The Phony Campaign

2020-05-17 Update

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The folks wagering their own money continue to hold on to the possibility of President Hillary Clinton, but she continues to fade. Sad! In the meantime, both Wheezy Joe and President Bone Spurs managed to hold their win probabilities unchanged over the past week.

Although they probably bounced up and down in between; this is just a snapshot. Things could change in an eyeblink if/when either one of them says something unusually stupid or insane.

And everyone lost phony hits this week. I have no explanation for that.

Candidate WinProb Change
Since
5/10
Phony
Results
Change
Since
5/10
Donald Trump 49.0% unch 1,640,000 -640,000
Hillary Clinton 2.3% -0.4% 558,000 -55,000
Joe Biden 42.1% unch 432,000 -219,000

Warning: Google result counts are bogus.

  • Sad news for me, via Matt Welch at Reason: Justin Amash Drops Out of Presidential Race.

    In a Twitter thread, Amash wrote that the current political environment "presents extraordinary challenges," including that "polarization is near an all-time high" and that "social media and traditional media are dominated by voices strongly averse to the political risks posed by a viable third candidate." Also, "lingering uncertainty regarding ratification of online voting, the feasibility of 50-state ballot access and related legal challenges, and unity after the nomination have also weighed heavily on me. We must address these issues as a party to ensure we maximize our potential."

    Who knows what the Libertarian Party will do now? Not me.


  • Hey kids, remember post-9/11 when everyone was absolutely frantic that Dubya might get access to a list of books you checked out from your local library? No, really. Fortunately, civil-liberty minded Democrats stuck by their principals, and…

    Oops, never mind. As lefty Matt Taibbi points out, Democrats Have Abandoned Civil Liberties.

    Emmet G. Sullivan, the judge in the case of former Trump National Security Adviser Michael Flynn, is refusing to let William Barr’s Justice Department drop the charge. He’s even thinking of adding more, appointing a retired judge to ask “whether the Court should issue an Order to Show Cause why Mr. Flynn should not be held in criminal contempt for perjury.”

    Pundits are cheering. A trio of former law enforcement and judicial officials saluted Sullivan in the Washington Post, chirping, “The Flynn case isn’t over until a judge says it’s over.” Yuppie icon Jeffrey Toobin of CNN and the New Yorker, one of the #Resistance crowd’s favored legal authorities, described Sullivan’s appointment of Judge John Gleeson as “brilliant.” MSNBC legal analyst Glenn Kirschner said Americans owe Sullivan a “debt of gratitude.”

    One had to search far and wide to find a non-conservative legal analyst willing to say the obvious, i.e. that Sullivan’s decision was the kind of thing one would expect from a judge in Belarus. George Washington University professor Jonathan Turley was one of the few willing to say Sullivan’s move could “could create a threat of a judicial charge even when prosecutors agree with defendants.”

    It's darkly amusing to see Democats morph into (in Taibbi's words) "defenders of the spy state."


  • The New York Post's gossip page has a scoop: REvil, law firm hackers, double ransom demand, threaten Donald Trump.

    The ransom demand for the secret files of a cyber-attacked lawyer to A-list stars has doubled to $42 million — as the hackers now threaten to reveal “dirty laundry” on President Donald Trump in just a week if they are not paid in full.

    Attorney Allen Grubman — the most prominent entertainment attorney in the world, whose firm represents stars including Lady Gaga, Madonna, Mariah Carey, U2, Bruce Springsteen, Priyanka Chopra and Bette Midler — was being shaken down by hackers who attacked his New York law firm for $21 million until today.

    The hackers claim to have "found a ton of dirty laundry" on the President, even though he's never been a client of the firm. Grubman is refusing to pay.

    So we'll see, huh?


  • Wheezy Joe had a fine interview with an ABC hack:

    “I know nothing about those moves to investigate Michael Flynn,” Biden said on ABC’s “Good Morning America” when George Stephanopoulos asked what he knew of the FBI’s operations in early 2017.

    And a handful of seconds later in that same interview, after Stephanopoulos pressed a little with specifics:

    “I thought you asked me whether or not I had anything to do with him being prosecuted,” Biden said. “I was aware that there was, that they asked for an investigation, but that’s all I know about.”

    And then a few hours later…

    The declassification of material from the Michael Flynn case has exposed more chilling details of an effort by prosecutors to come up with a crime to use against the former national security adviser. This week, however, a letter revealed another unsettling detail. Among over three dozen Obama administration officials seeking to “unmask” Flynn in the investigation was former Vice President Joe Biden. This revelation came less than a day after Biden denied any involvement in the investigation of Flynn. It also follows a disclosure that President Obama was aware of that investigation.

    C'mon man.


  • So it's not like President Biden will actually be capable of being in charge of anything. Fortunately, one of his main advisers Ezekiel Emanuel Wants to Control Your Health Care.

    If Joe Biden is elected president in November, oncologist and bioethicist Ezekiel Emanuel, the former vice president’s chief campaign health-care adviser, will almost certainly control the new administration’s health policies, perhaps even as secretary of health and human services. That is bad news. Emanuel was a prime architect of the Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare, and remains one of the law’s most enthusiastic apologists. Readers may also recall his infamous 2014 article in The Atlantic, where he wrote that he wants to die at age 75 — implying that we should too — because people after that age become “feeble, ineffectual, even pathetic.”

    Joe Biden is 77, Zeke.


Last Modified 2024-01-23 5:16 AM EDT