KNOW WHAT YOU KNOW

Okay, so I guess it's official now (or nearly). The electors have spoken, placing Donald Trump on the path of presidential inauguration. What fun!

Some of the electors wanted information about the alleged Russian hacking before voting, but the intelligence community declined. At some point, perhaps just before the ceremony, a report will come out.

And maybe about that time Obama will unleash some sort of cyber-hell on the Ruskies, in retaliation for the hacking. "At a time and place of our choosing" begins to dwindle rapidly after that, at least for Obama's promise to bear fruit.

Will Trump keep the ball in the air? Unlikely.

He continues to deny that Russia had anything to do with any hacks, opting instead for the 400-pound cyberpunk sunk down in a mattress somewhere. Trump says they (the intelligence community) doesn't know if it's China or Russia or whoever.

Trump, being human, thinks he can penetrate the minds of others and divine their contents. He knows when people are lying, and calls 'em on it. (Okay, he seems unable to tell when he himself is lying, but you can only do so much, right?)

Remember, he knows ISIS better than the generals.

And while there appears to be no evidence any hacker actually interfered with the voting process itself, it's likely some minds were changed by the information produced by hacking and released by WikiLeaks.

The Russians (or whoever) may not have handed Trump the election, but the hacks gave the man ammunition he could (and did) use against Hillary Clinton.

Information filtered through his own puzzle palace.

For instance, when someone speculated in a hacked email about the relative conservativeness of Catholicism and Evangelicalism, Trump roared his outrage from the podium, characterizing this innocuous comment as a "vicious attack" on religion. Bizarre.

Acting from his position as alpha a-hole, Trump cried out to all the wannabe a-holes in America, getting just enough of them in the right states to vote for him. (Or to vote against "crooked" Hillary.) His tirades worked perfectly, splitting the country down the middle with a mountain of outrageous lies.

Now, he knows the people of America love him and voted for him in a landslide. It makes sense to him that whatever he does now is mandated by the country.

He can literally do no wrong, by definition.

So if he starts a war with China (which is looking more and more likely, every day), that too will be an expression of the will of the people.

Hey, don't blame him.

Remember, you asked for it. (Well, enough of you did.)

UNDERCUTTING ISIS

Last week was the one-year anniversary of the terror attack at a San Bernardino county government Christmas party. (The folks responsible—who were Muslim—may have been ticked off having to attend a function with built-in Christian sentiment.)

The shooters pledged allegiance to ISIS before going at it. Afterwords, they were allegedly cruising the area in a rented SUV, trying to find a wi-fi signal so they could detonate bombs they'd left behind. No luck, there.

At the memorial ceremony I presume the survivors and the families of victims were treated to a jumbo-sized portion of religious palaver. It's what we do, without paying much attention to the implications.

(Makeshift shrines to those burned-up in the Oakland warehouse party fire included not only the usual balloons, but lighted candles. Fighting fire with fire, I suppose.)

The fact is, offering religion at the memorial for a religion-based terror attack is exactly the wrong way to go. You end up in a religious pissing contest: My religion can beat up your religion!

Or closer to it: My religion can forgive anything your religion would have you do to us. Which makes us the ultimate winner. Also: God always liked us better!

Can you really fight nonsense with more nonsense?

Wouldn't it be better if we could take these opportunities—and there will be many more of them—to kick the legs out from under a variety of God-addled perpetrators?

The concept of God is fundamental to ISIS. Those guys couldn't get out of bed in the morning without it. Every scrap of their presumed legitimacy comes from God as depicted in the Quran.

And it doesn't go far enough simply to repudiate the holy book they turn to for guidance. And not just because there has been plenty of extravagantly nasty activity inspired by the Bible.

It makes more sense to go after the Big Guy himself. As long as he stands, more books can be written about him (or reportedly by him). With whatever evil results.

Remember, all revealed religions start with a text some guy swears came from an enchanted state of mind that could only have been created by a Supreme Being.

And while most people rely on the traditional revelations—if only because the details occurred so far in the past they don't have to consider how it actually played out—there are always plenty of disaffected humans aching for a new revelation to sink their rotting teeth into.

To prevent modern-day brain-storms from promulgating new levels of dangerous nonsense, we need to eliminate the pretended source—the concept of God itself.

If you are serious about fighting ISIS, disavow the very idea of God. That should be the text of any memorial service held for their victims.

Calling for help from God to fight ISIS is more than naive. It's absolutely counterproductive.

Perhaps you're a tad reluctant to scrap God as a concept. Maybe you think he'll hear about it and punish you in some heart-stopping manner. (Literally.)

But why worry? You must know that atheists and god-denying agnostics exist on this planet and go about relatively normal lives.

Remember, the first Commandment doesn't say you have to believe in God—merely that you put the Big Guy first on your list of gods. If it turns out you have a list.

Feel bad about not going to church and praising God? What sort of god would want praise from the likes of us?

Feel something's missing if you can't pray to God for stuff? Don't sweat it. Answered prayers are an illusion. (Don't forget—and it's quite easy to do so—human beings are idiots.)

Besides, if there were a God, wouldn't he already know what you wanted to pray for? Should you really have to beg that guy repeatedly to heal your grandmother's psoriasis?

And get over yourself. Denying the existence of God doesn't make God disappear, should there actually be some sort of God out there.

(Such a god, should he exist, would have a lot to answer for.)

Take comfort in this: A proper God would have no trouble understanding why you found it necessary to turn your back on him. Defeating ISIS is a hard job—one he's been unable to do, so far.

(I'm leaving out the annoying possibility that the existence—and persistence—of ISIS comes from exactly the wrong sort of God, that those blood-happy fellows have actually got it right.)

Look, I get it. My suggestion to kick God loose will no doubt fall on deaf ears. My bet, humans would rather hold onto the comforting (though hideously dangerous) idea of God—and put up with the existence of ISIS.

The devil you know, boys and girls.

TRUMP TRIUMPHANT, NOW AND FOREVER

President-elect Donald Trump says his electoral college total was a "landslide" victory. Speaker of the House Paul Ryan said Trump won a "mandate" from the American people.

Those guys don't seem to know what those words mean.

Trump now says (via Twitter) that if you deduct the millions of illegal votes Hillary Clinton got, he also won the popular vote.

Wow.

Give the man enough time, I suspect he'll claim Hillary got no legitimate votes at all—that Trump, in fact, won the presidency by unanimous acclamation.

That would fit the high opinion he has of himself.

Contrary to his "Drain the Swamp" campaign promise, he's busy filling his cabinet with Washington and Wall Street insiders. At least the Republican-controlled Congress knows Trump is taking this job seriously.

He may not be outfitting himself for changing Washington, but maybe those guys will let him get a little input to the day-to-day governance of the nation.

They'll no doubt let him keep his Twitter account, so he can vent the excess steam of his mental processes. (Trump's brain seems to produce a lot of waste heat.)

What is not being reported, at least not on the network news programs, is how well the new and improved version of Trump is going over with his hardcore supporters, the "jail the bitch" crowd.

Maybe when Trump makes the rounds of his victory tour he will get a little taste of their approval—or lack thereof.

THE FIRST TEN DAYS

So what's President-elect Donald Trump been up to?

One thing I noticed right away is a major shift in tone. With the exception of some loony tweets (claiming those folks demonstrating against his election are professional agitators set loose by corrupt media), Trump seems way subdued. Reminds me of the rant-less public statement following his meeting with the president of Mexico.

In an interview on Sixty Minutes, he seemed to be backing off his blood-thirsty campaign to get Hillary and Bill Clinton jailed for crimes against the nation. Now he says those guys are "good people" and he doesn't want to hurt them.

(But is this apparent new stance just a secret assignment delivered to the more rabid [and gun-toting] members of his core supporters? I don't want to hurt them, Trump says, but you fellas should feel free to go hog-wild.)

Trump also seems okay if some of his signature border Wall is represented by mere fencing. He knows parts of it will be a legitimate wall, and that's good enough for him.

Mexico, of course, will never consent to pay for something built in the US. That would be silly.

(Besides, it might enrage the drug cartels, by making more difficult the distribution of all that good stuff Americans clamor for so strenuously. Members of a government that ponied up the dough to build a wall might well become targets for murder and beheading. Or worse.)

Trump has also quieted down on his promise to eliminate and replace Obamacare. He seems now ready to make only a few modifications to the program, not engage in its wholesale destruction. Still no way to know if his version will be better and cheaper than the original, as he has often promised.

Trump even met with vocal enemies, like Mitt Romney. Happy handshakes and back slapping for the man who famously called Trump a phony and a conman.

Before that happened, Trump spent an hour and a half with Barack Obama, said he'd be willing to take advice from the man he once called the stupidest American president and the worse president this country has ever had. Can Trump really not remember his own words from just a few months ago?

Has the man been kidnapped by space aliens? Did those gray-skinned rascals go up his butt and hollow out his skull?

Obama recently pointed out that campaigning is different from governing. The two activities apparently draw on different talents and "strengths." Perhaps that explains Trump's shifting positions.

I guess we'll have to wait and see if The Donald has really become a different guy, and a president this country can survive. There are a lot of people anxious to get the answer, nervous folks from all over the world.

TRUMP WINS, WORLD ENDS

Maybe we dodged a bullet. Seriously.

There was really no way to tell what chaos might follow a win by Hillery Clinton. Would the nastier elements of the Deplorables take up arms to right the outrage of a rigged election?

The way it turned out, the country will get a chance to see Trump in action—and judge him harshly for it.

Here's how it might go:

After two years of Trump not getting his way (government is hard, man!), the Democrats might pick up some seats in the midterm elections. After two more years of Trump not slapping together all those many, many things he said he would accomplish "quickly and easily," he may get voted out. A one-termer.

With even more Demos landing in Congress.

Four years from now, with both the White House and Congress in Democratic hands, the gridlock should finally be broken. (Especially if a goodly number of Tea Party recalcitrants are swept away.)

Should this scenario came to pass, it might actually satisfy a significant portion of America.

In this election, the vast majority of voters wanted change in Washington above all, and Hillery was never going to be a viable choice.

Sure, the polls suggested she could pull it off, but in the end Trump may have picked up enough people who declined to support him in public, but who voted for him in secret. They wanted change, see? And were willing to ignore the man's obvious defects.

Even those Democrats who want to blame the FBI director for his last-minute email-investigation flip-flop will have to admit Hillery was just too Washington to please the frustrated mood of the current electorate.

Trump's victory speech demonstrated the quieter version of the man. He didn't mention the Wall or illegal immigrants, but concentrated on the one thing that might bring the country together: rebuilding the infrastructure.

So far, Republicans have ignored Obama's call for that action. Maybe now it can get some sort of start.

Trump seemed to suggest he was going to put American back to work doing that job. He made no mention of how it was going to be funded, but I'm pretty sure it won't be by lowering taxes on the rich and corporations.

It will be interesting to see if Democrats will try to block what they clamored for under Obama. (You can be sure Republicans would have made Hillery's path difficult at almost every turn.)

Trump also didn't mention killing Obamacare in his speech, one of his Day One promises. If he manages to actually get this one done, I have a feeling a lot of Americans will be disappointed with whatever the Republicans pony up to replace it.

In fact, it's likely there would be no replacement. Which may well seal Trump's exit from Washington in four years.

Maybe Hillery will be out of jail by then.

WHAT'S WRONG WITH US

Despite recent appearances, this is not a political blog. (And yes, I've said it before.)

This blog is meant to support the Kindle ebook whose cover is depicted to the right of these words: WHAT'S WRONG WITH US.

(I just discovered the book is available as a free bootleg download on the Internet. I'm not quite willing to tell you where, right now.)

The central thesis of the book is that the reason human beings are so difficult to live with is that they are basically stupid.

Too stupid, in fact, to realize how stupid they are.

Oh, sure, an individual can see that other people are idiots. They just don't see how that idiocy could also be applied to them.

Basically, if a thought exists inside a human brain, that thought is considered correct. Any attempt to overthrow a given notion is immediately labeled false. Much of this inviolable knowledge is pounded into children's heads when they're helpless to resist.

(Keep in mind, Christians, if you'd been born in Baghdad or Tehran, you'd be a Muslim now. And be careful—your attempt to squirm out from under this obvious fact may stretch you Idiot Quotient to the breaking point.)

Another problem: Humans can't tell the difference between what they know and what they think they know.

The brain is mainly a machine for producing acceptable reasons why it's okay to think whatever it is you already think or to do whatever it is you've already decided to do.

The brain literally makes up stories to support your position on any subject. It also edits the world to provide you with "facts" that back you up—no matter what crap is bouncing around inside your diseased gourd.

The current election process is a window into this madness.

Roughly five percent of voters support third party candidates. This is idiocy. America is a dedicated two-party system, and the only time you can even attempt to move that needle is to align a third party with one of the major parties during primaries.

Bernie Sanders is an Independent who aligned with the Demos and tried for the nomination there. Hillary's super delegates made his quest impossible. Maybe next time it will work. But even it it does, this will still be a two-party system.

The way it is right now, the only thing a third party candidate can hope to accomplish is to throw the election to one of the major parties. Thus, Ralph Nader messed up the Florida vote enough to put George W. Bush in the White House. With disastrous results we're still trying to get away from.

The majority of Americans say they will vote for either Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton. Some of them are enthusiastic about their choice. Others are only trying to block the other guy from getting elected. It's been said these are the most unpopular candidates ever put forward by the Big Two.

This blog has attacked Donald Trump many times. (Trump would, if he had any inkling of this backwater corner of the Internet, characterize those attacks as "vicious." He likes that word a lot.)

The man puts himself right out there. Supporters often cite his willingness to speak his mind as their favorite thing about him. I guess we have to assume he really is saying what he means to say.

And in the process he shows himself to be a bully and a thug and a demagogue. He behaves in public in ways few Presidents have behaved in private. And some people literally love him for that.

He either sexually assaults women, or wants men to think he does, and so lies about doing it. Forty-some percent of Americans applaud this position.

Almost everything Trump says is either a lie or a promise no president can make happen. Forty-some percent of Americans want to fight to make him their president.

(If he loses, there will be lawsuits—and maybe armed insurrection. Man the barricades!)

Folks want change in Washington. They see backbiting and infighting and lack of cooperation, and they want it stopped. Forty-some percent of Americans reason that Trump, being an outsider, can make that change.

In fact, Trump faces a Congress that may never cooperate with him. About half are Democrats, and of the other half (the Republicans), about half of them hate the man. At best, he's a guy who will probably not veto anything the majority manages to get through.

(Assuming it's possible to get anything through Congress. Some Republicans have vowed not to approve of any Supreme Court nominee Hillary Clinton might put forward.)

Presidents need the cooperation of Congress to get most things done. And neither candidate is likely to get much help there.

Why is that? People know what they know and they know they're right (as far as they know). Why would they compromise that excellent knowledge? Why would they give an inch to the other side?

You can't bargain with devils!

This all-or-nothing attitude has been building for years. Is there any way out? Sometimes, when an outside threat is big enough, it forces folks to get together to defeat it. Will something like that work today?

One of the greatest challenges facing the world right now is Global Warming, but one of the candidates has it in mind it's a hoax. If his supporters agree, this country is not likely to come together to defeat it.

We face increased threat from Russia, but one of the candidates is fighting a compliment war with Russia's president. Trump says: "If he says great things about me, I'm gonna say great things about him." Putin recently declared Trump "brilliant." (Perhaps he admires the way the man lies and lies and gets away with it.)

Acting on his own, Trump may not be able to get much done. The question is, how much trouble can he get us into? If he wins, we may need to set up back-channel connections to the world to remind everybody this man does not speak for us. Is that some kind of treason?

Of course, Hillary Clinton has her own problems. I don't give them much space here because Trump provides me with vastly more material.

I believe she set up her private email server when she was in the Senate. She decided to keep it going when she became Secretary of State. That has proved to be a monumental mistake, perhaps big enough to cost her the election. If she were the ruthless monster portrayed by Trump, she would have anticipated trouble, if only the requirement to release all her private emails—or face criticism for deleting them.

And if you have political power, it's probably not a good idea to also have a foundation folks can send money to—in the hope of siphoning off some of that power in their favor. If a motorcycle cop won't be bribed to let you off that speeding ticket, it's only human nature to think a donation to the Orphans and Widows Fund might help you out.

Even if Pay-to-play isn't happening, it looks bad for the one in power. If your bribe doesn't actually stop you from getting you what you want, you might conclude it helped you to succeed. And you might spread the word.

(Humans believe in prayer, too—because they know it works. Try getting that out of their wonky heads.)

Oddly, some folks might hold their noses and vote for Hillary, despite the fact they believe Trump's lies about her. They just hate him more.

Any way you slice it, the majority of Americans are going to vote for indefensible reasons. But they'll all know they're doing the right thing.

Lucky us! We get to live right in the middle of this dangerous nonsense.

OUT, DAMNED EMAILS!

Oh, good, an October Surprise—another cache of emails related to Hillary Clinton and the State Department.

Donald Trump must be creaming his jeans (not that he'd ever wear jeans; the man favors billion dollar suits).

And all because Anthony Weiner can't keep his texting in his pants.

The timing, of course, is crucial. And experts on the FBI are all pretty sure there will be no results coming before the election. (The emails must be embedded in Trump's tax returns.)

But it doesn't have to be that way. There might easily be a quick and dirty assessment of the emails. Put ten or twenty agents on them, triage them for applicability to national security.

Unfortunately, that probably won't happen, which could be devastating for Hillary, even if the emails turn out to be the sort of innocuous personal stuff she ordered deleted—a fat sample of the "missing" emails that Trump cries out for, and which probably still exist on computers all over the world.

In order for these latest emails to rise to the level of actual disaster for Clinton (when all the dust has cleared), they would have to contain items of the sort not found in the first batch sent to the FBI. There would have to be the equivalent of Top Secret mash notes sent directly to Putin.

Such emails are far from likely, but in the absence of information, what are folks to think?

Trump has leaped to his conclusion—same as it ever was. And his followers have no doubt followed.

It might not help, but we need to hear from Huma Abedin, Anthony Weiner's wife, to see if she can remember what that stuff was. (She can't just check; it's all on her husband's laptop, now in the possession of the FBI.) Such a statement wouldn't stop Trump from jumping all over her obviously biased testimony, but it might reassure Clinton supporters it's not time to jump ship.

In the absence of data, humans make up the details that do the least damage to their made-up worlds. Later, when the actual data becomes available, it's vetted, distorted, and selectively deleted by the brain—to maintain the illusion that nothing has changed.

Just bidness as usual. And we all have to live with the consequences.

ARGUING WITH IDIOTS

With a small smile, Donald Trump declined to answer the question. Would he abide by the results of the coming election? He would have us wait in suspense.

But that's Trump for you.

Every other presidential candidate has agreed up front to abide by the results of American elections. Trump's running mate, Mike Pence, agreed. Trump's campaign manager said they would agree.

But Trump's a maverick. He's not your everyday political chump. He's a man who likes to keep his options clear.

He's also very suspicious of other people's motives. In a discussion of the Second Amendment, when Hillary Clinton mentioned Trump had been endorsed by the National Rifle Association, Trump wondered aloud if she was being sarcastic.

Implying he hadn't been endorsed by the NRA?

Again Trump makes us wonder if he knows the meaning of words.

He said the flap over women coming out to accuse him of misconduct was largely debunked. By which he apparently means: has in no way been debunked.

In fact, corroborating witnesses have said several of the women mentioned the incident at the time, years ago. So much for folks making it up at Hillary's insistence.

Trump is fighting hard to get people to believe he's the sort of fellow who lies about being a scumbag—but is not an actual scumbag. It's a mighty fine distinction for a presidential candidate.

(In her take on the "bus tape," Trump's wife seemed to concentrate on his use of bad language, ignoring that this language was used to describe truly lowlife behavior. She also ignored the fact Trump went into some detail to insure Billy Bush would believe her husband actually did act that way.)

In his explanation of the dismantling the Supreme Court's Roe v. Wade decision, Trump suggested the way the law read, a baby could be ripped out of a woman's womb on the day before the planned delivery—a very late term abortion.

I think it's more likely the baby would simply be delivered one day early. And watched very closely.

Because about the only circumstance that might warrant such extraordinary action would be if the baby were seen to be armed and intent on murdering the woman.

(Think Stewie Griffin.)

On the subject of immigration reform, Trump pointed out President Obama had deported millions of illegal immigrants. He made it sound like an accusation, as if it didn't fit perfectly with his own plan for those folks.

(A month or so ago Trump announced the end of the Birther Movement in tones that suggested he'd had quite enough of such nonsense—as if he wasn't at the center of that nonsense, pushing it forward with everything he had.)

Bringing up a fragment of a Wiki-leaked bank speech, he accused Hillary of wanting "open borders." She explained she was talking about the transport of energy, not people. If true, that ought to have put the "open border" thing to rest, but Trump wasn't buying it. Why should he trust Hillary's version of what she was talking about?

(Of course, releasing the entire texts of all those speeches could go some way in settling the matter, but that's clearly not going to happen now. Similarly, Trump will never release his taxes. Folks should just stop asking.)

Trump's fixing of the economy relies on the same massive tax breaks for the rich that George H. W. Bush deemed "voodoo economics" when fellow candidate Ronald Reagan suggested it. Didn't work then, and there's no reason to think it would work now. Give rich people a windfall chunk of money and it's just as likely to go into the bank—or into foreign investments—than to "trickle down" to folks with lesser incomes.

On the other hand, Trump knows it will work, instantly creating a new Golden Age of America.

As usual, Trump ignored questions to make the usual points: How Hillary created ISIS, how bad NAFTA was, how bad the Iranian nuclear deal was, how Hillary got those guys killed in Benghazi, how she's been at the center of American politics since the Dawn of Time and has gotten nothing done.

If the man didn't have God's own confidence in his abilities, he might be a little humbled by that last point. Maybe things are harder to accomplish in Washington than he thinks they are. "Quickly and easily" may not always be possible.

Unfortunately, the only way to even attempt to teach him that lesson would be to elect the guy president and let him fail at every promised task. But that may not be good for the country.

Also, Trump would undoubtedly produce plenty of scapegoats to blame for any whiff of failure. It's probably not possible to teach the man anything. He already knows it all.

(It's a common human attribute.)

During the debate, Trump spent his downtime smirking and shaking his head and fiddling with his mike. I expected at any moment to see him make the hand gesture that signifies masturbation. His contempt for Hillary was fully manifested.

(His core followers all agree. The Secret Service better hire some more good people.)

Trump's voice often took on a certain put-upon tone, as if he were attempting to explain the obvious to an obstinate child.

I'm reminded of the old saying: Never argue in public with an idiot; bystanders won't be able to tell you apart.

TRUMP'S MILITIA

The thing about human beings is that they know what they know and they can't be wrong. About anything. It's just a delusion, of course, but a powerful one that drives most human behavior.

Donald Trump, for instance, knows he's a hell of guy and would make a great president of this country. He also knows Hillary Clinton is a monster from hell who would destroy American in a matter of days.

Given that juicy packet of human knowledge, Trump knows he will easily win the coming election. It just makes sense, right?

It also makes inescapable sense that if he should fail to be elected, there must be something seriously wrong with the election process. It must be rigged.

Hence, his latest hobby horse: the Rigging of the Election.

He doesn't know how, exactly, but he knows it's rigged. Forces are aligned against him: the crooked media, the crooked establishment, maybe even the crooked Republican party, which—let's face it—has been leery of Trump from the git-go.

No doubt Crooked Hillary is behind it all. Which is so unfair, because the woman should be in jail right now for all her crimes. Clearly, the so-called justice system is also rigged.

Trump can only count on his core followers, the ones who have been on his side from the beginning. Hillary calls them the Deplorables.

Trump's opinion of them was expressed quite early. These are the people who will back him no matter what. He could murder a man on Fifth Avenue—in plain view of witnesses and captured on smart-phone video—and his supporters would only smile.

Maybe compliment him on his shooting technique.

Nothing wrong with that, right? If the man wants to shoot somebody, that's his business. If he wants to grab some hot babe's pussy, why not? That's just what real men do.

It's the American tradition, Bubba: hard men doing men's work, life-takers and heart-breakers. Men who take what they want and make no excuses. Men who offer no apologies for being who they are.

Trump was raised to be that guy. According to his dad—and reported in a recent Frontline documentary—the opposite of loser is "killer."

And it's pretty clear Trump wants us to think of him as a killer. A man who takes what he wants. A man who mocks losers for not packing the gear.

It's not enough that a handful of close friends knows the real Trump. He wants everybody to know. Which is why he behaves the way he does in public.

(Could it be he's even crazier in private? When things go wrong, he's known to be a screamer, blaming everybody but himself for the failure.)

What Trump doesn't know—and it's literally unknowable in his universe—is that people are against him because they recognize him for what he is: a bully, a thug, a boastful idiot who thinks he can do all sorts of things in government just by putting his attention on them. He lies about almost everything, then blames others for lying. He is the King of the Deplorables.

If the election is "rigged," it's because it contains Donald Trump as a candidate. He's the rig.

What's amazing is how close it is. I guess we'll have to blame Hillary for that. Talk about a "perfect storm."

The crucial question now is what's going to happen if he loses? How's he going to fix this rigged election?

How many lunatics has Trump primed for battle? One guy told a reporter Hillary should be tried for treason and executed. Another guy said he wasn't going to let the woman remain in power.

Trump inspires people. He especially appeals to white men who go to work right after high school. Men who resent and hate their college-educated bosses. Men who think of themselves as the real Americans.

What vast militia may form after Trump loses the election, dedicated to setting things right?

I guess we wait and see.

GABFEST NUMBER TWO

If Donald Trump had been in court, instead of on stage at a presidential debate, he might have ended up in contempt for refusing to keep his answers relevant.

But we know that about Trump: The man is a rambler.

Not that he doesn't have a favorite destination. Every question seems to be an excuse to trot out his hobby horses and give 'em a little exercise.

His first words were interesting. Hillary Clinton had morphed a question about the tone of the campaign to set out her plan for the future of this country, ending by saying she hoped to be elected in November.

Trump said: "I agree with everything she said."

Next up: the hot-mike tape of Trump and Billy Bush. Trump characterized it as "locker-room talk" and said he had apologized. He said it wasn't as bad as ISIS and all the barbaric things those rascals are up to. He did not fail to blame Obama and Hillary for setting the stage for those guys.

Asked if he had done the things he talked about on the Access Hollywood bus, Trump pointed out that he had a great deal of respect for women. As for his comments: "You hear these things. They're said."

Asked again to confirm or deny he'd ever done what he talked about, he finally let it slip, almost parenthetically: "No, I did not."

Apparently the words "locker-room talk" are code for "swapping lies."

Hillary said she didn't think Trump was fit to be president. (What a surprise, Trump added.) After listing his faults in this area, Trump responded: Words, just words.

At first I thought he was reminding the audience that the stuff he said on the bus were just words, not actions. But it turned out he was jumping ahead to one of his favorite new anti-Hillary points—that she talks a good game about helping Americans but has, in thirty years in government, failed to actually do it.

He'll come back to this later.

(He comes back to everything, eventually. And repeatedly.)

Throughout the night, Trump always wanted to respond after Hillary spoke. What he means by "respond" is apparently this: She just said some bad things about me and I want a chance to say some bad things about her.

What we needed was a moderator who could say: Go ahead, Donald, but only if you can say something that directly counters what she just said—and only if you haven't already made that point on this stage tonight.

Trump went on to say (vis-a-vis the "locker-room talk") that Bill Clinton had said and done much worse—that the man was a great abuser of woman. (Trump had some of Bill's victims in the hall tonight.) And Hillary had attacked them, too. For which she should be ashamed. That got applause from the Trump contingent.

Hillary's response included a quote from Michelle Obama ("When they go low, you go high.")

Trump pounced on the name Michelle Obama, bringing up campaign ads from when Hillary faced Barack Obama in the primaries, eight years ago. Turns out Hillary's friend Michelle said some "vicious" things about her. (Trump loves the word "vicious.")

Was Trump implying Hillary displayed bad judgment in choosing her friends?

Trump went on to point out that Hillary had done some horrible things (aided by the DNC) to defeat Bernie Sanders. He was amazed Sanders had "signed on with the Devil" by endorsing Hillary after the convention.

He then said Hillary should apologise for the 33 thousand emails she deleted—an action taken after being subpoenaed by congress for all her emails. Trump also said (with reluctance, he claimed) that if he were elected he would have a special prosecutor go after Hillary. (And he expected her to go to jail.)

(As for the deleted emails: From what I gather, the order to delete them had gone out months before the subpoena, but her staff had failed to get the job done until just after the legal action was taken. Not actually Hillary's fault.)

After all this jabbering about emails, Trump demanded to know why the moderators didn't ask about the emails. He must have thought those guys were sparing Hillary by not bringing them up.

Even though the emails were quite thoroughly up.

Asked how American Muslims could live under the threat of anti-Muslim sentiment, Trump again made his bizarre statement that neither President Obama nor Hillary Clinton would use the term "radical Islamic terror." (Can't fight it if you can't name it.)

I don't know where Trump gets this idea, or why he thinks it's so significant. Clearly both Obama and Hillary Clinton are against this particular form of terrorism.

(It's true, though—you hardly ever hear Obama mention ISIS. But that's because he uses the administration term ISIL. Does Trump think ISIL is somehow a less damning word than ISIS? That Obama is going easy on those guys because he's their founder?)

Concerning Syrian refugees, Trump says we know nothing about them, and shouldn't let a bunch more into the country. He says Hillary is already soft on immigrants who have committed crimes. If the country of origin refuses to take the guy back, Trump is going to force them to take him. (If the offender is from Mexico, Trump can fling the guy off the top of the Wall.)

When asked how he would make the rich pay their fair share of taxes, Trump talked about his tax cuts for the rich.

Asked about evading federal income tax, Trump again pointed out Obama and Hillary created the vacuum that brought about ISIS. (No doubt the logic of this is central to Trump's thinking. All questions about his actions lead to a condemnation of Hillary.)

Asked about Syria and Aleppo, Trump repeatedly said Syria and Russia were fighting ISIS. (And Iran, too, a country we saved from ruin with that disastrous nuclear deal.)

Hearing a quote from running mate Mike Pence, advocating military action against Syria and Russia for bombing Aleppo, Trump said he hadn't talked to the guy and disagreed. (Later, Pence said everything was okay between him and Trump; that he had been misquoted. He is likely incorrect about that.)

Anderson Cooper quoted from one of Trump's books, which said a leader needs to have discipline. He then brought up the series of tweets Trump made between 3 a.m. and 5 a.m., ending with a suggestion folks check out a sex tape.

He was trying to finish the question by asking if this demonstrated discipline, but Trump had heard the words "sex tape" and was already talking: There wasn't check out a sex tape, just a suggestion to take a look at the person Hillary had made out to be "this wonderful Girl Scout—who was no Girl Scout." (Former Miss Universe, a reference to the first debate.)

Trump then went off on a Benghazi rant, triggered by the words "three a.m." in Cooper's question.

He finished by pointing out Twitter was a modern-day form of communication and that he had a lot of followers. Trump said he was "not unproud" of that.

The man clearly enjoys free associating on the stage. Fortunately for him, all paths lead to Hillary's shortcomings.

In the mean time, the actual question about a leader's discipline had disappeared in a puff of smoke.

When asked about the qualifications of a new Supreme Court justice, Trump managed to attack Hillary for not putting millions of her own money into the campaign, seeing as how she got rich in office.

The cool thing is that Trump not only knows his own mind, he knows Hillary's, too. He knows she has no idea who the rebels are in Syria; he knows she has no idea if Russia is behind cyber hacks in this country (he suggested maybe there were no hacks); and he says: "Believe me, she has tremendous hate in her heart."

Humans often think they know what's going on inside other people's heads. In fact, they claim to know things the other guy doesn't even know about himself. The illusion of knowledge is central to a human being's makeup.

In the end, a moment of sweetness. Asked to say something nice about Trump, Hillary praised his children. Trump said he liked that Hillary was a fighter who never gave up.

His statement created the far side of a pair of bookends for this debate. He had begun by meekly agreeing with "everything" she said in her opening remarks, and ended by praising her as someone who never quit.

Words that may come back to haunt him.

LOOKING PRESIDENTIAL

The Vice Presidential Debate was best for me because I saw almost none of it. Then I taped over it.

From what little I could stand to watch, Tim Kaine appeared vice-presidential: grinning impishly as he interrupted Mike Pence time after time. Attack dog with a machine gun, sniping away.

Pence tended to deny that Trump ever said all the things Kaine said he did (and he did). The effect was odd: It made Pence seem presidential, especially in contrast to the A-side of his ticket.

Having not actually seen the debate, I don't know if the boys were asked the one vitally important question—the one that never gets asked:

"If you saw a chance to start Armageddon—and bring Jesus of Nazareth back to the world—would you do it? And if not, why not?"

It always amazes me that the American electorate prefers to hand the keys to the nuclear garage to somebody who sees the End of the World as a good thing.

Generally, you can't get elected Dog-Catcher of America without being a devout Christian. Or at least looking like a Christian.

Mike Pence, for instance, is a well-known evangelical. He thinks religious rights trump gender rights. And by religious rights he means the right to discriminate against others who have a different set of religious beliefs.

(You don't have to turn gay to bake a cake for two guys. Nor do you have to endorse homosexuality—which may be against your religion—to allow gays to drive on roads built with public funds.)

Pence's Christian credentials being bona-fide, he's all set. And he appears to be a lot calmer than Trump.

Is that embarrassing for The Donald?

(Does Trump even understand the concept of "embarrassing"?)

During the primaries, Bernie Sanders skated by without encountering any religion-based bumps. The DNC even speculated about his religion, or lack of it—according to leaked emails.

And for good reason.

If Sanders were now the Democratic candidate it might guarantee the election of Trump, though pre-election polls would probably not show it. Folks tend to vote their religious conscience when they get behind the little curtain, and that makes it difficult to elect a Jew.

Or worse, an atheist.

To be elected in this country, you need to have a head full of unverifiable nonsense. And it pretty much has to be traditional Christian nonsense, arguably the most dangerous variety of cranial crap.

(Mitt Romney thought he was going to be President. Maybe it turned out Mormonism was not Christian enough for folks who said they would vote for him, but then didn't.)

Think about it: Muslims are not looking forward to Judgment Day, let alone considering paths to start it up.

(Some devout Christians support Israel because they think that country's fierce opposition to neighboring Arabs will somehow trigger Armageddon.)

The next Presidential debate comes up this Sunday. There are to be questions from the audience. Maybe somebody will stand up and ask the one about deliberately instigating the End of the World.

But I doubt it.

Remember the old joke: Everybody wants to go to Heaven, but nobody wants to die.

Or even talk about dying, in such a scary way.

And that's the preferred way to thwart the monster: hide under the covers until it goes away.

Good luck with that.

TRUMP'S PRIDE

Donald J. Trump has built up an empire of real estate and other enterprises, and he is rightly proud of himself for doing it.

Sure, he dives into bankruptcy from time to time to avoid paying folks the full amount of what is due them for their work, and he's a smart cookie who arranges to pay no federal taxes whenever possible.

But what we learned from the first presidential debate is that the man is inordinately proud of forcing Barack Obama to release his birth certificate. Not just once (the short form), but twice (for the long form).

Trump claims he did this for the sake of the country, and for the sake of Obama himself. It was good for the President to come clean about his origins. Finally.

Sure, it took years of prompting.

And later, after it was done, it took many more years for Trump to make sure the news was out. And air his concerns about forgeries and so forth.

But he got 'er done.

And, in the meantime, he accumulated a base of potential voters, which he has parlayed into a neck-and-neck race for the highest office in the land.

All by toadying up to the racist a-holes of the nation, folks who couldn't believe a Negro could get his black ass elected in the Good Ol' USA. (Well, Obama did it, twice, and I don't think being born in another country was how he pulled it off.)

By this clammy embrace of the country's "deplorables," Trump is making a bid to become the alpha a-hole of the world, a role for which he seems supremely qualified. Perhaps even over-qualified.

No wonder he's proud of his accomplishment.

Trump touched on his actions for the Birther Movement more than once during the debate. In fact, he touched on a couple of matters over and over again.

It seemed every question led him back to ripping on the Iran nuclear deal, or ripping on NAFTA—and the loss of American jobs (though economists have concluded NAFTA was a wash when it came to job loss or creation in this country)—or prompted Trump to tout the beauty of his tax reduction plan for the rich (bigger than Reagan's!) that will cause jobs to flood back into the US, where they belong.

In typical political mode, Trump evaded, ignored, or rewrote questions to suit his available answers.

Heal the racial divide? Law and order.

What's wrong with Hillary's "look"? Lack of stamina.

How would he defeat ISIS? Go back in time, apparently, and stop Obama and Secretary Clinton from forming that group of nasties in the first place.

Trump excoriated Hillary for putting her plan for defeating ISIS right on her Web page. Aren't those plans supposed to be kept secret?

Trump's own plan for ISIS-obliteration ("easily and quickly," I believe were the words he used to describe the process) has dropped out of sight. During the Commander "debate" he said he'd have his generals line up to reveal their plans, and maybe pick one of them. Or go with his own.

If he really does have such a plan, consider all the lives that will be lost, the throats cut, the women raped, the homosexuals tossed off the roofs of buildings, while Trump sits smugly on his plan, awaiting a payday ransom (the Presidency) to give it up.

(In Trump's America, the man would be dragged into the torture room of the nearest police station [they'll all have one] and ripped to pieces in an attempt to get this invaluable plan out of him.)

Why doesn't Trump take his fool-proof plan to President Obama? Is it because he hates America and wants her citizens to suffer, not to mention innocent people all over the world? Or is he just that greedy to be president?

Trump spent a lot of time (and dropped a lot of names) defending the position he was against the invasion of Iraq. He shrugged off his remark to Howard Stern, misquoting himself in the process.

Actually, Trump's apparent reluctance to endorse the invasion ("Yeah, I guess") quickly became a dig at George H. W. Bush for not invading Iraq when he had the chance.

Turns out Donald Trump was in favor of invading Iraq, twice.

The man again refused to release his taxes until after the ongoing audit, though he offered to do so right this minute (and against the advice of counsel), if Hillary would release her 33,000 deleted emails.

(If those emails were efficiently deleted, Trump has nothing to worry about. They're gone.)

When asked about the nation's security, Trump failed to mention one of his favorite hobby horses, the Wall. In fact he had little to say about immigrants, Mexican or Muslim.

I guess he's saving all that for later.

While Hillary spoke, Trump's face was a-swarm with motion: sneers, grimaces, and pouts. I don't think he ever smiled at what she was saying. (She found a lot of what he said amusing.) He shook his head, sipped water, adjusted his mike, and leaned in frequently to say "wrong" or "I never said that," almost always in error.

(I say "almost" because I don't have the stamina to fact-check every one of his verbal twitches. What am I, running for president?)

In the end, I'm sure Trump thought he crushed the bitch.

After all, he's the man who forced a sitting president to produce his birth certificate.

THE DANGER OF DEFEATING ISIS

Fighting ISIS obviously has unintended consequences, which we experience as violent blowback on us and our allies (principally France, right now). It's important to know that defeating ISIS will also put us in the cross hairs.

Remember, wiping the Islamic State off the map won't guarantee the death of every last fighter. Toward the end great numbers of them will melt into the terrain, will blend into the local population. Awaiting the call.

More important, the guys running the cyber division may already be well-hidden, far from the conflict zone. Web sites celebrating ISIS victories can just as easily promote a sense of revenge growing out of the ultimate defeat.

The Islamic State is specifically a holy entity. Destroying it is a religious crime that will cry out for redress.

This represents a new and dangerous level of involvement.

Moderate Muslims who noted with mild interest a minor ISIS victory are far more likely to be galvanized into action by its utter destruction.

Expect the propaganda wing of ISIS to beat the drum in a frenzy of outrage, calling for action against the perpetrators. And expect that call to be met.

Imagine a stadium full of lone wolves spreading out across the US, fired up and thirsty for blood. Imagine a hundred small planes taking off from a hundred different airports, all headed for the White House.

Imagine ninety-nine out of every hundred pressure cookers sold in this country used to make bombs. Imagine the end of pressure cookers as a legal consumer product.

Or this: Imagine fertilizer banned for all uses for the next thousand years—causing world-wide starvation.

ISIS sits now at the edge of the Muslim world. Destroying it could move it to the center. And bring about a global religious war.

(C'mon, Christians! All aboard the Armageddon train!)

Are human beings really that crazy?

Just watch.

DONALD J TRUMP TO THE RESCUE

If you've been following the Birther Movement, you know it was started by Hillary Clinton in 2008. Since then she has appeared on literally hundreds of talk shows, demanding to see Barack Obama's birth certificate. By now, she must have posted over ten thousand tweets on the subject, clearly baffled that the President refuses to hand over the document in question. (And I mean, the real one!)

"He must have something to hide!" she has said, over and over.

It's frankly amazing Obama put up with all this nonsense during the four years the woman was Secretary of State.

(I tell you, that man is a saint!)

Anyway, flash-forward to yesterday afternoon (or whatever), and we find a hero has emerged at last.

Donald Trump stepped up to the microphones and put an end to this Birther crap once and for all, declaring that Barack Obama was born in the United States of America. Period.

Period, okay?

So give it a rest, Hillary. Let it go!

Bitch!

(And why the hell aren't you in jail over that email thing? Or for murdering all those guys in Benghazi?)

At one point Trump considered the idea of shooting the woman down, right there on Fifth Avenue, shoot her down like the mad dog she so clearly is—but there's hardly any point in doing that now, right? What with her soon-to-be fatal brain tumor and everything. (That thing is already bigger than her head, if you can believe it. She has a brawny aide designated to carry it around for her in a bag meant for bowling balls. It's true!)

It's this sort of selfless act—crushing the Birther Movement—that's bound to catapult Donald Trump right into the Oval Office. He just needs to make sure he doesn't lose too many of his core supporters.

Here's a suggestion to draw those folks in even tighter: Propose a plan to execute all illegal immigrants found in this country.

And for good measure, make abortion a death-penalty offense.

When you're supported by the blood-thirsty element, you need to spread around some of that magic elixir.

That's just good business.

TRUMP'S CRISIS OF CONFIDENCE

At casual glance, this blog may appear to be a political blog—and a Democratic blog at that. It's not.

This blog is about bizarre human behavior. It just turns out the name Donald J. Trump comes up a lot.

Like right now.

After he met with the President of Mexico (and while he was still in country), Donald Trump spoke softly and respectfully about our neighbor to the south. When asked, he said they had discussed the Wall, but the question of who pays for it would be left to another day. For his part, the President of Mexico said he told Trump in no uncertain terms Mexico would not be paying for that Wall.

Agree to disagree, okay?

An hour or sos later Trump was back in America—and back in scream-mode—describing how he's going to kick every last illegal Mexican out of this country, starting with those who take the name "illegal immigrant" to heart and start committing crimes beyond that of simply crossing the border without permission.

Eventually, all illegals will have to go, although Trump hints that a level of "softening" might be possible. It's not clear what that might be. Perhaps illegals could go to a Mexican consulate and apply for a legal visa. In time, those vetted ("extreme vetting!") might return to their homes in America and find themselves on a path to citizenship. But those who remain here illegally cannot, under any circumstances, become citizens.

Maybe something like that, who knows. Trump is moving the pieces around in his head, messing with the language. What he knows for sure, it will get done and it will be great.

A lot of his plans are like that: Vague references to "action" followed by success like you're never going to believe. But believe, okay? It's going to happen!

Trump has lately been making appeals to black Americans, where his support hovers around one percent. He says their lives are crap, they have no homes or jobs, their schools are a joke.

"What the hell have you got to lose?" says Trump.

Because he's going to fix all that, starting on Day One when he takes the oath of office.

It's going to be a very busy day!

According to Trump, starting on Day One all lawlessness in this country will cease. By decree, I would imagine.

(One way you could do that would be to abolish all laws. I think they made a movie about that.)

Trump reminds black Americans they're getting shot at in the streets of their cities—especially Chicago.

Trump's going to fix that, too. Somehow.

The other day he was talking to Bill O'Reilly, saying he'd met a powerful police leader in Chicago, the fellow saying he could fix all that shooting in the streets in one week. O'Reilly asked, How? We didn't get into that, Trump said. Oh, really?

Trump did apparently get in touch with the mayor's office and recommend they hire this go-getter police commander. The city later said Trump had never met with any of their police leaders.

(Maybe Trump was actually on the set of Chicago PD, talking to the hard-driving—and corrupt—leader of the Intelligence Squad. Fixing the gun problem in one week sounds like something that guy might say.)

It's not really that odd he failed to get the details of that cop's plan to fix the problem of street shooting. Trump, after all, has his own plans.

Which brings us back to the Day One business.

Maybe Trump will unhorse his legendary leadership ability to solve the myriad of problems facing his (theoretical) new presidency.

His leadership style is apparently to point at various people in his employ and say: "Get on it!"

For Trump, it's enough to be aware of a problem. He then nods at somebody and the problem vanishes.

This technique eliminates the bugaboo of providing detailed plans for the solution of problems.

When Mitt Romney was running for president, he said his keenly-honed business sense would be sufficient to set the country's economy right again. I imagined it would be like extending his "business" hand and grasping America in that special (and secret) grip, maybe tickle the nation's pudendum with a spare finger, and all would fall into place.

That's confidence, baby!

Aspirants to the office of president often have secret plans to fix the nation's woes, plans that can only see the light of day after the candidate is voted into power.

After all, why marry the cow if you can get the milk for free. Presidential hopefuls have little faith in the gratefulness of American voters.

Trump says he's going to make life for black Americans so good that by the end of his first term he'd have 95% of them voting for another term.

But isn't that a bit risky? Can Trump get elected in the first place with only one percent of blacks?

Maybe he should get that Chicago cop's one-week plan to end gun violence and apply it right now. Even if it took a whole month to work, Trump could surely count on better than one percent of blacks to vote for him in November. It'd be the least they could do, right?

C'mon, Trump, what the hell have you got to lose?

The candidate implies that if Barack Obama, a black president, didn't fix all the problems black Americans have, it can only be because he was unaware of the problems (ignorant)—or he was incompetent.

(Or maybe Obama was too busy inventing ISIS.)

Trump only has to be aware of a problem to fix it, and he has demonstrated his awareness of a number of problems besetting this country.

Consider them fixed, people.

Trump has unending confidence in his ability to get stuff done. Point at him, and he'll point at his people, tell 'em to get to work.

In his acceptance speech, Trump said he's the only one who can fix this country. If his method works (point at his guys and say "go"), then he may be right.

Point and shoot with his magic finger.

(They may be stubby, but they're powerful!)

But if that finger holds no magic, all Trump's pointing will come to naught. Then he'd have to scramble to come up with real plans to fix things.

Where's the fun in that?

The thing is, Trump is so supremely confident he will only find out he's powerless after he takes office and actually tries to get things done.

That's a crisis of confidence we'd all have to suffer.

TRUMP SOUNDS OFF

The cool thing about human beings is that they know what they know. Stop asking how they know, they just do, okay?

Take language, for instance. Humans use words for pretty much everything except transporting knowledge from one head to another.

Donald Trump, for example, has recently made noises (or, if you prefer, said "words") that suggest he is about to soften his position on illegal immigration.

From the beginning he has said all eleven million illegals in the country would have to go, presumably launched off the top of the Wall into Mexico (thus destroying that country's evil plan to send us their criminals and rapists and so on).

Now he may be about to announce what might be called (though not by Trump) a path to citizenship.

Flip-flopping?

Not at all, says one of Trump's spokespersons. The man is merely adjusting the words being used.

Words, of course, have no intrinsic meaning, especially for politicians. Those folks can fiddle with their mouth-noises endlessly, sounding off for hours at a time, all without incurring the worst of all epithets: flip-flopper.

In politics, decisiveness is all.

Remember George H. W. Bush? "Read my lips," he said. "No new taxes." Having to raise taxes anyway might have cost him a second term, even after kicking Saddam Hussein out of Kuwait.

But don't worry, Trump is sitting pretty. He still has lots of words he can twist this way and that to get to where he needs to be without actually flip-flopping on anything. (Where he needs to be is in the White House.)

Notice, Trump does not back up. He doubles-down. Maybe you heard him wrong in the first place. Maybe you didn't get that he was joking. Maybe you're the source of all his problems, you with your stupid ears.

And if the meaning of words is up for grabs, maybe the meaning of meaning will be next. When politicians are forced to answer questions, it's not precisely clear they think "meaning stuff" is even necessary.

The first casualty of any press conference is the concept of "question" itself. When you ask a politician to address a particular issue, he sees this as an opportunity to sound off about whatever is on his mind. Relevancy is an illusion when the Great Man is speaking. He says what he wants people to hear, regardless of the question asked. He's a professional; he stays on point.

Recently Trump announced Hillary Clinton was a bigot. He says she has no interest in minorities except as votes she needs to get into office.

And he knows this because...

Okay, there's really no way we'll ever find out how he came to know what he knows about Hillary. He just knows, okay? Stop pestering the man!

Yesterday, talking about the "alt-right" Internet scene, Trump assured the interviewer Hillary knew nothing about it. Where did he come by that nugget of knowledge?

Easy!

Proper human beings can see right inside the heads of other humans. As a consequence, folks know the hidden agendas of all their friends and enemies. In fact, they know you better than you know yourself.

Trump knows all of Hillary's secret plans for America (like deleting the Second Amendment). And it's his job to inform an unsuspecting people what they're in for.

Never mind how he found out.

The man knows what he knows, and he's going to sound off about it. Pay no attention to the words he uses. Properly handled, they aren't even words. Just noises of disapproval you can interpret any way want—so long as you end up voting for Trump.

That's the not-so-secret meaning of all his words.

TRUMP'S GREATEST ENEMY

Presidential hopeful Donald Trump has had a bad couple of weeks. He's losing ground to Hillary in the polls, especially in battleground states.

Plus, a lot of Republicans in the national security business have labeled Trump unfit to be Commander-in-Chief.

And a bunch of other negative stuff:

Trump made a public plea to Russia to reveal the thirty thousand emails Hillary deleted from her server--on the theory they might have already grabbed them up before the controversy arose (and back while the server was available; right now it's probably locked up in the basement of the FBI building, unplugged and disconnected from the world, impossible to hack).

Some critics suggested Trump was attempting to enlist Russia in a new cyber crime, but this hack--if it happened--would have occurred way in the past. And, unfortunately for Trump, there's never been convincing evidence Hillary's server was actually hacked by anyone.

Later, Trump repeated his favorite lie (that Hillary plans to destroy the Second Amendment), and reminded his audience if she appointed new Supreme Court Justices they could do her bidding and there would be nothing anybody could do to stop her. Well, maybe the "Second Amendment people" could do something about it.

"I don't know," Trump mumbles, moving on.

After some uproar, he explained this was no semi-veiled threat of assassination, merely a reference to the gun-lobby's legendary ability to get stuff done in support of its cause--by organizing and rallying the troops, and so forth.

(I suppose a reformulated Supreme Court could deliver a new interpretation of the Second Amendment, but getting rid of it entirely would require a national vote and a substantial majority of state legislatures to agree. Not much chance the NRA would let that happen.)

Next, Trump announced President Obama and Hillary Clinton as co-founders of ISIS, a claim he repeated several times with a straight face before revealing it was just a joke.

Good to know the man's got a healthy sense of humor.

Now that Hillary has released copies of her most recent tax forms, Trump continues to say his hands are tied. Seems there's a "routine" audit under way. The IRS says that's no impediment to releasing the information, but it seems clear Trump will refuse to act until after the election, after which he may well continue to refuse on the grounds he is no longer a candidate for President and his taxes are none of your effing business.

Following all this campaign upheaval, Trump has announced he has a new "greatest enemy." He'll set Hillary aside for the moment to fight the press.

Yes, those bastards of the press!

Always in his face, always reporting what he says about stuff, forever asking him to explain what he means by the words he uses!

Always giving him opportunities to walk back his outrageous statements so he can sound more like a level-headed individual and less like a raving loon.

Those bastards!

Implying Trump doesn't say what he means and mean what he says, like the man he is. A man with a perfectly fine penis, okay? About which nothing more need be said.

Trump says he's thinking of revoking a bunch of press credentials. God knows he doesn't need the publicity. He could spend billions of his own money putting his message before the American people.

And he'd probably be better off, too. Short, tightly-edited commercials might keep him out of trouble. Or at least they might if it was just a matter of getting tangled up in his own words when he's facing the cameras.

The fact is, most of what Trump says is perfectly clear and unambiguous. And out of this world.

Which is why Trump himself will always be his greatest enemy.

What he needs is to have somebody else control the content of his sound bites, somebody more responsible, more serious--perhaps a grownup of some sort.

If everything Trump said was vetted by the Republican Party, he might have a chance against Hillary.

But that's a risk, for Republicans.

If they carved out a respectable, even presidential, version of Trump and successfully fed it to America--and then loosed the result on the country, unable to control him in office--the Republicans would have committed a fraud upon the American people that might prevent the party from getting another candidate elected for a hundred years.

But why take the long view? Nobody does, right?

It's not like there's going to be a future.

TRUMP FIGHTS BACK

Khizr and Ghazala Khan made a brief appearance at the Democratic National Convention. Father of a soldier killed a dozen years ago in Iraq, Mr. Khan told Donald Trump: "You have sacrificed nothing and no one."

Speaking of the building of walls and the restriction of Muslim immigrants, Khan asked Trump if he'd ever read the US Constitution. And whipped out a copy, offering to loan it to him. He suggested Trump scan the document for the words "liberty" and "equal protection of law."

Trump characterized the attack as "vicious."

In a TV interview, Trump defended his sacrifices, noting he has worked hard and created tens of thousands of jobs.

Set the Constitution aside for another day, Trump. Get yourself a dictionary. Creating jobs is no kind of sacrifice.

Trump went on to suggest Khan's wife, who said nothing during her husband's remarks, might have been silent for religious reasons—simply not allowed to speak.

I assume this comment was meant to discredit Muslims for their treatment of women—just another reason for not letting those people into this country.

Alternatively, Trump might be suggesting that the woman's silence was a direct indictment of her husband's words. She kept her mouth shut because she knew he was lying. Which would mean Trump didn't need to respond.

But of course he did respond, in his patented crazy way.

He might have pointed out the Constitution does not require Presidential candidates to have dead soldiers in their immediate families. Or if it did, that he and Hillary have an equal number of sacrifices on the board.

He might have noted the Constitution does not ensure the liberty and equal protection of law for folks who just want to be citizens. And that no one has a constitutional right to enter this country.

He might have reminded us Hillary Clinton voted for the war that got Captain Khan killed. (But then so did Trump's running mate, Mike Pence, which makes it hard to smack Hillary with this particular stick.)

He might have said he honors the death of Mr. Khan's son, that he at no time meant to imply all Muslims were terrorists.

He might (theoretically) have said any number of reasonable things.

Instead, Trump went off on his nonsensical tangent, ensuring more controversy over his fitness to be President. He simply cannot stop himself from blurting out the most ridiculous crap—nor does he see that lack of restraint as a negative in his bid to run this country.

Neither, apparently, do his supporters. They admire the way he speaks his mind. Perhaps they even agree with Trump that the only way their man can be denied the Presidency is if the election is "rigged."

The Donald didn't have to carry out his threat to deal with a "rigged" convention. Now we get to wait until November to see if his loyal supporters will allow any interference with Mr. Trump's divinely ordained destiny.

THE TAJ MAHAL OF CRAP

Thank God that's over, the Republican National Convention. What a crap-fest of screaming nonsense. Didn't those people know that thing was being televised?

And all of it topped off by a 70-minute acceptance rant from the Big Monkey himself, Donald J. Trump.

Let's see if we can make any sense from his ramblings.

He weeps for Americans murdered by illegal Mexicans, but that's a given. Who's on the side of the murderer?

Still, make no mistake: Trump is blaming somebody here. He's blaming Obama (and by extension, Hillary Clinton), for allowing such a thing to happen.

Trump, we have to imagine, would not have let it happen.

How? I think we can only assume Trump would have had the Mexican offender executed on the spot for trying to enter this country. (Mexico doesn't have the death penalty, so it'd be up to us to put the monster down.)

Now this is just an implication of his outrage, not a stated position, but how else could Trump be sure the man would not sneak back into the country and kill more Americans?

We now have to assume the coming Wall would have Immigration Courts built into it, along with high-speed industrial-capacity gallows. Bodies could then be buried right there in the Wall (like getting buried in the Kremlin Wall, but not as big an honor). Or the dead could be fired back into Mexico with giant slingshots.

What Trump needs you to remember is that he will be the Law and Order President. And we will see the result of that on Day One, when American Law will again mean something. Crime will be a thing of the past.

He'll do this just by being Trump, apparently.

(And, of course, by hiring the right people to get the job done. Obama, in contrast, always looked for the wrong people, to make sure nothing ever got done, guaranteeing innocent Americans would get murdered by illegals. Or, for that matter, murdered by legals. President Obama, Trump need not spell out to the convention crowd, is truly despicable.)

Trump spent a lot of time excoriating the big, multi-country trade agreements that stole all those American jobs.

Trade agreements and illegals—the twin sources of job loss in America. And Trump is going to land on both those evils with fire in his eyes and murder in his heart.

Trump will personally renegotiate all trade agreements, and if he can't get his way, he'll walk away—whatever that means.

One actually specific thing Trump said (specifics were rare in the speech) was that he would not sign any multi-country trade agreements. He would deal with other countries on a one-to-one basis. And no agreement would be signed if even one American job could be lost. (Sounded like he said that, anyway.)

Since Bernie Sanders also pounded those same trade agreements as being responsible for American job loss (though economists would disagree), Trump is sure all of that man's supporters will flock to The Donald's camp.

Trump says the fact Sanders didn't get the Democratic nomination was proof the system is rigged. Had nothing to do with the fact Clinton started out the heavy favorite and Sanders didn't have time to change enough minds. It was entirely those damn super-delegates! (Though Trump didn't mention those guys specifically.)

Trump says American companies would not be allowed to fire American workers and relocate to another country—"without consequences."

He doesn't say what those consequences would be.

But it they leave anyway, despite the alleged consequences, don't fret. Trump's big tax cuts will brings all those jobs "roaring back" into this country. That and his removal of business restrictions, which he will do "very very quickly."

(There's a political joke: A Liberal is a man who hasn't be mugged yet. Here's another: A Conservative is a man who hasn't yet lost a child to corporate greed and indifference. It's an annoying fact: Only a federal government can regulate relative safety into the practices of American Big Business.)

More on immigration: If those bastards aren't taking your job, they're taking your life. Acts of terror by ISIS sympathizers are on a path to kill us all, and Trump is going to put a stop to it.

No Muslim will be allowed to enter his America until we can devise a vetting process that is one hundred percent accurate. And if that takes awhile, so be it.

Hillary, on the other hand, wants as many rabid jihadists as possible to be jammed into this country. Go figure!

Speaking of the massacre in a gay nightclub in Orlando, Trump says he would protect the LGBTQ community from the "violence and depression of hateful foreign ideology." (He probably meant "oppression," but it sure sounded like "depression" to me.)

Trump failed to mention the Orlando shooter was born in the United States.

Trump's once-potential running mate, Newt Gingrich, recently suggested the vetting should contain this question: "Do you agree with Sharia law?" This test, he says, needs to be applied to all Muslims currently living in the country. Those who like Sharia would be deported. Not clear what would happen to those born here. Maybe they could find room in the Wall.

(It would also make sense—and just out of fairness—to make sure everybody who believed the Bible's Old Testament to be the word of God would be kicked out of this country. Sharia is, after all, largely based on OT pronouncements. And let's not forget: The OT is, like ISIS, of Middle Eastern origin. Oddly, it's exactly the sort of "hateful foreign ideology" Trump is determined to protect us from!)

Trump would take care of ISIS in a hurry, mostly by getting other countries to weigh in. (A sign in the crowd: "ISIS Lives Don't Matter".) Think slaughter—and plenty of it. (We covered Trump and ISIS last time.)

Domestic matters: Trump would solve the VA hospital crisis by allowing vets to go to their own doctor or hospital for treatment. This makes sense, but it's nothing new. Still, by saying something sensible, does that prove Trump is not a complete lunatic?

(Son of a bitch!)

Trump says he will work to remove wording that prevents churches from promoting political candidates without losing tax-exempt status.

He didn't mention a corollary position: Letting blatantly political groups like Tea Party folks claim tax-exempt status. Maybe that's coming.

Trump laid out a long list of things going wrong with America, things he's going to fix, quickly and easily. He also says he's the only one who can get it done.

If America's infrastructure is falling apart, he will roll up his sleeves and personally rebuild those roads and bridges. By implication, Barack Obama doesn't give a crap about such things. (Never mind the President has implored Congress to tackle that problem on numerous occasions.)

In his speech, Trump makes a lot of promises, mostly offering no specific solutions, just saying he would take care of it, and fast. ("Believe me!")

And maybe he will. Check this out:

The one major claim Trump could have made, he left on the table, unsaid. Things may well get done during Trump's presidency, not because he's a miracle worker, but simply because he's a Republican (sort of).

If the Republicans retain control of Congress, they may well pass the laws Obama has been begging them to pass but they couldn't, lest some of the credit accrue to a Democratic President.

If Trump asks, they'll do it (or at least think about doing it, which is more than Obama gets). How come? If the Republicans can make that man look good, maybe he'll get a second term as President. Four more precious years without the threat of veto.

In this instance, the system is indeed rigged.

LEADERSHIP

So there's Donald Trump and his running mate, Mike Pence, sitting for an interview with Lesley Stahl. She wants to know how they're going to handle ISIS.

"I will declare war on ISIS," Trump declares.

Stahl wants to know if that means he will put American boots on the ground.

Not at all necessary, it turns out.

Trump will get the countries surrounding ISIS—and NATO (if those guys are still around; Trump doesn't seem to care if NATO exists or not)—to do the dirty work of eradicating ISIS.

He then goes on a rant to explain how ISIS was created by Hillary Clinton. (With Obama along for the ride.)

Mike Pence pipes up to congratulate Trump on his leadership skills.

Leadership, baby. You gotta love it!

Here's how Trump does it: "Hey, everybody, check out this problem! [Trump looks around, and points.] You, you, and you—get in there and take care of it!"

That's leadership! Identify a problem and get some guys to fix it. Just that simple.

It starts by locating a problem. Trump, famously, invented Mexico and its illegal immigrants. Nobody had ever heard of Mexico before he came on the scene.

Trump also noticed Islamic radicals, and pointed out how they could be a danger to us.

Shear genius at work!

Muslims were completely off everybody else's radar, but you can't stop Trump from ferreting out the really esoteric threats to America.

Unfortunately, Trump's plan for dealing with ISIS sounds a lot like: "Hey, let's you and him fight!"

Maybe this is how he thinks it's supposed to work. Not surprising: If, in his "real" life, he spots a problem, he just tells his guys to take care of it.

And they do!

But remember, those guys work for Trump. They get paid by Trump. They might even expect some bonuses and perks for jumping in there and taking care of whatever it is that's got the boss's panties in a twist.

In the other real world, what is it that will cause those countries bordering the Islamic State to rush in with guns blazing? Everybody in the region is a Muslim of some form. ISIS is exclusively populated by the majority faction of Islam, so it's easy to see how a lot of the local population might be reluctant to go against them.

And what's NATO's motivation? If Turkey, none too stable these days, were to claim it had been invaded by the IS, does that mean NATO (Turkey's a member) would step in to help out? Forcing Turkey to team up with their arch enemies, the Kurds?

Is the US going to pay those countries—and NATO—to fight our war?

Another glitch: I surmise that Trump's beef with ISIS is that they send fighters to hurt Americans.

If fact, it's the Americans who are killing Americans in this country, for the most part. Americans inspired by ISIS propaganda.

And by propaganda, I don't mean lies. It's perfectly true that ISIS is under attack by America (and other Western countries).

Now Trump wants to declare formal war on ISIS. (Or, at least, get Congress to do it, because he can't, by law, do it himself.)

After a declaration of war it doesn't matter who actually pulls the trigger on our behalf, America will be the aggressor-of-record. Every dying ISIS fighter will cry out for revenge against America.

And they'll get it, too.

ISIS doesn't have an Air Force, so those guys have to get in there and muck about with guns and knives to get the job done. None of this "death from above" nonsense. Those guys are real, hands-on heroes. They fight with honor for a deeply-held religious cause. (As annoying at that might sound, it's really kind of true. Certainly they believe it.)

Americans, on the other hand, are cowards who drop bombs from planes or fire missiles from drones flown by guys in Nevada. It's so unfair a fight even a moderate Muslim might be moved to retaliate.

Just the fading memory of a vanquished ISIS may inspire the faithful of every new generation to attack Americans wherever they are.

Trump's leadership will get a lot of American civilians killed, but maybe that's the way it has to be.

But wait, there might be a bonus!

What if a concerted effort to blast ISIS off the face of the earth serves to start Armageddon and bring Jesus of Nazareth back to the world? No devout evangelical President or Vice President could ever object to that.

(In the interview with Lesley Stahl, Trump made a point of touting his religious credentials.)

And if the world is destroyed and Jesus fails to make an appearance? Oh, well. Worth a shot, right? Christians have to do whatever they can to shape the story of the universe.

Besides: In the end, everybody dies anyway.

So, what's the difference?

QUICK, CALL THE BLACK POLICE!

Sniper in Dallas, the network news graphics proclaims. And off we go again.

How is this thing ever going to end? Let's take a look.

There are actually two separate problems:

1) White cops are seen on video shooting black guys.

2) People (mostly black people) are filled with anger and frustration, because they know white cops are murdering black folk for no reason.

Let's take the second problem first. How do you solve this perception of black murder at the hands of white cops?

You don't.

You're dealing with thoughts inside a human head, and you can't get those things out of there with dynamite.

Humans know what they know, and that's that. The brain plays along by editing mental perception of the world to make sure we get solid proof that whatever the hell pile of crap is inside our skull, it's golden, baby, now and forever.

How do you change those thoughts? You can't.

Because if you could change the thoughts, that would imply those who held those thoughts were somehow wrong—and that's impossible. Human beings are never wrong (as far as we know.)

Consequently, whoever might harbor the notion that white cops are systematically murdering black men, rest assured. You're in no danger of being proved wrong. You can't be, and you won't be. Case closed.

So let's abandon this fruitless quest and look at the first problem: White cops caught on video shooting black guys.

Is that a problem that needs to be addressed? Of course it is, but it's not as staggering a dilemma as Problem Two might suggest.

Turns out, only about one percent of the famous Black Lives Matter cases are actual, prosecutable instances of white cops murdering black guys.

If you eliminated all those real cases—and of course that absolutely needs to be done—you might not notice the difference.

One percent. Maybe.

[Which ones? Obviously, the cop who chased a black motorist, grappled with him, then shot the guy in the back as he ran away for the second time—that's an example of some kind of murder. And the Chicago cop who poured lead into the knife-carrying fellow in the middle of the street may well be prosecuted for his actions, though he claimed (and it's a hard claim to fully dismiss) that he was in fear of his life. (If he was in genuine fear for his life—in those circumstances, surrounded by fellow cops—he at the very least should not be retained by the police department.)]

Virtually all the other cases involved cops following procedure as best they could under often difficult conditions.

Blacks don't see it that way, and never will. Their minds are made up.

But when a cop stops you and asks if there are any weapons in the vehicle, for god's sake don't say yes, then start digging around in search of your carry permit. Keep your hands on the steering wheel and make no moves without the cop's instructions. Your life literally depends on it.

That goes for white guys, too. Believe it or not.

And when a cop comes up to you and says, "Turn around and put your hands behind your back," do it.

Don't just stand there, bristling with defiance, and demand to know what this is all about.

If there's a report of a man with a gun, the cops might not want to say the magic word until after you're in cuffs. If you're not the guy with the gun, expect them to remove the cuffs pretty quickly.

And that goes for black guys too, believe it or not.

I know it takes courage to let yourself be cuffed when you're convinced the cops have got the wrong guy, but it has to be done. Especially if you're black and you're pretty sure you're about to be shot dead.

The fact is, cooperating with the cops in those crucial first moments may be the only thing that keeps you from getting shot.

Like the cops often say when they bring out the cuffs: "For my safety and yours."

Easy to see how cuffing a suspect protects the cops; how does it protect you? It helps to relieve the tension of the situation. It tends to keep the cop from shooting you out of fear of what you might do to him.

(Perhaps a cop's greatest dread is that some dirtbag will grab his service pistol and use it on him. Even so, that device has to be handy to the cop—which makes it handy to the bad guy, too.)

So, if removing all the murdering cops leaves the other 99% of legitimate, duty-based shootings, how are the optics ever going to change for the better?

Putting aside the fanciful solution ("Set phasers to stun, boys!"), the only way we're ever going to end the stream of white-cop-shooting-black-guy videos is to end those encounters once and for all.

If a black man is the perp—or the victim—he must be handled exclusively by black officers.

That also means, if a white cop comes across a black man bleeding-out in the street, the best he'll be able to do is call for an ambulance...and then fade into the background.

Now, black officers will be following the same police procedures as their white comrades, but in at least some cases the black perp may relax a bit and not do any of those ill-advised things that might get him killed.

But not in every case.

Soon the nightly newscasts will fill with video of black cops shooting black guys.

Eventually, the popular narrative will shift. Not white cops murdering black guys for no reason, just cops in general murdering black guys for no reason.

That way Sniper in Dallas (or wherever) will feature photos of more black cops on the role call of victims.

A kind of victory for equality, I suppose.

And a new question: Do we reach for the champagne—or the cyanide-laced Kool-Aid?

WATERBOARD THIS

Following the attack on the Turkish airport, Donald Trump again called for waterboarding terrorists—and worse—with an eye to preventing future attacks.

I have to think this is mostly a slap at the Obama administration, the folks who called for a stop to enhanced interviewing techniques.

Trump is theorizing about all the excellent intelligence this country would have, but for Obama's mishandling of the situation. (Bleeding heart liberal, and all that.)

And theorizing is the right word.

There's no actual evidence we'd be any safer if we were still jacking around in the crap of random Muslims, looking for clues to the future.

As for stopping the Turkish airport attack, who the hell does Trump want to waterboard now? Maybe pry some chunk of human beef out of a terminal light fixture and have a go at it? No help there, I'm pretty sure. No, you'd have to ask the ISIS commander who sent those guys, and it's likely even that guy would not know the exact moment of the attack.

That someone might attack the airport is not news. No one need change into dry clothes for that information to come out. The world is packed with soft targets, and everybody knows it. The only solution is to be vigilant, everywhere and all the times.

Even so, it would probably not hurt to offer rewards to landlords who rent to standoffish young fellows dabbling in stinky chemicals. Might get some leads there.

Deploying nuclear aircraft carriers to hostile waters and launching sorties of fast-movers laden with smart weapons costs a crapload of money. Maybe some of that dough, deployed as reward money in hostile neighborhoods, could loosen up the intelligence market.

The sort of terror leaders Trump would have us torture are instead being killed in drone attacks and the like. Dead guys launch no missions. As for plans already in place, there are better methods of uncovering them than splashing water on a highly motivated soldier of Allah.

The fact is, the current level of terror violence will not wane until deeply religious folks get permission from church authorities to be less religious.

In the mean time, fighting violence with violence only begets revenge violence, over and above the violence called for in the holy books. But you have to do something, right?

If Trump is looking for somebody to waterboard, he could do no better than to raise his own hand. It may be the only way to find out what he really plans to do to solve the country's problems—aside from "we're going to take care of it and it's going to be great."

On the other hand, for torture to work, the guy beneath the dripping towel actually has to know the answers you seek. Can anybody be sure Trump has even an inkling of an answer to any of it? This may be something even he doesn't know—and won't know until he's forced to face the matter square on.

Somebody get a bucket and maybe we can find out.

FALSE CONFIDENCE

The main problem with humans is that they can't tell the difference between knowing something and thinking they know something. These two states of mental activity are literally identical inside the human skull.

This condition gives rise to all manner of death and destruction. Folks move forward decisively because they know they're doing the right thing.

Heads get busted, blood gets spilled, women and children get ravished, valuable property is transferred willy-nilly from one head-strong person to another.

And everything makes perfect sense. Folks know exactly what they're doing and why they're doing it.

People have confidence. It's the natural result of knowing what you're about.

And it's all based on nonsense.

Human beings are so good at knowing stuff (including the unknowable), they need take no time to examine their knowledge. Why would you study something you already know?

People step forward with confidence to act in whatever way they deem appropriate. It's literally a no-brainer.

The main function of that hunk of gray matter is to come up with plausible reasons why it's okay to do what you already "know" you should be doing.

Fortunately, the brain edits the world to make sure you encounter no nasty surprises. Should "truth" rear its ugly head, there's a good chance you'll never see it.

And out of sight, out of mind. You don't have to grapple with inconvenient reality if you can't see it standing there in front of you.

Success breeds confidence, and vice versa. And neither needs to be real to work its magic on your happy life.

Take Donald J. Trump, for instance. He thinks he'll be a president who can get things done. He "knows" how to handle any number of the country's problems, knows it ahead of time. Not that he's dealt with similar stuff, but because he's dealt with some things before—with occasional success.

Unfortunately, his solutions are theoretical at best. Nobody really knows what they can accomplish in government until they try to do something. At which point they usually find the system is designed to make sure they can do nothing.

Outsiders think they can wave all that aside. And yes, it's kind of fun to watch 'em try.

But this is a real country, in a real world, with real people and real blood. That's bound to drain some of the fun out of the game.

A supremely confident man quite naturally persuades others to have confidence in him. Even if the confident man is not actually a confidence-man, enormous damage can be done as a result of this basic misunderstanding.

Which brings me to my axiom about politics: No one who seeks public office should be allowed to hold public office.

It's a simple matter of public safety.