About The Facts

And BTW, the next time somebody wants to talk about "...the anemic economic growth under this weak POTUS because it's a lousy 1.2%..." 

- let's try to remember that 1.2% growth in a $17 TRILLION GDP = $204,000,000,000 (two hundred-four billion & no/100 dollars).

The growth in the US economy was greater than the total GDP of 26 states.

The growth in the US economy was greater than the total GDP of all but 46 countries around the world.

The fucking GROWTH.

It's called "The Tyranny Of Large Numbers".

And while it also applies to large numbers like Debt and Deficit (and that gets a little scary), ya gotta ease up a little on the Dumfuckery Quotient, Skeezix.

And The Question Is

It seems the cyber hack of DNC is a lot bigger, and pointing very much more precisely at Russia.

Chuck Todd wants to know "where's the National Security outrage?"

I'm thinkin' maybe that explains why Trump's reverted to his usual big and asshole-ish form.  He needs to distract for right now, making sure we gloss over the Ruskies' fuckery and hoping for the other shoe to fall on Hillary.

Let's see those tax returns, Donald.

Bernie-esque

"He wants America to work for him and his friends, at the expense of everyone else. He's offered no credible plans to address what working families are up against today. Nothing on student loans or the cost of prescription drugs. Nothing for farmers and struggling rural communities. ...nothing for communities of color in our cities to overcome barriers of systemic racism. Nothing to create new opportunities for young people. Just a more extreme version of the failed theory of trickle-down economics, with the addition of his own unique Trumpian ideas that even Republicans reject."

Not crazy about the F35 thing, and I'm still waiting for good answers on the flipflop on TPP and KeystoneXL.  And I'd like her to acknowledge / deal with the shit that NAFTA turned out to be - she kinda tries (companies gaming the system etc), but it's just not there yet.  

But she's putting it out there in pretty good shape.  For me right now, it's a matter of supporting her as "a wonk I think I can trust on policy", if we can figure out how to keep pressure on her and rein in her apparent difficulties with the seemier aspects of making deals and thinking she has to hide those details from us - to the point where she lies when she really doesn't have to.

Anyway, it's a pretty thoroughly boring stump speech, and that's a good thing, kids. Cuz it sure beats the fuck outa what that other guy's doin'.

Mr Insurance

Donald Trump has "targeted" Ohio Pennsylvania and Florida, figuring if he wins those 3 "Battleground States" he'll have a real shot.

Unfortunately for Trump, he also has to hold every state that Romney won in 2012.

Evan McMullin is running for president.

Evan McMullin is ex-CIA.

Evan McMullin is a Mormon.

Evan McMullin has some rich buddies backing him.

Evan McMullin has missed getting on the ballot in some very important states, but he managed to get on the ballot in Utah.

Evan McMullin won't win in Utah, but he'll syphon off plenty of votes - very possibly enough to make Hillary the winner in Utah.

Trump is up by about 7 points in Utah - where favorite son Romney won by 48 points in 2012. Mormon matters.

Evan McMullin's mission is to fuck up the election for Donald Trump.

Today's Pix

Stochastic Probability

Applied to politics = 

Stochastic terrorism is the use of mass communications to incite random actors to carry out violent or terrorist acts that are statistically predictable but individually unpredictable. In short, remote-control murder by lone wolf.

It's not like we aren't aware of this shit, Mr Trump.

At each step, plausible deniability increases through the diffusion of responsibility. "Oh, it was just a lone nut, nobody could have predicted he would do that, and I'm not responsible for what people in my audience do."

Trump knows what he's done, even if his intent at the time was nothing more than one of his usual stunts to say something heinously inflammatory in order to generate some free media.

And the statements that have come from his campaign are again the usual bullshit aimed at kicking the news cycle around to keep the coverage going - to give the story legs.

"It's called the power of unification – 2nd Amendment people have amazing spirit and are tremendously unified, which gives them great political power. And this year, they will be voting in record numbers, and it won't be for Hillary Clinton, it will be for Donald Trump." --Jason Miller, Senior Communications Advisor.

That's a near-perfect, classically content-free "explanation".  Notice, there's nothing in there that even tries to pretend that Trump is condemning violence against a political opponent.

Charlie Pierce put up a quote from (I think) Hunter S Thompson, and tag-lined it with this:

What he said on Tuesday is something Donald Trump does every day of his life, on purpose, as a matter of policy and a perfect expression of everything he stands for. It seems one could stoop even lower than Nixon to be president.

And of course, the usual asshole apologists were out to make sure we got a good dose of False Equivalence:

Here's the point on this little piece of your freak show, Mr Halperin: If it was bad for Hillary to say what she said in 2008, then it's bad for Trump to say what he said 2016.

See how that works?  Bad is bad is bad.  You don't get to say Hillary was wrong to do it back then, so it's OK for Trump to do it now. dick

But what riles me now is that neither The Hillary gang nor the Press Poodles are getting after this with any kind of zest or gusto.

"Here's what Americans need to hear from you, Mr Trump, and in no uncertain terms:

- you are not calling for violence

- you condemn violence against any political opponent at any time for any reason

- you reject the support of anybody who'd even think violence against a political opponent is in any way OK

- you understand that sometimes we get a little nutty, but everybody has to leave their guns out of this

- be passionate; be vocal; be steadfast - just don't be a dick"

Are ya getting any of this, Mr Trump?

Trump Trumps Trump

Trying to be fairer than I think I have to be, some of the contradictions can be explained because we have to allow people to change over time.

That said, holy fuck, dude.  You don't take a position one day in one situation, and then change it completely the next day when you're talking to somebody else.

The guy is the classic old-school sales-putz.  You just say whatever you think you need to say in the moment.  It's not about leading with your values - because this guy apparently has none - it's about looking for the cues from your prospect and pandering to them.  So, he says whatever he thinks the interviewer (eg) wants to hear.  And if he contradicts himself, he can either flatly deny it or he can blame the listener for misunderstanding, which gives him the opportunity to blather some more and explain the intricacies of his pitch because you're just too dumb to get it.

We can see you, Donald.  We're writing this shit down so we can keep track of it, so we can try to make sense of it later.  And it's one hot fucking mess.

More Cracks

First - reports of the demise of DumFux News are greatly exaggerated - or maybe they're just kinda premature.

But second - dang - It's been more than a little obvious for a good long time that Fox and the GOP are so inter-connected as to be divisions of the same Billionaire Hobby Corporation. So much so that if one craters, it pulls the other one in after it. And isn't that a happy prospect?

Get Real, Kids

"Journalism"

And again - why are we allowing all the real journalism to happen on 1/2 hour cable shows?

I wouldn't mind one little bit if we broke up the Media Mega-Giants, but I'm not advocating for a plan to then prop them up as viable outlets. Business is business, and you can't mandate profitability.

This will probably be a fairly long slow process of evolving into a workable model, but it occurs to me that along with all the scary shit about Report-o-Bots and Digital Content Generators, one thing we could get from the techno-wizardry is some kind of a built-in Fact Check mechanism.  Right now, I can high-lite a word or a string of text (on my Mac), right-click on it and look it up in the dictionary, or Google it, or go to Wikipedia or whatever - the point being in this case that the same technology that gets us a problem can be used to help us solve that problem.

In the meantime, we need to keep on keepin' on by learning more about applied skepticism and critical thinking.  

Because, even tho there are a few signs of improvement, this shit will prob'ly just get weirder before it starts to get anywhere close to relaxed and groovy.

Press Poodle of the future

Something We Should Know

It's just about being made to think Da Gubmint is taking it away from me and giving it to somebody I think doesn't deserve it.  

We don't know shit and what makes that a bad thing is that we don't even wanna know that we don't know it.

Fareed Explains

Clearing It Up

(This is a bit of a redux)

Hillary "lied" like everybody "lies" - sometimes you say things that you meant one way and people hear them a completely different way.

And always always always remember that every agency in every department in every government at every level is both a constituency itself, and/or it's either prospecting for or looking to maintain a constituency for itself.  You're a client being served, or you're in service to a client, or you're both at the same time. Everybody. Everywhere.

James Comey came up thru the Bush DoJ (he was assigned to take over the investigation of Bill's pardon of Mark Rich), and is no fan of the Clintons.

But he knows enough to be more or less a straight shooter, and he's got some chops as a Bankster Buster even tho' he's been on the inside at Lockheed, Bridgewater, and HSBC.

A bit of an odd duck, and worth watching.

Anyway, he was obviously a little peeved at the whole spectacle, having the look of a guy who couldn't quite stomach all the political bullshit.  Or maybe he was just disappointed that Cartwright asked the right questions, leaving the Repubs with basically a handful of nuthin'.

We can still find reasons to hate on Hillary if we wanna, but we should prob'ly let go of that one.

Today's Pix

Here's The Plan

1. Drug Trump
2. Put him in a "Truman Show" White House
3. Wake him up
4. Tell him he won
5. Sell subscriptions
6. Retire National Debt in about 2 years

hat tip = Twitter dude, @harryallen

Today's Tweet

The best letter to the editor in today's @TB_Times. pic.twitter.com/E60kou9BXw

— Mark Puente (@MarkPuente) August 7, 2016

Today's List

 In case you needed a score card.

173 Things Donald Trump Has Said and Done That Make Him Unfit to Be President

Disclaimer: Trump contradicts himself a lot. Not all of the policy positions listed here reflect his current thinking on a given subject. You’ll have to decide for yourself whether you find that reassuring.

Update, Aug. 1, 2016: We originally listed 141 items here. But Trump doesn’t stop saying and doing unpresidential things, so we’ll continue to update the list through Election Day. New items will appear at the top of the list under “Recent Trump Moments” for a while, until they are replaced by fresher instances of self-disqualification.

Here's the list (so far) - at Slate

Fellow Travelers

I worry a little sometimes about how "the looney lefties" line up with a lot of what I'm lined up with politically - not because they're bad people and I hate making common cause with a buncha hippies, but because I'm not all in; I go out of my way not to be in lockstep with anybody; I just don't believe the "way they believe" - whatever the hell any of that means at any given moment.

Anyhoo

That said, there is something to the bit about how "you will know them by their fellows".  You are not your friends, but there are reasons people gather together and one of the big ones is that they reflect at least some of each other's values.

So when you're talking about a Donald Trump, you can't ignore the simple fact that real live White Nationalist fuckwads are lining up behind him, itching for a nice fat slice of that power pie.  We can know a little something about him by the people he attracts to his cause. 

“We have a wonderful OPPORTUNITY here folks, that may never come again, at the RIGHT time,” he stated. “Donald Trump’s campaign statements, if nothing else, have SHOWN that ‘our views’ are NOT so ‘unpopular’ as the Political Correctness crowd have told everyone they are!”

The dead give-away is when somebody's making a political statement and refers to any other American as "the enemy".  There are limits, guys.  And we've been past those limits before.  And going past those limits has always meant unjustly bad things for righteously decent people. Just sayin' - don't be like those assholes over there.

So they're all the same? It doesn't matter? You're just picking one corporatized automaton over another? Bullshit.

But in the end - seriously - who would you rather hang out with?  Which of these fellows would you rather be known by?

Today's Tweeted GIF

.@HuffPostComedy

Debate Triple Jump #TrumpOlympics pic.twitter.com/9Pb5lU5dwc

— Mr. Jameson Neat (@MrJamesonNeat) August 2, 2016

Trae Crowder

What We Miss

I have to admit that I get a little too sucked in. There's a tendency to yell and point at all the shitty things we don't like about the other guy's candidate while practically ignoring what "our" candidate wants to do.  So we end up making a choice based on what we don't like about the brand on the outside of the box instead of making an informed decision based on what we know about the content inside the box. 

We can't just go on voting against everything and everybody because that only gets us pretty much to where we are now - half of us are so "against it" that we don't vote at all.  

We have to be able to vote for something. 

One smallish case in point - here's a bit from Hillary's speech in Philly (via Alternet):

We have to heal the divides in our country. Not just on guns. But on race. Immigration. And more. And that starts with listening, listening to each other. Trying, as best we can, to walk in each other’s shoes.

So let’s put ourselves in the shoes of young black and Latino men and women who face the effects of systemic racism, and are made to feel like their lives are disposable.

I don't agree with the part of that article that tends towards cynicism. (Appearances to the contrary, I'm a skeptically pragmatic idealist - it's just that I can't always resist being a bit cynical, cuz holy crap dude, have you even seen what goes on up in here sometimes?)  

But anyway, my point is that I'll vote for Hillary partly because she's standing up and saying there's this real problem and we need to figure out something we can do about it. Which is in fact very different from Trump, who literally just makes shit up, tells us he's seen videos that don't exist, and has nothing to say about anything that might help us form some kind of reasonable policy.

Really, I'm not just against Trump, feeling I have nowhere else to go and I guess I'll hafta hang with Hillary.  I've said something close to that in the past, but I'm a little smarter now - because I've been trying to do my homework.  

So no, I'll go along with Hillary until or unless she bails on it - just like I try to do with all of 'em - hoping for the best while understanding I won't get everything I want, no matter who the candidate is or what issue I'm on about right now.

Stumble forward.

Today's Quote

Clint Eastwood says 'When I was growing up, we didn't call it racism.' Emmett Till unavailable for comment.

--John Fugelsang

Today's Pix

(Click a pic to big it up)

Compare And Contrast

Steely-eyed and focused vs twitchy and panicked

Steady as a rock and jumpy, erratic man pic.twitter.com/OxHzmWPXYu

— Matt Ortega (@MattOrtega) August 4, 2016

And btw - those Secret Service guys just jump into it no matter what.  How straight-up amazingly awesome do you have to be to know your guy is a complete douche nozzle like Donald Trump, and still put yourself between him and trouble?   

Trump vs Trump

Inside Peek

Recently unearthed training video for Donald Trump's campaign staffers:

hat tip = driftglass

Today's GIF

Breaking News: In spite of mounting pressure from GOP officials, the Trump campaign will not revamp the basic message at this time.  They believe in their candidate and their candidate's message, and their candidate's unique ability to articulate that message. 

We take you now to live coverage of Mr Trump's latest pronouncements:

image via Mock Paper Scissors

Meanwhile, at GOP Headquarters:

Just kidding - there are no black people working at GOP Headquarters. Let's not get silly.

An Armed Society

Here's one of the favorite bromides of the American Ammosexual: 

"An armed society is a polite society"

I think maybe we're looking at large portions of the populace feeling intimidated into keeping silent; being reluctant to speak out because they're afraid some asshole with a gun might do something stoopidly shitty - and mistaking that forced reticence for courtesy.

Those two things are not the same.

And also too - the fact that Americans are heavily armed (and short-tempered) may be a contributing factor in our ever-increasing tendency to offload some of our societal responsibilities onto the cops.

Why would I knock on my neighbors' door to ask him to keep his dog quiet, when I'm afraid he'll shoot my ass?  Am I being polite - or is it something else?

Just wanna point some of that shit out.

Propaganda Works

Cool story, bro.  

But wait - that's not Jacksonville, that's Cleveland.  And oh gosh, that's the victory parade for the Cavaliers when they beat the Warriors for the NBA championship a coupla months ago.

Oops.

Dang - Breitbart lied to us?  Another illusion shattered.

Today's GIF

We take you now to live coverage as our intrepid cadre of Press Poodles continue to strive gallantly to make Donald Trump seem like a viable candidate.

Today's Tweets

Meet another Gold Star family with some personal perspective on Donald Trump:https://t.co/z2eJfg9dv0

— Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) August 1, 2016

Crying baby ejected from Trump rally issues statement pic.twitter.com/NydOC41skZ

— Ash Warner (@AlsBoy) August 2, 2016

Today's Political Leverage

Lotsa people have been wondering what's up with Paul Ryan.  Why does he blast Trump for saying stoopidly shitty things while still supporting the nominee?  

Ryan said Trump's criticism of Judge Curiel was "the textbook definition of a racist comment".

Ryan kept quiet when Trump went after Khizr Khan, and was rewarded by  Trump coming out in support of Ryan's primary challenger.

Now, Ryan's in a tight spot because he's trying hard to take his Party-Uber-Alles duties seriously, but at this point, he's trying to stand up for Party Unity in a GOP that split badly several years ago, and is in the process of splintering into smaller and smaller factions, heading rapidly for the Logical Extreme of becoming 20 million Parties Of One - which in a bit of sweet irony, is exactly what Ayn Rand's philosophy requires.  Unity means there has to be a bit of sublimation of the individual in order to work in concert with as many others as possible (ie: making a collective effort, which is absolute anathema to The Randian Way).

So it comes down to "damned if ya do and damned if ya don't", and that's how Trump always plays it. Everybody's fucked but him, which is a pretty good way to sum up the GOP Platform over the last 30 years, and also a plain-spoken interpretation of Ayn Rand's outlook, which means Trump is doing nothing but beating Ryan et al at their own game, which (hoping now) points up why you don't build a healthy society on the beliefs of a bitterly aggrieved former bourgeois fantasy hack whose life turned out to be exactly the kind of contradiction she railed against for 50 years.

So how 'bout it, Mr Speaker - will you tough it out and be the rugged individual St Ayn requires you to be? Or are you going to wuss out and ask somebody for a little help; a little teamwork; a little collective action?

You helped build that shit house - stop bitchin' about the stink and do something about it.

Cracks In The Facade

US Rep Richard Hanna (R-NY22), and characterized as "Liberal Republican", via HuffPo - endorsing Hillary because he just can't stand to think of Trump as POTUS.

“I trust she can lead. All Republicans may not like the direction, but they can live to win or lose another day with a real candidate,” he wrote. “Our response to the public’s anger and the need to rebuild requires complex solutions, experience, knowledge and balance. Not bumper sticker slogans that pander to our disappointment, fear and hate.”

I don't know much about New York's 22nd district, so I can't make a good guess as to the Gerrymandering effect, but in 2012, Mr Hanna ran unopposed and managed to get just 74% of the vote. Maybe 74% is a lot, but it seems like you're not exactly Mr Popularity when 45,500 people show up at the polls and still won't vote for you even though you're the only one in your race.

And BTW, Mr Hanna has chosen not to stand for re-election this time around, so while I think he's doing the right thing voting against his party's obviously bad choice of POTUS nominee, I'm not handing him any medals for political courage either.

The race for NY22 is called a toss-up right now, but shades towards a pickup for the Dems.

Today's Quote

“People who treat other people as less than human must not be surprised when the bread they have cast on the waters comes floating back to them, poisoned.” --James Baldwin

Rhetorical Cues

When somebody starts by saying, "I'm not racist, but...", you know what follows will make you wish they'd die in a tragically embarrassing bathroom accident.

A close second is when (usually) a "conservative" starts a comment with, "The fact of the matter is...". You can then expect a pile of spun-up bullshit and anything-but-facts intended to deflect and obscure.

Here endeth today's lesson.