Supreme Court Says

Take that, North Carolina Voter ID law!

The court found that all five restrictions “disproportionately affected African Americans.” The law’s voter identification provision, for instance, “retained only those types of photo ID disproportionately held by whites and excluded those disproportionately held by African Americans.”

This was so, the court said, even though the state had “failed to identify even a single individual who has ever been charged with committing in-person voter fraud in North Carolina.” But it did find that there is evidence of fraud in absentee voting by mail, a method used disproportionately by white voters. But the Legislature exempted absentee voting from the photo ID requirement.

Hmmmmm... You don't suppose...

Whistlling Past the Graveyard

• Republic of T:  "Truth, Reconciliation and Healing Racial Trauma."

  The racial healing the country needs can’t begin until we address the residue of racial trauma that has haunted African-American communities for generations.

• Indomitable:  On whether to stand for "The Star-Spangled Banner."
• The Rectification of Names:   On What Matters.  I think.  Sleeeeeepy.

In Memoriam

All NYTimes obituaries.

• Marc Riboud, photojournalist
• Doris Bohrer, spy (Allies, WWII)
• George Curry, editor and journalist

Casting About for Relevance

• Good.  Called third strike.  False equivalence at the New York Times.  Let's take these in order:
• (Found at Booman Tribune.)  I find myself getting very judgmental about Mr. Weiner.  Seriously (required declaration:  I am not a psychologist or a psychiatrist and am not licensed to practice on the Internet), if what he does is a compulsion, he needs a lot of therapy.  
• (Found at Strangely Blogged.)

  ... it isn't Huma Abedin's problem that he's a creep--it's his problem that he's a creep.
  
  That said, it certainly isn't a Clinton campaign issue, as such. Although Clinton is responsible for her staff in some respects, she can hardly be responsible for her staff's spouses.

• (Found at AlterNet.)  

  To recap: Haberman is essentially saying that the scandalous behavior of someone Hillary Clinton never hired to do anything reflects as poorly on her intentions as Donald Trump’s decision to hire—as his campaign chief—a known stoker of a racist movement who was credibly charged with domestic violence.

Ms. Abedin is DTMFA.
• Wash your sheets.  (Robin Scher, AlterNet)
• Has your state's voter database been hacked? (Karoli Kuns, Crooks and Liars)
• Mark Evanier shares an anecdote about Gene Wilder.

In Memoriam

I heard someone talk about this on the bus home, and I was hoping it wasn't true. More fool me.

Gene Wilder, comic actor.

With video clips. He had Alzheimer's. It's just sad.

Electric Word, Life

• The trouble with All-'80s radio is that at least once a day I have to hear "Come On Eileen," and I was not a fan of that song in the actual '80s.  
• Why voting is important and necessary.  Via twistedchick on dreamwidth.  Fannie Lou Hamer.  You can look her up.  And then explain why, if impersonation voter fraud is 0.5% of 0.000004%(total voter fraud, 2000-2012, was less than 2,100.  Average turnout, 2000-2012, was around 122,000,000), the concentration is on voters being impersonated, rather than dishonest election or campaign officials.
  
  Yeah, I thought not.
• Batocchio (Vagabond Scholar) presents a guide to when it's worthwhile engaging in political discussion:

  In my experience, some people simply aren't persuadable; some have little substance to their views even if you politely hear them out. Trying to identify points of agreement and contention can be a useful exercise (and sometimes can de-escalate an argument), but ultimately it's impossible to find common ground with someone on another planet. (Plus, trying to do so can be draining.)
  
  In the interests of preserving sanity and lowering blood pressure, I've been playing with some categories to assess these dynamics and where someone falls. Maybe this piece isn't necessary for most people, who have worked out their own rules or handle such matters with instinctual grace. There's also a danger of condescension or ego preservation with these classifications. To guard against that, I think it's essential to practice curiosity, listening, compassion and a willingness to consider one's own potential blind spots. (I'm certainly not claiming that I personally achieve all that, but we gotta aspire to something, right?)

  Don't look at me; I address all issues with snark.
  
• Someone has not quite left the playground.

  "Bigotry, if you look at the definition, it's about someone who's small-minded and sits there and directs hate towards a certain group," she explained. "Hillary Clinton's speech [attacking alt-right conservatives] was all about hate towards a group that, while my fellow counterpart might consider them to be very racist, it's the exact opposite."
  
  "These are God-fearing, baby-loving, gun-toting, military-supporting, school choice-advocating Americans!" Hughes added. "And just because maybe there might be some, a part of a very small fringe group [of white supremacists] that read Breitbart -- by sitting there and saying the entire website is white supremacy is kind of ridiculous as saying just because you have people that are anarchists and communists that read the Huffington Post, calling that newspaper establishment, [is like] saying that they're pro-anarchy and they're against the United States government."

  Try "work at," Ms. Hughes. "Alt-right conservatives" don't just read Breitbart, they set its tone.  (Although she might not actually read Breitbart.  Many people don't.  I get my fantasies from Fantasy, if you know what I mean.)
  
  The MTV reporter riposted:

  [Jamil] Smith clarified Breitbart's role in promoting white supremacy.
  
  "What they present is the view of the white supremacist mentality through their coverage," he observed. "It's not necessarily saying, 'Well, everyone who works there is a white supremacist.' I don't know that."
  
  "The point is to say, what kind of viewpoint did they reflect? And it's undeniable that they reflect a white supremacist view if you looked over their coverage over the last several years."

• Of course tonight is clear and not too cold. When I wanted to watch the Perseids last week, it was overcast every night. There was someone screaming in the park at regular intervals when I took out the garbage. Sometimes several someones. I was sufficiently far enough away that I couldn't see through the trees.
  

In Memoriam

• Sonia Rykiel, designer
• John Ellenby, laptop pioneer
• Marvin Kaplan, actor and voice.  Mark Evanier, who wrote that obit, also tells a story.

In Memoriam

Warren Hinckle, editor, publisher, journalist, columnist--you name it.

Bridge Bids

You may have noticed that yesterday none of the links referred to Mr. Orange-Hair-Surprise.

I am very tired of That Man.

Very tired.

That is all.

• Echidne of the Snakes and reading statistics.

  There will always be people with extreme nasty values, there will always be some who troll. To unearth a troll comment and then to write about it as if it represents a sizable number of people in the real world is lazy and just wrong. Even utopia would have a few trolls, hankering for life in hell.

• Zandar:

  The larger issue is at some point America has to decide that laws protecting the right to discriminate are no longer acceptable in our society, and that's not going to happen until a number of Roberts court decisions get updated and/or reversed outright by a new liberal majority, starting with Merrick Garland replacing Antonin Scalia.

• I missed Dorothy Parker's birthday yesterday.  Jurassicpork didn't.
• The Daily Irritant (Professor Chaos), because I can't stop giggling at that .gif.  (Actual topic of post outdoes The Onion.)
• The person your person could smell like (I believe I addressed this many years ago at Shakesville, but I'd have to sift too many comments).  Kali Holloway, AlterNet.
• The Stsephen King Flowchart reminds me that I haven't read any new Stephen King since Dreamcatcher.  (Maybe that's why.)
• Joni Mitchell appears in Los Angeles.
• Moonlight Sonata on guitars. First movement.  Third movement.  Crank it up.

Stay hydrated, my friends.

What It Says on the Label

Fred Clark, Slacktivist at Patheos:  "Here's what you do when an erratic bigot hijacks your party nomination."

You really have to see it for yourself.

Food for Thought

Susie Bright's lasagna.

(Susie Bright's site is usually considered NSFW, and this recipe is something you should be consulting at home anyway.)

There Are African-American Voters Out There! OMGOMG!

• Trump has discovered that there are black voters out there who wouldn't vote for him and he tries to appeal to them by speaking to a largely-white audience in Michigan.  BBC, with video.
• From Heather, Crooks and Liars:

  Apparently the executives over at CNN believe that allowing their employees to go on the air and spout racist bile while insulting the other guests is good for business, because that's what they've been allowing the many Trump surrogates they've got on their payroll to do for months on end now.
  
  Case in point is one of Trump's more vocal and obnoxious surrogates, Kayleigh McEnany, who has defended waterboarding, calling it just a "bit of discomfort," pretended that Donald Trump was just being sarcastic when he called President Obama the founder of ISIS, and just this week called Trump's race baiting speech in front of an almost all white audience a message tailored for blacks.

  This article links to Media Matters, which transcribes the smackdown of Ms. McEnany.

• Joy Reid's deft handling of a lying, filibustering pastor this morning was a sight to behold. Everyone should take a lesson about how it's done.
  
  [...] Scott cut in on her with the claim that the birtherism was the fruit of Hillary Clinton's primary campaign.
  
  It's a bad idea to try and pull that with Joy Reid, who knows the history of these things better than anyone else.
  
  "No, that's wrong," Reid corrected. "Even a pastor cannot just make things up on this show."
  
  [...]
  
  As they cut away, she said, "No, sir, I respect you as a pastor. You're not going to come on my show and make things up."
  
  And that, as they say, was that.
  
  This is exactly how these liars have to be handled. Correct the lie, expose them as liars, and show them the door.

  Karoli Kuns, Crooks and Liars. With video.
  

Yanno, conservatives seem to believe that black people are an aggregate populace who are just not smart enough to vote for people who hate them.  I just can't understand it.  Maybe conservatives are an aggregate populace who are just not smart enough to realize that black people know perfectly well that conservatives hate them, and won't vote for people who hate them.

Designated Fool

Trying any story.

Dear Ms. Pierson:  Save as much of your salary as you can and invest it wisely (not with Trump), because you're going to be a laughingstock.

Mr. Draper, Mr. Don Draper, to the Blue Courtesy Phone, Please...Mr. Draper to the Blue Phone, Please.

Lifestyle marketing involves using emotion to create a sense of community and identity for a product or service. This type of marketing often resonates with a given target audience for a longer period of time than merely focusing on the specifics of a product. As has been done with the ad campaigns for Apple computers and phones as well as Red Bull energy drinks, the product or service is not marketed straightforwardly but rather it’s all about how they connect with consumers’ sense of self and identity.

And lifestyle marketing can leverage how consumers use brands to express their individual sense of self. It may attempt to address groups of people (such as “hipsters” or “preppies”) or those described as “urban,” alternative,” “diverse” or “multicultural” to create brand loyalty and demand. Social media and other online technologies are essential tools for a successful lifestyle marketing campaign because they transform consumers into active advocates for the brand.

Chauncey DeVega, Indomitable, reposted from Salon. And the next sentence is:

Donald Trump is applying all of these concepts.

Yes. Now it can be revealed: Donald Trump is soap.

Two Voices

• Zandar Versus The Stupid:

  The problem was never Donald Trump, but somebody who could run on Donald Trump's white nationalist platform and not be a self-destructive idiot while doing it. Trump's not the guy you have to be careful of. It's the guy after Trump, who knows how to play this game and win, who is the real danger.
  
  Trump himself meanwhile can't take the fact that 99% of black voters like myself despise him, so in his speech in Wisconsin last night he made a pitch to African-Americans in general.
  
  [...]
  
  Now, the Republican pitch to black voters has been exactly this for years, it's nothing new, that everything ailing the black community would magically vanish if we just started to vote for the Republicans.
  
  Only, the reality is that in 2016, black voters are the Democratic party. We're the most loyal base and we haven't forgotten the way Trump and Republicans have treated us, have treated President Obama and his family, and the Black Lives Matter movement, so Donald Trump can kindly go screw himself with a rusty pickax. We certainly haven't forgotten how the Republican party has worked over the last 60 years to stop us from voting at all. It's comical how bad this man is at running for President.
  
  But remember this: so far we've had McCain, Romney, and Trump, three guys who made massive unforced errors and completely blew their elections in the final stretch (and Trump is doing an even better job of self-destructing now.) But when we get somebody both smart and dangerous, that's when America gets screwed, big time.

  Emphases and link in original.
  
• Indomitable (Chauncey DeVega):

  The right-wing media, its opinion leaders, and elected officials, have also openly talked about a second American “civil war” in response to Barack Obama’s (very centrist and moderate) policy initiatives. This is violent speech.
  
  Conservatives routinely call Obama a “tyrant” or say that his policy initiatives (such as the Affordable Care Act) are infringements on “liberty” and “freedom.” This is speech that is designed to encourage violence against a democratically elected public official.
  
  In 2011, former Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin featured a map where gun sights targeted Democrats she wanted defeated in the upcoming congressional elections. Palin’s map was accompanied by the directive, “‘Don’t Retreat, Instead – RELOAD!'” Gabrielle Giffords, a member of the United States Congress, was one of the people targeted in Palin’s ad. She would later be shot at a political rally in Arizona by a gunman named Jared Loughner. Likewise, in 2010, Sharron Angle, a Republican congressional candidate, threatened Democrats with gun violence by using the more “polite” language of “Second Amendment solutions.”
  
  Eliminationist rhetoric is the norm in the. There, liberals and progressives are called “libtards,” “rats”, “traitors,” “sick,” not “real Americans,” and described as being subhuman debris. This type of language dehumanizes its target in order to legitimate violence against them.

See, the people on the "right" seem to believe that no one will notice how toxic their values are.  (Really, demonization of immigrants, people of color, poor people, LGBTQ people, people who disagree about politics?  Next thing, Red Sox fans rumbling with Yankee fans in the street?  One of the better points about the USA was that transitions of power were smooth, orderly, and peaceful.  There are plenty of examples in the 20th century of power transfers that didn't go well.)

We notice.

Do you notice?

Good.  Because they seem to be sucking all the air out of the atmosphere.  They seem to be getting lucrative and prestigious jobs with "right" wing disseminators of lies.  (That video?  By his own mouth...)  They seem to be everywhere in the communications industry.  Objective reporting?
Ha.  Ha.

Someone somewhere (I thought it was Daisy or Avedon, but I can't find the quote) suggested that the derision toward the experiences of the baby boomers has to do with the fact that the boomers are the last generation who remember life and the world before Reagan.  (I wouldn't know--wait while I cue up Steppenwolf's "Monster"--about any of that, of course.  /innocent look)

I don't really have answers other than continuing to insist on posting the facts;  we cannot yield to the flow of falsity and illogic and hate.  Because, as Driftglass points out, the "ragged Liberal legions ...were right about the Right all along."

The FBI Said It, I Believe It, That Settles It.

Karoli Kuns, Crooks and Liars:  Hillary Clinton did not send classified intel through her private server.

A letter sent by FBI Acting Assistant Director Jason Herring to the House Oversight Committee confirms that the three emails media is making such hay over did not originate with Secretary Clinton, nor was the use of the term "extremely careless" meant to establish some mythical standard of conduct which did not exist before Director Comey's statement.

[...]

[...] But for those who encounter people who are only marginally paying attention, the two takeaways here are as follows:

1. Clinton did not send emails with information marked classified in them. She received them.
2. There was no intent on her part -- or her staff's -- to share classified information with people not entitled to see it.

Also, there's a Mike Luckovich cartoon.
The letter.

In Memoriam

• Clarence "Choo-Choo" Coleman, original Met.  
• Bobby Hutcherson, vibraphonist.
• Fyvush Finkel, actor and remnant of Yiddish theater.

In Memoriam

• Glenn Yarbrough, folk singer (NYTimes obit)
• Kenny Baker, actor (R2-D2)

Context is All, or Polly Wanna Cracker NOW

(The way James Nicoll [of the English language quotation] would put it is "Context is for the weak." Unfortunately there are a lot of power-seekers who have decided that context is a stumbling block on the path to power.)

• The report on the Baltimore City Police Department, in case you haven't seen it. Please read the whole thing, even though it's on the long side.  Linked from Walk On, cited next.
• If it's not on video, did it happen? did it happen that way? did it happen within a particular narrative?  (Jesse Curtis, Walk On.)  

  This week the Justice Department released the report of its investigation of the Baltimore Police Department. See Radley Balko's review of the report, or check out German Lopez's summary. Or read the report for yourself. It deserves more attention than it is getting. But it's not going to get that attention because it's 164 pages of text written by government lawyers. It's not bleeding. It's not on video.
  
  And that's a problem for us. We don't know how to deal with systemic failure. When institutions go to rot, responsibility is defused. When something goes wrong, who is to blame?

  Links in original.
• Echolocation.  (Steve M., No More Mister Nice Blog.)

  Republicans and Rupert Murdoch never entertained the possibility that someone who actually believed all the nonsense peddled on Fox could win the presidential primaries, even after Sarah Palin became a know-nothing superstar, and even after the Tea Party slipped the leash and started a mini-civil war within the GOP. But here we are, with a nominee who imbibed and believed all that crazy talk is now repeating it.
  
  Trump can't see what harm can come from his rhetoric -- after all, Sean Hannity's been saying the same things for years. [...] Trumpism is Murdochism without the safety valves. And Trump doesn't get that, because he probably thinks the safety-valve stuff is boring. [...]

• Ground troops not on ground.  (Tom Sullivan, Hullabaloo.)

  This is classic rookie thinking. Novice candidates (and cheap ones) sometimes believe that the party exists to raise their money and run their campaigns for them. Uh, no. The party assists with GOTV efforts. Candidates run their own campaigns and raise and spend their own money. And if they cannot manage that, how can they be expected to manage anything else?

• Katrina Pierson:  Everything She Knows is Wrong.  (Reading the comments, aside from historical snark [Obama defenestrated Jan Masaryk and then designed the bikini in Paris] and misogyny, yielded her Wikipedia entry [she was apparently Obama without his advantages], which gave me the impression that a biology degree from University of Texas did not require some history along the way.  And she's a Tea Party person; no, I don't get that either.)

Why The Onion Can Barely Keep Up

The Log Cabin Republicans (yes, they're still around) are throwing a fundraiser at the end of September, and their featured speaker will be -- wait for it -- Newt Gingrich.  (Joe.My.God., by way of No More Mister Nice Blog, via Avedon's Sideshow.)  This once, check out the comments, some of which are hilarious.

PS:  This is my 2751st published post.  Ring a ding ding.

Loose Threads

• More on Baltimore, MD, or what The Wire left out.  The Rude Pundit does not get rude here.
• Paul Bibeau sends Trump tweets with .gifs of accidents (which vanish when I click 'em, so y'know, use caution).
• Popehat:

  Depression and anxiety are doubly pernicious. They don't just rob you of your ability to process life's challenges. They rob you of the ability to imagine things getting better — they rob you of hope. When well-meaning people try to help, they often address the wrong problem. "Your relationship will work out if you just talk," or "I'm sure your boss doesn't actually hate you," or "things will look up and you'll find another job" may all be true, and may all be good advice. But they don't address the heart of mental illness. A depressed or anxious person isn't just burdened with life's routine problems. They're burdened with being unable to think about them without sheer misery, and being unable to conceive of an end to that misery continuing, endlessly, in response to one problem after another. Solving the problems, one by one, doesn't solve the misery.

  Why it is important to discuss mental illness.
  

In Memoriam

• Patrice Munsel, soprano (she had her own TV show when I was a kid)
• Barry Jenner, actor

Cops and Trumpery

Yesterday was the 42nd anniversary of Nixon's resignaton from the US presidency.  We used to have annual parties to celebrate.  I miss that.  It was also the thirteenth anniversary of That Accident I had.

• Baltimore, MD.
• Washington Post excerpts from Justice Department's Report.

  and more than 60 complaints alleging unlawful strip searches. In one of these incidents — memorialized in a complaint that the Department sustained — officers in BPD’s Eastern District publicly strip-searched a woman following a routine traffic stop for a missing headlight. Officers ordered the woman to exit her vehicle, remove her clothes, and stand on the sidewalk to be searched. The woman asked the male officer in charge, “I really gotta take all my clothes off?” The male officer replied “yeah” and ordered a female officer to strip search the woman. The female officer then put on purple latex gloves, pulled up the woman’s shirt and searched around her bra. Finding no weapons or contraband around the woman’s chest, the officer then pulled down the woman’s underwear and searched her anal cavity. This search again found no evidence of wrongdoing and the officers released the woman without charges. Indeed, the woman received only a repair order for her headlight. “

• Background (Sarah Lazare, AlterNet)

  In other words, Baltimore’s widely demonized protesters were telling the truth. They were expressing outrage at a police force whose atrocities against their community are now confirmed and documented in harrowing detail by the federal government.

And still some people (probably not of color) who think that Black Lives Matter exaggerates the problem.
• Lenny Bruce, in a sketch I used to have on tape ("The Palladium"), recounted the disastrous outing of an unfunny comedian who resorted to rudeness on stage.  (Yes, you have to hear the whole thing.  Think of it as background research.)  John Scalzi dissects the current iteration of unfunny clown.

  So here’s the context of that joke: Donald Trump is a man who has pursued the presidency through racism and white nationalism and by insinuating criminal activity on the part of his opponents (or their families), who has encouraged foreign agents to subvert the US election process (another “joke”) and who is actively training his base of support — angry and scared white people, many of whom have a nearly-fanatical attachment to their firearms — to consider the election process rigged if it does not produce the result they want. Then, at a political rally, as the GOP candidate for president, while speaking about the 2nd Amendment and arguing how his opponent Hillary Clinton wants to get rid of it — to get rid of his angry white supporter’s firearms! — he drops a little joke about how, well, actually, they could oppose her, nod nod, wink wink.
  
  Trump wasn’t making a private joke with friends in the comfort of his own ridiculously baroque home. He wasn’t writing satire (which is often not funny) or black humor in the pages of, say, the New Yorker. He wasn’t on the stage of a comedy club trying out five minutes of edgy new material in front of a half-drunk midnight crowd who are there to see someone else anyway. He wasn’t putting it in the comments of his liberal friend’s Facebook post about gun control. He wasn’t doing any of those things — although even if he were, he could still be held accountable for his words. Rather, he was, as the GOP candidate for president, at a rally of his supporters, in a race he is currently far behind in, joking about someone killing off Hillary Clinton, or whomever she appoints as a judge. He wasn’t there to make comedy. He was there, quite literally, as a political statement. That’s the context.

  Ahem.
  

Hint! Hint!

• Janet Allon at AlterNet summarizes Paul Krugman's suggestions for infrastructure improvement.
• Il ne regrette rien.  NPR interviews Khizr Khan for All Things Considered.  With audio. Via Shakesville.

  Khan also addressed criticism that they shouldn't have used their son's death to wade into politics. He said he thought about staying out of the political conversation but ultimately felt that calling out Trump was worth the "price" that he has had to pay:
  
  "I would have such a burden on my conscience if I would have not spoken. In the midst of the grief, we don't set our conscience aside. There are some prices that must be paid. There are certain concerns and certain hearts that must be touched regardless of the price," he said.

• But seriously, folks...  (The Rude Pundit has been in Ireland, and he kept getting the same question.  NSFW language, of course, but the concluding sentences are:

  We live in the world, the whole world, and there is no such thing as "America First" anymore. That is a toddler's fantasy of geopolitics. Let's at least pretend like we're grown-ups.)

• Rule prevents Gabby Douglas from competing in the Olympic gymnastics individual all-around.  With table.

In Memoriam

• Pete Fountain, New Orleans jazz guy.
• Mary Ann Madden, New York Magazine wordplay competitions.  (The obit does not mention "The bloated cadaver of poor Mrs. Hayes," which continued to turn up uninvited in later competitions.)(The phrase, I mean, not the body.)
• David Huddleston, character actor (The Big Lebowski)

Honestly? Honestly!

Morning golf course:

• Some meta:  John Oliver discusses local journalism.  AlterNet. Video.  Summary by Alexandra Rosenmann.
• Bob Somerby of The Daily Howler on the reportage of the emails.

  (In our view, the question seems to be settled about three "marked" emails—settled in a way which reflects poorly on Comey rather than on Clinton.)
  
  We'd like to know if Hillary Clinton really was "extremely careless" with those 110 emails! That said, the Washington Post still seems unable to produce a clear account of the basic things Comey has said. Could a newspaper which seems so unclear on the basic facts help resolve that question?

• The businessman has no clothes.  Digby, Hullabaloo.  Mostly from an article in the New York Times, but I have obituaries to note.  
• Also from Hullabaloo's Tom Sullivan:  Republican Satanic panic Fear of the manufactured issue of voter fraud goes way back.  With charts and numbers.  Voter ID would not prevent the most prevalent form of fraud, by the way.  

  Fraud hucksters are — and/or they think the rest of us are — gullible enough to believe that, unlike Us, each Election Day hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands of people (you know, Them) go to the polls, not to do their patriotic and civic duty like “real Americans,” no, but to commit felonies punishable by five years in prison and a $10,000 fine for each offense, "plus additional state penalties," Berman adds. All so they can a single extra vote to their preferred candidate's total.

• What's wrong with this headline?
  
  OK, not really. Some tweets with the hashtag KatrinaPiersonHistory which are, let's say, less than complimentary to her instruction in history, her recollection of current events, and her employer.
  
  (If I did Twitter, my entry with that hashtag would be "Obama Built the Berlin Wall.")
• Supporters of the Republican presidential candidate speak.  Have a hot shower and lots of soap ready before reading.  (Zandar Versus The Stupid, who goes there so you don't have to.)
• Ahem:

  For a man who claims he's an incredible rich successful and talented businessman, this ad is an embarrassment.
  
  Also striking is that the Clinton campaign can use Trump's own words, in lengthy segments, to highlight his offensive traits and idiotic exploits; Trump on the other hand, has to ham-handedly edit and misrepresent HRC to come up with what amounts to be middle school level production values.

  John Amato, Crooks and Liars.  "Television advertising is such a graphic business."
• Theology, a point of (Yastreblyansky, The Rectification of Names):

  Douthat and the killer (a local kid who knew very well who he was attacking) are working together to craft a narrative of ineluctable conflict, to the death, in opposition to the reality of integration and love that Hamel worked so hard to create and for which he did in effect die.

• Speaking of Douthat (were we?  I forgot), Professor Chaos administers a well-deserved (non-kinky) spanking:

  Yeah, no she doesn't.
  She has already expanded her percentage of the non-racist vote. And the non-misogynist vote. And the I-don't-want-a-president-who-gets-into-Twitter-wars-with-Rosie-O'Donnell vote. And the I-don't-want-a-President-whose-only-experience-is-being-a-businessman-who-has-had-multiple-bankruptcies vote. I think she's going to be fine. But thanks for your fake concern.

Intelligence, Comedy, and a Post-Mortem

Not necessarily in that order.

• Bernie Sanders and the Black Vote (Bruce Dixon, Black Agenda Report), or why he didn't get much of it.  (See also this article in Fusion, which the Black Agenda Report is reacting to.)

  [...]. Instead of asking those questions, the Sanders campaign and Mr. Starr’s Fusion article treated the black community as a kind of united corporate whole with no perceptible internal divisions or contradictions, all of it potentially winnable by just putting the right message in front of the right audiences, or throwing enough staff and money at the problem.

• The "intelligence community" is not enamored of Donald Trump.  (Adele M. Stan, AlterNet)
• Really bad writing, sex scene division.  Not exactly safe for work, but maybe sneak a peek in less sensitive locations?

  I cannot speak for others, but for me this scene had all the thrill of an Ikea Chair assembly manual.

  The Rotting Post (I think the number of 'h's was related to the Fibonacci sequence, but what do I know?  [In that case, the last "ahhhhhh" should have only had 5 'h's.]); also check out the comments.

Blueberry pancakes?

Yes, It's Blabbermouth Day

Yet more links to articles about current events; I can't seem to shut up today.

• Part 2 of Republic of T's examination of supporters of Trump.
• Unfiltered voices (Zandar Versus The Stupid has embedded New York Times video.)
• Indomitable:

  The heart of my comments on Clinton's speech is my recurring frustration with presenting efforts to confront racism, white supremacy, and other anti-democratic forces in American society as something impossible or magical. The solutions are right in front of us; most people have been conned into thinking they are not.

• Brownback backlash.  Brownback blowback.

Aw, you know the tune:

96 days of the Trump campaign,
96 days of campaign;
Survive today and then you can say
95 days of the Trump campaign.

95 days of the Trump campaign,
95 days of campaign;
Survive today and then you can say
94 days of the Trump campaign.

And so on.  By 80 you should either be sleeping or throwing up on your shoes.

"You Don't Want Me to Vote."

• Politifact runs the numbers on "voter fraud."  (And lists their sources.)

  [Mark Pocan:]  "Let’s put it this way, more people are struck by lightning than commit in-person voter fraud."
  
  Getting struck by lightning might actually be more common than what you’d guess.
  
  What about in-person voter fraud by impersonation -- that is, claiming to be someone else as you cast your ballot?
  
  We’ll note up front that there are various types of voter fraud, but Pocan is citing one particular type.
  
  [...]
  
  Roughly 300 people per year are struck by lightning in the United States. But cases of voter fraud -- someone impersonating another voter -- are documented even less often.

• Nevertheless: (John Amato, Crooks & Liars.)

  In an interview with the Washington Post, Donald Trump continued to promote unfounded claims that if he loses the general election, it will be because it's rigged.
  
  As Politifact reveals, people are more likely to get hit by lightning than participate in voter fraud.
  
  The whole interview is deranged, but [John Amato is] focusing on his "rigged election" nonsense, not only because it appears this will be his strategy as he continues to fall behind, but because he is illegitimizing the election process for a large number of voters. This does damage to our democracy that will outlast the Trump campaign.
  
  Trump believes that opposition to draconian voter ID laws is because people are voting as many as ten times without ID and don't want to be caught. All evidence points to the opposite being true.

  Emphasis added.
  

One almost gets the idea that Republicans like the "voter fraud" canard because "level playing fields" are not really to their taste.

Play That Funky Waltz

• Earth, Wind & Fire is almost as good as coffee.
• "Nativist" (because, unless all of one's ancestors were born in what is now the USA 700 or more years ago, one has an immigrant in the family tree trunk; I'm beginning to think of "nativism" as a third-or-fourth (or beyond) generation mental quirk for which great-grandparents, could they hear that nonsense, would upchuck on their descendants' shoes.  Spectrally, of course.  Have you seen Ghostbusters?) radio host exhibits gluteus maximus maximally.  With (ewww) audio.

  Kobach should realize that Khzir Khan is not just someone who went to law school, but he has also earned a Harvard Masters of Law, which guarantees that he hasn't simply read the Constitution, but has also analyzed and learned it.

  Karoli Kuns at Crooks & Liars, who listens to this stuff so you don't have to.
• Chauncey DeVega on American exceptionalism, coups d'état, and hypocrisy.

  As more information is gathered, these headlines may prove to be accurate, and their warnings about the consequences of the data theft from the Democratic National Committee to be true. But curiously absent from these notes of panic and alarm is any substantial mention or consideration of how the United States routinely interferes with domestic politics and elections in other countries.

• The Emperor has no Inside Voice.
• Terrance, Republic of T on You-Know-Who.

  If that’s how Trump repays those who went out on a limb to endorse him, maybe Republicans are worried about how he will reward the party that gave him its nomination. Maybe that’s why Republicans are scrambling to find a replacement, out of fear Trump might quit or implode. The party can’t force Trump out, now that he’s the nominee, but if he quit the race, that would give the 168 members of the RNC until September to fill the gap. It may seem far-fetched, but a presidential candidate inviting a foreign country to launch a cyber attack on the US and picking a public fight with a Gold Star family also seemed far-fetched, until last week.

• Avedon's Sideshow has many essential links and analyses.  I still haven't run them all down.;-)
• R. Sharp, guest blogging at The Rude Pundit:

  Since the conventions I've been asking my friends and peers what they think of the election and who they would vote for. After countless discussions and a few arguments I've compiled a list of three statements that I constantly hear and, frankly, piss me off.

• Bad Idea Theater.  (A/K/A "Villagers" being stupid.  Sorry.)
• Hmmmmm...Following Earth, Wind & Fire with Prince does the trick.

Waiting for the Electrician...

Via Avedon's Sideshow, Erik Levitz in New York Magazine:

Both Republican and Democratic administrations entered trade agreements designed to put downward pressure on the wages of domestic manufacturing workers. This was a deliberate choice and not a foregone conclusion — these same governments did not subject professional workers to similar international competition. As economist Dean Baker notes, our trade deals could have established clear standards that would allow “students in Mexico, India, and China to train to U.S. levels and then practice as professionals in the United States,” thus providing enormous savings to consumers in the form of cheaper health care and legal fees. But policymakers decided that maintaining the living standards of our professional workers was more important than consumer savings. They reached the opposite conclusion about the living standards of our blue-collar labor force.

At the same time, these governments did little to compensate the “losers” of globalization; made it more difficult for workers to unionize; and further decreased their leverage over employers by cutting the social safety net. This policy framework has left non–college educated workers — a group that makes up 65 percent of our labor force — with a median wage $1.30 lower than it was in 1980.

And there you have it.

...Or Someone Like Him

Donald Trump is a balloon and everyone is a pin.

• Actual billionaire Warren Buffett talks about Trump and cites the Army-McCarthy hearings and uses the Joseph Welch quote "Have you no sense of decency, sir?"  (With video.  Partly transcribed by Karoli Kuns, Crooks and Liars.)
• Terrance of Republic of T summarizes Khizr Khan's speech, Trump's reaction, and other reactions; a reporter at the Washington Post also quoted Joseph Welch, because despite the last twenty or so years decency is still a respected value.
• The Trump solution to sexual harassment.  (AlterNet.)
• Comrade Misfit brings the sarcasm (with bonus Mother Jones graph!)
• Yastreblyansky laces into the apologist for the Racist/Stupid Party.

  The real issue isn't that phony anti-intellectualism anyway, it's the work of those Republican intellectuals, all in the same Straussian bad faith, constructing rationalizations and panderings in one direction and another as whatever this year's "true conservatism" turns out to be, as a mask for the basic aim of keeping their own taxes low and their businesses unregulated. Because in the end that's all they really care about. And the ones like Boot hate Trump mostly because he's going to lose so badly, either before the election or after it, depending how unlucky we are, and discredit them all for a generation.

• Ann Telnaes writes in the Columbia Journalism Review about editorial cartooning and social media.

  Pett’s experience, and mine, underscore how social media has changed the landscape for editorial cartooning—how it is being used as a tool of intimidation by interest groups and campaigns to try to silence criticism. Through social media they can quickly mobilize their supporters and distribute misinformation, allowing mob mentalities to spread as soon as a cartoon is posted online. The medium is lightning fast and provides the protection of anonymity. Add a news media that seems to value clickbait over presenting context about the editorial cartooning craft and often parrots the inaccurate characterizations the campaigns’ supporters spread, and you might as well paint a red bull’s eye on the cartoonist’s back.

• Guest post by Jon Green at The Rude Pundit on voting rights and the lengths gone to in order to disenfranchise people.  Language NSFW, so read at home.
• And since porn came up recently, here's an article about virtual reality porn.  As a palate cleanser.  Sort of.

More Dangers

Dave Neiwert asks a question.

All of this stands in stark contrast to media and public response to the single greatest threat to the lives and well-being of police officers in the United States over the past decade and longer: the sovereign citizens movement.

[...] In the succeeding years, it has not gone away – and indeed has been picking up strength in the past decade, particularly fueled by right-wing reaction to the election of Barack Obama as president in 2008.

In the eight years since, sovereign citizens have killed nine police officers and injured more than a dozen others in 16 separate incidents, many of them violent responses to ordinary police actions such as issuing traffic tickets or serving warrants. Other incidents involved plots to kidnap, torture and murder police officers, or armed standoffs in which law-enforcement officers were threatened.

And yet...

Nah, that leads nowhere.  Better just eat the ice cream.

Help Me, Rhonda-wan Kenobi

• Booman Tribune has opinions:
• Trump's taxes
• Trump (or his campaign manager) and Russia
• Republican transformation into the "Stupid/Racist" Party
• Here comes conspiracy theory:

  Trump once again attacked voter integrity by telling his supporters that the elections are all rigged and that the November election will also be rigged.
  
  "I'm afraid the election's gonna be rigged, I have to be honest." he then tried to say that his primary was rigged also, but his mind veered off into a different direction.

  (John Amato, Crooks and Liars)
• Two-fer.
• Trump promises to crack down on Internet porn.
• Maybe he missed this.  (Yes, I know I linked that last week.)  Was there a comparable bump during the Democratic convention?  I'm not doing that sort of primary research.
• News-Observer says XHamster is blocking access to that site from North Carolina.  Mmmmmmm-hmmm.
• Federal judge just a leetle skeptical about the purpose of HB2 (North Carolina) since it doesn't seem to be about safety...  (Box Turtle Bulletin)
• As others see us.

  To be clear, the focus of my mission was not race or discrimination. My mandate concerns the enjoyment of the rights to freedom of peaceful assembly and of association. But it is impossible to discuss these rights without issues of racism pervading the discussions. Racism and the exclusion, persecution and marginalization that come with it, affect the enabling environment for the exercise of association and assembly rights.

  It's a long report by the UN Special Rapporteur. The full report will come out next year.