Genocidal Maniac Narendra Modi, The Death Penalty For Treason, Vaping-- Another Wild Monday In Trump-World

Relatively few Americans ever get to India, a real shame, since it's a truly incredible place. I set out from London in 1969 in my VW camper for my first trip. I spent nearly two years on that trip, much of it driving from the Punjab down along the west coast to the tip, crossing over by ferry into Sri Lanka (then Ceylon) and then driving up the east coast, up into Nepal and across the north of the country and out through the Punjab into Pakistan again. And I barely scratched the surface. Since then I've been back to India half a dozen times-- by plane those times-- sometimes for business and sometimes for vacation. Several of those times in more recent year have been during Narendra Modi-election cycles.

In December 2007, I wrote that there was a bitterly contested state election in Gujarat whose main issue was the controversial incumbent chief minister, Narendra Modi, of the far-right nationalistic party BJP, a Trump kind of guy through and through. The BJP is a classic right-wing political party, representing the status quo interests of the exploitative/owner class. In a thriving democracy like India, how does a party concerned exclusively with the welfare and prerogatives of .001 percent of the population, and espousing one prepackaged conservative nostrum after another, even hope to win votes? The BJP never needed Richard Nixon, Lee Atwater, Karl Rove or the Southern Strategy to succumb to the siren song of the Dark Side's exploitation of social tensions, racism, xenophobia, religionist hatreds and fear of, what Modi always talked about-- "Islamofascist terrorism." That kind of divisiveness had turned very ugly-- and launched Modi's career as a national figure, leading to his current position as national prime minister. I write at the time that "In Gujarat over a thousand Muslims-- men, women and children-- have been brutally murdered, their homes and businesses burned and looted, just five years ago as a step on the ladder to Modi-power. This is called BJP-inspired Hindutva, sometimes called Moditva, in honor of his George Wallace-like encouragement for the mayhem." While I was there that year Modi bragged about having suspected Muslim 'terrorists' dealt with extra-judicially-- by having them killed.

Gujarat is one of the poorest and most backward states in India-- think Mississippi-- in a country where over 2 million children under the age of five died in 2006 and where seven hundred million (700,000,000) people do not have access to sanitation. Muslims are Modi's and the BJP's scapegoats of choice; there are too few Jews left in India.

Let me get back to the social problems the BJP exploits to win elections in a moment and move to the heart of the party's agenda: unbridled vulture capitalism. All of India's robber barons back Modi. It is claimed he has created a development-friendly climate that vulture capitalists just eat up. And he has delivered electricity-- for those rich enough to afford it. Most cannot. "Development" for Modi and his party means Raj-level opportunities for the already rich and powerful and a slim-- very slim-- chance that there might someday be some trickle down for everyone else. Not much has trickled down so far.

Modi seemed intent to try fighting for reelection based on his development record, but most Gujaratis weren't buying it, because they aren't feeling it or seeing it. So like any right-winger worth his political salt, he turned to divisiveness and mud-slinging. (Headlines today were all about a Congress Party politician in Gujarat caught on tape in a compromising position with a woman he isn't married to. CDs were provided to all the media outlets in the state and in Delhi.)

But playing the religionist card is Modi's time-tested specialty. "The Congress [Party] questioned Lord Ram's existence in an affidavit submitted in court," he brayed to a small crowd of tribal Gujaratis yesterday. But if Modi sounds even more like a reckless religionist crackpot than Mike Huckabee or Bishop Willard Romney, he's as slick a politico as either of them. After making his emotional appeal to defend the veracity of Lord Ram's existence, he didn't hesitate to remind the audience to get their butts to the polls. "Please don't think I will become chief minister if you set out on a padayatra to Ambaji temple," unconsciously showing his own hypocrisy and contempt for religion. "I will not come to power if you recite my name 108 times a day. It will only happen if you come out of your homes to cast your votes for the GOP BJP."

Yesterday, Philip Rucker reported for the Washington Post that "The foreign strategy of soothing tensions with the United States by stroking President Trump’s ego was put into vivid effect here Sunday when Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi lathered praise on his American counterpart at a massive rally celebrating the Indian diaspora. The leaders of the world’s two largest democracies took the stage together in Houston before a roaring crowd of tens of thousands of Indian Americans, where Modi delivered an unmistakable endorsement of Trump’s presidency and cast their joint appearance in historic terms. Said Modi: 'His name is familiar to every person on the planet. He was a household name and very popular even before he went on to occupy the highest office in this great country. From CEO to commander in chief. From boardrooms to the Oval Office. From studios to global stage.'" I wonder who wrote that!

It was music to Trump's ears compared to what he heard on Morning Joe a few hours later, when former Massachusetts Governor Bill Weld, a fellow Republican, noted that "Talk about pressuring a foreign country to interfere with and control a U.S. election. It couldn’t be clearer, and that’s not just undermining democratic institutions. That is treason. It’s treason, pure and simple, and the penalty for treason under the U.S. code is death. That’s the only penalty. The penalty in the Constitution is removal from office and that might look like a pretty good alternative to the president if he could work out a plea deal."





These are heady days around the White House, as Trump pours gasoline on the impeachment fires. Jake Sherman and Anna Palmer noted for Politico early Monday that "Impeachment is becoming more and more likely. Some will tell you it’s approaching a certainty... Unlike the Byzantine Russiagate allegations, the latest charge-- that the president repeatedly tried to get a foreign leader seeking military aid to investigate a political opponent-- is not hard to understand. It’s about the actions of Trump himself, not his aides or former campaign nobodies. At this point, the facts are pretty much in the open and agreed to: The president has practically admitted he discussed Biden with Ukraine’s president, and his lawyer Rudy Giuliani has been open about pressing the Ukrainians to investigate Biden’s son Hunter. Now it’s up to Congress to figure out how to proceed."

Speaker Nancy Pelosi understands the caucus’ moods better than anyone, and her letter Sunday-- which said the president needs to hand over the whistleblower report now, or else-- was a rifle shot that should not be underestimated.

Time is of the essence for the Trump White House. If they don’t produce the whistleblower report within days-- maybe a week-- Democrats are going to be under extreme pressure to move toward impeachment. Thursday will be an important day to watch: That’s when Joseph Maguire, the acting director of national intelligence, is testifying in an open hearing.

But you know what's funny here? While the White House is fretting over what looks like a Trump washout in Michigan, some of his allies are more worried about Trump losing because of his opposition to vaping! No, really... forget treason and impeachment and emoluments. How funny would it be if one of the only good things Trump has ever tried to do in his whole miserable life, destroys his toxic presidency! "Conservative leaders are circulating data to White House staff that claims adults who vape will turn on President Trump if he follows through with his planned ban on flavored e-cigarettes... The data reveals that the number of adult vapers in key battleground states greatly outweighs the margins by which Trump won those states in 2016-- and they argue it could cost him reelection. 'While parents may be concerned about e-cigarettes, the people who genuinely care about vaping as a voting issue so far outweighs the number of people Trump needs to win in 2020 that they are royally screwing themselves by doing this,' Paul Blair, the director of strategic initiatives at Americans for Tax Reform, tells me... Florida, which Trump won by 113,000 voters, had about 873,000 adult vapers in 2016. They reason that if 1 in 8 vapers turn against Trump in 2020 because he foreclosed their vaping options, it could jeopardize the election.

Trump has begun backing away from his anti-vaping stand and will probably soon be doing ads for the delicious flavors! This guy is so incredibly predictable! And pathetic.

The Three Stooges Take To The Pages Of The Washington Post

The 3 Stooges by Nancy Ohanian

Mark Sanford (SC), Joe Walsh (IL) and William Weld (MA) don't have anything in common except that they are Republicans who hate Trump and are "running" for the Republican nomination against him. The party isn't interested in their criticisms of Trump and they are being largely ignored even though Sanford is a former governor and congressman, Walsh was a congressman and tea party firebrand and Weld was a distinguished governor and ambassador. Even if the Republican establishment-- and voters-- yawn at the mention of their campaigns, the Washington Post revels in the puny challenges to Trump. Yesterday readers woke up to a joint op-ed by the three of them-- without the Nancy Ohanian cartoon of Trump's characterization of his opposition.

The three of us are running for the Republican nomination for president in a race that will inevitably highlight differences among us on matters of policy, style and background. But we are brought together not by what divides us but by what unites us: a shared conviction that the United States needs a strong center-right party guided by basic values that are rooted in the best of the American spirit.

A president always defines his or her party, and today the Republican Party has taken a wrong turn, led by a serial self-promoter who has abandoned the bedrock principles of the GOP. In the Trump era, personal responsibility, fiscal sanity and rule of law have been overtaken by a preference for alienating our allies while embracing terrorists and dictators, attacking the free press and pitting everyday Americans against one another.

No surprise, then, that the latest disgrace, courtesy of Team Trump, is an effort to eliminate any threats to the president’s political power in 2020. Republicans have long held primaries and caucuses to bring out the best our party has to offer. Our political system assumes an incumbent president will make his case in front of voters to prove that he or she deserves to be nominated for a second term. But now, the Republican parties of four states-- Arizona, Kansas, Nevada and South Carolina-- have canceled their nominating contests. By this design, the incumbent will be crowned winner of these states’ primary delegates. There is little confusion about who has been pushing for this outcome.

What does this say about the Republican Party? If a party stands for nothing but reelection, it indeed stands for nothing. Our next nominee must compete in the marketplace of ideas, values and leadership. Each of us believes we can best lead the party. So does the incumbent. Let us each take our case to the public. The saying “may the best man win” is a quintessential value that the Republican Party must honor if we are to command the respect of the American people. Cowards run from fights. Warriors stand and fight for what they believe. The United States respects warriors. Only the weak fear competition.

Across the aisle, the Democratic primary challengers are still engaged in a heated competition of debates, caucuses and primaries to give their voters in every corner of our country a chance to select the best nominee. Do Republicans really want to be the party with a nominating process that more resembles Russia or China than our American tradition? Under this president, the meaning of truth has been challenged as never before. Under this president, the federal deficit has topped the $1 trillion mark. Do we as Republicans accept all this as inevitable? Are we to leave it to the Democrats to make the case for principles and values that, a few years ago, every Republican would have agreed formed the foundations of our party?

It would be a critical mistake to allow the Democratic Party to dominate the national conversation during primary and caucus season. Millions of voters looking for a conservative alternative to the status quo deserve a chance to hear alternate ideas aired on the national stage. Let us argue over the best way to maximize opportunities in our communities for everyday Americans while the Democrats debate the merits of government intervention. Let us spend the next six months attempting to draw new voters to our party instead of demanding fealty to a preordained choice. If we believe our party represents the best hope for the United States’ future, let us take our message to the public and prove we are right.

Trump loyalists in the four states that have canceled their primaries and caucuses claim that President Trump will win by a landslide, and that it is therefore a waste of money to invest in holding primaries or caucuses. But since when do we use poll numbers as our basis for deciding whether to give voters an opportunity to choose their leaders, much less their presidents? Answer: We don’t.

Besides, the litigation costs these four state parties will likely be forced to take on in defending legal challenges to the cancellations will almost certainly exceed the cost of holding the primaries and caucuses themselves.

In the United States, citizens choose their leaders. The primary nomination process is the only opportunity for Republicans to have a voice in deciding who will represent our party. Let those voices be heard.

By Unanimous Consent: Señor Trumpanzee Was Always Unfit For The Presidency

From the editors of USA Today 3 years ago: "In the 34-year history of USA Today, the Editorial Board has never taken sides in the presidential race. Instead, we’ve expressed opinions about the major issues and haven’t presumed to tell our readers, who have a variety of priorities and values, which choice is best for them. Because every presidential race is different, we revisit our no-endorsement policy every four years. We’ve never seen reason to alter our approach. Until now."

This year, the choice isn’t between two capable major party nominees who happen to have significant ideological differences. This year, one of the candidates-- Republican nominee Donald Trump-- is, by unanimous consensus of the Editorial Board, unfit for the presidency.

From the day he declared his candidacy 15 months ago through this week’s first presidential debate, Trump has demonstrated repeatedly that he lacks the temperament, knowledge, steadiness and honesty that America needs from its presidents.

Whether through indifference or ignorance, Trump has betrayed fundamental commitments made by all presidents since the end of World War II. These commitments include unwavering support for NATO allies, steadfast opposition to Russian aggression, and the absolute certainty that the United States will make good on its debts. He has expressed troubling admiration for authoritarian leaders and scant regard for constitutional protections.

Read the whole editorial here. They summarized their reasons by citing 8 overall disqualifiers. Has anything changed since he occupied the White House-- other than the incontestable fact that he's gotten worse?

• He is erratic.
• He is ill-equipped to be commander in chief.
• He traffics in prejudice.
• His business career is checkered.
• He isn’t leveling with the American people.
• He speaks recklessly.
• He has coarsened the national dialogue.
• He’s a serial liar.

Republicans Justin Amash, Bill Weld And Tom Coleman Use Thursday To Pound Trump

What Would Freud Do? by Nancy Ohanian

Pelosi and Trump were attacking each other yesterday after his temper tantrum and walk-out from the infrastructure talks at the White House. Pelosi said Trump "needs an intervention" and called him "villainous," while Trump kept referring to Pelosi as "crazy Nancy." But Pelosi wasn't the only one attacking the orange imbecile yesterday.

The Washington Post published an interview Jacob Bogage did with McKinsey Pete yesterday. And Pete, a military vet tore into the draft-dodger-in-chief. Pete accurately described Trump as using his "privileged status to fake a disability" in order to avoid the Vietnam War. "This is somebody, who I think it is fairly obvious to most of us, took advantage of the fact that he was a child of multimillionaire in order to pretend to be disabled so that somebody could go to war in his place... I don't have a problem standing up to somebody who was, you know working on season 7 of Celebrity Apprentice when I was packing my bags for Afghanistan."

Justin Amash was pounding Trump again for his criminal behavior and talking about the need to impeach him. Here's his twitter storm in narrative form:

Mueller’s report describes a consistent effort by the president to use his office to obstruct or otherwise corruptly impede the Russian election interference investigation because it put his interests at risk.

The president has an obligation not to violate the public trust, including using official powers for corrupt purposes. For instance, presidents have the authority to nominate judges, but a president couldn’t select someone to nominate because they’d promised the president money.

This principle extends to all the president’s powers, including the authority over federal investigations, federal officials, and pardons.

President Trump had an incentive to undermine the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election, which included investigating contacts between Russia and the Trump campaign.

The investigation threatened to uncover information, including criminal activity, that could put Trump’s interests at risk. Ultimately, the investigation did uncover very unflattering information about the president, his family, his associates, his campaign, and his business.

It also revealed criminal activities, some of which were committed by people in Trump’s orbit and, in the case of Michael Cohen’s campaign finance violation, on Trump’s behalf.

The investigation began before the president was elected and inaugurated. After Trump assumed the powers of the presidency, Mueller’s report shows that he used those powers to try to obstruct and impede the investigation.

Some excuse Trump’s conduct based on allegations of issues with the investigation, but no one disputes the appropriateness of investigating election interference, which included investigating contacts between the Trump campaign and people connected to the Russian government.

Some examples in Mueller’s report of the president’s obstructing and impeding the investigation include:

1. Trump asked the FBI director to stop investigating Michael Flynn, who had been his campaign adviser and national security adviser, and who had already committed a crime by lying to the FBI.

2. After AG Sessions recused himself from the Russian investigation on the advice of DoJ ethics lawyers, Trump directly asked Sessions to reverse his recusal so that he could retain control over the investigation and help the president.

3. Trump directed the White House counsel, Don McGahn, to have Special Counsel Mueller removed on the basis of pretextual conflicts of interest that Trump’s advisers had already told him were “ridiculous” and could not justify removing the special counsel.

4. When that event was publicly reported, Trump asked that McGahn make a public statement and create a false internal record stating that Trump had not asked him to fire the special counsel, and suggested that McGahn would be fired if he did not comply.

5. Trump asked Corey Lewandowski, his former campaign manager, to tell AG Sessions to limit the special counsel’s investigation only to future election interference. Trump said Lewandowski should tell Sessions he was fired if he would not meet with him.

6. Trump used his pardon power to influence his associates, including Paul Manafort and Michael Cohen, not to fully cooperate with the investigation.

Trump, through his own statements-- such as complaining about people who "flip" and talk to investigators-- and through communications between his personal counsel and Manafort/Cohen, gave the impression that they would be pardoned if they did not fully cooperate with investigators.

Manafort ultimately breached an agreement to cooperate with investigators, and Cohen offered false testimony to Congress, including denying that the Trump Tower Moscow project had extended to June 2016 and that he and Trump had discussed traveling to Russia during the campaign.

Both men have been convicted for offering false information, and Manafort’s lack of cooperation left open some significant questions, such as why exactly he provided an associate in Ukraine with campaign polling data, which he expected to be shared with a Russian oligarch.

Some of the president’s actions were inherently corrupt. Other actions were corrupt-- and therefore impeachable-- because the president took them to serve his own interests.

And Amash wasn't the only Republican criticizing Trump. Former Governor Bill Weld (R-MA), Trump's GOP primary opponent mentioned that he celebrates "that America has always been a melting pot. It seems he would prefer an Aryan nation... a nation with no immigrants." And Aryan Nation? That has some pretty strong connotations.

Also yesterday, a third Republican, former Missouri Congressman Tom Coleman penned an OpEd for the Kansas City Star calling for Trump's and Pence's impeachment. Coleman served as Missouri's Assistant Attorney General from 1969 to 1972. He was then elected to the state House of Representatives and, when the district's Democratic congressman suddenly died, he flipped the district from blue to red in 1976 and served in Congress until 1993, becoming a lobbyist in a Republican firm after that. His OpEd doesn't sound like what any currently-serving Republican elected official would dare write.

According to the redacted Mueller report, candidate Donald Trump, along with members of his team, on multiple occasions welcomed Russian interference on his behalf during the 2016 presidential campaign. For example, the report details a meeting between the Trump campaign chairman and a Russian intelligence asset where polling information and campaign strategy were shared... the net effect was that the Trump campaign encouraged a foreign adversary to use and misrepresent stolen information on social media platforms to defraud U.S. voters. Because the presidency was won in this way, the president’s election victory brought forth nothing less than an illegitimate presidency.

What should be done now?

...Contemplate the possible behavioral problems of a Trump untethered from the law and who is frequently untethered from reality. Would we be surprised if he were to repeatedly brandish his get out of jail card while breaking, at will, democratic norms, presidential precedents and criminal statutes? Trump said early in his campaign that he “could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn’t lose any voters, OK?” Are we now at that point?

Because DOJ regulations put a president above the law while in office, I believe the only viable option available is for the House of Representatives, under Article II, Section 4 of the Constitution, to open its own investigation, hold public hearings and then determine if they should pursue removal of the president through impeachment. There is a trove of evidence in the Mueller report indicating Trump has committed multiple impeachable offenses, including abuse of power and lying to the American public. Both were part of the articles of impeachment brought against President Richard Nixon. This process would allow a full public review of wrongdoing, while providing Americans an opportunity to obtain a better understanding of the consequences to our national security and the lingering threat to our democracy.

If this process leads to impeaching Trump in the House of Representatives and also results in convicting him in the Senate, his illegitimacy would survive through Vice President Mike Pence’s succession to the presidency. Because the misdeeds were conducted to assure the entire Trump-Pence ticket was elected, both former candidates-- Pence as well as Trump-- have been disgraced and discredited. To hand the presidency to an illegitimate vice president would be to approve and reward the wrongdoing while the lingering stench of corruption would trail any Pence administration, guaranteeing an untenable presidency. If Trump is impeached, then Pence should not be allowed to become president. The vice president should resign or be impeached as well if for no other reason that he has been the chief enabler for this illegitimate president.


...What if House Democrats decide not to embark on impeachment? If that were the case, I believe the public would conclude Democrats are no better than the Republicans who have enabled Trump for the past two years, putting party above country. It could hand Trump a second term. Failure to pursue impeachment is to condone wrongdoing. To condone wrongdoing is to encourage more of it. To encourage wrongdoing is to give up on the rule of law and our democracy. To give up on the rule of law and democracy invites autocracy and eventually dictatorship. History has taught us this outcome. In my lifetime, it has occurred in other places including the Soviet Union and Germany, as well as in Russia and Venezuela today.

Don't Trust Republicans Just Because They Oppose Trump... They're Still Republicans, Including Bill Weld

Not a hero, not then, not now, not ever-- just a right-wing kook

Tucker Carlson, Max Boot and Bill Kristol... what comes to mind? Conservative Republicans, right? Stop there. Don't over-think it. That's the answer. No, "buts" about how Boot and Kristol are anti-Trump. Glad they are, but it doesn't matter about who they are and what their advice on anything other than-- very precisely-- Trump's odiousness, means. In yesterday's American Conservative, oddly enough, it was Carlson-- a much bigger face of odiousness than the other two of late-- who pointed out why we should never get sucked into any sympathy for what they all are (as we agreed, conservative Republicans). "Why," he asked, "are these professional war peddlers still around?, pointing out that "pundits like Max Boot and Bill Kristol got everything after 9/11 wrong but are still considered "experts." Not in our world but in the conservative Republican world these 3 live in.

There's plenty in Carlson's-- and remember, we're talking about Trump Machine Fox propagandist Tucker Carlson-- little essay to agree with. Like, right off the bat: "One thing that every late-stage ruling class has in common is a high tolerance for mediocrity. Standards decline, the edges fray, but nobody in charge seems to notice. They’re happy in their sinecures and getting richer. In a culture like this, there’s no penalty for being wrong. The talentless prosper, rising inexorably toward positions of greater power, and breaking things along the way. It happened to the Ottomans. Max Boot is living proof that it’s happening in America." Boot's foreign policy recipes have all tasted like raw sewage... basically because they are. Back in the day, Boot wrote that "Once we have deposed Saddam, we can impose an American-led, international regency in Baghdad, to go along with the one in Kabul,” Boot wrote. “To turn Iraq into a beacon of hope for the oppressed peoples of the Middle East: Now that would be a historic war aim. Is this an ambitious agenda? Without a doubt. Does America have the resources to carry it out? Also without a doubt." Yes, he hates Trump now-- and Carlson's head resides up Trump's ass-- but that doesn't make Boot's opinions on anything, other than Trump's unsuitability, worth listening to. Same for Kristol. As for Tucker, nothing he says is ever worth listening to, except how terrible Max Boot and Bill Kristol are. (I'd be happy to hear him go off on the MSNBC Republicans as well. No doubt he feels as strongly about them as we feel about the Fox Democrats.)



Bill Weld isn't usually referred to as a "conservative Republican." Bozos in the media call him a "moderate Republican." Others refer to him as a "libertarian Republican." This might be as good a time as any that many Libertarians really do not like their 2016 vice presidential nominee at all. He screwed them when he ran fro governor of New York in 2006, when he endorsed Obama in 2008, when he virtually endorsed Hillary in 2016 and just recently when the man who announced at the 2016 Libertarian Party convention that he was a Libertarian member for life switched his party registration to the GOP again. "Weld lacks loyalty," wrote Grant Deltz for the Libertarian Republic this week. "He embodies the meaning of the stereotypical career politician... Weld is simply an opportunist... He’ll probably be endorsing Kamala Harris before it’s all said and done."

Weld was the Republican governor of Massachusetts from 1991 through 1997, when he resigned to concentrate on an unsuccessful battle with Jesse Helms over his nomination by Bill Clinton to be ambassador to Mexico. Yesterday he announced an exploratory committee to run for president as a Republican. (He had endorsed Kasich for president in 2016.)

Reporting for the Boston Herald, Joe Battenfeld, wrote that, "in prepared remarks at the Politics & Eggs breakfast in Bedford, N. H., Weld delivered a blistering critique of Trump, saying 'we have a president whose priorities are skewed toward promotion of himself rather than toward the good of the country. To compound matters, our President is simply too unstable to carry out the duties of the highest executive office-- which include the specific duty to take care that the laws be faithfully executed-- in a competent and professional matter. He is simply in the wrong place.'"

In his speech, the former federal prosecutor called out his own party for supporting Trump, saying “many Republicans exhibit all the symptoms of Stockholm Syndrome, identifying with their captor.”

“The truth is that we have wasted an enormous amount of time by humoring this President, indulging him in his narcissism and his compulsive, irrational behaviors,” Weld said.

The former governor, who served in Massachusetts from 1990 to 1997, did not mention the “impeachment” word but hinted he would like to see Trump removed even before the 2020 election.

“The situation is not yet hopeless but we do need a mid-course correction,” he said. “We don’t need six more years of the antics we have seen. We need to make a change, and install leaders who know that character counts.”

...Weld’s announcement is likely to trigger anger among President Trump and his supporters, who see the former governor as a flip-flopper who deserted the Republican Party. The New Hampshire GOP chairman told the Herald he doesn’t expect Weld to get a welcome reception from voters there, and polls show a vast majority of GOP voters back Trump.

But sources close to Weld say he is determined to make life difficult for Trump, even if his candidacy is a long shot.

While Weld was harshest in his criticism of Trump, he also singled out Democrats for drifting too far left toward socialism.

“We need the opposite of socialism,” he said. “In the federal budget, the two most important tasks are to cut spending and to cut taxes-- and spending comes first.”

Weld laid out his positions on other issues, calling for less government intervention in health care and for more intervention to prevent climate change.

Yesterday, writing at the neoCon website, The Bulwark, for Jeb Bush operative Tim Miller explained why he thinks Trump has lost it (mentally) and is now running our country based on his hallucinations about marauding Hispanic invaders.

[M]aybe Trump is really a 243-pound (lol) septuagenarian Haley Joel Osment, and he’s seeing the corpses of contractors he and his father have screwed over in decades past? Or maybe he’s gone deep down a YouTube suggested video rabbit hole and he’s watching clips from a Middle Eastern war zone that have been mislabeled as present-day Mexico and Trump is convinced its real because the people are brown-skinned and it looks kinda like what he imagines the border to be. I don’t know. As I said, I’m not a doctor.

We should also consider the possibility that a member of the Deep State has been dosing his Diet Coke with acid. After all, they never found out who wrote that anonymous New York Times op-ed.

What I know for certain is that here on the physical plane of existence there is no security emergency at the U.S.-Mexico border. The incursion the president describes is not the lived reality of any actual Americans. Border crossings are down, crime is down, employment is up. Yet the president’s hallucinations persist, and in the past week they seem to be growing more severe.

At a speech in El Paso, rather than just talking about the imaginary caravan of people invading the country, Trump actually claimed that he had invented the word “caravan” altogether. (In fact, the word is sourced from medieval Latin, caravana, picked up during the Crusades from Persian karwan “group of desert travelers.” Donald Trump is very old but this is slightly before his time.)

He has also begun touting the construction of an imaginary wall. “The wall is being built. It’ll continue. It’s going at a rapid pace,” he said. “Now you really mean ‘finish the wall’ because we’ve built a lot of it,” he continued. None of these statements are remotely true. And rather than be alarmed that the president is having a wall-themed seance, everyone is going along with it. After all, the wall is in our hearts.

So then I start to wonder-- maybe I’m the crazy one. Maybe this is all just equal parts Trumpian hyperbole and good old fashioned gaslighting.

But if so, what explains the other delusions, like the blubbering tough guys crying whenever they meet Trump. And it’s not just this one time. Trump seems to keep meeting “monster” sized buff men who are brought to tears by their gratitude to him. For a wall that doesn’t exist. That’s designed to stop an infiltration that isn’t happening.

The layers of unreality build upon itself.

After-all, whatever happened to the president’s friend “Jim” who used to go to Paris every year but now doesn’t? He was scared of the imaginary brown-skinned “infiltration” of the City of Lights. We haven’t heard from him in a while. Are you in there Jim?

Now the dots are being connected . . . Pepe Silva . . . Time replaced by a fever dream . . . Paris under siege. The apparitions in Trump’s delusions are having menacing delusions of their own.

So now the Orange King is set to act. Haunted by these threats he is poised to declare an extralegal national emergency to prevent a U.S.-Carcosan nightmare. This, you would hope, would be the moment for those close to the president recognize this illness and shake him back to reality. To stand with him by the window and with kind eyes let him know that, no there is no ominous car out there. There are no barbarians at the gates.

But no, the delusions persist. The fantasy is fed. And at times even those who can see the light can feel our definitions fading.

Miller may be right about Trump, and he's funny to read, but do you care what he has to say about Jeb Bush? Or AOC? Or Ilhan Omar? Or democracy? Why would you?

Trump Is Just About Trump-- His Supporters On The Other Hand, Are Looking For A White Valhalla

Yesterday, Nick Kristof offered 5 reasons why certain types among our countrymen and women might want to vote for Trump:

• voters who worship at the alter of ignorance
• voters who feel it's time to embrace a paragon of fraud
• voters who want to be entertained by the country's leader
• voters who feel extremists have a role to play just like everyone else (diversity)
• voters who want a new approach to psychological norms

Deep in our heads, resting on the spinal cord, is what scientists sometimes call our “reptilian brain.” In evolutionary terms, this is the oldest part of our brains and it governs primal instincts such as hunger, sex and fear; it helps trigger the fight or flight response.

This reptilian brain has been updated with a cerebral cortex and other modern brain structures that are the seat of reason-- but Trump is bypassing them. Neuroscientists have noted that he preaches directly to the lizard in our heads.

“We do experience a primitive apprehension welling up from our ‘reptilian brain,’” Steven Pinker, the Harvard psychology professor, tells me, but we still interpret it in light of our belief system. The modern world has developed science, journalism, a judiciary and similar institutions to curb our primal impulses-- but Trump blows these off.

Our reptilian brains evolved to be hyper-alert to dangers, which was lifesaving in an age of pterodactyls. Trump activates these vigilant instincts, Pinker says, and channels them into the most primitive interpretive circuits of our cortex, the ones rooted in tribalism. And so he wants us to join him in making scapegoats of Muslims, refugees, Mexican “rapists” and black “thugs.”

This historic election thus presents a choice: To decide how to cast our ballots, do we rely upon our reptilian brains or our human brains? To put it another way: Are we fearful, instinctive reptiles? Or nuanced, reasoning humans?

John Cassidy is an Englishman who's been writing for the New Yorker for just over two decades. He decided to tackle a question many people have been asking themselves and everyone they know: why does Trump still have do much support? It was inspired, at least in part, by his wife asking him "how can Hillary Clinton be losing to a mentally unstable megalomaniac and sexual predator who doesn’t pay income taxes?" Fair question-- and one we need to get to the bottom of for the good of the country, once he's been defeated Tuesday. One never goes wrong by pointing out "it's the economy, stupid."

In the past few days, Clinton supporters have offered up at least three explanations, or culprits, for why the race is so close: James Comey; “false equivalence” in the media; and sexism. In each case, they are onto something. But the bigger story is one my colleague George Packer wrote tellingly about last week in the magazine: an America bitterly divided along class, racial, and cultural lines. To quote Benjamin Disraeli, the nineteenth-century British statesman, we now have “two nations between whom there is no intercourse and no sympathy; who are as ignorant of each other’s habits, thoughts, and feelings, as if they were dwellers in different zones, or inhabitants of different planets.”

Disraeli was writing about the rapidly industrializing England of the eighteen-forties, and the two nations he referred to were the rich and the poor. In the United States, because of its history of slavery, the Civil War, and mass immigration, the divisions have never been that simple: vertical cleavages along racial, ethnic, and regional lines have often trumped the horizontal class divide. But the gulf between Clinton’s America and Trump’s America, even though it can’t be traced entirely along economic lines, is now a yawning chasm.

The polls say that just less than forty per cent of voters in America have a favorable opinion of Trump. Whatever their views of him as an individual, they like what he stands for: nationalism, nativism, and hostility toward what they consider a self-serving élite that looks down on them. In addition to these confirmed Trump supporters, there are a number of other folks-- moderate Republicans and Republican-leaning independents, mainly-- who may harbor serious reservations about Trump personally, but who may also be willing to vote for him to keep Clinton out of the White House.

When members of this latter group have been confronted with the most grotesque aspect of Trump’s behavior-- such as his willingness to attack the family of a U.S. serviceman who died in Iraq, or his history of treating women like chattel-- they have tended to back away from him, causing his poll numbers to falter. But whenever Clinton takes center stage in the news, and Trump fades into the background for a bit, her numbers also tend to fall. Thus the “sine wave” pattern we’ve seen in the polls over the past few months.

...Some of Clinton’s defenders blame the media for this. News outlets, they say, treat her minor transgressions, or alleged transgressions, in the same way they treat outright demagoguery, mendacity, and grotesquery on Trump’s part. This is another argument that needs some context. To the best of my knowledge, nobody has accused Clinton of operating a fraudulent business that bilked tens of thousands of dollars from people on modest incomes, stiffing tradespeople on a routine basis, making a mockery of the tax laws and not paying a cent of income tax for twenty years, boasting about charitable giving while not donating any of her own cash, or sexually assaulting women. Who brought these stories to the public’s attention? The news media. During the Republican primaries, some outlets, particularly on television, indulged Trump shamefully, while using him as a ratings booster. Ever since he got the nomination, though, much of the print media’s coverage, and even some of broadcast media’s, has been negative.

...From Trump University to Trump’s tax records to the parade of women alleging that he harassed and assaulted them, reporters have done a pretty thorough job of illuminating and investigating Trump’s checkered past, the hollowness of many of his claims, and what sort of person he is. Meanwhile, the pundits, including many conservatives, have portrayed Trump as an existential danger to the Republic. And yet none of these journalistic endeavors has had the desired effect: to snuff out Trump’s candidacy.

Some of the blame here may belong to the Clinton campaign. While it has done an effective job of highlighting Trump’s race-baiting and sexism, it hasn’t done enough to exploit his other vulnerabilities, to paint the Republican candidate as a con man whose schemes have victimized many ordinary, hard-working Americans. To be sure, the Clinton campaign has gone some way in this direction. But they should be ramming home every day the message that Trump is a serial chiseler of the little guy, not his savior. Why isn’t Clinton regularly appearing alongside some of the people who lost their savings to Trump University? Where are the ads featuring tradesmen and suppliers and charities that Trump has stiffed?

But the explanation of Trump’s enduring appeal must go beyond political tactics. In a divided but social-media-saturated America, people on either side of the divide communicate over each other, rather than with each other. They regard news stories not as new information to be ingested and considered but as potential ammo to hurl at the other side. They see their political opponents not as well-meaning if misguided fellow-citizens but, to borrow a phrase, as deplorables who have no political legitimacy.

On the Trump side, there is a siege mentality, evident in the constant vilification of the Clintons, the chants of “Lock her up,” and the fury toward the mainstream news media. If you tune in to conservative talk radio, as many Trump supporters do, you will hear a constant discourse of resentment, conspiracy theories, and alienation from the institutions of economic and political power-- including the Republican Party establishment. Sean Hannity, of Fox News, for example, daily presents the vote on November 8th not merely as a chance to select a new President but as a last chance to save the country from politicians and liberals who are out to destroy its very essence.

The Trump movement, like the Tea Party movement it supplanted, is a reaction to the socially liberal, polyglot America that is rapidly emerging in the twenty-first century. Representing an older, whiter, and more embattled tradition, it is constantly evoking what it sees as a lost Valhalla-- a place of plentiful jobs, rising living standards, conservative social values, fewer immigrants, and minorities who knew their place. To a large extent, this lost America is a myth. Since its inception, practically, the United States has been roiled by technological change, large-scale migration, economic conflicts, and ethnic and religious tensions. But it is a powerful myth, which Trump-- Mr. Make America Great Again-- plays to shamelessly and effectively.

On the Democratic side, the liberal mentality comes out in suggestions that Trump’s supporters, almost by definition, are uncouth, ill-educated bigots. If you adopt this attitude, vigorously opposing Trump isn’t just a political decision; it is a moral duty and a social necessity. To assert your identity as part of the enlightened America, you need to disassociate yourself from the racist hillbillies, rednecks, and suburban dolts supporting Trump.

“Liberals and Democrats are not really part of a party, as much as they are part of a new America that looks and thinks differently and has little interest in looking back, wherever that might be,” Shadi Hamid, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, who spends much of his time studying Islamic societies, pointed out in a thought-provoking piece a few months back. “More than a party, it is a lifestyle, a culture and a sensibility, with its own media, institutions, norms and values.” Hamid probably understates the importance of policy differences that divide the two parties, especially now that Trump has proposed things like introducing religious tests for immigrants and reintroducing the use of torture in interrogations of terrorist subjects, as well as promising to appoint Supreme Court Justices in the mold of the late Antonin Scalia. But the larger point, about the gaping cultural divide, stands.

Despite the recent narrowing in the polls, liberal America still has demographics, early-voting patterns, and the Electoral College map on its side. But even if Trump loses next week, the great divide his campaign has brought to the fore won’t go away. Indeed, as Hamid noted, “The risk is that as whites become a smaller majority-- and eventually an outright minority-- the tendencies toward ethnic politics we’ve witnessed in this election season might very well intensify.” And if, in the coming years, robots and algorithms provide another big shock to the economy, destroying tens of millions more decent-paying jobs, how many former truck drivers and displaced white-collar workers will be receptive listeners to a future Trump?

None Of The Above?

Oklahoma is arguably the reddest state in the country. LBJ beat Goldwater in 1964 but that was it. After that the state belonged to the GOP. The last Democrat to carry even one county was Gore in 2000. Both senators and all 5 House members are far right Republicans-- as is the governor. The state Senate has 40 Republicans and 8 Democrats and the state House has 71 Republicans and 28 Democrats. The state Democratic Party atrophied and died. Pollsters aren't even doing surveys of the state. The last one, in late July, showed Trump leading Clinton 53-29%, even with Oklahomans viewing Trump unfavorably. Trump only drew 130,141 votes (28.3%) in the state primary, losing to Ted Cruz and barely ahead of Rubio. Trump came in 3rd in Oklahoma City and 3rd in Tulsa.

The Tusla Metro area has nearly a million people and includes not just Tulsa county but parts of Osage, Rogers, and Wagoner counties as well. In 2012 the state went for Romney 889,372 (67%) to 442,647 (33%). Tulsa County gave Obama 36% of its vote, Osage 37%, Rogers 25% and Wagoner 27%. In 1940 Oklahoma was still a very Democratic state and that year the state gave its 11 electoral votes to Franklin Roosevelt with a 57.41% to 42.23% win over Republican Wendell Willkie. But that year the Tulsa World endorsed Willkie. They endorsed every Republican candidate for president since then as well! Oklahoma voted for FDR again in 1944 but The World endorsed Thomas Dewey. The paper endorsed Dewey again in 1948 against Truman, though the state went for Truman 62.75% to 37.25%. Finally in 1952 the editorial board and the voters were on the same Republican page. And-- except for Goldwater's Oklahoma loss to Johnson (56-44%), with The World touting Goldwater-- they've remained on the same page-- the voters and the editors love the GOP.

This year... not so much. Trump's going to win Oklahoma and he's going to win Tulsa and the Tulsa Metro, mostly because the region is brainwashed against Democrats and brainwashed against Hillary. They don't like Trump much but they seem him as the lesser of tow evils. Even in the Democratic primary, Bernie beat her substantially. With 335,554 Oklahoma Democrats voting, Bernie took 174,054 votes (51.9%) to Hillary's 139,338 (41.5%). Bernie won every county in the state but two.

This year the Tulsa World, for the first time since endorsing FDR in 1936, refused to endorse the Republican nominee. They couldn't possibly go for Clinton, of course. So they went for "none of the above." The editors said they don't trust Clinton and derided her as the candidate of the status quo (with the Tulsa World has always championed) at a time when voters want a change.

"Hillary Clinton," they wrote, "is in the mold of George W. Bush and Al Gore, brilliant in their own ways, but uninspired and uninspiring. She is, in short, a lousy politician, and she wants a politician’s job. Donald Trump, on the other hand, is a brilliant politician, and a lousy person."

From Day One, the Trump campaign has brought out the worst of America, not the greatness that he promises.

His campaign for president evokes the worst qualities in people: fear and bigotry. From the first day of his candidacy, when he claimed Mexico was sending its rapists and criminals to the United States, to his speech at the Republican National Convention, where he had the gall to suggest that the United States, the world’s only superpower, is not a great nation, Trump has sought to build a political bloc out of misplaced anger and anxiety.

All politicians are egoist, but Trump’s overvaluation of his own self is truly monumental. His claim that only he has the ability to make America great again suffers from two gigantic flaws: America is great, and he isn’t going to make it any greater.

Indeed, if he were elected president, he would probably make it a good deal worse because never in the history of American politics has there been a major party candidate with fewer qualifications to be the president. Trump has never held an elective office or had any significant leadership in legislative action. And, despite what an angry electorate might think, the ability to work through the legislative process is a requisite of the job. He isn’t the only person capable of fixing our nation’s problems. He’s not even on the list of those who should try.

In place of competence or facts, Trump’s campaign relies on faith. And not the type of faith most believe in, but rather a faith in Trump himself. In trade, terrorism and immigration, he promises the moon. Not just any moon, but a HUGE moon, the most magnificent moon ever! But when pressed for how he will produce this lunar miracle, he just says, “Believe me.” We don’t believe.

Never before have we so firmly believed that each of us has to find the answers for ourselves. We encourage every voter to identify what is important to them and their families. Only then can each voter determine who they believe is the best choice in this presidential election.

We encourage all voters to participate in the election and to follow their consciences in making the best choice from the least acceptable list of candidates for president in modern times. We won’t be endorsing any of them.

Massachusetts, of course, is the polar opposite of Oklahoma-- as Blue a state as you'll find anywhere. In 1924, Massachusetts was still a reflexively Republican state. They voted to reelect home state boy Calvin Coolidge 62.26% to 24.86 for ConservaDem John Davis and 12.50% for Progressive Robert LaFollette. But that was the end of GOP dominance in Massachusetts in 1928, Massachusetts (and Rhode Island) joined the Solid South in voting for Alfred Smith, the Democrat running against Herbert Hoover. Massachusetts supported every Democrat since then except for backing Eisenhower both times he ran and Reagan both time he ran. This year the Real Clear Politics polling average shows Hillary beating Trump 52.0% to 32.3%. A WBUR poll last month was even more dismal for Trump-- 60-31% for Clinton in a head-to-head matchup with Trump.

A former popular Republican governor of Massachusetts, William Weld, is running for vice president on the Libertarian ticket. This week, after toying with the idea of quitting the race altogether, he told the Boston Globe that "he plans to focus exclusively on blasting Donald Trump over the next five weeks, a strategic pivot aimed at denying Trump the White House and giving himself a key role in helping to rebuild the GOP.

While Weld insisted he still supports Johnson, he said he is now interested primarily in blocking Trump from winning the presidency and then potentially working with longtime Republican leaders such as Mitt Romney and Haley Barbour to create a new path for the party after the election.

“Maybe somebody is going to come up with a new playbook, and I don’t know who it’s going to be, but it would be fun to participate,” Weld said in a telephone interview from Atlanta, where he was holding a fund-raiser and rally and planned to watch and tweet about Tuesday night’s vice-presidential debate featuring his major-party rivals, Democrat Tim Kaine and Republican Mike Pence.

Weld, a former Republican governor of Massachusetts, said he is focusing on Trump because, while he disagrees with Hillary Clinton on fiscal and military issues, Trump’s agenda is so objectionable it’s “in a class by itself.”

“I think Mr. Trump’s proposals in the foreign policy area, including nuclear proliferation, tariffs, and free trade, would be so hurtful, domestically and in the world, that he has my full attention,” Weld said.

He insisted he was not abandoning Johnson, although he signaled that bolting from the Libertarian Party might be a possibility in the future.

“I’m certainly not going to drop them this year,” Weld said.

Weld’s comments seemed sure to reignite suspicions among Libertarians who have questioned his loyalty to the party and have accused him of using the ticket for his own political aims. But Weld’s decision to chart his own course appears to reflect the feeling among his aides, who have privately expressed dismay at Johnson’s flubs on national television, such as when Johnson could not come up with the name of a favorite foreign leader and when he said “What is Aleppo?” when asked about the besieged Syrian city.

...“I have had in mind all along trying to get the Donald into third place, and with some tugging and hauling, we might get there,” Weld said.

Weld has been much more critical of Trump than of Clinton, whom he has known since the 1970s, when they were young lawyers working for the House committee that investigated President Richard Nixon.

Just last week, for example, Weld irked Johnson supporters when he said on MSNBC that he’s “not sure anybody is more qualified than Hillary Clinton to be president of the United States.”

Weld, meanwhile, has denounced Trump as a “huckster” with a “screw loose” and has said his plan to deport 11 million illegal immigrants “would remind me of Anne Frank hiding in the attic.”

Weld’s new plan calls for him to focus his fire on Trump in a handful of red states-- as well as in at least one swing state, New Hampshire-- where the Libertarians are running strong. Nationally, the ticket is drawing about 7 percent support.

Polls show that Johnson and Weld-- who were initially thought to appeal mostly to anti-Trump Republicans-- may be doing more damage to Clinton by siphoning away young voters.

I'm hearing rumblings from Capitol Hill that there is a bill brewing to include "none of the above" in future federal elections. Nevada already has it in place and has since 1976, although even if the "None of These Candidates" option receives the most votes, the actual candidate who receives the most votes still wins the election. The option rarely gets more than 1% in presidentential elections although in 2012, when the Senate race featured two especially putrid candidates-- GOP nincompoop Dean Heller and corrupt right-wing Democrat Shelley Berkley "none of the above" won nearly 5% of the votes cast and 45,277 votes, almost four times the margin of victory for Heller, which was 11,576 vote. More on the None of the Above legislation soon.

By November Will There Be Any Non-Mormons Left Voting For McCain?

It's well known in Arizona political circles that Barry Goldwater always hated McCain and avoided him whenever he could. McCain's crooked approach to politics and sleazy relationships with bribe wielding big money men, coupled with his nasty personality and suck-up attitude always made Goldwater's skin crawl. If the book Barry Goldwater, Jr. (penned with John Dean) about his dad, Pure Goldwater, wasn't enough to convince you that Barry, Sr. had passed his antipathy towards McCain on to his whole clan, be sure to read his granddaughter's post at HuffPo. She and her siblings joined other members of the Goldwater family in endorsing Barack Obama.

We believe strongly in what our grandfather stood for: honesty, integrity, and personal freedom, free from political maneuvering and fear tactics. I learned a lot about my grandfather while producing the documentary, Mr. Conservative Goldwater on Goldwater. Our generation of Goldwaters expects government to provide for constitutional protections. We reject the constant intrusion into our personal lives, along with other crucial policy issues of the McCain/Palin ticket.

My grandfather (Paka) would never suggest denying a woman's right to choose. My grandmother co-founded Planned Parenthood in Arizona in the 1930's, a cause my grandfather supported. I'm not sure about how he would feel about marriage rights based on same-sex orientation. I think he would feel that love and respect for ones privacy is what matters most and not the intolerance and poor judgment displayed by McCain over the years. Paka respected our civil liberties and passed on the message that that we should conduct our lives standing up for the basic freedoms we hold so dear.

Long before the current Goldwaters were born, their antecedents changed their name from Goldwasser and changed their religion to something that was more upwardly mobile at the time. Today it's ok to be Jewish and there are even some Jewish Republicans-- just like their were a few self-loathing or just really stupid Jews in the early 1930s who supported the Nazis in Germany. But the vast majority of Jews do not support right-wing parties and the GOP never fares very well with Jews. Every election cycle Republicans say this year we will get the Jews They never do-- and 2008 will not be the exception. A new Gallup poll shows that since the summer, more and more Jews have embraced the idea of a President Obama. He now leads McCain 74-22%. That's around the same number of Jews who voted for Bush in 2004. As you can see from the graph, Jewish support for Democrats has been pretty steady for three decades.



But this morning's big news isn't that Scotty McClellan endorsed Obama or that much of the Bush electoral coalition is swinging in Obama's direction or that most Jews are doing exactly what most Jews always do-- vote for the better candidate. No, it's the quality of the exhaustive 3 page NY Times Obama endorsement. The warm-up:

The United States is battered and drifting after eight years of President Bush’s failed leadership. He is saddling his successor with two wars, a scarred global image and a government systematically stripped of its ability to protect and help its citizens — whether they are fleeing a hurricane’s floodwaters, searching for affordable health care or struggling to hold on to their homes, jobs, savings and pensions in the midst of a financial crisis that was foretold and preventable.

As tough as the times are, the selection of a new president is easy. After nearly two years of a grueling and ugly campaign, Senator Barack Obama of Illinois has proved that he is the right choice to be the 44th president of the United States.

And for a newspaper that actually endorsed McCain just a few months ago and has been part of the media cabal that has helped him create a false myth that he was a straight talking and honest maverick, they have certainly soured on him under long overdue scrutiny.

Senator John McCain of Arizona has retreated farther and farther to the fringe of American politics, running a campaign on partisan division, class warfare and even hints of racism. His policies and worldview are mired in the past. His choice of a running mate so evidently unfit for the office was a final act of opportunism and bad judgment that eclipsed the accomplishments of 26 years in Congress.

Given the particularly ugly nature of Mr. McCain’s campaign, the urge to choose on the basis of raw emotion is strong. But there is a greater value in looking closely at the facts of life in America today and at the prescriptions the candidates offer. The differences are profound.

Mr. McCain offers more of the Republican every-man-for-himself ideology, now lying in shards on Wall Street and in Americans’ bank accounts. Mr. Obama has another vision of government’s role and responsibilities.

...The American financial system is the victim of decades of Republican deregulatory and anti-tax policies. Those ideas have been proved wrong at an unfathomable price, but Mr. McCain-- a self-proclaimed “foot soldier in the Reagan revolution”-- is still a believer.

Mr. Obama sees that far-reaching reforms will be needed to protect Americans and American business.

Mr. McCain talks about reform a lot, but his vision is pinched. His answer to any economic question is to eliminate pork-barrel spending-- about $18 billion in a $3 trillion budget-- cut taxes and wait for unfettered markets to solve the problem.

It will should come as no surprise to anyone-- though it will-- that McCain-Palin is dragging the entire Republican Party down the toilet with it. Last night the Politico reported on GOP warnings of a rout.

An internal document circulating among House Republicans warns of an impending congressional bloodbath, listing 58 Republican-held House seats being at risk, and 11 already considered as good as gone. As many as 34 GOP-held seats are in serious jeopardy of swinging to Democrats, the assessment shows.

The seats that they know they're losing are many of the ones we've been talking about all year here at DWT and pushing at Blue America. According to the memo they've written off the seats currently held by Randy Kuhl (NY-29), Don Young (AK), Tim Walberg (MI-07), Joe Knollenberg (MI-09), Tom Feeney (FL-24), Ric Keller (FL-08) as well as almost all the open seats from which Republicans-- some facing prison, some just sick of politics-- are retiring.

Ironically, the only blue to red switch, will be in FL-16, where the Republicans are going to beat a corrupt Republican who switched his voter registration to Democratic a few months before the 2006 election. Rahm Emanuel explained to him that Foley had a problem about to break and that if Mahoney became a Democrat he could promise him the seat. Mahoney did win (as a "Democrat") but has voted with the GOP more than almost any other Democrats in the House. Evan a lowlife like Emanuel is afraid to defend him now. Let the GOP take the district back. It will mean a net pick up of 36 instead of 37 seats-- or maybe 40 instead of 41.

To be honest with you, I would rather the Democrats win far fewer seats as long as they are real Democrats, not these phony nominal ones from the Republican wing of the Democratic Party who are just as bad as actual Republicans. How do you know who the real ones are? We did the work for you. If you can help... even $5 or $10 helps.


UPDATE: ANOTHER MAINSTREAM REPUBLICAN DUMPS McCAIN

Former Massachusetts Bill Weld (R), just endorsed Obama. "Senator Obama is a once-in-a-lifetime candidate who will transform our politics and restore America's standing in the world," Weld said in a statement. "We need a president who will lead based on our common values and Senator Obama demonstrates an ability to unite and inspire. Throughout this campaign I've watched his steady leadership through trying times and I'm confident he is the best candidate to move our country forward."