Is Hillary Being Judged by a Double Standard? (Rhetorical Question)

Who Won The First Debate?

From the Huffington Post:

“Had the debate been a prize fight, it would have been stopped in the third round. Donald Trump turned in the worst ― and I mean worst ― debate performance in modern times. It was so bad that in a normal year, it would disqualify him from getting anywhere near the White House.  But this is 2016, a year so weird, unsettled and unsettling, that even the spectacle of an unprepared and almost incoherent Trump, reeling from blow after blow from Democrat Hillary Clinton, may not be enough to slow him down.”

That's about it.  Trump kept spewing out lie after lie, and the Trumpanzees didn't care or didn't notice.

Lester Holt had to keep fact-checking Trump, repeating over and over that being audited by the IRS would NOT prevent him from releasing his tax returns; and Trump kept insisting that he can't release his tax returns until the IRS is through with their audit.  WTF is he hiding?  A Russian Mob connection?  The fact that his net worth is closer to $300 million than the $20 billion he keeps implying?

He was also fact-checked again and again over his claim that he was against the Iraq War from the beginning.

And let's not forget:

The Candidates Prepare for the September 26th Debate

America: 1933 and 2016

THIS is What Voter Fraud Looks Like

Donald Trump Promises to Get the Food Police Off Our Backs

If you have any household pets — for that matter, if you're generally concerned about knowing what's in the food you purchase — here's one more reason to NOT vote for Donald Trump (as if there weren't enough already).

“The FDA Food Police, which dictate how the federal government expects farmers to produce fruits and vegetables and even dictates the nutritional content of dog food.  The rules govern the soil farmers use, farm and food production hygiene, food packaging, food temperatures and even what animals may roam which fields and when.  It also greatly increased inspections of food 'facilities,' and levies new taxes to pay for this inspection overkill.”

Damn those faceless government bureaucrats!  So, let's say you have a lethal allergy to peanuts, and you've just had a seizure because you ate something that contains peanuts — after the ingredients label assured you that it doesn't — be grateful that we got the government off our backs.

Ditto for your dog or cat that got poisoned from contaminated pet food.  Etc.

Re-route the Dakota Access Pipeline through Cities, Suburbs and Golf Courses

The Dakota Access Pipeline was originally supposed to pass near Bismark, North Dakota; population 88,000 and mostly white.  They decided to re-route the pipeline through rural areas and tribal lands so there wouldn't be any public outcry.  How'd that approach work out for them?

Donald Trump, Then and Now

This Doonesbury strip is from November 1999.  Some things never change.

The Truth about Donald Trump's “Basket of Deplorables”

As you've probably heard, the Trumpanzees are having a sad because Hillary Clinton said mean things about them at a fundraiser:

“You know, just to be grossly generalistic, you could put half of Trump’s supporters into what I call the basket of deplorables. Right? The racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamaphobic — you name it.”

While the Trump Klan is shedding crocodile tears, here are the facts.

Among people who say they're voting for Trump:

65% believe President Obama is a Muslim;

59% believe Obama was not born in the United States;

40% think Blacks are more lazy than Whites;

50% think Blacks are more violent than Whites;

In a different poll, conducted only in South Carolina among Trump supporters:

31% believe all LGBT people should be banned from the United States;

16% said “whites are a superior race;” another 14% answered the same question with “not sure.”

Deplorable indeed.

More Hardball Questions from Matt Lauer

Jill Stein Forces the “Media” to Talk about Dakota Access Pipeline vs. Standing Rock Sioux

Let's hear it for Jill Stein.  She got herself arrested at the Standing Rock Sioux protest against the Dakota Access Pipeline, thereby forcing the mainstream media to reluctantly acknowledge what millions of us are already fuming about.

Of course the coverage is pretty lame — totally sanitized and corporate-approved for public consumption.

Here's the corporate/mainstream version.

And here's a more accurate example.

But it was still poetic to see the corporate media squirm and grimace while grudgingly talking about an issue that they were hoping would go away if they kept ignoring it.  It can't hurt to have this crisis brought into millions of living rooms.  It's a start, hopefully.

And the irony is too much.  Armed thugs hired by Dakota Access (with the tacit approval of the government and local law enforcement) come storming into the protest site, siccing attack dogs on protesters and using bulldozers to destroy Native Americans' ancestral burial grounds — perfectly legal.

Jill Stein spray-paints a message on the side of a bulldozer — charged with trespassing and vandalism.

[sigh]

If you like Voter ID laws, You'll Love the Interstate Voter Registration Crosscheck Program

And what exactly is this innocuous-sounding sleep-inducing Interstate Voter Registration Crosscheck Program, you ask?  Think of it as Voter ID on steroids.  With those commie federal judges overturning one Voter Suppression law after another, this is the GOP's latest end-run in their relentless drive to crack down on “Voter Fraud” (i.e. Voting While Black).

GOP-controlled states  — including some of the battleground/swing states — are using this program to prevent people from voting more than once.  The program supposedly crosschecks registered voters by their full name (including all middle names or initials, Jr. or Sr. or a Roman numeral after the last name, etc.) and the last four digits of the person's Social Security number — in order to prevent people from voting multiple times in different states.  But for some odd reason, middle names and Jr./Sr./III keep getting omitted accidentally, and the 4-digit Social Security numbers are surprisingly inaccurate.  How conveeenient!

If your name is John Mortimer Smith III, and your middle name gets omitted — good luck trying to vote if you live in a red state.  And it gets worse.  These crosscheck lists are being targeted at certain ethnic groups (guess which ones).  Here's how they do it.

From the article:

“If your name is Washington, there's an 89 percent chance you're African-American. If your last name is Hernandez, there's a 94 percent chance you're Hispanic. If your name is Kim, there's a 95 percent chance you're Asian...God forbid your name is Garcia, of which there are 858,000 in the U.S., and your first name is Joseph or Jose. You're probably suspected of voting in 27 states.”

Anyway, check out the article; it's a lot more detailed and more sinister than my brief summary.

Kris Kobach is the mastermind behind the Interstate Voter Registration Crosscheck Program.   Personally I think Kris Kobach should have every possible conspiracy charge and RICO violation thrown at him, but that's just me.

If voting twice is a felony, isn't it also illegal to deliberately cheat millions of legitimate voters out of their right to vote?  [Just a rhetorical question]