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Representative Tulsi Gabbard, one of 12 Democratic presidential candidates who have qualified for this weeks televised debate, said on Monday that she would participate in the forum after raising the possibility of boycotting it to protest what she sees as a rigging of the election.

Ms. Gabbard had argued that the corporate news media and Democratic National Committee were working together to influence the event. On Monday, she offered little explanation of why she had dropped her objection to participating. I just want to let you know that I will be attending the debate, she wrote in an email to supporters.

While Ms. Gabbard had met the qualifying criteria to participate in Tuesdays debate, she is among the lower-polling candidates and has struggled to gain traction, never breaking 3 percent in any major poll. She failed to qualify for the September debate and has not yet made the stage for the November face-off. The New York Times is a co-sponsor of Tuesdays debate with CNN.

Ms. Gabbard has disputed the polls selected by the national committee as certifying candidates for the debate, arguing that many of the noncertified surveys are more accurate. Those polls could also help Ms. Gabbard qualify for the November debate.

Her call won support from a fellow primary candidate, Marianne Williamson, who is also polling among the bottom tier of presidential hopefuls.

I have great respect for Tulsi for saying such inconvenient truth, Ms. Williamson posted on Twitter last week, after Ms. Gabbard first raised the idea of boycotting the debate.

Ms. Gabbards warnings of a rigged election are likely to resonate with her base, an unconventional mix of anti-interventionist progressives, libertarians, contrarian culture-war skeptics, white nationalists and conspiracy theorists. They like her isolationist foreign policy, her calling out of what she sees as censorship in the major technology platforms and her support for drug decriminalization.

Buoyed by frequent appearances on Tucker Carlsons Fox News show, her quixotic, bare-bones campaign has also won praise from some surprising admirers, including Stephen K. Bannon, President Trumps former chief strategist; former Representative Ron Paul, a libertarian star; and Franklin Graham, the influential evangelist, who has said he finds her refreshing.

Ms. Gabbard has lobbed some of the toughest attacks on the debate stage. In July, she assailed Senator Kamala Harris over her record as a prosecutor, becoming the most searched candidate on Google in the hours after the event.

Ms. Harris later shot back, calling Ms. Gabbard an apologist for Syrias president, Bashar al-Assad, whom Ms. Gabbard controversially visited in Damascus in January 2017.

A telegenic military veteran, Ms. Gabbard, once a Democratic darling, began falling out of party favor during President Barack Obamas administration, when she picked a series of high-profile fights over foreign policy, joining Republicans in demanding that Mr. Obama use the term radical Islam.

In 2016, she resigned her position as vice chair of the Democratic National Committee to endorse Senator Bernie Sanders over Hillary Clinton. She has said that she believes that the primary was rigged by the party committee against Mr. Sanders.

This years qualifying criteria were designed by the national committee as a direct response to criticism leveled during the 2016 campaign by supporters of Mr. Sanders, who argued that the party committee organized the debate schedule to favor Mrs. Clinton, the eventual party nominee.

While some lower-polling candidates have expressed frustration with the qualification rules, particularly the requirement that candidates amass at least 165,000 unique donors to make the November debate stage, there has been little outcry from Democratic voters.

In June, nearly three out of four voters who planned to attend the Iowa caucuses said that at least several of the candidates should drop out of the race, according to a Des Moines Register/CNN/Mediacom Iowa poll. A little more than four months later, only four of the candidates have ended their bids, leaving 19 remaining in the race.

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Democratic Debate: Tulsi Gabbard, After Threatening Boycott, Will Participate on Tuesday - The New York Times

When President Trump Tweeted last week that it is time for us to get out of these ridiculous endless wars, adding that the US would be withdrawing from Syria, Washington went into a panic. Suddenly Republicans, Democrats, the media, the think tanks, and the war industry all discovered and quickly became experts on the Kurds, who we were told were an ally being sent to their slaughter by an ignorant President Trump.

But it was all just another bipartisan ploy to keep the forever war gravy train rolling through the Beltway.

Interventionists will do anything to prevent US troops from ever coming home, and their favorite tactic is promoting mission creep. As President Trump Tweeted, we were told in 2014 by President Obama that the US military would go into Syria for just 30 days to save the Yazidi minority that they claimed were threatened. Then that mission crept into we must fight ISIS and so the US military continued to illegally occupy and bomb Syria for five more years.

Even though it was the Syrian army with its Russian and Iranian allies that did the bulk of the fighting against al-Qaeda and ISIS in Syria, President Trump took credit and called for the troops to come home. But when the military comes home, the military-industrial-Congressional-media complex loses its cash cow, so a new rationale had to be invented.

The latest mission creep was that we had to stay in Syria to save our allies the Kurds. All of a sudden our military presence in Syria was not about fighting terrorism but rather about putting US troops between our NATO ally Turkey and our proxy fighting force, the Kurds. Do they really want us to believe that it is pro-American for our troops to fight and die refereeing a long-standing dispute between the Turks and Kurds?

It was a colossally dumb idea to train and arm the Kurds in Syria in the first place, but after spending billions backing what turned out to be al-Qaeda affiliates in Syria to overthrow the Assad government, Washington found that the Kurds were the only willing boots remaining on the ground. While their interest in fighting ISIS was limited, they were happy to use Washingtons muscle in pursuit of their long-term goal of carving out a part of Syria (and eventually Turkey) for themselves.

We can never leave because there will be a slaughter, Washington claimed (and the media faithfully repeated). But once again, the politicians, the mainstream media, and the Beltway experts have been proven wrong. They never understand that sending US troops into another country without the proper authority is not a stabilizing factor, but a de-stabilizing factor. I have argued that were the US to leave Syria (and the rest of the Middle East) the countries of the region would find a way to solve their own problems.

Now that the US is pulling back from northern Syria, that is just what is happening.

On Sunday the Kurds and the Syrian government signed an agreement, brokered by the Russians, to put aside their differences and join together to defend against Turkeys incursion into Syrian territory.

Now our Kurdish allies are fighting alongside the army of Syrian President Assad who we are still told by US officials must go. Washington doesnt understand that our intervention only makes matters worse. The best way to help the Kurds and everyone else in the region is to just come home.

This article was published by RonPaul Institute

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Ron Paul: Washington Is Wrong Once Again As Kurds Join Assad To Defend Syria OpEd - Eurasia Review

U.S. Rep. Tulsi Gabbard speaks at the U.S. 2020 presidential election Democratic candidates debate in Miami, Florida (File/REUTERS/Mike Segar)

By Lisa Lerer

Stephen K. Bannon, President Donald Trumps former chief strategist, is impressed with her political talent. Richard B. Spencer, the white nationalist leader, says he could vote for her. Former Rep. Ron Paul praises her libertarian instincts, while Franklin Graham, the influential evangelist, finds her refreshing.

And far-right conspiracy theorists like Mike Cernovich see a certain MAGA sais quoi. Shes got a good energy, a good vibe. You feel like this is just a serious person, Cernovich said. She seems very Trumpian.

Among her fellow Democrats, Rep. Tulsi Gabbard has struggled to make headway as a presidential candidate, barely cracking the 2% mark in the polls needed to qualify for Tuesday nights debate. She is now injecting a bit of chaos into her own partys primary race, threatening to boycott that debate to protest what she sees as a rigging of the 2020 election. Thats left some Democrats wondering what, exactly, she is up to in the race, while others worry about supportive signs from online bot activity and the Russian news media.

Perhaps strangest of all is the unusual array of Americans who cannot seem to get enough of her.

On podcasts and online videos, in interviews and Twitter feeds, alt-right internet stars, white nationalists, libertarian activists and some of the biggest boosters of Trump heap praise on Gabbard. They like the Hawaiian congresswomans isolationist foreign policy views. They like her support for drug decriminalization. They like what she sees as censorship by big technology platforms.

Then there is 4chan, the notoriously toxic online message board, where some right-wing trolls and anti-Semites fawn over Gabbard, calling her Mommy and praising her willingness to criticize Israel. In April, the Daily Stormer, a neo-Nazi website, took credit for Gabbards qualification for the first two Democratic primary debates.

Brian Levin, the head of the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism at California State University-San Bernardino, said Gabbard had the seal of approval within white nationalist circles. If people have that isolationist worldview, there is one candidate that could best express them on each side: Gabbard on the Democratic side and Trump on the Republican side, Levin said.

Gabbard has disavowed some of her most hateful supporters, castigating the news media for giving any oxygen at all to the endorsement she won from the white nationalist leader David Duke. But her frequent appearances on Tucker Carlsons Fox News show have buoyed her support in right-wing circles.

Both Gabbard and her campaign refused requests for comment about her support in right-wing circles or threat to boycott the debate. Even some political strategists who have worked with her are at a loss to explain her approach to politics.

Shes a very talented person but Im not sure, I just dont know what to say about the campaign exactly, said Mark Longabaugh, a Democratic strategist who worked with Gabbard when she was campaigning for Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont in 2016.

There is potential upside for Gabbard: Drawing more attention could energize her donors and perhaps attract more supporters, extending her candidacys life span.

Yet there is only confusion for several Democratic officials, activists and party officials, who privately say they have been a little spooked by Gabbard. Rival campaigns worry about her unpredictable attacks, if she participates in the debate, pointing to her sharp jabs against Sen. Kamala Harris of California in an earlier matchup.

Shes taken a series of policy steps which signal to the right that she has deep areas of alignment, said Neera Tanden, a longtime policy adviser to Hillary Clinton who now leads the Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank.

The questions deepened Thursday after Gabbard threatened to boycott Tuesdays debate, arguing that the corporate news media and the Democratic National Committee are working together to rig the event. (The New York Times is a co-sponsor of the debate with CNN.)

That message resonates with many of Gabbards supporters. In a moment marked by fractured politics, Gabbards nontraditional positions are a major part of her appeal for voters seeking to break out of polarized partisan divisions. Joe Rogan, the popular podcast host, said he planned to vote for her. Jack Dorsey, the chief executive of Twitter, donated to her campaign.

But its also an argument that reminds some Democrats of the narrative pushed by Russian actors during the 2016 presidential contest, when an operation by internet trolls worked to manipulate U.S. public opinion: that the electoral system is broken and cannot be trusted.

Some of those who have worked with Gabbard say that, as an Iraq War veteran whose chief message is that America should stop trying to police the world, she is representing viewpoints that draw support from an array of people in the United States as well as abroad.

In reality, Tulsi is really running on an anti-war message thats consistent with where a lot of veterans are, said Jon Soltz, chairman of the liberal veterans organization VoteVets.org, which worked closely with Gabbard during her first congressional campaign. I know everyone thinks theres a conspiracy theory here but thats really what shes doing.

Still, Democrats are on high alert about foreign interference in the next election and the DNC is well aware of the frequent mentions of Gabbard in the Russian state news media.

An independent analysis of the Russian news media found that RT, the Kremlin-backed news agency, mentioned Gabbard frequently for a candidate polling in single digits, according to data collected by the Alliance for Securing Democracy, a group that seeks to track and expose efforts by authoritarian regimes to undermine democratic elections.

Disinformation experts have also pointed to instances of suspicious activity surrounding Gabbards campaign in particular, a Twitter hashtag, #KamalaHarrisDestroyed, that trended among Gabbards supporters after the first Democratic debate, and appeared to be amplified by a coordinated network of bot-like accounts but there is no evidence of coordination between these networks and the campaign itself.

Laura Rosenberger, a former policy aide to Clintons campaign and director of the Alliance, sees Gabbard as a potentially useful vector for Russian efforts to sow division within the Democratic Party.

The Russian activity could be part of a longer-term effort to drive a wedge among Democrats, she said. This messaging has echoes of 2016.

That kind of speculation inflames Gabbards supporters online, who are known for swarming Gabbards critics on Twitter, for attacking the news media and the Democratic establishment for perceived bias against her and for compiling YouTube clips of her destroying and shutting down her Democratic rivals.

Gabbards fans are especially sensitive to claims that she is supported by Russian bots and amplified by the Russian state-funded news media outlets a conspiracy theory, they say, that is designed to delegitimize her campaign and her foreign policy views.

This whole thing the Democratic Party has done by putting forward this false idea that there was collusion between Russia and Trump has hurt our relations in a huge way with the Russians, Graham said. I cant speak for Tulsi, but I think she feels kind of the same way on some of these things.

While Democrats in Washington fret about Gabbard, her primary rivals have largely stayed silent, seeing little advantage in attacking a low-polling candidate.

She is likely to get harsher treatment back in Hawaii, where a cottage industry of researchers, former opponents and Democratic strategists has sprung up to track her connections and background as well as her ties to the teachings of Chris Butler, the controversial guru who founded The Science of Identity Foundation, and whose work she said still guides her. Gabbard has said the focus on her relationship with Butler and her faith was fueled by anti-Hindu bigotry.

She already faces a serious primary challenge for her House seat from state Sen. Kai Kahele, a Democrat. Though his campaign is focused on economic issues, he sees Gabbards support from extremists as a potential liability.

Clearly theres something about her and her policies that attacks and appeals to these type of people who are white nationalists, anti-Semites and Holocaust deniers, Kahele said. To her credit she has denounced David Duke, rejected these endorsements. But it does beg the question why.

Gabbard, once a Democratic darling as a telegenic newcomer and the first Hindu member of Congress, began falling out of party favor during the Obama administration, when she picked a series of fights over foreign policy, joining Republicans in demanding that President Barack Obama use the term radical Islam.

In 2016, she resigned her position as vice chair of the DNC to endorse Sanders over Clinton.

While Gabbard has opposed recent military interventions in the Middle East, she has developed relationships with leaders known for their authoritarian tendencies. She touts her support for Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India, who has empowered Hindu fundamentalists at great cost to Indias minorities. Gabbard also met with Egypts strongman leader, Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi, during a 2015 trip to Paris with Dana Rohrabacher, a former Republican congressman known for his ties to Russians.

Most controversially, she has repeatedly defended the brutal Syrian dictator, Bashar Assad, whom she met in January 2017.

Those positions confound even some of her former Republican supporters.

Rabbi Shmuley Boteach, a pro-Israel activist who founded the World Values Network, said he first met Gabbard through Sen. Cory Booker of New Jersey, who brought the congresswoman to dinner at a kosher restaurant in Washington.

His group, which is funded by the Republican megadonors Sheldon and Miriam Adelson, awarded Gabbard their Champion of Freedom Award at their annual gala in 2016. A picture from the event shows a grinning Gabbard posing with Boteach and Miriam Adelson.

In the three years since, Gabbard has criticized Israel for its reaction to protests, met with Assad and made several statements defending his regime.

To have a moral woman like Tulsi who is a military hero suddenly sit with a man who did that was inexplicable, Boteach said. I dont understand it until today. I cant figure her out.

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What, Exactly, Is Tulsi Gabbard Up To? - The Indian Express

WASHINGTON On Dec. 19, 2016, a little more than a month after the presidential election, members of the Electoral College gathered around the nation to cast their votes. Ten of them went rogue.

A swing by that number of electors would have been enough to change the outcomes in five of the previous 58 presidential elections, according to a petition filed last week in the Supreme Court. In the 2000 election, after an assist from the Supreme Court, George W. Bush beat Al Gore by just five electoral votes.

The petition asked the justices to decide whether faithless electors were free to disregard pledges they made to vote for their own parties candidates. It urged the court to act quickly. This case permits the court to issue a decision outside of the white-hot scrutiny of a contested presidential election, the petition said.

Deciding the issue in the context of an actual election could do lasting damage to the Supreme Court, said Lawrence Lessig, a law professor at Harvard who filed the petition on behalf of three Democratic electors from Washington State who were fined $1,000 each for casting their electoral votes for Colin L. Powell rather than for Hillary Clinton.

A ruling that tipped an election to one or another candidate could not but look political, Professor Lessig said. It would be disastrous for the institution, he said of the court, if they had to decide it in the middle of a presidential election.

The Washington State Supreme Court upheld the fines in May, saying that the Constitution allows states to insist that electors vote for their parties candidates.

In dissent, Justice Steven C. Gonzalez disagreed. The Constitution provides the state only with the power to appoint, he wrote, leaving the electors with the discretion to vote their conscience.

Three months later, the United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit, in Denver, rejected the Washington State Supreme Courts reasoning. It said that Colorado had been wrong to discard a vote from a Democratic elector who had wanted to cast a ballot for Gov. John Kasich of Ohio.

Electors, once appointed, are free to vote as they choose, Judge Carolyn B. McHugh wrote for the majority of a divided three-judge panel. While the Constitution grants the states plenary power to appoint their electors, it does not provide the states the power to interfere once voting begins, to remove an elector, to direct the other electors to disregard the removed electors vote or to appoint a new elector to cast a replacement vote.

Such sharp disagreements in the lower courts make a Supreme Court review more likely. So does the importance of the issue: It is hardly far-fetched that the next presidential election could turn on the votes of faithless electors.

Two things are reasonably clear. The first is that the framers of the Constitution and the language they used seemed to contemplate that electors would use independent judgment.

The second is that over time people have come to assume that electors are meant to vote for their parties candidates.

An 1892 Supreme Court decision captured this tension. Doubtless it was supposed that the electors would exercise a reasonable independence and fair judgment in the selection of the chief executive, Chief Justice Melville Fuller wrote. Over time, he added, the original expectation may be said to have been frustrated.

Alexander Hamilton described that original expectation in the Federalist Papers. Men chosen by the people for the special purpose of selecting the president, he wrote, will be most likely to possess the information and discernment requisite to such complicated investigations.

The Supreme Court these days is generally inclined to honor the original meaning of the Constitution, and the Tenth Circuit made a strong case that its language supports elector independence. The words of the relevant provisions, including elector, vote and ballot, Judge McHugh wrote, have a common theme: They all imply the right to make a choice or voice an individual opinion.

On election night in 2016, the electoral vote was expected to be 306 for Donald J. Trump and 232 for Mrs. Clinton. In the end, though, it was 304 to 227.

Seven electors succeeded in voting for other candidates. A fourth Democratic elector in Washington voted for Faith Spotted Eagle, and a Democratic elector in Hawaii voted for Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont. Republican electors in Texas voted for Mr. Kasich and Ron Paul, a former representative of Texas.

Three more Democratic electors, in Colorado, Maine and Minnesota, tried to vote for candidates other than Mrs. Clinton. Two were replaced, and a third eventually came around.

The number of faithless votes was the largest in history, but the phenomenon was not particularly unusual. Congress has accepted the vote of every vote contrary to a pledge or expectation in the nations history that has been transmitted to it a total of more than 150 votes across 20 different elections from 1796 to 2016, the petition filed last week said, citing data from FairVote, a nonpartisan voting rights advocacy group.

Congress has only once debated the question, when some lawmakers objected in 1969 to counting a Republican electors vote for George C. Wallace after Richard M. Nixon won the popular vote in the electors state. Both houses rejected the objection, and the vote stood.

Professor Lessig, the lawyer for the Washington State electors, said a decision in their favor could help focus public attention on the shortcomings of the Electoral College in reflecting the popular will. One response, he said, is the National Popular Vote plan, under which states agree to grant their electoral votes to the candidate who gets the most votes nationwide.

It could also convince both sides that it is finally time to step up and modify the Constitution to address this underlying problem, he said. One possibility, he said, is a constitutional amendment requiring a proportional allocation of electoral votes at the state level.

The key point for now, Professor Lessig said, is to have a definitive answer on elector independence before the justices can know which candidate might benefit from their ruling.

Whatever way you resolve it, he said, it should be resolved.

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Faithless Electors Could Tip the 2020 Election. Will the Supreme Court Stop Them? - The New York Times

John C Moritz Austin Bureau USA TODAY NETWORK, Corpus Christi Caller Times Published 4:19 p.m. CT Oct. 15, 2019 | Updated 4:25 p.m. CT Oct. 15, 2019

A self-styled militia group called Oath Keepers is seekingvolunteers to help "protectTrump supporters" during the president's rally in Dallas.

AUSTIN A 10-year-old self-styled militia group called Oath Keepers is seekingvolunteers to help "protectTrump supporters" during the president's rally Thursday in downtown Dallas.

"As always, we are confident that the interior of the venue itself will be safe (the Secret Service will see to that)," Stewart Rhodes, who founded the organization of military veterans and former law enforcement officers in 2009, wrote on the organization's website this week."But we have serious concerns for the safety of attendees as they walk from their vehicles to the venue, and then especially as they walk back to their vehicles in the dark afterward."

The anti-government group, Oath Keepers, says it plans to help protect Trump supporters at the president's rally in Dallas, Oct. 17, 2019.(Photo: Oath Keepers' Twitter page)

The group that calls itself defenders of the Constitution also lists a series what is says are potential government directives it will not obey, including disarming citizens.

The group was at Trump's rally last week in Minneapolis, and says it also will be at Democratic presidential candidate Beto O'Rourke counter-rally to Trump's appearance in nearby Grand Prairie.

Protesters clashed with supporters outside a rally in Minneapolis. Some burned MAGA hats and threw urine in the streets. USA TODAY

The organization, which according to several reports claims about 35,000 members, bills itself as a"non-partisan association of current and formerly serving military, police, and first responders, who pledge to fulfill the oath all military and police take to defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic.

Rhodes, a one-time staffer to former Texas Congressman Ron Paul, says on his personal website he is an "ex-paratrooper, disabled vet, ex-firearms instructor" and a graduate of Yale University School of Law.

"If a police state comes to America, it will ultimately be byyourhands," Rhodes wrotein an article called "Just Following Orders" in S.W.A.T. Magazine."That is a harsh reality, but you had better come to terms with it now, and resolve to not let it happen on your watch."

Rhodes also referred to Hillary Clinton as "Herr Hitlery" during the 2008 race for the Democratic presidential nomination.

More: Trump in Texas: Heres what you need to know about Donald Trump's Dallas rally

Several articles and essays on the organization's website decry the decision by Democratic U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to move forward with an impeachment inquiry into Trump as a "circus" and a push to overturn the 2016 election.

Last month, the organization retweeted Trump when he said impeachment and removal from office would "cause a Civil War like fracture" of the nation and added a comment:

"This is the truth. This is where we are. We ARE on the verge of a HOT civil war. Like in 1859. Thats where we are. And the Right has ZERO trust or respect for anything the left is doing. We see THEM as illegitimate too."

As demonstrators began organizing a protest in Ferguson, Missouri, on the one-year anniversary of the shooting of Michael Brown in August 2015, ablack man who was shot and killed by a white police officer, an armed group of protesters came to the city ostensibly to help law enforcement.

According to a USA TODAY report at the time, several members rifle-toting Oath Keepers walked amongthe protesters. Missouri law permits license-holders to openly carry weapons.

St. Louis County Police Chief Jon Belmar called the group's presence "unnecessary and inflammatory."

Officers form a line across First Avenue following the rally for Donald J. Trump Thursday, Oct. 10, 2019, outside the Target Center in Minneapolis. (Photo: Dave Schwarz, dschwarz@stcloudtimes.com)

The Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks what calls extremist groups, describes Oath Keepers as "one of the largest radical anti-government groups" in the nation.

"While it claims only to be defending the Constitution, the entire organization is based on a set of baseless conspiracy theories about the federal government working to destroy the liberties of Americans," SPLC says on its website.

In an interview with the Dallas Morning News, Rhodes disputed the characterization and called his organization "the right-wing version of the ACLU."

John C. Moritz covers Texas government and politics for the USA Today Network in Austin. Contact him at jmoritz@gannett.comand follow him on Twitter@JohnnieMo.

More: Why Democrats are happy Donald Trump is spending time campaigning in Texas

More: Protesters burn MAGA hats, police use pepper spray in tense hours after Donald Trump rally in Minneapolis

More: Dueling rallies round two: Beto O'Rourke plans rally to counter Trump's Dallas visit

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Trump rally in Dallas: What to know about the Oath Keepers militia group - Times Record News

Every four years, large numbers of people waste countless hours of their lives toiling under the delusion that they will be able to predict who one or both political partys presidential nominee will be. Some people gather information from oodles of disparate sources polls, fundraising numbers, media coverage, historical trends, debate performance, sentiment of party insiders, etc. and often wind up focusing so intently on certain data points that they miss the forest for the trees and get it completely wrong. Others cherry-pick from much of that same information and attempt to use it to retroactively justify the inevitably candidacy of the politician they happen to like. (There is a lot of overlap between these two groups, however unintentional.) Others just bullshit like hell and sometimes end up being more right than the experts.

Often this is done in service of journalism or campaign emails telling you to DONATE NOW, but today we are going to talk about the people who do it for pure, unadulterated profit. As Ive written for The Outline previously, the website PredictIt is a political prediction market, in which users buy shares of an outcome they believe will occur, whether its which justice will be Trumps next Supreme Court nominee, which party will win the 2020 presidential election, or the number of times Andrew Yang will tweet this week. While yes, this is basically just gambling on politics, prediction markets do have genuine value for election forecasters such as Nate Cohn of The New York Times and Nate Silver of 538, the latter of whom, I noted in my previous piece, has written that [prediction markets] tend to mimic his websites forecasts more than conventional polling data does.

In the past couple of weeks, however, the PredictIt market for the 2020 Democratic presidential race has developed an anomaly that truly boggles the mind. While conventional polling indicates a dead heat between an ascendent Elizabeth Warren and a slowly receding, bleeding-from-the-eyes Joe Biden, with Bernie Sanders behind both in a competitive third place, PredictIts market for the same race looks nothing like that at all. For one, theyve got Warren way out in front of Biden, at 48 cents to 21 cents (each PredictIt market divides its shares into portions of a dollar, both to keep things cheap and to mimic actual polls), and Sanders in sixth place.

The space between Warren and Sanders, though, is where shit gets wild. Have a look for yourself:

Screenshot via PredictIt, taken around 11 a.m. on October 10.

Hillary Clinton, a person who is not currently running for president, is nevertheless neck and neck with Andrew Yang, the Ron Paul of the Democratic Party, for third place. (As you can see, Pete Buttigieg is in fourth, but I dont care and neither should you.)

Ever since he announced his candidacy, Andrew Yang has performed disproportionately well on PredictIt, especially relative to Sanders. This is in part because one of Yangs key bases of support is extremely online young men who are more interested in getting $1000 than they are in free healthcare i.e., the type of people who are really into prediction markets.

As for Clinton, its a weirder and not particularly explainable situation, given that, again, she is not currently running for president. But prediction markets dont care about whats happening now, they care about what will happen in the future, and clearly there are people out there who think that shes going to run for president and would have a shot at winning.

One of the arguments for the effectiveness of prediction markets is that in theory, they facilitate those with inside information anonymously coming forward and making that information known by placing a large bet on an otherwise unexpected outcome. If, say Hillary Clintons driver and had overheard the former Secretary of State telling someone on the phone that she was about to jump into the race, that person could hop on PredictIt and make a huge bet on Clinton becoming the nominee, which might catch the attention of other PredictIt users and cause them to also start betting on Clinton, which would in turn drive the price of her shares up. So: Are prediction markets trying to tell us something were not already privy to?

The ascendency of Hillary Clinton on PredictIt came to my attention when Kevin Munger, an Outline contributor and Political Science professor at Penn State, made a joke about it on Twitter on October 2. Since then, Munger has watched with bemusement as Clinton has crept upwards. Intrigued, I started looking at the market, trying to understand why this was happening and whether it actually meant anything. According to PredictIts chart of trade volume, which indicates the number of shares of Clinton being bought and sold on any given day, interest in Clinton shares originally spiked on October 2, and then jumped again on October 8. I then started Googling around to see if anything might have happened in the news on those days that might explain these upticks in trade volume. If there wasnt, that might be a clue that someone with connections to Clintons camp was trying to cash in on non-public information.

The results of my search, it turned out, were head-smackingly obvious.

On October 2, Hillary Clinton appeared on The View. Alongside her daughter, Chelsea, with whom she just co-authored a book. As for the October 8 spike, well, that was because Donald Trump tweeted, I think Crooked Hillary should enter the race, to which Clinton (or more likely, her assistant), responded, Dont tempt me.

While its true that presidential candidates go on The View and tweet epic clapbacks at Donald Trump, thats stuff that hundreds of public figures many of them politicians! do as well, and none of them are running for president. In an interview with CNN, Clinton confidant Terry McAuliffe said that shes re-emerging in the public eye because shes got a book to sell and that Shes having fun, but that doesn't mean shes going to run again. No one, not even Hillary Clinton, wants to relive the 2016 election again.

While the fact that Clinton is a contender on PredictIt isnt proof shes secretly getting ready to run for president again, its definitely proof that these markets, so vaunted by prognosticators named Nate, are sometimes driven by nothing more than a few people sitting at home saying, Hey, I saw that person on TV! Its certainly a bad sign that the sort of press tours that famous people do whenever theyre trying to hawk some dumb bullcrap are often indistinguishable from modern political campaigns, but the people of PredictIts inability to tell the difference between the two functions as an example of the learned insensitivity to reality that, as Tom Whyman wrote for The Outline yesterday, is one of the primary characteristics of modern stupidity. Sometimes, the more information we gather, the less were sure of which bits are worth focusing on.

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This prediction market has Hillary Clinton in third place to win the Democratic primary - The Outline

Every so often, a political candidate rises to the fore fueled by the grievances of people who are seriously annoyed. Donald Trump, for example, stoked the fires of an America in perceived decline. Ron Paul in 2008 capitalized on the backlash to the costly military interventions of the Bush era. In 2016, Bernie Sanders drew together a coalition of the young, the far-left, and the people who didnt want to cast a vote for a Clinton ever again. Typically, a candidate who creates an Im-mad-as-hell coalition tends to pull in some unusual supporters who dont necessarily agree with the candidate on his or her main political platform, but who connects to the reason for being mad as hell libertarians for Bernie, hippies for Ron Paul, or the much-talked-about Obama-Trump voters.

The 2020 election, still over a year away, has its own peculiar Im-mad-as-hell coalition. In a strange twist, theyre lining up behind the usually cheerful Andrew Yang. Yang is an entrepreneur whos never run for public office before and yet has improbably held on through multiple rounds of debate qualifications and quarterly fundraising reports. Hes rising rather than falling in the polls, at least for the most part. Is it because of his signature Freedom Dividend, a plan for universal basic income in the US that takes center stage at all his rallies?

I would argue that, no, it isnt. Head over to the Reddit subreddit for Yang campaign supporters, and youll start to get the idea that Yangs momentum has a lot to do with people who have had enough of fear-mongering, hyperpartisanship, and an intense sense of doom traits that have been exploited to no end lately by politicians and an attention-hungry media.

We all feel it, that something is terribly and deeply wrong, a looming sense of dread for our childrens futures and our countrys future, wrote Reddit user RandomLake7. I was never able to put my finger on it until I saw Andrew Yangthat feeling of dread is still there, but it is beginning to go away as I see this campaign growhappiness really is a state of mind, but what I realized was that even if you have a lot in life, you can never be truly happy when you live in a society where so many are on a knifes edge.

Many users say that Yangs candidacy snapped them out of a depressive phase. Im not entirely sure whats going on but I feel as if I was in a depression fog until Yang, wrote user samoa1013. I dont think I had any purpose, no real hope for the future, because honestly beyond my life society is a [clusterfuck]. I feel motivated now.

But its not just about a $1,000/month fix getting people out of hard times. While Donald Trump demonized the fake news media, Yangs fed up with the clickbait media, and his supporters have identified just what its doing to us. And thats getting him unlikely support.

A few examples: in the June debates, most of the press around Yang was centered on his decision to not wear a tie. Cleverly, in his closing statement in the July debates, Yang called out the media for turning politics into a reality show, cited the focus on his lack of a tie in the prior debates and made an appeal to those who care more about your family and your kids than my neckwear.

At a recent Los Angeles rally, Yang asked who in the crowd had voted for Trump in 2016, and then asked the rest of the crowd to cheer for them being there a far cry from baskets of deplorables.

Yang also openly decried Saturday Night Lives decision to fire new cast member Shane Gillis based on the use of racist epithets on recent comedy podcasts, even though Yang himself had been a target of them. As the person who was personally called out in this case, I thought that if I could set an example that we can forgive people, particularly in an instance where, in my mind, it was in a comedic context or a gray area, that I thought it would be positive, Yang said at the time.

And his campaign slogan? Not left, not right, forward.

Yangs political platform is hardly sunshine-and-rainbows; his plan to combat climate change paints it as an existential threat and underscores the urgency in dealing with it. His primary justification for the Freedom Dividend is the rise of automation displacing American jobs, which critics paint as overhyped invasion-of-the-killer-robots thinking. But his emoji-filled tweets and upbeat attitude convey a can-do attitude: bring in the nerds and a whole lot of boring facts, and we can solve this. Its no wonder his supporters scream chants of PowerPoint! while wearing hats that say MATH on them.

This is all a reaction to something very real, and something that should alarm anyone in the media industry: people are getting fed up with dumbed-down news, cheap soundbites, and the willingness to do anything for a click. They are tired of overtly partisan media outlets stretching the truth for attention, of being told to hate their neighbors, and likely of the mental health effects of a hyperbole-obsessed news climate.

Now, in fairness, Yang still polls in the single digits though hes starting to pull ahead of candidates like California senator Kamala Harris. Hes unlikely to win the nomination, let alone the presidency. (And, as a side note, political cults of personality should give anyone pause; look at how that worked out for Barack Obama and now Donald Trump.)

But sometimes these things start with the nerds. Just look at ad blocking, a phenomenon thats created serious headaches in the media and advertising industries for years now. Browser extensions and mobile apps that block ads have been around since the late Nineties, but theyre now among the most popular consumer software downloads, with 25 percent of internet users now using them in some form. The reason theyve gotten so popular? People find online ads intrusive, creepy, and exploitative. The ad industry was notoriously slow to respond.

Andrew Yang is the ad blocker of political candidates, so to speak; hes the candidate fueled by the support of people who are tired of being treated like idiots. Today its the Yang Gang, but tomorrow its likely bigger. The media industry should take note.

Read more from the original source:
Andrew Yang is 2020's ad blocker candidate - The Spectator USA

Syria has been turned into the most wretched of neighborhoods on the planet by Washingtons neocons and liberal interventionists. From its pre-2011 population of 23 million, more than 6.7 million have fled to countries such as Lebanon (1 million), Jordan (700,000), Turkey (3.6 million), Europe and elsewhere.

At the same time, more than 6.5 million Syrians are internal refugees, driven from their homes and towns by a so-called "civil" war that wouldnt have lasted more than a few months save for the billions of arms, training and walking around money that Washington and its Persian Gulf allies have supplied to the violent opposition.

Owing to these billions of aid to armed insurrection, however, the Syrian economy has been turned to shambles and its ancient cities and towns have been reduced to steaming piles of rubble. Disease, malnutrition, lack of safe drinking water and medical supplies and treatments stalk the land.

And Washingtons objective was exactly what?

Well, to remove from power the Assad family regime that had ruled Syria since 1978 with reasonable economic stewardship and a mildly authoritarian writ that was slightly better than par for the course by Middle East standards, and not because the Assads posed any threat to Americas homeland security whatsoever.

To the contrary, the Alawite-based (a branch of Shiite Islam) Assad clan was an inherent barrier to the spread of Sunni jihadism and had ruled Syria under a secularist policy of tolerance for the scores of ethnic and religious minorities that populated the artificial geography of Syria including Christians, Druze, Kurds, Turkmen, Assyrians, Jews, Yazidis, Twelvers, Ismailis, and numerous more.

So Assads real sin was that he was aligned with his Shiite co-religionists in Iran but that the War Party in Israel and Washington could not abide. Thats because the threat of a falsely demonized Iran is what kept Bibi Netanyahu in power and the US military/industrial/surveillance/interventionist complex in budgetary clover.

Accordingly, the utterly illegitimate Empire First objective of regime change in Damascus led to Washington stumbling around in the complex ethnic and religious stew of the now shattered state of Syria like the proverbial bull-in-the-china-shop. At length, it ended up arming two bitter enemies as its "allies" in the battle against the ISIS caliphate that Washington itself had birthed when it destroyed and then abandoned the similarly-shattered state of Iraq.

As we detailed last week, in fact, Senator John McCain had personally recruited, organized, funded and sponsored the Free Syrian Army (FSA) to help overthrow Assad and bring about regime change in Damascus. To that end, McCain and his CIA factotums had stood-up the FSA composed of Sunni Arabs, many of who had jihadist sympathies in camps in Turkey for the alleged purpose of fighting the ISIS caliphate which had overrun the Syrian northeast.

But the battle between the Washington-sponsored FSA and the Washington-fostered ISIS Caliphate soon spilled over into the Kurdish communities that had historically populated the regions along the Syria-Turkey border east of the Euphrates River.

Needless to say, when Assad could no longer protect his own territory and borders owning to the Washington/Saudi/Qatar funded armed insurrection in the Syrian north and east the desperate Kurds, who had become collateral damage, turned to Washington for arms, training and money. The latter was soon flowing to the Kurds in the billions to defend themselves from the ISIS plague that Washington had spawned from the wreckage of Iraq and the massive stores of US weapons left behind.

Thus, after the 2014 ISIS capture of Mosul in Iraq and establishment of the Islamic Caliphate in Raqqa (Syria), Washington had armed three different forces ISIS, the FSA and the Kurdish Syrian Defense Forces (SDF) to duke it out in northern Syria: One and all were aligned against the nations legitimate government in Damascus even as they sometimes fought each other, other times made tactical alliances and frequently sold to the highest bidder the Washington/Saudi supplied weapons which were abundant in the region.

Why this is timely, of course, stems from the fact that Washingtons FSA mercenaries (Sunni Arabs from many countries no just Syria) and its Turkish NATO "ally" are now threatening to annihilate its other "allies" in the Kurdish/SDF army. Yet from the very beginning, Washingtons feckless arming of the Kurdish minority in Syria (about 2 million people) was seen as a mortal threat by Ankara after its decades of struggle with the much larger separatist-oriented Kurdish population of about 15 million within its own borders.

Alas, as we predicted last week, the Kurds had no logical choice but to quickly make a deal with Assad for protection from the NATO/FSA "invaders". And they now have with alacrity.

So in short order, Assad will be back in control of the Kurdish lands northeast of the Euphrates and the whole purpose of the Washington instigated Syrian civil war an epic economic, social and human calamity will have been for naught.

Still, it doesnt even end there because it is likely that Cool Hand Vlad Putin will arrange a ceasefire and peaceful resolution of the incipient war between Washingtons two allies.

That is, he will help his longtime ally in Damascus reassert control over the Syrian northeast. At the same time, he will likely supply his more recent partner in Ankara (Erdogan) with a "safe zone" along the border where the Kurdish SDF will be banned and the massive Syrian refugees population in Turkey can be processes and camped as they begin to return home, thereby eventually relieving Turkey of the massive fiscal and political burden posed by the millions of Syrian refugees now within his borders because Washingtons neocon warmongers wrecked their own country.

Moreover, there is a still larger rebuke to Imperial Washington in the unfolding and history changing events on the Turkey-Syria border. Putin will have stopped NATO member, Turkey, from invading its neighbor (Syria) in order to remove an armed threat that Washington had stood up on its own borders.

Stated differently, until the last 24 hours or so, the whole predicate of NATO was about to be slammed by a lunatic conflict of Washingtons own making. We are referring to the Article 5 "collective defense" proviso of the NATO treaty which,

.. means that an attack against one Ally is considered as an attack against all Allies. The principle of collective defence is enshrined in Article 5 of the Washington Treaty.

So had Turkey invoked Article 5, Washington would have been obligated to join its Turkish and FSA "allies" in attacking its Kurdish/SDF "allies"; or in the alternative, had Washington invoked Article 5 presumably Turkey would have been obligated to make war on itself!

Needless to say, if Putin succeeds in arranging a settlement between the Turks, Kurds and Assad, he will also have prevented NATO from attacking itself!

Then again, allegedly NATO exists to stop Putin from invading Europe and the Middle East, too. Perhaps the Donalds wise move to remove a few dozen American soldiers from the Syrian-Turkish border, therefore, will have a much greater silver-lining.

To wit, maybe it will remind that NATO is absolutely pointless and has been since the Soviet Union disappeared from the face of the earth more than 28 years ago.

As we explained at length at the recent Ron Paul conference, the time for a NATO mercy killing is long overdue, and the current contretemps in the dusty plains east of the Euphrates might finally be the wake-up call that crystalizes the reasons why.

David Stockman was a two-term Congressman from Michigan. He was also the Director of the Office of Management and Budget under President Ronald Reagan. After leaving the White House, Stockman had a 20-year career on Wall Street. Hes the author of three books, The Triumph of Politics: Why the Reagan Revolution Failed, The Great Deformation: The Corruption of Capitalism in America and TRUMPED! A Nation on the Brink of Ruin And How to Bring It Back. He also is founder of David Stockmans Contra Corner and David Stockmans Bubble Finance Trader.

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Wake-Up Call On The Syrian Border: Time To End Washington's Feckless Regime Change Policy and NATO, Too - Antiwar.com

Yesterday, the Federal Reserve (Fed) said it would restart buying bonds in the open market. Also, it will continue its overnight funding operations until January of next year.

For the Fed, pouring cash into the markets is already routine. It seems that policymakers are trying to convince the public that there is nothing wrong with their easing measures. However, what we get is cheaper money that devalues at an even faster paste.

Last month, the M2 monetary supply exceeded the $15 trillion mark.

Elsewhere, the M1 money supply a narrower definition of money that includes its most liquid form is about to touch the $4 trillion mark soon.

For former congressman Ron Paul, the Feds intervention in the market is a form of monetary socialism, as the central bank is trying to plan the value of money through manipulations rather than letting the markets decide it.

On Friday, the Fed announced it would start purchasing about $60 billion in Treasury bonds every month until at least the second quarter of 2020. Also, it will extend the repo operations from the end of November to at least the end of next January. The Fed explained:

These actions are purely technical measures to support the effective implementation of the FOMCs monetary policy, and do not represent a change in the stance of monetary policy.

The Fed is trying to convince the public that we shouldnt call its measures quantitative easing and that its last steps are not even part of monetary policy. For the central bank, buying bonds and injecting cash into the repo market are necessary measures to protect the economy and mitigate potential risks, especially amid the Sino-US trade war.

Dallas Fed President Robert Kaplan told the media:

It is not intended to create more accommodation or create more stimulus. This is not intended to have any impact on monetary policy. Its not designed that way.

However, economists argue that this is the purest form of QE and should be treated as such. Usually, QE is the result of a crisis but it seems the Fed doesnt want the public to realize there is a problem with the economy.

Nevertheless, the figures are insane. On Thursday, the New York Fed added $88.1 billion through the repo market, and another $82.7 billion on Friday.

While the Fed is experimenting, Bitcoin remains an ideal asset to preserve value and stay away from a devaluing currency.

Do you think the Fed is doing too much? Share your thoughts in the comments section!

Images via Bitcoinist Media Library, Fed, CNBC TV

More here:
Fed's Hidden QE Becomes Norm; Bitcoin to the Rescue - Bitcoinist

HERNDON, Va. Ron McDole doesnt dress up for Halloween anymore. Hes 80, after all. But his daughter says he still enjoys the holiday.

Of course he does, Tammy McDole says. He eats all the candy.

Some of her fathers fondest memories from the Buffalo Bills glory days of the 1960s are of Halloween costume parties. He devotes a chapter to these monster mashes in his 2018 book, The Dancing Bear: My 18 Years in the Trenches of the AFL and NFL.

McDole got the Dancing Bear nickname after the Bills traded him to Washington following the 1970 season, when he was 31. Bills coach Johnny Rauch thought McDole was over the hill; Washington coach George Allen thought otherwise.

McDole would go on to star for Allens so-called Over-the-Hill Gang, a nickname borrowed from a 1969 made-for-TV western. It was bestowed on the team because Allen valued veterans and collected them like football cards. Washingtons over-the-hillers reached Super Bowl VII following the 1972 season, where they lost to the unbeaten Miami Dolphins, 14-7.

I met McDole 10 days ago at Jimmys Old Town Tavern, a Bills bar not far from where he settled in Northern Virginia after his playing days. McDole showed off a pair of oversized rings, one on each hand his 1964 AFL championship ring with Buffalo and his 1972 NFC championship ring with Washington. And he gifted bar owner Jimmy Cirrito with a Bills No. 72 jersey with the name McDole lettered on the back.

He was at Jimmys to sign that jersey plus photos and copies of his book, which includes a chapter titled, The Famous Buffalo Bills Halloween Parties. Running back Joe Auer hosted the first one. (He played for the Bills in 1964 and 1965 but is most famous for inaugurating the Dolphins existence in 1966 by returning the opening kick of their first game for a touchdown.) Paul Maguire punter, linebacker, funnyman hosted after that, the book says.

And then McDole and his wife, Paula, took over as hosts, at first in a spooky-looking house his words that he owned with teammates Ernie Warlick and Al Bemiller on Grand Island and later at a huge home he owned in Eden with a widows watch that hed decorate with a billowing bedsheet of a ghost plus pulsing strobe lights.

"I was the leader of the costumes, and I took my role very seriously, McDole writes. One year I was a ballerina complete with tutu and fairy wings. This Buffalo Bill weighed three bills, and in costume resembled nothing more than the elephant ballerinas from Fantasia.

Naturally, he always thought his costumes were best. One year he was the Great Pumpkin, but the costume was so Great as in gargantuan that he couldnt get down the stairs in it. So partygoers had to go upstairs to see him.

Paul Maguire during one of the legendary Bills Halloween parties of the 1960s. (Photo courtesy of the McDole family)

Maguire came as a turtle one year with a shell made of roofing shingles. As the night went on, Maguire got shorter and shorter from the weight of his costume, McDole writes. He finally took it off. But we have a hilarious photo of him sitting with his little green flippers sticking out, resting, his head poking out of his shell.

One year offensive lineman Joe ODonnell came as Big Bird and looked as if he had just walked off the set of 'Sesame Street.' Another time McDole came as a big chicken. He dressed in yellow tights and his wife remembers how cars backed up on Route 75 to watch as she glued real chicken feathers on him in their backyard.

At the party, he says, every time I walked up to somebody, they put their hand over their drink so my feathers wouldnt fall in.

McDole hated leaving Buffalo, not least because it meant the end of hosting Halloween, but the trade turned out well for him.

I made more money, he says. And we had a bunch of old guys who werent over the hill. George hated rookies because he hated rookie mistakes. George didnt like to teach how to block or tackle. He wanted guys who already knew how.

McDole intercepted 12 passes in his career, a record for defensive linemen. He played in 240 regular-season games third all-time for defensive ends, behind Jim Marshall and Bruce Smith. And he scored two TDs on interception returns and forced three safeties for 18 points in his 16 seasons.

He was joined on the Bills front four by Tom Day at the other end and Tom Sestak and Jim Dunaway at the tackles celebrated stalwarts of Buffalos mid-'60s title teams.

Im the only one left, McDole says sadly. Everyone else has passed away. Dunaway and I were roommates and good friends. They were all great ballplayers. We had a heck of a line. We were dominating the league.

So much so that the Bills did not allow a rushing touchdown for more than a calendar year, from Oct. 24, 1964, through Oct. 31, 1965. That covered 16 games and two Halloweens.

Turns out team chemistry comes in all sizes, including 300-pound men in tutus and feathers.

Link:
Ron McDole on those legendary 1960s Bills' Halloween parties - Buffalo News