The Coming Av-Hill-Lanche, Con't

If Hillary Clinton's team keeps hitting Donald Trump with his own words in powerful ads like this one out today, Trump may actually lose by double digits.

In the 30-second spot, which will air in several battleground states, young girls look self-consciously at their reflections in iPhone screens and mirrors. Trump’s offensive remarks, taken from radio and TV interviews, play in the background. 

“I’d look at her right in that fat ugly face of hers.”

“She’s a slob. She ate like a pig.” 

“A person who is flat-chested, it’s very hard to be a 10.” 

In the final quote, an interviewer asks if Trump treats women with respect and he responds, “I can’t say that either.” 

“Is this the president we want for our daughters?” the ad concludes.

Last Trumpista left, please scream at the lights until the bulb breaks.

The Keys To The Campaign

The NY Times interviews Prof. Allen Lictman, who has correctly predicted the last nine presidential elections successfully with his "13 keys" approach to political prognostication, and it's worth noting that he says that Donald Trump will be your next President.

Nobody knows for certain who will win on Nov. 8 — but one man is pretty sure: Professor Allan Lichtman, who has correctly predicted every presidential election since 1984.
When we sat down in May, he explained how he comes to a decision. Lichtman's prediction isn't based on horse-race polls, shifting demographics or his own political opinions. Rather, he uses a system of true/false statements he calls the "Keys to the White House" to determine his predicted winner.
And this year, he says, Donald Trump is the favorite to win.
The keys, which are explained in depth in Lichtman’s book “Predicting the Next President: The Keys to the White House 2016” are:

1. Party Mandate: After the midterm elections, the incumbent party holds more seats in the U.S. House of Representatives than after the previous midterm elections.
2. Contest: There is no serious contest for the incumbent party nomination.
3. Incumbency: The incumbent party candidate is the sitting president.
4. Third party: There is no significant third party or independent campaign.
5. Short-term economy: The economy is not in recession during the election campaign.
6. Long-term economy: Real per capita economic growth during the term equals or exceeds mean growth during the previous two terms.
7. Policy change: The incumbent administration effects major changes in national policy.
8. Social unrest: There is no sustained social unrest during the term.
9. Scandal: The incumbent administration is untainted by major scandal.
10. Foreign/military failure: The incumbent administration suffers no major failure in foreign or military affairs.
11. Foreign/military success: The incumbent administration achieves a major success in foreign or military affairs.
12. Incumbent charisma: The incumbent party candidate is charismatic or a national hero.
13. Challenger charisma: The challenging party candidate is not charismatic or a national hero.

Lichtman's formula is that the party in power loses if they fail six or more of these conditions, and that Hillary Clinton and the Democrats have already failed ad conditions 1, 3, 7, 11, and 12 for sure, and that Gary Johnson's poll numbers mean that they have failed number 4 as well.

The problem is I disagree with points 7 and 11.  Both Obamacare and normalization of relations with Cuba continue to be major successes for the Obama administration, plus I believe that Gary Johnson's support will collapse by November.  That leaves the Democrats only losing two for sure, with condition 12 subjective at best.

So no, I don't think Hillary Clinton is in trouble in the least by this criteria.  I just think it's being measured incorrectly.

She's still going to win.

Bevin Busted Big

The Kentucky Supreme Court has shoved GOP Gov. Matt Bevin's face in the dirt with a 5-2 ruling throwing out the governor's unilateral decision to cut University of Kentucky system funding.

"The governor's reduction of the allotments of the universities in this case exceeded his statutory authority," wrote Justice Mary C. Noble in a 50-page opinion. "Whatever authority he (the governor) might otherwise have to require a budget unit not to spend appropriated funds does not extend to universities, which the legislature has made independent bodies politic with control over their own expenditures." 

The ruling reverses an earlier one by Franklin Circuit Court Judge Thomas Wingate saying a governor does have the authority to withhold funds appropriated by the General Assembly to universities. 

Four justices concurred with Noble in the 5-2 opinion. Justices Daniel J. Venters and Samuel T. Wright III dissented. 

At issue in the case is Bevin's controversial directive to cut state funding to universities and community colleges by 4.5 percent during the 2015-16 fiscal year. Bevin later agreed to reduce the cuts to 2 percent and exempt Kentucky State University – the state's smallest university. 

The 2 percent cuts amount to about $18 million – money that has been held in a separate account pending the Supreme Court's final ruling.

So no, Matt...you're not king of Kentucky.  And several other suits are pending as Bevin took authority in his first six months to do everything from make cuts to colleges to firing entire advisory boards, and if this ruling from the state's highest court is any indication. he's in a lot of trouble.

But the impact of the ruling is huge as it relates to the Republican governor's aggressive exercise of executive power and his ongoing legal clashes with Democratic Attorney General Andy Beshear, who filed the lawsuit challenging the university cuts. 

"Today, the Supreme Court enforced Kentucky law, reminding us that not even the governor is above the law," Beshear said at a news conference late Thursday morning. "Based on today's ruling, I am calling on Gov. Bevin to immediately release the $18 million he wrongfully withheld from our public universities and colleges." 

Beshear also said, "I'm also calling on the governor's office to use today as a turning point. It's time for him to stop attacking and instead to join me in building a better Kentucky." 

But the response of the governor's office made clear Bevin is not ready to join Beshear in anything. That response briefly said Bevin disagreed with Thursday's ruling and emphasized that the cuts to universities were part Bevin's broader strategy to save money to address the crisis within state pension funds, which have unfunded liabilities of about $35 billion. 

"The Attorney General clearly does not understand the severity of the pension problem which became the nation's worst-funded plan under the watch of his father's (former Gov. Steve Beshear's) administration," Bevin Press Secretary Amanda Stamper said in a statement.

So the fight between Andy Beshear and Matt Bevin continues, Beshear's not sorry he's winning, and Bevin's refusing to apologize while losing.

Welcome to Bevinstan.

StupidiNews!

• A third night of protests in Charlotte over the police killing of Keith Scott saw police use tear gas to disperse protesters blocking Interstate 277, protests ended before a midnight curfew.
• A Tennessee man has killed two people at a factory in Athens, Tennessee near Knoxville before taking his own life, police as of yet have no motive for the murders.
• Russian military forces launched their heaviest airstrikes yet as any hope of a ceasefire has vanished, Moscow says it will now retake rebel-held Aleppo and fully capture the city.
• President Obama's EPA Clean Power Plan will face federal court on Tuesday with 27 Republican-led states joining energy industry groups to sue the administration to emissions regulations.
• Yahoo confirms that as many as 500 million email accounts were compromised by hackers in late 2014 by a "state-sponsored actor".

Last Call For The Ol' Perfesser's Lament

Our old friend Glenn "Instapundit" Reynolds was booted from Twitter last night for a rather awful tweet he made about Charlotte protesters:

Glenn Reynolds, a conservative USA Today columnist and University of Tennessee law professor known by the moniker Instapundit, was suspended from Twitter on Wednesday for urging drivers to hit protesters blocking a highway in Charlotte, North Carolina.

Reynolds tweeted a link to a live video stream of demonstrators stopping traffic on I-277 during the chaotic second day of protests over the fatal police shooting of Keith Lamont Scott. His comment read “Run them down.”

Twitter suspended his account shortly after the tweet went up and outraged commenters accused Reynolds, who also runs the Instapundit website, of inciting violence. Several users preserved screenshots of the tweet.

Run them down.

That tweet was bad enough.  Far worse is Reynolds's defense today.

Sorry, blocking the interstate is dangerous, and trapping people in their cars and surrounding them is a threat. Driving on is self-preservation, especially when we’ve had mobs destroying property and injuring and killing people. But if Twitter doesn’t like me, I’m happy to stop providing them with free content. 

ANOTHER UPDATE: Was just on Hugh Hewitt talking about this. Since Twitter won’t let me respond to — or even see — my critics, let me expand here. 

I’ve always been a supporter of free speech and peaceful protest. I fully support people protesting police actions, and I’ve been writing in support of greater accountability for police for years. 

But riots aren’t peaceful protest. And blocking interstates and trapping people in their cars is not peaceful protest — it’s threatening and dangerous, especially against the background of people rioting, cops being injured, civilian-on-civilian shootings, and so on. I wouldn’t actually aim for people blocking the road, but I wouldn’t stop because I’d fear for my safety, as I think any reasonable person would. 

“Run them down” perhaps didn’t capture this fully, but it’s Twitter, where character limits stand in the way of nuance. 

Meanwhile, regarding Twitter: I don’t even know that this is why I was suspended, as I’ve heard nothing from Twitter at all. They tell users and investors that they don’t censor, but they seem awfully quick to suspend people on one side of the debate and, as people over at Twitchy note, awfully tolerant of outright threats on the other. 

Twitter can do without me, as I can certainly do without Twitter.

So he absolutely was advocating for violence, in particular vehicular assault,  against protesters.  The standard is that if you block the road, and he runs you over, it's automatically self-defense no questions asked.

This is a tenured law professor saying this.

Oh but it gets worse: Nick Gillespie shows up and continues the defense at Reason because he's a nice guy and a blogger.

Well, I hope he is reinstated immediately and keeps on giving Twitter "free content." Over the past 15 or 20 years, Reynolds (whom I interviewed for one of my very first stories at Reason, about the potential influence of the Supreme Court case United States v. Lopez) has been one of the most-interesting and thoughtful voices on the broadly defined right. He writes everywhere (I recommend especially his USA Today columns) and books such as An Army of Davids and The Higher Education Bubble are the product of an incredibly sharp and serious person with an eye on the possibilities offered by technological and cultural innovation. Since coming online in 2001 shortly before the 9/11 attacks, the Instapundit site has been nothing short of a godsend, collecting and sharing links on an immense variety of topics from electoral politics to private space exploration to human longevity to flash sales at Amazon (for these and other reasons, Reynolds is sometimes called "the Blogfather"). I don't always agree with the spin the various contributors put on current events, but it's the first or second site I check every day after Reason.com.

Whatever you think of the tastefulness of his suggestion regarding the protesters in Charlotte, the idea that he is seriously inciting any sort of actual or real threat is risible. I can appreciate the various pressures that Twitter is facing from all sorts of perspectives. The service is constantly being asked to take material down for any number of reasons, and the requests aren't simply coming from SJWs with bees in their bonnets (indeed, it seems as if the most numerous requests from copyright holders). Twitter lists the most common reasons for suspending accounts here.

He was reinstated later on Thursday morning, of course.

This is what we're up against.  This is what I mean by there's a different legal, cultural, and social standard for black people exercising anything that looks like a right: a right to gather, a right to protest and air grievances, a right to bear arms, they either apply to black people only with the permission of white people or do not apply to black America at all, and the penalty for violating this goes all the way up to death, guys.

And this is why.  We're just obstacles to Reynolds.  We're in his way, and if we violate that, our lives are forfeit. Automatically. Not only is he unapologetic, but he doesn't see any possibly reason as to why he should have been made to care in the first place, and the bad guys here are Twitter and liberals for pointing out he's advocating violence against people.

Black Lives Matter, guys.

Racism's Only Been Around For Eight Years Or So, You See

This isn't just gaslighting by Trump supporters, I'm used to them just pretending facts don't exist. Global warming, police brutality, gun safety and an entire economic "plan" are all fiction to these clowns. But this?  It's wholesale alternate reality construction that erases 400 years of history.

Donald Trump’s campaign chair in a prominent Ohio county has claimed there was “no racism” during the 1960s and said black people who have not succeeded over the past half-century only have themselves to blame. 

Kathy Miller, chair of the Republican nominee’s campaign in Mahoning County, who is white, made the remarks during a taped interview with the Guardian’s Anywhere but Washington series of election videos. 

“If you’re black and you haven’t been successful in the last 50 years, it’s your own fault. You’ve had every opportunity, it was given to you,” she said. 

“You’ve had the same schools everybody else went to. You had benefits to go to college that white kids didn’t have. You had all the advantages and didn’t take advantage of it. It’s not our fault, certainly.” 

Miller also called the Black Lives Matter movement“a stupid waste of time” and said lower voter turnout among African Americans could be related to “the way they’re raised”.

Such abject denial is necessary for voting for Trump, after all.  But this is bordering on mass delusion.

Miller also dismissed the racial tensions of the 1960s, when she said she graduated from high school. “Growing up as a kid, there was no racism, believe me. We were just all kids going to school.” 

Asked about segregation and the civil rights movement, she replied: “I never experienced it. I never saw that as anything.” 

Miller added: “I don’t think there was any racism until Obama got elected. We never had problems like this ... Now, with the people with the guns, and shooting up neighborhoods, and not being responsible citizens, that’s a big change, and I think that’s the philosophy that Obama has perpetuated on America.”

Miller dismissed the suggestion that Trump was exploiting racist or prejudiced views among some voters as “the media making stuff up”. Instead, she said of the Republican nominee: “He’s very willing to talk about issues that have never been discussed publicly.” 

When it was pointed out that some people might find her remarks offensive, Miller replied: “I don’t care, it’s the truth.”

This is what we're up against in November, guys.  Now, after this Kathy Miller has resigned her position but take a long, hard look at the very real possibility of a country where sixty million Kathy Millers decide your federal government.

Maybe you want tot do something about it?

Our Dark Orange Future Nightmare

Evan Osnos at The New Yorker honestly considers what a Trump presidency would look like, and it's pretty awful across the board if you're one of those folks who thinks that they can grin and bear it through four years of Trump to reach the promised land of liberal utopia.

When Trump talks about what he will create and what he will eliminate, he doesn’t depart from three core principles: in his view, America is doing too much to try to solve the world’s problems; trade agreements are damaging the country; and immigrants are detrimental to it. He wanders and hedges and doubles back, but he is governed by a strong instinct for self-preservation, and never strays too far from his essential positions. Roger Stone, a long-serving Trump adviser, told me it is a mistake to imagine that Trump does not mean to fulfill his most radical ideas. “Maybe, in the end, the courts don’t allow him to temporarily ban Muslims,” Stone said. “That’s fine—he can ban anybody from Egypt, from Syria, from Libya, from Saudi Arabia. He’s a Reagan-type pragmatist.” 

William Antholis, a political scientist who directs the Miller Center, at the University of Virginia, pointed out that President Trump would have, at his disposal, “the world’s largest company, staffed with 2.8 million civilians and 1.5 million military employees.” Trump would have the opportunity to alter the Supreme Court, with one vacancy to fill immediately and others likely to follow. Three sitting Justices are in their late seventies or early eighties. 

As for the Trump Organization, by law Trump could retain as much control or ownership as he wants, because Presidents are not bound by the same conflict-of-interest statute that restricts Cabinet officers and White House staff. Presidential decisions, especially on foreign policy, could strengthen or weaken his family’s business, which includes controversial deals in Turkey, South Korea, Azerbaijan, and elsewhere. Trump would likely face pressure to adopt an arrangement akin to that of Michael Bloomberg, who, when he became mayor of New York City, withdrew from most management decisions for his company. Trump has said only that he plans to turn over the Trump Organization’s day-to-day control to three of his adult children: Donald, Jr., Ivanka, and Eric. 

As President, Trump would have the power to name some four thousand appointees, but he would face a unique problem: more than a hundred veteran Republican officials have vowed never to support him, and that has forced younger officials to decide whether they, too, will stay away or, instead, enter his Administration and try to moderate him. By September, the campaign was vetting four hundred people, and some had been invited to join the transition team. An analogy was making the rounds: Was Trump a manageable petty tyrant, in the mold of Silvio Berlusconi? Or was he something closer to Mussolini? And, if so, was he Mussolini in 1933 or in 1941? 

Michael Chertoff served both Bush Presidents—as a U.S. Attorney in Bush, Sr.,’s Administration, and then as Secretary of Homeland Security under George W. Bush. He was one of fifty senior Republican national-security officials who recently signed a letter declaring that Trump “would be the most reckless President in American history.” Chertoff told me that he has been approached for advice by younger Republicans who ask if joining Trump, after he has already been elected, would be regarded as patriotic, rather than political. “I think anybody contemplating going in will have to have a very serious look in their own conscience, and make sure they’re not kidding themselves,” Chertoff said. 

Trump’s Presidential plans are not shaped by ideology. He changed parties five times between 1999 and 2012, and, early on the campaign trail, he praised parts of Planned Parenthood (while opposing abortion), vowed to protect Social Security, and supported gay rights (while opposing same-sex marriage). He is governed, above all, by his faith in the ultimate power of transaction—an encompassing perversion of realism that is less a preference for putting interests ahead of values than a belief that interests have no place for values. 

Trump has relied heavily on the ideas of seasoned combatants. Newt Gingrich, who, as House Speaker in the nineties, pioneered many of the tactics that have come to define partisan warfare, is now a Trump adviser. Gingrich told me that he is urging Trump to give priority to an obscure but contentious conservative issue—ending lifetime tenure for federal employees. This would also galvanize Republicans and help mend rifts in the Party after a bitter election.

“Getting permission to fire corrupt, incompetent, and dishonest workers—that’s the absolute showdown,” Gingrich said. He assumes that federal employees’ unions would resist, thus producing, in his words, an “ongoing war” similar to the conflict that engulfed Madison, Wisconsin, in 2011, when Governor Scott Walker moved to limit public-sector employees’ collective-bargaining rights. After five months of protests, and a failed effort to recall the Governor and members of the state senate, Walker largely prevailed. Gingrich predicts that that chaotic dynamic can be brought to Washington. “You have to end the civil-service permanent employment,” he said. “You start changing that and the public-employee unions will just come unglued.”

That was always the goal: to dismantle the US civil service for good. The damage would be catastrophic in the courts and in the executive branch, as well as in foreign policy.

If you can't see that you should be doing everything you can to stop Trump, and that means voting for Hillary, then I don't know what else to tell you at this point.  There is nothing that Hillary Clinton could do that would be worse than this man at the helm of the United States Armed Forces, making Supreme Court nominations, and making and breaking foreign treaties.

Put your pride and ego aside and realize there are exactly two choices in this election, and make the right choice.  Period.

StupidiNews!

• A second night of protests in Charlotte have prompted NC GOP Gov. Pat McCrory to declare a state of emergency and ready the NC National Guard to deal with further protests.
• The US Senate has easily turned back efforts by KY Sen. Rand Paul and CT Sen. Chris Murphy to stop $1.15 billion in arms sales to Saudi Arabia.
• Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen left interest rates unchanged this week but hinted strongly that an interest rate hike is probable before the end of 2016.
• Several Trump campaign aides could be called as witnesses in the "Bridgegate" trial in New Jersey that started this week, including Gov. Chris Christie and Trump's son-in-law, Jared Kushner.
• Nashville's city council gave final approval to Google Fiber bringing internet service to the city but as with Louisville, AT&T plans to immediately sue the city to stop Google Fiber access to utility poles. 

Last Call For All About The Benjamin

My friend Emily L. Hauser wonders why President Obama is even bothering to meet with Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu today at the White House, because it's not like Bibi hasn't smacked the president around like a wet noodle for eight years and laughed at him every second of it.  I don't often see her upset with President Obama over things, but she's pretty frustrated over this, and rightfully so.

Many things stand in the way of a durable Israeli-Palestinian peace, not least Palestinian terrorism; domestic politics on both sides; a mutual refusal to recognize the just demands of long-time enemies; the hugely fraught questions of how to share Jerusalem and the status of Palestinian refugees; and all those wars in Gaza, each of which was part of a cyclical and very lopsided war of attrition waged between the sides for decades. 

But even if all that were somehow, through sheer force of will, resolved, Obama's stated goal of a two-state peace literally cannot be achieved if Israel not only refuses to leave Palestinian land but continues to build on it. Which is, and has always been, the goal of settlement — to force permanent Israeli control over the West Bank. 

What could the Obama administration have done to convince its client state that compromise for the sake of peace was in its own best interests? Any number of things, ranging from the geopolitical to the financial. We'll never know if putting real pressure on Israel would have worked, because Obama — like every other president before him, with the single and short-lived example of George H.W. Bush — was never willing to push Israel past its comfort zone. I believe Obama to have been an excellent president for the American people, but the simple truth is that he has failed Israelis and Palestinians miserably. 

Netanyahu, on the other hand, has staked his entire career on settlement and was once secretly recorded telling a group of constituents: "I know what America is. America is a thing you can move very easily… They won't get in our way." 

Do you think Obama wants a chance to tell Netanyahu he was right?

It's not hard to admit that Obama's foreign policy failures are real and lasting.  He's done a lot of good things over the last eight years, but Syria, Israel, and Yemen  (and in reality, Russia) are never going to be counted among his successes.  I love the man dearly and will always respect him, and I wish he could server another term, but as with Emily, the rose-colored glasses have to come off when it comes to MENA and the failure of Arab Spring, and what could have been.

He's not alone in that blame.  But he gets his healthy share of it, deservedly.

Eight years of letting Bibi kick him in the crotch and run away giggling, then giving him $38 billlion in new military aid? C'mon. The truth is, Obama got sandbagged, bruised, battered, beaten, and just plain outsmarted in his second term, like Clinton and Dubya before him.  Clinton's weakness was domestic, Dubya's was both domestic and foreign policy, but Obama's is definitely foreign policy and the next President has a hell of a mess to clean up.

And no, I expect even less from Hillary when it comes to dealing with Israel, so let's get that out of the way now.

God help us all if it's Trump, though.

Not Here To Entertain You

Donald Trump's Traveling Medicine Show For Black America Featuring Sean Hannity is in Cleveland today, and as The Grio's Brian Bush reminds us, the packaging of black grief for absolution consumption by white audiences is snake oil for everyone involved.

So as the circus that is the Trump campaign makes a stop in Cleveland, what, exactly, could Donald Trump hope to possibly communicate during this interview with Hannity? After all, his rise to political prominence came as a result of overtly racist talking points and “Alt-right” fervor. His arena-filling rallies over the past year have been little more than public gathering spaces for white supremacists, and hotbeds of violence against protesters. 

Should, then, Donald Trump’s last-ditch effort be enough to convince black voters that he is the candidate best able to address “African-American concerns?” 

Hardly. 

His track-record suggests no, and he can’t wheel out enough black faces to convince me otherwise. Simply put, the Trump campaign’s recent push to secure black votes is absurd.

It always has been about selling Trump as White Savior not to black America, but to white America. The problem is Trump's past is so awful that nobody believes him.  But he sure is selling the notion that he's forgiven, because after all if Trump and the GOP are absolved of their guilt on race, it because the fault of black America alone.

Speaking last month to a predominantly white crowd in Dimondale, Michigan, Donald Trump boldly asked “What the hell do you have to lose,” going on to use inaccurate statistics to paint a dystopian portrait of black America. The question posed was odd for a few reasons. 

First, because the audience present was mostly all white, and the question itself was directed towards black voters. More odd, though, was the fact that the person asking the question seemed to ignore his own past of discrimination; the very type of discriminatory views that helped create the environment he now criticizes. 

In 1973 while Donald Trump served as the president of his father’s real estate company, the Trump Management Corporation, the Department of Justice sued the company for violating the Fair Housing Act, alleging racial discrimination against potential black renters in several of the Trumps’ buildings. While Donald and his father ultimately settled the lawsuit without having to admit guilt, the suit alleged that the Trumps quoted different rental conditions and terms to black renters seeking housing than to white renters, and lied to black rental candidates about apartments not being available. In fact, just a few short years later, the Justice Department sued the Trump company again for the same reason. 

Recognizing that, it’s hard to believe Donald Trump when he now says that he’s concerned with issues facing black Americans. The disparities in education and employment that exist now are a result of the same racist attitudes Donald Trump helped perpetuate. 

While Trump was allegedly keeping black tenants out of his buildings, an employer a few blocks away was likely denying an applicant because of the color of his skin. Both worked in concert to create inner-city communities with few economic opportunities, and crumbling, underfunded schools for black children. Trump, more than most, has played a direct role in preserving the structure of white supremacy. Even if his data is a bit off (things aren’t as bad as he makes them seem), Donald Trump is objectively one of the many architects of a system that has worked to disadvantage black people for many years. 

And he’s done a poor job during his campaign to change my perception. 

Trotting out black preachers in order to ingratiate himself with black Americans has hardly worked to refurbish his image. Not because of their religious affiliation, but because they have been so willing to lie about the most basic things.

But lie they will, because lies sell very well in the game of forgiveness.  And it's all right there on FOX News.

The Millennial Puzzle

Greg Sargent takes on the question of who would be to blame if Trump wins, Millennials or Boomers, but argues that the much larger story is while Trump has certainly driven away voters under 36, Democrats in general have a long way to go in order to earn their votes.

Earlier this year, as the conventions were displaying two sharply different visions of the country’s future, Democrats were talking about the possibility that the GOP’s nomination of Trump might create a historic opportunity to persuade younger voters that the Democratic Party is the one firmly aligned with diversifying America. Meanwhile, it might also cement their views of the GOP as unremittingly hostile to cultural, social, and demographic change. Some Never Trump Republicans watched the conventions and agreed that for this reason, the nomination of Trump might alienate a new generation of voters, with catastrophic consequences. As you’ll recall, leading GOP strategists also reacted to the 2012 outcome by resolving to modernize the party to make it appear less hidebound and trapped in the past to young voters — unaware, of course, that Trump was already feverishly plotting to seize control of their party. 

Now, it’s looking as if this analysis was right — at least in predicting that Trump would indeed alienate these voters. Beyond Trump, it’s possible that many are already hardened against the GOP after having come of age during the debacles of the George W Bush presidency and after having witnessed the party’s failure to evolve on gay rights and other cultural issues well into the 21st Century. But with Clinton struggling among them, and with larger than expected percentages considering minor party candidates, we can no longer be sure what is going to happen with these voters over the long term. This seems particularly true of the younger millennials, who loved Barack Obama but aren’t feeling it for Clinton. 

My strong sense is that millennials will likely come home to Clinton in substantial numbers, if not quite at the levels Democrats might hope for. But the broader point is that, even if Clinton does win, the political loyalties of these voters — and efforts to engage them, particularly in midterm elections — will be topics of concern that long outlast this election, given the long term stakes. The party leadership during the Clinton presidency, should she win, will undoubtedly have to make ministering to these voters a major aspect of their agenda, including innovations in communicating with younger voters in the digital age. I hope to have more in a future post on what the Clinton campaign and Democrats are thinking and doing on this score. But I just wanted to plant a marker on the idea that this could be a big, consequential story going forward.

In other words, while 2016 is important, so is 2018.  And if Millennial turnout two years from now and six years from now is anything like 2014's dismal showing, the Republicans will continue to control everything but the White House for a long, long time to come.

It's also important to note that by 2018, Millennials will be the largest bloc of eligible voters in America, with the very youngest of them (those born in 2000) ready to cast ballots.  How many of them will bother to show up to vote, well, that will determine where America goes.

StupidiNews!

• Police in Charlotte used tear gas to break up protestors who blocked parts of Interstate 85 after cops shot and killed Keith Lamont Scott while serving a warrant for another person.
• Federal prosecutors have charged the Chelsea bombing suspect with four counts of using a weapon of mass destruction among other charges, he is facing multiple life sentences if convicted.
• Flash flooding in Indonesia has killed at least 20 so far as rescuers search for the missing, about 1,000 people have been evacuated from the flood area in Garut, near Jakarta.
• Three years after starting an initiative to double electricity access in Africa, President Obama's Power Africa project has run into the realities of serious political and economic problems.
• Google is again taking on instant messaging with Google Allo, a new cloud-based IM client that offers Google Assistant to share search results with friends.

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.