Trump Is Responsible For Death Threats To Women Members Of Congress Who Oppose His Fascism

Reshaping the GOP by Nancy Ohanian

Last night, while Trump, was encouraging a chant-- "Send her home"-- at one of his trade-marked hate rallies, this one in North Carolina, Bernie was at dinner with Ilhan Omar and her daughter, at whom Trump's vitriol was aimed. A few hours later Bernie wrote that it was at the dinner that he and Ilhan first heard the news that thousands of people at a Donald Trump rally were chanting "send her back." Thursday, after Trump's advisors warned him that if he keeps up that kind of televised extremism, he would lose in 2020, Trump decided to throw his racist supporters under the bus. He told the White House reporters Thursday morning that the "send her back" chant Wednesday night-- which he could have easily stopped, instead of encouraging-- was not something he agrees with. "I was not happy with it. I disagree with it." What a liar!

Bernie's note continued that to his surprise, "Ilhan was pretty unfazed. Sadly, as she told me, she has been dealing with this kind of hatred and racism for a long time. And she knows, as we do, that Trump is a demagogue doing what he does best: dividing and conquering through hate. No; Trump won't talk about trying to throw 32 million Americans off their health care. He won't talk about his massive tax breaks for billionaires. He won't talk about his budget which called for huge cuts to Medicaid and Medicare. And he certainly won't talk about how climate change is destroying the planet. But he will try to divide the country up based on the color of our skin, our religion, where we were born or our sexual orientation. Brothers and sisters: Now is the time, more than at any other moment in our lifetimes, to say NO to racism, NO to divisiveness, NO to the hatred that Trump is trying to foment. Ilhan Omar is a leader with strength and courage. She won’t back down to Trump’s racism and hate, and neither will we.

Some congressional Republicans are starting to get frightened about Trump's pivot to extremism-- whether to take people's minds off his ties to child rapist Jeffrey Epstein or because he is determined to run on this as an actual platform. The none-too-bright new head of the NRCC, Tom Emmer-- their version of Cheri Bustos-- was mortified that the Trump crowd chants could lose the GOP dozens of seats next year. He told the media that he "didn’t watch the rally last night, but there’s no place for that kind of talk. I don’t agree with it."

Michael Krause, reporting for Politico, noted that hours before Trump arrived, his Greenville crowd "was ready for it and ready to ramp it up. More than three days after President Donald Trump triggered national outrage with tweets telling four Democratic congresswomen of color to 'go back' to the countries 'from which they came,' the feeling among the throng mustering in the sweltering heat at East Carolina University was that the president had ample rope before he even came close to offending them."

The best-selling MAGA merchandise, perfectly parroting and even amplifying his taunts on Twitter, indicated just how much latitude he enjoyed.

“LOVE IT OR LEAVE IT.”

“LET ME HELP YOU PACK!”

“BUILD THE WALL DEPORT THEM ALL.”

...Inside, barely 15 minutes into his hour-and-a-half stemwinder, Trump gave the people what they wanted: “The four congresswomen,” he said. The capacity crowd in the venue of 8,000 seats booed on cue. And then Trump named the women, starting with the only one of them not born in this country. “Representative Ilhan Omar,” he enunciated. He talked about the Minnesota lawmaker originally from Somalia, and only her, for the better part of five minutes, portraying her, a U.S. citizen since she was 17, as an anti-Semitic, America-hating sympathizer of terrorists.

“Traitor!” someone shouted from high up in the crowd.

“Treason!” someone else yelled.

And then the chanting started.

“Send her back! Send her back! Send her back!”

If there had been any doubt about how Trump’s latest political gambit would be received-- had it inspired his supporters as much as it had enraged his opponents?-- it disappeared here. Earlier in the week, when Trump defended himself against charges of racism, insisting “many people agree with me,” it was crowds like these he almost certainly had in mind. But until right then and there, he hadn’t heard directly from them-- a live audience feeding back direct proof that this was something he could keep running on.

This is and always has been the engine of Trump’s political ascent and appeal-- not just perpetual, calculated conflict, but particularly and specifically race-laced foils and feuds. His proto-candidacy was birtherism. The crux of the announcement of his 2016 candidacy: Mexican rapists. The ongoing battle cry: “Build that wall!” And while he filed for reelection the day of his inauguration, and his first official 2020 rally was a month ago in Orlando, Florida, this past half-week capped by Wednesday night felt like the truer, more telling start.

...And he had to hear what I heard, seated in the press pen. Trump stood at the center of the stage, under a giant American flag, and that blunt chant, unscripted and spontaneous, rained down, a newfangled three-syllable shiv. Television clips fail to convey its intensity. It was, by far, the most visceral, guttural sound of the night.

...The longer he talked, the more he told mostly uncheckable tales in which people called him sir. A smattering of policy squeezed between much more rousing personal asides and attacks, the speech was a sine wave of energy peaks and troughs. It was the extemporaneous product of an attention-seeking, room-reading savant, an instinctual gauger and tweaker and torquer of crowds, who understands the ebb and flow of their appetites, always aware of what line will get the biggest reaction.

Oddly for a campaign rally, one of those troughs came when he finally mentioned the Democrats who might be his actual opponent come next November. His invocations were brief, halfhearted, practically parenthetical. He called Joe Biden “Sleepy Joe.” He called Elizabeth Warren “Pocahontas.” He called Bernie Sanders “desperate.” He called Kamala Harris “a new one that knocked the hell out of Biden during the debate.” He called Pete Buttigieg “a beauty” who “runs a failed city” before poking fun at his name (“Boot-edge-edge!”). He called all of them “sad.”

The real takeaway, though, was some 20 minutes in. He spent far, far more time on the quartet of congresswomen he labeled “vicious” “extremists”-- first Omar, and then Rashida Tlaib of Michigan, and then Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, and then Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts, a hard-to-miss chronology that prioritized the two Muslims before shifting to AOC (whom he pointedly called “Cortez”), and finally Pressley. He paused to listen to the chants about Omar and let others in the arena do the same.

Vote for Trump next year, the president suggested, or vote for them.

“The choice for every American,” he said, “has never been more clear.”

I would imagine that Pelosi has requested Secret Service protection for Ilhan by now, perhaps all four of them. Bobby Rush (D-IL): "It’s crystal clear to me that her life is in imminent danger. He has threatened the safety of a member of Congress. That takes this to a whole different level." Rush is a phony. If he gave a damn he would have voted for impeachment. He didn't. Neither did Ben Ray Lujan, a Pelosi lap dog who said blithely, "It’s bad enough that the president didn’t stop the chant last night. But he started it. It’s instilling fear, it’s going to instill violence."

Yesterday the Daily Beast's Lachlan Markay reported that crackpot ant-vaxxer Trumpist Darryl Varnum threatened to kill Frederica Wilson (D-FL), who has been a Trump target for years. Varnum is a Pentagon cybersecurity contractor and has been charged with threatening to kill a member of Congress over the introduction of a bill that would require public schools to vaccinate children. He called her on June 28 and left a voicemail threatening to kill her if she introduced the bill.

“I’m gonna kill your ass if you do that bill. I swear,” Varnum’s voicemail began. “I will fucking come down and kill your fucking ass. And you’re a Congressperson, that’s fine. I hope the fucking FBI, CIA and everybody else hears this shit.”

“This is the United States of America, bitch. Get the fuck out,” the voicemail continued. “I’ll tell you what I’ll come down to Miami bitch. I’ll fuck you up. Like the Cubans don’t even know.” 

...On his Facebook page, Varnum compared The Vaccinate All Children Act to the Holocaust-- a common trope used by vaccine skeptics. “I’m done with this bullshit. Time to step up or ship out,” he wrote. In a comment on that post, Varnum added, “All of our guns are next. Been trying for years!”

According to the complaint, Varnum’s wife previously told police that he owns “numerous guns.” He has registered just one: a .45 caliber Ruger pistol. His wife’s statement came in the course of another law enforcement encounter in 2015. Carroll County sheriff's deputies responded to a call from Varnum’s wife, who reported that her husband was having “behavioral issues.” When police arrived, an intoxicated Varnum had holed up in his garage with a rifle and a bottle of vodka, insisting that Taliban militants were en route to his house.

Police said Varnum was “cooperative and non-violent” during that interaction, and he was transported to a hospital for a mental health evaluation.

But even after that, he was still employed by the Pentagon-- through the Defense Information Systems Agency-- as a "a senior cyber systems engineer." Trump has been a lunatic fringe vocal anti-vaxxer:

Anyone Else Wondering If The Mueller Report Ties The NRA To The Kremlin's Efforts To Put Trump In The White House?

The NRA sent a letter begging its members to send money to rescue the organization's collapsing finances. Wayne LaPierre blames Andrew Cuomo, who is threatening the NRA's tax exempt status and has told New York state regulators to encourage insurance companies, banks and financial services companies to stop doing business with the NRA. This must have sounded sweet to many people when it got out: "Right now we’re facing an attack that’s unprecedented not just in the history of the NRA, but in the entire history of our country. And if this attack succeeds, NRA will be forced to shut down forever." New York's Attorney General, Letitia James, noted in an interview with Ebony that "The NRA holds [itself] out as a charitable organization, but in fact, [it] really [is] a terrorist organization."

The NRA's precipitous decline of income-- a $55 million deficit between 2016 and 2017-- is suspected to be related to a one-time money-laundering operation that saw at least $20 million of Russian money illegally used by the NRA to help the Trump campaign via one anonymous donor. At the same time, many patriotic Americans recognized that being part of the NRA means being part of Russia's attack on the American electoral system and membership income declined from $163 million to $128 million.

A letter to the FEC from 9 senators-- Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), Patty Murray (D-WA), Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), Christopher Murphy (D-CT), Ed Markey (D-MA), Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) and Kamala Harris (D-CA)-- is demanding an investigation of how the NRA uses shell companies together around election laws and flood elections with suspect money-- some of it from foreign sources.

Another reason we need to see the full Mueller Report is to be able to understand the relationship between the NRA and Kremlin operatives Alexander Torshin and Maria Butina, relationships that are also being investigated by the House Judiciary Committee. Butina is due to be sentenced April 26.

The House Judiciary Committee is on the case. The committee is looking to connect the dots between the $50 million the NRA spent helping Trump and his allies in the elections and the sources of that money. According to the L.A. Times, the committee asked the NRA to provide:

• Documents relating to development of the Republican platform for the election, including references to arming the Ukraine government in the wake of the Russian annexation of Crimea.
• Attempts to provide or obtain a range of things tied to the election, including “voter data, polling information, political ad targeting, voter registration rolls, social media data, and campaign or party e-mails.”
• Discussion of U.S. sanctions against Russia between June 16, 2015, and Jan. 20, 2017, involving Trump or 14 other people (at least six of whom have been charged or pleaded guilty to federal charges arising from the Mueller probe-- sorry, “witch hunt”).

Meanwhile though, the NRA is still busy working with its Republican allies to continue enabling gun violence on every front. Last week OpenSecrets disclosed how the NRA is working with the GOP to defeat reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act, which expired in February. The bill would keep guns out of the hands of domestic abusers, a big no-no for the NRA, which is always a champion for domestic abusers. They vehemently oppose any and all regulations that lead to firearm confiscations over misdemeanor domestic violence or stalking convictions. The bill by Karen Bass (D-CA) and Brian Fitzpatrick (R-PA) that the House is due to vote on is now opposed not just by the NRA but by GOP Leader Kevin McCarthy and GOP Whip Steve Scalise. The NRA and other pro-gun groups have shoveled $183,618 into Scalise's coffers-- the second most of any member of Congress (Don Young of Alaska is #1 at $185,672-- and the bribes to McCarthy have totaled $106,150. The only Democrat in that 6-figure bribery area is Collin Peterson (Blue Dog-MN). Most Democrats have stopped selling their asses to the NRA and other gun groups and, aside from Peterson, the only Dems who accepted NRA bribes in the 2018 cycle were Henry Cuellar (Blue Dog-TX), Sanford Bishop (Blue Dog-GA), Ron Kind (New Dem-WI), Kurt Schrader (Blue Dog-OR), and Vicente Gonzalez (Blue Dog-TX).

H.R.1585, Bass and Fitzpatrick’s version of VAWA reauthorization, builds on Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee’s (D-TX) bill introduced last fall, prior to VAWA’s expiration. Her version allowed law enforcement officials to take weapons from domestic abusers who can’t legally own them.

Several organizations lobbied on the bill in 2018, including the NRA and gun control groups such as Giffords and Coalition to Stop Gun Violence.

VAWA expired for two years, from 2011 to 2013, when Republican senators objected to new measures included in a reauthorization bill. The measure was the subject of heavy lobbying, with nearly 60 organizations lobbying on the bill before it passed. The NRA was not one of those groups.

The NRA has upped its lobbying efforts during the Donald Trump era, spending more than $10 million on lobbying between 2017 and 2018. However the “dark money” nonprofit has spent significantly less on independent expenditures to influence federal elections than in previous cycles as its revenue has continually declined.

The pull of the NRA and other gun rights organizations with Republicans will be tested as the Senate Judiciary Committee considers VAWA reauthorization and other gun-related laws. During a Tuesday committee hearing on red flag laws, Chairman Lindsey Graham (R-SC) said a new federal law should create an incentive for states to enact their own extreme risk protection laws that can lead to gun confiscation. His remarks drew harsh criticism from the National Association for Gun Rights.

Republicans Seek To Go Out With A Bang-- Reaffirming Their War Against Women In The Lame Duck Session

The House Republicans have always hated the Violence Against Women Act-- first passed in 1994-- and yesterday Roll Call reported that they plan to use the cover of the lame duck session to let it lapse. "The law was set to expire Sept. 30, but it was extended through Dec. 7 under a stopgap spending bill that expires this week. Text of another short term spending deal was released Monday and does not include a VAWA extension, according to Republican aides in both the House and Senate."

The law authorizes funding for social service agencies that aid victims affected by sexual violence, including rape crisis centers, shelters and legal-assistance programs. Reauthorizations over the years have included expanded provisions focused on reporting mechanisms for sexual violence on college campuses and extending protections for the LGBT community.

Data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shows that one in three women and one in six men encounter sexual violence during their lifetime.

...House Democrats introduced a VAWA reauthorization proposal in July, sponsored by Texas’s Sheila Jackson Lee, that includes updates to the law such as provisions to help victims of domestic violence and stalking stay in stable housing situations and to bar evictions based on the actions of an abuser.

The update, backed by more than 160 Democrats and no Republicans, also includes a gun-related provision that could prove to be a poison pill for any action in the GOP-led House. The Democratic proposal would expand firearms laws to ensure that partners under protective orders or convicted of dating violence or stalking are prohibited from having a gun. Some states already have so-called red flag laws in place, with the aim of preventing escalation of violence.

Several dozen mainstream conservatives say they will vote with the Democrats to reauthorize the bill, but Paul Ryan and Kevin McCarthy are preventing a vote and are tossing some red meat to misogynistic Trumpists and religious fanatics in their conference who feel the GOP war against women works for them politically. Republican Brian Fitzpatrick (PA) is one of the GOP members who want to see VAWA extended: "Congress must continue to aggressively combat domestic violence, sexual assault, and stalking by swiftly reauthorizing the bipartisan Violence Against Women Act.

Ryan, McCarthy and Judiciary Committee chairman Bob Goodlatte have prevented Jackson Lee's bill from getting a committee hearing, let alone a floor vote. Before the pressure on Ryan and McConnell became too much for them to handle-- causing them agree to extend VAWA-- I spoke with Ted Lieu one of the rising stars on the Judiciary Committee. He pointed out that "Women ran away from Republicans in the midterm election. As a result, Republicans lost the popular vote by the largest margin in US history; lost the House by 40 seats; lost six legislative chambers; and lost 7 governorships. And what does the GOP do? Refuse to extend VAWA. Democrats will fix the Republican stupidity next year by passing an extension of VAWA. It will be one of our first priorities." I also reached out to Jamie Raskin, vice ranking member of the committee to ask him if the Democrats will be able to fix the Republican mischief once they formally take over the House in January.

Something tells me Elle Magazine didn't select Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez at random to kick off their insanely powerful new "We the People" ad (which was just debuted on Morning Joe). Meanwhile... if I was a Republican congressional election strategist or operative, I'd be paying attention to the zeitgeist this "free marketplace of ideas" ad is flowing out of. It's more important than a 30 second campaign spot-- much, much more important.



UPDATE: War Against Women

And speaking about the Republican Party's war against women, an Oklahoma state senator, GOP crackpot Joseph Silk of Broken Arrow, introduced a bill that would classify abortion as a felony homicide and sentence women to a mandatory life sentence. He represents the 5th district southeast of Oklahoma City in the remote corner where Oklahoma meets Texas and Arkansas. Silk was reelected in 2016 against Stacey Ebert 14,665 (57.17%) to 10,987 (42.73%). "It’s gonna be classified as a homicide because, essentially, a fertilized egg is a human life just like a 1-year-old baby is a human life,” he said on Friday. "So, an abortion would be considered intentionally taking a human life." He calls for Oklahoma to ignore federal rulings on abortion and dismisses the idea of rape or incest as being relevent.

Midnight Meme Of The Day!

-by Noah

Back in 1994, Congress passed Senator Joe Biden's Violence Against Women Act by a bi-partisan vote (Times were different way back then). The act was signed into law by President Bill Clinton. The new law provided $1.6 Billion to investigate and prosecute those charged with violent crimes against women. It also imposed automatic mandatory penalties for convictions, and also provided for redress via civil cases. The VAWA also created the Office on Violence Against Women as a part of the United States Department of Justice.

Fast forward to 2013 when the law was coming due for its periodic reauthorization. A congressional battle ensued as numerous Republicans sought to deep six the law just as they do with civil rights laws and voting protections. In the end, the law was reauthorized, again by a bi-partisan vote. However, the 22 senators shown in today's meme voted against the reauthorization of the VAWA. Look at those faces. You will see what most Republicans proudly call their leaders, their "best people," if you will. First and foremost, you will see McConnell, Grassley, Cruz, Paul, Rubio, Graham, Hatch, and current Attorney General Sessions.

Context is everything. If you are still astonished that the Republican Party is fighting tooth and nail to get Judge Roy Moore, accused pedophile, into their ranks, even after well-documented evidence presented by his accusers, look no further than their attitudes towards women as expressed in their votes against the Violence Against Women Reauthorization Act of 2013. President Obama signed the reauthorization into law in March of 2013. Would you expect a President Trump or Pence to do the same? That's a rhetorical question. We know the answer.

So what do we think about The Donald's predatory attitude toward women?

DOONESBURY     by G. B. Trudeau

[Click to enlarge.]

by Ken

Not so long ago -- a year, maybe? -- a known history with women like The Donald's would have been, by itself, an absolute disqualifying factor in an American national political campaign. (What about JFK's now-well-known philandering, you say? Of course it was known to insiders at the time, just as The Donald's was. Is there any question, though, that if the country had known then what we later came to know, yes indeed, it would have been an absolute disqualifying factor.) In The Donald's case this is only one of a cluster of what would once have been, each by itself, an absolute disqualifying factor, and while I'm not going to be so foolish as to rank them in order of disqualificatory merit, but I will say on behalf of this one that it tells us something so debased about the mind at work that its disqualificatory power is considerably enhanced.

And yet the Trump voters either didn't care (hey, that's just "guy stuff," right?) or thought that it's not that big a deal. Maybe that it's, you know, overstated -- like, where were all those now-whining babes back when it was happening, huh, huh? The sort of thing as the veil started to lift from the full horror of Roger Ailes's reign of sexual predation at Fox Noise, for which it seems to me he still ought to be on Death Row, with his sizable of hench-enablers facing lifetime-without-possibility-of-parole prison terms.

Which I hope explains why I fixed on today's Doonesbury. For the benefit of non-initiates, here's some Doonesbury-website background on our Boopsie:

BARBARA ANN BOOPSTEIN

During her Hollywood heyday, Barbara Ann Boopstein was called "the drinking man's Meryl Streep." Stardom has thus far eluded the Divine Miss B, but she knows it's only a matter of lifetimes. She speaks with a certain authority: in a previous incarnation she was Lorna Doone. Her theatrical credits thus far include numerous exercise videos and several teensploitation flicks. She was featured in the swimsuit issue of Sports Illustrated, played Barbara Bush in the made-for -TV movie Poppy: The War Years, and was mentioned in Andy Warhol's diary. Activities in service to her country include co-hosting the Times Square victory parade marking the end of the Cold War, posing for a popular pinup poster for the Desert Shield troops, and working with the Malibu Military Family Support Group. She served on the California State Task Force to Promote Self-Esteem, and, on the personal front, was delighted to be Babe of Honor at Hugh and Kimberly Hefner's wedding. Regrettably for her fans, she did not make the cut in "Survivor" tryouts. But her body, bit-mapped and scanned, lives on in a variety of media, generating royalties as the template for Lara Croft in "Tomb Raider" and Julia Roberts' breasts in "Erin Brockovich". Having concluded a longtime association, Boopsie no longer shares her body with the channeled 25,000-year-old warrior Hunk-Ra. Along with college sweetheart and Fighting Swooshes football coach B.D., daughter Sam and nanny Zonker Harris, she once again calls Walden home.

And while we're at it, since today's strip focuses on B.D. as well:

B.D.

College football star, Vietnam Vet, third-string quarterback for the Rams, Gulf War reservist, California Highway Patrol officer -- B.D. has worn many helmets o ver the years. He and his wife, starlet Barbara Ann Boopstein, share many memories of the 70s and their years at Walden Commune -- she posing for Playboy , he volunteering for Vietnam to get out of writing a term paper. Though captured by a Vietcong terrorist named Phred and wounded by a beer can, B.D. left the Nam relatively unscathed.

In his subsequent role as Boopsie's hardheaded Hollywood manager, B.D. exhibited minor skills and major attitude, a combination that did not help extend her list of credits. Their main production was Samantha, born in 1992. Better suited to life in uniform, B.D. was called to serve in Desert Storm, and later as a CHIP officer, but a diagnosis of Gulf War Syndrome left him sidelined and bitter.

A return to Vietnam helped him bury old demons and dig up several old war buddies - including Phred, now a mover and shaker in the new Vietnam. Hired by his alma mater to coach the football team he once quarterbacked, B.D. has come full circle, he and Boopsie once again living in the house at Walden where they first met.

Reactivated for a second Gulf War, B.D. was shipped out to Kuwait, leaving the Fighting Swooshes in Acting-Coach Boopsie's care. He serves as a public affairs officer at Camp Blowback, embedding journalists in frontline army combat units.

#

Republicans Who Voted Against The Violence Against Women Act, Still Clinging To Trump

Lamar Smith opposed the Violence Against Women Act and strongly backs Trump

Headed into last night's debate, the overwhelming majority of Republicans in Congress were still backing Trump, despite the release of the "grab 'em by the pussy" tape and the promise of more-- and even worse--revelations of that nature to come in the next few weeks. Last night he aimed right to his Hate Talk Radio base... probably didn't win over a single new person. PolitiFact will be very busy for the next few days since Trump lied his way through the entire debate. We'll see later today and tomorrow if he was able to staunch the flow of Republican elected officials from his banner yesterday.

Many of the most fervent Trump supporters were opponents of the reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act. It passed in the House 286-138 and that entire 138 was made up of Republicans. (87 Republicans teamed up with all 199 Democrats to pass it.) Among the anti-women Republicans who voted NO on the Violence Against Women Act and who still back Trump, are fringe extremists Lamar Smith (TX), Steve King (IA), Mo Brooks (AL), Paul Gosar (AZ), Bill Posey (FL), Arkansas closet case Tom Cotton (now in the Senate and already running for the 2020 GOP presidential nomination), Tennessee's rapist doctor Scott DesJarlais, Hillary-hunter Trey Gowdy (SC), John Mica (FL), black-hating Robert Pittenger, ambitious would-be Ted Cruz replacement Mike McCaul (TX) and GOP whip (and KKK supporter) Steve Scalise (LA).

The Associated Press analysis of why some congressional Republicans had finally started distancing themselves from Trump and announcing they would not vote for him, noted that "during the Republican primary, GOP officials worried that disavowing Trump would alienate his supporters and hurt the party in congressional races. In the general election, Trump’s crass behavior also seemed easier for Republicans to tolerate when stacked up against Democrat Hillary Clinton, a candidate so reviled by many in the GOP that virtually nothing Trump did seemed worse than the prospect of her becoming president. But these new revelations come at a time when the White House race seems to be slipping away from Trump. He’s been unable to attract support beyond that offered by his core backers."

“There were people who were just starting to feel like this ship was going down and now this gives people a good excuse to jump off,” said Katie Packer, a Republican strategist who advised Mitt Romney’s 2012 campaign and led an unsuccessful effort to prevent Trump from becoming the GOP nominee.

While some Republicans expressed astonishment and dismay over Trump’s 2005 comments, those who steadfastly refused to endorse him throughout the campaign suggested their party knew full well what they were getting with the brash real estate mogul and reality TV star.

“Nothing that has happened in the last 48 hours is surprising to me or many others,” said Ohio Gov. John Kasich, who was critical of Trump when he ran against him in the primary and has remained so for months.

Privately, even Republicans who didn’t formally revoke their support for Trump conceded there was little he could do to right his campaign at this point. Early voting is already underway in some key states and the comments aired in the video will likely be unforgivable with independent women-- a constituency Trump desperately needs to win if he has any hope of defeating Clinton.

The last hope now for many Republicans is that an unimaginable election year will still end with the GOP in control of the Senate. New Hampshire Sen. Kelly Ayotte and Nevada Rep. Joe Heck, both locked in tight races, joined the parade of officials Saturday who said they simply couldn’t stand by Trump anymore.

For Ayotte, the move earned her no quarter from her Democratic opponent, New Hampshire Gov. Maggie Hassan.

“She has had one example after the next of Donald Trump’s despicable words and his despicable behavior as reasons that she should have disavowed him,” Hassan said. “It took her until now when the revelation of his comments from a decade ago were made to decide that politically she couldn’t stand with him anymore.”

Look for more of the same in races nationwide. Democrats made clear Saturday they would spend the next month trying to ensure they and other Republicans get no credit for walking away now.

And the polling that came out from both CBS and NBC just before the debate was brutal for Trump-- though neither reflected his pussy grabbing problems. Taken together, the polls of likely voters in battleground states Ohio, Florida, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin block any glimmer of hope for a Trump victory. Even before the barrage of news about his pussy comments, she led him 45-42% in Florida, 49-37% in Pennsylvania, 46-42% in Ohio, and 43-39% in Wisconsin.

In 1916, President Woodrow Wilson carried 30 states to Republican Charles Hughes' 18 but the raw vote was close-- 9,126,868 (49.2%) to 8,548,728 (46.1%) and the electoral vote was as well-- 277 for Wilson and 254 for Hughes. Ohio's 24 electoral votes were absolutely crucial. Had Wilson lost Ohio Hughes would have been president. But Wilson did win Ohio, 604,161 (51.86%) to 514,753 (44.18%). Part of that victory can be attributed to Wilson's endorsement by the Columbus Dispatch. It was the last time that paper endorsed a Democrat-- until yesterday. "For us," they wrote, "the choice between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump is not pleasant, but it isn’t difficult. Republican candidate Donald Trump is unfit to be president of the United States. Democrat Hillary Clinton, despite her flaws, is well-equipped for the job... We are disappointed that so many Republican leaders have accommodated a narcissistic, morally bankrupt candidate who is so clearly out of step with those values."

[Trump] has proved himself a liar of epic proportion. He is a bigot, a braggart and an admirer of foreign thugs such as Russia’s Vladimir Putin. He is reckless and thin-skinned. He has demeaned Mexicans, demonized Muslims, insulted women and mocked the disabled.

His economic policies, to the extent that they can be analyzed, would at least double the national debt. His call for punishing tariffs on foreign goods would trigger retaliation and ignite a trade war with disastrous results for employment and the standard of living in the United States. The stakes are too high to sit out this election and risk letting Trump misuse the awesome power of the presidency. The Dispatch urges voters to elect Hillary Clinton.

They didn't wait to watch last night's debate-- and they didn't decide to wait for the next one... if there is a next one.

UPDATE: SO Who Won Last Night?

The first post-debate scientific polls were done by YouGov and CNN. YouGov:

• Clinton- 47%
• Trump- 42%

And CNN:

• Clinton- 57%
• Trump- 34%

"We wanted people to learn that [domestic violence] is not just a woman's issue" (Ali Torre)

Last Thursday and Friday on MetroFocus (the nightly news-features show produced by the three Metro New York public TV entities, NYC's WNET13, Long Ialand's WLIW21, and NJN, the New Jersey Network), Billy Crystal talked to Joe and Ali Torre about the Torres' Safe At Home Foundation. Watch Part 1 of the interview here, and Part 2 here.

"What we wanted people to learn about the issue [domestic violence] is that it's not just a woman's issue, that for every woman that goes into a shelter there are two to three children that go with her."

-- Ali Torre, in the interview with Billy Crystal

"When I was growing up, I never shared this with anybody. When I used to go to my friend's house, waiting for my dad to go to work, I just went there. I didn't say I didn't want to go home 'cause my dad was there. So when we started our Safe At Home Foundation, friends who were very close to me had no clue, because I just was embarrassed, what was going on in my home, and I felt like I was the only one in the neighborhood that had this going on."

-- Joe Torre, in the interview

by Ken

I've told this story before, but I'm going to tell it again. One day during my time at Howie's and my alma mater, James Madison High School in Brooklyn, a portion of the student body found ourselves in the auditorium where two guests came onstage. The younger guy was readily recognizable to most Brooklynites, because Joe Torre, a Brooklyn boy, had in just a few years with the Milwaukee Braves established himself as a baseball star.

I wasn't a Brooklyn kid, though. I was a transplant (most recently) from Milwaukee, so I recognized the older guy as Joe's brother Frank, whom I'd seen play a major role in the Braves' winning two NL pennants and a World Series. In fact, I remembered the spring when Frank showed up at camp with his chubby little brother, a catcher, in tow. It may have been mostly as a favor to Frank, but the Braves wound up signing Joe to a contract, which turned out to be one heckuva smart move. Because he turned out to be a great player (and later a great manager).

In fact, that day at the James Madison HS assembly, Joe was a ringer. Frank Torre was indeed a Madison alum, but Joe as the coddled baby among five siblings (in the interview, he reminds us that he's eight and a half years younger than his next-youngest sibling), went to private school -- Catholic high school, of course.

Maybe you had to be there at the time to appreciate how good a player Joe Torre was, playing with a quiet competence and day-in, day-out consistency that fit perfectly with the "image" of unflappable self-confidence -- as Billy Crystal notes in the MetroFocus interview with Joe and his wife, Ali -- that Joe seemed to exude throughout his baseball career. But as Joe reveals in the interview, most of his life he was anything but confident. He reminds us that his freshman year in high school he didn't even go out for the baseball team, feeling he wasn't good enough. He was almost pathologically shy, always reluctant to speak, often feeling ashamed.

One thing he was most unlikely to do was speak in front of a group. Which makes what happened one day in November or December of 1995 (when he was 55), at a four-day seminar in Cincinnati, Ali's hometown, where she and Joe had moved after he was fired as manager of the Saint Louis Cardinals. (Interestingly, he doesn't mention until later that he had in fact just been named manager of the New York Yankees.) Ali had persuaded him to attend this Life Success seminar, where they were assigned to separate groups.

About day two or three, after this one speaker, saying a lot of things that hit home with me, I wind up standing up, in front of the whole group, and I was crying, because I realized, instead of being born with the low self-esteem, instead of being born with the nervousness that I thought . . . I was sort of embarrassed about it. I didn't want to share with anybody that I had these insecurities. I realized that what was going on in my home, where my dad was abusing my mom -- physically abusing her, and of course emotionally abusing her -- that that was what caused it.

Joe doesn't remember what exactly he said, and in the interview he forgets that Ali can't tell us because she wasn't there. But she remembers the effect it had on him, and remembers in particular that that night when they got home, he called one of his sisters and asked, "Did Dad hit Mom?"

-- from the Safe At Home Foundation website

Since that day obviously Joe has talked about his family history a lot, and now everybody knows the story: how as the baby among the five Torre children (including brothers Frank and Rocco and sisters Rae and Marguerite), he was protected by his older siblings, and especially by his sisters, from the violence of their home, and how eventually it was Frank and Rocco who confronted their father, a police detective well known and admired in their Marine Park neighborhood, and forced him to move out of the house.

But I had no idea until now that Joe, traumatized though he was by the atmosphere created in his house by his father's raging temper (if Joe Sr. didn't like what his wife served him for lunch, young Joe could hear the plate crashing against the wall), never knew his father was physically abusing his mother. (He does tell a fairly hair-raising story, though, about an incident he did witness, when Rae took knife in hand to protect their mother, Margaret, from their father on one of his rampages. Dad proceeded to fetch his detective's revolver, whereupon the youngest Torre walked over and took the knife out of his sister's hand.) In good part Joe's obliviousness resulted from his brothers' and sisters' efforts to protect him, which had its ironic side. With all the whispering young Joe witnessed going on among all the rest of his family, he assumed that what was going on must be his fault.

And he kept it all to himself. Until that fateful day in Cincinnati, he didn't even talk about what went on in his home to Ali, who knew only that the home environment was seriously troubled and his parents divorced when Joe was 11 or 12.

When I was growing up, I never shared this with anybody. When I used to go to my friend's house, waiting for my dad to go to work, I just went there. I didn't say I didn't want to go home 'cause my dad was there. So when we started our Safe At Home Foundation, friends who were very close to me had no clue, because i just was embarrassed, what was going on in my home, and I felt like I was the only one in the neighborhood that had this going on.

Which is why a crucial part of the work of Joe and Ali's Safe At Home Foundation is concerned with education, including programs in schools where, as Joe says, they try to communicate two messages: "You're not the only one," and "It's not your fault." Billly Crystal, who has attended a lot of those sessions, reports that he has often heard kids who've gotten the messages say they're not afraid to go home anymore.

After watching the first part of Joe and Ali's interview with Billy Crystal, I knew I wanted to get something about it on the record. My original idea was to do a post combining that and the latest developments in the scandal of the hellishly abusive environment created by Roger Ailes at Fox Noise, since that too was widely thought of as a "woman's issue" when it was just Gretchen Carlson filing suit against the giant rat bastard, at least until other women at the network, past and present, began telling their stories. Even now, the fall of Roger Ailes is surely regarded as a lesser side story to the story of what he built at Fox Noise -- an engine for turning the country into the hell of his diseased mind.

Eventually the scope of the Fox Noise horror crowded the other story out, and took precedence news-wise. But still in my mind the two stories, of sexual harassment at Fox Noise and of epidemic domestic violence, are still related. The crowning irony is that they take place in a society that pretends to be built on "family values." The eerie reality is that quite possibly our society truly is built on the "family values" we actually practice. Can this possibly not have a major role in defining who and what we are?



By all accounts Joe's doting sisters Rae and Marguerite played a major role in the upbringing of their baby brother. As seen above, they became household figures to Yankee fans during his time as manager, and both were in Cooperstown when he was finally inducted into the Hall of Fame as a manager in 2014; Rae died the following February, at 89.

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You're probably dying for some inside dope on Dartmouth's new no-hard-liquor policy, right?

I know you can't actually read this timeline of "The Process" involved in President Hanlon's historic reform plan, but if you really care, you can click on it to enlarge. Actually, I was thinking more that it might make a lovely wallpaper; just print out this PDF on any suitable-for-wallpapering material.

by Ken

I expect you've heard something about the new plan announced by the president of Dartmouth College to make the campus a better, safer healthier place for everyone to live and learn -- you know, the plan that includes banning hard liquor from the campus. (Ah, now it rings a bell?) And you're thinking, gee, I'd like to know more about that, like can you really keep hard liquor off a whole college campus?

It's just your luck that you happen to have an inside connection. In exchange for putting in four years on that campus in its much-reduced form back around the Civil War, I get a lifetime of timely information about Alma Mater deposited in my e-mailbox. And for a price, I'm prepared to share that information.

Okay, I'm just kidding about the price. It's all included in the standard DWT package. (Tipping optional, though nobody's done so yet.)

The plan is actually called "Moving Dartmouth Forward," and its genesis, as you can see from the timeline above, goes back to April 16 of last year, when College President Phil Hanlon "call[ed] for an end to extreme behavior at Dartmouth." I guess you had to be there, or be watching the news, to know what kinds of "extreme behavior" he had in mind. Like, he wasn't thinking of the American Family Association's former loudmouth-in-chief sounding off about Jews and Muslims and other non-Christian scum.


ACTUALLY, THOUGH, THIS IS SERIOUS BUSINESS



Okay, this is not riveting video. It looks as if President Phil was strapped to powerful electrodes that would administer giant juice jolts anytime he moved any part of his body more than half an inch.

But this is actually serious business. And it's actually an enormously wide-ranging, deeply detailed plan, meant to address serious, deep issues of community respect and safety. I don't claim to have digested even the materials I have access to, and I certainly don't claim to know how workable the system of proposals is (and the proposals are clearly meant to function as a system). But I can tell you that the problems President Phil is attempting to address here are big-time ones, and with the process he set in motion last April, he seems to be really trying to find ways to grapple with them.

You'll find the complete text of President Phil's speech, as prepared, here. (And also an FAQ here.) But I want to share a chunk from the beginning of the speech, because President Phil evokes one of my heroes, in exactly the right way. (I've added the picture.)

I want to begin the conversation by reaching back into our past.

I begin with a story of a young professor of philosophy at Princeton University in the wake of World War II. The professor, at the behest of Dartmouth’s then dean of the faculty, was convinced to pick up from Princeton and move to Hanover to become the chairman of the mathematics department at Dartmouth. His task was to revitalize the department, filling it with faculty of the first rank, capable of attracting the brightest students in the nation.

It was a risky proposition made riskier by the fact that this professor would be a non-tenured chairman. And yet the philosopher turned mathematician -- who studied under Einstein -- took the leap. He came to Dartmouth. He recruited tenaciously and built a stellar department from the ground up. As a Dartmouth undergraduate, I had the good fortune to be a beneficiary of his efforts.

But he did not stop there. A computer genius—he foresaw that while the invention of the computer was an incredible breakthrough … the real revolution would be putting the computer into homes and classrooms across the country. So he helped to invent the language that would make computers accessible. Which we know as BASIC.

But he did not stop there. He became president of the College, and he presided with calm during a time of tremendous social unrest in our country. He inspired and managed the transition of Dartmouth to a coeducational college, without doubt the most significant change in our College’s history.

I share the story of John Kemeny -- a story of risk, a story of best-in-class teaching, a story of leadership, a story of visionary problem-solving, a story of the courage to CHANGE -- because it encapsulates perfectly the incredible promise that is Dartmouth.

John G. Kemeny (1926-1992)

Like President Phil, as a Dartmouth undergraduate I had the good fortune to be a beneficiary of John Kemeny's efforts. In my time, as I recall, which actually predates President Phil's, he was still, as memory serves (sometimes better than others), co-chair of the Math Department, and was still teaching actively. I don't think I ever took a class with him, but I'm sure I must have had lectures with him. And though I am by no means a mathematician of any sort, I took classes with a number of professors from that "stellar department" he "built from the ground up," including two terms with Tom Kurtz, co-inventor with Kemeny of the BASIC programming language (I understood scarcely a word Professor Kurtz said during those two terms in an honors math course, real college-type math turning out to be very different from the kiddie-style high-school version I'd sailed through, but then, I with my basic ignorance of mathematics was apparently every bit as mystifying to him), and spent some time with a number of the others. They were an amazing bunch -- not just incredibly smart, but creative, wise, and humane, some of the best people I've known.

As President Phil mentions, at a time when computers still existed only as giant mainframes, Kemeny and his team were committed to maximizing hands-on contact -- they wanted every student in the college to have the opportunity to sit at a keyboard and do at least some simple programming, using the pioneering Dartmouth Time-Sharing System and of course BASIC. That's what they'd been created for.

The first, and maybe only, alumni function I attended was a dinner presenting Kemeny to NYC alums when, a year or two after I graduated, he was selected as the new president of the college. I was just looking at his Wikipedia bio, and see that as a Hungarian refugee settled in NYC, he attended George Washington High School, a legendary public school not far from where I live now in Washington Heights, which graduated countless students en route to great public careers. He graduated in three years and then, during his undergraduate years at Princeton, "took a year off" -- to work on the Manhattan Project at Los Alamos! ("His boss there was Richard Feynman. He also worked there with John von Neumann." Yikes!) Amazingly, the Wikipedia bio makes no mention of the fact that in 1979, while still president of Dartmouth, he chaired what became known as the Kemeny Commission, overseeing the Report of the President's Commission on the Accident at Three-Mile Island ("The Need for Change: The Legacy of TMI").

But I digress. If you're in need of inspiration for vision, it would be hard to think of a better model to turn to than John Kemeny.


FOR A SURVEY OF THE CONTENTS OF THE PLAN --

I'm going to turn the floor over to the Dartmouth Office of Public Affairs, which posted this release, "President Hanlon Presents His Moving Dartmouth Forward Plan," with associated materials. I'm guessing they won't mind my sharing the release with you.

Dartmouth President Phil Hanlon ’77 today introduced his Moving Dartmouth Forward Plan to address high-risk behavior on campus and create a safe and inclusive environment in which students can live and learn.

The plan has at its core a new housing model that will fundamentally transform the residential and social experience at the College.

President Hanlon presented the reforms as the capstone of work that began last spring when he called on the Dartmouth community “to create fundamental change in every place on campus where the social scene is carried out.”

In his April 16 address, Hanlon announced the formation of the Presidential Steering Committee of students, faculty, staff, and alumni. The committee’s work included crowdsourcing solutions from the Dartmouth community, investigating best practices, and visiting peer institutions. Committee members were also charged with consulting external experts in the fields of student life, student health and wellness, sexual assault, alcohol abuse, diversity and inclusivity, and campus safety. Committee members heard from more than 40 student groups and 50 alumni groups and reviewed more than 2,000 email suggestions before submitting their final report to Hanlon this month.

From this report, Hanlon identified the set of reforms announced today, which Dartmouth has begun to implement and will continue putting in place in the coming months and years.

“To be clear, no single action contains the consummate solution. If it did, these problems would have vanished from our campus and society years and years ago,” Hanlon said.

Hanlon outlined steps to ensure a safer and healthier campus environment for students, raise expectations for individuals and student organizations, create a more diverse set of social opportunities for students, foster a more inclusive campus environment, strengthen academic rigor, and increase opportunities for learning outside the classroom.

“Dartmouth has a long tradition of academic excellence,” said Hanlon. “This is our legacy. And as we move to the future, we will become ever more defined by this ideal. But this will happen only if we remove the barriers that keep us from fulfilling our potential.”

Among the most notable reforms, Dartmouth will aim to lead nationally by eliminating hard alcohol from campus. Under Hanlon’s plan, hard alcohol will no longer be served at events open to the public, and penalties for underage students found in possession of hard alcohol will increase in severity.

Other initiatives include a four-year mandatory sexual violence prevention and education program for students; comprehensive sexual assault training for faculty and staff; an increased presence of faculty and other mature influences in the lives of students; a comprehensive code of conduct for all students; and the new housing model.

As part of the effort to increase accountability, the College will reinforce the rules for student groups—including Greek organizations—and hold all groups to higher standards than ever before. Organizations that choose not to live up to these higher standards will not be part of the Dartmouth community.

These steps are being taken to raise expectations for all students on campus, Hanlon said, and he warned that if substantive Greek reforms are not enacted within several years, the College will reevaluate the continuance of Greek life on campus.

To ensure accountability and adherence to the new plan, Hanlon also announced the formation of an external review panel chaired by Tufts President Emeritus Larry Bacow. Dartmouth will regularly reevaluate and retool the Moving Dartmouth Forward Plan, ensuring transparency and substantive reform throughout the process.

OKAY, OKAY, HERE'S THE NO-HARD-LIQUOR PART OF THE PLAN

To truly create a safe environment—and one that is advantageous to learning—we will also have to tackle the challenge of excessive drinking. Dartmouth will take the lead among colleges and universities in eliminating hard alcohol on campus. Dartmouth’s new alcohol policy for students will prohibit the possession or consumption of “hard alcohol” (i.e., alcohol that is 30 proof or higher) on campus by individuals, including those over the legal drinking age, and by Dartmouth College-recognized organizations. In addition, we will ask that the entire campus community follow suit and not serve hard alcohol at college-sponsored events and be role models for the healthy consumption of alcohol.

The key to the successful implementation of any policy change is a clear path for enforcement. To this end, we will require third-party security and bartenders for social events. We will also increase penalties for students found in possession of hard alcohol, especially for those students who purchase and provide alcohol to minors.

Now, aren't you glad you asked? Okay, you didn't ask, actually.

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Crackpot Utopia: The Year in Republican Crazy, Part 9

• Pompous Blowhard of the Year Award: Bill O'Reilly
• FOX "News" announces new spinoff: The FOX Benghazi™ Shopping Channel!
• Crazyspeak of the Year nominee No. 11: DiGiorno Pizza


In Crackpot Utopia it was still the Year of Benghazi -- see No. 2.

Crackpot Utopia: A dream world as envisioned by republicans; a manifestation or expression of the deranged, warped alternate universe inhabited by republicans, at least in their minds. See also: Bachmannism, Boehneresque.

by Noah

1. Pompous Blowhard of the Year Award: Bill O'Reilly

When I thought about who deserved this award, there were more than a few candidates screaming out the windows of the Crackpot Asylum. But one truly bizarre person has built a reputation that is so synonymous with the words "pompous" and "blowhard" that there can really be only one true champeen!



The following pearls from the worm-eaten mind of Bill-O are not just breathtaking in their Outer Limits trans-dimensional scope of irony; they are as breathtaking as what would happen if you were sitting in a spaceship orbiting Pluto and suddenly all the windows blew open and in an instant all the air, the contents of the ship, and you were sucked out into the vast vacuum of ice-cold space.

Heeeerre's Bill-O!

"When you hear something on a partisan-driven program, do not believe it!"

And, mere seconds later:

"Distortions are how some people make a living."

Hmmm, good to know, Bill-O! Good to know!

It's worth noting that O'Reilly actually, really cut short his August vacation to bless us with these pearls of his unique genius. It seems he got paranoid and felt the need to rush back and defend himself against people he calls "race hustlers" (no, he wasn't looking in the mirror, although it's reasonable of you to assume that he was), by issuing a diatribe about people who dare to criticize republican icon Darren Wilson, the police officer who shot an unarmed suspect Michael Brown in Ferguson, MO.

Bill-O seems to think that having bravely acknowledged that Michael Brown shouldn't be dead offsets the rest of the nonsense he's spewed about Ferguson. But then, he doesn't have to listen to himself.


"My pal Jon Stewart, basically a comedian, but he's taken seriously by some of his fanatical followers. . . . Stewart mocked me for coming back from vacation. . . . Stewart distorts the [Ferguson] issue, and he has been known to do that. [Plays clips including one showing him saying, "What happened to Michael Brown should never happent to any American," and another saying, "If Michael Brown did something wrong, it doesn't mean that you wind up dead in the street."] So here is the Factor Tip of the Day: When you hear something on a partisan-driven program, do not believe it. And that includes the Net! Don't believe this stuff! Distortions are how some people make a living. Stewart is going for the laugh. He doesn't reallycare if it's true or not. And his audience, watching me, they don't know. Yuk-yuk-yuk. Come on!" (Watch the clip here.)


2. FOX "News" announces new spinoff: the "FOX Benghazi™" Shopping Channel!



Watching FOX "News" during the last year -- in fact, over the last two years, has been like watching a blinding bright yellow flashing road sign, a sign that screams "Benghazi!," flashing it over and over again. Don't worry, when you pass the first one, there'll be another, even bigger flashing Benghazi! sign every 50 yards. Benghazi. Benghazi. Benghazi! Benghazi! After all, the old sign that said "Birth Certificate!" burned out.

It got so bad that in just a two-week period in June, FOX devoted an insane 225 segments to what will go down in history as "The Great Republican Benghazi Hoax." For the FOX asylum, Benghazi is some sort of manifestation of Tourette's syndrome.

Then, a few weeks ago, the report from the republican-led congressional investigation of the Benghazi tragedy came out. After spending millions and millions of our precious taxpayer dollars that Congress could have been put to so much better use, it turned out that, as all non-crackpots knew, there was no scandal. There was no conspiracy. There was no cover-up.



The reaction from Fox? Silence. It was almost like FOX simply went off the air.

Alas, it was not to be. It took all of about three days, but they got their wind back. The republican committee that issued the report had dumped it out after 5:00 on a Friday afternoon in a classic news dump at the time of week when they thought no one would notice, and much of the media, including the so-called liberal media, only lightly mentioned the findings. But on FOX, nothing at all, not even on their Sunday "news" shows.

Not to worry, FOX has regrouped, and they have hopes for a brand-new republican-crackpot committee that will also spend more of our hard-earned money investigating Benghazi. What's that about the definition of insanity? You know, the one about doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results?

FOX is all in. They already pushed all of their chips on Benghazi to the middle of the table a year ago. Now they've taken off all their clothing and added it to the pile. Damn, the idea of seeing a nude Sean Hannity or Neil Cavuto sitting at the poker table is not a pretty sight. ‘Scuse me a minute, I have to go barf.

OK, I'm back. What is it with Benghazi for Republicans? Benghazi might as well be Walter White's blue crystal meth to these wackos. They just can't get enough of it. They constantly need more, more, more! They look under every pillow and rock for what has become the Loch Ness Monster of scandals. Benghazi has become a myth that has fervent bug-eyed believers. The more they chant the word, the more they believe. You could tell these people that the sky is blue and they will scream that it is green.

Recently FOX "News," in their desperation to put literally anybody in front of the camera who will back their nihilistic insanity, called upon Duck Dynasty crackpot Phil Robertson as an expert on foreign policy for their Sean Hannity program. His mission was apparently to convince viewers that "Benghazi is real, my friends." Well, if the Duck Commander says it, it must be so. Hey, that's even better than Krauthammer.

Then there was Hercules, aka Kevin Sorbo, as an expert on Benghazi for FOX's Outnumbered show. (Even the show name reflects the paranoia that is integral to the republican mindset.) In discussing the NFL's very real domestic abuse horrors, Sorbo managed to draw a direct line from Benghazi to the NFL.

And he wasn't the first loon on FOX to do so! Lizzie Hasselbeck had beaten him to it on her miserable little slice of village-idiot theater called FOX and Friends, managing to draw some sort of line between Benghazi and the NFL's domestic-abuse scandal -- as, er, expressed in her Tweet:



It just goes to show that not everyone in Hollywood is a liberal commie pinko. Give it time and crazies like Sorbo will be on FOX connecting Pearl Harbor to Benghazi, complete with tales about Obama using a time machine to lead the Japanese attack. There will be claims of covered-up old black-and-white photos of him shaking hands with Admiral Yamamoto (who also went to Harvard, by the way -- say no more!) and bowing to the emperor.

If FOX keeps going in the direction they've been going, we will see, in time for the 2016 election, a completely made-up scandal based on people and places that don't even exist. Some building that has never been built, in a town that has only existed in republicanland, will be blown up and people that never existed will disappear. Maybe they can call it Roswell, but I think that's already been done. Submit your names for the town of republican myth-mongering now! You might want to get the Web domain name registered. Reaganville, anyone? That's the next step in republican lunacy. Rest assured, though, that it will all be some Democratic front-runner's fault.

The republican masterminds of the crypto-scandal of Benghazi have succeeded beyond their wildest dreams in getting the gullible and the haters to believe. Why did they perpetrate this hoax? My guess is that the real Benghazi cover-up is that the Republicans don't just want to exploit the tragedy in order to politically damage President Obama and Hillary Clinton. They also want to divert attention from the fact that it was they who cut the dollars for the security of our embassies in the first place, and they certainly wouldn't want the media pointing that one out, now would they? If you take away embassy protection, bad things happen.

The way I see it, it's inevitable. FOX already has FOX Business, FOX Sports, and who-knows-what-else, all designed to fatten Rupert Murdoch's wallet so he can invest more money in backing China. So it's only natural that FOX "News" would spin off a FOX "All Benghazi, All The Time" channel: FOX Benghazi™! Your Benghazi Channel! They'll have Lizzie Hasselbeck and Megyn Kelly offering a full line of FOX Benghazi™ merchandise. I can see it now: T-shirts, handbags, socks, AR-15s, all emblazoned with some sort of FOX Benghazi™ logo, even sick little flag-draped FOX Benghazi™ coffins.


3. Crazyspeak of the Year nominee No. 11: DiGiorno Pizza



It's bad enough that DiGiorno makes a virtually inedible product, which even New York City rats ignore when it's tossed out the window and into back alleys, half-finished, by slob citizens. And it's bad enough that said product contributes to the growing obesity problems of those who actually eat it.

Now, in the wake of the sad tale of footballer Ray Rice cold-cocking his then-fiancée-now-wife in an elevator, DiGiorno goes and comments on a twitter account, #WhyIStayed, which someone set up so battered women could explain why they stay with their abusers. Many of the reasons are poignant, even if they aren't quite enough for many of us to fully understand. Reasons offered often deal with things like staying so my unborn child will have a dad or because they believed that every time would be the last time, etc.

In a fine example of typical corporate arrogance, stupidity, and insensitivity, some genius at DiGiorno added what he or she saw as a perfectly reasonable reason to stay with the man who may, some day, kill you:



Is there no depth to which corporate a-holes will not sink in an attempt to separate us from our money and give us diabetes or colon cancer in return? DiGiorno later claimed they didn't know what the Twitter account was about, or even what the phrase "Why I Stayed" means.



I suppose if you live under a rock, it's possible.

DiGiorno's marketing goons may be the Mariana Trench of marketeers, but what should we expect in a world where the likes of Jamie Dimon and Mitt Romney roam free and a whole political party can make light of rape? It seems that it's only a matter of time before some fast food chain uses pictures of the starved prisoners of Auschwitz, saying if only they had our tacos, or pizza, or whatever.


TOMORROW IN PART 10: Beyond Drudgery; and Crazyspeak of the Year nominees Nos. 12 and 13: Michele Bachmann and Kimberly Guilfoyle

NOAH'S 2014 IN REVIEW --
Crackpot Utopia: The Year in Republican Crazy

Part 1: Princess Liz Cheney tries for the Smoothie of the Year Award; "Miss Beck regrets" -- Crazyspeak of the Year nominee No. 1: Glenn Beck; and the Crackpot Party reacts to President Obama’s State of the Union speech [12/19/2014]
Part 2: Republicans wonder why normal people call them racists; Sean Hannity wants to self-deport; and the First Annual Mr. Burns Award, to ABC "shark" Kevin O'Leary [12/20/2014]
Part 3: Using fear, loathing, and paranoia to sell stuff; Arizona legalizes crack!; and Crazyspeak of the Year nominee No. 3: Bill O’Reilly [12/21/2014]
Part 4: A celebration of Michele Bachmann: Pray away the crazy?; What "War on Women"?; and the "Obama angle" on Malaysian Flight 370 [12/22/2014]
Part 5: The GOP and the kiss heard 'round the world; Crazyspeak of the Year nominee No. 5: Joe the Plumber [12/23/2014]
Part 6: A word about South Carolina; Pat Robertson and his magic asteroid; and I'll have a pack of Twizzlers and an IUD to go, please [12/24/2014]
Part 7: And so it begins: The running of the buffoons; Crazyspeak of the Year nominee No. 7, George Will has no idea what rape is; and Crazyspeak of the Year nominee No. 8, Rick Wiles calls for a coup [12/29/2014]
Part 8: Things to come: Forward into the past! (11 Presidential Dream Tickets); Crazyspeak of the Year nominee No. 9: Former republican VP nominee Paul "Crazy Eyes" Ryan; Crazyspeak of the Year nominee No. 10: Bryan Fischer of the American Family Association [12/30/2014]
Part 9: Pompous Blowhard of the Year Award: Bill O’Reilly; FOX "News" announces new spinoff: the "FOX Benghazi™" Shopping Channel!; Crazyspeak of the Year nominee No. 11: DiGiorno Pizza [12/31/2014]
Part 10: Newsmax -- Beyond Drudgery; and Crazyspeak of the Year nominees Nos. 12 and 13: Michele Bachmann, Kimberly Guilfoyle [1/1/2015]
Part 11: GOP and FOX whip up the hate over a POW exchange; and Crazyspeak of the Year nominee No. 14: Iowa asylum escapee Rep. Steve King [1/3/2015]
Part 12: Arizona Republican protests busload of YMCA campers; Crazyspeak of the Year nominee(s) No. 15: the Impeachment Variations (group nomination); Crazyspeak of the Year nominee No. 16: NM Rep. Steve Pearce [1/4/2015]
Part 13 (and last): TV for Dummies: Sarah Palin launches her own channel; Crazyspeak of the Year nominee No. 17: Arizona schools superintendent John Huppenthal (rhymes with Neanderthal); and the final Crazyspeak of the Year nominee -- and also the winner! [1/5/2015]

NOAH'S 2013 IN REVIEW --
A Prayer to the Janitor of Lunacy

For listings and links, see Part 1 of this year's series.

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