The Weekly Wrangle

The Texas Progressive Alliance has never said anything like what Donald Trump said to Billy Bush when they thought no one was listening, not in a locker room and not anywhere else.  No decent person says things like that because no decent person thinks like that or acts like that.  What the TPA does say is in this week's roundup.

Off the Kuff looked at turnout and voter registration patterns and what they might say about this year.

Libby Shaw at Daily Kos shares an exposé as well as her own personal experiences to describe how Jim Crow continues to pervade the voter registration laws in Texas, in Jim Crow Actively Lurks in Texas: The State’s Voter Registration Laws.

Socratic Gadfly looks back 150 years or so into Southern racial and class history and finds one key word --— "mudsill" -- that explains much of the Trump voter phenomenon.

The Libertarian ticket seems to have hit their ceiling, and not just because Gary Johnson has short-term memory issues, writes PDiddie at Brains and Eggs.

CouldBeTrue of South Texas Chisme is glad that poverty is down in Texas, but food insecurity is still high.

Neil at All People Have Value discussed an interactive art work on the streets of Houston. APHV is part of NeilAquino.com.

Texas Leftist scolds Congress for overriding Obama's veto of the 9/11 legislation.

Txsharon at Bluedaze posts details of the Earth Wind and Fire Energy Summit, in Addison later this month.

The Lewisville ISD sent out a parental advisory about the creepy clown appearances making news in Texas and other states, as reported by the Texan-Journal.

Egberto Willies amplified the Houston Press' commendation of  KPFT as the Bayou City's best radio station.

And Dos Centavos enjoyed the Festival Chicano this past weekend.

===============

Here's more great Texas blog postings from last week!

About a quarter of Texas police shooting deaths over the last decade -- more than 200 -- went unreported to the office of the Texas attorney general despite criminal penalties on the books for noncompliance, according to Grits for Breakfast.

The Texas Election Law Blog reminds those who aren't yet registered to vote in the 2016 election that they have until tomorrow to do so.

The Texas Observer reports on the bursting of the Texas private prison bubble.

Houston has higher levels of inequality and segregation than every U.S. metro except New York and Los Angeles, according to a researcher quoted at The Urban Edge.

The Texas Freedom Network has the latest from Pastor Robert Jeffress, who claims that your right to privacy as interpreted by the Supreme Court is an imaginary construct.

Lone Star Ma celebrates Texas Influenza Awareness Day.

State Rep. Garnet Coleman writes about the Sandra Bland Act that he intends to file next session.

Eileen Smith waded into the fetid swamp of Donald Trump's sexism, a couple of days before that swamp got even nastier.

Betsy Barre has a problem with the collective reaction to the Donald Trump "grab her in the p----" video.

And Ashton Woods at Strength in Numbers publishes the first edition of the Chronicles of an Angry Black Queer.

Sunday Night Fight Preview

I'm sure that's what they're telling the pollsters now, but once they get into the voting booth they'll chicken out and push the straight-party-ticket button.  Because, like most Americans, they're scared to death of what might happen if they don't.

After expressing regret for his remarks, Trump quickly turned his focus to Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton and her husband, former President Bill Clinton. Trump concluded his statement by hinting very strongly that he will make attacking the Clintons for past sex scandals a centerpiece of his debate appearance on Sunday evening.

“I’ve said some foolish things, but there’s a big difference between the words and actions of other people. Bill Clinton has actually abused women, and Hillary has bullied, attacked, shamed and intimidated his victims. We will discuss this more in the coming days. See you at the debate on Sunday,” Trump said in the video, which was released shortly after midnight on Saturday.

Trump has toyed publicly on several occasions with bringing up sordid aspects of Bill Clinton’s past. After the first presidential debate on Sept. 26, Trump praised himself for not bringing up President Clinton’s infidelities almost immediately after he walked into the spin room and began talking with reporters. Trump declared that he held back because he knew the Clintons’ daughter, Chelsea, was at the debate.

President Clinton has admitted to conducting multiple affairs during his marriage. He has also been accused of rape and other abusive behavior. The New York Times a week ago published an article chronicling the ways in which Hillary Clinton encouraged and oversaw efforts in the 1990s to sully the reputation of women who publicly claimed to have had affairs with her husband.

You should click on that link, if only to relive the wondrous '90's all over again.  You know: Herbert Walker Bush's Gulf war, Nelson Mandela being freed from prison, the divorce and later tragic death of Princess Diana, the Tonya Harding/Nancy Kerrigan Olympic assault, the videoptaped beating of Rodney King by LAPD and the riots that followed, the O.J. Simpson trial, Timothy McVeigh and the Oklahoma City bombing, the capturing of Unabomber Ted Kazynski, and of course the scandals, impeachment, and subsequent re-election of Hillary Clinton's husband.

Especially that last, as Trump has all but promised us.

Trump’s performance in the first debate was widely panned, and his standing suffered in the polls. Leading up to the second debate, which will take place in St. Louis on Sunday, members of Hillary Clinton’s campaign suggested they thought bringing up the dirty laundry would be a bad move for Trump.

“I don’t think it’s a smart strategy for Donald Trump to come after her with these kinds of personal attacks,” Clinton campaign manager Robby Mook told reporters earlier this week.

Mook was responding to Trump’s prior threat to invite one of President Clinton’s former paramours to the first debate. Mook further said he didn’t believe the real estate tycoon would bring up anything “salacious.”

“We do not necessarily expect him to come with the kind of personal and harsh attacks that he has been threatening,” Mook told reporters again Thursday. “We expect a more focused, prepared Trump at this debate.”

This guy isn't named Mook for nothing.

But if anything could prod Trump into bringing up President Clinton’s sex scandals, it might be the Clinton campaign’s telling him not to, which they have done several times in the past week.

Before the firestorm over Trump’s comments about trying to “f*** and “grab” women, Republican consultant Liz Mair told Yahoo News the Clinton campaign was likely trying to goad Trump.

Taunting a wounded, angry, barking yam with a long history of lashing out at anyone and everyone who offends him in the slightest way.  Sounds like a plan. 

“The Clinton folks probably do think they’re baiting him, or are hoping so, but the reality is that baiting or not, Trump is very likely to walk into this trap anyway,” said Mair, who ran a super-PAC opposing Trump. “Self-immolation on live TV: It’s what he does.”

Conventional wisdom ahead of Trump’s latest controversy was that making sex-scandal-based attacks would be a disastrous tactic, especially given Hillary Clinton’s role as the aggrieved spouse. Trump’s resurfaced remarks would make the move even riskier. But Trump’s inner circle seemed divided about how to proceed.

Last month, Trump came from behind in the polls after adopting what his campaign called a “more disciplined” approach and talking about policy issues. He has since slipped. Following the vice presidential debate last Tuesday, Trump’s campaign manager Kellyanne Conway indicated a clear preference for how her candidate should behave.

“I do appreciate when he talks about the issues,” Conway said.

Understated and ironic.

Yet Trump is at his most unpredictable when he is cornered. And so the revelation of the sexually aggressive behavior he bragged about in the 2005 video may have made it more likely that Trump gets down in the mud during the debate.

If you would rather see what a calm, sensible, scandal-free presidential candidate might look like in tonight's debate, Democracy Now! once again will present Jill Stein's response, alongside Trump's and Clinton's, to the various questions they will field.

Whether you're watching, listening, Facebooking, Tweeting -- or not -- much of America will be tuned in with plenty of popcorn on hand.  Lots of DVRs will be whirring; the NFL's ratings are going to suffer again, and even the latest HBO hot drama 'Westworld' could take a hit, as it is repeated throughout the following week and can be skipped for watching later.  It's a dirty job, but somebody's got to follow the Twitter feed, so even if you can't make sense of the medium, watch the top right space here for insights and snark.  And try to find the humor in what should otherwise be a deplorable 90 minutes of townhall-format mudslinging.  The most interesting moment I'll be watching for is how Trump might turn a climate change question into a reference to Monica Lewinsky's soiled blue dress.  "That stain looks like Hurricane Matthew" sort of thing.

Enjoy!

Sunday Funnies

Election developments move quickly after latest Trump embarrassment

-- Paul Ryan canceled Trump's appearance at a campaign swing through Wisconsin the two were scheduled to make today.  Sen. Mike Lee of Utah took to Facebook Live to urge Trump to quit the race.  There were denouncements aplenty, but essentially nobody except Lee withdrawing their endorsement.  Update: there's a growing list of Republicans calling for him to drop out.  But of course he won't, and he can't anyway; voting is already happening in nearly two dozen states, including mail ballots like Texas and expats overseas.  The GOP is stuck with him, and the nightmare for downballot Republicans is real.

Update II: Both Vox and Rick Hasen outline some highly implausible scenarios -- Hasen calls them 'unlikely contingencies' -- whereby if Trump chose to drop out, the GOP could finagle the Electoral College representatives to be counted for both Trump and whoever might replace him.

Trump apologized on video, but more in defiance than in contrition, and promised he would strike back at Clinton using her husband's old track record.  That portends a lively yet revolting set-to for Sunday night's second debate.  Trump's polling continues to slide even before the impact of yesterday's sexist insults tape can be measured, which leads to more predictions falling in behind mine on Monday that Trump is finished.

Despite all of this, I still do not think he can lose Texas.

-- Meanwhile, Wikileaks released some of John Podesta's emails, which confirmed Hillary's shilling for Wall Street.  Still not quite the October Surprise her political opponents have been eagerly anticipating, though the RNC is seizing on it to distract themselves us from Trump's implosion.  We get another "it's the Russians" reaction from Democrats, and sputtering outrage from all the usual alt-right suspects, who have forced a "Bill Clinton is a rapist" Twitter hashtag to trend.  Some lay blame on the media, another predictable response.

-- All of this noise has drowned out the capture and subsequent release of several peace activists by the Israeli navy as they attempted to land at Gaza, the devastation wrought by Hurricane Matthew, the New Cold War with Putin and Russia, the hot proxy war we're fighting with them in Syria, more devastating climate change statistics, and a host of other things that are more important than Trump's sophomoric frat boy behavior or Clinton's latest email dump.  But at least it knocked Kim Kardashian's robbery back to the entertainment section.

-- In brighter news, Jill Stein is returning to Texas at the end of next week, with stops in El Paso, San Antonio, and Houston, at the Last Concert Cafe' on Saturday, October 15.  I'm delighted that she has long seen the Lone Star State as a tremendous growth opportunity for the Green Party.

It's not a protest vote, not a wasted vote.  It's an eviction notice.

Some offbeat election news, scatter-shot

-- Darrell Castle, the Constitution Party's presidential nominee -- "on thirty-five state ballots (twenty-four, actually) and maybe the only social conservative running" -- has the ultimate putdown to those who still parrot the fallacy that a vote for the lesser evil is your only option.

“People say, ‘Well I have to vote for the lesser of two evils because if I don’t Mrs. Clinton may get elected,'” he says. “But I speak to a lot of Christians, and I tell them as a Christian you cannot do that if you have some regard for scripture because Romans 3:8 says you’re prohibited from trying to achieve a good result by doing evil.” 

There you go, evangelicals and Ted Cruz supporters.  Get Castle's polling moving upward.

-- I had a bizarre conversation with a California Berniecrat who is voting for Clinton because he isn't certain whether Clinton could carry his state (a fairly delusional thought, unless you just can't believe the polls or fear the election is going to be hacked by the Russians, or something).  Bizarre, at least, until I read this.

Whether Donald Trump is entitled to California's 55 Electoral College votes would be called into question if Trump wins the state's popular vote, a Trump-supporting third party and election law experts are warning.

It's an unusual situation and everyone seems to agree there's a potential problem, but they disagree on the severity and likely resolution if Trump defies polls and wins the state.

[...]

The problem arises from the fact that Trump is nominated by both the Republican Party and the state branch of the American Independent Party, and the two parties did not agree on a joint slate of electors, Just two names overlap on lists submitted earlier this week, bringing the total number of Trump electors to 108.

California ballots will list the two nominations together near Trump’s name, with “Republican, American Independent” or some abbreviation – and ballots don't list individual electors. But if on the evening of Nov. 8 it becomes clear he has won the state, the two nominations will net Trump nearly twice the number of electors allowed.

Go read it; it's kinda fun.  And not so much bizarre, but about as possible a scenario as a swarm of undocumented immigrant conservative Yetis helping the GOP hold the line in Orange County.

-- I think writing in Bernie Sanders' name is ridiculous and a little sad, but I do not think that any vote cast is a wasted one.  This is debatable, however, as I will explain in a moment.  But for now, and as a matter of public service ...

In Texas, a write-in vote for any candidate in any office who has not been certified by the state of Texas is a vote that will not appear in the official canvass.  Strangely, there will be a record of it kept by your county clerk, but that will not be made public.  Perhaps the clerk's office would respond to a FOIA request and announce the number of votes cast for Hypnotoad, or Jesus Christ, or Mickey Mouse for President some time after the election.  Otherwise we'll never know how many votes were "wasted" in this fashion ... the only way you can waste a vote, other than by not casting it at all.

To the latter: over 50% of the American people will waste their votes in this manner, as they remain unregistered to vote, and about 50% of those registered, give or take a few, will likewise fail to get themselves counted.  Those who do not exercise their citizenship are doomed to be governed by their inferiors, so the saying goes, and have earned no right to complain.

-- I have seen some really interesting voting rationales by some 'friends' on Facebook.  The most creative one recently was a woman who said she could not vote for Jill Stein in Texas because the GP "doesn't do party-building" between presidential elections (an atrociously misinformed statement coming from an otherwise bright but binary-thinking progressive Democrat).  In the same paragraph she said she would vote for down-ballot Greens "to show support for having additional options".  That's really something, isn't it?  A Catch 22 that she puts herself into and takes herself out of at the same time.  I suppose the Greens should be happy with whatever vote for them she can muster.

A rationale that a fearful or recalcitrant liberal might employ in deciding to vote for Hillary in a close county -- like Harris -- might be in order to help the Dems retake majority status, with the presiding judges in all precincts and at early voting locations.  Note that this would have nothing to do with turning Texas blue, as it won't.  Similarly, and as the anonymous person mentioned in the previous graf has indicated she will do, here's the best reason to vote for Jill Stein and the Green candidates running in Texas (there will be four or five dozen on the ballot throughout the state, not all of them on your ballot, because they're running for county offices and things like SBOE, which are multi-county in a specific region):

If Jill Stein and Ajamu Baraka receive 5% of the national vote, the Green Party will qualify for general election public funding in 2020 that will be worth over $10 million dollars.

Securing 5% of the popular vote will also guarantee state ballot access lines for the next election cycle, saving the Green Party time and money that could be spent where (the GP) needs it most. 

Charles Kuffner, as you might have guessed, is contemptuous.  It is indeed going to be one giant leap for mankind if the Greens can pull it off, as someone on another celestial plane once said.  With respect to those who would rather focus on a brand new Congress, I applaud the efforts of BernieDems, etc. in working to reform that party on the inside, but I spent the past ten years heavily involved in that effort, and you can see the fruits of that harvest came in spoiled rotten every single year.  Been there, done that, just took the forty T-shirts I got for it to Goodwill.

I would sooner join al-Qaeda and try to reform it from within.  A decade of my life spent demonstrating the definition of insanity is far too much.  I'm going to do something different from now on.  I'd be happy to have your help if you're so inclined.

Libertarian candidates falter

Gary Johnson seems to be having a personal crisis.  AKA meltdown.

In an interview on CNN early yesterday [...] Johnson explains why if "crossing 'i's and dotting 't's" on international political leaders and geography is more important than the policy itself and than admitting mistakes, he’s not meant to be president (but if honesty and peace are what voters want, then he is).

Jeremy Binckes at Salon told Johnson he looked 'jittery' and 'in need of sleep'.

If it makes you feel any better, your excuse makes sense, even the way you phrased it on CNN: “OK so I point out an elected leader that I admire, and then all of a sudden I have to defend them against things that I’m not even aware of,” Johnson said. “If that’s a disqualifier to run for president, so be it.”

I hate to break it to you, but that’s sort of what international politics is about. The U.S. has allies, and they sometimes come for dinner. It’s really not good if you insult them on their special day.

... (Y)ou also tried to explain away your gaffes by saying that you have “never been in politics before.” Are you forgetting that you were a two-term governor of New Mexico, and that you actually ran for president in 2012 (as a Republican first, then as a Libertarian after you couldn’t get in the debates)?

You’re starting to see the truth here, though, when you say, “I guess I wasn’t meant to be president.”

It’s understandable. Running for president is hard, even if you’re running as the candidate for the “we want to vote for a Republican, but not that Republican” crowd — and especially if it seems that you haven’t done your international relations homework.

But back to how you’re feeling. You look jittery. You need sleep. If only there were something you could take to make you nice and sleepy, and, ya know, mellow out a bit.

This comes alongside Bill Weld's odd capitulation.

Gary Johnson’s hapless running mate, William Weld, is essentially giving up on the presidential race and wants to spend its last few weeks attacking Donald Trump.

The same day Johnson admitted he’s not keeping up with world affairs, Weld told The Boston Globe Trump is his only priority from now until November 8.

[...]

The Globe said Weld also hinted that he might abandon the Libertarian Party altogether, although he said he’s “certainly not going to drop them this year.”

Still, he said his priority after the election could be working with Republicans like Mitt Romney to rebuild the GOP.

When Weld, a former Republican governor of Massachusetts, joined Johnson on the Libertarian ticket, he said he would be a Libertarian for life and fight to make sure his running mate became the next President of the United States.

But Weld apparently wised up after Johnson’s month of stunning gaffes, with the third-party contender consistently failing to know anything about current events or foreign affairs. When Johnson couldn’t name a single world leader he admired during an MSNBC town hall, Weld stepped in as his hype man, reminding him of a couple names.

Johnson spent his Tuesday morning arguing on national TV that his ignorance about the world could be a virtue, because it would prevent him from sending soldiers to dangerous countries.

Weld last week told MSNBC he’s “not sure anybody is more qualified than Hillary Clinton to be president of the United States.”

Kind of a humiliating way to wind down a presidential campaign, isn't it?

No winners

Pence 'won' on style -- he didn't sniffle or vomit on the table -- and Kaine 'won' on substance, but he was unpleasantly aggressive and interrupted far too much.

(I)t was as if two different Donald Trumps showed up at Longwood University on Tuesday night.

There was the Trump to whom Kaine kept pivoting in every answer, and eagerly interrupting Pence to prosecute: the Trump who called Mexican immigrants “rapists”; the Trump who spent years perpetuating the “outrageous and bigoted lie that President Obama is not an American citizen”; the Trump who has “again and again praised Vladimir Putin” as a “great leader”; the Trump who “believes that the world will be safer if more nations have nuclear weapons”; the Trump who has “claim[ed] that NATO is obsolete”; the Trump who “went after John McCain, a POW, and said he was not a hero because he had been captured”; the Trump who has “called women ‘dogs,’ ‘pigs,’ ‘disgusting.’”

This Trump, Kaine argued, “demeans every group he talks about” and is the kind of “fool or maniac” who “could trigger a catastrophic [nuclear] event.”

Then there was the Trump that Pence kept evoking every time he responded to Kaine’s parries with a sad shake of his head or rueful chuckle: the Trump who “didn’t say” this or “never said” that; the Trump who doesn’t consider Mexicans rapists, but rather sees the current immigration system as a “heartbreaking tragedy”; the Trump who isn’t bigoted, but rather “fully support[s]” community policing; the Trump who might misspeak every once in awhile, but only because “he is a businessman” and “not a polished politician.”

In short: a kinder, gentler Trump.

As usual, the zero-sum Beltway pundits will declare one vice presidential wannabe the winner of Tuesday’s debate. But ultimately, it’s up to voters to decide which of the two Trumps on display better aligns with reality, at least as they see it — and that more than anything else will determine the effect, if any, of Kaine and Pence’s performances.

In truth, both candidates did well, because they both did what they came to Farmville to do.

The very fact that the debate was more of a referendum on Trump than Clinton should count as a win for Kaine. With his constant interruptions and clockwork attacks, Kaine forced Pence to talk about Trump a lot more than Pence forced Kaine to talk about Clinton. That was the point. In a battle between two historically unpopular presidential candidates, the one the election becomes about is the one who’s more likely to lose. Consider that nearly every unflattering Trump quote that Kaine cited was factually accurate — despite Pence’s dodges and more-in-sorrow-than-anger objections — and you have plenty of fodder for a few more “Yes, Trump really said X” news cycles. And that, in turn, could be enough to convince a few more swing voters that Trump is temperamentally unfit to serve as president — which is, of course, the Clinton campaign’s ultimate goal.

A key example of Kaine’s executing this strategy came early in the debate. After the Democrat rattled off a list of Trump’s various offenses — McCain, Judge Curiel, rapists, “‘dogs,’ ‘pigs,’ ‘disgusting'” — Pence countered that Trump’s insults were “small potatoes compared to Hillary Clinton,” who called “half of Donald Trump supporters a ‘basket of deplorables.’”

Kaine was ready with his rebuttal.

“And she said, ‘I should not have said that,’” Kaine replied. Then he seized on the fact that Trump has never expressed similar regrets as an opportunity to run through Trump’s greatest hits yet again.

“Did Donald Trump apologize to Sen. John McCain? Did Donald Trump apologize for calling women ‘slobs,’ ‘pigs,’ ‘dogs,’ ‘disgusting’? Did Donald Trump apologize for taking after somebody in a Twitter war and making fun of her weight? Did he apologize for saying that President Obama was not a citizen of the United States?

“You will look in vain to see Donald Trump ever taking responsibility for anything and apologizing,” Kaine concluded.

Here's another place where the two talked past each other.

Thanks to his running mate’s long history of divisive remarks — and Kaine’s incessant reminders of them — Pence had the harder task Tuesday: making Trump seem tolerable (and tolerant) to voters who still haven’t made up their minds about him.

So rather than defending the indefensible, Pence simply decided to pretend that it didn’t exist.

One exchange — about ISIS and foreign policy in general — stood out. After Kaine battered Trump relentlessly on the subject — “He does not have a plan. He trash-talks the military, ‘John McCain is no hero,’ ‘The generals need to be fired,’ ‘I know more than them,’ ‘NATO is obsolete’” — Pence tried to brush it off.

And here's another of Pence's disarmingly condescending putdowns.  "Did you work on that one for a long time?", before ...

“That had a lot of creative lines in it,” he laughed.

“See if you can defend any of it?” Kaine snapped.

But Pence refused to take the bait. Instead, he gave “this president credit for bringing Osama bin Laden to justice,” then pivoted to a generic conservative attack on Obama’s foreign policy ...

Kaine had the far easier case to prosecute, and did so well.  Pence just dodged.  But the governor looked "presidential" while doing so, and that's what stood out to the talking heads afterward. (Update: More debate viewers thought they'd rather have a beer with Pence.  And so it goes.)

It is a credit to Pence’s skill as a political communicator — he worked for several years in the 1990s as a conservative radio and television host — that he was able to pull off this sort of 180-degree turn without inducing whiplash. He was polished, disciplined and steady. He seemed calmer than Kaine, and considerably more polite. He sounded empathetic. He spoke in talking points, but delivered them as if they were thoughts that had just occurred to him. And most important, Pence realized that the best way to defend Trump was not with words — which he rarely offered up — but rather by leaving viewers with the impression that Mike Pence is everything they fear that Donald Trump is not: decent, grounded, consistent. If that guy’s also going to be in the White House, how crazy could things really get?

Vice presidential debates rarely, if ever, affect the outcome of an election. The most they can do is “change the narrative” until the presidential candidates debate again.

It may be, then, that while Kaine won on points, Pence won on style — and both, in the end, conjured up the Trump they intended to conjure up. The story of those two Trumps will be the story of the rest of this race.

I had forgotten that Pence made his bones by being a Rush Limbaugh wannabe before entering politics.  And there were a few "I wish Pence was the nominee" Tweets from regretful conservative #NeverTrumpers.  Been there, seen that (Paul Ryan, Sarah Palin; and also from Democrats in the past: Joe Biden -- yes indeed, and in this cycle too -- and Lloyd Bentsen).  On policy, Pence is Trump without the swagger and bombast, and this was his audition for 2020.  Mark it; he'll be in the thick of the GOP scrum in four years.  (Update: No More Mister has an insightful rebuttal to my -- and Chris Matthews', whom I don't watch any more -- prediction about Pence.)

Ajamu Baraka's debate performance was more thoughtful, IMHO.  Alas, the only candidate of color, the only veteran, the only person willing or able to discuss or even acknowledge American hegemony was -- just as Kaine and Pence -- preaching to his choir.  And frankly it's a shame that the Libertarians have gone into hiding for these affairs; William Weld could have made things interesting by joining Baraka in Democracy Now's after-debate, instead of doing his solo bit.  I barely saw any Libs participating in the Twitter feed.

All four veep prospects represented well enough to make the case for their running mates, but the needle won't be moving over the remaining thirty-four days.  These, even more than the presidential faceoffs, are just pep rallies for red and blue cheerleaders.  During the course of the evening on Twitter, the #HipHopAwards broadcast on BET trended higher than the #VPdebate.  That alone should tell the full tale about the optics of two old white men quarreling about women's reproductive freedoms, or improving police tactics and making significant reforms to criminal justice without mentioning the words 'Black Lives Matter' in seeking a solution to the nation's most compelling social crisis.

Yeah, the system isn't rigged; it's broken.

Veep debate scattershooting

-- Snoozefest or something substantive?  You decide.  I'll be live-Tweeting it so you don't have to watch; just check the Twitter feed, top right, if you're inclined.  If you're as intelligent as you have demonstrated just by reading here, you should stop watching teevee news about the presidential election.  I am not kidding.  You'll be less scared, more calm, and better able to enjoy the cool weather, your pumpkin spice whatever, the MLB playoffs or the fall festivals or just life in general if you do.  Seriously.

-- The insiders are saying that the Trumpbatross around Pence's neck is too heavy a lift.  Democracy Now! will feature the Green Party's Ajamu Baraka participating in the debate, as Jill Stein did with Clinton and Trump last week.

-- Voting is already under way -- always two words, please; it's not your underwater underwear, after all -- in 20 states plus the D. of C.  Mail ballots are going out and being returned in Harris County and throughout Texas (the deadline to register to vote is fast approaching; visit your nearest taco truck.  Hopefully there'll be one on every block next election).  These ballots are important tools for the Democrats and Republicans, as most of these voters are seniors, strongly partisan -- which is to say they vote straight-ticket -- and very reliable.  The Ds have upped their game statewide and erased the R's advantage in recent cycles due to the workhorse efforts of people like Glen Maxey.

-- This is, by a long distance, the worst thing I have read in the entire 2016 cycle.  After reading all of it -- turgid, ponderous, uses every single logical fallacy in the book -- I must say that I certainly hope I read nothing worse.  And then he doubled down on it today.

Here's Fred Rogers with some advice to that guy.

And here's Ted Rall speaking for me.

To my many friends and readers who plan to vote for Hillary Clinton: please stop bullying me.

Also please lay off other people, progressives and liberals and traditional Democrats and socialists and communists, citizens who identify with the political left, who plan to vote for Dr. Jill Stein or stay home.

I’m not going to vote for Donald Trump. I agree with the mainstream liberal consensus that he should never hold political power, much less control over nuclear launch codes. He’s dangerous and scary. But that doesn’t mean I have to vote for Hillary Clinton. ...

1. The main reason that I’m not going to vote for Hillary Clinton is the same exact main reason that I’m not going to vote for Donald Trump: I don’t vote Republican. Being age 53, Nixon was the first president I remember. Hillary Clinton’s politics (and her paranoia and insularity) remind me of Richard Nixon’s. I can’t bring myself to think of a Democrat as someone who solicits millions of dollars from Wall Street or votes with crazy Republicans (like George W. Bush, whose stupid wars she aggressively supported) to invade foreign countries just for fun. She plays a Democrat on TV, but we know the truth: she’s a Republican.

[...]

3. There’s a big difference between an impressive resume and a list of accomplishments. Hillary has the former, not the latter. I hold her resume against her: she has held tremendous power, yet has never reached out to grab the brass ring. As senator, her record was undistinguished. As Secretary of State, she barely lifted a finger on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, contributed to the expansion of the Syrian civil war, and is more responsible than almost anyone else for destroying Libya. What she did well she did small; when she went big she performed badly.

[...]

5. She still hasn’t made an affirmative case for herself. By clinging to President Obama, she’s running as his third term. The standard way to pull this off is to present yourself as new and improved: the old product was great, the new one will be even better. Her campaign boils down to “I’m not Donald Trump.” No matter how bad he is, and he is awful, that’s not enough. Watching her in the first presidential debate, at the beginning when Trump was besting her over trade, I kept asking myself: why doesn’t she admit that the recovery is good but has left too many Americans behind? Why hasn’t she proposed a welfare and retraining program for people who lose their jobs to globalization? A week later, the only answer I can come up with is that she has no imagination, no vision thing.
6. She has made no significant concessions to the political left. Frankly, this makes me wonder about her intelligence. Current polling shows that the biggest threat to her candidacy is losing millennial, working class, and Bernie Sanders supporters to the Green Party’s Jill Stein and Libertarian Gary Johnson. She would not have this problem if she’d picked Sanders as her vice presidential running mate. Even now, she could bag the millennial vote by promising the Vermont senator a cabinet post. Why doesn’t she? For the same reason that she won’t embrace the $15-an-hour minimum wage (she gets $225,000 for an hour-long speech but wants you to settle for $12) — she’s a creature of the corporations and therefore the political right. She’s not one of us. She doesn’t care about us.
7. My vote is worth no less than the vote of someone who supports a major party nominee. So what if the polls say that Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump will be elected president? Why, based on those polls, should I strategically vote for someone whose politics and personality I deplore? By that logic, why shouldn’t they change their votes to conform to mine? I have my vote, you have your vote, let Diebold add them up.

I don’t have a problem with you if you plan to vote for Hillary. This year is the best argument ever for lesser evilism. But the fact that we are selecting between two equally unpopular major party presidential standardbearers indicates that the two-party system is in crisis, if not broken. We need and deserve more and better options. The only way to get them is to start building viable third parties — voting for them, contributing money to them. What better time to start than now?

Anyway, there’s absolutely no way that my refusal to vote for Hillary will put Donald Trump into the White House.

That is game, set, and match.  But here's your memory jogger, just in case.

It is indeed a very strange presidential election this year

Dr. No has quasi-endorsed Jill Stein.

Ron Paul, whose 1988 Libertarian presidential bid and two Republican bids made him the "liberty movement's" best-known figure, told MSNBC today that he couldn't support Gary Johnson for president and saw reasons to back the Green Party's Jill Stein.

"If you tend to lean toward progressivism, you can lean toward the Green Party," Paul said. "She's probably the best on foreign policy."

Bold emphasis mine.  There are two videos at the link well worth watching for context if you're open-minded, as in not subsumed by binary logic.  It's hard to decide if this is a good thing or a bad thing; it probably doesn't impact much either way, as with most endorsements these days.  Paul is most certainly correct that actual progressives (not the Hillary Clinton kind) should not be considering voting for Johnson, but that might be a blind hog/acorn kind of correct.

Anyway... can someone get this for me as a mask for Halloween?

Who leaked Trump's tax returns?

Bonddad first:

Here's the really important point:  The key to this news story is a single piece of information among literally thousands of numbers and individual data points.  Whoever leaked this information knew enough about taxes to know what to leak and no more.  

If I was going to make a guess: someone really close to Trump who was intimately familiar with Trump's finances and who also didn't have a professional code of confidentiality.

If You Only News initially suspected it was Trump's daughter, Tiffany.  Then they got a little more plausible with Hair Furor's ex, Marla Maples.  Josh Marshall didn't offer any names but provided background, quasi-legal and personal, and No More Mister expanded on that.

It really doesn't matter who leaked them; Trump is over.  Finished.  Kaput.  Stop being afraid he's going to win.  He isn't.  He can't.  He has eliminated every single pathway to an Electoral College victory, almost all of them by his own hand.

The Russians are not going to hack the election.  (They are simply unable to do so.  This is Democratic propaganda.)  Women and Latin@s and squishy Democrats who only vote every four years will turn out in droves to vote against him.  Every voter living in a non-battleground state -- there are at least forty of them, and their number will increase as this election turns into a landslide for Clinton -- is hereby emancipated from the scare tactics of every Jackass from Obama on down to vote their principles in order to make sure Madam President gets the message: use the next four years to achieve real progress on the issues you say we can't, or else get primaried from the left and be a one-termer.

Clinton won't have an opponent so weak, so awful, and so self-destructive next time.