UNC board members tells male graduates, buy a nice ring for a woman, and both will increase in value

A Jesse Helms protege shared his Ozzie-and-Harriet worldview with UNC-Wilmington graduates at their graduation last weekend.

Tossing the one-minute welcome the university gave him to read, UNC governor Tom Fetzer, 64, launched into a six-minute lecture on "topics including continuing education, personal advice on finances, and technology," The Wilmington Star-News reported.

In his off-the-cuff remarks, Fetzer offered a view of life that would have made the late actor Doris Day weep with joy:

Let me just cut to the chase young ladies, there are only two things in this world you should borrow money for. Your continuing education and a house. Pay cash for everything else because it’s a depreciating asset and you will end up owing more than it is worth. And that is the road to ruin. Those are the parents clapping. Young men, I will add one thing to the list for which you may borrow money. A diamond ring. Because it will appreciate, and so will she.

Elected mayor of Raleigh in 1993, Fetzer spent six years seeking endless tax cuts, privatization of city services and arguing that arts funding was a waste of money. He then became a powerful lobbyist, land speculator, and political consultant to losing presidential candidates Elizabeth Dole, Newt Gingrich, and Marco Rubio.

He was elected state GOP chair in 2009 and, with gobs of money from dime store billionaire Art Pope, led the party to win control of the North Carolina General Assembly and gerrymander themselves into power for the next decade. The legislature, busy stacking the UNC board of governors with Republican pols while downsizing it to make the old white men feel more comfortable, appointed him in 2017.

Within a couple of months, Fetzer drafted and sent a letter chiding board chair Louis Bissette and system president Margaret Spellings for insufficient protection of a Confederate memorial on the UNC-Chapel Hill campus without showing it to 13 members.

He then joined a cabal of UNC board members to call for the board to create its own staff and move away from Chapel Hill to run the university system directly.

"The process of abandoning all beliefs, principles, values and policies in search of something in which no one believes but to which no one objects,” he said, reading Thatcher’s definition to the board on Sept. 7. “The process of avoiding the very issues that have to be solved, merely because you cannot get agreement on the way ahead.” 

“Divisions in this board, if respectful, will be very helpful,” he said. “Raging internal conflict is a long-held American tradition, and I think even the casual student of history would have to agree that nothing great in this country occurred without a raging, raucous, robust, passionate debate beforehand.”

In 2018, Fetzer launched a private investigation of a candidate for chancellor of Western Carolina University and circulated the results to the board. He explained,

Upon reviewing the WCU candidate’s 50-page curriculum vitae, using an obscure and highly sophisticated investigative tool called Google, it took me all of two minutes to confirm an apparent misrepresentation by the candidate on page 1 of the person’s resume.

Then Fetzer hired a PI friend to investigate the candidate, who withdrew from consideration after having been vetted by two consulting firms and presented by president Spellings for approval. Fetzer admitted he had been recommended for the job himself and that his position on the board gave him access to the personal information he exploited.

Spellings, who got the presidency in 2015 after the board ousted a respected but Democratic incumbent, lasted only three years as the General Assembly turned the board over with new governors from the increasingly radical end of the state GOP and the legislature itself. She resigned n 2018.

In 2009, Fetzer- then 54- filed suit against a talk show host who forwarded a letter suggested he was gay.

Tom Fetzer, who served as mayor from 1993 to 1999, is running to be chairman of the North Carolina Republican Party. He said an anonymous letter was sent to GOP leaders claiming that he is a homosexual. 

Fetzer said Curtis Wright, a radio and television talk show host in Wilmington, forwarded the letter to the officials. Fetzer sued Wright and the stations where he works in May 2009. 

"I am not gay – never have been, never will be. There is absolutely no evidence whatsoever to support any of the scurrilous allegations made in the anonymous attack on me," Fetzer wrote in a letter to Republicans. "I will spare no cost or hardship in defending my good name. I intend to vigorously pursue legal action against any and all who spread these lies."

Fetzer married- " in a small wedding"- four months later.

"What is was, wasn't football"

Nothing is more badly reported by the media than a lawsuit, and no lawsuits are more badly reported than Florida elections lawsuits.

Florida Senator Marco Rubio- more a water boy than a coach on the best of days- played Sidelines Expert the other day as he tweeted from the partisan gutter:

Imagine if NFL team was trailing 24-22 but in final seconds hits a 3 pt kick to win. Then AFTER game lawyers for losing team get a judge to order rules changed so that last second field goals are only 1 point

Well that’s how democrat lawyers plan to steal #Florida election 1/4

— Marco Rubio (@marcorubio) November 14, 2018

The twitterverse promptly dispatched Little Marco to the locker room:

I am being roasted for ‘3 pt kick’ tweet about election? Why? You think everyone who follows politics knows what a field goal is?

Besides,it’s absurd to claim I don’t know what a field goal is... that’s all my Dolphins have scored for 9 straight quarters https://t.co/PWc8QlrVd2

— Marco Rubio (@marcorubio) November 14, 2018

A Florida federal judge was not impressed:

Consider the game of football. Football fans may quibble about the substance of the rules, but no one quibbles that rules are necessary to play the game. See generally Nat’l Football League, 2018 Official Playing Rules of the National Football League (2018).

And no one quibbles that football referees make certain calls, under the rules, that deserve review. Indeed, not every call is going to be clear—the ultimate decision may hinge on highly subjective factors. Hence, a call will be overturned only when there is “clear and obvious visual evidence available that warrants the change.”

Among other things, the 2018 NFL Rules allow video review for plays involving possession, boundary lines, the line of scrimmage, and the goal line. See id. The NFL likewise provides review for disqualification of players. Id. Coaches may challenge calls themselves by throwing a red flag, or, in certain circumstances, the referees may initiate review on their own.

All that process. Just for a game.

In this case, the Plaintiffs have thrown a red flag. But this is not football. Rather, this is a case about the precious and fundamental right to vote—the right preservative of all other rights. And it is about the right of a voter to have his or her vote counted.

There is no doubt there must be election laws. There is no doubt that to run an election, the state must impose deadlines and rules to govern an efficient and transparent election process. There is no doubt that election officials must make certain calls, under the rules, that deserve review. And there is no doubt some of those calls may hinge on highly subjective factors. 

The precise issue in this case is whether Florida’s law that allows county election officials to reject vote-by-mail and provisional ballots for mismatched signatures—with no standards, an illusory process to cure, and no process to challenge the rejection— passes constitutional muster. The answer is simple. It does not.

As did Chris Christie- dispatching Marco Rubio- Bannon performed one service: he blabbed to Michael Wolff.

Less echo, more choice in Utah?

Orrin Hatch, December 19, 2017:

Well, Mr. President, I have to say that you’re living up to everything I thought you would. You’re one heck of a leader, and we’re all benefitting from it. This bill could not have passed without you. It couldn’t have passed without the Alaskan delegation. It couldn’t have passed without the leadership in the House and the Senate — Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell — and the other leaders as well.

All I can say is, is that we’re making headway. This is just the beginning. If you stop and think about it, this President hasn’t even been in office for a year, and look at all the things that he’s been able to get done — by sheer will, in many ways.

I just hope that we all get behind him every way we can, and we’ll get this country turned around in ways that will benefit the whole world, but, above all, benefit our people and bring us all to a realization of how really great America really is and how the rest of the world depends on us.

I love this country. I came from very humble roots. And I have to say, that this is one of the great privileges of my life to stand here on the White House lawn with the President of the United States, who I love and appreciate so much, and with these wonderful colleagues and Cabinet members who stand behind us.

And to see all of you and realize that you care too. All I can say is that God loves this country. We all know it. We wouldn’t be where we are without Him. And we love all of you. And we’re going to keep fighting, and we’re going to make this the greatest presidency that we’ve seen, not only in generations, but maybe ever.

Mitt Romney, March 3, 2016:

...Now that doesn't mean we don't have real problems and serious challenges. We do. At home, poverty persists. And wages are stagnant. The horrific massacres of Paris and San Bernardino. The nuclear ambitions of the Iranian mullahs. The aggressions of Putin. The growing assertiveness of China and the nuclear tests of North Korea confirm that we live in troubled and dangerous times. But if we make the right choices, America's future will be even better than our past and better than our present.

On the other hand, if we make improvident choices, the bright horizon I've described will not materialize. And let me put it very plainly. If we Republicans choose Donald Trump as our nominee, the prospects for a safe and prosperous future are greatly diminished. Let me explain why I say that. First on the economy. If Donald Trump's plans were ever implemented, the country would sink into prolonged recession. A few examples. His proposed 35 percent tariff-like penalties would

instigate a trade war and that would raise prices for consumers, kill our export jobs and lead entrepreneurs and businesses of all stripes to flee America.

His tax plan in combination with his refusal to reform entitlements and to honestly address spending would balloon the deficit and the national debt. So even though Donald Trump has offered very few specific economic plans, what little he has said is enough to know that he would be very bad for American workers and for American families. But you say, wait, wait, wait. Isn't he a huge business success? Doesn't he know what he's talking about?

No, he isn't and no, he doesn't.

(CHEERS AND APPLAUSE)

ROMNEY: Look, his -- his bankruptcies have crushed small businesses and the men and women who work for them. He inherited his business, he didn't create it. And whatever happened to Trump Airlines? How about Trump University? And then there's Trump Magazine and Trump Vodka and Trump Steaks and Trump Mortgage.

A business genius he is not.

Now, not every policy that Donald Trump has floated is bad, of course. He wants to repeal and replace Obamacare. He wants to bring jobs home from China and Japan. But his prescriptions to do those things are flimsy at best. At the last debate, all he could remember about his health care plan was to remove insurance boundaries between states. Successfully bringing jobs home requires serious policy and reforms that make America the place businesses want to come, want to plant and want to grow.

You can't punish business into doing what you want. Frankly, the only serious policy proposals that deal with a broad range of national challenges we confront today come from Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio and John Kasich. One of these men should be our nominee.

(CHEERS AND APPLAUSE)

ROMNEY: Now I know that some people want this race to be over. They look at history and say a trend like Mr. Trump's isn't going to be stopped. Perhaps. But the rules of political history have pretty much all been shredded during this campaign.

(LAUGHTER)

...Now let me turn to national security and the safety of our homes and loved ones. Mr. Trump's bombast is already alarming our allies and fueling the enmity of our enemies. Insulting all Muslims will keep many of them from fully engaging with us in their urgent fight against ISIS, and for what purpose? Muslim terrorists would only have to lie about their religion to enter the country. And then what he said about -- on "60 Minutes." Did you hear this? It was about Syria and ISIS, and it has to go down as the most ridiculous and dangerous idea of the entire campaign season. Let ISIS take out Assad, he said, and then we can pick up the remnants. Now, think about that. Let the most dangerous terror organization the world has ever known take over an entire country?

This recklessness is recklessness in the extreme. Now Donald Trump tells us that he is very, very smart.

(LAUGHTER)

ROMNEY: I'm afraid that when it comes to foreign policy he is very, very not smart.

(LAUGHTER)

(CHEERS AND APPLAUSE)

ROMNEY: Now I'm far from the first to conclude that Donald Trump lacks the temperament to be president.

After all, this is an individual who mocked a disabled reporter, who attributed a reporter's questions to a menstrual cycle, who mocked a brilliant rival who happened to be a woman due to her appearance, who bragged about his marital affairs, and who laces his public speeches with vulgarity.

Donald Trump says he admires Vladimir Putin, at the same time he has called George W. Bush a liar. That is a twisted example of evil trumping good.

(CHEERS AND APPLAUSE)

ROMNEY: There is a dark irony in his boasts of his sexual exploits during the Vietnam War. While at the same time, John McCain, whom he has mocked, was imprisoned and tortured.

Dishonesty is Donald Trump's hallmark. He claimed that he had spoken clearly and boldly against going into Iraq. Wrong. He spoke in favor of invading Iraq. He said he saw thousands of Muslims in New Jersey celebrating 9/11. Wrong. He saw no such thing. He imagined it. He's not of the temperament of the kind of stable, thoughtful person we need as a leader. His imagination must not be married to real power.

The president of the United States has long been the leader of the free world. The president and, yes, even the nominees of the country's great parties, helped define America to billions of people around the world. All of them bear the responsibility of being an example for our children and our grandchildren. Think of Donald Trump's personal qualities. The bullying, the greed, the showing off, the misogyny, the absurd third-grade theatrics.

You know, we have long referred to him as "The Donald." He's the only person in the entire country to whom we have added an article before his name, and it wasn't because he had attributes we admired.

(LAUGHTER)

ROMNEY: Now imagine your children and your grandchildren acting the way he does. Would you welcome that? Haven't we seen before what happens when people in prominent positions fail the basic responsibility of honorable conduct? We have. And it always injures our families and our country.

Watch, by the way, how he responds to my speech today.

(CHEERS AND APPLAUSE)

ROMNEY: Will he talk about our policy differences? Or will he attack me with every imaginable low road insult? This may tell you what you need to know about his temperament, his stability and his suitability to be president...

ROMNEY: Let me say that again. There's plenty of evidence that Mr. Trump is a con man, a fake. Mr. Trump has changed his positions not just over the years, but over the course of the campaign. And on the Ku Klux Klan, daily for three days in a row. We will only really know if he's a real deal or a phony if he releases his tax returns and the tape of his interview with the "New York Times." I predict that there are more bombshells in his tax returns. I predict that he doesn't give much, if anything, to the disabled and to our veterans.

I predict that he told the "New York Times" that his immigration talk is just that -- talk. And I predict that despite his promise to do so, first made over a year ago, that he will never ever release his tax returns. Never. Not the returns under audit; not even the returns that are no longer being audited. He has too much to hide. Nor will he authorize the release of the tapes that he made with the "New York Times."

If I'm right, you'll have all the proof you need to know that Donald Trump is indeed a phony. Attacking me as he surely will won't prove him any less of a phony. It's entirely in his hands to prove me wrong. All he has to do is release his back taxes like he promised he would and let us hear what he said behind closed -- doors to the "New York Times."

You know, Ronald Reagan used to quote a Scottish philosopher, who predicted that democracies and civilizations wouldn't last much longer than a couple hundred years. And John Adams wrote this, "Remember, democracy never lasts long; it soon wastes, exhausts and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide."

That's John Adams.

I believe that America has proven these dire predictions wrong for two reasons. First, we've been blessed with great presidents, with giants among us. Men of character, integrity and selflessness have led our nation from the very beginning. None were perfect. Each surely made mistakes. But in every case, they acted out of the desire to do what was right for America and for the cause of freedom.

The second reason is because we're blessed with a great people. People who at every critical moment of choosing have put the interests of the country above their own. These two things are related. Our presidents time and again have called on us to rise to the occasion. John F. Kennedy asked us to consider what we could do for our country. Lincoln drew upon the better angels of our nature to save the union.

I understand the anger Americans feel today. In the past, our presidents have channeled that anger and forged it into resolve, into endurance and high purpose, and into the will to defeat the enemies of freedom. Our anger was transformed into energy directed for good.

Mr. Trump is directing our anger for less than noble purposes. He creates scapegoats of Muslims and Mexican immigrants. He calls for the use of torture. He calls for killing the innocent children and family members of terrorists. He cheers assaults on protesters. He applauds the prospect of twisting the Constitution to limit First Amendment freedom of the press.

This is the very brand of anger that has led other nations into the abyss.

Here's what I know. Donald Trump is a phony, a fraud. His promises are as worthless as a degree from Trump University.

(CHEERS AND APPLAUSE)

ROMNEY: He's playing the members of the American public for suckers. He gets a free ride to the White House and all we get is a lousy hat.

(LAUGHTER)

ROMNEY: His domestic policies would lead to recession. His foreign policies would make America and the world less safe. He has neither the temperament nor the judgment to be president and his personal qualities would mean that America would cease to be a shining city on a hill.

I'm convinced America has greatness ahead.

And this is a time for choosing. God bless us to choose a nominee who will make that vision a reality.

Thank you and God bless you all. Thank you.

What Fresh Hell? All the news to give you fits on October 12, 2017

Because we can only have one president at a time.

MOTUS got up early today to denounce Puerto Rico for 125 years of colonial neglect by the United States and doing nothing to divert hurricanes:

"Puerto Rico survived the Hurricanes, now a financial crisis looms largely of their own making." says Sharyl Attkisson. A total lack of.....

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 12, 2017

...accountability say the Governor. Electric and all infrastructure was disaster before hurricanes. Congress to decide how much to spend....

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 12, 2017

...We cannot keep FEMA, the Military & the First Responders, who have been amazing (under the most difficult circumstances) in P.R. forever!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 12, 2017

Having denounced PR again for being in debt, the *resident has an omnibus hurricane bill before Congress that offers the Commonwealth more aid in the form of a $5 billion loan.

*****

The *resident gave an interview to Sean Hannity last night. The assertion that somehow private stock market gains reduces the public debt went unchallenged:

Trump to Hannity tonight. This is … not how it works. pic.twitter.com/Odwc6cGcyO

— Philip Bump (@pbump) October 12, 2017

*****

Today is the 125th anniversary of a patriotic fetish-object to conservatives. The Writer's Alamanac explains how it has gone from being the aspirational paean of an American socialist to a tool of the Cold War:

It was on this day in 1892 that the Pledge of Allegiance was recited en masse for the first time, by more than 2 million students. It had been written just a month earlier by a Baptist minister named Francis Bellamy, who published it in Youth's Companion and distributed it across the country. It was recited on this day to celebrate the 400th anniversary of Columbus's arrival in the Americas. It was slightly shorter in its 1892 version: "I pledge allegiance to my flag and the Republic for which it stands — one nation indivisible, with liberty and justice for all."

After that, it got revised twice, and both revisions made the Pledge wordier. The first was in 1923, when it was changed from "my flag" to "the flag of the United States of America." This change was made to ensure that immigrants were pledging to the American flag and not the flags of their home countries. The second change was to add the words "under God." A few determined preachers worked for years to get it changed, but it wasn't until 1954 that it was amended. President Eisenhower attended a sermon by the Reverend George Docherty, who said: "Apart from the mention of the phrase, 'the United States of America,' this could be a pledge of any republic. In fact, I could hear little Muscovites repeat a similar pledge to their hammer-and-sickle flag in Moscow with equal solemnity." Eisenhower was convinced and within a few months the Pledge was amended to include "under God" as a way to distinguish this country from the Soviet Union.

*****

A white, Rust Belt rapper's attack on the MOTUS is a thing:

To fight Trump as Trump fought would have required a Jeb Bush or John Kasich or Marco Rubio to embarrass their mothers, spouses, and kids, to sully their souls and their respectability. 

Eminem is not similarly constrained.

*****

For all his talk about killing off NBC lately, his complaints that the First Amendment letting people just write whatever they want ("disgusting"), and his campaign promise to sue his sex abuse accusers and their enablers in the fake media, Mr Trump has failed his first test:

On Oct. 12, 2016, The New York Times published a story entitled, "Two Women Say Donald Trump Touched Them Inappropriately."

A year later, despite a threat from his attorney that Trump would have "no option but to pursue all available actions and remedies," Trump hasn't sued. That's significant because Wednesday, the statute of limitations expires on a libel claim brought in New York over the publication's groping story. In theory, Trump could try to get around the deadline by filing a complaint in a different state, but with judges often being strict about jurisdiction — Trump can consult his wife about this subject — it can be said with near certainty that Trump won't be suing The New York Times over that infamous article.

A threat of legal action that doesn't actually lead to a court filing falls under a category of speech known as bluster. Some argue that news publications shouldn't cover intimidation lest it encourage bullying. For example, in reaction to The Hollywood Reporter's article last week stating Harvey Weinstein's attorney was "preparing" a lawsuit against The New York Times over its latest story about a powerful figure behaving inappropriately toward women, one reporter at The Wall Street Journal tweeted that his paper had a policy against covering threats until the actual lawsuit came. We're more lenient here (while having stricter standards in other areas of legal coverage), but also think that follow-up is important. 

Why is the empty retraction demand (still available on Trump's website) from attorney Marc Kasowitz significant?

For starters, Trump made libel reform an actual promise to those who supported his presidential candidacy. As the leader of the executive branch of the federal government, however, Trump is fairly limited in what he can do, as defamation claims are largely governed by state law. He can nominate federal judges, who sometimes preside over these cases or are asked to settle constitutional issues. So far, with appointments like Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court — who has shown a deference to the First Amendment — Trump hasn't made any big swings toward disrupting the status quo as it relates to defamation law. Thus, his failure to go after The New York Times amounts to a missed opportunity. What's more, fighting as a defendant in defamation cases, Trump has learned to appreciate certain First Amendment protections. Or at least, his lawyers have (here and here).

Next, while some may respond that Trump now has better things to do than litigate a claim against The New York Times, hardly a day goes by when Trump isn't tweeting about "fake news." He's used his bully pulpit to delegitimize the mainstream press. He's obviously obsessed with unflattering information about himself and his administration, yet isn't willing to take an obvious action that would become symbolic of his willingness to actually fight with more than words.

Which leads us back to the issue of bluster.

*****

Headline of the Day (from Lifehacker, no less):

AFTER HOURS

How To Play With Testicles

*****

H.L. Mencken said democracy is the charming idea that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it, good and hard:

Trump will sign an executive order on Thursday directing an overhaul of major federal regulations that would encourage the rise of a raft of cheap, loosely regulated health insurance plans that don't have to comply with certain Obamacare consumer protections and benefit rules. They'd attract younger and healthier people — leaving older and sicker ones in the Obamacare markets facing higher and higher costs.

***** 

Back to killing off NBC:

"You basically have to kill someone or be a child sex predator to lose your broadcast license."

*****

Are you plagued by social media gits who pounce on any mention of Harvey Weinstein and shriek, "WhataboutBill?"

Share this link with them. Congratulate them on winning their Moral Troll Certificates.

*****

Shortly, the new lead out of Hollywood will be that there's a gay mafia of highly-placed and grabby predators.

*****

More Joel Osteen backlash:

Alex Jones, the conspiracy theory architect behind Infowars, asked his listeners to consider giving money to his operation rather than donating to large megachurches because he uses the money to fight the globalist world order instead of spending it on prostitutes, helicopters and cocaine.

*****

Now in favor, Little Marco jokes, "You know what they say about men with really big signatures, don't you?"

The President and his entourage- a random selection of family; the Vice President; three or four cabinet members; and the Republican establishment of south Florida- gathered in a Miami auditorium yesterday to pay fealty to a noisy, extremely old, and schizoid electoral minority who want to see their homeland freed, and yet have absolutely no intention of returning it when liberation comes.

There were many speeches.

Congressman Mario Diaz-Ballart bellowed through a shorter- much shorter- version of a Fidel Castro diatribe in to denounce sixty years of a blockade that has beggared family members without enough pull to get to Florida. Fortunes and political careers have been built on the careful maintenance and repair of an imaginary wall that, like the Mexican one, Americans pay for.

Diaz-Ballart and his brother- first cousins of Fidel- have spent decades in the luxe halls of the lower house of the most powerful legislature on earth; if deliverance comes- next year in Havana is their fervent prayer- who the hell wants to go home to a seat in the Cuban parliament?

So they nurse the old boogeyman stories, and the grandparents and great-grandparents bid the bambinos check under their beds for Communists every night.

The President's Cuban volte-face is a triumph for Diaz-Ballart and Senator Marco Rubio, who wore his tallest-heeled boots for the day. They crafted a deal that, above all, mollifies and grants special rights to an important, if dwindling, constituency. Their rights to make visits and repatriate money home- things which, done over the Mexican border, are wicked- are unaltered.

The rights of American corporate interests- hoteliers, airlines, purveyors of all things plastic and short-lived, internet companies- to bore into the Cuban market remain as the feckless Obama caved on.

Fears that Europeans and the Chinese will ace out American corporate market-builders are bootless.

Only everyone else in America cannot go to Cuba. For centuries, Americans have been able to visit every nation that will admit them. Thus the comics stylings of America's favorite cross-dressing NBA player, Dennis Rodman, in North Korea, where he opened a door and gave the boy despot a copy of The Art of the Deal.

Only with respect to Cuba can Americans not go and see for themselves. The President's new blows for freedom import and install as American policy the Soviet-era model of government-approved tours with minders who keep the participants to a strictly timed schedule of "meaningful interactions" and government-approved experiences, compliance with which the government can audit records and quiz tourists about for up to five years after they have returned home with their Bible study groups.

Starwood- a luxury hotel chain that competes with the President's- is checked. They were the first in with a big historic hotel conversion, under license by the Cuban military's holding company, and will see their occupancy rate plummet.

When he finally waddled up on stage, the President assumed the spirit of dear President McKinley, murdered while making America great in 1901.

Lionized by Karl Rove, the GOP operative, in a 2016 book (remember the outrage when the name of America's highest mountain had its native name restored after a century as memorial to an Ohio pol so dim he signed guarantees of a friend's IOU's into hundreds of thousands of dollars of liability, thinking it was just a new copy of the first one for a pal who was prone to misplace things?), McKinley is in vogue again.

McKinley was a protectionist and a nationalist, and with the backing of huuuge industrialist donations, ran two massively successful campaigns for president based on huge media buys, mobilization of nearly a million volunteers, and propping up its rotten borough patronage machines in the South.

For Rove, the 2016 parallels were obvious. Only his casting was wrong. He thought his patron, Jeb Bush, would, from his Florida base, bring the Presidency home to the Sunshine State, just ninety miles from Cuba: the site of McKinley's splendid little war.

President Trump's Miami pep rally was vintage William Randolph Hearst jingoism. He sang the destiny of America as guarantor of freedom and cheap goods to the little brown people of the Caribees.

His speech evoked memories of the 1898-1958 Golden Age when self-determination for Cuba meant free-market dictatorships America liked, not tediously doctrinaire despotisms featuring camo and scraggy beards even Matthew McConnaghey would reject.

There were plenty of lustfully extended "Cuuuuba"s and "Ha-VAH-nuh"s- and even a "Santi-aygo" as the old sensualist exhibited his linguistic skills ("Who knew? There's one in California, too").

Jabba the Hutt grins were displayed, and Mussolini chins pulled, in the President's oration.

He spent half the speech invoking the tales of Cuban resistance fighters, interspersed with new demands of loyalty:

Many of you witnessed terrible crimes committed in service of a depraved ideology.  You saw the dreams of generations held by captive, and just, literally, you look at what happened and what communism has done.  You knew faces that disappeared, innocents locked in prisons, and believers persecuted for preaching the word of God.  You watched the Women in White bruised, bloodied, and captured on their way from Mass.  You have heard the chilling cries of loved ones, or the cracks of firing squads piercing through the ocean breeze.  Not a good sound.

Among the courageous Cuban dissidents with us onstage here today are Cary Roque, who was imprisoned by the Castro regime 15 years ago.  (Applause.)  She looks awfully good.   

MS. ROQUE:  Thank you, Mr. President.  Thank you, Mr. Vice President.  Thank you, Marco Rubio, Mario Diaz-Balart.  Thank you to all the men and the Cubans who fight no matter what -- for the Cuban liberty.  Mr. President, on behalf of the Cuban people, the people inside my eyes, my homeland, thank you.  Thank you, and we appreciate your love.  (Applause.)

THE PRESIDENT:  Thank you.  Wow.  That's pretty good.  She didn't know she was going to do that either, I will tell you.  Thank you very much.

_______

Over the years, a special sympathy has grown between this land of the free, and the beautiful people of that island, so close to our shores and so deeply woven into the history of our region.  America has rejected the Cuban people’s oppressors.  They are rejected.  Officially today, they are rejected.  (Applause.)  And to those people, America has become a source of strength, and our flag a symbol of hope. 

I know that is exactly what America is to you and what it represents to you.  It represents the same to me.  It represents the same to all of us.  And that is what it was to a little boy, Luis Haza.  You ever hear of Luis?  He became very famous, great talent -- just eight years old when Fidel Castro seized power. At the time, Luis’s father was the police chief in Santiago de Cuba.  You know Santiago?  Yeah?  Oh, they know Santiago.  Just days after Fidel took control, his father was one of 71 Cubans executed by firing squad near San Juan Hill at the hands of the Castro regime. 

Luis buried his grief in his great love of music.  He began playing the violin so brilliantly and so beautifully.  Soon the regime saw his incredible gift and wanted to use him for propaganda purposes.  When he was 12, they organized a national television special and demanded he play a solo for Raul Castro  -- who by the way is leaving now.  I wonder why.

They sent an official to fetch Luis from his home.  But Luis refused to go.  And a few days later, Castro’s soldiers barged into his orchestra practice area, guns blazing.  They told him to play for them.  Terrified, Luis began to play.  And the entire room was stunned by what they heard.  Ringing out from the trembling boy’s violin was a tune they all recognized.  This young Cuban boy was playing “The Star Spangled Banner.”  (Applause.)  Luis played the American National Anthem all the way through, and when he finished, the room was dead silent. 

When we say that America stands as a symbol to the world -- a symbol of freedom, and a symbol of hope -- that is what Luis meant, and that is what Luis displayed that day.  It was a big day.  It was a great day.  And that is what we will all remain. That was a very important moment, just like this is now, for Cuba.  A very important moment.  (Applause.)  America will always stand for liberty, and America will always pray and cheer for the freedom of the Cuban people.

Now, that little boy, whose story I just told you, the one who played that violin so beautifully so many years ago, is here with us today in our very, very packed and extremely warm auditorium.  (Laughter.)  Of course, he is no longer a little boy, but a world-renowned violinist and conductor -- one of the greats.  And today he will once again play his violin and fill the hearts of all who love and cherish Cuba, the United States, and freedom.  (Applause.)

I would like to now invite Luis to the stage.  

Luis.  (Applause.)

(Luis Haza plays The Star-Spangled Banner on the violin.)

AUDIENCE:  USA! USA! USA!  (Applause.)

THE PRESIDENT:  Thank you, Luis.  I just said, so where were you more nervous?  Today or then?  He said, honestly, I think today.  That's pretty -- (laughter.)  Thank you, Luis, that was beautiful.

So I want to thank Miami.  I want to thank Little Havana.  Havana, we love.  Do we love it?  Would you move anywhere else?  You wouldn't move to Palm Beach, would you?  No.  No way.  Little Havana.

And I want to thank all of our great friends here today.  You've been amazing, loyal, beautiful people.  

No one on the TV networks noted the irony of a President committed to defunding all the arts in America praising a violinist who owes his fame and career to a state-funded arts education scheme.

_____

The event over, recordings of Sousa marches were played. It was the perfect Rough Rider touch to close the restoration of a loving, tough but fair, protectorate for the future.

The Vice President- whose fawning introduction of his boss merited a separate speech listing on The White House's website- jetted off to Indianapolis. He is the first sitting vice president to establish a political action committee three and a half years ahead of running for president.

But one of the nice things about a PAC is, you can also use the limitless funds it can generate for stuff like legal bills. And Mr Pence has a new dependent: a $1500/hr criminal defense lawyer.

It was, in every respect, a day for the history books.

As the President noted,

Actually, I was telling Mike, so it was two days -- on my birthday -- until a big day, which turned out to be tomorrow -- the 16th.  That was the day I came down with Melania on the escalator at Trump Tower.  That's tomorrow.  (Applause.)  So it's exactly tomorrow -- two years since we announced.  And it worked out okay.  Worked out okay. 

 (Applause.)  It's a great honor.  Believe me, it's a great honor.  Right? 

AUDIENCE:  (Sings Happy Birthday.) 

THE PRESIDENT:  Thank you.  Thank you very much.

It was also the 45th anniversary of the Watergate break-in.

No one said a word about Elian Gonzalez's re-liberation, nor why the blood-drenched rulers of Saudi Arabia as Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross warbled about not seeing a single protestor in that peaceful and well-ruled state. Obey the Orb.

"Of course, if Musk was up there praying, or posing on a fur rug like the First Lady, that would be different."

Today in Breitbart News's Selective Virtues Pages:

Travel + Leisure magazine reported last year,

Donald Trump, who just won New Hampshire’s primary, has an ostentatious ride that, ahem, trumps them all—a Boeing 757 emblazoned with his name on it in red, white, and blue. According to JetSmarter, it cost the real estate mogul $100 million. The massive plane, dubbed Trump Force One, was purchased from Microsoft’s Paul Allen back in 2011. Check out this video of The Apprentice’s Amanda Miller for a tour of its many features, including seating for 43, a silk-lined master bedroom, a master bath with 24-karat gold fixtures, and even gold plated seat belts. 

Trump’s nearest Republican rivals, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz and Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, have more in common than a political party and a penchant for red ties—they both fly around the country in Cessna Citation Excel planes, to the tune of $3,000 an hour. Presumably they don’t share a jet, although potential voters might appreciate their fiscal conservativeness.

A politicovagelical ike Cruz is also aware that God prefers his frquent flyers to skip going coach:

Two well-known televangelists defended their luxury jets late last month in part by contending it would be impractical to fly on a commercial airline “with a bunch of demons.” 

Duplantis recalled a story where he was flying on an airline and had to unbuckle his seatbelt to speak to God. 

“You couldn’t have done that over an airline,” Copeland noted. 

“No sir, no way,” Duplantis agreed. 

“Stand up and say, ‘What did you say Lord?'” Copeland said. “You can’t do that. No, no. This is so important and those of you that are just now coming into these things in the first place: Jesse and I and others … the world is in such a shape, we can’t get there without this.” 

He continued, “We’ve got to have this! The mess that the airlines are in today. I would have to stop — I’m being very conservative. At least, 75-80, more like 90 percent of what we are doing. Because we can’t get there!” 

“That’s why we are on that airplane. We can talk to God!” Copeland added. 

The televangelist then explained flying commercial was a hassle because other passengers would likely bother them with prayer requests. 

“Now, Oral [Roberts] used to fly airlines. But, even back then it got to the place where it was agitating his spiritual. People coming up to him, he had become famous, and they wanting him to pray for them and all that,” Copeland said.  

“You can’t, you can’t manage that today. This dope-filled world, and get in a long tube with a bunch of demons. And it’s deadly.” 

“So anyway, I wanted to make that clear so the devil can’t lie to you and say, ‘See them there preachers spending all that money, just fat cats riding around.’ No, we’re not; we’re in business.”

 

Idea broker of broke-down ideas gets broken by the GOP establishment.

Jim DeMint, 65, is a former ad man turn Teabaggist turned self-imagined power broker who spent a long time in DC acting out, and now he's gone.

The Greenville, SC pol made a career around his conviction that small government is best led by small minds with small ideas.

He created a Senate Conservatives Fund to support nutball candidates who'd answer to him; a hilarious feature of its website was a rating system in which he was the only Senator who ever got a pure 100% Conservative Rating.

He tried to cast US Senate candidate Marco Rubio as his protege', but soon got left behind. Both men were mentioned as '16 presidential hopefuls, but in the event, DeMint never got out of the starting gate.

Not even fellow Republicans in South Carolina- the makers of presidents- were interested.

DeMint wrote lots of short books with wide page margins about his big ideas, which mostly involved expanding poverty, contracting health care, and making war on minorities, gays, and unmarried pregnant women. His footnotes were few and nearly all drawn from websites.

He was a madman for free trade until God, through candidate Donald Trump, issued some new commandments.

He was passionately for Randian capitalism in the way only a man whose decades in business and 19 years in Congress left him with a net worth of only $40,000 could.

After bleating about term limits forever (none of his plans ever required him to leave office anytime soon, though), DeMint bolted the Senate in 2013 to become president of the Heritage Foundation, a powerful source of conservative public policy idea actually grounded in fact (the 1980 Heritage blueprint for the incoming Reagan administration, Mandate for Change, remained the blueprint for a decade).

DeMint changed all that, turning Edwin Feulner's Palace of Ideas into the boys-only bar of a small town Moose lodge. He tried to rcreate his PAC with a political office called Heritage Action, and replaced the wonks and boffins with pols who were tasked with taking DeMint's mucousy stream of Teabag nostrums and inventing policy papers to make them seem rational.

In 2016 Heritage turned into a propaganda arm and resume service for Donald Trump, who salted his cabinet transition teams with junior DeMints.

DeMint's great triumph was seeing Neil Gorsuch plucked from the Heritage List of Twenty Lunatic Judges and installed on the Supreme Court (with help from the Federalist Society, where rightwing lawyers who clean up better cluster).

In the Christians Victimized By Homos Derby, DeMint bet on Ryan Anderson, a Princeton protege of anti-LGBT intellectual Robert P. George (co-founder, and long-since abandoned, of the crackpot National Organization for Marriage) to lead the charge against marriage equality and other stuff the gays want; Anderson remains unmarried at 36. DeMint made a video star of Oregon cake shop martyrs and internet grifters Aaron and Melissa Klein; she cried copiously on command, while he peddled the tale that they were prisoners in their home, their business was closed by haters, their Facebook page comments section was a thesaurus of profanity.

Never mind that the Kleins moved their straights-only cake shop home to exploit a loophole in Oregon's antidiscrimination law; sold their baked goods onlie until 2016, and have ade over half a million tax-free dollars from online appeals for money to pay off the $135,000 judgment levied on them for infliction of emotional distress on the lesbian couple Aaron chased out of their store, shouting "Abomination!" at them and their foster kids.

They blocked comments they didn't like on their Facebook page, too.

After four highly-paid years turning a respected institution into a 3-D replica of the fever swamp of Jim DeMint's mind, the entire board of Heritage- every last member- took their own Heritage Action and imposed term limits on the Palmetto Gadfly. As blogger Joe.My.God put it best:

Heritage Foundation President Jim DeMint Resigns After Board Members Vote Unanimously To Shitcan Him

Stuff I read today, October 30, 2016

- Little Marco, Florida’s bored Senator, was set to retire this year after one six-year term run for President. Then his talking points got stuck on buffer in the New Hampshire primary debate and that was that.

After a hiatus, Senator Rubio clambered up on the bodies of the Orlando shooting victims- Florida is very flat and Rubio is so short he wears platforms- and announced he had had a vision, and it involved another six-year term running for President. And so the man who dragged public discourse down to the level of Donald trump’s crotch is back in the race.

Substance-wise, however, the short combover is still a walking GIGO-counter, devoid of the first original thought. In response to his opponent's own debate buffer freeze, Rubio came up with this gem:

The audience laughed, faintly, at one of nearly 20 mentions of the Republican presidential nominee during the one-hour debate.When Murphy next mentioned Trump, Rubio was quick with a rejoinder based on a famous Joe Biden rebuke of Rudy Giuliani: “A noun, a verb and Donald Trump: that’s his answer to everything.”

Where is Max Headroom? He’d be the dream candidate for the Post-Factual Age.

- Everyone is banging on about the FBI’s cack-handed handling of the Zombie Emails. Nobody knows what it means, least of all the Bureau’s director. As I learned in childhood from the adults around me, nothing is more satisfying than chewing over actions long past and past changing. Harry Truman’s vice president, Alben Barkley, wrote an entertaining 1950s memoir in which he recalled a 19th century undecided Kentucky voter who said, “I haven’t made up my mind, but when I do, I’ll be mad as hell!”

- Marco Rubio is but one of the actors making 2016 The Year of The Penis. The presidential election comes down to a pissing match over whose penis did the worst things: 70 year-old-ex-president Bill Clinton, or 70-year-old-president-wannabe Donald Trump.

Here is what you need to know about Penises. Republican men have Family Values Penises, which means they screw around, but in mostly discreet and socially acceptable ways. As the early 20th-century actress Mrs Patrick Campbell said, “Does it really matter what these affectionate people do — so long as they don’t do it in the streets and frighten the horses!”

Democrats are the Party of the Pervert Penis. They are the party of the libertines, of penises of call colors and sizes, mostly XXXL to “Oh, sweet mystery of life, at last I’ve found you” , and they do things you wouldn’t believe with theirs, and they do it for fun.

They never get enough, and this is why we have a crying need for Law & Order, and white guys to be able to own ever-bigger, semi-automatic, penis stand-ins (Marginal Revolution predicts the next frontier of bullying will be trolling driverless cars).

It drives men mad that Hillary Clinton is widely imagined not to have a penis. This makes her unpredictable as president: a rara avis, a genetic sport. Many aging penises are springing to Mr Trump’s defense, among them 72-year-old Rudy Giuliani, who would know when he says everybody is an adulterer any more, and 73-year-old Newt Gingrich. They are foursquare in the defense of the traditional privileges of The White Penis (Trump, Rudy and Newt have burned through nine wives so far), but in that realm, a comer to watch is South Carolina Republican write-in candidate Brett Brocato.

So reflexive is the South Carolina voter reach for the straight- literally- GOP voting booth lever, those in the district that surrounds Bob Jones University were shocked to learn they’d recently ousted an absentee Republican woman for a gay Republican man.

There is no room for the Gay American Penis in the GOP (which, regrettably, does not stand for Grizzled Old Penises), so Brett Brocato is running to restore “conservative sexual values”:

Brocato said he decided to run as a write-in candidate after hearing constituents react to news reports about Elliott’s sexual orientation.

“The timing of my run is due to the fact that our Republican nominee claims the voters have accepted his progressive sexual values, yet we’ve seen no evidence that he campaigned as openly homosexual,” Brocato said in a statement.

Asked how Elliott should have campaigned, Brocato told The State: “That burden of figuring out how to campaign that way would probably be on my opponent.”

It is a mark of the depravity of the modern Republican that, after decades of nailing gays into their closets, they now complain when one doesn’t shout it to the rooftops. When I was a boy, and America was great, you could spot them at a distance. My father explained the signs to me.

- The Trump campaign has acknowledged one Official Deplorable: a man who started shouting “Jew-S-A!” at a rally the other day. So far there has been no comment from the black Trump backer The Donald spotted, called a thug, and ordered dragged out of another event- in Kinston, NC, which has worked so hard to rebrand itself as hip and tolerant and arugula-friendly in A Chef's Life.

Nor is there word about whether the campaign will certify the large gathering of Deplorables at the NC State Capitol two weeks ago, where, disguised as a Franklin Graham Republican Jesus rally, they picked out a reporter to scream “Jew-boy” and “fucking sodomite” at.

His “Hillary is a Cunt” short was, apparently, in the laundry bin.

- Fashion icon Tim Gunn explains why Ivanka Trump doesn’t give two slaps about what her father’s supporters wear.

What I learned at the second presidential debate, including new Donald Trump-approved locker room talk

The great October rap battle of the sexes

A new study on media coverage of the presidential race suggests "that the press is in the tank for Barack Obama," the Boston Globe reported yesterday. Is a "top medical journal in the tank for Obama?" reads a recent Portfolio headline. John McCain, according to a story in Thursday's Guardian, "didn't even give the press a chance, trashing it on the assumption that it would be in the tank for Obama." How did in the tank come to mean supportive (when you really ought to be impartial)?

Aquatics by way of pugilism. In the 19th century, Americans called swimming pools "tanks" and thus "go into the tank" was synonymous with "to dive." As far back as the 1920s, the phrase go into the tank became associated with intentionally losing a boxing match by diving onto the canvas and pretending you've been knocked out—a sense perfectly illustrated by this sentence from a 1928 New York Times article: "Pansy came out of jail and his manager, thinking him 'all washed up,' signed him up to 'take a dive,' or, more technically, 'to go into the tank' for a bird named Sailor Gray."

...By the mid-20th century, go into the tank, in the sense of rolling over for someone in a rigged contest, extended into political usage. Thus in 1960, syndicated columnist Robert Ruark set up a boxing metaphor to describe the run-up to that year's presidential conventions: "I am having a tiny touch of difficulty with the American news lately, having gotten it slightly mixed up with the prize-fighting business. But if I read it right, the presidential nomination conventions have been bagged in advance … with all the other competitors rigged to go into the tank for Jolting Jack Kennedy and Richard the Ripper Nixon."

While taking a dive still refers to self-sabotage, the meaning of go into the tank gradually shifted toward working on someone's behalf, often with the hint of backroom deals or at least inappropriate devotion. As such, people weren't as likely to go into the tank as they were to be found there after the fact; i.e., they'd simply be in the tank. In a 1987 Boston Globe article by David Nyhan on the Robert Bork nomination process, we get: "Will he be in the tank for Reagan? Ted Kennedy says yes, Bork says no. I'm afraid Bork hasn't convinced me." And, also from the Globe's David Nyhan, a 1983 example of the phrase applied to a journalist: "It turns out [George] Will coached Reagan in debate, privately advised him on issues, regularly praised his presidency in print and on TV, and only rarely uttered the bare minimum of criticism that decency and appearance require. As a result of the recent commotion, Will bears the Scarlet Letter of having been in the tank for Reagan."

Juliet Lapidos, “How Did ‘In the Tank’ Come to Mean Supportive?”, Slate, October 24, 2008

Last night it was co-moderators Martha Raddatz and Anderson Cooper Donald Trump accused of favoring Aunt Hillary. It’s Tactic 4 from Vox’s excellent explainer, “A taxonomy of Donald Trump’s most reliable debate tactics” (10/7/16)- Rile up your Opponent.

As Vox explains it,

The debate stage, too, became a place for him to pick out an antagonist and engage in a dominance ritual with him (it was always a “him”), straining to shout him down or humiliate him.

The sole point of many of these displays seemed to be to get attention. Often, they devolved into shouting matches over who was talking, as during the fifth debate:

TRUMP: Am I talking or are you talking, Jeb?

BUSH: I'm talking right now. I'm talking.

TRUMP: You can go back. You're not talking. You interrupted me.

BUSH: September 30, you said…

TRUMP: Are you going to apologize, Jeb? No. Am I allowed to finish?

Trump would also pick out one or two antagonists during any given debate — always some combination of Bush, Marco Rubio, and Ted Cruz — to try to take down. The point wasn’t to get them to concede a policy point to him, but to establish that Trump was the one who should be allowed to talk.

Trump used personal insults and accusations of interrupting. He turned attacks against him; at the 11th Republican debate on Fox News, when Rubio criticized Trump University as a scam and a fraud, Trump retorted, “He scammed the people of Florida. He scammed people. He doesn't vote. He doesn't show up for the US Senate. He doesn't vote. He scammed the people. He defrauded the people of Florida.”

Usually, nobody came out of these exchanges looking good. But Trump figured out that, in primary debates as on reality TV, the cameras love the contestant who knows how to get attention. And Trump is great at getting attention.

Early in the first presidential debate, Trump was able to pull Clinton into some of these exchanges — and the first one ended badly for her:

TRUMP: But you haven't done it in 30 years or 26 years or any number you want to...

CLINTON: Well, I've been a senator, Donald...

TRUMP: You haven't done it. You haven't done it.

CLINTON: And I have been a secretary of state...

TRUMP: Excuse me.

CLINTON: And I have done a lot...

TRUMP: Your husband signed NAFTA, which was one of the worst things that ever happened to the manufacturing industry.

CLINTON: Well, that's your opinion. That is your opinion.

Unable to draw Mrs Clinton into that trap again last night, with the citizen voters mute, Trump turned his ire on the moderators, tirelessly complaining that they let her talk more than he did, even though a substantial portion of nearly all her two-minute responses had to be patched together by viewers over his crosstalk and interruptions, and post-debate reports show the two were within a sniffle or two of getting exactly equal time.

It was- I thought-  an odd thing to bitch about when Trump was so clearly being screwed nine ways from Sunday by the debate format, questions, and timing. I know this is so because he’s been jabbering about it since the Dog Days.

The timing plaint was the closest he came to addressing those apparently forgotten (or just faked, to play the refs before the game) pre-debate mortal concerns and mutterings about not showing up. He’d sent up flares about Anderson Cooper in mid-September, telling The Washington Post:

"I don't think Anderson Cooper should be a moderator because Anderson Cooper works for CNN, and over the last couple of days, I've seen how Anderson Cooper behaves. He'll be very biased, very biased. I don't think he should be a moderator. I'll participate, but I don't think he should be a moderator. CNN is the Clinton News Network, and Anderson Cooper, I don't think he can be fair."

As Callum Borchers noted in that paper, before Trump didn't trust Cooper, he was a big fanboy:

I like them," he told reporters aboard his plane last Monday. "I respect the moderators. I do respect them."

During the Republican primary, Trump participated in two town hall events moderated by Cooper and did not object to the host's participation or complain about his performance. In a CNN interview after a GOP debate in March, Trump offered unprompted congratulations to Cooper for his moderation of a Democratic debate four days earlier.

"Anderson got very good ratings," Trump said. "We're very happy for Anderson. I don't know if it helps me, but he certainly got very good ratings."

You also didn’t hear a peep out of The Donald over last night’s debate overlapping NFL Sunday Night Football, an issue he whinged about for days at the end of July, threatening not to participate unless the Commission on Presidential Debates redid the schedule to suit him and the NFL.

You may also recall he claimed Roger Goodell wrote him- Citizen Trump, with none of that insider mojo Hillary uses to make things happen- to complain about the schedule.

And you might also remember the NFL said, “So did not!”, and somebody in Trump’s management team- the one two versions back-  admitted it was all just another firehose of flaming bullshit.

Nor did Donald Trump stop last night’s debate to demand a new microphone. How likely was it, outside the hermetically-sealed studios of Coast to Coast America AM and The Donald’s supporters’ fervid imaginings (remember, according to that crazy lady in Pennsylvania, Obama’s not just a Muslim and a terrorist, but a queer Muslim terrorist, set on locking up Christian Americans in oral sex comfort stations for their immaculately-turbaned overlords to come- by which I mean “arriving in the future”. Honestly. I can’t take you people anywhere since Franklin Graham okayed the Trump Talk Tape), that he’d get the same crap mic the debate commission sandbagged him with in Round 1? Especially after the commission acknowledged, “there were issues regarding Donald Trump's audio that affected the sound level in the debate hall."

So there he was last night, in Sniff-o-rama Surround Sound: the Tony Montana of Presidential Politics, the man who seems to put the ‘blow’ into ‘bloviate’ at every debate. Not a whimper about that mic. Just a highly audible, endlessly repeated snot snort.

I started this report with a backgrounder on the origins of “in the tank” as a political dig, explained by Slate eight years ago. The phrase kept coming to me during last night’s debate, only from a different, if still of 2008 vintage, derivation: Stephen King’s novella, “A Very Tight Place.”

In that story, first published in McSweeney’s, then collected in “Just After Sunset”, we meet

Curtis Johnson, a middle-aged gay gentleman...lured to a deserted construction site by his neighbor, Tim Grunwald, with whom he's been having legal disputes involving property rights and Curtis's beloved dog, Betsy, who was killed by Tim's electric fences. He is confronted by Tim, who forces him into a portable toilet, locks him in, then tips it over, leaving him trapped there in the heat of a Florida summer day to die. With no way to get help, Curtis must figure out how to escape or perish. Eventually, after a long night, Curtis discovers he can crawl through the toilet and into the tank, where he can unscrew the bolts using Betsy's old dog tag.

Millions of Americans must have shared Johnson’s disgust and horror at figuring out the only way out of last night’s debate- which was quite impossible to turn off- was through the bottom of the brimming tank.  

Trump’s coprophilic debate style- also known as Gish’s Gallop, after a creationist whose m.o. is to fling as much poo as possible, as fast as possible, leaving his debate opponents the choice of trying to respond to a shit-slimed wall of lies, or let them stand and try to make their own points from the reality-based community- would have earned the admiration of the most adept baboon troops in Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom.

Everybody said a town hall format would sink Trump, because he’d have to be an asshole to so many regular joes sitting right next to him. He played foxy, going to New Hampshire for twenty minutes of questions read by a GOP talk radio host before an audience of his friends as prep. Oooh, that won’t work, said the pundits, none of them realizing trump intended to just ignore the town hall format altogether. His only concession to playing Judgment in Nuremberg in the round was to affect a blander, lower-keyed biliousness.

Otherwise, it was standard operating procedure. He redeployed the same old platoon: shoeless, lice-ridden and costive, to roam the debate hall in search of facts, armed only with three word phrases; unattributed horrors many people say; running out the clock with everything but an answer to the question on the table (“It was locker room talk and I regret it, so let me tell you, I will knock the hell out of ISIS”); and egomania. “I’ve spent $100 million. Why don’t you spend $20, or $30 million of your own money,” he asked Hillary, “to pay for your campaign, instead of getting $200 million from your rich friends to run attack ads on Donald Trump?”

That made me wonder if the reason 93-year-old Bob Dole sticks with The Donald is not the mystery most pundits find it, but an appreciation that Trump is the only other GOP presidential nominee to consistently refer to himself in the third person and to cause hundreds of down-ballot Republican candidates to run, screaming, for the lifeboats thirty days out from voting day.

But I digress. Back to Donald.

For Trump, everything is a disaster except his sex tape. He didn’t actually do any of those things he said he did, egged on by the elfin, patrician media whore, Billy Bush. No one respects women more than he does, he insisted, and what he said in that tape was just the sort of thing he and his New York Military Academy classmates used to jump-start circle jerks with on the long nights between the monthly arrival of Trump’s subscription to Playboy.

But those days are long gone; his classmates are grandfathers now, married (many of them, to just one woman). Trump’s new co-onanists are on the other side of the TV screen, sharing the sexual frustrations Trump shared in his Access Hollywood interview, and by Tom Cruise’s gormless sidekick in 1983’s Risky Business:

Barry: I can't believe Glenn bringing Statwiler over like that.
Joel: Why?
Barry: Because he boffed Hendricks last week!
Joel: He did?
Barry: Yes! And after the game on Saturday, he fucked her.
Joel: Barry?
Barry: What?
Joel: Boffing and fucking are the same thing.
Barry: They are?
Joel: [laughing] Yes. What did you think it was?
Barry: I thought it was something else. You're sure on this?
Joel: I'm positive.
Barry: Shit!

Trump is contrite, insisted Rudy Giuliani, who did a pre-debate full Ginsberg of the Sunday talk shows to put his master’s comments in a frame which posits that adultery is something everyone does (William Ginsburg, Monica Lewinsky’s lawyer, was the first to appear on all five shows in one morning, in February 1, 1998, and so won the naming rights).

Trump said he was contrite, too, but not for long: his bucket list clearly includes acid-washing (“very expensive”) his just-installed Lifetime Achievement nameplate from the Bob Packwood Emotionally Stunted Groper trophy.

Before that, he said he was sorry to anyone who was offended:  a tiny subset of humanity entirely peopled by male Republican office holders with biologically female wives and daughters with papers to prove it.

Last night, Trump pressed his case- that Bill Clinton is the unassailable Everest of sexual assault- with vigor. The new defense to everything, cack-handedly advanced by The Donald’s astonishing volunteer social media corps of derps and twerps, gits and twits, prats and numpties, is that if you can prove someone else did whatever you did, only worser, you get out of jail free (had this defense been available to Charles Manson, he’d be a semi-retired aromatherapist on Big Sur today, sprung from a long-forgotten murder rap by a jury who, after deliberating, agreed, “He’s so right! Stalin killed way more people, and way messier!”)

Governor Pat McCrory was right, too: North Carolinians’ sexual anxieties have gone viral, hitchhiking with across the land on the backs of the fast-spawning army of creepy clowns. Now all America is asking, “What can I talk about in locker rooms, and what can I do to women there?”

While a number of former pro athletes have insisted they never heard such talk as Trump and Billy Bush go for, pre- or post game, who cares? In Donaldland, that carries as much weight as the thirty ex-congresscritters who, safely pensioned off, dumped Trump last week. And if current pros were anything but overpaid pussies, they’d’a beast the hell out of Colin Kaepernick weeks ago. There’s a Facebook meme about that.

To hear Trump tell it for the thousandth time, the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse are astride the land, all wearing Hillary Clinton masks. Everything is bad, even his microphone, and the drape of his $7000 suit. “The world is disgracefully managed,” a Ronald Firbank character muttered ninety years ago, “and one hardly knows to whom to complain.”

But Trump does. “You were a senator,” he demanded. “Why didn’t you fix this?” It’s a good line, and one I hope Deborah Ross will launch an ad to ask NC Senator Sockless Dick Burr.

Let’s consider cases.

Education is a disaster, doubly so for blacks. The inner cities are disasters. There are no jobs. They have the 45% unemployment there, what’ve you got to lose, I ask my vast all-white audiences? I’m going to be president of all the people: the Hispanic and the Latinos (note his manful attempts to put a Spanish pronunciation on the terms, and only a cynic would find more than a hint of a sneer in the effort; the blacks and the African-Americans; the women and the bitches. I’m going to give inner cities dwellers economics. I’m going to unleash the insurance companies and the coal miners and the oil drillers, and they will generate so much money paying less tax than ever in history that “we will pay off our tremendous national debt, which is tremendous.”

In short, Donald Trump is about energy. He wants to grab the extractive companies by their toggles and pulleys, offer them taxcut-flavored Tic-Tacs, take them shopping for new drills at Schlumberger, and frack the hell out of America. Because when you’re the president, they let you do whatever you want.

He will give us new health plans that are so great, by erasing lines Obama drew around the the states to keep health insurers from doing like the credit card companies that flocked to the come-hither laws of the Dakotas, there to saddle every American with plastic carrying 21% interest rates. Ride ‘em, cowboy!

And all that competition, made possible by whatever state offers the least regulation and laxest laws, means the insurers will be so rich, and creating jobs for so many new computers, they will give us back the bans on pre-existing coverage denials, and  coverage caps the Republican repeal of Obamacare will free them from. Because they’re just good Americans that way.

Trump’s miniscule debate prep did yield some results: when Martha Raddatz asked what the fall of Aleppo will mean, he paused, mentally checking off “Don’t ask what it is” and “Don’t say it won’t happen on your watch, in case it already has.”

Then he said it already has, and added Russia, Iran and Syria to his basket of admirables- joining the long-solitary, and dead, Saddam Hussein. They all kill terrorists, and he admires that.

Raddatz waited out a Trump filibuster on Syria, then said, “let me ask you the question again.”

As if. Regurgitating old lines like a papa penguin who keeps trying to feed a chick he’s forgotten the giant petrels had for lunch months ago, Trump went on, over and over, with the business he launched in July about how we don’t even know who the rebels are in Syria.  We don’t know who the Syrian refugees are, either, something that has fretted him since spring. So that’s why, he explained to the nice Muslim lady, we need you to step outside for some extreme vetting but no worries, she want’s a 10).

As befits a seventy-year old, Trump, who knows more about war than the generals (in 1997, discussing his miraculous avoidance of STD’s in his decades of not nailing babes, he told Howard Stern, “It is a dangerous world out there. It’s scary, like Vietnam. Sort of like the Vietnam era. It is my personal Vietnam. I feel like a great and very brave soldier”- nevertheless likes to keep the popular figures of his childhood alive in his apocalyptic dreams.

Having exhumed Douglas McArthur (b. 1880) last debate, he dug up George S. Patton (b. 1885) last night and set them both spinning like Erich Brenn, the Austrian multitasker, did plates on sticks on The Ed Sullivan Show- popular back when American Was Great The First Time, and young Trump was busily developing bone spurs in military school to avoid real military service in Vietnam.

Nothing, he says, says “fighting terrorists” like saying- over and over- “radical Muslim extremists,” the Beetlejuice-summoning spell Trump says Mrs Clinton won’t say (she always says “the Scottish play,” too), except-perhaps, because he knows more- The Donald citing the example of generals dead fifty and seventy-five years respectively as lodestars for winning asymmetrical wars.

But this is nothing new: in March, Trump, asked on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” who he talks with consistently about foreign policy, Trump responded, “I’m speaking with myself, number one, because I have a very good brain and I’ve said a lot of things."

"I know what I’m doing and I listen to a lot of people, I talk to a lot of people and at the appropriate time I’ll tell you who the people are," Trump said. “But my primary consultant is myself and I have a good instinct for this stuff."

What Donald Trump knows, he never forgets, either. Well, hardly ever:

During sworn testimony in the Trump University lawsuit [June, 2016], Donald Trump repeatedly said he couldn't recall specific claims, documents or events related to the case, prompting a lawyer for the plaintiffs to ask if the real estate mogul considered himself to have “one of the best memories in the world.”

In response, Trump said he thinks he has a “good” or a “great” memory, but doesn’t recall claiming it’s one of the world’s best, according to hours of previously unreleased testimony in which Trump was questioned by the plaintiffs' lawyer Jason Forge.

“So you don't remember saying that you have one of the best memories in the world?” Forge asked.

“I remember you telling me, but I don't know that I said it,” Trump replied.

Three weeks earlier, during a conversation about 9/11 with NBC News reporter Katy Tur, Trump had said he had “the world’s best memory,” Tur reported.

Though Trump’s concession under oath restored the sash of World’s Greatest Memory to Sir Noel Coward (“I have the memory of an elephant. In fact, elephants often consult me”), Trump's brain remains capacious enough to hold Whitmanesque multitudes, true and imagined; Ronald Reagan had nothing on this successor GOP nominee.

Donald Trump says America’s nuclear weapons are so old they can only be viewed in black-and-white film footage. Just queue up Dr. Strangelove on Netflix, and see for yourself.

Trump's birther lies needed no tarting up; they can be as threadbare as his hairpiece and the faithful swigged another Bud Lite at every mention of Sidney Blumenthal last night.

For more specialized tastes, there was a one-off when Trump said of Mrs Clinton, “There is tremendous hate in her heart”.

As one, all over America, Glennbeckistanis heard the silent Obama=Clinton dog whistle, dabbed Mentholatum sticks under their eyes, and recited their mantra, “This president, I think, has exposed himself over and over again as a guy who has a deep-seated hatred for white people or the white culture… I’m not saying he doesn’t like white people, I’m saying he has a problem. This guy is, I believe, a racist.”

Trump said he still wants to be president of all the Americans, not that he will give two slaps what any of us think, or want. Remember, he is the “I, alone, can fix this” man.

Pared from Trump’s list of all Americans, in that vein, are The Gays. No longer does extreme vetting include the “doncha just heart the gays?” question on his “are you a refugee who loves America?” quiz. He didn’t urge the moderators to “Ask the gays! Who’s your friend?” as he bade all Americans do last June.

There is, after all, only so much room for him to gather to his saggy man-bosom so many minority voters. And he has already promised to feed the gays to Franklin Graham and Tony Perkins after his Supreme Court nominee sets to out-argle-bargling Antonin Scalia.

The Supreme Court was the only forum in which America’s much-oppressed LGBT citizens (‘You know we’re in the same room and can hear you talking, yes?”) made a cameo appearance in America’s future: Mrs Clinton thinks overturning marriage equality would be bad.

You thought I’d forgotten Mrs Clinton was there, too, didn’t you? (Or did you suppose I’m in the tank for her?) Either way, she was a spectral presence, caught between the urge to just sit back and let Donald Trump jawbone himself out of the running in three more swing states, and the need to appear to participate without actually saying anything.

Her answers were filled with awkward, buffered pauses, like a little old lady trying to watch Netflix via her phone line and AOL browser. She’d speak a few phrases, then stop to resort the cache, always looping back through Sidney Blumenthal’s imagined pre-debate prep precis: “Just let him talk, and don’t fuck up”.

One of her lowest points was trying to deal with the latest Wikileaks data dump of Mrs. Clinton’s Wall Street speeches. One have thought she’d have prepped for the quote about having one position in public and another in private: “You have always said, Donald, you’d release your tax returns when my speeches came out. So let’s see the tax returns!”

Instead, she launched into an incomprehensible Siskel & Ebert moment in which she recalled conducting a seminar on Spielberg’s Abe Lincoln movie for the arbitrageurs of Goldman Sachs (as it happens, she was, in fact, talking about the movie, but it still sounded pretty lame).

Trump, for his part, stalked the stage, hovering in the background (he is ten inches taller than Mrs Clinton) behind her as she answered questions, like a babe he was making plans to following into the bathroom at Pat McCrory’s house. She sat during his responses. He loomed, glowering behind her, through hers.

Hypercaution has its drawbacks, though.

Thomas E Dewey was so sure he was the 1948 shoo-in- the Democrats had, after all, split into three parties- he limited his rich baritone to visions like “The future lies before us,” and next thing he knew, there was Harry Truman waving that goddam newspaper for the first few seconds of eternity.  And a hundred years ago, when the GOP raided the Supreme Court for their nominee, Charles Evans Hughes (the one Teddy Roosevelt called “the bearded lady”) the Justice was so sure he’d lit a big ol’ can ‘o whoop-ass under Woodrow Wilson, he left his valet strict orders not to disrupt his his hard-earned election night sleep. When the first reporters arrived for comment on the results, Hughes’ man told them, “The President cannot be disturbed,” the reporters replied, “When he gets up, tell him he ain’t President.”

(Hughes politicked his way back to the Court as Chief Justice, where he led the justice’s long march of the 1920s/30s to overturn every law that offended Jim Crow and the freedom of contract. Karma then bitch-slapped him with having to swear in President Franklin D. Roosevelt three times.)

I did learn three new things last night.

Donald Trump told Hillary Clinton he is going to appoint a special prosecutor and put her in jail. The triumph of post-factualism was foretold years ago by the pioneering South Carolina GOP smear master (and Bush family wet work man) Lee Atwater: “It’s not what you say. It’s what people think they hear.”).

Trump will jail her. She is guilty of stuff. He has no idea what. Just guilty. Of stuff. Lots of stuff. So much stuff, you just can’t imagine it all, and it’s the worst stuff that anyone has ever done.

Imprisoning rivals is a global commonplace (see,e.g., Republic of Egypt vs Mohamed Morsi, appeals pending in the Secretariat of the Grand Mufti), but a new concept in the United States. The last time it was tried was under President Nixon. It boomeranged.

Another thing I learned is that a town hall debate format isn’t worth a damn when the candidates opt for Jerry Springer’s. One of the 42 meat puppets onstage last night emailed The Diane Rehm Show today, complaining she felt reduced a prop.

She and the others deserved little better, when the best of the questions they give Cooper and Raddatz included Rodney King bromides like these:

James Carter: Do you believe you can be a devoted president to all Americans?

Karl Becker: Regardless of the current rhetoric, would each of you name one positive thing that you respect in one another?

They were from St Louis, for God’s sake, and no one thought it worth asking about race and law enforcement?

Donald Trump is not happy with Mike Pence, either. That’s the third thing I learned. Asked about his running mate’s call for American airstrikes on the Syrian military, Trump backhanded the #2 Senator Kelly Ayotte is writing in for #1 (her campaign denies she has a newly discovered medical condition, “Electoral Dyslexia Gravis”).

“I haven’t talked to him but I disagree with that,” Trump said said of his Hoosier hanger-on.

That’s what calling Trump’s sex tape indefensible gets you.

First your schedule vanishes from the campaign website.

Then you start hearing about the fates of past Indiana vice presidents (Dan Quayle, passed over for the presidency of the Scripps-Howard National Spelling Bee, and Woodrow Wilson’s No. 2, Thomas Marshall, who said, “Once there were two brothers. One ran away to sea, the other was elected Vice President, and nothing was ever heard of either of them again.”)

While Pence pondered a new career as an opera castrato, Trump invited Paula Jones, Kathleen Willey, and Juanita Broadrick to the debate. They are discarded, embittered women Bill Clinton didn’t offer a stick of furniture, not even when he looted the White House to kit out his bachelor pad in Chappaqua. Before the debate, they had a press conference which was billed, to lure the press, as debate prep.

Clearly there was some sort of Trumpian Yardstick of Sex being applied, given that Jones, Willey and Broadrick got tickets and Monica Lewinsky didn’t: something like the Helen of Troy Scale, which assesses beauty on the basis of how many ships one’s face could launch (for readers inclined to cavil, it is true that Helen’s actual rating is not 1000, but 1.186, based on the census of ships in Book II of The Iliad])? But that’s all I can contribute. I imagine Kellyanne Conway will explain it.

The three women, who haven’t had any media oxygen in twenty years, flowered like desert plants after a storm. They didn’t explain the difference between Clinton pickup lines- which are very, very bad- and Trump pickup lines, which- as thousands of Franklin Graham Facebook fans explained over the weekend (and Trump himself explained last night) were just words.

Overnight news stories have it Team Trump’s plan was to invite the ladies into the family box for the debate, then turn them loose on the stage for the post-event hugs and air kisses with President Clinton. The Republican president of the Debate Commission said if that happened, he’d have the three forcibly removed by security guards.

Gennifer Flowers didn’t attend this debate, either. She was brought up right.