Last Call For That Domestic Terror Problem Of Ours

Meanwhile, in Texas, here's a domestic terrorism story that nobody cared about because when a white guy is charged with trying to blow up a building, none dare call it terrorism.

A Houston man is set appear before a federal magistrate Monday afternoon on charges he participated in a bomb plot, trying to transport deadly explosives, according to a news release from U.S. Attorney Kenneth Magidson. 

Cary Lee Ogborn, 50, was arrested late Friday after retrieving a package he thought contained explosives powerful enough to maim or kill people or destroy buildings. 

In 2013, Ogborn pleaded guilty in Harris County to knowingly possessing illegal metal knuckles and served a 30-day jail sentence. That same year he pleaded guilty and served time in Montgomery County for illegal possession of a firearm. Ogborn has a prior convictions from 2004 for driving with a suspended license in 2004 and committing insurance fraud, lying about a stolen car, in 1996. He served time for 1989 convictions for auto theft, and possession of cocaine and marijuana. 

Investigators believe Ogborn tried to order the explosive materials online from an illegal weapons marketplace through an encrypted network, that rendered his IP address undetectable and made him anonymous. He sent a private message to a vendor on this network in August saying he intended to use the materials to blow up a building. It turned out the vendor was an undercover FBI agent, according to court documents.

If Cary Lee Ogborn was a brown-skinned Muslim from Pakistan, this would be national news and we'd be talking about TERROR CELL IN TEXAS.  If he was black, we'd be breathlessly asking about his connections to Black Lives Matter and why black culture is responsible for his long criminal past.  If he was from Mexico, we'd be screaming about border security and La Raza and the failure of ICE, and probably Operation Fast & Furious to boot.

But because Cary Lee Ogborn is a 50-year-old white guy who plotted to blow up a building, he gets a few paragraphs in the Houston Chronicle and nobody cares to ask "Where was he radicalized?" or questions about his religion or his international travel or if Houston police should be racially profiling middle-aged white men.  Nobody is on CNN or FOX or MSNBC asking if Christianity is really just a terrorist ideology masquerading as religion and if it should actually receive any First Amendment protections as a result, or whether we should just accepting Christians at all in this country, and maybe deport all the Christians we already have here just to be safe.

Nobody.

Here endeth the lesson.

The Gunmerican Way

New figures from Harvard show that the concentration of firearms ownership in America is shocking. Only 3% of Americans account for a whopping 50% of firearms ownership, with on average 17 firearms a piece.  That's more than 130 million firearms.

The survey's findings support other research showing that asoverall rates of gun ownership has declined, the number of firearms in circulation has skyrocketed. The implication is that there are more guns in fewer hands than ever before. The top 3 percent of American adults own, on average, 17 guns apiece, according to the survey's estimates. 

The survey is particularly useful to researchers because it asked respondents not just whether they own guns, but how many and what types of guns they own. This makes for one of the clearest pictures yet of American gun ownership, showing the concentration of most guns in the hands of a small fraction of American adults.

The study found that 22 percent of American adults say they personally own a firearm. This is lower than the percentages reported in some other recent surveys, such as those by the Pew Research Center (31 percent) and Gallup (28 percent). 

Based on the percentage of people owning guns and the number of guns that respondents reported owning, the survey estimates that 265 million guns are in circulation, or more than one for every adult. This is lower than other estimates, which put the number of guns in circulation at 300 million or more. 

Gun rights advocates are often skeptical of gun-ownership surveys, saying that many owners may not disclose the presence of guns to a stranger over the phone or in person. Survey researchers have generally found little evidence to support this claim. The Harvard-Northeastern survey was conducted anonymously via an online panel. The researchers told the Guardian newspaper that they did not receive any pushback from respondents about the questions, leading them to be confident in the results. 

The finding that the overwhelming majority of firearms are owned by a small number of adults isn't particularly surprising. Similar patterns of concentration are seen with many other consumer goods and services, from alcohol to health care. The researchers who conducted the study say that most gun owners cite a need for protection from other people as a primary reason to own guns. 

"When I look at our survey, what I see is a population that is living in fear," Deb Azrael, a Harvard researcher and one of the study's lead authors, told the nonprofit news organization the Trace. "They are buying handguns to protect themselves against bad guys, they store their guns ready-to-use because of bad guys, and they believe that their guns make them safer."

It's these folks who are the NRA nutjobs making any sort of gun safety legislation impossible.  We're literally being held hostage by 3% of America's population when it comes to guns and common sense in America.

It's time to put that to an end.  I can understand owning one or two firearms for protection, I grew up in small-town NC, you have that right. But seventeen?  That's insane and dangerous, and we should have better laws than that.  You don't need 17 guns any more than I need 17 laptop PCs or 17 televisions, you know?

That's just ridiculous.

The Bridge Too Far, Con't

Meanwhile the other big story in New Jersey this week is the start of the Bridgegate trial, where both the defense and prosecution agree that GOP Gov. Chris Christie is the central figure as the man behind the scheme to punish Democrats in the state by closing lanes on the George Washington Bridge.

Bill Baroni, 44, was Christie’s top appointee at the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which owns and operates the world’s busiest bridge. He is on trial alongside Bridget Anne Kelly, 44, Christie’s former deputy chief of staff.

The pair are accused of creating gridlock in Fort Lee over five mornings in September 2013 to punish the town’s mayor, a Democrat, for not endorsing the Republican governor’s reelection bid. They are charged with misusing federally funded property, wire fraud and depriving residents of their constitutional right to travel freely in the town. They face the possibility of years in jail and fines totaling hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Not only was Christie told of the lane closures in the midst of gridlock on the Fort Lee side of the bridge, lawyers said during opening statements, he was so entrenched in the politics and activities of the Port Authority that he conferred considerable powers on an old schoolmate. That person, David Wildstein, who was named to an influential post at the agency by Christie, is expected to be the trial’s star witness after he negotiated a plea deal with federal prosecutors.

“When David Wildstein spoke, Governor Christie’s voice came out and everybody knew it,” said Michael Baldassare, Baroni’s attorney. He added that evidence in the trial will show that Wildstein “looks like a ventriloquist doll sitting on Christopher J. Christie’s lap.”

Assistant U.S. Attorney Vikas Khanna contradicted Christie’s repeated public statements that he knew nothing about the lane closures until months after they were found to have been politically motivated.

Christie did not respond to questions about the trial at a town hall meeting on education funding in Whippany on Monday.

Khanna said that Wildstein and Baroni boasted about the traffic problems to Christie three days into the week-long closures at a Sept. 11 memorial ceremony at the World Trade Center in 2013, celebrating the fact that they were ignoring pleas for help from Fort Lee Mayor Mark Sokolich.

“The evidence will show that Baroni and Wildstein were so committed to their plan to punish Mayor Sokolich during those few minutes they had alone with the governor they bragged about the fact there were traffic problems in Fort Lee and Mayor Sokolich was not getting his calls returned,” Khanna said.

Bridgegate would have been the end of Christie's presidential aspirations anyway, even if he somehow had beaten Trump in the primaries.  It's just that closing lanes on a bridge to punish a city for a week is so cartoonishly corrupt, petty, and vindictive that I can't honestly believe we're in the trial phase of this already.  But apparently we have plenty of evidence to prosecute and a star witness, and as the trial begins, Chris Christie's political career looks to be coming to an end.

Couldn't have happened to a nicer friggin guy.

StupidiNews!

• The suspect in this weekend's bombing attacks in New York and New Jersey was captured after a shootout with police, Ahmad Khan Rahami is currently being held on charges of attempted murder.
• Charlotte's city council will not repeal a city ordnance protecting the rights of LGBTQ citizens as embattled NC GOP Gov. Pat McCrory wanted in order to start repeal of the state's HB2 law.
• President Obama will address the UN General Assembly today as the organization has suspended aid convoys in Syria after an airstrike hit a convoy, killing at least 12.
• Billionaire George Soros says he will pledge $500 million to help global refugees as the world faces its worst displacement crisis since WWII.
• Automaker General Motors says it will get power from 100% renewable sources in all of its facilities by 2050.

Last Call For North Carolina Goes Down The Crapper, Con't

It looks like NC GOP Gov. Pat McCrory is crumbling on the state's bigots in the bathroom bill, with the NBA and NCAA pulling events and the state having lost $100 million in business from boycotts, cancellations and protests.  His new strategy remains his initial one: blame Charlotte's LBGTQ city ordinance protecting equality for the mess and demanding its repeal.

Gov. Pat McCrory could call lawmakers into session as soon as next week to repeal House Bill 2 – but only if the Charlotte City Council first drops the ordinance that prompted it, his office confirmed Friday. 

The North Carolina Restaurant & Lodging Association has been working to broker a compromise to stop the economic damage from HB2, which this week included the loss of major NCAA and Atlantic Coast Conference sporting events. 

Losing the games is expected to cause an economic loss of tens of millions of dollars.
“Our industry and the hospitality industry at large has been collateral damage in this,” said Lynn Minges, president and CEO of the restaurant group. “It’s obviously been impacting our businesses and employees. We’ve chosen to have a seat at the table rather than have an adversarial role.” 

A McCrory spokesman said the governor is willing to call lawmakers back. 

“For the last nine months, the governor has consistently said state legislation is only needed if the Charlotte ordinance remains in place,” said spokesman Josh Ellis. “If the Charlotte City Council totally repeals the ordinance and then we can confirm there is support to repeal among the majority of state lawmakers … the governor will call a special session. 

“It is the governor’s understanding that legislative leaders ... agree with that assessment.” 

But repealing the Charlotte ordinance, which broadened LGBT protections before it was nullified by HB2, would meet resistance. One gay rights spokeswoman Friday called the proposed compromise “the same cheap trick” lawmakers have floated before. It’s unclear whether the council would have the votes to repeal its ordinance. 

It’s also unclear whether businesses would return to North Carolina if the compromise involved Charlotte giving up legal protections for gay, lesbian and transgender individuals. And a deal might not end the legal challenges.

So we're back to where we were when the Charlotte city ordinance was passed: McCrory will end the bill as long as Charlotte makes it legal again to fire people for being gay, and it only cost the state $100 million.

Hopefully it will cost McCrory the election, too.

Read more here: http://www.newsobserver.com/news/politics-government/state-politics/article102251942.html#storylink=cpy

The GOP Conserva-schism Is In Full Effect

What the attacks in NY and NJ conveniently took out of the news for Trump is the fact that Ohio GOP Gov. John Kasich (who ran against Trump and lost miserably in the primaries) has now openly declared war this weekend on his party's own candidate for president.

Ohio Gov. John Kasich's war with the national Republican Party exploded into the open Sunday night, when his top adviser thrashed GOP leader Reince Priebus and hinted that the presidential election may be out of reach for Donald Trump. 

The statement, issued on official campaign letterhead, followed remarks by Priebus earlier Sunday suggesting the party might block the Ohio governor from running for president again because he has refused to support Trump.

"Thankfully, there are still leaders in this country who put principles before politics," said John Weaver, Kasich's adviser, adding, "The idea of a greater purpose beyond oneself may be alien to political party bosses like Reince Priebus, but it is at the center of everything Governor Kasich does." 

Weaver derided Priebus as "a Kenosha political operative," referring to Priebus's Wisconsin home, and said the three-term Republican National Committee leader should be thanking Kasich for "an inclusive, conservative vision that can actually win a national election."

"The Governor is traveling the nation supporting down ballot Republicans and preventing a potential national wipeout from occurring on Reince's watch," Weaver said. 

Kasich's statement was a stunning act of open hostility between the national Republican Party and the governor in perhaps the most crucial swing state — and at a sensitive moment in the election. Trump has risen in national polls and inched closer to Hillary Clinton in swing states. He's even passed her in Ohio, perhaps his strongest chance to capture a state that Mitt Romney lost in 2012. 

RNC spokesman Sean Spicer shrugged off the Kasich camp's statement. "We are totally focused on winning back the White House and maintaining our majorities in the House and Senate," Spicer said.

Ohio remains a 100% must-win for Trump as it does for any Republican running for the White House, so for the sitting Republican governor of the state to hint that Trump cannot win is pretty much open combat on the field.  Kasich is pretty sore that he lost a primary to a clown, and I freely grant that Kasich would have been a much tougher opponent for Hillary to take on (although five minutes of press coverage on his balanced budget amendment would have ended his presidential run once America figured out it means massive, across-the-board cuts to Medicare and Social Security on top of everything else).

Still, to see this fight openly happening is amazing, and a reminder to all that the Republican party will not survive this election in its current form.  Pointing fingers seven weeks before election day over whose fault the impending loss is doesn't exactly have me looking for the Trump upset, even if he does win Ohio.

If he doesn't win Ohio, Clinton is your next president.

Disarming An Improvised Election Device

Even I have to admit at this point that given the events this weekend that it will be very difficult to focus voter attention on anything other than Warren Terrah from now until November.  Clinton's "Basket of Deplorables" rhetoric, while true, can now be dismissed by simply saying "the definition of deplorable is leaving a backpack of explosive devices near a New Jersey train station or stabbing multiple people in a Minnesota mall."

An explosion that injured 29 people when it rocked a crowded Manhattan neighborhood Saturday night has been determined to be an "intentional act," and New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo said it was clearly "an act of terrorism." 

The explosion, on West 23rd Street between Sixth and Seventh avenues in the Chelsea neighborhood, was reported around 8:30 p.m. Twenty-nine people were hospitalized with injuries, but they had all been released by Sunday afternoon, authorities said. 

"A bomb exploding in New York is obviously an act of terrorism," Cuomo said Sunday morning.

And that would be correct as well.

Less than three hours after the blast, an object police described as a "possible secondary device" was found just a few blocks away from the original explosion on 27th Street while officers were combing the area. Cuomo said the device was "similar in design" to the one that detonated just blocks away. 

Authorities studying surveillance video on Sunday from both areas may have identified the same man at each location, law enforcement sources told NBC New York.

Authorities are now looking for that man, Ahmad Khan Rahami  as a suspect.

As much as it would be morally correct to continue to pursue the angle that tens of millions of Trump supporters are enabling racism, homophobia, misogyny and especially Islamophobia today, the reality is that politically it's suicidal and Clinton will be flayed alive in the press if she continues to bring that up.

As many times as I have said the real issue in this election are the people willing to accept Trump's awful rhetoric in order to "Trump That Bitch!" the vagaries of politics dictate how a political campaign has to be run, and it's time to retire the Basket for now.

Because now, the FBI has a job to do.  Coming after the 15th anniversary of 9/11 and seven weeks before a presidential election, maybe this was inevitable.  What I do know is that the calculus of this election may have changed dramatically this weekend, and what a month ago was looking like a solid Clinton win is now looking like a perfect opportunity for America's darker impulses to elect an actual fascist to "protect" us.

We'll see how things shake out, but the debates just got a whole hell of a lot more important, the first of which is next week.  For now, the numbers still show Hillary Clinton will be our next president, and that Donald Trump is once again calling for national racial profiling and mass deportations this morning, proving that the best advocate for a Clinton presidency is Trump's own words.

We soldier on.

StupidiNews!

• After two explosions over the weekend in the New York/New Jersey area, the FBI says a backpack full of suspicious devices was found and detonated safely in Elizabeth, NJ, nobody was injured.
• FX's "The People v. OJ Simpson" was the big winner at last night's Emmy Awards with five, but HBO's "Game of Thrones" garnered three to become the most awarded series in Emmy history at 38.
•  The UN says two aid convoys bound for Aleppo were never safely able to enter the city to supply nearly 200,000 people as a week-long Syrian cease fire has now ended with no plans to extend it.
• German Chancellor Angela Merkel's party was crushed in Berlin voting over the weekend, the Christian Democratic Union suffered its worst local defeat in the German capital since WW II.
• SpaceX and Tesla founder Elon Musk says humanity should look beyond Mars to colonize other planets and moons in our solar system.

Last Call For The Deplorable Election

In Florida, the people keeping Donald Trump close in the most important swing state prize are white suburban voters like the folks of Pasco County north of Tampa.  Given years of a Republican governor and GOP supermajority in the state legislature in Jacksonville, they blame Obama for their considerable problems and will take Donald Trump in a heartbeat if it means destroying Hillary Clinton and a legacy of those people having real political power previously only reserved for a country of white, male presidents.

Southwest Pasco County looks tailor-made for Trump: 90 percent white, nearly 90 percent without college degrees, median household income of about $34,000. Also, widespread anxiety over crime and a deteriorating quality of life.

In the 1970s, this was a blue-collar retirement mecca that attracted Northeasterners who could buy a comfortable two-bedroom ranch with attached garage for $10,000. Many of these same homes sold for more than $140,000 during the peak of the housing bubble in 2006, only to see their values plummet to less than $50,000 today.

The numbers help explain how Trump is defying the conventional political wisdom that Florida's fast-changing demographics will make the state a steep climb for a Republican nominee so weak among minority voters.

That conventional wisdom also may underestimate Clinton's unpopularity based on conversations inside the VFW post, outside the Walmart and inside Jimmy's Restaurant.

"She should be in jail, and you or me would be if we did what she did with those emails," said Dorothy Jay of Holiday over lunch at Jimmy's with her husband. "At least Trump is not going to be taking payoffs from people wanting something."

"I don't trust her, and we don't need another four years of Obama," said Alan Jay, who moved with his wife to the area from Long Island in 1994. "Trump's problem is that he has diarrhea of the mouth. He speaks before he thinks, but what comes out of his mouth is honest."

Republican pollster Wes Anderson, who works for the Rebuilding America Now super PAC helping Trump, said Clinton has at least as much to do with Trump's strength in Florida as Trump.

"Everyone talks about Trump's negatives, and we kind of miss the point that Hillary Clinton has just as strong negatives as he does — and in some ways hers are more telling," Anderson said. "This is a change election, and she is anything but that. Whether she likes it or not, she wears the mantle of the political establishment. ... That is actually what's happening in Florida."

Even as Clinton dramatically outspends Trump on TV ads in Florida and builds a more robust voter-turnout operation, the candidates are virtually tied. The average of recent Florida polls compiled by RealClearPolitics.com on Friday had Trump with 45.1 percent support and Clinton with 44.4 percent.

"The assumption is it's because Trump is running up the score in the markets where Republicans have to run up the score when they win Florida," said Anderson. "I think that's only half of the story. There are lots of places where she is underperforming, and I do think it's going to come down to Tampa and Orlando."

The I-4 corridor in the center of the state connecting Tampa to Orlando to Daytona Beach will most likely decide Florida, and Florida is by far the largest swing state up for grabs in November.  As Cincinnati is to Ohio, Tampa and Orlando are to Florida, the place where voters will decide the presidency.  Donald Trump is counting on Pasco County to turn out heavily for him.

The question is can Clinton mobilize her voters?  Barack Obama showed the way in 2008 and 2012.  Will Clinton do the same to counter the rage Trump voters have to punish and shatter the Obama coalition?

I hope so.

Unlikely Voter Models

The only thing more ridiculous than the LA Times and its "likely voter model" presidential tracking poll is the irresponsible reporting of the anti-Clinton NY Post about it.

Donald Trump is gaining support among African-American voters — whose enthusiasm for Hillary Clinton is eroding, a tracking poll released Saturday revealed.

Trump saw a 16.5 percentage-point increase in backing from African-American voters in a Los Angeles Times/University of Southern California tracking poll, up from 3.1 percent on Sept. 10 to 19.6 percent through Friday.

Meanwhile, the same poll showed Clinton’s support among that group plummeting from 90.4 percent on Sept. 10 to 71.4 percent.

Clinton’s nearly 20-point crash began Sunday, said Dan Schnur of USC. Sunday was the day Clinton was recorded collapsing while entering a Secret Service van at a 9/11 event.

The survey, which spanned through Friday, included the days in which Trump reignited the divisive “birther” issue — which critics contend is a thinly veiled attempt to undermine the legitimacy of the country’s first black president.

Late Wednesday, Trump had refused to acknowledge that President Obama was born in the United States, demurring on the topic in a Washington Post interview published the next day.

But at a bizarre press conference at Trump International, his new ­hotel in Washington, DC, on Friday, the tycoon conceded, “President Barack Obama was born in the United States, period.”

For the week, the poll found a 6-point rise for Trump. The Republican is now at 47.2 percent of the vote to Clinton’s 41.2 percent.

Nobody on earth believes Trump is up six points nationally, let alone that he's getting 20% of black voters.  Nobody.  The poll also shows Trump with an 8-point lead among millennials, 6 points among voters 35-64, and 6 points among seniors.

If you for a second think Donald Trump is doing better among voters under 35 than with voters over 65, I have some beachfront property on the moon to sell you.

On top of all that, Trump is doing better with Asian voters than Clinton by 7 points, according to the LA Times.

It's ludicrous, the poll is off by 8-12 points, and yet the NY Post is running with it as gospel.

Our media is broken.

Sunday Long Read: Bored Walk Empire

This week's Sunday Long Read is Book of Numbers author Joshua Cohen's case that as he looks back at growing up in New Jersey, the forces most responsible for the downfall of Atlantic City are people you, as ZVTS readers, might have heard of in passing: one Chris Christie and one Donald J. Trump.

I FIRST NOTICED THIS SEA CHANGE LAST FALL, when a certain type of red-faced, overweight, whatcha-gonna-do-about-it New Jersey/New York male commandeered our national politics. Both Donald Trump and Chris Christie were talked about in my family constantly—Trump since before I was even in utero, and Christie since George W. Bush appointed him US Attorney for New Jersey in 2001, and especially since he became governor in 2010. But it was only after suffering through their schoolyard-bully penis-contests during the 2016 Republican primaries that I began to recognize how similar they were, how alike in personality and in unctuous, disingenuous style. If I hadn’t detected their toxic resemblance before, it was only because they’d been menacing different playgrounds: Trump having always been nominally private sector, brandishing the better, or just more recognizable, brand; Christie having always been nominally public sector, an elected official who must be held to higher standards. The ongoing SEC and Congressional and New Jersey State investigations into Christie’s alleged misappropriation of Port Authority monies, his allegedly having made federal emergency relief funds available to Jersey cities affected by Hurricane Sandy contingent on city-government support of unrelated state-government initiatives, and, finally, his allegedly having ordered the George Washington Bridge closed as an act of political retaliation against the mayor of Fort Lee—and so snarling a major artery from Manhattan—will likely continue beyond the conclusion of his term in 2018. Jersey’s governor has always been such an unmitigated prick that what stunned me most last spring wasn’t Trump’s emergence as the GOP frontrunner, but Christie’s dutiful dropping-out and endorsing him—his assuming a role, even after Trump passed him over for VP, halfway between that of a catamite-butler and henchman-capo, the butt of Trump’s insulting fat jokes and the fetcher of his milkshakes and fries.

The Republican primary debates marked the televised degeneration of their friendship—or whatever a friendship can mean in politics—which began only in 2002, when Trump’s sister, Maryanne Trump Barry, then a Philadelphia-based judge on the US Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, nominated to that position by Bill Clinton, introduced her brother to the governor. The Christies were invited to Trump’s third wedding, to Melania; the Trumps were invited to Christie’s first inauguration. A year into Christie’s first term, and six years after the State of New Jersey had started to pursue collection of the almost $30 million in back taxes owed by Trump’s casinos, the State suddenly reversed course and settled for $5 million. Trump contributed an exceedingly modest share of the money he saved to the restoration of New Jersey’s historic gubernatorial residence, Drumthwacket. New Jersey’s near-miraculous tax-forgiveness must be understood in the same way as its governor’s near-miraculous abjection: neither are demonstrations of Trump’s master outmaneuvering, but rather of Christie’s cravenness. Christie will do anything to win, or be on the winning team. If he can’t be President, or VP, he’ll plump for chief of staff, or attorney general, or even just settle for a monogrammed-T swag bag with a Trump hat, Trump steaks, Trump wine. Christie’s not only inept, he’s also running out of options: there isn’t much of his party left to knock around. Politics (budget meetings in the State House in Trenton) used to be distinct from entertainment (The Celebrity Apprentice in syndication), but no more. Christie seems jealous of Trump, not just of his financial success or his nomination, but of how well and recklessly Trump, as a former/current reality TV star, can lie. Christie has always just ignored, withheld, or fastidiously obfuscated. Trump, by contrast, can’t afford not to be blatant or audacious in his untruths, so as to keep earning free airtime from the cable networks and radio stations whose ratings and ad revenues increase—blatantly, audaciously—in correspondence.

To me, Trump was always a blusterer, a conniver, a mouth: a cotton-candy-haired clown who crashed the AC party late and left it early and ugly. To my parents and their cadre, the Republican nominee was a more malevolent breed of fraud: a dishonest client and dysfunctional boss. I spent my first weekend in AC convincing my parents to introduce me, or reintroduce me, to their casino friends, acquaintances, and colleagues, and spent my first week explaining my presence to many concerned and baffled adults, to people who didn’t recognize me from childhood, to people I didn’t recognize from childhood, and to strangers and all and sundry who’d make the time to talk Trump with me. The word I heard most often in reference to the GOP candidate—from Steven Perskie, the former New Jersey assemblyman and state senator whose original gaming referendum brought casinos to AC in 1976; from Nelson Johnson, the New Jersey superior court judge who wrote the book version of Boardwalk Empire; from Mayor Don Guardian, one of the few AC mayors in my lifetime not to have been charged with corruption; from Ibrahim Abdali and his cousin who’d only identify himself as Mohammed, Afghan refugees who sell pipes and bongs and martial arts weaponry on the Boardwalk—the word I heard most often was failure.

Every Trump account I was given in AC described a man so extraordinarily bad at business, or at being anything besides a business-celebrity, that he was forced to switch from building casinos to branding casinos with his name, that polysemous pentagrammaton he charged his partners to use and then sued them to remove once the decaying properties became a liability. In the 1980s and ’90s, the casinos with which Trump was associated comprised between a third and a quarter of AC’s gaming industry. The Playboy Hotel and Casino, which was founded in ’81, became the Atlantis in ’84, and went bankrupt in ’85, was acquired by Trump in ’89 and renamed The Trump Regency; he renamed it again as Trump’s World’s Fair in ’96, and it was closed in ’99 and demolished in 2000. Trump Castle, built in cooperation with Hilton in ’85, was rebranded as Trump Marina in ’97, sold at a loss to Landry’s Inc. in 2011, and is now operated by Landry’s as the Golden Nugget. Trump Plaza, built in cooperation with Harrah’s in ’84, went bankrupt and shuttered in 2014 and now just rots.

And then there’s the Trump Taj Mahal, which Trump built with the help of Resorts International in 1990 on financial footings so shaky and negligent that by the end of the decade he’d racked up more than $3.4 billion in debt, including business (mostly high-interest junk-bond) and personal debt which he handled by conflating them. By lumping them together under the auspices of a publicly traded company, Trump Hotels & Casino Resorts, he dumped all his burdens onto the backs of his shareholders even as he continued to treat his casino receipts as profits, to be raided and reinvested in development in New York. Even while Trump Hotels and Casino Resorts bled an average of $49 million a year into the late ’90s, even while its share price plummeted from $35 to $0.17 through the early 2000s, Trump himself continued to receive a salary in the millions, not to mention bonuses and the monies his personally held companies made from his publicly traded company leasing office space in Manhattan’s Trump Tower and renting Trump Shuttle helicopters and Trump Airlines airplanes to fly around showroom-acts and high-rollers. Trump Hotels & Casino Resorts finally went bankrupt in 2004, and in its restructuring became Trump Entertainment Resorts, which itself went bankrupt in 2014 and was fire-sold to Icahn Enterprises, whose subsidiary, Tropicana Entertainment Inc., has run the Taj into a $100 million hole. Carl Icahn, the conglomerate’s chairman, was once a wary adversary who now endorses Trump, though he’s declined Trump’s offer to become the next secretary of the treasury: “I am flattered but do not get up early enough in the morning to accept this opportunity.”

On July 1, at the height of the season, the Taj’s unionized employees from UNITE HERE Local 54 went on strike, demanding a wage increase and the reinstatement of health and pension benefits suspended in the transfer of ownership. Negotiations were never scheduled; Icahn and the union couldn’t agree on a venue, let alone an agenda. In early August, Icahn announced that he’d be closing the Taj after Labor Day. And so the fall forecast kept getting grimmer, with the loss of the city’s most prominent casino and more than 2,800 jobs.

The Taj’s demise would be chronicled throughout the summer by the New York Times and the Washington Post, in articles framed as analyses of Trump’s finances. These articles, like the leveraged-debt practices they documented, were virtuoso feats, given that they were researched without access to the candidate’s tax returns, which he refuses to release. But reading them induced headaches: all those loans and defaults and shell-companies shattered, keeping track of them was like counting the beach, grain by grain.

As several of you have mentioned before, Trump is the evil carney barker of American entrepreneurship, the blending of Michael Douglas's Gordon Gekko of Wall Street and Jonathan Pryce's Mr. Dark of Something Wicked This Way Comes.  Nothing brings this to the forefront like Trump's abject failures in Atlantic City and the lengths to which he went to cover them up. 

The reality is that the one guy in America who could have absolutely ended Donald Trump's political career before it started was Chris Christie, who could have easily opened the boardwalk books on Trump and sunk him, but my suspicion is Christie, being a lawyer and federal prosecutor himself, realized too late that cozying up to Trump was a thread that if he pulled at would have unraveled his own campaign as well.  Perhaps that why Trump was so confident he could run against Christie and win, and did just that.

Cohen neatly dissects the pathology of Trump, the con man who failed at business spectacularly, but who succeeded beyond his wildest dreams at convincing everyone else he was a success, and the trail of victims in Trump's wake certainly includes the current governor of New Jersey.  If anything Cohen's piece giving voice to the warnings about Atlantic City stands as a prediction of what awaits America's economy in a Trump administration should the unthinkable happen.

Maybe it's not so unthinkable after all.

Hillary Clinton's Not-So-Secret Weapon

One of the reasons I believe that Hillary Clinton will win in November is because of the efforts of the current head of the Democratic party, President Barack Obama.  He has grown increasingly popular as the economy has improved over the last year and as the rise of Trump has proven false the claims Republicans have made about being a serious alternative to the White House as a way forward for America.

As the final stretch of the 2016 campaign nears, President Obama is making the case that in order to continue his legacy and to protect the programs that have improved the lives of tens of millions of us, voters need to back Hillary Clinton, especially voters of color, and that message is starting to really hit home.

President Barack Obama said Saturday night he will take it as a "personal insult" if the African-American community fails to turn out for the presidential election and encouraged black voters to support Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton.

Obama delivered his final keynote address to the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation, symbolically passing the torch to the person he hopes will succeed him next year. Clinton, his former secretary of state, was honored for becoming the first female presidential nominee of a major party.

Obama said his name may not be on the ballot, but issues of importance to the black community were, including justice, good schools and ending mass incarceration.

"I will consider it a personal insult, an insult to my legacy if this community lets down its guard and fails to activate itself in this election," Obama said with a stern look and booming passion. "You want to give me a good send-off, go vote."

For the last two presidential election cycles, the pundits and the Republicans have badly underestimated voters of color and especially the black vote in this country, and record turnout among black voters has helped propel Democrats across the country.  2016 will be no different, and Barack Obama is a major reason why. We're going to be there for Hillary, if only to save the country from itself.  We turned out at a higher rate than white voters in 2012, but there's still much room for improvement.

In her own pitch to African-Americans at the same dinner, Clinton implored the crowd to help protect Obama's legacy, warning of a "dangerous and divisive vision" that could come from Republican opponent Donald Trump.

Obama joked about the "birther" issue long promoted and now dismissed by Trump, telling his audience that there's an extra spring in his step now that the "whole birther thing is over." But his main message was about voter turnout among blacks.

He turned quite serious when speaking about voting. He said Republicans have actively added barriers to voting by closing polling places mostly in minority communities, cutting early voting and imposing more voter ID requirements. He called the efforts a national scandal, but even if all restrictions on voting were eliminated, African-Americans would still have one of the lowest voting rates.

"That's not good. That is on us," Obama said. He then told the crowd if they wanted to give Michelle Obama and him a good send-off, "don't just watch us walk off into the sunset, now. Get people registered to vote."

Obama also sought to blunt Trump's recent efforts to reach out to black voters, saying Trump at one point in the race had said there's never been a worse time to be a black person.

"I mean, he missed that whole civics lesson about slavery and Jim Crow, but we've got a museum for him to visit," Obama said, a reference to next week's opening of the National Museum of African American History and Culture. "We will educate him."

You're damn right we will, Mr. President.

Count on it.

Last Call For The Bodyguard

Donald Trump must be feeling pretty confident, because he's right back to stroking his ego and being utterly awful again, and it just may take the heat off Clinton for a while.

The New York Times says Donald Trump on Friday night "once again raised the specter of violence against Hillary Clinton." The Guardian, meanwhile, titled its tweet "Trump hints at Clinton's assassination again."

If you just glanced at those recaps and noted the word "again," you might think Trump had brought up his controversial "Second Amendment people" comment — the one about how Republicans could prevent a President Clinton from appointing liberal judges.

But Trump was actually repeating a formulation that he has used many times before, about how Clinton should have her guards disarm if she believes so strongly that guns aren't the answer to stopping violence.

And it's not even an argument that's unique to him. It's an extension of a favored argument used by the National Rifle Association -- "The only way to stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun" -- and it's one the gun rights crowd has used with gusto against Democrats who support gun control, including President Obama. There was even a White House petition a few years back calling on the White House to disarm security guards for Obama, Vice President Biden and their families, given the White House's stance on guns.

So Trump was on well-trodden ground here. The difference Friday night, though, is that he took a comment that was worn and not all that interesting and spun it forward with just a few extra words, giving it new life by painting a more violent picture. 

Depressing stuff?  Trump's actual quote is far worse than the Post lets on.

She goes around with armed bodyguards like you have never seen before. I think that her bodyguards should drop all weapons. They should disarm. Right? Right? I think they should disarm immediately. What do you think? Yes? Yes. Yeah. Take their guns away. She doesn't want guns. ... Let's see what happens to her. Take their guns away, okay? It would be very dangerous.

That's not a  "borderline" threat, or "moderately" disturbing, it's an outright invitation to test the mettle of the United States Secret Service in their capacity to protect a possible president and former First Lady.  That's an open "Second Amendment remedy" attack on his opponent, and it should be roundly condemned.

But of course a lot of Trump statements should be roundly condemned, and yet this man is seven weeks away from maybe being President.

To Hell In A Deplorables Basket

Allen Abel at Maclean's give us some north of the border perspective on who Trump voters are and why they want to vote for him, and the reasons really shouldn't surprise you at this point in the game.

These are Donald Trump’s “deplorables,” as Hillary Clinton calls them—11 unashamed Trump-train riders from across the United States, writing in their own words. 

To Clinton, they—or at least “half of them,” as the Democratic nominee chuckled last weekend in a stunning display of contempt before hurriedly apologizing­—can be lumped together as “racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic­­—you name it.” 

Our contributors would disagree. The Trump supporters who volunteered to write for Maclean’s this week are collegians and golden agers, whites and non-whites, retirees and working people. One studies bioterrorism; one teaches Grade 7. They hail from locales as variegated as Boynton Beach, Mayfield Heights, Wichita Falls, and Punxsutawney. (One of them is this writer’s first cousin.)

Two weeks ago, Trump said, “Becoming the nominee of the party of Abraham Lincoln . . . has been the greatest honour of my life. It is on his legacy that I hope to build the future of the party, but more important, the future of the country.” It is likely that, when they harken to Trump on the stump, only a minority of American citizens espy the second coming of Honest Abe. Even within his own party, Trump’s disapproval rating is unprecedented for a major-party nominee. But even if he is routed by Clinton on Nov. 8, at least 40 million Americans will vote Trump. Here’s why.

And the reasons are myriad:  He's not the career politician in the race, he's "not afraid to speak the unpopular truth" about immigrants, Muslims, and black people, but most of all these are people who really, really, really hate Hillary Clinton, folks like Royce Barnes in the swing state of Florida.

I am a 68-year-old American voter. I am a white American. I am a combat veteran of the U.S. Army; I served for 18½ years, received an honourable medical discharge, and was declared 100 per cent Service Connected Disabled. I have been married to the same wonderful woman for over 33 years, have four children with her. 

I grew up on a farm in the state of Maryland, which in the ’50s and ’60s, made my parents automatically Democrat. In 1966, I graduated from high school and joined the Army (U.S. one year, Korea one year, Vietnam one year). I never registered to vote until Jimmy Carter and I registered Democrat. He was the most destructive president in history until the current administration. I immediately changed to Republican after Carter. 

Since then, I have followed and participated in the political process with a steadfast conviction, hoping to see either party honour the Constitution of the United States of America. What I have observed is that both parties have separated themselves from the Constitution because of political correctness, which was strongly introduced in the Bill Clinton administration. Now I live in a country where I am considered a terrorist, because I am a Christian, a veteran, a white conservative, law-abiding, born-in-America citizen. 

What do I make of Mr Trump’s statements? I almost support all of his statements, because they are not polictically correct, they are mostly the honest truth. Finally, I believe that he is America’s last hope . . . if Clinton wins, America will never come back. 

Most people have been dummy-downed by the lies and deception of their leaders, and are not even aware that their God-given liberty and rights have been almost completely stolen from them. American leadership has declined since JFK’s assassination to the point of treason and total corruption. The political system must be totally remodelled and redeemed. 

I believe that God anointed Trump to be the agent of change necessary to defeat the so-called wise politically correct crowd that presently stands in the position of power and authority.

So yeah, I think that 40 million is low by half.  Plenty of people will vote Trump, and they will rationalize away his racism, bigotry, misogyny, and Islamophobia because it doesn't affect them personally.

The question is will at least that many of the rest of us show up and vote for Clinton?   Will Johnson and Stein really get 20 million votes between them on top of that?

Are we really going to put this asshole in the White House?

Last Call For Red State Blues

It's tough being a red state Democratic senator in 2016 because you basically have to publicly hate Obama and Clinton to keep your job.  This week's example: North Dakota Dem Sen. Heidi Heitkamp on the Basket of Deplorables.

Heitkamp was asked on WZFG AM 1100 if she renounced the comments. 

“Yes, I do,” said the Democratic senator on Thursday. “I think it was a wrong thing to say. I think that it ignores the very true concerns that we have about needing change in this country. I think that it was ill-advised. 

“I think [Secretary Clinton] said it was ill-advised,” he continued. “I think she walked it back, and I think that it was unfortunate that she said it. I’m glad that she’s denounced that statement, and I do not agree with her.”

Like it or not, the alternative to Heidi Heitkamp is having another lunatic cowboy Republican from the Dick Cheney school of public "service" like Wyoming's John Enzi or Montana climate change "skeptic" Steve Daines in the Senate. You may not like Democrats like Heitkamp (or yes, even Joe F'ckin Manchin and Evan F'ckin Bayh) but they are lawmakers who will at least vote with the Dems most of the time, and not fall in line with Team GOP on things that count.

As a Kentucky liberal commie pinko agnostic type, you take your victories in the states where you can get them, because we need as many wins as you can get.  Remember, in the end, lawmakers and presidents are elected by the people they represent, so if you can get a Heitkamp or Manchin as opposed to, I dunno, Ted Cruz or Jeff Sessions, you go with the Blue Dogs every time.

Sometimes the useful idiots do serve a purpose.