Anathema-

And fwiw I suspect it wouldn't be too hard to find legitimate illegality in a scheme to frame someone for a crime.

I agree with Popehat's general skepticism of the latitude the FBI gets in how to treat matters like this; but I do think that dumbassing your way into a crime is a valuable avenue that should be exploitable.

While I roll my eyes at the corporatization of stuff like this, the flavor sounds great. I fucking love pecans.

Whatever buddy, it's your aneurysm.

I think Hillary should be exempt by now from having to worry about how bad faith actors will twist her words and we all owe it to ourselves to stop making a big fucking deal out of it, too. Just spend your energy doing something productive.

I'm not one to label everything he does a distraction but that's absolutely what this is and I won't comment further unless/until we hear about it after the midterms.

Even with that I'm not sure I'd change my position all that much. It's semantics over whether or not to call unintuitive/counter-intuitive design a "malfunction" and if the malfunction benefits the party in power who then makes no moves to correct the issue then what can be done other than to call out what it plainly is? I'm also skeptical of the government's statement that the issue is minor. In the first order we can't limit the potential impact only to people who both noticed AND reported the issue; in the second, 20 errant ballots is many thousands of times more recurrent than the instances of voter fraud that the ruling party uses as an excuse to further suppress voting. The machines need to be changed, sure; but more importantly is holding people to account for their bad acts that only serve to keep them in power. P.S. Even if the error equitably changed votes between the candidates, stories like this contribute to voter apathy that keeps republicans in power and they know this. It's not enough for them to escape culpability on this.

Where did you see this?

Deplatforming is the only way to deal with subjects that are unworthy of debate. We don't bring on "a constellation of opinions" (to borrow a phrase) about fucking pedophilia.

We need independent election authorities. Too many areas of the country have no say in their leadership, to say nothing of the federal government. Leaders being able to choose and shape their electorate has given rise to tyranny wrapped in Democratic (rather than divine) frippery.

Is it rigging if the way they're garbage benefits the party in power and, after being alerted to the problem, they make no moves to correct the issue? I'm not sure we can call it anything else and by not calling it straightforward election tampering (by this point) only serves to give cover to those who benefit from unchecked power. When the bug is a feature, call it a feature; unless calling it a feature makes you look bad in which case you hope no-one notices; and if someone notices then say it's not your fault; and if it is your fault say that nothing can be done even if you're the only one who can do something about it and it's your job to fix it. Then pretend you have a mandate from the people.

I actually hate putting cheese on my eggs

Influence happens in this direction as well, absolutely. How often did Obama beg for people to fight for the things they just assumed he could snap his fingers and do? He was asking to be guided politically. *** The problem is, I think, not as much with the influence of pols and the population, but with a class of leaders interested only in power and revanchist elements of the electorate eager to give it to them and violently mad at disagreement. Nobody foresaw people wanting to vote for a tyrant, or if they did, didn't do enough to protect our democracy against one.

Midterms schmidterms; Kavanaugh is gonna be there for a while.

I think it's in between. People can be led in many (although not all) directions and people can be simply waiting for social permission to act how they want. Like, yeah you could say the intentions were there but without particular leadership it doesn't come out. Like what happened at the beginning days of the Muslim ban; CBP/TSA agents running amok with their power knowing that they'll be backed up by their chain is a good example.

It goes really nicely in a roast beef sandwich. I want to taste the beef more than the cheese and American is just right.

All because trump is too much of a coward to fire anyone face to face.

The FBI would have to launch a thorough investigation of Kavanaugh's background in late high school/college to prove that Swetnick intentionally lied tho

Killing gays and abortion providers have been juiced by rhetoric from the Regan and Bush white houses or from other elected GOPers. The demonization of liberals has gone on for decades and there's reams of right wing violence that has followed. If you're trying to limit it to just examples of calls for violence from the Oval you'd certainly find a point but it's a distinction without a meaningful difference.

Seems like a bad idea.

Absolutely; remember Bart Stupak folded

Also he is spending on other Texas democrats, a smart move on many levels; build local infrastructure and help new potential straight ticket voters to the polls (This is one of the things that made Northam's win so massive and larger than the polling; larger turnout for statehouse races).