America Needs to Listen to What Colin Kaepernick Is Actually Trying to Say | The Nation

"Instead of reckoning with the substance of his critique, much of the media coverage has fostered an abstract discussion about patriotism and etiquette—centering the question of whether he has the “right” to protest rather than examining what it is he’s trying to say.



As Charles Modiano breaks down brilliantly, this is the wrong approach:



Colin Kaepernick’s deliberate act of protest to sit out the national anthem caught the nation’s attention, and this initial sentence framed most media headlines: “I am not going to stand up to show pride in a flag for a country that oppresses Black people and people of color.” But the meat of Kaepernick’s cause actually came two sentences later: “There are bodies in the street and people getting paid leave and getting away with murder.”



Hold it right there: “Getting away with murder.” That is the story.



America Needs to Listen to What Colin Kaepernick Is Actually Trying to Say | The Nation

'Opportunist' Trump sees a moment in Mexico | MSNBC

'Opportunist' Trump sees a moment in Mexico | MSNBC

The Real Clinton Foundation Revelation - The New York Times

"When I was the chief White House ethics lawyer for President George W. Bush, I asked many prospective administration officials if they would sell stock in companies, give up stock options, step down from nonprofit boards or make other painful choices to enter public service. Some balked. I told them that someone more important than I was, perhaps the president or the White House chief of staff, would ask them, “Do you want this job or don’t you?”



I know about the difficult questions, and entanglements, that crop up in public service. I believe that Hillary Clinton has asked and successfully answered those questions as they pertain to the Clinton Foundation. There is little if any evidence that federal ethics laws were broken by Mrs. Clinton or anyone working for her at the State Department in their dealings with the foundation. Unfortunately, the foundation is still fuel for Mrs. Clinton’s persistent critics.



These critics have yet to point to any provision of the federal statutes or ethics regulations that was violated by Secretary Clinton or her staff in their dealings with the foundation and its principals, agents and donors. Was there favoritism? Probably, yes. But laws were not broken. If favoritism by political appointees toward outside persons and organizations were illegal, the United States government would be quite different than it is today.



White House political appointees and members of Congress show favoritism regularly, from how quickly they return campaign contributors’ telephone calls to which meeting requests they honor to who gets what they want in the policy arena."



The Real Clinton Foundation Revelation - The New York Times

Apple, Congress and the Missing Taxes - The New York Times

"Apple and the United States are crying foul over the ruling in Europe that Apple received illegal tax breaks from Ireland and must hand over 13 billion euros ($14.5 billion), a record tax penalty in Europe.



But Apple and the United States have only themselves to blame for the situation.







"Apple has engaged in increasingly aggressive tax avoidance for at least a decade, including stashing some $100 billion in Ireland without paying taxes on much of it anywhere in the world, according to a Senate investigation in 2013. In a display of arrogance, the company seemed to believe that its arrangements in a known tax haven like Ireland would never be deemed illegal — even as European regulators cracked down in similar cases against such multinational corporations as Starbucks, Amazon, Fiat and the German chemical giant BASF.



Congress, for its part, has sat idly by as American corporations have indulged in increasingly intricate forms of tax avoidance made possible by the interplay of an outmoded corporate tax code and modern globalized finance. The biggest tax dodge in need of reform involves deferral, in which American companies can defer paying taxes on foreign-held profits until those sums are repatriated.



Initially, deferral was a convenience for multinationals, as they sought investment opportunities abroad. Today, it is the taproot of global tax avoidance. Financial engineering has let American companies shift profits into foreign accounts, while they lobby Congress for tax-rate cuts in exchange for repatriating the money. Currently, there is some $2 trillion in corporate profits in offshore tax-deferred accounts; besides Apple, Microsoft, Google, Cisco and Oracle also have large stashes. Apple is one of nearly two dozen major corporations pushing Congress for a “tax holiday,” which would let companies bring back foreign-held money over the course of a year at a discounted tax rate, rather than the current rate, 35 percent.



Apple, Congress and the Missing Taxes - The New York Times

Podcast: Trump Ignored Black Voters. But Has Clinton Earned 91% of Their Support? - The New York Times

"Mr. Blow discusses the difficult choice this election. “One party approaches you with a philosophy of pain, and the other approaches you with a philosophy of pity,” he says. “And most black people, I would venture, don’t want either.”



But he warns about false equivalency. “Have Democrats been perfect? Of course they haven’t. But there are actual attacks on individual people of color in this country,” he says, speaking of efforts to enact stricter voter registration laws. “Everyone knows the net effect of them will be a disproportionate impact on poor people and minorities and, in particular, black people,” he said, “and those are, for the most part, Republican legislatures doing that.”



Despite not being perfect, as Mr. Blow says, the Democratic Party — Hillary Clinton in particular — has overwhelming support from black voters. A recent poll shows Mrs. Clinton with 91 percent of the black vote, compared to 1 percent for Mr. Trump. I ask Ms. Alcindor whether Mrs. Clinton has earned that. She thought back to what she heard while covering Bernie Sanders.



“Bernie Sanders would say this thing: ‘People don’t know me, which is why they’re not flocking to me. African-Americans don’t know me,’ ” she recalls. “I think that the voters that Bernie Sanders thought were ignoring him because they didn’t know him — I think they knew who Bernie Sanders was.



“African-Americans that I interviewed, they knew exactly who Bernie Sanders was,” she says, “and they weren’t picking him. They were picking Hillary Clinton.”



Podcast: Trump Ignored Black Voters. But Has Clinton Earned 91% of Their Support? - The New York Times

Democrats ask FBI: Did Donald Trump aides' Russia connections lead to cyberattacks? - CBS News

“We are writing to request that the FBI assess whether connections between Trump campaign officials and Russian interests may have contributed to these attacks in order to interfere with the U.S. presidential election,” the lawmakers wrote in a letter sent to FBI Director James Comey on Tuesday.



The letter was signed by Rep. Elijah Cummings, D-Maryland, ranking member on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee; Rep. John Conyers, D-Michigan, ranking member on the House Judiciary Committee; Rep. Eliot Engel, D-New York, ranking member on the House Foreign Affairs Committee; and Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Mississippi, ranking member on the Homeland Security Committee.



The lawmakers said that “overt and covert actions by Trump campaign officials on behalf of Russian interests” have raised “serious questions.”



They referenced several reports about Trump campaign officials’ or his advisers’ ties to Russia. They mentioned long-time Trump adviser Roger Stone’s admission in early August that he had previously communicated with WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. They also said Trump foreign policy adviser Carter Page traveled to Moscow and delivered a speech critical of the U.S. and how Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, who’s endorsed Trump, traveled to Moscow last December and ate at Russian President Vladimir Putin’s table.



They also expressed concern about Paul Manafort, who served as Trump’s campaign chairman until he resigned recently after a series of damning reports about his involvement in Ukraine."



Democrats ask FBI: Did Donald Trump aides' Russia connections lead to cyberattacks? - CBS News

Former Models for Donald Trump's Agency Say They Violated Immigration Rules and Worked Illegally | Mother Jones

"Republican nominee Donald Trump has placed immigration at the core of his presidential campaign. He has claimed that undocumented immigrants are "taking our jobs" and "taking our money," pledged to deport them en masse, and vowed to build a wall on the Mexican border. At one point he demanded a ban on Muslims entering the country. Speaking to supporters in Iowa on Saturday, Trump said he would crack down on visitors to the United States who overstay their visas and declared that when any American citizen "loses their job to an illegal immigrant, the rights of that American citizen have been violated." And he is scheduled to give a major address on immigration in Arizona on Wednesday night.



But the mogul's New York modeling agency, Trump Model Management, has profited from using foreign models who came to the United States on tourist visas that did not permit them to work here, according to three former Trump models, all noncitizens, who shared their stories with Mother Jones. Financial and immigration records included in a recent lawsuit filed by a fourth former Trump model show that she, too, worked for Trump's agency in the United States without a proper visa.



Foreigners who visit the United States as tourists are generally not permitted to engage in any sort of employment unless they obtain a special visa, a process that typically entails an employer applying for approval on behalf of a prospective employee. Employers risk fines and possible criminal charges for using undocumented labor."



Former Models for Donald Trump's Agency Say They Violated Immigration Rules and Worked Illegally | Mother Jones

The Anthropocene epoch: scientists declare dawn of human-influenced age | Science | The Guardian

"Humanity’s impact on the Earth is now so profound that a new geological epoch – the Anthropocene – needs to be declared, according to an official expert group who presented the recommendation to the International Geological Congress in Cape Town on Monday.



The new epoch should begin about 1950, the experts said, and was likely to be defined by the radioactive elements dispersed across the planet by nuclear bomb tests, although an array of other signals, including plastic pollution, soot from power stations, concrete, and even the bones left by the global proliferation of the domestic chicken were now under consideration."



The Anthropocene epoch: scientists declare dawn of human-influenced age | Science | The Guardian

Nasa: Earth is warming at a pace 'unprecedented in 1,000 years' | Environment | The Guardian

"The planet is warming at a pace not experienced within the past 1,000 years, at least, making it “very unlikely” that the world will stay within a crucial temperature limit agreed by nations just last year, according to Nasa’s top climate scientist.



This year has already seen scorching heat around the world, with the average global temperature peaking at 1.38C above levels experienced in the 19th century, perilously close to the 1.5C limit agreed in the landmark Paris climate accord. July was the warmest month since modern record keeping began in 1880, with each month since October 2015 setting a new high mark for heat.



But Nasa said that records of temperature that go back far further, taken via analysis of ice cores and sediments, suggest that the warming of recent decades is out of step with any period over the past millennium."



Nasa: Earth is warming at a pace 'unprecedented in 1,000 years' | Environment | The Guardian

23 Sanjay Gupta Calls Bullish on Trump’s ‘Questionable’ Doctor and Hype...

[Editorial] Seoul-Moscow ties

"South Korea and Russia are set to reinforce government- and business-level cooperation on Moscow’s plans to develop the Russian Far East.



Russia plans to support Korean firms investing into its projects to build cold storage facilities and modernize harbors in Vladivostok, according to the Ministry of Strategy and Finance.



Outlook on the bilateral economic ties is bright, as Finance Minister Yoo Il-ho shared the goals and emphasized the importance of partnership with his counterpart Yuri Trutnev at a meeting in Seoul last week."



[Editorial] Seoul-Moscow ties

Clinton: Donald Trump has shown us who he is | MSNBC

Clinton: Donald Trump has shown us who he is | MSNBC

Clinton maintains lead in latest poll | MSNBC

Clinton maintains lead in latest poll | MSNBC

Living in L.B.J.’s America - The New York Times

"For those puzzled about why so many evangelical leaders were willing to endorse Donald J. Trump, the most openly irreligious major-party presidential candidate in our history, Jerry Falwell Jr. provided the answer in his singularly graceless speech at the Republican National Convention: “Mr. Trump has added a plank to this party’s platform to repeal I.R.S. rules sponsored by Lyndon Johnson in 1954 barring churches and nonprofits from expressing political free speech.” Mr. Falwell assured his audience, “Trust me, the repeal of the Johnson Amendment will create a huge revolution for conservative Christians and for free speech.”

Mr. Falwell was referring to a change to the tax code added by Johnson when he was the Senate minority leader. The amendment, as The Times reported in 2011, was not aimed at churches, but at “two nonprofit groups that were loudly calling him a closet Communist.” These were the Facts Forum, funded by the Texas oil billionaire H. L. Hunt to produce and distribute McCarthyist books, television programs and radio shows; and the Committee for Constitutional Government, another far-right, multimedia and mass-mailing center founded by the newspaper magnate Frank Gannett.

The Johnson Amendment stated that “all section 501(c)(3) organizations are absolutely prohibited from directly or indirectly participating in, or intervening in, any political campaign on behalf of (or in opposition to) any candidate for elective public office.” In other words, tax-deductible charitable contributions could not be used to fund election campaigns. This was considered so uncontroversial at the time that no record of what Johnson was thinking or precisely how he got this clause attached to the tax code seems to have survived. It was passed by a Republican Congress, and signed into law by President Dwight D. Eisenhower.

Churches on all sides, liberal and conservative, proved able to skirt the provisions of the amendment easily enough, and it went largely unchallenged until 2008, when the Alliance Defending Freedom, a legal and political organizing arm of right-wing Christian evangelicals, started a campaign to repeal it. The A.D.F. began an annual Pulpit Freedom Sunday, in which ministers were encouraged to give overtly political sermons, and then send recordings of these talks to the I.R.S."



Living in L.B.J.’s America - The New York Times

Applying for Housing at a Trump Property in the '60s - Video - NYTimes.com

Applying for Housing at a Trump Property in the '60s - Video - NYTimes.com

Richard Nixon & Lee Atwater Redux - Donald Trump's southern strategy remix Does Donald Trump's promise to restore "law and order" take inspiration from a strategy used by Richard Nixon? Robert P. Jones of the Public Religion Research Institute, NBC's Perry Bacon, Jr., Trump surrogate Steve Cortes and Democratic strategist Karine Jean-Pierre join to discuss. - AM Joy on MSNBC

AM Joy on MSNBC

AP engaged in sloppy journalism in reporting on the Clinton Foundation - AM Joy on MSNBC

"Questions surround AP story on Clinton Foundation
Hillary Clinton pushed back this week against claims that as Secretary of State she granted special access to big donors to the Clinton Foundation. Investigative reporter for the Washington Post, Spencer Hsu, joins MSNBC’s Joy Reid to discuss this and the recent Associated Press story regarding the situation."


AM Joy on MSNBC

‘No Vacancies’ for Blacks: How Donald Trump Got His Start, and Was First Accused of Bias - The New York Times

"She seemed like the model tenant. A 33-year-old nurse who was living at the Y.W.C.A. in Harlem, she had come to rent a one-bedroom at the still-unfinished Wilshire Apartments in the Jamaica Estates neighborhood of Queens. She filled out what the rental agent remembers as a “beautiful application.” She did not even want to look at the unit.



There was just one hitch: Maxine Brown was black.



Stanley Leibowitz, the rental agent, talked to his boss, Fred C. Trump.



“I asked him what to do and he says, ‘Take the application and put it in a drawer and leave it there,’” Mr. Leibowitz, now 88, recalled in an interview.



It was late 1963 — just months before President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the landmark Civil Rights Act — and the tall, mustachioed Fred Trump was approaching the apex of his building career. He was about to complete the jewel in the crown of his middle-class housing empire: seven 23-story towers, called Trump Village, spread across nearly 40 acres in Coney Island.



He was also grooming his heir. His son Donald, 17, would soon enroll at Fordham University in the Bronx, living at his parents’ home in Queens and spending much of his free time touring construction sites in his father’s Cadillac, driven by a black chauffeur.



“His father was his idol,” Mr. Leibowitz recalled. “Anytime he would come into the building, Donald would be by his side.”



Over the next decade, as Donald J. Trump assumed an increasingly prominent role in the business, the company’s practice of turning away potential black tenants was painstakingly documented by activists and organizations that viewed equal housing as the next frontier in the civil rights struggle.



The Justice Department undertook its own investigation and, in 1973, sued Trump Management for discriminating against blacks. Both Fred Trump, the company’s chairman, and Donald Trump, its president, were named as defendants. It was front-page news, and for Donald, amounted to his debut in the public eye.



“Absolutely ridiculous,” he was quoted as saying of the government’s allegations.



Looking back, Mr. Trump’s response to the lawsuit can be seen as presaging his handling of subsequent challenges, in business and in politics. Rather than quietly trying to settle — as another New York developer had done a couple of years earlier — he turned the lawsuit into a protracted battle, complete with angry denials, character assassination, charges that the government was trying to force him to rent to “welfare recipients” and a $100 million countersuit accusing the Justice Department of defamation.



When it was over, Mr. Trump declared victory, emphasizing that the consent decree he ultimately signed did not include an admission of guilt.



But an investigation by The New York Times — drawing on decades-old files from the New York City Commission on Human Rights, internal Justice Department records, court documents and interviews with tenants, civil rights activists and prosecutors — uncovered a long history of racial bias at his family’s properties, in New York and beyond.



That history has taken on fresh relevance with Mr. Trump arguing that black voters should support him over Hillary Clinton, whom he has called a bigot."



‘No Vacancies’ for Blacks: How Donald Trump Got His Start, and Was First Accused of Bias - The New York Times

Trump's Town Hall: The Softening

Hillary Clinton Denounces the ‘Alt-Right,’ and the Alt-Right Is Thrilled - The New York Times

Hillary Clinton Denounces the ‘Alt-Right,’ and the Alt-Right Is Thrilled - The New York Times

Is Donald Trump a Racist? - The New York Times

"One early red flag arose in 1973, when President Richard Nixon’s Justice Department — not exactly the radicals of the day — sued Trump and his father, Fred Trump, for systematically discriminating against blacks in housing rentals.

I’ve waded through 1,021 pages of documents from that legal battle, and they are devastating. Donald Trump was then president of the family real estate firm, and the government amassed overwhelming evidence that the company had a policy of discriminating against blacks, including those serving in the military.

To prove the discrimination, blacks were repeatedly dispatched as testers to Trump apartment buildings to inquire about vacancies, and white testers were sent soon after. Repeatedly, the black person was told that nothing was available, while the white tester was shown apartments for immediate rental.

A former building superintendent working for the Trumps explained that he was told to code any application by a black person with the letter C, for colored, apparently so the office would know to reject it. A Trump rental agent said the Trumps wanted to rent only to “Jews and executives,” and discouraged renting to blacks.

Donald Trump furiously fought the civil rights suit in the courts and the media, but the Trumps eventually settled on terms that were widely regarded as a victory for the government. Three years later, the government sued the Trumps again, for continuing to discriminate.

In fairness, those suits date from long ago, and the discriminatory policies were probably put in place not by Donald Trump but by his father. Fred Trump appears to have been arrested at a Ku Klux Klan rally in 1927; Woody Guthrie, who lived in a Trump property in the 1950s, lambasted Fred Trump in recently discovered papers for stirring racial hatred.

Yet even if Donald Trump inherited his firm’s discriminatory policies, he allied himself decisively in the 1970s housing battle against the civil rights movement." http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/24/opinion/sunday/is-donald-trump-a-racist.html

Is Donald Trump a Racist? - The New York Times

Hillary Clinton goes after Trump's controversial "alt-right" supporters

Clinton ad ties Trump to KKK, white supremacists - POLITICO

Clinton ad ties Trump to KKK, white supremacists - POLITICO

The Clinton Foundation David Sirota and Michael Cohen talk with Chris Hayes about the latest reporting and questions surrounding the Clinton Foundation. - All In with Chris Hayes on MSNBC

All In with Chris Hayes on MSNBC

Donald Trump’s Description of Black America Is Offending Those Living in It - The New York Times

Donald Trump’s Description of Black America Is Offending Those Living in It - The New York Times

Charles Blow: "Trump is bigot". Finally someone in the news media saying it like it is.

I love this: Neil deGrasse Tyson: Atheist or Agnostic?

Clinton Foundation story offers smoke, but no fire | MSNBC

"The report from the Associated Press yesterday came with a headline designed to raise eyebrows: “More than half those who met Clinton as Cabinet secretary gave money to Clinton Foundation.” The story’s lede leaves no doubt that the AP believes it’s uncovered something resembling wrongdoing:

More than half the people outside the government who met with Hillary Clinton while she was secretary of state gave money – either personally or through companies or groups – to the Clinton Foundation. It’s an extraordinary proportion indicating her possible ethics challenges if elected president.

The proportion is considered “extraordinary” because, well, apparently the Associated Press says so.



But right off the bat, the first sentence undercuts the provocative headline: “more than half” of those Clinton met with “outside of government” supported her husband’s charitable foundation. In other words, to arrive at the controversial figure, the Associated Press had to exclude all kinds of people: State Department officials, diplomats, ambassadors, foreign leaders and officials, White House personnel, military servicemen and women, etc.



In other words, after excluding the people any Secretary of State might ordinarily see on a typical day, and looking exclusively at this smaller subset of people Hillary Clinton met with, more than half of them contributed to Bill Clinton’s charity."



Clinton Foundation story offers smoke, but no fire | MSNBC

Think the Clinton-Trump Race Will Be a Landslide? Hold Your Horses

"Donald J. Trump, after weeks of self-inflicted damage, has seen support for his candidacy in national polls dip into the 30s — Barry Goldwater and Walter F. Mondale territory — while Hillary Clinton has extended her lead to double digits in several crucial swing states.

Time to declare a landslide, right? Not so fast.

The vote may be more favorable to Mr. Trump than the worst-case-scenario prognosticators suggest for a very simple reason: Landslides do not really happen in presidential elections anymore.

It has been 32 years since a president won the popular vote by a double-digit percentage. That was when Mr. Mondale suffered an 18-point defeat to Ronald Reagan in 1984. It was also the last time there was a landslide among states, with Mr. Mondale winning only Minnesota and the District of Columbia.

There are a variety of factors that are likely to prevent a candidate today from rallying the huge, 60-plus-point majorities that swept Franklin D. Roosevelt back into office in 1936, Lyndon B. Johnson in 1964 and Richard M. Nixon in 1972.

The country is too fragmented and its political temperature too overheated for any single person to emerge as a consensus choice for anything nearing two-thirds of the electorate. And that climate has led the political parties to become far more ideologically uniform than they used to be."

On "Last Week Tonight" John Oliver Destroys Ryan Lochte "America's idiot...

Why Hillary Clinton Might Win Georgia - The New York Times

"Atlanta — Recent polls show something that has caught even the most optimistic liberals by surprise: Hillary Clinton is tied with Donald J. Trump in Georgia, catching up with him in South Carolina and generally showing strength in traditionally Republican parts of the South. It seems like the Democratic dream come true — demographic changes are turning Southern states purple.



But this story has less to do with the future than the past, and both parties run a risk in misreading it. Mr. Trump’s racially charged hard-right campaign reveals a fault line in Republican politics that dates from the very beginning of G.O.P. ascendancy in the South.



The Republican’s Southern Strategy is one of the most familiar stories in modern American history: Beginning in the 1960s, the party courted white racist voters who fled the Democratic Party because of its support for civil rights."



Why Hillary Clinton Might Win Georgia - The New York Times

Sean Hannity Turns Adviser in the Service of Donald Trump - The New York Times

"During major inflection points in Donald J. Trump’s campaign, the advisers, family members and friends who make up his kitchen cabinet burn up their email accounts and phone lines gaming out how to get his candidacy on track (and what counsel he might go along with).



But one person in the mix brings more than just his political advice. He also happens to control an hour of prime time on the Fox News Channel.



That person is Sean Hannity.



Mr. Hannity uses his show on the nation’s most-watched cable news network to blare Mr. Trump’s message relentlessly — giving Mr. Trump the kind of promotional television exposure even a billionaire can’t afford for long."





Sean Hannity Turns Adviser in the Service of Donald Trump - The New York Times

Charter Schools: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO)

John Oliver Asks Donald Trump To "DROP OUT" Last Week Tonight (HBO) 8/21/16

Trump’s Hollow ‘Regrets’ - The New York Times

"This fragile narcissist, who is a sort of bottomless pit of emotional need and affirmation, is easily injured by even the slightest confrontation.



He is a man who has said of himself, “I have no friends, as far as I’m concerned,” as he joked that it would be easy to get big money out of politics. But that claim is worrisome, a thing that only a bully would say.



Yes, he can work a crowd, work a screen and work a Twitter account. He can channel anger, hatred and bigotry and give it a voice and face and standing. He can make bombast feel like bravado. He can lower discourse and raise the rabble.



He has the gifts of a grifter.



The problem is that, at the moment, those gifts are proving to be woefully insufficient as he continues to face horrible polling results and other Republican officials begin to reek of fear, panic and impending peril.



Furthermore, his team is being remade in the fourth quarter, as reports of corruption begin to swirl. Last week his campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, resigned after The Associated Press reported:



“A firm run by Donald Trump’s campaign chairman directly orchestrated a covert Washington lobbying operation on behalf of Ukraine’s ruling political party, attempting to sway American public opinion in favor of the country’s pro-Russian government, emails obtained by The Associated Press show. Paul Manafort and his deputy, Rick Gates, never disclosed their work as foreign agents as required under federal law.”



The report continued:



“The lobbying included attempts to gain positive press coverage of Ukrainian officials in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and The Associated Press. Another goal: undercutting American public sympathy for the imprisoned rival of Ukraine’s then-president. At the time, European and American leaders were pressuring Ukraine to free her.”



This email controversy, coming from the same campaign trying to make hay of Hillary Clinton’s email controversy. Oh, the irony.



Trump thinks of himself as a great man — that is the premise of his entire sales pitch, that America has faltered and can only be made great again by the Midas touch of his tiny hands — but if current trends continue and he suffers a staggering loss on Election Day, his ego will be forever injured as he is assigned to history not as a great man but as a great disaster, a cautionary tale of what comes of a party that picks a con man as its frontman.



Trump’s recitation of regret wasn’t so much a ruthless Saul to Apostle Paul transformation as an inverted Jekyll and Hyde monstrous illusion.



There is something rotten at the core of this man that no length of script or turn "



Trump’s Hollow ‘Regrets’ - The New York Times

Affluent and Black, and Still Trapped by Segregation - The New York Times

"In fact, a New York Times analysis of 2014 census figures shows that income alone cannot explain, nor would it likely end, the segregation that has defined American cities and suburbs for generations.

The choices that black families make today are inevitably constrained by a legacy of racism that prevented their ancestors from buying quality housing and then passing down wealth that might have allowed today’s generation to move into more stable communities. And even when black households try to cross color boundaries, they are not always met with open arms: Studies have shown that white people prefer to live in communities where there are fewer black people, regardless of their income.

The result: Nationally, black and white families of similar incomes still live in separate worlds.

In many of America’s largest metropolitan areas, including New York, Chicago and Los Angeles, black families making $100,000 or more are more likely to live in poorer neighborhoods than even white households making less than $25,000. This is particularly true in areas with a long history of residential segregation, like metropolitan Milwaukee."

Affluent and Black, and Still Trapped by Segregation - The New York Times

Immigrant Runners Like Mo Farah and Bernard Lagat Are Winning More Than Olympic Medals at Rio 2016 - The Atlantic

"On Saturday night, the British distance runner Mo Farah will try and become the first athlete to sweep the 5,000- and 10,000-meter races at consecutive Olympics since Finland’s Lasse Viren won both in 1972 and 1976. Farah has already found a heart-stopping way to pay homage to the Finn, albeit accidentally. Viren famously fell mid-race during the 10,000-meter in 1972 but managed to get up and still win. Forty-four years later, in the middle of last Saturday’s 10,000 in Rio, Farah got tangled up with the American runner Galen Rupp, his friend and sometime training partner, and went crashing onto the track. It briefly looked as though Farah’s race was over. But he sprang up, rejoined the pack, and won in the same way he’s dominated the biggest international races for a half-decade: by separating himself from runners still in the mix and entering the final lap with a blistering closing kick.



Farah is tangled up with forces off the track too. He’s an immigrant who came to England from Somalia in order to escape conflict there at the age of eight. Time and again in recent years, the 33-year-old Farah, a devout Muslim, has prayed on the track and draped himself in the British flag after crossing the line for wins on the biggest stage, including at London’s 2012 games and then biennial World Championships in Russia and China in 2013 and 2015."



Immigrant Runners Like Mo Farah and Bernard Lagat Are Winning More Than Olympic Medals at Rio 2016 - The Atlantic

Ark Encounter and Biblical Literalism - The Atlantic

"Voltaire thought none required more faith than the story of Noah’s Ark: “The history of the deluge being that of the most miraculous event of which the world ever heard, it must be the height of folly and madness to attempt an explanation of it.” If only he had visited Ark Encounter—a Christian theme park that opened this summer in Kentucky and boasts a “life-sized” reconstruction of Noah’s Ark. Seemingly impossible details have been fanatically researched and naturalistically explained by Answers in Genesis (AiG), a literalist Christian organization that’s also responsible for the nearby Creation Museum. With roughly 40 percent of Americans believing in creationism, the park shouldn’t be dismissed as mere Christian kitsch. Rather, it represents a recent and powerful trend in evangelical thought, a kind of fundamentalist realism. To visit the park is to see how conservative Christianity of the 21st century finds strength not simply in miracles, scripture and sermon, but in timber, mannequins, blueprints, and feasibility studies."



Ark Encounter and Biblical Literalism - The Atlantic

The Nightly Show - Love From Jon Stewart

Racist red flags follow Trump Breitbart hire, Steve Bannon | MSNBC

Racist red flags follow Trump Breitbart hire, Steve Bannon | MSNBC

I had the pleasure of stomping on Donald Trump's Hollywood Star May 20th 2011

Trump's new brain. Steve Bannon: the Machiavellian 'bully' who made Breitbart into 'Trump Pravda' | US news | The Guardian

This man is dangerous.  He is ruthless, dishonest and amoral.  He will become Trump's brain.“Egomaniacal.” “Purely Machiavellian.” A man summed up by three words: “fear and bullying”.



Former employees do not lack for words to describe Donald Trump’s new campaign chief, a Wall Street veteran who found his flock on the far right, with a site associated with conspiracy theories, provocation and notions unspoken on cable TV. For staffers of Breitbart News, Steve Bannon’s words were law.



Steve Bannon: the Machiavellian 'bully' who made Breitbart into 'Trump Pravda' | US news | The Guardian

Obamacare Hits a Bump - The New York Times

"More than two and a half years have gone by since the Affordable Care Act, a.k.a. Obamacare, went fully into effect. Most of the news about health reform since then has been good, defying the dire predictions of right-wing doomsayers. But this week has brought some genuine bad news: The giant insurer Aetna announced that it would be pulling out of many of the “exchanges,” the special insurance markets the law established.



This doesn’t mean that the reform is about to collapse. But some real problems are cropping up. They’re problems that would be relatively easy to fix in a normal political system, one in which parties can compromise to make government work. But they won’t get resolved if we elect a clueless president (although he’d turn to terrific people, the best people, for advice, believe me. Not.). And they’ll be difficult to resolve even with a knowledgeable, competent president if she faces scorched-earth opposition from a hostile Congress.



The story so far: Since Obamacare took full effect in January 2014, two things have happened. First, the percentage of Americans who are uninsured has dropped sharply. Second, the growth of health costs has slowed sharply, so that the law is costing both consumers and taxpayers less than expected.



Meanwhile, the bad things that were supposed to happen didn’t. Health reform didn’t cause the budget deficit to soar; it didn’t kill private-sector jobs, which have actually grown more rapidly since Obamacare went into effect than at any time since the 1990s. Evidence also is growing that the law has meant a significant improvement in both health and financial security for millions, probably tens of millions, of Americans.



So what’s the problem?



Well, Obamacare is a system that relies on private insurance companies to provide much of its expanded coverage (not all, because expanded Medicaid is also a big part of the system). And many of these private insurers are now finding themselves losing money, because previously uninsured Americans who are signing up turn out to have been sicker and more in need of costly care than we realized.



Some insurers are responding by hiking premiums, which were initially set well below what the law’s framers expected. And some insurers are simply pulling out of the system.



In Aetna’s case there’s reason to believe that there was also another factor: vindictiveness on the part of the insurer after antitrust authorities turned down a proposed merger. That’s an important story, but not central to the broader issue of health reform.



So how bad is the problem?



Much of the new system is doing pretty well — not just the Medicaid expansion, but also private insurer-based exchanges in big states that are trying to make the law work, California in particular. The bad news mainly hits states that have small populations and/or have governments hostile to reform, where the exit of insurers may leave markets without adequate competition. That’s not the whole country, but it would be a significant setbac"



Obamacare Hits a Bump - The New York Times

The Daily Show - Uncovering Discrimination at the Baltimore Police Depar...

John Oliver - Sarcastic Trump

The Daily Show - The Hardest Job in the World: Donald Trump's Campaign S...

Mr. Trump’s Foreign Policy Confusions - The New York Times

"Donald Trump’s speech on Monday was advertised as an attempt to redirect his campaign from a series of blunders to a more serious discussion of foreign policy, starting with combating global terrorism. As such, it marked another test of his readiness to lead. It did not go well.



Far from coherent analysis of the threat of Islamic extremism and a plausible blueprint for action, the speech was a collection of confused and random thoughts that showed little understanding of the rise of the Islamic State and often conflicted with the historical record.



Meanwhile, with terrorism as his central focus, Mr. Trump doubled down on the anti-refugee themes that have dominated his campaign, dressing them up as a national security issue. He proposed a new “extreme vetting” approach to immigration that would impose an ideological test on newcomers and undermine the very American values of tolerance and equal treatment that he said he wanted to encourage. He also called for the creation of a commission that would “expose the networks in our society that support radicalization,” which struck many listeners as an uncomfortable echo of McCarthyism."





Mr. Trump’s Foreign Policy Confusions - The New York Times

Secret Ledger in Ukraine Lists Cash for Donald Trump’s Campaign Chief - The New York Times

"KIEV, Ukraine — On a leafy side street off Independence Square in Kiev is an office used for years by Donald J. Trump’s campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, when he consulted for Ukraine’s ruling political party. His furniture and personal items were still there as recently as May.



And Mr. Manafort’s presence remains elsewhere here in the capital, where government investigators examining secret records have found his name, as well as companies he sought business with, as they try to untangle a corrupt network they say was used to loot Ukrainian assets and influence elections during the administration of Mr. Manafort’s main client, former President Viktor F. Yanukovych.



Handwritten ledgers show $12.7 million in undisclosed cash payments designated for Mr. Manafort from Mr. Yanukovych’s pro-Russian political party from 2007 to 2012, according to Ukraine’s newly formed National Anti-Corruption Bureau. Investigators assert that the disbursements were part of an illegal off-the-books system whose recipients also included election officials.



In addition, criminal prosecutors are investigating a group of offshore shell companies that helped members of Mr. Yanukovych’s inner circle finance their lavish lifestyles, including a palatial presidential residence with a private zoo, golf course and tennis court. Among the hundreds of murky transactions these companies engaged in was an $18 million deal to sell Ukrainian cable television assets to a partnership put together by Mr. Manafort and a Russian oligarch, Oleg Deripaska, a close ally of President Vladimir V. Putin."



Secret Ledger in Ukraine Lists Cash for Donald Trump’s Campaign Chief - The New York Times

Hillary Clinton’s Edge in a Donald Trump-Centric Race Has Liberals Wary

"While few have questioned the electoral strategy of bringing Republicans into the fold by casting Mr. Trump as a singular threat to democracy, both skeptics and some admirers of Mrs. Clinton have come to view her decisive advantage in the polls with mixed emotions.

She may win by a mandate-level margin, they say. But what, exactly, would the mandate be for?

In a matter of weeks, beginning with the party conventions, the policy-driven debates that animated the Democratic primary race have largely disappeared from the political foreground, giving way to discussions of Mr. Trump’s temperament, his inflammatory remarks and even his sanity."

Hillary Clinton’s Edge in a Donald Trump-Centric Race Has Liberals Wary

The Nightly Show - Blacklash 2016: The Unblackening - Donald Trump's Dan...

Donald Trump Courts the Gun Zealots - The New York Times

"The mutual embrace of Donald Trump and the National Rifle Association grew tighter last week with Mr. Trump’s incendiary suggestion that Second Amendment advocates could “maybe” find a way to deal with Hillary Clinton and her gun safety agenda if she reached the White House.



Whether calculated or clumsy, Mr. Trump’s ugly pronouncement left a whiff of lethal intimidation in the air. It marked a singular moment of desperation in his presidential campaign — but also created grounds for the nation to demand a rational, substantive campaign debate on gun safety that gets beyond Mr. Trump’s inflammatory sound bites."



Donald Trump Courts the Gun Zealots - The New York Times

Race and the Olympic Games - The New York Times

"The opening ceremony included an acknowledgment of slavery (as captured in the photo above). How would you interpret what was going on there?



A. I thought it was really significant that the slave trade was not just mentioned but portrayed in movement and dance in the way that it was. It’s not quite a taboo subject, but it’s something that is still not widely discussed or widely studied in Brazil, which received far more slaves than any other place in the Americas — more than 10 times the amount of slaves that went into North America.



Rio was the epicenter of this trade, and even within Brazil there is a misconception about how it functioned; many people here still think Salvador in the northeast received far more slaves when that just wasn’t the case.



Rio was the economic heart of Brazil at that time and then it was the seat of the empire. It was this linchpin of just a really brutal period in the country’s history. So I think it’s contributing to greater awareness and more discussion about the origins of the country.



Somewhat symbolically, the first gold medal winner for Brazil, Rafaela Silva, was also this incredibly gifted competitor in judo and she grew up very poor — she’s Afro-Brazilian, and she grew up very poor in Cidade de Deus, the City of God, the huge favela where Fernando Meirelles, the director of the opening ceremony, made his film of the same name. And her victory really resonated with a lot of people in Brazil, including in the favela where she was raised."



Race and the Olympic Games - The New York Times

The Last Word with Lawrence O'Donnell on MSNBC

The Last Word with Lawrence O'Donnell on MSNBC

The Last Word with Lawrence O'Donnell on MSNBC

2007 deposition teaches us about Trump’s lies
Donald Trump lied over 30 times in a 2007 deposition. What does that teach us about how he’s behaving now that he’s entered politics? Esquire’s Charlie Pierce and Trump book author David Cay Johnston join MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell.

The Last Word with Lawrence O'Donnell on MSNBC

Trump again falsely claims Obama founded ISIS Lawrence O'Donnell talks to conservative talk radio host Hugh Hewitt, who gave Donald Trump a chance to correct his claim that Obama is the founder of ISIS. Counter-terrorism expert Malcolm Nance breaks down the truth about who started ISIS. - The Last Word with Lawrence O'Donnell on MSNBC

The Last Word with Lawrence O'Donnell on MSNBC

Once Skeptical of Executive Power, Obama Has Come to Embrace It - The New York Times

"Once a presidential candidate with deep misgivings about executive power, Mr. Obama will leave the White House as one of the most prolific authors of major regulations in presidential history.



Blocked for most of his presidency by Congress, Mr. Obama has sought to act however he could. In the process he created the kind of government neither he nor the Republicans wanted — one that depended on bureaucratic bulldozing rather than legislative transparency. But once Mr. Obama got the taste for it, he pursued his executive power without apology, and in ways that will shape the presidency for decades to come.



The Obama administration in its first seven years finalized 560 major regulations — those classified by the Congressional Budget Office as having particularly significant economic or social impacts. That was nearly 50 percent more than the George W. Bush administration during the comparable period, according to data kept by the regulatory studies center at George Washington University.



An army of lawyers working under Mr. Obama’s authority has sought to restructure the nation’s health care and financial industries, limit pollution, bolster workplace protections and extend equal rights to minorities. Under Mr. Obama, the government has literally placed a higher value on human life."



Once Skeptical of Executive Power, Obama Has Come to Embrace It - The New York Times

Trump's Latest Ten Donald Trump's ten most recent outrageous statements.

Dozens of Republicans urge RNC to spend money on congressional races, not Trump - The Washington Post

"More than 75 Republicans have signed a letter urging Republican National Committee Chair Reince Priebus to spend the party's money on helping secure the Republican majority in the Senate, not on Donald Trump's presidential campaign.



The letter, whose signers include former congressmen Mickey Edwards and Christopher Shays; former senator Gordon Humphrey; Bruce Bartlett, a policy aide to Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush; and former RNC staff members, said Trump's campaign will have a "catastrophic impact" on down-ballot races."



Dozens of Republicans urge RNC to spend money on congressional races, not Trump - The Washington Post

Simone Biles on Weighs in on Sexist Coverage of the Rio Olympics: 'I’m not the next Usain Bolt or Michael Phelps. I’m the first Simone Biles.' - The Atlantic

"After winning individual gold in the women’s gymnastics all-around on Thursday, Simone Biles, in an interview, made a declaration. “I’m not the next Usain Bolt or Michael Phelps,” she said. “I’m the first Simone Biles.”



It was a simple tautology—of course she’s the first Simone Biles—that was also a powerful response to the gendered double standards that have so far plagued the 2016 Games. She’s not a lady version of a guy; she is … herself. It was an obvious point that, given some of the media coverage of Rio, was also a powerful piece of media criticism."



Simone Biles on Weighs in on Sexist Coverage of the Rio Olympics: 'I’m not the next Usain Bolt or Michael Phelps. I’m the first Simone Biles.' - The Atlantic

The Real Scandal of Hillary Clinton’s E-Mails - An interesting analysis of those who are around the powerful. - The New Yorker

An interesting analysis of those who are around the powerful.



"The many different anti-Clinton camps, on the left and on the right, share an assumption that all of the Clintons’ decisions are oriented around off-the-books agendas, and that these agendas emerge in moments of stress. This has amped up the fervor of the various probes into Clinton’s e-mail and the Benghazi episode—by means of foia, subpoena, and Russian hack—and it has also created a wild hype. In June, Julian Assange told ITV that WikiLeaks had the goods on Clinton, and that its material “could proceed to an indictment.” Republicans have spent years promoting the idea that at the heart of the Benghazi episode lies a profound criminality, self-interest, and corruption. The insistence that the probes will reveal illegal activity has crowded out the more realistic possibility that the relationships around Clinton are simply unsavory—and this, in turn, has reduced the chances that this episode will end with efforts at reform. “Lock her up!” Donald Trump’s crowds cry, but each time they do it seems more ridiculous. We have seen so many of her e-mails. Lock her up for what?"



The Real Scandal of Hillary Clinton’s E-Mails - The New Yorker

Can Hillary Clinton End the Southern Strategy Forever? Please, Put George Wallace, Ronald Reagan and Lee Atwater into the garbage can of history where they belong as a resiult of their racist, campaign strategies. | The Nation

Demographic shifts mean that, for the first time in half a century, Democrats have a real chance at winning states in the South and Southwest.



Can Hillary Clinton End the Southern Strategy Forever? | The Nation

Donald Trump’s latest attack on President Obama The Republican nominee claimed at a rally in Florida that President Obama is the founder of ISIS and went on to say Hillary Clinton is co-founder. What is Donald Trump’s strategy here? - Hardball with Chris Matthews on MSNBC

Hardball with Chris Matthews on MSNBC

Voters pick Donald Trump’s most offensive statements The Hardball roundtable discusses the results of new polling on the five things Donald Trump has said during this campaign that have bothered voters the most. - Hardball with Chris Matthews on MSNBC

Hardball with Chris Matthews on MSNBC

Andrea Tantaros Breaks Silence On Roger Ailes

The Daily Show - Did Donald Trump Call for Hillary Clinton's Assassination?

The Daily Show - A Suspicious Police Shooting in Chicago

Donald Trump’s Missteps Risk Putting a Ceiling Over His Support in Swing States - The New York Times

DOYLESTOWN, Pa. — Donald J. Trump has been waiting for months for a poll in which he cracks 50 percent of the vote against Hillary Clinton in any of his top battleground states: Florida, New Hampshire, Ohio or Pennsylvania.



“It’ll happen after the conventions,” he said in a July 6 interview. “Believe me.”



But in the last two weeks, instead of attracting a surge of new admirers, Mr. Trump has been hemorrhaging support among loyal Republicans, anti-establishment independents, Clinton-loathing Democrats and others, according to polls and 30 interviews with a cross-section of voters. His dispute with the Muslim parents of the Army captain who was killed in action in Iraq, and his suggestion that “Second Amendment people” could somehow stop Mrs. Clinton, have intensified doubts about Mr. Trump even among Americans who were initially attracted to his frank and freewheeling style.



Several Republican voters said they grow leery every time Mr. Trump speaks these days, for fear he will embarrass them, and feel increasingly repelled just when they hoped he might adjust his message to try to draw more people in.



Donald Trump’s Missteps Risk Putting a Ceiling Over His Support in Swing States - The New York Times

Dumb, dumb and dumber - Donald Trump sentence | User Clip | C-SPAN.org

Look, having nuclear—my uncle was a great professor and scientist  and engineer, Dr. John Trump at MIT; good genes, very good genes,

OK, very smart, the Wharton School of Finance, very good, very smart

—you know, if you're a conservative Republican, if I were a liberal, if,

like, OK, if I ran as a liberal Democrat, they would say I'm one of the

smartest people anywhere in the world—it's true!—but when you're a

conservative Republican they try—oh, do they do a number—that's

why I always start off: Went to Wharton, was a good student, went

there, went there, did this, built a fortune—you know I have to give my

like credentials all the time, because we're a little disadvantaged—but

you look at the nuclear deal, the thing that really bothers me—it would

have been so easy, and it's not as important as these lives are (nuclear

is powerful; my uncle explained that to me many, many years ago, the

power and that was 35 years ago; he would explain the power of

what's going to happen and he was right—who would have thought?),

but when you look at what's going on with the four prisoners—now it

used to be three, now it's four—but when it was three and even now, I

would have said it's all in the messenger; fellas, and it is fellas because,

you know, they don't, they haven't figured that the women are smarter

right now than the men, so, you know, it's gonna take them about

another 150 years—but the Persians are great negotiators, the Iranians  are great negotiators, so, and they, they just killed, they just killed us.







Donald Trump sentence | User Clip | C-SPAN.org

Dumb, dumb and dumber - Donald Trump sentence | User Clip | C-SPAN.org

Look, having nuclear—my uncle was a great professor and scientist  and engineer, Dr. John Trump at MIT; good genes, very good genes,

OK, very smart, the Wharton School of Finance, very good, very smart

—you know, if you're a conservative Republican, if I were a liberal, if,

like, OK, if I ran as a liberal Democrat, they would say I'm one of the

smartest people anywhere in the world—it's true!—but when you're a

conservative Republican they try—oh, do they do a number—that's

why I always start off: Went to Wharton, was a good student, went

there, went there, did this, built a fortune—you know I have to give my

like credentials all the time, because we're a little disadvantaged—but

you look at the nuclear deal, the thing that really bothers me—it would

have been so easy, and it's not as important as these lives are (nuclear

is powerful; my uncle explained that to me many, many years ago, the

power and that was 35 years ago; he would explain the power of

what's going to happen and he was right—who would have thought?),

but when you look at what's going on with the four prisoners—now it

used to be three, now it's four—but when it was three and even now, I

would have said it's all in the messenger; fellas, and it is fellas because,

you know, they don't, they haven't figured that the women are smarter

right now than the men, so, you know, it's gonna take them about

another 150 years—but the Persians are great negotiators, the Iranians  are great negotiators, so, and they, they just killed, they just killed us.







Donald Trump sentence | User Clip | C-SPAN.org

Real Time With Bill Maher Over Time - NewRule (7th Aug) Convention 04

You Choose or You Lose - The New York Times

"Here’s the bottom line: There are only three things you can do when it comes time to elect a president. You can stay home and punt; you can choose between the two major party candidates; or you can cop out by doing something that looks like voting but has no effect whatsoever on the outcome of the race.



That includes strategies about writing in the name of a retired general, leaving the top line blank, or voting for a third-party candidate who has as much chance of winning as the YouTube Keyboard Cat.



The only third party that might have a line on all state ballots is the Libertarian, whose platform includes eliminating Social Security, ending gun control and wiping out drug laws. This year’s Libertarian candidate is Gary Johnson, the former governor of New Mexico. Johnson does not seem to agree with the platform on many points, but to be honest, he’s not the world’s greatest explainer. Libertarians like the idea of a charisma-free candidate, since he’d be incapable of getting much done.



But truly, this is a silly choice. Voting for Johnson is exactly the same as staying home, except that it involves going outdoors. Ditto for Green Party candidate Jill Stein, a doctor who appears to have a rather ambiguous attitude toward childhood vaccinations.



Susan Collins said she could support the Libertarian ticket if only it had been reversed, with vice-presidential candidate William Weld on top. You can’t totally dislike Weld, who once told me that being governor of Massachusetts was pretty much a walk in the park. (“I used to go on vacation for a week at a time and I wouldn’t even call in.”) However, he’s been out of office for nearly 20 years. He is not the presidential candidate. And the Libertarians are never, repeat, never going to be elected.



Right now we live in a world that’s been messed up by the bad decisions George W. Bush made about invading Iraq. He was elected president in 2000 thanks to a few hundred votes in Florida. A state where Green Party candidate Ralph Nader got 97,488 votes."





You Choose or You Lose - The New York Times

Wolf Blitzer just nailed Trump to the wall!

 

 

 

"Once in a while, not that often but every once in a while CNN comes through in the clutch. Wolf Blitzer just had GOP congresssludge Representative Duncan Hunter (R-CA) on to discuss Cheeto Jesus latest outrage, his ‘2nd amendment people’ call for Hillary Clinton’s assassination. I thought we had left this behind with that Tea Party toad Sharron Angle.

Hunter gave it his best shot. He told Blitzer that Trump was speaking metaphorically, calling for action at the ballot box to stop her. He said that as a politician he has repeatedly used the phrases of ‘Stopping him’ or ‘stopping her’ and was always referring to beating his opponent at the ballot box, the media was blowing this completely out of proportion, there was no story here. This has become the standard surrogate mantra for the day in dealing with the crisis. Even the campaign has released a statement to this effect.

     Unfortunately, Blitzer wasn’t buying it, and set out to demolish Hunter. And he did it beautifully. He started out by reading the statement intact;

‘If she gets to pick her judges, nothing you can do, folks. Although the second amendment people, maybe there is, I don’t know.      Then m’man Wolf went for the jugular, using simple common sense. He told Hunter that when Trump spoke of Clinton appointing judges, that was an obvious admission that she had already won the freakin’ election! If she was selecting judges, she was the President, mobilizing 2nd amendment right voters to the polls would be useless, the election was over. What else could he possibly be talking about but assassinating either Clinton or Federal Justices?

     Hunter had no out. He retreated to the mantra that Trump was not a natural politician, his semantics were not always going to be well polished and perfected, especially when speaking off of the cuff, but all of the air had been sucked out of him

     Well done Wolf! See what you can do every once in a while if you use your brain for something more than just reading the words off of the teleprompter or script?"

(Via.) Wolf Blitzer just nailed Trump to the wall!:

Real Time With Bill Maher: Over Time - New Rule - August Saturday 6th, 2...

Donald Trump’s Tax-Return Dodge - The New Yorker

"The law is clear about publicly releasing tax returns. The I.R.S. is prohibited from doing so, but taxpayers themselves have every right to disclose their own returns. Does the existence of an audit change the legal status of public disclosure? The answer is no; Trump can release the returns if he wants to. “He filed these tax returns under penalty of perjury with the I.R.S.,” Scott Michel, a partner at Caplin & Drysdale, a leading tax-law firm, said. “If he were to disclose the returns publicly, he’s not disclosing anything that the I.R.S. doesn’t already know about. A disclosure in and of itself cannot possibly prejudice or hurt him with his audit.”



Donald Trump’s Tax-Return Dodge - The New Yorker

Gingrich compares Trump to President Jackson. "On this day in 1806, future President Andrew Jackson kills a man who accused him of cheating on a horse race bet and then insulted his wife, Rachel. Contemporaries described Jackson, who had already served in Tennessee’s Senate and was practicing law at the time of the duel, as argumentative, physically violent and fond of dueling to solve conflicts. Estimates of the number of duels in which Jackson participated ranged from five to 100." Andrew Jackson kills Charles Dickinson in duel - May 30, 1806 - HISTORY.com

"On this day in 1806, future President Andrew Jackson kills a man who accused him of cheating on a horse race bet and then insulted his wife, Rachel.



Contemporaries described Jackson, who had already served in Tennessee’s Senate and was practicing law at the time of the duel, as argumentative, physically violent and fond of dueling to solve conflicts. Estimates of the number of duels in which Jackson participated ranged from five to 100."





Andrew Jackson kills Charles Dickinson in duel - May 30, 1806 - HISTORY.com

Unbelievable! Andrew Jackson openly defied the U.S. Supreme Court and used the U.S. army to force illegally force march 20,000 Cherokee from Georgia to Oklahoma committing the genocide of 1 and 4. This is Gingrich's endorsement of Trump? Gingrich: Trump is at least as reliable as Andrew Jackson - POLITICO

“Sure. I mean, he is at least as reliable as Andrew Jackson, who was one of the most decisive presidents in American history,”



Gingrich: Trump is at least as reliable as Andrew Jackson - POLITICO

Gingrich Comepares Trump to this murderer and American President. Andrew Jackson kills Charles Dickinson in duel - May 30, 1806 - HISTORY.com

"On this day in 1806, future President Andrew Jackson kills a man who accused him of cheating on a horse race bet and then insulted his wife, Rachel.



Contemporaries described Jackson, who had already served in Tennessee’s Senate and was practicing law at the time of the duel, as argumentative, physically violent and fond of dueling to solve conflicts. Estimates of the number of duels in which Jackson participated ranged from five to 100."





Andrew Jackson kills Charles Dickinson in duel - May 30, 1806 - HISTORY.com

Trump 'Second Amendment' Quip Seen as Veiled Threat Against Clinton - NBC News

Trump 'Second Amendment' Quip Seen as Veiled Threat Against Clinton - NBC News

GOP senator Susan Collins: Why I cannot support Trump - The Washington Post

"By Susan Collins August 8 at 9:00 PM

The writer, a Republican, represents Maine in the Senate.



I will not be voting for Donald Trump for president. This is not a decision I make lightly, for I am a lifelong Republican. But Donald Trump does not reflect historical Republican values nor the inclusive approach to governing that is critical to healing the divisions in our country."



GOP senator Susan Collins: Why I cannot support Trump - The Washington Post

Poll: Hillary Clinton widens her lead over Donald Trump

"Hillary Clinton has widened her lead significantly over Donald Trump since the period before the two parties held their conventions last month, according to a Monmouth University survey released Monday.



The survey found that Clinton leads Trump 46 percent to 34 percent among registered voters, with 7 percent supporting Libertarian nominee Gary Johnson and 2 percent backing Green Party candidate Jill Stein. Among likely voters, Clinton leads Trump 50 percent to 37 percent, with 7 percent supporting Johnson and 2 percent backing Stein."




Poll: Hillary Clinton widens her lead over Donald Trump

Last Week Tonight with John Oliver: Journalism (HBO)

Bus driver fired over Facebook post about student's lunch money.

Five Things We Learned About the Presidential Campaign Last Week - NBC News

Five Things We Learned About the Presidential Campaign Last Week - NBC News

Laughter Trumps Hate

Laughter Trumps Hate

Trump, the Bad, Bad Businessman - The New York Times

"It was a Thursday night in late May 1990. I was a 32-year-old Wall Street Journal reporter who had written dozens of articles about Donald J. Trump’s business affairs. I was closing in on the biggest one of all — Mr. Trump was on the brink of financial ruin. He was quietly trying to unload his assets. His Atlantic City casinos were underperforming, and prices for his casino bonds were plummeting, suggesting that he would have trouble making interest payments.



“Donald Trump is driving 100 miles per hour toward a brick wall, and he has no brakes,” the banker told me. “He is meeting with all the banks right now.”



The next day, I called sources at the four banks I knew had large Trump exposures. The first three calls yielded “no comment,” but the fourth hit pay dirt, and I was invited to visit the bank late that afternoon.



Behind a large mahogany desk sat the bank’s chief lending officer. He explained that all of the banks would have to agree to a huge restructuring of Mr. Trump’s loans or Mr. Trump would have to declare personal bankruptcy. Unknown to the banks when each had lent him money, Mr. Trump ended up personally guaranteeing a staggering $830 million of loans, which was reckless of him, but even more so for the banks.



In a front-page Wall Street Journal article on June 4, 1990, I wrote: “Donald J. Trump’s cash shortage has become critical. The developer is now in intense negotiations with his main bank creditors that could force him to give up big chunks of his empire.” One banker said, “He will have to trim the fat; get rid of the boat, the mansions, the helicopter.”



Amid all the self-made myths about Donald Trump, none is more fantastic than Trump the moneymaker, the New York tycoon who has enjoyed a remarkably successful business career. In reality, Mr. Trump was a walking disaster as a businessman for much of his life. This is not just my opinion. Warren Buffett said as much this past week."



Trump, the Bad, Bad Businessman - The New York Times

Raising American Muslim Kids in the Age of Trump - The New York Times

"Like most parents with young kids, I think about their future: What will my daughter’s first word be? Will she like spicy South Asian food or will I have to shame myself by ordering “mild”? Will my American Muslim daughter be allowed to leave the Trump detention camps if she grows up to be a “10”? Would that make her eligible for a Trump Beauty Pageant?"



Raising American Muslim Kids in the Age of Trump - The New York Times

Clinton’s Fibs vs. Trump’s Huge Lies - The New York Times

"Let’s investigate.



One metric comes from independent fact-checking websites. As of Friday, PolitiFact had found 27 percent of Clinton’s statements that it had looked into were mostly false or worse, compared with 70 percent of Trump’s. It said 2 percent of Clinton’s statements it had reviewed were egregious “pants on fire” lies, compared with 19 percent of Trump’s. So Trump has nine times the share of flat-out lies as Clinton.



Likewise, The Washington Post Fact-Checker has awarded its worst ranking, Four Pinocchios, to 16 percent of Clinton’s statements that it checked and to 64 percent of Trump’s."





Clinton’s Fibs vs. Trump’s Huge Lies - The New York Times

The Trump Base Chris Hayes talks with J.D. Vance about white working class voters in the age of Trump, and his new book, 'Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis.' - All In with Chris Hayes on MSNBC

All In with Chris Hayes on MSNBC