James Carville Is An American Original

He gets it.

American democracy is safe as long as James Carville is around.

Trump’s Russian Connection

an alleged covert communication channel between the Trump Organization, Trump’s business fiefdom, and Alfa Bank, a Russian institution with ties to the Russian oligarchy and Putin. 

 a former senior spy for a Western country had uncovered evidence that the Kremlin had launched an operation—approved by Putin—to turn Trump into a Russian asset. 

 “Russian regime has been cultivating, supporting and assisting TRUMP for at least 5 years. Aim, endorsed by PUTIN, has been to encourage splits and divisions in western alliance.” It maintained that Trump "and his inner circle have accepted a regular flow of intelligence from the Kremlin, including on his Democratic and other political rivals." It claimed that Russian intelligence had "compromised" Trump during his visits to Moscow and could "blackmail him." 

The Comey Sexism

Clinton is guilty of SWF (Speaking While Female), and emailgate is just a reminder to us all that she has no business doing what she’s doing and must be punished, for the sake of all decent women everywhere.

FBI Chief James Comey has shown himself to be another bully of the same kind. He has repeatedly talked down to Clinton, admonishing her as a bad parent would a 5-year-old. He has accused her of “poor judgment” and called her use of a private email server “extremely careless.” 

Russia And NATO

In the early 2000s Russia actually expressed interest in joining NATO. Russia apparently was rebuffed. That is mind boggling from the peace perspective.

It can be imagined the military industrial complex in America did not like the idea. When you don't have an enemy it is hard to justify a large defense budget.

On the other hand Russia has not exactly gone down the path of democracy. And it does not seem to have discovered some alternate path to putting its economy on a sound path to rapid progress.

Russia is Second World.

Be that as it may it is for Russia and America as the two leading nuclear powers on the planet to take the lead to creating a world free of nuclear weapons. Why keep weapons that everyone knows can never be used? Why leave the options open for false alarms that might end human civilization?

And while the two powers figure out their mutual dynamic, Syria suffers. The innocents in Syria suffer. It is a sad situation.

America could have done a much better job of winning the Cold War. It did not do enough to help Russia in the aftermath. It did not do a good enough job of face saving of a defeated rival.

And it is not too late for Russia to choose the path of democracy as the only available way to rapid economic progress and true greatness.

Letting go of Assad would be a good small step in that direction. Assad is irredeemable. Assad is deplorable. This guy has attacked his own people like Hitler attacked people in other countries.

The Comey Attack

What drives people? When your professional obligation is to uphold the laws and the constitution but you helplessly undermine your chain of command and your department guidelines and your heart says to not obey because your boss is a black woman (that don't look right) and you are moved by the ideologies of racism and sexism as certainly as the electrons are moved by electric forces and you are okay with Huma Abedin being a Hillary Clinton surrogate but a Pakistani Indian American is getting too close to the president for your comfort, what do you do? You make one last ditch effort. You would rather a madman near the nuclear code than a Pakistani Indian American near the President Of The United States.

The FBI did it to John Liu, who is born in New York City. He looked too Chinese to possibly occupy the second most powerful office in the country.

This is how you know racism in America's criminal justice system is a very real issue.

On Clinton Emails, Did the F.B.I. Director Abuse His Power?

GOP Civil War Round The Corner?

Now the party of Ronald Reagan is being led by a man with no discernible ideological leanings, save for an affinity with some of history’s ugliest. 

“The likelihood of the Republican Party surviving this, of there being another Republican president in the future, is small,” said one movement conservative who served in the Bush White House. “I don’t think the party survives.”

Far from the halls of the Hoover Institution and big Washington policy shops is a force they cannot control: the Trump campaign, a small collection of social-media gurus, Breitbart alumni, and Trump family members who have managed to capture the majority of Republican voters in the U.S., and who may use their new power to launch a media network, or take over as the new axis of the GOP, or both. And as the old establishment looks on in horror, the civil war in its ranks has already begun.

“I’ve never seen so many really smart people at a loss for what to do,” says the head of one prominent conservative think tank. “They’re pulling their hair out, to the extent they have any hair left.” 

“We’ve known the cause of death while the patient was still alive on the table.”

There is pretty universal agreement in conservative circles that the immediate cause of death was blunt force trauma with a loud, orange object.

there is wide disagreement as to whether this was a sudden, unpredictable trauma—a piano falling on you as you walk down the street—or the result of deep-seated, sclerotic disease. 

“The ugliness of those forces is real. The number of people who supported Trump is alarming. 

Some among them just think it’s time to start over. “If you can’t resurrect the Republican brand with less than half a billion dollars and spending four to eight years to get it done,” Glover, who is on the board of Roy’s new think tank, said, it might be time to think about starting something new. 

The party she envisions is one with “a Jeb Bush platform but with a 21st-century bolt on acknowledging climate change, gay marriage and campaign finance reform that’s First Amendment-compliant.”

Trump could only have happened to a party that was already paralyzed by an identity crisis—one that still has to be dealt with in addition to the secondary identity crisis wrought by Trump.

three disparate factions that find themselves squabbling under the Republican tent—the Trump fans, the stand-pat establishment, and the conservative Jesuits—

What the orange dragon chooses to do after the drubbing Republicans are sure he’s going to get might be the difference between the final nail in the GOP coffin, and a revival. And again, few really believe in the latter, not even the stalwarts. “I have a feeling no one’s going to learn a lot from this campaign because of the unique nature of Trump,” says the think tank head. “I’m one of the people who is feeling a lot of angst.” If he starts a media company, says Ayres, “It will be far harder to heal the wounds that he opened up, and far harder to put Humpty Dumpty back together again.”

“It’s in Trump’s nature to continue to want to be relevant, to have people come to Trump Tower to lick his boots for years to come,”

As for the people who hope Trump will simply melt away on November 9 and remove the threat of collapse from the Republican Party? “I appreciate but do not share their optimism,” says Soltis Anderson. “I feel like we are in for a pretty long civil war.”

Talk Of Trump Victory?

This is confounding, to say the least.

Et Tu, Texas?

New Electoral College Ratings: Texas and North Carolina Shift in Clinton's Favor

Arkansas 1980

“I cannot tell you the number of times they would say to me, ‘If your husband wins, are you going to keep his last name?’ ” she told me. “I heard it over and over and over.”

Arkansas

The Road Trip That Changed Hillary Clinton's Life 

After they made their way deeper into Arkansas, bypassing Little Rock and curving through the Ozarks, the women stopped at a ramshackle restaurant for lunch. Mrs. Ehrman was growing more alarmed as she took in the surroundings.

“I said to her, ‘Hillary, you’re never going to get French bread here. You’re never going to get Brie,’ ” she recalled in a final plea, but by then Mrs. Clinton had made up her mind. “She wasn’t even listening to me at that point,” Mrs. Ehrman said.

They arrived in Fayetteville, home of the University of Arkansas, on one of the rowdiest weekends of the year. The hilltop town, with its canopy of oak trees, had become a swarm of drunken football fans, their faces painted red and their heads covered with hats shaped like the university’s hog mascot. The Razorbacks were playing a major rival at the time, the Longhorns of the University of Texas.

“It was then that I broke down and cried when I thought, ‘She’s going to live here?’ ” Mrs. Ehrman said. “I just cried. I just absolutely cried.”

Mrs. Ehrman took a plane back to Washington and paid someone to drive her Buick home. “I thought, ‘I’m getting out of here tomorrow morning. I don’t belong here,’ ” she said.

Texas Blues

Texas Republicans are slowly coming to grips with the unthinkable: Hillary Clinton has a shot at winning the nation’s most iconic red state.

Texas is the beating heart of the modern Republican Party, and the cornerstone of any GOP nominee’s electoral strategy. It’s also home to the most recent Republican president, George W. Bush, and to two serious recent GOP contenders for the White House, Sen. Ted Cruz and former Gov. Rick Perry.

And Texas is where the party’s most prominent donor base is clustered.

A New Political Party?

Bald, wiry, and barely 40, McMullin is not a bomb-thrower by nature. He is polite and mild-mannered, and speaks in the earnest cadence of a Mormon missionary asking for permission to come inside and share a brief message about Jesus. As a Capitol Hill policy wonk, McMullin was a loyal cog in the Grand Old Party until he quit his job in August to launch a presidential protest bid under the #NeverTrump banner. Initially, he said, his campaign was intended as a vehicle of reform, meant only to remind the GOP of its conservative principles. But now, in the final weeks of this havoc-wreaking election, McMullin is scanning the wreckage of the Republican Party, and wondering whether there’s anything left to salvage........ He has become increasingly convinced that the rise of Trump “is just a symptom of a greater disease in the party” — one that can’t be cured “within the existing infrastructure.” ....... McMullin and his campaign are attempting something much more audacious than a fluke victory in a single state. While no one was watching, they were building an entirely new political party in the desert — and they don’t plan to stop when Trump loses. ........ McMullin spent the next two and half months listening to frightened lawmakers and calculating donors apologetically explain why they couldn’t break with Trump — a party paralyzed by fear and careerism. ....... For him, these craven capitulations have highlighted the need for a new center-right party in American politics ..... if Trump continues to exert his toxic influence after Nov. 8, “we are going to see a new party emerge.” ...... they’ve assembled serious state organizations across the country on a shoestring budget, enabling them to hustle their way onto 11 state ballots in the space of just 10 weeks. As Trump’s candidacy has imploded, McMullin has sought to take advantage with campaign stops throughout the Mountain West, where he’s often been greeted with large crowds and armies of eager volunteers. ........ fewer than 50% of Latter-day Saints now identify as Republicans. ..... he ticked off his support for traditional Republican causes — pro-life, pro-trade, hawkish on foreign policy— and they cheered even louder when he took on the failures of the current Republican Party. He called for a “new conservative movement” that welcomed Muslims, immigrants, and “people who don’t look like me.”

Russia, Syria, Donald, And War, And Cyber Espionage

Exclusive: Trump says Clinton policy on Syria would lead to World War Three

Syria is the number one hot spot in the world right now. The complication is that Russia is all out in support of its top regional ally Assad.

How does this game end? It ends with Assad gone. Assad will eventually go, but will also have lasting damaging effects on Putin's regime internally. It is expensive to support Assad.

The sad part is all the damage that is being done while Assad lingers on.

The forces of democracy will ultimately win. Because it is first and foremost about the people in Syria.

Russia, Syria, Donald, And War, And Cyber Espionage

Exclusive: Trump says Clinton policy on Syria would lead to World War Three

Syria is the number one hot spot in the world right now. The complication is that Russia is all out in support of its top regional ally Assad.

How does this game end? It ends with Assad gone. Assad will eventually go, but will also have lasting damaging effects on Putin's regime internally. It is expensive to support Assad.

The sad part is all the damage that is being done while Assad lingers on.

The forces of democracy will ultimately win. Because it is first and foremost about the people in Syria.

Russia, Syria, Donald, And War, And Cyber Espionage

Exclusive: Trump says Clinton policy on Syria would lead to World War Three

Syria is the number one hot spot in the world right now. The complication is that Russia is all out in support of its top regional ally Assad.

How does this game end? It ends with Assad gone. Assad will eventually go, but will also have lasting damaging effects on Putin's regime internally. It is expensive to support Assad.

The sad part is all the damage that is being done while Assad lingers on.

The forces of democracy will ultimately win. Because it is first and foremost about the people in Syria.

Russia, Syria, Donald, And War, And Cyber Espionage

Exclusive: Trump says Clinton policy on Syria would lead to World War Three

Syria is the number one hot spot in the world right now. The complication is that Russia is all out in support of its top regional ally Assad.

How does this game end? It ends with Assad gone. Assad will eventually go, but will also have lasting damaging effects on Putin's regime internally. It is expensive to support Assad.

The sad part is all the damage that is being done while Assad lingers on.

The forces of democracy will ultimately win. Because it is first and foremost about the people in Syria.

Pigs Can't Fly

But they can run for President Of The United States, apparently! Oh, only in America! Here's looking at you Donald Trump.

Trump Monster

Bilal Elcharfa was pouring cereal for his children before school this month when his 7-year-old daughter, Maaria, walked into the kitchen, calling for him.

“Baba, I had a scary dream,” she said, hugging him tight. “About Donald Trump.”

Mr. Elcharfa, a taxi driver, had dealt with his own share of anti-Muslim sentiment, like the time a passenger refused to pay his fare because he said Muslims needed to pay for the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

Maaria said that if Mr. Trump became president, “I’m going to stay in my room forever.”

Trump Is Pus Coming Out

Mass injustice doesn't result from a "few bad apples," but from the mass of people willfully supporting injustice.

I remain desperate to protect you from a society that quietly but habitually tells you that as a girl, you're not equal to boys -- that you're more valued for your body than your brains, that you don't deserve the same opportunities let alone the same basic respect. And the truth is, black men and women are still treated vastly differently under our laws and in our communities. 

After all, you're only eight years old. But I know you understand the difference between right from wrong. And I know that you know the things Donald Trump has said about Mexicans and veterans and Muslims and women are wrong.

You've said that if Donald Trump wins, you want to move to India. 

Trumponomics Leads To India Before 1991

Trump's US will look like the India Narayana Murthy complained about