Unleash The Twitter

Give the poor guy his phone back.

Several advisers warned him that he risked becoming like a wild animal chasing its prey so zealously that it raced over a cliff — a reminder that he could pursue his grievances and his eagerness to fling insults, but that the cost would be a plunge into an electoral abyss.

Taking away Twitter turned out to be an essential move by his press team, which deprived him of a previously unfiltered channel for his aggressions.

Brunch Thread

Have a video.

Open Carry

So a bunch of Trumpkins freaked out when someone thought there was a gun at a Trump rally, which was just a sign, and now it's accepted lore that someone tried to assassinate Trump (no one did).

Usually it takes a blah person with a gun to inspire that much panic, but someone carrying a gun in a crowd is generally pretty scary. I mean an armed society is a polite society and it makes everyone feel safer. I don't even know. It makes no sense. I guess as long as the good guys with guns wear t-shirts proclaiming "good guy" and bad guys wear t-shirts proclaiming "bad guy" we'll be able to sort it out.

Overnight

Tomorrow is...not Taco Tuesday.

Bigly

First woman president or last election. Which will it be?

Saturday Afternoon

Gonna go outside and play on Hell St. here in the urban hellhole. Hope I don't get shot!

The Voting

Ralston says there's basically no way Trump can win Nevada.

My squinting at an electoral map and applying my Model (it's manufactured by my gut) says if Clinton wins both Florida and Nevada it's over. Win one (especially Florida) and it's probably over.

Off to pour my breakfast bourbon (joke).

I can't wait for this election to be over.

People are arguing about whether certain people are neoliberals and whether neoliberalism is really all that bad. If you believe in democracy, of course, neoliberalism is really all that bad, I saw this thing Matt Stoller wrote on Facebook that I thought summed it up pretty nicely:

I put this on another thread, but I think it's worth discussing here because there's a lot of confusion. Our current governing apparatus is neoliberal. What does that actually mean? What is neoliberalism?

Neoliberalism is a kind of statecraft. It means organizing state policies by making them appear as if they are the consequences of depoliticized financial markets. It involves moving power from public institutions to private institutions, and allowing governance to happen through concentrated financial power. Actual open markets for goods and services tend to disappear in neoliberal societies. Financial markets flourish, real markets morph into mass distribution middlemen like Walmart or Amazon.

This definition is my paraphrase of Greta Krippner's "Capitalizing on Crisis", a pretty good book about what happened from the 1960s to the 1980s in terms of financial politics. Her thesis is that the liberal democratic system was dismantled because it was too explicit about who was making choices. People would get mad at politicians when they didn't have, say, mortgage credit, or when the price of milk went up too high. The answer came to be neoliberalism, or creating a veil of financial markets to make all those decisions seem apolitical. Milk too expensive? Ah, those darn markets. Sure you can get mortgage credit, but market is going to charge you 19%. Can't afford that? Oh those darn financial markets.

Neoliberalism is not faith in free markets. Neoliberalism is not free market capitalism. Neoliberalism is a specific form of statecraft that uses financial markets as a veil to disguise governing policies.

This is what I think everyone needs to try to look out for and undo. Not just people who call themselves adherents of a particular party, or who voted for a particular candidate you find odious, but people who practice "statecraft" designed to obscure the fact that the things they are doing are political decisions and it needs to be stopped.

Holding Pattern

It's all over but (some of) the voting.

Then we can mourn for the end of the Republic or start bitching about Cabinet appointments.

Is It Tuesday Bedtime Yet?

Win Florida so we can all go to bed early.

Look On The Bright Side

The new White House Briefing Room "press pen" will be pretty cool looking.

They didn't have to put up with that. They did.

Friday Afternoon

Hold your loved ones tight as the apocalypse is nigh.

Takebacks

As Cokie said, it's out there...

Lie Down With Dogs

BREAKING: Kelly & Baroni were reached charged with 7 counts. Both found guilty on ALL charges. #Bridgegate

— Matt Arco (@MatthewArco) November 4, 2016

Rich Preppers

What drives me nuts about preppers is like all end times cultists they basically want the end of the world to happen just so they can be proved fucking right. I guess this version of it is mostly harmless, but...

Ector, Texas, is a tiny, single-traffic light town most see only from the highway. But the pace in the century-old city is about to pick up. Just past the post office, work is now underway on a unique new neighborhood called Trident Lakes.

It is a $300 million project being built on 700 acres just west of Ector, with an emphasis on safety and sustainability.
Over the next few years, fields of grass will conceal 400 underground bunkers, a tunnel system and even a vault to store DNA.


It's all part of a plan to prepare for any impending doomsday.

"You get life assurances for when stuff really gets bad, but while you're at it you live in a five-star resort waiting for that doomsday," said Trident Lakes spokesman Richie Whitt.

Real Britains

Things are so nutty in the UK right now that it gives me some kind of satisfaction that our politics aren't quite that crazy. Well, I guess I'll have wait until Wednesday to know that for sure.

Short version: the UK right wing press has basically adopted the line that pro-Brexit voters are the Real Britains and even disagreeing with the result of the referendum is borderline treasonous, or at least French. I don't even think they support Brexit, really, it's just the become a rallying point the way support for the Iraq war was here. Which side are you on? Britain's, or Europe's???

And in "keep the government out of my Medicare" form, there's a lot of "the EU transfer payments will continue after we leave the EU because we will drive a hard bargain!!!" (regional transfer payments, though not huge, exist for poor areas, not just poor countries in the EU) kind of thinking. Also, too, those bastards in the EU had better give us free mobility even as we deny it to them because reasons.

Nobody really knows what Brexit is about, but it's become about choosing sides. And it's pretty crazy.

Morning

I had a dream that it was only Thursday, but turns out it is... Friday!!!

Thursday Night

Only a few days left to establish who is to blame if Clinton loses. Probably the kids and the blahs. It's usually them.

Assholes

Putting assholes in charge never goes well. (Many) people think they'll give a good kicking to the people who deserve a good kicking, but their special snowflake status and all around superiority means they're on Team Kicking not Team Kicked. Of course it doesn't really work that way in practice. Narcissistic assholes just kick whoever is a nuisance that day. Could be your friends, family, or you.

Trump's an asshole. The people running Britain now are assholes, and the people who support them are bigger assholes. I'd like to say this will be the last asshole election, but probably not. As Jesus said, the assholes we will always have with us. Something like that, anyway.

Vacation's All I Ever Wanted

For various reasons didn't really have any time today. Guess it was my pre-election vacation day. More of a "personal day" anyway. Did the aliens invade yet?