Response to The Wall Just Got Higher

(See: Just Above Sunset: The Wall Just Got Higher)

Today, some observations on (a) unpredictability and (b) racism.

So almost the entire roster of Republican officialdom has now climbed aboard the campaign bus, even after suspecting the driver is drunk, and now they're complaining about his erratic driving? Maybe they shoulda just stood at home.

One of his prominent characteristics the Republicans take issue with is something Trump brags about -- his unpredictability:

"I like to be unpredictable," he said in an October debate, explaining why he carries a concealed weapon. In September, Trump said he likes to stay unpredictable when dealing with foreign foes. "You want to have a certain amount of, you want to have a little bit of guesswork for the enemy," Trump said.

Can't pin him down! He flies all over the place! Maybe the reason Donald Trump seems to defy gravity is that he has so little of it.

And if you think Trump means he can be counted on to be unpredictable, don't bet the farm on that, since he's also been heard several times to say something like this:

“If somebody hits me, I have to hit them back. I have to. I’m not going to sit there and say, ‘I’m wonderful, I’m a president.’ I want to win."

A trait that, I'm sure, will not escape the notice of our nation's friends and foes alike, and who will all, I'm quite sure, take the occasional opportunity to play him like a fiddle.

Washington Monthly’s David Atkins confirms that:

His reaction to being criticized is to immediately engage in childish and petty personal attacks against his critics. ... 

So it is that when a judge with a Hispanic surname ruled against Trump in the ongoing scandal of his fraudulent Ponzi scheme “university,” Trump’s reaction wasn’t to suggest that all the facts had yet to come out, or that the judge had misinterpreted the data, or even that the judge had a politically motivated agenda as a secret liberal. These are the sorts of defenses that people who aren’t egomaniacal narcissists might make. 

But not Trump.

In fact, what Trump does respond with borders on the mysterious, and is such a non-sequitur, it would certainly have immediately snuffed out the campaign of even the most milquetoasty non-egomanical, non-narcissist candidate. To Jake Tapper's dogged questioning (over twenty times!) of whether his citing a federal judge's ethnicity as justification for recusal from a case was "racism", Trump repeatedly presented this answer:

"He's a Mexican. We're building a wall between here and Mexico." ... 

At the end of a lengthy exchange, Tapper asked: "If you are saying he cannot do his job because of his race, is that not the definition of racism?" 

"No, I don't think so at all," Trump said. ... "If he was giving me a fair ruling, I wouldn't say that," Trump told Tapper, pointing again to Curiel's background. ... 

"I'm building a wall."

So the question is now this:

Is it racist to argue that some American judge should recuse himself from a case on the grounds that his ancestors were Mexican? To which our next president's unequivocal answer is, "I'm building a wall."

Does that make sense? No? Good. Let's move on.

But the question still is, yes, but is that really racism?

Well, maybe not technically -- but yes, it certainly is. Here's my online dictionary's definition of racism:

rac*ism |ˈreɪˌsɪzəm| noun 

the belief that all members of each race possess characteristics or abilities specific to that race, esp. so as to distinguish it as inferior or superior to another race or races. 

• prejudice, discrimination, or antagonism directed against someone of a different race based on such a belief

So by that reading, what Trump is doing -- albeit possibly unknowingly -- is indeed racism.

Trump is figuring that, because he plans to someday build a wall at the Mexican border, then any judge who has any Mexican blood whatsoever flowing in his veins is a member of a whole race of people who can be assumed to be biased against Donald Trump (despite that fact that he does very well with the Mexicans), unless, of course, the judge gives Trump a "fair ruling", in which case, never mind.

But in summary, overlooking all the nonsense parts: Yes, Trump is being racist.

Except, of course, that biologists don't technically recognize "races" of humans anyway, do they? Same Dictionary:

Although ideas of race are centuries old, it was not until the 19th century that attempts to systematize racial divisions were made. Ideas of supposed racial superiority and social Darwinism reached their culmination in Nazi ideology of the 1930s and gave pseudoscientific justification to policies and attitudes of discrimination, exploitation, slavery, and extermination.

Theories of race asserting a link between racial type and intelligence are now discredited. Scientifically it is accepted as obvious that there are subdivisions of the human species, but it is also clear that genetic variation between individuals of the same race can be as great as that between members of different races.

Instead of human races, scientists nowadays tend to differentiate between people of different "continental origins". Here's Stanford University biologist Dr. Marcus Feldman, who's done lots of research in the area of what we might call "race":

Many biologists have replaced the term “race” with “continental ancestry.” This is because such a large fraction of the world has ancestry in more than one continent. The result is hyphenated nomenclature, which attempts to specify which continents are represented in one’s ancestry. 

For example, our president is as European in his ancestry as he is African. It is arbitrary which of these an observer chooses to emphasize. Obama’s opponents overtly and by implication denigrate him because of his African ancestry. But he is equally European.

Which is to say that Barrack Obama is not technically an "African-American", he's really an "African-European-American" (or maybe, just as accurately, a "European-African-American".)

Still, "Mexican" is not, in itself, a race, it's a nationality, right? So doesn't this mean Trump's not a racist after all?

Not so fast. Take another look at my dictionary:

race 2 |reɪs| noun 

each of the major divisions of humankind, having distinct physical characteristics: people of all races, colors, and creeds.

• a group of people sharing the same culture, history, language, etc.; an ethnic group :we Scots were a bloodthirsty race then. 

• the fact or condition of belonging to such a division or group; the qualities or 

• a group or set of people or things with a common feature or features : some male firefighters still regarded women as a race apart. 

• Biology a population within a species that is distinct in some way, esp. a subspecies :people have killed so many tigers that two races are probably extinct. 

• (in nontechnical use) each of the major divisions of living creatures: a member of the human race | the race of birds.

So while scientists may not believe in this stuff, lexicographers still do, and therefore, they get the last word.

Response to The Wreck

(See: Just Above Sunset: The Wreck)

I need to retract what I wrote the other day, when I advised Hillary not to engage in insults with Donald Trump, since she'd only lose at that.

In fact, her speech on Friday was quite good, and demonstrates that she should be able to handle him just fine. It was just the right blend of foreign policy substance and President Trump's (shudder!) inadequacies. Trump was apparently unprepared for her calling him out for being totally unfit for the presidency, especially when it comes to international relations. He had little response except to say, “Reading poorly from the teleprompter! She doesn’t even look presidential.”

First off, of course she uses a teleprompter, just as all actual presidents do! She uses a prompter because she, unlike him, has something to say, rather than just blurting out little turdlets of nonsense that he thinks up as he goes along! (Also, she actually reads the prompter pretty well! I was watching closely and could hardly tell she was even using it!)

And second of all, while all actual presidential-looking presidents feel the need, from time to time, to use a prompter when they give a speech, I know of no president in history who ever went out in public with such a tacky comb-over, looking like he just came from the tanning salon, complete with that goggle-eye effect. (Well, okay, maybe James Buchanan did, nobody knows for sure, but he wasn't much of a president anyway.)

So I've changed my mind. I think Hillary should maybe continue going on the offensive, although she should be careful to not to overdo it, and to always link his shortcomings to why they disqualify him for the job.

And speaking of Trump's disqualifications, Josh Marshall mentions something interesting that Donald Trump told the Wall Street Journal about the federal judge presiding over his Trump University cases:

The fact that [Judge Gonzalo] Curiel was born to immigrant parents in Indiana in 1953 is relevant, according to Trump, because Trump's been so vocal against illegal immigration. “I’m building a wall. It’s an inherent conflict of interest."

So I guess that seals it!

The fact that Trump's family immigrated to America from Germany means he has "an inherent conflict of interest" in running for our presidency, since our country fought his country in two world wars within the last 100 years (and whupped 'em good, I might add!), so he can't help but have it out for all of us real Americans, and obviously wants to see our country fail!

Want proof? Just look what he's been able to achieve so far in destroying our electoral campaign system!

But something that makes me question even that theory is seeing the number of things that Kevin Drum tells us Trump should know, but doesn't, about foreign affairs:

He doesn’t know what the nuclear triad is. He favors Britain leaving the EU but has never heard of “Brexit.” He doesn’t know where Iraq’s oil is. He doesn’t know the difference between Hezbollah and Hamas. He’s blissfully unaware that Germany cares a great deal about Ukraine. He was taken by surprise when he learned that US companies aren’t allowed to sell planes to Iran. He thinks Iran is the main trading partner of North Korea.

So who are North Korea's main trading partners?

According to CNN.com in 2013, "The CIA World Factbook said China accounted for an estimated 67.2% of North Korea's exports and 61.6% of imports in 2011. South Korea accounted for 19.4% of exports and 20% of imports, while India received an estimated 3.6% of exports and the European Union provided about 4% of imports in 2011." Iran's not even on the list.

Per United Nations sanctions, only certain items can be traded, none of them being weapons. North Korea's #1 main export? According to Wikipedia, it's "Coal; Briquettes". (Yikes!)

And who are Iran's main trading partners?

Per europa.eu, in April; "The EU used to be the first trading partner of Iran, but due to the sanctions regime, China, the UAE and Turkey are now Iran's main trade partners, followed by the EU." North Korea's nowhere in sight. And per UN sanctions, only certain items -- but not weapons or planes! -- can be traded.

But the blatancy of Trump's lack of knowledge (and seeming lack of interest) in international affairs leads me to another theory, that being that Donald Trump's whole run for the White House may just be the world's greatest performance art project, all designed to show the Republicans the natural consequence of their outrageous belief systems!

Yes, they were right when they said he was, in fact, a liberal in conservative's clothing, just posing as a Republican candidate, but as a means to point out to them the error of their ways! In other words, the GOP has just been punked! Look for Trump to come clean and drop out of the race immediately after his acceptance speech at the convention in Cleveland!

Although I am willing to concede that I might be wrong about this theory, too. It's just that I can't figure out the real reason that he's involved himself in all this silliness.

Response to The Proper Insult

(See: Just Above Sunset: The Proper Insult)

Let's face it, Hillary Clinton couldn't insult her way out of a paper bag.

But maybe that's a good thing!

Maybe Hillary should proceed instead by differentiating herself as the candidate who's not hurling cheap shots and personal low blows. If she doesn't denigrate him, she reduces his opportunity to strike back with denigrations of his own, which he's not only very good at, it's really the only thing he is good at.

Maybe she can concentrate not only on what we, as a country, need to do, but how to do it, in a way that demonstrates her command of knowledge -- something he lacks. For example, she could show that his policies would contribute to the impoverishment of Mexico, and that would actually hurt both countries -- if they don't have jobs down there, we can neither sell to them, nor buy from them, and will force Mexicans to go back to those days when they actually were flooding across our borders. How does Trump counter that?

She should bombard him with facts. He's not really very good at those. Besides, hardly anybody ever counters his misstatements of fact anymore -- for example, that rather than immigrants being responsible for so much crime in America, studies have shown that the incidence of crime in immigrant neighborhoods is actually lower than in other neighborhoods.

And she shouldn't be afraid to show us how much she knows. The people who don't respect intelligence will be voting for Trump anyway. She needs to remind the rest of us why we should go to the polls on election day.

I know that that's a hard game plan to succeed on, considering how little it helped those other Republican candidates who tried it, but maybe the fact that the general election voters will be so different from the primary voters will help her with support from so many non-KoolAid-drinking-Republicans that those GOP candidates couldn't avail themselves to. At least I hope so.

But one more suggestion:

Maybe Hillary should even announce ahead of time that she'll be doing this, maybe even in her acceptance speech at the convention: 

"My Republican opponent isn't very good at much, but it's impossible to deny that he's very, very good at insulting and belittling other people, especially his opponents -- mocking them for being shorter than he, or insinuating that they lack his energy. 

I guess being good at insulting people is a skill that comes from a lifetime of practice, and I'm happy to confess that I've not had any reason to develop, much less perfect it, since showing a lack of respect for those you disagree with is not an ability that is of very much use in public service -- which is what I've spent my life doing. In this sense, my Republican opponent, who has lived his whole life outside of government, has a big head start on me. 

And this is why I want everyone to know right now that I don't plan on playing that game with him. 

I realize it will be hard to resist countering his abuses, but that's what I plan on doing during this upcoming election season. Instead, I will try to stay focused on telling you what I think we, as a country, should be doing, and also, how I believe it can be done. 

But don't get me wrong! I don't plan on refraining from ever criticizing my opponent, or holding back from expressing my heartfelt belief -- and it's a belief shared by millions, if not billions, around the world -- that Donald Trump is not in the least qualified to be president of the United States! 

Even if you think he is a plain-speaking man who "tells it like it is", he isn't. In fact, when expressing himself about world affairs, he plainly hasn't any idea of what he's talking about. But saying this is not to insult him, especially in a snarky way, nor to belittle his appearance, nor is it meant to humiliate him -- it's merely to point out his serious shortcomings in regards to the office that he's seeking.

Will I be "going negative"? 

Well, yes, I suppose I will, but only in the sense that I do plan on showing why I think I'm qualified to be president, and why I think Mr. Trump is not. But I do not plan on "going negative" with personal insults or speculative innuendo about things that have nothing to do with my opponent's capabilities to be the country's Commander in Chief.

And so on.

But if possible, just to maximize full impact, they should not leak either the text or the general contents of the speech ahead of time. Otherwise, they will rob the speech of its ability to pull the rug out from under Trump. This way, everybody gets to watch Trump to see what he does in the coming days, but also to watch her, just to see how well she stays to her word.

The better she does, the better she will look.

Response to The Closer

(See: Just Above Sunset: The Closer)

In the Huffington Post, Howard Fineman tells what he learned from talking with Donald Trump's new brain, Paul Manafort:

Trump doesn’t read briefing papers, but he is a magnet for information, Manafort said. “He reads the newspapers, and he talks on the phone and to office visitors in a never-ending stream. You’re sitting there in his office and you realize that he is constantly picking up stuff as he goes.”

A "never-ending stream" is what you get from a fortune teller, who is able to use constant blithering to fool their mark into thinking they know more than they do.

I've heard this he-just-picks-up-stuff thing about Trump before, and every time I do, I'm reminded of that episode of "The Bullwinkle Show" in which Bullwinkle Moose, speaking to a confused shipping magnate named Pericles Parnassus, says ...

"Boy, for a powerful magnate, you sure don't pick things up very fast!"

We see Trump, the confidence-man, in action at his rallies where, rather than details of how he plans to do something -- like create jobs, which can be picked apart by people who actually know about this stuff -- he substitutes exclamational phrases ("Boy, I'm going to create so many jobs, so fast! Tremendous jobs, incredible jobs! It'll make your head spin!") that make you want to just trust that he knows how to do it; otherwise, why would he seem so sure of himself?

But another thing is, how can anybody pick apart something you say if you haven't actually said anything?

And this aversion to giving away too many specific details is why I'm thinking Trump may not announce his VP pick until the very last minute of the convention. It has to do with this "pandering" thing. Think about it: who is he worried about thinking that picking a woman or minority as his running-mate would be "pandering"?

His base!

The people who are attracted to him because he doesn't play the "politically correct" game! By not picking a "politically correct" VP, he is pandering to those people who, while so loyal they might even vote for him if he shoots down some stranger on Fifth Avenue, might start falling away if they actually see him give concrete details of how he would run the country -- for example, showing him picking an "insider" who actually knows how to do the job, despite making his appeal to the rubes on the grounds that he himself doesn't know Jack Shit.

So far, his campaign has been successful because it's been running on hot air, but just as soon as he actually does something, like announce his VP pick, the campaign starts getting real substance, which means it gets harder and harder for people to see in his campaign what they have wanted to see. His crusade just might lose its beguiling "incredibility".

Come to think of it, from the beginning, it's all been a question of incredibility. From the New York TImes: 

“We have had tremendous support of almost everybody, and even if you look at Congress, the support has been incredible,” Mr. Trump said.

It is! Literally! In fact, if he wins, he will make an incredible president! 

So it's coming down to a contest between those Americans who want an "incredible" president, and those of us who want a "credible" one.

Response to Using the Nineties

(See: Just Above Sunset: Using the Nineties)

I know a lot of people would love to see someone shoot Donald Trump to death, but I'm not even going to bring that up, because I just have too much integrity.

Now I realize that, while some people (who shall remain nameless) may be just smarmy enough to introduce certain subjects into the conversation that they themselves won't even discuss, such as the idea of somebody shooting somebody else, I'm not going to do that, simply because it would just be wrong!

And seriously, except for the not-gonna-go-there part, I actually mean that!

If Trump were to be assassinated, it would suggest that the only way democracy (or what passes for it in this country) can survive the misuse of it by a demagogue such as him is to step outside of itself and just shoot the bastard dead. Whatever damage Trump promises to do to our country if elected, not to even mention the damage he's done already, would be multiplied by his meeting such a violent end. Just think of what happened to the Roman Republic after a bunch of otherwise well-intentioned senators took it upon themselves to use extra-legal measures to do away with their suspected tyrannical leader, Julius Caesar.

Still, there's no doubt the man is a thug. In fact, if there's one thing both sides can agree on is that Donald Trump is a thug; where the two sides differ is on whether or not his being a thug is a good thing. I, for one, am of the opinion that the last thing this country needs is a thug for a chief executive, while others, who imagine the country is in much worse shape than it actually is, think a thuggish president is exactly what we need to get us going in another direction.

Something I've always wondered about ISIS is, what do people see in them? Basically, wouldn't you think most people would be turned off by the stuff ISIS does? Don't people see that this group chops off heads and burns people alive, and that this sort of behavior makes them not look like the good guys?

The explanation, of course, is the all-purpose explanation for our times: Beheading your enemy is a feature, not a bug!

I guess when some people watch a video of a guy wearing a black hood, cutting the throat of some innocent, what they see is someone who has definite ideas on how to deal with problems, and also has the guts to put his theories into practice. Hey, if someone's going to get into a disagreement with these head-chopping guys, you probably want to be on the side of the doers, not the talkers!

Maybe it's just part of the unspoken zeitgeist of our age, but it's hard not to see the similarities here. Nobody thought much of Donald Trump until he humiliated everyone around him, and then, even people who had denounced him and called him every name in the book and said choosing between him and his major opponent was like choosing between dying by gun or by poison, have now joined up with him, in theory because, as bad as he is for the country, the woman running against him -- someone who may or may not have made an arguably bad choice in her use of her email system in some way that nobody can fully explain -- could be even worse?

But no, we all know that's not the real reason to join up with Trump. The real reason is the same reason people join ISIS, and that is, when civilization seems to be losing ground to the bullies, the safest place to be is probably going to be standing behind the toughest-looking thug on the battlefield.

Response to The Politics of Humiliation

(See: Just Above Sunset: The Politics of Humiliation)

According to the New York Times’ Patrick Healy, Donald Trump says he's ready with his strategy:

In a telephone interview, he noted that women did not like seeing Mrs. Clinton insulted or bullied by men. He said he wanted to be more strategic, by calling into question Mrs. Clinton’s judgment in her reaction to Mr. Clinton’s affairs ...

Trump, or maybe one of his ubiquitous droids, needs to explain how this is supposed to work:

When confronted by boasts from his own book on his extramarital exploits with women (“If I told the real stories of my experiences with women, often seemingly very happily married and important women, this book would be a guaranteed best-seller"), how much success can Trump expect to get from painting Hillary with that same brush, when nobody is accusing Hillary herself of being a slimy lounge lizard?

The worst they can argue is that she married someone like Donald Trump!

He [Trump] acknowledged that Republicans tried to discredit her judgment in the marathon Benghazi hearing in the fall, to little avail. 

But he said that he would be more pointed and memorable in linking her to the failings and deaths in Libya, and that the debate would have a vastly larger television audience than the hearing.

First of all, is Trump really saying that, for once, he's going to stop speaking in generalities, and start digging into the details?

Okay, well, good luck with that!

Trump needs to understand that Hillary was able to shut down the Benghazi Committee members because their insinuating questions actually only have an effect when kept in that mysterious area of "unanswered questions". But once you get beyond the generalities and into the specifics in these Benghazi accusations -- and the same thing with the email accusations -- the wrongdoing turns out to not be there, the "scandal" falls apart, and the critics start looking like they're on a witch-hunt.

Greg Sargent zeros in on another one of Trump's bizarre ploys:

Unlike Romney, Trump cheerfully cops to having been in on the elite scam that has ripped off American workers for decades and now promises to put his inside knowledge to work on their behalf.

Hey, it's that old "Fox in the Henhouse" scam! Remember that one?

So it all comes down to that old snoozer, "Yes, he is an S.O.B., but at least he's our S.O.B." I understand a lot of Americans think things are bad in this country, but it's hard to believe that things are so bad that they want to put a know-nothing bullying shit-head in the White House.

Charles Blow says you can just forget about all the strategies:

Trump is smart enough to know what he lacks – substance – and to know what he possesses in abundance – insolence. So long as he steers clear of his own weakness and draws others in to the briar patch that is his comfort zone, he wins. 

As MSNBC’s Chris Matthews said in December, this is asymmetric warfare. Conventional forms of political fighting won’t work on this man. Truth holds little power, and the media is still enthralled by the monster it made.

The media didn't really create this monster, unless you're talking about the media being so predictably easy for the monster himself to manipulate. It's not that hard. All it takes is a recognition that the media insists on giving the public more of what it obviously wants, because if the public doesn't get what it wants, it goes away -- and what it wants is provocative bluster, and preferably, on a daily basis. 

And that's exactly what Trump offers up: Today's story is that he says we need to keep all Muslims from entering the country; next Sunday, it will be that this Muslim thing was only a suggestion. Do the Trump-heads think he's a flip-flopper? No, since they're not really listening. He had them a long time ago, at "We don't win anymore."

Yes, there are a large number of voters who have totally given up on rationality, given up hope, and think they need an S.O.B. as their president, but we can only hope that we outnumber them on election day. If we don't, then America will find itself involved in the same experiment that John Boehner kept trying with the Tea Party -- just this once, let them get their way, and let them find out first hand, that -- surprise! -- shutting down the government doesn't force Obama to repeal Obamacare after all!

Of course, that wishful thinking never worked for Boehner, and it surely won't work for us either.

Maybe electing Donald Trump president of the U.S. will be sort of a yin-yang moment for the planet, in which everything seems to be chugging along nicely, but the next thing you know, bang! Everything is swallowed up by its dichotomous opposite! Maybe it's that the gods are just playing dodge-ball with us!

Response to The Deadly Background Noise

(See: Just Above Sunset: The Deadly Background Noise)

I'm not convinced this Colonel Andrew Bacevich, author of "America’s War for the Greater Middle East: A Military History", who comes very highly recommended as an expert in military affairs, knows what he's talking about in the area of international relations -- although maybe the real problem was not with Bacevich but instead with Steve Donoghue, who reviewed his book.

For one thing, about that description given of what the Carter Doctrine did:

"... in which the leader of one country peremptorily laid claim to the natural resources of a sprawling region on the other side of the world, was a breathtaking act of imperial belligerence."

Whoever it was who said this seems to have totally misstated what it was that Carter actually said, which was this:

"Let our position be absolutely clear: An attempt by any outside force to gain control of the Persian Gulf region will be regarded as an assault on the vital interests of the United States of America, and such an assault will be repelled by any means necessary, including military force."

To me, this sounds like Carter was just extending the Monroe Doctrine to the Persian Gulf, rather than avariciously "laying claim to natural resources" that didn't belong to us, a harsh criticism of Jimmy Carter that is rarely, if ever, heard anywhere. But what do I know?

Also, that statement, that "the military is in a position, not entirely but to a very considerable extent, to call the shots regardless of what the president wants", seems to overlook the fact that Obama, for different reasons, later found himself firing both generals McChrystal and Petreus.

I still think Obama did fairly well these last eight years, especially under the circumstances of having to keep the country open for business and out of default, and with very little assistance from the opposition party, but just try telling that to anybody who doesn't like the guy.

Although it's odd enough to see history itself drastically changing direction right before our eyes -- as has been happening with Donald Trump and the Republican Party -- but what we're seeing here is not so much history in transition, but instead, something much more disconcerting: historiography in revision.

To put that another way, in this age of ubiquitous shenanigans, history is no longer what actually happened, it tends to be what Republicans say actually happened.

Response to The Day of Simulated Reckoning

(See: Just Above Sunset: The Day of Simulated Reckoning)

First, a reiteration:

Eugene Robinson apparently thinks the big meeting between Donald Trump and Paul Ryan was nothing but a dog-and-pony show:

Save us all the faux drama. We already know how this star-crossed courtship is going to end: House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) will decide that Donald Trump isn’t such an ogre after all, and they’ll live unhappily ever after. 

Ryan will be unhappy, at least. Trump has stolen his party, and there’s nothing Ryan can do in the short term to get it back. ... 

Trump came to Washington for meetings with Ryan and other GOP establishment figures as a conqueror, not a supplicant. ... Anyone choosing self-interest over principle – a habit I have observed among politicians – would think twice about opposing a man who has received more primary votes than any previous GOP nominee.

Apparently Robinson did not read my comment from yesterday (he being just one of billions, I might add) in which I tried to point out what everyone but Donald Trump seems to be missing about these meetings with Republicans, Ryan in particular, and that is that, being someone "who has received more primary votes than any previous GOP nominee" is not nearly as important as being someone who, most polls show, is probably going to lose the general election -- unless he can mend fences with a whole lot of regular Republicans, many of whom have publicly sworn an oath to never vote for him. 

The least Trump can do is try to lure as many of the 78% of primary season voters of both parties who have had a chance to vote for him so far, but didn't.

For his part, Ryan has nothing to lose in pissing off Trump in his attempt to unite the insurgents with the establishment, as a way of keeping his party from disappearing from the face of the earth, since Ryan famously didn't want his job in the first place and could just as easily give it up. Not that I agree with any of his policies -- I really don't -- but I do think he deserves kudos for the way he's handling this.

And much as I dislike him, I'm starting to see that Trump himself may just be smarter than all those pundits after all.

But secondly, Josh Marshall accidentally uncovers one promising possibility that can be found in Trump's plan to deport 11 million hyphenated Americans, which might just as easily include those here legally along with those who are not:

It is probably also true that you could not pull off this kind of operation in anything like that kind of time frame without committing numerous civil rights and civil liberties violations, not only of people with no legal status but also of lots of Americans or people here with legal status. Trump has already said he’ll simply ignore the immigration courts that govern the deportation process.

Might it be possible that we somehow use this deliberately sloppy process as an opportunity to deport Donald Drumpf himself back to Germany?

Response to The Impossible Reconciliation

(See: Just Above Sunset: The Impossible Reconciliation)

I think some people are surprised to see how amiable Donald Trump turned out to be, in reaction to Paul Ryan's insistence that the two get together to talk things over before he announces any endorsement. The truth is, Trump's media surrogates can talk all they want about how he doesn't need them as much as they need him, but Donald may be remembering something that they've forgotten:

As of today, more people did not vote for Trump in the Republican primaries than did. According to The Green Papers, accessed moments ago as I write this, Donald Trump has a total of 10,994,897 votes cast for him, which is just 40.64% of the 27,052,068 votes in all the Republican state primaries, caucuses and conventions.

And that, of course, does not include those either who voted for Democrats, which is 22,596,354, of which Hillary Clinton received 12,647,631 (55.97%) and Bernie Sanders 9,570,525 (42.35%), or, for one reason or another, didn't vote for either party, a number I don't have. Independents who couldn't vote? Those who would have voted but couldn't find a candidate they could see themselves voting for? Who knows.

The point here is that, while Trump has obviously shown himself to be enormously popular, there are more people who voted for someone else than voted for him so far -- that is, 78% of the total 49,648,422 who have voted for either party so far did not vote for Donald Trump. My guess is, while many of those might vote for him in the general election, many more of them will not.

And I'm also guessing that Trump suspects the GOP does not need him more than he needs them -- that, in fact, there are probably plenty of Republicans who would rather just sit this election out than turn the party over to a maniac.

So what choice will people -- even Republican people -- have? At this point, probably Hillary. Yet, there's a problem with that: Hillary is hated almost as much a Donald. (No, really! I'm serious!)

The question is, why? Here's Adam Gopnik, in the New Yorker:

NeverTrump is a meaningless slogan unless one is prepared to say ThisOnceHillary. 

Some may be waiting for a third choice to emerge, an honorable if improbable idea, but too many seem hobbled by a disdain rooted less in rationality than in pure habit to see the reality of the circumstance. ... 

What would Hillary Clinton be like in the White House? Well, she was in the White House, once, and helped preside over a period of peace and mostly widespread prosperity. One can oppose her ideology (to the degree she has any), be unimpressed by her record (as contradictory as it may be), or mistrustful of her character. 

God knows, it is bitterly hard to defer to a long-standing political enemy, but it is insane to equate a moderate, tested professional politician with a crypto-fascist. Doing so is possible only through a habit of hatred so distended that it no longer has any reference to reality at all.

Exactly!

Hating Hillary has become, over the years of our hearing her alluded to with negative speculations, a habit that has lost any reference to reality. Didn't we read somewhere that she and Bill were involved in some shady land deal in Arkansas? That she had the entire White House Travel Department fired so she could replace them with friends from back home? That she had been romantically linked to Vince Foster, whom, along with her husband, she later had murdered?

Didn't we hear that she encouraged her husband to go out and get nooky in their open marriage, and then she blamed the women? And that she refused to supply expanded security for State Department staff in Benghazi, then slept through the 3:00 AM call from them when they needed help, and then lied to the families of those who died, and also the American people, saying it wasn't terrorism but just an innocent demonstration against an anti-Muhammed video that got out of hand?

Also, didn't she do something wrong with some emails or something?

Wow! You hear all these things that, even when found either unsubstantiated or plain lies,  must have at least a grain of truth to them; otherwise, there wouldn't have been so many of them! After all, where there's smoke, there's fire -- while, in fact, in the case of anti-Clinton propaganda (and also, anti-Obama), if we look for the fire behind the smoke, we instead always find some Republican, blowing it. As a class of people, while they may not be very good at governance, they've really shown themselves to be skilled at dirty tricks.

But it's not just Republicans who would rather not vote at all than vote for Hillary, there's also Democrats, and even liberals, as shown in this Daily Kos piece by MotoCat, entitled Why Do People Hate Hillary Clinton So Much?:

As a liberal with lots of liberal friends I am used to seeing all sorts of negative stories about Hillary Clinton in my social media universe with regularity. The question that irks me is why? I can clump the negativity toward Hillary into three main arguments.   

1. She is untrustworthy (liar, disingenuous, doesn’t mean what she says, etc...) 

2. She isn’t really liberal 

3. She is “bought” by Wall Street (or owes them some sort of favors)       

I’m a data nerd (worked in analytics in the past), and I have been paying close attention this election cycle so I thought I would unpack these three statements and see what sort of evidence there is for them. 

He (she? whichever) examines these three one by one, starting with "untrustworthy", and without my going into all the detail, he chooses to "disregard all unreliable statements based on personal observation such as 'she just looks phony', or 'you can tell she is lying'", instead decides to take a look at the comparative findings of Politifact on Hillary vs Bernie:

As you can see, It’s not exactly obvious from this data which of the candidates is the “honest” one. Clinton has a much higher “true” rating at 26% vs. 16% for Sanders. Sanders however, has more “mostly true” claims. Regardless, I’m not seeing any backup here for a narrative that Clinton is a dishonest politician on the stump.

He also includes a New York Times "infographic", comparing the truthfulness of almost all (I don't see John Kasich) the 2016 candidates, along with a few other random politicos (Cheney, Biden, Obama and Bill Clinton), with Donald Trump taking second-highest "Percent of Mostly False and Worse", at 76% (just behind Ben Carson's first-place 84%), and with Hillary taking fourth-from-last-place, at 28%, just above third-from-last Bernie, at 26%, followed by Martin O'Malley's 25% and Bill Clinton, the least untrustworthy on the list (despite his famous "I did not have sexual relations...") at 24%.

Hillary's not really a liberal? Actually, the article cites a "ontheissues.org" graphic that shows Bernie to be as "left-liberal" as one can get, with Hillary way over there with him, and only slightly to his right.

MotoCat also references another Daily Kos article, by someone else ("Phenry"), that found Hillary Clinton to be the 11th most liberal Senator while she was there, with Bernie Sanders being the first-most. (Incidentally, MotoCat adds this: "According to the data presented in Phenry’s diary, conservatives are MUCH more conservative than Clinton. It’s not even close.")

And as for Hillary owing Wall Street big-time, MotoCat does cite "OpenSecrets.org" with the information that 3.9 percent of her contributions come from people who work on Wall Street, but also notes that 25% of her income comes from speaking fees, which is a lot. Still, he argues:

I think making the logical jump from campaign donations and speaking fees to favors owed requires overlooking some big inconsistencies. 

1. If Hillary Clinton has indeed been trading favor to Wall Street for donations, then why is her record so consistently liberal despite receiving donations from those same Wall Street companies for her entire career as a Senator? That would require one of two things to be true. Wall Street executives may actually be asking her to promote liberal policies, or she has been playing an incredibly long con where she has been collecting money for decades while advancing a liberal agenda as a cover with the sole purpose of eventually becoming President of the United States and returning those favors. I’m not sure I can imagine either of those scenarios being true. 

2. If dollars donated and paid for speaking fees is equivalent to favors owed, what happens when different donors interests collide? Do the Boys and Girls club and Goldman Sachs have the same agenda? 

3. If she is in fact in the “pocket” of Wall Street, why would she be advancing a platform that could be argued to be more restrictive than any other candidate on Wall Street? This is a matter of debate of course, but if expert economists cannot agree on whose plan is more restrictive on Wall Street then they are probably both pretty restrictive in their own ways. 

And by the way, does she, as Trump charges, play the "women's card"?

According to a Gallup poll released in March of 2014, "Americans say the best or most positive thing about a possible Hillary Clinton presidency -- if she were to run and be elected in 2016 -- would be her serving as the first female president in the nation's history." The next top choices were, "Experience/Foreign policy experience, Best choice, Capable/Competent/Qualified, Intelligent/Smart/Educated", and "Bill Clinton would be back in White House/Help her".

And she probably knows that. In fact, after the first Democratic debate back in October, Huffington Post reported it this way:

Clinton largely avoided playing the gender card during the 2008 presidential campaign, but famously declared in her concession speech to Barack Obama that her candidacy had put “18 million cracks” in the glass ceiling. If there was any question of how much she’d focus on gender this time around, it was answered repeatedly on Tuesday night. 

The former secretary of state delivered one of her strongest lines on the issue right out of the gate, saying during her introductory remarks that with her in the White House, “finally fathers will be able to say to their daughters, ‘You, too, can grow up to be president.’” 

Asked how her presidency would be different from President Barack Obama’s, she quickly responded, “Well, I think that’s pretty obvious. Being the first woman president would be quite a change from the presidents we’ve had, including President Obama.”

So yeah, I guess I agree with Donald, that she plays that woman card. Still, who really cares? I know I don't.

Yep, she didn't play that card back then, and nor did Obama play the race card. Moreover, I didn't vote for him because he'd be the first black president, I voted for him because he was the the smartest guy in the room -- and like many others, I won't be voting for Hillary because it will make her the first female president, I'll be voting for her because she's the smartest guy in the room.

Trump says it's about the only thing going for her, and that she knows many will vote for her solely based on her gender, and that if she were a man, she'd probably be only about 5% in the polls.

Okay, so when you think about it, Trump similarly seems to be playing the asshole-card.

He must know that a whole lot of people are pulling for him simply because he acts like such a huge asshole, and that if he were to stop being an asshole, he'd probably be at about 5% in the polls.

Think about it! Being a giant asshole is the only thing Trump's got going for him! Take that away, and he'd be nothing.

Response to At Peak Trump

(See: Just Above Sunset: At Peak Trump)

Interesting! I think we're getting closer to figuring out who all these Donald Trump supporters are.

For one thing, there's that nagging question of just how conservative Trump is -- a question that will be highlighted by his upcoming meeting with Paul Ryan, who, as leader of the so-called "Republican Establishment", represents the kind of Republicans who think true conservatives have to believe in a free-market economy (e.g., trade deals), small government and low taxes, especially for rich people -- all things Donald Trump and his merry gang of Trumpheads either pay very little attention to or outright reject.

In fact, traditional conservative Republicans accuse Trump of being a closet liberal, an accusation that obviously puzzles many of us actual liberals: If this guy's so liberal, why am I not tempted to vote for him?

Yes, Trumpheads are conservatives, but no, they are not that kind of conservative. So what kind are they?

Trump continually brags that he has brought millions of voters into the Republican fold (although there is also evidence that the net migration has been the other way, that departures are greater than arrivals). So who's joining up? One good guess might be that many of them pretty much stayed politically detached up to now, simply because they couldn't find a home for their particular ideological leanings in either party.

To grossly oversimplify the subject, all political leanings pretty much boil down to one of two approaches to life, advocates of each holding the other in near complete disdain:

(a) There's "Be nice", and
(b) there's "Be nasty".

"Nice" people are optimists. Like Will Rogers, they never met a (person) they didn't like. They believe we're all in this together and need to look out for one another, and that there's no social problem that can't be addressed by both sides trying to understand and empathize with each other and sitting down to discuss it. Whether or not they are religious, they believe in the basic prediction of Matthew 5:5: "Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth", and that peace is preferable to war. They believe in the principle that it matters not whether you win or lose, it's how you play the game.

"Nasty" people are pessimists. They think "meek" is another word for "weak", and definitely that those namby-pamby meek people are too naive to inherit much of anything, much less the whole fucking world -- because if they try, the "strong" will just walk in and kick their collective ass. They claim to believe that winning is not the most important thing, it's the only thing. (See what they did there? Clever, right?)

And need I tell you which is which? Let's face it, liberals are, traditionally speaking, "nice" people, while conservatives, who confuse it with "realism", lean toward the "nasty".

Yes, there are other beliefs that go along with the two ideologies, depending on what part of the world you live in, but these are usually marginally superfluous add-ons, especially in the case of "movement conservatives" -- which, nowadays, is another term for "Establishment Republicans".

For example, lower taxes for rich people and international trade agreements, while part of the Republican orthodoxy for years, are not conservative tenets that hold natural appeal to mostly middle- and working-class whites who object to all the gains being made by minorities in recent decades, which they see as adversely effecting white people. After all, lower tariffs just mean American jobs go overseas, and why should rich people on Wall Street get special tax breaks, after all they've been doing to our economy? For years, national Republicans have joined with Democrats in telling us what's acceptable to do and say, and the "nasty" wing of the conservative electorate is fed up with all that.

Black and Hispanic people, the argument goes, get special consideration in going to college and in getting jobs, whether they're qualified or not -- which implies millions of  "qualified" white people are obviously being discriminated against. (Remember back in 2012, Donald Trump offering $5 million to Barack Obama to show us his college transcripts? He never did mention why, but one has to assume Trump wanted to show Obama was an "affirmative action" beneficiary, and got into Harvard Law without being qualified -- which would presumably also help Donald explain to the world how he only got into Wharton as an undergrad.)

Are the Trumpists racists? Yeah, maybe, but whatever. That's definitely part of it, but almost beside the point.

More to the point is, all this politically-correct taking my tax dollars and using it to give special breaks to minorities is happening because we're letting the meek walk all over us. We used to be a meritocracy, where you earned your breaks! Now, okay, we also used to mistreat black people, but we passed laws against that, so it doesn't happen anymore!

Back in the day, America stood for something around the world, and nobody would give us lip, but ever since the elites took over, they're all laughing in our face, crossing the border and taking our jobs, and all those Muslims taunt us by chopping off Christian heads! It didn't used to be this way. Why are we allowing this?

And yes, liberal Democrats are to blame, but it's not just them, it's also the Republican politicians who cooperate with them! They're just as bad! As George Wallace once said, there's not a dime's worth of difference between the two parties.

(And to top it off, queers can now marry each other? Hey, what's up with that?)

The point here being that, while Republicans like the pointy-headed intellectuals at National Review magazine may question Trump's conservative bonafides, they will not convince liberals, for example, that Donald Trump is a liberal, since we know he, being even nastier than they are, is actually more legitimately conservative than they are.

But they also will not make even the tiniest dent in the movement that Trump is leading, because none of those people gives a shit, even about being so-called conservative, and don't even really care if Trump says one thing today and totally contradicts himself tomorrow.

Nor do any of the Trumpette women care that he disrespects women -- they're tough; they can take it; and they dislike America's political correctness much more than dislike any nasty insult Trump dishes out to anyone, who probably deserved it anyhow. Hell, Trump voters probably don't even give a shit if he ever builds that stupid wall, nor whether he really has Mexico pay for it. After all, it's the thought that counts.

None of that matters. All they know is that the kinds of things he says pretty much matches the way they think about the world, and figure if he gets in, there's just a chance they'll see the kind of stuff done that they want done.

And, they probably figure, what do they have to lose? No other candidate is talking about this stuff, so you might as well vote for the crazy guy.

Response to Pretty Much Settled

(See: Just Above Sunset: Pretty Much Settled)

Two observations -- one trivial, one not so trivial:

First, there's something I noticed the other day while watching video of Donald Trump giving a speech: It's like he's doing stand-up! He thinks he's a comic!

The next time you get a chance to see him behind a podium, insulting someone, look carefully and watch his technique! He's emulating a comedy club comic.

It's not that he's all that funny. In fact, the fact that he's not may be the reason that so many people haven't noticed this, but he thinks he's a stand-up comic, running for president. He's got the timing, the gestures, and a "Hey, what's up with that?" schtick going with the audience that's sort of a combination of Rodney Dangerfield, Don Rickles and Andrew Dice Clay, but without a trace of the humility of any of them. But it is strange, especially that it seems to be working, even though -- as I said -- he's not actually funny.

In fact, Trump's never going to be good enough to do this for a living, but from what I understand about his financials, he doesn't really need to keep his day job.

And second, here's Josh Marshall, apparently written sometime Tuesday night:

Each state tonight looks like it has Trump at or near 60%. How big does his margin need to be? Are we going to start talking about his 75% ceiling?

Good question! Why does Trump's so-called "ceiling" keep getting higher? I have a theory.

Remember back when there were seventeen dwarves on the stage, and Trump was garnering about 25% to 30% of the popularity, didn't we all assume they collectively were hogging all the anti-Trump votes, and that once the group got whittled down, all the anti-trump votes would concentrate in fewer and fewer candidates, and, if we were lucky, just one candidate would be left to face Trump, and that candidate would beat him?

Well, while that sounded logical, it turns out it didn't turn out that way.

I'm thinking that, even if so many non-Trump candidates are now out of the race, there's still nobody that most Republicans find worth voting for -- which means that, even as the pie keeps getting smaller, Trump keeps ending up with a larger percentage of the pie.

For example, let's say some random voter really liked Carly Fiorina. But then Fiorina dropped out, so after some deliberation, that person switched his allegiance to Chris Christie. And so when Christie dropped out, the voter finally just gave up and lost interest, since he didn't like anyone left in the game.

Even when Christie came out for Trump and Fiorina reemerged as Cruz's running mate, our voter stays put, since he doesn't like either of those guys.

If that voter ends up voting for Hillary in the general election, that would be great, but it doesn't really matter, just so long as he doesn't end up voting for Trump.

And this whittling-down of the voters, rather than just the candidates, may help explain something else that few, if any, of the pundits seem to be discussing, which is that, consistently, more Democrats than Republicans are voting in these primaries.

Not only that, but the winner of the Democratic races all are getting way more votes than the winner of the Republicans! In fact, according to these results from AP in the New York Times, there are some cases (e.g., Connecticut, Maryland, Rhode Island; see below) in which even the losing Democrat gets more votes than the winning Republican.

Compare the bolded numbers under each party to see what I'm saying:

Connecticut Primary Results

Republicans:

213,212 votes, 99% reporting (700 of 701 precincts)

CANDIDATES VOTE PCT. DELEGATES
Donald J. Trump 123,367 57.9% 28
John Kasich 60,481 28.4 —
Ted Cruz 24,969 11.7 —
Other 4,395 2.1 —

Democrats:

328,322 votes, 99% reporting (700 of 701 precincts)

CANDIDATES VOTE PCT. DELEGATES
Hillary Clinton 170,075 51.8% 27
Bernie Sanders 152,410 46.4 25 (Bernie got more votes than Donald, above!)
Other 5,837 1.8 —

Delaware Primary Results

Republicans:

69,892 votes, 100% reporting (313 of 313 precincts)

CANDIDATES VOTE PCT. DELEGATES
Donald J. Trump 42,472 60.8% 16
John Kasich 14,225 20.4 —
Ted Cruz 11,110 15.9 —
Other 2,085 3.0 —

Democrats:

93,633 votes, 100% reporting (313 of 313 precincts)

CANDIDATES VOTE PCT. DELEGATES

Hillary Clinton 55,950 59.8% 12 (Hillary got more votes than Donald, above!)

Bernie Sanders 36,659 39.2 9

Other 1,024 1.1 —

Maryland Primary Results

Republicans:

434,572 votes, 99% reporting (1,973 of 1,989 precincts)

CANDIDATES VOTE PCT. DELEGATES

Donald J. Trump 236,623 54.4% 38

 John Kasich 100,089 23.0 —

 Ted Cruz 82,038 18.9 —

Other 15,822 3.6 —

Democrats:

846,039 votes, 99% reporting (1,973 of 1,989 precincts)

CANDIDATES VOTE PCT. DELEGATES

Hillary Clinton 533,247 63.0% 61

Bernie Sanders 281,275 33.2 33 (Bernie got more votes than Donald, above!)

Other 31,517 3.7 —

Pennsylvania Primary Results

Republicans:

1,573,338 votes, 99% reporting (9,123 of 9,168 precincts)

CANDIDATES VOTE PCT. DELEGATES

Donald J. Trump 892,702 56.7% 17

Ted Cruz 340,201 21.6 —

John Kasich 304,793 19.4 —

Other 35,642 2.3 —

Democrats:

1,652,947 votes, 99% reporting (9,123 of 9,168 precincts)

CANDIDATES VOTE PCT. DELEGATES

Hillary Clinton 918,689 55.6% 104 (Hillary got more votes than Donald, above!)

Bernie Sanders 719,955 43.6 81

Other 14,303 0.9 —

Rhode Island Primary Results

Republicans:

61,179 votes, 100% reporting (146 of 146 precincts)

CANDIDATES VOTE PCT. DELEGATES

Donald J. Trump 39,059 63.8% 10

John Kasich 14,929 24.4 5

Ted Cruz 6,393 10.4 3

Other 798 1.3 —

Democrats:

121,253 votes, 100% reporting (146 of 146 precincts)

CANDIDATES VOTE PCT. DELEGATES

Bernie Sanders 66,720 55.0% 13 (Bernie got more votes than Donald, above!)

Hillary Clinton 52,493 43.3 11

Other 2,040 1.7 —

It seems to me that this probably tells us Democrats something good about the upcoming general election, although I suppose I may be overstating the importance of this: Despite most the newsworthy craziness on the Republican side, it's the Democratic races that are attracting most the voters. 

What makes this a little scary is, after the Democrats finish their shake-out, it's just possible that voters might decide that there being "nobody worth voting for" might also mean Hillary, given that she has negatives that rival Donald's -- and that means Trump really could make some history by ending up America's first bad-standup-comic president.

Response to The Two Hollywoods

(See: Just Above Sunset: The Two Hollywoods)

Two items today.

First, there's this one:

The Friends of Abe has acted as a clandestine club for Hollywood conservatives for more than a decade, hosting secret events where they could vent rightwing views and hear speeches from visiting Tea Party luminaries. 

But on Thursday the organization – which counts Jon Voight, Jerry Bruckheimer and Kelsey Grammer among its 1,500 members – made an abrupt announcement: it was dissolving.

I do find it interesting that this group is closing down, and I do wonder why -- although its executive director, Jeremy Boering, claims it's "because we have been successful in creating a community that extends far beyond our events, people just don’t feel as much of a need to show up for every speaker or bar night," although it might also be IRS trouble -- in 2014, Raw Story did a report "claiming that Friends of Abe 'had been gaming the system' by telling members it had 503(c)(3) status years before it did in order to solicit donations".

But I also find it curious that a group of famous conservatives would form an allegedly-conservative organization and name it after Abraham Lincoln, one of our most liberal presidents, at least by present-day definitions of the word.

Lincoln was a Republican, as Republicans keep reminding us -- obviously because, as everybody knows, Lincoln is universally recognized as one of our best presidents, if not the best president. In fact, take Lincoln away from the Republicans and we're hard-pressed to find too many other Republican presidents worthy of admiration. (Okay, well, maybe Teddy Roosevelt, but don't forget that he was an early adopter of progressivism, which today is just another word for liberalism.)

But how could any nowadays-conservative -- who supports suppressing the vote of minorities and doesn't support government spending on public improvements, and favors the sovereignty of states over the national government in all things -- possibly imagine himself going back in time to 1860 and voting for Abraham Lincoln? Could he ever see himself favoring the freeing of all those slaves, the building of all those railroads, much less engaging in a deadly war just to show the states who's boss?

Plainly put, the Republicans in Lincoln's time would be the Democrats of today, and vice versa.

Yeah, I know this "Friends of Abe" thing is small potatoes, but it's very existence should be taken note of as just another example of the conservative Intelligentsia not really thinking this stuff through.

Secondly, there's Kevin Drum, weighing in with this on how and why we all learned that Donald Trump has been putting on this big act all along:

First, I doubt that this recording was leaked. Rather, it was “leaked.” The Trump campaign wanted it to become public. Sure, it will inspire some mockery from liberals and campaign reporters, but that’s never done Trump any harm.

He may be right. After all, doesn't the "leak" actually do the campaign good, rather than harm?

More subtly, his current fans will also take it as a hint that his adult persona will be meant primarily not to con them, but to con centrist Republicans. With a wink and a nod, he’s telling them he’ll do what he has to do in order to appeal to the corrupt establishment folks, but not to take it too seriously.

The point being, he's telling them that he's fooling you, but you, of course, are in on the joke! Don't you understand, that it's really them who are being played for fools? It all depends, of course, on who is them, and also, of course, who is you!

Even though there's something to Drum's explanation, this once again reminds me of my favorite scene in the movie, "The Princess Bride", in which Westley, a.k.a. "The Man in Black", plays a deadly Russian-ruolette-type drinking game with Vizzini, the Sicilian bandit who has kidnapped the princess, Buttercup, in which Vizzini must guess which of two cups does not contain poison. "The Man in Black" offers a vial to Vizzini to smell the contents:

Vizzini: Sniffs vial.  "I smell nothing." Returns vial.  

Man In Black:  "What you do not smell is called Iocane powder. It is odorless, tasteless, dissolves instantly in liquid, and is among the more deadly poisons known to man." 

Vizzini:  "Hmm." 

Man In Black: Turns away from Vizzini with the goblets, to pour the poison in. Goblets replaced on the table, one in front of each.  "All right. Where is the poison? The battle of wits has begun. It ends when you decide and we both drink, and find out who is right ... and who is dead." 

Vizzini:  "But it's so simple. All I have to do is divine from what I know of you:  are you the sort of man who would put the poison into his own goblet or his enemy's? Now, a clever man would put the poison into his own goblet, because he would know that only a great fool would reach for what he was given. I am not a great fool, so I can clearly not choose the wine in front of you. But you must have known I was not a great fool, you would have counted on it, so I can clearly not choose the wine in front of me."  

Man In Black:  "You've made your decision then?"  

Vizzini:  "Not remotely. Because Iocane comes from Australia, as everyone knows, and Australia is entirely peopled with criminals, and criminals are used to having people not trust them, as you are not trusted by me, so I can clearly not choose the wine in front of you."  

Man In Black:  "Truly, you have a dizzying intellect."  

Vizzini:  "WAIT TILL I GET GOING! Where was I?"  

Man In Black:  "Australia."  

Vizzini:  "Yes, Australia. And you must have suspected I would have known the powder's origin, so I can clearly not choose the wine in front of me."  

Man In Black: "You're just stalling now."  

Vizzini:  "YOU'D LIKE TO THINK THAT, WOULDN'T YOU?  You've beaten my giant, which means you're exceptionally strong, so you could've put the poison in your own goblet, trusting on your strength to save you, so I can clearly not choose the wine in front of you. But, you've also bested my Spaniard, which means you must have studied, and in studying you must have learned that man is mortal, so you would have put the poison as far from yourself as possible, so I can clearly not choose the wine in front of me."  

Man In Black:  "You're trying to trick me into giving away something. It won't work."  

Vizzini:  "IT HAS WORKED! YOU'VE GIVEN EVERYTHING AWAY! I KNOW WHERE THE POISON IS!"  

Man In Black:  "Then make your choice."  

Vizzini:  "I will, and I choose -- What in the world can that be?" Vizzini gestures up and away from the table. The Man In Black looks.  

Man In Black:  "What? Where?" Vizzini switches the goblets. Turning back. "I don't see anything."  

Vizzini:  "Well, I -- I could have sworn I saw something. No matter." Smirks.  

Man In Black:  "What's so funny?"  

Vizzini:  "I'll tell you in a minute. First, let's drink. Me from my glass," picks up glass, "and you from yours." They drink.

Man In Black: Pointing. "You guessed wrong."  

Vizzini:  "You only THINK I guessed wrong! That's what's so funny! I switched glasses when your back was turned! Ha ha! You fool! You fell victim to one of the classic blunders! The most famous is never get involved in a land war in Asia, but only slightly less well known is this:  never go in against a Sicilian when death is on the line!! Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!! Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!! Ha ha ha" -- Stops suddenly, and falls dead, to his right. The Man in Black removes Buttercup's blindfold.  

Buttercup:  "Who are you?"  

Man In Black:  "I'm no one to be trifled with. That is all you ever need know." He unties her hands and feet.  

Buttercup:  "And to think, all that time it was your cup that was poisoned."  

Man In Black:  "They were both poisoned. I spent the last few years building up an immunity to Iocane powder."

So yes, the Presidential Election of 2016 has come down to a guessing game, the object of which is to figure out who is fooling whom -- our final answer being not at all important, since, either way, we're dead.

My own version of the so-called "leak" goes something like this:

Donald Trump may have finally figured out that he can't keep "winging" his campaign, that it's starting to hit the rapids, so he needs to bring in a seasoned professional, Paul Manafort, to put everything right. Manafort, with very little to work with, goes to the Republican National Committee, hoping to mend some broken fences with a "Hail Mary" play -- telling them not to worry, that Trump, clever guy that he is, has been just pretending to agree with all the clueless masses that he's attracted to the party, but just wait, you'll see him pivot during the general election toward being someone far more acceptable to the general public.

It's all just a big act, don't ya understand? It's Trump, being bold and being crazy -- but crazy like a fox! Yeah, that's the ticket! He's been doing all this on purpose!

Will anybody buy it?

Who knows! After all, it's a Hail Mary! Either it works or it doesn't! When you're in a hole, what difference does it make? At least it should keep people guessing long enough to buy time to come up with a new secret plan.

It's as if we now know that, someday, we'll look back and see this "acting" business was a major turning point in the campaign -- until still later, of course, when we find out that, in fact, nothing changed at all, and that they were just pretending when they said it was all an act.

Sort of like Nixon's "secret plan" on how to win the war, we'll learn that Trump's secret plan was that there was no plan.

Response to Sweating the Smallest Stuff

(See: Just Above Sunset: Sweating the Smallest Stuff)

 Yeah, it's bound to happen here and there that I find myself agreeing with Donald Trump, and his saying this, in fact, was an easy one:

"You leave it the way it is. There have been very few complaints the way it is," he continued. "People go, they use the bathroom that they feel is appropriate. There has been so little trouble, and the problem with what happened in North Carolina is the strife and the economic punishment that they are taking."

First of all, I'm sure it will come as a shock to many to learn that transgendered persons have existed, with very little discussion, throughout American history, and it is not just this weird concept concocted by liberals in the last few decades as a way to piss off conservatives.

And second of all, it's probably safe to assume that all those guys and gals down through our history occasionally have had to go to the bathroom! I wonder where they went? But however they've been sorting themselves out, they seem to have been doing it heretofore without raising too much fuss, since we haven't been hearing much about it in the news until very recently.

In fact, I am seriously interested in seeing the statistics about how big a problem, legal or otherwise, that this has been.

It's hard to imagine a man who feels more comfortable dressing like -- and identifies as -- a woman, going into the girls' room and molesting ... a little girl! Not that it's all that likely, but you'd think we would be more likely to see that same man, who identifies as a woman, be forced to use the men's room, go into one and molest a little boy!

No, wait! Scrap that! That's also pretty stupid. But when you're talking about some state that, only relatively recently, got out of the business of trying to enforce who gets to use which restroom, starts up doing it again, you're going to find yourself contemplating some pretty stupid shit.

But I do disagree with Trump on this one thing, as reported by Talking Points Memo:

The American Family Association suggested that Target provide single-use unisex bathrooms to accommodate transgender individuals.

Trump doesn't like it -- he says, "First of all, I think that would be discriminatory in a certain way," adding, "It would be unbelievably expensive for businesses and for the country."

But I think the suggestion has merit, as long as Target and other businesses are allowed to build the extra bathrooms voluntarily, assuming they can afford the expense.

But better yet, there's no reason for these single-use bathrooms to be designated for the exclusive use of trans persons, but in fact, they could be made available to anybody who doesn't feel comfortable sharing a bathroom with someone else -- including those who don't like Target's new transgender-bathroom-use policy.

In other words, if you have reason to believe that some guy will dress up like a girl just so he can molest your daughter in the girls' room, have her use the no-share rest room instead.

So it's a "Win-Win" situation! Transgendered folks can go back to the good old days when they would use a public restroom with little fear of getting arrested for it, and North Carolina conservatives can go back to the good old days of going to the bathroom with no fear of their daughter being molested by someone wearing clothes they shouldn't be wearing!

And all we have to do to get from here to there is to get rid of that ridiculous law.