2016 presidential race

The superficially crafted messaging of the Republican convention has been stepped on and obliterated every day. But Hillary better not feel powerful for having had anything to do with it. It's all Trump and his incompetent, deranged micro-campaign that's causing all the seemingly self-destructive chaos. Trump lifted those plagiarized passages from Michelle Obama's speech and put them into Melania's address and ate up two-and-a-half days of headlines that might have gone to republican messaging.

Tuesday's "Make America Work Again" was a follow-up to the Trump Convention's unhinged "Make America Safe Again" Monday theme. But there was basically nothing about work, jobs or anything related to either.

 Hillary Clinton campaigning with Tim Kaine (Photo: Andrew Harnik/AP; source)by Gaius Publius The widely rumored Democratic candidates to be

"Winter Blackbird," linocut by Lisa Hooper (source; click to enlarge)by Gaius Publius Among twenty snowy mountains,The only moving thingWas the eye of the blackbird.–Wallace Stevens, "Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird"Sometimes the thing that matters is not the thing seen, but the w

by Gaius PubliusI'm going to break the rule normally applied when one asks a question in a title ... by answering it immediately. Using NATO for economic purposes is very dangerous indeed, since it could, and perhaps will, lead to war.The stated purpose of NATO is "defense," yet it seems to exist for a different purpose — (a) to bring money into the coffers of U.S. corporations by strangling European trade with Russia as an economic competitor to the U.S., and (b) to guarantee billions of dollars in armament sales for U.S.

Darwin Deason (76) and His Own Melania, 5th wife Katerina (49)This week This American Life featured a story of father-son team, two deranged right-wing parasites who have been working to destroy America from within, ever since Darwin Deason, the father, crawled out from under a rock in Arkansas.

The unseemly spectacle of the Trumpish running mate selection-- culminating in Trump playing the Rolling Stones' "You Can't Always Get What You Want" a dozen times in a row for startled reporters before bringing out the hapless Mike Pence-- should serve as a prelude to what a Trump administration would be like.

A new poll from AP/GfK indicates that 33% of Americans would feel afraid if Trump gets elected and 25% would feel afraid if Hillary gets elected. The worse news is that 23% say they will feel afraid if either of these two awful candidates gets elected.

Ignore Chris Matthews' aggressive pro-Clinton badgering. Focus on Turner's determination to keep her progressive powder dry ... for the moment.by Gaius PubliusI'm not saying this is a trend ... yet ... and I'm presenting this just as news, not as something I do or do not want to happen.Frankly, part of me is watching this drama with a novelist's fascination, or more accurately, with a novel reader's fascination.

Yvette Carnell, speaking after the March 15 Super Tuesday voting. At 2:15: "This was our opportunity to go somewhere [other than to conservative Democrats] and to prove that you're going to [have to] treat us right ... this was our moment. So I'm not sure we're going to have another moment like this ...