Stuff To Enjoy-- From Us To You: Mitt Romney And Max Frost

First a Club for Growth video, an ad that will start running tomorrow on Fox News stations in Utah. The intent isn't so much to get Romney to do something-- Romney's immensely more popular in Utah than Trump-- but to warn other Republicans, especially vulnerable ones up for reelection, like Susan Collins (ME), Cory Gardner (CO), Thom Tillis (NC), Joni Ernst (IA), Martha McSally (AZ)... to not even think about breaking with Señor Trumpanzee. 





I have another couple of videos for you as well-- both songs by fantastic Texas musician Max Frost, a multi-instrumentalist blue-eyed soul singer, that I somehow missed when they were released in 2016. The one above, "President," came out about 6 months before the election. On the day he put it out, Frost wrote on his Facebook page that he was "releasing a new song called 'President' today that I've written in reaction to our current race for president in the US. While the song doesn’t have a specific political agenda, my aim is to show how disenfranchised my generation has become with our political system. It's become a TV show and we are merely the observers. Even the popular candidate's chances are dissolved by the convolution of a broken government that, even after it is exposed, continues to operate as a plutocracy. How are we suppose to care when all outcomes feel the same?"

The second one, "Adderall," came out a month after Trump was declared the winner of the election. Many people say the song, one of Frost's most popular, could be the personal theme song for the illegitimate president who happens to be severely addicted to the very deleterious drug. Listen to the infectious tune below, but these are the lyrics. Come on, remind you of anyone we all know and wish we didn't? [Contribute to Bernie's campaign here.]

I got a new disease

I saw it on TV

It's takin' hold of me

And I believe that I might be insane

My thoughts are incomplete
Up late, I don't get sleep
They say it's clear to see
That ADD is all there's left to blame

I can't get it together
I should know better
I got a mind like weather
That always seems to change

It's getting harder
So I need a doctor
He's gonna make me smarter
At least that's what they say

I've been bouncing off the walls
And shaking, the Adderall
Won't loosen the pressure
There's only so much I can take

Wake up, I need someone
To stop me, cause Adderall
Won't loosen the pressure
There's only so much I can take

Ooh ooh ooh, ooh
Ooh ooh ooh, ooh
Ooh ooh ooh, ooh
There's only so much I can take

I break into the scene
Buzz from a new vaccine
That's curing all my dreams
It's fine with me, as long as I get more

My doors left off the latch
And all my mirrors cracked
Now there's no turning back
So I just laugh and pass out on the floor

I can't get it together
I should know better
I got a mind like weather
That always seems to change

It's getting harder
So I need a doctor
He's gonna make me smarter
At least that's what they say

I've been bouncing off the walls
And shaking, the Adderall
Won't loosen the pressure
There's only so much I can take

Wake up, I need someone
To stop me, cause Adderall
Won't loosen the pressure
There's only so much I can take

Ooh ooh ooh, ooh
Ooh ooh ooh, ooh
Ooh ooh ooh, ooh
There's only so much I can take

I can't sleep cause I don't wanna
I don't want no marijuana
Tell my mom I tried to warn ya
Take one more and I'm a goner

I've been bouncing off the walls
And shaking, the Adderall
Won't loosen the pressure
There's only so much I can take

I've been bouncing off the walls
And shaking, the Adderall
Won't loosen the pressure
There's only so much I can take

Wake up, I need someone

To stop me, cause Adderall

Won't loosen the pressure

There's only so much I can take

Ooh ooh ooh, ooh
Ooh ooh ooh, ooh
Ooh ooh ooh, ooh
There's only so much I can take

Will His Career-Long Racism Finally Sink Biden's Campaign?

The far right Club for Growth is one of the sponsors planning to advertise during the Democratic debate Wednesday— but not on Fox— just on MSNBC and NBC in Iowa, aiming not to reach Trump supporters but Democratic voters. Ginger Gibson, reporting for Reuters, wrote that “Club for Growth's poll found voters are less inclined to vote for Biden if they were told he previously had taken positions that include opposing slavery reparations and busing of school children as part of desegregation systems.” And that’s just what their ad does, attack Biden for his pre-Obama career as a racist.

"Joe Biden’s past statements and positions on race issues present a serious challenge to his candidacy for the Democratic presidential nomination according to our polling," Club for Growth President David McIntosh said in a statement to Reuters.

"This poll and the coming ad are designed to help voters and observers of the 2020 Democratic presidential primary understand the field as well as the strengths and weaknesses of the frontrunner, former Vice President Joe Biden."

…The Club for Growth poll— which included 1,000 voters in the 18 states that are the first to hold primary contests— reaffirmed Biden's position as a frontrunner. It found, like other polls, that Biden's lead is being fueled largely by black voters. The poll found 46% of black voters, 29% of Hispanic voters and 33% white voters are backing Biden. Polls have been showing that Biden’s biggest demographic support comes from older, less educated African-American women.

The ad is expected to be a dry run for what Americans can expect from the Trump reelection campaign if the Democrats are foolish enough to give the party nomination to a life-long racist pig. Trump may even be a worse racist pig— or, at least, as bad a racist pig— but it the Democrats who need to votes from anti-racists, not Trump. Trump’s goal will be simple: depress voters turn out among African-American voters and their allies if Biden is the nominee.

An article for the New Republic by Matt Ford, Joe Biden’s Racial Dog Whistle, looked at the first brawl of the 2020 Democratic presidential primary, after the early frontrunner, stumbled clumsily into praising 2 dead arch-segregationist senators for the "civility" and his own ability to work with them to get things done— in this case, the “things” being his top issue: ending school busing as a tool of integration. "We got things done," Biden told a gaggle of rich Wall Street donors, seeking to evoke the glow of that less combative (albeit more racist) legislative era. "[T]oday you look at the other side and you’re the enemy. Not the opposition, the enemy,” said Biden after reassuring the banksters that a Biden administration— unlike a Bernie administration or an Elizabeth Warren adminstration— would look at them sympathetically. “Nothing will fundamentally change,” Status Quo Joe promised them as he solicited their campaign checks.

In response, Cory Booker suggested in no uncertain terms that Biden apologize for praising two of the worst racist senators of the Jim Crow era. Biden didn’t get it and, Trump-like, demanded that Booker apologize to him for daring to suggest that Joe Biden had even one racist bone in his body. Joe being Joe— a typical Biden foot in mouth move while trying to convince wealthy supporters that he and he alone can negotiate with Republicans in good faith and "get things done." Ford notes that the controversy has exposed a troubling aspect of Biden's presidential bid: a tendency to campaign just like his nemesis, Trump and to then try to bluster and lie his way out of it, just like Trump. Ford wants his readers to understand why, exactly Biden expects Republicans to "work with him after they waged a relentless and savage war against Obama. "Biden’s answer,” wrote Ford, is always implied and never spoken aloud: because he’s like them.” Biden has many of the same values that the Republicans in Congress have— the sympathy for the billionaire class demonized by Bernie, the racism that most Democrats have rejected, the whole women’s Choice issue that Biden has never understood, and the willingness to compromise away progressive accomplishments going back decades. “Both men built their campaigns on nostalgia for a bygone era that may have never existed,” wrote Ford. “Biden also shares Trump’s habit of never admitting error or apologizing for mistakes. His remarks on Wednesday show how he’s mirroring another strategy that propelled Trump to victory— one that sets him far apart from any of his Democratic rivals.”

That Biden would praise rather than condemn Eastland is jarring. Whatever civility the Mississippi senator extended to a young white Northerner like him did not reach his own black constituents. Robert Caro’s Master of the Senate recounts how Eastland spoke to a crowd during the Montgomery bus boycott with the language of a would-be genocidaire. “When in the course of human events it becomes necessary to abolish the Negro race, proper methods should be used,” he said. “Among these are guns, bows and arrows, slingshots and knives.... All whites are created equal with certain rights, among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of dead niggers.”

It’s tempting to describe Biden’s remarks as an Uncle Joe gaffe. What they actually reflect is the overarching theme of his campaign: that he has the experience, skill, and willingness to work with his Republican opponents, overcoming hyper-partisanship where other Democrats can’t or won’t. Last week, he made the improbable argument that he could convert Mitch McConnell, the Senate’s arch-obstructionist majority leader, into a reasonable, good-faith negotiator. As I noted then, Biden’s claim that the Kentucky senator and his fellow Republicans will “see the light” after Trump stretches all credulity. As Biden knows all too well, McConnell spent eight years blocking the Obama administration’s agenda whenever possible, and now brags about turning the chamber into a “graveyard” for House Democrats’ legislation.

…Serving as Obama’s vice president for eight years didn’t just give Biden a front-row seat to the persistence and wreckage of Republican partisan warfare. It’s also redounding to his benefit with Democratic voters today, in spite of his mixed history on race.

Biden’s track record on civil rights isn’t as straightforward as he suggests: Though he supported racial integration in Delaware, he clashed with local black leaders on busing in the 1970s. In the Senate, Biden helped craft the passage of laws that became the scaffolding for mass incarceration and presided over the Senate Judiciary Committee when it mistreated Anita Hill in 1991. But Biden remains extraordinarily popular among black voters, especially among the older generations. His proximity to the first black president is undoubtedly a boon.

Not identical-- but close enough

What explains Biden’s confidence that he can succeed where Obama failed? Invoking his relationships with Eastland and Talmadge offers a clue. I’m reminded of Ta-Nehisi Coates’s description of whiteness as an “ancestral talisman” and a “bloody heirloom,” one that “cannot ensure mastery of all events but can conjure a tailwind for most of them.” Past presidents who carried that metaphorical token of racial identity usually wielded it in more subtle ways. But Donald Trump, Coates wrote in 2017, “cracked the glowing amulet open, releasing its eldritch energies.” The president’s willingness to define himself through his whiteness set him apart from his rivals in 2016, eventually helping to elevate him to the White House.

Biden carries that talisman, too. He hasn’t unleashed its power in full; he does not share Trump’s antipathy toward immigrants and people of color. But the self-described working-class son of Scranton, Pennsylvania, is more than willing to brandish it to win the presidency. How could Biden build bridges in Washington where everyone else has failed? Why does it matter in 2019 that a Dixiecrat called him “son” and segregationists treated him with civility? Why would McConnell, of all people, work with him after a decade of all-out partisan warfare against Obama? Biden’s answer is always implied and never spoken aloud: because he’s like them.

Club for Growth will be inadvertently doing the Democrats-- and the country-- the biggest favor of all if they manage to sink Status Quo Joe's campaign. Let’s hope they run their ad in South Carolina and Nevada as well as in Iowa. Hey... and how about on BET?

Cheri Bustos Has Some Kindred Souls-- At The NRSC

Same kind of authoritarian, anti-democratic mindset and instincts. Bustos, chair of the DCCC, is trying to prevent primaries of Blue Dogs and New Dems in Congress, while she recruits New Dem and Blue Dog-types to run against progressives. Yesterday evening, Politico ran a report by Alex Isenstadt showing how the McTurtle and Todd Young, who are running the NRSC, are coming from the exact same place. Does this sound familiar? "Senate Republicans and their establishment allies are vowing to blackball any political consulting firm that works to defeat GOP incumbents, a dramatic step likely to further inflame intraparty tensions over 2020 primaries."

McTurtle and Young are all riled up because the far right is attempting to primary Thom Tillis (R-NC), who's more like the near-right. McTurtle was heard screeching that there will be a "zero tolerance policy." That kind of thing is more likely to work in a fascist-oriented party than among Democrats, where Bustos is rapidly destroying her own credibility and her career.

“It is the policy of the NRSC that we will defend any member of our caucus from any challenge-- be it in a primary or general election-- by any means necessary,” Kevin McLaughlin, the National Republican Senatorial Committee executive director, said in a statement. “It is a zero tolerance policy and we will not work with any vendors who work for campaigns or outside groups challenging incumbent Republican senators.”

The announcement is the most public brushback to those working for primary challengers since 2014, when the NRSC-- looking to beat back a wave of conservative insurgents-- cut off a consulting firm that had targeted Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and other incumbents up for reelection that year.

The Senate Leadership Fund, a well-funded super PAC closely aligned with McConnell, joined the committee in its decision.

“We have a long-standing policy of not using consultants who are assisting primary challenges against our Senate incumbents,” said Steven Law, the group's president.

The Club for Growth has not opposed an incumbent Republican senator since 2014, when it tried to unseat then-Mississippi Sen. Thad Cochran. But this week, the organization indicated it was trying to nudge North Carolina Rep. Mark Walker, a staunch Trump ally, into the primary. The Club for Growth also released a poll suggesting that Tillis would be vulnerable in a primary and general election.

The flare-up threatens to divide Republicans in a state at the center of the party’s 2020 strategy. Senate GOP campaign officials have warned aides to President Donald Trump that a disruptive and chaotic North Carolina Senate primary could hurt Trump in the battleground state.

North Carolina had already become an early focus of GOP concerns. The state Republican Party, whose chairman was recently indicted in a corruption case, has been wracked by turmoil. And there is considerable angst within the party about a field of lackluster gubernatorial candidates.

Senate Republicans are vigorously working to protect Tillis. In recent weeks, NRSC officials raised concerns with Trump campaign aides over the work that John McLaughlin, one of the president’s pollsters, was doing for Tillis primary challenger Garland Tucker. On Tuesday, McLaughlin’s firm withdrew from the North Carolina race.

The NRSC has indicated that it’s prepared to aggressively go after Walker, a third-term evangelical pastor. The committee, for example, has pointed out that the congressman has become entangled in the same federal corruption probe that led to the indictment of state party chairman Robin Hayes.

Major donors and outside groups are also coming to the senator’s defense. A spokesman for GOP megadonors Sheldon and Miriam Adelson said the couple “stands by Thom Tillis.”

Ending Spending Action Fund, a super PAC that in the past has received funding from the billionaire Ricketts and Adelson families, said it “will proudly support his reelection and vigorously oppose candidates or groups that seek to challenge the senator.”

Club for Growth officials say Tillis’ past differences with the White House have made him vulnerable in a state where Trump is popular among Republicans. Last year, the senator was criticized by fellow Republicans for co-sponsoring legislation to protect special counsel Robert Mueller. Earlier this year, Tillis wrote a Washington Post op-ed in which he announced his opposition to Trump’s national emergency declaration to build a border wall, though he ultimately voted in favor of it.

The Club for Growth tried to defeat the president in the 2016 GOP primary but has since refashioned itself into a pro-Trump outfit. On Friday, the group said it is still assessing whether to oppose Tillis.

“The Club for Growth has not made a determination if we will support a primary challenge to Sen. Tillis’ seat in North Carolina,” said Joe Kildea, a spokesman for the organization. “If we do endorse Walker, it will only be if we believe he is a stronger candidate in the general election.”

Republicans are not alone in trying to cut off oxygen to primary challengers. At a time when progressive insurgents are looking to unseat establishment incumbents, the House Democratic campaign arm has said it will no longer do business with vendors who are working to defeat sitting lawmakers.

The Club for Growth’s threat to Tillis puts some of the Republican Party's incumbents, who typically treat their fellow colleagues with deference, in an awkward position. Arizona Sen. Martha McSally has previously used two consulting firms, Axiom Strategies and WPA Intelligence, who have done work for the Club for Growth and Walker.

WPA Intelligence oversaw the Club for Growth’s new North Carolina survey, though a person familiar with the arrangement said it was done through a firewalled division of the polling firm. Jeff Roe, founder of Axiom Strategies and a top McSally adviser, said his firm would not be involved in any effort to defeat Tillis.

McSally is one of the most endangered senators up for reelection in 2020. A spokeswoman for the senator suggested that she took the same no-tolerance approach as the party committee.

"Sen. McSally strongly supports the reelection of Thom Tillis,” said McSally spokeswoman Katie Waldman, “and has made it clear that she will not use any vendors who are involved in a primary against the senator or any other Republican senator in the 2020 cycle.”

Steve Bannon Has Big Plans For Next Weekend-- A 100th Day Government Shut Down

Ryan held a conference call with his members yesterday to assure them that he has no intention of shutting down the government despite what the White House appears to be angling for. He promised not to let his failed TrumpCare bill get in the way. Some Republicans in Congress are worried they'll be blamed by next year's midterm voters if there's a government shutdown. Those worries are not part of Steve Bannon's calculus. He's fighting for his political life. What happens to Martha McSally, John Culberson, John Katko, Brian Fitzpatrick, Leonard Lance or Ed Royce isn't remotely on his radar. Making something BIG happen for the obsessed and mentally unbalanced boss on his 100th day in office is. Yesterday Ryan Lizza penned a piece in the New Yorker suggesting "the White House" wants a shut down. That's Bannon.

“For weeks, the House and Senate Democrats and Republicans have been working well together,” a Democratic aide said. “Then, all of a sudden, the White House is looking at next week and they have nothing to show for the first one hundred days, and they either want a health-care bill to pass next week, which seems like a heavy lift, or to get more on immigration from this process. Even Republicans don’t want this fight, and they don’t want a shutdown on Day One Hundred of the Trump Administration.”

The White House, which is trying to force another vote on an Obamacare repeal, seems desperate to either win some of Trump’s priorities in a deal next week, or force a government shutdown that it can blame on Democrats. That might energize Trump’s supporters, who don’t have much to celebrate yet.

But it’s not just the Democrats who oppose several Trump priorities. Congressional Republicans, who are generally united in support for the increase in defense spending, are divided on the border wall, which is not popular among border-state Republicans, and the deep domestic-spending cuts.

So far, it does not look like a bridgeable gap. “This is going to be high-stakes poker,” the White House official said. When I asked if a shutdown was likely, the official paused for several seconds. “I don’t know,” the official said. The official added, “I just want my wall and my ice agents.”

Bannon-- always the Hollywood drama queen. And Señor Trumpanzee can relate. After all what did those fuckers in Congress do for him anyway. They wouldn't even vote on TrumpCare, denying him targets for his wrath and vengeance. So late Friday night El Señor surprises everyone by announcing his powerful Armanda is steaming up the Potomac with submarines. Oops, sorry, he didn't do that yet. No, he announced that he would unveil a "massive" tax cut for Americans next week, vowing a "big announcement on Wednesday," but he revealed no details about what is certain to be an enormously complicated effort to overhaul the nation’s tax code, except, as a Trump-watcher might expect that it would be "bigger, I believe, than any tax cut ever." You almost feel sorry for Ryan and Miss McConnell. Almost. I bet they would have preferred the Armanda steaming past Point Lookout.

Trump's showy-- albeit crackpot-- announcement Friday surprised Capitol Hill and left El Señor’s own Treasury officials speechless as he arrived at the Treasury offices to sign directives to roll back Obama-era tax rules and financial regulations that protected consumers from bankster predators. "Earlier in the day," reported the Times' Alan Rappeport, "when reporters asked Steven Mnuchin, the Treasury secretary, how far away a tax overhaul proposal was, he said he could not give an answer. 'Tax reform is way too complicated,' he said." Nothing's too complicated for El Señor-- nothing as in everything-- same/same. He doesn't comprehend a word of any of it and depends on Kushner-in-law, who's mentally slow and something of a remedial student-- I know his tutor who told me he's incapable of critical thinking-- to explain it all to him over dinner.

Starting that fight next week is further complicated by Mr. Trump’s hopes to revive the Republican health care plan that collapsed last month. And it would mean trying a tax overhaul as his White House faces the prospect of a government shutdown if lawmakers cannot agree on a funding bill by April 28.

The details of Mr. Trump’s tax plans remain the subject of intense speculation, with stock markets regularly gyrating when White House officials discuss the subject. Since taking office, the president has suggested that he wants to enact the deepest cuts to individual and corporate tax rates in history.

But despite Mr. Trump’s statement on Friday that his tax overhaul “really formally begins on Wednesday,” White House officials quickly cautioned against high expectations that Mr. Trump would provide the legislative text of a detailed tax plan next week.

Instead, a senior administration official said the president would release only the “parameters” that Mr. Trump expected a tax plan to follow in the long congressional debate that would surely follow. Another official said the information released next week would be more like a “broad” outline. Wall Street, which tends to celebrate tax cuts, barely reacted; the Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index was down 0.3 percent Friday.

The administration has maintained that middle-income tax cuts, a simplification of personal income taxes, and making business taxes more competitive with other countries are the top priorities. Mr. Trump insisted that his plans were on track and that his strategy to remake the economy would change history.

“This is really the beginning of a whole new way of life that this country hasn’t seen in many, many years,” Mr. Trump said as he sat at the desk of Mr. Mnuchin, near a portrait of Alexander Hamilton, the first Treasury secretary.

He said, “We’ve lifted one terrible regulation after another at a record clip from the energy sector to the auto sector.”

Despite Mr. Trump’s enthusiasm, the directives he signed at the Treasury Department on Friday to review measures put in place by the Obama administration were largely preliminary. As business groups cheered the moves, some skeptics were left questioning whether Mr. Trump was keeping his campaign promises to give working-class Americans a higher priority than Wall Street bankers.

“From our perspective, it is a direction that is dramatically backwards on financial stability,” said Lisa Donner, executive director of Americans for Financial Reform.

The presidential order asks Mr. Mnuchin to review the tax regulations imposed by President Barack Obama in 2016. Those include efforts to clamp down on “corporate inversions”-- in which American companies merge with foreign companies to take advantage of lower tax rates abroad.

Viewed alone, undoing the rules would appear to be at odds with Mr. Trump’s campaign pledge to reduce incentives for companies to move overseas to minimize taxes.

Last year Mr. Obama’s Treasury Department, concerned about Pfizer’s $152 billion bid to acquire Allergan, which makes Botox, issued rules to thwart the practice. Among those efforts were regulations to prevent moves like “earnings-stripping,” in which an American subsidiary borrows from a parent company and uses the interest payments on the loans to offset its earnings. It was intended to make the financial relocations less attractive.

The uproar over inversions dogged a number of transactions over the last five years including Burger King’s takeover of the Canadian chain Tim Hortons and the drug maker AbbVie’s planned acquisition of an Irish rival, Shire.

But the major target of the outrage was the Pfizer-Allergan deal, by far the biggest effort by a company to give up its American citizenship to cut its taxes. Pfizer executives braced themselves for opposition from the Obama administration-- but were surprised by how aggressively the White House fought the deal. Within a few months, Pfizer and Allergan surrendered and ended their agreement.

Robert Willens, an independent tax consultant, said reversing these rules would be a gift to Wall Street bankers and lawyers who have complained that they have hampered international deal making.

“They’ll be dancing in the streets and jumping for joy,” Mr. Willens said.

...Democrats warned that Mr. Trump was putting vulnerable middle-class Americans in danger. “Simply eliminating these regulations and putting nothing in their place leaves a hole in the tax system that sophisticated corporations will continue to take advantage of, to the detriment of the country,” said David Kamin, a New York University law professor who worked on the Obama administration’s National Economic Council.

Senator Sherrod Brown, Democrat of Ohio, assailed Mr. Trump for trying to undermine rules that were put in place to protect the economy. “Any actions to undermine these protections encourage Wall Street’s risky behavior and leave taxpayers and our economy exposed to another catastrophe,” he said.

Mr. Brown said that Mr. Trump appeared to be breaking a campaign promise by making it easier for companies to use inversions. “We should be working to lower taxes for hardworking families and workers across Ohio, not helping multimillion-dollar corporations cheat the system to avoid paying their fair share,” he said.

Mr. Mnuchin insisted that would not be the case and argued the tax overhaul legislation plan that they would propose will address the problem of companies moving overseas.

Mr. Trump has shown an affinity for tariffs. He proposed a “reciprocal” tax this month that matches the import taxes other countries impose on American goods.

It remains unclear if Mr. Trump is on board with the “border adjustment” tax that is central to the plan being promoted by Speaker Paul D. Ryan and House Republicans. The concept would allow Republicans to raise more than $1 trillion of revenue, making it possible for them pass legislation without adding to the deficit.



Mr. Trump has been cool to that plan in interviews, and recently his advisers have been making the case that a surging economy, rather than Mr. Ryan’s border adjustment tax, will pay for deep rate cuts.

“The plan will pay for itself with growth,” Mr. Mnuchin said an Institute for International Finance conference on Thursday.

Mr. Trump’s economic team had initially set an August deadline to get tax legislation passed, but that target was delayed to the end of the year after Republicans expended time on their failed health plan.

Is The Republican Civil War Jeopardizing John Culberson's Houston Seat? Ask Club For Growth

If you're not from Tennessee, you may never have heard of Congresswoman Diane Black. She's an old racist witch, basically a classic neo-Nazi who's been representing a backward district in central Tennessee that conveniently skirts any cities, since 2010. TN-06 is made up of 19 shit-hole counties that God gave up on and abandoned to the Devil; most of the voters live in Sumner and Wilson counties. The dirt-poor district is almost entirely white-- and pretty much defines "trash." She's the absolute perfect representative-- except that she's a multimillionaire several times over, representing a bunch of poor hicks who don't have the good sense to understand she's screwing them over every single day. What a mess! The district has a PVI of R+21. McCain beat Obama there, 65-34%. Romney beat Obama 69-30% and Señor Trumpanzee beat Hillary 72.6% to 23.7%, Trump's second-best showing in the state.

I believe in the 50-state strategy-- but not for TN-06. Leave that pile of sewage alone. Let it exist as a kind of living museum of what happens when people listen to too much Hate Talk Radio and take too many opioids. It was Andrew Jackson's political base so it's perfect that the only president as corrupt as Jackson should also be so admired there.

Diane Black's record in Congress is the worst of any in Tennessee. Her ProgressivePunch lifetime crucial vote score is a whopping 1.13-- and a ZERO for the current session. She insists on being called a "congressman," not a congresswoman and hatred and bigotry exude from every pore of her hideous hide. But somehow the Club for Growth psychos have found a reason to be angry at her and started running the anti-Diane Black TV spot up top. It doesn't mean a thing. She isn't vulnerable. If the anti-Trump tsunami sweeps across America and the GOP loses 200 seats, Diane Black will be one of the ones left standing. Club for Growth knows that. The ad is symbolic (or something you have to be a right-wing loon to fully understand).

The ad below, though does mean something. It's from the same series of Club for Growth ads attacking Republican incumbents they're not happy with. Except this one attacks John Culberson in TX-07. This one is serious. Culberson is nearly as extreme right as Black-- but in a much more mainstream, diverse and well-educated district. His ProgressivePunch score for the current session is also a ZERO and his lifetime score is 2.12. But TX-07 has a PVI of R+13. It includes west Houston (just beyond the Rice campus), west through Bellaire and out past Bunker Hill Village and Barker Reservoir. Romney won it with 60% and Culberson usually does even better than that. Last November, though, he was reelected against a weak Democratic candidate, James Cargas, 143,369 (56.2%) to 111,774 (43.8%), the worst Culberson had ever done. Looks like he was dragged down by Trump, who didn't match Romney's 60% win. In fact Hillary beat Trumpy-the-Clown in the district 48.5% to 47.1%.

We reached Jason Westin, the cancer doctor campaigning hard against Culberson, and he told us that he never thought he'd say these words: "these are strange times: I agree with the Club for Growth about Mr Culberson. I agree that Career Congressman Culberson should oppose the border adjustment tax. In 2015, Texas alone had $84 Billion in imports from Mexico. A 20% tax on these goods would devastate the Texas 7th economy-- hardly putting 'America first.' I also agree the congressional seat currently occupied by the empty suit Culberson has a huge target on it for 2018. The district was won by Clinton in 2016, is increasingly diverse, and is highly educated and affluent-- all of which means 'not Trump territory.' Mr Culberson has attached himself to Mr Trump, going so far as to call him 'the father of the interplanetary highway system,' and has voted with Mr Trump 100% of the time. Even if Mr Culberson wanted to soften his radical right wing positions, being targeted by the Club for Growth this early shows he is in a very dangerous position. I hope he survives his Republican primary so I can face him in 2018, although I highly doubt the Club for Growth ads will continue to run then."

The district's been changing. Only 44% of the population is white now. Nearly a third is Hispanic and there are large, motivated Black and Asian populations too. It's a wealthy district, way better off than a hellish backwater like Diane Black's. And Trump is not anyone's idea of an American president. There are already 4 Democrats vying to take on Culberson next year-- Jason Westin, Debra Kerner, Joshua Butler and James Cargas-- and the DCCC has identified TX-07 as a top target. Let's hope Club for Growth spends plenty of money running the ad:

Too Late For The Republican Party Establishment To Stop Trump?

As one DC wag tweeted early yesterday morning, "Donald Trump continues to refuse to peak." Perhaps he was referring to the new Morning Consult poll which now has the Trumpster at a whopping 40% among Republican primary voters (with Carson, #2, at just 14%, the only other candidate in double digits, Jeb at 6%, Rubio and Cruz tied at 5% and Fiorina now back in margin-of-error territory where she belongs, confirmed yesterday by a CNN poll showing her 15% had dissipated down to 4%. Even Republican voters figured her out pretty fast. But not Trump... yet.

Trump is just murdering Jeb on a daily basis. Trump lured him into a 9/11 quicksand trap that Jeb was too stupid to avoid and too weak to fight his way out of. One poll released yesterday shows Trump beating Jeb in Florida and yesterday PPP put one out showing Trump beating Bush, 49-41 in a head-to-head match-up in New Hampshire. Establishment gunslinger-for-hire Mike Murphy (the guy who ran the disastrous circuses for John McCain and Mitt Romney), currently drawing an astronomical paycheck from Jeb's shady Right To Rise SuperPAC, was interviewed this week by Sasha Isenberg for Bloomberg. Main take-away: Murphy called Trump a zombie front-runner and is still laboring under the delusion that Jeb is a first-tier candidate. Oh... and he says all the polls are bogus. Murphy's spin on Jeb:

I’ve worked for him for 18 years. I know he builds slowly and gets better and better. You saw in the debates, the second debate was strong, he'll continue to improve, he's doing well on the stump now. He can outlast the noise, his candidate performance will be excellent, and we're an amplifier. Our job is just to amplify his story and what he's saying and we banked enough cash that nobody's turning our speaker off. And we're the only campaign in that situation and I think we are the campaign who can consolidate the winning largest lane in the party and do so in a way that can win the general election, which I think is unique only to Jeb. And if you look at the prediction markets overseas, which are kind of interesting, because that's the one place real money's involved, we constantly rank number one. The smart money's figured this out. What hasn't figured it out is the day-to-day cable punditry-- but that's OK, that'll follow reality. So our job is to be tuned into reality and let that stuff catch up eventually. That’s kind of our theory.

...I don’t think [Trump's] been particularly good for the process, he's trivialized it. I remember working in foreign countries in the past where like the beer brands would each run a candidate for president as a marketing gimmick. I thought “God, I hope this never comes to us,” because it just makes the election kind of a cheap card trick. And here we are.

It created a false zombie front-runner. He’s dead politically, he'll never be president of the United States, ever. By definition I don't think you can be a front-runner if you're totally un-electable. I think there's there an a-priori logic problem in that... It's a huge amount of noise and so we're trying to find the signal in all this. You've seen Trump start to drop now. I think it'll be a very slow drop, but I think he'll continue to drop and the question is: is he ready to lose primaries, will he stay in? And nobody knows the answer to that... I think in his lane the guy with the most opportunity will probably be Cruz. Voters have some resistance, it seems, to go to Cruz, there's something there they don't like, but in that lane I would think he'd have the opportunity. Walker tried to get into that business and got squeezed out too early to really know, but if I had to make a hypothetical I'd probably guess that. But we think it's a minority lane, so a lot of what we want to do is consolidate the regular Republican, positive-conservative lane. That means the real competition from our point of view, the main competition over the long run, are we think weaker candidates in our lane that we can overcome. There are people we have respect for, but there's Governor Christie, Senator Rubio, Governor Pataki, Governor Kasich-- that's the vote we'd like to consolidate. Carly Fiorina pulls a little from both sides, probably more in our data from the other lane.

Governor Pataki. OK, sure. In the latest poll, the one from CNN, Trump had 27%, up 3 points since September. Jeb was tied with Rubio in 3rd place with 8%, both down from September. Now if Murphy is able to consolidate Christie's 4%, Rubio's 8% Pataki's 0%, Kasich's 3% with Jeb, he winds up with 23% to Trump's 27%. And that helps explain the post from Byron York yesterday for the right-wing website, WashingtonExaminer.com: Panicked establishment gets ready for war against Trump. Grrrrrrrrrr...

"The Republican establishment, for the first time, is saying, off the record, this guy can win," noted Joe Scarborough on MSNBC Monday morning. "I've heard that from everybody. I don't hear anybody saying he can't win the nomination anymore."

That doesn't mean Republicans have made their peace with a Trump victory. On the contrary-- some are preparing to do whatever it takes to bring him down. Which could lead to an extraordinary scenario in which GOP stalwarts go to war to destroy their own party's likely nominee.

Over the weekend I talked to a leading conservative who opposes Trump. I asked what would happen if January comes and Trump is still dominating the race. Would he and other conservatives make their peace with Trump's candidacy, or would there be massive resistance?

"Massive resistance," was the answer. "He's not a conservative."

Insiders have watched as Trump defied what many believed were immutable laws of the political universe. First they thought Trump wouldn't run. Then they thought voters wouldn't take a reality-TV star seriously. Then they thought gaffes would kill Trump as they had other candidates. None of that turned out as expected.

But there is one belief Trump has not yet tested, and that is the political insiders' unshakeable faith that negative ads work.

"I don't think Trump can withstand 10,000 points of smart negative in Iowa and New Hampshire," says one veteran Republican strategist who is not affiliated with any campaign. "It would force him to spend money. That's when this starts to get real for him."

..."We primed the pump with our ads in Iowa," says Club president David McIntosh. "We did some polling afterward. The ads flipped Trump from first to second place among caucus-goers and put a dent in his approval rating."

McIntosh is looking for donors to fund an anti-Trump campaign that would hit hard in the month before voting begins. It might be a Club for Growth production, or it might be a combination of efforts. "There is no other group that has decided to do it," says McIntosh. "There are a large number of donors and political activists who want to do it."

The triggers for the anti-Trump onslaught would likely be: 1) if next month arrives with Trump still in the lead, and 2) if Trump begins airing his own ads. "Once that starts, you'll see a lot of people saying we've waited long enough," notes McIntosh.

While that is going on, officials at the Republican National Committee vow to stay out of things. Asked what role the RNC might play in any movement against Trump, strategist and spokesman Sean Spicer said, "None. None. Zero. It is up to Republican voters to decide who our nominee is, not the RNC." Indeed, other sources inside the RNC say chairman Reince Priebus has stressed to staff that they must stay out of candidate fights.

The anti-Trump campaign will face several challenges. The biggest is the voters who support Trump. Conservative groups like the Club believe they can convince those voters that Trump is not a true conservative. Perhaps they can. But what if a large number of his voters are not wed to conservative orthodoxy as defined by Washington-based organizations?

The other problem is Trump himself. If he decides to spend serious money on his campaign-- and some GOP veterans still aren't convinced he will-- he can launch a serious counterpunch to any anti-Trump campaign.

What a shame to see them wasting all that money bloodying each other up, instead of using it against Bernie or Hillary. Must be really horrible being a Republican!

This line of hysteria among GOP thought-leaders continued today, as both Byron York and Josh Kraushaar wondered aloud whether the Republican Establishment attacks on Trump might backfire on the Party. York-- based on the anti-Trump stuff Club for Growth has already run-- figures they'll make the case that he's not a conservative but that that may not matter much to voters. "The problem," he wrote, "is that an ad accusing Trump of not being a conservative will appeal almost exclusively to GOP voters who are strongly conservative. But those voters are mostly already supporting other candidates. Trump's base of support lies elsewhere, and might end up largely unaffected by a he's-not-one-of-us ad campaign. The short version of the problem could be this: An attack ad says Trump is not a conservative. Trump supporters-- and other possible GOP voters, as well-- say, that's OK, we're not conservatives, either."

Kraushaar's piece in NationalJournal, The Crackup of the Republican Establishment, emphasizes that "[t]he GOP elect­or­ate’s dis­dain for polit­ic­al in­siders is real, and it is fuel­ing the de­mand for Trump, Car­son, and, to a less­er ex­tent, Fior­ina and Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas."

There’s good reas­on why Trump has run on a non­tra­di­tion­al Re­pub­lic­an plat­form, one that’s skep­tic­al of mil­it­ary in­ter­ven­tion, hos­tile to il­leg­al im­mig­ra­tion, and opposed to free trade deals. Last week, he even at­tacked former Pres­id­ent George W. Bush for not an­ti­cip­at­ing the 9/11 attacks. Trump has been ad­voc­at­ing hik­ing taxes on wealthy cor­por­a­tions and in­di­vidu­als. His past sup­port of abor­tion rights, and ad­mis­sion that he hasn’t sought forgiveness from God, don’t en­dear him to evan­gel­ic­als. But these po­s­i­tions match the ideo­lo­gic­al pro­file of his supporters. Trump is no dummy; he’s run­ning a cam­paign geared to­wards voters that many Re­pub­lic­an can­did­ates, with their em­phases on tax cuts, free trade, and im­mig­ra­tion re­form, have per­en­ni­ally ig­nored.

For How Long Should Volkswagen Be Barred From Doing Business In America?

When Trump mentioned that he thought grasping, greed-driven hedge-fund managers and banksters should pay their fair share of taxes, the grasping, greed-driven hedge-fund managers and banksters doubled down on sabotaging his campaign. They are getting slime-ball lobbyists, like  Grover Norquist  and the Club for Growth, to "work on" the congressmembers the banksters own or rent. Club for Growth has already pledged to run millions of dollars of ads against Trump. Here's the first one:



When it comes to their pocketbooks, these monsters will do anything-- not almost anything-- to not give up a nickel, no matter what the damage to society, to the nation, to anyone. They may know where the best clothes money can be bought, but they are primitive, tribal and barbaric-- and they have gotten away with their sociopathic behavior for far too long. 

All week we've been getting to know a little about America's newest arch-villain, Martin Shkreli, the former hedge-fund manager-- and the love child of Voldemort, Scrooge, and Faust-- who jacked up the price of a life-or-death drug, for no good reason other than sheer greed and because he could, from $13.50/pill to $750/pill. And while Shkreli deserves his new status as a poster boy for grotesque antisocial behavior, he's not alone as the embodiment of what Pope Francis calls "the dung of the devil" when referring to the unfettered lust for money that has become so dominant in Western culture. 

As Bernie put it in a tweet yesterday after the Pope had finished speaking, "The pope is saying that money, the accumulation of money and the worship of money is not what life should be about."

As I was driving to the hospital for a day of cancer remission maintenance, I listened to an interview with Uri Gneezy, a professor of behavioral economics at UC San Diego, who wrote The Why Axis: Hidden Motives and Undiscovered Economics of Everyday Life. He made the point that fining corporations doesn't necessarily change sociopathic corporate behavior-- unless the fines are gargantuan and close to existential, and they take the behavior out of the realm of morality and into the realm of cost-benefit analysis. But the discussion wasn't about the execrable Martin Shkreli. 

It was about Volkswagen, the company founded in 1937 by the German Labour Front as an antidote to the then completely dominant luxury-car market, and run most recently-- until yesterday, when he was forced to resign-- by another Martin, Martin Winterkorn. Winterkorn, of course, refused to accept any personal responsibility for the criminal enterprise Volkswagen has turned into on his watch.

(Disclaimer: My first car was a VW van, and when I moved to Europe in 1969, I bought a second one, at the factory in Wiesbaden-- for $2,500, a fully equipped camper if you promised to export it out of Europe. I promptly drove to India and wound up living it in that van for several years.)

Professor Gneezy says the only way to really change the kind of behavior Volkswagen was engaging in-- and keep other corporations from doing the same in the future-- is to throw the book at them. (I believe I heard him use the word "execution," although that was probably just wishful thinking.) Germany may open a criminal investigation, but, given VW's outsize role in the German economy and what this scandal could do to it, that could well be part of a cover-up/wrist-slap strategy.

The Volkswagen emissions scandal will cost billions and could tarnish the entire German auto industry.

The company had made bold claims about being greener than other automakers, and had a reputation for reliability and quality engineering. Suddenly, the "Made in Germany" branding doesn't look so hot anymore after it apologized for cheating on diesel car emission tests.

...Here are seven key facts that show what's at stake:

1. The Volkswagen group accounts for roughly one in 10 vehicles sold globally.

2. The auto industry is the largest industrial sector in Germany, contributing about 2.7% to gross domestic product.

3. Some 20% of Germany's exports are made up of vehicles and parts.

4. Domestic auto sales and exports were worth 368 billion euros ($411 billion) in 2014.

5. Most German auto sales came from the Volkswagen group, which reported just over 202 billion euros in revenue in 2014.

6. Roughly 70% of Volkswagen vehicles are sold outside German borders.

7. Volkswagen employs nearly 600,000 people around the world, and more than a third of the 775,000 people who work in the auto industry in Germany.

That said, the editorial board of the Chicago Tribune knows how egregious the charges against VW are-- and they decided to share it with their readers, although without calling for VW from being barred from doing business in the United States.

There was a time when car shopping involved questions about price, performance and warranties. Maybe it's time to update the list of questions:

Do your vehicles accelerate unintentionally, as Toyota's did?

Do the ignition switches on your vehicles ever turn off suddenly while cruising on the highway, as GM's did?

Do your emissions systems evade federal law and secretly spew fumes, as Volkswagen's did?

The dangerous errors and calculating behavior of some auto manufacturers are astonishing.

Toyota paid a $1.2 billion penalty in 2014 to settle federal charges that it concealed safety defects that caused sudden-acceleration incidents. Last week, GM agreed to pay a $900 million fine for failing to disclose the installation of defective ignition switches that have been linked to the deaths of more than 100 people. Justice Department officials said that in both cases they would defer prosecution, giving the companies three years to prove they have changed their ways.

Now comes Volkswagen.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency says the German automaker slipped a "defeat device" into the emissions systems of diesel vehicles. In effect, the government charged, VW hacked its own engines to let its cars run dirty. The cars could detect when they were hooked up to a government pollution test and instantly the engine would clean up its act.

The scope of this scandal is stunning: Volkswagen said Tuesday that 11 million cars worldwide are fitted with the software responsible for the cheating. The company is setting aside $7.3 billion (about nine months' profit) to pay for the mess, including anticipated fines. But that's not the end of it.

In the U.S., Volkswagen will need to recall and fix 482,000 vehicles. The company faces fines under the Clean Air Act that could total $37,500 per car, as much as $18 billion. The Justice Department is reportedly pursuing a criminal investigation. VW's stock has plunged about 30 percent this week.

Volkswagen's global CEO Martin Winterkorn is under fire. Germany's economy minister is fretting about the damage the VW scandal has done to the country's reputation for reliable engineering.

Volkswagen didn't report its behavior; the company got caught by federal and California investigators. The rigged cars emitted up to 35 times the legally allowed amount of nitrogen oxide, a component of smog. Running dirty apparently improved acceleration and gas mileage. The cars involved in the U.S. include the diesel versions of the Jetta (2009-15); Beetle (2009-15); Golf (2009-15), Passat (2014-15) and Audi A3 (2009-15).

"Our company was dishonest, with the EPA and the California Air Resources Board," Michael Horn, Volkswagen's U.S. boss, said this week at a New York Auto Show event. "We have totally screwed up."

Winterkorn, in a video statement Tuesday, said he was "endlessly sorry" and acknowledged the company's culpability. "To make it very clear: Manipulation at VW must never happen again."

International competition has benefited consumers with far more reliable, technologically advanced, fuel efficient-- and fun-- cars. You're more likely to have a better shopping experience these days, thanks in part to Internet research tools. The Toyota and GM controversies do not seem to have shaken consumer confidence-- sales figures have generally been strong.

Perhaps VW can weather the storm too. But you have to wonder at what point consumers lose basic trust.

The fine the EPA is talking about-- $18 billion-- is the equivalent of VW's worldwide profits for the entire year and then some. Is that enough? Professor Gneezy seemed unconvinced. (Probably all the more so as it leaks out that Winterkorn is leaving his job with at least $32 million in severance, etc.) And this morning, it appears that the cheating scandal may not be confined to VW. Next up" BMW The stock price started crashing this morning as Auto Bild reported that its diesel engines were "significantly" exceeding regulatory limits, emitting nitrogen oxide levels that were 11 times more than the current limit set by the European Union.

Trump Insists Everyone Speak English... But He Speaks A Language Of Obfuscation

I'm not sure how relevant Bill Kristol, son of Irving, is to anything anymore, but the neoconservative fanatic, the founder and editor of the Weekly Standard, sits on a bunch of wingnut think tank boards with Robert Kagan and Liz Cheney. He's best known for having been key to preventing millions of Americans from getting health insurance in 1993 and for helping gin up a climate of hysteria that worked to allow Bush and Cheney to start-- and then expand-- the unjustified and catastrophic Iraq War. Also, some people credit him for inventing Sarah Palin as a national figure. 

But yesterday Kristol announced he would like to draft either Dick Cheney or Arkansas psychotic Tom Cotton to run as a third-party candidate if Trump wins the GOP nomination, as now looks very plausible.

Kristol's beefs with Trumpy are that he's not a serious neocon and that he insulted Kristol hero John McCain and that he backs some economic positions that benefit working families-- standard GOP establishment drivel they keep throwing at Trump with little to no effect, although it's worth noting that now that Wall Street banksters are fretting, even "terrified," over a potential Trump presidency and are making it clear that they're perfectly happy backing Hillary if Trump is the nominee, the GOP is likely to move into high gear against Trump.

Trump says he's not afraid of the bankster-predators:

Jeb Bush and Hillary Clinton will continue to let Wall Street and the 'hedge fund guys' rip off the people by paying no or very little in taxes. They have total and complete control of Hillary, Jeb and others running. My campaign is self- funded. The only people that have control of me are the people of the United States.

That of course is a lie-- the part about the self-funding, not the part about Wall Street controlling Hillary and Jeb, which is spot on. The media never asks him about the money flowing into the Make America Great Again SuperPAC run by Trumpite Jon Anderson, which Anderson admits "intends to raise funds in unlimited amounts." It has already started and accepted a six-figure check from convicted campaign-finance fraudster and close Trump crony Charles Kushner.

When Trump visited The Tonight Show last week, Jimmy Fallon's second question was, "How are you going to create jobs in this country?" Trump responded, "I'm just going to do it." When Fallon followed up with "But how?," Trump said, "By doing it. It just happens. Just by doing it." Enlightening... not!

Trump knows very well how to speak without letting anyone pin him down to anything that could pin him down in the future. Ads like this one the Club for Growth released in Iowa (a million dollars' worth of time) yesterday will make the straight-talker-who-isn't even more weasel-like.



Political speechwriter Barton Swaim, author of The Speechwriter: A Brief Education in Politics, is concerned about political language. In yesterday's Washington Post, he took a look at Trump's use of language. What he finds most distrinctive about Trump's rise is the structure of his language.

Everybody senses that Trump doesn't speak like other politicians. But how is his speech different, exactly? Is it just the swagger, the dismissive tone and clipped accent? Maybe in part. Trump does seem emotionally engaged in a way none of his competitors do; he is perpetually annoyed-- exasperated that things aren't as they should be-- but somehow also good-humored about it. (Chris Christie and John Kasich seem perpetually annoyed, too, but there is nothing funny or cheerful about their versions.)

To get at what makes Trump’s language different, take a look at the shape of his sentences. They don't work the way modern political rhetoric does-- they work the way punchlines work: short (sometimes very short) with the most important words at the end.

That’s rare among modern politicians, and not simply because they lack Trump’s showmanship or comedic gifts. It’s rare because most successful modern politicians are habitually careful with their language. They are keenly aware of the ways in which any word they speak may be interpreted or misinterpreted by journalists and partisan groups and constituencies and demographic groups.

And so in important situations-- situations in which they know a lot depends on what they say or don’t say-- their language takes on (at least) two peculiar characteristics. First, their syntax tends to abstraction. They speak less about particular things and people-- bills, countries, identifiable officials-- and more about “legislation” and “the international community” and “officials” and “industry” and “Washington” and “government.”

Second, their sentences take on a higher number of subordinate clauses and qualifying phrases-- “over the last several years,” “in general,” “in effect,” “what people are telling me,” and so on. This is the kind of language you use when you’re aware that your words might be misinterpreted or used against you.

When used well, it conveys competence and assures listeners that the speaker thinks coherent thoughts and holds reasonable positions. It suggests that the speaker cares about the truth of his claims. But politicians are frequently too careful with their language, and this conscientiousness can begin to sound like deceit or cowardice. When they rely too heavily on abstractions, when they avoid concrete nouns, when all their statements seem always hedged by qualifying phrases, they sound like politicians, in the worst sense of the word. To my ear, anyway, Hillary Clinton sounds this way almost all the time.

Whether used well or poorly, however, the language of a typical modern politician has a distinctive sound to it. It sounds complex and careful-- sometimes sophisticated, sometimes emotive, sometimes artificial or over-scripted, but always circumspect and inevitably disingenuous.

Trump’s language is from another rhetorical tradition entirely. Consider his hour-long media availability on Sept. 3, just after he’d signed a “loyalty pledge” that he wouldn’t run as a third-party candidate if he loses the GOP nomination. Some of his answers last only a few seconds, some are slightly longer, but almost all consist of simple sentences, grammatically and conceptually, and most of them withhold their most important word or phrase until the very end. Trump’s sentences end with a pop, and he seems to know instinctively where to put the emphasis in each one.



Near the beginning of the news conference, he says: “I don’t need money. I don’t want money. And this is going to be a campaign, I think, like no other. I’m not controlled by lobbyists. I’m not controlled by anybody.”

This is not the language of a typical politician.

Someone asks Trump about New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie’s (R) remark that he, Christie, didn’t need the chairman of the Republican National Committee to meet with him in order to beg him to sign a loyalty pledge. Another politician-- a politician wanting to take a shot at Christie-- might have answered, “Well I’m not sure why anybody would need Gov. Christie to sign a loyalty pledge, given his standing in the polls right now.”

That would have gotten a chuckle. But Trump worded his answer far better:

“Well, you don’t have to be met when you’re at 2 percent.”

His comedic instinct, I think, told him it was worth some awkward wording at the beginning of the sentence (“you don’t have to be met”) in order to put the words “2 percent” at the very end. Pop. Hardy laughter.

Trump’s lengthier answers, too, involve mostly short, grammatically uncomplicated sentences, with very few of the complicating phrases you hear from an ordinary politician who’s trying hard not to say something obviously false or stupid. Oftentimes his answers, when transcribed one sentence per line, read like free verse poetry. Asked a question about Jeb Bush, for instance, Trump replies:

Jeb Bush is a very nice man.

I’ll be honest; I think he’s a very nice person.

I think he’s a very low-energy person, and I don’t think that’s what the country needs.

I hear that he’s going to spend a lot of money on negative ads on me, and honestly-- look, he’s getting the money from special interests.

He’s getting the money from lobbyists and his donors.

And they’re making him do it because he’s crashing in the polls.

So I don’t know what’s gonna happen.

If he spends $20 million or $25 million on negative ads, I don’t know.

I know that my life will continue.

I just don’t know.

I mean, nobody’s ever spent money on ads against me.

But he probably has to do that, although it would not be the way I would do it.

His sentences get even shorter when he lapses into his campaign boilerplate. Politicians do this all the time. When the question is general enough, they move quickly from answering it to expatiating on general themes. But when Trump does it, his sentences contract to little more than a subject, a verb, and usually a direct object. Most range between five and fifteen syllables.

Our country could be doing much better.

We have deficits that are enormous.

We have all bad trade agreements.

We have an army that the head [Gen. Raymond Odierno] said is not prepared.

We have a military that needs help, and especially in these times.

We have nuclear weapons that-- you look at 60 Minutes-- they don’t even work.

The phones don’t work.

They’re 40 years old.

They have wires that are no good.

Nothing works.

Our country doesn’t work.

Everybody wins except us.

We need victories in this country.

We don’t have victories anymore.

Our country will be great again, but right now our country has major problems.

The words themselves are mostly preposterous. Other than “We have deficits that are enormous” and the one about Odierno, they range between laughable exaggeration and nonsense. What makes them effective in their way is that they don’t sound like political speech. Politicians in modern democracies just don’t talk this way.

Trump makes no effort-- or seems to make no effort-- to measure the effect of his propositions on different constituencies. He seems genuinely unaware that anybody might try to pick them apart. He makes no effort to hedge his statements or phrase them in such a way that they are at least defensible. Indeed, you don’t feel you’re listening to a politician at all. You feel you’re listening to a man who has rejected the conventions of electoral politics altogether -- someone who’s opted out of the whole charade.

The result, for probably the great majority of people who follow politics, is alternately comical and horrifying. But for people who’ve grown weary of politicians using vague and convoluted language to lull or impress their listeners, to preserve their options and to avoid criticism, Trump sounds refreshingly clear and forthright. I don’t share their view, but I find it hard to blame them.

Another way to look at Trump's use of language is to remember that his goal is always deception and that he's a compulsive, self-aggrandizing liar. If something sounds like it might not be true, you can take that to the bank. He uses language to hide things, not to clarify anything; not ever. Last night, on her show, Rachel Maddow exposed how Trump used the decommissioned USS Iowa to deceive the American public once again. It was classic Trump-- something that would have instantly sunk any other candidate in history. Trump claimed a veteran's group with "hundreds of thousands" of members had endorsed him and he was raising thens of thousands of dollars for them. Except there is only one member of the "group." Literally. Watch: