The Supreme Court struck down ‘straight-ticket’ voting, prompting a million pot-bellied party bosses of yesteryear to snuff out their cigars in disgust. Sunday is the 15th anniversary of 9/11, the date when a naked and confused Alex Jones punched his way out of the embryonic pod deep beneath the earth from whence he came. And Louis Gohmert took a break from making inflammatory statements about immigrants, staring directly at the sun and trying and failing to rub his stomach while patting his own head. He did so just long enough to say Hillary Clinton has special needs. This is HUFFPOST HILL for Friday, September 9th, 2016:
HOUSE REPUBLICANS SET UP WHITE HOUSE SHOWDOWN OVER SAUDI ARABIA BILL - Oh man, some good ol’ fashioned 9/11 turf battling. Someone dust off our Daily Kos account and fire up the “Fahrenheit 9/11” DVD! Jennifer Bendery: “The House of Representatives passed a bill Friday that would allow the families of 9/11 victims to sue Saudi Arabia for its alleged role in the terrorist attacks. The Senate passed the bill in May, so it now heads to President Barack Obama’s desk for his signature…The bill, known as the Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act, would prevent Saudi Arabia and other countries with alleged ties to terrorist groups from invoking their legal immunity in U.S. courts...New York courts routinely dismiss claims filed by families of 9/11 victims against Saudi Arabia for allegedly helping to finance the terrorist attacks... Obama administration officials have been trying to stop the bill for months, warning that it would put Americans overseas at legal risk, and leave the United States vulnerable in court systems around the world. The White House is also well aware of threats by Saudi Arabia to retaliate against the bill becoming law by selling off hundreds of billions of dollars in American assets.” [HuffPost]
DEMOCRATS BLOW EASY OPPORTUNITY, FOOTAGE AT 11 - Matt Fuller: “There’s no shortage of theories on why Democrats would have a hard time taking back the House. Ask aides at the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, and you’ll likely get some combination of factors including a gerrymandered map and some close districts ― take Staten Island, New York, for example ― where Trump isn’t such a drag on the ticket. But ask aides at the National Republican Campaign Committee, and they’ll give you a simple answer: Democratic candidate recruitment. ‘The DCCC’s recruitment efforts have been an unmitigated disaster, and that’s being kind,’ said Katie Martin, a spokeswoman for the NRCC. On Thursday, NRCC Chairman Greg Walden (R-Ore.) told reporters at a National Press Club event that Democrats had ‘multiple recruitment failures’ that will help Republicans keep a healthy majority in the House. Specifically, Republicans point to 10 races where Democrats ended up with someone who isn’t their ideal candidate. There’s Pennsylvania’s 6th District, where Democrats are running a candidate whose house is being foreclosed on. Then there’s New Jersey’s 2nd District, where the Democratic challenger ended the last reporting period with $576 cash on hand. And in Washington’s 8th District, the Democrat dropped out before the primary, but still managed to win the nomination.” [HuffPost]
IT’S HEEEEEERE - Hope Yen: “Get ready: Voting in the 2016 election is now underway.
Advance voting begins Friday in North Carolina, the first of 37 states that will allow balloting by mail for any reason or in person before the actual Election Day of Nov. 8. It’s part of a nearly nine-week campaign frenzy in which millions of voters will have the ability to fill out a ballot and be done with the 2016 presidential race. North Carolina residents are first, and they can now submit absentee ballots by mail without an excuse. They also will be able to vote early at polling booths beginning Oct. 20. In a possible sign of increased interest, 34,788 voters as of Friday had requested absentee ballots, according to the North Carolina State Board of Elections, up from about 25,600 from a similar timeframe in 2012. Broken down by party, the requests were somewhat evenly divided — 37 percent Democrat to 35 percent Republican and 28 percent who were unaffiliated with a party. Ballots were being mailed Friday with votes likely to start arriving in the coming days.” [AP]
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GOP LEADERSHIP EYEING LAME DUCK SPENDING DEBATE - Terrible news for staffers who hoped to spend their lame duck landing jobs in the Clinton administration. Sarah Ferris and Cristina Marcos: “House Republican leaders are embracing the Senate’s proposal of a government funding bill that would run through Dec. 9 despite opposition from conservatives who want a longer measure to avoid a lame-duck session of Congress. Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) at a closed-door House GOP meeting on Friday sought to win members over by saying that he wanted to avoid a lame-duck omnibus bill after the elections.An omnibus wraps up the various appropriations measures for the government into one huge bill, which many members argue can be approved without enough scrutiny. Conservatives in the House have repeatedly criticized the idea of doing an omnibus. Ryan laid out the pros and cons of a three-month or six-month funding bill that could be approved in September without explicitly endorsing one or the other. But approving a short-term bill this month would give Congress more time to approve a series of “minibuses,” or smaller groupings of appropriations measure, in the lame-duck.” [The Hill]
HIGH COURT STRIKES DOWN ‘STRAIGHT-TICKET’ VOTING - Great news for political scientists who are salivating over the down-ballot implications of Trump’s campaign. Cristian Farias: “The Supreme Court on Friday denied an emergency request from Michigan to reinstate a ban on ‘straight-ticket’ voting, a mechanism that allows people to vote for every candidate in a party’s ticket by marking a single box on a ballot. The court’s order indicates that at least two justices, Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito, would’ve allowed the ban to go into effect. This development can be seen as a victory for voting rights advocates, who have argued that restricting straight-ticket voting would exacerbate wait times and create confusion at the polls ― with the likely result that many Michigan residents, especially black voters, would not get a chance to vote at all.” [HuffPost]
TRUMP GAINING GROUND IN OHIO AND FLORIDA - Good God, the economic anxiety, it’s … it’s … everywhere. Natalie Jackson and Ariel Edwards-Levy: “Florida: A Quinnipiac poll released Thursday found Clinton and Trump tied at 47-47 in a two-way race, and 43-43 in a four-way contest, with Libertarian Gary Johnson getting 8 percent and Green Party candidate Jill Stein taking 2 percent. Most of the August polls in the state showed Clinton leading, at times by substantial margins, but Quinnipiac is the second since the beginning of September to indicate that lead might be narrowing. The HuffPost Pollster average has Clinton up by 3.5 points, but expect that to close in if more polls show a tighter race. Ohio - Trump has a narrow 1-point edge against Clinton in the Buckeye State, according to Quinninpiac. He fares slightly better in the four-way contest, earning a 4-point lead over Clinton. As in Florida, Clinton held the lead in Ohio throughout August, but September poll releases are showing a different race. TheHuffPost Pollster average still has Clinton ahead, but only by a single percentage point. “ [HuffPollster]
No labels update: McKenna Aiello: “Their parents might be in the thick of a heated race to the White House, but don’t start pitting Chelsea Clinton and Ivanka Trump against each other. The 36-year-old daughter of Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton stopped by The View on Friday, putting any rumors to rest that she’s feuding with Donald Trump’s 34-year-old daughter. ‘Absolutely not,’ Chelsea said when asked of any turmoil between the two. ‘We were friends long before this election; we will be friends long after this election.’” [E! Online]
LOUIE GOHMERT HAS SOME THOUGHTS - Louie Gohmert, clearly taking a break from accidentally crushing mice while petting them, made some interesting comments about Hillary Clinton. Sam Levine: “Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-Texas) said Hillary Clinton is ‘mentally impaired’ during a speech at the Values Voter Summit on Friday. Gohmert said that he didn’t want to make fun of Clinton, then went on to do just that. ‘You don’t make fun of people who are impaired, have special needs, and whether you like her or not, Hillary Clinton has made clear that she is mentally impaired and this is not somebody you should be making fun of,’ Gohmert said to laughter in the audience. ‘I get the impression that in law school and along the way, she’s been very, very smart, but I don’t know, maybe it was the concussion, the fall back when she did, or maybe, who knows? They won’t tell us what really is going on with her,’ he added. Donald Trump and his campaign has pushed the bizarre suggestion, unsubstantiated by evidence, that Clinton is medically unfit to be president. “ [HuffPost]
Rudy Giuliani, wadda guy: Ed Mazza: “Rudy Giuliani announced that Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump isn’t a birther anymore. ‘I confirm that,’ the former mayor of New York City told Chris Matthews in a testy segment on MSNBC’s ‘Hardball’ on Thursday. ‘And Donald Trump now confirms that.’ Trump has never confirmed that. ‘I don’t talk about it,’ Trump told NBC’s Ali Vitali on Monday.” [HuffPost]
BECAUSE YOU’VE READ THIS FAR - Here’s D-Day, as reenacted by LEGOs.
FACEBOOK REALLY NEEDS NEWS EDITORS- Sarah Morrison: “Two weeks ago, Facebook gave the human beings who moderated its Trending Topics bar the boot, replacing them with bots for a ‘more algorithmically driven process.’ Apparently, that process includes surfacing 9/11 conspiracy theories. On Friday, many Facebook users saw “September 11th Anniversary” in their trending bar. This makes sense, as the 15th anniversary of the attack is in a few days. But the first article it linked to on the topic page — and the one that shows up when the reader’s cursor hovers over the link to that page — is a British tabloid that claims there is new footage showing the Twin Towers were brought down by a ‘controlled demolition.’ This is a conspiracy theory perpetuated by so-called 9/11 ‘truthers’ and dismissed by literally everyone else. Except, apparently, Facebook’s trending robots.” [Vocativ]
COMFORT FOOD
- The Avengers as a boilerplate 90s sitcom.
- A person managed to hit 90 MPH on a longboard.
- A very strange Taylor Swift conspiracy theory is floating around the web.
TWITTERAMA
@marinafang: 2 months until the day after the election, when I might be very drunk.
@SimonMaloy: I’m concerned none of you appreciate just how much leadership is required to get polonium out of the ground and into the blood of a defector
@pourmecoffee: Look, Trump isn’t saying we did or didn’t actually land on the moon. He’s just not going to talk about it because people twist his words.
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