Twitstorm

Rhymes with...

Time of tweets duly noted; tiny fingers with the thinnest of skin, up into the wee hours and beyond, pressing all buttons currently available to their rage.

Fighting For Their Flag

The one that stands for treason as well as for slave-owning. In other words, the "party of Lincoln" reacts to a VA announcement that "Confederate flags will not be displayed from any permanently fixed flagpole in a national cemetery at any time." A Trump advisor, Texas Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller, has something to say about that — 

In a Facebook post published Thursday, Miller suggests the Civil War was first and foremost about protecting free speech — not slavery. He also strikes a skeptical note about whether Confederates who fought against the United States behaved treasonously.

Responding to a Washington Post column supportive of the VA's move, Miller writes that the piece "makes my blood boil" and says the Post isn’t "entitled to... attempt to read the minds of my long-dead Confederate ancestors and determine that their actions and motivations during that awful war were treasonous."

Seeing as he's an historian and all, Erik Loomis simultaneously manages to both ponder and answer the question, "Boy, I wonder how we could determine the thoughts of those who committed treason to defend slavery?"

More Loomis—

Truly, no one can read the minds of long-dead Confederates.

And hey, the Civil War was actually about free speech! That's why conservatives should totally secede from the nation if those big government PC liberals dare to criticize them. After all, saying mean things when Sarah Palin or Donald Trump say something dumb is the ultimate restriction of free speech! And this is just outstanding.

In the lead up to the aforementioned House vote on Confederate flags, a staffer for Rep. Lynn Westmoreland (R-GA) circulated an email making a case for preserving the Confederate flag that's similar to Miller's. The staffer, Pete Sanborn, wrote, "You know who else supports destroying history so that they can advance their own agenda? ISIL. Don't be like ISIL. I urge you to vote NO." He signed the email, "Yours in freedom from the PC police."

Among comments that follow—

C.V. Danes says...
You mean the last Civil War, or the one they're trying to start now?

FlipYrWhig... [referring to the Sanborn ISIL quote]
You know who else is very proud to wave the flag of a grandiose, illegitimate, fictitious nation?

Dr. Waffle says...
So. Much. Economic. Anxiety.

And on another history note—

Colin Day says...
Hey, it might have been about free speech, as in allowing the Post Office to deliver abolitionist literature in Southern states.

Abolitionist mail

Brave New Frontier

Trump's unlimited horizon for presidential corruption. Digby asks, "Will anyone care when Trump runs his business out of the White House?"

The foreign business, you see, is the Trump name. He cannot "divest." It's not something you can sell. And no one could buy it. You likewise cannot put it in a blind trust — it's his name on buildings and developments all over the world. He cannot literally wear blinders as president of the United States. Even if he were to tell his kids to find another line of work and simply walk away from the Trump Organization, shutting the doors and leaving it all behind, there are hundreds of deals already in place and contractual ramifications years into the future, all of which would present crippling conflicts of interest for President Trump. Trump's business interests would have had to be unwound years ago for him to be able to function properly as president. It’s literally impossible to do it now.

In case you were wondering, Trump has no legal obligation to do anything. Presidents are exempt from conflict-of-interest statutes. It was decided that it would be too complicated to write such a law for an office with such expansive powers. Instead we have depended upon norms that govern the behavior of our leaders, ensuring they are seen as acting solely on behalf of the people while they hold the office. Donald Trump has exploded every norm in politics so far. If he wins this election, there's every likelihood that he'll simply tell everyone that he's not making any important decisions for the Trump Organization, and that will be that. We will have a real-life oligarch in the White House, who will likely leave a whole lot richer then when he came in, while the people will be a whole lot poorer. That's been his business model from the beginning.

That Would Explain It

In all that David Cay Johnston has unearthed during thirty or so years of reporting on Trump, one major thread is lawsuits. Trump always settled them, but with court records always sealed.

Now David Fahrenthold's reporting sheds light on a few of Trump's settlements. Farenthold found four suits settled—to the tune of $258,000—using money donated to Trump's "charitable" foundation.

Sure, this is the crafty businessman who once cashed a check for $.13 free money.

These foundation expenditures would seem to violate IRS rules against "self-dealing" by charities... And has Trump in any of his manifestations ever engaged in another kind of "dealing"? Certainly, to settle lawsuits with someone else's money fits the business practices Johnston and others have reported for decades.

Fahrenthold also found some small-change expenditures that were unconnected to legal settlements—

In 2013, Trump used $5,000 from the foundation to buy advertisements touting his chain of hotels in programs for three events organized by a D.C. preservation group. And in 2014, Trump spent $10,000 of the foundation's money for a portrait of himself bought at a charity fundraiser.

Or, rather, another portrait of himself.

Several years earlier, Trump had used $20,000 from the Trump Foundation to buy a different, six foot-tall portrait.

Scott Lemieux notes—

In conclusion, some donors once emailed Huma Abedin asking for favors and didn't get them, so Both Sides Do It but Clinton Is Worse.

Airlift To Flint

Nothing useful (such as bottled water or funds) landed.

Instead, in an effort to be seen standing near African-Americans, Trump flew from NYC (after appearing on a fellow reality star's show), to visit a Flint church.

There, he rehearsed a new formulation. According to the NYT—

"It used to be cars were made in Flint and you couldn't drink the water in Mexico," Mr. Trump told the crowd, repeating a line he said earlier in the day. "Now, the cars are made in Mexico and you can’t drink the water in Flint...."

Although this is right up the narrow alley that passes for a thought process in Trump, it might sound rather different to people who are experts about Flint; after all, they are the ones who've experienced the political disenfranchisement and environmental disaster inflicted on their city. But, in another Trump formulation, Those people are already losers; what more can they lose?

Video of what also happened at the event—


The words of Rude Pundit are a thing of beauty.

Beautiful, because truth is beautiful.

{Pastor] Timmons did in one respectful, firm, polite gesture what 16 Republican candidates and thousands of protesters couldn't. She cornered Trump and make his swagger disappear and shoved the con job up his ass.

At this point in this stupid, endless goddamned election, it's apparent that the nation needs black Americans to save it. Between polls that show Trump polling worse than bed bugs and Macklemore among African Americans, the actions today by Rev. Timmons, and Don't-give-a-fuck Obama in full swing on the campaign trail, it's good to know that at least a few Americans completely understand what Hillary Clinton meant about the voters who support Trump.

At least some Americans get that this election isn't a fantasy without any real-world consequences.

Foul Deeds Live On

If she wasn't the original model for Ladies Against Women, she was the most successful of her type.

Still active into her nineties, and recently touting Trump as a fine Christian. It was all of a piece, for an activist who set back U.S. society for an unknown number of decades.

In true Family Values fashion, she went out in a blaze of legal battling over which of her spawn will gain control of Eagle Forum.

Among note taken of Schafly's passing: tengrain; pz Myers; David E.; LGM.

General consensus among commenters is along three lines:

1. As after the passing of Scalia, the world is made better by Schafly's absence.

2. "To paraphrase Bette Davis, 'You should never say bad things about the dead, you should only say good ... Phyllis Schlafly is dead. Good.'"

3. "She chose to die rather than see a woman become President."

Shady Business As Usual

From the advocate of closed borders. As James West reports—

... According to a financial disclosure filed by his campaign in May, Donald Trump earned nearly $2 million from the company, in which he holds an 85 percent stake. Meanwhile, some former Trump models say they barely made any money working for the agency because of the high fees for rent and other expenses that were charged by the company.

...

Two of the former Trump models said Trump's agency encouraged them to deceive customs officials about why they were visiting the United States and told them to lie on customs forms about where they intended to live. Anna said she received a specific instruction from a Trump agency representative: "If they ask you any questions, you're just here for meetings."

...

Kate, who worked for Trump Model Management in 2004, marveled at how her former boss has recently branded himself as an anti-illegal-immigration crusader on the campaign trail. "He doesn't want to let anyone into the US anymore," she said. "Meanwhile, behind everyone's back, he's bringing in all of these girls from all over the world and they're working illegally."

Now 31 years old and out of the modeling business, [Rachel] Blais once appeared in various publications, including Vogue, Elle, and Harpers Bazaar, and she posed wearing the designs of such fashion luminaries as Gianfranco Ferré, Dolce & Gabbana, and Jean Paul Gaultier. Her modeling career began when she was 16 and spanned numerous top-name agencies across four continents. She became a vocal advocate for models and appeared in a 2011 documentary, Girl Model, that explored the darker side of the industry. In a recent interview, she said her experience with Trump's firm stood out: "Honestly, they are the most crooked agency I've ever worked for, and I've worked for quite a few."

And so on; more grisly details in West's Mother Jones story.

You'd think that, if there's anything the public cares about, it's pretty women. But the story is unlikely to get beyond the usual audience. And if it did, it's simply a variation of every other story about Trump's business practices, as well as his treatment of employees or contractors.