Trump's Success Explained, Part 2

As we learned last week, 99 percent of new jobs created since 2010 have been filled by people with college degrees or at least some college, and Donald Trump is more popular with non-college-educated voters than with college-educated voters.

If you've been paying attention during the campaign, you know that another profile of Trump supporters is that they're white men. That being the case, consider this chart from Kevin Drum:

White men, alone among the ethnic groups and genders charted, have had a net loss in income over the past 40 years.

For years, all the smart guys have been saying that education is the key to "getting ahead" during the technological revolution. And they've been right. So our efforts have concentrated on education: Common Core, charter schools, and the like. And the smart guys have sat back and patted themselves on the back for being so right.

But there's a problem they didn't address: a huge part of the population ain't good at book larnin'. They're smart, but not in that way. Emily's late father-in-law didn't finish high school, but he could take an automobile apart and put it back together when he was a teenager. In World War II, he kept his Army unit's trucks on the road. When the war was over he took classes in electricity and got a job at a plant where he learned about something called metal spinning, a high-skill industry that shapes metal into Weber grills and rocket nose cones. He moved from shop to shop to learn the secrets of the metal spinning masters, and they did keep secrets.

Finally, he started his own business which he and his wife grew into a shop with 60 employees and millions of dollars worth of specialized machinery.

The business is still operating today, but many of its competitors have closed their doors and sold their machinery to China, where much of the metal spun products we buy is now made.

We have shipped our no-college-needed jobs overseas. What's going to happen to these guys?

One thing that's going to happen is that some are going to get angry about it, and look for someone to blame. And they'll look for a leader who will focus their anger. Like Donald Trump.

Or worse.

Lyin' Hillary

Via Kevin Drum, who writes, "Hillary is one of America's most honest politicians".

Feelings vs Facts

Last week John Oliver did a hilarious take-down of speakers at the Republican Convention who expressed their "feelings" that things were awful in the country. If you haven't seen it, go there now, then come back.

I bring it up because of the segment with Newt Gingrich:



Gingrich says, "The current view is that liberals have a whole set of statistics which theoretically may be right, but it's not where human beings are."

And despite our laughter and disdain, Gingrich is probably right.

The reason this is so is explained by cognitive scientist George Lakoff in his book, Don't Think of an Elephant! : Know Your Values and Frame the Debate, who speaks of "a set of myths believed by liberals and progressives:"

These myths come from a good source, but they end up hurting [progressives] badly.

The myths began with the Enlightenment, and the first one goes like this:

... If we just tell people the facts, since people are basically rational beings, they'll all reach the right conclusions.

But we know from cognitive science that people do not think like that. People think in frames. The strict father [conservative] and nurturant parent [progressive] frames each force a certain logic. To be accepted, the truth must fit people's frames. If the facts do not fit a frame, the frame stays and the facts bounce off. Why?

Neuroscience tells us that each of the concepts we have – the long term concepts that structure how we think – is instantiated in the synapses of our brains. Concepts are not things that can be changed just by telling us a fact. We may be presented with facts, but for us to make sense of them, they have to fit what is already in the synapses of the brain. Otherwise facts go in and then they go right back out. They are not heard, or they are not accepted as facts, or they mystify us. Why would anyone have said that? Then we label the fact as irrational, crazy, or stupid. That's what happens when progressives "just confront conservatives with the facts." It has little or no effect, unless the conservatives have a frame that makes sense of the facts.

Similarly, a lot of progressives hear conservatives talk and do not understand them because they do not have the conservatives' frames. They assume that conservatives are stupid.

Trump's Success Explained in Two Sentences

I spotted this as a "Noted" comment at the bottom of page 16 in the July 15 This Week magazine. It seemed so ridiculous I couldn't believe it, so I went looking for verification elsewhere. I found it at Bloomberg:

Of the 11.6 million jobs added since the rebound took hold in 2010,  about 99 percent — or 11.5 million jobs — were filled by people with either at least some college education, a bachelor's degree or better, according to a study by Georgetown University's Center on Education and the Workforce. Only 80,000 spots went to workers with a high school diploma or less ....

That's amazing, and I'm still having trouble believing the numbers, if not the direction the statistics are pointing.

Although we saw plenty of articles claim that the median income of Trump supporters was as high as any of his primary opponents, that did not tell the whole story.

According to Politico in March:

[V]oters without a college education are Trump’s core base of support. More non-college-educated voters than ones with college degrees have supported Trump in every single primary and caucus so far, according to exit polls. In those states, voters without degrees were over 11 percentage points more likely to support Trump, on average.

Our failure to create a balanced economy – one in which there are employment opportunities for everyone – is the cause of this threat to the Republic named Trump. We've got work to do.

The Republican Convention Odds and Ends

• Am I the only one that thought Trump resembled Mussolini in the way he strutted, gestured, and preened during his speech? I went looking for some videos to capture what I mean, and discovered that it's been a YouTube subject for some time now, though I think they should all be updated after last night's performance.

• I know it's not nice to say something mean about a 9-year-old kid, but I was fascinated with watching the face of Donald's son, Baron, as he regarded the great unwashed below his feet.

Baron's on the left

The picture above just captures the typical 9-year-old bored-with-it-all expression.

• Continuing with my theme of making inappropriate attacks on candidates' children (although she's 21, at least), did you hear that Mike Pence's daughter, Charlotte, is suspected of being a vampire? You laugh? Then you explain why her reflection does not appear in this photo, shared by Governor Pence himself!

Maybe Trump was warning us about a Zombie Apocalypse!

History

The British, though, did exactly that.

The issue of whether to allow Syrian refugees into the United States has been a political hot button for months now. In light of which it was interesting to read this, from American Refugee Policy and European Jewry, 1933-1945, by Richard Breitman and Alan M. Kraut (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1987). Describing the sentiments of some American officials in late 1940 (when the German borders had already been closed, and any Jew [with few exceptions] who hadn't gotten out was not going to get out):

Even George Messersmith (now the ambassador to Cuba), often praised by Jewish spokesmen for his fairness and sympathy toward Jewish refugees when he was consul general in Berlin, took seriously reports of Jewish loyalty to Germany and treated them as cues to recommend tighter restrictions. From his new post in Havana he cited rumors that some Jewish refugees allegedly celebrated the fall of Paris to the German army. The stories included a naval attaché's report that he had heard Ursula Einstein, the scientist's grandniece, herself a refugee in Port-au-Prince, express similar sentiments. Messersmith hoped that Congress would pass legislation permitting consular officials to assess whether the admission of each applicant to the U.S. would be "in the public interest." For national security reasons, Messersmith argued, "our government can no longer delay giving very specific instructions to consular officials with respect to the degree to which they must go into the character and opinions of aliens desiring immigration visas and visas for a temporary stay in the United States."

Several moths later William C. Bullitt, former ambassador to France, further fueled concern by telling a Philadelphia audience that "more than one half the spies captured doing actual military work against the French army were refugees from Germany." Though Bullitt's contention was unconfirmed and contradicted by others, it added to the general apprehension that had already reached as far as the White House.

The president did not hesitate to state publicly that he was haunted by the specter of a fifth column whose members included some of the refugees.

It's deja vu all over again.

The Art of the Grifter

Via Andrew Tobias comes this link to a 2016 New Yorker article about Tony Schwartz, the ghostwriter of Donald Trump's The Art of the Deal. In Trump's campaign announcement speech, the one after his famous ride down the escalator in Trump Tower, he said, “We need a leader that wrote ‘The Art of the Deal.’ ”

Excerpt from The Art of the Deal

"If that was so, Schwartz thought, then he, not Trump, should be running."

Howard Kaminsky, the head Random House when the company published the book, confirmed, "Trump didn't write a post card for us."

Yet Trump insisted in a recent phone call, "I wrote the book. I wrote the book. It was my book. And it was a No. 1 best-seller, and one of the best-selling business books of all time. Some say it was the best-selling business book ever.”

And I think he believes all that.

This may shed a little light on Melania Trump's speech at the Republican Convention last night.

A longer extract from the Esquire article:

... Schwartz believes that Trump’s short attention span has left him with “a stunning level of superficial knowledge and plain ignorance.” He said, “That’s why he so prefers TV as his first news source—information comes in easily digestible sound bites.” He added, “I seriously doubt that Trump has ever read a book straight through in his adult life.” During the eighteen months that he observed Trump, Schwartz said, he never saw a book on Trump’s desk, or elsewhere in his office, or in his apartment.

Other journalists have noticed Trump’s apparent lack of interest in reading. In May, Megyn Kelly, of Fox News, asked him to name his favorite book, other than the Bible or “The Art of the Deal.” Trump picked the 1929 novel “All Quiet on the Western Front.” Evidently suspecting that many years had elapsed since he’d read it, Kelly asked Trump to talk about the most recent book he’d read. “I read passages, I read areas, I’ll read chapters—I don’t have the time,” Trump said. As The New Republic noted recently, this attitude is not shared by most U.S. Presidents, including Barack Obama, a habitual consumer of current books, and George W. Bush, who reportedly engaged in a fiercely competitive book-reading contest with his political adviser Karl Rove.

Trump’s first wife, Ivana, famously claimed that Trump kept a copy of Adolf Hitler’s collected speeches, “My New Order,” in a cabinet beside his bed. In 1990, Trump’s friend Marty Davis, who was then an executive at Paramount, added credence to this story, telling Marie Brenner, of Vanity Fair, that he had given Trump the book. “I thought he would find it interesting,” Davis told her. When Brenner asked Trump about it, however, he mistakenly identified the volume as a different work by Hitler: “Mein Kampf.” Apparently, he had not so much as read the title. “If I had these speeches, and I am not saying that I do, I would never read them,” Trump told Brenner.

The article is by Jane Mayer, author of the excellent book, Dark Money,  the best recounting I have seen of how a couple of dozen billionaires have corrupted American politics.

This Isn't Funny Anymore

Charles P. Pierce writes in Esquire:

CLEVELAND, OHIO—A while back, we here at the shebeen decided that Donald J. Trump's act was no longer funny. That he no longer was a goofy guy with three wives and a ferret on his head, a freak candidate who devoured an incredible passel of unpopular lightweights on his way to a freak nomination. That he was more than just a vessel for the barely camouflaged rage and fear of an aging white American majority terrified of so many barbarians at so many gates. But not until Wednesday did we realize the true magnitude of the threat that this reckless clown poses to American democracy. Not until Wednesday did we hear clearly the echoes of shiny black boots on German cobblestones.

On Wednesday, in several venues, He, Trump accused "some people"—he never said who they were, nor will he, ever—of calling for a moment of silence for Micah Johnson, the mass murderer of police in Dallas, Texas. We have had some experience with this. Back when he was still considered something of a sideshow attraction, He, Trump said that he's "seen" Muslim-Americans in New Jersey celebrating as the World Trade Center towers burned on September 11, 2001. He never said who they were, nor will he, ever. But at least there was a level of detail to the lie. There is in fact a state called New Jersey. There are in fact Muslim-Americans living there. And the attacks of 9/11 did in fact happen.

Emboldened because this and other whopping untruths did not immediately sink his campaign, He, Trump now has taken his truthless palaver to another level entirely. This is what he said on the stump in Indiana on Wednesday, when he was taking auditions for the men who care so little for their country that they are desperate to be on a ticket with a serial arsonist.

"The other night you had 11 cities potentially in a blow-up stage. Marches all over the United States—and tough marches. Anger. Hatred. Hatred! Started by a maniac! And some people ask for a moment of silence for him. For the killer!"

To be blunt, this didn't happen.

There is no evidence from any news source that this happened. By anyone. Anywhere. Nobody can find anyone who "called for a moment of silence" for the mass killer of policemen. Nobody has counted "11 cities" that are potentially on the verge of a racial holy war. RaHoWa, cry the white-supremacists. And now the presumptive Republican presidential nominee has joined the chorus. That's where his rhetoric has led him, and far too many people have followed along.

Yeah, but it was Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg who "crossed the line." Jesus, these people.

Carl Icahn

Be sure to read Andrew Tobias's "My Carl Icahn Story".

The Best the Tea Party Has to Offer

Joe Walsh is a one-term, former Congressman from Illinois. He's now a talk radio blatherer on one of those stations for right wing deep thinkers.

Here's his comment on the shooting in Dallas:

Impressive, no?

In today's Chicago Tribune he clarifies, "Of course I didn't mean, 'Let's go kill Obama and Black Lives Matter.' I was not trying to incite violence against Obama and Black Lives Matter. That's crazy and stupid and wrong."

Sure am glad he clarified that. I might have gotten the wrong idea.

Two Unrelated Notes

The Battle of the Somme

Today marks the 100th anniversary of the beginning of the Battle of the Somme. On the first day of the 5-month battle, the British incurred 60,000 casualties. An example of "attrition warfare," when the battle was over, combined casualties exceeded 1 million men, and the battle line had advanced 6 or 7 miles.

The French and British generals should have been court martialed for their incompetence, but it was considered unpatriotic to point that out.


My Amazon Profile has Changed

I am working on a book about Emily's mother's escape from Nazi Germany at the age of 10. In the course of my research, I came across the name of a man who was Hitler's "idea man" when it came to anti-Semitic conspiracies and theories. I made one Amazon search to see if his opus magnus (said with a sneer) is available at a reasonable price.

Since then, Amazon has been offering to sell all sorts of anti-Semitic and Holocaust-denying books to me, "based on your interest" in Holocaust denial. But, hey – it's just an algorithm, right?

Not Your Father's Israel

Barack Obama and Benjamin Netanyahu

The July/August issue of Foreign Affairs has a series of articles concerning the changing relationship between Israel and the United States. Behind it all is the changing nature of Israel itself.

The journal's managing editor, Jonathan Tepperman, summarizes:

In important respects, [Israel] no longer resembles the image many Westerners still picture – the liberal Zionist state of David Ben-Gurion, Abba Eban, Golda Meir, and Yitzhak Rabin. The socialist Ashkenazi elite that used to dominate Israel's politics has long since fractured and faded away. Sephardic Jews, Soviet immigrants, settlers, the religious right, secular Jews, and Arab Israelis now vie for influence. In foreign policy, meanwhile, what Israel stands for, and who it stands with, is also in play. [My emphasis.]

Aluf Benn, editor-in-chief of Haaretz, Israel's oldest daily newspaper, writes about "The End of the Old Israel":

Israel – at least the largely secular and progressive version of Israel that once captured the world's imagination – is over. Although that Israel was always in some ways a fantasy, the myth was at least grounded in reality. Today that reality has changed, and the country that has replaced it is profoundly different from the one its founders imagined almost 70 years ago. Since the last elections, in March 2015, a number of slow-moving trends have accelerated dramatically. Should they continue, they could soon render the country unrecognizable.

Already, the transformation has been dramatic. Israel's current leaders – headed by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who metamorphosed after the election from a risk-averse conservative into a right-wing radical – see democracy as synonymous with unchecked majority rule and have no patience for restraints such as judicial review or the protection of minorities....

Meanwhile, the two-state solution to the conflict with the Palestinians has been taken off the table, and Israel is steadily making its occupation of East Jerusalem and the West Bank permanent. Human rights groups and dissidents who dare criticize the occupation and expose its abuses are denounced by officials, and the government has sought to pass new laws restricting their activities. Arab-Jewish relations within the country have hit a low point, and Israel's society is breaking down into its constituent tribes.
Netanyahu thrives on such tribalism, which serves his lifelong goal of replacing Israel's traditional elite with one more in tune with his philosophy.

Brexit

Tomorrow the Brits vote on whether to leave or stay in the European Union. It's a decision that will eventually affect us here in the United States.

Jonathan Pie is, according to Andrew Tobias (who sends us this link and the John Oliver link, below), "the British John Oliver." In this 10-minute clip, Pie expresses his frustration at the level of the pro- and anti-Brexit debate.

Warning: It's not for children's ears.

Warning: It is progressively hilarious. It really gets going at about the 4:30 mark.



If you promise to watch the Jonathan Pie clip, too, then watch John Oliver himself on Brexit:

Colbert Explains Donald Trump

Warning: Uses language we don't use on Sempringham.

Report from the Lowest Common Denominator

The Gallup organization reports that their polling currently has the approval rating of Congress at 16 percent. Its approval rating among Republicans, who have built their franchise on not approving of anything related to the government, is even lower – 12 percent. In September and November of last year, the approval rating among Republicans was 8 percent!

When you take into consideration that both houses of Congress are controlled by the Republican Party, you begin to get a sense of how successful their franchise has been.

In contrast, President Obama's approval rating – in a poll taken since the probable Republican nominee insinuated the President's complicity in the Orlando shootings – is up another point to 53 percent.

This chart has nothing to do with this story, but it's fun to look at anyway.

*** BULLETIN *** BULLETIN *** BULLETIN ***

This just in: Donald Trump has just announced that he is barring Sempringham journalists from his events.

Reached by phone, Sempringham blogger Bob Miller responded, "This was a shock to me, first, because Sempringham has no journalists, and second, because I have never had nor intimated that I had a desire to attend any Donald Trump event."

Miller went on to say that he was honored to be in the company of Politico, The Huffington Post, BuzzFeed, Gawker, Foreign Policy, Fusion, Univision, Mother Jones, the New Hampshire Union-Leader, the Des Moines Register, the Daily Beast, and most recently, the Washington Post.  After a moment's pause, he asked that the New Hampshire Union-Leader be removed from his list. "Not such an honor," he explained.

Fareed Zakaria

Among the list of people I'd most like to have over for dinner, Fareed Zakaria is certainly near the top. Here are a couple of topical examples of why.

Trump, Conspiracy Theorist

Andrew Tobias points us to this collection of 58 Donald Trump conspiracy theories.

Did you know that Barack Obama not only did not attend Columbia University, but also got bad grades there? Now there's a conspiracy!

154 Cuts

Lynn Sweet, a political reporter for the Chicago Sun-Times, writes in today's column:

On Friday, Trump, pointing to a [supporter] at a rally in California said, 'Oh, look at my African-American over here. Look at him,' Trump said. 'Are you the greatest?'

Under questioning Sunday from MSNBC's Chris Matthews, Gregory Cheadle, an African-American Republican running for a California congressional seat, told Matthews he was indeed at the rally and was the man Trump singled out. Cheadle told Matthews he was not sure he would vote for Trump.

Almost every day, it's something.

Let's pause for a moment here to give everyone a chance to raise his/her slacked jaw.

Then I'll again quote Michael Gerson, a conservative columnist in the Washington Post:

Make no mistake. Those who support Trump, no matter how reluctantly, have crossed a moral boundary. They are standing with a leader who encourages prejudice and despises the weak. They are aiding the transformation of a party formed by Lincoln’s blazing vision of equality into a party of white resentment. Those who find this one of the normal, everyday compromises of politics have truly lost their way. [My emphasis.]

Can we start of list of politicians who have crossed the moral boundary? Let's see, there's:

Paul Ryan
Mitch McConnell
Rand Paul
Rob Portman
Chuck Grassley

Oh, wait! We don't have to list them all here, because Wikipedia has already done the job for us!

We have 154 days until the election, and almost every day Trump is going to say something stupid, crude, and disgusting, and on each those days these guys are going to have to separate themselves from the man they have endorsed to be President of the United States.

Go watch Hillary's speech. Her criticism of Trump needs to be expanded to a criticism of the Republican Party itself. The Republic is in danger.

Hillary Starts Hitting the Right Notes

Hillary will never be a great orator, but her San Diego speech this week was the first to take aim, throughout, at Donald Trump. And it was a winner, from beginning to end. The only critical words I've heard about it have been from Faux and the Donald.

You can watch it here:



Or read it here. Warning: If you read it, there's one of those irritating videos that starts automatically when you connect to the page.. You'll need to turn it off quickly or your blood pressure will take a hit.

A special note to Bernie supporters in California: There's a lot I like about Bernie Sanders. But he is not going to win the nomination, even if he wins this week in California. Hillary IS going to get the nomination, but she'll have a harder time winning the election if she looks weak in the California primary. Please consider that when you're in the ballot box voting booth. (Please stay out of the ballot box!)  And please watch or read her speech if you're hesitant. There's a lot at stake here, as if I needed to tell you.

God Help Us

Are you ready for this? I'm guessing not.

Iconic Chicago Tribune Building now.

Newspaper chain Tribune Publishing announced today that it is changing its name to "tronc" and will switch its stock exchange listing from the New York Stock Exchange to Nasdaq. It will start trading on Nasdaq on June 20. The company described Tronc's mission as being "a content curation and monetization company focused on creating and distributing premium, verified content across all channels."

Got that?

Chicago Tribune Building after name change.

No, that didn't come from The Onion, it came from Politico. It's for real

There's no word yet on whether the Chicago Tribune will actually be renamed. I'd say "of course not",  but John McCain has endorsed Donald Trump, so there really are no standards anymore. Meanwhile, I'm getting all misty-eyed about how the Constitution guarantees freedom of content curation and monetization. Freedom!

Time for Wasserman Schultz to Show Some Class

Whatever you may think of the job that Debbie Wasserman Schultz has done as chair of the Democratic National Committee for the past several years, it's clear that things have gone seriously off track during the Presidential campaign. Bernie Sanders doesn't believe she has been an honest broker of the competing interests of his and Hillary's campaigns. He is so convinced of it that he has endorsed her primary opponent for her seat in the House of Representatives. According to some insiders, there are talks of some kind of coup to remove her from her position.

Regardless of whether Sanders' beliefs are justified, he is the candidate of a large and important wing of the Democratic Party. The last thing the Democrats need is a bitter split when they're about to go against the greatest threat to the Republic in 150 years.

Every day that is wasted on this business is a disaster. It will not end until Wasserman Shultz is either removed or steps down. And that's what she should do: step down.  I've prepared a statement for her:

Over the past several months it has been clear that a significant group of people in the Democratic Party do not believe I have served as a neutral actor in the Democratic primary process. I strongly disagree. I have worked hard always to provide fair treatment, without prejudice, to all of the candidates' campaigns, and I believe that fairness has been reflected in every word I have spoken and every action I have taken.

My desire and instinct are to carry on as Chairman of the Democratic National Committee in this extremely important election year. However, my obligation is to do what is best for the Democratic Party and, therefore, I believe, my country. I am now convinced that the distraction from the important job before us that would result from continuing to serve as chairwoman would be detrimental to the prospects of our eventual nominee. It is, consequently, my duty to resign the position and find other ways to serve my country and my district.

Although I am personally deeply saddened by this turn of events, and, I will admit, feel considerably misused, I ask – beg! – that my supporters and detractors put their disagreements on my actions aside until after the election. We have an important job in front of us; upon our success may depend the safety of the Republic. This is no time for personal squabbles. 

My resignation will become effective as soon as a replacement is named by the Democratic National Committee. Thank you.

Authoritarianism and Donald Trump

Thought you might enjoy this little video that describes an analysis of authoritarianism in America by political scientists.  It includes some of Trump's Greatest Hits.

Gerson Gets His Head Back on Straight

A few months ago, we had great fun reading a Michael Gerson column that blamed the craziness in the GOP on ... are you ready? ... Obama! It was a uniquely non- introspective column.

Gerson, whom I've always held in high esteem despite his conservative stances, seems to have regained his senses:

Make no mistake. Those who support Trump, no matter how reluctantly, have crossed a moral boundary. They are standing with a leader who encourages prejudice and despises the weak. They are aiding the transformation of a party formed by Lincoln’s blazing vision of equality into a party of white resentment. Those who find this one of the normal, everyday compromises of politics have truly lost their way.

This is not even to mention Trump’s pledge to limit press freedom, or his malicious birtherism, or his dangerous vaccine skepticism, or his economic plans that would bring global recession, or his lack of relevant qualifications, or his temperament of brooding and bragging, egotism and self-pity, or his promise to emancipate the world from American leadership, or his accusation that Ted Cruz’s father was somehow involved with Lee Harvey Freaking Oswald.

Some are trying their best to act as though all this were normal. But we are seeing, in the words of G.K. Chesterton, “lunacy dancing in high places.” None of this requires a vote for Hillary Clinton. But it forbids a vote for Donald Trump.

Pithy Quotes

E.J. Dionne had some accurate observations in today's column: The Irony of Celebrity Populism:

We need to think hard about the multiple weaknesses Trump is exposing in our politics. How has he been able to convert fame and outrage into votes without even a moment of apprenticeship in public service?

One reason is the anger in a large segment of the Republican Party that has been stoked by its leaders. You might say they have now lost control of the beast they were feeding. There is also the utter contempt toward government that their ideology encouraged. Trump has played on the fragility of our media system, which, in its search for ratings, can’t get enough of him, and on a pervasive pain among the many who have been cast aside by our economy. They had been ignored by elites of all kinds.

[Snip]

... a phony celebrity populism plays well on television at a time when politics and governing are regularly trashed by those who claim both as their calling. Politicians who don’t want to play their assigned roles make it easy for a role-player to look like the real thing and for a billionaire who flies around on his own plane to look like a populist. 

Small World

John Boehner has called Ted Cruz "Lucifer in the Flesh". This is, of course, an exaggeration.

But Cruz HAS been endorsed by Lucifer's wife.

Carly Again

Well, Cruz has chosen Carly Fiorina as his running mate, although we might be excused for wondering, "Running mate for what?" Ted Cruz isn't going to win the nomination. But it confirms a position I was taking last fall (though sadly not here, so I could point to it and say 'I told you so') that Carly was never running for the presidential nomination; she realized that whoever the GOP nominee was,  a woman would be an attractive ticket addition in a race against Hillary.

Okay, so she's not dumb. Evil, maybe. But not dumb.

Repeating a quote from Frank Bruni:

The Washington Post just published a humiliating account of her sluggishness to pay bills from that 2010 campaign. That she stiffed several vendors until January 2015 wasn’t really the damning part: That’s sadly common in politics.

But The Post reported that one of the people stiffed was the widow of the pollster Joe Shumate, who dropped dead of a heart attack, “surrounded by sheets of polling data” for Fiorina, shortly before Election Day in 2010. Fiorina mourned him as “the heart and soul” of her operation, then neglected for years to fork over at least $30,000 that she owed him.

Martin Wilson, who managed that campaign, told The Post that he occasionally implored her to settle up. “She just wouldn’t,” he said.

It’s striking that he’d tattle like that on Fiorina. She apparently doesn’t leave much love in her wake. Reuters interviewed about 30 people who worked for her in 2010, 12 of whom said: Never again. “I’d rather go to Iraq,” one unidentified campaign aide groused.

Cruzus Rafaelis Edwardi ?

Via Paul Krugman's Twitter feed:

Yes, it's for real.

The National Review for Twits

Kevin Drum quotes a National Review blogger laughing at dumb libruls:

Perhaps some of the voices calling for Tubman on the $20 just wanted any prominent African-American woman to replace one of the white males on our currency. If it was political correctness that drove this decision, who cares? The Obama administration has inadvertently given Tubman fans of all political stripes an opportunity to tell the story of a deeply-religious, gun-toting Republican who fought for freedom in defiance of the laws of a government that refused to recognize her rights.

Drum observes:

Yeah. That's the ticket. All those folks in the Obama administration had no idea who Harriet Tubman really was. They were all just, check this out Jack: black, female, helped slaves, done. Boxes checked. Identity politics satisfied. Put her on the twenty.

The poor fools. She was religious! She carried a gun while helping slaves escape! She was a Republican! She fought for freedom against a tyrannical government! If you think about it, she's basically the poster child of the modern-day Tea Party. And none of those idiots in the White House had a clue.

Seriously. That seems to be what they think. Next they're going to remind us that Abraham Lincoln was a Republican too.

 Yup.

Oh, This Is Sweet

Nothing can start my day off with a happier glow than a conspiracy theory that links Ted Cruz's father, a known nut-case named Rafael, with Lee Harvey Oswald. This takes the Kennedy Assassination conspiracists in a whole new direction, and guarantees another decade of life for the franchise.

This picture is the evidence:

The guy in the foreground is Oswald. The guy to his left, also in white shirt and tie, is a man who sorta looks like he could be Rafael Cruz (or a few thousand other men), who was known to be in either Dallas or New Orleans when this picture was taken.

Sempringham's Razor applies: If it's too good to be true, it probably isn't.

Anyway, if this is just too sweet for you to pass up, you can read about all the other ... um, evidence ... at Wonkette. Or, you can just do a search on "Lee Harvey Oswald Rafael Cruz".

More to This Guy than Meets the Eye

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau explains quantum computing:

A Re-Post

This is a re-post of a video I posted in 2008, of Sting and Cheb Mami singing Desert Rose. As I said 8 years ago, "that should be good enough. But instead of the usual music video, you get to look at some of the amazing images created by my favorite photographer, Steve McCurry."

Make sure you click that little thing in the lower right-hand corner to make the images full-screen.



Makes me want to pick up my camera again.

The thing I love about McCurry's photos is the dignity he sees in every subject.

The Sound of Another Shoe Waiting to Drop

You've no doubt seen coverage of the leak of 11.5 million documents (2.6 terabytes, in more modern parlance) from a law firm in Panama, Mossack Fonseca, whose business, one of its partners claims, is "95% ... selling vehicles to avoid taxes." And he didn't mean Buicks.

Already the Prime Minister of Iceland has had to resign because of the leak.

Kevin Drum writes:

In any case, you might find this whole thing a bit boring because it implicates only a bunch of foreigners, mainly in countries already well known for their casual relationship with bribery and corruption. What about the United States? 

[Snip]

Editor of Süddeutsche Zeitung responded to the lack of U.S. individuals in the documents, saying "Just wait for what is coming next" — Mathew Ingram (@mathewi) 

So stay tuned. Maybe Hillary Clinton has millions of dollars stashed away in the Isle of Man! 

I'm not sure if Drum was being sarcastic, but if either Clinton's name comes up it will be the end of Hillary's campaign. 

What I hope to see, though, are the names of some of the biggest financial donors to the extremist right wing of the Republican Party. And I don't mean the Cokes.

We'll see.

But as Liam Stack reports in the NY Times:

One reason there may be relatively few Americans named in the documents is that it is fairly easy to form shell companies in the United States. James Henry, an economist and senior adviser to the Tax Justice Network, told Fusion that Americans “really don’t need to go to Panama.”

“Basically, we have an onshore haven industry in the U.S. that is as secretive as anywhere,” he said.

 Feel better now?
 

E.J. Dionne Jr. Channels Sempringham

From Dionne's column in the Washington Post:

Trump’s troubles threaten to go beyond Wisconsin. He could now lose in other big states that vote next, including Pennsylvania, California, New Jersey and possibly even his home state of New York. If this happens, it will be far easier for the Republican Party bosses (such as they are these days) to deny him the nomination. Trump will come to look less like the rank-and-file Republican favorite and more like a flash in the pan.

Second, Democrats Hillary Clinton or Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) would lose their ideal opponent. From their point of view, Trump’s collapse may come too early. It’s true that if the very right-wing Cruz were the Republican nominee instead of Trump, the Democratic winner — it’s still likely to be Clinton, despite Sanders’s current surge — would be favored.

But an utter Trump implosion might free the Cleveland convention to turn to someone entirely outside the current crop of candidates, someone unsullied by the ugly and vulgar GOP primary campaign. A sinking Trump would have far less power to resist such an outcome. Democrats need to prepare now for the strong possibility that they will not be lucky enough to run against The Donald. [My emphasis.]

Or even, for that matter, Ted Cruz.

I'm going back to a prediction I made several months ago: Paul Ryan will be the Republican nominee.

A Must Read ...

... with a boffo opening graphic:

It's right here.

Cruz

Click on it for full size view.

John Oliver on France

He beats me to it again.

Trevor Noah Covers the GOP Debate

Why was Ted Cruz's performance like a Greek tragedy? Trevor Noah has it here (scroll to the bottom and sit through the ads; it's worth it).

Welcome to Sempringham, Trevor.

Is There a Difference Between Republicans and Democrats?

[W]hile Democrats were participating in a candidates forum, Republicans Mike Huckabee, Bobby Jindal and Ted Cruz were guests at "religious freedom" event led by a pastor who preaches that homosexuality should be punished with death.

Rachel Maddow has the story here.

P.S. Whatever you do, don't start making comparisons with Nazis, as that is a sign that you are not a serious person.

Don't Worry, Carson Will Never Get the Nomination

And it's not just because of his peculiar approach to history.

From Laura:

Immigration Reform II

Well, I never thought I'd ever say anything remotely like this, but if you want to see the best argument I've ever seen for deporting illegal aliens, it's right here. [Warning: This will be rough on the ears and eyes of most Sempringham readers, who don't talk like this.]

Note that this professionally prepared video was created by a political PAC. I doubt many minds were changed favorably to immigration reform by it.

Jeb Bush is Now the Rodney Dangerfield Candidate

Jeb! Bush decided that exclamation points weren't helping him get traction, so he revamped his campaign with a new slogan: "Jeb Can Fix It!"

How's that working? Well, Politico reports that at one of those famous New Hampshire town hall meetings this week, three separate people stood up and asked him for help fixing their septic systems.

[Oops! This post was originally called Jeb the Henny Youngman candidate. Youngman was "Take My Wife, Please!" Rodney Dangerfield was "I get no respect around here!" It's always a good idea to fact-check BEFORE you click that "Publish" button.]

The Wisdom of Napoleon

Oh, Vlad!!!

As we wait to find out if the terrible crash of a civilian Russian airliner in the Sinai was the result of an ISIS missle, let us remember the famous maxim attributed to Napoleon: "Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake."

That was essentially the advice of Tom Friedman in late September, when Vlad Putin sent his troops into Syria:

[T]oday’s reigning cliché is that the wily fox, President Vladimir Putin of Russia, has once again outmaneuvered the flat-footed Americans, by deploying some troops, planes and tanks to Syria to buttress the regime of President Bashar al-Assad and to fight the Islamic State forces threatening him. If only we had a president who was so daring, so tough, so smart.

Really? Well think about this: Let’s say the U.S. did nothing right now, and just let Putin start bombing ISIS and bolstering Assad. How long before every Sunni Muslim in the Middle East, not to mention every jihadist, has Putin’s picture in a bull’s eye on his cellphone?

The Sunni Muslims are the vast majority in Syria. They are the dominant sect in the Arab world. Putin and Russia would be seen as going all-in to protect Assad, a pro-Iranian, Alawite/Shiite genocidal war criminal. Putin would alienate the entire Sunni Muslim world, including Russian Muslims.

[snip]

Putin stupidly went into Syria looking for a cheap sugar high to show his people that Russia is still a world power. Well, now he’s up a tree. Obama and John Kerry should just leave him up there for a month — him and Assad, fighting ISIS alone — and watch him become public enemy No. 1 in the Sunni Muslim world. “Yo, Vladimir, how’s that working for you?”

Oh, how the GOP (and face it: the mainstream press) drooled over the manly Vlad!

Immigration Reform

Paul Ryan says there will be no immigration reform during the Obama Presidency:

Newly elected Speaker Paul Ryan said Sunday he’s willing to work across the aisle with Democrats but won’t do immigration reform with President Obama in his final 14 months in office.

“The president has proven himself untrustworthy on this issue, because he tried to unilaterally rewrite the law himself. Presidents don’t write laws. Congress does,” the Wisconsin Republican said in an interview on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” referring to Obama’s executive actions this year to ease immigration policies. “The president’s proven himself to be untrustworthy on this issue.”

Oh, yes, it's all Obama's fault. This is, of course, pablum for the party faithful.

And David Atkins at Political Animal will have nothing to do with it:

It’s perfectly obvious that of all the battles in the GOP civil war between the establishment and the base, immigration is by far the most toxic. Immigration is the main reason Donald Trump is where he is in the polls, Jeb Bush seems to have one foot in the campaign grave, and media/establishment darling “winner of every debate” Marco Rubio can’t seem to climb higher than 10% in the national numbers.

Any attempt to even consider bring a legislative proposal on immigration in the House would destroy what little is left of Republican Party unity, and make the presidential race an even bigger clown show than it is now. That downside risk is far scarier to most Republicans than whatever upside gains might be made with Hispanics come November as a result of actually trying to be responsible legislators.

Quite right. The only immigration reform package this GOP Congress could put on Obama's desk is one that deports 11 million people in boxcars. And yet, that appeals to a large section of the Republican Party.

That Damn Feral Gummint

New Jersey Governor Chris Christie in the last Republican Debate:

I mean, let me be honest with the people who are watching at home. The government has lied to you and they have stolen from you. They told you that your Social Security money is in a trust fund. All that’s in that trust fund is a pile of IOUs for money they spent on something else a long time ago.And they’ve stolen from you because now they know they cannot pay these benefits and Social Security is going to be insolvent in seven to eight years.

[Snip]

If somebody’s already stolen money from you, are you going to give them more? Or, are you going to deal with the problem by saying, I’m going to give people who’ve done well in this country less benefit on the backend.

 Former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee responds:

First of all, yes, we’ve stolen. Yes, we’ve lied to the American people about Social Security, and Medicare. ...

Christie again:

They stole it. It got stolen from them. It’s not theirs anymore. The government stole it, and spent it a long time ago.

Compare and contrast.

For some background, check out The Looting of Social Security.

Postscript: I hope I'm not being cryptic about this. In a democracy, the government is not they, it is we. Everything that was done with Social Security trust funds was done the knowledge and consent of Republicans and Democrats in the Senate and the House of Representatives.

Job Creation Under Bush and Obama

Paul Krugman shared this graph on his blog.

Like Moynihan said, you're entitled to your own opinion, but you're not entitled to your own facts.

Looking for a Fool and His Money

You read it here first, although it was very obvious: Jim Webb has an op-ed in today's Washington Post that says he is "in the process of deciding" whether to mount an independent campaign for President. Webb is certainly a different kind of Democrat, but the party is big enough to include him. He essentially failed to make his case in the debates.

In the op-ed he gives his rationale for considering a third-party run. What he doesn't do is paint a picture of how he could actually win.

Addendum:

Using Webb's campaign button in no way implies support or an endorsement. And to prove it, here:

Fantasy GOP Team

In the last post we talked about Fantasy GOP©, the exciting new game where contestants select five GOP debate participants after each debate, trying to build a team that will have the highest cumulative polling increase. We haven't seen any polls yet (and still have to decide which poll will be the "Official Fantasy GOP©" poll) but here are our choices:

Kasich - Make sure you see Uncle Ted's comment on Kasich at the end of the last post. I agree that Kasich will not get the nomination, but we're talking about temporary polling increases, and sane Republicans have nowhere else to go.

Rubio - Duh!

Huckabee - Protected the old people's Social Security.

Cruz - Scariest guy up there, but he'll get a boost (mostly mostly from Trump's people, who are bored already) for attacking mainstream media.

Graham - A sentimental favorite (always a bad move in a contest). He was on the undercard with Pataki, Jindal, and Santorum (sheesh!) so nobody saw him, but Lindsay, who has never seen a problem that couldn't be bombed or invaded, had the best one-liner: "Make me commander-in-chief and this crap stops!"

Last Night's Republican Debate

Once again, we didn't see the whole thing. You can watch that kind of nonsense for just so long.

Talking Points Memo reports that:

Carly Fiorina, who is barely in the running, got more time than anyone else. Jeb Bush got the least by a significant margin - less than Rand Paul, Huckabee, Christie, people who aren't even really in the race.

The debate was sponsored by CNBC, a right-wing, wacked-out network for day traders. Josh Marshall found it to be just as weird as I did:

[A] big reason the debate was so weird was that so many of the questions were based on obscurantist and myopic CNBC nonsense - which is not only far-right and identified with great wealth but specifically owned by the bubble of Wall Street. That led to a lot of odd questions - like Jim Cramer's saying why aren't GM execs going to jail, Santelli's wild questions or that question about fantasy football. Lots of people are into fantasy football. But whether it's betting and whether it should be regulated, that's a Wall Streeter question - in the same way huge amounts of the money that gets pushed through political betting sites comes off Wall Street. It's hard for Republicans to say this. But I think this is a significant reason why the debate seemed so odd. And it made it kind of odd to hear anti-liberal bias attacks on the moderators when they were asking questions like shouldn't the Fed be forced to take us back to the gold standard. [My italics]

I mean: really, what a bunch of fruit cakes.

Which all helped make John Kasich sound like the only sane man person up there. Will he see a significant bump in the polls? Are there still enough sane Republicans to make a difference? In a sane world, yes. But I hereby declare a copyright on the concept of Fantasy GOP.  Using your "skill", choose your team of wackadoodles, and I'll choose mine. Five to a team. Whosever team gets the highest cumulative bump in the post-debate polling wins. And don't forget the undercard.

Republican Amnesia

As far as we know, Bernie Sanders was the first to talk about "Republican Amnesia", the inability of Republicans to remember the mess they created. It was only 7 years ago.

Looks like Hillary has picked up on it.

Webb and Chaffee

We have to admit being surprised at how poorly former Virginia Senator Jim Webb has done in the Democratic campaign. A former Republican, he seemed perfectly poised to collect the votes of the so-called "Reagan Democrats".  Upon withdrawing, he said, "I fully accept that my views on many issues are not compatible with the power structure and the nominating base of the Democratic Party."

Dissect that, and what you've got is an appeal to folks who are part of neither the party power structure nor its nominating base – those Reagan Democrats. But it looks like Reagan Democrats have joined the Students for a Democratic Society under the heading, "Do They Even Exist Anymore?" No doubt many of them can be found in the Tea Party.

If you're planning on running for President, make sure your ego is big and your skin is thick. One certainly gets the impression that Jim Webb makes it in the ego department. He, at least, takes himself very seriously and is obviously dreaming of a third party candidacy at this point. I suspect he'll find one or two dim bulbs with the money to enable his fantasy for a while. We'll see.

Now, what to say about Lincoln Chaffee? He seems like a very nice person.

Colbert skewers them both (via Crooks & Liars):

Bernie Sanders Gets It Right

This is a clip of Bernie Sanders' speech at the Jefferson Jackson dinner in Des Moines last night. From about 0:30 to about 2:30, Sanders articulates a theme that we have heard hardly at all, but I think has a powerful punch: Republican Amnesia.



Sanders starts painting the picture of how bad things were when Obama took office in 2009, but kept it short. Things were much, much worse. And there is a lot more to be said about how much better things are, despite the constant lack of patriotic cooperation from the Congressional Republicans.

Take, for instance, job growth:

Like the graph says, the economy has added 13.2 million private sector jobs in the last 67 months. There has never been a period of uninterrupted job growth as long as this.

Hillary, on the other hand, was back to her irritating self:

Mrs. Clinton also offered an oblique criticism of Mr. Sanders over his record on guns. 

“I’ve been told to stop shouting to end gun violence,” she said, repeating a line she has begun using since Mr. Sanders said in the debate that “all the shouting in the world” would not keep guns out of the wrong hands. “I haven’t been shouting, but sometimes when a woman speaks out, some people think it’s shouting.”

And of me she would say, "Sometimes when a woman speaks out, some people think it's irritating."

Trey Gowdy's Benghazi Committee

I couldn't watch as much of the Benghazi hearings as I had hoped to, but what I saw made me shudder. It is unbelievable that the Republican Party would allow a bunch of intellectual lightweights like they have on this committee to represent them on national television. I've never been a particular fan of Hillary's, but she came out of this looking like a person to be taken seriously – more than you can say about the Republicans.

Hillary says it all here:

Benghazi

Steve Benen observes,

There is a degree of irony to all of this: Benghazi didn't bring down Hillary Clinton, but it did prevent Kevin McCarthy from becoming Speaker.

Trump

Hitting where it hurts, Nicholas Kristoff writes of Donald Trump:

Back in 1976, Trump said he was worth “more than $200 million.” If he had simply put $200 million in an index fund and reinvested dividends, he would be worth $12 billion today, notes Max Ehrenfreund of The Washington Post. In fact, he’s worth $4.5 billion, according to Forbes.

In other words, Trump’s business acumen seems less than half as impressive as that of an ordinary Joe who parks his savings in an index fund.

Carly

Frank Bruni covers her pretty well. An excerpt:

The Washington Post just published a humiliating account of her sluggishness to pay bills from that 2010 campaign. That she stiffed several vendors until January 2015 wasn’t really the damning part: That’s sadly common in politics.

But The Post reported that one of the people stiffed was the widow of the pollster Joe Shumate, who dropped dead of a heart attack, “surrounded by sheets of polling data” for Fiorina, shortly before Election Day in 2010. Fiorina mourned him as “the heart and soul” of her operation, then neglected for years to fork over at least $30,000 that she owed him.

Martin Wilson, who managed that campaign, told The Post that he occasionally implored her to settle up. “She just wouldn’t,” he said.

It’s striking that he’d tattle like that on Fiorina. She apparently doesn’t leave much love in her wake. Reuters interviewed about 30 people who worked for her in 2010, 12 of whom said: Never again. “I’d rather go to Iraq,” one unidentified campaign aide groused.

What's This?

It's the new Zumwalt class destroyer.

"The 610-foot-long ship comes equipped with new technologies including radar reflecting angles, a striking inward-sloping tumblehome hull, an all-electric integrated power system, and an advanced gun system."

At 610 feet, it's longer than the battleship USS Nevada.

Oh, Great!

Turns out the sheriff in charge of the shooting investigation at Umpqua Community College in Oregon is what's known as a "Sandy Hook Truther", someone who believes the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., where 20 students and 6 adults were murdered, never actually happened. From Talking Points Memo:

Douglas County Sheriff John Hanlin posted a link to a YouTube video called "The Sandy Hook Shooting - Fully Exposed," which summarized conspiracy theories surrounding the shooting and quickly racked up millions of views, about a month after the massacre took place. The post was deleted or made private sometime after 2:30 p.m. Friday. [Oct. 2, 2015]

"This makes me wonder who we can trust anymore..." Hanlin wrote. "Watch, listen, and keep an open mind."

The video opens with text that reads: "In this video I will prove to you there has been a lot of deception surrounding the Sandy Hook shooting. This is a simple, logical video. No aliens, holigrams (sic), rituals or anything like that, just facts." It then intersperses news clips from the time with text raising questions about the "official story" presented in the media, including whether there was more than one shooter and whether grieving parents were actually so-called "crisis actors."

Can't help but wonder what his investigation will reveal.

Vatican Chicanery?

Charles P. Pierce at Esquire asks, "Was Pope Francis Actually Swindled into Meeting Kim Davis?"

Villain: Papal Nuncio to the United States, Archbishop Carlo Vigano.

Perhaps "tricked" would be a better word than "swindled" here, but it's an interesting story, with insights into the "sanctified r*****ing" that has been part of the Vatican for centuries.

Update

The Vatican has issued a statement:

The brief meeting between Mrs. Kim Davis and Pope Francis at the Apostolic Nunciature in Washington, DC has continued to provoke comments and discussion. In order to contribute to anobjective understanding of what transpired I am able to clarify the following points:

Pope Francis met with several dozen persons who had been invited by the Nunciature to greet him as he prepared to leave Washington for New York City.

Translation:

Archbishop Carlo Vigano put that pile of poo there, and let the Pope step in it.

So I owe the Pope an apology. The deceitful coward turned out to be someone else.

Syria Again

I rarely watch CNN or Faux, so I don't get the constant drumbeat of how manly Putin is, and how he's making us look weak.

But if you're concerned about Russia's move in Syria, may I recommend this and this?

I So Want This Not To Be True

There are stories flying everywhere that Pope Francis met secretly with Kim Davis, the Kentucky county clerk that refuses to issue marriage licenses to gay people, while he was in the United States.

Words that come to mind are "deceit" and "cowardice".