Open Thread for Wednesday, August 17, 2016

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It doesn’t look good for me having time to blog much today — and the day’s half over — so I’ll go ahead and start an Open Thread, with some possible topics. Talk amongst yourselves:

Trump shakes up campaign, demotes top adviser — Basically, the message from here on out is “Let Trump be Trump.” Which I suppose is excellent news for those of us who think it’s fine that he be himself, as long as he isn’t also president. Jennifer Rubin has a pretty good take on it. She says it’s time for Republicans to cut their losses and concentrate on down-ballot.
Sweeping fed indictment targets SC ‘Irish Travelers’ — Yeah, that’s why I posted the clip above from “Snatch.” The feds allege that the folks in Murphy Village have gone way beyond selling shoddy caravans.
SC tax agency can’t sue private companies over penny tax, judge rules — I don’t know all the ins and outs of this, but my gut is that I hate to see the courts preventing DOR from trying to inject some accountability. I mean, if they legally can’t, they can’t. I just hate to see it.
Release of Code Raises Fears That N.S.A. Was Hacked — Great. First Snowden, now this.

That’s all I’m seeing in a quick sweep over the news. Maybe y’all can suggest something better.

snatch

Wrap your head around this: 1,300 more USC student beds

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Peter Ustinov (on the right) in “Logan’s Run.”

I was struck by this yesterday, but didn’t get around to sharing it until now:

The University of South Carolina will add around 1,300 new beds in privately owned student housing properties in time for the fall 2016 semester, seventh-most in the country.

A study by student housing and apartment market data provider Axiometrics found seven of the 10 university markets expecting the most new beds were in the Southeast or the Southwest. Arkansas led the way with an anticipated 2,319 new beds.

Several new student-oriented apartment complexes have recently opened in Columbia, including: Park Place, located at Blossom and Huger streets, with 640 beds; Station at Five Points, located at Gervais and Harden streets, with 660 beds; and 650 Lincoln Phase Two, with 297 beds.

Nationwide, a total of 47,700 new beds are scheduled for come to market in time for the fall semester….

Everybody else in "Logan's Run" Jenny Agutter, anyway...

Everybody else in “Logan’s Run.” Or Jenny Agutter, anyway…

Hey, I don’t care about nationwide. I care about the fact that, as many additional students as we’ve absorbed downtown in recent years, 1,300 more are moving in right now!

And that does count hundreds or thousands more that we can see under construction!

Already, walking down Main Street makes me feel like Peter Ustinov in “Logan’s Run.” This is bizarre.

Where are they all coming from?

‘Survey says…!’ My opinion continues to be in great demand

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“Survey says..!”

At the moment, in my Inbox, I have messages asking me to fill out surveys giving feedback about:

The last time I gave platelets at the Red Cross.
A recent lunch at the Capital City Club.
My dealings with the service department at Canon regarding a malfunctioning printer.
My dealings with the AT&T service department regarding a faulty router.
My recent six-month checkup with my internist.

Two of them came in on the 11th, two on Monday and the other today, and I haven’t gotten to any of them.

And while I appreciate that they all care so much about what I think of the service, the cumulative effect is a bit overwhelming. Reminds me of school, when every teacher assumed she or he was the only class giving you homework. They meant well, too.

The one I definitely want to respond to is the Canon one, but not yet — because, unbeknownst to Canon, we’re not done yet.

I have this wonderful ImageClass MF6160 dw printer that I got for Christmas, and it’s given me great service ever since. Until a couple of weeks back, that is.

There are two things about it I particularly love — the multiple-page-document feeder on the top for copying and scanning, which saves a lot of tedious standing there to feed it; and the fact that I can immediately print out anything I see on my iPad or phone from anywhere in the house.

But then I came back from vacation, turned it on, and got an error message and a complete refusal to do anything — copy, scan, print, whatever.

I spent several evenings trying to call Canon before realizing they shut down the phone lines at 8 p.m. (the recording would tell me they were closed, but would NOT tell me what the hours were). So I sent them a long email, with all the particulars, and received a response telling me to call. By 8, of course.

So I called. And the guy who answered was unable to call up my email, so I started from scratch with him. He concluded that I needed to download some new firmware. But my printer had not come with a USB cable, so he said he’d just send me a new printer.

Which is great, right? It came yesterday — earlier than I expected, so great again. But my new AT&T router came the same day, so I installed that first and got all my devices up and working on the home network before dealing with the printer. (Everything went as advertised with the new modem/router, so yay, AT&T! A loyal advertiser on bradwarthen.com, by the way…)

I finally got it all unpacked, and carefully put all the pieces of orange tape that came on it onto the old printer that I have to ship back to them, and turned it on. No error message! And it copies fine.

But it won’t print or scan because I can’t get it to connect to my devices via wifi. Even though I’ve been through the ritual of making the connection several times, and each time it says it’s connected.

And of course, by this time it was well after 8 p.m.

So tonight I’ll call them, and see if we can get all this straightened out. And after that, I’ll fill out their survey. And I’ll be happy then, because I love my printer, and I just want it back.

And then maybe I’ll get to the other ones as well.

I mean, it’s nice that they care what I think….

Hey, I know! Since they value what I think so much, maybe they’d all like to get together and pay me what I used to get paid at the paper to express what I think! If they’d do that, I’d fill out surveys all day….

Allegations against this Sheriff Arpaio guy

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Photo by Gage Skidmore, via Wikipedia.

Speaking of Trump supporters… I don’t know this Sheriff Arpaio guy from Adam’s off ox, but this release from the state Democratic Party at least lets me know what is allegedly wrong with him.

Consider the source all you like, but it’s quite a list:

SCDP STATEMENT ON JEFF DUNCAN AND MICK MULVANEY HONORING RACIST SHERIFF JOE ARPAIO

Columbia, SC – The South Carolina Democratic Party released the following statement today on the announcement by Rep. Jeff Duncan that racist Maricopa County, Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio will be a “special guest,” alongside Rep. Mick Mulvaney, at Duncan’s Faith & Freedom BBQ next Monday in Anderson:

“The fact that Jeff Duncan and Mick Mulvaney would honor a racist and sexist bigot like Joe Arpaio is disgusting, but given their support of a racist and sexist bigot like Donald Trump for president, it is not surprising.

“Pasted below is a list of 10 of Joe Arpaio’s policies, taken from a 2012 article by Ian Millhiser of ThinkProgress based on a U.S. Department of Justice legal complaint. We are interested in hearing which of these policies Jeff Duncan and Mick Mulvaney believe are appropriate.”

1. Forcing Women To Sleep In Their Own Menstrual Blood: In Arpaio’s jails, “female Latino LEP prisoners have been denied basic sanitary items. In some instances, female Latino LEP prisoners have been forced to remain with sheets or pants soiled from menstruation because of MCSO’s failure to ensure that detention officers provide language assistance in such circumstances.”

2. Assaulting Pregnant Women: “[A]n MCSO officer stopped a Latina woman – a citizen of the United States and five months pregnant at the time – as she pulled into her driveway. After she exited her car, the officer then insisted that she sit on the hood of the car. When she refused, the officer grabbed her arms, pulled them behind her back, and slammed her, stomach first, into the vehicle three times. He then dragged her to the patrol car and shoved her into the backseat. He left her in the patrol car for approximately 30 minutes without air conditioning. The MCSO officer ultimately issued a citation for failure to provide identification.”

3. Stalking Latino Women: “In another instance, during a crime suppression operation, two MCSO officers followed a Latina woman, a citizen of the United States, for a quarter of a mile to her home. The officers did not turn on their emergency lights, but insisted that the woman remain in her car when she attempted to exit the car and enter her home. The officers’ stated reasons for approaching the woman was a non-functioning license plate light. When the woman attempted to enter her home, the officers used force to take her to the ground, kneed her in the back, and handcuffed her. The woman was then taken to an MCSO substation, cited for ‘disorderly conduct,’ and returned home. The disorderly conduct citation was subsequently dismissed.”

4. Criminalizing Being A Latino: “During raids, [Arpaio’s Criminal Enforcement Squad] typically seizes all Latinos present, whether they are listed on the warrant or not. For example, in one raid CES had a search warrant for 67 people, yet 109 people were detained. Fifty-nine people were arrested and 50 held for several hours before they were released. Those detained, but not on the warrant, were seized because they were Latino and present at the time of the raid. No legal justification existed for their detention.”

5. Criminalizing Living Next To The Wrong People: “[D]uring a raid of a house suspected of containing human smugglers and their victims . . . officers went to an adjacent house, which was occupied by a Latino family. The officers entered the adjacent house and searched it, without a warrant and without the residents’ knowing consent. Although they found no evidence of criminal activity, after the search was over, the officers zip-tied the residents, a Latino man, a legal permanent resident of the United States, and his 12-year-old Latino son, a citizen of the United States, and required them to sit on the sidewalk for more than one hour, along with approximately 10 persons who had been seized from the target house, before being released”

6. Ignoring Rape: Because of Arpaio’s obsessive focus on “low-level immigration offenses” his officers failed “to adequately respond to reports of sexual violence, including allegations of rape, sexual assault, and sexual abuse of girls.”

7. Widespread Use Of Racial Slurs: “MCSO personnel responsible for prisoners held in MCSO jails routinely direct racial slurs toward Latino prisoners, including calling Latino prisoners ‘paisas,’ ‘wetbacks,’ ‘Mexican bitches,’ ‘fucking Mexicans,’ and ‘stupid Mexicans.’”

8. Widespread Racial Profiling: “[I]n the southwest portion of the County, the study found that Latino drivers are almost four times more likely to be stopped by MCSO officers than non-Latino drivers engaged in similar conduct. . . . In the northwest portion of the County, the study found that Latino drivers are over seven times more likely to be stopped by MCSO officers than non-Latino drivers engaged in similar conduct. . . . Most strikingly, in the northeast portion of the County, the study found that Latino drivers are nearly nine times more likely to be stopped by MCSO officers than non-Latino drivers engaged in similar conduct.”

9. Random, Unlawful Detention Of Latinos: “MCSO officers stopped a car carrying four Latino men, although the car was not violating any traffic laws. The MCSO officers ordered the men out of the car, zip-tied them, and made them sit on the curb for an hour before releasing all of them. The only reason given for the stop was that the men’s car ‘was a little low,’ which is not a criminal or traffic violation.”

10. Group Punishments For Latinos: “In some instances, when a Latino [Low English Proficiency] prisoner has been unable to understand commands given in English, MCSO detention officers have put an entire area of the jail in lockdown—effectively preventing all the prisoners in that area from accessing a number of privileges because of the Latino LEP prisoner’s inability to understand English, inciting hostility toward the LEP prisoner, and potentially placing MCSO officers and other prisoners in harm’s way.”

###

Do you think critics have been too rough on Trump voters?

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An image from the Trump campaign website of a rally in Fayetteville. Who’s to blame — Trump, or all those thousands cheering him?

William McGurn, writing in The Wall Street Journal today, thinks critics on the left and right have been excessively mean to “Trumpkins,” the people who have inflicted Donald Trump upon us.

Says he:

In the land of NeverTrump, it turns out one American is more reviled than Donald Trump. This would be the Donald Trump voter.

Lincoln famously described government as of, by, and for the people. Even so, the people are now getting a hard lesson about what happens when they reject the advice of their betters and go with a nominee of their own choosing. What happens is an outpouring of condescension and contempt….

Start with the fondness for the word “Trumpkin,” meant at once to describe and demean his supporters. Or consider an article fromNational Review, which describes a “vicious, selfish culture whose main products are misery and used heroin needles” and whose members find that “Donald Trump’s speeches make them feel good. So does OxyContin.” Scarcely a day goes by without a fresh tweet or article taking the same tone, an echo of the old Washington Post slur against evangelicals as “largely poor, uneducated and easy to command.”…

Sure, plenty of dismissiveness has been directed at the Trump voter. Many a critic has written or said something along the lines of, “We blame Trump too much; we let those who voted for him off the hook.”

I’ve seen that; you’ve seen that.

But on the whole, those who say that are more in the right of it than Mr. McGurn, I think. Those of us who are appalled by Trump pile on him day in and day out. He’s a big guy, a billionaire tycoon; he can take it — right? (Except, of course, that he can’t — we may never have seen a more thin-skinned presidential nominee.)

And while there is the occasional slap at his supporters, by and large, we don’t seem to blame them as much as we have their candidate. There’s good reason for this — most of us have an aversion for going after “the people” themselves, even when we’re just talking about a minority subset of the people. In out secular religion, it seems impious to blame them. We’re supposed to mumble about their economic dislocation and other things that allegedly give them an excuse for what they’re doing.

Well, I don’t buy that. I’ve been more economically dislocated than most — the average Trump voter easily has a higher income than I currently do — yet I have not lost my freaking mind and joined a movement to elect a fascist blowhard to the highest office in the world.

So I really don’t buy the idea that Trump voters have it so hard that it’s worth doing something like this to the country. In fact, no amount of hardship is worth that. But that’s not really what it’s about, is it? It’s about the fact that a lot of people actually like the nasty, spiteful, ignorant, clueless things that he says.

And remember — without the people voting for him, and telling pollsters they’d do so again in November, Donald Trump would still be the joke he was a little over a year ago, and no kind of threat to our country.

So I appreciate that Mr. McGurn is taking a swipe at elitist snobbery and all that. I’m not for calling anyone names or otherwise hurling insults. But we should not for a moment regard Trump voters as blameless. They’re the reason we’re in this mess.

And you thought seeing Cersei on the Iron Throne was scary

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This is scarier than an army of White Walkers.

Enjoy…

This year, individual SC votes will actually MATTER!

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On that earlier post, I failed to point out the most remarkable thing about that PPP poll showing HIllary Clinton in a statistical dead heat with Donald Trump in South Carolina.

It’s a fairly obvious point, but I feel I should use this separate post to bring it up for your examination.

It is this:

For the first time in a long time — since well before I moved back to South Carolina in 1987 — how you and I and each individual South Carolinian votes will actually matter to the outcome of the presidential election.

Whether you vote for Trump or Clinton or someone else, or stay home and sit it out, could actually make the difference in whether South Carolina stays red or goes blue, in whether all 9 of our state’s electoral votes go to Donald or Hillary.

No more can Democrats complain despairingly that their votes don’t matter. And it’s different for Republicans, too — in previous elections, they could stay home if they liked, secure in the knowledge that the state would go Republican anyway. And the importance of each of us swing voters stands out more starkly than ever.

Heady stuff.

Of course, you could say that South Carolina going blue wouldn’t matter, because if THAT happens, it would already be a Clinton landslide. But you would be a real killjoy to say that.

Go ahead and savor your importance in this election, average South Carolinian. Who knows if you’ll every experience it again?

Brits are at their most creative when describing bad tea

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Arthur Dent, yearning for a true cuppa…

This is something that I just realized.

All who have read Douglas Adams are familiar with this gem:

After a fairly shaky start to the day, Arthur’s mind was beginning to reassemble itself from the shell-shocked fragments the previous day had left him with.

He had found a Nutri-Matic machine which had provided him with a plastic cup filled with a liquid that was almost, but not quite, entirely unlike tea.

The way it functioned was very interesting. When the Drink button was pressed it made an instant but highly detailed examination of the subject’s taste buds, a spectroscopic analysis of the subject’s metabolism and then sent tiny experimental signals down the neural pathways to the taste centers of the subject’s brain to see what was likely to go down well. However, no one knew quite why it did this because it invariably delivered a cupful of liquid that was almost, but not quite, entirely unlike tea….

That one never fails to delight.

But recently, rereading Patrick O’Brian’s The Fortune of War, I was struck by the height of creativity to which he rose in describing Stephen Maturin’s suffering upon the occasion of his being served tea by Americans:

… which, while drier, I found almost as delightful as Adams’ characterization.

Apparently, there is something in the experience of drinking bad tea that kicks the brains of British writers into a higher gear….

The really shocking part of PPP’s poll of South Carolina

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A face in the crowd: Who knew, when she appeared here in May 2015, she’d be so close here now?

Yes, it’s startling to see Public Policy Polling — an outfit that Nate Silver says skews slightly toward Republicans — showing South Carolina as in play in the presidential election. (See “Clinton/Trump Race Tight in South Carolina,” Aug. 10.)

Seeing Hillary Clinton only 2 percent behind Donald Trump — just within the 2.7 percent margin of error, making this a dead heat — is something most of us doubted we would see again in our lifetimes. (Jimmy Carter was the last Democrat to win here, in 1976.)

But what’s truly shocking, to me, is how much support Trump does have:

The closeness is a function of Democrats being a lot happier with their party’s candidate than Republicans are with theirs. Clinton is winning 84% of the Democratic vote, compared to Trump’s 77% of the Republican vote. Although neither candidate is well liked by voters in the state Trump’s favorability, at 38% positive and 56% negative, comes in slightly worse than Clinton’s at 38/55…

That’s right, 77 percent — an overwhelming supermajority — of Republicans are willing to vote for Trump. Only 4 percent of them — less than the percentage ready to throw away their vote on Gary Johnson — is willing to back Hillary.

Perhaps that doesn’t surprise you. If it doesn’t, I think that’s because you’re making the mistake of thinking of this as a normal election, just another standard-issue contest of Democrats vs. Republicans, in which Republicans should be expected to back their nominee as a matter of course.

To that I say, stop trying to normalize this election! There is nothing normal about it! There hasn’t been since a year ago, when Trump started outpolling actual, normal Republicans!

If an actual, sane Republican were the nominee — Bush, or Kasich, or maybe Christie before he sold out and backed Trump — then fine. I wouldn’t like that mindless, reflexive vote for the party any more than I usually do (regardless of the party), but at least it would be something we’ve come to expect as normal.

This is not. This is inexcusable, unthinkable. It is an abomination.

But you know what is worse? That Trump has a bigger lead over Hillary among those who are “independent or identifying with another party” than he does among the overall electorate!

I’m sure that doesn’t include any of you loyal UnPartisans, but still. It’s shocking…

Open Thread for Friday, August 12, 2016

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Still from a video Tweeted by the Clinton campaign, showing Republicans saying candidates should release their returns.

Some topics as the week winds down:

Clinton tax return shows couple made $10.7 million in 2015 — Meanwhile, someone else — I’m not saying who — is still sharing nothing.
Clinton Widens Lead Over Trump in Battleground States — That’s in the WSJ. The NYT reports that since the conventions, “instead of attracting a surge of new admirers, Mr. Trump has been hemorrhaging support among loyal Republicans, anti-establishment independents, Clinton-loathing Democrats and others…”
Lawyers for ex-N. Charleston officer say video defends shooting — The lawyers here know what Carl Sandburg said: “If the facts are against you, argue the law. If the law is against you, argue the facts. If the law and the facts are against you, argue total B.S.”
The Trump we saw: Populist, frustrating, forever on the make — This is from a book a couple of Washington Post reporters are writing.
Have we detected an alien megastructure in space? Keep an open mind — And now, for something completely different… It’s probably a space bypass being constructed by the Vogons, as part of a stimulus package pushed by President Zaphod Beeblebrox.

Race card flung at Joel Lourie, of all people

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Lourie at his recent retirement party.

As a smart friend of mine once said somewhat hopelessly, she feared that a thousand years from now, historians would look back and say, “The United States was a noble experiment, but they never got over that slavery thing.”

Sen. John Scott

In the Midlands, in South Carolina, across the nation, there are a lot of issues that turn largely, if not primarily, on race. On the local level, race is the (usually) unstated pivot point on attitudes concerning, for instance, local school districts.

Some people still think of Richland One and Richland Two as the black district and the white district, although perception is catching up to reality, which has changed dramatically. District One has long been a black power base — with white influence clustered into a few zones within the district (Dreher, A.C. Flora). Now there is a struggle for the future of District Two that is largely rooted in racial identity.

Elsewhere — such as with the Richland County election and recreation commissions — race is a widely understood subtext, shaping viewpoints but not openly acknowledged. Until now.

Apparently, the defenders of the status quo at the Richland County Recreation Commission — a legislative special purpose district with a growing reputation that brings to mind the routine corruption on “The Wire” and “Boardwalk Empire” — feel backed into a corner.

How else to explain Sen. John Scott and Rep. Leon Howard suggesting there is something racist in the white majority of the county legislative delegation demanding accountability from the commission?

Sen. Scott even had the nerve to bring the notoriously, spectacularly incompetent Lillian McBride (of the election commission meltdown) into the equation, as though that helped his case:

“This is the second time the same group has made an inquiry as it relates to an African-American director,” Sen. John Scott said, referring to then-Richland County election director Lillian McBride.

Sen. Joel Lourie, one of the letter’s authors, said Scott’s suggestion is offensive….

And well he should say that. Sen. Lourie, I mean.

Rep. Leon Howard

It’s a sad day when Joel Lourie has to defend his good name in the twilight of his Senate career, saying, “‘My family and I have a very proud record of community and race relations for the last 50 years.”

Indeed they have. Sen. Darrell Jackson has a Senate seat because Joel’s father, Isadore, gave up his seat in order to let an African-American have a shot at it.

And Joel’s record as a champion of social justice is impeccable — as is those of others being smeared by innuendo, such as Reps. James Smith and Beth Bernstein.

The saga of the recreation commission was sordid and shameful enough. Messrs. Scott and Howard have made it more so, by choosing such an inexcusable manner of defending it.

Trump Tower climber faces charges. Good.

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It appalls me to see cops risking their lives to rescue this guy, who put them in danger for no good reason.

I take a dim view of death-defying stunts, particularly when they are performed for no useful purpose — which is the case at least 99 percent of the time.

Evel Kneivel never held any charm for me. Those buses simply did not need to be jumped over. As for extreme sports — well, I have a personal rule about skydiving: I will jump out of a perfectly good airplane the next time it is absolutely necessary for someone to do so in order to liberate Europe from Hitler. Not before.

I especially look down on the kinds of stunts that attract extensive news coverage, thereby inspiring kids and unbalanced adults to emulate them.

So it is with the guy who climbed Trump Tower yesterday. His “purpose” was to meet Trump. And it’s hard to imagine a purpose less useful than that one.

But what gets me is that he caused NYPD cops to risk their necks rescuing him.

I read that he’s facing charges for what he did. Good.

Lord, what fools these liberals be!

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Hey, my liberal friends, it’s Shakespeare! And I couldn’t resist.

Besides, the particular liberals in question were asking for it.

“Lord, what fools these mortals be!”

Some of us, deeply concerned about the possibility of Donald Trump becoming president and wanting to save the country (and the world) from that fate, were pleased when that group of 50 heavyweight GOP policy types came out and said that Trump “lacks the character, values and experience” and “would be the most reckless President in American history.”

We were more pleased when some of those same GOP policymakers and others went the next step and declared for Hillary Clinton — since voting for her is the only way to stop Trump.

Any sensible person would be pleased — particularly, one would think, the liberal Democrats who would want to see Hillary win no matter who her opponent was.

But no. Check this piece in the Post this morning headlined, “Clinton’s Republican outreach a step too far for already suspicious liberals.”

Sheesh. Double sheesh.

Ideologues will be the death of the country.

Apparently, these hammerheads would rather see Hillary Clinton lose — and Trump win — than have her win by appealing to independents and Republicans. It’s more important to them that she slavishly agree with them than that she have a chance of winning.

And yes, I’m even more dismissive of their concerns because unlike them, I am pleased that Hillary Clinton is the closest thing to a Scoop Jackson still extant in the Democratic party. What pleases me appalls them.

But that’s no excuse. There is no excuse for trying to pull Hillary back from courting and receiving the support she needs to stop Donald Trump. And I can’t respect anyone doing that.

I’ve had it with these “suspicious liberals.” It’s best for all of us — Democrats, Republicans and independents — that they be neither seen nor heard from until this election is over. But who can persuade them of that?

Open Thread for Wednesday, August 10, 2016

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I don’t know about you, but I intend to be mentally prepared. Maybe it’s time I went back to school…

A few topics for consideration:

USC classes you won’t believe actually exist — OK, you made me look, and it was interesting, but it did not strain credulity. Yeah a class treating the Hunger Games as literature is ridiculous, but don’t you think higher education should be preparing us psychologically for the Zombie Apocalypse? Look how traumatized Rick Grimes and the others were. You know why? Because they were not prepared mentally! As for the other courses… Suddenly I’m flashing on some dialogue from “Ghostbusters” (the real one). Dean Yeager: “Your theories are the worst kind of popular tripe, your methods are sloppy, and your conclusions are highly questionable! You are a poor scientist, Dr. Venkman!” Peter Venkman: “But the kids love us!”
Costco opens Columbia store today — Seriously, did any of you consider for an instant going there today? I’ll look at the traffic density function on Waze a couple of months from now and see if it’s safe, and maybe check it out then. Meanwhile, let me know if you hear we’re getting an Apple store.
US government blasts Baltimore police over race — And race isn’t the only problem. I saw “The Wire.”
Even under oath, Trump struggled with the truth — The Donald, deposed. In a 2007 case.
Is split-ticket voting making a comeback? With Trump on the ballot, some Republicans hope so. — It’s not “ticket splitting.” It’s being a rational, responsible voter. Anyone who votes exclusively for one party or the other and doesn’t consider that SOME candidates in the other party may be superior to those who oppose them should lose the right to vote. Voters have an obligation to think about each and every choice on the ballot. Harrumph.

There are other topics out there. Bring them up if you like.

Trump suggests gun owners could deal with Clinton

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How to characterize it? Since no headline writer in the history of the nation has ever before had to try to describe such a statement by a nominee for president before, let’s take a look at how they did:

WSJ: ‘Second Amendment People’ Can Stop Clinton on Guns, Trump Says

NYT: Trump Suggests Gun Owners Could Stop Clinton Agenda

NPR: Trump Appears To Suggest ‘Second Amendment People’ Could Stop Clinton

WashPost: Trump appears to encourage gun owners to take action if Clinton appoints anti-gun judges

The Guardian: Trump hints at assassination of Hillary Clinton by gun rights supporters

The reason you see all those hedge words — “suggests,” “appears to,” “hints at” — is that as usual, Trump did not speak in actual sentences. And he tends to be even less intelligible than usual when he’s saying the most outrageous things.

Here’s what he said:

“If she gets to pick her judges, nothing you can do, folks,” Donald Trump told supporters at a rally in Wilmington, N.C. “Although the Second Amendment people, maybe there is, I don’t know.”

So how do you interpret that? There’s not a lot of wiggle-room there, although I expect Trump will indignantly claim that he didn’t say what he said.

The Post stressed the ambiguity, because that’s what news people do:

It was not clear whether Trump was inciting gun owners to use their weapons against judges or a sitting president, or was encouraging some other action.

Did you think Trump couldn’t top himself, or bottom himself, or whatever you call it when a candidate is having a contest with himself to see how low he can go?

Well, think again.

OK, let’s have another show of hands from Republicans who are actually going to vote for this guy?

Of course, we know that a lot of Republicans had already decided not to vote for him. There’s a smaller group of Republicans — including some heavyweight policymakers from past GOP administrations — who will actually vote for Hillary Clinton. Small, but growing. The Post is keeping a list. You may want to peruse it, and praise these folks for their integrity.

I’ll close with this Tweet from The Hill:

Secret Service on Trump: “The US Secret Service is aware of the comments” https://t.co/4UAzrTWBOy pic.twitter.com/CgRxwXWfsm

— The Hill (@thehill) August 9, 2016

John Oliver on the plight of newspapers

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I had trouble finding time to watch this, and if we wait until I have time to comment on it, I’ll never get around to posting it. I have actual work to do.

So… I urge y’all to watch it, and comment, and I’ll jump in and join you later.

I’ll just say that the piece is well-done, and accurate. The truest thing Oliver says is when he indicates that no one has figured out a good way to pay for the journalism our society needs going forward (now that print advertising, which used to be like a license to print money, has essentially gone away). In other words, he says a lot of things I’ve said before, in a less entertaining matter. (My Brookings piece, for instance, wasn’t crafted for laughs.)

That’s the truth, and the tragedy. One can make fun of all the media executives who are trying various stupid strategies to keep going, but the indisputable fact is that no one has come up with the right approach yet…

Let’s be clear: That one’s not sexism; it’s football

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Are you ready for some football-related news from the Olympics?

Feminists have the things that drive them up the wall, and I have mine.

The Washington Post today had an interesting piece about how no matter what female athletes at the Olympics accomplish, media coverage has a tendency to focus more on what their husbands do. And there are some good examples so absurd as to cause you to laugh, cry, scream with rage or tear your hair out.

But I zeroed in on this one, because it hits me where I live (and on my blog, that’s what matters, right?):

In case you’re tempted to call that a fluke, let’s look at how the Chicago Tribune wrote about Corey Cogdell-Unrein, its hometown Olympic star:

“Wife of a Bears’ lineman wins a bronze medal today in Rio Olympics,”the newspaper tweeted Sunday.

Not even her name. Or her event. Or the fact that it was Cogdell-Unrein’s second Olympic medal in trap shooting, in her third Olympic Games. The most newsworthy part: She’s married to NFL lineman Mitch Unrein.

The Trib got called out on the sexism, and not just by angry women’s studies majors.

Peters and Justins and Scotts all over Twitter had a field day.

“In other news, husband of Olympic medalist Corey Cogdell can’t seem to win a Super Bowl,”tweeted cartoonist Scott Johnson.

“Bill Clinton Back in White House. Brings Wife,” tweeted another outraged man….

Yeah, OK, maybe all those other cases are blatant sexism. But this one? This is about the American obsession, which finds its most virulent expression in newspaper sports departments, with football.

Newspapers are so incredibly obsessed with football, particularly in our own part of the country, that they cover it year-round. And it’s not just the sports guy: the best chance a story has of moving from sports to the front, it often seems, is for it to have some sort of connection to football, however tenuous or indirect.

The sports journalists involved in that story weren’t picking on this woman or being mean to her. By their lights, she was lucky to get such great coverage, because they are incapable of seeing her as anything other than someone who has a connection to what matters, which is football. In their universe, she is either the wife of a prominent football player, or she doesn’t exist.

They were doing her, and the Olympics, a favor. They were trying to get their readers to care, by explaining her in terms of her connection to something important.

So go ahead and point out when something is sexist. But know when something is not. And this particular absurdity was not. This one was football.

I had a great time hanging with Burl the last few days

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Burl and me, with Fort Sumter so far in the background you can’t quite make it out.

It was great getting to see my old high school classmate Burl Burlingame — and his wife Mary, also a veteran journalist (and night editor at the Honolulu paper) — the last few days.

The exterior of the Hunley museum/research site is undergoing improvements.

As you know, he was here for the International Plastic Modelers Society’s 2016 National Convention & Contest, where he was both a presenter and contestant. He gave a great talk Saturday morning about what most people don’t know about Pearl Harbor, from which I learned a lot. After that, I accompanied the Burlingames to Charleston to see the Hunley.

Of course, I couldn’t help telling the guide that “You realize this is the world’s leading authority on Japanese midget subs,” thereby putting pressure on both the guide and Burl. But Burl was up to it, and he was fairly impressed with what the Hunley folks had accomplished. I was, too. I remain amazed that they were able to remove all that concretion from the outside and the inside of the sub without destroying the whole thing.

We capped the weekend by cooking out at my house, where Burl and Mary met a few folks I thought they might like to meet, plus most of the Warthen clan.

A good time was had by all. Or by me, anyway.

From the video: The future founder of the UnParty enjoys an Uncola, in 1971.

From the home movie: The future founder of the UnParty enjoys an Uncola, in 1971.

If you’re not a military brat like Burl and me, you might not realize what a special thing it is for your friends and family to meet one of your high school friends. Before meeting Burl on our way back from Thailand last year, my wife had met exactly one of my high school friends — briefly, in 1975. Burl brings the total to two, out of a class of 600.

Burl and I graduated in 1971 — as part of the festivities Sunday night, I showed some Super 8 movie footage (silent, of course), recently digitized, from our last days of high school. As it happens, my Dad shot some footage of me talking with Burl and another friend or two outside the HIC on graduation day — at a distance, with a feel like surveillance film. Unfortunately, you mostly just see the back of Burl’s head. But there is one split second when Burl leaned toward me to make a point, and you can barely make him out.

Burl in 1971.

One’s youth can be so elusive. It’s tough to recapture.

It’s the only photographic evidence that we knew each other, all those years ago. Burl noted last night it was sort of our version of the Zapruder film. This would be extremely difficult for today’s 17-year-olds to imagine, as they text out pictures, and HD video, of themselves with their friends on an hourly basis, if not more often.

Here’s hoping it’s not another 45 years before we meet again.

Our version of the Zapruder film…

Kenley Young’s review of ‘Suicide Squad’

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Haven’t decided whether to go see “Suicide Squad.” That’s that super-villain movie with Will Smith and that hot girl who for some reason is made up like one of the Baseball Furies from “The Warriors.”

Kenley Young, formerly of The State and a vocalist you may know for fronting several local bands in recent years, offered his take on it on Facebook today, and I share it:

‪#‎SuicideSquad‬: Not a good movie, but not as bad as the reviews indicate — although at this point I feel like Warner Bros./DC should just recycle that as a tag line for the rest of their lineup. “Meh.”

First, a couple of admissions: I’m a DC guy, and I desperately WANT to see its cinematic universe succeed. (Its TV and animated universes are unmitigated successes already, and the company deserves credit there.) Secondly, I was among a handful of fans who thought “Man of Steel” was a pretty decent movie. (Well, two-thirds of a decent movie, because that third act — aka “Transformers VI” — was truly awful.) Still, omnipotent goodie-two-shoes Superman is a hard sell these days, and I felt that first installment held some promise and that the films would improve from there.

They, um, have not. Not that “Suicide Squad” doesn’t have bright spots: Margot Robbie and Will Smith are fun to watch and, at times, compelling. And Viola Davis, as always, seriously classes up the joint. I hope they all stick around. But the plot’s ludicrous, even by comic book standards; the gun violence is tough to stomach (not sure why superpowered “meta-humans” need so much ammo); there’s a fair amount of blatant misogyny; and Jared Leto as The Joker just doesn’t really do it for me.

That’s not his fault entirely; Leto’s clearly a talent. I just think we’re not far enough removed from Heath Ledger’s Oscar-winning turn in the role. That was only eight years ago. Before Ledger, it’d been almost 20 years since we’d seen Jack Nicholson run away with a film like that, in a piece of pop performance art for the ages. Anyone’s portrayal of the greatest villain in comics will forever be measured against that backdrop. It’d be a daunting task for any actor. Plus, “Suicide Squad” has plenty of other issues; Leto’s not really the one weighing it down.

Clearly, since its “universe” launch, Warner Bros. has yet to churn out a 100 percent enjoyable — or even fully coherent — DC film. The forthcoming “Wonder Woman” may break that streak; the trailer looks terrific, early buzz is good, and I’ll give it the benefit of the doubt. (Sadly, the same was all true for “Man of Steel.”) Either way, it’s probably the last shot they’re gonna get for me. Diana of Themyscira, I believe in you and am rooting for you.

Maybe the Wonder Woman movie will be better…