Trump: Who Is More Stupid Than A Woman? A Deaf Woman

... or, apparently, any other person with disabilities. In 2011, Trump tangled with well-known actress Marlee Matlin; the result was truly ugly. There are reasons piled atop Trump's sexual assaults that further disqualify Trump for holding any public office.

In fairness, I admit that I am a fan of Matlin and her work, and as a person with disabilities myself, I am outraged at Trump's condescending dismissiveness toward all of us with physical or mental disabilities. He has no business in a position of public "service."

NYT: Trump's Leaked 1995 Tax Records Could Have Allowed Him To Wipe Out Almost $1 Bn, i.e., Possibly ALL Trump's Federal Income Tax From Then To Today

Via Josh Marshall at TPM, we learn that a small portion of Trump's 1995 tax return was leaked to the New York Times. (You may scroll past the video window at the top of the NYT page.)

The Times then hired tax specialists to analyze the effects of the document on Trump's taxes.

Their conclusion was that Trump, if he wished, could have applied the entire $916 million loss to future income that would otherwise have been taxable. The total loss comprised his failed Atlantic City casinos holding company, an "ill-fated" venture into the airline business, and his "ill-timed" purchase of the Plaza Hotel in New York City. According to the NYT, the total $916 million could have covered an estimated 18 years of Mr. Trump's income taxes.

That's from 1995 to within a few years of today, depending on Trump's income, but Trump has refused either to confirm or deny the loss, or his income over the period starting in 1995. And besides, who's counting a few hundreds of millions more or a few hundreds of millions less. Small change, right? Er, right?

But the amount, while awe-inspiring, jaw-dropping and horrifying to poor blokes like us, is not the point. The point is this: How would you or I go about not paying federal income taxes for about two decades?

The Times points out it has no evidence that what Mr. Trump did was in any way illegal. It's just the usual way obscenely rich people shove off a billion or so of their taxes onto poor schmucks like us; no big deal, right? You'll dial or punch Mr. Trump's checkbox on your voting machine with no hesitation, right?

---

CORRECTED: replaced '$916 bn' with '$916 million'. They may look the same to Trump, but I should know better. - SB

Trump's Rage And Abuse: Marshall's Analysis

This is well worth your time to read and contemplate: Josh Marshall's incisive analysis, Caught in Trump's Cycle of Rage and Abuse. Marshall's conclusion:

For now and for the next several weeks at least Trump is pulling the country into the drama of his own dominance and abuse rituals, ones that plainly aren't working because his opponent is steadier on her feet than he is. That fact itself is leading him to lash out in wilder and wilder ways, just as electoral reverses are pressuring him into more intense outbursts. The next debate is only a week away. It's difficult to imagine he can right his ship before then.

And if Trump does "right his ship," heaven help America's ship of state in the next four years. Hey, maybe it's not a ship but a plane...

USA Today, WSJ: Not So Much ‘Vote For Clinton’ As ‘Don't Vote For Trump’

• USA Today
  
• WSJ
  

This is as much as one could reasonably hope for from America's mainstream conservative news source and America's exceedingly conservative news source. I echo their positions on this. I hope, for America's sake, you will elect Secy. Clinton, but at the very least, don't encourage an ignorant, hostile, possibly criminal, clearly crazy man by giving him your vote. Thank you.

The Guardian Offers ‘Lyin' Trump: A Weekly Fact Check’

I just discovered this series this week, but I can tell already that it is going to save all of us a great deal of googling/reading/transcribing in pursuit of the Donald's endless lies:

‘Lyin' Trump: A Weekly Fact Check’.

Good luck; keep your antacid supply handy.

‘I Just Don’t Think She Has A Presidential Look’

That's Donald, speaking of Hillary. Personally, I think Donald DOES have a presidential look... think of former Serbian President Slobodan Milošević, for example, crank down the charm by about 10 percent, and you've got Trump.

But that's not my real point. My real point is that Trump evaluates women entirely by their physical appearance. His wife... er, wives... are good evidence of that: not that any one of them is stupid, but all of them are attention-getting for their looks alone. So the statement that Hillary lacks "a presidential look" means exactly two things:

• she is not male, and
  
• she does not meet Trump's standard of femininity.
  

Go figure... when Hillary was First Lady, my father used to remark on her good looks. But what part of a president's toolkit is her looks, anyway? My mother was bright and articulate from my earliest memories, but I have pics of her in her young adult years, and she was striking... it's no surprise my father went for the whole package, brains, looks, speaking ability, writing ability, etc. (Occasionally, perhaps just to prove a point, Mom would tune the family car. Farm girls often acquire skills like that, though in her case I think it was probably the tractor she tuned.) But Trump clearly evaluates women with one thing in mind. What a schmuck that man is.

A reminder for poll-watching voters. Lately the big three broadcasting networks have been saying that Trump and Clinton are in a dead heat, statistically tied, use your own favorite phrase (but please... not "neck and neck"). Before you believe that statement in its usual sense, go read FiveThirtyEight.com; it's on this site's blogroll. You'll find the networks are cherry-picking the polls they average, and rotten-apple-tossing the tweaked results at you. If you can put aside their "methodology" (heh) for long enough to see what Nate Silver & Co. are saying, you'll see Hillary is still several points in the lead... and noticeably more likely to win the office. This does not mean she or her supporters can afford to be complacent, but neither is it time for them to tear their hair out.

Follow-Up: Trump Asks ‘Is There Something Wrong’ With Calling Obama ‘Founder Of ISIS?’Does Trump Suffer Alzheimer's?Is Trump FAKING Alzheimer's?

Be forewarned: my speculation at the conclusion of this post is 1) no sure thing, but if true, 2) as sad as sad can be.

Here's Caitlin MacNeal at TPM again:

Donald Trump on Thursday morning refused to back down from his Wednesday night claim that President Obama is the "founder of ISIS."

"He was the founder of ISIS, uh, absolutely," Trump said on CNBC's "Squawkbox" when asked if it was "appropriate" to say that Obama founded a terrorist organization.

And later in the interview, Trump seemed confused as to why he was asked whether his comments were appropriate.

"Is there something wrong with saying that? Why? Are people complaining that I said he was the founder of ISIS?" he asked.

...

I can only shake my head, shed a tear, and wonder... here's the speculation... whether Mr. Trump is entering the early stages of Alzheimer's disease.

I am not an MD, let alone a psychiatrist. But I do have some close experience with Alzheimer's disease: my late mother, may she rest in peace, suffered Alzheimer's for about two years before she died, presumably of complications of the brain damage that dread disease causes.

I am not especially the praying type, and I confess I detested Mr. Trump up to the moment I saw his possible affliction. But if that is the cause of his nonsensical pronouncements, he is more to be pitied than loathed, and he and his family deserve our prayers. For me, that's going to be a difficult transition: I wouldn't wish Alzheimer's disease on my worst enemy. For his sake, I hope I am wrong, and Trump is merely a power-mad nutjob.

But if Trump is showing the early signs of SDAT, he must not be allowed to take control of the world's most powerful office. I don't know what the provisions are, if any, for a president who becomes unfit to serve even before he is elected, but if the problem is in fact Alzheimer's, then Trump would become, long before the end of a single presidential term, incapable of even minimally adequate service as president.

I'm keeping my fingers crossed...

AFTERTHOUGHT: It is just barely possible he is faking dementia. That's harder to do than you might imagine, so it's unlikely. Besides, what possible motivation could a candidate for high office have for faking a mind-destroying illness?

AFTERTHOUGHT: The nature of a person with early Alzheimer's is not entirely predictable, of course, but my mother talked about individuals who obviously did not exist and events that clearly never occurred. These persons and events were as real to her as if the persons did exist and the events had happened. There was no use trying to talk her out of seeing them; they were as real to her as... well, as Obama's founding of ISIS apparently is to Donald Trump.

FINAL THOUGHT: Nah. I saw him on the evening news last night, and he didn't act like someone with dementia. Trump is playing us all for suckers. If Americans let him get away with it, we're all fv<ked. Trump is willing to destroy America in order to own America, goddamn him.

Trump: Obama Is ‘Founder Of ISIS’; Hillary Is ‘Co-Founder’

Caitlin MacNeal at TPM:

During a rant about the Middle East at a Wednesday night rally in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, Donald Trump called President Obama the "founder of ISIS."

“In many respects, you know, they honor President Obama. ISIS is honoring President Obama,” Trump said. “He’s the founder of ISIS. He founded ISIS. And I would say the co-founder would be Crooked Hillary Clinton.”

...

I'd say Trump's campaign is beginning to, uh, founder.

But seriously, folks... how could Trump believe that? or is this just another of his off-the-cuff remarks aimed at the most ignorant of his base, a remark that, if Trump were president, could endanger every American?

I am not in the habit of advocating formal psychological sanity testing for presidential candidates, but I hope someone in Clinton's campaign is tasked with assembling all these full-blown-batsh!t-crazy Trump clips into pithy campaign ads. Forget about Trump's base; members of the American public who don't pay attention need to understand just how fv<king crazy he is before they elect him president.

Trump Hints To Gun Nuts: Assassinate Hillary

This just came out in The Guardian:

Donald Trump has hinted at the assassination of Hillary Clinton by supporters of gun rights.

The Republican nominee was speaking at a rally in Wilmington, North Carolina, about the next president’s power to appoint supreme court justices. “If she gets to pick her judges, nothing you can do, folks,” he said, adding: “Although the second amendment people – maybe there is, I don’t know.”

The second amendment to the constitution protects the right of Americans to bear arms. Trump has accused his Democratic rival of wanting to abolish it, a charge that she denies.

“This is simple—what Trump is saying is dangerous,” said Clinton campaign manager Robby Mook. “A person seeking to be the president of the United States should not suggest violence in any way.”

...

This is getting out of hand. Republicans: when are you going to remove this reckless sociopath from the top of your ticket?

David Cay Johnston...

Johnston

... knows a lot of facts about the evil man of the hour, and reveals more than a few of them in his book, The Making of Donald Trump. If you can't get a hold of the book (or on the book; HPL is taking its time responding to my hold request) right away, at least read Kathy Kiely's review at billmoyers.com ... I have a lot of respect for Johnston, and when he lets rip with flames like those described in Kiely's review, you can expect your hair to be singed.

(Speaking of hair, is it a coincidence that Johnston's hair and beard look very much like mine? Probably wishful thinking on my part.)

So Much For A 'Public Trial'...

AP via The Guardian UK:

[US district judge Gonzalo Curiel]’s refusal to release video of Donald Trump testifying in a lawsuit about the now defunct Trump University denies critics of the Republican presidential nominee a chance to use potentially powerful images against him.

Transcripts of Trump’s depositions have been released over the past few months but videos remained sealed. ...

Read the article for more about what the videos show. This is not a criminal action against Trump; it is a lawsuit, so the Sixth Amendment may not apply. But the judge who is hearing the suit is the one Trump criticized for his "Mexican heritage," and it seems to me Trump owes him an apology. Fat chance of that!

Since Khan-Trump Exchange, Constitution Becomes Bestseller

Too bad I won't be rushing out to buy one; I've had a pocket copy since 1976, though it's missing one amendment. I keep it in the bed headboard, along with a book-sized copy annotated by Linda Monk.

And yes, Lyin' Donald, you can bet your fat ass I've read it, all the way through perhaps a half dozen times over the years, and individual pieces of it several times a month as issues arise.

Oh, and Scott Bixby tweeted (see last graf at Guardian link above), "Donald Trump mocks Hillary Clinton for wanting to build schools, declares he wants to build a $100 million ballroom for the White House." Hmm. I wouldn't have thought Donald Trump's balls required all that much room. Maybe that's his brains I'm thinking of...

Trump Says He Is 'Afraid The [General] Election's Gonna Be Rigged'

What can I say... no one is better positioned than Trump to know whether the election is being rigged.

Apparently Trump intends to challenge the general election. If he does, I want the results of the 2000 [S]Election reopened and challenged as well: I'm still angry enough to want to see (especially) Dick Cheney in prison, and I wouldn't cry if James Baker saw bars as well...

Trump & Co.'s Relationship To Truth: Always Tell It? Never Tell It? Neither: They Say Whatever They Want, With Utter Indifference To Whether It Is True

They can talk about "Lyin' Hillary" all they want, but every new article on Trump's (or any Trump surrogate's) response to criticism reveals their utter indifference to whether that criticism is true or... and this is my complaint... whether their response contains any shred of truth. Katherine Krueger at TPM:

Amid Donald Trump's ongoing attacks on the family of U.S. Army Captain Humayun Khan, a Muslim-American solider who was killed fighting in Iraq, a number of his supporters latched onto a conspiracy theory that Khan's father is a "Muslim Brotherhood agent" and his son was on an "Islamist mission."

...

The execrable Roger Stone is apparently involved with this, but Trump himself is no better: he would speak any nasty fiction about an American hero if he thought it would gain him a quarter point in any poll.

Trump hasn't yet figured out that a lie to the public has to be breathtakingly big for the public to react, "Surely he wouldn't say that if it weren't true!" His succession of little lies only increases public mistrust of the man, and proves what a deep-seated bastard he is.

The Khans do not deserve this, but I am sure Trump doesn't give a flying fv<k...

GOP Adviser Resurrects 2008 ‘Lock-And-Load’ Meme

Josh Marshall voices his concern over the Trump campaign's winking at staffers' and other RWNJs' threats to murder Hillary Clinton. His specific example is the ranting of New Hampshire state Rep. Al Baldasaro, an adviser to the Trump campaign on veterans' affairs, who, speaking recently on a RWNJ talk show, said of Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, "[Clinton] should be put in the firing line and shot for treason" for her actions regarding Benghazi.

Marshall's primary concern is that Trump and company are "wink-winking" at campaign staffers and spokespeople who make such threats, thus implicitly advocating the assassination of his opponent. One spokesperson for the campaign (see first article linked above) said, "We’re incredibly grateful for [Baldasaro's] support, but we don’t agree with his comments." Wink-wink, indeed; I fully agree with Marshall's assessment of the intended message, and of its direly unacceptable nature.

The only thing Marshall omits (as far as I can tell) is that THIS IS NOT NEW BEHAVIOR FOR THE GOP IN A PRESIDENTIAL RACE. Surely other Democrats remember Sarah Palin's repeated exhortations to "[l]ock and load," delivered to audiences full of gun-toting Republicans more concerned with their personal right to carry than anyone else's right to stay alive.

This is a trend. This is the second consecutive presidential election in which a candidate or his/her surrogates has urged a Republican audience to exercise their Second Amendment right by threatening (at least) to shoot an opposing candidate, or opposing voters, or anyone they don't like the looks of. THE GOP HAS BECOME THE PARTY OF VIOLENCE DIRECTED AGAINST ITS POLITICAL OPPONENTS. I cannot put an end to the threats, but I damned surely can voice my objection to them. America is in theory a representative democracy; WE DO NOT SETTLE DISPUTES ABOUT LEADERSHIP BY MURDERING POLITICAL OPPONENTS. PERIOD!

I am somewhat relieved to see that the Secret Service is investigating Rep. Baldasaro about his naked threat against Secy. Clinton... not that I really expect them to do anything about it, but at least they are making some noises that they will take an "appropriate" action. It's not much, and it won't save Mrs. Clinton from a Glock-toting RWNJ, but it's better than nothing.

GOP National Convention Starts Today, Monday...

... but a quick flip of the remote will transport me to Daniel Tiger's Neighborhood.

♪ Would you be my neighbor? ♪ And honestly: which of these two would you welcome in your neighborhood?

Each of them lives in his own land of make-believe; the difference is that Daniel Tiger admits it upfront.

Pounds For Trump, Pence For Indigent Women And All LGBTs

Trump is about to choose Indiana Governor Mike Pence as his running mate.

Should you care?

• If you are an American woman of childbearing age, especially one who doesn't have the money for reproductive healthcare, you have a strong financial interest in Pence and his unconcealed efforts to defund Planned Parenthood.
• If you are an LGBT American, you have a deep interest in Pence's efforts to pass the Indiana Religious Freedom Restoration Act, which would allow business owners to refuse to serve LGBTs on religious grounds. (He signed such a law, later mitigated slightly, but if he were the Veep instead of a state governor, he would surely push for a law on the national level. Never forget what President, uh, I mean, Vice President Dick Cheney managed to ram through when second to a president about as incompetent as Trump would be.)
• If you can remember the roaring 1990s, remember that Pence was then a right-wing radio talk show host, known by some people as "Rush Limbaugh on decaf."
  

Trump has made his first presidential decision, and it couldn't be a worse decision if he tried. Never forget it.

Whose Party Is It?

Josh Marshall, the estimable if too-moderate-for-my-taste editor and publisher of Talking Points Memo, expresses outright in an editorial a thought that's been troubling my mind in the past few days. Here's his conclusion:

...

Let's put it starkly. Whose Republican party is this? McCain's? Romney's? Bush's? Boehner's? Ryan's? There's little question that the 2016 GOP is the party of Sarah Palin. Donald Trump is simply the successor who is bringing what she started to fruition - the Joshua to her Moses, the Umar to her Muhammad. This is not simply a commentary on the colorful, antic quality of this political cycle. It's rooted in the same basic themes and beliefs: a mix of grievance and aggression, sharp tongued impatience with cosmopolitan thinking and 'political correctness', paeans to the righteous resentment of hard-working white folk, and all packaged in a media savvy gift for gab. It is no accident that the two on stage today are both reality TV stars. Perhaps he has talents to bring things to fruition which she could not. But it's her brand and her message.

This may all sound like a snark. But that's only the outer layer at most. Look back over the last eight years with the jostling factions of the GOP, establishment wings, Tea Partiers, post-2012 post-mortemers, House backbenchers, Palin and Joe the Plumber. What has it all arrived at? Whose party does it end up being? For right now, there's just no debating it: Palin comes out on top. It's her party.

The good Dog help us all, Marshall is very probably right. The GOP is defunct; long live the (new) GOP?

I don't know. America has reached a point of decision: do we retain a flawed two-party system, or do our wide assortment of crazies throw out both major parties and forcibly replace them with their vision of a one-party system? Given the temperament of those crazies, you can bet that a one-party system will more resemble today's GOP... yes, Sarah Palin prominent among them... than the Democratic Party of any era, even in its current sad state.

What do we see when we look down the road a dozen years? Is it His Most Excellent Supreme Ruler Trump, with his Lord High Executioner Palin, who clearly would love to dispatch more than turkeys? You thought we were done with her, and suspected we would be done with him after this primary season. I'm not betting against either one: in its current collectively fractured frame of mind, the diminishing White American majority, in a last rash act, could thrust the baton into their hands.

Trump-l'œil [sic]

No, not trompe-l'œil, in which the eye is deceived, but Trump-l'œil, in which Donald Trump deceives the voter in as many different ways as his clever yet perverted brain can conceive. TPM provides a lot of examples at the moment, and I didn't even search for all of them, just harvested their main page:

• Trump On Black Lives Matter Protester: Maybe He Should've Been Roughed Up
• Trump (Again) Refuses To Rule Out Independent Bid For The Presidency
• Trump Reiterates That He Saw People Cheering On 9/11 In New Jersey
• Donald Trump Says He'd Bring Back Waterboarding

This man is a dangerous nut-job who would be an unholy terror as president... but nonetheless, ohpleaseohpleaseohpleeeez let him run as an independent! At worst, his current followers would vote instead for the Republican candidate; at best, they would bolt the GOP altogether and wreak havoc both in the presidential race and down-ballot. What fun that would be!

---

For a lot of reasons I'm taking a vacation from politics for a couple of weeks, probably until the local runoff on 12/12, but if events drive me to write, I'll try not to post any more consecutive articles about The Donald. Meanwhile, please wish me good weather, low stress and a lot of time in front of the rainbow‑maker, which is working exceedingly well in the angle of late morning sunlight that Fall brings to Houston. Imagine an entire wall, reflected by a mirror filling the entire perpendicular wall, all full of literally dozens of tiny rainbows like the ones in this video, chasing all around, all over the harpsichord, etc. ... if my camera were working, you wouldn't have to imagine it, but alas it isn't! Meanwhile, here is a video of the device taken by someone who makes much better short movies than I do. Or try this one!

Protester At Trump Event Kicked, Dragged From Room As Audience Chants ‘USA, USA, USA...’

Sara Jerde at TPM:

Crowd Chants 'USA' As Protestor Is Kicked, Dragged Out Of Trump Rally

A protestor attending a campaign event for Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump was dragged out of the event Friday and kicked by a man described by the Trump campaign as a rally attendee, reported an NBC affiliate.

The campaign rally, ... was interrupted by three groups who were "chanting pro-immigration messages," ...

The protestor, identified by the NBC affiliate as Ariel Rojas, can be seen in a video being dragged by a man who also kicks him while he's on the ground before police removed [him] from the room.

All the while, the crowd chants "USA."

...

There's a video with Jerde's article, linked above.

(Photo of immigrants protesting Trump,
credit: Business Insider.)

We have to assume the "USA" response is typical of Trump supporters because there were enough of them to get such a chant started in response to a legitimate if unpleasant exercise of First Amendment free speech. Police removing the protester from the event so it could continue was one thing; I can't blame them for that. But unidentified crowd members with no police authority literally kicking his butt and dragging him out rather than allowing the police to remove him was another altogether... and raucously asserting that doing so was a proper response in the USA was altogether outside the pale.

I trust Godwin's Law will not prevent me from observing that this behavior by Trump's supporters is painfully reminiscent of that of Hitler's supporters. Is Trump a Nazi? I seriously doubt it. But he is personally responsible for violent treatment of uninvited people voicing unpleasant speech at his campaign rallies, because he can exercise the weight of his personal influence with the crowd to stop the violence until the police arrive.

A couple hundred years ago, America's founders legalized and constitutionally protected vocal dissent... let's not tolerate its suppression at this late date.