US Politics, March 2018: Why do people leave the White House for good?

I have this strong feeling today that in the very near future

1) the AG is going to be fired

-and-

2) we're all gonna be reading presidential sexts

Buckle up!

— Chris Hayes (@chrislhayes) March 13, 2018

https://thumbs.gfycat.com/MassiveSomberAntipodesgreenparakeet-max-1mb.gif

http://hrwiki.org/w/images/5/53/sbemail126.png

WASHINGTON — President Trump, fresh off replacing his secretary of state and C.I.A. director, is considering firing his secretary of veterans affairs and installing Energy Secretary Rick Perry in the post, according to two people close to the White House.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/13/us/politics/trump-perry-shulkin-veterans-affairs.html

i have to say, at least perry is probably more qualified to oversee VA than DOE. baby steps.

Hoos, goole said that Trump’s worse threats like you know...threatening nuclear war are “within the Democratic mainstream”. We can all just agree that that falls under the category of “getting carried away”. I guess we all still hungry for those dumb af “Decision 2016 Giant Meteor amirite lol” memes.

All sorts of fun in this one.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/roger-stone-claimed-contact-with-wikileaks-founder-julian-assange-in-2016-according-to-two-associates/2018/03/13/a263f842-2604-11e8-b79d-f3d931db7f68_story.html?utm_term=.f53f70110579

Well yes that...huh?

Mike Conaway, the R running the House Russia probe, acknowledged that Russians were trying to “hurt” Clinton in 2016.

Just asked him what’s the difference between hurting Clinton and helping Trump, and he said: “Glass half full, glass half empty; you can pitch that either way”

— Manu Raju (@mkraju) March 13, 2018

oh god i just realized this tool (trump) is smack in the middle of my commute ... hope he takes the chopper out of miramar

Well yes that...huh?

Ned whenever you do this sort of thing I can only hear it in the voice of TV's Frank

im calling Ozymandias

Every now and then it's interesting to just stop and marvel that this this is a universe where "bubba the love sponge" is a phrase that is at least tangentially relevant to presidential politics.

Yes, suggesting that something is appropriate for nobodies on the internet to talk shit about to other nobodies on the internet is the same as suggesting that it be the core of the Democratic Party message in the midterm and/or Presidential elections.

Ned whenever you do this sort of thing I can only hear it in the voice of TV's Frank

I consider that a perfect compliment.

Fun fun

https://www.politico.com/story/2018/03/13/pennsylvania-special-election-preview-tax-republicans-458276

Republicans backed away from their signature tax-cut law in the final days of a closely watched special House election in the Pittsburgh suburbs — even though it's the very accomplishment on which they had banked their midterm election hopes.

the trashy shock jock era

who got blended haircuts up in this

Telling.

I spoke to the former president of Trump’s casinos for clues to Trump’s impulsiveness on tariffs, North Korea and Tillerson. He said Trump acts this way when he’s under intense pressure https://t.co/njX35O7oFv pic.twitter.com/Bt6J42cy5C

— David Nakamura (@DavidNakamura) March 13, 2018

BUBBA THE LOVE SPONGE CLEM — who filmed Hulk Hogan sleeping with his wife in the tape published on Gawker and sued over by Charles Harder, who was paid by Trump supporter Peter Thiel and currently represents Melania Trump — accidentally got the scoop on Trump's affair with Stormy https://t.co/rOWFpxz779
— Gabrielle Bluestone (@g_bluestone) March 13, 2018

― Ned Raggett, Tuesday, March 13, 2018 2:03 PM (two hours ago)

pretty cool (unintentionally?) bug/feature of ilxcode is that it automatically preserves deleted tweets.

polls close in about 10 minutes in Pennsylvania.

During a long and unfocused speech on Saturday night, Mr. Trump appeared aware of the personal stakes. “I hate to put this pressure on you, Rick,” he said. “They are all watching because I won this district, like by 22 points.”

just realized that trump will attribute any republican loss in any district he carried to a personal failure of the candidate (in this case, Saccone), no matter how often this happens and no matter what the candidate does

i wonder what pelosi actually wants to happen

maybe people leave the White House for evil

the best thing in the very little I've read about Stormy Daniels is that Yam wanted to know what the royalties for porn are like.

just think he could have become the president of Vivid Video

big ups to HOOS for gabbneb-Nerdstrom podcast proposal, xo

i'm watching the polls because i'm procrastinating. only about 20% of the results are in so far, but comparing the county-by-county results to the fivethirtyeight.com county-level benchmarks, lamb is already in a strong position.

https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/3/13/17116874/conor-lamb-rick-saccone-pennsylvania-18-special-election-live-results

vox seems more up to date. 36% of precincts in, lamb with a 8 point lead so far

Jitter on or off?

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/03/13/us/elections/results-pennsylvania-house-special-election.html
(I only trust upshot/nyt/cohn after nov 2016.)

it's going to be very close.

whatever the final results, the main takeaway should be that this district swung substantially away from trump since nov 2016 - probably to the tune of around 20 points

and that's your toyota camry main takeaway. toyota camry. "let's go places"

62% in and Lamb is 6 points up. Not that close.

read section 4: political geography: https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/everything-you-need-to-know-about-the-pennsylvania-18th-special-election/

true but I wanna see Trump lose, lose, and lose some more, my main take away is fuck him

it's going to be slowly swinging back toward saccone the rest of the night. 80% of the votes are in from allegheny, the most democratic-leaning county in the district. only 53% are in from westmoreland, a county that leans heavily republican.

Well folks, we have some bad news. Westmoreland County has told us that they aren't going to report results by precinct tonight (though they had previously told us they would). The model runs on precinct results so, this is a problem.

— Nate Cohn (@Nate_Cohn) March 14, 2018

*NYT dial swings wildly around in circles*

^^^ "we"/"us" = NYT/Upshot

Alright folks, we've shut the needle down. As mentioned earlier, Westmoreland County isn't going to produce precinct results, as we believed they would. It's the GOP base of the district. We can't responsibly make a forecast without data from there.

— Nate Cohn (@Nate_Cohn) March 14, 2018

so does that mean westmoreland is just gonna be like....here's the whole county *barfs all the results at once*

county website data (62% reporting)

Lamb is up 16 in Allegheny (needs to be +14 to break even, per 538 benchmarks)
Lamb is down 18 in Greene (needs to be -19 to break even)
Lamb is tied in Washington (needs to be -6 to break even)
Lamb is down 12 in Westmoreland ((needs to be -19 to break even)

he's beating the benchmarks in all four counties, very good sign.

anyway while we wait can we all just agree that this is a great night for the NY Post

Take a bow, @NYPost pic.twitter.com/dthl70r1Sc

— Brian Stelter (@brianstelter) March 13, 2018

jfc, hitting refresh on this page and fuuuuuuck

87% reporting, 1.4% lead for lamb

Is Lamb going to squeak out a miraculous victory?

just a little napkin math based on what's left to report, I think Lamb wins this by like 500 votes

Lamb's lead actually going up slightly

91% reporting, 0.8% for lamb

94%, +.4% now

this night should end with a sword fight to the death

not feeling good abt this

whats left uncounted?