Last Call For The Real Trumpies

The NY Times collected the unfiltered comments and voices of Trump supporters to hear what they had to say, and what they had to say should scare the living daylights out of you.  Needless to say, this is extremely NSFW language used here.



 

These folks are pretty awful.  And these folks will definitely vote in November.

The View From Detroit And Derry

Donald Trump hasn't been doing the GOP brand any favors in Michigan, where GOP Gov. Rick Snyder still hasn't lifted a finger as far as a real solution to the ongoing Flint water crisis, and a new Detroit News/WDIV-TV poll shows Hillary Clinton with a 9-point lead in the Wolverine State.

Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton has widened her lead over Republican Donald Trump in Michigan as 3-in-5 likely voters say the New York businessman is not qualified to be president, according to a new poll conducted for The Detroit News and WDIV-TV. 

Clinton led Trump 41 percent to 32 percent in the statewide survey of 600 likely voters conducted Saturday through Monday following Clinton’s formal nomination at last week’s Democratic National Convention. 

The poll contains many troubling signs for Trump’s White House campaign, including a “shocking” lead for Clinton in the Republican strongholds of west and southwest Michigan, pollster Richard Czuba said. 

Sixty-one percent of likely general election voters said Trump is ill-prepared to be the nation’s commander-in-chief. The figure grows to 67 percent among women, a group with whom Trump performs poorly. Clinton has a commanding 21-percentage-point lead among female voters. 

“He’s sitting in the cellar right now, and they’re going to have to do something to dramatically turn this around,” said Czuba, president of the Glengariff Group Inc. polling firm. “If I were a Republican running on this ticket right now, I’d be beyond nervous.”

If Trump is losing in Grand Rapids and Kalamazoo, he's done.  That would be the equivalent in Ohio of Trump losing in Cincinnati's northern suburbs or here in northern KY.  Most of all, the realization is setting in among Michigan Republicans that Trump is going to drag them to hell along with him.

Some 61% of Michiganders find Trump unqalified for the White House, while 57% find Clinton fit for the job..  Still, there's more than a quarter of voters in the state either still undecided or otherwise not voting for either Trump or Clinton, so there's still ground to be made up.

Still, these numbers are initially good for Clinton.  Trump isn't nearly as competitive in Rust Belt states as people seem so think he is.

And here's the rub: coming off the conventions, Clinton is doing even better in New Hampshire.

Hillary Clinton has opened up a 15-point advantage over Donald Trump in the battleground state of New Hampshire, according to the results of the latest WBUR poll released Thursday, which also found the state’s Democratic Gov. Maggie Hassan with a double-digit lead over incumbent Republican Sen. Kelly Ayotte. 

The survey, conducted in the days immediately following the Democratic National Convention, found Clinton with 47 percent support among likely voters. Trump has the backing of 32 percent of voters, while Libertarian nominee Gary Johnson finished a distant third with 8 percent and Green Party candidate Jill Stein took 3 percent. Another 2 percent indicated support for another candidate, while 7 percent did not know or refused to answer. 

Clinton held a much narrower two-point edge over Trump in a WMUR/University of New Hampshire poll taken before the convention. National polls taken after both conventions showed Clinton erasing any bounce Trump gained from the previous week when he briefly surged following the Republican National Convention.

Maggie Hassan is up by 10 over Kelly "The Third Amigo" Ayotte too.  Maybe America isn't as screwed as we thought.

School's Out In Hamilton

Oh Hamilton Ohio, never, ever change.

He doesn’t know what to say. 

“I’m actually stunned,” said Southwest Local Schools Superintendent John Hamstra. 

The school district had a levy on the ballot Tuesday, and it went down 2,425 votes to 1,811. Hamstra wasn’t expecting that. It would have paid for a new junior high building and a renovated high school. 

“I’m still a little speechless,” Hamstra said. “As far as what’s next,” and then, he trailed off. “I don’t know…” 

Tuesday was a tiny special election. There were only four issues on the ballot in Hamilton County, and three were renewals – for Mount Healthy, Elmwood Place police and Elmwood Place fire/EMS. All three renewals passed. 

Southwest Schools was asking for a combined 4.45-mill levy that would have cost the owner of a $100,000 home in the district an extra $156 a year. The district tried for a levy in November 2015, and that one failed. So, they cut the amount in half, Hamstra said. They scaled back the project – putting elementary school decisions to another time – and he thought voters were on board. 

He hosted open houses every Thursday to talk with whoever showed up. 

There were building tours every Tuesday so people could see the need firsthand.
He did podcasts, wrote letters, and there were 55 people on the district’s social media team, he said, “putting out the facts.” 

“We’re shocked,” he said. “… What do they want?” 

It's odd, because, comparatively, Southwest homeowners have it easy. They pay the lowest rate in the county for schools, $715 a year per $100,000 home. 

By comparison, the owner of a $100,000 home in the Cincinnati Public Schools district pays $1,424 a year, and school officials are asking for an extra $277.55 a year with a levy this fall. In Finneytown, top of the price list, the owner of a $100,000 home pays $1,909 a year for schools. 

A few days ago, a 10-foot-by-10-foot chunk of plaster fell from one of the classroom ceilings at Southwest, Hamstra said. It’s summer, so no one was hurt. 

“But if there were kids in that room at that time? That would not have been good," he said. "The buildings are not getting any younger, and the issues are not going away.

And the only people who care about voting in a special election in a sweltering Tuesday in August are people who don't want to see an extra dime given to public education, as evidenced by a vote that went down in flames by roughly 18 points.  Meanwhile, I'd like to know how many businesses in Hamilton get nice tax breaks to, you know, avoid paying for things like school districts.

I bet every one of the people who voted against the levy thinks kids these days are pretty stupid, too. Meanwhile you have a baffled superintendent who honestly doesn't know why a school levy in the reddest part of the state would fail.

I'd laugh, but it's really kind of pathetic.

StupidiNews!

• Hurricane Earl has made landfall in eastern Belize as a Category 1 storm, causing widespread power outages as the storm moves across the Yucatan Peninsula.
• Texas has reached a preliminary deal with civil rights groups to ease voting restrictions after the state's voter ID provisions were partially struck down last month by a federal judge.
• One woman is dead and five others wounded after a 19-year-old man went on a rampage with a knife in central London's Russell Square last night.
• Early results from elections in South Africa show the ruling African National Congress party is trailing the country's main opposition party in several key cities.
• Russian space agency Roscosmos says it has plans to send an orbiting spacecraft to Jupiter's largest moon, Ganymede.