Anything Goes!

This recent post in the Times regarding Donald Trump's "anything goes" precedent he has set in campaigns points out many disturbing trends. There are many salient points in the article but Mr. Martin fails to adequately note that it's the people that want someone like Donald Trump.

These are the people that are firmly in the basket of deplorables, most of whom are likely beyond help. Take, for example, this guy.

We need to turn our backs on the elites, and he's the one who has emerged as the rebel leader in that cause.

Right. Because people that are more intelligent and accomplished than us (see also: adults) should be vilified at every turn. In fact, we should just burn the whole fucking house down and act like...what age level again?.....ADOLESCENTS.

The real danger isn't really Donald Trump. It's the 40 million people who are so lacking in emotional intelligence, maturity, and intellectual capacity that they would allow their own insecurities, inferior feelings, and constant thoughts of inadequacy that they would happily vote for a sociopath for president. Are they that reckless? Are they that catty and bitchy about Hillary Clinton? Do they really understand what's at stake here? Any of you out there who has had to deal with teenagers know the answers to all these questions.

At least the media is finally waking up to the fact that they have been way too easy on Donald Trump.

Deep Fried Basket Of Deplorables

Damn!

A Tightening Race?

The presidential race is tightening and the Democrats are officially starting to poop themselves with the release of each new poll. Haven't we see this movie before? Oh, right, that was 2012 when Mitt Romney (actually someone who was qualified to be president) gained on Barack Obama and everyone predicted the Mittster would be the next president. They used a similar metric to what they are saying today...lack of voter enthusiasm, especially among young people, would ruin the president.

How did that turn out?

Now, I'm not going to assuage people from jumping up and down and acting like Trump could actually win this thing. I think everyone should spend from now until election day operating under the assumption that Trump is actually ahead in the polls. Why? Because Hillary Clinton can't merely eke out a victory. She has to demolish him with the American people sending a clear message to The Deplorables.

We are not going back. We are moving forward. Take your nonsense and dissolve on the ash heap of history.

If there is vacuum in the sense of urgency department, the election will be much closer than it should be. People that think that Hillary is going to walk away with this one because Trump is nuts are going to deprive her of the political capital she needs to govern starting next year. So, crap away in fear, I say, and let's get more people out there to vote.

In terms of nuts and bolts, here is where the race sits today.

Click the map to create your own at 270toWin.com

My map is based on an analysis of the following:

The Polls Plus Model at 538.

Real Clear Politics Battle For The White House

Hillary still has the advantage and likely has more than 270 electoral votes. Yet Trump is ahead in the average of polls in Georgia, Florida, Ohio, and Iowa. Hillary is ahead in North Carolina and Nevada with those averages. All six of these states are within the margin of error. If we put them in as either red or blue, we have this map.

Click the map to create your own at 270toWin.com

So, a much closer race than a couple of weeks ago.

Trump has benefited from an awful week from Clinton as well as being graded on a curve. All he has to do is basically show up, not make an ass out of himself, and he gets a good grade. My hope is the media is going to start getting a lot tougher on him in these last few weeks. Now that he has proven he's an adult, he should be asked adult questions on specific policy points.

Of course, a tight race makes for better ratings for the media so who knows?

Respecting the Flag

Good Words...from Ted Cruz?

Ted Cruz on Donald Trump

"Whatever he does, he accuses everyone else of doing," Ted Cruz, whom Trump relentlessly attacked as a liar during the Republican primaries, said at a fiery press conference the morning of the Indiana primary in May. "In a pattern that I think is straight out of a psychology textbook, his response is to accuse everybody else of lying. He accuses everybody on that debate stage of lying. And it's simply a mindless yell."

Hmm...that sounds awfully familiar...:)

A Basket of Hypocrites

Help me out here, folks. Donald Trump has staked his candidacy on shunning political correctness. He and his followers are tired of people that are offended all the time. And yet now, Trump and his people are all over the Hilz about her "basket of deplorables" comment? A commenter over at Quora summed it up best.

If you have no problem supporting and even agreeing with a man who says derogatory things about non-whites and women, and who has effectively made white racists and white nationalism a thing in the Republican party, then why are your knickers in a knot when someone actually calls you deplorable for at worst, identifying/agreeing with this stuff, and at best, associating with such people?  

This IS deplorable stuff. And Hillary shouldn’t apologize-she’s dead right about you guys. If anything, she lowballed the percentage. Those of you who aren’t racists should be examining your souls as to why you want to associate with and support the same man that the likes of Duke are supporting. And for those of you who are…well, you ARE deplorable.

Amen, sister! Calling people out on their bullshit like this should happen more often in this country.

Check out the polls. These are facts, folks, not the passing opinion of the Democratic candidate for president. Half of Trump's supporters are racist.

And they are also kinda dumb. Now they are wearing their deplorables label like a badge of honor.

Great! Now we can easily identify the racists:)

Did Trump's Russian SVR Pals Give Hillary Pneumonia?

I'm just asking.

Because Trump is constantly spewing ridiculous conspiracy theories about what Hillary might do when she's elected, it's only fair to ask questions about what Trump would do to get elected.

And dirty tricks are exactly the sort of thing that Trump (and Republicans in general) love to engage in.

Think about it. Trump and his surrogates have been yammering nonsense about Hillary's health for a couple of months now, setting the hook. Then, magically, after they've been talking trash about her, Hillary suddenly comes down with pneumonia.

Coincidence?

The Russians have a long history of assassinating people in other countries with various types of poisons: in England they poisoned Alexander Litvinenkio with polonium 210, and Georgi Markov with a ricin-tipped umbrella. They poisoned Czech reformer Alexander Dubcek with radioactive isotopes in his soup (he recovered). Also in London they poisoned whistleblower Alexander Perepilichny with a flower found in Asia. They poisoned Ukrainian politician Viktor Yushchenko with dioxin, leaving him horribly disfigured (he has mostly recovered).

Now, the Russians couldn't get away with poisoning Hillary Clinton. Suspicion would fall upon them immediately. Trump would be branded a traitor, by all except those morons who are begging him to shoot someone on Fifth Avenue.

But giving Clinton pneumonia, that's the perfect crime: it's a common disease that you can pick up anywhere. I had it once myself, completely out of the blue, and had no symptoms except a terrible headache and exhaustion.

Is there any evidence of this? No.

But that wouldn't stop Donald Trump from putting a theory like this out there. Spewing these sorts of lies and conspiracies is what Trump and his followers do every day. They fabricate lie after lie after lie, and make up grand conspiracies -- like a 50-year plan to place an anti-British Muslim Kenyan dictator in the White House.

So I'm not saying that Trump had his Russian pals in the SVR (Sluzhba Vneshney Razvedki, or External Intelligence Service, the successor to the KGB) gave Hillary pneumonia. I'm just asking the question, like the misogynists at Fox News or Donald Trump's misogynistic alt-right white supremacist buddies at Breitbart do.

But when Donald Trump constantly extols the virtues of Vladimir Putin, saying what a great and strong leader Putin is for seizing parts of Georgia and Ukraine, and assassinating political opponents like Boris Nemtsov and journalists like Anna Politkovskaya, you gotta wonder if Trump is taking plays out of Putin's play book.

Bad Ass

Remember...

WTF, Right Wing Bloggers?

Remember this?

This was a headline to the Drudge Report a while back in which he very clearly intimated that our country, under Barack Obama and the Democrats, was going to become a totalitarian state like the Soviet Union. Right wing bloggers like Drudge have been foaming at the mouth that we don't take Putin seriously and that liberals are still plotting a secret government take over that will result in a Russia style state.

Yet in the same breath, folks like Matt Drudge support Donald Trump,  a man who has now tripled down on his love for Vladimir Putin, calling him a "great leader." A great leader?!? Really!!!? This is a guy who kills journalists and rules his country much like Stalin did. How on earth can right wing bloggers support the very thing that supposedly keeps them up at night? Consider all of Trump's very clear connections to Russia and how that makes him essentially a puppet of Putin.

Despite denial, Trump's connections to Russia go back years

Here’s what we know about Donald Trump and his ties to Russia

Donald Trump’s Many, Many, Many, Many Ties to Russia

Even folks like semi-retired gun blogger Kevin Baker and his readers are going to vote for Donald Trump. Why? Because they think Hillary is going to take away their guns. Personally, I wish she would and start with those guys but it's not going to happen. Kevin has spent years writing on his blog about the education system and Yuri Bezmenov, an ex KGB guy, who has warned the US about a totalitarian takeover. Now he and others like him in the right wing blogsphere are ACTUALLY VOTING FOR THIS TO HAPPEN.

Kevin, I had planned on leaving you alone but this complete capitulation to Putin via Trump is such a monumental example of hypocrisy that it necessitate inquiry. You rail against Russia's influence in the US and now you are going to help make that happen by voting for Putin's puppet. I have to wonder...WTF, dude? All of the long posts about Bezmenov...the education system...communists plots...ALL now rendered worthless. Where is your integrity, man? I'll be looking for your response on your site.

Given the right wing bloggers' penchant for authoritarianism, illustrated quite well in any sort of engagement with them in comments sections, my only guess here is that they are for totalitarianism if the right people are in charge. If they have some naggy liberal trying to make the world a better place and making them do stuff that they don't wanna, well, fuck that!

But if they have a system where they can keep their guns to guard against government tyranny and still jail people for being against that government and not being patriotic enough then, by gum, the are ALL IN!!!

Bush League Adolesents

Gary Johnson's brain fart yesterday on "Morning Joe" illustrates the fundamental flaw in libertarian ideology. Like adolescents, they are completely unaware of the world beyond their little sphere of tantrums and rebellion towards authority. They refuse to see how problems that happen across the world affect us here in the US. The ignore or outright dismiss the very concept of globalization, pretending that we can wall ourselves off from the rest of the world and comfortably live our lives.

The video below shows a child playing in an adult world. The fact that we have so many other people that think like him should now be the focus of the conversation. What can we do to get these people to grow up?

The (ahem) Commander in Chief Forum Post Mortem

Like many in the media, I thought last night's Commander in Chief forum was a fucking joke. Neither candidate was asked very serious questions about the issues of the day, in particular, foreign policy. Most of Hillary Clinton's time was spent on her email server. Donald Trump was asked about his love for Vladimir Putin. How about a question that called for specifics about Syria? Or climate change?

Last night brings up a larger issue which is most troubling. As Heather Parton over at Slate notes, most Americans believe a cartoon version of Hillary Clinton that bears no resemblance to reality.

Follow Chris Cillizza ✔ @TheFix This election is about voters choosing the least worst candidate. That's where we are in our politics. 10:43 AM - 4 Sep 2016 89 89 Retweets 194 194 likes 

That tweet from Chris Cilizza of The Washington Post’s The Fix blog is cleverly framed to be about the voters’ view of this campaign. Both candidates do have high unfavorable ratings among the public (as does the Congress and pretty much every other institution, including the press.) That jaded comment by a member of the media, however, illustrates something important. Some members of the press are not just commenting on a reality; they are pushing the theme of two equally unpalatable candidates and it just isn’t true.

Indeed. Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton are not equally unpalatable. Trump is the most unqualified candidate to every run for office. He's mentally unstable, filled with anger-hate-fear, and views the presidency as a monarchy. Hillary Clinton was careless with her emails as Secretary of State.

Even though Clinton is still the likely winner, we, as a country, need to stop with this fairness bullshit, not just for this election but for the future. When Trump offers zero specifics on his plans, the media needs to keep pressing. He, and all other candidates, need to be asked specific questions and held accountable for their lack of detail.

Enough with the Cult of Both Sides. Donald Trump and the people that support him are an imminent danger to our country. Their ignorance, fueled by anger, hate and fear, needs to be called out over and over again from now until November 8th.

The Media's Five Unspoken Rules For Covering Hillary Clinton

Reprinted here from this very much spot on piece from Jonathan Allen.

1) Everything, no matter how ludicrous-sounding, is worthy of a full investigation by federal agencies, Congress, the "vast right-wing conspiracy," and mainstream media outlets

2) Every allegation, no matter how ludicrous, is believable until it can be proven completely and utterly false. And even then, it keeps a life of its own in the conservative media world. 

3) The media assumes that Clinton is acting in bad faith until there's hard evidence otherwise. 

4) Everything is newsworthy because the Clintons are the equivalent of America's royal family. 

5) Everything she does is fake and calculated for maximum political benefit.

I'd like to see them apply this standard to Donald Trump.

Consumed By Right Wing Bloggery

Like most Americans, I used to find Scot Adams' Dilbert cartoon amusing. His take on the modern office space was fun and irreverent. But lately, he has been letting his ideological slip show and I'm sad to report he's bought in to the right wing blogger ideology, hook, line and sinker.

This recent post about Donald Trump really says it all. It's basically one long diatribe about how Donald Trump really isn't all that bad because our modern political system is a disaster and we should just nuke the site from orbit. Like I said, classic right wing blogger mentality. Let's destroy all the poopy stuff I don't like that makes my head hurt with all the stoopid rules and stuff that mom and dad make me follow (stomp...stomp...stomp...SLAM!)

Adams' fundamental premise is flawed. Fear of Trump isn't the same as fear of the dark. Donald Trump is a shining light of ineptitude, buffoonery, and massive incompetence. He's a con man, plain as day, so we should absolutely be afraid that he might be president. The notion that everything is so fucked up with politics that Trump wouldn't be any different illustrates just how fucking ignorant people can be. Ironic, because Adams attempts to push his own confirmation bias and cognitive dissonance on people who are "afraid of Trump."

Who's really the ignorant one here, Scott?

Crooked Hillary and Crazy Donald

As this election season enters its final phase, it's become painfully obvious there is a double standard in terms of candidate bashing. This piece from Olivia Taylor-Young sums it up quite nicely.

1) The most benign, run-of-the-mill stuff is automatic cause for suspicion. 

2) Bad faith must always be presumed. 

3) Regardless of source, every vicious, outlandish accusation warrants headlines and intense investigation.

This is, of course, what happens when you deal with a group of people (conservatives) who behave as adolescents. And a media that gets very high ratings when Clinton scandals are front and center.

Certainly, Trump has been the target of media bashing as well. But the story that sells the best with him is the "Trump is a crazy asshole" meme, not "Trump is crooked and broke the law." Today, I'm wondering why and calling bullshit.

Let's take this step by step. Remember this?



This was just one in a series of comments in which Trump bragged that he paid to play, something he is now pillorying Hillary Clinton for doing. The New York Times has an extensive article up today about how Trump has clearly violated campaign law.

In the 1990s, the Federal Election Commission fined Mr. Trump for exceeding the annual limit on campaign contributions by $47,050, the largest violation in a single year. And in 2000, the New York State lobbying commission imposed a $250,000 fine for Mr. Trump’s failing to disclose the full extent of his lobbying of state legislators. For the most part, Mr. Trump has seemed unrepentant. Testifying in 1988 about a $50,000 bank loan he had first guaranteed, and then repaid, on behalf of Andrew J. Stein’s successful campaign for New York City Council president, Mr. Trump made no bones about the move. “I was under the impression that I was getting my money back,” he told the New York State Commission on Government Integrity.

Imagine if this were Hillary Clinton. There would be calls for jail time, public floggings and a town hanging. But for Trump? He's just a businessman...that's what they do...and now he's calling attention to a broken system.

Except not really.

In the Florida case, Mr. Trump is accused of using a large and timely political donation in 2013 to ward off a potentially thorny investigation by Ms. Bondi’s office: Days before the donation was made, The Orlando Sentinel reported that the New York State attorney general’s office had sued Trump University and noted that Ms. Bondi’s office was weighing whether to join in that litigation.

A political aide to Ms. Bondi told The Associated Press earlier this year that the attorney general had solicited the donation in a conversation with Mr. Trump weeks before The Sentinel’s article. But Mr. Trump made the donation from his charitable foundation, in violation of tax regulations, and paid the penalty, as first reported by The Washington Post last week.

So, here we have Donald Trump behaving like...a politician? That really does not fit with his image as an outsider who wants to change politics as usual. Worse, and unlike the Hilz, there is clear evidence that violated the law.

The question now is...will all of the media cover this because it's not a "Crazy Donald" story?

50 State Poll

The Washington Post's recent 50 state poll is a veritable treasure trove for political junkies like me. The first thing that jumps out at me is how the electoral map has shifted quite a bit based on the candidates themselves. The race is much tighter in rust belt states which is good news for Trump. Yet Hillary Clinton is within the margin of error in places like Texas, Mississippi, Georgia and Arizona. What does all this mean?

Well, this was a poll based on 74,000 REGISTERED voters, not likely voters. This makes a huge difference and probably means that Trump is safe in Texas and Mississippi for example. Conversely, this means that Hillary Clinton is safe in Wisconsin and Pennsylvania as well. This poll does, however, show that Hillary Clinton does have a substantial lead over Donald Trump and is basically a couple of states away from 270. Hillary has 244 and Donald has 126 in the solid and leaning category. That's pretty bad.

Here's the video that breaks it all down.

The Biggest Challenge For Hillary Clinton

With the final stretch of the 2016 Election about to begin tomorrow, Hillary Clinton's biggest challenge is convincing the American public that she is more trustworthy than her image is currently showing. Today's piece in the Times is most illustrative of this.

“What am I supposed to do if I don’t like him and I don’t trust her?” a millennial black woman in Ohio asked. “Choose between being stabbed and being shot? No way!”

“She was part of the whole problem that started sending blacks to jail,” a young black man, also from Ohio, observed about Mrs. Clinton.

“He’s a racist, and she is a liar, so really what’s the difference in choosing both or choosing neither?” another young black woman from Ohio said.

And this is from black millenials, a group she will likely carry over Donald Trump. Not good at all. So what does she need to do?

The first debate presents her with a moment to make amends, as best she can, for all of this and show the country that she has the moralistic fortitude to lead this country. Donald Trump is going to attempt to make this his moment as well and I think he may surprise some people. He may very well chuck all the personal attacks, which is what Hillary and her people are preparing for, and merely talk about how great he is and what he will do to help people less fortunate than himself. There may even be a touch of humility in some stuff he says.  His "unpredictability" could be being more normal. Of course, I could be wrong about all of this and he will simply go on with his anger, hate and fear.

Regardless, she needs to answer the email question the way she did when she was interviewed recently by the Morning Joe team.

"Every time I attempt to explain my email server, I end up sounding like I am making excuses. So, no excuses. I made a mistake and I was careless. I apologize."

She could add on to this by saying the following.

"I make no excuses and have learned that, as president, I will have to be more careful to handle sensitive, government material, classified or not. And I promise you that I will."

When she is asked about her foundation, her response should be as follows.

"Though our foundation helps many people around the world, myself and my family can help many more if I become president. So, the foundation and the Clinton Global Initiative will be folded into the Gates Foundation and they can continue on with our work. All documents relating to the foundation and my meetings as Secretary of State will be made public, if they haven't already, for anyone to pour over."

Throughout the entire debate, she should also explain how she learned from her mistakes and how that reflection made her a stronger and more solid person. After all, Trump isn't going to admit any of this so the contrast will be clear between the two candidates. People tend to identify more with leaders who are like them.

Everyone makes mistakes. If Hillary shows us that she is like the rest of us, she eliminates the perception that she is above common folk and that talking point evaporates.

Stand!

Latest Election Map

Here's my latest map based on the polls and various resources.

Click the map to create your own at 270toWin.com

As we can see, Hillary has fallen off a bit in terms of her monumental lead. Now we have more of a modest lead with Iowa trending towards Trump. North Carolina has move more back to Trump as well. In many ways, North Carolina represents the struggle to shift out of the chains of the past and into the progression towards the future. It's almost there, just not quite yet.

Good Words

From First Read: “More than two months before Election Day, it’s already happening: Downballot Republicans and top GOP leaders are dumping Trump. There was no public memo or major announcement in August — just actions…” 

 “But here’s the bad news: After Labor Day, almost every single Democrat in a House and Senate race will be tying their GOP opponent to Trump. So up and down the ticket, hundreds of millions of dollars in Democratic messaging will be ‘Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump.’ And when there’s been that kind of disparity in messaging when one party is talking about one thing and the opposition is talking about everything else — see 2006 and 2008 (‘Bush, Bush, Bush’) or 2010 and 2014 (‘Obama, Obama, Obama’) — there’s been a wave. November is going to go one of two ways. One, this kind of GOP separation from Trump is going to work like we saw in 1996. Or two, the bottom is going to fall out for the Republican Party.”

I'm thinking it's going to be the latter...:)

Trump's Position on Immigration

If someone can explain to me Donald Trump's position on immigration, I'd be grateful. Oh wait, Steve Sack just did...

Things You Can/Can't Do in the NFL

Debate Prep?

The Times has a very interesting article up about how the respective Trump and Clinton camps are preparing for the first debate. It looks like the Donald is going to wing it. Can't wait!

This was my favorite bit from the piece.

“Trump has severe attention problems and simply cannot take in complex information — he will be unable to practice for these debates,” said Mr. Schwartz, who was the subject of a New Yorker profile last month that portrayed Mr. Trump as a charlatan. “Trump will bring nothing but his bluster to the debates. He’ll use sixth-grade language, he will repeat himself many times, he won’t complete sentences, and he won’t say anything of substance.”

All of the words I've bolded perfectly describe pretty much every right wing blog and right wing blog commenter out there. He's definitely their guy!!

The Colin Kerfuffle

I don't get the outrage over Colin Kaepernick's refusal to stand during the National Anthem. This is his right and his view is justified. This isn't Game of Thrones or Germany in the 1930s. We don't bend the knee to the flag or our nation. They serve us and are supposed to represent equality. Clearly, they still don't.

I'm further perplexed by Donald Trump's attack on Kaepernick.Hasn't Trump been going on and on about how awful our country is... how awful it is for black people? It seems to me that they are essentially saying the same thing. At least Kaepernick is taking a principled stand and putting himself at considerable risk.

Kaepernick is using his celebrity status to take a stand on an issue that is still a deep wound in our country's soul. We are not doing a good job of addressing the fallout from slavery...even in the year 2016. I hope he is the first of many to let his voice, or silence in this case, be heard.

Deafening Silence

Referendum on Right Wing Bloggers

Now that Stephen Bannon has taken the helm of the Trump campaign, we can officially have a national referendum on what America thinks about right wing bloggers. Many of my posts from the last few months during this election have shown how the theme of the Trump campaign is most reminiscent of the comments sections of right wing blogs. But with the Brietbart chief running the tiller, it's official. Let's take a look at some of their best headlines, shall we?

Hmm...seems like they have a little hostility towards women. Probs because they and their readers look like this...

It's going to be pure joy watching them get their asses handed to them...by a woman!!!

Be Sensitive To White People!

Climate Cognitive Dissonance

As Chris Mooney has pointed out many, many times, nothing will likely get through.

On the off chance that it might, here's that link again for those of you that have requested the handy list of denier arguments and how to bury them with the peer reviewed science.

Summer Vacation

A Lot Of What He Believes...

The "Final Stand" of the Angry Old White Man

There's a big myth out there that Donald Trump has galvanized a whole mess of new conservative voters that will put him over the top come November 8th. David Wasserman over at 538 breaks down why this doesn't really matter and is, in fact, a myth.

There’s no doubt Trump compelled hundreds of thousands of conservative voters to switch their registrations to Republican to vote for him in closed primaries, accelerating these voters’ exodus from formal Democratic affiliation. But do they constitute a surge of new November voters? Not so much. It’s likely that most of these party switchers were already voting Republican.

He then follows this assertion with quite a bit of data. Check it out!

Hillary Releases Thousands of Emails!

HILLARY RELEASES TWENTY THOUSAND SPAM E-MAILS FROM OLD NAVY

Hee hee...

Why Do They Support Donald Trump?

Answered here.

Why They Support Trump:

Ability to translate the violent dissonance in their heads into cogent, plain-stated hate

Ya Think?

The mea culpas continue...

Sykes’ many arguments with listeners over Donald Trump’s serial outrages have exposed in much of his audience a vein of thinking—racist, anti-constitutional, maybe even fascistic—that has shaken Sykes. It has left him questioning whether he and his colleagues in the conservative media played a role in paving the way for Trump’s surprising and unprecedented rise. 

Ya think? Sheesh...

Trump Supporter Attacks Interracial Couple Kissing in Public

From the Washington Post:

Daniel Rowe was apparently enraged at the sight of a black man and a white woman kissing on the streets of Olympia, Wash., Tuesday night. But police say he hid his violent intent behind a stony face until he was close enough to strike. . . .

Rowe, 32, walked up to the couple and, without warning, yelled a racial slur and lunged with his knife, police say. The blade grazed the woman and went into the man’s hip, according to a news release from Olympia police. . . .

After the attack, Rowe ran off as stunned onlookers dialed 911. The 47-year-old male victim, not realizing how badly he was injured, chased Rowe and “tripped him up,” said Lt. Paul Lower, a police department spokesman. Rowe hit his head on the ground and was knocked unconscious.

No one involved had life-threatening injuries, but police said Rowe’s behavior grew stranger as officers tried to wrestle him into the back of a patrol car.

“He tells them, ‘Yeah, I stabbed them. I’m a white supremacist,'” Lower said. “He begins talking about Donald Trump rallies and attacking people at the Black Lives Matter protest.”

According to court documents obtained by the Olympian, Rowe, who was unconscious when police encountered him, had tattoos that read “skinhead,” “white power” and “hooligan.” One tattoo showed the Confederate flag.

Trump's been egging these guys on for a year now. Is it any surprise they're starting to take action?

Worst Dictator Ever

An Excellent Summation of Conservatives Today

The question is...are these people reachable? Will they change? I find it incredibly difficult to be tolerant of such intolerance. Honestly, I think we just need to leave them behind..

More American Climate Refugees

This past July was the hottest month on record, by a lot. And it wasn't a fluke: it was the 15th straight month of record breaking temperatures.

This has produced crazy floods in Louisiana:

In just one day over the weekend, more than 31 inches of rain fell in some parts of Louisiana. The ground became saturated, and some rivers rose six feet higher than ever recorded. Rescuers evacuated more than 30,000 people, and about one-third of those have been forced to stay in emergency shelters. On Tuesday, the governor also added eight parishes to the list of federal disaster areas, raising the total to 12.

Two months ago West Virginia was hit by a "1,000-year rain," killing 23 people. Last week parts of Minnesota had eight inches of rain -- two months worth -- in just a few hours.
We're having 100-, 500- and 1,000-year rains a couple of times a year, all over the country.

Why? Higher temperatures produce heavier rains because warmer air can hold more water vapor.

Climate change has wrought a different disaster in California: drought, which has brought a slew of wildfires.

A small brush fire that started Tuesday morning near San Bernardino, California, has rapidly spread to 18,000 acres and forced more than 80,000 people from their homes.

California’s drought, now in its fifth year, has left the landscape and its vegetation parched; that, along with hot temperatures and dry winds, has given the Blue Cut fire such explosive growth that Governor Jerry Brown declared a state of emergency in San Bernardino County. The fire was first reported at about 10:30 a.m. on Tuesday, and within two hours it’d scorched 1,500 acres. By Wednesday morning, the fire was expanding in every direction. The San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department went door-to-door asking people to leave their homes, and the fire now threatens to burn several communities in the rural hills in Southern California.

The problem with all that water in the air is that it doesn't come down evenly: geography dictates precipitation patterns, and California and the American West get stiffed on rain because of their mountain ranges and other factors.

Sea level rise is hammering the Alaskan coast, and forcing an island village in Alaska to move:

Residents of Shishmaref, Alaska, voted Wednesday to relocate its ancestral island home to safer ground, escaping eroding shores and rising seas brought on by climate change.

Melting sea ice has strengthened the storms that beat along the island's shores, causing chunks to drop off into the ocean, even as the permafrost on which the community is built is rapidly disappearing.

A band of Louisiana Indians were the first American climate refugees, forced out of their homes in February.

All of these disasters were forecast by climate scientists decades ago. Yet their computer models have historically underestimated the pace of climate change.

It's been 10 years since Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth came out, and most of its warnings have proven true. The prediction that hurricanes in the Atlantic would become more severe hasn't panned out, but it wasn't totally wrong: warmer water in the Pacific has produced a large number of record-breaking tropical cyclones and typhoons in the western Pacific.

Ultimately these problems boil down to simple physics: the more CO2 in the atmosphere, the hotter it gets. The hotter it gets, the more water vapor the air holds, and the more energy in the atmosphere. More water and more energy bring heavier rains and more severe storms, which means more flooding in areas prone to heavy rainfall and drought in other areas.

A Dream of the Future

Hitting Reset Again

The Trump 2016 campaign hit the reset button yet again with the hiring of Brietbart News' Stephen Bannon as its chief executive. Trump also brought Kellyanne Conway on board to be the campaign manager. I guess I'm not sure what the difference is between the two roles. Paul Manafort just resigned as campaign manager so that probably helps with the confusion.

So, basically an already failing campaign now has two bosses instead of one. Bannon has vowed to "let Trump be Trump" but that has actually caused far more damage than anyone in the organization would care to admit.

Donald Trump’s Crucial Pillar of Support, White Men, Shows Weakness

I agree with Nate Silver on this one. Trump is doubling down on a losing strategy. He looked a little more polished yesterday, which the media is attributing to Ms. Conway, but this is only one day. Can he actually sustain this? Worse for him, though, is the fact that his main base of support loves it when he is NOT polished and makes offensive comments.

If he becomes someone else, will they lose their interest?

Portrait of Heartache and Tragedy

The Incoherence of Trump

Recently Donald Trump gave a speech in which he blasted George W. Bush and Barack Obama for "nation building." In that same speech he said, "I have long said that we should have kept the oil in Iraq."

Donald Trump seems to think the oil in Iraq is like the Hope diamond, locked up somewhere in a safe that we could just crack open and bring home.

Never mind that stealing Iraqi oil is a war crime, immoral and unethical, and a violation of the basic tenets of Christianity that forbid stealing and killing. Does it make any kind of economic sense?

Iraq's oil reserves are estimated to be 140 billion barrels. Crude oil production in 2016 was about 4.55 million barrels a day. In 2008 production was half that. The oil fields are spread out over tens of thousands of square miles of mostly desert.

If you do the math, it would take 84 years to implement Donald Trump's plan to steal all Iraq's oil. We would need to have hundreds of thousands of American troops in Iraq for the duration to fight the ongoing insurrection. Furthermore, we would need to embark on a huge ongoing nation building effort in Iraq to repair the infrastructure required to run the oil industry, which Iraqi insurgents would be blowing up constantly, as they did throughout the American occupation from 2003-2011.

For example, oil production requires large amounts of electricity, consuming about 10% of total Iraqi demand. That means you need a functioning electrical grid (one of the big "nation building" projects we spent so much money on in Iraq). This is a problem because power plants and power lines would be constant targets of the Iraqi resistance. No problem, Trump says. Just bring in generators and make electricity in the  field. Not so fast: generators need refined fuel (they can't burn crude). That means you need to haul in diesel fuel (refined in the United States, probably) along the highways that the Iraqi insurgents are blowing up with IEDs all the time.

The Iraqi petroleum industry directly employees thousands of workers. Thousands more are needed to provide basic services (truckers, sailors, mechanics, janitors, cooks, plumbers, electricians, blackjack dealers and hookers -- this is a Trump operation, after all). It was hard to find enough Iraqis willing to assist Americans when we were helping them. How many will collaborate when we're stealing their oil?

Without the Iraqis' help we would have to bring in hundreds of thousands of workers to replace Iraqi workers, which means we'd have to bring in hundreds of thousands more troops to protect the workers. In the end it could take half a million people to steal Iraq's oil.

And the cost would be prohibitive: we spent a trillion dollars on the eight-year Iraq occupation. Eight years of oil is 13 billion barrels. At $50 a barrel, that would be worth $664 billion. Stealing Iraqi oil would cost twice as much as it's worth.

And that cost would likely be much higher, because Americans working in Iraq would get paid 10 to 20 times more than Iraqis. Plus, there's the lifetime medical costs for medical care for the troops. Speaking of which, an 84-year occupation of Iraq would mean the end of the volunteer armed forces. Who would volunteer to die in Iraq to steal oil for Donald Trump? We'd need a draft (imagine how the vote in Congress for this would go down), or we'd have to hire mercenaries on the world market, which would be really pricey.

What kind of an idiotic businessman would go for a deal that costs more than it's worth? No wonder Trump declared bankruptcy so many times.

Now, I assume that Trump doesn't mean any of this. He's just saying stupid stuff because it gets applause at his rallies. His own supporters don't believe he would actually steal Iraq's oil. Nor do they believe he would build the stupid wall, deport all the Mexicans, or ban all the Muslims.

He's just venting anger and hate, and his supporters love anger and hate more than anything else.

Thus, Trump's supporters have absolutely no idea what Trump will do if elected (he doesn't either, it seems). You did get some sort of an idea when he trots out his economic plan: tax cuts for billionaires and the businesses that have been stiffing American workers for decades.

For decades Republicans have succeeded by getting their voters to vote against their own economic self interest by appealing to religious, sexist and racist sentiments. Trump supporters have finally wised up and are mad at establishment: they realize they've been fed a steady diet of Republican bullshit.

But Trump has just repackaged the the same bullshit in an angrier package. Just like his supporters know he won't steal Iraq's oil or build the border wall, they should realize he's not going to stop trade deals or bring back factories back from China and Mexico.

Because after you listen to any Trump speech, after you brush away all the asides, the contradictions, the sarcasm, the insults, the wild tangents, the misplaced adjectives and unintelligible ejaculations, the only thing Trump ever really says is that he's a businessman, and that he would negotiate a "better" deal.

Which is a completely empty promise. What's "better" for Trump and American CEOs is not better for the people who work for Trump and American corporations.

Trump Triples Down on Racism and Sexism

As Trump's polling numbers have cratered in the last couple of weeks he has made three new hires.

Paul Manafort, who has sold warlords, dictator and despots to the U.S. government for forty years, is being ousted by two right-wing zealots from Breitbart: Stephen Bannon and Kellyanne Conway.

Breitbart News has been the voice of the "alt-right," pushing racist right-wing conspiracy theories. These people peddle the standard crypto-fascist propaganda about Muslims, blacks and Hispanics. Contributors to Breitbart include Milo Yiannopoulos of Gamergate fame, who openly spout the most vile garbage against women.

Trump has also hired Roger Ailes to help him prepare for the debates, though the Trump campaign denies this because it's so damning with the dozens of former Fox employees who have come out with their own stories of Ailes' abuse.
Ailes was recently fired from Fox News for decades of harassing women in the news room. Several other Fox managers and "personalities" pulled the same sort of thing; women who refused lost their jobs or didn't get plum assignments that were contingent on sexual favors. Bill O'Reilly settled one such harassment suit for an untold sum, but the initial figure mentioned was $60 million.

These moves make it clear Trump intends to amp up his racist and sexist diatribes and has no desire to appeal to anyone but the ever-declining population of old white men and the vanishingly small number of gay men who are virulent misogynists.

Remember President Obama?

All this talk of Trump and Clinton has made most folks forget about our current president who is currently shaping up to be what Ronald Reagan was for the GOP-a legacy president who will be remembered as one of the best. Take a look at this, courtesy of 538.

JOB APPROVAL RATING
YEAR	PRESIDENT	1 MONTH BEFORE ELECTION	FINAL
2000	Bill Clinton	57%	66%
1960	Dwight Eisenhower	58	60
2016	Barack Obama	53*	—
1988	Ronald Reagan	51	63
1976	Gerald Ford	50	53
1968	Lyndon Johnson	43	49
1992	George H.W. Bush	34	49
1980	Jimmy Carter	34	34
1952	Harry Truman	32	32
2008	George W. Bush	25	29

Stunning. And this is with all the BS that the right threw at him for the past decade. Essentially what we have here is the recognition that the man deserves from people who live outside of the bubble...you know, in REALITY.