the Donald: "And I will tell you, Hillary Clinton is raising your taxes, folks. You can look at me. She’s raising your taxes really high. And what that’s going to do is a disaster for the country. But she is raising your taxes and I’m lowering your taxes. That in itself is a big difference. We are going to be thriving again. We have no growth in this country. There’s no growth. If China has a GDP of 7 percent, it’s like a national catastrophe. We’re down at 1 percent. And that’s, like, no growth. And we’re going lower, in my opinion. And a lot of it has to do with the fact that our taxes are so high, just about the highest in the world. And I’m bringing them down to one of the lower in the world. And I think it’s so important — one of the most important things we can do. But she is raising everybody’s taxes massively."

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CLINTON: Well, everything you’ve heard just now from Donald is not true. I’m sorry I have to keep saying this, but he lives in an alternative reality.
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Donald Trump called it locker room talk. It’s not.

I’ve been cadging quotes in locker rooms for more than 40 years, and I have never heard anything like the things Trump said in 2005 when he didn’t know a hot mic was recording his conversation with Access Hollywood’s Billy Bush.

That’s the first thing I told my wife Friday evening when we heard about all this. I wanted her to know this is not how men talk when they’re together. They tell bawdy jokes sometimes. They make unkind comments sometimes. They talk about sexual conquests sometimes. But they simply do not talk about grabbing women by their genitals — bragging about sexual assault in the immunity of their inner sanctums.

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I often spend time chatting with other men when our wives are out of earshot. (The beach and the golf course are no more than a locker room without walls.) We talk about sports and beer for hours. My wife will ask what we talked about. When I tell her, she just sighs. Men don’t talk about anything real, she’ll say. And it’s hard for me to argue. We’re idiots. But I have never in my life heard anything like the smarmy discourse on that recording.

The things Trump said, the things that are echoing all over the internet and the TV dial this weekend, are deeply demeaning to women, profoundly so. But remember this: When he passes it off as mere locker-room banter, he demeans men, too.
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President Barack Obama on Sunday called Donald Trump's rhetoric "unbelievable" and said it exposes his insecurities in his first public appearance since the release of a video in which the Republican presidential candidate speaks vulgarly about women.

"One of the most disturbing things about this election is just the unbelievable rhetoric coming from the top of the Republican ticket. I don't need to repeat it, there are children in the room," Obama said while campaigning for Senate candidate Tammy Duckworth in Chicago.

"Demeaning women, degrading women, but also minorities, immigrants, people of other faiths, mocking the disabled, insulting our troops, insulting our veterans -- that tells you a couple of things," Obama continued. "That tells you that he's insecure enough that he pumps himself up by putting other people down, not a character trait that I would advise for someone in the Oval Office. It tells you he doesn't care much about the basic values we try to impart to our kids. I tells you he would be careless with the civility and respect that a real vibrant Democracy requires."

The president did not directly mention Trump's recently uncovered 2005 remarks in which he talks about groping women, but the comments were clearly directed at the most recent discovery that has led to dozens of Republicans pulling their support.
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Punk Talk is a method of compensating for a lack of confidence and low self esteem. It is commonly identified with adolescence, a period during which young people are seeking group acceptance and dealing with issues of self-esteem. Punk Talk is intended to convince others (as well as the speaker) that the speaker is NOT A BIT fearful and NOT A BIT intimidated by anyone - or anything. Punk Talk is the affectation of real self confidence and meant to convince others the speaker is possessed of actual healthy self esteem. The good news for teens is most grow up and grow out of it. They will mature, become adults and develop a healthy self esteem and not need Punk Talk anymore. But not all teens do. Which brings me to the purpose of this post.

Now, let's be clear about this. All of us, at one time or another, can get angry and 'lash out' at someone. But Conservatives it seems, almost can't along without the aid of Punk Talk. That Punk Talk is an outgrowth of self esteem issues is apparent in that it nearly always involves speaking derisively of the other person ... rather than of what the other person is saying. The derisive speech is intended to send the message to the listener: "Ha! I look down on you!" This kind of talk is only necessary when the speaker actually is lacking in confidence and needs a confidence 'boost'. Even a short time on this site reveals the importance of Punk Talk to Conservatives - based upon how much they use it. Many Conservatives posting on this site seem to think Punk Talk takes the place of a valid argument(!?).
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When Donald Trump claimed, "the election's going to be rigged," he wasn't entirely wrong. But the threat was not, as Trump warned, from Americans committing the crime of "voting many, many times." What's far more likely to undermine democracy in November is the culmination of a decade-long Republican effort to disenfranchise voters under the guise of battling voter fraud. The latest tool: Election officials in more than two dozen states have compiled lists of citizens whom they allege could be registered in more than one state – thus potentially able to cast multiple ballots – and eligible to be purged from the voter rolls.

The data is processed through a system called the Interstate Voter Registration Crosscheck Program, which is being promoted by a powerful Republican operative, and its lists of potential duplicate voters are kept confidential. But Rolling Stone obtained a portion of the list and the names of 1 million targeted voters. According to our analysis, the Crosscheck list disproportionately threatens solid Democratic constituencies: young, black, Hispanic and Asian-American voters – with some of the biggest possible purges underway in Ohio and North Carolina, two crucial swing states with tight Senate races.

2016: First Presidential Election Since Voting Rights Gutted

America will vote for president in a country where it's easier to buy a gun than vote in many states
Like all weapons of vote suppression, Crosscheck is a response to the imaginary menace of mass voter fraud. In the mid-2000s, after the Florida-recount debacle, the Bush administration launched a five-year investigation into the allegedly rampant crime but found scant evidence of wrongdoing. Still, the GOP has perpetuated the myth in every national election since. Recently, North Carolina Board of Elections chief Kim Strach testified to her legislature that 35,750 voters are "registered in North Carolina and another state and voted in both in the 2012 general election." [Editor’s note: This quote was taken from the power point that accompanied Strach’s testimony. In a subsequent letter, she informed us that during her presentation she "stressed that we were not suggesting that 35,750 voters had committed any type of fraud. My testimony was that the data we received from the Crosscheck Program showed that in the 2012 general election, there were 35,750 people who voted in North Carolina whose first and last names and dates of birth matched persons who voted in the same election in another state.”] Yet despite hiring an ex-FBI agent to lead the hunt, the state has charged exactly zero double voters from the Crosscheck list. Nevertheless, tens of thousands face the loss of their ability to vote – all for the sake of preventing a crime that rarely happens. So far, Crosscheck has tagged an astonishing 7.2 million suspects, yet we found no more than four perpetrators who have been charged with double voting or deliberate double registration.

On its surface, Crosscheck seems quite reasonable. Twenty-eight participating states share their voter lists and, in the name of dispassionate, race-blind Big Data, seek to ensure the rolls are up to date. To make sure the system finds suspect voters, Crosscheck supposedly matches first, middle and last name, plus birth date, and provides the last four digits of a Social Security number for additional verification.

In reality, however, there have been signs that the program doesn't operate as advertised. Some states have dropped out of Crosscheck, citing problems with its methodology, as Oregon's secretary of state recently explained: "We left [Crosscheck] because the data we received was unreliable."
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Private polling in both parties is showing that Donald Trump’s decline is much worse than is currently being reported. The situation is so dire that if Trump doesn’t turn it around at the second debate, the Republican Party is planning to abandon him.

The New York Times reported that both parties have private polling showing that Trump’s spiral is worse than is being reported in public polls:

Should Mr. Trump falter badly in his second debate with Hillary Clinton on Sunday in St. Louis, Republican congressional candidates may take it as a cue to flee openly from their nominee, said two senior Republicans involved at high levels of the campaign who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss private party strategy.

Mr. Trump has already slipped perceptibly in public polls, trailing widely this week in Pennsylvania and by smaller margins in Florida and North Carolina — three states he cannot afford to lose. But private polling by both parties shows an even more precipitous drop, especially among independent voters, moderate Republicans and women, according to a dozen strategists from both parties who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the data was confidential.

The idea that the Republican Party has a backup plan that involves cutting Trump loose was first reported in August. The debates have always been make or break for Trump regarding continued party support.
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Back in the 1990s the political establishment made fun of Hillary Clinton for her comment that the press was missing the real story of “the vast right-wing conspiracy” that had been dogging her family throughout her husband’s presidency. Any mention of it provoked eye-rolls and knowing smirks among the cognoscenti, who were all absolutely sure that it was just more evidence of Clinton’s guilty conscience over something.
But she was right. And there was some real reporting on it even at the time although, as it was revealed, the Republicans would throw out another shiny object and the press pack would go running in the opposite direction like a herd of gazelles. So it was very difficult to get a handle on the whole story. For instance, this 1999 article by Jill Abramson and Don Van Natta in the New York Times laid out the previously untold story story of the small group of conservative lawyers who concocted the Paula Jones lawsuit and were instrumental in pushing the Monica Lewinsky matter, among other things. As it happens one of those lawyers was a fellow named George Conway, who was not yet married to Kellyanne Fitzpatrick, who is now Donald Trump’s latest campaign manager. The Drudge Report drove much of the scandal, and George Conway was believed to have been Drudge’s main source, most memorably the story about President Clinton’s alleged “distinguishing characteristic” which pundits and commentators gleefully discussed on television for months. It’s a small right-wing world after all.

The book “The Hunting of the President” and the new e-book “The Hunting of Hillary,” both by Joe Conason and Gene Lyons, finally put together the overall narrative of what happened. But even at the time, it was obvious that there was a concerted effort, funded by millionaire GOP donors, to throw mud on the Clinton administration in an attempt to either get the president impeached or force him to resign. We all know how that ended.

One of the biggest players in the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy was an outfit called Judicial Watch, formed in the early 90s by a conservative gadfly named Larry Klayman. Klayman was a one-man wrecking crew who filed more than 18 lawsuits against members of the Clinton administration costing them millions of dollars in legal fees. The most notable of these was a $90 million invasion of privacy suit filed against Hillary Clinton and others on behalf of the “victims” of Filegate, one of the many scandals for which both Bill and Hillary Clinton were completely exonerated by two different independent counsels. The lawsuit was colorfully described at the time by Jacob Weisberg of Slate:

Klayman has found an opening to harass his political opponents, inflicting costly all-day depositions on Harold Ickes, [George] Stephanopoulos, James Carville, Paul Begala, and many others … Klayman asks administration officials about whom they date, where they go after work, whether they were expelled from school for disciplinary problems. One 23-year-old White House assistant was interrogated about a triple murder that took place at a Starbucks in Georgetown. Klayman videotapes these depositions, excerpts of which air on Geraldo when Klayman appears on the program, and publishes the transcripts on the Internet. This is in pursuit of a case about the invasion of privacy, remember … The ultimate goal of the Filegate suit appears to be to inflict this treatment on Hillary Clinton.

That was just one of many Judicial Watch lawsuits, including one in which Klayman sued his own mother for $50,000, that went nowhere. But they did achieve their true purpose, which was to damage reputations, smear political opponents and inflict huge legal fees on anyone who happened to be in the administration.
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WASHINGTON — Three weeks after it looked like Donald Trump could challenge Hillary Clinton in Michigan, it now appears the Republican nominee may have squandered that chance with a poor debate performance, revelations about his taxes and erratic behavior on the campaign trail, an exclusive new Free Press/WXYZ-TV poll shows.

The poll showed Clinton, the Democratic nominee and former secretary of state, regaining an 11-percentage-point lead over Trump, 43%-32%, and clawing back levels of support among key voting blocs including women, African Americans and millennials. It came less than a month after a more-disciplined Trump had closed the gap to 3 percentage points in Michigan, which hasn’t voted for a Republican presidential nominee since 1988.

Now, with less than five weeks until the Nov. 8 election, Trump, a businessman, real estate mogul and reality TV star, may have a tough time trying to take back the momentum in a key battleground state; with his already high negative ratings climbing even higher and segments of the public he was counting on to win — men and voters with a high school diploma or less education — not backing him as strongly as was expected, at least not for now.



“The race is much more settled now no matter what demographic group you’re looking at,” said Bernie Porn {"Porn"??_B USA}, the pollster for Lansing-based EPIC-MRA, which performed the survey for the Free Press, WXYZ-TV (Channel 7) and their outstate partners. “It’s hard to imagine (Clinton losing Michigan) unless Hillary has a health (or some other) issue … I think the perceptions of Trump are pretty baked in.”
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Few issues have moved more quickly from fringe to consensus than the “Fight for $15.” When colleagues and I suggested at a Democratic political conference in early November 2012 that we should raise the minimum wage to $15, people in the audience literally laughed. When New York City fast-food workers first walked off the job two weeks later demanding a $15 minimum wage (more than twice the federal $7.25 rate, both then and now), the number was widely dismissed as overreaching and symbolic — a mere bargaining tactic on the part of workers who had little if any bargaining power at all. Nobody predicted what would follow. As an early and vocal advocate for $15, even I was surprised by how fast the dominoes would fall.


But as remarkable as this political progress has been, the political rhetoric surrounding the minimum wage remains surprisingly unchanged. Minimum wage opponents continue to deride every proposed increase as a surefire job killer, while reporters and pundits reliably characterize the passage of every minimum wage ordinance and statute as a dangerous experiment that threatens to harm the very people it’s intended to help. “California makes itself a guinea pig in a massive and risky minimum wage experiment,” tweeted the New York Times’s Noam Scheiber. “Raising minimum wage risky,” the Lexington, Kentucky Herald Leader’s headline tersely warned its readers following $15 victories in faraway California and New York. “Raising minimum wage hurts low-skill workers,” the Detroit News bluntly chimed in. “Even left-leaning economists say it’s a gamble,” Vox solemnly cautioned (without actually managing to cite a single left-leaning economist willing to pejoratively editorialize $15 as a “gamble.”)

No one captured this conventional economic orthodoxy better than Noah Smith, a very smart economist and writer for Bloomberg. Smith, in an article titled “Finally, an Answer to the Minimum Wage Question,” welcomed “the fact that, finally, we’ll have some data on how the $15 minimum wage would affect jobs.” In his article, Smith said he considered it a test because “in theory a higher minimum wage should cause increased unemployment.” Smith’s implication is that we have never run a minimum wage experiment before and that the increase is unprecedented in economic history. But the core assumption of Smith’s piece is a so-called “economic theory” — asserted as if it is a law of nature — that if the minimum wage goes up, employment must come down.

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But the confidence of the doomsayers and the anxiety of the pundits might make more sense to me if they hadn’t been making the same dire predictions since the minimum wage was invented 78 years ago — or if at least some of these dire predictions had actually managed to come true. In fact, contrary to the cautionary headlines, there is nothing “experimental” about raising the minimum wage. The federal minimum wage has been raised 22 times since it was first established in 1938 (state and local minimum wages have been raised hundreds of times), sometimes by as much as 87.5 percent in a single year — far less than the annual increases $15 advocates propose. So if the minimum wage opponents were correct, it should be incredibly easy to find overwhelming empirical evidence that minimum wage hikes cause the job losses they always predict:
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Only serious nerds like me eagerly await the annual Census Bureau reports on income, poverty and health insurance. But the just-released reports on 2015 justified the anticipation.

We expected good news; but last year, it turns out, the economy partied like it was 1999. And this tells us something very important — namely, that a government that wants to can make American society more equitable, improving the quality of life for ordinary families.

The reports showed strong progress on three fronts: rapid growth in the incomes of ordinary families — median income rose a remarkable 5.2 percent; a substantial decline in the poverty rate; and a significant further rise in health insurance coverage after 2014’s gains. It was a trifecta that we haven’t hit since, yes, 1999.

It’s true that the surge in median income comes after years of disappointment, and even now the typical family’s income, adjusted for inflation, is slightly lower than it was before the financial crisis. But the percentage of Americans without health insurance is now at a record low. And the overall performance of the Obama economy has given the lie to much of the criticism leveled at President Obama’s policies.
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