Month: September 2016

Sam Bee for your sanity

by digby

She’s back. Thank God:

She makes me feel I’m not crazy. I’ve missed her so much.

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The angry hangover

by digby

I wrote a little bit about the improving economy and why people are still so angry for Salon today:

Jeff Greenfield wrote a piece in Politico recalling the 1992 campaign in which he compared the rise of Trump to Pat Buchanan’s primary challenge and the political environment that spawned it. It’s an interesting look back at a race that has some intriguing parallels to 2016.  Greenfield thinks Trump’s timing is better than Buchanan’s because immigration is a more acute problem and American global dominance seems less assured so the isolationist argument has more salience today. And he points out that the white working class, a focus of much of this election, has seen stagnant wages since the start of the new millennium, as manufacturing jobs continue to disappear. This is the recipe for the kind of right wing populism that both Buchanan and Trump represent.

But it appears that at long last the cloud is lifting.  Immigration really isn’t such an acute problem (it’s been declining for years) and even Vladimir Putin admits that American dominance is as overwhelming as ever.  Most importantly, the economic news this week was very good.

Jared Bernstein in The Washington Post reported yesterday:

Poverty fell sharply, middle-class incomes rose steeply, and more people had health coverage last year, according to Tuesday’s report on household economic conditions from the Census Bureau — the best evidence to date that the growing economy is finally reaching households that had been left behind.

The trends are going in a positive direction for the first time in a long time mostly due to a tightening of the job market leading to higher wages and more hours across the income scale. Both unemployment and inflation are down leading to more money in people’s pockets. The Affordable Care Act and low unemployment are responsible for the sharp rise in health coverage. The greatest gains in the past year were among the low and middle income households and they were real gains for a change.

In short, things are looking up. In fact, they’ve been looking up for a while.  And yet this election is being waged in an atmosphere of great rage and resentment, as if nothing had changed since 2010. What’s going on?

The reason I brought up the 92 election is the fact that the recession which brought on that bout of populist fervor had also been over for a while. It lasted eight months from July of 1990 to March of 1991 but more than a year later the angst and the anger was just reaching fever pitch.

In May of 1992, the New York Times reported:

In a poll conducted May 4-6 and made public this week, the Wirthlin Group found that 14 percent said the country was moving in the right direction, while 83 percent said it was on the wrong track. That was the highest level of pessimism recorded in 12 years, said the group’s political project director, Michael Dabadie. The group tied these findings, in part, to the riots in Los Angeles, but it was also part of a bleak pattern throughout 1992.

It felt a little like the country was falling apart with desperation everywhere and urban riots and bizarre politics. I remember Bill Clinton saying that he was riding in a car somewhere in New England and saw a man standing on the side of the road with a sign that said “Do something, please just do something.”   We know how that election ended. Buchanan lost the primary, the third party candidate anti-trade reformer Ross Perot took twenty percent in the general and Bill Clinton went on to govern during one of the longest economic expansions in American history.

Needless to say, the 2007 financial crisis and the global Great Recession that followed cannot be compared to what happened in 91-92. The scale of the recent upheaval was a (hopefully) once in a lifetime cataclysm. It also revealed some systemic problems that have yet to be adequately addressed, income inequality being at the top of the list as well as serious weakness and corruption in the financial system. So far there does not seem to be much will to confront them.

And communities hit hard by the loss of manufacturing over the past 30 years are still hurting. That is a perennial problem for which there seems to be no easy answer. Better trade policies will surely help but the globalization genie isn’t going back in the bottle.

Still the larger economy is improving rather smartly at long last and yet we have Donald Trump, the author of a book called “Crippled America”  saying daily that the country is going to hell and tens of millions of people agree with him. Obviously one big reason for this is the right wing media from which many of these Trump supporters get their information. If you watch Fox News you are told on a daily basis that we are living in a dystopian hellscape on the verge of economic collapse and imminent imposition of Sharia Law by illegal immigrants. His followers who are employed undoubtedly believe they are among a very lucky few.

But I also think people suffer from an emotional hangover after these economic upheavals. You feel paralyzed when they’re happening, afraid to make a move or take a chance. And that makes sense. It’s a perilous time. Once things finally improve in a substantial way, it’s as if you are coming back to life and there’s an understandable feeling of pent up anger and resentment about what you have gone through. It’s not about what’s happening now it’s about what happened before.

Of course that’s not a conscious thought. People just feel what they feel in the moment and when their anger is answered in some way, it begins to dissipate. I don’t know if that will happen this time. A lot depends on how well people do economically, if they feel secure and are hopeful about the future. But it could. And if it does the next few years may look very different than the ones we just experienced.

This news won’t make a difference in this election, of course. The narrative has been set. But whoever wins may be coming in with a strong wind at his or her back. Let’s hope to God it isn’t Donald Trump, who would not only destroy whatever gains we might have in our future, he would take credit for the upswing and use it to seize a mandate for some of his worst policies. And instead of a well-deserved period of economic well being, Americans would be faced once again with mourning in America.  If things are getting better, the last thing we need is another Republican to come in and mess things up again.

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QOTD: President Obama

by digby

From his rally yesterday.

This moved me. And I’m dead inside:

And, yes, she’s got her share of critics.  And she’s been caricatured by the right and sometimes by the left.  And she’s been accused of everything you can imagine, and has been subjected to more scrutiny and what I believe is more unfair criticism than anybody out here.  (Applause.)  And she doesn’t complain about it.  And you know what, that’s what happens when you’re under the microscope for 40 years.

But what sets Hillary apart is that through it all, she just keeps on going, and she doesn’t stop caring, and she doesn’t stop trying, and she never stops fighting for us — even if we haven’t always appreciated it.  (Applause.)

And look, I understand we’re a young country, we are a restless country.  We always like the new, shiny thing.  I benefitted from that when I was a candidate.  And we take for granted sometimes what is steady and true.  And Hillary Clinton is steady, and she is true. 

 (Applause.)  And the young people who are here, who — all you’ve been seeing is just the nonsense that’s been on TV.  You maybe don’t remember all the work that she has had to do, and all the things she has had to overcome, and all the good that has happened because of her efforts.  But you need to remember.  You need to understand this.

If you’re serious about our democracy, then you’ve got to be with her. She’s in the arena, and you can’t leave her in there by herself.

That’s a really decent thing to say.

NASA: Fracking is source of the massive methane “hot spot” in the American Southwest

by Gaius Publius

Methane, fracking, and global warming — like three musketeers, all for one and one for all.

As anyone who reads here regularly knows, methane (CH4) is a greenhouse gas — it traps the earth’s heat — just like CO2. When it’s burned (for power-generation, for example) it’s emitted into the atmosphere as CO2 and H2O (water vapor, another greenhouse gas, by the way). While methane is shorter-lived than CO2, which is stable in the atmosphere and is only drawn out slowly by natural processes, when methane breaks down in the air, it becomes CO2 and other products, including water vapor, which again are also greenhouse gases. So methane, even after breaking down, does long-term damage.

The lifespan of methane in the lower atmosphere is estimated at about ten years and 12 years in the stratosphere, but its greenhouse effect in that brief time is over 100 times the effect of CO2 over the same period.

So, not only is burning methane bad for the global climate (Ms. Clinton, take note), but direct methane leaks are terrible. If the “greenhouse effect” of CO2 (its “global warming potential”) is indexed as “1”, the greenhouse effect of methane over 100-year timespan is about 30, and and over a 20-year timespan, about 85.

That’s thirty times as potent as CO2, and 85 times as potent as CO2, respectively.

Methane in the Earth’s atmosphere is a strong greenhouse gas with a global warming potential of 29 over a 100-year period. This means that a methane emission will have 29 times the impact on temperature of a carbon dioxide emission of the same mass over the following 100 years. Methane has a large effect (100 times as strong as carbon dioxide) for a brief period (having a half-life of 7 years in the atmosphere), whereas carbon dioxide has a small effect for a long period (over 100 years). Because of this difference in effect and time period, the global warming potential of methane over a 20-year time period is 86.

There are many sources of direct methane emissions, including animal husbandry (consider how much beef is consumed in just the U.S. each day; every live cow emits methane almost hourly) and also melting Arctic permafrost, both undersea and on land (there’s a massive amount of methane sequestered in the Arctic, most of it still there … for now).

But a new and important source of methane is our increasing dependence on “natural gas” as a fuel for power generation. It’s true that burning methane provides more energy per unit of CO2 emission, but the CO2 it emits is still CO2. In addition, methane leaks at every point in the production and usage process, from well heads to pipelines, to facilities that “liquefy” it for long-distance transport, to the transportation vehicles themselves, to delivery to customers, and finally at sites where it’s ultimately burned. Every step of the process produces methane leakage. (Consider that the next time someone tries to sell a methane-dependent “bridge fuel” plan to the future.)

But the most important source of methane leakage is from the fracking that’s used to extract it.

Put simply, fracking doesn’t just cause earthquakes and water pollution. Fracking causes large methane leaks as well.

NASA: Fracking is causing the largest methane leak in the country

Nowhere is this more apparent than in the “four corners” region of the American Southwest, where Arizona, Colorado, Utah and New Mexico meet (see map above). We’ve known for years that there’s a massive (visible from space) methane “hot spot” in that region. Now we know why. Fracking.

Via Common Dreams:

NASA Study Nails Fracking as Source of Massive Methane ‘Hot Spot’

The 2,500-square mile plume is said to be the largest concentration of the potent greenhouse gas in the country

A NASA study released on Monday confirms that a methane “hot spot” in the Four Corners region of the American southwest is directly related to leaks from natural gas extraction, processing, and distribution.

The 2,500-square mile plume, first detected in 2003 and confirmed by NASA satellite data in October 2014, is said to be the largest concentration of atmospheric methane in the U.S. and is more than triple a standard ground-based estimate. Methane, the primary component of natural gas, is a highly-efficient greenhouse
gas—84 times more powerful than carbon dioxide, and a significant contributor to global warming.

The study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences and funded primarily by NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), surveyed industry sources including gas processing facilities, storage tanks, pipeline leaks, and well pads, as well as a coal mine venting shaft.

It found that leaks from only 10 percent of the individual methane sources are contributing to half of the emissions, confirming the scientists’ suspicions that the mysterious hotspot was connected to the high level of fracking in the region.

There are more than 20,000 oil and gas wells operating in the San Juan Basin, where Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico, and Utah meet. The U.S. Energy Information Administration estimates that overall annual gas production in the basin is as much as 1.3 trillion cubic feet, mostly from coal bed methane and shale formations.

“NASA’s finding that the oil and gas industry is primarily responsible for the ‘hot spot’ is not surprising,” stated the Western Environmental Law Center, a nonprofit public interest law firm. “In fact, the researchers found only one large source of methane not related to oil and gas operations: venting from the San Juan coal mine. This discovery renders attempts to point the finger at other potential emissions sources, like coal outcrops and landfills, definitively refuted.”

The article goes on to detail “how problematic current estimates of methane emissions from oil and gas operations are” — meaning that the EPA’s estimates of methane emissions (leaks) tend to minimize the problem.

Your bottom line —  We’re not only burning ourselves back to the Stone Age (I mean that literally), we’re fracking ourselves there too. Time to stop? Perhaps before it’s an emergency — or a worse one than we already have? If you think agree that the time to stop is now, click here. There’s simple and obvious way out of this, but the clock will soon run out on even that solution.

(A version of this piece appeared at Down With Tyranny. GP article archive here.)

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“This is a big deal”
by Tom Sullivan

One of the Republicans’ campaign talking points this year is that electing Hillary Clinton will be a third term for Barack Obama. The horror.

Upon yesterday’s release of two reports by the Census Bureau, Economic Policy Institute president Larry Mishel tweeted:

I can't remember feeling such glee on seeing a new economics data report— Larry Mishel (@LarryMishel) September 13, 2016

Census described its findings in a press release:

The U.S. Census Bureau announced today that real median household income increased by 5.2 percent between 2014 and 2015 while the official poverty rate decreased 1.2 percentage points. At the same time, the percentage of people without health insurance coverage decreased.

Median household income in the United States in 2015 was $56,516, an increase in real terms of 5.2 percent from the 2014 median income of $53,718. This is the first annual increase in median household income since 2007, the year before the most recent recession.

The nation’s official poverty rate in 2015 was 13.5 percent, with 43.1 million people in poverty, 3.5 million fewer than in 2014. The 1.2 percentage point decrease in the poverty rate from 2014 to 2015 represents the largest annual percentage point drop in poverty since 1999.

The percentage of people without health insurance coverage for the entire 2015 calendar year was 9.1 percent, down from 10.4 percent in 2014. The number of people without health insurance declined to 29.0 million from 33.0 million over the period.

I'm especially thrilled at the fast growth at the bottom. WOW! pic.twitter.com/H7ppdtk544— Larry Mishel (@LarryMishel) September 13, 2016

On the stump yesterday in Philadelphia for Hillary Clinton, President Obama touted the reports’ findings that both the uninsured rate and the pay gap between men and women is the lowest on record:

“So, now, let’s face it; the Republicans don’t like to hear good news right now,” Obama said. “But it’s important just to understand this is a big deal. More Americans are working, more have health insurance, incomes are rising, poverty is falling, and gas is $2 a gallon. … Thanks, Obama!”

President Obama’s approval rating approached 60 percent in a recent ABC News/Washington Post poll.

The income report was particularly good for Hispanic families in the U.S.:

The Center for American Progress, however, urged readers to curb their enthusiasm. There’s more work to do:

Even as middle-class households saw solid income growth in 2015, the share of income accruing to the middle class remains at near-record lows. The latest Census Bureau data show that the top 20 percent of American households continue to bring home a majority of national income. Meanwhile, the middle 60 percent of households received just 45.7 percent of national income—far below their 1968 peak of 53.2 percent. As shown in Figure 3, the downward slide of the middle-class income share is not a new phenomenon. Decades of declining worker power, challenges from globalization, and increasing levels of market concentration have all contributed to the weakening of the middle class. Had the share of national income accruing to the middle 60 percent remained at 1968 levels, the average middle-class family would have earned about $9,900 more in 2015.

The stunning economic news might not actually boost Clinton’s numbers any time soon. For one, it takes time for macroeconomic news to filter down to average voters, a former Sanders pollster told the San Francisco Chronicle. It may take several positive reports before voters notice. Plus, John Powell, director of UC Berkeley’s Haas Institute for a Fair and Inclusive Society, observed:

“Trump feeds off of people feeling bad, feeling angry. Then he says, ‘I can save you,’” Powell said. “Much of their effort — by Republicans and Trump — is that they need to say that things are bad. Their campaign is one of deep anxiety and polarization, that the country is going to hell in a handbasket.”

And for voters in rural areas, the news may take even longer to seep in, writes Timothy B. Lee at Vox:

The census counted more than 20 million households as being located outside any metropolitan area — that is, in rural America. And it found that these households saw their incomes drop by 2 percent between 2014 and 2015: from $45,534 to $44,657.

That is why rural voters will respond to Trump’s message as many in Appalachia did to Bernie Sanders’. They feel left behind. It is not simply that the Good News has not reached them. The recovery still has not.

There is not just a liberal/conservative split in America, but an urban/rural one Democrats need to do more to address. Howard Dean recognized that the DNC’s bi-coastal, urban-heavy presidential strategy essentially forfeited the rural center of the country to Rush Limbaugh and the Republicans. There may not be a lot of electoral votes concentrated there, but there are enough House and Senate seats to make the country ungovernable by a Democrat in the White House. Hillary Clinton has hinted at bringing back Dean’s 50 State strategy. Faster, please. Serve the term Dean never had.

"It just seems that the economy does better under the Democrats than the Republicans." —Donald Trump, March 2004 https://t.co/rKW1wpaDNk— Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) September 13, 2016

Remember The Last Time The MSM Didn’t Do Their Job?

By Spocko

I’ve noticed some serious anger at the mainstream media coming from multiple sources lately. It reminds me of 2003, during the build up to the Iraq war. I, like many people, were thinking, “The mainstream media is going to do their job, right? They will ask the tough questions, sort out the BS from the truth, hold power accountable, you know, the stuff from the movies.” But they didn’t.

Some of us started blogging during that time as an alternative to screaming at the TV.  The MSM didn’t want me helping them be better, so I chose to defund the right-wing media, who were making the world worse. (They still are, but are getting a lot less money for it.)

After the disaster of the Matt Lauer interviews, I got the same sick feeling about the MSM as I had in 2003. “Wait, what? Are you KIDDING ME?” I suppose in the spring and summer people could forgive the MSM for going with the most entertaining candidate. I mean, would you want to cover the unctuous Ted Cruz for 9 months? I couldn’t take enough showers every day.

But this isn’t Dancing with the Stars, the winner of this contest gets the power of life and death over millions.

I think the mainstream media are still assuming that “cooler heads will prevail” and/or Trump will self immolate so they won’t have to call him on his BS. They also expect the Hillary people to do the heavy lifting for them, so they can continue to look “objective.”  Maybe that will work, but as the old saying goes,”It’s all fun and games until a maniac gets the nuclear codes.”

Cliff Schecter and Sam Seder talked about this last Friday on the Majority Report. Cliff was angry at the mainstream media in general and furious at NBC for the Matt Lauer debacle specifically. You can hear the frustration in Cliff’s voice when he says he doesn’t know how to solve this problem.

In this clip Sam points out some of the pressures on the media that most people didn’t know about that led mainstream journalists to their defensive crouch in the first place. They also discuss what has changed with the rise of blogs and social media.

An increase of voices from the left has helped, but the bad news is that journalists are still being punished, not rewarded, for doing the job we expect them to do.  Especially when it comes to coverage of right wing politicians. But this isn’t anything new.

Eric Boehlert wrote a book, Lapdogs, How the Press Rolled Over for Bush, about how the Bush/Cheney White House treated the press like dirt and how well it worked for them.

I remember the story of how Dick Cheney kicked an ABC reporter off the Vice President’s plane. Her bosses and others in the media didn’t stand up for her. Sounds just like how Trump treats the media who challenged him. And the Breitbart editor who didn’t stand up for his own reporter? He’s Trump’s campaign CEO now.

Why so serious Spocko? Trump is funny! 

If you want some humor with your media criticism and miss Jon Stewart’s smart, funny take on the Matt Lauer interview, listen to Jimmy Dore’s political comedy podcast. “Matt Lauer failed at journalism during the town hall with Trump & Clinton, we break it down.”

I’m happy that there are so many people who are pounding on the mainstream media to be better. They aren’t going to get better on their own. The need to be pushed to do their job, especially when they are punished for it.

Joel Silberman wrote a piece, The Media Should Be Put on Trial for Its 2016 Election Coverage that has some good suggestions on what to do.

So, what can we do? Demand better media. Write to the station managers of corporate TV stations/cable operators and tell them you are not satisfied. Tweet about it. Call out CNN, MSNBC, NBC, CBS, ABC, FOX in all forms of social media. It’s time to demand that media live up to the vision of the founders of our democracy.

If that seems too old school, how about using technology better and faster to do the job the MSM journalists won’t. Jordan Hoffner, Salon Media’s CEO, had an interesting proposal, fact-check the candidates’ statements in real time. What a great idea! We can act as if Google exists and people have memories! Woo hoo!

In the past if networks didn’t treat Trump special, he would cut them off. But imagine the ratings bonanza for the first real journalist to demand the truth and hold his feet to the fire. What if instead of arresting Amy Goodman for doing journalism, she is rewarded for it? Imagine her Trump/Clinton interviews and debates.  I’d also love to see Sam Seder call Trump out during an interview.

But frankly, having to beat up the main stream media again to try to get them to do their job makes me weary. If you feel the same way there is another option. Support blogs like this and other progressive voices.

We are asking the tough questions and pointing out the BS, shouldn’t that be rewarded? 

Trump’s big medical reveal

by digby

Kellyann Conway appeared on the morning shows and said she hadn’t been told the name of the doctor who administered his recent physical about which he’s slated to reveal all the details on Dr Oz tomorrow. But since she said in the same breath that she thinks it’s important that people are able to keep their longtime doctor I’m going to assume there’s at least some chance that it’s the same quack who wrote that ridiculous letter.

Anyway, this looks like it’s going to be quite a show:

As you probably know by now, Donald Trump plans to reveal the results of a recent medical exam Thursday on the “Dr. Oz Show,” which is a rather unorthodox way for a presidential candidate to make records public. But, hey, Trump is a former reality TV star. As long as all relevant health information comes out, who cares if it is presented in showbiz style?

The problem is that all relevant information might not come out. Based on the way Mehmet Oz is talking about his upcoming interview with the Republican presidential candidate, it sure sounds like we’re about to get an incomplete picture of Trump’s physical condition.

Here is an exchange between Oz and Fox News Radio host Brian Kilmeade that aired Tuesday:

KILMEADE: What if there’s some embarrassing things on there?

OZ: Well, I bet you he won’t release them.

KILMEADE: Oh, it’s still going to be his decision?

OZ: It’s his decision. You know, I — the metaphor for me is it’s the doctor’s office, the studio. So I’m not going to ask him questions he doesn’t want to have answered.

So, to review, Oz says Trump will publicize only the good parts of his medical report and that the interview will not include any questions Trump would not want to answer.

But seriously folks. Is it any surprise that Trump would turn to a snake oil salesman? He’s a member of the guild — along with his good buddy Ben Carson who will undoubtedly attest to his fantastic, tremendous good health as well.

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With friends like these

by digby

Candidate Joe Garcia of Florida

Here’s a perfect example of how even with good intentions some men walk into sexist arguments that make women feel like jamming chopsticks in their ears:

“I believe we’re about to see the most consequential presidency that we’ve seen since Lyndon Johnson,” Garcia said, according to footage of the event obtained by the Miami Herald.

“This is not because I think Hillary Clinton is the greatest ever. But I do believe she is extremely, exceedingly competent, and she — I know this is going to sound weird to you, but to me, as somebody who studies history, she’s going to be very similar to Lyndon Johnson,” he continued.

“Lyndon Johnson wasn’t a particularly charming man, wasn’t a particularly nice man: He would ask you nice, and then when you didn’t do it, he made you do it. And Hillary is under no illusions that you want to have sex with her, or that she’s going to seduce you, or out-think you.”

I especially like the “she won’t out-think you” which leaves you with the impression that she’s an unfuckable moron who I guess will put a gun to your head and force you to do whatever she wants — like the shrieking harpy she is. Now I guess there might be some people out there who find that to be an appealing image in a leader but I’m going to take a wild guess that they’re more likely to vote for Trump.

He’s apologized, saying that he meant that she’s a hard-worker who gets the job done and I guess that’s fine. But it’s revealing of the way many men, even ones who are supposedly sympathetic to the cause, think about accomplished older women. And no, it’s not just older men either. If anything, I hear the worst of this stuff coming from the youngs.  This guy is younger than Obama, and he should know better.

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Yes, it’s all about them

by digby

Please read this whole piece by Brian Beutler responding to the criticism of the press in this election. He acknowledges that it’s complicated and that journalists have a number of different ways of looking at this.

And he has deconstructed something important which I’ve been harping on with my facile little bon mot “it’s all about them”:

The press is not a pro-democracy trade, it is a pro-media trade. By and large, it doesn’t act as a guardian of civic norms and liberal institutions—except when press freedoms and access itself are at stake. Much like an advocacy group or lobbying firm will reserve value judgments for issues that directly touch upon the things they’re invested in, reporters and media organizations are far more concerned with things like transparency, the treatment of reporters, and first-in-line access to information of public interest, than they are with other forms of democratic accountability.

That’s not a value set that’s well calibrated to gauging Trump’s unmatched, omnidirectional assault on our civil life. Trump can do and say outrageous things all the time, and those things get covered in a familiar “did he really say that?” fashion, but his individual controversies don’t usually get sustained negative coverage unless he is specifically undermining press freedom in some clear and simple way.

Even then, though, the press has no language for explicating which affronts to press freedom are more urgent and dangerous than others. All such affronts are generally lumped together in a way that makes it unclear whether the media thinks it’s worse that Trump blacklists outlets and wants to sue journalists into penury or that Clinton doesn’t like holding press conferences.

The result is the evident skewing of editorial judgment we see in favor of stories where media interests are most at stake: where Clinton gets ceaseless scrutiny for conducting public business on a private email server; Trump gets sustained negative coverage for several weeks when his campaign manager allegedly batters a reporter; where Clinton appears to faint, but the story becomes about when it was appropriate for her to disclose her pneumonia diagnosis; where because of her illness, she and Trump will both be hounded about their medical records, and Trump will be further hounded for his tax returns—but where bombshell stories about the ways Trump used other people’s charity dollars for personal enrichment have a hard time breaking through.

News outlets are less alarmed by the idea that Trump might run the government to boost his company’s bottom line, or that he might shred other constitutional rights, because those concerns don’t place press freedoms squarely in crosshairs. Controversies like his proposal to ban Muslim travel into the U.S., create a deportation force to expel millions of immigrants, and build a wall along the southern border are covered less as affronts to American values than as gauche ideas that might harm his poll numbers with minorities. Trump’s most damaging scandal may have been his two-week political fight with the Khan family, but even there, the fact that Trump attacked the Khans’ religious faith was of secondary interest to questions like whether attacking a Gold Star family of immigrants would offend veterans and non-whites who might otherwise have voted for him.

Against that backdrop, it’s no surprise that when liberal intellectuals argue the press’ coverage of Trump and Clinton is out of whack, in ways that imperil the democracy itself, members of the media don’t see a world-historical blindspot that must be urgently corrected. They see an attack on the trade itself—and reflexively rush to protect it.

This is very, very important. Right now the press is in a defensive crouch because they are getting a lot of grief on social media for their coverage. In my view, it’s completely justified. This is turning into a story that rivals the “spite girls” nonsense in 2000 which pathologized Al Gore as delusional and bizarre and valorized George W. Bush as a regular dude. The subconscious motives for this had a lot to do with the fact that the media wanted to make Gore pay for their own failure to take down Clinton. It’s a different set of dynamics, but the press is doing the same thing — putting its finger on the scale. And it has to do with their own set of issues with the candidates.

They think they are representative of “the people,” which is the central thesis of what I call The Village. Once you see this, you realize that it’s always all about them. Normally, the country can just work through this, but we have an existential threat in Donald Trump and it must be challenged.

Right now reporters are blaming the voters (even as they mau-mau Clinton for … blaming voters) and insisting that they have nothing to do with Trump’s rise. That’s simply incorrect. I know that covering Trump is extremely difficult for a straight reporter. He is unique in politics and flouts any rules that might apply. But the reaction to that is to turn their frustration away from him, since it’s confusing and difficult to understand, and demand satisfaction from his more traditional rival, who also happens to be the target of right wing character assassins handing them an easy story line. They are doing a bad job at the wrong time.

Trump is not a politician. He’s something else. And the media needs to stop navel gazing and recognize this. We’re seeing some of that from editorial boards and pundits who are usually pretty invested in the “both sides do it” narratives. But straight reporters (and I assume their editors) are letting the country down right now. This isn’t an ordinary election. And the polls are too close for comfort.

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The oppression of a billionaire’s son

by digby

In 2014, Trump Jr was asked about his Dad’s birtherism:

“I appreciate someone who has the moral conviction to stand by a belief, or even question it. What’s wrong with questioning something these days? Whether it be political spectrum, across a racial divide, it’s increasingly difficult for – and this is coming from, I’m the white privileged son of a rich guy — there is a point where I’m not even allowed to have this conversation in America today, which again, I can have it, but it’s a no-win proposition for me.”

Boo hoo hoo! It’s a no win proposition for the rich white guy when he promotes racial division and lies. What is this world coming to?

This clears up one thing. We know what basket Trump Jr is in.

But then, we already knew that:

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