Last Call For Back To (No) Work

Congress is back in session, and Republicans are immediately back to their usual nonsense, this time holding funding for fighting the Zika virus hostage again and Democrats not falling for it as the measure would have eliminated all federal funding for Planned Parenthood as well as returned the Confederate flag to national monuments and cemeteries.

McConnell and House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) have both vowed to get money out the door to fight Zika by the end of September. Senate GOP leaders acknowledged for the first time Tuesday that the Zika funding will likely be wrapped into the stopgap spending bill, known as the continuing resolution.

"You know I assume that it would be wrapped in the year-end fiscal negotiations that would lead to some sort of continuing resolution. That's my assumption," Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas), the Senate majority whip, told reporters just before Tuesday’s failed vote.

Some Republicans, including those in Florida facing the most intense pressure on Zika funding, have already hinted that the GOP will have to drop its Planned Parenthood language to get a bill passed in the upper chamber.

“For this to get done, that language just may have to go away,” Sen. Roy Blunt (R-Mo.), a leading negotiator on Zika who faces reelection this fall, told McClatchy.

The Senate’s bill would have provided about $1.1 billion, including about $350 million in new money and the rest coming from existing health accounts, such as a fund for fighting the Ebola virus.

Earlier this summer, the Senate approved a different, bipartisan $1.1 billion funding package, though it was ultimately in the House because the funding was not offset.

Both bills are shy of the White House’s total $1.9 billion request, which Republicans from Florida — such as vulnerable incumbents Sen. Marco Rubio and Rep. Carlos Curbelo — have backed.

Where this goes now, I can't tell you, other than hey, the babies that Republicans care about because they're "pro-life" will continue to die, or continue to be born with preventable birth defects, because 
Republicans want to win points in an election year.

And this is all the House and Senate GOP.  Trump doesn't have to lift a finger to show the world how awful all the non-Trump GOP are.

The Coming Av-Hill-Lanche, Con't

Hillary Clinton is going to win, and the main reason is because Donald Trump will bring unprecedented turnout for voters of color, and college-educated white women...unprecedented turnout, that is, for Hillary Clinton.  The suburbs of Philadelphia, like Blue Bell, PA, are exactly the kind of place where Clinton will make the largest Democratic gains in swing states across the nation, and that will total up to a thrashing come November.

Trump is badly lagging every previous Republican nominee with educated white women. Among white women with a college degree, Romney earned 52 per cent to Obama’s 46 per cent in 2012. Democrat Hillary Clinton, the first female nominee of a major party, is trouncing Trump 58 per cent to 38 per cent, ABC/Washington Post polling suggests.

No Republican has won Pennsylvania since 1988. Trump, behind in more diverse states, needs it desperately. He is trailing by seven percentage points. The four “collar counties” around Philadelphia — Montgomery, Bucks, Chester and Delaware — are a large part of the reason why.

“They’re hugely important. You had 1.2 of 5.5 million votes cast in 2012 cast in four counties,” said G. Terry Madonna, director of the Center for Politics and Public Affairs at Franklin and Marshall College. “It’s virtually impossible for either party to carry the state if they don’t do well there. In fact, you usually have to win.”

The counties have been trending toward the Democrats for 25 years. Republican voters there, Madonna said, tend to mix fiscal conservatism with liberal positions on issues like gun control, abortion rights and climate change. Trump has staked out right-wing stances on all three.

Blue Bell went narrowly for Obama in the last election. An unscientific sample on Monday was notably lopsided: of 37 women, 22 preferred Clinton versus only eight who said they would vote for Trump or were likely to do so.

Their chief concern about Trump was not policy. They objected most strongly to his behaviour, to his attitudes toward women, and to his disparagement of Muslims, Hispanics and African-Americans.

“I think Trump is disgusting and awful and everything about him makes me sick,” said Stefani Bohm, 43, a psychotherapist.

“Clinton, because Trump’s a lunatic,” said Miranda Sarwer, 44, who works in the pharmaceutical industry. “He’s a bigot, he’s a racist.”

And Republican women can't bring themselves to vote for Trump.  Again, Romney won this group in 2012 and still lost the election.  What happens when Clinton increases her lead with voters of color, and then makes a 26-point turnaround with white women with degrees on top of that? 

We're going to find out.

The Pause That Refreshes

Bit of a vacation for me this week, so I won't be posting quite as much until I'm back on Monday, but I'll be around a bit should anything nifty pop up for you.

Also, ZVTS hit 8 last month and I didn't even notice, so happy blogday to me, and as always thanks to all the folks that read, comment, and cheer the place on.

Carry on.

Last Call For Clinton Derangement Syndrome 2.0

Republicans are getting so desperate with Donald Trump's collapse that they're actually resorting to calling for special prosecutor for Clinton's confirmation hearings as Secretary of State.

Senate Republican Whip John Cornyn (Texas) said Hillary Clinton misled lawmakers eight years ago when questions about the Clinton Foundation loomed over her nomination to head the State Department.

Cornyn held up her nomination because of concerns over potential conflicts of interest posed by the foundation’s fundraising activities. He finally relented and voted for her after Clinton promised him that safeguards would be followed.

In the wake of various reports detailing instances where the foundation did not fully comply with transparency requirements, Cornyn now says he would have voted against her had he known what was to come.“When I put a hold on Mrs. Clinton’s nomination as secretary of State, she reassured me that they would take appropriate steps,” he told The Hill in an interview Friday. “As seems to be usual for the Clintons, they crossed the line and all the concerns that she reassured me would not occur did in fact occur.

“She was playing both sides. As she was performing her job of secretary of State, the Clinton Foundation was shaking down donors who were buying access. It’s absolutely deplorable.”

Cornyn said the only way to know whether foreign donors to the foundation gained improper access to Clinton while at the State Department would be for President Obama to appoint a special prosecutor.

For months, Cornyn has called for a special prosecutor to investigate allegations that Clinton mishandled classified information on a private email server while at State.

“Once again the rules don’t apply to them like they apply to everybody else. Can you imagine if anybody else in the United States government had tried to get away with something like this? It wouldn’t have happened,” he said.

And make no mistake, this isn't aimed at Republicans at all, but at nervous Democrats to try to get them to think that Donald Trump would be preferable to four years of daily "Republicans Call For Special Prosecutor As X Looms Over Clinton" stories.

The correct response is "Maybe if Democrats controlled both the White House and the Senate in 2017, this would go away.  Let's make both happen."

Far be it from me to advise.

He's A Rocket Mensch

SpaceX's spectacular and catastrophic test fire failure Friday that resulted in the total destruction of the company's Dragon rocket and its satellite payload cost hundreds of millions of dollars, sure.  But what people haven't been talking about as much is the fact that SpaceX's client was effectively Israel's space program.

A large question mark looms over Israel’s space industry after its prized Amos-6 satellite blew up in last week’s failed SpaceX rocket launch.

Space Communication Ltd., the Israeli company that was to operate the Amos-6, is still picking up the pieces and deciding what to do next. The government will formulate a long-term national space program, and may help develop a communications satellite, the Science Ministry said late Sunday after an emergency meeting with representatives of the country’s space industries.

The Sept. 1 accident in Cape Canaveral, Florida was the biggest blow to Israel’s space program since the death of astronaut Col. Ilan Ramon in the Space Shuttle Columbia disaster in 2003.

The setback imperils Space Com’s deal with China’s Beijing Xinwei Group for control of the company, but presents an opportunity for Israel Aerospace Industries Ltd., the state-owned weapons manufacturer that built Amos-6. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu can allot some of the estimated $300 million to pay IAI to build another satellite for Space Com, its sole client for such products, but first must decide if satellites are an industry of national strategic importance.

“This is a traumatic experience for the industry, but allows us to hold this discussion that should have happened 10-15 years ago,” Yossi Weiss, IAI’s chief executive officer, said Sunday.

Now I find this all intriguing that the end result of a major technical disaster appears to be moving Israel's satellite program away from a joint commercial venture with Beijing and towards a Israeli military takeover in the name of national interest, something that's been discussed for ten or fifteen years.

The government could push to build a new satellite and maintain the independence of Israel’s space industry, according to Tal Inbar, head of the space and UAV research center at the Fisher Institute for Air and Space Strategic Studies, based in Herzliya, Israel.

Keeping the country’s space industry in-house shields it from pro-Palestinian activists who apply political pressure on foreign companies to stop doing business with Israel, Inbar said. Satellites also serve as backup for Israel’s communications infrastructure in the event of war or technical malfunction, he added.

"There’s a synergy in the triangle between Space Com, its biggest client, and its supplier, in that they’re all Israeli companies," Inbar said in an interview. "They understand each other and would be responsive to each other, so that they could amend issues in the satellite, if need be, in no time."

You don't say.  Gosh, that's quite the long-term benefit if you're the Israeli military. 

Just throwing that out there.

The Black Millennial Blame Game

Whenever the polls get close as they have recently with the switch from registered voters to likely voter models, the media starts looking for "answers" other than the obvious like "switch from registered voters to likely voter models".  That doesn't sell copy, so there's been a lot of effort to find instead someone to pin the blame on in case Clinton loses.  Jonathan Martin of the NYT confirms that group is black Millennials in 2016.

When a handful of liberal advocacy organizations convened a series of focus groups with young black voters last month, the assessments of Donald J. Trump were predictably unsparing.

But when the participants were asked about Hillary Clinton, their appraisals were just as blunt and nearly as biting.

“What am I supposed to do if I don’t like him and I don’t trust her?” a millennial black woman in Ohio asked. “Choose between being stabbed and being shot? No way!”

“She was part of the whole problem that started sending blacks to jail,” a young black man, also from Ohio, observed about Mrs. Clinton.

“He’s a racist, and she is a liar, so really what’s the difference in choosing both or choosing neither?” another young black woman from Ohio said.

Young African-Americans, like all voters their age, are typically far harder to drive to the polls than middle-aged and older Americans. Yet with just over two months until Election Day, many Democrats are expressing alarm at the lack of enthusiasm, and in some cases outright resistance, some black millennials feel toward Mrs. Clinton.

Their skepticism is rooted in a deep discomfort with the political establishment that they believe the 68-year-old former first lady and secretary of state represents. They share a lingering mistrust of Mrs. Clinton and her husband over criminal justice issues. They are demanding more from politicians as part of a new, confrontational wave of black activism that has arisen in response to police killings of unarmed African-Americans.

“We’re in the midst of a movement with a real sense of urgency,” explained Brittany Packnett, 31, a St. Louis-based leader in the push for police accountability. Mrs. Clinton is not yet connecting, she said, “because the conversation that younger black voters are having is no longer one about settling on a candidate who is better than the alternative.”

The question of just how many young African-Americans will show up to vote carries profound implications for this election. Mrs. Clinton is sure to dominate Mr. Trump among black voters, but her overwhelming margin could ultimately matter less than the total number of blacks who show up to vote.

To replicate President Obama’s success in crucial states such as Florida, Ohio and Pennsylvania, she cannot afford to let the percentage of the electorate that is black slip far below what it was in 2012. And while a modest drop-off of black votes may not imperil Mrs. Clinton’s prospects, given Mr. Trump’s unpopularity among upscale white voters, it could undermine Democrats’ effort to capture control of the Senate and win other down-ballot elections.

Elon James White, in particular, has been taking this approach, that real criminal justice and mass incarceration issues are the main thing for black voters in this election.  That's fine, he lives in California, a state that Clinton is in precisely zero danger of losing, it's good to spread awareness.

But these are black Millennial voters in Ohio, North Carolina, Viginia and Missouri we're talking about here. And the thing is Hillary Clinton has put her plans for addressing these issues right on her website.

"People are crying out for criminal justice reform. Families are being torn apart by excessive incarceration. Young people are being threatened and humiliated by racial profiling. Children are growing up in homes shattered by prison and poverty. They’re trying to tell us. We need to listen." 

Hillary Clinton, July 8, 2016

The United States has less than 5 percent of the world’s population but almost 25 percent of the total prison population. A significant percentage of the more than 2 million Americans incarcerated today are nonviolent offenders. African American men are far more likely to be stopped and searched by police, charged with crimes, and sentenced to longer prison terms than white men found guilty of the same offenses.

To successfully reform our criminal justice system, we must work to strengthen the bonds of trust between our communities and our police, end the era of mass incarceration, and ensure a successful transition of individuals from prison to home. As president, Hillary will focus on a few key areas.

And then it lists exactly what she plans to do about improving conditions with reforming police, to use the kind of collaborative policing approach that has worked here in Cincinnati, and to end the era of mass incarceration.   That's been there since July, and it's one of the major reasons I'm voting for her, not "against Trump" but for Hillary Clinton.

But nowhere in the article does Jon Martin mention this.

In Florida, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Virginia, 70 percent of African-Americans under 35 said they were backing Mrs. Clinton, 8 percent indicated support for Mr. Trump and 18 percent said they were backing another candidate or did not know whom they would support. In 2012, Mr. Obama won 92 percent of black voters under 45 nationally, according to exit polling.

Over 25 percent of African-Americans are between 18 and 34, and 44 percent are older than 35, according to 2013 census data.

“There is no Democratic majority without these voters,” Mr. Belcher said. “The danger is that if you don’t get these voters out, you’ve got the 2004 John Kerry electorate again.”

In Ohio, for example, blacks were 10 percent of the electorate in the 2004 presidential race. But when Mr. Obama ran for re-election in 2012, that number jumped to 15 percent.

What frustrates many blacks under 40 is Mrs. Clinton’s overriding focus on Mr. Trump.

“We already know what the deal is with Trump,” said Nathan Baskerville, a 35-year-old North Carolina state representative. “Tell us what your plan is to make our life better.”

She has.

Nobody apparently has listened, and I'm actually pretty upset with this.

Such talk can be frustrating to Mrs. Clinton’s aides, who point out that her first speech of the campaign was on criminal justice and that she has laid out a series of proposals on the topic.

“It is on us to make sure that that’s known,” said Addisu Demissie, Mrs. Clinton’s voter outreach and mobilization director, adding of young black activists, “We share their goals, we share their values and we want to make sure that’s reflected through our campaign.”

The focus groups and interviews with young black activists suggest many of them are not aware of Mrs. Clinton’s plans regarding police conduct, mass incarceration and structural racism broadly.

Please note that this is being reported in a newspaper.  Perhaps the newspaper could do an article on Mrs. Clinton's plans regarding police conduct, mass incarceration, and structural racism broadly.

Just saying.

Last Call For Off The Menu

As much as I liked eating there as there's one right near my apartment, it may be time to stick a fork in Chipotle, folks.  

Nearly 10,000 workers are suing Chipotle for allegedly cheating them on their pay.
Current and former Chipotle employees claim that the company made them work extra hours "off the clock" without paying them. It's a practice known as wage theft, and Chipotle is allegedly doing it all over the United States. 

"Chipotle routinely requires hourly-paid restaurant employees to punch out, and then continue working until they are given permission to leave," according to the class action lawsuit known as Turner v. Chipotle. It's named after a former Chipotle manager in Colorado, Leah Turner, who claims she had to work without pay and was told to make workers under her do the same in order to meet budget goals. 

Chipotle denies any wrongdoing and says the case has no merit. The company says it has paid all wages it owes employees. 

Briana Alexander is one of the nearly 10,000 workers who have joined the lawsuit. She worked at a Chipotle in Miami, Florida for about a year, starting in the fall of 2013.
"Behind the scenes, [Chipotle] is not always what it seems," Alexander told CNNMoney. "I can say I have worked off the clock." 

Alexander says she was forced to stay late numerous times at her store. If the workers weren't done by midnight or 12:30am, they were clocked out but told to keep working until the job was finished, even though they were no longer getting paid. Alexander also claims she worked 12-hour shifts on some days, but was clocked out after her shift time ended even though she actually continued to work on busy days. 

Chipotle has faced similar lawsuits before, but this is the first time there has been such a large class action case against the company for wage theft. As of Friday, 9,961 current and former workers have sent in consent forms to join the lawsuit. 

They come from about every state that Chipotle operates in, according to lawyer Kent Williams of Williams Law Firm, who is representing the employees in Turner v. Chipotle. 

"Chipotle has argued this is a few rogue managers who aren't following policy. Our view, especially given the number of people opting in, is that it's a systematic problem at Chipotle," says Williams.

And I know what the obvious criticism is from a Glibertarian standpoint: better to be working for stolen wages than to be unemployed and getting $0.  And yes, I'm sure Chipotle's response will be "Well we will have to cut jobs and close underperforming locations now" if they lose this case.

But at some point, cheating workers out of money they are owed is a problem that has to be addressed.  As an IT professional I've been subject to wage theft.  When the state of KY came to me looking for evidence I complied.

That company is still going and they've hired more.  Hopefully, they pay their new workers fairly.

I doubt it, though.

Duterte Deeds, Done Dirt Cheap

Meanwhile in the Philippines, recently elected President Rodrigo Duterte, voted in on a "law and order platform" to apply the death penalty for drug pushers through , you know, illegal military death squads whenever possible, has responded to his first national terrorism crisis with the light, friendly version of outright martial law.

Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte on Saturday declared a "state of lawlessness" in the country after 14 people were killed in a bomb blast at a night market in his home city.

Duterte's declaration came as the Abu Sayyaf terrorist group claimed responsibility for the late Friday attack that also injured 71 people, with the extremists warning of more attacks in the coming days.

The Philippine leader stressed that he had not declared martial law, but that the move would allow him to ask the military to conduct operations according to his instructions.

"These are extraordinary times," he told reporters during a visit before dawn at the site of the bomb attack in the southern city of Davao, where he used to be the mayor. "I can order soldiers to search premises."

Placing the country under a state of lawlessness empowers the president to call on the military to help the police in anti-crime operations.

In a statement, the office of the presidential spokesperson pointed out that the declaration has "limitations" as the president can only order the armed forces to quell violence.

Martial law can only be declared in certain situations, the statement continued. "Only if there is an invasion or a rebellion, and when public safety is at risk, can he (the president) suspend the writ of habeas corpus or declare martial law."

The statement called on Philippine citizens to be vigilant against "those who wish to create chaos."

Anyone want to take bets on how long before that declaration of martial law happens?  He's been in office for less than three months and he's running the classic military strongman playbook to an absolute T.

Since Rodrigo Duterte assumed the presidency of the Philippines eight weeks ago, the same scene has unfolded night after night in the slum neighborhoods of Manila: A shot rings out, and a person lies dead on the street with a cardboard sign laid next to him, scrawled with a single word: “Pusher.”

This is how Duterte’s war on drugs is playing out on the ground. It is a punitive campaign spurred by the president’s promises of immunity and even bounties to those who take drug users and traffickers “dead or alive.”Last week, the national police chief testified during a Senate inquiry that more than 1,900 people suspected of being involved in the drug trade or abusing drugs had been shot dead by police or “vigilantes” (that number nowapproaches 2,500). Over 10,000 people have been arrested, and at least 675,000 people have voluntarily surrendered to the authorities.

The numbers are staggering, but what remains unclear is whether those killed and imprisoned are even involved in the drug trade. According to bereaved relatives, Duterte’s take-no-prisoners approach has claimed former addicts, spouses of suspected drug peddlers, and even a 5-year old child as casualties. “Mothers are approaching me every week as their sons are threatened or listed in police precincts,” said Jean Enriquez, a long-time feminist leader who belongs to a coalition of 50 Philippine human rights organizations. “Being listed could mean death.”

The soaring rise in extrajudicial killings has invited scrutiny and condemnation from both international and domestic human rights groups, as well as institutions like the Catholic Church. But Duterte shows no sign of slowing down. Only last Friday, he brushed off criticism from the United Nations in an address to the Philippine military: “What crime against humanity? I’d like to be frank with you, are [drug users] humans?”

And keep in mind this was all before this weekend's declaration of "lawlessness", suddenly making those extrajudicial military death squads of his very, very legal.

Manila has suddenly become a extremely big international problem in the last several weeks, and it's only going to get worse.

Sunday Long Read: The Cure For What Ailes You

This week's Sunday Long Read is Gabriel Sherman's piece in NY Mag about the women who brought down FOX News chairman Roger Ailes, ending his two-decade run as the man who forever changed the cable news landscape for the worse.

And it couldn't have happened to a nicer asshole.

It began, of course, with a lawsuit. Of all the people who might have brought down Ailes, the former Fox & Friends anchor Gretchen Carlson was among the least likely. A 50-year-old former Miss America, she was the archetypal Fox anchor: blonde, right-wing, proudly anti-intellectual. A memorable Daily Show clip showed Carlson saying she needed to Google the words czar and ignoramus. But television is a deceptive medium. Off-camera, Carlson is a Stanford- and Oxford-educated feminist who chafed at the culture of Fox News. When Ailes made harassing comments to her about her legs and suggested she wear tight-fitting outfits after she joined the network in 2005, she tried to ignore him. But eventually he pushed her too far. When Carlson complained to her supervisor in 2009 about her co-host Steve Doocy, who she said condescended to her on and off the air, Ailes responded that she was “a man hater” and a “killer” who “needed to get along with the boys.” After this conversation, Carlson says, her role on the show diminished. In September 2013, Ailes demoted her from the morning show Fox & Friends to the lower-rated 2 p.m. time slot.

Carlson knew her situation was far from unique: It was common knowledge at Fox that Ailes frequently made inappropriate comments to women in private meetings and asked them to twirl around so he could examine their figures; and there were persistent rumors that Ailes propositioned female employees for sexual favors. The culture of fear at Fox was such that no one would dare come forward. Ailes was notoriously paranoid and secretive — he built a multiroom security bunker under his home and kept a gun in his Fox office, according to Vanity Fair — and he demanded absolute loyalty from those who worked for him. He was known for monitoring employee emails and phone conversations and hiring private investigators. “Watch out for the enemy within,” he told Fox’s staff during one companywide meeting.

Taking on Ailes was dangerous, but Carlson was determined to fight back. She settled on a simple strategy: She would turn the tables on his surveillance. Beginning in 2014, according to a person familiar with the lawsuit, Carlson brought her iPhone to meetings in Ailes’s office and secretly recorded him saying the kinds of things he’d been saying to her all along. “I think you and I should have had a sexual relationship a long time ago, and then you’d be good and better and I’d be good and better. Sometimes problems are easier to solve” that way, he said in one conversation. “I’m sure you can do sweet nothings when you want to,” he said another time.

After more than a year of taping, she had captured numerous incidents of sexual harassment. Carlson’s husband, sports agent Casey Close, put her in touch with his lawyer Martin Hyman, who introduced her to employment attorney Nancy Erika Smith. Smith had won a sexual-harassment settlement in 2008 for a woman who sued former New Jersey acting governor Donald DiFranceso. “I hate bullies,” Smith told me. “I became a lawyer to fight bullies.” But this was riskier than any case she’d tried. Carlson’s Fox contract had a clause that mandated that employment disputes be resolved in private arbitration—which meant Carlson’s case could be thrown out and Smith herself could be sued for millions for filing.

Carlson’s team decided to circumvent the clause by suing Ailes personally rather than Fox News. They hoped that with the element of surprise, they would be able to prevent Fox from launching a preemptive suit that forced them into arbitration. The plan was to file in September 2016 in New Jersey Superior Court (Ailes owns a home in Cresskill, New Jersey). But their timetable was pushed up when, on the afternoon of June 23, Carlson was called into a meeting with Fox general counsel Dianne Brandi and senior executive VP Bill Shine, and fired the day her contract expired.* Smith, bedridden following surgery for a severed hamstring, raced to get the suit ready. Over the Fourth of July weekend, Smith instructed an IT technician to install software on her firm’s network and Carlson’s electronic devices to prevent the use of spyware by Fox. “We didn’t want to be hacked,” Smith said. They filed their lawsuit on July 6.

And the rest is now history.  Ailes was forced out of his position before the end of July after several additional women, mostly employees (and in some cases possible employees) of FOX News came forward to corroborate his slimy behavior.  The Murdochs kicked his ass to the curb following their own investigation into the matter.

The larger issue was of course that Ailes's cartoonish misogyny and sexual harassment, hush money payments and stalking, was one of the worst-kept secrets in the cable news business.  Say what you will about Gretchen Carlson (and many of us have, including myself) and her tenure on FOX and Friends, but standing up to Roger Ailes and ending his reign of frat boy garbage took serious courage, and she deserves respect and even admiration for it.

More power to you, ma'am.

Something Of A Soap Opera

Cincinnati is home to a lot of major corporations, Fifth Third Bank, Macy's, AK Steel and Western & Southern Insurance, but the big two by far are Kroger and Proctor & Gamble (now P&G).  The region makes a lot of money as HQ to two of the largest makers and sellers of consumer cleaning products you buy at the grocery store, so when the Obama administration called out manufacturers and retailers of antibacterial soaps on Friday and is banning the main ingredient in them, it's kind of a big deal around here.

The Food and Drug Administration banned the sale of soaps containing certain antibacterial chemicals on Friday, saying industry had failed to prove they were safe to use over the long term or more effective than using ordinary soap and water.

In all the F.D.A. took action against 19 different chemicals and has given industry a year to take them out of their products. About 40 percent of soaps — including liquid hand soap and bar soap – contain the chemicals. Triclosan, mostly used in liquid soap, and triclocarban, in bar soaps, are by far the most common.

The rule applies only to consumer hand washes and soaps. Other products may still contain the chemicals. At least one toothpaste, Colgate Total, still does, but the F.D.A. says its maker proved that the benefits of using it — reducing plaque and gum disease — outweigh the risks.

The agency is also studying the safety and efficacy of hand sanitizers and wipes, and has asked companies for data on three active ingredients — alcohol (ethanol or ethyl alcohol), isopropyl alcohol and benzalkonium chloride — before issuing a final rule on them.

Public health experts applauded the rule, which came after years of mounting concerns that the antibacterial chemicals that go into everyday products are doing more harm than good. Experts have pushed the agency to regulate antimicrobial chemicals, warning that they risk scrambling hormones in children and promoting drug-resistant infections.

“It has boggled my mind why we were clinging to these compounds, and now that they are gone I feel liberated,” said Rolf Halden, a scientist at the Biodesign Institute at Arizona State University, who has been tracking the issue for years. “They had absolutely no benefit but we kept them buzzing around us everywhere. They are in breast milk, in urine, in blood, in babies just born, in dust, in water.”

The agency first proposed the rule in 2013, when it told companies that unless they could prove that chemicals like triclosan and triclocarban did more good than harm, they would have to remove the products that contained them from the market. On Friday, the agency said that it was not convinced.

The F.D.A. has given industry more time to prove that an additional three chemicals are safe and effective — benzalkonium chloride,benzethonium chloride and chloroxylenol. Products with those chemicals can stay on the market for now.

And the drug resistance that antibacterial agents like triclosan are causing is not a joke.  We're rapidly running into resistant strains of infectious, treatable diseases like tuberculosis that are no longer treatable by the drugs we have. The age of antibiotics is rapidly coming to a close and the antibiotics we have now will probably be rendered all but useless within my lifetime.

It's probably a smart move by the FDA to keep a tight leash on chemicals like that.  Hand sanitizer, now ubiquitous in American society, is most likely next on the list.

We'll see what the FDA has to say about that soon.

Last Call For El Payaso Naranja

A lot of the recent (and unwarranted) panic over polls tightening comes from the shift to likely voter models for pollsters, and those models have been mostly very bad at predicting turnout among voters of color.  I feel very strongly that these voter turnout models are using 2014 data, which granted had an absolutely dismal turnout of Latino voters. In 2014, the electorate was 75% white, and if that turnout model holds true, Donald Trump will easily be your next president.

It won't.

The reality is that there are 10.7 million more eligible voters in 2016 than in 2012, and two-thirds of them are voters of color. And that percentage will only rise in the future four, eight, twelve years from now.

The problem for Trump and the GOP is simple:  Trump is burying the GOP brand with voters of color, especially Latino voters.  And if Latino voters start voting like black voters, the GOP is dead and gone.

Donald Trump’s speech on immigration this week — with its full blown xenophobia, its broad brush portrayal of undocumented immigrants as invaders and criminals, and its flat-out nixing of any meaningful path to assimilation — is the stuff of nightmares for GOP operatives who believe their party’s perilous standing with Latinos has left it teetering on the edge of a demographic abyss.

A new poll of over 3,000 Latino voters just released today will not do much to assuage these fears.

The poll, which was commissioned by America’s Voice and conducted by Latino Decisions, finds Hillary Clinton leading Donald Trump by 70-19 among Latinos. That’s worse than Mitt Romney’s 27 percent in 2012.

But buried in the crosstabs are these findings that suggest Trump may also be damaging the GOP’s image among them pretty badly:

* Only 21 percent of Latinos say the Republican Party truly cares about the Latino community. (Forty five percent say the GOP doesn’t care too much about them, and 28 percent say it is hostile to them, a total of 73 percent.) By contrast, 56 percent say the Democratic Party truly cares about them.

* 70 percent of Latinos say that Trump has made the Republican Party “more hostile” to them. By contrast, 58 percent of Latinos say Hillary Clinton has made the Democratic Party “more welcoming” to them.

* 68 percent of Latinos say Trump’s views about immigrants and immigration make them less likely to vote for Republican candidates this November — with 58 percent saying those views have made them much less likely to do that. By contrast, 64 percent of Latinos say Clinton’s views make them either much more likely (43) or somewhat more likely (21) to vote for Dem candidates.

* 63 percent of Latinos say Trump’s opposition to Obama’s executive deportation relief for DREAMers (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals) makes them less likely to vote for GOP candidates, with 53 percent saying they are much less likely.

* Latinos say they’ll vote for Democrats on the generic ballot by 60-14.

There is also some evidence that Trump may be galvanizing Latinos to turn out. Seventy six percent of Latinos say it’s more important to vote this year than it was in 2012, and of that group, a bare majority say this is because of the need to resist Trump and his views.

Imagine how crushed the Republican party would be if Trump drove Latino voters to turn out and vote like black voters.  They would end the GOP.

And everyone knows it.

That day just got a lot closer.

GOP Voter ID Laws Are Racist Extortion

North Carolina faces more legal action as Republicans are dragging their feet on implementing Supreme Court-ordered changes to remedy the state's racist voter ID laws by passing the buck on to GOP-controlled county election boards.

With the Supreme Court's refusal to hear an Appeals Court case that overturned North Carolina's 2013 elections law, the struggle for voter rights has moved to the counties.

The court decision resets the state's voting laws to before the 2013 law was passed. That includes 17 days of early voting but it raises a number of other questions; the number of hours and location of early voting sites aren't spelled out, for example.

At the reported urging of the state Republican party, many county boards of elections - which are all led by Republicans - have submitted plans for early voting that mirror provisions of the 2013 law or trend in that direction.

"The state failed in its effort to restrict early voting and failed in its effort to hurt voters of color in their participation," said Allison Riggs, with the Southern Coalition for Social Justice. "So we've seen counties pick up the mantle where the state failed."

"Lenoir County's plan represents a 76 percent reduction in early voting hours compared to 2012," said Riggs. "Early voting sites and predominantly African-American communities have been tossed. Weekend voting and Sunday voting have been tossed. Evening hours, tossed. It just flies in the face of what the 4th Circuit's ruling stood for, which is, you have a problem with discrimination when you try and attack voting like that. One of the reasons they wanted to get rid of Sunday voting is because black voters disproportionately used it and black people tend to vote Democratic."

So now the issue is that NC's voter ID laws aren't racist, it's that counties suddenly are unable to implement what the Supreme Court is telling them to do, gosh we're really sorry that we can't let black people vote, you guys.  We can't afford it.

Of course, as one Republican consultant pointed out on Friday, that's the whole reason this is happening.

Longtime Republican consultant Carter Wrenn, a fixture in North Carolina politics, said the GOP’s voter fraud argument is nothing more than an excuse.

“Of course it’s political. Why else would you do it?” he said, explaining that Republicans, like any political party, want to protect their majority. While GOP lawmakers might have passed the law to suppress some voters, Wrenn said, that does not mean it was racist.

“Look, if African Americans voted overwhelmingly Republican, they would have kept early voting right where it was,” Wrenn said. “It wasn’t about discriminating against African Americans. They just ended up in the middle of it because they vote Democrat.”

Exeunt all, stage right.

Let's think about this for a second.  Republicans would let black people vote in North Carolina if more black people just voted Republican.  Republican lawmakers wouldn't target black voters in majority black voting precincts with laws that make it much harder for them to vote if they weren't the most reliable voting bloc for Democrats in America.

This is how Republicans choose to operate.  That's outright extortion, codified into state law.

In 2016.

Let that sink in.  Get angry.

Then go vote.

The Turnout Model Doesn't Always Turn Out Like That

With Labor Day weekend approaching, we're starting to see pollsters switch from registered voters to likely voters, that is raw numbers of voters to weighing those numbers based upon who pollsters think will actually turn out to vote in November.

Traditionally this switch greatly favors the Republican candidate, as polling outfits eliminate more of the younger, more liberal, Democratic-leaning voters from their likely voter models as they are less likely to actually vote than older, more conservative Republican voters.  In presidential election years, this switch usually happens around Labor Day, where the campaign season's home stretch begins.

But a lot of those turnout models haven't done so well recently.  Remember four years ago when Gallup was predicting a Romney win, and Obama won by 5 points instead?  Many likely voter models are heavily weighted against black and Latino turnout, and yet black voters came out in record numbers in 2008 and 2012.

It looks like the pollsters are making the same mistake this year as well.  Let's start with the latest IBD/TIPP poll, showing Trump now tied with Clinton at 39% in a 4-way race.

In a sharp turnaround in an already volatile election season, support for Hillary Clinton tumbled as Donald Trump made gains over the past month, leaving the race a virtual tie.

The latest IBD/TIPP Poll shows that Clinton is now ahead of Trump by just one percentage point, 44% to 43% among likely voters. Last month, Clinton had a seven-point lead over Trump — 46% to 39% -- among registered voters.

Clinton and Trump are tied at 39% each in a four-way matchup that includes Libertarian candidate Gary Johnson, who gets 12% support, and Green Party candidate Jill Stein, who gets 3%.

As the election nears, IBD/TIPP is narrowing the horse-race results from registered to likely voters. This month's survey included a total of 934 respondents, 887 of whom were registered voters and 861 were deemed likely voters. The margin of error for the horse-race results is +/‐3.4 percentage points. The IBD/TIPP Poll has been cited as the most accurate in the past three presidential elections.

Now IBD/TIPP has traditionally been pretty accurate when it comes to the final poll of the presidential campaign, they called 2008 right on the nose.  But the jump from registered to likely is always jarring and is almost always the likely voter model from four years previous, without any adjustments.  We're seeing that now.

Reuters/Ipsos too has made the jump to their first real likely voter model, and it now finds Trump leading.

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump has pulled into an effective tie with Democratic rival Hillary Clinton, erasing a substantial deficit as he consolidated support among his party’s likely voters in recent weeks, according to the latest Reuters/Ipsos national tracking poll released Friday.

The poll showed 40 percent of likely voters supporting Trump and 39 percent backing Clinton for the week of Aug. 26 to Sept. 1. Clinton's support has dropped steadily in the weekly tracking poll since Aug. 25, eliminating what had been a eight-point lead for her.

Trump's gains came as Republican support for their party’s candidate jumped by six percentage points over the past two weeks, to about 78 percent. That is still below the 85 percent support Republican nominee Mitt Romney enjoyed in the summer of 2012, but the improvement helps explain Trump’s rise in the poll.

The Reuters/Ipsos poll is conducted online in English in all 50 states. The latest poll surveyed 1,804 likely voters over the course of the week; it had a credibility interval, a measure of accuracy, of three percent.

Different polls have produced widely different results over the course of the campaign. In part that's because some, like Reuters/Ipsos, have attempted to measure the preferences of who's likely to vote, while others have surveyed the larger pool of all registered voters. And even those that survey likely voters have different ways of estimating who is likely to cast a ballot.

Again, a very, very similar outcome to IBD/TIPP.  Rasmussen too has made the jump to the likely voter model this week.

Hillary Clinton’s post-convention lead has disappeared, putting her behind Donald Trump for the first time nationally since mid-July.

The latest weekly Rasmussen Reports White House Watch national telephone and online survey shows Trump with 40% support to Clinton’s 39% among Likely U.S. Voters, after Clinton led 42% to 38% a week ago. Libertarian candidate Gary Johnson now earns seven percent (7%) of the vote, down from nine percent (9%) the previous two weeks, while Green Party candidate Jill Stein picks up three percent (3%) support. Three percent (3%) like some other candidate, and seven percent (7%) are undecided. (To see survey question wording,click here.)

Clinton's support has been trending down from a high of 44% in early August just after the Democratic National Convention. This is her lowest level of support since mid-July. Trump's support has been eroding, too, from his high of 44% at that time. A one-point lead is statistically insignificant in a survey with a +/- 3 percentage point of margin of error. It highlights, however, that this remains a very close race.

Again, a nearly identical outcome.  All three polls show Hillary Clinton at just 39% among likely voters in a 4-way race, tied with Trump, and frankly I don't believe that for a second. Once again these likely voter models almost always underestimate black and Latino voters, and those are the groups that Hillary is polling the best with.

So expect to see adjustments in these likely voter models that favor Clinton as we move ahead as these models start accounting for the changes in the electorate from four years ago (some will do this better than others, which is why Gallup was so badly off four years ago in late October, having Romney up by 7 two weeks before the election.)

Shorter article: relax.  Then go vote.

Jobapalooza, Con't

Another pretty decent month for job growth in the US as President Obama's unprecedented streak of job creation approaches six and a half years.

U.S. employment growth slowed more than expected in August after two straight months of robust gains and wage gains moderated, which could effectively rule out an interest rate increase from the Federal Reserve this month. 

Nonfarm payrolls rose by 151,000 jobs last month after an upwardly revised 275,000 increase in July, with hiring in manufacturing and construction sectors declining, the Labor Department said on Friday. The unemployment rate was unchanged at 4.9 percent as more people entered the labor market. 

The report comes on the heels of news on Thursday that the manufacturing sector contracted in August, which had already cast doubts on an interest rate hike at the Fed's Sept. 20-21 policy meeting. 

"This mixed jobs report puts the Fed in a tricky situation. It's not all around strong enough to assure a September interest rate hike. But it's solid enough to engender a heated policy discussion," said Mohamed el-Erian, chief economic adviser at Allianz, in Newport Beach, California.

Economists polled by Reuters had forecast payrolls rising 180,000 last month and the unemployment rate slipping one-tenth of a percentage point to 4.8 percent.

A rate hike this month may be on pause because of the miss, but at this point I would think that a rate hike before the election would probably make people crabby anyway, so it's probably a good thing short term.  Still, 77 straight months of job growth, a mark that will probably never be equaled in my lifetime.  I'm hoping very much that it will continue into a Hillary Clinton presidency.

Split Decision, Con't

If you want to know why Democrats aren't running away with significantly more GOP Senate seats at this point, it's because there are somewhat more people who will vote for Clinton, but will still consider Republicans down ballot.

In what could be good news for endangered Republican senators up for re-election this fall, a majority of Hillary Clinton supporters say they are likely to split the ticket — that is, vote for the Democratic presidential candidate but then support some GOP candidates for the Senate or other offices down the ballot.

In a nationwide USA TODAY/Suffolk University Poll, a third of Clinton's supporters, 32%, say they are "very likely" to split their votes, and another 20% say they are "somewhat" likely. Twenty percent say they are "not very likely" to split the ticket, and 23% say they'll vote for Democratic candidates up and down the ballot.

In contrast, a majority of Donald Trump supporters say they probably or definitely will vote only for Republicans. A third, 33%, say they plan to vote a straight GOP ticket up and down the ballot, and another 20% say they are "not very likely" to vote for Democratic candidates for other offices.

So yes, the good news is Clinton is peeling off a lot of GOP support, but that's not translating into coattails down the ballot.  Why?  The fear factor seems to be a pretty good explanation.

Driving the election is antipathy toward the competition: 80% of Trump supporters and 62% of Clinton supporters say if the other candidate wins in November, they would feel "scared," the most negative of four possible choices.

Those are stronger feelings than they express about a victory by their own candidate. Just 27% of Clinton supporters and 29% of Trump supporters would feel "excited," the most positive choice. A majority of both sides — 62% for Clinton and 52% for Trump — predict a more temperate "satisfied" feeling instead.

"I honestly think she'll be a good president, as flawed as she is," says Carol Fisher, 56, a Clinton supporter and registered nurse from Teaneck, N.J., who was among those surveyed. "And I believe the alternative of a Trump presidency would be disastrous, not just for our country but for the whole world." While she usually votes for Democratic candidates, she says, "I've never been so afraid of a Republican before."

Noel Hartman, 64, of Humboldt, Ariz., feels the same way about Clinton.

"The one word that really stands out is 'above the law,' " the retired farmer and rancher said in a follow-up phone interview. "I mean, anything that she ever did has never been accounted for, and she gets by with just laughing it off." He's supporting Trump. "I know he doesn't say stuff right, but I'm so tired of being lied to," Hartman says. "I'm hoping for change."

Republicans are well versed in fear driving everything they do, fear of an America that embraces new ideas, other cultures, and other people.  But voters aren't pegging that fear of Trump to other Republicans, at least not yet.

That will probably change as Trump grows more and more desperate, if this week is any indication.

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.