Trump Meets Anvil

Today was a Red Trump day, ere the sun rises...

I had to look back to earlier articles from 2009 to remind myself how crazy the Birther movement had been for the Far Right, and yes it was the Far Right who shilled it and ate it up. Like this tidbit:

And so, this isn't about the birth certificate. This is about the Far Right refusing to accept the 2008 election results. This is about the Far Right refusing to wake up from their fantasy-based world (where Bush and Cheney and Rush are GODS, where terrorists possess nukes and the French are cheese-eating surrender monkeys, where there's an endless supply of loans to pay for massive war expenses and unending tax cuts) and re-enter the Reality-Based community (where everything's been broken by 8 years of Bush/Cheney self-serving incompetence and the whole world hates us for warmongering and neocon arrogance). This is about the Far Right thinking it's 1993 all over again and they can attack Clinton for every half-baked rumor coming out of Arkansas, only now it's 2009 and they think they can attack Obama for every fully-baked rumor about him. Facts don't matter. Truth don't matter. Even having the courts throw their cases out for sheer stupidity don't matter. All that matters is ATTACK AND WIN.

Or this piece that came soon after:

I admit to having interests in conspiratorial stuff: huge X-Files fan here, got a copy of the Big Book of Conspiracies on my shelf somewhere. I've even got my own thoughts on who killed JFK (and why a cover-up was necessary). But even I know the difference between slightly titillating nonsense that tweaks my reading habits and this crap about Obama's birth status that extremists are using to stir up talk of coup d'etats and actual military misconduct. Too many crazy people are taking this sh-t seriously. And that's not good for the rest of us. It'd be nice if I could stop talking about it, but it's either this or the pre-planned Republican Riots at Congressional town halls this month for discussion.

Sigh. The crazy is not gonna end anytime soon.

The sad thing about what I wrote back then? I never really brought up the other underlying part of those Birther attacks: the racism behind denying Obama his very IDENTITY as a person. I felt uncomfortable then bringing it up, because it's hard to make that kind of accusation in public - even on a minor traffic site like this - and not walk away scarred by it. But nowadays, given how blatant the Far Right has gotten in their attacks on ANYONE not "Ignorant White Male", the racism HAS to be pointed out for what it was and what it is today.

And as I noted, the crazy DID NOT end in 2009. It didn't even - despite Trump's lying about it now - end in 2011 when Trump really pushed this fake narrative for all it was worth (in a likely attempt in 2012 to make a Presidential bid).

Lemme re-link this article from Christian Science Monitor... which was published in 2011 when Trump went full-tilt bullshitter selling this con:

“The cynicism of the purveyors of these fantasies is that they know very well what they are playing at, the prejudices they are fanning,” Remnick wrote. “Let’s say what is plainly true … these rumors, this industry of fantasy, are designed to arouse a fear of the Other, of an African-American man with a white American mother and a black Kenyan father.”

And now Trump, likely getting told he HAS to pander outside of his Alt-Right (hint: KKK Neo-Nazi mofos) fanbase to get over the 40 percent hump, is trying to flip-flop his way out of a racket he'd been selling for five years (at least). He's not doing this to win over Blacks or other minority groups who are well aware how racist this "Birth Certificate" crap has been, he's trying to woo back the middle-of-the-road White voters who normally won't vote for Hillary but aren't keen on voting for well-known racists like TRUMP.

If there's any good out of this, it's that the Birther crowd has lost their greatest standard bearer. Remember Orly Taitz? Better yet, let's forget her again.

If there's any other good out of this, it's that Trump is getting hammered in the press for his bouncing between one lie and another about his Birther involvement. It'd be pretty to think that this is the weekend the major media outlets - save for Fox Not-News, which has tied its fate to this particular wagon - finally switches the Narrative over to the "Trump is a Con Artist Lying His Way Out of Everything" track.

What's insulting now is that Trump is trying to pass the blame onto Hillary, making the argument that it was Clinton back in 2008 during the rough Democratic primaries who smeared Obama with the birtherism attack. Problem with that, the fact-checkers know damn well it wasn't Hillary. Obama knows it wasn't Hillary - after all, Obama picked her for Secretary of State and you don't do that for someone who insults you - and I would love to see what happens the moment Obama comes out and hammers Trump on the Anvil of History about who OBAMA really blames for the Birther crap.

Because Obama beat the shit out of Trump on this before:

It was the same night Obama was making the judgment call to take out Osama Bin Laden. The entire weekend was a humiliation for Trump, and it's burned him ever since.

I pray to the Old Gods and the New that Obama slaps the taste out of Donald's mouth.

Radio Silence For This Week (Plus a Request)

I seriously need to not blog for the next week or so.

It has to do with a writing project I need presentable for an e-publishing class at the library next Monday.

I won't be able to get it edited / beta-read before publishing it, I know, but if I'm putting something to market I might as well have it finished as a story (as not as messy).

So if you noticed I'm not blogging as often, I've kind of "gone fishin" for plot threads.

In the meantime, this is where my request comes in.

I'd kind of like to get my writing hobby/career off on a good footing, and if I can convince some of the blog viewers to take the time - and if they've got a good budget to work with - to purchase some/any/all of the ebooks or print books I've got on market.

If you go to my Writings tab up top, you'll see a list of current and past publications I've got on the market. There's a couple of humor/horror anthologies that have published my stories - I've gotten good reviews for "I Must Be Your First" in the original Strangely Funny anthology - and there's a couple of ebook titles that should be available in Kindle and EPUB formats if you look in the right retail sites.

I'd really appreciate it if you went to your local public - or college - library and make a request for the library to purchase any of the books on that list. If you give them the title and ISBN number, the library ought to be able to find the record in their acquisitions services (not always, sadly), order it, and place it on hold for you to check out. They will not do it for the early works - Last of the Grapefruit Wars will likely be too old for the market - nor the ebook ones, but the anthologies and Surviving the Age of Obstruction should be fresh enough for consideration. Granted, many libraries will be on strict budgets, hopefully they will fulfill a library user request.

For that, I will thank you.

Now, turning off all communications. Running silent in 5... 4... 3... Byleven... dammit, restart the countdown.  5... 4... 3... 2... 1... ZEMO.

Sigh.

Wake Me Up When The Wingnut Nightmare Ends

Today is September 11.

It has been fifteen years since 2001. Since that clear-sky day that Tuesday turned so shockingly wrong.

And here we are, fifteen years later in the midst of an election cycle where one of the candidates - Trump - is an unabashed Islamophobe, eager to defame Muslims with accusations and lies that make it easier for his followers to attack innocent people on our streets.

Here we are fifteen years into a War on Terror where the crimes our own nation committed - a torture regime, unjustified invasion and occupation of Iraq that was based on lies - remain unanswered. Worse, the likes of Trump wants to bring that torture regime AND a re-occupation of Iraq (this time to blatantly take all the oil) back.

It has been fifteen years for my people, for our nation, for the United States sitting in the shadow of our own demons, driven into the shade by our fears and our rage. Kept there by a political faction among the Far Right who profits from keeping their fanbase fearful and mad. Any sane policy on keeping our nation safe gets ignored. Any hopeful expression of our nation's diversity and openness of culture gets mocked and insulted and beaten. Any attempt at justice - ending a prolonged and possibly illegal detention of prisoners at Gitmo, for starters - gets denied.

And the United States stumbles on, still bearing the scars of that Tuesday. We won't heal. There are those among us who can't.

And we're still stuck in a nightmare doomed to get worse if the biggest fear-monger of them all gets his orange-colored ass into the Oval Office.

This will not end well, if at all, in my lifetime, will it?

So Who Really Makes Up the Voting Base For Trump? (w/ Update)

So Hillary got the Far Right in a snit this weekend by calling out "half" the Trump supporters for their racism, homophobia, Islamophobia, and sexism:

“You know, to just be grossly generalistic, you could put half of Trump's supporters into what I call the 'basket of deplorables'. Right?” Clinton said to applause and laughter from the crowd of supporters at an LGBT for Hillary fundraiser where Barbra Streisand performed. “The racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic — you name it.”

“And unfortunately there are people like that. And he has lifted them up,” she added.

As Ta-Nehisi Coates puts it:

...One way of reporting on Clinton’s statement is to weigh its political cost, ask what it means for her campaign, or attempt to predict how it might affect her performance among certain groups. This path is in line with the current imperatives of political reporting and, at least for the moment, seems to be the direction of coverage. But there is another line of reporting that could be pursued—Was Hillary Clinton being truthful or not?

Much like Trump’s alleged opposition to the Iraq War, this not an impossible claim to investigate. We know, for instance, some nearly 60 percent of Trump’s supporters hold “unfavorable views” of Islam, and 76 percent support a ban on Muslims entering the United States. We know that some 40 percent of Trump’s supporters believe blacks are more violent, more criminal, lazier, and ruder than whites. Two-thirds of Trump’s supporters believe the first black president in this country’s history is not American. These claim are not ancillary to Donald Trump’s candidacy, they are a driving force behind it.

When Hillary Clinton claims that half of Trump’s supporters qualify as “racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic,” data is on her side...

If I had to break it down, the Republican voting base - the biggest part of Trump's support - goes like this:

You have the traditional Republican voter, the ones who were raised since birth - or at least since their mid-life crisis - to vote habitually for the GOP regardless of who the candidate on the ticket is. These are the voters that Rude Pundit noted before would vote Republican even when it was their best interest to vote Democrat based on the issues. These are the ones who aren't really fully racist, they're merely prejudiced (there is a distinction, at least among themselves) and are genuinely nice to other ethnicities and would probably vote for reasonable social aid programs and keep public schools funded and stuff, they'd just rather everyone stay on their sides of the lines and not make a fuss about it. These are the ones who can't vote for Hillary Clinton even if Hillary guaranteed full-time jobs at $90,000 minimum across the board and non-fattening ice cream for life. I'd have to say these were the ones who didn't vote for Trump in the primaries but likely for the "Establishment" type candidates like Jeb, Kasich, or Rubio. That would be about 25 percent of the primary voter turnout (and a good number of business leaders who financially support the party).

You have the hardcore Far Right voter who obsess fully over the dogmatic positions for cutting taxes, slashing government regulations, shutting down Planned Parenthood, bringing back the standard neocon foreign policy stances but not exactly anything that would alienate our allies. These are the Republicans who have no problem with government shutdowns, or blocking anything to the Left of Barry Goldwater. They're relatively racist and sexist but are more subtle about how they sell themselves to the public knowing full well there are some lines you can't cross. At least not until they've got solid control of all three branches of government. These are the types who voted for the more radical candidates like Santorum, Huckabee, and the second place guy Cruz. I'd put them about 27 percent of the primary voter turnout (and with the other business leaders who are more wingnut, such as the Koch brothers).

And then you have the Real Trump supporters. The ones who... well...

The ones who display open rage at Latinos. Who can't wait for that Trump Wall to go up between the US and Mexico. Who can't wait for another Operation Wetback to drive out 11 million people. Who fully buy into Trump's accusations of Mexicans being rapists and thugs.

The ones who attack Muslims in public. Who buy into the fear-mongering that EVERY Muslim is a knife-wielding bomb-wearing killer driven by a hateful religion to kill "true" Christians.

The ones who express utter disdain - and violence - towards women. Who tend to be the ones on social media using it as an outlet for some pretty vulgar stuff. And who threaten to get worse.

These are the ones who went all in for Trump during the primaries around 45 percent.

Granted, these are just based on uneven - actually minor - primary turnout results, that do not cover the Independent voters who couldn't participate in any of the closed primaries. This is just a rough guess estimate, but it has the virtue of filling the polling numbers and support that the Far Right and Right-leaning voters are giving Trump right about now.

The scary thing is how the hater faction backing Trump is so large compared to the other Republican factions still struggling to stay afloat this election cycle.

Hillary may have apologized for saying "deplorable" stuff about Trump supporters but I'm with Coates on this. Hillary didn't lie.

And Hillary was more polite about it that I would have been. I've had called those half of Trump supporters - the neo-Nazis, the Klan, the Islamophobes, the Roger Aileses of their tribe - a bunch of assholes. And then I'd ask the saner members of the Republican Party forced to back Trump something along the lines of "WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU GOING TO DO ABOUT YOUR OWN PARTY TURNING INTO A BUNCH OF MONSTERS?"

Update: PM Carpenter has less sympathy for the enablers of the "Deplorable", especially Ron Fouriner. To wit:

It is shocking, at long last it is still shocking, that Fournier (& Co.) could be so blind as to not see that only populist baskets of virtually undifferentiated deplorables could have elevated Mussolini and Hitler to the ultimate authority they sought. The latter deliberately distorted the origins of the national ills they addressed, while the latter of the latter pursued assorted scapegoats with unprecedented verve. And this — all of it — would have gone nowhere had it not been for the authoritarians' popular support; less than a majority, but popular enough. The lazy, the easily beguiled, the human detritus of pluralistic societies grabbed at the quick, brutal fixes of fascist appeals — and the indifferent or less enthusiastic supporters were really no better than the vigorously enthusiastic. They — all of them — were essentially one of a kind: deplorable...

...One may support an unbigoted, non-sexist, intellectually deep and quite curious if rather conventional pol, or one may support her point-by-point opposite with no blanket deplorability attached. Just how in God's name is that possible? Hillary's "gross" generalization was, is, incontestable: Roughly half (probably more) of Trumpeteers are "racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamaphobic, you name it." At least those are principles, of sorts. They may be contemptible principles, but they're principles as "philosophically" rooted as was National Socialism's anti-Semitism. Far less principled are the other half who support a megalomaniacal thug merely because he plays into the extravagances of Hillary-hatred. And Trump "has lifted them up" — all of 'em.

We can only hope the result of this election cycle is a decisive Trump and Republican loss across the board. And then the entire GOP - the party elected, their media pundit allies, their deep-pocket funders, their voters - needs to sit down in a room and figure out just how WRONG they all got this cycle.

The Things That Ought To Unsettle The Hell Out of You Regarding Trump

Update: Hello again, Crooks & Liars readers linking in from Mike's Blog Round-Up! Thank you again Batocchio for the link! Please check out my other anti-Trump diatribes while you're here, just click the tags below. ;)


1) He still doesn't get it.

2) He has no respect for anyone or anything. He views professional intelligence officers and military generals as political props for his fantasies. He projects onto them his own twisted world-view in such a way that most of them are thisclose to violating their own confidentiality rules to speak out against him.

3) He really doesn't get it.

4) Trump lies and continues to lie because nobody moderating his public appearances is willing to confront him on where he either distorts his own previous statements or where he makes sh-t up.

5) He soooo doesn't get a single thing about it.

6) Trump's openly misogynistic view of women shows incredible disrespect towards rape victims. He claims putting women in the military inevitable for them to be raped by male colleagues, a statement so vile and ill-informed that it intentionally "blames the victim" from start to finish and assumes men would be rapists if put in the same work environment as women. Goddamn him.

7) The thing that Trump doesn't get is that being President of the United States is a serious commitment and requiring of a sober, informed, and focused mind. He has none of those things.

8) Trump's open man-crush on Russian autocrat (if not outright dictator) Putin is so blatant it's unsettling. Any other political figure fawning over a Russian leader like this would have been called before HUAC and jailed for sedition by now.

9) Trump's vanity is such that he's a clear front-runner for being the target of Carly Simon's "You're So Vain" even after the singer's admitted the second verse was about Warren Beatty. Okay, seriously, Trump is so self-absorbed it should bother anybody who wants to see empathy in our Presidents towards the nation. But with Trump that will never happen: everything under a President Trump will all happen to the benefit of Trump, even if it wrecks the entire world.

10) Trump really really DOES NOT GET IT. Ever.

And for that he should never get the White House.

Just on any ONE of the serious points I put up there - Numbers 2, 4, 6, 8, and 9 - Trump should be disqualified from the campaign and even sent into exile (hey, he apparently likes Russia... ) before he causes any more damage. And this isn't even getting into the SUPER SERIOUS charges of financial corruption, bankruptcy, possible bribery of elected officials, and further acts of malfeasance.

FOR THE LOVE OF GOD DO NOT VOTE FOR TRUMP.

This Needs to be the Headline Of Every Major Paper For the Rest of the Year

TRUMP IS A F-CKING LYING MONSTER

It will not be libel. It will not be slander. It will be the f-cking truth.

I am honestly calling upon God Almighty here to smite you Beltway bastards who keep underplaying Trump's criminality and sleaze and keep overhyped false scandals about Hillary on the f-cking news cycles when those fake stories turn out to be nothingburgers.

How many more f-cking questions does Hillary have to f-cking answer about an email system that the FBI and Justice Department already investigated for what two f-cking years?

Stop f-cking using Drudge or Rush or Breitbart or Assange as f-cking sources because they are NOT f-cking reliable or trustworthy. They are f-cking hacks shilling their own f-cking agendas (or Putin's) to f-ck up this country.

I just spent ten minutes yelling and screaming, coping with this crappy pseudo-debate NBC just hosted where Trump was allowed to slide on his lies while Hillary kept getting hammered about those f-cking emails like four f-cking times. WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU TRYING TO PROVE, MATT LAUER, THAT YOU CAN BE "FAIR" TO TRUMP? F-CK. YOU.

Clinton Foundation Vs. Trump Foundation

Where I work, I have access to a foundations/grants database.

On a whim, I took a look at the two foundations currently in the news:

The Clinton Foundation versus the Trump Foundation (as of 2014 reports)

Clinton Foundation	Trump Foundation
Assets:$354,190,170	Assets: $1,273,895
Giving: $5,160,385	Giving:  $591,450

On the one hand, you can see that the Clintons are working with greater assets, doing a better job of fund-raising, and giving out ten times as much as what Trump Foundation does. The only thing favoring Trump's non-profit is that they give out more (over half) of the assets they claim... it's just not anywhere near what the Clintons are doing.

Clinton Foundation stated purpose "works to strengthen the capacity of governments and individuals to alleviate poverty, improve global health, strengthen economies, and protect the environment."

Trump Foundation stated purpose "giving primarily for health organizations, youth development, and social services."

Clinton Foundation doesn't set a geographic limit, even giving on an international basis. After all, they're covering global health and environmental issues.

Trump Foundation limits themselves to giving primarily in New York or Massachusetts. No real reason given.

The governing board for the Clinton Foundation has CEO, CFO, executive Director. The only Clinton family member I see active with the non-profit is Chelsea Clinton.

The governing board for the Trump Foundation is all Trump: Donald himself, two of his kids, one of his grandkids, and I think his son-in-law. I know I shouldn't suspect *cough* nepotism *cough* but still...

The database I use didn't show on the records the foundations' rating scale, it may have been under a different part of the directory. But for what I know, the Clinton Foundation is vetted and graded and the Trump Foundation isn't.

And the Beltway media only wants the CLINTON Foundation to close down?

Screw them.

A Serious Scandal For a Deadly Serious Election Year

This has been a story floating out there for months now, and I hadn't even focused on it much because 1) There were 50 other terrible stories about Trump and 2) There were 20 other terrible stories about corrupt Florida Republicans. But now there's starting to be some buzz about this, since the major papers including the Washington Post are now paying attention:

Donald Trump on Monday dismissed questions about his failure to disclose an improper $25,000 contribution to a political group connected to Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi, who was at the time considering whether to open a fraud investigation against Trump University...

...The large donation, made by the Donald J. Trump Foundation in 2013, violated federal rules that prohibit charities from making donations to political candidates. Trump and his team also failed to disclose the large gift to the Internal Revenue Service, instead reporting that the donation was given to an unrelated group with a similar name — effectively obscuring the contribution.

Bondi ultimately decided not to open an investigation against Trump’s embattled for-profit education business...

So, here's a few things to point out:

• The donation violated federal rules, even in this age of Citizens United.
• Trump's people refused to report this properly to the IRS, trying to hide it by claiming it went to a different group. Repeat: they hid what they did, they knew what the rules were and attempted to avoid them.
• Bondi ended the investigation into Trump's scam program. Other states that investigated Trump University DID NOT end their investigations and in fact pressed charges. Court cases are starting this November (unfortunately, not until after the general election).

There's more: There is evidence Bondi went to Trump's people asking for the donation.

Anyone remember enough of their high school Latin to know what quid pro quo means?

It means roughly "this for that." It means an exchange of favors: You do this for me, I do that for you. In politics, it's a form of back-room pay-for-play dealing that would seem to a third party like a form of payoff, or worse a form of bribery.

Searching the illegality of quid pro quo on the Intertubes, I came up with something called the Hobbs Act, and a website that delved into the matter:

The Hobbs Act prohibits the obstruction of commerce by extortion, which defines as “the obtaining of property from another, with his consent, induced by wrongful use or actual or threatened force, violence, or fear, or under color of official right.” Hobbs Act violations based on extortion by a public official need not include proof of threat, fear, duress, or coercion. It is now established that the “under color of official right” portion of the Act is not unconstitutionally vague. What is less clear is the type of conduct which transforms a public official’s quest for campaign contributions to extortion under the Hobbs Act...

So did Bondi extort/solicit a bribe from Trump/Trump's handlers? Remember, she approached them about getting a donation while at the same time she was supposed to be investigating Trump's University as a possible rip-off scheme to separate students from their credit card balances. Bondi was supposed to represent the citizens in Florida who had their personal finances sucked up and wiped out by Trump's program.

And after Bondi's visit with Trump/Trump's people, and after getting that $25,000 campaign donation she used to win re-election in 2014, that investigation went away, which benefited Trump (up until the point where the other states digging into the scandal dropped the hammer on him).

While it's nice to see the major news outlets start paying attention to this story, they shouldn't treat it as just another one-day headliner. This is a serious matter, a potentially criminal one at that. There ought to be constant news coverage about this: Did Bondi get paid - did she ask for it - by Trump to drop a case against him?

By all rights this is a major scandal: An elected official for the state of Florida played favorites with someone under criminal investigation and had that person pay her off. And that someone under criminal investigation is now campaigning to be the highest-ranked executive of the land.

Somebody better be filing for an investigation into Bondi's lack of investigating. Somebody - it has to be someone (possibly one of Trump's victims) with standing to file - better be getting a special prosecutor at the federal level to look into this.

Bondi ought to be resigning over this. She's been caught playing favorites with lobbyists before: This is worse, direct interaction with a suspect and that suspect's organization and direct inaction failing to bring that suspect to answer to the law.

Keep beating the news drum over this, people. There's solid evidence of foul misdeeds here.

Update: Some further linkage, this time to David A. Graham over at the Atlantic. Trump's own history of bragging how he buys political favors is a key point:

...Bondi and Trump both insist that the donation had no connection with the decision not to pursue the case against Trump, and there’s no definitive proof otherwise. There is, however, the strange timing, and Trump’s past statements, in which he assured audiences that, yes, the game was rigged; yes, politicians could be bought; yes, he had done the buying; and yes, he was the only one who could fix it, since he was honest about how the game worked.

Asked about his Journal comments during the August 6, 2015, Republican primary debate in Cleveland, for example, Trump said, “You’d better believe it. If I ask them, if I need them, you know, most of the people on this stage I've given to, just so you understand, a lot of money...”

Graham's article points out the history of Trump handing out donations to key figures who just happened to be either in a position to help him into a deal or help him out of a jam, including payoffs uh donations to current Texas governor Abbott.

Trump reveled in how "the game was rigged" and how "he" could play it. Now, he's got some explaining to do, and he shouldn't get any goddamn wriggle room to lie his way out of this.

Ignoreland Lyrics Still Have Meaning

If they weren't there we would have created them
Maybe, it's true
But I'm resentful all the same
Someone's got to take the blame
I know that this is vitriol
No solution, spleen-venting
But I feel better having screamed, don't you? - REM "Ignoreland"

I've been spending this Labor Day weekend breaking out an old story I tried submitting to the Anvil Press 3-Day Novel contest. It was a complete mess but it was the most I'd ever written for one of those 3-Day things (oy, the time limit is ruthless). I'm getting it out now so I can use it to teach an e-Publish class this month at the library.

I wrote it in 2008, during the final days of the Dubya administration and venting a ton of outrage at the ongoing scandals of the mis-managed wars and crashing economy. Funny thing, I haven't looked at it in years - trying to focus on more sci-fi and superhero writing to make a niche there - but breaking it out now I am horrified by how many crimes were left ignored these past eight years.

I just need to update it to the horrors of the 2016 election cycle and I should have something novella-sized for your Amazon Kindles. I'll keep you informed.

A General Appeal To the American Voters: WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING?

I'm not thrilled with how the polling is going right now.

By all rights Trump should be sliding into the low 30s. He shouldn't still be at 40 percent support.

Granted, it is the nature of polling that the results are a week or two behind the current news of the ongoing campaigns. So the results we're seeing now are based on situations two weeks ago, not necessarily within the past week itself (during which Trump switched back to full-on "Build A Wall" anti-Latino bullsh-t). Thing is, two weeks ago Trump wasn't doing any better, having to cope with an organization still a mess and his so-called "pivot" not really moderating anything about himself. The only thing I can think of is that the previous weeks were filled with primary voters getting their groove on at the state level, and a lot of Republican voters getting their "I MUST SUPPORT THE PARTY" mindset into full gear.

I'm not the only one bothered by this. Bob Cesca at Salon.com is worried too:

And the GOP nominee hasn’t really done anything specific to warrant such a change in fortunes. In fact, he’s done almost everything wrong by a factor of thousands. This speaks volumes about the malfunctioning condition of American politics and the news media, and I’m afraid that all of the garment rending over Trump’s individual hourly trespasses is serving to avoid the big picture crisis: Trump shouldn’t even be in the race, much less nearly tied with a far more qualified opponent. He’s marched through a super-colossal loophole in the system, bobby-pins and border walls in tow, while doing everything wrong...

I know we shouldn't panic... but...

Panic is a necessity when dealing with this reality: We are one vote away from electing a racist, sexist, ignorant, ill-informed, lying con artist named Trump to the highest office in the land. What Trump can do in the White House is horrifying: subvert existing laws, sign in new laws that will shred our rights (he's openly promised to do this), terrorize our own populace, destroy every foreign alliance that helps keep us safe.

Trump shouldn't be polling at 40 percent. He shouldn't even be polling near 33 percent - if you factor in how the electorate is divided into thirds of Republican-Independent-Democrat - because Trump doesn't hold a near-lock on Republican voters (he's near about 85 percent intraparty support, where Romney in 2012 was near 95 percent). Well, maybe he could be if Trump is pulling any numbers from the Independent Third... but who the hell among the Independent-minded voters ACTUALLY THINKS TRUMP IS A VIABLE CHOICE?!

This is an insane part of an already insane and broken election cycle.

This is where the flaws of the national media - the part of the institution designed to inform the voters as factually and accurately as possible - are striking. The mainstream media has for the past month attacked Hillary Clinton more than they've gone after Trump, all because:

1) the Beltway types never liked Hillary,
2) they're obsessing over getting a BREAKING news story on the Clintons that could FINALLY be a major scandal after 25 years of near-misses and one sex scandal about blow-jobs, yet they keep failing to do so, and
3) they want their damned horse race to make it to the finish line, so they're under-reporting the sins of one campaign (Trump's) and exaggerating the flaws of the other (Hillary's).

This isn't just Fox Not-News: CNN has gone all in as Trump Apologists, and MSNBC has more fanboys in the tank for the RNC than they have actual reporters digging into the serious criminal issues surrounding Trump. Good Lord, so-called Progressive Lawrence O'Donnell argued if Trump was "softening" on his immigration stance: a real Progressive knows Trump has been a real-life racist for so long that he won't pivot on that hatred for anything. This happened not because O'Donnell is Progressive or Left: this happened because O'Donnell is a media talking head, and this is his livelihood of forcing balance (all in the name of ratings and ad space) where there IS no balance.

As a result, our media has pretty much convinced a sizable population that "both sides are corrupt." I'm hearing people now saying they have "a choice between AIDS and Cancer." They're equating a known bankrupt-driven failure of a businessman with a documented history of racism and misogyny who's promising more of the same as President to a long-time political figure with a proven track record of impressing her voters and understanding public administration who just happens to have a dubious reputation all because her haters GAVE her that reputation in the first place.

This is infuriating, bordering on professional malpractice.

This really isn't Panic for me as it is Rage: That my whole nation is collapsing down around ourselves because of bad information, primal emotions, and outright foolishness.

We're supposed to be better than this, America. We're supposed to be better than this anti-immigrant, anti-policy, con artist shilling himself as the Great Orange Hope when he's really a Tiny-Fingered Cheeto-Faced Ferret-Wearing Shitgibbon.

Appealing to the better angels of our nature apparently does not work anymore. Fine. Just gonna have to yell at you.

WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH YOU PEOPLE?! TRUMP IS A WALKING DISASTER AREA OF A HUMAN BEING WHO LIES MORE THAN A BEAR RUG. HE'S FACING MULTIPLE COURT CASES ABOUT HIS ACTS OF FRAUD AND CORRUPTION, HE WON'T RELEASE HIS TAX RETURNS, HE'S OPENLY CALLING ON MASS DEPORTATION ON A SCALE THIS WORLD HASN'T SEEN SINCE THE HOLOCAUST AND I AM NOT GOING GODWIN HERE DAMMIT THIS IS REAL.

Argh.

Look, you may have your outrage and your hurt feelings and your fears about where "your" nation may be heading, but NONE of that is REAL. You've been fed fear-mongering by a group of media monsters - Hi, Rush! Hi, Ann! Hi, Sean! Hi, Glenn! -who offer you that shit because it makes you buy their books and keep them on the gravy train.

If you think you've got a standard-bearer in Trump that can lead you to your Promised Land of "Whites Only Utopia" you are sadly mistaken. Trump is a con artist who will rip you off - he will rip off the entire nation if he can - and leave you in the dust convincing you that it's still all the fault of Others than himself.

STOP BUYING THE GODDAMN SNAKE OIL, AMERICA.

The Hell. Is Happening Anymore. When will sanity prevail? When the lies stop. When the self-serving bullshit stops.

Mama Wartenberg's Traditional Tasty Taco Truck

"If you don't do something about it, you're gonna have taco trucks on every corner!" - "Latinos for Trump" co-founder Marco Gutierrez on MSNBC 9/1/2016

THIS MIGHT WORK.

"Everybody gets a taco truck!" - Oliver Willis

Just think of the economic benefits of having taco trucks on every corner! No, this is serious! Food truck service is actually a smart investment in the right markets!

Hell, give me the seed money right now! Lemme go start my own taco truck service!

And all I gotta do is use Mama Wartenberg's excellent Mexican-German recipes to serve up the BEST TACOS IN CENTRAL FLORIDA!

Take the finest taco tortilla shells made from pure Iowa corn.

Grill the pulled pork doused in peppers and the family chili sauce.

Layer it with lettuce onion tomato and the finest Cheddar and Monterey Jack cheeses.

Topped with the purest sour cream shipped from the farms of Bavaria.

We can sell three tacos for $5.99 plus drink!

Who wants in on this franchise, baby!

TACOS FOR EVERYONE!

P.S. be wary of any Trump Taco Trucks in your neighborhood. They won't serve the best tacos, not ever.

What To Expect This September 2016

If last night's #Trumpsterfire is any indication, the cray-cray isn't going to end this month. It's going to get worse.

I was hoping that by this time the Republican Senators will waver in their obstruction against Judge Garland's nomination to the vacant Supreme Court seat - its vacancy has become an ongoing embarrassment - but right now I'm not seeing that many Republicans pivoting from their now-finished primary races towards a more moderate General Election mode. Unless the polling quickly reflects a lot of independent voters rejecting incumbent GOP Senators over their refusal to do their jobs, there is every likelihood the Senate won't do anything until after the November election and the certainty of Trump's defeat.

And even then, if Hillary wins and the Senate remains Republican, there's every chance those damn buzzards will STILL refuse to fill that SCOTUS seat out of sheer spite.

So there goes my bet that Garland would be getting a hearing by now. Shame on me for getting my hopes up.

One thing to expect this September will be the uptick in television ads, although it's likely going to be one-sided: Hillary's campaign has been shoving money in a lot of places to get the attention, while Trump's campaign still seems underwhelming in the amounts they're spending. Although the Trump people claim they're raking in the cash, they don't seem to be using it for the usual things. Then again, Trump never needed to spend for ad space considering how much media coverage he obtains just by being a verbal jackass.

The first Presidential debate is set for September 26th. There's supposed to be a lot of prepping by the major candidates during this month. This is just another moment to promote how hilarious Alexandra Petri is, by the way.

I swore recently I wouldn't do any more debate drinking game rules. But for this one, should I change my mind and set the rules for how early and how often everybody should drink (hint: the second Trump opens his mouth, drink whole bottle and cry your tears into the empty container)? I wanna get some comments / votes below.

It's also the start of professional and collegiate football season. GO BUCS, please don't humiliate the Tampa Bay region... GO BULLS, let's win a conference for once. And GO GATORS, let's do what we can to save Leonardo's Pizza, damn it UF it's a NATIONAL TREASURE...

What Could Possibly Go Wrong? Trump's Impulsive Trip to Mexico

This kinda came out of the blue last night, and I was distracted by the Florida primary voting so I didn't give it much attention, but this is what I'm waking up to.

Trump accepted an invitation to speak IN MEXICO this day, in-between a morning fundraiser in Los Angeles and then a planned "major immigration speech" in Arizona.

If you read the tweet-storm that the Balloon-Juice article highlights, this isn't exactly the sanest thing the Trump campaign's ever done.

What's the Spanish word for "straitjacket" again?

I can think of a few reasons why Trump is doing this:

1) It's a chance to preen before more cameras. His vanity compels him to do this.

2) As an impulsive creature, any off-the-wall proposal given to him will be accepted as a challenge.

3) Trump thinks this will help his "pivot" to win over White voters horrified by Trump's racist anti-Latino statements of the past year lifetime as well as stop more Latino voters from joining African-American voters in the #NeverTrump coalition.

4) The Mexican President Nieto making the offer must have thrown in an offer of a free lunch.

5) Trump's really bat-shit crazy. That BJ article links to Josh Marshall, who posits "Trump's Razor" as the reason this is happening:

...Trump's Razor helps here. It's tempting to assume that there's some angle Trump has here, some plan or understanding with Peña Nieto to make this not as silly a decision as it appears to be. I'm tempted because how could they think this was a good idea? Trump's Razor tells us to resist this temptation. "The stupidest scenario possible that can be reconciled with the available facts." I think that's what we have here. It's as stupid as it looks. Who knows? Maybe Trump will handle this deftly and it'll be a huge success. But Trump's Razor has yet to fail me...

At best? Trump comes away from the Mexico visit with a subdued, mature impression that he can handle foreign visits and provide "context" to his openly bigoted statements ("Mexicans are rapists") and positions ("Let's build a Wall and have Mexico pay for it!"). Most likely, Trump will trip over himself with a grasping, ad-libbed presentation talking about himself more than anything or anyone else ("Isn't it great that I'm here! People respect me to do this! Mexicans really love me!"). At worst, by this afternoon we'll have the luxury of watching Trump get arrested by the FBI at the Phoenix airport for having instigated a border war with Mexico.

It's a good thing I'm in meetings this afternoon. I have other things to stress about.

Ten Years Blogging And All I Got to Show For It Is a T-Shirt

Well, as sold on CafePress and what not... ahem. I should focus here.

Infidel753 over on his blog announced he had completed ten years of crazy blogging and took a moment to look back at his biggest reads. Blogger.com tracks viewership stats, country of linkage, and search terms used to bring up the blog.

He pointed out how Pinku-Sensei over at his blog had done the same thing, and I got to thinking that hey, it wouldn't hurt to look back as part of the Ten Years Gone sentiment and see what was popular among the eight regular readers and occasional guests...

10) There's a book on suggested amendment ideas! Oct 23, 2007
1135 Pageviews

This is a hold-over from the days where I wanted to focus my blogging on amendment reforms and ideas, when the blog was Amendments We Need and... almost nobody read it. But this picked up a lot of traffic because of the keywords: the word "amendment" and the name "Larry Sabato," a well-known Constitutional scholar and political pundit. Sad thing is, there's nothing to this entry. It's barely two paragraphs, mostly noticing there's a book on suggested amendment ideas. It's kind of sad how the Google search algorithms work.

9) Democratic Debate Drinking Game for October Oct 1, 2015 7 comments
1144 Pageviews

This is part of a phase on my blogging when I couldn't take the then GOP Primary debates of the 2015-16 news cycle. So to cope, I wrote a series of mocking, almost horrifyingly accurate drinking rules for people watching the debates.

This isn't even the highest ranking drinking game mockery, just one that eked into the top 10. I will say more higher on the list.

8) The Danger of Trump's World View Apr 29, 2016 5 comments
1245 Pageviews

The biggest reason I get a lot of recent traffic is that somewhere around 2012 (2011?) I came to the attention of Batocchio, blogger at Vagabond Scholar, who placed links of my articles at Crooks & Liars newsblog under the Mike's Blog Round-Up daily share. Since then, other guest managers of MBRU like Tengrain and Infidel would link me as well, kicking up my traffic from fourth-tier to... um, maybe second-tier infamy.

This affected me in two ways. One, it increased how often I would blog because before then I would post something maybe once a week: Nowadays I try to blog something of interest once a day. Two, it made me try to write things of genuine thought and intellectual worthiness to make the grade for the MBRU notice.

This actually wasn't one of my more intellectual works. Borrowing a lot from Adam Silverman's more scathing attack on Trump's world-view from Balloon-Juice, all I did was add on my views of Barber's Presidential Character traits and let it out there. It had a lot of the emotional urgency - due to it pointing how dangerous Trump would be, period - which I guess made it a popular article to link. It not only got the C&L treatment, I also got linked to Infidel's individual weekly wrap-up as well as a link from Skippy the Bush Kangaroo!

7) Florida Ballot Amendments 2012: The Big No Oct 12, 2012 1 comment
1257 Pageviews

One thing I noticed from the analytical information is how I get traffic from other nations. I get readers flocking in from places like Russia and Japan for certain articles. Sometimes because the Russians were trying to hack me, probably, still I shouldn't be too paranoid. Ahem...

This was HUGELY popular in places like Japan and France, and the reason why was that I was blogging about a rare thing: the statewide amendments on the Florida ballot in 2012. There must not be a lot of other people who spend the time - at least back then - to go over each amendment in detail and offer up a suggested "vote this way". I must pop up high on the search engine results whenever someone wants to know "hey, what's Amendment 7 about" and "should I vote NO on this amendment on tax exemptions for war veterans?"

6) Florida 2014 Election: Sample Ballots and Reminders Oct 12, 2014 8 comments
1380 Pageviews

As noted with 7), my Florida-based evaluations of the sample ballots and amendment votes are a big hit with the search engines. This one got slightly better traffic, and even got more heated commentary, because of the key races for Governor, the Medical Marijuana vote, and the Pasco County Mosquito Control Board (sadly, there wasn't enough information on that year's Mosquito Control candidates, which led to a lot of angry readers). This year, I hope I get a good showing for the general election recommendations...

5) American Income, American Injustice Mar 6, 2015 2 comments
1503 Pageviews

This one is one of my prouder achievements. Building off of the examinations from better writers like Ta-Nehisi Coates and Chad Staton, I delved into our nation's nasty little secret of police-driven extortion in the form of Asset Forfeiture, and how it was keeping poor communities broken and feeding into the cycle of mistrust between law enforcement and the citizenry needing their service. I consider it one of my better calls for reforms I've written.

4) Whatever happened to the Port-O-San Cleaner from Woodstock Aug 15, 2009 7 comments
1569 Pageviews

If the previous article is my proudest work, this is my most personal fave.

I've been a fan of Woodstock Festival 1969 ever since my high school years studying modern history, and so every year every August I find myself gushing over the event. In particular, I came to respect the man who showed up in the classic award-winning documentary working on keeping the Port-O-Sans clean for 500,000 (!) attendees, and so in 2009 I dedicated a researched blog article about Mr. Taggart, the Hero of Woodstock.

Where most of these articles are ranked high thanks to traffic links from Crooks & Liars and other bloggers, this one does not. And yet it made the Top 5 all on its own, based on search engine requests from hundreds of other people trying to find anything on the "guy who cleaned the Port-O-Sans at Woodstock." Every day I see one, three, five, eight people hitting this article - sometimes not even near the anniversary - all because they want to find any info on him too. Such is the legacy Mr. Taggart has left to us: there are so many who watch the documentary and are touched by the man's story and who want to know more...

And I'm still waiting to hear from Mr. Taggart's son! C'mon man, I need to hear your story...

3) The Long October: The Ambitious Damage of The Hollow Men Oct 15, 2013 2 comments
1969 Pageviews

This was me, waxing poetic during the big Republican Shutdown effort of 2013, what I called "the Long October." This made a big impact on the MBRU page the week I wrote it, and I later considered it for Batocchio's Annual Roundup at his Vagabond Scholar site, which added to the traffic.

2) And Iran. Day Six Jun 18, 2009 2753 Pageviews

I was one of hundreds of people blogging about the Iranian Green Revolution back in 2009, hoping at the time that the people's uprising might lead to good things.

Sadly, it didn't.

I still got a lot of traffic for this entry, most of it from France, probably because this one had photos to it, some I had created on the I Can Has Cheezburgr site using the Demotivational Poster tool. And ouch, the links have actually gone bad. I need to go in and fix those...

In the meantime, the Iranian uprising had been quashed in one way but had retained life in another: the Iranian people still vote for the most moderate, global-minded candidates they can in spite of the Ayatollah's efforts to push hardliners into office. Granted, the moderate officials can't do much, but the votes are still a major denouncement of the religious leadership, and they've led to better foreign relations that can lead to a kind of peace that the Ayatollah cannot ignore.

1) It Has To Be Done: GOP Debate Drinking Game 2016 Jul 22, 2015 17 comments
3879 Pageviews

I will admit: This one was too easy to make.

The early polling for the Republican slate of Presidential candidates was making it clear that Trump was dominating the set, and that the upcoming televised debates starting that August were going to be barn-burners (in a bad way). At one point I tweeted to Oliver Willis if he knew of any drinking games that were going to be in play for at least the first debate, and then I decided "You know what? F-ck it, I'm writing my own."

Even though I personally do not drink alcohol of any kind. I *am* keen on the microbrewery process as a purely intellectual / cooking /chemistry interest, but that's it. I'd be drinking flavored tea where I could (and hell, even drinking water to excess is toxic, so any drinking game carries a risk...)

By creating that drinking game list in July, I had gotten ahead of a couple of other bloggers (and professional writers) who were trying the same thing before the actual August event. By getting in early for the search engine parameters, I ended up at the top of the results pages for a lot of people looking to get buzzed - or drowning their sorrows - during what turned out to be the Worst of Times and the Blurst of Times.

Adding to the fun was getting Pinku-Sensei showing up, plugging in his suggested drink recipes for each GOP candidate, and which helped spike interest.

I made another drinking game for September, building off the success of this one, but by the October one I realized the gag wasn't that funny anymore and that people were likely getting drunk over the realization that Trump was winning the Republican ballot. I don't think I will create another election-based drinking game again.

Unless Ted Cruz and Marco "No-Show" Rubio make comebacks for 2020.

---

So there you have it. My ten most viewed articles in the first ten years of this blog.

Of the articles I'm most proud of that didn't make the list, a popular article on Presidential Character for Woodrow Wilson deserves honorable mention. I also get a lot of traffic for the MegaCon comic book conventions, but that's about it.

I do encourage you all to of course read every article. :)

Liveblogging Tonight's Florida Primary Results August 2016 Edition

So here goes, with the polls closing at 7:00 PM and with the help of Baynews 9 I hope to track the resu...

DAMMIT FLORIDA REPUBLICANS YOU'RE PUTTING NO-SHOW RUBIO BACK ON THE BALLOT /headdesk

It's not even 1 percent of the results in and it's looking like blowouts for Rubio on the GOP side and Murphy on the Dems. Still, we'll get a better idea of how the results should really play out by the halfway point.

Be right back.

update 7:40 PM: One thing to track is the state referendum on the solar panel tax exemption. Right now it's at 74 percent approval, which is good going this early on. The rule of state amendments is that it has to clear a supermajority of 60 percent, at this rate it should be passing easy peasy.

update 8:40 PM: Here it is one hour later and the Baynews 9 people are kinda calling it. There's at least 73 percent of the precincts in and the candidates in the lead are pretty much mathematically confirmed.

That means for the US Senate race the Republican candidate is Marco "No-Show" Rubio (the hell, Republicans, his lack of attendance would get him kicked out of real jobs) and the Democratic candidate is Pat "Oh No The BernieBros Are Gonna Think He's Too Centrist" Murphy.

The news site isn't calling the state amendment just yet, but it's been holding steady at 73 percent Approval: outside of a late rush of No votes, this should make the 60 percent cutoff...

update 10:00 PM: Baynews had overlooked the voter tally for the Libertarian Senate primary race until now. Having just a couple thousand people voting in it makes it a little... underwhelming. If there's anything to say about it, Stanton is winning it with 2000 or so votes to Invictus at 1000 votes. It's pretty much all done except for the tears. The good news, none of the official candidates running for the Senate seat are known threats to goats at a local or global level, so we're cool. We're good.

The Congressional and state election races are too numerous to go into detail for now. There may be an upset or two worth talking about, but I can follow that tomorrow. I'm gonna call it a night.

Reminder to Florida: August 30 Is Statewide Primary

Even the No-Party voters have a reason to get out and vote as there's School Board seats, judicial seats, and a State Referendum worth putting a vote for.

GET THE DAMN VOTE OUT, FLORIDA.

P.S. Your voting precinct is most likely a Pokemon Go Stop or Gym. So there's that to while away the time if you're stuck in line.

It's Official. The 2016 Is Killing Everybody We Like (RIP Gene Wilder)

Whoa! WHOA! I was at a training session at Winter Haven Public Library when I saw a tweet go out. Gene Wilder died?!?!

DAMN YOU 2016!

I am serious about this now. This HAS to be The Rapture after all. Why else would people like Bowie and Prince and Abe Vigoda and Kenny Baker (R2! NOOOOOoooooo) and Harper Lee and George "Boys Are You Buzzing" Martin and... and... oh man, this year just SUCKS for celebrity deaths.

The only good thing to say about this is that at least Mr. Wilder is with Gilda Radner now. Otherwise this is sucks-to-be-us type of news.

And now, back to wars, floods, insane politics, and an unending cycle of Anthony Weiner d-ck pics. DAMMIT.

Added: from The Little Prince.

"...And now here is my secret, a very simple secret: It is only with the heart that one can see rightly, what is essential is invisible to the eye..."

In Brief: Some Questions I Have for Steve Bannon

So in case you don't get your news from Fark.com you might have missed another Florida Man story:

Florida Man caught registered to vote at an address he doesn't live at, hilarity ensues.

It seems Steve Bannon, recently put in charge of Trump's off-the-rails Presidential campaign, has his voter registration at an abandoned property due for demolition, that there's no evidence he ever really lived there, and that he's been living at places in three different locations - Los Angeles CA, Washington DC (and THAT's got its own questionable issues), and yet another property in Florida - bringing up a question of which place is his real place of residence.

(Note: one reason a lot of well-off people own and claim residency in Florida is that we have very relaxed Homestead Exemptions property laws that make it REAL friendly for tax-dodging Far Right types, so for a guy who does a lot of business in DC and LA, I'm not surprised he calls Florida home... and never shows up here...)

'Cause you see, voter laws may be set by state but even the states agree you can really only call one place home (and have that as a place of voter registration). Voting in one town - even within the same state - but really being a primary resident in another is a form of voter fraud (why hello HYPOCRISY cough cough).

Maybe the reason why Republicans run around claiming Blacks and Latinos commit in-person voter fraud so often is because they seem to do a lot of it themselves.

So I got a few questions for Mr. Bannon if time allows:

1) Which state among your various property holdings is your real primary residence?

2) Have you registered to vote in the other states where you claim home ownership / rental properties? Have you voted in other states while claiming to reside at the address in Miami that you never really lived in?

3) How soon can you go to jail for lying on your voter registration forms (Florida Statutes Title IX, Chapter 104.011(2) covers it) about your address?

I expect a reply within the hour... of hell freezing over. Still, the effort counts.

Not So Much a Flip As It Was a Flop

Why, yes, I did grow up reading Doonesbury:

I do not own rights. the publisher may hunt me down for this...

It's actually a common occurrence. A politician runs on an issue up until the point he/she realizes that position is toxic, and then he/she flip-flops on the issue and hopes to the Old Gods and the New that nobody (heh) notices.

Of course, everyone does. What matters is if A) the media takes it in stride, B) the Establishment leaders take it in stride, and C) the hard-core voting base that still loved the toxic issue won't riot in despair and outrage.

So when Donald Trump decided yesterday to change his tune on mass deportation of "illegal immigrants" there were several ways to view it.

On the one hand, it was kind of expected. That hard rhetoric on deporting 11 million or so illegals - with the clear implication that millions more would be harmed by the effort - was proving to be a deal-killer among the moderate voters that make up the general election cycle (you know, the ones who aren't the rabid Far Right base). Trump was floundering in the polls, making little gains in the chaotic stampede that had been his post-convention "campaign". He needed to regain numbers in the polls and the only way to do that is to start pandering to the Middle.

On the other hand, he did exactly the one thing he kept harping against during the Primaries towards the other Republican candidates, the ones who were professional politicians who made careers flipping and flopping whichever they needed on any particular day. He now had to flip-flop himself, and doing so in a way that made inconsistently bad floppers like Mitt Romney (you could see him twist in the wind over every issue except his massive tax cut) seem like master game-players.

Making it worse is that Trump was signalling a retreat on the single biggest issue he'd been campaigning on since his 2015 announcement: he was giving up a key element of his "Fear The Other" pledge of banning as many non-White people from our borders as best he could. Granted, Trump was still insisting on building that damn Wall of his - apparently he's got a 40-mile-long banner with his name TRUMP(tm) emblazoned on it that needs hanging somewhere - but he was taking off the table a meaty tasty treat that the Alt-White (AKA Angry White Boys) would love to indulge in as a weekend hobby.

In particular, it caught one of Trump's biggest cheerleaders Ann Coulter off-guard, because she just published a rah-rah book about Trump and right on Page 3 she wrote "There's nothing Trump can't do that won't be forgiven... except change his immigration policies."

OOOOOOPPPPSSsss.

And here's the thing. Once Trump and his handlers realize that few - if any - moderate voters are buying Trump's "softer" stance on immigration policy and that they're actually starting to lose whatever wingnut support they still have among the Angry White Boy crowd, they'll just as quickly go back to the "Deport 'Em All" rhetoric that got them here, hoping that it'll at least keep them happy in battleground states like Georgia, South Carolina, Missouri and Texas.

Yeah. Those are battleground states now. That's how badly Trump is starting to lose Red States.

Flop. Trump has always been a Flop.

Praise Towards a Better Wit Than I: Alexandra Petri

I just want to jump in here and say that, damn, Alexandra Petri has basically become the funniest pundit I've seen this crazy election cycle.

This is her current winner, that just basically made me crack my own ribs from holding in the laughter.

A Transcript of Hillary's Disastrous Debate Prep.

READ IT.

She also did "The State of (The DC) Metro is a Gothic Nightmare" which showed a grasp of horror memes and the real-world decay of a once-proud public transit system.

Just bookmark her, follow her, read her tweet links, whatever it takes. She's hilarious.

Whatever silliness I write here is second-rate, off-the-cuff snark. I bow humbly in her general direction.

The Worst Thing You Can Pin On Hillary

(w/ Update: hello again Crooks and Liars readers! Thank you Tengrain for the Mike's Blog Round-up link! Please stay and peruse the rest of the blog today, I hope there's more here to your liking.)

It's not the fake body count that the Far Right keeps pinning to her.

It's not the questionable email server, or Benghazi.

It's not how she forgave Bill for his out-and-out cheating.

It's that, well, basically, nobody in the media likes her.

It's this nitpicking like obsession with her Unfavorable numbers, that if only the Democrats had nominated somebody who was truly hugely popular - shut up BernieBros, Sanders was too abrasive and too Left-wing to make it - we'd be seeing a 50-state landslide for "Insert Democratic Savior Here" able to overwhelm congressional gerrymandering to secure major Senate and House wins.

It's like high school all over again.

You go to war with the President you have, not the President you wish you had.

Hillary is unpopular. Fine. Let's stick with that.

Hillary is also competent, intelligent, well-versed in the mechanics of how government works not only on the floor for voting but in the back-rooms where deals are made.

Hillary can be - will likely be - more bull-headed and obsessive than Obama has been, but where Obama let the obstruction ride to allow his Republican opponents to self-implode, Hillary will likely go all LBJ (remember, Hillary is Active-Negative by my estimates) and wheedle, press, maybe even outright bully her opponents into submission. Meaning that a lot of the stuff stuck in gridlock - our needed funding for schools and highways, fixing our income inequality, tweaking Obamacare to close the gaps starting to show in our healthcare reforms, pressing harder on foreign policy to stop a lot of the ongoing wars in Syria perhaps - will finally break out. These are still - despite the probability of blowback and screwups - worthy goals to support.

At this point, fuck the popularity contest part of political campaigning.

It's time to vote for the competency. For getting shit done.

I'm with her.

Florida Primary 2016 EARLY VOTING NOW

I posted Primary suggestions earlier, but need to point out that EARLY VOTING is NOW this week until Saturday August 27 and there's still time fellow Sunshine Staters TO GET YOUR VOTE IN.

The statewide Primary official date is Tuesday August 30th. GET THE VOTE IN! PRIMARIES COUNT! There's a state amendment - creating tax-exemptions for solar panel installations - on the ballot, so EVERYONE has a reason to check in.

Elections matter.

A Brief Foray Into Pragmatism

If you all had been reading this blog for some time - hi, my regular 8 readers! - you might have noticed I occasionally rail against the "-Isms" of the world. By that, I mean the philosophical ideologies that drive people to commit to certain acts and thoughts towards themselves and others.

I made a big deal ranting against Libertarianism from time to time, for example.

One of the reasons why I don't ascribe to an -Ism (even though I probably do, everyone has at least one -Ism) is that it can force a person to adhere ENTIRELY to that belief system - almost like a religious faith - to where they exclude any rational thought or healthy skepticism (uh-oh) that could help them out of a philosophical argument they can't get out of. A person can become an Absolutist about an -Ism to where they deny the Reality that -Ism can't resolve.

That is where planned Utopias go to die: the -Ism becomes more important that the practicalities of daily living and the tiny moral (and amoral) compromises that one requires to survive.

I even argue that Pragmatism has its' flaws. Yeah, I went there.

But what exactly is Pragmatism in the first place? Good question, self.

This is coming up by the by because of a brilliant article by PM Carpenter about American Pragmatism and the Republican Party's current logical dilemma of backing an outright fraud like Trump, even though supporting him AND denying him would destroy their party no matter what. He mentioned a fellow I hadn't heard of before - William James - and that peaked my interest.

Anyway, just to start off, Pragmatism is (thank you Merriam-Webster) "a reasonable and logical way of doing things or of thinking about problems that is based on dealing with specific situations instead of on ideas and theories." Another explanation would be that a Pragmatist would focus on the problem-solving required of an idea rather than reflect over or promote the idea itself.

It has - much to my delight - an American origin as a philosophy, beginning in the 1870s by the likes of Charles Sanders Peirce, William James, and John Dewey (not the guy who invented the Dewey Decimal, that was Melvil you fools).

Let's focus on James as Carpenter refers to him directly:

That phrase, "whatever works," is often embraced as the essence - the singular essence - of American Pragmatism. The embrace, however, is a degradation of the ism. William James would be appalled to see his seminal philosophy reduced to the practical politics of enduring a human blight such as Trump.

(James) meant, in his early 20th-centiry lectures and writings, to locate an intellectual space between Idealism (often, Dogmatism) and rootless Materialism. He borrowed from both, which is to say, he and another principled pragmatists saw their philosophy of practicality as one nonetheless endowed by human decency, human values, even by what I'm reluctant to call human morality (possibly inspired by the ethereal). What's more, none of it was worth a bucket of warm whatever if it wasn't geared toward the humanly productive.

And nothing could be less conceptually productive than the incontestable horror of a President Trump - the very definition of blighted humanity...

I'm with Carpenter about the subversion of "whatever works": that passes more as an excuse for "expediency" which usually results in a sloppy, half-hearted patch job that falls apart when its logical fallacies bump up against the Real World. A Pragmatic solution is one that thinks towards long-term resolution, something that when fixed stays that way, or is open to further revisions down the line.

One of the elements of Pragmatism - if we refer to Peirce's founding practices - requires the use of the "Scientific Method": That is, Observation, Measurement, Testing, and Modification of a hypothesis towards establishing a theory, rule, or law. Most other -Isms won't even look at modifying anything if it meant disrupting the core principles of that -Ism. It gives Pragmatism a flexibility other ideologies don't have.

Where James comes into the equation is his application of his career in psychology - Peirce and Dewey were mathematicians and logicians - over establishing Truth and Facts: That the mind would accept certain things about Reality but not others. James' version of "the Pragmatic Theory of Truth" which differed from Peirce's went like this:

(James) begins with a standard dictionary analysis of truth as agreement with reality.  Accepting this, he warns that pragmatists and intellectualists will disagree over how to interpret the concepts of “agreement” and “reality,” the latter thinking that ideas copy what is fixed and independent of us.  By contrast, he advocates a more dynamic and practical interpretation, a true idea or belief being one we can incorporate into our ways of thinking in such a way that it can be experientially validated.  For James, the “reality” with which truths must agree has three dimensions:  (1) matters of fact, (2) relations of ideas (such as the eternal truths of mathematics), and (3) the entire set of other truths to which we are committed.  To say that our truths must “agree” with such realities pragmatically means that they must lead us to useful consequences.  He is a Fallibilist, seeing all existential truths as, in theory, revisable given new experience...

How would this apply to Carpenter's invoking James to rebuke the current Republican disillusionment? Carpenter tells us:

In brief, authentic pragmatism can't always mean "whatever works." It must be grounded in principles. And not even Herr Hegel (note: never mind him, he's an Idealist) could synthesize Trump's boundlessly unprincipled character with Republican strategists' exultation of others' fundamental principles. These just can't be squared. Trying to square them or defend the attempt is unproductive, which further means pragmatically oriented, Trump-tolerating Republican strategists are, paradoxically, being quite un-Pragmatic.

Contrast what the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy article says to what Carpenter points out: "They must lead us to useful consequences" vs. "the attempt is unproductive".

A real Pragmatist among the Republican ranks would not be trying to twist him/herself into knots defending the indefensible. The Pragmatists would be working on fixing the whole damn Republican Party to ensure this sort of shit - preventing the hater factions from seizing control of the primaries, adding regulatory practices to campaign financing to clamp down on the rampant greed that consumed most of their candidates (and their managers), end the constant lying to themselves and the public by popping that hermetically-sealed media bubble of theirs - never happens again.

But how many Pragmatists are left among the Republican ranks? The Idealists - the Utopian-driven fanatics worshiping at the Altar of St. Ronnie - have done such a masterful job driving out the more moderate and skeptical members of the party - where most of the Pragmatists would reside - over the last twenty-five/thirty years.

This is where -Isms suck: the fighting over ideology that disregard more practical matters at hand. And we as a nation allowed the Idealists of one party - hi, Republicans! - to take control of the car, driving it over that cliff into the ocean all because their -Ism told them so.

As been said before, we will be lucky to live through this...

...

Okay, so I hate all -Isms, what negative things can I say about Pragmatism?

The biggest dissent against it revolves around "What IS Truth" in the first place. The more Progressive/Left philosophers of the 20th Century also attacked Pragmatism because it "fails to offer significant moral and political resistance to the existing set of social and institutional relations. For (Randolph) Bourne and his followers, pragmatism came up short when it came time to articulate new values and new ideals in response to that system. Pragmatism, in its insistence on the practical cash value of ideas, had reduced ideas to mere expediency..."

I think Carpenter and myself would disagree about the "expediency" part (the current Republican dilemma is a clear example), as long as the Pragmatists remained dedicated to the process of modification and problem-solving. As far as "cash value" - that is, the Real-World Experience of the -Ism - being a millstone, I would argue the Left-leaning critics were - like any other adherent to a Utopian ideal - ignoring the practical realities to pursue a potentiality.

Damn. I *am* defending an -Ism here. Quick, slap me with a trout, see if that resets my leanings towards Skepticism!

Playing With the Polling Numbers Mid-August 2016 Version

It's either this or writing three different science fiction short stories I can plug together to make an self-published anthology I can use to teach an e-publishing class at my library next month.

Anyway.

Going by Nate Silver's 538 polling forecasts as of August, which shows the likelihood one state is leaning between Hillary and Trump - so far, neither Johnson or Stein have enough percentages within each state - let's go with the states that are so clearly going for one candidate that they are basically locks this November, and convert that result into the 270towin.com mapping for better visualization:

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

Look at that. These are the states already locked up. Hillary has THAT huge of an electoral lead. Granted, there's still a lot of states left to go.

Now, next let's add the states that are leaning either for Hillary or Trump but have enough of the "wiggle room" room crossing the dividing line to make them competitive. However, leave off the states where the current average - represented by a dot centered in that sliding bar - is closest to that line.

Let's start off with Trump-leaning states:

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

Okay, that adds in a lot of Red to the map. Let's add Hillary-leaning states now:

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

If we were just playing this as a game of numbers, it'd already be over. But this is just forecasting: the actual results won't matter until when people, you know, actually FREAKING VOTE.

And for the final touch, let's fill in the final states - Arizona, Georgia, South Carolina and Missouri - based on how their sliding bar of interest ekes across the middle of the numbers, and how the Dot of Averages specifically lines up:

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

It's not a huge Electoral beatdown - nothing like 1984 or 1964 - but it will be a bigger win than Obama's electoral numbers (and every likelihood of a Popular vote landslide victory), showing a nationwide track of Democratic dominance that the Republican Party can no longer ignore. And if Hillary can flip at least Georgia and South Carolina - which is possible if she campaigns aggressively in those states - she can shove a stake into the heart of the Southern Strategy monster that the Far Right had been counting on the last 40 years.

Granted, this is still August, and there's still the debates - if Trump deigns to show up - and anything can happen, and who knows what October Surprise is in store from the wingnuts... and this still all requires one thing:

GET THE DAMN VOTE OUT, DEMOCRATS! Show up at the ballot box, in spite of the GOP suppression efforts! DOOO EEEETTTTTTTTT!