Debate night.

I guess I will be joining the 100 million or so other Americans who will be watching the presidential debate tonight. 

The bar has been set so low for trump that if he simply stands there without falling asleep, throwing up, or calling Lester Holt the n word, he will be declared the winner.  

Poor Hilary is going to have to try and prove to America than she is more qualified to be president than a serial lying reality television star who refuses to release his tax returns.

 Good luck with that, because given all of this, she is still in a dead heat with the guy.

I will also be live- tweeting over at @fieldnegro with a few thousand of my twitter friends, so feel free to come over and join me.

*Pic from washingtonpost.com

One more deplorable. ("Blood needed to redeem something"?)

I think we are going to need a larger "bucket" for trump's deplorable supporters, because there is one more we have to add to that sordid lot.

Field hands, I give you the governor of Kentucky, a man who personifies the modern day far right conservative.

He is an elected official who has some rather extreme views about where we are going as a country.

"Kentucky Governor Matt Bevin has not forgotten the Jefferson quote. Speaking at the Values Voter Summit in Washington over the weekend, the Republican recalled it while suggesting that a Hillary Clinton victory in the presidential election could necessitate bloodshed:

I want us to be able to fight ideologically, mentally, spiritually, economically, so that we don’t have to do it physically. But that may, in fact, be the case….

Somebody asked me yesterday, I did an interview, “Do you think it’s possible, if Hillary Clinton were to win the election, do you think it’s possible that we’ll be able to survive, that we’d ever be able to recover as a nation?” And while there are people who have stood on this stage and said we would not, I would beg to differ. I do think it would be possible, but at what price? At what price? The roots of the tree of liberty are watered by what? The blood of who? The tyrants, to be sure, but who else? The patriots.

Whose blood will be shed? It may be that of those in this room. It might be that of our children and grandchildren. I have nine children. It breaks my heart to think that it might be their blood is needed to redeem something, to reclaim something that we, through our apathy and our indifference, have given away. Don’t let it happen.

As the Lexington Herald-Leader reports, those comments took many listeners aback. On Monday, Bevin said in a statement that his comments had been misconstrued and referred to those fighting in the military." [Source]

Nothing new here, the governor has only been echoing what the candidate and some of his surrogates have been saying all along: That if their guy doesn't win things could get violent.

For folks who hate people from the Third World as much as they do, they sure like to revert to Third World type politics. Trying to take out your opponent via bloodshed is how desperate people who depend on their political leaders for food and housing do things; It's not how we conduct our politics here in the United States.

Finally, I just saw on MSNBC that Newsweek magazine will be running a story tomorrow which might give us some clues as to why Mr trump won't release his taxes. I am looking forward to it.
Because, for the life of me, I can't understand why the press in this country will not demand that this man releases his tax returns.

I am going to close with something I asked Mr trump to do a few posts ago: Mr trump, if the IRS is in fact auditing you--- and this prevents you from releasing your tax returns--- please produce the letter from the IRS informing you of said audit.

With all due respect to your campaign manager, I am not going to call you a flat out liar, but given your history, I would just like to verify.  

*Pic from huffingtonpst.com

Making sure the race stays close.

I think the following article from Jonathan Allen is on point and answers to some degree a question that I have been asking this entire political season: Why does the main stream media ignore the multiple trump scandals and focus like a laser on Hilary's e-mails?

"The  reporter's job is to "comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable" — a credo that, humorously, was originally written as a smear of the self-righteous nature of journalists. And so the justification for going after a public figure increases in proportion to his or her stature. The bigger the figure, the looser the restraints.

After a quarter of a century on the national stage, there's no more comfortable political figure to afflict than Hillary Clinton. And she's in for a lot of affliction over the next year and half.

That's generally a good way for reporters to go about their business. After all, the more power a person wants in our republic, the more voters should know about her or him. But it's also an essential frame for thinking about the long-toxic relationship between the Clintons and the media, why the coverage of Hillary Clinton differs from coverage of other candidates for the presidency, and whether that difference encourages distortions that will ultimately affect the presidential race.

The Clinton rules are driven by reporters' and editors' desire to score the ultimate prize in contemporary journalism: the scoop that brings down Hillary Clinton and her family's political empire. At least in that way, Republicans and the media have a common interest.

I understand these dynamics well, having co-written a book that demonstrated how Bill and Hillary Clinton used Hillary's time at State to build the family political operation and set up for their fourth presidential campaign. That is to say, I've done a lot of research about the Clintons' relationship with the media, and experienced it firsthand. As an author, I felt that I owed it to myself and the reader to report, investigate, and write with the same mix of curiosity, skepticism, rigor, and compassion that I would use with any other subject. I wanted to sell books, of course. But the easier way to do that — proven over time — is to write as though the Clintons are the purest form of evil. The same holds for daily reporting. Want to drive traffic to a website? Write something nasty about a Clinton, particularly Hillary." [ Read more]

If you listen to and watch some in the political chattering class you would think that Hillary's sloppiness with her e-mails and ignorance about her e-mail server is the same as being a bigot, a liar, or flat out sociopath. I can assure you field hands that it is not.

What we are witnessing now is probably the most shameful period in American journalism, where the candidacy of a man who is probably the most dangerous to ever run for the office of president is being normalized,

There are, of course, exceptions. Good for Soledad O'Brien for calling out her colleagues today.

It would have been nice if they heard her. But sadly, we know that they won't. What she is saying just doesn't fit the corporate media agenda.

They have to make this thing a horse race. It's the only way the public will stay engaged and watch their stations to drive up those precious advertising dollars. I mean let's face it, a presidential election only comes around once every four years

*Pic from salon.com

Hairpingate.

These are serious times, so tonight I want to blog about a serious subject: Donald trump's hairpin.

Now I know that your fist impression is that it is a silly thing to write about, but think about it, do you want the leader of your country (not to mention the free world) wearing a hairpin to important state meetings?

You don't have to answer that. I know that your answer depends on whether you belong to the cult of trump or not. If you are a trumpster, you will justify the hairpin by saying that he needed it in his hair because he didn't want to give the Mexican president the impression that he is unkempt. Or, if you are prone to conspiracy theories, you believe the story that it was really a tiny radio to translate what the Mexican president was saying and to give him talking points while he stood there looking "presidential".  If you are trump himself, though, you are calling your lawyers right now to start drawing up the papers for that Hair Club For Men lawsuit.

Friend of mine earlier today: "I am sorry dog, I am not voting for a man who wears a bobby pin in public. Period."

"Trump has often made a show of proving that his hair is real, that it is his own, but even casual Trump observers can see that his unusual coif doesn’t bespeak a hairpiece, but a hairdo combed with the skill of a Jedi to give the appearance of a full head of hair. Now, you can all start poring over old Trump videos looking for bobby pins."

Tommy,  I think will pass. I have seen enough of this guy for two lifetimes.

* Pic from mediaite.com

Governor, we are not "the enemy'.

  One of Donald trump's biggest supporters is a guy named Paul Le Page. Mr. LePage happens to be the governor of the lovely state of Maine, and he has some very interesting views about people of color.

"Speaking about Maine's effort to combat drug crime, Paul LePage said that "the enemy right now... are people of color or people of Hispanic origin".

When you go to war... and the enemy dresses in red and you dress in blue, then you shoot at red," he said.

Leading Democrats have urged him to resign.

Mr LePage made the comments while seeking to clarify remarks he made earlier in the week which were criticized as racist.

The press conference capped a controversial 72 hours for the Republican governor."

This is the same guy who went all Travis Bickle on a fellow lawmaker because he thought that the guy called him a racist.

Anyway, Le Page is catching some heat for his behavior, but I am pretty sure that he won't be forced to resign. In fact, you could argue, that given the demographic makeup of the state of Maine, he will win reelection if he decides to run for governor.

This is not the same for his buddy, Donald trump. In order to win the election to become the 45th president of the United States, trump will have to win significantly more minority votes than -according to the polls- he is currently going to receive.  With this in mind, Donald has put a full- court press on trying to court the black vote. Unfortunately for the orange haired one, though, that has not been going so well.

Once again, he gave a speech to an almost all white audience about "the African Americans" and about how  he plans to make America better by forcing them to clean up their act. You could see him reading the lines from the teleprompter as his handlers no doubt kept their fingers crossed. 

They wrote all the right things for him about how African Americans had contributed to America's greatness and how not all African Americans (as he implied before) were living in poverty and looking over their shoulders for fear of being shot, and he was delivering the message---- meant for college educated whites and white suburban mothers to a barn full of screaming right wingers.  The optics was sickening, and the speech was predictable.

The worse part of trump's day started before the speech. This is when he took it upon himself to use the tragic death of Dwyane Wade's (Donald, note the spelling) cousin to score cheap political points. 

"Donald Trump tastelessly used the tragic shooting death of basketball star Dwyane Wade’s cousin to appeal to black voters — but he couldn’t even spell the Chicago Bulls player’s name correctly.

“Dwayne Wade's cousin was just shot and killed walking her baby in Chicago. Just what I have been saying. African-Americans will VOTE TRUMP!” Trump tweeted Saturday, a day after 32-year-old Nykea Aldridge was shot dead in the city's South Side. The mom of four did not appear to be the target of the shooting.

Critics swiftly condemned the Republican presidential hopeful's callous message — which at first offered no condolences to Aldridge’s grieving family — and mocked the real estate mogul for misspelling Wade’s first name.

Three hours later, Trump deleted the typo tweet and sent out a new message, which was identical to his first post but with the correct spelling of Dwyane."

 I bet Donald wishes that he was running to be governor of Maine instead of president of the United States, then he wouldn't have to deal with "the blacks".           

*Pic courtesy of huffingtonpost.com  

Memo to HIllary: Time to hide Bill.

I am now convinced that Bubba does not want his wife to become president of the United States. I mean how else do you explain his boneheaded move to ----not so secretly meet with the Attorney General on an airport tarmac of all places? 

Bill Clinton is supposed to be a world class politician, so he had to have known what the optics of such a meeting would mean. He had t have known that wingnuts and the FOX VIEWS crowd would be all over it. And honestly, I can't blame them. It just wasn't a good look.

Now the AG seems to be a fine lady, and I take her at her word that there was no discussion about the e-mail investigation with Bubba's wife, but as an experienced lawyer she should know the dangers of having anything even resembling an ex-parte conversation.

I don't take calls from other lawyers or litigants involved in any of my cases for a reason.  

Finally, Hillary's husband is doing his best to sink her campaign, but she can take comfort in the fact that her opponent is trying to torpedo his own campaign as well.

Consider his numerous idiotic pronouncements over the past few days. Mexican planes attacking? Are you serious? No wonder his campaign is in chaos and his staff is bailing on him faster than a vegetarian from a steak house.

Now that I think about it, trump might not want to be president, either. I think that this was all initially a big joke to him, and that he woke up one day and said, Holy crap! I'm winning?!

Yes Donald, you are wining, and if Hillary doesn't put her husband in check, you will really be surprised come November.    

*Pic from democracynow.org

   

 

   

"Empire state of mind."

*"New York, concrete jungle where dreams are made of
There's nothin' you can't do
Now you're in New York
These streets will make you feel brand new
The lights will inspire you
Let's hear it for New York, New York,
New York.."

Yeah, let's hear it for New York. TonightIt's their turn to vote for presidential candidates. Three of the candidates, like Jay Z, are going to claim that they rep New York, but I don't know about that.

Bernie was born and raised there, but he got out as soon as he could, Hillary moved there to get elected, and Donald is from...well, another planet.  

Speaking of Donald, he might have some problems. I am not talking about him mistaking the heroes  who work at 7eleven for the heroes who worked after 9/11. I am talking about him claiming to be down there and knowing some of the people who were killed.

"Donald Trump has a 9/11 problem — and it’s not that he called it “7/11” on the eve of the New York primary.

 

At a rally in Buffalo, N.Y., Monday, the Republican frontrunner referred to the wrong date while recalling the 2001 terror attacks — a flub that was soon trending online. But it was a story about his own experience at Ground Zero that is drawing scrutiny.

 

“Everyone who helped clear the rubble — and I was there, and I watched, and I helped a little bit — but I want to tell you: Those people were amazing,” Trump said. “Clearing the rubble. Trying to find additional lives. You didn’t know what was going to come down on all of us — and they handled it.”

 

The real estate mogul’s anecdote was meant to illustrate his “New York values” — a phrase that has become a conservative flashpoint in Trump’s battle with Texas Sen. Ted Cruz in the race for the GOP nomination.

 

But his assertion that he helped clear rubble in the search for 9/11 survivors is fraught with questions.

 

“Did he mean he picked up a few chunks of concrete?” Philip Bump writes in the Washington Post. “Sent staff to assist? It’s not clear.”

 

It’s clear that Trump was at or near Ground Zero in the days following the attacks.

New York Newsday spotted Trump there on Sept. 13, according to this excerpt cited in Bump’s report:

The workers are so worn out that they barely glance at the sight of Donald Trump, every hair in place and impeccably dressed in a black suit, pressed white shirt and red tie, walking into the plaza with his cellular phone to his ear. “No, no. The building’s gone,” he says into the phone.

The same day, standing three blocks from Ground Zero, Trump gave an interview to a German television reporter who asked the real estate mogul whether he would be involved in the reconstruction efforts.

 

“Well, I have a lot of men down here right now,” Trump replied. “We have over 100 and we have about 125 coming. So we’ll have a couple of hundred people down here.”' [Story]

 

You gotta love Donald. All  this and the people of New York will  still give him a great majority of the votes tonight. 

 

"8 million stories, out there in the naked
City it's a pity, half of y'all won't make it.."

 

Those 8 million stories could all be negative ones about Donald and he would still make it.

 

Let's hear it once again for New York. It's been that type of political season.

 

*Pic from interactive. nydailynews.com

 

 

 

 

 

 

American psychos.

I     I was watching the republican debate last night, and I was thinking to myself, how did we come to this? Forget, for a minute, that the candidates told lie after lie after lie about their previous statements and policies. (It was so bad with Trump that he lied about his own words on his own website.) Not to mention their whining about everything from the green room to the moderators. There were so many of them that the poor moderators couldn't keep up.  But hey, this is where we are with this party these days; everyone thinks that they can be the leader of the free world.

In a way I blame Barack Obama for this phenomenon. (If that n****r can do it so can we.)The "derangement syndrome" has been so strong that the folks on the other side wanted the reddest meat thrown at them to satisfy their hunger and hatred of the "hope and change" guy.

Then there are those folks in the so called middle--- the independents as they call themselves. They are not much better. Many of these same people support Trump now. He is the new outsider who will bring change to Washington.

Eight years ago they wanted the "magic Negro," but not even the tall, magical, bi-racial- "well spoken"-fellow from Chicago could deliver on that fantasy. To make matters worse, the racial animus and ignorance which was hidden under the surface for years came roaring to the top. And it wasn't just the dumb rednecks in places like Mississippi and Arkansas. Powerful people in the halls of Congress harbored this hatred as well. (You lie!)

So here we are. No matter what he (Obama) did could have been enough them. He could have given everyone of his haters a house, a car, and tax free income for life, and they would have complained that the house doesn't have an ocean view.

"Over time, the hostility toward Obama grew dramatically, and so did racist statements. Actually, it did not take very long. One year into his presidency, ABC News catalogued an array of racially tinged and overtly racist statements or actions taken against Obama. They came from election and party officials and media figures, including Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh. In the years since, the number of prominent figures using race as a wedge only grew. They include a New Hampshire police commissioner using the "N" word to refer to the president, a Montana federal district judge sending racist emails, and many others.

Most troubling is that some of the most loathsome comments have been enabled and legitimized. After Ted Nugent called the president of the United States a "subhuman mongrel"—a term CNN's Wolf Blitzer noted was used by the Nazis to justify the extermination of Jews—Texas gubernatorial candidate Greg Abbott welcomed this incendiary and hateful figure at a campaign event. And Colorado Senate candidate Tom Tancredo excitedly announced that he had gotten Nugent to contribute one of his assault weapons for Tancredo to auction off to help finance his campaign.*
 

When Ann Coulter referred to the black president as a "monkey" for Vladimir Putin—one of the most vile terms to apply to an African American, a term that, when used without malice by the late Howard Cosell to refer to a football player, resulted in massive criticism and ultimate removal from Monday Night Football—Fox News host Sean Hannity was taken aback, albeit in a bemused way, and offered Coulter a chance to rephrase. She refused. Many conservatives criticized her for the remarks, but she was right back on Hannity's TV and radio shows without any hiatus or punishment."

But it's almost over now. Soon, the family of color will be leaving the White House. America's political class will go back to "normal",  and  hopefully political debates will once again look like....well, debates.

*Pic from msnbc.com












      

One flew over the GOP nest.

"Freedom isn't to do whatever you want to do, it's to do what you ought to do" ..."

Huh? I told you all that Ricky [I should be in a] Sanitarium is crazy, but you wouldn't listen.

Folks, make no mistake, A Rick [I should be in a] Sanitarium presidency would be scary for A-merry-ca.

I know all about Rick [I should be in a] Sanitarium, I am from Pistolvania. He was one of our Senators here before we decided to throw his ass out by 16 percentage points. Now that he has a national stage the rest of A-merry-ca is finding out about the guy as well.

Comparing O to Hitler. Wanting to do away with federal AND state involvement with education. (Yes, Ricky would prefer if all the children in A-merry-ca were home schooled like his own. Shhhh, let's not mention the fact that he stole money from the people of Pistolvania while doing it.)Wanting to do away with pre-natal care for pregnant women, and calling the religion of the president of these divided states "phony." Wow! This all makes him declaring contraception harmful to women seem like the norm. I will give Ricky credit; he is doubling down on crazy.

"The idea that the federal government should be running schools, frankly much less that the state government should be running schools, is anachronistic. It goes back to the time of industrialization of America when people came off the farms where they did home-school or have the little neighborhood school, and into these big factories, so we built equal factories called public schools. And while those factories as we all know in Ohio and Pennsylvania have fundamentally changed, the factory school has not."

"Anachronistic" Rick? Oh the irony. Folks, believe me, if there is anything that belongs in another time it's Rick [I should be in a] Sanitarium.

"There's nothing - there's no gift, no Christmas gift, that could be given better than Rick Santorum to the Democrats,"

I know that they don't believe me, but I want to say this to my republican friends in all sincerity: If Donald Trump believes that the guy heading for the nomination of your party is unelectable, just what do you think a normal person in A-merry-ca is thinking about him? Think about it.