The Bishop and the Butterfly: Murder, Politics, and the End of the Jazz Age

    It wasn't the performance he needed

    By Flavius on Wed, 10/19/2016 - 10:52pm |

    That was Nate Silver's comment.

    It'll do.

     

    Comments

    It wasn't the campaign he needed.


    by Michael Wolraich on Wed, 10/19/2016 - 11:12pm

    Yeah, it's over now. Thank God.


    by Flavius on Wed, 10/19/2016 - 11:20pm

    All over but the senating


    by Michael Wolraich on Wed, 10/19/2016 - 11:29pm

    I think you mean it's all over until the three am tweeting.


    by tmccarthy0 on Thu, 10/20/2016 - 12:05am

    It isn't the political party America needs.

    Trump may say he doesn't trust democracy, but the GOP mission from day one will be an also undemocratic Stop Hillary. Unless we vote them OUT!


    by NCD on Thu, 10/20/2016 - 1:09am

    You are prophetic. Donald tweeted that he won the debate at 3 A.M.

    http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/onpolitics/2016/10/20/3am-tr...

     


    by rmrd0000 on Thu, 10/20/2016 - 6:56am

    I wish it were difficult to guess what that OrangeBuffoon will do but of course it isn't! LOL. I was wondering what he'd tweet this morning. He is so easy to predict!. SAD!


    by tmccarthy0 on Thu, 10/20/2016 - 9:40am

    Okay, okay. I hereby render unto Flavius the Dayly Line of the Week Award for this here Dagblog Site, Given to all of Flavius from all of me.

    hahahahahah

    I told NCD I might do this.

    But damn....


    by Richard Day on Thu, 10/20/2016 - 12:29am

     You're getting soft. Better toughen up or change the award to the Dayly line of the weak.


    by Flavius on Thu, 10/20/2016 - 8:41am

    We've dodged a bullet. Hillary shouldn't have been our candidate. Not now.

    Got too many miles on her. Fortunately the Trumper shouldn't have been

    anybody's candidate. He's a menace.

    Unsafe at any speed.

     

     


    by Flavius on Thu, 10/20/2016 - 8:47am

    If HRC hadn't run at all, who do you think should have been the Democratic candidate?  


    by CVille Dem on Thu, 10/20/2016 - 9:54am

    Biden


    by Flavius on Thu, 10/20/2016 - 11:08am

    You're wrong about that on so many levels, but I'll let Ezra Klein explain one or two of them ...

    Joe Biden is no Hillary Clinton.


    by barefooted on Thu, 10/20/2016 - 12:11pm

    Anyone believe the Republicans would (for the first time in decades) work with Biden, a Democratic President, reach compromises and not endeavor to destroy his presidency?

    If you don't believe they will change, you want a smart experienced fighter in the oval office,  one who the GOP fears and hates precisely because they know what a formidable opponent she can be. I'm not sure Biden could fill that role. He didn't want it anyway. He ran twice in 88 and 2008 and dropped out early. He voted for the 2002 'Iraq War' resolution like Hillary.


    by NCD on Thu, 10/20/2016 - 1:47pm

    I disagree - Hillary's shown more stamina than most any mortal. She's definitely earned her wings. That she's doing this at 69 (next week) is pretty amazing. They've thrown the kitchen sink at her, Benghazi, emails, Clinton Foundation & WikiLeaks too.

    It's been a year of very bizarre double standards and complicated positioning. And for all the second-guessing and worries about how'd she fare against Trump (remember all those polls showing she was already doomed back in February?), she seemed to play the debates like a pro.

    And 4 years ago I was quite sure it was crazy to think of Hillary running again, that certainly someone with fresher ideas, new generation would step up. Oddly enough they didn't (or at least not packaged well enough to actually challenge what she was offering, IMHO).

    And 4 years ago I thought counting on her or anyone to be healthy enough at 69 to be president was presumptious, including after her brain clot but any number of other conditions that could pop up (yeah, didn't expect Trump or Sanders to be even older). But so far so good.

    Or even assuming that she'd want to spend another turbulent 1 1/2 - 2 years on the campaign trail with everything about her examined, from the usual obgyn & proctology fetishes to this year's pivot to brain scans as well. She's certainly set records for public scrutiny.

    But quite frankly I'm actually most interested and enthused in seeing how she'll govern - am rather sick of a decade of campaigning and all this trying to be "authentic", "likeable", etc. I quite like it that she writes serious, detailed policy proposals that everyone likes to ignore in campaign season but will be quite useful in getting things done and drawing up actual legislation & executive procedures. She's more than likeable enough, and it seems maybe recently all the public doubts and questioning and concerns is starting to taper off a bit to normal levels - even for some of the Republicans.

    Anyway, it's game on. 2 1/2 more weeks, and now it looks like between GOP meltdown and her playing them like a gong, we may actually have a real chance of Senate + House. FIngers crossed big time.

    ETA - one thing that kept getting press time is the 'year of the anti-establishment candidate' - but a lot of this was a self-fulfilling echo chamber, and a lot was vastly contradicting views of just what about the establishment was wrong. Steve Jobs built a career out of ignoring what customers said they wanted, since it was typically what was popular then or several years before, or just familiarity with what someone else was doing. He seemed to figure it was his job to actually figure out what would suit the customer and overall market. How far this goes for Hillary I don't know, but the old adage "opinions are like assholes, everyone's got one" certainly brought out the assholes this year. Fortunately primarily on the Republican side of the aisle. There will be a lot of name-taking to account for this year - too many people have been public and vocal to let defeat be "an orphan" - they're all going to own it but good.


    by PeraclesPlease on Thu, 10/20/2016 - 12:48pm

    Primarily because it's so hard for women to break into the highest levels of politics, there just aren't a lot of choices for female candidates. And I think we are MORE than ready to see what a woman can do in the office. Following Obama's historic election, it's only fitting we have an equally historic one.

    I hope we are beyond wanting a NON-POLITICIAN in the office. Unfortunately, without years of vetting on the way to getting there, who knows what you'll end up with as the nominee? If this cycle should be proving ANYTHING, it's that you need to be careful what you wish for.

    I was never a Hillary fan. Ever. But when Obama appointed her Secretary of State, I had to take another look at her. He obviously saw something in her I didn't. And watching what the right did to him, I had to consider the possibility that they had done the same to her over the decades. So I started researching where all the Hillary hatred came from. Lo' and behold, they HAD. The vast majority of things that have been hung around her neck were either distortions or half-truths, and sometimes even outright fabrications.

    By the time she was considering another run, I was hoping she'd go for it, and am now a passionate supporter. My husband has always distrusted her, and considered the Clintons grifters. I've been feeding him articles showing what they've been doing to her, and even HE has come around.

    As far as her stamina goes, I am in awe. I am only 64, and I'm pretty sure she could run circles around me, and she is certainly more in command of facts and figures than I have ever been on my best day!

    Still, being ahead in the polls, even by a lot, does not get her elected. We have to have a HUGE turnout to counteract all the people thrown off the voting rolls, and all the voter suppression going on in various states. Voting has NEVER been so important. This race has gone way beyond policies and into the realm of fitness for the office. I have to say that should be the number one criteria. We can survive policies we disagree with. We cannot survive having a willfully ignorant/dangerously vindictive/thin-skinned narcissist in office. When a candidate makes George Bush look reasonably competent, you know you have a problem.

     


    by stillidealistic on Fri, 10/21/2016 - 1:10pm

    There's a fascinating sub-meme circulatiing amongst the rueful rump Repugnants ( pointing to some of the podesta files) viz, Clinton Inc set out from jump with a firm conviction that only Trump could fail to beat her,and therefore....(That  famous call from Bill to Donald does start to loom a bit larger)    

     

    Newfound respect, Hil.                      


    by jollyroger on Thu, 10/20/2016 - 2:21pm

    It was rigged, JR? Only a real snake could think such a thing.


    by PeraclesPlease on Thu, 10/20/2016 - 2:55pm

     I wrote that Hillary shouldn't have been our candidate. Not that she shouldn't be  President . She's qualified  -as much as Joe. My  fear was she was unelectable . Running against anyone other than Donny Boy.

     


    by Flavius on Thu, 10/20/2016 - 9:26pm

    If Hillary chose not to run it's not certain those votes would have gone to Biden. Many don't see him as presidential. Biden would have been my last choice. My vote would have gone to Sanders or O'Malley. Or if Hillary hadn't run there might have been others in the race. Warren might have run, if so Sanders might not have.


    by ocean-kat on Thu, 10/20/2016 - 10:14pm

    Hillary was never going to face anybody but Trump because the Republicans are racist misogynists. Jeb Bush and John Kasich failed to win votes because they are not racists. Rubio had no change because he tried rational immigration reform, and not the kick them all out plan that Trump proposes. Cruz looked like the Conservative alternative in the Republican race, but Cruz was not racist enough. 

    Trump calls Mexican criminals, wants to deport Muslims, want women seeking abortions to be criminally punished, and wants blacks and Latinos to face national Stop and Frisk. Trump was the only rational candidate of the modern Republican Party. Trump says that he won't accept election results unless he wins. There has been no open condemnation from GOP leadership. Our fellow citizens who are Republicans are Neanderthals who do not want other citizens in the United States to live in freedom. The Republican Party wants no opposition.

    Trump lied about the existence of a sex tape during his attack on a beauty pageant contestant. He allowed a shock jock to call Ivanka a piece of ass. He admitted to groping women. Trump did all these things and Evangelicals who are Republicans stand by their man. These charlatans even quote the Bible to support their blasphemy. 

    Trump denies the Russian cyberattacks on the United States. He believes Vlad Putin rather than the intelligence agencies. Trump is a useful idiot. The Republican Party tells us that they will protect the country. Hopefully, they will do a better job than Bush did on 911. Trump will be a doormat for Russia. No one in the Republican Party addresses the danger that Trump represents.

    The Republican Party is a cesspool of immorality and treason. Trump is the only possible candidate that the Republicans could select. Trump wants to be a dictator. Republicans want a dictatorship. When Republicans do not toe the wingnut line, they are called Republicans in name only. Trump was the choice from the beginning. Hillary did not luck out, she faces the candidate selected by our fellow citizens who are members of the Republican Party.


    by rmrd0000 on Thu, 10/20/2016 - 10:43pm

    Republicans cheered when Trump told them to attack protesters during the Primaries.

    They cheer and pick up their pitchforks when he tells the crowds to "Lock her up".

    Republican voters cheer when Trump says he will only accept results if he wins.

    These are the members of the modern GOP. They are filled with hate.


    by rmrd0000 on Fri, 10/21/2016 - 12:04am

    " A top Kansas state lawmaker called a quote from Adolf Hitler “profound” and told her Facebook followers to listen to his words closely.  Republican House Speaker Pro Tem Rep. Peggy Mast praised the Nazi mass murderer in a post on her Facebook page Thursday." .....NY Daily News

    ...compared Planned Parenthood to the 3rd Reich....? There is something very wrong with these people.


    by NCD on Thu, 10/20/2016 - 11:29pm

    Pence supports Trump unwillingness to concede, citing "pockets" of voter fraud in the United States. Pence dog-whistles that blacks are causing voter fraud. He is as much of a racist as Donald Trump.

    http://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2016-election/pence-echoes-trump-his-rig...


    by rmrd0000 on Fri, 10/21/2016 - 8:06am

    " My  fear was she was unelectable . Running against anyone other than Donny Boy. " - we of course won't know (at least not til 2020, but I've always suspected that simply isn't true. She would have put in a similar money machine against other candidates, she would have taken them on at debates in different but equally effective ways, etc. Yes, she would always be running against the press as well and be losing 24x7, no it wouldn't be easy, but with a less bizarre candidate it would be easier to bring up the trainwreck of the Republican party and have it  stick whereas with Trump the normal disqualifiers nevery applied.


    by PeraclesPlease on Fri, 10/21/2016 - 7:38am

    If Donny had not run, the other candidates would have had to sent dog-whistles to the GOP base. Elizabeth Warren wrote an op-ed taking Republicans to task for the disease they inflicted on the US.

    http://thedailybanter.com/2016/10/elizaneth-warren-republicans-donald-tr...

    (the link is not directly to the WaPo in case people without a subscription have exceeded their free article limit)


    by rmrd0000 on Fri, 10/21/2016 - 7:57am

    I'm hoping Hillary appoints Warren as Secretary of Pitbull.

    I think Obama hurt himself early by not wrapping the 2008 economic catastrophe firmly around the Republicans' neck so they were able to spin it back and with amazing chutzpah make it his fault even as he was trying his best to make nice and do bipartisan compromises.**

    Warren will help keep this from being "Donald was just an aberration" and instead firm up "he's the obvious natural result of what you've been pushing the last 2 decades".

    ** the problem with listening to Village wisdom and the "will of the electorate" is they tell you all sorts of bullshit like "America's tired of the fighting, they want parties that can get along". They want parties that get along if it's their way - an impossibility with 2 or more opinions.

     


    by PeraclesPlease on Sat, 10/22/2016 - 2:15am

    I agree that the Republicans are my deplorable than Obama thought. Republicans think Obama wasn't born in the United States and is a Muslim. The majority of Republicans think blacks are lazy. They want to monitor the polls in black neighborhoods. The Republican Party is under a 1982 consent decree because they tried to do voter suppression at the polls. He wants a Stop and Frisk. A Huffington Post survey notes that Republicans believe that the only the only way that Clinton win is if the election is rigged. The GOP is a white supremacist party. Republican Evangelicals have abandoned their moral authority by continuing to support a misogynist who admits to attacking women. We have to realize that up to 40% of the voting public wants complete control over the other 60%. GOP leadership still supports Trump. The Republicans are not a political party, they are a cult.


    by rmrd0000 on Sat, 10/22/2016 - 10:18am

    I was watching a video of Milos Foreman last night talking about his movies - 2 items jumped out, first Foreman talking about Howard Rollins in "Ragtime", a black man who'd just had a group of joker New York country boys defecate on his nice car, with Foreman identifying with Rollins' humiliation -  Rollins just wanted *someone* to pay for what they'd done even as the constable begged him to let it go - as the same kind of humiliation the Communists put Foreman and everyone else through - at that point he finally understood what his own film was about, the key motif.

    Second was Foreman talking about his actors, how they're always prepared, with the example of one black girl who he auditioned for "Hair" - he asked what she'd been in and she said "no, sir - I'm just a maid down at the hotel", and she did such a good job he gave her the part - and then when they were practicing and auditioning it out, she hit every version perfect, first time, even when the camera wasn't supposed to be on her - he even used her first audition outtakes in the film ( Guess being an immigrant, Foreman didn't realize he was supposed to assume the blacks were lazy - an American-born white man might have presumed she just didn't want to come back for a 2nd take, so went ahead and did it right the first time around ;-)


    by PeraclesPlease on Sat, 10/22/2016 - 11:01am

    "Ragtime" was a great book and movie. Sad that Rollins died. He has a statute at a museum in his birthplace, Baltimore.


    by rmrd0000 on Sat, 10/22/2016 - 11:51am

    I didn't know. Substance abuse, arrests, drag queen, dead of AIDS at 46 - tough short life for such a talent.


    by PeraclesPlease on Sat, 10/22/2016 - 1:02pm

    Who's Who

    A shilling life will give you all the facts:

    How Father beat him , how he ran away,

    What were the struggles of his youth, what acts

    Made him the greatest figure of his day:

    Of how he fought, fished, hunted , worked all night,

    Though giddy, climbed new mountains; named a sea:

    Some of the last researchers even write

    Love made him weep his pints like you and me.

     

    With all his honours on, he sighed for one

    Who, say astonished critics , lived at home;

    Did little jobs about the house with skill

    And nothing else; could whistle; would sit still

    Or potter around the garden; answered some

    Of his long marvellous letters but kept none.

    W.H. Auden

     

    Good, isn't it. Flavius

     

     

     

     


    by Flavius on Fri, 10/21/2016 - 11:09pm