Res Ipsa Loquitur

Following on President Obama's speech today (and taking this from comments at the link):  a thousand words is worth a picture:

Thanks, Obama!

"old times there are not forgotten...."

"look away, look away, look away...."

As bad as Rick Perry was, and Greg Abbott is, I've never heard them say anything as insane as this:

Somebody asked me yesterday, I did an interview and they said, "Do you think it's possible, if Hillary Clinton were to win the election, do you think it's possible that we'll be able to survive? That we would ever be able to recover as a nation? And while there are people who have stood on this stage and said we would not, I would beg to differ. But I will tell you this: I do think it would be possible, but at what price? At what price? The roots of the tree of liberty are watered by what? The blood, of who? The tyrants to be sure, but who else? The patriots. Whose blood will be shed? It may be that of those in this room. It might be that of our children and grandchildren. I have nine children. It breaks my heart to think that it might be their blood that is needed to redeem something, to reclaim something, that we through our apathy and our indifference have given away."

That's the sitting governor of Kentucky.  That's not some loose-mouthed yahoo on Alex Jones, or even David Duke or some darling of the "alt-right."  That's the current governor of a state of the Union.

And Charlie Pierce is right; it sounds familiar:

Waddell and the men present at the press destruction then re-formed their lines and returned to the armory. There, Waddell counseled the men: "Now you have performed the duty you called on me to lead you to perform. Now let us go quietly to our homes and about our business and obey the law, unless we are forced in self-defense to do otherwise."35 But Waddell's cautions fell on deaf ears for there were already roving clusters of armed men in a state of recklessness throughout the city. The white supremacy monster that he and other members of the Democratic Party had spawned, and previously held in check, had exceeded their control.

That's from a report on the coup and slaughter in Wilmington, North Carolina, in 1898.  What struck me was the language about "self-defense," which can mean just about anything you want it to mean, and has gone from being a simple idea upheld by the Supreme Court, to being an assertion that you must be able to carry a gun in public spaces in Texas even if the building includes courtrooms.  Self-defense now means your "castle" walks around with you, wherever you go.  It's a loose, amorphous concept that starts out sounding like repelling burglars from your home and ends up meaning shooting anybody you perceive to be a threat.

And who is that?

Wasn't that long ago a man here in Houston went to his neighbor's house and complained about the party, and proceeded to shoot several people who he confronted there.  He was carrying a video camera, filmed the whole thing, including his voice saying "I'm being threatened" as he opened fire.  Despite the number of witnesses, the lone gunman, and the complete lack of justification for what he did, the prosecutor said he would have been convicted but for that videotape.  People died needlessly and justice would have said "self-defense."

Another man shot two men running across his lawn carrying items they'd stolen from his neighbor's house.  The two men posed no threat at all the the shooter, and yet he stood in his doorway and shot them both.  The grand jury refused to indict him.

Things really haven't changed that much in 100+ years.

But, of course, the burning questions of the day are:  Hillary's pneumonia:  what did she know and when did she know it?  And:  "Deplorables":  insulting and out of bounds, or deeply insulting and a game-changer?

"Ein volk, ein reich, ein yam"

I'm tired of being subtle....

Courtesy (again) of Charlie Pierce, the words of Donald Trump today:

We will protect those who protect us. And we will follow your example of unity—working in common purpose and common cause. We will be one people, under one God, saluting one American flag.

I'm thinking somewhere in there is a swing at Colin Kaepernick.  But it sure puts that use of the word "deplorables" in context, doesn't it?  Because those of us who follow Colin's example, or who don't think we are under one God, and would rather not salute one American flag (we have another?), are apparently going to be pushed aside.

Yeah, but the problem is what Hillary said.

Let's all sing like the birdies sing....

I know I'm just repeating what Charlie Pierce said, but think of it as a retweet because, dammit, he's exactly right and it can't be said too often!

Mr. Pierce:

Hell, we've been grading Republicans on a curve for decades. We graded Reagan on a curve when he burbled about trees and air pollution. We graded him on a curve during Iran Contra on the grounds that he was too dim to know what was going on around him. We graded W on a curve for the whole 2000 campaign when he didn't know Utah from Uzbekistan, but Al Gore knew too much stuff and what fun was he, anyway? We graded Republicans on a curve when they attached themselves to the remnants of American apartheid, when they played footsie with the militias out west and with the heirs to the White Citizens Councils in the South. We graded them on a curve every time they won a campaign behind Karl Rove or Lee Atwater or the late Terry Dolan back in the 1970s. We talked about how they were "reaching out" to disillusioned white voters who'd suffered in the changing economy, as though African-American workers didn't get slugged harder than anyone else by deindustrialization. We pretended not to notice how racial animus was the accelerant for the fire of discontent in the "Reagan Democrats." That was, and is, grading on a moral curve.

We graded Republicans on a intellectual curve when they embraced a fundamentalist splinter of American Protestantism and brought themselves to a pass in which they are the 21st Century Know Nothings. They have followed movement conservatism to the point where they can ignore science and promote creationism and supply side economic foolishness simply because they can sell it to the same audiences that gobble up the red meat that's been marinating since George Wallace ran for president. Because they are graded on a curve, they can still claim to be shocked when the purist product of all of that work hijacks the nomination and gives the entire game away. Of course, Trump has been graded on a curve. If the electorate hadn't graded modern conservatism on an intellectual curve, it would've flunked out of Human College decades ago.

It is timidity now that grades this ridiculous man running this ridiculous campaign on the biggest curve of all—the timidity of a people who have declined the responsibilities of serious citizenship and the abdication of its duty under the Constitution of a putatively free press too timid to call them on it. That is the political correctness that truly is hurting the country and may yet hurt it beyond all repair. There's only one candidate now running however gingerly against that.

I can only add that the intellectual curve and the moral curve are connected at the root, because our morality is a product of our intellectual consent, and our intellectual consent is verified by our morality.

And the best we ever do is have one person who is very, very gingerly against that.  Because if you are any more firmly against it, they kill you; or make you a saint so they can say how special and rare you were, and then ignore you.

If you don't love, you're dead; if you do,.....

What're ya gonna do with folks like that?

Trump interview on 9/11: "[My building] was the 2nd-tallest in Manhattan... And now it’s the tallest." #NeverForget pic.twitter.com/47WUsSKLRu

— Ess (@ScottyLiterati) September 11, 2016

But Hillary has ties to the Clinton Foundation!  And Bill asked for special passports!  And Hillary met with a donor to the Foundation!!!!

I couldn't be any more sick and tired of Donald Trump if I tried.  The man is not fit to live among civilized people.

A little birdie told me....

Luntz going for trolling gold: https://t.co/kIDLljPJLn

— Joy Reid (@JoyAnnReid) September 9, 2016

Southern Beale calls my attention to this, but I think Luntz is just trolling the GOP:

Kim Jong-Un is a strong leader with a 100% approval rating in his country.

Our current president has barely ½ that. https://t.co/LkQCScVyCR

— Frank Luntz (@FrankLuntz) September 9, 2016

At least, I think he is:

Kim Jong-Un is a strong leader. 🇰🇵 https://t.co/Aj1Sbfzkdr

— Frank Luntz (@FrankLuntz) September 9, 2016

¯\_(ツ)_/¯ pic.twitter.com/l3J8f5VQBo

— Frank Luntz (@FrankLuntz) September 9, 2016

And my first clue is that Luntz re-tweeted Joy Reid's tweet.

And in other news:  how long will it take the New York Times to jump all over this?

"How Donald Trump retooled his charity to spend other people’s money"

Trump had earlier gone to a charity in New Jersey — the Charles Evans Foundation, named for a deceased businessman — and asked for a donation. Trump said he was raising money for the Palm Beach Police Foundation.

The Evans Foundation said yes. In 2009 and 2010, it gave a total of $150,000 to the Donald J. Trump Foundation, a small charity that the Republican presidential nominee founded in 1987.

Then, Trump’s foundation turned around and made donations to the police group in South Florida. In those years, the Trump Foundation’s gifts totaled $150,000.

Trump had effectively turned the Evans Foundation’s gifts into his own gifts, without adding any money of his own.
.
On the night that he won the Palm Tree Award for his philanthropy, Trump may have actually made money. The gala was held at his Mar-a-Lago Club in Palm Beach, and the police foundation paid to rent the room. It’s unclear how much was paid in 2010, but the police foundation reported in its tax filings that it rented Mar-a-Lago in 2014 for $276,463.
.....
In two cases, he has used money from his charity to buy himself a gift. In one of those cases — not previously reported — Trump spent $20,000 of money earmarked for charitable purposes to buy a six-foot-tall painting of himself.

So, is this worse than Hillary's ties to the Clinton Foundation, or not as bad because....Trump?

And, in response to Luntz's tweets about Hillary's remarks about "deplorables:"  Now who's deplorable?

Vote early and often!

I get this via TPM, but I have to ask:  what is Stan Stanart's definition of "Voting fraudulently"?

Election workers, who will undergo training before the election, are not allowed to question the validity of the sworn statement at the polls. But after the votes are counted and the election ends, Stanart said his office will be checking to see whether a person who signed the sworn statement has a Texas Department of Public Safety-issued ID through the DPS database. If, for whatever reason, a person who actually has a license but decided to go through the trouble of lying under oath that he didn't, the voter is in trouble. Stanart says it is to ensure no one is voting fraudulently—a problem that doesn't actually exist, according to a recent analysis—but says his office won't look into the issue any further than the DPS check. (And if they really are a fraudulent voter, then Stanart says their vote will still count, criminal charges or not.)

Because saying you don't have a valid ID when you do, doesn't mean you are committing voter fraud.  It may mean you lied under oath, but perjury is not voter fraud.

Who can vote in Texas is governed by the Texas Election Code.  The relevant portion of the code for Stanart is Title 6, Chapter 63.  The portion of that title concerned with voter ID has been set aside by court order.  The only other applicable section is this one:

Sec. 63.012.  UNLAWFULLY ACCEPTING OR REFUSING TO ACCEPT VOTER.  (a)  An election officer commits an offense if the officer knowingly:
(1)  permits an ineligible voter to vote other than as provided by Section 63.011;  or
(2)  refuses to accept a person for voting whose acceptance is required by this code.
(b)  An offense under this section is a Class B misdemeanor. 

No, I don't mean by this that Stanart is on the verge of committing a misdemeanor.  I mean there is no provision in the statutes for claiming a violation of the Texas Election Code by misrepresenting your ID status under oath pursuant to a Federal Court order.  This is why Stanart says he'll let the voter vote, but investigate later.  Which is a pretty clear violation of what's left of the Voting Rights Act, so I don't think the Court is going to look too kindly on these comments.

And, of course, this is just because Stanart was asked.  There are 253 more counties in Texas, each with a County Tax Assessor Collector who oversees elections, and may agree with Stan Stanart.

Or not; one is enough to violate the Voting Rights Act.

You can read the motion that brought this to the Court's attention here.  What it says doesn't make the situation sound any better; in fact, it seems to be much, much worse.  (The State's response, as represented in that motion, seems to be that, if you want to control the county officials of Texas in charge of elections, sue all 254 of them individually.)

The gentleman with thistledown hair

The Gentleman with the Fabulous Eyebrows?

So I finished watching the BBC's version of Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, via Netflix just the other day.  The BBC dramatization took out all the lengthy footnotes, inserted all the fairy stories in the mouths of the characters to good effect, and set aside all the artifice of an 19th century novel in favor of a cracking good yarn with action in every episode.  But I don't come here to praise the BBC, but rather to examine again the metaphor of magic in modern literature.

Well, sort of.  Magic here turns either on power (casting, or even "spinning," spells) or invoking the aid of fairies.  Oh, not the winged sprites too wee to see.  The fairy here is a gentleman with longish pointed fingernails (almost feminine) and a British 19th century version of a B-52 hairdo, silver-white.  He is quite powerful in his magic (more powerful than the magician who must call on him), and he does nothing without making a bargain, which he then adheres too quite legalistically.

The problem is, his contracts are always full of what the laity calls "fine print," and his actions are those of a child.  A very, very powerful child.  Let me give you one example:

In the story, the fairy (identified only as the Gentleman in the novel, never really named in the teleplay) decides to take the wife of Jonathan Strange.  To do so he creates a simulacrum (never mind how) whom Strange (again, ignore the plot details) takes to be his wife.  The circumstances are such that this is a reasonable thing for him to do.  Unbeknownst to him (hey, it's early 19th century England, I'm allowed!), the fairy has already taken his wife, and awaits only the acceptance of the bargain to seal her fate.

We see this in a carefully edited scene, switching between the fairy's castle as he greets his newest possession, and the fake wife who entreats Mr. Strange "Do you accept me as your wife?"  He does, of course, not realizing he is making a bargain, and the fairy tells the real wife "Your husband has traded you for a piece of wood" (what he made the fake wife from).

It is a bargain, Jonathan Strange did accept it; but he had no idea there was even a bargain offered.  Still, the fairy considers it binding, and as there is no power greater than his, he gets to keep the proceeds of the arrangement.  In other scenes we see that this kind of bargain is indeed binding on him as well; it is the greater power that rules his; but he keeps the terms to his advantage, through guile or simply by making a devil's deal (he makes an earlier on with Mr. Norrell, but too many examples spoil the soup).

All very interesting, you are thinking, but who cares?  Well, as I watched it, I realized that a kingdom ruled by the Gentleman (two other characters I haven't named  suffer from his rule very cruelly) seems extremely similar to a country ruled by Donald Trump.  Trump is a man with childish ambitions and a child's attitude toward his power.  He seems to think he can rule, not administer (it is, after all, an "administration" he would oversee), by will alone.  Consider again the "bargains" of the Gentleman.

They are contracts, but they are a child's (or perhaps a non-lawyer's) idea of a contract:  once agreed to, the terms are set, no matter how burdensome or unjust the exchange is.  No court would ever enforce such an agreement, but then no court is available to appeal from the decisions of the Gentleman.  This could well be the perception of the poor, those with no access to the law (there are few contingency cases in contract law), while those who can afford lawyers see the matter quite differently (and that is how the system should work).  But a child can be forgiven for thinking you made the deal, you are stuck with the consequences; and a child with the power of the fairies in the world of the BBC series, would be a frightening thing indeed.

Or with the powers of the President of the United States.  Trump says he will fire the generals when he takes office, even though he can't do that.  He says he'll defeat ISIS in 30 days with a secret plan he doesn't have; but no matter, such a thing is physically impossible.  He thinks he could destroy the oil fields of Iraq and get Exxon to rebuild them in two months.  He is a child who thinks the Presidency would give him the power of a god.

The solution of the novel/teleplay is to make one character in the story even more powerful in magic than the fairy, and so destroy the fairy (no one weeps for him).  That's the nice thing about fiction:  you can always make it work out into a fairly happy ending.  To whom would we give more power than Donald Trump, and how much damage would he do before we gave it, and who would replace him?  Someone replaces the Gentleman as king of his kingdom, but that's another story.  Our national story would not so easily close the book.

Nightcap

Closing out a busy day...

I know it's just the internet and the major outlets will probably publish something about Hillary Clinton's first press conference since God was born that they have been clamoring for, but the question is:  is this why they wanted her to hold one?  So they could complain that she hasn't held one?

Hillary Clinton finally gave a news conference. What took so long?

Hillary Clinton’s news conference drought is finally over. Or is it?

Okay, maybe that's a bit unfair, as those are from the WaPo's "The Fix."  But Google didn't put up anything else from major news outlets, except this one:

Five takeaways from Clinton’s press conference (according to that one, six questions were asked (I only count five, below), and all six (?) were about the horse race).  Well, that's not quite right, because the transcript is here.

These are the five questions (go to the link for the answers):

1)  QUESTION: Madam Secretary, the latest Real Clear Politics average has you up by an average of 2.8 percentage points over Donald Trump. Given what you say are his historic inadequacies and disqualification on the commander in chief point that you just made, shouldn’t you just basically be running away with it at this point?

2)  QUESTION: You said unequivocally last night that you would not put troops into Iraq ever again. Isn’t, A, that ignoring some ground forces who are there; and B, boxing yourself in should your military commanders, if elected, advise that you in fact need to do that?

3)  QUESTION: Hi, good morning.  Secretary Clinton, you’ve been criticized by the RNC for your demeanor last night, that you were too serious, that you didn’t smile enough.  Can you react to that? And also you suggested that there is a double standard. Do you think that you’re treated differently in this race because you’re a woman?

4)  QUESTION: Last night, Mr. Trump suggested in some of his security briefings that briefers made a suggestion or an insinuation that they were not pleased — the CIA was not pleased with the decisions that the administration and President Obama have made so far.  Did you get that same impression in the briefings that you got? And can you comment otherwise on that suggestion from Mr. Trump?

CLINTON: I think what he said was totally inappropriate and undisciplined. I would never comment on any aspect of an intelligence briefing that I received.

I included that answer because it was so short, and because it was the right answer.

5)  QUESTION: (inaudible) different standard? And what does that mean for you going into the debate?

Admittedly, not much of a press conference; but these are the questions the press has been clamoring to ask?  I can wait patiently for the next interview.

Comin' around again

It's too complicated to go into at Salon (comments ain't blogs!) but the favorite assault (among many) on Hillary Clinton there is that she is appealing to Republicans and, even worse, she once said nice, polite words about Henry the K (rather than spitting on the ground every time his name gets mentioned, which all right-thinking progressives know is the only appropriate response).

So Charlie Pierce notes the irony of the NYT taking solace in the words of Glenn Greenwald.  Which ought to mean something, but really just means the NYT really is the place where journalism when to die.

Jeff Gerth to Judith Miller to the present, which includes the "criminal investigation" of Hillary's e-mails that never was, as well as the Case of the Duplicitous Diplomatic Passports, and just today, the suspiciously missing mention of Donald Trump's praise of Vladimir Putin (well, at least the President thought it was funny).

Yup, it's definitely the case that there is an "unrelenting pundit-led effort to delegitimize all negative reporting about Hillary Clinton" and that "Trump's extremism does not entitle Clinton to waltz into power without serious scrutiny."  Which is, apparently, why the NYT is unrelenting in its efforts to negatively report on everything about Hillary Clinton it can.

Still waiting, however, for the serious scrutiny of Trump's donations to Pam Bondi and Greg Abbott, and the coincidence of state investigations into Trump U. going away in those states (FL and TX).  You know, just for starters.  Especially since Matt Lauer spent 15 minutes in the C-in-C forum last night asking Hillary about e-mail, and how many minutes asking Trump about campaign donations?  Maybe even the fact the IRS levied a fine for how he made that donation?

Burn on, big river, burn on....

Donald Trump said last night:

The — and I think you know — because you’ve been watching me I think for a long time — I’ve always said, shouldn’t be there, but if we’re going to get out, take the oil. If we would have taken the oil, you wouldn’t have ISIS, because ISIS formed with the power and the wealth of that oil.

LAUER: How were we going to take the oil? How were we going to do that?

TRUMP: Just we would leave a certain group behind and you would take various sections where they have the oil. They have — people don’t know this about Iraq, but they have among the largest oil reserves in the world, in the entire world.

And we’re the only ones, we go in, we spend $3 trillion, we lose thousands and thousands of lives, and then, Matt, what happens is, we get nothing. You know, it used to be to the victor belong the spoils. Now, there was no victor there, believe me. There was no victor. But I always said: Take the oil.

One of the benefits we would have had if we took the oil is ISIS would not have been able to take oil and use that oil...

Yes, he has said that before:  

“I know more about ISIS than the generals do. Believe me. … I would bomb the shit out of ‘em. … I’d blow up the pipes. I’d blow up the — I’d blow up every single inch. There would be nothing left. And you know what, you get Exxon to come in there and in two months — you ever see these guys how good they are? The great oil companies? They’ll rebuild that sucker brand new. It’ll be beautiful. And I’d bring it, and I’d take the oil.”

We've seen what he's actually calling for, before; in Kuwait, in 1991.  Kuwait is still suffering from that economic and environmental catastrophe.  And what Trump is calling for would actually be worse.

The Rumaila oil field in Iraq is a super-giant oil field (no, that's a term of art, not hyperbole).  The land is actually owned by the government of Iraq and has been since 1961.  Donald Trump thinks we should have taken it after our invasion of Iraq in this century, and left troops behind to protect it and control it.  Of course, he also thinks we should have utterly destroyed the petroleum infrastructure there and throughout Iraq (which has an estimated 143 billion barrels of oil), and that Exxon could rebuild it in two months.

The oil wells in Kuwait burned for 11 months.  Imagine the damage if you blew up "every single inch" of the Rumalla field alone.  Imagine the catastrophe of that on the 3rd largest oil field in the world.  Imagine how long it would take to extinguish the resulting fires, then clean up the debris, then rebuild.  If you imagine "two months," you are living in a child's dreamworld alongside Donald Trump.

I mention this because it is no minor thing, and yet it will get no attention at all.  We will focus on what Trump said about men and women in the military (appalling, I agree), or his double super-secret plan to win the war against ISIS which the generals he wants to fire will give him, or just how much he thinks of Vladimir Putin.

We won't focus on this answer, in this forum, which was meant to show whether or not Trump is qualified to be commander-in-chief of the U.S. armed forces.

The answer is:  he is not.  That is literally beyond argument.

The Old Grey Mare, She Ain't What She Used To Be

I just got this via Charlie Pierce:

So, the NYT writeup on the vets' forum tonight was very long but literally didn't mention Trump's comments on Putin. https://t.co/jEwFV03Giu

— Nate Silver (@NateSilver538) September 8, 2016

Huh.  Who'da thunk it?  Guess they needed the space for what Clinton had to say about her e-mails (as Charlie asked:  This was a veteran's forum.  What do e-mails have to do with veteran's issues?)

Here endeth the lesson....

Honestly, was that so hard?

On Thursday, he called on the press and public to “just listen to what he says and follow up and ask questions about what appear to be either contradictory or uninformed or outright wacky ideas."

Obama cautioned that this particularly unusual election cycle shouldn’t “normalize” “behavior that in normal times we would consider completely unacceptable and outrageous.”

“People start thinking that we should be grading on a curve,” Obama added. “When you speak, it should actually reflect thought-out policy that you can implement.”

And if anyone can watch the "interview" between Trump and Lauer and find any reflection of "thought-out policy that you can implement" in Trump's responses.......

War on, Journalism!

Charles Blow to the Glenn Greenwalds of the world (and the rest of American "journalism"):

This is not an honest man. This is not a trustworthy man. The fact that people believe he’s honest is a result of a failed media that aims its sincerest critique at Clinton’s deficiencies with the truth, but applies an entertainment standard to Trump that corrects falsehoods but doesn’t castigate him for them.

There is no reasonable explanation or salable excuse for the media’s behavior this presidential cycle. History will look back at this period and it will not be kind to the Fourth Estate. We will all have to one day ask ourselves, “Where was I on Trump and the truth?” Far too many of us will be found wanting.

Generating far more heat than light....again

So now we've reached the point in our revels where we're arguing over who arguably gets more unfavorable coverage, and what ratio of unfavorable coverage to favorable, and to candidate v. candidate, should be allowed, thought proper, or be taken as evidence of bias and, well...unfavorable coverage.

And we wonder why the American public gets sick of this circus long before the second Tuesday of November every 4 years, and why they refuse to give this oh so important! topic the searing, laser-like attention we say it deserves?

Yeah, you could say Krugman started it, although he conveniently overlooked the NYT's long history of Clinton Derangement Syndrome, capped most recently by its concern for the issuance of diplomatic passports sought by Bill Clinton so he could take two people to North Korea to help him retrieve two journalists held by the insane government there (hmmm.....why would you want to travel to North Korea on a diplomatic passport on a mission of mercy to wrest two people from the clutches of the government there?  Perfidy?  or Charity?  Notice how the two words end in "y"? Coincidence?  I think not, says the Old Gray Lady!  The game's afoot!).  But then Glenn Greenwald had to offer his $.02 worth, to reassure us he isn't a dried up old has-been since he came to America and nobody found him interesting enough to even detain at the airport for 10 minutes.  And somebody want to ask him about those "tens of thousands" of documents he had from Snowden?  The ones he was gonna release, like Julian Assange was/is gonna do against Hillary?  It must be hard, losing the limelight like that.

In the fine tradition of internet-based rants everywhere, whenever anyone anywhere publishes an opinion you disagree with, it is a sign of the imminent collapse of Western Civilization and another victory for the barbarians and a sign of "The Unrelenting Pundit-Led Effort to Delegitimize All Negative Reporting about Hillary Clinton."  No, really, that's what Greenwald said; or at least that's the headline his rant was posted under.  Evil has won, the barbarians have breached the walls, we're done for, we're done for!

All because Paul Krugman wrote a column criticizing the press coverage of Hillary Clinton and pointing out the continuing presence of Clinton Derangement Syndrome.  This, of course, is the real evil.  (This response, of course, requires mocking Krugman and siding with Zaid Jilani, a "colleague" (Greenwald's word) who is described as a journalist who writes for, among other on-line outlets, The Intercept.  Small world; although it raises the question again:  is Glenn Greenwald a journalist?  And does it matter?  Oh, let's not go there; like Camelot, it's much too silly.  Besides, it turned out it didn't matter; he wasn't important enough to detain when he bravely came to America to accept a minor award.  Brave, brave Sir Greenwald.)

Honestly, this is so far inside baseball it's under the stitches.  Krugman is right, but who really cares?  The reputation of Hillary Clinton is set in stone:  everybody knows it's true because everybody knows it's true.  And yet don't point out how it probably isn't true (unless you are Charlie Pierce, whom apparently Mr. Greenwald never reads; although I like to think that, because he's solely on-line too, Greenwald knows Pierce would rip him a new one, in style)* because then you will have upset the balance of the universe and given somebody somewhere who is anxious to be relevant again, if only for five minutes (is it up to 15 in total, yet?) a reason to rant.

Because, really, isn't that what the internet is for?

*I only wonder why Greenwald didn't tag Hillary with the Iran "ransom."  That would have been fun.  Because, you know, the only reason to object to such coverage is to cover for Hillary.  What a Manichean world they do live in.

Surely a revelation is at hand!

This is one of those things that's probably only important to me, but in Texas this is like the Manchester Union-Leader endorsing Bernie Sanders:

There is only one serious candidate on the presidential ballot in November. We recommend Hillary Clinton.

We don't come to this decision easily. This newspaper has not recommended a Democrat for the nation's highest office since before World War II — if you're counting, that's more than 75 years and nearly 20 elections. The party's over-reliance on government and regulation to remedy the country's ills is at odds with our belief in private-sector ingenuity and innovation. Our values are more about individual liberty, free markets and a strong national defense.

We've been critical of Clinton's handling of certain issues in the past. But unlike Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton has experience in actual governance, a record of service and a willingness to delve into real policy.

They even said it themselves, so I don't have to.  The Dallas Morning News was Republican back when Texas was a single-party Democratic state (it's still a single-party state, but that's never going to change). It was moss-bound conservative before Ted Cruz was a gleam in his daddy's eye.  And I'm surprised they ever backed FDR.  They must have been drunk when they did it.  That, or he faced his own Donald Trump.

They even address the Clinton Derangement Syndrome that AP and the NYT continue to simultaneously feed and draw news stories from:

 Her being cleared of crimes by investigation after investigation has no effect on these political hyenas; they refuse to see anything but conspiracies and cover-ups.

Which makes me think they're reading the comments at Salon.

We reject the politics of personal destruction. Clinton has made mistakes and displayed bad judgment, but her errors are plainly in a different universe than her opponent's.

That's gonna leave a mark!

Trump's values are hostile to conservatism. He plays on fear — exploiting base instincts of xenophobia, racism and misogyny — to bring out the worst in all of us, rather than the best. His serial shifts on fundamental issues reveal an astounding absence of preparedness. And his improvisational insults and midnight tweets exhibit a dangerous lack of judgment and impulse control.

After nearly four decades in the public spotlight, 25 of them on the national stage, Clinton is a known quantity. For all her warts, she is the candidate more likely to keep our nation safe, to protect American ideals and to work across the aisle to uphold the vital domestic institutions that rely on a competent, experienced president.

They didn't just bash Trump, they endorsed Hillary.  Strongly.

It's almost enough to make me think the basilea tou ouranon (kingdom of heaven) is at hand.

None Dare Call It Racism

But really, I don't know what else to call it:

“I don't want to be melodramatic but I do want to be truthful,” the evangelical Christian [Michelle Bachman] said in an interview on the Christian Broadcasting Network’s “Brody File.” “I believe without a shadow of a doubt this is the last election. This is it. This is the last election.”
....
“It's a math problem of demographics and a changing United States,” she said. “If you look at the numbers of people who vote and who lives in the country and who Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton want to bring in to the country, this is the last election when we even have a chance to vote for somebody who will stand up for godly moral principles. This is it.”

I suppose it's not "hate speech," and Bachman is not from the "Jim Crow South;" but still, the linkage of the "wrong" kind of voters being brought "in to the country" and "somebody who will stand up for godly moral principles" couldn't be much clearer.

You don't have to be a dog to hear that whistle blow.  And you know she'd disavow any racial animus, and be truly insulted by the mention.

And to prove there is always an Uncle Ruckus to be found among us:

Latinos for Trump founder Marco Gutierrez's comments came while he was defending Donald Trump's immigration position to MSNBC's Joy-Ann Reid.

"My culture is a very dominant culture. And it's imposing, and it's causing problems. If you don't do something about it, you're going to have taco trucks on every corner," Gutierrez said.

No, I don't know what the problem with taco trucks is, either.  Nor did I realize his culture was so dominant and imposing.  Curiously, most people are proud to make that statement.

Normal is as normal does

From the "Jim Crow South" of California, 1935

JMM sez Trump's immigration speech in Arizona was "hate speech," and he makes a good argument for it.  But then, trying to seal his argument, he (as so many do) goes overboard trying to sanitize America from its culture:

This isn't normal. It was normal in the Jim Crow South, as it was in Eastern Europe for centuries. It's not normal in America in the 21st century.

Actually, it wasn't just normal in the "Jim Crow South," unless we extend the south up to Minnesota.  Oklahoma, not even a state at the time of the Civil War, had "sundown towns," and "Tulsa" still means more than a city in that state.  Lynchings occurred throughout the Midwest; the project to collect all the photographs of lynching which were widely distributed in the early 20th century belie the idea all the racism in America had drained down to the benighted "South."  The violence in response to forced busing in Boston speaks for itself, and that was long after my own home town experienced very small scale violence (one outburst in one afternoon on one campus, which didn't even disrupt classes for all the students) over the issue of integration (and mine was a very Southern town in Texas.)

This is normal.  It was normal when George Wallace did it (JMM is too young to remember, although he knows his American history).  It was normal when Strom Thurmond did it, and Jesse Helms, and even George H.W. Bush through the offices of Lee Atwater.  It's as normal and American as baseball, hot dogs, and apple pie.  We shouldn't try to deny it, to "other" it, to hide it like we hide from the "N-word" (significantly, JMM won't use the title of Dick Gregory's autobiography in his piece, but he will use the slanderous "kike".  Hey, we were anti-semites and eugenicists before the Nazis made both of those "bad" ideas, but we were never Nazis or racists!) .   Trump's speech was hate speech; but there's nothing abnormal about that in America.

We may prefer that it is, just like we prefer no one even write the word "nigger" out where we can read it.  But wishing it were not so will not make it so.  Only facing it, acknowledging it, and calling it what it is and accepting our complicity in it, will finally heal us of it.  Reconciliation and justice start with recognition and responsibility.

"Some People Say"

The irony cuts like a knife:

Friends can differ, Mr. Assange said in the interview. Still, some of his staunchest supporters, like the heiress Jemima Goldsmith Khan, have turned on him, troubled by what they see as a double standard. In an opinion piece for the New Statesman, Ms. Khan wrote that WikiLeaks, which was created to produce a more just society, “has been guilty of the same obfuscation and misinformation as those it sought to expose.”

Which Reinhold Niebuhr, at least, could have told you is what was going to happen.

“Julian loves misinformation; it’s his passion,” Mr. Greenwald said. “He’d likely say this just to make the Clintons uncomfortable.”

Do tell; and what does that have to do with transparency and the "democratization of information?

Democratizing information has never been more vital, and @Wikileaks has helped. But their hostility to even modest curation is a mistake.

— Edward Snowden (@Snowden) July 28, 2016

I'm not sure what "democratized" information looks like, except I agree with Snowden that it shouldn't include personal and valuable information like Social Security numbers (which is what he's addressing in that tweet).  And when critiqued like that, this is not your best look:

@Snowden Opportunism won't earn you a pardon from Clinton & curation is not censorship of ruling party cash flows https://t.co/4FeygfPynk

— WikiLeaks (@wikileaks) July 28, 2016

I never thought Julian Assange was a knight in shining armor; what's still amazes me is that anybody did.

Anybody over the age of 13, anyway.

So, is this misinformation or proof Assange is interfering in the U.S. election?  Or is it just bullshit?

The American liberal media is falling over themselves to defend Hillary Clinton,” he told The New York Times during a Facebook video interview Wednesday.

“[They are] erecting a demon who is going to put nooses around everyone’s necks as soon as she wins this election, which she is almost certainly going to do.”

Assange, whose organization released internal emails from the Democratic National Committee (DNC) believed to have been stolen by Russia, said it is particularly troubling that the Democrat's campaign has linked her critics to Russia.

“[It’s] that attempted reframing by Hillary Clinton, to declare media organizations that are publishing material that shows illicit behavior in the [Democratic National Committee] to fix the election for her, as somehow being Russian agents,” he said.

“Her campaign has effectively called, or maybe even directly called Donald Trump, the opposition leader in this case, a Russian agent,” Assange added of the GOP’s presidential nominee.

“Jill Stein, the Green Party candidate, the fourth candidate effectively in terms of numbers, has also been called a Russian agent. This is a neo-McCarthyist hysteria.”

I got curious about that last claim, so I went looking.  This is what I found on Google.  No story directly connecting Stein to Russia critically, or connecting the Democrats to criticism of Stein.  The best I could find in a news story was this:

A number of media outlets have published scathing and misleading stories about Stein and her running mate Ajamu Baraka, along with rumors circulated on social media by Clinton supporters.

But thats from RT, which is controlled by the Russian government.  Glenn Greenwald brought the claim up on Democracy Now!, with even less factual support.  I mean, some people say:

And it’s amazing to have watched, in this campaign, Democrats completely resurrect that Cold War McCarthyite kind of rhetoric not only to accuse Paul Manafort, who does have direct financial ties to certainly the pro—the former pro-Russian leader of the Ukraine, but really anybody who in any way questions the Clinton campaign. I mean, they even tried doing it to Jill Stein a few weeks ago by claiming that she had done something nefarious by attending an event in Moscow sponsored by the Russian television outlet RT that’s controlled by the Putin government. 

And Stein does think Assange is a hero, and Assange thinks Putin is almost beyond reproach.

So that squares that circle, I guess.  Assange, in other words, is dealing in innuendo and rumor and lies.  Pretty much the kind of stuff Wikileaks was supposed to put an end to.

Isn't it ironic?  Don't you think?  Maybe the Christian elders were on to something with that idea of "original sin," and "all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God."  It's not good as a weapon, but it is a better basis for understanding what "some people say."

"The Revealing Science of God"

I suppose this one needs a soundtrack....

Science gets very close to theology indeed:

But, as with the preference for WIMPs over axions and sterile neutrinos, some physicists suspect the widespread distaste for modified gravity is at least partially due to the sociology of scientists rather than the scientific process itself. “Modified gravity isn’t ‘pretty’ in the eyes of particle physicists,” says Sabine Hossenfelder, a theorist at the Frankfurt Institute for Advanced Studies in Germany. “Inventing new particles is what particle physicists do for a living; of course that’s what they prefer.”

Whatever their preferred candidate might be, the biggest concern for many physicists grappling with dark matter is not that the concept will eventually be seen as somehow invalid or entirely mistaken — the observational evidence for dark matter’s existence is overwhelming. Instead they worry that dark matter’s identity might simply prove to be irrelevant to other great mysteries in physics and thus offer no new paths toward understanding the true nature of reality.

“The desire is for dark matter to not only exist but also to solve other outstanding problems of the Standard Model,” says Jesse Thaler, a physicist at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. “Not every new discovery can be a revelation like the Higgs, where afterward theories suddenly fit together much better. Sometimes new particles just make you say, ‘Who ordered that?’ Do we live in a universe where each discovery leads to deeper, more fundamental insights or do we live in one where some parts have rhyme and reason but others don’t? Dark matter offers either possibility.”

The amusing, and obvious, comparison is to critics of religion who claim the religious just see what they want to see, and refuse to face the hard truths of reality (building on the observations of David Hume, in essence).  Except:  "Inventing new particles is what particle physicists do for a living; of course that's what they prefer."

One of the base lessons of religion is humility:  that what you prefer is not necessarily what the world is meant to provide.  Understanding the mind of God is a worthy pursuit; assuming you can understand the mind of God is a fool's errand.  But if medieval theologians were obsessed with how many angels could dance on the head of a pin, what are physicists looking for?

And assuming the existence of God is simply a baseline.  Interestingly, "the observational evidence for dark matter's existence is overwhelming;" but where is it?  What is it?

The decaying theoretical underpinnings for simple WIMP models, paired with the ever-growing list of empty-handed detection efforts, have led Feng and many others to propose that WIMPs are part of a much more complicated picture: An entirely new hidden realm of the universe filled with multiple varieties of dark particles interacting with one another through a suite of dark forces, perhaps exchanging dark charges via bursts of dark light. Because they offer theorists many more variables to play with, such “dark sector” models can be reconciled to fit into the ever-tighter straitjacket of facts placed on dark matter by new data.

Yes, this is how science "works," but the end result one day will be a mathematical explanation few people on the planet can understand, and a report of an observation by a device everyone will have to accept on faith (trust) is being accurately interpreted and properly operated.  Because it isn't just particle physicists who prefer a certain outcome.

I'm really struggling to slip a piece of paper between this effort and the more arcane efforts of medieval theologians (when God was used as a way to explain everything; when God was the "Grand Unified Theory.").  One doesn't have to say either effort was wrong to ask:  why is one effort superior?

It's the commonly paraded critiques of religion that are my target.  Do those critics not see that when they point one finger, three more are pointing back at them?

It's not that these statements 'prove' science and theology slide into each other at some point, any more than the failure to "discover" dark matter proves there is no such thing as "dark matter."  But a universe where not every discovery is a key to unlock the doors of perception to further understanding?  What is so surprising about that?  And if that realization provides a sense of humility about the "power" of science, then it is well to remember that "humility" is a very religious concept.