Indian Protest Heard

Native American tribes won a significant victory on Friday when the Obama administration halted construction of an oil pipeline on federal land that was opposed by the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe, who were supported in a series of protest demonstrations by a score of other tribal groups.

The ecological/climate crisis angle is part of the story, but so is the specific agency of Native peoples. The Native groups were protesting because the local tribe feared for the consequences to its water supply of an oil pipeline leak, and also opposed the pipeline's transit across a sacred site.  There's more background in this NPR report.

The action was announced jointly by the Justice Department, Interior and the U.S. Army who owned the land. They said in their statement: "This case has highlighted the need for a serious discussion on whether there should be nationwide reform with respect to considering tribes' views on these types of infrastructure projects."

They said they would initiate government to government talks with the tribe.

In addition to the issue at hand, this statement may well set a precedent.  It essentially states the federal government's position as suggesting equal standing with Indian tribal governments.  It is a victory for Native American sovereignty and dignity.

For despite recent lip service, American Indian voices are still not heard, institutionally or individually as equals, with different but legitimate and ultimately valuable perspectives and points of view.  More specifically, Indian communities are not heard politically concerning issues that affect them.  In this particular case, when non-Native communities objected to their water supplies being endangered, the pipeline route was changed--to endanger Native communities.

Demo included participants from North Coast tribes.  Photo from Lost Coast Outpost.                                                                                                              

It seems everybody is an expert on Indians and what's good for them, except Indians.  I know enough to know I am not an expert, which seems to make me an anomaly.  Yet even I find the confident ignorance of many non-Natives shocking and embarrassing.

I had to laugh when recently (non-Native) researchers concluded that the earliest Americans could not have arrived by the land bridge from Asia, as (non-Native) science has insisted for decades was how it happened.  Native scholar Vine Deloria, Jr. was only the most outspoken critic of this assumption.  Although non-Native scholars like Levi-Strauss also thought it was wrong,  Deloria felt it was political--a way of dating Indian ancestors to shortly before European invasion--and he showed how this had been used against tribal claims.

Many Indian tribes have stories of much longer residence, and stories that suggest other ways--by sea for instance--of their ancestors arriving.  But such information is not often taken seriously by the predominantly non-Native scientists who tend to hold fast to theories about the ancestors of today's Indians even in the face of contrary evidence.

Guilt is probably part of the defensiveness on a wide range of other issues as well, for what Europeans did during the history they repress and suppress. They cling to cherished pioneer myths that substitute for owning historical horrors, such as California's enslavement and genocide of Native peoples.  

President Obama has met several times with leaders and residents of Native communities.  Now his administration has taken a potentially major step in hearing them.

The Donald Chronicles: Confederacy of Dunces (Updated)

Candidates Clinton and Trump appeared separately on what was billed as a foreign policy forum by NBC News on Wednesday evening.  According to most reviews, neither did all that well, but the most vilified participant was the questioner Matt Lauer.

Matt Lauer’s Pathetic Interview of Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump Is the Scariest Thing I’ve Seen in This Campaign was just the headline to Jonathan Chiat's takedown.  Lauer spent inordinate proportion of the allotted time questioning the emails, and tried to rush Clinton through answers to complex foreign policy questions.  He let Trump get away with lying and spouting nonsense.  And wearily I say as usual, global heating didn't even come up.

To this Frank Rich (in Matt Lauer’s Gift to Donald Trump) adds that NBC's optics favored Trump over Clinton.  He also said it was a disaster with political implications.

In the New York Times James Poniewozik wrote that Lauer was "lost at sea."  Another Times piece summarizes the immediate, nearly universal deploring of Lauer's performance.  The WPost's Daily 202 does also.

The NBC event fits into the ongoing narrative of the double standard.  Charles M. Blow in the NYTimes: "This [Trump] is not an honest man. This is not a trustworthy man. The fact that people believe he’s honest is a result of a failed media that aims its sincerest critique at Clinton’s deficiencies with the truth, but applies an entertainment standard to Trump that corrects falsehoods but doesn’t castigate him for them."

As usual the followup stories can't keep up with all the outrageous, stupid and lying assertions that Trump made in his segment.  But they say, he looked good doing it.

In 2012 President Obama was ambushed in the first presidential debate by a Mitt Romney who confidently brandished brand new positions as if he'd always held them, and rattled a succession of assertions and attacks too fast and too many to keep up with.  Media scorekeepers gave him the debate.  Now knowing what to expect, President Obama came back strong and won the second and third debates.

Now Hillary Clinton knows what to expect even before the first debate, which may well be the only debate that many people watch.  There's always a risk in giving Trump equivalence by being on the same stage with him.  And his TV smarts and the confidence of the psychotic salesman are factors she has to deal with.  If the Clinton campaign is smart enough to win this election, they'll have to show it by learning from this dry run.

Otherwise it's all ammunition for the despair that is never far off.  Trump is the Homegrown Hitler, the Siberian Candidate (which he demonstrated again at the forum) and psychologically unfit for any high office, without the attention span to administer a city let alone this always imperiled nation. And in so many ways he is more dangerous than any terrorist. But there he is--the Republican nominee.

Trump is a moron, as is Matt Lauer, as is Gary Johnson --just look at their faces, just look into their eyes. Those are G.W. Bush eyes, and in comparison to them Bush is practically Einstein.  Meanwhile President Obama is dealing with intractable problems I can't even keep up with, and he talks about the trends in the climate crisis as "terrifying." 

This campaign is therefore terrifying, but that's been the case for every campaign I can recall since 1980.  Jonathan Chiat in a later post provides a long analysis of why Hillary Clinton is so easily vilified.  (And sexism is part of it.)  But as he writes, the mechanics of campaign coverage is part of the madness.  So it's not just the Clinton campaign that has to do better---it's certainly the media, especially the debate masters.

In other Homemade Hitler news, GOP vp candidate Pence joins Trump in calling Putin a stronger leader than Obama--which is simply to say that a de facto dictator is "stronger" and therefore better than an American President.  This as well as Trump's blustering foolishness about changing things (like military leadership) a constitutional President can't, is pretty explicit in asserting that he wants to be elected dictator.

In addition to dissing his own President in favor of the Russian dictator, Trump took an unprecedented step farther into the abyss by criticizing American foreign policy and other aspects of the American system on a Russian state-owned tv network controlled by Putin.

Eugene Robinson adds:

"Trump repeated his complaint that the United States should have “taken the oil” in Iraq, noting that “it used to be, to the victor belong the spoils.” Yes, that was true in the time of Genghis Khan. Today, under international law, plunder is a war crime — and not the only one Trump wants our military to commit. He has said in the past that our forces also should practice torture “worse than waterboarding” against suspected terrorists. He would ask our service members to dishonor the uniform and all it represents."

"Face the truth: Trump has to be the most dangerously ignorant major-party presidential candidate in history."

The Trump Corruption in Florida case continues to heat.  The Washington Post editorial board: IF DONALD TRUMP were treated like an ordinary presidential candidate, the speculations swirling around an illegal donation his charitable foundation gave to Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi (R) might dog his campaign from now until Election Day. The situation smells of influence-buying. Even if one takes Ms. Bondi’s explanations seriously, the facts already on the record are damning."

In Florida, the Tampa Bay Times editorial board has called for a federal investigation.

50 Years Ago Today

"The Man Trap," the first episode of Star Trek aired on NBC on September 8, 1966.  

The Donald Chronicles: Double Standard and/or Fraud Fatigue?

Complaints of a media double standard on Clinton (lots of prominent stories, nothing illegal found) and Trump ( less prominent stories, actual illegal stuff found with possibly more) cited here by Josh Marshall and Paul Krugman got other voices in support on Tuesday.  Plus more scrutiny on the Trump possible bribe story, partly due to Hillary talking about it to the traveling press.

 There were two pieces in the WPost:  Paul Waldman asks Trump’s history of corruption is mind-boggling. So why is Clinton supposedly the corrupt one?         and Daniel Dresner attempts to answer the question Why Hillary Clinton’s perceived corruption seems to echo louder than Donald Trump’s actual corruption.  

Waldman explains the questions involved in the Trump Foundation contribution to the campaign of Florida's attorney-general, who then declined to prosecute Trump on allegations of fraud made against Trump University, after she solicited the campaign contribution from him and received it.  It raises lots of questions--  "But here’s the thing: We don’t know the answers to those questions, because almost nobody seems to be pursuing them."  Waldman lists the stories about Trump that aren't being investigated.

Dresner notes that so far the Clinton Foundation stories have turned up only "nothingburgers." "To be clear, I don’t disagree with much of this coverage. I’m just noting that there’s an awful damn lot of it."  The media has covered some Trump scandals but the Clinton coverage "echoes louder" partly because cable news provides the chamber.  (Also the coverage on the Clinton Foundation is way way bigger than on the Trump Foundation, at least so far.)

Dresner suggest two reasons why: Clinton is leading, and there's lots of material pertaining to her on the record, because it's all been made public.  Not really ironically, Trump is harder to cover because he keeps everything secret, like his tax returns.  (Which 74% of voters believe he should reveal, but he's still refusing.)

None of this says why Clinton is "perceived" as corrupt without evidence--it can't all be Faux News.

But basically Waldman says the media isn't investigating the Trump Foundation and other Trump problems, and Dresner says they aren't doing so because it's hard.

But hard as it may be (requiring like, you know, actual reporting), this might be changing.  An editorial by the Miami Herald explains why the Trump Foundation/Trump U. story "deserves a closer look," with Florida details.  It also mentions that absolutely nothing illegal has turned up about the Clinton Foundation.   NPR did a segment and covered the story, noting that a political contribution by a foundation was illegal, the IRS caught Trump and he paid a fine. But the story had little or no new reporting.

Trump on Tuesday denied ever speaking to the Florida a-g, then (since she's on the record as having asked for the donation from him in a personal phone call) his campaign walked it back by saying he meant he never spoke to her about Trump U.

Another reason--which keeps coming up--why Trump outrages aren't fully covered is that there are so many of them, several times a day.  On Tuesday there were his completely nonsensical answers to substantive questions in a staged town hall, his dubious military endorsements, and the leaking of Democrat emails by a likely Russian hacker to a New York newspaper owned by Trump's son-in-law and campaign honcho.  Another Siberian Candidate moment?

Meanwhile, a CNN national poll shows the likely voter race tied (reason to believe this is an outlyer) and a huge Washington Post poll of all 50 states done over a month shows a tight race but clear electoral vote advantage to Clinton.  The surprise in this poll is the number of close states, both blue and red--including Texas, a virtual tie.  But this poll was taken over a volatile time, so it's not clear what it says about the state of the race right now.

As for truth, the WPost shoots down another rabid right Internet cliche--that Hillary was fired from the Watergate committee-- and the New Yorker begins a weekly series "Trump and the Truth" (because he's really no good at it) with Trump and immigration.

The Donald Chronicles: Laboring for Headlines (with Updates)

Labor Day being the traditional campaign kickoff, news media stories are laboring for hot contest headlines. Trump cuts into Clinton’s lead as crucial stretch begins screams the Politico headline.  But an NBC analysis shows that Trump isn't cutting into anything--Clinton's numbers have gone down slightly in some polls but Trump's have not gone up.

The Politico story correctly emphasizes the importance of the debates, which are scheduled to begin in late September.  But the WPost wonders whether the Donald will show up for all or any of them.  Though it seems Trump should be happy with at least one of the moderators.  Update: Trump said Monday that he will participate in all three debates.

One thing that is true is that Labor Day begins the most active campaigning, especially for Hillary who has devoted much of August to fundraising.  Good news for her fans in this Boston Globe report suggesting she's hitting her stride as a campaigner.  (Plus the latest state polls look good--an 8 pt.lead holding in PA, 4 points in North Carolina.)

But Josh Marshall continues to raise the alarm that coverage is disproportionate to the benefit of Trump (especially in the NY Times, he asserts.) See here and here. The Clinton Foundation gets scary coverage, but Trump's documented attempted (and apparently successful) bribe of a Florida official is pretty much ignored.

Later on Monday in the NYTimes, Paul Krugman agreed with this assessment, asserting that news media is pushing images of Clinton akin to how the media distorted Al Gore in 2000.

Reporters keep picking at the smallest oddities of the Clinton email investigation while missing the overall picture, which is--according to Kevin Drum:"... this report is pretty much an almost complete exoneration of Hillary Clinton. She wasn’t prohibited from using a personal device or a personal email account, and others at state did it routinely. She’s told the truth all along about why she did it. Colin Powell did indeed advise her about using personal email shortly after she took office, but she chose to follow the rules rather than skirt them, as Powell did. She didn’t take her BlackBerry into her office. She communicated with only a very select group of 13 people. She took no part in deciding which emails were personal before handing them over to State. She had nothing to do with erasing information on the PRN server. That was a screw-up on PRN’s end. She and her staff all believed at the time that they were careful not to conduct sensitive conversations over unclassified email systems. And there’s no evidence that her server was ever hacked."

But I have to say the media mis-coverage that fills me with the most despair isn't about the political race.  As I posted prominently--and as two British papers reported prominently--during President Obama's visit in China, the US and China announced they were both ratifying the Paris climate crisis agreement--so far the most significant international effort to save the planet.  But is that what the WPost chose to emphasize?  Naaaah.  An argument at the airport between minor Chinese officials and (significantly I suppose) the American press led the story: Obama’s China visit gets off to rocky start, reflecting current relations.  More evidence reflecting that we are indeed too stupid to live.

How about the Senate and the House?  WPost teases with a headline, though the actual story is a report about a few races with no answer to the question.  But Politico reports on races in Indiana and North Carolina and opines that the Dems chances of retaking the Senate "just keep getting better."

Monday pm updates: Why bother with a new post?  Trump makes a fool of himself--again--over that supposed snub in China.  But in more substantive news, the WPost reports: U.S. intelligence and law enforcement agencies are probing what they see as a broad covert Russian operation in the United States to sow public distrust in the upcoming presidential election and in U.S. political institutions, intelligence and congressional officials said.

Finally, a capable summary of the state of electoral play on Labor Day from Ed Kilgore.  His assessment doesn't vary much from my earlier take on the conventional wisdom but he has more info.

Serious About the Real World

"The United States and China, the world’s biggest emitters of greenhouse gases, have announced they will formally ratify the Paris climate change agreement in a move campaigners immediately hailed as a significant advance in the battle against global warming" writes the Guardian today.

Earlier China had announced it would formally ratify the Paris accord with President Xi vowing to “unwaveringly pursue sustainable development”. “Our response to climate change bears on the future of our people and the well-being of mankind,” Xi said, according to the Associated Press. Obama said the joint announcement showed how the world’s two largest economies were capable of coming together to fight climate change."

The UK Telegraph has an extensive story along with video of some of President Obama's remarks.

President Obama's current travels began in the Sierra Nevada foothills.  As described by ABC: Standing beneath the forest-green peaks of the Sierra Nevada, President Barack Obama drew a connection Wednesday between conservation efforts and stopping global warming, describing the two environmental challenges as inseparably linked.

Obama used the first stop on a two-day conservation tour to try to showcase how federal and local governments can effectively team up to address a local environmental concern like iconic Lake Tahoe, which straddles California and Nevada. Obama told a sunbaked crowd of several thousand in a small lakeside town that "our conservation effort is more critical, more urgent than ever."

"When we protect our lands, it helps us protect the climate of the future," Obama said, joined by Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid of Nevada, California Gov. Jerry Brown and Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif.

Obama's brief stop along the Nevada-California border came at the start of an 11-day international tour that will take the president to Asia for his final time as president. Throughout the trip, Obama is hoping to elevate issues of climate change and conservation...

In Hawaii, President Obama announced a program that will devote $40 million to help vulnerable communities, especially small islands, cope with the climate crisis.

President Obama at Midway Atoll, threatned by rising
climate crisis seas.  He gave a video interview to the NYTimes.

From the smallest nations and victims, to China, one of the largest emitters and victims, President Obama brought action as well as vision.  Ratification of the Paris treaty by the two nations who together emit 40% of all greenhouse pollution was not expected so soon.

Here are excerpts from President Obama's remarks in China:

"We are here together because we believe that for all the challenges that we face, the growing threat of climate change could define the contours of this century more dramatically than any other challenge.

One of the reasons I ran for this office was to make sure that America does its part to protect this planet for future generations. Over the past seven and a half years, we’ve transformed the United States into a global leader in the fight against climate change. But this is not a fight that any one country, no matter how powerful, can take alone. That’s why last December’s Paris Agreement was so important. Nearly 200 nations came together as — a strong, enduring framework to set the world on a course to a low-carbon future.

And someday we may see this as the moment that we finally decided to save our planet."

photo: President Obama at Yosemite in June

"We have a saying in America — that you need to put your money where your mouth is. And when it comes to combatting climate change, that’s what we’re doing, both the United States and China. We’re leading by example. As the world’s two largest economies and two largest emitters, our entrance into this agreement continues the momentum of Paris, and should give the rest of the world confidence –- whether developed or developing countries -– that a low-carbon future is where the world is heading.

Of course, the Paris Agreement alone won’t solve the climate crisis. But it does establish an enduring framework that enables countries to ratchet down their carbon emissions over time, and to set more ambitious targets as technology advances. That means full implementation of this agreement will help delay or avoid some of the worst consequences of climate change, and pave the way for more progress in the coming years.

This is the single-best chance that we have to deal with a problem that could end up transforming this planet in a way that makes it very difficult for us to deal with all the other challenges that we may face.

Yes, diplomacy can be difficult, and progress on the world stage can be slow. But together, we’re proving that it is possible.

And I was reflecting before we came in here with Secretary General Ban Ki-moon about the meeting that we had in Copenhagen in my first year of my presidency, which was quite chaotic. And I think it is fair to say that if you had looked at the outcome of that meeting, the prospects of us being here today, the prospects of a Paris Agreement seemed very far away. And yet, here we are, which indicates that where there’s a will and there’s a vision, and where countries like China and the United States are prepared to show leadership and to lead by example, it is possible for us to create a world that is more secure, more prosperous, and more free than the one that was left for us."

The Donald Chronicles: Rejecting the Hater

A fairly stunning poll of registered Latino voters by Latino Decisions gives Hillary a 70% to 19% advantage.  She may not be so popular with the total electorate but Hillary has 68% favorable rating among Latinos, while Trump is viewed unfavorably by 74%. The last day of this poll was Tuesday, so it doesn't even include reaction to Homegrown Hitler's speech in Arizona.

Apropos of that speech, Josh Marshall's followup post Trump's Blood Libel and Press Failure should be highlighted: "Even now, after all that's happened, most political reporters find themselves either unwilling or unable to identify Donald Trump's tirades as hate speech. But they fit the textbook definition, inasmuch as it's even a useful concept...

Watch Trump's speeches, with the yelling, the reddened face, the demand for vengeance and you see there's little to distinguish them from what we see at Aryan Nations or other white hate rallies that we all immediately recognize as reprehensible, wrong and frankly terrifying. This isn't 'rough' language or 'hard edged' rhetoric. It's hate speech. Precisely what policy solution Trump is calling for is almost beside the point. Indeed, it wouldn't be hate speech any less if Trump specified no policy solution at all.

This isn't normal. It was normal in the Jim Crow South, as it was in Eastern Europe for centuries. It's not normal in America in the 21st century. And yet it's become normalized. It's a mammoth failure of our political press. But it's not just theirs, ours. It's a collective failure that we're all responsible for."

Marshall also points out that Trump's tactic of trooping victims of violence allegedly committed by undocumented immigrants up to the stage (at the RNC or for this speech) is a tried and true tactic of fascist and Nazi speakers.  However real their suffering is, the idea is to create a frenzy of hatred.  It's also akin to inspiring a lynch mob.

Speaking of Jim Crow, the WPost has a detailed expose of the racist intent of the Republican-created North Carolina voter restriction law recently blocked by federal courts.  The intent to limit black voting couldn't be clearer, as the court said.  Now we have the evidence before us.  The story references other states as well.

Meanwhile, this Business Insider (!) piece goes into detail on why Trump's Wall won't work, as emphasized by the people closest to the border.

The Trump campaign added another rabid/alt. right conspiracy spinner to its leadership.  WPost: David N. Bossie, the veteran conservative operative who has investigated the Clintons for more than two decades, has been named Donald Trump’s deputy campaign manager...The addition of Bossie, who first gained notice in the 1990s as the Republican congressional staffer who aggressively delved into the Clintons’ finances and dealings, is the latest sign that the Trump campaign’s new leadership team is embracing right-wing figures whose ties to the party’s elected leadership have been tenuous or even hostile.

Several stories on Friday referenced growing GOPer establishment disenchantment with Trump, including a rush to follow John McCain in congressional candidates trying to distance themselves from him.  An interesting inside the RNC story in the NY Times is another.

And since it's Friday, it's time for the Guardian roundup of Lies Trump Told This Week, extra-large edition.

For election junkies, Politico has an interesting story on Clinton strategy based at the moment on many paths to victory, and working towards a landslide--though by their definition that means matching Obama's 2008 electoral numbers.

Seemingly the only news Friday was the surprise release of the FBI report on its investigation of Clinton's State Department emails, in which it concluded she did nothing illegal.  So far reporters haven't found much new of any importance.  The general feeling I get is that a less than tech savvy Clinton in a less than up-to-date State Department didn't consider the emails themselves very important, probably because they weren't.  Unlike some businesses, diplomacy wasn't carried out chiefly by email.

45 Years Ago Today

On September 1, 1971, the Pittsburgh Pirates fielded the first major league baseball team comprised completely of African American and Latino players.  This team would go on to make similar World Series history.  It included several All-Stars and two future Hall of Fame players in Roberto Clemente and Willie Stargell.

The Donald Chronicles: Return of the Homegrown Hitler

Apart from exciting Ann Coulter and David Duke, Trump's so-called immigration speech (it was not about actual immigration) seems to have galvanized Latino opposition, including erstwhile allies--like his own "Hispanic advisory council" and Latino surrogates--and a major R donor in Mike Fernandez, who announced that he'll be voting for Hillary Clinton.

Trump backer and director of American Principles Project’s Latino Partnership Alfonso Aguilar, withdrew his support, saying "I think we were generally misled."  Another Latino Trump surrogate concluded, "he used us as props."

One of the first Trump advisory group members to resign was Jacob Monty, a Republican and Mexican American who published a column in the Houston Chronicle in June called "A Latino's case for Donald Trump." His feeling of betrayal is probably shared.  Other Hispanic advisory council resignations are expected.

Javier Palomarez, head of the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce who has already endorsed Clinton, condemned Trump's speech and called him "payaso," which we on the North Coast know is Spanish for "clown."  But Palomarez evidently did not mean it in a good way.

On Thursday the coverage of Trump's Wednesday speech turned away from any suggestion he had moderated.  The WPost's 202 was most direct in the roundup headlined "Trump triples down on a losing immigration position in Phoenix:

Republicans facing four more years in the wilderness will long recall the raucous rally in Phoenix as a low point of the Trump campaign, perhaps even as the moment that he definitively extinguished his hopes of becoming president.

As for the speech itself, Josh Marshall describes Trump in full Homegrown Hitler mode:

"This was as wild and as unbridled a speech as I've seen from Trump. Even if you couldn't understand English, it would be stunning to watch the slashing hand gestures, the red face, the yelling. It's hard to imagine any presidential candidate in living memory giving such a speech. And again, this is if you didn't know what the words even meant...

But watching this speech, compared to the press conference today in Mexico City, what kept coming to my mind was the contrast between Hitler's uniformed rally speeches from the hustings and the suited, statesman Hitler we see in the old news reels in Munich and at other iconic moments in the late 1930s. Hitler is sui generis, of course. His crimes are incomparable. But the demagogic style, the frenzied invocation familial blood sacrificed to barbaric outsiders - these are not unique to him. When we see this lurid, stab-in-the-back incitement, the wild hyperbole, the febrile railing against outsiders who will make us no longer a country - the similarities are real. More than anything, perhaps the most chilling part of this day is the contrast between the two men - a measured, calm statesman figure we saw this afternoon and this railing, angry demagogue figure who captured the emotional tenor of Klan rally. As I said, the ability to shift from one persona to the other is a sign of danger in itself."

Marshall later upped his analysis by calling out other news media for not characterizing Trump's address for what it was: hate speech.
The Clinton campaign announced that it had raised a whopping $143 million in August, its biggest haul of the year.

Meanwhile, the trend toward tightening national polls was at least temporarily broken by the Suffolk/USA Today that gave Clinton a 7 point lead nationally, both head to head and in the four way.  She leads with women by 16 points and is drawing even with men.  The 7 point lead is consistent with the recent Monmouth poll.

New state polls also counter the theme of tightening. Clinton maintains leads in PA, Ohio, Wisconsin and New Hampshire with a slight lead in North Carolina.  She is 3 points behind in Arizona, so it will be interesting to see if Trump's speech there moved the dial either way.  The Clinton campaign just made a major ad buy in Arizona.

Florida is shaping up to be a disaster for Trump.  New voter registration figures favor Democrats, with only 4% of African Americans and 16% of Latinos registering as GOPers.  Trump has exactly one campaign office in the entire state.

The Donald Chronicles: Embracing His Inner Bully

It was a busy Wednesday for the Donald.  He made a suddenly announced trip to meet the president of Mexico (and it turns out not to be true that the President of the United States offered Mexico five billion dollars to keep him there) and then he made his big immigration speech in Arizona.

He managed the one-hour visit calmly, though he said he didn't discuss making Mexico pay for The Wall, while the Mexican president said he told him that's never going to happen, hombre.  Then came the speech, a reversion to form according to everyone, though not everyone could agree on just what he meant about deportations.

"Donald Trump on Wednesday doubled down on deporting anyone inside the U.S. illegally if elected president, outlining a militant immigration plan that vanquished swirling questions about whether he would soften his position for a general election audience," said the US News report.

But the NY Times had a different take: "Donald J. Trump made an audacious attempt on Wednesday to remake his image on the divisive issue of immigration, shelving his plan to deport 11 million undocumented people and arguing that a Trump administration and Mexico would secure the border together."

NBC however headlined their report: Trump Recommits to Mass Deportation in Fiery Immigration Speech.

The WPost sort of splits the difference and figures Trump isn't still talking about deporting all of the estimated 11 million undocumented immigrants.  Just six million.   Where have we heard that number before?

The contradiction--nicey nice in Mexico, fulminatingly Homegrown Hitler in Arizona-- was handily explained by NY Times columnist Charles M. Blow:

"Donald Trump is the internet troll of presidential politics. When he’s securely removed from the objects of his scorn, he’s tough as nails; when he’s in their presence, he quivers like a bowl of Jell-O. Such is the way of a bully.

Furthermore, when he is surrounded by supporters who cheer his base nature, he amplifies the enmity. When the applause of hostility is out of earshot, he tones down his vitriol to a whimper."

And so on.  The column doesn't relent.  Dana Milbank gives a similarly caustic if intentionally funnier account.

The WPost provides an annotated transcript, and a fact check.  Good luck.

Meanwhile, some polls have tightened, Hillary is as unpopular as ever, and Paul Waldman explains cogently if depressingly why it is unlikely that she will ever have high favorables as President.  The basic melancholy numbers are that while many Presidents before G.W. Bush sometimes got around 40% approval from members of the opposing party, President Obama has never gotten more than 11% from Republicans.  Something else that G.W. ruined.

Poor reporting won't help, though.  Headlines (and the Donald) screamed Tuesday that the FBI found 30 emails about Benghazi that Clinton hadn't turned over to them.  But in their ill-advised, bound-to-be-misunderstood statement, the FBI didn't say that.  They found 30 emails that might have something in them about Benghazi, but they aren't yet sure if they are duplicates of emails they already have--from Clinton.  You'd think they could wait to make sure before they talked about it.

Photo above (from BBC):A version of Trump's wall created by artists David Gleeson and Mary Mihelic next to the US-Mexican border in California

The Donald Chronicles: Consensus of the Numbers

A consensus of the presidential campaign numbers and the media people who study them as we enter September makes two basic conclusions: Hillary Clinton is far enough ahead in enough states with enough electoral votes to win the presidency, but a true landslide is unlikely.

The latest state poll--Monmouth's in PA--shows Clinton's substantial lead there has not diminished.  The New York Times daily summary of polls  shows that poll averages have her comfortably ahead also in Virginia, Colorado, Michigan, Wisconsin and New Hampshire, clearly if narrowly ahead in Florida and Ohio, and slightly ahead in North Carolina and Iowa.  Trump has no path to victory that doesn't include some combination of Ohio, Florida, PA and Virginia.  National poll averages continue to show Clinton up by about 6 points.

To win back the Senate and the House, Dems are hoping for the landslide tide that lifts all boats.  That would probably follow from a vote victory of over 10 points. While within the realm of possibility in an unhinged election year, most media commentators say it's unlikely.  Stuart Rothenberg at W Post is among the latest. He emphasizes demographic clusters defining blue states and red states in suggesting Clinton's victory will most likely be of Obama-like proportions (probably the narrower 2012 win.)  Other analysts emphasize the two party polarization, to the extent that they exist in separate opposite universes where the candidate of the opposite party is the devil.

However, NBC First Read is among the media analysts who believe, even absent a landslide, the Dems are "on track" to win back the Senate, but just barely.  A Clinton landslide would likely add seats.

This is all "state of the moment" stuff, but indicates that Clinton has some margin for a bad debate performance, say, or negative external events.  The presidential campaign they say used to start after Labor Day weekend.  No more.  But it's still true that it gets more intense.
 

Sanctuary

I can't let any more time go by without noting probably the most significant governmental act of the summer: President Obama (in the words of the WPost) "created the largest ecologically protected area on the planet when he expanded a national marine monument in his native Hawaii to encompass more than half a million square miles.

The president more than quadrupled the size of the Papahanaumokuakea (pronounced “Papa-ha-now-moh-koo-ah-kay-ah”) Marine National Monument to 582,578 square miles of land and sea in the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands."

Under the media radar tuned exclusively to perturbations in the Donald universe,  President Obama made another apparently unobtrusive yet most meaningful contribution to address the climate crisis future.

In the climate crisis context we get somewhat used to speculating on sea level rise, increased flooding and fires, even diseases and epidemics.  But it's harder to even think about the ultimate threat to the world's oceans.  The health of oceans is already weakened by chemical pollution, plastic garbage and other degradation that is deadening huge areas of these massive seas.  But the chemical effects of global heating is perhaps the most pervasive threat.

This ocean area now protected is as close to pristine as the ocean now gets, teeming with life that includes ancient species, and the actual oldest known living beings on the planet, coral that is estimated to be 4,500 years old.   National Geographic:

"Papahānaumokuākea is a sanctuary for endangered species, including blue whales, short-tailed albatrosses, sea turtles, and the last Hawaiian monk seals. It contains some of the world’s northernmost and healthiest coral reefs, considered among the most likely to survive in an ocean warmed by climate change. The seamounts and sunken islands of its deeper waters are inhabited by more than 7,000 species, including the oldest animals on Earth—black corals that have lived for more than 4,000 years. In all, a quarter of the creatures living in the monument are found nowhere else."

If ocean life is to survive and regenerate, this sanctuary may be vital.

Marine biologist Sylvia Earle, a National Geographic explorer-in-residence, said Obama’s announcement buoys hope that the United States can lead the way to a global network of marine-protected areas large enough to save and restore the oceans. These “blue parks,” as Earle calls them, “are not a luxury – a place to go and have a good time,” she said. “Resilience to climate change is dependent upon having significant areas of natural protection—for biodiversity and for all the things that hold the planet steady. This is vitally important to protect our life-support system.”

Quoted in the Atlantic, “This is one of the most important actions an American president has ever taken for the health of the oceans,” Senator Brian Schatz of Hawaii, who formally proposed the expansion last year, said in a statement.

And as the species that's brought such destruction to the ocean, it's the least we can do.

The media will perhaps pay more attention to this when President Obama goes to Hawaii midweek.

50 Years Ago Today

   
The Beatles last concert.

The Donald Chronicles: Are We Too Stupid To Live?

As we slouch towards September, there's still almost a month before the first debate and early voting in some states.  So the media is all about speculation--is Trump done?  Or is there time? Is Hillary overconfident? Are the polls tightening, or is Trump's base eroding?

And now all this speculation on what Trump is going to say about his immigration policy.  At least some of  the media believes a slight change in Trump's doubletalk bullshit is going to convince some people that he should be President after all.

Trump has garnered a plethora of appropriate descriptions, "psychopath" being the latest.  But what does his nomination as the candidate of one of only two major parties say about the rest of us?

Let's separate the underlying factors that leads some people to a desperation that expresses itself as anarchism.  In more general terms, is Trump more disconcerting evidence that we're culturally decadent?  That in a moment of existential crisis--perhaps the greatest crisis of human global civilization--humanity is too stupid to live?

If the evidence is the television we avidly watch and the popular culture it expresses, TV expert Michael Rosenblum says oh yeah.  Unfortunately he did so at the excerable Huffington Post, which blocks the copy feature, and what he said isn't so profound that I'm going to type it all out.  Basically his evidence is  the devolution of TV--notably the cable stations like Bravo!, A&E and the History Channel that once actually did programming that expressed the purpose inherent in their name but now traffic in the same reality show sewerage as the networks.  This is Trump's America, and why he will win, Rosenblum says.

A transatlantic view in UK's Telegraph focuses on credulity there and in the US:

American and British politicians at the highest level appear to be engaged in a competition to see who can utter the most defiantly ill-informed, aggressively ignorant statements about precisely the issues that governments have traditionally regarded as life-and-death matters. Somehow, this brazen guilelessness – the shameless display of the failure to understand even the basic meanings of significant words – seems to be offered as a bond with the common man, as if not understanding complicated things was a measure of authenticity."

There's a chicken or egg problem here--is the electorate getting really stupid (clueless about even recent history, heedless of real world consequences) or are our political leaders?  I think the second proposition is easier to prove.  Donald Trump is the most ignorant human ever to be a major party nominee for US President in at least my lifetime, which is something I could have said (and probably did say) just 12 years ago when G.W. Bush ran.  Yet Bush's knowledge could run rings around Trump.

That perhaps the most ignorant available candidate (and remember, Rick Perry was among them) got the nomination throws suspicion on the electorate, at least in Republican primaries, but also on the cynicism of party leadership.

It seems the cynical ignorance is broader and deeper--and perhaps institutionalized.  The cynicism and lack of responsibility to the country permeates the Republican political leadership.  Arthur Vandenberg in the 1940s, Everett Dirksen in the 1960s, for example, were Republican leaders, partisans and conservatives, but they had major moments of statesmanship that helped their country through great crises and improved the lives of Americans and others.

It's worth noting now, so near the March on Washington anniversary, that Dirksen's greatest moment as Senate Republican leader was supporting Civil Rights legislation.  He did so using a quote that has since become famous--I remember when he said it (I was in high school), and it's the reason I know the quote at all:

 "Victor Hugo wrote in his diary substantially this sentiment: 'Stronger than all the armies is an idea whose time has come.' The time has come for equality of opportunity in sharing of government, in education, and in employment. It must not be stayed or denied."

Can anyone seriously hear Mitch McConnell saying something like that?  McConnell, currently the Senate majority leader, is 100% cynical partisan.  The name "statesman" can't conceivably be applied to him in any circumstance.  McConnell also appears to be a dim bulb, though with a tunnel vision cunning.  Lots of those in politics, but he's the Majority Leader.

Democrats lack personality in their leaders, and there's nobody I know of who is at Obama's level of combining personal force and vision with knowledge both broad and deep.  But statesmanship is not yet dead in the Democratic party at least.

Both parties suffer from a political system in which members of Congress and other officeholders spend much if not most of their time raising money for their next election, and can't bother to even read (let alone write) the bills they occasionally vote on.

Still, voters gave us Trump, just as they gave the UK the catastrophe of Brexit.  Not comforting.

Otherwise: the New York Times suggests that particular Donaldalian vulnerabilities encourage Dems to pursue a House majority, and publishes a feature that's really worth looking at--a timeline of Trump's Greatest Homegrown Hitler Hits together with the dates on which Republican leaders announced they were abandoning him.

Polls: A new Monmouth U. national poll of likely voters has Hillary up 7, though their previous had her up 13.  Emerson has a confusing bunch of state polls, which show Hillary up 10 pts. in Ohio (more than others) but only up 3 in PA (less than others.)  Josh Marshall suggests Emerson's methodology isn't reliable. Polls by other outfits show tie games in Arizona and...yes, South Carolina.

The Donald Chronicles: Team of Awfuls

Once again, a study "finds no evidence of widespread voter fraud" as reported by NBC.--in particular the kind that has so alarmed his Trumped-upness that he wants vigilantes patrolling certain polling places. " A study of 2,068 alleged election-fraud cases in 50 states between 2000 and 2012 found the level of fraud was infinitesimal compared with the 146 million voters registered over the 12-year period. The analysis found only 10 cases of voter impersonation, the only kind of fraud that could be prevented by voter ID at the polls."

In fact the only fraud that was found on Friday was the Guardian's revelation of voting fraud currently being committed by Steve Bannon, head of the Trump campaign.  He registered in Florida giving a phony home address: a completely empty house.  Once caught by the Guardian, he changed his registration to the occupied single family home of a Brietbart writer where he also does not live.  He is liable to a felony charge.

It wasn't Bannon's only problem Friday.  Evidence surfaced of a police report documenting a domestic violence incident, and his ex-wife is on record that he threatened her in order to force her not to press charges.

Then on Saturday, a potent example of his anti-Semitism emerged.

This is only exhibit one of the attention the Trumpettes are getting lately.  In a WPost piece entitled Trump's repellent inner circle, former R speechwriter Michael Gerson writes:
Trump’s campaign has been a roiling, noxious, dysfunctional mess from the start, characterized by public feuds, subject to sudden leadership changes and unable to fulfill key functions (like actually having a campaign apparatus in key states). 

And Trump’s personnel selections have been both instructive and disastrous. Consider this list of Trump’s chosen: Former campaign manager Corey Lewandowski had a brutal and demeaning style that resulted in a staff revolt, and his manhandling of a female reporter overshadowed the Trump campaign for weeks. Former campaign chairman Paul Manafort was paid lucrative consulting fees by foreign interests and resigned after reports that Ukraine anti-corruption investigators were scrutinizing millions in alleged payments there.

Longtime adviser Roger Stone is a crackpot conspiracy theorist who asserts that Bill and Hillary Clinton are “plausibly responsible” for the deaths of roughly 40 people and that Hillary Clinton should be “executed for murder.” Confidant Roger Ailes recently stepped down from his job at Fox News under a cloud of sexual harassment claims. And Steve Bannon, Trump’s new campaign chief executive, is known for his bullying tactics and for running a website (Breitbart News) that flirts with white nationalism.

To this team of awfuls, Trump just added the former aide to Chris Christie who was fired for being implicated in the Bridgegate scandal.  Welcome aboard, you'll fit right in here!

Then there's the question of what these folks actually do--in particular, Trump's supposed campaign manager Kellyanne Conway.  In an incisive piece, Josh Marshall maintains that what is known about what Conway does (travels with the Trump, gives lots of interviews including one with Rachel Maddow that got a lot of attention but not necessarily in a good way) isn't consistent with the actual job of campaign manager.  (And nobody, he says, seems to know what Bannon actually does.)  Marshall's conclusion: the Republican nominee for President has no campaign manager.  (His suggestion that these folks basically have their eye on their next career move is exactly my impression from the Conway/Maddow interview transcript.)

Sunday update: Josh Marshall makes another persuasive case, this time that the real "dominant force" in the Trump campaign is currently Roger Ailes, the deposed power of Fox News, driven out for serial sexual harassment.

In the more interesting recent Trumpania, Managing Editor Robert Schlesinger of U.S. News explains Trump's crazed meanderings on immigration last week: I've got a theory to explain Donald Trump's adoption of word salad as his proposed policy on deportation of people in this country without legal permission: Maybe Donald Trump is incoherent on immigration because Donald Trump is incoherent. Maybe what he says doesn't make a lot of sense because he doesn't know what he's talking about."  The piece wraps around some good cartoons, too.

In fact-checking a Hillary ad, the WPost tracks down where in the world Trump products are made, and concludes, yeah, she's right--in at least 12 different countries.  And occasionally in the US.

On the media response to Clinton's speech calling out Trump and the Trumpettes, Ed Kilgore said it best: "Media False Equivalence Is Trump’s Best Friend in the Debate Over Racism: Clinton offered a detailed indictment. Trump replied with an insult. How’s that a draw?"

With the unchanging trend line so far for the presidential election, eyes turn to the future.  The NYTimes explains why Trump may be crippling the R party for a long time in the American West.  And Politico suggests that Rs are already plotting to hobble a Clinton presidency.

That Politico piece presupposes that Rs maintain control of both houses of Congress.  There seems to be a range of opinion these days on whether that's likely.  Some polls suggest that ticket-splitting will favor R candidates, and Dems didn't field their best candidates (not realizing the opportunities Trump presents, not a very complimentary argument.)  But others--like the Times and Josh Marshall--see the trend moving towards a slight Dem majority in the Senate.  The House is less likely but also at this point less readable.

National Visions

Thanks mostly to the Federal Arts Project in the 1930s (part of FDR's New Deal initiatives to fight the Great Depression), we have some iconic posters that celebrate aspects of American public life.

In celebration of American National Parks, the British-based Guardian has reproduced poster images about the parks, most from the 1930s. Such as the ones I've showcased here.

 The Federal Arts Project, like the Theatre and Writers projects, was designed primarily to employ people, but they left an astonishing legacy, even though none was permitted to last very long.  For one thing, they helped start careers (or kept those careers from foundering) in American arts and letters that lasted for decades. Many famous names worked in these projects.

  The Federal Theatre Project is remembered for innovation, daring and diminishing the distance between theatre and a popular audience.  Professional theatre was almost all in New York until FTP, which seeded the regional theatres of today across America.   It was America's only attempt at subsidized theatre that most civilized countries now find essential, and it worked.  The Writers' Project produced guides to American states that were prized for decades afterwards.

From the Arts Project we have posters such as these, bold designs that are still vibrant.  This was one federal program serving another, and both essential to our national well-being.

Also on this centennial, Grist has a series on National Parks.  This article is an interview with the current National Parks Service director, focused primarily on the challenges presented by the climate crisis, which Jarvis calls "Fundamentally, it’s the biggest challenge the National Park Service has ever faced. I put it there because it fundamentally changes the way we are going to manage our national parks into the future. It’s making us rethink the whole paradigm under which we manage. That makes it really complicated."

But he's been thinking about climate change since the 1980s, and the National Park Service has been seriously planning on ways to deal with its effects for a decade.  That's part of being true public servants and stewards--deal with the realities despite the politics.