Last Call For But Her Emails

Truns out that yes, media coverage of Clinton's email server was a factor in costing her the race, as many have said before.  CNN's Chris Cillizza will admit that it was an issue, but being responsible for the breathless coverage is not something he's going to cop to.

Not only did "email" dominate the conversation around Clinton, it dominated the entire conversation in the race. From October 23 on, Trump is barely talked about -- an amazing feat for someone so willing to make news. 

This study will be used by liberals as evidence that the media's unnecessary focus on Clinton's email server cost her the election. 

I'd agree that Clinton's email server played a decisive role in deciding the election. But I wouldn't agree with the idea that the media is responsible for it. 

After all, it was Clinton who never seemed to grasp the seriousness of the issue and how it eroded the public's already shaky confidence in her. Her inability to do those things meant she was never able to put the story behind her. And then the Comey announcement came, which undoubtedly surged the issue back to the top of many voters' minds. 

Whatever the reasons, when people thought of Clinton in the final weeks of the race, they thought of her emails. And that was a very bad thing for her.

What makes Cillizza an asshole, even now, is that we know good and well that her email server wasn't an iota as bad as what Trump is doing now, with billions in graft for his empire and a regime drowning in corruption, with new revelations weekly, if not daily since the firing of James Comey.

But her emails, right?

I know. 25 years of Clinton Derangement Syndrome is a hard habit to kick, but 63 million still voted for her.  Go figure.

Our Little Domestic Terrorism Problem, Con't

We already know that the Trump regime and AG Jeff Sessions consider anybody but white men to be a threat to the homeland, so what will they do given overwhelming evidence that America's white supremacist terrorist movement is only becoming stronger and more dangerous now that it is going to be left largely unchecked by a Justice Department that is wholly uninterested in stopping them?

A man accused of shooting his two roommates Friday in a Tampa Palms apartment told police he shared neo-Nazi beliefs with the men until he converted to Islam then killed them because they showed disrespect for his faith. 

The revelations weren't over. 

Officers found a garage stocked with bomb materials as they arrived to investigate the double homicide, leading to federal explosive charges against Brandon Russell — a Florida National Guardsman and admitted neo-Nazi who kept a framed photo of Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh on his dresser. 

Russell, 21, was the man Tampa police officers found crying outside his door Friday evening when murder suspect Devon Arthurs led them back to the apartment that the four had shared in an affluent suburb north of the University of South Florida. Russell, wearing camouflage, had just returned from National Guard duties. 

Police went to the apartment in the Hamptons at Tampa Palms after Arthurs, 18, told them he fatally shot his roommates Jeremy Himmelman, 22, and Andrew Oneschuk, 18, according to a Tampa police report. 

While searching the garage, investigators found a cooler full of a white, cake-like explosive material known as HMTD, or hexamethylene tiperoxide diamine, according to a criminal complaint filed in U.S. District Court. Nearby, they found explosive precursors — chemicals that can be mixed to create explosives — including potassium chlorate, potassium nitrate, nitro methane and more than a pound of ammonium nitrate in a package addressed to Russell. 

Investigators also found electric matches and empty 5.56-caliber ammunition casings with fuses that could be used to detonate destructive devices once HMTD was added to the casings. The materials could be used to make a bomb, according to the complaint.
In addition, pagers carried by bomb technicians alerted them to the presence of two radiation sources. The complaint does not say whether they were connected to the explosive materials. 

In Russell's bedroom, investigators discovered Nazi and white supremacist propaganda including the photo of McVeigh, who was convicted and executed for detonating an ammonium nitrate and nitromethane fertilizer truck bomb in front of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City in 1995. The death toll from the blast was 168. 

According to the complaint, Russell admitted to being a national socialist, manufacturing the HTMD and owning the precursors. He also admitted he is a member of a white supremacy group called the Atomwaffen, German for "atomic weapons." 

Questioned about why he had the explosives, Russell said he was in a USF engineering club in 2013 and used the HMTD, in part, to boost homemade rockets and to send balloons into the atmosphere. 

"Based on my training and experience, HMTD is too energetic and volatile for these types of uses," FBI Special Agent Timothy A. Swanson wrote in the complaint.

A guy who literally had a framed photo of modern America's most notorious domestic terrorist in his bedroom, belonged to a neo-Nazi group, had all kinds of explosives and bomb-making materials, and white supremacist propaganda where he lived,  And this guy was a zygote when Tim McVeigh attacked Oklahoma City.  Hell, I was the age he is now when that happened.

How many more of these skinhead New Reich assholes like Russell are out there?  Gosh who knows, Trump and Sessions are too busy harassing anyone darker than a paper bag.  Why would Trump go after the people who elected him, after all?

The fetters are off these guys.  Expect to see a lot more scenes like this where state and local law enforcement have to do the bulk of the work dealing with these guys, and remember Russell only got caught because he shot two of his roommates.  The cops had no idea otherwise.  The Feds under Trump and Sessions won't give a damn.

And that's going to be a disaster sooner rather than later.

How Bad Will The Senate Version Of Trumpcare Be?

David Leonhardt at the NY Times says that if you're expecting Senate Democrats to be able to stop Trumpcare from passing through GOP budget reconciliation tricks, forget it.  The only question is how bad the final Senate bill will be.

While the rest of the country has been transfixed by Trumpian chaos, members of the Senate have spent the last two weeks talking about taking health insurance from millions of Americans. 

There is an alarmingly large chance that they’ll decide to do so. But if they do, they will almost certainly rely on a political sleight of hand to disguise their bill’s damage. Understanding that sleight of hand — and calling attention to it — offers the best hope for defeating the bill. 

The effort to take health insurance from the middle class and poor and funnel the savings into tax cuts for the rich is a little like mold. It grows best in the dark. 

That’s why Republican leaders in the House handled their bill as they did. They did not hold a single hearing, because they knew that attention would have been devastating.
Just imagine a hearing featuring the leaders of these groups, every one of which opposes the House bill: the American Medical Association, American Nurses Association, American Hospital Association, American Academy of Pediatrics, American Cancer Society, American Heart Association, American Diabetes Association, American Lung Association, March of Dimes and AARP. 

The House also passed its final bill without waiting for the Congressional Budget Office to estimate how many Americans would lose insurance. The C.B.O. will release that analysis tomorrow afternoon. There is no precedent, outside of wartime, for passing a bill this important in such haste. 

After the House did, many observers assumed the bill was too flawed to have much chance in the Senate. Republican senators, aware of the bill’s unpopularity, were careful to say publicly that they would start fresh. But the early signs suggest that Mitch McConnell and his Republican caucus are actually mimicking the House approach.

In other words, expect the Senate to pass a bill exactly like the House did: with no public hearings, with no CBO score, and with no input from Democrats.  And considering Trump's planned budget is already going to destroy Medicaid anyway, the combination of the two will wipe out health insurance for tens of millions.

But of course, that's the point.  The GOP budget plan is lethal, trillions of tax cuts for the rich and for corporations, and trillions more in social program cuts for Medicaid, SNAP, college loans, and more on top of massive cuts to government departments that will cost hundreds of thousands of jobs.

The damage will be done, and 2020 will be far too late to fix it.

StupidiNews!

• At least 22 are dead and 60 injured, including several children, after a suicide bomber detonated a blast at the end of an Ariana Grande concert in Manchester, England last night.
• Iowa Governor Terry Branstad was confirmed as US Ambassador to China by the Senate, the six-term Republican will pass power to Lt. Gov. Kim Reynolds, the state's first woman governor.
• North Korea says it will mass-produce the "intermediate range" missile it tested on Sunday, the Pentagon says North Korea doesn't have the resources to do so.
• European Union ministers want as much as a 100 billion euro penalty Britain will have to pay to leave the EU, UK PM Theresa May is threatening to leave Brexit talks completely.
• Hospitals and pharmacies across the country are dealing with the latest medical supply shortage, this time with medical-grade sodium bicarbonate, good old baking soda.