They-a Culpa

Mea culpa is indeed appropriate, but not the kind instinctive for the NYT. That is, "How did we get this so wrong?" hand-wringing, along lines of, Perhaps we really are a liberal, elitist media who were uncomprehending of The Heartland.

It could so easily be dispensed with—if the editors bothered to look at their own goddamn reporting, of four months ago.

11-9; 9-11

If his voters deserve to get it (good and hard), the rest of us do not. Nor does the rest of the world.

Mencken, of course, believed that immigrant masses in cities would make the worst political choices. Yet the most under-populated and backward parts of the country are the ones favored by our antique and intentionally undemocratic system. The Electoral College supposedly existing to prevent an incompetent demagogue from being placed in the presidency, and all that...

Roy Edroso, on the voters who really mattered—

I'm still seeing some people talking about this election as if Trump voters were a bunch of poor oppressed hillbillies desperate to be freed from the meth and misery to which Tyrant Obama had condemned them. But as has been shown, Trump voters aren't poor -- though they obviously do feel as if they've been deprived of something, and that voting for Trump would give it to them....
...
Sure, Trump stirred up the Nazis, but look on the bright side, he made the liberal elites sad! I think this was a big part of the winning formula. I doubt Trump voters seriously believe their man will make international trade more advantageous to the U.S., or settle race relations, or bring global peace. But they don't like the people who are actually working on these things; they are delivering unsatisfactory results and, in the Trumpkin mind, that isn't because these things are difficult and complicated, but because they spend too much time thinking about their friends the blacks, the women, the foreigners, and the gays. Never mind your so-called rights, widget sales are fluctuating, now how'm I going to afford that second home? It's gotta be the fault of liberal elites!

You don't have to be a yokel to think like that -- hell, you don't even have to be a Republican. You just have to be a certain kind of American who's always wondering where's his.

In the end, a vote for "Spite."

First time voters seem to have crawled out of the woodwork, when I had wanted to believe they wouldn't manage to register or show up. Certainly, it was not a good sign when PBS decided to run its new voter human interest story featuring this woman—and her white power-heil Hitler tattoos...

Thus did the media blandly present this horror as checking in with Heartland Real America. Month after month after month of a media Trump-Trump-Trump drumbeat, drowning out anything real... It all ends in this feeling of having entered a Twilight Zone episode. The shock now is to know this will be immeasurably longer than a half hour, and an episode which can not be turned off.

New Voters

So, members of this family finally figured out how to register. Is it uncertain whether the wives know how to make marks?

It really should be asked: why is privacy so non-existent in these polling places? This opens the door wide open to intimidation, and—as Trump's ugly mug (and uglier history) suggest—to potential domestic abuse.

Wisdom

Interesting account of going door-to-door in West Dayton, OH—

Mostly talked to older African-Americans. When I launched into the boilerplate about how this is likely to be a very close, very important election, etc etc etc, they’d often give me a raised-eyebrow look that said, very clearly, "do you really think I don't understand what's at stake with this election?" and we'd quickly move on to logistics–polling locations, early voting hours, etc.
...

Only a few people want to take advantage of the captive audience to talk politics, but one woman, just getting home from a double shift as I arrived to her house, was pure gold. I'm going to reconstruct my favorite part of her rant as faithfully as possible, but I'm not doing is justice–it was just a marvelous, angry, hilarious rant. The gist of it:

Look, I get it, you white people* had a hard time with Obama being president so you need a racist president. I get it. I don't like it but I get it. But what I don't get is why you needed a racist who is so goddamn crazy and stupid! Couldn't you find a racist who could actually know how to run the damn government? I mean, I wouldn't vote for him–he'd still be bad for people like me–but at least he'd know what he's doing? What good does it do the damn white people when Trump shits the bed? It's not like there's some other special country they move to when he takes this country down. We get a black president and he does a pretty good job, and your response is murder-suicide? You white people need to get smarter about how you do this racism thing.

*she interjected caveats about how her use of "you white people" should not be construed to include people such as myself and Obama/Clinton supporters generally, so this didn't come off as hostile or accusatory as the words on the page might make it appear....

Really no need to interject the caveats, when the crazy and stupid is in everyone's face. But, how could this racism be anything other than suicidally crazy and stupid?

Implausible Deniability

Someone in Drumpf's campaign thought decided to have the wife read words about... bullying.

An instantly obvious sick joke, it seemed. Yet the remarks (near end of this transcript)—

Technology has changed our universe. But like anything that is powerful, it can have a bad side. We have seen these already. As adults, many of us are able to handle mean words, even lies. Children and teenagers can be fragile. They are hurt when they are made fun of or made to feel less in looks or intelligence. This makes their life hard and can force them to hide and retreat. Our culture has gotten too mean and too rough, especially to children and teenagers. It is never OK when a 12 year old girl or boy is mocked, bullied, or attacked. It is terrible when that happens on the playground.

And it is absolutely unacceptable when it is done by someone with no name hiding on the internet.

When the Party of Personal Responsibility speaks, it's a given that what's said is all projection, all the time. But this is particularly stunning, in light of the how "technology" creates a record of its use.

So, about recent "mean words, even lies"...

About who is setting an example for children to bully fellow students who are African-American, Hispanic, Muslim...

And that "our culture has gotten too mean and too violent" is the reason for death threats against Jewish journalists...

Or threats against those perceived as Jewish. A mysteriously "too violent" culture prompting neo-nazi to send potentially lethal epileptogenic video to reporter on the Trump beat.

He's Still Relevant

And bigly, from what Wayne Barrett reports—

Two days before FBI director James Comey rocked the world last week, Rudy Giuliani was on Fox, where he volunteered, un-prodded by any question: "I think he's [Donald Trump] got a surprise or two that you're going to hear about in the next few days. I mean, I'm talking about some pretty big surprises."

Pressed for specifics, he said: "We've got a couple of things up our sleeve that should turn this thing around."

The man who now leads "lock-her-up" chants at Trump rallies spent decades of his life as a federal prosecutor and then mayor working closely with the FBI, and especially its New York office. One of Giuliani's security firms employed a former head of the New York FBI office, and other alumni of it. It was agents of that office, probing Anthony Weiner's alleged sexting of a minor, who pressed Comey to authorize the review of possible Hillary Clinton-related emails on a Weiner device that led to the explosive letter the director wrote Congress.

Barrett runs down numerous other Giuliani-FBI pal connections, including this one—

[Jim] Kallstrom is the former head of the New York FBI office, installed in that post in the '90s by then-FBI director Louis Freeh, one of Giuliani's longtime friends. Kallstrom has, like Giuliani, been on an anti-Comey romp for months, most often on Fox, where he's called the Clintons as a "crime family." He has been invoking unnamed FBI agents who contact him to complain about Comey's exoneration of Clinton in one interview after another, positioning himself as an apolitical champion of FBI values.

Besides apolitically exposing the Clinton crime family on Fox, Kallstrom chairs (though without pay, notes Barrett)

...the Marine Corps Law Enforcement Foundation ... the single biggest beneficiary of Trump's promise to raise millions for veterans when he boycotted the Iowa primary debate. A foundation official said that Trump's million-dollar donation this May, atop $100,000 that he'd given in March, were the biggest individual grants it had ever received. The Trump Foundation had contributed another $230,000 in prior years and Trump won the organization's top honor at its annual Waldorf Astoria gala in 2015.

Much more, in Barrett's piece.

Steve M. takes up Barrett's conclusion, that "Fox is the pipeline for the fifth column inside the bureau"—

... A cabal of current and former law enforcement operatives has made this a live issue again. We think the likes of Giuliani and Kallstrom have been banished to cigar lounges and cable news greenrooms, where they can strut their supposed expertise while recalling the good old days when they had power. But they have power. They're the undead, and they're working with some of the living to undermine American democracy and either install a psychopath as president or hobble the psychopath's opponent if she manages to win.

And they're spreading disinformation via Fox News -- which a lot of smart people told us was on its last legs. Roger Ailes is gone, Bill O'Reilly might retire, Sean Hannity might soon leave for Trump TV, Megyn Kelly might jump ship, and Rupert Murdoch might finally cede full control to his less ideological sons. And yet when this cabal wanted to spread its story, Fox was still the obvious venue...

A Cast Of Thousands

Impeachment 2017, coming very soon. One of the players: chair of Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, Richard Burr. Currently campaigning on the "assassinate her" platform.