There is a sturdy meme going around out there...

to the effect that Hillary Clinton is getting "lucky" in that Donald Trump is about the only republican She could have beat this year.
Waaal, I dunno about that, I suspect that she and her redoubtable husband the ex-president were eagerly hoping to run against some premature geezer like Jeb Bush (like they don't know how to beat a Bush in a general election....) or a twitchy ideologue like Ted Cruz.
But she got Trump so be it.
Normally I jump ugly on said notion at this point in said blog post...but for once lemme opt for a tincture of empathy. A LOT of the people espousing said meme are themselves republicans who cannot vote for Donald Trump with any kind of a clear conscience. So if they are bolting the party they have to console themselves with some scenario, because lord knows voting for Hillary (even staying home or taking a libertarian ballot) is a traumatic prospect for today's republican. Keep in mind they've been demonizing and or fundraising off of her name for Twenty Five Years Now....the irony of Hillary Clinton being Senator McConnell/Mitt Romney/Paul Ryan/The Bush Family's last best hope of rescuing the GOP must be bitter indeed.

Donald Trump seems to be

playing around with the idea of a post electoral insurrection should he lose this November....granted he is using coded language in a doubly passive aggressive way, but the hint and the menace are there.
Or there would be if anyone was afraid of this fat mook.
Let me be short and blunt fantasies of insurrection didn't work for Jefferson Davis and his Benighted Crew....Losers Secede in other words and Secession is a Losing Idea.

Olympiad Advice....

I "dabble" in the Olympics lurching from the stuff that gets hyped (ergo "Women's Gymnastics") to competitions where it's easy to tell who the heck won (ergo swimming)...I run the gamut from idly curious to decorously patriotic.

But Holy God Almighty, the sports commentary on NBC is uniformly awful, bumptious, inane and plain dopey!
I think a lot of these guys are used to the professional basketball, baseball, football, hockey axis in the USA so anything off grid like Beach Volleyball or Bicycle Racing or whatnot tends to defeat them.
Which is sad because sometimes its these fringe sports than attract the true and for real "Committed and Talented Amateur" who one and all try harder because the weight of expectations is paradoxically off them as their chosen sport has a small audience.
Anyhow just turn the sound off I say, I mean if you need commentary to figure out who one a track meet then it might be time to take up knitting or solitaire.

2ndA....

All Hillary Clinton has called for in her platform this year, is expanding background checks on firearm purchases and banning the sale of assault weapons to private individuals.
THAT....fairly incremental response to toxic national gun saturation constitutes abolishing the Second Amendment in the blustery reaches of Donald Trump's mind and as such may require violent corrective action visited on her or her judicial nominees (DT's wording is to say the least, ambiguous likely deliberately so).
Just remember thats the modalities here, backing up a lie with the threat of violence, and yes as of today we have officially hit Rock Goddamn Bottom in the USA.

Just what Kelly Ayotte wanted...

Donald Trump's all too surly endorsement in the General Election. The embattled GOP Senator from NH can practically hear the stampede of female voters to Maggie Hassan....
I think Ayotte would sooner have the endorsement of the Zika Virus....
Of course supposedly Trump was mocking John McCain, Kelly Ayotte & Paul Ryan at campign stops til this weekend when he executed a weird surly about-face and suddenly endorsed the above incumbents.
Josh Marshall is wondering exactly who had the whip hand over Trump to force him to recant like that, me I think Kelly Ayotte is thanking her lucky stars Trump endorsed her on the weekend, during the Olympics, which gives her time to get out from under that most unwelcome endorsement....

Senator Kelly Ayotte is allegedly

down a full ten points in New Hampshire mostly on the toxic downticket effect of Donald Trump...
Kelly's response is classic a quadrennial love for seniors, law enforcement and veterans...all of it more than a little forced and artificial.
Kelly's been in the majority for her entire term of office and yet New Hampshire still lacks a VA Hospital despite being a steady contributor to the ranks of combat veterans, for all manner of services vet must literally take a bus to Jamaica Plain.
If I was Kelly Ayotte I'd be campaigning 24 - 7 for such a facility but no....she's been too busy polishing Mitt Romney's black Oxford's to move the ball forward.
Numbers as cited above are likely what is fueling the GOP's current panic attack about their nominee...its one thing to nominate a thin skinned narcissist for President, but if he starts ending people's phony-baloney jobs then it's Katey-Bar-The Door!

Y'know

a regular feature of GOP National Conventions down thru the years has been the appearance at the podium of some grieving police widow who was more or less willing to back up republican law-n-order bona fides by sandbagging the democrats....usually by name.
And the CONSISTENT response of said democrats, be it Mike Dukakis, Al Gore, John Kerry....has always been "I support the police, they have difficult jobs, I share your pain".
The Khan Family stick it to The Donald at the DNC (over constitutional issues no less) and Citizen Trump squeals like a stuck german pig.
Nothing so easily illustrates Trump's unfitness for The Big Job...his skin is literally paper thin, his instinct whenever the criticism hits home is to lash back without recourse or reflection....you want that sad childish mentality with it's short little finger on the button?

(posting will be sporadic this week, even I must go on vacation sometimes)