The Way It's Done

When you listen to a song, you can listen to the music or the lyrics and yesterday, the mainstream media (and probably everyone else) heard the music.

Consider the reaction to a small portion of Attorney General Jeff Sessions' testimony Tuesday before the Senate Judiciary Committee. From least credible organ to most credible, we have:.

-New York Post: "A defiant Attorney General Jeff Sessions on Tuesday slammed the suggestion that he colluded with Russians as 'an appalling and detestable lie' — but said questions about his conversations with President Trump were off limits."

-Fox News: Attorney General Jeff Sessions, in dramatic Senate testimony, on Tuesday decried suggestions he colluded with Russian officials during the 2016 campaign as an “appalling and detestable lie” -- while staunchly defending his role in the firing of former FBI Director James Comey.

-Politico: Attorney General Jeff Sessions forcefully defended his integrity on Tuesday, testifying that any suggestion he colluded with Russian officials to affect the 2016 election was “a detestable lie,” even as he repeatedly refused to answer questions about his conversations with President Donald Trump.

-Wall Street Journal:  Attorney General Jeff Sessions told a Senate panel on Tuesday that he never met with any Russian officials last year to discuss the presidential campaign and any suggestion that he colluded with them to help Donald Trump was “an appalling and detestable lie.”

-New York Times:   Attorney General Jeff Sessions offered an indignant defense on Tuesday against what he called “an appalling and detestable lie” that he may have colluded with the Russian effort to interfere in the 2016 election, but he declined during an often contentious Senate hearing to answer central questions about his or President Trump’s conduct.

There are two elements present in each of these accounts.  All five note that Sessions termed allegations of collusion with Russian officials "an appalling and detestable lie."

And each of them failed to quote Sessions in full, thus failing to quote him accurately. In his opening statement, the Attorney General had pled

Let me state this clearly: I have never met with or had any conversations with any Russians or any foreign officials concerning any type of interference with any campaign or election. Further, I have no knowledge of any such conversations by anyone connected to the Trump campaign. I was your colleague in this body for 20 years, and the suggestion that I participated in any collusion or that I was aware of any collusion with the Russian government to hurt this country, which I have served with honor for over 35 years, or to undermine the integrity of our democratic process, is an appalling and detestable lie.





Sessions at first stated definitively that he has "never met with or had any conversations with russians or any foreign officials concerning any type of interference with any campaign or election." That's fully inclusive but then he clarified, remarking "any suggestion that I participated in any collusion or that I was aware of any collusion with the Russian government to hurt this country..."

To hurt this country. Sessions may have colluded with the Russian government. But if he did, he probably thought it was in the best interests of the USA, whether to advance a beneficial policy agenda or to assist in the election of Donald J. Trump, which he believed would "make America great again."

While therein appearing to be forceful and honest, Sessions cleverly left an escape hatch.  But that only partially explains the effectiveness of this portion of the Attorney General's statement.

An appalling and detestable lie.  Righteousness indignation, whether sincere or trumped-up, is an effective weapon in the arsenal of any politician or celebrity. In 1991 Judge Clarence Thomas appeared before the Senate Judiciary Committee to consider his nomination to the United States Supreme Court. The detestable Thomas vehemently denied Anita Hill's charges and as Sherrilyn Ifill would recount years later

With his white wife seated behind him, Thomas described his Supreme Court confirmation hearing as "a high-tech lynching for uppity blacks who in any way deign to think for themselves." The words and imagery were shocking and powerful, and reset the course of his confirmation hearings.






Anita Hill, as seen in the video below, testified in reasoned, reasonable, and measured terms, carefully avoiding making any dramatic accusations of sexism.   Despite Thomas' "deliberate invocation of the most hideous and grotesque of racial crimes to shield their own conduct from scrutiny" (or maybe because of it) more Americans believed Thomas than Hill. At the time, it was obvious to me- as now has been virtually proven- that Thomas was lying, but his staged, emotional denial carried more weight in the court of public opinion than did Hill's calm testimony.






Jefferson Beauregard Sessions knows this history and it's likely his testimony, though perhaps indirectly, was informed by it.  He'll face criticism, deserved and underplayed, for claiming executive privilege without doing so, or not claim it while doing so.   But he didn't get where he is by being stupid, and slick was on display Tuesday.







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Trump May Be A Fitting Hero

Tim Alberta recognizes in Politico Magazine that the largely successful effort of evangelical leaders in the

casting of Trump as a great champion of the faithful, engaging the forces of secularism on behalf of a beleaguered religious right, is essential to understanding his appeal among evangelicals....

From their perspective, Christianity is under attack from the worldly influences of academia and entertainment and media, all of which have a vested interest in loosening religion’s grip on society. 

"The most important question," Alberta emphasizes and which became especially obvious during the last election cycle, "is not whether Trump believes in their cause, but whether he can win their wars." The war's battles include

nominating a conservative in Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court; reinstating and strengthening the Mexico City policy, which eliminates U.S. funding for international nongovernmental organizations that perform abortions; signing the Congressional Review Act to route federal money away from Planned Parenthood; and issuing an executive order that begins to broaden religious liberty guidelines, with promises of more action to come. 

Therefore, Alberta argues persuasively

After generations of ceding ground to what they view as a militant, secular left—with Roe v. Wade cementing protections for abortion, Engel v. Vitale taking prayer out of public schools and Obergefell v. Hodges legalizing same-sex marriage nationwide, among other defeats—social conservatives are finally feeling momentum on their side. 

The origin of the religious right was not Alberta's concen. Yet- and notwithstanding the importance of abortion, public school prayer, and gay marriage- the genesis of arguably the nation's most significant political movement of the past half-century should not get short shrift.

Writing in 2014, (also in Politico Magazine) Randall Balmer explained

On June 30, 1971, the United States District Court for the District of Columbia issued its ruling in the case, now  Green v. Connally (John Connally had replaced David Kennedy as secretary of the Treasury). The decision upheld the new IRS policy: “Under the Internal Revenue Code, properly construed, racially discriminatory private schools are not entitled to the Federal tax exemption provided for charitable, educational institutions, and persons making gifts to such schools are not entitled to the deductions provided in case of gifts to charitable, educational institutions.”

The ruling in Green v. Connally

captured the attention of evangelical leaders , especially as the IRS began sending questionnaires to church-related “segregation academies,” including (Reverend Jerry) Falwell’s own Lynchburg Christian School, inquiring about their racial policies. Falwell was furious. “In some states,” he famously complained, “It’s easier to open a massage parlor than a Christian school.”

One such school, Bob Jones University—a fundamentalist college in Greenville, South Carolina—was especially obdurate. The IRS had sent its first letter to Bob Jones University in November 1970 to ascertain whether or not it discriminated on the basis of race. The school responded defiantly: It did not admit African Americans.

Despite efforts- largely symbolic- to placate the IRS. "on January 19, 1976, after years of warnings—integrate or pay taxes—the agency rescinded the school’s tax exemption." Heritage Foundation co-founder and political activist Paul Weyrich for almost twenty years

by his own account, had been trying out different issues, hoping one might pique evangelical interest: pornography, prayer in schools, the proposed Equal Rights Amendment to the Constitution, even abortion. “I was trying to get these people interested in those issues and I utterly failed,” Weyrich recalled at a conference in 1990.

However, Balmer points out

For many evangelical leaders, who had been following the issue since  Green v. Connally, Bob Jones University was the final straw. As Elmer L. Rumminger, longtime administrator at Bob Jones University, told me in an interview, the IRS actions against his school “alerted the Christian school community about what could happen with government interference” in the affairs of evangelical institutions. “That was really the major issue that got us all involved.”

It was difficult- politically incorrect, one might say- to promote a political movement on the basis of opposing the effort to end racial discrimination. Still, in the mid-1970s, many evangelical leaders were determined to prevent re-election to the presidency of any Democrat (even a religious one such as Jimmy Carter) and

Falwell and Weyrich, having tapped into the ire of evangelical leaders, were also savvy enough to recognize that organizing grassroots evangelicals to defend racial discrimination would be a challenge. It had worked to rally the leaders, but they needed a different issue if they wanted to mobilize evangelical voters on a large scale.

Legal abortion had increased after Roe v. Wade and the catalyst for a movement, begun to support the tax exemption of racially segregated schools, had found its catalyst.

It would be decades before the rest  of us would realize that Christian conservative activists, now anxious to deter use of birth control, claiming the right to discriminate on the basis of claimed religious belief, and supporting a President with values anathema to the human race, was about much more than discouraging abortion.

Most people on the left recognized at least that the religious right did not always practice what it preached and had a dangerous political agenda (relevant portions of video below at 3:18-4:35 and 5:01-5:25), a fear brought to fruition with the presidency of Donald J. Trump. In 1994, 22-23 years before Trump-Pence, the  conservative stalwart, former senator and GOP presidential candidate Barry Goldwater, warned

Mark my word, if and when these preachers get control of the [Republican] party, and they're sure trying to do so, it's going to be a terrible damn problem. Frankly, these people frighten me. Politics and governing demand compromise. But these Christians believe they are acting in the name of God, so they can't and won't compromise. I know, I've tried to deal with them.

There is no position on which people are so immovable as their religious beliefs. There is no more powerful ally one can claim in a debate than Jesus Christ, or God, or Allah, or whatever one calls this supreme being. But like any powerful weapon, the use of God's name on one's behalf should be used sparingly. 











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Time Aplenty

Lindsey Graham on Sunday warned President Trump "You may be the first president in history to go down because you can’t stop inappropriately talking about an investigation that, if you just were quiet, would clear you,"

This will fall on deaf ears, not only because of Trump's famous stubbornness, but also because the President very likely knows that an investigation would indict him in a figurative- and possibly legal- sense. There is after all a reason, one eventually acknowledged by Trump, that the President terminated FBI director James Comey.

Let's hope something else falls on deaf ears. From the Center for American Progress' Ideas Conference, Rolling Stone reports that Representative Maxine Waters of California

receives one of the conference's most raucous receptions as she delivers the blistering indictment of Trump she's become known for since the president's inauguration – which she skipped. No one has sounded the alarm louder or more consistently since.

On stage Tuesday, on the heels of the president's biggest unforced error to date, Waters mocks her prudish colleagues for their reluctance to speak more forcefully about Trump: "Oh my god, she said the word 'impeachment'! Oh my goodness, it's too soon to say that! We can't focus on it because we have members in districts he won and they can't afford to talk about impeachment!"

Quite the opposite, Waters says, Democrats as a party can't afford not to talk about impeachment. They cannot wait for another election. "We can't wait that long. We don't need to wait that long. He will have destroyed this country by then. We cannot wake up every morning to another crisis, to another scandal. We cannot have the uncertainty," she declares.

Dear God, please, no.  Waters obviously is sarcastically referring to GOP Representatives, who presently will not buck the President of their Party because he remains popular with their base while crippling health care reform, privatization, and (above all) tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations are within their sight.

However, sarcasm is not in order; these are crucial factors and presently are an impenetrable hurdle to impeachment, now not even desirable. Consider that, as The Chicago Tribune's Steve Chapman notes

Nothing about his performance suggests he has any idea how to handle his office. Trump complains that the Senate is obstructing his nominations. But at last count, he has yet to pick anyone for nearly 80 percent of the positions that require Senate confirmation.

On one issue after another, he has had to flee from ill-considered positions. He said the U.S. might junk its "One China" policy — only to be forced to back down by Chinese President Xi Jinping. He lambasted President Barack Obama's "dumb deal" to take refugees from Australia but eventually decided to honor it...

Trump's incompetence is self-perpetuating. A clueless executive is forced to rely on aides who are mediocre — or worse — because better people are repelled. Vacant jobs and poor staff work, aggravated by bad management, lead to more failure, which makes it even harder to attract strong hires — and easier for opponents to get their way.

However, even the specter of the theocratic, slicker right-winger Mike Pence waiting in the wings may not be the primary reason that articles of impeachement should not currently be drawn up. Not when, as Politico explains

A broadly worded provision of the Internal Revenue Code gives Mueller, who acts with the authority of the Justice Department in his new post, the ability to obtain the returns from the IRS if he can demonstrate to a federal judge that there is “reasonable cause to believe, based upon information believed to be reliable, that a specific criminal act has been committed” and that the returns “may be relevant” to the investigation. Under the law, there is no requirement that the subject of the investigation—in this case, Trump—even be notified of the court order to IRS. The move does not require a formal subpoena or the action of a grand jury; veteran federal prosecutors said it could all take place in a matter of hours.

A handful of legal scholars and former federal prosecutors I interviewed say it is too early to determine whether Mueller will seek the tax records. But they say it would not be at all surprising if he does. There have been a swirl of allegations about questionable financial ties between the Trump Organization and Russian businessmen and banks close to Russian President Vladimir Putin, including Russian oligarchs who have made major investments in Trump properties in the United States and overseas. Trump’s two adult sons have both been quoted as saying that Russian investments represent a lopsided share of their revenues (they later denied the quotations or suggested they had been taken out of context). 

If Mueller is half as competent, professional, and non-partisan as any viewer of CNN or MSNBC has been led to believe he is, an effort to obtain many years of Trump's tax returns is nearly unavoidable. Nevertheless, he may take a pass. Yet

David Sklansky, a Stanford University law professor who worked for years as a Justice Department prosecutor in Los Angeles, says a request for the tax returns might be an obvious step for Mueller to take. “I’m reluctant to speculate about what will happen, but Mueller can apply for an order for tax returns, just like any U.S. attorney could, if he concludes there is reasonable cause to believe a crime has been committed,” Sklansky says. “Everything we know about Mueller suggests he isn’t likely to make an application like this unless he has good grounds for it.”

Samuel Buell, a law professor at Duke University and former federal prosecutor who led the Justice Department’s prosecution of the Enron Corp., says he is convinced that if Mueller believed he needed the returns, he would seek them—and that a judge would likely approve the order without delay, given the respect the former FBI director commands in Washington. “It’s hard to imagine an individual connected with federal law enforcement still alive in the United States with his stature,” Buell says.

If tax returns are obtained: game, set, match. It might still take many months to impeach and convict, or impeach and force the resignation of, the President, but it would be highly likely he would not survive politically. In the unlikely event there were no conviction (in the Senate) and no resignation, the GOP would be severely wounded, operating under a cloud which now can be only imagined. By contrast, decisive action now, when "obstruction of justice" remains an abstraction to most Americans, likely would incite a significant backlash.

There is a portion of President Trump's base which would remain loyal to him if he were videotaped shooting someone on Pennsylvania Avenue or if his tax returns were released.  But there is a reason he has refused to do either, and many of his current supporters would desert him if-if  the case for impeachment were far stronger than it is today.

Very few Democratic politicians have echoed Representative Waters' call for serious consideration of impeachment. They are heeding- and for the time being, should continue to heed- the advice given by the NFL's greatest active quarterback to his teammates during a slump: "R-E-L-A-X."

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Not Leaks (Or Leeks)

Donald Trump's lawyer, Marc Kasowitz, has threatened to file a couple of complaints against James Comey.  The ex-FBI chief is accused by the GOP spin machine with "leaking" as a private citizen his own notes pertaining to meetings already described by the President.  Josh Gerstein quotes an "ex-FBI chief" commenting

“I would be astonished if the FBI supported Comey in terms of his handling of this information … If they accepted this, you would have a virtual collapse of a wide array of regulations governing dissemination of information.”

Several federal criminal laws could potentially apply, including some that prohibit disclosure of various types of classified information. However, Comey insists the memos he shared are unclassified.

Comey is not "insisting" the memoranda are unclassifed; they are his own notes.  But Gerstein continues

One statute involving theft of government property has sometimes been used to charge government employees who disclose the names of informants, confidential contract bids, or even information about changes to Medicare reimbursement policies. The law has been invoked even when the information wasn’t really stolen or removed, but merely copied or relayed.

That's not going to fly. Gerstein acknowledges

a Justice Department policy appears to bar use of the law when “the defendant obtained or used the property primarily for the purpose of disseminating it to the public.”

“Under this policy, a government employee who, for the primary purpose of public exposure of the material, reveals a government document to which he or she gained access lawfully or by non-trespassory means would not be subject to criminal prosecution for the theft,” the U.S. Attorneys’ Manual says, while acknowledging that other laws could apply, including those for classified information.

Even the premise is faulty, however. Defending James Comey and (now ex-) NASA contractor Reality Winner, Dana Gold explains

After being fired for doing his job investigating government corruption, Comey—like so many whistleblowers before him—recognized the likely futility of an independent investigation being launched into potentially one of the most serious abuses of power in history without the power of the press. Similarly, Winner reasonably believed she was exposing evidence of illegal activity on the part of the Russians to interfere with our elections, though she would have benefited from talking with an experienced whistleblower attorney before deciding to share a classified document with the Intercept.

Fear of futility—that speaking up won’t make a difference—and fear of reprisal are the two main reasons employees with evidence of serious wrongdoing stay silent. We should be grateful that Comey had the courage to use the press. Whistleblowers and the verifiable information they provide about wrongdoing, reported responsibly by the press, are essential to making our barely functional democratic system of checks and balances work.

The Justice Department will not be so grateful, and Winner is in a heap of trouble, James Comey far less.  Nevertheless, the larger issue may be, as Charles Dickens once wrote "If the law supposes that," said Mr. Bumble, squeezing his hat emphatically in both hands, "the law is a ass - a idiot".











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Grotesque Double Standard, With Liberal Use of Profanity

The concept is really fairly simple, even if some people- especially celebrities- refuse to acknowledge it.  It's common sense, explained here (emphasis mine) as

Modeling therapy is based on social learning theory. This theory emphasizes the importance of learning from observing and imitating role models, and learning about rewards and punishments that follow behavior. The technique has been used to eliminate unwanted behaviors, reduce excessive fears, facilitate learning of social behaviors, and many more. Modeling may be used either to strengthen or to weaken previously learned behaviors.

Modeling has been used effectively to treat individuals with anxiety disorders, post-traumatic stress disorder , specific phobias , obsessive-compulsive disorder , eating disorders, attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder , and conduct disorder . It has also been used successfully in helping individuals acquire such social skills as public speaking or assertiveness.

Friday night's episode of "Real Time" featured Michael Eric Dyson, who explained to Bill Maher why he believes the latter's use on the previous episode of the term "field nigg_" was offensive and harmful.  Although there was some social value in the discussion, there was little later in the program when Ice Cube actually remarked

I think there’s a lot of guys out there who cross the line because they’re a little too familiar. Or there’s guys that might have had a black girlfriend or two ... and they think they can cross the line. And they can’t. It’s a word that has been used against us. It’s like a knife. You can use it as a weapon, or you can use it as a tool. It’s been used as a weapon against us by white people, and we’re not going to let that happen again. I know it’s in the lexicon, you’ve heard people talking. But that’s our word now. And you can’t have it back.





No one questioned Mr. Cube as to how the use of a prejorative term- my opinion, evidently not his- is not encouraged by its proud use ("it's our term now") among people for whom it is (justifiably) offensive.

But it's our word now. You can't have it back.  Loose- not very- translation: "white people, shut up."

A word doesn't belong to any one group, any more than it belongs to any one person.   That may be difficult to understand- or more likely, to acknowledge- from O'Shea Jackson (a/k/a Ice Cube), who has acquired a net worth of approximately $120 million with classy lyrics such as these:


 "The Nigga Ya Love To Hate":

I heard payback's a motherfucking nigga
That's why I'm sick of gettin treated like a goddamn stepchild
Fuck a punk cause I ain't him
You gotta deal with the nine-double-M
The damn scum that you all hate
Just think if niggas decide to retaliate
They try to keep me from running up
I never tell you to get down it's all about coming up
So what they do go and ban the AK?



"The Wrong Nigga To Fuck With":

God damn, it's a brand new payback
From the straight gangsta mack in straight gangsta black
How many motherfuckers gotta pay
Went to the shelf and dusted off the AK
Caps gotta get pealed
Cause "The Nigga Ya Love to hate" still can "Kill at Will"
It ain't no pop cause that sucks
And you can New Jack SWING on my nuts
Down wit the niggaz that I bail out


"It's our word now," Ice Cube says. No, it's the word of bigots now, as before. On second thought: perhaps it is his word now.

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Exploiting Death

President Trump has a message for the world. His concern for terrorism begins and ends with the borders of the United States of America

Trump first responded to the recent atrocity in London with an appropriate and tasteful tweet. However, eight minutes later he followed with "We need to be smart,vigilant and tough. We need the courts to give us back our rights. We need the Travel Ban and an extra level of safety."

The next morning he tweeted "We must stop being politically correct and get down to the business of security for our people.  If we don't get smart, it will only get worse." What got worse was his attitude as he grossly misrepresented the words of Sadiq Khan by tweeting "At least 7 dea and 48 wounded in terror attack and Mayor of London says there is 'no reason to be alarmed.'"

Way to go in exploiting mass murder, Mr. President. However, Trump will not confine his gratuitous, tasteless insults to allies. In their worst moments, other people will become victims of the crude and rude head of state. Politico reports

Gunmen and suicide bombers killed at least 13 people in Tehran on Wednesday in an attack on the Iranian parliament building and the mausoleum of Ayatollah Khomeini. Iran’s Revolutionary Guard blamed the attack on Saudi Arabia, a key U.S. ally and a regional rival that practices a different form of Islam than the one endorsed by the Iranian government.

Saudi Arabia has denied any involvement and the Islamic State had claimed responsibility for the attacks.

The White House statement, issued Wednesday afternoon, offered prayers for the Iranian victims but also jabbed at the government in Tehran over its support of groups viewed by the U.S. as terrorists.

“We grieve and pray for the innocent victims of the terrorist attacks in Iran, and for the Iranian people, who are going through such challenging times,” the White House statement said. “We underscore that states that sponsor terrorism risk falling victim to the evil they promote.”

Shorter Trump: "Too bad about the dead people, but it's all your fault. "

Not as short Trump: "We're against terrorism- unless we don't like the victims.  Too bad, drop dead."











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The Power Of Timing

On Monday night CNN's Don Lemon hosted a panel focusing on comedian Bill Maher's racially-tinged remark on the previous Friday's Real Time.

"White Like Me" author Tim Wise, Bush 43 political appointee W. Scott Jennings, and South Carolina Democratic Party official Bakari Sellers all were appalled at Maher's "house nigg_ remark."

Unlike the other two, Jennings took a partisan tack, arguing that the comedian should have been fired by HBO and commenting

I agreed with HBO. They called what he did "inexcusable.: But HBO PR department, hear me. They said it's inexcusable but now he's going back on the air Friday night. He's not suspended. There apparently is no punishment for this. That's the exact opposite of inexcusable. I wholeheartedly agree this is inexusable. Apparently, the liberal iluminati has decided Bill Maher is too important to the resistance so he gets to escape punishment here. I think it's terrible, it's inexcusable, and I can't believe they're putting him back on the air Friday.

Recognizing that Jennings lamented the relative lack of attention paid by the media to the remark, Lemon pivoted from him and asked "Do you think it's that, Bakari, or do you think because of the terror attack that it received less coverage and that people just became distracted by the coverage?"

Sellers cannily ignored the question, instead responding to Jennings by pointing out "no, I think it's shallow to say that this is a partisan argument, because it's not..."

The answer to Don Lemon's question is simple and nearly undeniable. It is "yes."






Ask yourselves and your friends and relatives if they remember a statement issued jointly last autumn by the Director of National Intelligence and the Department of Homeland Security which read in part

The U.S. Intelligence Community (USIC) is confident that the Russian Government directed the recent compromises of e-mails from US persons and institutions, including from US political organizations. The recent disclosures of alleged hacked e-mails on sites like DCLeaks.com and WikiLeaks and by the Guccifer 2.0 online persona are consistent with the methods and motivations of Russian-directed efforts. These thefts and disclosures are intended to interfere with the US election process. Such activity is not new to Moscow—the Russians have used similar tactics and techniques across Europe and Eurasia, for example, to influence public opinion there. We believe, based on the scope and sensitivity of these efforts, that only Russia's senior-most officials could have authorized these activities.

The answer to that also is simple and undeniable. It is "no" or more likely "what statement?"

Not only does almost nobody remember this critical release but very few remembered it within a few hours after it was made.

That was because the date of the matter was October 7, 2016.   You might recall something else from that date:

On Friday afternoon, the Washington Post published a clip of Trump on a hot mic before an interview with Access Hollywood. In chatting with then-host Billy Bush, who is now co-host of NBC's Today show, Trump talked about kissing women and grabbing them between their legs (using far cruder language) without permission, because he's "attracted" to them like a "magnet."

"[W]hen you're a star," he said, "they let you do it. You can do anything."

The interview occurred before Trump was set to film a cameo on the soap opera Days of Our Lives, and he said, laughing, that he needed "some Tic Tacs, just in case I start kissing her."

In talking about kissing women, Trump boasted: "I'm automatically attracted to beautiful — I just start kissing them. It's like a magnet. Just kiss. I don't even wait. And when you're a star, they let you do it. You can do anything."

"Grab them by the p****. You can do anything," the Republican nominee continued, using vulgar slang for the female anatomy.

Additionally, October 7 included the first release by Wikileaks, at 4:32 p.m., of DNC emails. However, of the Access Hollywood recording,  The Washington Post accurately reported "by 4 p.m., his story was causing shock waves."

Only the literally incredible Julian Assange knows for sure whether the email dump was timed (unsuccessfully) to divert attention from the horrendous remarks by Julian Assange's preferred major-party candidate, Donald Trump.

Clearly, however, the DNI/DHS statement was forgotten because of the Access Hollywood revelation. Similarly, a major terrorist attack as occurred in London, England would virtually obliterate all attention to  anything Bill Maher might say, other than to announce that he had joined a monastery.  Don Lemon understands that concept and was unafraid to bring a little common sense to an incident in which very little has been.






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