StupidiNews!

• Tropical Storm Hermine has weakened from Category 1 hurricane status as it has made landfall along the Florida panhandle coast, headed northeast into Georgia and the Carolinas.
• Hillary Clinton had a record $143 million fundraising month in August, with $81 million raised for state and federal candidates down ballot.
• Uzbekistan's long-time President Islam Karimov has died of complications from a stroke at the age of 78, he had been hospitalized since Saturday, he ruled the country since 1989.
• Russian President Vladimir Putin says Washington and Moscow are very close to a major agreement on Syria that could help to finally bring about an end to a five-year civil war.
• Samsung has stopped sales of its flagship Galaxy Note 7 after just two weeks and has issued a global recall in the wake of examples of battery explosions when charging the phone.

Last Call For It's Probably Obama's Fault

Our increasingly worthless media has decided that there has to be a close race whether the race is actually close doesn't matter, and that means both attacking Democrats, and as Frank Bruni of the NY Times does today, enable Trump by making excuses for his awful behavior.

Did Democrats cry wolf so many times before Trump that no one hears or heeds them now?

That’s a question being asked with increasing frequency, though mostly in conservative circles and publications. An essay by Jonah Goldberg in National Review in late July had this headline: “How the Media’s History of Smearing Republicans Now Helps Trump.”

In Commentary, Noah Rothman has repeatedly examined this subject. He wrote back in March that when “honorable and decent men” like McCain and Romney “are reflexively dubbed racists simply for opposing Democratic policies, the result is a G.O.P. electorate that doesn’t listen to admonitions when the genuine article is in their midst.”

“Today,” he added, “they point and shout ‘racist’ into the void, but Democrats only have themselves to blame for the fact that so many on the right are no longer listening.”

I think he’s being more than a bit disingenuous about the potential receptiveness of the right — or the left — to anything that the other side says in this polarized, partisan age. There hasn’t been all that much listening for some time.

Also, the Democratic condemnations of McCain and Romney weren’t as widespread and operatic as the ones of Trump.

And this is a two-way street. Republicans paint a broad spectrum of Democrats as socialist kooks, and Obama has been as strong a magnet for hyperbole as any politician in my lifetime. Let us not forget Dinesh D’Souza’s 2010 book “The Roots of Obama’s Rage,” or Newt Gingrich’s assertion that “only if you understand Kenyan, anticolonial behavior” can you grasp Obama’s method of governing, or Trump’s insistence that Obama produce his American birth certificate.

The sad truth is that we conduct the bulk of our political debate in a key of near-hysteria. And this renders complaints of discrepant urgency, about politicians of different recklessness, into one big, ignorable mush of partisan rancor.

Both sides are awful, so what can you do?

Bruni does go on to say that Republicans are attacking Trump, so maybe, maybe the characterization of him by Democrats has some small merit, but that's as far as he's willing to go.  Being mean to Mitt Romney after all is what created Trump, apparently.

That's a nice argument if you're a puerile child, but out here in reality when Trump is repeatedly saying how he'll round up and deport millions of people, at some point the blame for Trump's rancid rhetoric has to be assigned to Trump, as well as the party that nominated him.

And that's the blame Bruni is trying to dodge.

Shoot The Mess, Assange-r

Can we stop pretending that WikiLeaks isn't a pro-Russian, pro-Trump outfit trying to affect the election and US politics in general, and that Julian Assange is far from a neutral, objective voice here?

In an interview with New York Times investigative reporter Jo Becker on Wednesday, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange accused the press of supporting Hillary Clinton, whom he likened to a “demon.” 

“The American liberal press, in falling over themselves to defend Hillary Clinton, are erecting a demon that is going to put nooses around everyone’s necks as soon as she wins the election, which is almost certainly what she’s going to do,” Assange said in the interview, which was broadcast live Wednesday on Facebook. 

Hey Julian, I know you're not from around here, but let's talk about American history and the use of "nooses around everyone's necks" as far more than just hyperbolic imagery, especially when it comes to black folk.  See, saying Hillary Clinton is going to lynch people is really not the term you want to use in a country where black people were strung up and publicly hanged by the hundreds as recently as my parents' lifetime.  This wasn't figurative of symbolic, this was literal.  I'm offended by you using that, and I have to assume that someone who has spent years as an information broker and prophet of the power of words used that sentence entirely on purpose.

WikiLeaks has already aimed to influence the 2016 election. In July, the organization released a trove of emails hacked from the Democratic National Committee’s servers that showed Democratic staffers criticizing Sen. Bernie Sanders. Assange has defended the release of the emails, which prompted a flurry of resignations within the DNC. Assange has been accused of helping fuel conspiracy theories about the circumstances surrounding the death of Democratic staffer Seth Rich, who was killed in a mugging earlier this year. 

In Wednesday’s interview, Assange said WikiLeaks is impartial. He also reiterated earlier statements that he would publish more information about the 2016 election in the future.

Impartial, but more than happy to make damaging leaks against Hillary Clinton and the Democratic party, and promising more such damaging leaks before Election Day.  You know, that kind of impartial.

“We have a range of information related to the U.S. election and a number of different institutions,” he said, when Becker asked whether the organization would release information damaging to the Clinton Foundation. 

Some critics have accused the WikiLeaks editor in chief of trying to undermine the Clinton campaign in an effort to help Donald Trump’s campaign and advance Russia’s political interests. (Russian hackers are widely suspected to be behind the DNC email hack.) Assange has denied the claims and in the interview said the concerns over Russia’s involvement are “neo-McCarthyist hysteria.”

This is exactly the tack Double G has taken this week: if you mention the numerous Russian connections that Donald Trump, Julian Assange, or Edward Snowden have to Vladimir Putin, you're now automatically dismissed as a "Clinton neo-McCarthyite".

So there's something a lot bigger going on here with Assange and his little info shop. But mention it and you're instantly pegged as the new Tailgunner Joe.

So Hillary Clinton Was In Cincinnati...

While a lot of the attention yesterday was on Donald Trump's disastrous trip to Mexico to meet with President Nieto, followed by Trump's truly scary calls in Phoenix for a mass deportation force to round up millions, Hillary Clinton was here in downtown Cincy speaking to the annual American Legion conference and providing a major contrast with actual foreign policy leadership as opposed to Trump's inchoate screaming.

Donald Trump's visit to Mexico Wednesday serves as an example of the way a Trump presidency would undermine the U.S.'s leadership as an "exceptional" nation, Hillary Clinton told veterans Wednesday.

Clinton censured Trump for "trying to make up for a year of insults and insinuations by dropping in on our neighbors for a few hours and then flying home again," as her Republican opponent headed to Mexico to test his diplomatic prowess in a visit with the country's president.

Trump has criticized some Mexican immigrants who are living in the U.S. illegally, and his signature campaign issue has been his pledge to build a wall on the U.S. border with Mexico and persuade Mexico to pay for it.

"That's not how it works," Clinton said of diplomacy and international leadership. Still, she avoided the jokes and mockery she sometimes uses when criticizing Trump and avoided saying his name in her speech to the American Legion gathering – a group that included some Trump supporters – at the Duke Energy Convention Center in Cincinnati.

Clinton carefully pitched her foreign policy, you know, the one that doesn't include the absolute fantasy of a massive multi-billion dollar wall and an army of ICE deportation goons.

In Cincinnati, Clinton argued Trump has rejected American exceptionalism, the notion that the U.S. has a special role in the world as a leader and purveyor of democracy. The principle has traditionally been championed by Republicans, whom Clinton is trying to woo, and Trump has drawn on the principle in some ways, such as by insisting that America strive to become "great" again.

But Trump generally has opposed the use of the term and rejected the principle that the U.S. is better than other countries, to whom he routinely says the U.S. is losing.

"My opponent is wrong when he says that America is no longer great," Clinton said Wednesday, echoing the feelings of many devotees of American exceptionalism. They advocate for more engagement of the U.S. internationally to spread democratic ideals, while Trump has often taken a more isolationist approach.

That approach would hurt the U.S.'s standing, Clinton said, vowing to keep the U.S. the "greatest country on Earth."

“Our power comes with a responsibility to lead humbly, thoughtfully and with a fierce commitment to our values," she said. "When America fails to lead, we leave a vacuum.”

Trump will be in town today to address the American Legion, so I'd stay out of downtown if I were you.

StupidiNews!

• In a strident speech in Phoenix last night, GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump promised once again to deport millions of people from the US within hours of taking office if elected.
• The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals has upheld an Arizona ruling that a gun store owner can deny selling firearms to people with medical marijuana cards.
• Reuters is reporting that the Iranian nuclear deal included some "secret" exemptions  in order for Tehran to be able to meet conditions of the agreement.
• 2016 was a lousy summer for movies with at least nine major summer releases losing at least $60 million each as moviegoers avoided both sequels and remakes.
• Science host Bill Nye will be getting his own talk show in 2017 thanks to Netflix, where he will take on science claims from religious leaders, politicians, and the corporate world.

Last Call For Not A Monolith And Never Was

Just like the black vote, the Hispanic vote isn't a monolithic thing.  There are plenty of issues and reasons why people vote, ranging from economics to terrorism to schools to immigration, and a new Gallup poll that breaks down Hispanic voters into immigrants and US-born finds a big difference in how they vote and why.  Aaron Blake at the Washington Post crunches the numbers and finds some surprising results.

A Gallup poll shows that Hillary Clinton maintains a very big advantage among Hispanic voters — just as you might expect. Democrats, after all, have won this group by increasing margins in presidential elections, and that's a major GOP sore spot, givenhow quickly the U.S. Hispanic population is rising.

But the poll also shows that there is a significant split in the Hispanic community between Hispanic immigrants and U.S.-born Hispanics.

If you focus just on Hispanics born outside the United States, 87 percent have a favorable view of Clinton, while just 13 percent have a favorable view of Trump.

If you focus just on Hispanics born in the United States, though, it is much, much closer. Clinton's favorable rating drops to 43 percent, while Trump's jumps to 29 percent.

That second group, US-born Hispanic voters, have a view of the candidates much closer to that of the rest of the country.   Pew Research made a similar distinction between Spanish-speaking/bilingual and English-speaking Hispanic voters and found similar results.

The Pew Research Center last month broke this down in a slightly different — but equally telling — way. It compared Clinton's lead on Trump among Hispanics who are English-dominant with those who aren't.

While bilingual and Spanish speakers preferred Clinton in a head-to-head matchup by a massive 80 percent to 11 percent margin, English-dominant Hispanics were actually relatively evenly split, with 48 percent picking Clinton and 41 percent picking Trump.

The latter group's seven-point margin for Clinton looked, again, a lot like the rest of the country, which favored Clinton by a nine-point margin — 51 percent to 42 percent — in the same poll.

Indeed, if you look at these numbers, there doesn't seem to be a distinguishable "Hispanic vote" at all. The real difference-makers are Hispanic immigrants and those who don't speak English as their first language.

The issue of course is that in 2016, the group of Spanish-speaking or bilingual Hispanic folks are nearly 60% of Hispanic population in total, and they strongly favor Clinton.  The rest though look like America's population as a whole.

So which group will turn out in greater numbers in November?

We'll see.

Getting The Full Brazilian Done

After nearly 12 hours of testimony and hours of deliberations, the Brazilian Senate has voted 61-20 to impeach suspended president Dilma Rousseff and remove her from office.

Brazil's Senate removed President Dilma Rousseff from office on Wednesday for breaking budgetary laws, ending an impeachment process that has polarized the scandal-plagued country and paralyzed its politics for nine months. 

Senators voted 61-20 to convict Rousseff for illegally using money from state banks to boost public spending, putting an end to 13 years of leftist Workers Party rule in Latin America's largest economy.

Conservative Michel Temer, the former vice president who has run Brazil since Rousseff's suspension in May, will be sworn in on Wednesday to serve out the remainder of the presidential term through 2018.

In a separate vote, the Brazilian Senate decided not to bar Rousseff from public office.

Brazil's Senate decided that former President Dilma Rousseff, who was removed from office earlier on Wednesday, should not be barred from holding public office.

Senators voted 42-36 to allow Rousseff to maintain her political rights, short of the two-thirds needed to bar her. Under Brazilian law, a dismissed president is prevented from holding any government job, even teaching posts at state universities.

Regardless, I would think her political career is over, you don't really come back from impeachment to be President of Brazil again.

Well, mostly.

We'll see.

Prosecutorial Discretion

If the name "Angela Corey" sounds familiar, she's the woman who botched the George Zimmerman prosecution, prosecuted Marissa Alexander for self-defense, and is the woman The Nation magazine's Jessica Pishko called "The Cruelest Prosecutor in America" just two weeks ago.

During her eight-year tenure, Corey has garnered national attention in a pair of controversial trials. Her press conferences, for which she often wears a large gold cross like a Benedictine nun, have been broadcast nationwide. In 2012, she made headlines with her prosecution of Marissa Alexander, the mother who fired a gun to scare off an abusive husband (no one was injured in the incident). Corey charged Alexander with aggravated assault, which carried a minimum sentence of 20 years in prison. Her prosecution of Alexander spurred online petitions and protests from domestic-violence groups, who argued that Alexander was being overcharged for protecting herself. Alexander ultimately served three years in prison. In an interview, Corey told me that she didn’t understand why her actions were “newsworthy,” arguing that Alexander had endangered her children, who were in the next room. “How am I the bad guy in that situation?” she asked.

Then, in 2013, Corey failed to convict George Zimmerman in the death of Trayvon Martin. Some critics, like the now-retired Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz, said in no uncertain terms that Zimmerman went free because Corey had overcharged him. (Corey responded by calling Harvard Law School and threatening to sue for libel.) As the special prosecutor in the case, Corey charged Zimmerman with second-degree murder, which requires intent, rather than a lesser charge like manslaughter. Corey’s office also concealed information from the defense that had been taken from Trayvon Martin’s cell phone, which was later revealed by one of her staff members. (Corey subsequently fired him.)

But these high-profile cases only hint at the governing ethos in Corey’s office. In nearly every relevant category, Duval County (by far the largest in the Fourth Circuit) embodies the outdated ideas that have fueled mass incarceration in this country—theories that everyone from the Obama administration to the Koch brothers have declared useless. In 2010, Duval had the highest incarceration rate in Florida—significantly higher than every jurisdiction of comparable size or larger, even though crime everywhere in the state was at a historic low. Despite this fact, Corey has opposed efforts to change the sentencing structure for nonviolent offenses to alleviate overcrowding at local jails. 

Duval is one of the few counties in America in which the number of death sentences hasn’t decreased—a significant outlier during a decade of nationwide decline. One in four Florida death sentences comes from Duval, even though it has less than 5 percent of the state’s population; per capita, it’s the highest in the nation. Corey’s top homicide prosecutor, Bernie de la Rionda, is known for seeking the death sentence even when circumstances seem to weigh against it. For example, Michael Shellito was convicted of homicide and sentenced to death in the 1990s, when he was 19. There is extensive evidence that Shellito was suffering from severe mental illness and has a low IQ. The Florida Supreme Court overturned the death sentence, yet de la Rionda, acting at Corey’s behest, filed an appeal in the decision. One recent case is that of James Xavier Rhodes, a now-24-year-old man who is facing a death sentence for shooting a young woman at a MetroPCS store. Darlene Farrah, the victim’s mother, has asked Corey to grant her daughter’s killer a plea deal for a life sentence—to no avail.

During her first year in office, Corey doubled the number of felony cases in which minors were tried as adults. According to Human Rights Watch, the Fourth Circuit sends 75 percent of the young people charged as adults to prison or jail—the highest rate in the state. (By contrast, Miami-Dade County weighs in at around 12 percent.) This suggests that Corey is less likely than other state attorneys to consider alternatives to prison time.

Yet Corey argues that her decisions as a prosecutor couldn’t possibly be to blame for these disproportionate numbers. “We have so many sets of rules we are bound to follow,” she said. “There are so many checks and balances.”

And now, two weeks after that article was written, Angela Corey has been removed from office by voters. Part of last night's Florida primary vote saw state prosecutor Angela Corey go down in flames to a relatively unknown challenger, Melissa Nelson, who rolled over Corey in the contest.

The election caps a dizzying rise for Nelson and an equally shocking fall for Corey, one of the most polarizing political figures in Jacksonville history who generated national attention and enormous criticism for her prosecutions of George Zimmerman, Marissa Alexander, 12-year-old Cristian Fernandez and many others. Corey will depart office in the first week of January as the first incumbent state attorney in modern history to lose a contested election.

Nelson must still defeat write-in candidate Kenny Leigh in the general election before she officially becomes the state-attorney elect, but no write-in candidate has ever been elected to a state attorney position in Florida and Leigh has not raised any money or made any campaign appearances.

Until Nelson entered the race Corey was largely seen as a lock to win a third term despite numerous controversies and low public approval ratings. But Nelson hit the ground running, raising over $1 million and getting support from many in the legal and business community.

Corey attempted to counter by hyping the support she had received from elected officials like Jacksonville Mayor Lenny Curry, Sheriff Mike Williams and other current and former elected officials. Williams and other law enforcement officers touted Corey, her experience and toughness in ads supporting her. But that support never seemed to convince voters they wanted to keep Corey.

The first poll that came out after Nelson entered the race showed her with a 10-point lead. That expanded to a massive 32-point lead in a poll that was released last week.

Nelson campaigned on a platform of bringing integrity to the office and said Corey had lost the trust of the community with her actions.

For once, Florida does the right thing.  Good job Gunshine State.

StupidiNews!

• Sens. John McCain and Marco Rubio, and former DNC chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz all survived primary challenges from voters in Arizona and Florida last night.
• New Jersey GOP Gov. Chris Christie has vetoed a bill that would raise the state's minimum wage from $8.38 to $15 an hour, saying the bill would eliminate tens of thousands of jobs. 
• Donald Trump will meet with Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto today, then deliver a speech on immigration in Phoenix, Arizona.
• Coca-Cola workers in France found a surprise in a shipment of orange juice from Costa Rica: hundreds of kilos of cocaine that were being illegally smuggled into the country.
• Michigan state lawmakers are considering legislation to allow driverless cars on the streets and highways of the Wolverine State.

Last Call For Strickland From The Record

Things aren't looking good for Ted Strickland in Ohio in his race to unseat GOP Sen. Rob Portman this fall, so much so that Democrats are holding off on ad spending for now to see if he can't find a way to get back in the race that currently has him down by about 8 points.

The Democratic Party’s national Senate campaign arm has canceled more than a week of television ads that were set to run next month in the key battleground of Ohio, where former governor Ted Strickland (D) has struggled to gain traction against incumbent Sen. Rob Portman (R). 

The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee had reserved advertising time on Ohio TV stations starting Sept. 13. Now, according to political ad trackers in both parties, the national Democrats won’t launch that campaign until Sept. 22. 

The DSCC has not withdrawn its support from Strickland entirely — the committee is currently funding a Strickland campaign ad through its limited coordinated-spending accounts that seeks to tie Portman to GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump — but the delay in unleashing ads from the committee’s more substantial independent expenditure arm comes amid rising doubts about Strickland’s viability against Portman. 

Strickland campaign spokesman David Bergstein said the delay represented a shift in tactics, not a vote of no confidence from party honchos in Washington. 

“The DSCC is spending the same amount of money they were slated to spend, it’s just being used to help fund our existing ad instead of through an independent expenditure,” Bergstein said.

If it's truly a move to backload ad spending to hit Portman in late September and October, that's one thing.  But it also gives the DSCC time to reduce that spending, too.  That's where I think we're headed, as Strickland isn't doing himself any favors lately, as Portman has been hitting him hard on Strickland's time as governor preceding John Kasich.

We'll see if Strickland can get his act together or not. Doing things like saying how awesome Gov. Kasich is for not backing Trump for example isn't going to get too many additional votes for him, but that's Strickland's way.  He's a nice guy, and totally unsuited to the Year of Trump.  If Democrats do get control of the Senate back, I just don't see that path going through Ted Strickland and Ohio right now.

State (Elections) Of Chaos

This Michael Isikoff story on Yahoo! News about foreign hackers hitting state election databases  demonstrates we may have an extremely serious problem on our hands in 2016.

The FBI has uncovered evidence that foreign hackers penetrated two state election databases in recent weeks, prompting the bureau to warn election officials across the country to take new steps to enhance the security of their computer systems, according to federal and state law enforcement officials. 

The FBI warning, contained in a “flash” alert from the FBI’s Cyber Division, a copy of which was obtained by Yahoo News, comes amid heightened concerns among U.S. intelligence officials about the possibility of cyberintrusions, potentially by Russian state-sponsored hackers, aimed at disrupting the November elections. 

Those concerns prompted Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson to convene a conference call with state election officials on Aug. 15, in which he offered his department’s help to make state voting systems more secure, including providing federal cyber security experts to scan for vulnerabilities, according to a “readout” of the call released by the department. 

Johnson emphasized in the call that Homeland Security was not aware of “specific or credible cybersecurity threats” to the election, officials said. But three days after that call, the FBI Cyber Division issued a potentially more disturbing warning, entitled “Targeting Activity Against State Board of Election Systems.” The alert, labeled as restricted for “NEED TO KNOW recipients,” disclosed that the bureau was investigating cyberintrusions against two state election websites this summer, including one that resulted in the “exfiltration,” or theft, of voter registration data. “It was an eye opener,” one senior law enforcement official said of the bureau’s discovery of the intrusions. “We believe it’s kind of serious, and we’re investigating.” 

The bulletin does not identify the states in question, but sources familiar with the document say it refers to the targeting by suspected foreign hackers of voter registration databases in Arizona and Illinois. In the Illinois case, officials were forced to shut down the state’s voter registration system for ten days in late July, after the hackers managed to download personal data on up to 200,000 state voters, Ken Menzel, the general counsel of the Illinois Board of Elections, said in an interview. The Arizona attack was more limited, involving malicious software that was introduced into its voter registration system but no successful exfiltration of data, a state official said.

So yes, this is kind of a big deal.  My first question is "which foreign power is behind this" and the obvious answer is Donald Trump's friends in Moscow, although that may not be the correct answer. But the thought that foreign hackers are mucking around in state voting databases should be disturbing to everyone.  The potential for dirty tricks here could be devastating, especially in a contested state like Arizona or majorly populated one like Illinois.

We'll see how the FBI handles this.

Maine Turning The LePage

In a radio interview this morning, embattled GOP Gov. Paul LePage admitted that he may not finish out his term after his most recent racist tirades.

Gov. Paul LePage raised the possibility Tuesday that he may not finish his second term, amid mounting pressure from Democrats and members of his own party to amend for his recent actions. 

“I’m looking at all options,” the Republican governor said while appearing on WVOM, a Bangor talk radio station. “I think some things I’ve been asked to do are beyond my ability. I’m not going to say that I’m not going to finish it. I’m not saying that I am going to finish it.” 

He later said, “If I’ve lost my ability to help Maine people, maybe it’s time to move on.” 

LePage also apologized repeatedly to Rep. Drew Gattine and his family for leaving a threatening voicemail last week. 

He said he plans to invite the Westbrook representative to a face-to-face meeting to talk further. 

“When I was called a racist I just lost it, and there’s no excuse,” the governor said. “It’s unacceptable. It’s totally my fault.”

I'm not sure if this means LePage is expecting this to be enough and for him to get off the hook, or if he really means any of this.  Given his propensity and repeated racist remarks over the years, I can't imagine his sincerity level is very high at all.

Still, we'll see if this leads Maine Democrats to dig in and call for LePage to do the right thing and step down.  Here's hoping.

StupidiNews!

• Astronomers are taking a closer look at a radio signal from a star 94 light-years from Earth to see if there's any indication that the signal could indicate a distant civilization.
• The Obama administration says it will meet its goal of admitting 10,000 Syrian refugees into the US a month ahead of schedule.
• An attack on the Chinese embassy in Kyrgyzstan's capital of Bishkek appears to have been a suicide car bomber, three were wounded in the attempt to breach the compound's gates.
• The EU has hit Apple with a $14.5 billion tax bill after regulators determined that Ireland illegally cut the tech company's taxes, both Apple and Ireland are expected to appeal the deal.
• Drugmaker Mylan says it will offer a cheaper generic version of its EpiPen, but the alternative will still retail for $300 for a two-pack of the injectors.

Last Call For Weiner Dog

Well it wouldn't be the 2016 election season without former Dem Congressman (and husband of Clinton aide Huma Abedin) Anthony Weiner showing up with poor impulse control once again and embarrassing himself nationally with his sexting addiction.

Weiner, whose career ended after a sexting scandal, was reportedly exchanging messages with a woman on July 31, 2015, when he changed the subject of the explicit conversation, saying, "Someone just climbed into my bed," the New York Post reported. 

He then attached a picture of his crotch, with his son curled up nearby. 

“You do realize you can see you[r] Weiner in that pic??” the woman responded, according to the Post. 

Earlier this month, Weiner gave his phone number and offered to share his location with a college student during a private online chat, according to the Post.

So yeah, last summer he was still at it, and probably since then, once again cheating on his wife and making an asshole out of himself.  Oh hey, and his kid was in the picture too, because he's a family guy.

Yes, I know the Democrats aren't perfect and the Republicans are far worse, but it sure would be nice for Weiner to stop behaving like a horny frat boy jackass, you know? This is wrong, this is stupid, and frankly I'd like to never hear about this little carbuncle again.

Go away, man.

In A World Of Pure Imagination

Legendary comedian, actor, producer, director and movie legend Gene Wilder has passed away today at the age of 83.

Gene Wilder, who regularly stole the show in such comedic gems as “The Producers,” “Blazing Saddles,” “Young Frankenstein,” “Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory” and “Stir Crazy,” died Monday at his home in Stamford, Conn. His nephew Jordan Walker-Pearlman said he died of complications from Alzheimer’s disease. He was 83. 

His nephew said in a statement, “We understand for all the emotional and physical challenges this situation presented we have been among the lucky ones — this illness-pirate, unlike in so many cases, never stole his ability to recognize those that were closest to him, nor took command of his central-gentle-life affirming core personality. The decision to wait until this time to disclose his condition wasn’t vanity, but more so that the countless young children that would smile or call out to him “there’s Willy Wonka,” would not have to be then exposed to an adult referencing illness or trouble and causing delight to travel to worry, disappointment or confusion. He simply couldn’t bear the idea of one less smile in the world.

He continued to enjoy art, music, and kissing with his leading lady of the last twenty-five years, Karen. He danced down a church aisle at a wedding as parent of the groom and ring bearer, held countless afternoon movie western marathons and delighted in the the company of beloved ones.”

He had been diagnosed with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma in 1989. 

The comic actor, who was twice Oscar nominated, for his role in “The Producers” and for co-penning “Young Frankenstein” with Mel Brooks, usually portrayed a neurotic who veered between total hysteria and dewy-eyed tenderness. “My quiet exterior used to be a mask for hysteria,” he told Time magazine in 1970. “After seven years of analysis, it just became a habit.” 

Habit or not, he got a great deal of mileage out of his persona in the 1970s for directors like Mel Brooks and Woody Allen, leading to a few less successful stints behind the camera, the best of which was “The Woman in Red,” co-starring then-wife Gilda Radner. Wilder was devastated by Radner’s death from ovarian cancer in 1989 and worked only intermittently after that. He tried his hand briefly at a sitcom in 1994, “Something Wilder,” and won an Emmy in 2003 for a guest role on “Will & Grace.”

Needless to say, with all the Mel Brooks, Richard Pryor and Willy Wonka references I make around here, Gene Wilder was one of my favorite actors.

Here's hoping you're in a place of pure imagination, sir.