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There is no such thing as a "popular mandate" for President. If you win, you have the mandate to be President. That's the only mandate that exists.

Walking Dead Season 3, Ep 6. "It says GO BACK." #Alexa says "I can't go back right now." What ... ?

Hotel maid flipped my #echodot upside down. Afraid it was listening, or didn't know which side was up?

I wrote an #alexa  skill to make my goal horn sound at home. So instead of pressing a button on my iPhone or watch, I can say "alexa, tell horn we scored" and the horn will sound. #awsreinvent  

Seems ironic that an SEO chief is taking such a stand on moral issues.

How did I not know that Michelle Rhee was married to KJ? Both of them are great.

I get the feeling that people sometimes express a feeling of fear as a means of expressing deep disagreement, rather than a feeling of actual fear.

I dislike the language ("economic terrorism"), but it is important that we recognize that these protests (even when they aren't violent) cause real economic harm. We shouldn't let people block busy city streets during rush hour, at least not without a permit and prior notice so people can plan for it. It's not OK.

President Trump should create a new "Transparency Czar" position, and name Chelsea Clinton to the role, if she'll take it. Some of the work she did along these lines with the Clinton Foundation was quite good. She'd be tasked with eliminating conflicts of interest and unreasonable or illegal secrecy across all executive agencies, and given the budget to make it happen.

Obama can't "pardon" an illegal alien to protect them from deportation under Trump. As I've been saying for years, being here illegally is not a crime. That means you can't be punished criminally for it; it also means you can't be pardoned for it. The only way to fully protect someone from deportation under Trump is to give them a permanent legal status.

The NY Times article here, written by a law professor, is wrong. What he's missing is that being here illegally is not an "offense" in terms of the law, it's a matter of status: you belong somewhere else, so you are returned to where you belong.

When you're deported, you are not being punished, according to the law. You're simply being sent home. There's no "offense" to pardon you for. Obama can't change someone's legal status with a pardon, and therefore cannot protect from deportation with a pardon.

At most, Obama can pardon people for the offense of illegal entry, but that wouldn't make anyone legal.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/06/opinion/can-obama-pardon-millions-of-immigrants.html

Donald Trump has destroyed both parties.

Republicans will best serve the country and themselves if they do what the Democrats didn't do in 2008, and bring the minority party along. Even in repealing the ACA, bring the Democrats along. Better to get 75% of what you want with Democratic support, than 100% of what you want without it.

The "popular vote" for President is only an approximation of how people would have voted if we had an actual popular vote for President.

We can finally dispense with the myth that polls are accurate.

OK, that's too simplistic. Polling is hard and you have to continually adjust your assumptions, and when those assumptions are flawed, your results may be inaccurate, and it is always possible that your assumptions are flawed, so you can never assume your results are accurate.

So polls are not trustworthy, even the best ones, but they are still right more often than not, because when our assumptions are proven wrong, we adjust to the new discoveries. And polls will have accurate results for a time ... until our assumptions are wrong again.

Does this mean Alec Baldwin will become a permanent SNL cast member?

PSA: There is no such thing as a "popular vote" for President. Thus, there is nothing to "win" or "lose."

And this isn't merely a technical point: people cast their vote based on the system we have, so the fact that we have no popular vote has an effect on the vote itself, such that votes in different states aren't equal.

In California, for example, it's not possible for anyone but Clinton to win, so someone might be more likely to vote for a third-party or independent candidate, or not at all, since your vote is inconsequential. But in Florida, where the outcome was far from assured, someone is more likely to vote for one of the majority party candidates.

So the way you vote can change depending on which state you're voting in; therefore, you can't just pull all the individual votes together from all the states (plus DC!) and call it a "popular vote." The number is meaningless.

We don't know who will have the most individual votes in 2016, but we know Bush had fewer than Gore in 2000. But what we don't know is if Bush would have had fewer in 2000 if we had an actual popular vote. All we know is that the tally would have been different, and that it might have been different in sufficient degree that Bush would have had more.

So please, stop talking about the "popular vote" as though it can tell us who would have won if we determined the election by actual popular vote. It cannot tell us that.

Cheers!

I am avoiding Facebook for the next week or so. Look for me elsewhere if you want me.

The Red Sox finally winning the World Series in 2004 did wonders for Boston native John Kerry in the election. I'm sure the 2016 victory of the Chicago Cubs will do the same for Chicago native Hillary Clinton.

Secretary of State Kim Wyman is being attacked by her challenger for things she literally has no control over, such as voter turnout being down (which is because people dislike their choices); holding the presidential primary (which only the legislature, not the Secretary of State, can suspend); and requiring voter ID for voter suppression (which is only seeking to being Washington into compliance with the federal REAL ID law, not suppressing votes; voter ID only applies to in-person voting, which almost no one in Washington does).

The only valid claim made against Wyman is that there was an error in a Spanish translation of the voter guide that implied that people convicted of a misdemeanor, not just a felony, were ineligible to vote, but no one seriously thinks that this was intentional, and it's framed as though Wyman is trying to engage in voter suppression.

Tina Podlodowski's entire campaign, literally, is based on lies. Honesty is one of the most important characteristics for a Secretary of State, and she makes herself ineligible.

There's nothing wrong with having a gun and using it to defend yourself and your family.

There is something wrong with firing a gun irresponsibly. Rule #1: do not fire -- or even point -- a gun at someone unless it is necessary to protect a life.

A bystander dying because you fired your gun to protect yourself or someone else is a tragic accident. A bystander dying because you fired your gun to stop a car thief is a terrible mistake.

This is a funny read about security of WA elections. My favorite part is that they need to tell us what "IP" and "DMZ" stand for, but not what "SLTT" and "FM200" are. Several sentences are missing verbs or have incorrect verb tenses. And the faith they place in the testing is pretty funny, too.

When a team with a more than 50-year drought wins the World Series in an election year, the Republicans win the White House.

If you vote based on your interests and the facts, then I think you're making the right vote, no matter whom it is for.

Hillary said yesterday she is sure the FBI will find classified information illegally stored by Abedein on Wiener's computer.

"I'm sure they will reach the same conclusion they did when they looked at my emails for the last year."

And, of course, the most important conclusion the FBI reached was that she had a lot of highly classified information illegally stored on her server. Whether or not it was a crime, it was a very serious and -- at best -- extremely careless breach of national security.

Mark Cuban said Clinton "dealt with all of her classified documents using hard copies, and the FBI reports confirmed that." She did not; the FBI did not.

This is simply incorrect. The whole point is that the FBI concluded she DID illegally have classified documents on her server, in threads she participated in.

He also said "there's never been any reported evidence of pay-to-play" with the Clinton Foundation. This is also obviously false. While there's no proof, there's a ton of highly suspicious circumstantial evidence. In fact, the Obama Administration itself, and Chelsea Clinton herself, have said that the Foundation did not properly avoid the appearance of wrongdoing (just ask Doug Band what he thinks of Chelsea's actions to root out potential corruption at the Foundation).

Mark Cuban is a smart guy, but either he is terribly ignorant about these legal and political issues, or he hates Trump so much that he is willing to lie about the facts.

The notion that we should avoid a person or company because they back one candidate or another is far more damaging to our society than either candidate could ever be.

At the end of Stranger Things, I wanted to see Mike's parents go the way of the parents at the end of Time Bandits. That would've been the best 80s homage of all.

Having two ears and one mouth does not imply listening twice as much as speaking.

It implies that knowing where a sound is coming from is more important than sending sounds in multiple directions simultaneously.

I want a t-shirt that says DONALD TRUMP IS FEARFULLY AND WONDERFULLY MADE.

Lowest scoring tie in the NFL since 1974 (when overtimes came to the regular season). Pathetic game. I've never laughed so hard at a football game as when that last kick sailed left.

Just finished Planetary. Great series.

There was so much consternation about how Chris Wallace would do as moderator ... mostly from people who really haven't seen Wallace much, apparently, because they thought he wouldn't do a great job. He did do a great job, and he did it without the "fact-checking" so many people said they wanted from the moderators.

Wallace could have pointed out the fact that Clinton was misrepresenting what Heller was (the law in question was not just about requiring trigger locks on long guns: it also banned all handguns, and she was in favor of that). But he let her answer stand, and let Trump respond to it as he chose to do.

He followed the Jim Lehrer model -- stay out of the way and let the candidates speak -- and he did it even better than Jim Lehrer. While this was not the best presidential debate we've seen, it was one of the best moderations of a presidential debate we've seen.

I don't know about all y'all, but I said Bush was properly elected, and Gregoire, and I'll say the same of Clinton.

The only way to say Obama cut the deficit but two-thirds (as Clinton did tonight) is to say that a massive spending increase in the FY2009 budget that was passed by the Democratic majorities in the House and Senate, signed into law by President Obama, and included Obama's stimulus ... was Bush's fault.

No foreign government manipulating U.S. elections before? See former FDR VP.

Remember when sending troops to war on the eve of an election was called an October Surprise?

Why is the press giving any time or space to women making allegations about Trump? It's extremely irresponsible, unless there is some kind of corroboration of the claims.

A woman saying she was groped on a plane 30 years ago ... anyone can say that. It's not newsworthy. Maybe it's true, but we have no reason to believe it just based on her word.

And no, the fact that he implied he gropes women is not evidence he groped a particular woman. And no, the fact that any women have made allegations does not make any of the allegations any more likely to be true.

Let's be responsible with the truth, please.

Please?

If we spent as much working to make the country better as we did to advocate for or against presidential candidates, would the country be markedly better, regardless of who wins the election?

I'm inclined to think the answer is Yes.

The question "why would these women make up these stories about Trump?" is perhaps the dumbest question I've heard all year.

I am not saying any of them are lying, though I do assert I need far more than their word to believe them, obviously. I simply disregard assertions like this until I have sufficient evidence. I don't even consider if it's true until I have serious evidence that it's true or false, and so far, I have none.

But the idea that I should believe them because they have no reason to lie is extremely silly. People spend extraordinary resources -- including time, money, and credibility -- trying to defeat Trump and Clinton. People spend resources to tell lies about Trump and Clinton all the time.

We all know this. So why would we believe that people wouldn't tell lies like this to defeat Trump?

Of course, again, I am not saying they are lying. But saying the fact that you don't know their motive to lie is evidence that they have no motive to lie, especially when there's a ready-made motive staring you in the face, is completely myopic.

Yet another judge ignoring the law and making up his own.

Republicans used to take pride in being principled. Now, they attack fellow Republicans for being principled.

What if Clinton didn't show up to future debates with Trump because he's so disgusting?

Remember: "price gouging" in a disaster is not evil; it's a necessary good.

I really have no idea why Trump calling a woman "Miss Piggy" is a some sort of significant problem. Did anyone not know that this is how he treats people, until now? Come on.

And worse, how is talking about the weight of a Miss America contestant a problem ... even for someone that we don't already think isn't a jerk? The whole point of these pageants is to gaze upon an idealized form of a woman, which means a certain shape, and her shape had grown outside of that idealized form.

If you have a problem with these pageants -- and I would be perfectly happy if they all went away tomorrow -- then say you have a problem with these pageants. But people are basically acting like there's a problem with Trump being honest, and it's just bizarre.

It's kinda like if vegans complained that I used BBQ sauce on my steak. It might be indicative of the problem, but it's not the actual problem. If there's nothing wrong with eating steak, how could there be something wrong with putting BBQ sauce on it? Maybe talk about eating steak being a problem, not what sauce I put on it.

Wow, Hillary admitted tonight that it was Bush who got us out of Iraq, not Obama, and that Obama tried to keep us in Iraq, but failed.

This is entirely true, but exceptional because Obama likes to take credit for leaving Iraq, even though it was Bush's agreement, and Obama tried to keep us there longer.

Similarly, folks are saying that Hillary could not have been fighting ISIS for long, because it was only created three years ago. This, too, undercuts a major Obama narrative, that ISIS is, essentially, Al Qaeda.

You see, Obama launched attacks into Libya to go after ISIS, which is flatly illegal under U.S. statutes unless there's one of a few criteria are met, such as that they attacked the U.S., or there was a specific congressional authorization. Obama says the authorization to attack ISIS in Libya was under the 2001 AUMF, passed in the wake of 9/11, which authorized force against "nations, organizations, or persons [the President] determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, or harbored such organizations or persons."

In the eyes of Obama, ISIS attacked us on 9/11, which means ISIS is Al Qaeda, which means ISIS has been around since 1988. While ISIS has not been around all of Clinton's adult life on Obama's view, it's a majority of it.

(Interestingly, Tim Kaine himself has, for years, expressed that the Obama administration has been skirting the law on this; while not outright stating that his party's leader is breaking the law, he has expressed concern about it as far back as 2011.)

I am so glad that both of the candidates agree -- and tonight reiterated -- that American citizens should not have due process.

This is one of those issues where the groups that know the most about the issue -- everyone from the ACLU to the NRA -- agrees this is unconstitutional. But it sounds good, right? If you can't fly in airplane, you can't buy a gun! Who could disagree with this? It even rhymes: "no fly, no buy."

The problem is that there is a constitutional right to buy a gun, and you cannot take away someone's constitutional right by secretly deciding that they simply shouldn't have that right anymore, which is how the No Fly list works.

It's funny how easily we can lose our rights sometimes.

Now, the ACLU is pretty awful on gun rights generally. Their stated position is that gun rights get lesser protection from government interference than other rights because guns can kill. It is, simply, an unprincipled position.

But that's how clear this issue is: even the gun-hating ACLU, who has no problem with not protecting gun rights when it goes against their subjective sensibilities, says You Can't Do That.

Both Clinton and Trump, like Obama, want to do that, because -- frankly -- they do not respect civil rights or the rule of law. They don't. This is a pattern with all of them, and is the biggest reason why I wouldn't vote for any of them.

No respect for rule of law, no vote. It's not as catchy, but it makes a lot more sense.

Right to Work, in principle, is a bad thing: it means that government tells companies they are not allowed to choose who they want to hire. If a company wants to hire only union members, they should be allowed to do so.

The problem is, however, that government is also leaning on the other side of the equation, giving special powers to unions, such as forcing employers to deal with unions in many cases.

So yes, fine, let's get rid of Right to Work ... as long as we also get rid of the National Labor Relations Board and other means governments use to protect and push union interests.

I am all for freedom, so I am against Right to Work in principle; but I am also for fairness, and Right to Work is a response to the inherently skewed balance of power that government creates in favor of unions.

So if you change your child's diaper, you're a child molester. If you don't, you're a child abuser. If you get someone else to do it, you're an accessory to child molestation. Probably the same thing if you give the baby up for adoption.

The only legal recourse is to abort the child before it's born, it seems.

The court says, correctly, that a prosecutor is unlikely to charge a parent with this crime. But that's no excuse for allowing it to stand. That ignores the role and practice of law in society. We shouldn't have to hope no rogue prosecutor will throw us in jail just for doing the right things in our daily lives.

In a free country, the government has no authority to throw you in jail without actually showing evidence you did something actually wrong. Increasingly in America, it's the case that the government has the authority to throw you in jail for any of a number of "crimes" you may have committed, that aren't legitimate crimes.