Last evening's prediction on Anderson Cooper!

THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 10, 2016

Toobin drops the bomb:
The press corps has finally finished an orgy of speculation/prediction.

Any attempt to cover substantive topics was abandoned in favor of clowning with polls. The actors would pretend that each new poll was somehow more accurate than the previous three million polls.

Joe and Mika were the stars of this realm. But none of them seemed to have the slightest idea that polls can be systematically wrong.

Wonderful amounts of time were massacred in this fashion. Viewers got the thrill of the imaginary race.

Even on Election Day, the nonsense wasn't permitted to stop. Every clown had to pursue the con.

Amazingly, this even happened. Be sure to scroll down to the UPDATE.

This is by way of expressing disgust with prediction culture. Still, Jeffrey Toobin voiced a prediction last night that was worth recording:
COOPER (11/9/16): And Jeffrey, how do you see this transition?

TOOBIN: I think Trump won. And Trump is going to drive a truck through the Obama administration record. And I think, you know, and President Obama will be very polite. But let's not underestimate why—what his appeal is. I mean, what Donald Trump's appeal is. It was born in the birther movement. It continued through immigration.

COOPER: And let's talk about the Supreme Court, which you've written about brilliantly. I mean, how big of an impact on that—

TOOBIN: He has—well, he has a very free hand. You know, he has a majority in the Senate. Yes, theoretically you could have filibuster. But, you know, there are a number of Democrats who are up in red states who are very likely to cooperate with Donald Trump on many issues.

There's only one vacancy at this point and it's Justice Scalia's seat. So it would probably just be a conservative for a conservative. But the real issue is looking ahead 83-year-old Ruth Ginsburg, 80-year-old Anthony Kennedy, 70 or 80-year-old Stephen Breyer. Those seats, that's when you start to see if the—

COOPER: And very quickly on the Attorney General, what are your thoughts?

TOOBIN: I think it's going to be Rudy Giuliani, and I think he's going to prosecute Hillary Clinton.

COOPER: Really?
That was an astounding prediction. Winning some kind of Clueless Award, Dana Bash quickly reacted:
TOOBIN (continuing directly): You know, I—this is the guy—

BASH: Not so sure.

COOPER: You're saying not so sure?

TOOBIN: Looks like everybody is like, "Oh, he's going to be nice—"

BASH: No, no. I'm not so sure it's going to be Giuliani.
It's known as missing the point, or burying the lede.

At this point, Toobin restated his prediction. Quickly, Anderson took a break, needing to pay some bills.

Will Trump prosecute Hillary Clinton? We have no idea. We do know that nothing is so extreme that the children won't be able to take it completely in stride.

Dearest darlings, use your heads! Salaries would be at stake! Good jobs at good pay!

17 comments:

  1. It's hard to be calm watching our country commit suicide.

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  2. Hillary has come out publicly in favor of gutting the First and Second Amendments to the Bill of Rights. Trump's unexpected victory means that these two amendments will survive another four years.

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    1. David creates his own reality, like a good Bush Republican.

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  3. Hillary pledged to reverse Citizens United decision. The McCain-Feingold law that Citizens United overturned would have prevented, e.g., Planned Parenthood from running an ad opposing an anti-abortion candidate. (Except that Planned Parenthood could run the ad if no election was imminent.) That big infringement of Freedom of Speech is why the ACLU supported that Supreme Court decision. BTW an ACLU employee I talked to recently told me that the ACLU lost many members because they supported the Supreme Court's Citizens United decision.

    Hillary's position on guns would make it difficult for honest people to obtain weapons, thus reversing the 2nd Amendment's decree that "the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed."

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    1. Hey all of you MSNBC fans, do you think that their current strategy of not discussing issues in favor of personalities and scandals should be changed?

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  4. Maybe we should hope Trump does prosecute Hillary. It will waste a lot of Republican time and money and prevent them from focusing on other mayhem. They won't find anything and they won't damage the Clintons because they are not going to run for office again. In fact, they can relocate their Foundation to another country and keep operating.

    If it gets to the point that the judges are not doing their jobs, we are in Nazi Germany territory and we should all perhaps relocate. There is no recourse against tyranny when a dictator owns the courts because there is no check on power when the leader decides to set aside the law. Prosecuting Hillary might be a good test case -- a canary in the gold mine for that possibility.

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    1. Anon 11:17 -- You're worried about some hypothetical prosectution of Hillary Clinton. But, it's the Democrats who have really unfairly prosecuted their political opponents. E.g., Alaska Senator Ted Stevens, Texas Governor Rick Perry, Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell, and Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker. All of these people were either acquitted or had their convictions reversed on appeal, after their political careers were damaged.

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    2. Yes, 11:17, let's hope they keep to their rhetoric and create a government that does very little. They sure like to peek between the sheets, though, don't they?

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    3. D & C - there are some weaknesses in your argument. Ted Stevens was convicted in July, 2008, when Bush was president. In what way was he prosecuted unfairly by Democrats? More significantly, there is no comparison between the charges against Rick Perry by a local prosecutor, which were dismissed, and a third world type prosecution of Clinton that you and the 'lock her up' crowd crow for. The federal prosecutors are supposed to be non-political. For example, the US Attorney in Massachusetts recently prosecuted and got a conviction of the State Senate President. Just because McDonnell's conviction on appeal was overturned, doesn't mean he was unfairly prosecuted by Democrats. You present zero evidence that there is anything like a double standard.

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    4. The Massachusetts state senate president who, as you probably could have assumed, is a Democrat.

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    5. I had a long response AC/MA, which I accidentally blew away. Here's a piece of it
      several Democratic commentators, including David Axelrod, Jonathan Prince, Matthew Yglesias, and Jonathan Chait have stated that they believe the charges are either weak or unwarranted.[18][19]

      Harvard Law School professor Alan Dershowitz stated that "The two statutes under which Gov. Perry was indicted are reminiscent of the old Soviet Union — you know, abuse of authority. The idea of indicting him because he threatened to veto spending unless a district attorney who was caught drinking and driving resigned, that's not anything for a criminal indictment. That's a political issue." [20] He added, "it's so important to put a stop to it now, to say the criminal law is reserved for real crimes, not for political differences where a party in power or out of power gets revenge against the other party. That's just not the way to use the criminal justice [system]."[21] On August 16, 2014, Perry called the indictment a political move and an abuse of power, and vowed to fight the charges.[22] The Texas Democratic Party asked Perry to resign.[5]

      Major newspapers including The New York Times ("appears to be the product of an overzealous prosecution"), The Los Angeles Times ("the courts are the wrong place to settle political scores"), The Washington Post ("The grand jury, however, would criminalize Mr. Perry’s conduct by twisting the pertinent statutes into a pair of pretzels"), and USA Today ("Politics as usual should not be a violation of criminal law") criticized the indictment.[23][24][25][26] The Dallas Morning News editorially said that the key question for the jury to decide after hearing all the evidence is “[d]id our governor violate state law in how and why he withheld that funding?”[27]

      Eugene Volokh, UCLA School of Law professor, writing in the Washington Post said that the Texas Constitution gives Perry the right to veto bills and he cannot be prosecuted for using his lawful and constitutional authority as Texas Governor.[28]

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rick_Perry_veto_controversy

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    6. Another piece regarding Ted Stevens, from New York Times
      The Justice Department has found that two prosecutors involved in the botched 2008 corruption trial of Senator Ted Stevens engaged in “reckless professional misconduct,” but it stopped short of firing the men, saying their mistakes were not intentional.

      In a cover letter to a 672-page report provided to Congress on Thursday, alongside additional attachments and findings, the Justice Department said the two prosecutors would be suspended without pay — Joseph Bottini for 40 days, and James Goeke for 15 days.

      Mr. Stevens, Republican of Alaska, was charged during the Bush administration with failing to report that an oil services firm had remodeled his house. He was convicted just before the 2008 election and lost his seat — briefly giving Democrats a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate, which enabled them to pass the health care law.

      The case, however, started to fall apart after it emerged that prosecutors had failed to turn over information, like conflicting statements by witnesses, that might have helped Mr. Stevens at his trial. Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr., then new to the job, asked the judge to throw out the conviction, and both the court and the department began investigations.

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    7. D in C - I didn't deny that Stevens was wrongly convicted. You said "it's the Democrats who have really unfairly prosecuted their political opponents, e.g Ted Stevens . . ." Stevens was tried and convicted while Bush was President, so in that regard what you stated is completely false. I assume you admit this falsity. As for Perry, the indictment against him was a joke, and was dismissed. No one took it very seriously, and it was dismissed before it ever went anywhere. There is no comparison between your examples and the movement to prosecute Clinton under the Federal treason statute. This would be an unprecedented political prosecution, and a further step on the road to authoritarian dictatorship in the U.S. embodied by the Trump phenomenon. (You ought to look up outrageous case of former Democratic Alabama governor Don Seligman, who was jailed, in a horribly unfair political prosecution by Republicans. Your claim that it is Democrats who are really the guilty parties in prosecuting political enemies is absurd.)

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    8. AC/MA -- Yes, to prosecute Hillary for treason would be nothing like the examples I provided.

      You have a point about Sen Stevens. The decision to prosecute Stevens wasn't made by George Bush or by the Attorney General. That decision was made by local prosecutors. I assumed that these local prosecutors were Democrats, because of the timing, but I have no specific evidence of what party they supported.

      My memory of the Perry prosecution is different from yours. As I recall, Perry was running for President. Although the prosecution was legally a joke, it was used against him in his campaign. However, I think his weak speaking skills would have sunk him in any case.

      Thanks for pointing out the Siegelmann prosecution. I find the accusations of prosecutorial misconduct plausible, because of what happened to a friend of mine. RF was CEO of a large American reinsurance company. He and four others were convicted of colluding to do an illegal deal. The convictions were overthrown when it was shown that the key witness against them was out of the country, so he was lying when he said he was present at the meeting when the illegal deal was supposedly agreed to.

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  5. Prosecutors mislead juries every day.

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  7. Trump isn't going to have Hillary prosecuted.

    It was interesting to watch Hillary supporters on CNN essentially begging Trump supporters to confirm it would happen. There is a weird masochism in a lot of the left. Sorry to disappoint them, but it isn't going to happen. We just like hearing someone make the corruption point in a colorful way during the campaign.

    Are you really that stupid?

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