It's The Consent, Stoopid

The overlooked irony of this photo is that the shirt itself constitutes consent. The lack of which is the entire crux of the issue. pic.twitter.com/7dEoQ4IISa

— Melissa McEwan (@Shakestweetz) October 14, 2016

Ex-Trump executive Barbara Res says she believes the allegations of sexual misconduct and assault against Trump https://t.co/qeO85Oz44J pic.twitter.com/VsH1UvvLA5

— CNN Politics (@CNNPolitics) October 13, 2016

I can say I've walked way too close to whatever line there is that separates Healthy Expression from Sexual Assault.  

While we're at it, I have to admit I've crossed a line or two on more than one occasion.

And I won't try to hide behind "too young and too stupid, or too high or too drunk to know better" or "yeah - hormones - whaddaya gonna do?"

For my part - I'm sorry. 

I'm always trying to do better.

Because it's what a man does - a man stands up.

From Across The Pond

The world watches us pretty closely most of the time, but it's still a pretty neat trick when you've made the Brits notice just how fucked up our politics really is.

The lead article:

HOW do people learn to accept what they once found unacceptable? In 1927 Frederic Thrasher published a “natural history” of 1,313 gangs in Chicago. Each of them lived by a set of unwritten rules that had come to make sense to gang members but were still repellent to everyone else. So it is with Donald Trump and many of his supporters. By normalising attitudes that, before he came along, were publicly taboo, Mr Trump has taken a knuckle-duster to American political culture.

The recording of him boasting about grabbing women “by the pussy”, long before he was a candidate, was unpleasant enough. More worrying still has been the insistence by many Trump supporters that his behaviour was normal. So too his threat, issued in the second presidential debate, to have Hillary Clinton thrown into jail if he wins. In a more fragile democracy that sort of talk would foreshadow post-election violence. Mercifully, America is not about to riot on November 9th. But the reasons have less to do with the state’s power to enforce the letter of the law than with the unwritten rules that American democracy thrives on. It is these that Mr Trump is trampling over—and which Americans need to defend.

And in light of some of our less than sterling political moments - Swift Boat, Iraq's WMD, Whitewater, Willie Horton, Iran-Contra, The Enemies List, Southern Strategy, Joe McCarthy (the list goes on and on) - the fact that this one stands out in bold relief is depressing.

Today's Pix

Today's Tweet

They're just after Trump because he's exposing the vast conspiracy of women who don't like to be groped and ogled by gross men.

— LOLGOP (@LOLGOP) October 13, 2016

NYT

Please allow me to be the first to pat myself on the back. Obviously, my relentless criticism of (and the level of my contempt for) The Press Poodles in USAmerica Inc's media biz is paying dividends. 

Here's the letter NYT published in response to Trump's threat to sue them for libel:

At great personal expense, I've enlisted the smart and capable Kristen Bell to translate in a way even Trump (and a few of his devoted rubes) can understand. Take it away, Ms Bell:

Way to go, guys - build on that, OK?

What He Brags About

Listen for what a guy brags about most, and that'll tell you what's false about him.

O'Donnell has a good record when it comes to calling these things - especially when it's about Donald Trump.

It Counts

hat tip = FB pal Vicki W-E

One From driftglass

driftglass (a coupla days ago):

Today was the day when the Republican party's nominee for president declared open war on the leadership of the Republican party for finally daring to timidly whisper about various, glaringly observable realities (h/t @Billmon).

BTW - nobody does PhotoShop better:

 

Sometimes You Vote With Your Checkbook

Reuters:

Kerry Woolard, the 37-year-old manager of Trump Winery in Charlottesville, Virginia, went online in June and made her first political contribution: A $250 donation to the campaign of her boss, Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump.

Woolard's donation was unusual.

Only a dozen of an estimated 22,450 people employed at Trump's companies have donated more than $200 to the celebrity businessman's bid for the U.S. presidency, a Reuters review of federal campaign finance records through August shows. Those who gave less to either Trump's campaign or his joint fundraising committees would not have shown up in the review.

The contributors, including an office cleaner, a golf course groundskeeper, a bartender and an attorney, have given $5,298 to Trump's campaign, a fraction of the $112 million Trump's political operation has received from donors and joint fundraisers.

An employee at Trump enterprises gave $275 to the campaign of her employer’s Democratic rival, Hillary Clinton. A 13th Trump employee, a lawyer at the Trump Organization, contributed to a Trump Super PAC, giving $1,000. 

Kids These Days

WaPo:

Students at Liberty University have issued a statement against Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump as young conservatives at colleges across the state reconsider support for his campaign.

A statement issued late Wednesday by the group Liberty United Against Trump strongly rebuked the candidate as well as the school’s president, Jerry Falwell Jr., for defending Trump after he made extremely lewd comments about women in a 2005 video. The students wrote that Falwell’s support for Trump had cast a stain on the school’s reputation.

“We are Liberty students who are disappointed with President Falwell’s endorsement and are tired of being associated with one of the worst presidential candidates in American history,” the statement said. “Donald Trump does not represent our values and we want nothing to do with him. … He has made his name by maligning others and bragging about his sins. Not only is Donald Trump a bad candidate for president, he is actively promoting the very things that we as Christians ought to oppose.”

--and also too--

The Liberty University student manifesto against Trump comes as college Republican groups across the country reconsider support for the candidate. On Tuesday the University of Virginia College Republicans announced that the group voted to rescind its endorsement of his candidacy for president. The chairman of the College Republicans at Hampden-Sydney College, Tanner Beck, posted a statement on Facebook noting that Trump “has gone from simply being an embarrassment to our party, to a potentially permanent stain on our brand and our country.”

The statement was posted online as a petition

I'm not holding out a lot of hope that this will flip any given Trumpster, and I don't really give a rat's ass what anybody thinks their imaginary friend has to say about politics (or anything else for that matter).  

That said, maybe I can take it as a good sign that some of these young adults are forming political identities that aren't simply Red vs Blue and My-Team-No-Matter-What, in spite of the submissive authoritarian crap that gets drilled into them at a "Religious University".

Realistically, some of these "kids" will go on to become the next buncha blue-nosed pinch-faced purity warriors that plague every system everywhere, but some will also grow into regular human-type people who can change things where they are with the tools they have at hand.

A guy can hope, can't he?