The latest accuser of Donald Trump’s aggressive actions towards women is Jessica Drake, an actor in adult films, who claims that in 2006, after she rejected his advances, Trump offered her $10,000 to change her mind and have sex with him. She turned that down too, even though he sweetened the deal with an offer to fly her in his private plane.
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The ‘sovereign citizen’ movement consists of people who have their own interpretation of their rights and obligations under the US constitution. Via Mark Frauenfelder, I came across this fascinating video of a woman who, at a traffic stop, challenges the right of a California police officer to detain her, saying that because she is a sovereign citizen, she can claim all the rights of citizenship without obeying any of its laws. The driver of the car apparently did not have a license, presumably because as a sovereign citizen, he does not need the state’s permission to drive.
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This election is going to be analyzed for decades to come for what it says about Donald Trump, the Republican party, and the large numbers of people who support him. There have already been numerous attempts to understand what the hell is happening. Much of this speculation right now is in the media but later we will see more academic studies, trying to tease out such things as the root causes of the Trump phenomenon, whether this is something transient or a long-lasting trend, who really are the people who responded to Trump’s message, and whether they were drawn to him because of economic concerns and a sense that the system was rigged against ordinary people or by more ugly xenophobic and racist feelings.
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I’ve got to admit that I am fascinated by Ben Carson. People may be forgiven for thinking that his eyes-closed, slow, monotonous delivery suggests that he himself is asleep when he is not putting others to sleep. But in this interview where he was defending Donald Trump, he became so animated and aggressive (he even asked the host to cut off the microphone of another guest) that it seems like this is the one thing he really cares about
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Beware of those who try to scare us about the deficit. David Dayen exposes the agenda behind those who are pushing the deficit and debt as a huge problem and then use it to urge cuts in Social Security benefits. The people whom Social Security benefits the most are the less well-off, and cutting their benefits without raising the cap on contributions is just another way for the wealthy a way to achieve their goal of making life easier for themselves and harder for those who are not well-to-do. Both Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton propose to maintain (and perhaps even increase) benefits and pay for it by raising the cap on contributions.
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For the benefit of those readers who do not live in the US and may be a little unclear about how the president is actually chosen, this post outlines the main details. The president is formally elected by something called the Electoral College, a largely virtual institution that exists just for the purpose of electing the president every four years. Each of the 50 states plus the District of Columbia is allocated a certain number of what are called ‘electoral votes’ equal to the sum of the Senators and members of the House of Representatives that the state sends to Congress. You need to win a majority of those votes to be elected president.
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Although the title of this post was from Hunter Thompson’s famous book on the 1972 election campaign, it turned out to be prophetic when it came to the debate. Donald Trump tried to instill deep fear in the American people about the dire situation the country is in at present and how much worse it will get under a Clinton presidency, while Clinton warned us how dangerous it would be to have someone with the attitudes and temperament of Trump in charge of the world’s biggest economy and the most powerful weaponry. (You can read the transcript here.)
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