Trump Admits Hillary is Way Smarter Than Him

The timeline:

• September 23, 2015: The non-partisan Commission on Presidential Debates announces the debate schedule for the 2016 election.  Donald Trump raises no objections.
• April 14, 2016: The NFL releases its schedule for the 2016 season.  Donald Trump still raises no concerns about conflicts between the NFL schedule and the presidential debate schedule.
• May 3, 2016: Ted Cruz drops out of the race for the Republican nomination, all but clinching the nomination for Trump.  Still not a peep out of Trump about the debates.
• July 29, 2016: Donald Trump accuses Hillary Clinton of trying to 'rig' the debates by scheduling two of them at times that conflict with the NFL schedule.

Now of course Trump is, as usual, full of shit (more on that later), but just for a moment, let's assume everything he's saying is 100% true.  In that case, Trump is saying that Hillary Clinton successfully manipulated the scheduling of the debates to her advantage TEN MONTHS before Trump figured out there was a problem.

So he's basically admitting that she's ten times smarter than he is, right?

One other thing.  When making his accusation --- as usual, on the basis of no evidence whatsoever --- Trump claimed that he received a letter from the NFL saying "This is ridiculous. Why are the debates against --".

Well, we know Trump is lying about this.  How do we know?  Because the NFL didn't even start planning its schedule until the 2015 regular season ended on January 3, 2016, more than 3 months after the debate schedule was announced.  If conflicting with the debates was a problem for them, they could have scheduled around them.

Also, the NFL denied sending Trump any letter.  So there's that, too.

Trump: Historically Bad

The Youtube video and social media have only been around for about two election cycles now, and I'm no historian.  But I have to believe that the level of bipartisan opposition we're seeing to Trump is historic --- certainly unprecedented in my lifetime.

If you have the misfortune to know a Trump supporter, show them this video.  Just show it to them, and hope it sinks in.

There's really no excuse to vote for Trump.  None.  If everyone of voting age took their civic duty seriously, Hillary would win in a shutout.  538-0 in the electoral college, and 90+ percent of the popular vote, with a sprinkling here and there for Gary Johnson and Jill Stein, etc.

The Republican Party: Party of Trump, Party of Hate

How appropriate.

On the same night that Donald Trump officially became the Republican nominee for president, the GOP convention highlighted a tweet from the white supremacist group VDARE.

This seals it.  The Republican party is now officially the party of hate.

"But," Trump's defenders will object, "the tweet itself isn't racist. Just because a white supremacist group supports Trump's message doesn't mean that Trump or the Republicans are racist!"

Sorry, that excuse doesn't hold water any more.  Trump has long since passed getting the benefit of the doubt.  All the way back in January, people were already writing articles about Trump's habit of retweeting white supremacists.  In February, he was still doing it.  He was still doing it in April.  And of course in July, Trump famously tweeted out his own anti-Semitic attack on Hillary.  Lots of people use Twitter, and a political candidate can't know the extreme views that one or two or a half-dozen of his supporters might hold.  But Trump has established a definite affinity for white supremacists.

Tonight is the night that the Republican party embraced Trump, so it's appropriate that tonight is the night the Republican party embraced the white supremacist brand.  A political convention is not just about anointing your party's standard-bearer in the upcoming presidential election; it's also about putting on a show to tell the rest of the country and the world what you stand for.  And if you want to distance yourself from white supremacists, you do the work to make sure you check every tweet you highlight, especially when your nominee has the history that Trump does.

But tonight, the Republican party broadcast it's warm embrace of hatred and bigotry for all to see.  This is why henceforth in this blog, I shall refer to the Republican party only as the Party of Hate.  They proudly showed their true colors; I think we owe it to them and the country to call them out for what they are.

Everyone, Please Stop Killing Police Officers

Today in Baton Rouge, a Missouri man named Gavin Long shot and killed three police officers.  This follows the killing of 5 Dallas police officers just a few days ago.

Reports are still sketchy, but at this time, it is being reported that Long was affiliated with an anti-government extremist group called the "New Freedom Group".  The Dallas shooter, Micah Johnson, appeared to be motivated by recent police killings of black men in Baton Rouge and Minneapolis, and appeared to have ties to the New Black Panther movement.

Just to be clear: all killings are wrong.  All killings of police officers are wrong, whether your reasons for killing stem from your opposition to the government or your support for ending racism.

This is something Everyone Knows.  Killing police officers is wrong.  The only question I have is whether politicians on all sides will condemn all such killings equally.

The Lunacy of Voting for Jill Stein

Also cross-posted to Facebook . . . .

For those of us on the left, the election essentially boils down to something like Let's Make a Deal. Monty Hall has already given us a new car --- let's say a Nissan Leaf, since we're good progressives and environmentalists and all. We can keep it, or we can take what's behind the curtain.

The curtain has a picture of a really snazzy, eco-friendly, self-driving Tesla on it. We don't know what's BEHIND the curtain, but there's a 75% chance it's the exact same Leaf we already have, and a 25% chance it's a gaggle of rabid monkeys who will run out and chew off your legs from the knees down.

The Jill Stein supporters are planning to take what's behind the curtain, because they really want the Tesla.

Contain Your Disappointment: Bernie Endorses Hillary

I posted this to Facebook earlier today, and have been stunned that so far, NO ONE has reacted to it.  Granted, I only have 18 friends, but most of them are pretty darn political.  Anyway, I thought this was one of my better rants, so . . . .

For the Sanders supporters feeling 'betrayed' by his endorsement of Clinton . . . .

Sanders helped the Democrats draft probably the most progressive major party platform ever, including

1. Breaking up 'too big to fail' banks,
2. Re-enacting a form of Glass-Steagal,
3. Abolition of the death penalty,
4. Calling for a constitutional amendment to overturn Citizens United,
5. $15/hour minimum wage,
6. An aggressive plan to combat climate change,
7. Marijuana decriminalization
8. Policies to try to prevent more tragic shootings like the recent ones in Louisiana and Minnesota.

I'm guessing that if someone had told you 2 years ago that a Democrat would be running on this platform, you would have been eager to support them. But some Sanders supporters don't want to vote for this platform, because they don't want to vote for the nominee.

But --- what did you THINK would happen? Sanders' campaign was a long shot from the start. If you went into this thinking it would end with Sanders getting the nomination, I'm sorry for your disappointment, but you were really fooling yourself. From the start, Sanders' campaign was about influencing the platform, and he succeeded beyond what any reasonable person could have imagined. If you vote for someone else now, you're the one betraying Sanders, not the other way around.

Setting aside the fact that most arguments which call into question Hillary's competence or ethics are B.S. fabricated by the right wing echo chamber PRECISELY to con people into voting for 'anyone but Hillary', exactly how many of Sanders' positions would the Democrats need to adopt to satisfy you?

If Hillary wins, she will probably still have to deal with a Republican-controlled House, and so won't be able to deliver everything in the platform. Hell, something like a constitutional amendment is aspirational at best anyway. But a vote for Hillary is a vote to enact a fair bit of progressive policy. A vote for Jill Stein is a vote not to enact anything, but to make you feel better (I guess) when you look at yourself in the mirror. And of course, there's always the small but very real chance that a vote for Jill Stein allows the reincarnation of Benito Mussolini to start doing whatever he damn well pleases (remember Nader in Florida in 2000).

If that happens, I doubt your principles will do much to comfort you.