broaddrick's claim that Clinton raped her violently enough to leave her with a swollen, bleeding lip ("You better put some ice on that" he allegedly told her when he had finished). Stephanie Salter, a liberal columnist nails it:

IT IS with a heavy heart and not a little nausea that I resign from the Bill Clinton defense team.

I have run fresh out of the benefit of the doubt and can no longer bend way over backward. Saddest of all, the cost of keeping a staunch defender of reproductive rights sitting in the White House just climbed out of my price range.

Like all Americans, I got to choose this past week whether I believe Bill Clinton or a 56-year-old Arkansas nursing home operator named Juanita Broaddrick.
Unlike the legions who came before her, Broaddrick did not allege that sometime during the last two decades she had a consensual sexual affair with Clinton. She didn't say that he made a pass (crude or benign), which she rebuffed and he never tried again. Broaddrick said Clinton raped her.

Not a jump-from-the-hedges stranger rape. A "date" rape. The kind that rarely results in an arrest, let alone a conviction, because it almost always comes down to the man's word against the woman's.

Since Broaddrick told her story to the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post and - in five hours of tapes - to Lisa Myers of NBC's "Dateline," many people have busied themselves casting doubt on her word.

Why did she stay silent about the alleged assault for 21 years? (She says she figured nobody would believe her or they'd say she "asked for it" ; she wanted to purge the ghastly event from her life.)

Why did she file a false affidavit about it when Paula Jones' ubiquitous lawyers gave her the chance to sing? (She knew her privacy would be shattered and she says she didn't have the guts to face that.)

Why could she remember only that the incident happened in the spring and not the exact date or at least the month? (It wasn't exactly a day she wanted to commemorate each year; she never forgot the important part.)

Why now? (She read one-too-many "true" stories filled with lies about her and her husband; the guilty burden of her own 21-year silence broke her resistance.)
In truth, Broaddrick had absolutely nothing to gain by speaking up now and everything to lose, especially her privacy and good name. The impeachment trial is over, the statute of limitations on the alleged crime has long run out.

As NBC's exacting research revealed, no right-wing foundation seems to be bankrolling Broaddrick. No book agent has promised a contract. Her upper middle-class lifestyle, 18-year marriage, non-existent police record and apparent lack of any psychosis indicate a solid, believable citizen.
Meanwhile, there is the word of the man she has accused.

It is good for nothing.

After the past 13 months, Bill Clinton is almost uniformly mistrusted by the people of his country, his party, his closest associates, his friends and even his family. Whatever virtues people still see in him, veracity is not among them.

So, when Clinton's personal lawyer says Broaddrick's accusation is "absolutely false," it is as if a vapor has landed on his side of the scale.
Clinton always says the accusations are false. The needle doesn't move.

All the times before, those of us on the defense team went through the same drill: Even if he's lying (and usually he was), it's a lie about messing around, about cheating on his wife, about making dumbass, fraternity-boy passes. Even if the accusation is true, it's about unseemly but not illegal sexual behavior, like harassment or assault.
He wasn't easy to defend, but he was defendable.

This time, the drill breaks down. If he is lying, it's about crossing a legal and moral line that no feminist (and few women in general) would think of defending. Because proof or disproof is impossible, each of us can only weigh the facts and bestow the benefit of the doubt on the most credible person, either the president or his accuser.
The latter choice opens one up to the truly disgusting prospect of being lumped in with the likes of Kenneth Starr, Henry Hyde, the House managers, Bay Buchanan, the Heritage Foundation and every other "family values" fascist who wants to cram a narrowly prescribed morality down the throats of 250 million Americans. (Thus the aforementioned nausea.)

It is a risk I will have to take. Maybe the president really is telling the truth. This time. But someone else will have to make that argument in his defense. I have no choice but to choose Juanita.

As far as Trump's most recent Blackshirt comment is concerned, after almost eight years of a president who not only claims he has the right to assassinate American citizens and uses that "right" by burning two of them alive, it's kinda hard to get all that riled when Trump hints (with all the subtlety of a horse shitting in a swimming pool) that his ammosexual supporters should also consider exercising the "right" to whack other citizens.

I guess my point is that as the late Alexander Cockburn pointed out a few years ago, the country in many ways has already gone fascist.

[Flagg]

Well I knew he was a shit, but damn. Mea Culpa.

[The Romulan Republic]

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/wh ... look-like/

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We’re going to spend a lot of time over the next 87 days contemplating the possibility of a Donald Trump presidency. Trump is a significant underdog — he has a 13 percent chance of winning the election according to our polls-only model and a 23 percent chance according to polls-plus. But those probabilities aren’t that small. For comparison, you have a 17 percent chance of losing a “game” of Russian roulette.

But there’s another possibility staring us right in the face: A potential Hillary Clinton landslide. Our polls-only model projects Clinton to win the election by 7.7 percentage points, about the same margin by which Barack Obama beat John McCain in 2008. And it assigns a 35 percent chance to Clinton winning by double digits.

Our other model, polls-plus, is much more conservative about Clinton’s prospects. If this were an ordinary election, the smart money would be on the race tightening down the stretch run, and coming more into line with economic “fundamentals” that suggest the election ought to be close. Since this is how the polls-plus model “thinks,” it projects Clinton to win by around 4 points, about the margin by which Obama beat Mitt Romney in 2012 — a solid victory but a long way from a landslide.

But the theory behind “fundamentals” models is that economic conditions prevail because most other factors are fought to a draw. In a normal presidential election, both candidates raise essentially unlimited money and staff their campaigns with hundreds of experienced professionals. In a normal presidential election, both candidates are good representatives of their party’s traditional values and therefore unite almost all their party’s voters behind them. In a normal presidential election, both candidates have years of experience running for office and deftly pivot away from controversies to exploit their opponents’ weaknesses. In a normal presidential election, both candidates target a broad enough range of demographic groups to have a viable chance of reaching 51 percent of the vote. This may not be a normal presidential election because while most of those things are true for Clinton, it’s not clear that any of them apply to Trump.

A related theory is that contemporary presidential elections are bound to be relatively close because both parties have high floors on their support. Indeed, we’ve gone seven straight elections without a double-digit popular vote victory (the last one was Ronald Reagan’s in 1984), the longest such streak since 1876-1900.

silver-landslide-chart-1
As with other theories of this kind, however, there’s the risk of mistaking what’s happened in the recent past for some sort of iron law of politics. Historically, the U.S. has ebbed and flowed between periods of close presidential elections — such in the late 19th century or early 21st century — and eras in which there were plenty of lopsided ones (every election in the 1920s and 1930s was a blowout).

These patterns seem to have some relationship with partisanship, with highly partisan epochs tending to produce close elections by guaranteeing each party its fair share of support. Trump’s nomination, however, reflects profound disarray within the Republican Party. Furthermore, about 30 percent of Republican or Republican-leaning voters have an unfavorable view of Trump. How many of them will vote for Clinton is hard to say, but parties facing this much internal strife, such as Republicans in 1964 or Democrats in 1972 or 1980, have often suffered landslide losses.

Perhaps the strongest evidence for a potential landslide against Trump is in the state-by-state polling, which has shown him underperforming in any number of traditionally Republican states. It’s not just Georgia and Arizona, where polls have shown a fairly close race all year. At various points, polls have shown Clinton drawing within a few percentage points of Trump — and occasionally even leading him — in states such as Utah, South Carolina, Texas, Alaska, Kansas and even Mississippi.

Just how bad could it get? Let’s start by giving Clinton the 332 electoral votes that Obama won in 2012. That’s obviously not a safe assumption: The race could shift back toward Trump, and even if it doesn’t, Clinton could lose states such as Iowa or Nevada, where her polling has been middling even after her convention bounce. But as I said, we’re going to focus on Clinton’s upside case today.

So I’m going to list the states Romney won in order of how easy it is for Clinton to flip them, according to our polls-only model.1 The number in parentheses by each state represents the point at which the model estimates it would flip to Clinton, based on her lead in the national popular vote. For instance, South Carolina (+9.5) means that Clinton would be favored in South Carolina if she leads by at least 9.5 percentage points nationally, but not by less than that. These projections are based on where the model has each state projected currently, along with each state’s elasticity score, a measure of how responsive it is to changes in the national environment. Here goes:

North Carolina (+3.2): It wouldn’t be any surprise if Clinton carried North Carolina, which Obama narrowly won in 2008. But Obama lost North Carolina in 2012 despite winning by about 4 percentage points nationally. This year, it looks like Clinton would win North Carolina with a 3 percentage point national victory. In other words, North Carolina has drifted slightly bluer relative to the rest of the country and is closer to being a true tipping-point state this year.

Arizona (+7.1): Arizona and Georgia have been flickering between light blue and light red in our polls-only projection recently. That’s because the model figures each state would be a tossup with Clinton ahead by about 7 points nationally, and that’s where the forecast has been for the past few days. Arizona is the fourth-most-Hispanic state after New Mexico, Texas and California, although historically its Hispanic population has voted at relatively low rates. A strong Hispanic turnout, perhaps coupled with gains for Clinton among Mormon voters (about 6 percent of Arizona’s electorate), might swing the state to her.

Nebraska’s 2nd Congressional District (+7.1): Nebraska and Maine award one electoral vote to the winner of each congressional district. That came in handy for Obama in 2008, when he won Nebraska’s 2nd Congressional district, which consists of Omaha and most of its suburbs. District boundaries were redrawn after the 2010 Census to make them slightly tougher for Democrats, but Omaha’s highly-educated demographics — we estimate that 47 percent of voters in the district have a college degree, comparable to Virginia or Connecticut — could wind up being favorable to Clinton. There’s been no polling in the district yet, so its position on this list is based on the model’s guesses based on its demographics and voting history.

Georgia (+7.2): In some ways, Georgia might be more promising than Arizona for Democrats’ long-term future. It has more electoral votes — 16 to Arizona’s 11 — and could serve as part of a bloc of states (along with Virginia and North Carolina) that could eventually offset losses for Democrats in the Rust Belt. It’s easy enough to see how Georgia’s demographics are favorable for Clinton: It has a substantial black population, but also an increasingly well-educated white population, with lots of migration from the Midwest and the Northeast.

Let’s pause here to see what the map would look like if Clinton wins by 8 percentage points nationally — close to where her lead in the polls has been over the past week or so. This map you see below is worth 375 electoral votes, close to the 365 electoral votes Obama won in 2008 when he beat McCain by 7.3 percentage points. In fact, the map is identical to 2008 but for three changes: Georgia and Arizona turn blue, while Indiana (which surprisingly went for Obama in 2008) remains red:

silver-landslide-map-1
But let’s say Clinton continues to build her lead, instead of Trump rebounding. Which dominoes might fall next?

South Carolina (+9.5): Public Policy Polling caused a big stir on Thursday when it published a poll showing Clinton down just 2 percentage points in South Carolina — but the result shouldn’t have been all that shocking. South Carolina was only a couple of points redder than Georgia in 2012 and 2008, so if Georgia has moved to being a tie, you’d expect South Carolina to follow just a half-step behind it. True, South Carolina doesn’t have a metropolis like Atlanta, but a relatively high percentage of white voters there have college degrees.

Missouri (+10.3): It’s surprising to see Missouri, once considered a bellwether state, so far down this list. Bill Clinton won it twice, and Obama came within 4,000 votes of winning it in 2008. But now we estimate that Hillary Clinton would need to win by about 10 points nationally to claim the state. Note, however, that the recent polling in Missouri has been mixed, with polls showing everything from a 10-point lead for Trump to a slight edge for Clinton.

There’s something of a gap after South Carolina and Missouri before the next set of states. Thus, Trump might be able to hold Clinton below 400 electoral votes even if she won by 12 points nationally:

silver-landslide-map-2
But after that, the floodgates would really open, with lots of traditionally red states in all parts of the country potentially turning toward Clinton:

Mississippi (+12.3): I’m skeptical about this one, since Mississippi presents something of a modelling challenge. You can see why it’s an attractive target for Democrats, in theory: It has the highest share of black voters in the country (after the District of Columbia). But in 2008, only 11 percent of Mississippi’s white population voted for Obama. Clinton trailed Trump by just 3 percentage points in the only poll of Mississippi, taken in March. In that poll, Clinton got 20 percent of the white vote. If she can replicate that on Election Day, the outcome could be close.

Indiana (+13.2): Obama’s win in Indiana in 2008 — one of just two times Democrats have won the state since 1940 — might be hard to duplicate. He benefited that year from investing in the ground game in a state that is usually ignored, and from Indiana’s connections with Chicago. Plus, Indiana Gov. Mike Pence is Trump’s running mate. Still, if Clinton stretches her national lead into the teens, Indiana could be competitive.

Texas (+13.: Democrats have long talked about turning Texas blue — or at least purple — but the truth is they haven’t come anywhere close. Obama lost Texas by 12 points in 2008 despite his near-landslide margin nationally, for instance. But Clinton has a number of factors that could work in her favor. We estimate that about somewhere between 37 and 40 percent of Texas’s electorate will be Hispanic, black, Asian-American or Native American, depending on turnout. A high proportion of its white population has college degrees. And Trump has run afoul of locally popular politicians, such as Ted Cruz and George W. Bush. Previous polls of Texas had shown Trump with only a mid-single digit lead there, although a more recent survey had him up by 11.

Montana (+14.1): Obama also nearly won Montana in 2008, losing by just 2 percentage points. But Montana is historically an anti-establishment state, and Trump led Clinton in the only poll we can find — which, granted, was way back in November 2015 — by 21 percentage points. A winning scenario for Clinton would probably involve Libertarian Gary Johnson getting a substantial portion of the vote: Montana was Johnson’s second-best state, after New Mexico, in 2012.

Utah (+14.2): People are fascinated by Clinton’s prospects of winning in Utah, which went for Romney by 48 points in 2012. But it’s hard to say just how realistic those are. The polls-only model has Clinton just a couple of percentage points behind in the polling average in Utah, but its demographic model projects her to lose it by 16 points — a lot better than 2012, but not particularly close. As with Mississippi, therefore, the odds you assign to Clinton in Utah are highly sensitive to your choice of assumptions. She’s taking her chances seriously enough to make some efforts to campaign there, but is it a wild goose chase — like when Dick Cheney visited Hawaii in 2004 — or part of long-term plan to swing Mormons into the Democratic Party?

South Dakota (+14.9): Less excitingly, Clinton could win South Dakota in the event of a national rout, as the state seems to have become the slightly bluer of the two Dakotas after North Dakota’s oil boom. Perhaps South Dakota has a soft spot for Clinton, having voted for her in the Democratic primary in both 2008 and 2016, when Obama and Bernie Sanders won almost all the surrounding states.

Kansas (+15.6): Polls have had Kansas surprisingly close — with one survey in June even having Clinton ahead. One can squint and make an argument for it: Kansas is relatively well-educated, and Republican Gov. Sam Brownback is extremely unpopular. But note that Kansas polls badly overstated Republicans’ problems in 2014, when both Brownback and Sen. Pat Roberts won re-election.

Alaska (+15.7): I doubt that Alaskans have much affection for Clinton, but the state is idiosyncratic enough that I don’t really know what they think of Trump, who lost to Cruz in the state’s Republican caucuses. As in Montana, a Clinton win would probably depend on Johnson sucking up a lot of Trump’s vote. Clinton trailed by just 5 percentage points in the only poll of Alaska in January, which didn’t include Johnson as an option.

Nebraska’s 1st Congressional District (+15.: As goes Omaha, so goes Lincoln? Here’s what the map might look like if Clinton won by 16 percentage points nationally, along with all the states we’ve mentioned so far:

silver-landslide-map-3
That would work out to 471 electoral votes, to 67 for Trump, which would be fairly typical for a win of that magnitude. Dwight D. Eisenhower won 457 electoral votes when beating Adlai Stevenson by 15 points in 1956, for example. And Franklin D. Roosevelt won 472 electoral votes in 1932, in an 18-point win against Herbert Hoover. Clinton would be a ways short of Ronald Reagan’s 525 electoral votes in 1984, however.

All right, let’s stop there. I’m trying to encourage you to keep an open mind. The way the polls-only model thinks about things, Clinton is ahead by 7 or 8 percentage points now, and the error in the forecast is symmetrical, meaning that she’s as likely to win by 14 or 16 points as she is to lose the popular vote to Trump. There have even been a couple of national polls that showed Clinton with a lead in the mid-teens. But my powers of imagination are limited. Other than losing North Dakota to go along with South Dakota, or perhaps the statewide electoral votes in Nebraska to go along with the congressional district ones, it’s hard for me to envision Trump doing any worse than this — unless he really does shoot someone on 5th Avenue.

Well, we can't exactly call fivethirtyeight unbiased here, but I'm hoping for option three.

This line stands out though:

Trump is a significant underdog — he has a 13 percent chance of winning the election according to our polls-only model and a 23 percent chance according to polls-plus. But those probabilities aren’t that small. For comparison, you have a 17 percent chance of losing a “game” of Russian roulette.

Edit: When I quoted the article here, it seems to have translated some of the punctuation into smiley faces. Sorry about that.

[Mr Bean]

*Snip the article
Edit: When I quoted the article here, it seems to have translated some of the punctuation into smiley faces. Sorry about that.

As far as 538 goes, Hillary Landslide is both highly unlikely and highly likely because it's a secondary issue to the primary one. Hillary landslide counts on depressed Republican turnout, if 10% of typical Republican votes stay home that would have voted in any other election then landside becomes almost a given.

The three factors that affect things regardless of party or nomine
1. Turnout
2. Third party/local options splitting the vote
3. Election day shenanigans

Turnout is still up in the air but signs point to a bad year for Republicans showing up making landslide highly likely. Third party options are in play and a big deal this year again but it's strength is yet unknown (We will know better thirty days out). Last election day shenanigans are currently ongoing, I'm talking about the good old fashion Republican governers having one polling place for every 200 affluent voters while lower income voters get one polling place per every 20,000 and other such election day issues that can affect significant states (IE Florida).

So while everything is trending well for Secretary Clinton, a significant change in 1, 2 or 3 can result in a surprise result in states predicted to go Clinton.

To give an example say Florida where the old vote early and the young and middle age groups typically vote on election day a massive disruption ala year 2000 can turn a seven point lead into a one point loss if it's bad enough. Is it going to happen? Who knows watch the court cases to see if the Governors plan to close polling places in busy areas is still intact come election day.

Second
There is a disable smiles check box in the full editor for just that reason. between do not parse url's and notify when a reply is posted

[The Romulan Republic]

Trump campaign is asking for volunteer "Trump election observers" (read: voter intimidators/suppressers).

http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/ ... _dt_tw_top

Donald Trump is doubling down with the “rigged election” claims. Rather than walk back his past statement, or claim he was being sarcastic, the Republican presidential candidate straight out told supporters on Friday that there’s only one possible explanation if he ends up losing the crucial state of Pennsylvania: through cheating. “The only way we can lose, in my opinion—I really mean this, Pennsylvania—is if cheating goes on,” he said late Friday. Nevermind that the Real Clear Politics polling average notes Hillary Clinton has a 9.2-point advantage over Trump in recent surveys. “We’re going to have unbelievable turnout, but we don’t want to see people voting five times, folks,” the Republican presidential nominee said.

Particularly concerning about his warnings was how he noted that he’d “heard some stories about certain parts of the state, and we have to be very careful.” Trump added that there would be a lot of people watching on Election Day. “We have to call up law enforcement, and we have to have the sheriffs and the police chiefs and everybody watching,” he said.

But law enforcement won’t be enough, he warned, and called on supporters to help detect any voting irregularities, expressing shock at the lack of voter ID requirements. “I hope you people can sort of not just vote on the eighth, go around and look and watch other polling places and make sure that it’s 100 percent fine, because without voter identification—which is shocking, shocking that you don’t have it,” he said. Civil rights groups have long said that efforts to institute voter ID laws are really just thinly veiled efforts to prevent minority voters from casting a ballot.
The line was hardly off-the-cuff. In what appeared to be a new section of his website, Trump’s campaign is now seeking to sign up volunteers to be “Trump election observers,” noting he needs help to “stop crooked Hillary from rigging this election!”

This increasing talk of voter fraud and rigged elections is raising fears that Trump supporters could go out in large numbers to try to intimidate minority voters, notes the Los Angeles Times. Particularly concerning was how Trump called for stringent monitoring of “certain areas.” “That kind of rhetoric can be used to keep lots of legitimate people from voting,” Wendy Weiser, director of the Democracy Program at the New York University School of Law’s Brennan Center for Justice, said. “This has happened a lot through our history, and it’s been happening a lot lately.”

Read more Slate coverage of the 2016 campaign.

All part of the effort to preemptively delegitimize any result other than a Trump victory.

Let it never again be said that the Republican Party believes in democracy.

At this rate, I wonder if we'll need a massive police presence at the polls to prevent violent clashes.

[Patroklos]

Not that I feel this effort is needed, but you do understand that the mainstream Republican and Democratic parties do this as a matter of routine at every US election, right?

[The Romulan Republic]

I know that Trump's not the first person to use election monitors, yes, and that in and of itself I wouldn't really have a problem with. Apologies for being unclear on that point.

What I do have a problem with is the context in which this is taking place- a context where he is telling his supporters that any outcome other than him winning is proof of fraud, and engaging in thinly-veiled threats of violence. So something normally relatively innocuous and arguably even beneficial becomes potentially dangerous.

[bobalot]

This was funny and also a bit scary.

Trump Supporters React to Outrageous Campaign Ads

[Flagg]

This was funny and also a bit scary.

Trump Supporters React to Outrageous Campaign Ads

Christ, I wonder how many would have agreed to putting them into sealed trucks "going to the other side of the border", but in actuality piping the exhaust into the passenger compartment, murdering them. My guess is "all".

[Esquire]

Yes, I'm sure Triumph the Insult Comic Dog made sure to take a representative sample of modern Republicans, and not just those who'd make the most view-grabbing funniest video. Oh, wait.

[The Romulan Republic]

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/201 ... -indecline

An anarchist group put up a bunch of naked Trump statues to mock the Donald. Statue is titled "The Emperor Has No Balls".

Article NSFW due to photos.

A nude statue of Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump without testicles was taken down on Thursday after causing quite the stir in New York’s Union Square.

The anarchist group INDECLINE erected the statue, titled The Emperor Has No Balls, overnight Thursday.


Interpreting Trump: art that honors and art that tears him down – in pictures
View gallery
“It’s horrendously, tragically beautiful,” said Jeanne-Marie Patrick as she knelt down to take a picture. She came and saw the statue on her break after catching a glimpse on Facebook. Despite being disappointed that the face wasn’t quite accurate, she was in awe of it.

“It’s been a horrible week, this has been the best thing that happened to me all week,” Patrick said.

Union Square was packed with people of all ages taking selfies and laughing at his bulging belly and lumpy form. Athelea Sookia got her friend to snap a photo as she tugged on Trump’s stubby penis with a smile.


“He has no balls, he has no balls!” Sookia said. “He’s no good as a president. He hate the Mexicans. Get him out, get him out.”

In an interview with the Washington Post, INDECLINE explained that they wanted humiliate Trump while nodding towards his authoritarian tendencies, as dictators often erect statues of themselves.

The group is also behind putting names of black men killed by the police on Hollywood stars and painting an anti-Trump rape mural on the US-Mexico border.

Naked Trump statues were also simultaneously unveiled in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Cleveland and Seattle.


The artist behind the designs, Ginger, said he wanted to give Trump a “constipated look”. The statues show a veiny Trump with a saggy bottom. There are also specific details, such as a Masonic ring on his finger.


Who supports Donald Trump? The new Republican center of gravity
Read more
The group released a video showing the making of the statue on YouTube.

The statue did not last long, as the parks department tore it down while the ebullient crowd booed. “Salaam alaikum, Donald Trump!” one onlooker shouted as the statue was loaded into the back of the van.

The NYPD watched over the dismantling. One officer told the Guardian it was unattended property and had to be taken down.

“NYC Parks stands firmly against any unpermitted erection in city parks, no matter how small,” a parks department spokesperson told Gothamist.

They left one foot and a pole sticking out in their wake.

Russian president Vladimir Putin was also depicted naked in 2014, in a painting sent by Ukrainian artist Olga Oleynik to Foreign Policy. Oleynik also gained fame by depicting Ukrainian president Victor Yanukovych.

A previous nude painting of Trump also made headway across the internet after it was banned for public display due to copyright violations over the likeness to Trump.

New York City mayor Bill de Blasio was asked what he thought of the statue during a press conference.

“That is a frightening thought,” de Blasio said. “When he’s wearing clothes I don’t like him.”

The best response has got to be from NYC Parks:

"NYC Parks stands firmly against any unpermitted erection in city parks, no matter how small"

That's got to be a nearly perfect mix of class, an absolutely no class.

[Flagg]

They erected (hehe) one in Seattle as well. The response wasn't positive from the Seattle Times, aka the local right wing rag hidden behind a paywall. Why one of the most liberal cities in the US has as its most prevalent paper conservative garbage, I have no fucking clue.

[Ace Pace]

They erected (hehe) one in Seattle as well. The response wasn't positive from the Seattle Times, aka the local right wing rag hidden behind a paywall. Why one of the most liberal cities in the US has as its most prevalent paper conservative garbage, I have no fucking clue.

Very simple. Enough people are buying the paper to enable it to live comfortably and the paper sees no ability to expand among liberals?

[Mr Bean]

They erected (hehe) one in Seattle as well. The response wasn't positive from the Seattle Times, aka the local right wing rag hidden behind a paywall. Why one of the most liberal cities in the US has as its most prevalent paper conservative garbage, I have no fucking clue.

Very simple. Enough people are buying the paper to enable it to live comfortably and the paper sees no ability to expand among liberals?

Actually no the opposite, it's a passion project by the Blethen family who've owned the paper for generations. It used to make money, it still sort of makes money as it's the only newspaper in town but it's family owned so the family sets the agenda.

[Flagg]

They erected (hehe) one in Seattle as well. The response wasn't positive from the Seattle Times, aka the local right wing rag hidden behind a paywall. Why one of the most liberal cities in the US has as its most prevalent paper conservative garbage, I have no fucking clue.

Very simple. Enough people are buying the paper to enable it to live comfortably and the paper sees no ability to expand among liberals?

Actually no the opposite, it's a passion project by the Blethen family who've owned the paper for generations. It used to make money, it still sort of makes money as it's the only newspaper in town but it's family owned so the family sets the agenda.

There used to be a liberal rag to offset it, the Seattle Post Intelligencer, but it got bought out and closed IIRC.

[The Romulan Republic]

According to a new poll, 61% of Trump supporters and 40% of the population in Texas supports secession if Clinton wins.

https://time.com/4455875/hillary-clinto ... cede-poll/

Much of Trump's support in Texas comes from those 65 and older



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Correction Appended, Aug 17 2016

If Hillary Clinton became the President of the United States, three out of five Donald Trump supporters in Texas would support a bid by the state to secede from the Union, according to a new poll.

Trump is leading in the state with 50% of voters, while the Democrat has 44% of voters, according to the survey released Tuesday by the Democratic pollster Public Policy Polling. According to the poll, 61% of Trump supporters would want the state to secede if Clinton became president. Overall, 40% of Texans would support secession if Clinton is victorious in November.

The survey found that Texans have an overall unfavorable opinion of both of the candidates, with 59% for Clinton and 53% for Trump.

Trump’s lead is based entirely on him holding a 63% to 33% advantage among the state’s seniors, according to PPP. Clinton leads Trump among voters under 65 by a four point advantage.

PPP, known for asking often humorous questions on surveys, inserted fictional candidates Deez Nuts and Harambe, the fallen gorilla who has achieved internet fame since his death, into a four-way poll. Trump received 47% of the vote, Clinton 38%, Deez Nuts 3% and Harambe 2 percent.

The survey was conducted August 12th to 14th among 944 likely voters int he state of Texas, with a margin of error of plus or minus 3.2%.

Correction: The original version of this story misstated the poll’s findings. It found that three out of five Texans who support Trump would want the state to secede if Clinton wins the election.

This is... really, really dangerous.

Maybe, hopefully, probably its mostly just talk. But I honestly don't know if it would be unwise for Obama to quietly put the National Guard on heightened alert before election day, and even take a hard look at the political loyalties of the commanders of military facilities and units in certain states.

[TheFeniX]

Texas has been threatening secession since about 5 minutes after we were first admitted into the Union. There was talk when Obama was elected (two times) and even talk I remember back when Clinton #1 was elected. Saying 40% of 944 Texas voters want to seceded isn't making me stockpile ammo and Civil War Script.

For future reference and to save you some time: Texas is crazy. But it's a lot of big talk crazy, pushed by people trying to drum of votes by pandering to morons of which Texas has plenty of.

And nothing would make theses idiots happier than to see a Democrat president overreact by putting the National Guard on standby, validating their bluster. Obama should do what the rest of us sane people do: nothing. Or laugh a lot. Maybe both.

[The Romulan Republic]

Texas has been threatening secession since about 5 minutes after we were first admitted into the Union. There was talk when Obama was elected (two times) and even talk I remember back when Clinton #1 was elected. Saying 40% of 944 Texas voters want to seceded isn't making me stockpile ammo and Civil War Script.

For future reference and to save you some time: Texas is crazy. But it's a lot of big talk crazy, pushed by people trying to drum of votes by pandering to morons of which Texas has plenty of.

And nothing would make theses idiots happier than to see a Democrat president overreact by putting the National Guard on standby, validating their bluster. Obama should do what the rest of us sane people do: nothing. Or laugh a lot. Maybe both.

Oh, I'm aware that Texans have been spouting this horseshit for ages.

What worries me, besides the rhetoric itself, is that right now we have a Republican nominee who is more or less openly inciting and condoning violence, with supporters who talk about executing his main political opponent, and Trump might just be stupid enough to validate and encourage these people.

I suspect, as I said, that it mostly is talk. Hopefully that turns out to be correct.

But their is an ugliness to this race far beyond anything I've seen in my life time, and I'd be lying if I said it doesn't concern me deeply.

Point about not appearing to validate secessionists with an overreaction. But at the same time, I don't want to be caught unprepared on the off-chance that more than a handful of these people are serious.

Still... its very unlikely bordering on impossible that their are enough of them that are serious and organized to quickly become a major threat to the nation, and if their were the FBI would likely know about it, so you're probably right that their's no need to do anything preemptively. Just keep an eye on it and hope it blows over.

[FaxModem1]

As a Texan myself, I find serious fears of Texas seceding rather ludicrous. If Trump somehow gets elected, and we go into full on civil war or something, sure. But right now? I seriously doubt it.

[Patroklos]

This is... really, really dangerous.

Maybe, hopefully, probably its mostly just talk. But I honestly don't know if it would be unwise for Obama to quietly put the National Guard on heightened alert before election day, and even take a hard look at the political loyalties of the commanders of military facilities and units in certain states.

I new low TRR...

[Flagg]

This is... really, really dangerous.

Maybe, hopefully, probably its mostly just talk. But I honestly don't know if it would be unwise for Obama to quietly put the National Guard on heightened alert before election day, and even take a hard look at the political loyalties of the commanders of military facilities and units in certain states.

I new low TRR...

As a Texan by birth I think Texas and the rest of the nonexistent nation calling itself the CSA should have had a boot set firmly on the back of their necks until 1900+.

The fact that their nonsense was only brought back when blacks began demanding their civil rights says all you need to know. Yep, all those confederate battle flags were put on southern state flags, started flying over state capitals, and put on the rear bumpers (decades later with the familiarly ignorant and wrong "It's about heritage not hate" to which I respond pithily, "Yeah, a heritage of hate") as a direct result of the civil rights movement.

And I'd suggest the civil rights movement is far from over when many traitor states have enacted "Confederate Memorial Day" as a state holiday which just so happens to coincide with the Federal Holiday honoring the late but greatly needed Martin Luther King Jr. But "it's about heritage not hate".

That would ring more true if the Confederate loving losers who occupy those traitor states even used the right fucking flag for their bullshit. Hint: it's not the one plastered on redneck shitkicker automobiles. It's the actual "stars and bars" which looks absolutely nothing like "the confederate battle flag" and more like the flag of real country, The United States of America.

Which is hilarious and typical considering their revisionist tendencies of a history they know absolutely nothing about.

Oh and I agree that TRR has bafflingly reached a new level of "chicken littling". You proved us wrong, buddy. You proved us wrong...

[Simon_Jester]

This is... really, really dangerous.

Maybe, hopefully, probably its mostly just talk. But I honestly don't know if it would be unwise for Obama to quietly put the National Guard on heightened alert before election day, and even take a hard look at the political loyalties of the commanders of military facilities and units in certain states.

60% of Trump supporters in Texas favor secession. Going by one of the headlines you quoted, most Trump support comes from old people.

I am now picturing a horde of doddering secessionists with Zimmer frames.

Not much of a threat.

[Flagg]

This is... really, really dangerous.

Maybe, hopefully, probably its mostly just talk. But I honestly don't know if it would be unwise for Obama to quietly put the National Guard on heightened alert before election day, and even take a hard look at the political loyalties of the commanders of military facilities and units in certain states.

60% of Trump supporters in Texas favor secession. Going by one of the headlines you quoted, most Trump support comes from old people.

I am now picturing a horde of doddering secessionists with Zimmer frames.

Not much of a threat.

The real zombie apocalypse: Hordes of old people carrying pill cases and assault rifles they forgot to load.