Thursday Open Thread [6.30.2016]

Nate Silver is out with his 2016 forecasting model that will be updated daily with new polling information. Right now, surprise, he forecasts that Hillary Clinton has a 93.9% chance of winning Delaware.

As for the nation, Hillary has a 81% chance of winning, and given the electoral map below, winning big:

NATIONAL–PRESIDENT–FOX News—Clinton 44, Trump 38
NATIONAL–PRESIDENT–Quinnipiac—Clinton 42, Trump 40
NEW JERSEY–PRESIDENT–Fairleigh Dickinson University PublicMind—Clinton 52, Trump 31
NORTH CAROLINA–PRESIDENT–Civitas—Clinton 42, Trump 40
NEW HAMPSHIRE–PRESIDENT–ARG—Clinton 47, Trump 42

Canada's Parliament broke into chants of "four more years" as Pres. Obama wrapped up address https://t.co/B9fdCLbYPl https://t.co/tULeTfqWWH

— ABC News Politics (@ABCPolitics) June 29, 2016

Donald Trump hammered his former GOP rivals for not endorsing him, The Hill reports.

Said Trump: “It was a rough campaign, and I wasn’t nice, but they weren’t nice either. Honestly, you sign a pledge, you’re supposed to honor the pledge.”

He added they they were “really sore losers” and said they only signed the pledge so he would do so as well: “They broke their word, and in my opinion, they shouldn’t be allowed to run for office again… because what they did is disgraceful.”

So either you support Trump or you lose your office. Ah, yes, he is not a fascist authoritarian at all. That pledge thing was stupid. Trump wasn’t going to honor it himself if he lost the primary.

Former McCain Campaign Advisor Mark Salter: “He’s an ignoramus whose knowledge of public issues is more superficial than an occasional newspaper reader’s. He casts his intellectual laziness as a choice, a deliberate avoidance of expert views that might contaminate his ill-informed opinions. He excused his failure to consult professionals before commenting on the Brexit vote by dismissing foreign policy advisers in general, including his own… He’s a charlatan, preposterously posing as a business genius while cheating investors, subcontractors, and his own customers. He’s rich because his father left him a great deal of money… He possesses the emotional maturity of a 6-year-old. He can’t let go of any slight, real or imagined.”

“Whatever Hillary Clinton’s faults, she’s not ignorant or hateful or a nut. She acts like an adult, and understands the responsibilities of an American president.”

Well, this should end Kaine for VP talk: Kaine “took advantage of the state’s lax gift laws to receive an $18,000 Caribbean vacation, $5,500 in clothes and a trip to watch George Mason University play in the NCAA basketball Final Four during his years as lieutenant governor and governor,” Politico reports.

“Now a leading contender to be Hillary Clinton’s running mate, Kaine reported more than $160,000 in gifts from 2001 to 2009, mostly for travel to and from political events and conferences, according to disclosures compiled by the Virginia Public Access Project.”

Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) unloaded on a radio show host who wanted to know why he hadn’t endorsed Donald Trump yet, BuzzFeed reports.

Said Lee: “We can get into that if you want. We can get into the fact that he accused my best friend’s father of conspiring to kill JFK. We can go through the fact that he’s made statements that some have identified correctly as religiously intolerant. We can get into the fact that he’s wildly unpopular in my state, in part because my state consists of people who are members of a religious minority church. A people who were ordered exterminated by the governor of Missouri in 1838. And, statements like that make them nervous.”

Lee added that he wanted assurances from Trump that he would defend the Constitution: “I’m sorry, sir, but that is not an unreasonable demand.”

Mitt Romney revealed that he decided not to mount an independent presidential bid despite pleas from his wife and kids to jump in the race, Politico reports.

Said Romney: “My wife and kids wanted me to run again this time, interestingly enough. I got an email from one of my sons yesterday that said, ‘You’ve got to get in, dad. You’ve got to get in.’”

Oh just shut up already Romney and do it. You will tear up the Party even more than it already, but at least your vanity will be served.

Anne Stevens, the sister of ambassador Chris Stevens who was killed in Benghazi, Libya in 2012, told the New Yorker that she does not blame Hillary Clinton for his death.

Said Stevens: “I do not blame Hillary Clinton or Leon Panetta. They were balancing security efforts at embassies and missions around the world. And their staffs were doing their best to provide what they could with the resources they had. The Benghazi Mission was understaffed. We know that now. But, again, Chris knew that. It wasn’t a secret to him. He decided to take the risk to go there. It is not something they did to him. It is something he took on himself.”

She added that it is “inappropriate” she to make Benghazi an election issue.

Um….WOW: Trump fundraising off promise to indict Clinton pic.twitter.com/3MpgsRwYIm

— Zeke Miller (@ZekeJMiller) June 28, 2016

So Trump will direct prosecutions personally as President, rather than letting an Independent Attorney General handle any investigation. And he will indict his political opponents without any evidence whatsoever, simply because they are politically opponents.

The @NRA has launched its first TV ad this cycle. Doesn't mention guns; attacks @HillaryClinton over Benghazi. https://t.co/BE5PI6RhjB

— Michael Levenson (@mlevenson) June 29, 2016

Republicans are lining up to say stupid things about how ISIS is on the rise. Here’s Zack Beauchamp with the story of something good that happened last weekend in Fallujah.

Fallujah, the major Iraqi city that ISIS has held since January 2014, has officially been retaken. Iraqi army troops seized the last ISIS-controlled district in the city on Sunday, with Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi appearing on television to give a victory speech. The city that ISIS has held longer than any other in Iraq is, for the moment, out of the militant group’s hands.

This is the beginning of the end for ISIS’s territorial control in Iraq. After Fallujah, there’s only one more urban center in ISIS’s possession: Mosul, Iraq’s second-largest city. ISIS’s defeat in Fallujah, a longtime stronghold, reveals that it’s now no longer a question of if but when Mosul falls to the Iraqi government.

We also killed 250 ISIS fighters yesterday while they were retreating to Syria. Good.