Speaking of Fossilized Mouse Excreta...

• Out-there voter fraud claim.  (Karoli Kuns, Crooks and Liars)  Mind you, this is an "organization" that has been screaming about Republican Satanic panic "voter fraud" for years.  With audio.
• Paging The Onion...  Please call your office.  Crooks and Liars has scooped you...no, wait, that's real.  Never mind.

  Alex Jones melted down on his talk show Tuesday morning after learning that Wikileaks' Julian Assange, who boasted about the release of big news today, had actually no damaging documents to release against Hillary Clinton.

   With (slighly edited) video.
• An actual political spoof with video.  (Alexandra Rosenman, AlterNet)
• Yahoo(!) has been snooping on you.

I had several tabs of thought-provoking (that is, juicy) articles open, but the ISP went into Reset mode or something.  Sorry about that.

• Trump's taxes you know about already (although apparently according to his (former) accountant, there's worse), and Colbert gets scathing (video).  (AlterNet)
• Let's just say that Chauncey DeVega is less than complimentary about Mr. Trump.

P.S. 2800th post! Whooooopie!

In Memoriam

• Edward Lofgren, physicist
• Shimon Peres, Israeli prime minister, president, Oslo Accords negotiator
• Agnes Nixon, creator and writer of soap operas
• Jean Shepard, country singer, member of Grand Ole Opry

The Debate

Via Mark Evanier:  NPR has a transcipt with analysis and fact-checking of the debate.  For those of us who prefer to fast-forward through horror movies.

(Yes, there should have been a Debate Anticipation post, but I was disposing of garbage.)

The Debate Anticipation Room

Arthur Silber has offered an alternative to the debate:  The Metropolitan Opera is livestreaming Tristan und Isolde today at 4:55 PM (EST; it runs long).

Much more likely to be a transcendent experience.

Not the Debate Anticipation Room

• In memoriam:  Jose Fernandez.  What an arm.
• The Chicago Cubs have not only clinched their division, they also have the best record in the National League, which insures they will not get out of the first round of the playoffs.
• The Dodgers and Washington have clinched in their respective divisions.  The Wild Card is looking like the Mets, the Giants, and the Cardinals.  Maybe.
• Texas is the Western Division champ in the American League.  Cleveland and Detroit are still contesting the Central Division.  Boston has clinched a playoff spot, but Toronto (Toronto!  W0000t!) still has a very tiny chance.  
• Toronto, Baltimore, and Detroit have a shot at the Wild Card.

In Memoriam

Arnold Palmer, golf champion

Seriously, when I was 9, he was All Over the Place. He was Mr. Golf.

Water Is Wet

• Have health care?  Need health care?  You might want to consider the ramifications of electing Trump.  

  Republican candidate Trump would repeal "Obamacare" and replace it with a new tax deduction, insurance market changes, and a Medicaid overhaul. Democrat Clinton would increase financial assistance for people with private insurance and expand government coverage as well.
  
  The two approaches would have starkly different results, according to the Commonwealth Fund study released Friday.
  
  The analysis was carried out by the RAND Corporation, a global research organization that uses computer simulation to test the potential effects of health care proposals. Although the New York-based Commonwealth Fund is nonpartisan, it generally supports the goals of increased coverage and access to health care.

  Well, I didn't think I would need health care, either, but one's body proves everyone wrong sooner or later.  As usual, the Republican health plan is "Don't get sick."  (Yes, I stole that years ago.)
• Two essays from Jesse Curtis that probably need to be read together:
  
  1. On how "evangelical" does not mean "Trump supporter," and why. 

     Many Americans know evangelicalism primarily as a political movement. So it may surprise some people to learn that evangelicals are spending far more time and money working on things like poverty, racism, health care, and education than they are in trying to elect Republicans. World Vision, for example, is an evangelical aid organization with a budget that by itself dwarfs all the activities of the "Christian" Right in the United States.
     
     [...]
     
     This is the culminating act of political self-destruction in a 40 year campaign of harmful politics. When I think of the "Christian" Right, I'm inclined to repurpose a line from Frederick Douglass' first autobiography: "between the Christianity of this land, and the Christianity of Christ, I recognize the widest possible difference..." Indeed. Despite all the good done by evangelicals in local communities, the dominant political expression of American evangelicalism is hateful and selfish, and unworthy to be called Christian.

  2. On racism and denial.

     White Americans desperately want to be innocent of any racial wrongdoing. You notice this pretty quickly when you begin to talk about race. Once you look for it, you'll see how often White people are approaching the whole conversation with one goal: establishing their innocence. "My family didn't own slaves. My grandparents immigrated here in the twentieth century. I worked hard for everything I have. Black people have had the same opportunities." Etc.
     
     These kinds of statements tend to be beside the point, and often plainly false. But truth in a literal sense is not the goal of this kind of rhetoric. We use it to claim that we are good, and that we bear no responsibility for racial injustice. We use it to avoid negative feelings. We want to claim innocence not by doing something, but by creating our own reality with our words.

  They're related.
• Noam Chomsky, taking the long view (excerpt, via AlterNet):

  "We want quick victories," Chomsky pointed out, but went on to explain that even the Civil Rights movement was rooted in a movement that had spread to America nearly 200 years prior.

  (There are interesting typos, such as "writers" for "Riders.")
• ETA:  Department of Oh, And By the Way:

  Bob Schieffer, a CBS news veteran and former presidential debate moderator had a very different idea of what the job of a debate moderator is.
  
  CBS' Face The Nation host John Dickerson asked, "There's been a big question about fact-checking and what the moderator's role should be in that. How do you see that question?"
  
  The only reason there are questions about fact checking is because Trump is against it.
  
  Schieffer replied, "Well -- and I've said and I've thought about this over the years, after doing these things -- the first fact-checkers have to be the candidates themselves. If one candidate makes a mistake, you want to give the other person a chance to call him out on that."
  
  This is very smart from Schieffer, but he didn't stop there.
  
  Schieffer said, "If he or she doesn't, then the moderator steps in and sets the record straight. But if you don't give the candidates themselves that opportunity, you're being unfair to both of them."

  Got that? (John Amato, Crooks and Liars.)  EFTA:  Because the Debate Commission Chief begs to differ:

  Janet Brown, executive director of the commission, which organizes the debates every four years, said [...] "I don't think it's a good idea to get the moderator into essentially serving as the Encyclopedia Britannica."
  
  Once the fact-checking door is open, "I'm not sure, what is the big fact, and what is a little fact?" [...]
  
  Trump campaign aides have staked out a similar position. Some of them say a pro-fact-checking stance is really an anti-Trump stance.

  Emphasis mine.  And gee, I can't imagine why they'd think that.
  

Burst, Burst, Burst (Volume Kaboom, Number Blam)

• Some good news in the universe:  Via Washington Monthly, "Ohio 'Voter Purge' Policy Has Been Ruled Illegal."  (Cleveland Scene)  
• Don't ignore the disabled.  (There may be disabled libertarians, but I'd bet not many.)
• Monday's debate is not reality TV.  (Spocko's Brain)

  In the distant past, the metric for success by the journalist moderator were good questions that let people see the knowledge, competence and character of the candidates so voters can decide. I think the last time we saw that was when the League of Women Voters were in charge. If we have a moderator who sees the job like that, then Hillary will nail the debate with knowledge and competence.
  
  If that is how Holt approaches the debate, Trump will try to move to be light and funny. He’ll kick the policy details down the road. If Holt then doesn’t ask for more detail or accepts vagaries, Trump wins because Holt has let Trump set the rules.
  
  Hillary understands Debate Theater, she knows how to play the zinger game. Zingers actually can be very powerful. I hope someone is writing some new ones for her. She’s come up with a few good ones in the past. “A man who can be baited by a tweet” and “Delete your account.”
  
  Here’s the deal, we need the media that shows up to hold each candidate to the same, “Millions of lives are in the balance” standard.

  [Emphasis in original.]
  
• Mark Evanier lists some possible rationalizations for Trump's embrace of untruth. Links to New York Times article detailing a week's worth of false or misleading statements. Even the NYTimes called them "whoppers."
• Riotogenesis, long term.  (Comrade Misfit for the win.)
• I should stop now while I'm ahead.
• Jurassicpork on the photographic evidence (death of Keith L. Scott).  The Charlotte police have made the dash cam video public, but there are still questions.
• Zandar:

  This is a major, major story folks, and it far outweighs any silly conspiracy stories about Clinton's pneumonia or a simple email server. This is international pay-for-play, Trump style.

• Rolling Stone:

  Donald Trump, who had three times as many statements fact-checked by PolitiFact, fared only slightly better than Carson: 76 percent of his remarks were rated either mostly or completely false. A whopping 16 Trump statements (22 percent) were called "pants on fire." And, like Carson, not a single one of Trump's assertions was judged to be true.

  (Article is from December 2015, and includes people no longer in the race.)
• Joe Altschule, Visalia Times-Delta:

  Lying is the Trump default position. He lies whenever it suits him. Politico reviewed hours of his speeches and concluded that he actually lied every five minutes.

In Memoriam

• Bill Nunn, actor (Do the Right Thing)
• Buckwheat Zydeco (performance name of Stanley Dural, Jr.) musician
• Max Mannheimer, Holocaust survivor
• Bobby Breen, child actor/singer

Shaping Up

I was going to talk about the upcoming election because this is a political blog (although there are either 9 or 10 games left to play and some teams [hi, Cincinnati!] are just waiting for the season to be over, already.  Tampa Bay, Kansas City, the White Sox, Minnesota, the Angels, and Oakland get to play out the string on the American League side; Miami, Philadelphia, Atlanta, San Diego, Colorado, Arizona, and everyone in the NL Central Division who is not the Cubs have cancelled the champagne orders [Wait till next year!].  I don't have favorites this year.  I'm...curiously apathetic.  Must have been the Céspedes transaction.), but I keep getting...distracted.

• Happy 67th to Bruce Springsteen.  His songs, ranked by Caryn Rose for Vulture.
• Avedon lays about with knout and cudgel.
• Michael Caine had to change his name legally (he had been travelling under his original name).  Another reason to kick a terrorist.  (via Avedon's Sideshow.)
• Terry Jones (the other Terry in Monty Python) has been diagnosed with dementia.
• Via Mark Evanier, a long article by Jonathan Chait in New York magazine about accusations of Hillary Clinton "scandals."

  Open up any interview with undecided voters, and you will find them equating Trump’s shocking lack of qualifications with Clinton’s mundane transparency issues. (For instance, this Florida voter: “Mr. Trump scares him, Mr. Lewis said. Mrs. Clinton, he believes, is dissembling about her health. He, too, is considering sitting out the election.”) The ongoing normalization of Trump is the most disorienting development of the presidential campaign, but the most significant may be the abnormalization of Clinton.

• Douthat displays his tush ignorance.  Professor Chaos to the rescue:

  Oh. My GAWD! They're pushing a message of anti-hate? And anti-discrimination? And anti-bigotry? What kind of radical leftist bomb-throwers are these that would have us not hate our fellow Americans based on minor differences?

  And Yastreblyansky:

  What the Monsignor [that is, Douthat] is up to in this column isn't the development of some big and magisterial political science theory, as his language might lead you to suppose; it's really first steps in the construction of a narrative about how even though Clinton is going to win it will be bad for the Democrats, and in fact she really isn't going to win in the baseball-statistics sense, because it's the preposterousness of the Trump that will bring her victory and not any virtue of her own.

• Whedon Get-Out-the-Vote video.  Definitely biased.  (This vid precedes  some news videos.)
• Signature (barbershop quartet) doing Queen's "Somebody to Love."  "At Last."  The Barbershop Harmony Society's YouTube page.  Traditional a capella street group doing "My Girl."

Political Emetics

• Driftglass:
• Willful American political amnesia. Warning: Rude. For (mentally and emotionally) adults only.

  Sorry, Mr. Dionne, but all available suggests that most of the people at the top of your profession are simply incapable of learning from this simple lesson, no matter how many times you hit them in the head with the same 2x4. Because the professional and financial rewards for collaborating with America's domestic enemies are just too great and their moral compasses just too damaged.

• David Brooks may have discovered The Workers.

  And just one year later, Mr, Brooks has suddenly become a Champion of the Working Man. And all it took was the complete destruction of every lie on which Mr. Brooks has built his entire career for the last 20 years.

  We'll see how long that lasts, eh?  With a list of movies/books Mr. B still needs to take in.
• The Daily Irritant also pummels Mr. Brooks.

  Also, I'm fairly sure that the purpose of teaching history is to indoctrinate kids into the "tenets of their creed." It only takes a few minutes to teach American History properly. It's George Washington, then Lincoln freed the slaves, then we defeated Hitler, then 9/11 happened because they hate our freedom. You can skip over the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade, the Trail of Tears, the Chinese Exclusion Act, Japanese internment camps, you know all the stuff that makes people feel doubt that America is the greatest country in the fucking world!

   
• (Whenever I think that David Brooks doesn't deserve so much opprobrium, I read his column and start screaming "Liar!  Liar!!" no later than the third paragraph.  I am deeply grateful that Drifty and Professor Chaos take their sanity the time in hand to read and dissect Brooks' work, because there is only so much Chopin in the world for clearing that mess out of my head.)
• Shakesville:

  The truth is, it's only because Clinton's policies are as strong as they are that we're not hearing about policy at all. If they were a vulnerability for her, the press would be all over them. But they cannot be exploited to give her bad headlines, so they are of no use to media determined to try to derail her candidacy.
  
  Thus, it's not strictly true that the media has abandoned policy analysis. They've certainly scrutinized Clinton's policies—and found them to be of no use in coverage designed to harm her.

  Well, why aren't the media talking up her stated policies?  The horse race, yeah; the clown, yeah; the broader picture, yeah.  But, you know, I'm not having glasses of wine (beer, ugh) with any of these people.  All I know is that nothing would induce me to vote for Mr. Orange-Haired Surprise.
• Oh, snap.  (Also, the early comments [it's an Open Thread] are not bad.)
• Software Update really wants me to update Right Now.
• I need to go look at the standings.  The Giants are in trouble and my team is trying to stay out of the cellar.  The Cubs have clinched NL Central, so they'll be eliminated in the first round.

Rhoticserrie

• Well, yeah, it is Talk Like a Pirate Day today.  Avast, ye hearrrties!
• President Obama's address to the Congressional Black Caucus.  "Readers' Guide" (transcripts, notes, and tweets) at Crooks and Liars.

Low Enforcement

• The chairman of the Republican National Committee hints that former candidates not endorsing Trump might have trouble down the road with party aid.  (Crooks and Liars, video)  

• The reality is that the one guy in America who could have absolutely ended Donald Trump's political career before it started was Chris Christie, who could have easily opened the boardwalk books on Trump and sunk him, but my suspicion is Christie, being a lawyer and federal prosecutor himself, realized too late that cozying up to Trump was a thread that if he pulled at would have unraveled his own campaign as well. Perhaps that why Trump was so confident he could run against Christie and win, and did just that.

  (Zandar Versus The Stupid, excerpting a chunk of Joshua Cohen's long article on Atlantic City)
  
• Also, it's June Foray's birthday!

Frozen Out

Third party candidates did not poll high enough to be invited to the presidential debates.

Neither Libertarian Party nominee Johnson (8.4 percent) nor the Green Party’s Stein (3.2 percent) is polling an average of 15 percent in five major national surveys, the standard set by the nonpartisan Commission on Presidential Debates.

The candidates are also not invited to the vice presidential debate.

Fun times.

In Memoriam

• Prince Buster, Jamaican musician and producer
• Eddie Antar, retailer and felon ("Crazy Eddie").  For a decade and change, the store's commercials (personified by the actor Jerry Carroll) were New York TV fixtures.  Remembered by Michael Schulman in The New Yorker.  Complete with links to Crazy Eddie commercials on YouTube.  (The "Christmas in August" ad, later "Christmas Sale in August" was an annual thing.)
• Alexis Arquette, actress
• ETA:  W. P. Kinsella, author (Shoeless Joe, led to Field of Dreams)

Yahrzeit

Yahrzeit.

11 years.

In Memoriam

Edward Albee, playwright.

Georgia Tries Proofreaders and Other Stories

• Zandar links to and excerpts Buzzfeed's article on Bruce Carter (of Black Men for Bernie fame) putting together "Trump for Urban Communities," but uses a stealth headline referring to a Republican political practice.
• Oliver Willis notes that Georgia is purging minority voters from the rolls and links to ThinkProgress's article.  Via Zandar, Raw Story has a piece about the lawsuit filed in Federal court: 

  In Georgia, the groups said would-be voters were being penalized by a process fraught with error because of data entry mistakes, limitations in the matching software and other glitches applicants had no way of knowing existed. Other problems, they said, included applicants who use their surname as a first name, which is common among some Korean-Americans.
  
  They also point to a 2009 report from the Social Security Administration's Office of Inspector General, which said that the flaws and errors in the agency's voter registration verification system were preventing eligible applicants from registering.
  
  Georgia uses a voter registration process that requires all of the letters and numbers comprising an applicant's name, date of birth, driver's license number and last four digits of their Social Security number to exactly match the same letters and numbers for the applicant on the state's Department of Drivers Service or federal Social Security Administration databases.
  
  If a single letter, number, hyphen, space or apostrophe is out of place and if the applicant fails to correct the mismatch within 40 days of being notified of the problem, the application is automatically rejected.

• At The Inverse Square Blog:
  • Who takes antibiotic resistance seriously.
  • Meta about the media, riffing off a comment at Balloon Juice.
• Mr. Orange-Hair Surprise, second-guessing his response to the pastor in Flint, MI, who prevented him from Hillary-bashing (video) because that wasn't why he'd been invited.   

  Speaking truth to power in the presence of a Secret Service detail no less, is not easy for someone not accustomed to national press coverage. She found the courage to speak to you on stage, on camera, in front of her congregation, and to tell the truth. And for once, you folded like a cheap tent. Because her moral stand was right, and bullies like you can't stand up to that.
  
  Too bad you, Donald Trump, are too much of a cowardly bully to stand up to her face to face. Your Monday Morning quarterbacking would be embarrassing if we didn't know you so well.

  Frances Langum, Crooks and Liars
• ETA:  Why I love The Rude Pundit. (Warning: Rude.)

  Timmons did in one respectful, firm, polite gesture what 16 Republican candidates and thousands of protesters couldn't. She cornered Trump and made his swagger disappear and shoved the con job up his ass.
  
  At this point in this stupid, endless goddamned election, it's apparent that the nation needs black Americans to save it.

Perfect

This headline at Huffington Post.  Read the rest.  Indeed.

ETA:  Thanks to File 770!

Speaking of Deplorable

• Imani Gandy (Angry Black Lady Chronicles at Rewired), via Shakesville:  North Carolina Republicans still trying to prevent black people from voting.

  Even so, Republicans have evidently decided to bring the fight to the local level, taking advantage of the remaining provisions of the law.
  
  In an email sent to GOP members of county elections boards last month, North Carolina Republican Party Executive Director Dallas Woodhouse urged them to “make party line changes to early voting,” ones that are “supported by Republicans.” This included cutting early voting hours and refraining from putting polling sites on college campuses.

  You'd think that Republicans believe that African Americans should logically vote for creepy racists. I don't think Republicans understand how logic works.
  
• I begin to suspect I do not share the values of the "Values" Voter Summit, not if this is the sort of thing they encourage.  (Karoli Kuns, Crooks and Liars)
• Persecution complex.  (Professor Chaos, The Daily Irritant)

  American Christians are totally persecuted every day, fed to the lions, burned at the stake, the whole bit. That's why the catacombs are full every Sunday.

• Alexandra Rosenmann (AlterNet) presents a video in which Thom Hartmann takes down the Libertarian Party.
• Ta-Nehisi Coates has two more essays:
  1. On O. J. Simpson, the trial, his history, and its relevance to what's happening now;

     The claim was prophetic. Four years after Simpson was acquitted, an elite antigang unit of the LAPD’s Rampart division was implicated in a campaign of terror that ranged from torture and planting evidence to drug theft and bank robbery—“the worst corruption scandal in LAPD history,” according to the Los Angeles Times. The city was forced to vacate more than 100 convictions and pay out $78 million in settlements.
     
     The Simpson jury, as it turned out, understood the LAPD all too well. And its conclusions about the department’s inept handling of evidence were confirmed not long after the trial, when the city’s crime lab was overhauled. “If your mission is to sweep the streets of bad people … and you can’t prosecute them successfully because you’re incompetent,” Mike Williamson, a retired LAPD officer, remarked years later about the trial, “you’ve defeated your primary mission.”

     And it's nice, long, and thorough.
  2. On the Breitbartification (ptui!) of the media.

     The media’s criticism of Clinton’s claim has been matched in vehemence only by their allergy to exploring it. “Candidates should not be sociologists,” glibly asserted David Brooks on Meet The Press. I’m not sure why not, but certainly journalists who broadcast their opinions to the nation should have to evince something more than a superficial curiosity. It is easy enough to look into Clinton’s claim and verify it or falsify it. The numbers are all around us. And the story need not end there. A curious journalist might ask what those numbers mean, or even push further, and ask what it means that the ranks of the Democratic Party are not totally free of their own deplorables.
     
     Instead what followed was not journalism but, as Jamelle Bouie accurately dubbed it, “theater criticism.” Fournier and Blake’s revulsion at the thought that some 20 percent of the country, in some fashion, fit into that basket is illustrative. Neither made any apparent attempt to investigate the claim. No polling data appears in either piece and no reasons are given for why the estimate is untrue. It simply can’t be true—even if the data says that it actually is.

• Jim Wright's essay on 9/11, which was deleted and then restored to Facebook.  Another good reason not to have a Facebook account.
• The Talking Dog's essay on 9/11, with uncomfortable after-effects.
• Trying to power through illness just makes one sicker.

  Dick Cheney had serious heart problems and nobody seemed to care, never mind that Clinton has been held to a higher standard of proving she's "as strong as a man" in every political aspect.
  
  But Trump supporters are cackling to themselves that Clinton leaving Sunday's 9/11 memorial service in NYC to recover in daughter Chelsea's apartment is the end of the race and her political career, as it's proof of everything from cancer to Parkinson's disease to stroke.
  
  The press seems to think "there's something there." Or, they want there to be. After all, they have to keep the race close to sell ads.
  
  Meanwhile, Trump, older and in worse physical shape than Hillary, has been really, really quiet on this so far...
  
  How odd.

• ETA: Chauncey DeVega:

  By some estimates, the American media has given Trump at least $3 billion worth of free coverage. The 24/7 cable news cycle and the media’s corporate culture have fueled an obsession with creating a “horse race” and a willingness to massage, distort and misrepresent events in order to sustain that narrative. For example, the media continues to manufacture “scandals” about Clinton’s emails while ignoring or underplaying Trump’s misdeeds, from the buying of political influence and various documented acts of political corruption to his encouragement of election tampering by a foreign power, his questionable business practices and other instances of unethical behavior.

• Avedon has lots of links with astute commentary today, so I'm sending you there.

59

"59 days of the Trump campaign,
59 days of campaign;
Survive today and then you can say
58 days of the Trump campaign.

58 days of the Trump campaign,
58 days of campaign;
Survive today and then you can say
57 days of the Trump campaign."

Throwing up on your shoes yet?

Unabashed Linkspam

Blogger seems to have messed up some of my blogroll, disappearing some dates-of-last-update (from sites which aren't marked as not providing that), turning one link into source code, assuming some links are really feeds and need to be downloaded, etc.  As soon as I can compose communication that doesn't contain the words "incompetent poopyheads," I will shoot--excuse me, write--them a "trouble ticket," or whatever they're called.  (I am also unable to comment at Avedon's Sideshow, Daisy's Dead Air, or That's Why.  I don't think I've been banned.  The page insists that I am not signed in, even though I am, and nukes any and all comments.  Yes, I've tried alternative accounts.  Same thing.  Incom--)

• Poor whites and shifting perceptions about and by them.  (Alec MacGillis and Propublica, The Atlantic, via skippy)  Actually a review of two books on the subject.  See why I like book reviews?
• Finally, there is some media pushback on Mr. Trump's lies, although only to people who represent him:
• Joy Ann Reid and Kurt Eichenwald counter claims of Trump University "Pay-for-Play"/Clinton Global Initiative equivalence.  The word "lie" is used.  Video.  (LeftOfCenter, Crooks and Liars)  Coda:

  How's that lying to Joy Ann Reid working out for you, Trump surrogates? Especially when it's likely you'll have to sue Donald Trump after the election to get paid for your "work."

• Visitor to Hardball bombed on "birtherism."  Video.  Brad Reed, Raw Story on AlterNet.
• Zandar Versus The Stupid:

  But there's no taking this out of context. Clinton straight up told the truth here about the racism, xenophobia, misogyny and hatred fueling Trump, and his supporters are furious today. The problem is a lot of Village pundits are furious too, scolding Clinton for "mocking the electorate" which makes you wonder why they're so eager to defend Trump.
  
  This is a guy who has made sweeping generalizations about black folk, Latinos, women, immigrants, Muslims, and has done it time and time again, but we're all mad at Clinton.
  
  I see.

  ETA: Twitter has fun, via Frances Langum, Crooks and Liars.
  
• Matt Lauer, however...  The Rude One:

  As with just about everything allegedly scandalous with Clinton, there is nothing there except a narrative that must be sustained, no matter what the FBI, Congressional committees, and multiple investigations say. Clinton isn't corrupt or crooked. But she is not allowed to escape her narrative frame.
  
  When it came to Trump, Lauer also worked to keep the narrative going, that Trump is just saying provocative things that are meaningless, that his ignorance is merely naivete. You could easily make a case that Lauer went easy on his former network colleague (The Apprentice was an NBC show, after all). You could make the case that Trump's chumminess with media outlets over the decades has given him an insider's track with them (or given him information he can threaten them with). [...] Even when Trump said something bizarre and demonstrably false, like we need to "set up a court system within the military" (which has existed since the 1700s), Lauer gave him a pass instead of repeatedly asking him what the hell he's talking about.
  
  It wasn't journalistic malpractice. That implies actual journalism was occurring. It was eliminating the need for journalists. That seems to be the end game in the shift in what reporting is, especially on TV, from exposing truth and seeking facts to putting competing positions on a screen and having them go at it for a little while.

  The last paragraph of the post is definitely Rude, but everyone by now knows not to read The Rude Pundit at work. Right?
  EFTA: Ta-Nehisi Coates! Yes!

  When Hillary Clinton claims that half of Trump’s supporters qualify as “racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic,” data is on her side. One could certainly argue that determining the truth of a candidate’s claims is not a political reporter’s role. But this is not a standard that political reporters actually adhere to.

• Gary Bauer's suggestions to "values voters."  (Doktor Zoom, Wonkette, posted with permission at Crooks and Liars)  Video.
• Right-wing dictator love.  (Southern Beale)
• Guess what's in short supply?

Because It Can't Be Said Often Enough

Republic of T on conservative inability to understand why minorities won't vote for them.

... It wasn’t about discriminating against African-Americans, he said, but about protecting the GOP’s majority. Black voters got caught in the middle, “because they vote Democrat.”

In other words, fraud had nothing to do with it. It’s practically nonexistent. A recent study found just 10 cases of the kind of voter fraud that voter ID is supposed to prevent, out of 146 million registered voters; that’s 0.0000068 percent. So, why do 40 percent of Republicans think that the nonexistent community organization group ACORN will rig the election for Hillary Clinton?

[...]

Wrenn may suggest that such laws are necessary because black voters failed to “wise-up” and vote Republican, but the tactic points to a clear failure on the part of North Carolina Republicans, and conservatives in general .

Having failed to win through persuasion the support of African-American voters, Latino voters, etc., Republicans in North Carolina and elsewhere seek instead to simply prevent as many minorities as possible from voting.

As I’ve written before, Republicans make the same mistake many other all-white or predominantly white organizations make when it comes to attracting minorities. They ask the wrong question. That is, they ask the easier question: Why don’t more of “them” join us? It’s an easier question, because it doesn’t require any self-examination or accountability on the part of whoever’s asking. The impetus is on “them” to come to their senses and join “us.” If they haven’t yet, then they just don’t know what’s good for them. (In which case, can they be trusted with anything as important as voting?)

Republicans, and other such organizations, fail to ask the more difficult question: How have we failed to address their concerns so that “they” will naturally want to join “us”?

Apologies for using this much of the post, but at least it's a coherent excerpt; do read the full article at the link.

Mmmmmmmmm-hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm...

• Interesting account of the Florida Attorney General, Trump University, $25,000, a dog, and a legal case.  (Colbert video, AlterNet)
• Yastreblyansky (The Rectification of Names) smacks David Brooks around again.  Some more.
• Journalist in denial.  Video.  (Crooks and Liars)
• Stupidity.  (The Daily Irritant)

The Chain

"Listen to the wind blow..."

• Excerpts from Kurt Vonnegut's speech at SUNY Albany, 1972.  Via AlterNet.
• Chauncey DeVega analyzes Trump's Phoenix speech and issues ominous warning.

  Trump does not believe in freedom of the press. He wants to overturn standing political norms, values, traditions and institutions in order to return to a fictive past. Trump is a militant nationalist. Trump’s movement is based on social dominance behavior and authoritarianism. He is a strongman and leader of a cult of personality that emphasizes action, strength and hypermasculine energy. A direct appeal or encouragement to violence against the Other was one of the few remaining criteria for fascism that Donald Trump had not yet fulfilled. His speech in Phoenix has finally checked off that empty box.

• The headline is "CNN Admits They Serve As Parrots For The RNC."  Crooks and Liars, with video.  Karoli Kuns notes:

  Let me inject some perspective.
  
  It has been 174 days since Merrick Garland was nominated to replace Justice Antonin Scalia, who died 205 days ago, but no cable news network has put up a countdown clock for that, nor devoted much more than a passing mention of it over the past several weeks.
  
  No cable news network has complained that the American people are not being served by a politically motivated and cynical Republican leadership in the Senate actively blocking the process of government from going forward.
  
  No, instead they're nattering about whether questions on a plane means the countdown clock to a press conference should be reset.

• Talking Points Memo's Josh Marshall examines why the New York Times seems to be ignoring or downplaying possible Trump illegality:

  At the risk of stating the obvious, these facts are textbook examples of the sort of political and prosecutorial corruption journalists are supposed to uncover. Trump used money to buy protection from the consequences of his bad acts from friendly politicians. He then tried to cover up his payment of protection money. And on top of all that he made the either bizarre or incompetent mistake of paying the protection money out of his Foundation - the money from which mostly comes from other people beside Trump.

• Driftglass on shifting public opinion.

  Because we here in the land of the free have some very recent and terrifying experience with how radically public opinion can be warped when you start with a base of, say, 30% of the public who are already brain-dead, believe-anything-Hannity-says, Conservative meat-puppets, and then you pile on top of that a Beltway media deeply committed to pounding Conservative talking points home day after day after day, regardless of how nonexistent the underlying facts may be.

• Comrade Misfit expressed what I thought about the death of Phyllis Schlafly. Who will not be memorialized in this space.
  

Happy Labor Day, Last Day of Summer White Wearing day (In Your Dreams), anniversaire, and Robert Reich has an urgent message if you work for a living.  (AlterNet)

Those with great wealth have translated it into political power. And with that power they’ve busted labor unions (to which a third of private-sector workers belonged in the 1950s but now fewer than 7 percent do), halved the taxes they pay (from a top marginal rate of 91 percent in the 1950s to 39 percent today, and from an effective rate of 52 percent then to 18 percent now), cut safety nets, deregulated Wall Street, privatized much of the economy, expanded bankruptcy protection for themselves while narrowing it for you, forced you into mandatory arbitration of employment disputes, expanded their patents and intellectual property, got trade deals that benefited them but squeezed your pay, and concentrated their market power so you pay more for pharmaceuticals, health insurance, airfare, food, internet service, and much else.

This is bad for everyone.

In Memoriam

Hugh O'Brian, actor.  (The Life and Legend of Wyatt Earp)

"Wyatt Earp, Wyatt Earp,
Brave, courageous, and bold!
Long live his fame and long live his glory
and long may his story be told!"

An article about him in the '70s was the first time I heard the concept of FU money.

Snidely Whiplash and Dick Dastardly, Reporting for Duty!

• Via skippy:  "Voter ID laws are about disenfranchisement," which cites a Brennan Center for Justice report.

  Responding to an interview question about Republican’s chance at the presidency in 2016, U.S. Rep. Glenn Grothmann (R-Wisc.) responded, “Hilary Clinton is about the weakest candidate the Democrats have ever out up, and now we have voter ID and I think voter ID is going to make a little bit of a difference as well.” Grothman helped passed the voter ID law in 2011 when he served as assistant majority leader in the State Senate. In 2012, he claimed voter ID would help Mitt Romney win Wisconsin, saying, “[I]nsofar as there are inappropriate things, people who vote inappropriately are more likely to vote Democrat.”

  "Inappropriately." What do you suppose he meant by that? /rhetorical.
• Smudging the facts (Steve M., No More Mister Nice Blog)

  But those weren't rumors. They came from a rare first-rate campaign story in The New York Times, a genuine scoop by Yamiche Alcindor, based on an internal campaign document and a reliable source:
  
  [...]
  
  But hey, the press wants Trump and the GOP not to embarrass themselves and to get back in the race, so let's call these embarrassing facts "rumors," right?

  Link in original. Ellipsis is excerpt from story.
  
• Speaking of The New York Times:

  There’s more to the question of whether or not the Times is putting the same effort and the same interpretative rigor on coverage of Trump vs. Clinton, of course, and I will try to get to at least slightly more quantitative arguments in a later email. But if you want a case study why I, both a partisan and a practitioner and teacher of journalism, argue that the Times has its thumb on the scale, this story seems like a pretty powerful example.

  From a letter to a Times journalist from Tom Levenson, The Inverse Square Blog.  (Random sighting on No More Mister Nice Blog's blogroll.)

Requiescat in Pace

• Fred Hellerman, co-founder and last surviving member of the Weavers.
• Margrit Mondavi, patron of the arts.

Oh, Please! Please!! Pleeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeze!!!!!

Latinos for Trump founder says that unless Trump is elected, there will be "taco trucks on every corner."

Bring it on!  Current nearest taco truck is 3/4ths of a mile away, and when I'm jonesing for a burrito, that's too far to walk.  Besides, think of all that entrepreneurial goodness right down the street instead of having to get an MBA.

Make it so!