Last Call For Brewering Up Trouble

Republicans know they are in serious trouble in November with Trump turning into an anchor that will most likely sink the GOP, and the problem is only compounded by the fact that scared Republicans say and do idiotic things even more than usual.

Former Arizona Governor Jan Brewer says she suffered a “stumble of the tongue” on Tuesday when she seemed to call Hillary Clinton a “lying killer” during a radio interview.

“People want a fighter. They’re tired of the lying killer, uh, Hillary Clinton and Bill Clintons of the world,” Brewer told Mac & Gaydos on KTAR News, the audio of which was first reported by Mediaite.

When reached by phone by BuzzFeed News on Wednesday, Brewer said she just mispronounced Clinton’s name.

“I was trying to say Hillary Clinton,” Brewer said. “It was a stumble of the tongue.”

“Good grief,” she added.

The parth of "personal responsibility" sure has this problem with actually owning up to it.  I mean if you're going to essentially accuse the Democratic nominee of murder, embrace your hatred of the woman. At least that's an honest emotion, no doubt fomented by 25 years of blind rage.

Trump at least owns up to the fact he'll never change.

Aetna Tu, Brute? Con't

Yesterday I speculated that the obvious timing of health insurance company Aetna pulling out of Obamacare exchanges in 11 states indicated the move was political revenge for the Justice Department suing to block Aetna's planned buyout of Humana last month.  One of the places Aetna is pulling out is here in NKY, meaning less competition and higher premiums, so I've got skin in this game too. It stank from the beginning, especially given Aetna's plans in May to expand coverage.

Today we find out that political revenge theory is exactly what happened as Jonathan Cohn over at HuffPo drops this story on Aetna CEO Mark Bertolini.

Publicly, Aetna representatives this week framed their about-face as a reaction to losses the company was taking on Obamacare customers, and in particular figures from the second quarter of 2016 that the company had just analyzed, showing them to be sicker and costlier than predicted. 

When reporters on Monday asked whether Aetna was also reacting to the administration’s attempt to thwart its merger with Humana, company officials brushed off the questions, according to accounts in the Hartford Courant, Politico, and USA Today. 

But just last month, in a letter to the Department of Justice, Aetna CEO Mark Bertolini said the two issues were closely linked. In fact, he made a clear threat: If President Barack Obama’s administration refused to allow the merger to proceed, he wrote, Aetna would be in worse financial position and would have to withdraw from most of its Obamacare markets, and quite likely all of them. 

Bertolini penned the letter, which The Huffington Post obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request, on July 5 ― 16 days before the Justice Department announced it would fight the Humana deal. The department had asked Aetna how, if at all, a decision on the proposed merger would affect Aetna’s willingness to offer insurance through the exchanges. 

Bertolini responded bluntly. Aetna supported the law’s goal to expand coverage and planned to increase its exchange offerings next year, in the hopes that the exchanges would stabilize as enrollment grew, he wrote. 

But if the Justice Department were to block the merger, Bertolini warned, Aetna could no longer sustain the losses from its exchange business, forcing it sharply change direction:


[I]f the deal were challenged and/or blocked we would need to take immediate actions to mitigate public exchange and ACA small group losses. Specifically, if the DOJ sues to enjoin the transaction, we will immediately take action to reduce our 2017 exchange footprint .... [I]nstead of expanding to 20 states next year, we would reduce our presence to no more than 10 states .… [I]t is very likely that we would need to leave the public exchange business entirely and plan for additional business efficiencies should our deal ultimately be blocked. By contrast, if the deal proceeds without the diverted time and energy associated with litigation, we would explore how to devote a portion of the additional synergies ... to supporting even more public exchange coverage over the next few years.

So yes, Bertolini has made good on his threat, and he's put the health insurance coverage for millions of people in possible jeopardy as a direct result. Aetna still expects to make billions in profit in 2016, so the notion that the exchanges were hurting the company was always nonsense.

Richard Mayhew over at Balloon Juice calls BS on Aetna as well, using Pennsylvania as an example. Aetna says it has to pull out of the state because it's losing money on the individual market, including Obamacare exchange plans.  Filings to the state's insurance regulators prove otherwise:

Aetna was profitable in 2015 in the individual market in Pennsylvania. It is projecting to be profitable in 2017. The filing memo was drafted in late May and submitted to the Pennsylvania regulators in early June. Conditions have not changed enough to make Pennsylvania a money loser in under two months. 

My wee bit of cynicism bears fruit. Aetna is trying to logroll an anti-competetive merger with on-Exchange political consequences. If it works for Aetna/Humana it burns a bridge to get the merger, and if it fails, it puts Aetna on the shitlist of any Democratic administration. That is a very interesting strategy when it is highly likely that there will be another Democratic administration.

But the strategy makes sense if the goal is to not have another Democratic administration, you see.

So now we have evidence that health insurance companies are actively trying to sabotage Obamacare anyway and maybe even trying to hurt the Democrats as punishment.

So what will the Obama administration do about it?

We're about to find out.

That's Real White Of You, Con't

I think I may have found the problem with our political system as a whole, guys. As Justin Gest reminds us (and as I've been saying for months now) Donald Trump's followers are not going to suddenly all come to their senses on November 9th and start hugging everyone after they (hopefully) get stomped at the polls. If you think Trumpies are just going to vanish...

For people who feel that way, I have some discouraging news. As part of a broad study of white working class politics, I solicited white Americans’ support for Donald Trump, but also for a hypothetical third party dedicated to “stopping mass immigration, providing American jobs to American workers, preserving America’s Christian heritage, and stopping the threat of Islam”—essentially the platform of the UK’s right-wing British National Party, adapted to the United States. How many white Americans do you think would consider voting for this type of protectionist, xenophobic party? 

65 percent. 

Clearly, Trump’s allure is bigger than Trump himself. 

Who would the new party’s supporters be? What I found in the study is that much like those who support the Trump campaign, those who would consider voting for this third party are more likely to be male, of lower socioeconomic status, without a university education and ideologically conservative—in other words, the Republican Party’s longtime base. They are also more likely to be young (under 40 years old)—so this is not a phenomenon likely to pass quickly. 

This is most immediately important to the Republican Party: If Trump were the whole story, and his message didn’t matter, then Republicans could dismiss this election as an anomaly. However, if Trump has stumbled upon a policy agenda that has been latent in the Republican base, then the party is faced with a choice: adopt it in the future, or stick with its longstanding principles and risk alienating its voters. That would either usher in a radical turn in the party’s trajectory or open up space for a third party, the likes of which are growing rapidly in Europe. 

It is worth putting the results into perspective. This kind of theoretical question, untethered to any specific party or political figure, may well be a useful test of deep support for such policy platforms. But it’s also an imaginary third party right now, free of the media checks and public scrutiny that would accompany it were it to exist in a competitive party landscape. In Britain, for example, UKIP and its precursor, the British National Party, are both stained by allegations of racism and incompetence, while this hypothetical American counterpart is unexposed. 

But neither the BNP nor UKIP has ever garnered anywhere close to a majority of the white British electorate, let alone a general majority. 65 percent is a whopping number—in fact, it’s significantly more than those who expressed support for Trump’s candidacy in my research.

The problem was never Donald Trump, but somebody who could run on Donald Trump's white nationalist platform and not be a self-destructive idiot while doing it.  Trump's not the guy you have to be careful of.  It's the guy after Trump, who knows how to play this game and win, who is the real danger.

Trump himself meanwhile can't take the fact that 99% of black voters like myself despise him, so in his speech in Wisconsin last night he made a pitch to African-Americans in general.

Donald Trump made a new and explicit plea for the support of black voters on Tuesday, saying the Democratic Party had “failed and betrayed” them and accusing Hillary Clinton of “bigotry” in the pursuit of minority voters.

“We reject the bigotry of Hillary Clinton which panders to and talks down to communities of color and sees them only as votes — that’s all they care about — not as individual human beings worthy of a better future,” Trump said at a rally in Wisconsin.

After Republican Party leaders have urged Trump for months to rein in unpredictable tangents on the stump that have gotten him in repeated political trouble, Trump used a teleprompter at a campaign rally for the first time on Tuesday to deliver a speech that waded into the thorny topics of race and politics.

“The Democratic Party has failed and betrayed the African-American community,” Trump declared.

“The Democratic Party has taken the votes of African-Americans for granted. They’ve just assumed they’ll get your support and done nothing in return for it. They’ve taken advantage of the African-American citizen,” he added. “It’s time to give the Democrats some competition for these votes.”

Now, the Republican pitch to black voters has been exactly this for years, it's nothing new, that everything ailing the black community would magically vanish if we just started to vote for the Republicans.

Only, the reality is that in 2016, black voters are the Democratic party.  We're the most loyal base and we haven't forgotten the way Trump and Republicans have treated us, have treated President Obama and his family, and the Black Lives Matter movement, so Donald Trump can kindly go screw himself with a rusty pickax. We certainly haven't forgotten how the Republican party has worked over the last 60 years to stop us from voting at all.  It's comical how bad this man is at running for President.

But remember this: so far we've had McCain, Romney, and Trump, three guys who made massive unforced errors and completely blew their elections in the final stretch (and Trump is doing an even better job of self-destructing now.)  But when we get somebody both smart and dangerous, that's when America gets screwed, big time.

Imagine Ted Cruz or Marco Rubio running on Trump's platform from the start, the whole “stopping mass immigration, providing American jobs to American workers, preserving America’s Christian heritage, and stopping the threat of Islam” thing Gest mentions in his article.

Now imagine them running in 2020.

That's why I want to run up the score this year, guys.  I want these guys done.

StupidiNews!

• Donald Trump is shaking up his campaign staff by adding Breitbart News chairman Steve Bannon and pollster Kellyanne Conway as chief executive and campaign manager respectively.
• The death toll in Louisiana's record flooding has reached 11 as at least 40,000 homes have been affected by torrential rains and rising waters since last week.
• North Korea's deputy ambassador in London has defected along with his family and is now in Seoul, South Korea according to news sources.
• Networking equipment giant Cisco Systems says it plans to cut 14,000 jobs worldwide as the company shifts focus from hardware to software.
• Ford say it plans to produce a completely self-driving car for the ride-sharing industry by the end of 2021, joining the race with BMW and Google.

Last Call For Voting Rights And Wrongs

As expected, NC GOP Gov. Pat McCrory is demanding that the Supreme Court immediately reinstate the unconstitutional "voting reform" law passed by Republicans to disenfranchise black and Latino voters.

North Carolina officials asked the U.S. Supreme Court on Monday to keep a voter identification requirement and 10 days of early voting for the November election, even after a lower appeals court ruled these changes illegally restricted voting by blacks.

Republican Gov. Pat McCrory said his lawyers and those for other officials, including some hired by GOP legislative leaders who championed the 2013 law, asked the court to delay enforcement of last month's ruling by the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. The delay would occur while attorneys draft an appeal for the justices to consider the inherent issues in the case more deeply. 

The ruling struck down the photo ID mandate and returned early voting to 17 days.
The attorneys wrote that altering the voter laws would create voter confusion weeks before the election inNorth Carolina, a presidential battleground state with races for governor and U.S. Senate also on the ballot. The voter ID requirement already was used in this year's primary elections. 

"North Carolina should not be forced to scramble mere months before the general election to rejigger settled election plans at the 4th Circuit's command," the state's attorneys wrote to Chief Justice John Roberts. Roberts receives such appeals for North Carolina matters. 

A three-judge panel of the 4th Circuit already refused to delay their July 29 ruling, which found the Republican-led General Assembly enacted the law with intentional discrimination in mind. The court ruled the changes targeted black voters more likely to support Democrats. 

McCrory has said the ruling is factually wrong and maligned the state, adding that requiring photo ID makes common sense and protects the integrity of elections at a time when people must show IDs all the time. 

"The 4th Circuit's ruling is just plain wrong and we cannot allow it to stand," McCrory said in a release.

So we'll see what the Supreme Court does.  Given the 4th Circuit's pretty substantial findings, especially given that the state's Republican party went out of their way to target black NC voters in particular with practices that would specifically limit their ability to vote, I can't see the Supreme Court saying "Hey, yeah, we need to keep those practices going until we can decide this."

Then again, all Chief Justice Roberts would need to do is say "It's too close to the election in order to make any changes" and punt, which is why McCrory waited several weeks in order to petition the court for an injunction.

How the court will proceed, I don't know.  We'll find out soon, I suspect.

Picking Up Where They Left Off

If you think House Republicans are going to accept a Clinton landslide as a mandate or even as a legitimate election result, you really haven't been paying attention to the last 20 years.

A pair of leading House Republicans on Monday laid out detailed instructions for the Justice Department to file perjury charges against Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton. 

More than a month after first requesting the department open a criminal probe into Clinton for alleged misstatements she made under oath, the GOP heads of the House Judiciary and Oversight committees told a federal prosecutor specifically where they believed Clinton had lied to Congress about her email setup at the Department of State.

In at least four separate occasions during a marathon appearance before the House Select Committee on Benghazi, the lawmakers alleged, the former secretary's claims were at odds with what the FBI has now discovered to be the truth about her private server. 

"Although there may be other aspects of Secretary Clinton’s sworn testimony that are at odds with the FBI’s findings, her testimony in those four areas bears specific scrutiny in light of the facts and evidence” provided by FBI Director James Comey, Reps. Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.) and Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) told the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, Channing Phillips. Goodlatte leads the Judiciary Committee and Chaffetz runs the Oversight Committee. 

Monday’s letter is a sign that Republicans are committed to pressuring the Justice Department to act against Clinton, even after it notably declined to prosecute her for mishandling classified information. 

The GOP chairmen also appear to be making a public case for an indictment, perhaps building off widespread unease with the decision not to prosecute the former first lady. In addition to their letter on Monday, the Oversight Committee also released a 2.5-minute video detailing apparent inaccuracies in Clinton’s testimony.

I'm not at all surprised to see Jason "Benghazi" Chaffetz behind this particular mess, and this little gambit doesn't depend on the increasingly volatile and desperate Donald Trump, either.   It does however depend on our press to actually take this farce seriously, and they probably will, at least until Trump blows up again.

This obnoxiously political move to win the election they're destined to lose by trying to indict their opposition's nominee is the kind of nonsense you'd expect from the Banana Republicans.  But it seems like it's the last card they have to play right now.

They must really, really be worried about losing the House as well as the Senate to try this stupidity.

Aetna Tu, Brute?

I mentioned last month that the Justice Department sued to block the massive health care mergers between Anthem and Cigna, and another between Aetna and Humana, which would have dropped the number of major health insurance providers in the country from five to just three (the other player being United Health).  The mergers would have been a disaster for consumers and competition and in areas of several states would have left Americans facing a monopoly in health insurance coverage.

Now we see Aetna's counterstroke: the insurer is suddenly planning to drop out of Obamacare health exchanges across the country.

Health insurer Aetna Inc. will stop selling individual Obamacare plans next year in 11 of the 15 states where it had been participating in the program, joining other major insurers who’ve pulled out of the government-run markets in the face of mounting losses.

It will exit markets including North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Florida, and keep selling plans in Iowa, Delaware, Nebraska and Virginia, Aetna said in a statement Monday. In most areas it’s exiting, Aetna will offer individual coverage outside of the program’s exchanges.

The decision by Aetna is the latest blow to President Barack Obama’s signature domestic policy law. While it has brought coverage to millions, the new markets have proven volatile for some of the largest for-profit insurers, and UnitedHealth Group Inc. and Humana Inc. are also pulling out, after posting hundreds of millions of dollars of their own losses. Aetna said earlier this year that it expects to lose $300 million on the plans.

Next year will be the law’s fourth of providing coverage under the new markets. Aetna’s decision doesn’t affect people covered by the company this year, but when they look for 2017 coverage, they’ll need to pick a new insurer. The decision raises the prospect that some consumers will only have one insurer to choose from when they buy 2017 coverage.

Aetna’s about-face on the ACA comes less than a month after the U.S. Justice Department sued to block the company’s $37 billion purchase of Humana. The DOJ says the combination would harm competition for private Medicare plans and for ACA health plans. Aetna has said its revised stance on the ACA wasn’t prompted by the suit.

“The vast majority of payers have experienced continued financial stress within their individual public exchange business,” Aetna Chief Executive Officer Mark Bertolini said in the statement. “Providing affordable, high-quality health care options to consumers is not possible without a balanced risk pool.”

Sure, the DoJ lawsuit had nothing to do with Aetna's decision to pull out. And if you believe that, I've got some insurance to sell you.  After all, the Bloomberg article does note that this is an about face for the company, because just three months ago, Aetna was salivating over stepping in to pick up new Obamacare customers and even wanting to expand its markets.

Health Insurer Aetna Inc on Wednesday said it plans to continue its Obamacare health insurance business next year in the 15 states where it now participates, and may expand to a few additional states.

"We have submitted rates in all 15 states where we are participating and have no plans at this point to withdraw from any of them," said company spokesman Walt Cherniak. But he noted that a final determination would hinge on binding agreements being signed with the states in September.

Again, this was May and Aetna was full steam ahead.  Then the DoJ antitrust lawsuit was filed in July, and now suddenly in August Aetna can't possibly continue in 11 of those 15 states because of "hundreds of millions in losses."

Oh, and by the way, three of the states Aetna is pulling out of?  Florida, Ohio, and Pennsylvania.

You do the math.  Charles Gaba has a lot more at his place.

StupidiNews!

• Airstrikes by Saudi coalition forces have hit a Doctors Without Borders hospital in Yemen, killing 11 and damaging the facility.
• Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett has imposed a curfew in the city to try to quell protests over the police shooting of a black robbery suspect over the weekend.
• The Pentagon has announced the transfer of fifteen inmates from Guantanamo prison to the UAE, the largest single transfer of prisoners from the facility so far.
• Pennsylvania Democratic AG Kathleen Kane has been found guilty on multiple counts related to leaking legal information in order to harm her predecessor, and then trying to cover it up.
• Federal prosecutors say automaker Volkswagen could now face criminal charges for its diesel emissions scandal and could be seeking a settlement.

Last Call For Through The Looking Glass

We're totally off the map where There Be Dragons on the American political front as we've now witnessed "America's Mayor", Rudi "A Noun, A Verb, And 9/11" Giuliani actually forget that 9/11 happened.

Speaking in Youngstown, Ohio ahead of Donald Trump, Rudy Giuliani, who was the mayor of New York City on 9/11, declared that Islamic extremists hadn't carried out any terror attacks on American soil before Barack Obama's presidency.

"Under those 8 years, before Obama came along, we didn't have any successful radical Islamic terrorist attack in the US," Giuliani told the crowd. "They all started when Clinton and Obama came into office."

It's not the first time Giuliani has made remarks that seemed to gloss over the terror attacks that left nearly 3,000 dead and that defined him in the eyes of many Americans. While suggesting in 2010 that Obama could stand to take some cues from George W. Bush, the former mayor claimed, "We had no domestic attacks under Bush."

We've finally reached the fact-free portion of the 2016 campaign where the scores don't matter and the points are just made up.

But for Rudy Giuliani, the man who was mayor of goddamn New York City when 9/11 happened, to willfully pitch the event from his mind in order to attack our current president?  That's just insanity. Calculated insanity, but insanity nonetheless.

Then again of course this was going to happen during this campaign.  We already have a majority of Trump voters believing Obama is a Muslim traitor anyway, so what the hell do facts and issues have to do with anything coming out of the GOP anymore?

The Long Rhode To Gunmerica

Kim Rhode is an Olympic legend that most of us haven't heard of, and last week in Rio she became the first woman in history to win medals in six consecutive Olympic summer games.  That's a massive accomplishment for sure, a testament to her skill and longevity in the world of sport.

The issue is that Rhode's sport is skeet shooting, and her views on gun control are not very accommodating to say the least.

US Olympic Gold Medal shooter Kim Rhode is wading into the gun control debate and defended the Second Amendment ahead of her competition in Brazil. 

"We should have the right to keep and bear arms, to protect ourselves and our family," the skeet shooter said in an interview Wednesday with Time Magazine in Rio de Janeiro. "The Second Amendment was put in there not just so we can go shoot skeet or go shoot trap. It was put in so we could defend our First Amendment, the freedom of speech, and also to defend ourselves against our own government."

It's weird to see any Olympic athlete admit that her sport should be used to kill people, but sure.

The California native said that she hopes to pass shooting along to her three-year-old son "when he becomes of age." 

"I started when I was like 7 or 8 years old, and it was something that was a big deal in my family, to gain that rite of passage," she said. 

The skeet shooter also criticized gun control measures that were passed in California following the December 2015 San Bernardino terror attack that left 14 dead.

And if you're wondering why Rhode sounds like a walking billboard for the NRA and the firearms industry, it's because she is one.

Yet if the best form of compensation is colored green, there’s no need to feel sorry for Rhode. On her webpage—“Kim Rhode, just a girl shooting guns and stuff”—she provides a list of sponsors that include a firearms retailer, a hunters’ conservation group, and manufacturers of guns, ammunition and gun-cleaning equipment. A wife and mother, she is her family’s primary breadwinner, she says. “Compared with other sports, we have a massive industry behind us,” says Rhode, a 37-year-old skeet shooter.

An estimated 20 million Americans hunt, and more yet compete at shooting ranges, so Olympic medalists can serve as compelling faces of the firearms industry. After winning a gold medal in London, Rhode made an appearance at a hunting trade show on behalf of a sponsor, Otis Technology, a maker of gun-cleaning kits based in Lyons Falls, N.Y. “The line stretched way down the hallway with people wanting her autograph,” says Heather Bennett, marketing manager for Otis, which also sponsors sharpshooting biathletes in the Winter Games. 

TruckVault, a maker of secure in-vehicle storage lockers, began sponsoring Rhode after she became a customer, following the theft of a shotgun from her vehicle. “Part of the responsibility of owning a gun is securing your weapons,” said Don Fenton, sales marketing director for TruckVault, based in Sedro-Woolley, Wash. He calls Rhode “a great young athlete deserving of manufacturers’ dollars.”

Safari Club International, a hunters’ conservation group based in Tucson, Ariz., sponsors Rhode and two other female U.S. Olympic shooters because it “strongly supports women in the shooting sports,” says Phil DeLone, chief executive officer, adding that the Olympians are a big hit at the organization’s annual convention.

So yeah, Kim Rhode is certainly one hell of an athlete, setting a record for consistency and skill that spans two decades and five continents, an achievement that definitely puts Usain Bolt's track accomplishments and Michael Phelps's mastery of the water in perspective.

Rhode also is paid very well by the gun industry for doing what she does.  It's one thing to pitch Nike or Gatorade or Wheaties as an Olympian.  It's another to sell guns.

The Con Man's Con Man

What makes Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort uniquely qualified to run the con job of a campaign that he's running today? Apparently, the answer is that Manafort is a master grifter who helped loot millions and buy elections in Ukraine at his previous job for Victor Yanukovich.

Handwritten ledgers show $12.7 million in undisclosed cash payments designated for Mr. Manafort from Mr. Yanukovych’s pro-Russian political party from 2007 to 2012, according to Ukraine’s newly formed National Anti-Corruption Bureau. Investigators assert that the disbursements were part of an illegal off-the-books system whose recipients also included election officials.

In addition, criminal prosecutors are investigating a group of offshore shell companies that helped members of Mr. Yanukovych’s inner circle finance their lavish lifestyles, including a palatial presidential residencewith a private zoo, golf course and tennis court. Among the hundreds of murky transactions these companies engaged in was an $18 million deal to sell Ukrainian cable television assets to a partnership put together by Mr. Manafort and a Russian oligarch, Oleg Deripaska, a close ally of President Vladimir V. Putin.

Mr. Manafort’s involvement with moneyed interests in Russia and Ukraine had previously come to light. But as American relationships there become a rising issue in the presidential campaign — from Mr. Trump’s favorable statements about Mr. Putin and his annexation of Crimea to the suspected Russian hacking of Democrats’ emails — an examination of Mr. Manafort’s activities offers new details of how he mixed politics and business out of public view and benefited from powerful interests now under scrutiny by the new government in Kiev.

Anti-corruption officials there say the payments earmarked for Mr. Manafort, previously unreported, are a focus of their investigation, though they have yet to determine if he actually received the cash. While Mr. Manafort is not a target in the separate inquiry of offshore activities, prosecutors say he must have realized the implications of his financial dealings.

“He understood what was happening in Ukraine,” said Vitaliy Kasko, a former senior official with the general prosecutor’s office in Kiev. “It would have to be clear to any reasonable person that the Yanukovych clan, when it came to power, was engaged in corruption.”

Mr. Kasko added, “It’s impossible to imagine a person would look at this and think, ‘Everything is all right.’”

Paul Manafort definitely has a history of helping pro-Putin dictators win elections by cleaning up their messes and influencing the vote and apparently he was paid very handsomely to do it, far more than was previously reported.

Now he's helping Donald Trump, who loves him some Vlad the Dudesplainer.  In other words, the guy screaming about rigged elections has a campaign manager that rigs elections.

So where's the $12 million, Paul? And how much are you taking from Putin now?  Suddenly several news outlets are focusing on Manafort and with good reason.  Supposedly more stories on Trump's campaign manager and his dealings with Putin are on the way, folks.

Buckle up.  It's about to get nasty.

StupidiNews!

• Several thousand residents of Clearlake, California have been evacuated out of the path of a massive wildfire that has scorched 3,000 acres.
• No evidence of shots fired in Terminal 8 of JFK Airport has been found after reports of gunfire Sunday night interrupted air traffic for hours.
• Jamaica's Usain Bolt won the100m dash in Rio Sunday as he opened his unprecedented bid to win the 100m, 200m, and 4x100m relay golds in three consecutive Olympics.
• An attack by Ugandan-based Islamic rebels in the city of North Kivu in the Democratic Republic of Congo has killed at least 36, according to government media.
• Commercial space company SpaceX has now completed water landings of its Falcon 9 rocket four out of five times in the last year.

Last Call For Blue Bayou

Meanwhile, Louisiana is suffering from some of the worst flooding the state has seen since Katrina, with the Baton Rouge area along I-10 and I-12 the hardest hit.

Rescue efforts intensified Sunday as historic rain that paralyzed much of southeastern Louisiana eased while floodwaters continued to bring havoc to the battered region.

State Police helicopters delivered food and water to hundreds of motorists stuck for more than 24 hours in flooding near Baton Rouge. More than 7,000 people — and 500 pets — were rescued from homes, businesses and cars overwhelmed by the unrelenting waters, Gov. John Bel Edwards said. He said the death toll from flooding remained at three, with one person missing.

Parts of the area have been blasted by up to 25 inches of rain since Friday. The weather improved Sunday, but Edwards warned that flooding issues will continue for days.

"This is a serious event, ongoing," Edwards said at a Sunday news conference. "It's not over."

The Amite and Comite rivers were among those hit with record flooding. Jeff Gaschel, a hydrologist for the National Weather Service, said some areas of the Amite River won't crest until Monday. He said the area had similar rainfall amounts in 2001, but over a longer period of time.

Gov. Edwards himself had to evacuate the governor's mansion due to record flooding.  Expect to see more extreme, record-setting weather events like this as climate change magnifies the effects of storms and temperature.

The Coming Av-Hill-Lanche, Con't

Trump's corrosive rhetoric is starting to do permanent damage to his chances to win in November, as yet another set of swing state polls, this time from CBS, show he continues to be in dire odds of getting swamped.

Hillary Clinton has extended her lead in Florida and is now up five points over Donald Trump, 45 percent to 40 percent; she led by three points in June.

And Clinton now has a dominant nine-point lead in New Hampshire, 45 percent to 36 percent, a lead that has her threatening to take that battleground state off the board entirely, just as last week, a double-digit lead in Virginia made that state look like anything but a toss-up.

In Georgia - usually a Republican state not typically considered a battleground - Trump leads 45-41 but Clinton has things closer than in most presidential races, down just four points.

New Hampshire, just like Virginia, Pennsylvania and Colorado, is looking increasingly out of reach for Trump.  North Carolina, Ohio, and Florida are all moving into the Clinton solid lead column. Georgia, Arizona, and South Carolina are moving into play.  These are all states that Trump nees to win, and Clinton is starting to look like she's going to run the table.

But here's what I mean about "permanent damage" to Trump's chances:

Among women in New Hampshire, zero percent of those not with him are an affirmative "yes" and a scant nine percent say "maybe" they'd consider him going forward. Ninety-one percent say they never would.

And it also highlights the kinds of trouble he's had among voters of his own party: he's at 78 percent support among Republicans, compared to Clinton's 93 percent of Democrats.

Trump has lost women, and I'm betting he's lost black voters, Hispanic voters, and Asian voters as well.  People are not coming back to give him a second look, and that means there's not much more he can do to shift the numbers in his favor, even with 85 days left to go.

Trump hasn't made any headway since June in allaying the concerns of Florida voters who were put off by his campaign. Back in June half of them said watching the Trump campaign scared them, and those numbers are effectively the same today. The number of voters not with Trump who'd consider him has also slipped, from 16 percent in June to 10 percent now.

The movement in Florida, such as it is, has come from Clinton pulling in those previously undecided. Although she does get a few more Republicans now than Trump does Democrats, both of their support bases have remained largely locked in, and it remains a campaign in which voters feel they don't have a lot of choice. That may in turn explain why there have been so few outright swing voters.

In Florida, one-third feel they're choosing a candidate despite not liking either one, and just two percent feel they have two good choices between Trump and Clinton. In New Hampshire, that number is just one percent.

And in a year that's already provided so many counterintuitive findings, here we find that authenticity - often believed to be a valued attribute for a candidate - doesn't always correspond with who is ahead. Seven in ten voters feel Trump is showing who he really is on the campaign trail, but he is trailing. A majority feel Hillary Clinton isn't showing who she really is, but she's leading nonetheless.

Clinton's lead is starting to get locked in, guys.  It also means that the Clinton campaign's efforts to get out the vote have to be top notch in order to keep people motivated to get out and vote in November.

I still believe this is going to be one of the lowest presidential election turnouts in a long time.  The most recent nadir was 49% in 1996, just below the 50.3% in 2000 that ended up in front of the Supreme Court.  I think we'll be in the upper 40's at best and maybe less than 45%, which is why I have a pretty bad feeling about the the Dems taking back the House and Senate and Congress remaining in GOP hands.

But...who knows?  I could be wrong.  Maybe Trump's awfulness will get people to come out and vote against him -- and the GOP -- like they did in 2008.  If that's the case, the Trump campaign may hit a critical mass and implode, taking Republicans this year along with it.

We'll see.

Black Lives Still Matter

Another shooting by police, this time of an armed black man suspected of robbery in Milwaukee, that led to a crowd gathering in protest and violence.

A standoff between police and an angry crowd turned violent Saturday night in the hours after a Milwaukee police officer shot and killed an armed suspect during a foot chase on the city's north side.

After an hours-long confrontation with officers, police reported at 10:15 p.m. that a gas station at N. Sherman Blvd. and W. Burleigh St. was set on fire. Police said firefighters could not for a time get close to the blaze because of gunshots.

Later, fires were started at businesses — including a BMO Harris Bank branch, a beauty supply company and O'Reilly Auto Parts stores — near N. 35th and W. Burleigh streets, a grim and emphatic Mayor Tom Barrett said. He spoke at a midnight news conference at the District 3 police station at N. 49th St. and W. Lisbon Ave. 

He and Common Council President Ashanti Hamilton pleaded with the public for calm. Barrett promised a strong police presence in coming days.

The mayor said some involved in the disturbances took to social media early in the evening to encourage others to come out and participate in trouble-making. He said many of them were young people, and he urged parents to keep tight reins on their children to avoid a repeat of Saturday night.

"Our police officers are doing everything they can to restore order," he said. But he said everyone needed to help restore calm.

"If you love your son, if you love your daughter, text them, call them, pull them by their ears, get them home."

The mayor said police had "shown an amazing amount of restraint" Saturday evening.

Hamilton said, "Our city is in turmoil tonight." He promised a full and open investigation into the the police-involved shooting.

"When we get information, we are going to share it with the public, please allow the process to work," he said.

First, it's weird how even in situations where police are dealing with armed white suspects that they are "captured" or "taken alive" but black ones are killed far more often.

Second, what would lack of restraint look like by the Milwaukee PD? Killing suspects before they could be tried or something? Rolling tanks down the streets? How is this in any way restraint by the police?

Third, Milwaukee is arguably the most segregated large city in America and has been for years. That directly affects the makeup of the Milwaukee PD, the conditions of income equality in the city, everything. Some 40% of Milwaukee residents are black, and the overwhelming majority live on the city's north side.  This was apparent even back in 1999 when I was in town for GenCon and my friends and I drove north to Appleton to meet our old pal from high school.  We went through that part of town and my friends were pretty stunned at what they saw.  Nothing much has changed since.

Black Lives Still Matter, guys.  Police reform is still needed, badly.