2016 August 31th

I have, from time to time, referenced the British betting house Paddy Power, which provides politically neutral odds on our elections. Sadly, over the last ten days the odds on Clinton winning the election have slipped a bit, not a lot mind you, but slipped never the less.

On 8/21 if you were to have bet two dollars against Hillary Clinton winning the Presidency and you were subsequently right you would collect winnings of nine dollars. Today that win has dropped to seven dollars. The odds makers believe she is slightly less certain to win. They also believe she is less certain to be her party’s nominee at election time.  Ten days ago a one dollar bet against her would have paid 33 dollars if you won and she was not the party’s nominee at election time; now the same bet will only pay 25 dollars.

Who cares what the Brits think? It is our election not theirs. That’s the point, they aren’t concerned with Trump’s buffoonery or Clinton’s emails, except as these influence their analysis of the election odds. (Keep in mind they were dead wrong about the Brexit vote.)

Lots of activity today on the Trump front: He has accepted an invitation from the president of Mexico, Enrique Pena Nieto, to come to Mexico City for a chat. This President has compared Trump to Hitler and has said that Mexico would never pay for Trump’s (expletive deleted) wall. Trump first comment about Mexican’s coming into this country began with a lie. His first three words were, “Mexico is sending…” Mexico obviously was “sending” no one, but that didn’t bother Trump who believes everything he says because he has said it. For Trump there is no other criterion for truth.

Why would Mexico’s President invite Trump to Mexico City for a conference?  President Pena Nieto’s approval rating among Mexicans is lower than Donald Trump’s rating among Americans. On the other hand what do Trump’s handlers believe Trump has to gain by spending hours on this round trip just before he gives  a major talk on immigration at nine o’clock tonight in Arizona. Maybe he will claim that the President of Mexico has promised him that he will absolutely stop the flow of immigrants to the US and will pay for the wall after all. Trump has no problem with telling lies, and then if Mexico’s President denies he said any such thing Trump will call him a liar. (Keep in mind that the flow of Mexicans into the US is about equal to the flow of Mexican nationals back into Mexico, a fact you won’t hear from Trump.) There is another possibility: Mexico’s President Pena Nieto could place Trump under arrest and throw him in the slammer for slandering his country. Yeah, I know that won’t happen, but just thinking about it is very satisfying.

2016 August 30^th

While I am no fan of Donald Trump, readers of this blog will note that I have made no ad hominem attacks against him.  When he is attacked, either ad hominem or on issues of policy, I do admire the well-crafted product.

 Kathleen Parker, a columnist, has in this morning’s Record-Eagle, eviscerated Mr. Trump and then flayed the remains for good measure. I will quote just a smidgen of her excellent takedown. She begins, “Donald Trump. Would that it were unnecessary to mention his name except, say, as a Viagra pitchman.” Then, “But the enchanted evening Republicans fantasized when they nominated the biggest goofball ever to enter the Oval Office sweepstake is over. The clock has struck midnight, the carriage is ablaze, the golden haired prince is a bloated chimneysweep ranting at rooftops. The party’s footmen, blind mice begging for scraps of mercy, scatter in search of cover.” Now that skewering would be notable coming from a left leaning liberal, but Kathleen Parker is no flaming libtard. Ms. Parker seems to be very nearly a centrist.  It has become increasingly hard to find women who support Donald Trump, except within the small, tight circle of his paid surrogates and, of course, the folks at Fox.

Trump is now appealing to a broader audience, or, at least he trying to appeal to a broader audience. Either he is ignoring the advice of his advisors or the advisors should be fired. He appeals to Latino and African Americans by inviting them to come up and visit with him in his sanctuary at Trump Tower. It might occur to these political wizards that the minority group members who take advantage of Trump’s invitation are probably not a randomly selected group of the particular minority of which they are members. No matter, it makes for great theater; we have a camera pan the large group of minority members with Trump seated prominently in front of the camera. Each place has its own personal bottle of water in evidence. Could that be from the Trump bottled water works? Why not? Could he write that off as a business expense? You betcha!

The latest Trump Ha, Ha, is his plea for African Americans to vote Republican because by voting for Democrats African Americans have gained nothing. He claims they cannot even walk down the street without getting shot. He claims this is all because of the inept Democrats for whom the African Americans have voted. Trump and his advisors do not realize that in the black communities to which he is making this pitch, the Democratic politicians, the police chiefs, the mayors, the prosecuting attorneys and most all of the elected officials are black. Trump is appealing for the black vote by declaring that black officials elected by the black community are not competent to do their jobs. What a splendid way to win over minorities.

2016 August 28^th

We have a letter to the editor of the local paper today, and we had essentially the same letter published yesterday. The difference, according to the editor, was an error in the inclusion, or lack of inclusion of one word. In any event, the letter now has the advantage of the massively increased Sunday circulation.

The letter’s writer, whose name is really unimportant, begins by maintaining that Hilary Clinton’s policies have much in common with Josef Stalin’s and the old Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. He doesn’t elaborate on this charge; there is no comparison of Clinton’s plans with Stalin’s. There is no suggestion that Clinton wants massive executions of small farmers, or of show trials for military leaders suspected of disloyalty. No, it seems more like a “I hate Hillary Clinton all to pieces, so let’s see what nonsense I can pin on her in a letter to the newspaper.” This lack of specificity is endemic in the current leadership of the Republican party so it isn’t surprising that it would show up in one of the lesser rank and file.

The writer continues by suggesting that Clinton’s policies will turn this country into another Venezuela. Hyperbole can quickly degenerate into silliness and it has done so here. Venezuela is sitting atop enormous reserves of crude oil. Gasoline once sold there for less than ten cents a gallon. The country could export oil and use the income from those sales to fund its imports. The price of oil fell and with that fall, Venezuela’s good times vanished. The country’s leaders did nothing to move its economy away from a dependence on oil when it could and now the economy is a mess.

Venezuela is usually sited as the poster country for the failure of socialism. A socialist government probably didn’t help, but an inept government, socialist or capitalist, can have the same result. The Record-Eagle’s letter writer, in attempting to disparage liberal government policies, nicely avoids mentioning the very left leaning governments of Iceland, Sweden, Finland and Denmark among others. Why do you suppose that is?

Finally, the writer prays to God that this country will never have a woman as its Commander-in-Chief. Britain hasn’t done too badly with the Queen as titular Commander–in-Chief. All members of all British armed forces pledge allegiance to the Queen. Practically, of course it is the Prime Minister who exercises the power. A few years ago, Argentina tried to take over a British possession not far off its coast, the Falkland Islands. At the time a female, Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, was in charge. Britain still controls the Falklands. I’m confident that an American woman, if called upon, could do just as well as Margaret Thatcher.

2016 August 29^th

Today we have a very unhappy Mona Charen writing about “Clinton’s felonious friends in Virginia.” We must not blame Ms. Charen for being unhappy; if she weren’t unhappy about something, what would she write about in her column? Unhappiness is the stock in trade of all columnists and, I am forced to say, of this blog as well. I am unhappy with Ms. Charen’s unhappiness and so I have a theme for today. It’s all very convoluted.

Charen is unhappy with Virginia’s Governor, Terry McAuliffe, who has restored the voting rights of many convicted felons. She does not disagree with the result; she claims to be “open to the idea of restoring rights” to these people. She objects very strongly, and over many paragraphs to the method. McAuliffe did this restoration by using executive powers of various kinds, pardon, clemency and so on. Charen believes he should have persuaded the Virginia Legislature to change the law instead of going the Obama route (my term).

Charen points out that Governor McAuliffe’s action is unprecedented. She writes, “Never before have any of the prior 71 Virginia Governors issued a sua sponte clemency order of any kind, whether to restore civil rights or grant a pardon to an unnamed class of felons without regard for the nature of their crimes or any other individual circumstance relevant to their crime.” Fifty word sentences like this keep Charen from arriving quickly at the point of her message. (Sua sponte is Latin for of its own accord, that is without prompting. Charen is a law school graduate and so is inclined to insert some scholarly Latin phrases where possible.) The point Charen makes, that if a thing has never been done before, that is a good reason for not doing it now, seems like a fine conservative position. I wonder if that has a Latin name.

The Virginia General Assembly, which would have to agree to any change in the law about enfranchising felons, is two-thirds Republican and one-third Democrat. It is obvious from that imbalance that Governor McAuliffe should not waste his time trying to get a change in the law.  Happily, the public agrees with the outcome he has produced anyway: 65 percent are in favor of restoring voter rights so Governor McAuliffe will lose few votes over his action.

The General Assembly is not all that popular; they get only a 28 percent approval rating. Keep in mind that is about twice the approval rating the Republican led US Congress gets.

Charen has some difficulty here. She obviously is not a Clinton fan and she despises Donald Trump. Here is what she recently wrote about The Donald:

“I first became aware of Donald Trump when he chose to make cheating on his first wife front-page news. It was the early ’90s. Donald and Ivana Trump broke up over the course of months. Not that divorce is shocking, mind you. Among the glitterati marriage seems more unusual. Nor is infidelity exactly novel. But it requires a particular breed of lowlife to advertise the sexual superiority of one’s mistress over the mother of one’s children. That was Trump’s style. He leaked stories to the New York tabloids about Ivana’s breast implants — they didn’t feel right. Marla Maples, by contrast, suited him better.”

Charen goes on from there, but you get the picture. Poor Mona, whom can she vote for? Where’s Ross Perot when you need him?

2016 August 27^th

A day or so ago I wrote about Dr. Sanjay Gupta’s take on the unprofessional medical analysis provided by Trump’s physician. Now we find out why his doctor’s description of Trump’s health sounded like it was written by Trump himself.  Dr. Harold Bornstein has admitted that he wrote that evaluation in five minutes at the end of a busy day while Trump’s limo idled at the curb outside his office. Dr. Bornstein tells us that he decided to “channel” Donald Trump and deliberately wrote the analysis to sound just like Trump had written it. Good job Dr. Bornstein!

Now we wait for an analysis of Trump’s health that is not a bad joke and of course Trumpites claim Clinton must produce more medical records as well, so there the matter stagnates, ah politics!

The recent shift in Trump’s campaign, adding Stephen Bannon and Kellyanne Conway while subtracting Paul Mannafort, is beginning to make sense. A very rich, we’re talking 400 million net worth here, money man is behind the shift. Robert Mercer is the rich guy. He made his money in the arcane world of machine translation and developing programs to outwit Wall Street traders. He then became a hedge fund manager and over the last several years has managed an income of about 100 million a year. If he wants to throw thirty mil or so into a political campaign he won’t miss the money and he will get considerable gratitude from the beneficiary.

He has an interesting background; noteworthy is his enormous 200+ foot long yacht, “The Sea Owl” valued at about 90 million dollars. He also has a very elaborate model train set up and one of the largest collections of machine guns in the country.

Politically he devotes his energies and his money to groups so far to the right as to be considered on the fringe. He believes global warming is a myth and supports a group that has as its hero an electrical engineer whose claim to fame was a refusal to accept Einstein’s theory. He has been a generous funder of Breitbart and of the Trump campaign. And it was at his suggestion that Steve Bannon of Breitbart and Kellyanne Conway be hired by the Trump campaign. Bannon was hired in spite of no experience with political campaigns and a history of violence beginning with his divorce from his wife. He was charged with violence in that divorce but his wife was threatened if she testified against him so she never showed up and the case against him was dismissed. He claimed he had a problem with his small children playing with the neighborhood Jews.  

Michelle Field, the Breitbart reporter manhandled by Corey Lewandowski, and then abandoned by Breitbart’s Stephen Bannon, resigned from Breitbart. (Bannon tolerates no negative activity toward Trump’s campaign.) Bannon’s trashing of the original Breitbart mission, and moving far to the right, led to the resignation of Breitbarts’ principal editor Ben Shapiro as well as editors Jarett Stepman and Jordan Schachtel. Finally, moving Bannon to Trump’s campaign might have saved Breitbart News from extinction.

Trump’s Iowa speech today was just more of the same. To his adoring and noisy crowds he promised to make America safe again, wealthy again and all of the other good things you can think of again. He just didn’t say a word about how he would do any of that. None of his audience seemed to care. Their only interest is in the outcome, not in the process.

2016 August 26^th

Cal Thomas in his column today finds the gender-neutral statements from Princeton University very disturbing. He is sure this forecasts a horrendous destruction of the national identity. Maybe he’s right.

He is a little late in his concern, though, because some of these gender-neutral statements have been around for a while and have caused no damage, except perhaps to some fragile male egos. For some time now it has been considered appropriate at most colleges to refer to first year students as first year students rather than as freshmen. If this change makes the JV football team feel emasculated, it is not obvious.

Cal Thomas has the prejudices one would expect of an older white man who was once a vice president of the Moral Majority. Jerry Falwell, the founder of that now defunct group, was no supporter of equal rights for women, so Cal Thomas’ opposition to gender-neutral language is no surprise. Perhaps Thomas would buy into the fine old Teutonic notion that for women it should be only kinder, kuche und kirk. (Which translates to children, cooking and church.)

This might have been what the founder of Princeton had in mind because until the 1960s this retrograde outfit did not even admit women. Indeed most of the Ivy League schools did not admit women either. Yale admitted undergraduate women for the first time in 1969.

There were special women’s colleges attached to many universities. My alma mater, Carnegie Mellon University, had Margaret Morrison Carnegie College (Irreverently called Maggie Murph by us undergraduates) which opened in 1906 and closed for want of enrollment in 1973. (I should say that the then Carnegie Tech admitted women to all of its other colleges as well as to Maggie Murph.) Women were, by then, no longer interested in a college education for housewifery.

Eventually the ultimate disaster will strike poor Cal, an envelope will arrive addressed to: Mrs.  and Mr. Cal Thomas. Whatever will he do then? Perhaps that will be good for another column.

Thomas makes much of the fact that Princeton began as an institution to train ministers. Most undergraduate liberal arts colleges were started for that reason. I taught in a liberal arts college for thirty years. In its library basement I found a 1906 college catalog. The requirements to enter the college then included a reading knowledge of Greek and Latin. That was a requirement to enter, not to graduate. So where in rural central Michigan did the students come from who could meet such entrance requirements? The college maintained its own boarding prep school and drew its entering class from those prep school graduates.

2016 August 25^th

The big news today concerns Donald Trump (who else?) who has decided that it really isn’t necessary to deport all 11 million illegal aliens and their families. Mind you, this isn’t because such a procedure would be physically impossible, no indeed, because nothing is beyond Trump’s ability. Why has Trump changed his mind on this issue,…or has he really changed his mind?

Kellyanne Conway appeared last night on the “Rachel Maddow Show” to discuss some Trumpian issues, immigration among them. His new stance allows immigrants to remain here if they have committed no crimes and if they pay any taxes they owe. This, Kellyanne explained, is much more humane. Indeed it is but the question remains: Why has Trump changed his immigration views and particularly why would he now propose essentially the same solution proposed months ago by Jeb Bush, a solution which was then massively ridiculed by Donald Trump?

Kellyanne did not have any explanation for Trump’s change of plans. She wanted to talk only about the new look, and like the good pol she is, when pressed on the issue by Maddow, she retreated to an analysis of Hillary Clinton’s many faults. When you find yourself in a corner unable to defend your own candidate, switch to attacking the opposition.

It is odd to find Trump now vigorously promoting the very programs he previously mocked Bush and Rubio for advancing. What do Trump’s fans think about this switch? It’s not a problem for many of them because they don’t believe he is sincere about the change. They are sure that he is taking this new position to get votes and once in office he’ll revert to his original plan.

One prominent fan is most unhappy with Trump’s new approach, and that fan is Ann Coulter, the six-foot tall, blonde, far right wing firebrand. She is the author of such books as “How to Talk to a Liberal if You Must” and “Adios America: The Left’s Plan to Turn America into a Third World Hellhole.” Ms. Coulter is decidedly piqued with Donald Trump. She has a new book just out and its launch was on the very day Trump announced his new, more lenient, immigration policy. The title of Coulter’s new effort is “In Trump We Trust: e pluribus awesome.”

Coulter writes, “There is nothing Trump can do that won’t be forgiven except change his immigration policy.” Trump has changed his immigration policy and Ann Coulter is not about to forgive him. She has produced many very angry tweets to that effect. She had been a devoted fan, always seated in the front row at his rallies and with Trump sometimes pointing his index finger of honor directly at her. His change sure screws up her book launch.

We also have an interesting comment from Trump spokesperson Katrina Pierson. You may remember that not long ago Katrina told us that the invasion of Afghanistan was during Obama’s presidency when in fact it was in 2001 seven years before Obama took office. The Trump higher ups were not happy about that obvious gaffe and said it wouldn’t happen again.  Ms. Pierson has commented on Trump’s new immigration policy. She has said, “He hasn’t changed his position on immigration He’s just changed the words he is using.” Now that’s a tough act to counter, so I won’t even try.

2016 August 24^thBottom of Form

Donald Trump’s physician has released a curious medical report on “The Donald.” The report is curious because the phrasing is not in the language normally used by physicians. Here is Doctor Sanjay Gupta’s deconstruction of this curiosity:

Gupta noted that the letter included things a doctor would never say; and it also used incorrect medical terminology. Whether you’re a doctor or not, that degree of hyperbole [claiming Trump would be the healthiest president ever] and these types of words being used is very unusual. People don’t write like that, that this is ‘the healthiest ever.’ First of all, they couldn’t substantiate. How do you know that someone is the healthiest ever? There’s all sorts of language with that: “strength and stamina are extraordinary.” What does that mean exactly?

“Astonishingly excellent” was another term that was used. These just aren’t terms that are used by the medical community. So I don’t know where they come from.

It says they showed only positive results. Now it’s funny in medicine, because when something is good we say it’s a negative result. Meaning, that it did not appear when we did an exam. Positive results actually means quite the opposite. Calling things “test scores” instead of results. His PSA “test score” was this, as if it was the SAT exam instead of a blood test. It’s a strange letter that’s absurd to look at it on face value.

Could Trump have written this himself? He risked trouble once before by speaking in a language with which he wasn’t familiar; remember “two” Corinthians?

Moving along to another con artist, we have Cal Thomas writing a column for the morning paper. Cal is trying to legitimize the right wing’s new assault on poor people’s franchise.  Why are we not surprised?

The ham-handed analogies Thomas tries to make are surprising. He tells us that the photo IDs now required to vote are also required for many other privileges. You need a photo ID to register in a hotel, buy alcohol if you are under age 25, open a bank account, buy a gun and on and on. His source, The Washington Examiner, lists all of 25 occasions for which a photo ID is presumably required.

There are two problems with the “Examiner’s” list: First, at least one purchase they claim requires a photo ID does not. In most states, buying a shotgun requires only money. If you want to buy a machine gun, that is a very different matter and you’ll need much more than a photo ID.

Nothing in the constitution guarantees your right to rent a hotel room or open a bank account, both of which need a photo ID, but the constitution does guarantee your right to vote. (With some restrictions imposed by the states on convicted felons.) Some states have been trying to get around the 15^th Amendment guaranteeing blacks the right to vote for years. There once was a poll tax; that was declared unconstitutional years ago and now some states have replaced it with the “photo ID” requirement. That won’t work either but will the right wing keep trying? You betcha.

2016 August 23^rd

There has been a change in the Trump campaign and Kellyanne Conway is responsible for it. You may remember that Trump told us, not so long ago, that there would be deportation squads sent around to ferret out illegal aliens and their children and send all 11 million of them back where they came from. That may now have changed. When asked about Trump’s current plans for dealing with illegal aliens Kellyanne said that was “to be discussed;” shorthand for saying “I haven’t a clue.”

There was supposed to be a speech clarifying this issue next Thursday but that has been cancelled, as have the next two speeches after that. This sound more like the major parties are disagreeing over the course to take than a simple inability to produce a reasonable plan. Certainly the major players at Trump headquarters are not strangers to internecine warfare; have at it boys and girls.

A possible explanation emerges from the roundtable at Trump Tower. This was a gathering of prominent Latinos to have a confab with The Donald about his attitudes toward people of this ethnicity. There is no way that Trump would refer to Mexican’s crossing illegally into the United States, as “drug dealers, murderers, rapists and some, perhaps, are good people.” This isn’t because Trump has changed his mind about immigrants; it is because Trump is fully addicted to saying whatever will get him the approval of the crowd he is talking to at the moment. The result is that he will do nothing to upset the Latinos who were listening to him.

Maybe Kellyanne is bright enough to figure if she can just get Trump to talk to some of these groups he despises, she can get him to publicly modify his stance toward them. Who knows, maybe he’ll have a roundtable of Muslims next. One thing is certain; there are changes trying to bubble up in Trumpville.

Secretary Clinton’s health has become an issue. If you watch Rudy Giuliani  go into spasm when he mentions Clinton’s health you worry about a potential stroke on camera. In a futile attempt to provide information to stop the rumors of her imminent demise, Clinton’s long time physician produced a two-page report giving some of her health details. That didn’t work. (When President Obama produced his birth certificate did that stop the “He was born in Kenya” conspiracy theorists?)

Out of the Fox woodwork has emerged “Dr. Drew” Pinsky ready and able to make a fool of himself. Dr. Pinsky is a real M.D. and a board certified internist. He has decided that Hillary Clinton’s health is precarious and that she is just not getting the best medical care. He has come to this decision, not by examining Mrs. Clinton but by reading the two-page report about her health written by her own physician. He has voiced very specific concerns about the treatment Mr. Clinton is receiving for some minor chronic ailments. His concerns, while important enough for him to publicize them, have not been important enough for him to get in touch with Mrs. Clinton’s physician, or with Mrs. Clinton, to discuss the matter.

Pinsky’s willingness to diagnose Mrs. Clinton’s medical issues without the benefit of an examination has brought a comment from Newt Gingrich, who is not a notable Clinton supporter, Gingrich writes: Well, first of all, just to get down to a human level for a second, all of us ought to include Hillary Clinton in our prayers. You can be opposed to somebody without hoping that they have bad health, and I hope that she's all right. Second, I'm always dubious, with all due respect to television doctors, when you have a doctor who has never seen the patient, begin to give you a complicated, fancy sounding analysis based on what? I mean, I would be very cautious and I would recommend to doctors for professional reasons to be very cautious deciding you're gonna start analyzing people.”

Will this give Pinsky, or Giuliani pause? Not a chance!

2016 August 22^nd

If these two presidential candidates are, either of them, as inept in office as they are in their campaigns, the government of this country will be in desperate trouble. Consider Hillary Clinton, our former Secretary of State. She pushes for transparency but is reluctant to hold a full-blown press conference. She keeps insisting that she answers questions from the press all the time, but these questions are asked on the fly and are hardly a substitute for the real thing.

Her emails and their disposition continue to bedevil her. She has recently suggested that no less a figure than General Colin Powell had a hand in her decision to use a private email server. He is not willing to agree that he did that at all, or at least not to the extent that Clinton has suggested he did. General Powell is a revered figure in this country and probably could have been elected President…and probably still could be, particularly if he were running today. If Clinton wanted to tell us that General Powell had made suggestions about how she handled her emails why didn’t she ask him beforehand if she could reference his opinion about how to deal with them. That would have eliminated another attack on her honesty. How much intelligence would that have taken?

(As an aside here it might be noted that over the four years of Clinton’s tenure as Secretary of State about 62,320 emails were sent or received by her office. That comes to over 40 emails a day seven days a week for four years. Does anyone believe that she, herself, composed the majority of those?)

Then we have the esteemed Kellyanne Conway who is supposed to be the new savior of the Trump campaign. No presidential campaign in the country’s history has been in more need of a savior. Conway’s efforts so far have not helped. She has had Trump delivering a message to African-Americans in the 95 percent white suburb of Dimondale Michigan instead of in the much more diverse, and disastrously served, city of Flint. He has talked to no black churches, talked to no black groups like the NAACP or the Urban League. You can’t get the votes of people you are not willing to talk to.

An important issue for Trump is the 11 million people illegally in this country, many with children who were born here and are thus citizens. Trump has claimed that he will round up these people and send them back where they came from. For many reasons this claim is absurd on its face.

Trump has recently held a “round table” of Hispanic citizens to listen to suggestions about how this problem might be handled. The implication seems to be that perhaps someone has explained to Trump that his original deportation plan is ridiculous. His new savior Kellyanne Conway was asked about what Trump was planning now. Her answer was that the immigrant issue was “to be decided.” Thursday was to have been the big immigration speech but just today we are told that the immigration speech has been cancelled.

However much Kellyanne is being paid it is nowhere near enough.

2016 August 21^st

Here are some election odds from the people at Paddy Power the Brit betting folks where betting on US elections is legal. The odds of Hillary winning are 2/9 meaning that you put up nine dollars to win just two dollars if you’re right. In short, Hillary is a substantial odds on favorite. For Trump the odds change drastically; he is 3/1. This means that you bet one dollar on a Trump and if you are right you win three dollars. It’s obvious that the folks at PP don’t believe that Trump has much chance.

There is a new bet available at PP: Will the current nominees be the nominees at election time? The odds that Clinton will remain the nominee are 33/1; the odds for Trump are less than half that at 14/1. It will be interesting to see how the odds against Trump holding the nomination change as his campaign organizers churn and churn.

And now we return to yesteryear, actually August 21 of 2015. Cal Thomas, our old friend from the moral majority provides the incentive:

Aug 21^st

Cal Thomas provides some nonsense for me to disparage today. Good old Cal, whatever would I do without him? In his very first paragraph he says, “America appears in decline under a disengaged President.” This “disengaged President” has just negotiated an agreement between six nations, including Russia and China, to limit Iraq’s development of nuclear capability. Now he must fight against our “ally” Israel’s desperate attempts to sabotage it. He has also managed to get the Affordable Care Act passed and declared constitutional by SCOTUS. He has also managed to make same sex marriage possible in this country. He has reestablished a diplomatic relationship with Cuba in spite of screams from the right that the fifty year old boycott of Cuba had “just begun to work.” The result of his constant appearances to lobby the public for these and other programs, we have George Will claiming that he is “overexposed.” Can you be disengaged and overexposed at the same time? This is possible only for conservatives who are criticizing the President.

Moving right along to the next sentence Cal Thomas tells us that “We can’t seem to win wars, or know why we are fighting them.” Who started those wars Cal? Who claimed that Iraq had “weapons of mass destruction” and then destroyed the careers of Ambassador Wilson and his CIA wife, Valerie Plame, when they didn’t find the required evidence? You might read “The war they wanted; the lies they needed” in Vanity Fair.

Then he claims that “People are afraid of losing their jobs or are unable to find one. While the treasury takes in record amounts of money from working people, it outspends its income.” Cal Thomas should know that the treasury can’t take in record amounts of money from people who aren’t employed. So of course Cal isn’t stupid enough to claim employment is low but he can claim people are “afraid of losing their jobs.” The evidence he gives for this assertion is what? Then he claims that some are unable to find jobs. That’s true and it has always been true even in Ronald Reagan’s administration.

Cal Thomas finally attacks liberal politicians whom he claims are “providing ‘benefits’ in exchange for votes.” My goodness Cal, what a cynic you’ve become. I’m sure your church has a pantry where indigent people can get food. Most churches are not big on allowing people to go hungry because they can’t find work that pays enough to pay the rent and to feed their families. So, would you subscribe to the notion that your church just supports their pantry to increase the church’s membership? Perhaps the pantry is there to increase membership enough to qualify for another pastor? Perhaps your cynicism about people wanting to help others only applies to those who don’t share your political views.

2016 August 20^th

Donald Trump, who now recognizes that he is getting just 1 percent of the African-American vote, believes that with hard work he might be able to double that figure. That is certainly possible. To that end Trump has begun directing his comments to the Africa-American community. Yesterday, for example, he held a rally in Dimondale, Michigan, a town north of Detroit. He said the African-American community had not benefited from its Democratic allegiance and so they should give Donald Trump a chance.

This is a reasonable message but it is addressed to the wrong audience. Dimondale, Michigan, where Trump held forth, is 95 percent white.  Why wasn’t this message, and Trump’s rally held in Flint, Michigan, where just over half of the residents are black and the water crisis has made national news? No one knows, but a start might be that the poisoning of Flint’s water supply was arguably caused by  Republican Governor Rick Snyder trying to save a few bucks. Could it be that Trump knew that a Republican presidential candidate might get a very rude reception in Flint? Donald Trump is not going to risk getting a rude reception anywhere. This aversion to rejection might also account for Trump’s failure to accept speaking invitations from black organizations like the Urban League and the NAACP. Never mind how much he needs the black vote.

Trump is said to be speaking to The African-American community in an attempt to woo them into the Republican voting bloc. He isn’t doing that at all, he is speaking about the African-American community and what he believes they should do but he is not speaking to the black community, he is speaking to the white community. The purpose is to convince the white community that he is not a racist, that he welcomes African-Americans, indeed he pleads with them to come over to the Republican Party. If they are unwilling to recognize the failure of their allegiance to the Democratic Party, well he has done his best and now can’t be blamed for the loss of black votes. If some black voters hear his message and come over to the Republican party, so much the better.

Off to Baton Rouge, Louisiana and Donald Trump’s generous gift of a semi-truck load of…toys to the flood victims. There might have been other more appropriate things on that semi but the photo op Trump produced showed him and Governor Spence busy helping unload toys from that semi. That didn’t last very long because Donald Trump had many more important things to do than physically help anyone. The result was that Donald Trump and Mike Pence spent all of 47 seconds being photographed helping to unload that truck: hey, how long does a photo op take; what great guys!

2016 August 19^th

Paul Manafort is out of the Trump campaign so we won’t have Paul to kick around anymore. Oh Pshaw! Now we have to make do with that Breitbart boy…hey, no problem.

The arrival of the new team was supposed to mean that Trump was encouraged to go back to being Trump. Then we have the Kellyanne Conway (KC) influence, presumably softening Trump ever so slightly by making him apologize…sort of. Here is what Trump read from his teleprompter:

“Sometimes in the heat of debate, and speaking on a multitude of issues, you don’t choose the right words or you say the wrong thing. I have done that, and believe it or not I regret it. I do regret it particularly where it may have caused personal pain.”

That’s not an apology: that’s an excuse, read it carefully. “Sometimes in the heat of debate, and speaking on a multitude of issues…” allows Trump to excuse his boorishness. Whom was he “debating” when he mocked the disabled reporter…and then said he had done no such thing. He kept reporters penned up at his rallies and then pointed to one of them calling him a “scumbag.” He told his followers to “punch them in the face” when protesters were removed from his rally, all the while insisting he abhorred violence. He claims that he was “attacked” by a gold star father who asked him what he had sacrificed for his country. His response was to insult the man’s wife, mother of the fallen soldier. His response to the father’s question was that he had created jobs. He considers that a sacrifice?  Standard Trump nonsense.

Donald Trump says, “I will never lie to you.” Let’s see what he has said about Hillary Clinton not all that long ago and then what he says now: “Hillary Clinton I think is a terrific woman.” How about, “I know her very well, and I know her husband very well, and I like them both.” We also have, “Hillary is smart, tough, and a very nice person.” There is, “I know Hillary and I think she’d make a great president.”

Then Trump (who would never lie to us) says, “In Hillary Clinton’s America the system stays rigged against Americans . Syrian refugees flood in. Illegal immigrants convicted of committing crimes get to stay in, collecting Social Security skipping the line….It’s more of the same.”   

Which “truth” are you pushing now Mr. Trump?

Then we have Trump’s very different positions on Libya:
“I can’t believe what our country is doing,” said Trump on his video blog. “Qaddafi in Libya is killing thousands of people, nobody knows how bad it is, and we’re sitting around we have soldiers all over the Middle East, and we’re not bringing them in to stop this horrible carnage and that’s what it is: It’s a carnage.”

Then during the campaign, Donald Trump came down hard on the Obama administration for intervening in Libya to help topple Muammar Qaddafi. Trump now says, for example, that the world would be better off with Qaddafi in power. Indeed, he has argued that “frankly there is no Libya; it’s all broken up; they have no control; nobody knows what’s going on.”

Which is the “truth?” They are both the truth for Donald Trump. For Trump the truth is whatever he has most recently said. Once he has heard himself say it, those words become the truth for Donald Trump. It’s an illness.

2016 August 18^th

There have been some interesting comments about Trump’s re-jiggering—yet again—of his campaign staff. In response to the appointment of Stephen Bannon, in particular, one commentator remarked that Trump’s campaign was now “in hospice care.” Charlie Sykes who was responsible for that gem, is not some supporter of left-wing causes, he is in fact a right-wing talk radio host who despises “The Donald” because he believes that Trump is no conservative. Of course he is right about that.

Trump’s campaign has returned to the theme of “Let Trump be Trump.” That is who he has been all along and he has insisted that he will not change. The adage, “If you find yourself in a hole, stop digging” would seem to apply here, but not for Donald Trump. He believes that whatever he does will work…if the system isn’t rigged. He believes that it follows that if it doesn’t work then the system is rigged. His problem here begins with a faulty premise.

He also has a problem with some of his surrogates. Rudolf Giuliani has claimed, in one of his virulent sputterings, that there were no Islamist attacks against America until Obama came into office. That’s right, Giuliani said that. The 9/11 attacks happened in 2001, eight years before President Obama was elected. There was another attempt on the Towers in 1993. This isn’t the first time that Giuliani’s enthusiasms have outpaced his judgment.

Encouraged by Giuliani’s gaffe, next up was the stone-faced Katrina Pierson. Ms. Pierson tells us that Afghanistan was invaded when Obama came into office, in spite of the fact that the invasion was in 2001 under President Bush. Katrina stuck to her guns in spite of the interviewer’s attempts to set her straight. Later a Trump spokesperson ominously claimed  “I guarantee you that won’t happen again.” Will we miss Katrina? I certainly will.

Next up in fantasy-land was Trump’s lawyer, or one of them at least. Michael Cohen was being interviewed by Brianna Keilar on CNN. Her intention was to ask Cohen about the shake-up in the Trump campaign but she prefaced her remarks by mentioning that the campaign was in some difficulty. “Says who?” exclaimed Cohen . “The polls” said Keilar. Which ones asked Cohen. “All of them!” said an increasingly flummoxed Keilar. The sour faced, unsmiling Cohen then claimed that Trump would win in the end.

Polls come into the picture again when a Fox person, Eric Bolling, denied they mattered at all. In a Fox discussion, when Bolling was reminded about Trump’s declining poll numbers he claimed that they were more than compensated for by the huge crowds at his rallies. This is the same logic that has convinced Trump that because his rally crowds are so big he could only lose the election if the election were rigged.

President Obama won with 65 million votes in 2012. If Trump got 20 thousand people at 50 different rallies, that would still be just 1.5 percent of Obama’s winning total in 2012.

2016 August 17^th

Donald Trump has done another campaign shakeup. (This is two shakeups in two months.) His sycophants claim it is no such thing; it’s just a couple of additions to an admittedly skeleton crew. Trump has added Kellyanne Conway, a right wing pollster who has appeared on many panels vigorously and loudly defending “Mr. Trump.” She is a tad less irritating than Katrina Pierson whose “take no prisoners” attitude coupled with her absolutely expressionless face makes her memorable.

Ms. Conway is, at least pro tem, the “Campaign Manager” according to Mr. Trump. As a sidelight here, Ms. Conway’s “Wikipedia” entry was “edited” earlier this morning to remove some less than complimentary assertions. It is quite possible that the uncomplimentary assertions were libelous and deserved to be removed, but their removal just now is an interesting coincidence.

Stephen Bannon has also been added to the campaign. He was formerly the honcho at Breitbart News, an organization reputed to manufacture the news it would like to report if that news did not exist naturally. Bannon has served in the Navy in positions of responsibility and he has also worked for Goldman Sachs, so he is not devoted completely to the roll of iconoclast.

Bannon is now officially “Chief Executive” of the Trump campaign. (One wonders if Trump hands out glorious titles in lieu of cash. Does anyone know who the equivalent title holders are in the Clinton campaign…or have been in any previous campaign?)

Paul Manafort has not been demoted because he still has the title he held before; he is “Chairman” of the campaign. Who tells whom what to do is not clearly specified and no wonder, although Kellyanne Conway as “Campaign Manager,” seems to have the least glorious title and the one requiring the most work. What else is new?

Manafort has come in for some very unfavorable publicity recently thanks to the “failing” New York Times. It seems that some unrecorded money might have changed hands as a result of Manafort’s fine work on behalf of a Ukraine pol who was really a Russian sympathizer. Manafort was hired to help the man’s unfortunate image; he apparently did that very well.

The Russian connections to the Trump campaign are beginning to mount up. There is notably the Putin-Trump mutual admiration society; there was the removal from the Republican platform of a plank calling for increased armed support for Ukraine; there was Trump’s plea for the Russian hackers to produce Clinton’s emails; there was Trump’s assertion that we might not honor NATO obligations to defend some tiny Baltic countries if they were attacked by Russia.

Maybe Manafort is being eased out. One thing is certain: no one can persuade Donald Trump that he should change course or that he is wrong about anything. Hillary Clinton can be very thankful about that; it is greasing her path to the presidency…and she needs it.

                                               

2016 August 16^th

Patrick J. Buchanan writes in his column today that, “Yes the system is rigged.” This is in support of Donald Trump’s claim that if he loses the Pennsylvania election then the election was rigged. Buchanan is right; of course, the election is rigged and SCOTUS is busy trying to un-rig it. States control when they can vote, where they can vote and who can vote (within constitutional limits). In many states, the Republican Party is in the catbird seat and they have decided that voters need a picture ID to vote, That’s not a problem for many of us who have a driver’s license but for many poor people (read Democrats) it just replaces the poll tax, once used throughout the south to deny black citizens the franchise. SCOTUS declared the poll tax unconstitutional but Republicans have replaced it with a voter ID requirement, ostensibly to combat nonexistent voter fraud. It didn’t work and SCOTUS is busy knocking down these new barriers.

Buchanan, like Trump, is enamored of crowds. He points out that Bernie Sanders crowds dwarfed Hillary Clinton’s, but doesn’t mention that Clinton got 15.8 million primary votes to Sanders 12 million votes.

He goes on to tell us that, “The strongest GOP field since 1980 were sent packing.” (sent packing by Trump) This “strongest GOP field” consisted of Louisiana governor “Bobby” Jindal who left his state virtually bankrupt; Senator Ted Cruz who called his senate leader a liar on the floor of the senate; Carly Fiorina who was cashiered as CEO of Hewlett Packard and then went on to challenge California’s Senator Boxer for her senate seat losing badly, then refusing to pay her staff. All of these were part of this cream of the crop field, according to Buchanan.

Trump’s claim that if he loses Pennsylvania the election must be rigged because his crowds there are huge. That claim is nonsense. Trump’s rallies do draw big crowds. Let’s assume he pulls a total of 100 thousand at five separate rallies.  Does anyone really believe all of these rally goers will vote for Trump, that none of them attended his rally to be entertained? There are 7.2 million registered voters in Pennsylvania and 3.1 million of these are Republicans. If Trump had 100 thousand rally attendees and all of them voted for him that would be just 3 percent of the registered Republicans. He (and Buchanan) claim that if he gets 3 percent of the registered Republicans voting for him but loses the election it follows that the election is rigged. What are Trump and Buchanan smoking?

There are other unpleasant numbers for Trump as well. He makes much of the total primary vote he received, about 13.3 million votes…but more than 16 million Republican primary voters voted for someone else. In fact Hillary Clinton got 2 million more Democratic primary votes than Trump got Republican primary votes.

Buchanan finishes with this gem, “But if Hillary Clinton takes power and continues America on her present course, which a majority of Americans rejected in the primaries…” In which primary election were Hillary Clinton’s policies rejected? Buchanan can have his own opinions but he can’t manufacture his own facts. (Thank you Daniel Patrick Moynihan for that gem.)

Unpredictable electrons swallowed today's blog so I'll post this one from one year ago while I try to find my lost child!

Aug 15^th

Cal Thomas has a piece on “College Tuition.” Cal writes nothing that is not an attempt to provide some deceptive nonsense about a prominent liberal…and his effort here is not an exception. His intended victim is Hillary Clinton and her intention to spend 350 billion dollars to assist college students.

Cal asserts that we already have an 18 trillion dollar debt and we cannot afford to add to it. This is an interesting position to take on two counts: First, that 18 trillion dollar debt would be increased by less than 2 percent by adding 350 billion dollars to it. We got that debt by borrowing money to fight the Bush wars so why not spend some money, 1.9 percent, to educate our kids? Second, who said anything about borrowing the money? A tax surcharge on high income earners, or a simple wealth tax, would handle this and other government needs nicely. But what conservative ever suggested pay as you go as an economic position?

Thomas assails us with the unemployment rate for recent college graduates without mentioning that for many specialties there is no unemployment at all and many other graduates are unemployed because they are in some type of graduate school. Does he believe that medical students and law students should hold full-time jobs and attend professional school part-time? Ridiculous! What is the unemployment rate for high school graduates compared with college graduates? In 2014 high school graduates had unemployment rates of 6.0%; college graduates had unemployment rates of 3.5%; this is a little statistic Cal Thomas doesn’t include.

So a Colorado law Professor finds that “the rise in college tuition correlates with the huge increase in public subsidies for higher education.” It also correlates with the huge increase in student debt but Thomas says not a word about student debt. Scott Walker, governor of Wisconsin is not helping college students by cutting 350 million dollars from the University of Wisconsin system and providing 350 million dollars to help build a professional sports stadium in which one of his supporters has an interest.

Thomas says, “No one ought to be entitled to tax money to go to expensive schools like Harvard or Yale…” They don’t need money to attend these schools. Princeton, for example, will pay for any difference between their tuition and a family’s ability to pay for the cost of their child’s attendance. Similar adjustments are made by other top Ivy League schools.

Thomas claims that, “U.S. education in the 21^st century is based on a 20^th century model.” Some of it is indeed, and so is most of the care provided by your physician, or your attorney. Your physician examines you, listens to your complaints and prescribes a medication or a specialist. The primary difference is that she no longer makes house calls.

Thomas accuses Clinton of a vote buying scheme; perhaps it is. The liberals buy votes by promising to increase goods and services, even if they must raise taxes. Conservatives buy votes by promising to withhold services, reduce the taxes needed to pay for them and reduce regulations inconveniencing the wealthy, and if wars come, they will borrow the money to pay for them.

2016 August 14^th

Katrina Pierson, Kaleigh Mcenany and Trump’s other paid sycophants are in a swivet trying to keep up with “Mr. Trump’s” various sudden shifts in position. Trump, given multiple chances to dance away from his silly assertion the President Obama “founded” ISIS  continues to insist that he didn’t mean that Obama laid the groundwork for ISIS by withdrawing troops from Iraq, no indeed, he meant just what he said, that President Obama founded ISIS. His surrogates, and that includes Fox News, continued to insist he didn’t mean what he said in spite of Trump continuing to insist that he certainly did mean just what he said.

Now he has changed course again; now he claims he is not fighting against Hillary Clinton but against the “crooked” press. He is particularly unhappy with the New York Times. (He has already withdrawn the credentials of the Washington Post for a variety of offenses.) The Times has published an article about the internal problems the Trump campaign is having keeping the candidate on message and away from spending his rapidly vanishing time battling irrelevant issues like his press coverage.

We know what happens if anyone criticizes Donald J. Trump; he ignites immediately. Indeed, in this case, he demonstrates exactly the issue the Times claims his campaign is concerned about. He and his campaign have insisted that there is no disagreement among his campaign staffers, that everyone of Trump’s people are just delighted with their progress and that the Times’ story is a pack of lies. Of course they say that; what else would you expect them to say?

What are these poor Trump supporters to do now because Trump has begun to talk about losing the election. He has said that if he loses it’s no big deal, he’ll just take a nice long vacation. What a thrill to hear that if you have been busting your butt to get the guy elected with the hope of picking up some table scraps if he makes it. He says he might take an extended vacation at Mar-a-Lago with daily golf and any other amenities he can think of. That’s dandy but what will Katrina Pierson do, she is the stone-faced lady who appears periodically in an attempt to clean up his comments. If Trump loses, or drops out, Ms. Pierson will be not only unemployed but probably unemployable.

Hillary Clinton just sits quietly by like a cat surveying her domain. She has no need to do anything because Trump is self-destructing before her eyes. He has declared that if he doesn’t win Pennsylvania, where he is now significantly behind Clinton, it will mean that the election has been stolen. The man cannot understand that turning out ten thousand supporters for a rally does not mean that he will win even a majority of the 3.1 million registered Republican voters…nor does he realize that there are a million more registered Democrats than there are

registered Republicans in Pennsylvania. It is a lesson he will eventually learn.

2016 August 13^th

Jason Gillman lost his primary bid for a seat in the Michigan State house. That hasn’t stopped him from embarrassing the Grand Traverse Republican Party. He has managed to lead the local party pols to vote Governor Milliken, the most prominent Michigan Republican and a decorated WW 2 war veteran, out of the Republican Party. What an embarrassment, not an embarrassment for Governor Milliken, but certainly an embarrassment for the county pols.

Milliken is considered a moderate Republican. He served as Michigan’s governor from 1969 to 1983 and he was enormously popular. He was also a WW 2 veteran, a waist gunner on B-24s with 50 missions to his credit and a survivor of several crash landings. (Mr. Gillman has survived several Republican primaries.)

It is a different time, but Trump has driven away many staunch Republicans who cannot abide the man’s bigotry and his lies. Even Michigan’s Governor Snyder has not endorsed Donald Trump and probably won’t do so. Milliken has gone a step further; he will vote for Hillary Clinton. He has lots of company, even Meg Whitman the CEO of Hewlett Packard Enterprise has said she will vote for Hillary Clinton.  If your goal is to send Trump back to his real estate business, then you vote for Hillary Clinton; you don’t just avoid voting for Donald Trump. For those who see Trump’s presidency as a danger to the republic there is no real choice.

It is interesting to note that Governor Milliken has taken this route before and that his decisions to put his country ahead of his party have contributed to the local pols, at Gillman’s urging, declaring him no longer a Republican. I cannot imagine what the RNC thinks about this. Part of the justification for this absurdity was, as Gillman pointed out, Milliken backed John Kerry for president in 2004. How wonderful it was to have Bush-Cheney for four more years; to drive up the national debt, kill and cripple more Americans and end that presidential term by losing nearly 800 thousand jobs a month. (You do know that the “weapons of mass destruction” were there, but they were spirited away by Russian Special Forces, which is why we never found them.) If you think that’s farfetched realize that 54 percent of Republicans believe President Obama is a Muslim, 44 percent believe he wasn’t born in this country and 26 percent aren’t sure whether he was born here or not. At least 20 percent of Republicans believe that President Obama is the anti-Christ!

This extends beyond politics because 7 percent of the population believes that the moon landing wasn’t on the moon at all but was in the back lot of some movie studio. How can this be? Keep in mind that it is a statistical fact that one-half the population has an IQ under 100 and that 50 million have an IQ under 85. It’s a wonder Trump isn’t doing better!

2016 August 12^th

Trump’s handlers are now trying to scrape the egg from his face resulting from the fallout from his claim that President Obama and Hillary Clinton “founded” ISIS. Just yesterday he was asked repeatedly if he meant that President Obama had created an environment favorable to the rise of ISIS. Every time he was asked he said no he meant that President Obama and Hillary Clinton had “founded” ISIS. Just to emphasize his position, he used the president’s middle name, calling him Barak Hussein Obama.

Hugh Hewitt, a right wing radio commentator, tried mightily to get a more rational comment from Trump, even to pointing out that American warplanes were killing ISIS soldiers by the dozens in Libya, but Trump kept insisting on his thesis that the President and the former Secretary of State had founded ISIS even if they were now killing them off.

It is now a good 24 hours later and Trump’s supervisors have finally persuaded him that he has walked well out on a very thin limb with his ISIS comments. Trump, of course, never retreats, apologizes or any of those things mortals do when they make mistakes so what’s open to fix this mess?

It’s all the fault of the dimwitted press and his dimwitted critics all of whom failed to understand that Mr. Trump was being sarcastic. He has been sarcastic before. You might remember when he suggested that Russia hack into Clinton’s emails. Suggesting that an unfriendly foreign country stick its intelligence gathering noses into our election produced some static and Trump tried to defuse that by claiming his suggestion about the email hacking was just sarcasm.

It is obvious that Donald Trump doesn’t know what sarcasm is. In neither the suggestion that Russians hack Clinton’s emails nor the President “founding” ISIS could these remarks be taken as examples of sarcasm.  Sarcasm isn’t complicated; you exaggerate the opposite trait of the trait you want to belittle in your adversary. Saying that Trump is modest, or that he is careful not to offend minorities or the handicapped, would be examples of sarcasm.

As I wrote previously, Trump may initially say things he doesn’t really believe but after he hears himself repeat them he comes to believe they are true. If you believe you are lying you’ll probably flunk a lie detector test; but if you are convinced that what your saying is true you’ll probably pass. Trump seems able to convince himself of almost anything.

2016 August 11^th

Trump is now speculating about what he would do if he loses the election. He says that he would take a nice long vacation. I doubt that he would because I believe he will get together with Roger Aisles, who is also out of work, and together they will found the Trump TV network.

To suggest in the middle of the August, before the November election, that you might lose and what your plans would be then, does not inspire confidence in your fans…and highly P##### off the folks at the RNC. No matter, Trump has been throwing up straws like these before: Recall his comments about the election being “rigged” getting himself and his fans ready for the inevitable. Finally recognizing that he will lose is the first sign of some healthy reality testing.

Then back to fantasyland we go: Trump claims that President Obama founded ISIS…and that Hillary Clinton was the cofounder. He has repeated this assertion whose logic goes like this: President Obama withdrew our troops from Iraq and Hillary Clinton helped out the Libyan strong man Muammar Khadafy, thus opening the door for the rise of ISIS. That makes them the founders and co-founders of ISIS. This same logic, or its absence, would make Abraham Lincoln the founder of the Ku Klux Klan. Trump brags about his education at The Wharton School, but he somehow missed out on the elementary logical fallacy, post hoc ergo propter hoc, because “B” follows “A” doesn’t mean “A” causes “B.”

At this point, although Trump had originally meant that by withdrawing troops from Iraq and removing Khadafy, President Obama and Secretary Clinton had created the environment congenial for the rise of ISIS, Now Trump has convinced himself that they are responsible for the rise of ISIS in a much more fundamental sense. The mechanism is not unheard of, if you say something that you don’t believe and say it often and firmly enough, you’ll come to believe what you say; otherwise you have to admit that you are lying. I believe this is what has happened to Trump and it’s happened before. He insisted that Megyn Kelly attacked him at a debate when she simply asked him about comments he had made about women; that a gold star father attacked him by asking what he had ever sacrificed.

Trump’s paranoid streak means that he will believe he is being attacked even when no attack is intended. The result is that he will flail away at anyone, particularly at the press whose job it is to report what he says. He has even “withdrawn the press credentials” of the Washington Post because he doesn’t like what they print about him. Alienating the press is a particularly stupid move for any political candidate. Trump’s paranoia will lead to an unendingly hostile Donald Trump who perceives attackers everywhere. Hostile candidates usually lose elections. Trump is well on his way.

Now that Trump is well behind nationally and has been told that the RNC will have to begin deflecting resources to down ballot candidates, what does Trump say? He says that Hillary Clinton is now worried about losing the election.

2016 August 10^th

In “The Wall Street Journal” for Thursday August 4^th there appeared an opinion piece by Phil Gramm and Mike Solon, partners in a boutique lobbying firm. The firm pushes low tax legislation and in their opinion piece of last Thursday they offered their rationale about why the current recovery is “so slow.”

It will surprise no one to read that these lobbyists (not so identified by the WSJ) are of the opinion that high tax rates under President Obama are responsible. They point out that this recovery is slower than most and they compared the economy’s bounce under President Obama with the bounce that followed previous recessions. (Excepting the recovery after the great depression, which was hampered by Roosevelt’s various make work policies instituted to avoid starving the public.)

So let’s examine this so called slow recovery. There are certainly soft spots and the wages of the middle class have not improved very much. Many of the well-paying job losses are the result of automation, not the result of moving plants abroad. (Trump cannot understand this and neither can his followers.) As I wrote yesterday, we are producing twice as many cars and trucks as were produced when President Obama took office. Unemployment is under 5 percent and the stock market is at an all-time high. None of these data are at all convincing to the Gramm Solo lobbyists. Lobbyists have to convince you that things are terrible and if you hire them they’ll pressure the right legislators to remedy the situation for you.

Let’s look at the terrible tax situation that exists now under President Obama: Consider the corporate tax structure: Gramm Solon claims the federal corporate tax rate is the highest in the world at 35 percent. There are a couple of countries with higher corporate tax rates, but, generally speaking, ours are very high…except very few corporations pay that rate. If you average over the last five years and look at the rates for the top industrialized countries the average “effective corporate tax rate” is 16.1 percent. The US effective tax rate over that period is 13.4 percent. Lobbyists like Gramm and Solon have inserted enough loopholes in the corporate tax structure so that hardly any corporations pay the top rate…and some pay nothing at all. (You won’t learn that by reading WSJ.)

Now about the federal income tax that naughty President Obama has set at a marginal rate of 39.6 percent, but only on incomes topping 400 thousand a year. Gramm Solon considers this “over taxation” a cause of our anemic economic recovery. On the other hand, In 1969 Nixon set the marginal rate at 77 percent; it was at 50 percent in 1986 under Reagan; it was 91 percent under Eisenhower. Isn’t it amazing that the country did not sink irretrievably into depression given those marginal tax rates? Maybe the WSJ could ask these lobbyists why it’s only Democratic presidents whose much lower marginal income tax rates are so dangerous for the economy.

2016 August 9^th

Let’s look back a year. Here is the blog for August 9^th of 2015.

Aug 9^th

No fresh villains emerge today so I’ll comment on some who have been around a while. First we have that gentleman and scholar, Donald Trump, whose thin skin manifested itself on the Fox debate stage Thursday night. The first question was certainly designed to put Trump in a corner. The group was asked to raise a hand if they could not support whoever was chosen as the nominee. This was asking Trump to declare that he would not run as an independent if he didn’t like the way the candidate ball bounced. He didn’t knuckle under and he raised his hand; surprise surprise…and he was not happy to be the obvious butt of the first question.

Then they hit him again; Megyn Kelly asked him why he was so nasty to women interviewers. Well, provoke a rattlesnake and it’ll strike at you. Trump accused this poor woman of being out to get him, of having blood in her eye and “wherever.” This was an obvious accusation that Kelly’s upset was attributable to her menstrual period. Asked later if his comments were out of line his handlers indignantly (and hilariously) claimed that the “wherever” meant her nose, blood coming out of her nose. That only a deviant could think he (Trump) meant anything else. But if he meant nose why didn’t he say nose at the time, instead of saying wherever?

Poor Donald, (?) who because of his wealth, has never had to worry about how his comments affect anybody, is now playing in a very different ball park. His remarks got him disinvited to a Red State rally in Alabama where he would have been the keynote speaker. Oh Pshaw! His ratings out today are affected not at all.

As an aside: The lovely blonde interlocutor, Megyn Kelly, who asked the question that got Donald into trouble, is no stranger to “misspeaking.” A year or so ago, as Christmas closed in, there was some comment about kids who weren’t white identifying with a white Santa Claus. Ms. Kelly, quickly seizing the anti-politically correct torch and waving it high, claimed, “Santa Claus is white. Deal with it!” This comforting word to Santa Claus fans was followed by, “Jesus Christ was white too.”

Not entirely true. Saint Nicholas was Turkish and Jesus was a Levantine Middle-Eastern Jew so we are not describing a pair of pail skinned blue–eyed blondes here. Kelly was asked to explain her remarks because many people were upset by them. Guess what: they were a joke, that’s right—Megyn said it was all a joke. In fact, if you listen to her explanation she is very upset that her listeners didn’t understand the obvious humor in claiming that Santa Claus and Jesus Christ were white. Megyn should stay with Fox because she will never make it as a comic… on second thought?  This is not to excuse Donald Trump’s boorish comment about Megyn Kelly, but it is possible that in some twisted sense they deserve each other.

Now back to the present; we find Roger Aisles and the Fox soft porn show in considerable difficulty. Roger is being sued by many former lady “friends” and is out of a job with a mere 40 mil severance package. Oh my, what’s the poor old man to do now? 

2016 August 8^th

Donald Trump is addressing the Detroit Economic Club as I write this. I listened to him for a bit and it was instructive; he was not greeted by enthusiastic applause on some of the occasions when he obviously expected it. You could tell he thought the line would get applause because he paused just a tick after he said it, then when he got no response, he moved right along.

This speech will provide a truly fun time for FactCheck.org. In the very few minutes I listened to Trump several bits of misleading nonsense emerged. In his rant about the poor employment picture in this country he said that 20 percent of families have no one in the labor market. Horrors! But then my wife and I are retired and not in the labor market; our neighbor, a widow, is not in the labor market, the folks next to her are retired too and not in the labor market, a friend has had a recurrence of cancer and is not in the labor market, her brother has had a stroke and is not in the labor market. The Detroit Economic Club (DEC) is a sophisticated audience; why would anyone expect them to be influenced by such nonsense.

Moving right along Trump tells us about the terrible trade deals that have decimated the auto industry. He mentions the “yuge” number of jobs lost. Drive your car anywhere and you will be impressed by the “yuge” number of cars out there. They aren’t all imports…and many foreign marks are made right here in the US. The jobs are lost, but they are lost primarily to automation. In 2009, the first year President Obama was in office the US manufactured just 5.7 million cars and trucks. That was the low point thanks to the Bush-Cheney recession. In 2014 that production had risen to 11.6 million cars and trucks. This doubling in automobile production was the result of the “failed Obama administration.”

Trump wants to reduce the federal corporate tax rate, now at 35 percent, which Trump claims is the highest in the world. Almost no company pays that rate; GE on a recent year used various loopholes to pay nothing at all. Lobbyists suggest enlarging the loopholes and our fine representatives oblige them. According to the Government Accounting Office (GAO) the effective tax rate in 2010 for large major corporations was just under 17 percent. That’s less than half the tax rate Trump is using to scare voters You didn’t really expect honesty from this man did you?

He also wants to reduce “regulations.” Regulations, such as those the government requires for the safety of coal miners, save lives. When they are reduced or ignored they cost lives. Massey Energy’s CEO, Don Blankenship figured his Upper Big Branch mine would be more profitable if he relaxed those pesky regulations just a bit. The result was 29 dead miners and a jail term for Blankenship. What regulations do Trump want to reduce or eliminate? He isn’t saying. Neither is he saying what programs will be cut to compensate for all those tax cuts; nor is he saying how much the cuts will add to the national debt. Some things you just don’t need to know about.

2016 August 7^th

I had begun to believe that Donald J. Trump might be an agent of the Democratic National Committee come to hijack the Republican nomination and then act in a way guaranteed to lose the general election to Hillary Clinton. A good case could be made for that, even now. Trump blew the wheels off his competitors in the primaries. He lost only to Senator Cruz in Wisconsin. He had a powerful appeal to the “poorly educated” as he called them and they adored him. He was on their side. He would bring back those jobs he claimed were lost to bad trade agreements. (They weren’t of course, but the “poorly educated” never stopped to analyze the truth of what Trump told them.)

With a weak field, remember “Bobby” Jindal, Dr. Ben Carson and Carly Fiorina? Trump was far better at demonizing and appealing to the xenophobia of the “poorly educated” than any of the other candidates, so he cleaned up; even so, the other candidates in aggregate won more votes that Trump did. In the process Trump has become even more addicted to the cheap applause he can get by appealing to his adoring crowd’s unhappiness with their situation, an unhappiness he encourages at every opportunity.

He wins the nomination in a walk; but by doing so he has alienated (accurate word that) great hunks of the population and a good many principled members of his own party. The notion that he can now begin to heal the rifts and act more presidential appeals to many who view him with suspicion and to date they have seen little change from the self-centered nine year old who won the primaries.

So is Trump an agent of the DNC come to guarantee Hillary Clinton the White House? No, I don’t believe the DNC is that clever.

Trump’s Russian connection is very interesting: Everyone knows about his insistence that Russian would not invade the Ukraine even after they had already done so. We can add to that Trump’s apparent fondness for Putin and Putin’s complimenting of Trump. Trump’s comments about how nice it would be if we could just be friends with Russia. And then there is Michael Morell, Deputy Director of the CIA . Mr. Morell had this to say about Trump and Putin:

 "President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia was a career intelligence officer, trained to identify vulnerabilities in an individual and to exploit them.” That is exactly what he did early in the primaries. "Mr. Putin played upon Mr. Trump’s vulnerabilities by complimenting him. He responded just as Mr. Putin had calculated."

Paul Manafort, the head honcho of Trump’s campaign, is an old Russian hand. He had been hired by Vicktor Yanukovych, the Russian leaning Premier of Ukraine, to rehabilitate Yanukovych’s image after the Ukraine parliament kicked him out and he found asylum back in Russia.

Trump’s Russian connection was topped off when the Trump faction at the RNC, meeting to determine the platform content, insisted that any reference to arming Ukraine be removed. This produced quite a stir and particularly when Manafort and the Trump faction denied that they had done any such thing. Unfortunately for them there were a great many witnesses to testify that they had done exactly that.

Who knows, maybe instead of being a mole for the Democrats, Trump is a mole for the Russians.

2016 August 6^th

Donald Trump, speaking in Wisconsin last night, endorsed Speaker of the House Paul Ryan, Arizona Senator John McCain and New Hampshire Senator Kelli Ayotte, all for the coming elections. Trump spoke while reading directly from a script just like his handlers wanted him to do. There was all the enthusiasm of a hostage reading a ransom note dictated by his captors and, indeed, that is what this endorsement amounted to. Trump reading from a script  does not have the appeal of Trump’s unrehearsed unpredictability.

Congressman Ryan’s primary opponent, Paul Nehlen, has already received the nod from Trump who thanked him “for his kind words,” so this now makes Trump’s “endorsement” of Ryan largely moot. It was anyway because Ryan is very popular in his district and is a shoe in to return to Congress and to his speakership. Trump’s endorsement of Ryan helped Trump in Wisconsin far more than it helped Ryan…and Trump needs all the help in Wisconsin he can get.

Given the Latino population in Arizona Senator McCain might well prefer not to have Trump’s endorsement; it will not help him with a large and growing segment of the Arizona population.

Senator Ayotte is already ten points behind her popular opponent, the Democratic Governor, Maggie Hassan. Trump is behind Clinton in New Hampshire by 15 points; some help his endorsement of anyone will be in that state.

Even if Trump veers off track by not attacking Clinton, Fox and Friends with Tucker Carlson and two other non-entities (One of those a short-skirted blonde woman selected for her reporting skills of course.) were busy today attacking Hillary Clinton on her emails. A search of three thousand emails revealed that three had been marked somewhere in the document with a “C” for confidential and Clinton didn’t treat those emails with appropriate care. Comey, the FBI chief, admitted that Clinton might not have even seen that “C.” No matter, the folks at Fox have very little to hang their criticisms on, so they’ll hang on for dear life to what little they have.

The Benghazi killings continue to provide right wing ammunition. Never mind that Clinton was quizzed for eleven hours by a Congressional tribunal again and they found no smoking gun. Their waste of government money on this witch hunt has now become embarrassing. It’s interesting that the Republican house can find money to continue the investigation of Hillary Clinton but they can’t find money to fight the mosquito borne Zica virus. Is it any wonder Congress’ approval rating is about 13 percent? 

2016 August 5^th

First some curious housekeeping business: If you have been following this blog you are surely aware that it is not all that popular; on a good day it will get a dozen hits but more often it is about half of that. I do not expect a Pulitzer Prize.

 About ten days ago a curious thing happened, I had thirty some hits according to the free analytics that comes with this site. There is more, the next day there were sixty some hits and then the day after that there were over 130 hits. That is a geometric increase and I wasn’t raffling off Jaguars.

The analytics supplied could provide a geographic analysis of the blog’s hits. Was I suddenly discovered by the DNC; was some syndicate after me to do a regular column; no and no. These increased  hits were all coming from…Russia, with a few from China. And then things returned to normal. What happened? I have no idea.

Trump’s poll numbers show him in trouble in New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, Colorado, Virginia, Florida and in most any other toss-up state you can name; At least these were once toss-up states. Where was Trump putting his efforts yesterday? It was in Maine of course, wouldn’t that be expected…hey, he could have decided to spend a few days in Rhode Island...or maybe Delaware. Maybe Maine gives him some relief from global warming to which he plans to add by putting all the coal miners back to work. Can we say pander?

Tonight he is off to Wisconsin to treat his fans to heavens knows what bits of his imagination, but Speaker Ryan won’t be there, neither will Governor Walker, neither will Congressman Mike Gallagher, neither will Senator Ron Johnson. I doubt that Trump will want Palin to return to introduce him because she did that last April when he lost Wisconsin to Senator Cruz.

Trump is haranguing a crowd in Iowa. He is supposed to be a great “counterpuncher” so it is no surprise that he has taken some of the recent questions about his own sanity and his temperamental fitness to control our nuclear weapons an turned those concerns right back at Hillary Clinton. In the sixth grade this would be the “So’s your old man” response. It isn’t very original but it is probably the best the Trump team can produce. On the stage in Iowa he referred to Hillary Clinton as “unhinged;” sound familiar? Trump is quite simply accusing Clinton of the problem many people are convinced he has himself. He has done the same thing with the nuclear codes suggesting that Clinton is unfit to be trusted with them. Now his response is to send it back about Clinton. Given all the available ammunition against Clinton why use that? It must be, “I’ll hit you right where you hit me” even if there are better openings.

The sixth grader is never very far away.