Surprising Bush warning...

Here are the highlights of the surprising speech offered up by George W. Bush the other day, that struck at the heart of the heartless Trump administration...and Republican Party in general:



I thought I would also include a short part of John McCain's speech as well. I should note that Obama also made a statement, but it was unfortunately not anywhere as strong a criticism as Bush or McCain's. This is an ongoing problem for Democrats.

  

Huh? DNC chair Donna Brazile offers advice to Trump?

Donna Brazile is the worst kind of Democrat. She's helped enable the radicalization of the Republican Party by letting them off the hook every time, especially with Trump, and gently criticized them instead of telling it like it is. Her latest mealy mouthed advice to Trump is stunning; asking Trump to distance himself from racism and bigotry? I say let the Incredible Trump's big mouth flap!

Trump's "Best?" Campaign manager's Domestic Abuse over Jewish school kids, and now possible Election Fraud?

Just another questionable day at Trump headquarters:

Barely a week into the job, Donald Trump’s new campaign CEO is already facing harsh scrutiny over a 20-year-old domestic-violence charge and an allegation of voter-registration fraud.

I tweeted this....

But then this just came out: Election fraud? Seems Stephen Bannon may have used a vacant house to vote elsewhere:

Early Friday morning, Guardian US added its own bombshell: Bannon and another ex-wife are registered to vote at a vacant house in Florida, a key swing state. That registration could be a violation of election laws, representing voter fraud. The fact that Bannon’s registration is not on the up-and-up is particularly damaging because Trump has in recent weeks been warning that “rigged” elections and voter fraud were “the only way we can lose” the election.

Stephen Bannon, the chief executive of Trump’s election campaign, has an active voter registration at the house in Miami-Dade County, Florida, which is vacant and due to be demolished to make way for a new development.

“I have emptied the property,” Luis Guevara, the owner of the house. “Nobody lives there … we are going to make a construction there.” Neighbors said the property had been abandoned for several months.

Bannon, 62, formerly rented the house for use by his ex-wife, Diane Clohesy, but did not live there himself. Clohesy, a Tea Party activist, moved out of the house earlier this year and has her own irregular voting registration arrangement. According to public records, Bannon and Clohesy divorced seven years ago. The Trump campaign said simply that Bannon had moved to another location in Florida. Moreover, the Guardian reports that Bannon may have previously registered at an address in Florida where he did not live. Wilfullly providing false voter-registration information in Florida is a third-degree felony, punishable by up to five years in prison. Bannon also lives in Los Angeles and Washington, D.C.

TRUMP'S BEST: It was nice of Chris Hayes to put together this story, proving once again Trump's one big bullshitter:

Trump's Campaign Chief investigated for looting Ukrainian assets & influencing elections to the tune of $12 million..that's all.

Trump's sleazy campaign manager is part of a corruption investigation that mixed $12 million of business influence into Ukrainian and Russian politics. And coincidentally, there's still the likely Russian hacking of Democratic emails Paul Manafort could have used to try and sway the election here. Weird huh?

This would have, again, destroyed any other candidates campaign, but oddly not Trump? NY Times:

Secret Ledger in Ukraine Lists Cash for Donald Trump’s Campaign Chief: On a leafy side street off Independence Square in Kiev is an office used for years by Donald J. Trump’s campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, when he consulted for Ukraine’s ruling political party ... government investigators examining secret records have found his name, as well as companies he sought business with, as they try to untangle a corrupt network they say was used to loot Ukrainian assets and influence elections during the administration of Mr. Manafort’s main client, former President Viktor F. Yanukovych.

You can't make this stuff up. Imagine the uproar if the following described Clinton's campaign manager:

"...international consulting that has been a staple of Mr. Manafort’s business since the 1980s, when he went to work for the Philippine dictator Ferdinand Marcos. Before joining Mr. Trump’s campaign this spring, Mr. Manafort’s most prominent recent client was Mr. Yanukovych, who — like Mr. Marcos — was deposed in a popular uprising."

I'm typing this at the same time I'm listening radio host Mitch Henck, who's Bizarro World guest is blaming George Soro for the Ukrainian overthrow. While the right wing noise machine is busy at work, just keep this in mind:

Handwritten ledgers show $12.7 million in undisclosed cash payments designated for Mr. Manafort from Mr. Yanukovych’s pro-Russian political party from 2007 to 2012, according to Ukraine’s newly formed National Anti-Corruption Bureau. Investigators assert that the disbursements were part of an illegal off-the-books system whose recipients also included election officials.

In addition, criminal prosecutors are investigating a group of offshore shell companies that helped members of Mr. Yanukovych’s inner circle finance their lavish lifestyles, including a palatial presidential residence with a private zoo, golf course and tennis court. Among the hundreds of murky transactions these companies engaged in was an $18 million deal to sell Ukrainian cable television assets to a partnership put together by Mr. Manafort and a Russian oligarch, Oleg Deripaska, a close ally of President Vladimir V. Putin.

Go Trump? Yes, Manafort is now guiding Trump with everything he's learned, including these coincidental facts:

From Mr. Trump’s favorable statements about Mr. Putin and his annexation of Crimea to the suspected Russian hacking of Democrats’ emails — an examination of Mr. Manafort’s activities offers new details of how he mixed politics and business out of public view and benefited from powerful interests now under scrutiny by the new government in Kiev.

Anti-corruption officials there say the payments earmarked for Mr. Manafort, previously unreported, are a focus of their investigation, though they have yet to determine if he actually received the cash ... his lawyer, Richard A. Hibey, said Mr. Manafort had not received “any such cash payments” described by the anti-corruption officials ... “These are suspicions, and probably heavily politically tinged ones,”

The National Anti-Corruption Bureau, which obtained the ledger, said in a statement that Mr. Manafort’s name appeared 22 times in the documents over five years, with payments totaling $12.7 million. The purpose of the payments is not clear. Nor is the outcome, since the handwritten entries cannot be cross-referenced against banking records.

Trump's ISIS Lie Sarcasm!!?

Trump trolls continue to ignore the blatant lies of their orange leader, their chosen candidate for president no matter how much they deny it, because he "tells it like it is."

Seriously, you can't turn on conservative talk radio without hearing some mindless caller blather on about Trump's "tell it like is is"  honesty. Yet Trump is doing just the opposite, which brings us back to "everyday is opposite day in Republican world."

This is now the big headline this morning, after lying all day about ISIS founding father President Obama...hey, it was all just a joke, like his hilarious rant about shooting President Hillary Clinton over liberal supreme court nominations:

What, the main stream media couldn't tell by the expression on Trump's orange face - like at this recent rally - that he was just kidding?



Or this lighthearted back and forth with conservative talker Hugh Hewitt, where Trump not only doubles down on his claim Obama founded ISIS, but he readily admits that making outrageous comments get more news coverage than telling the boring truth. MSNBC's Steve Kornaki pointed out the slip-up, saying "Donald Trump revealed that making outrageous statements that warrant clarification is part of his strategy:"

Hewitt: "You meant Obama created the vacuum, he lost the peace."

Trump: "No, I mean't he's the founder of ISIS."

I also noticed an odd coincidence regarding the word "founder." In this highly edited clip of PBS's Frontline on the origin of ISIS, the focus is on its "founder," mention within the first 50 seconds. Interesting to note; Dick Cheney is really the person responsible for the development of ISIS, so he could make his case for war with Iraq:



Just for fun, the new Time cover...

Clinton's Economic Plan estimated to Create 10 Million Jobs, Trump will lose 3.5 Million.

CNBC tried to without success to make destroy Hillary's economic plan estimates by Moody's Mark Zandi. Hillary Clinton's would help create 10 million jobs, while Trumps plan would wipe out nearly 3.5 million jobs.

Zandi's report backed up the claim by saying Clinton's plan is highly detailed and easy to calculate, something that couldn't be said about Trump's plan.

Despite Voter ID, Trump smashes confidence in elections by saying they're rigged, opening door for more restrictions.

An article at Talking Points Memo brought up an interesting question about voter confidence in elections due to Voter ID; despite requiring photo ID’s, Republicans still cast doubt on elections by saying they’re rigged. So despite the rhetoric about voter confidence, why are Republicans claiming rigged elections, basically destroying that confidence?

“The whole aura of illegitimacy he is casting on the election in general ... he is feeding an already very hungry beast here with these kinds of accusations,” Nathaniel Persily, a Stanford Law professor who served on the Presidential Commission on Election Administration in 2012. 

“I’m telling you, November 8th, we’d better be careful, because that election is going to be rigged,” Trump said on Fox News this week. “And I hope the Republicans are watching closely or it’s going to be taken away from us. “I’m just saying that I wouldn’t be surprised if the election . . . there’s a lot of dirty pool played at the election, meaning the election is rigged. I would not be surprised,” Trump said.

Just as bad, recent Trump comments on the myth of voting multiple times makes it obvious this guy never set foot in his own local polling place.

“The voter ID, they’re fighting as hard as you can fight so that that they don’t have to show voter ID. So, what’s the purpose of that? How many times is a person going to vote during the day? If you don’t have voter ID. Multiple times. How about like 10 times. Why not? If you don’t have voter ID, you can just keep voting and voting and voting,” Trump said. 

Rick Hasen --- professor at UC-Irvine School of Law who also runs the Election Law Blog. -- told PBS Newshour Wednesday, “That sounds like someone who has never been to a polling place, because you just can’t go in and ask for a ballot, and they will just trust you. There is a voter roll. There is a list. Every state identifies you somehow. It might be that you give your signature. And if it’s that, then your signature is on the line. You’re already voted. You can’t vote 10 times.” 

Ironically, Trump did go to a polling place, not once, but three times in the same day but was turned away. Ah, he does know he can only go to one designated place? From Access Hollywood:



Destroying the public trust in elections despite voter ID...:

Voter ID laws are necessary to maintain public trust that voter fraud is being prevented. This is one of the arguments the Supreme Court invoked in its 2008 decision upholding Indiana’s voter ID law, Crawford vs. Marion County. 

Yet, a study published in June by Persily -- along with Charles Stewart III and Stephen Ansolabehere -- undercut that justification. They found no evidence that voters in states with strict voter ID laws had greater levels of confidence in elections than those in states without them. 

But Persily worries even if voter ID laws aren’t increasing confidence elections, Trump’s comments are making Americans less trusting of democratic institutions. “You have this perverse cycle here, you are ... casting [the electoral system] in a bad light of disrepute, and in the process, by creating these anti-system views, you are now justifying more restrictive measures that might keep people from voting," Persily said. 

The Incredible Trump "Says He Wanted to 'Hit a Couple of Speakers So Hard!" and so much More.....

This would be funny if Trump voters weren't so invested in this blunt talking reality show thug:

"You know what I wanted to. I wanted to hit a couple of those speakers so hard," Trump said. "I would have hit them. No, no. I was going to hit them, I was all set and then I got a call from a highly respected governor."

"I was gonna hit one guy in particular, a very little guy," he said. "I was gonna hit this guy so hard his head would spin and he wouldn't know what the hell happened."

Maybe this whole Trump phenomenon comes down to something this simple:

When it came to Donald Trump, Clinton went for the jugular — his Twitter feed. The remark was deemed the "most-tweeted moment" of the evening by Twitter's Government & Elections team.

Trump proved Clinton right with his reaction to the RNC's  lower ratings:

DNC Beats RNC for Third Straight Night in Early TV Ratings...

Early ratings results for Night 3 of the Democratic National Convention are in, and once again the DNC appears to have beat out the Republican National Convention. Donald Trump sent an e-mail to his supporters urging them not to watch Hillary Clinton deliver her nomination acceptance speech on the final night of the Democratic convention.

“I didn’t produce our show — I just showed up for the final speech on Thursday,” Trump told The New York Times in a phone call this week.
Trump actually broke with tradition by making multiple appearances during the Cleveland convention, coming on stage to introduce his wife Melania on the convention's opening night and appearing onstage with running mate Mike Pence, who followed Sen. Ted Cruz’s (R-TX) non-endorsement speech on the convention's third night.  His claim that he had no hand in the convention programming was also eyebrow-raising, given that campaigns typically dictate the speaker roster and many of the RNC speakers had direct ties to Trump. Among those were five members of the Trump family, the manager of Trump Winery and ‘80s sitcom star Scott Baio, who said Trump personally invited him to speak at a campaign fundraiser.

Trump shreds First Amendment's freedom of the Press, in Waukesha.

Cafeteria constitutional conservatives like to pick and choose what works and what doesn't work, freedom wise, depending on the situation.

"...prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press;..."

Republicans have been setting this argument up for a long time; the liberal media can't be trusted. So of course the corrupted liberal press is not constitutionally protected.

It was just a matter of time before someone like Trump, a right wing authoritarian, would test just how willing a resentful public would be to make little exceptions in the beginning:

JS: At Mike Pence's first public event as the Republican vice-presidential candidate, a Washington Post reporter was barred from entering the venue and was patted down by Waukesha County deputies, according to The Washington Post … When reporter Jose DelReal asked whether others attending the rally could enter with their cellphones, he said the official replied, "Not if they work for The Washington Post."

"First, press credentials for The Washington Post were revoked by Donald Trump," Post Executive Editor Martin Baron said. "Now, law enforcement officers, in collusion with private security officials, subjected a reporter to bullying treatment that no ordinary citizen has to endure. All of this took place in a public facility no less. The harassment of an independent press isn't coming to an end. It's getting worse."

Trump requests campaign help from Foreign Government Hackers.

Fascism is coming to America, and the news media won't even bring it up. But there's a real possibility fearful angry voters will choose a fascist, blunt, tell-it-like-it-is "leader" to make our country great again.

Eye Rolling Declarations of Fascism: Just this morning I heard radio host Mich Henck downplay Trump's obvious fascism. Henck thought it was over the top to supposedly compare Trump to Hitler and Mussolini. But Henck could have just as easily, and more realistically, used the plain old definition of fascism as the template, pushing aside the historical references.

As bad as Trump is, Scott Walker could have been much worse. During his presidential bid, he essentially promised to dissolve the federal government and declare independence to the states. With Homeland Security and the military under his control, you can bet "law and order" would still be maintained by Walker, a rightwing authoritarian father figure. Walker tipped his hand early on as governor. He began using the names of his opponents from his recall petitions as a political black list to attack and quash them.

The New National Black List:  Now it appears Wikileaks has posted the Democratic Party's donors names and addresses. With the possibility of one party rule under Trump, that sets up a number of scary possibilities. ABC: 

More significant, said Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta, is that trusted donors saw their personal information exposed to the world.

“What was disclosed is the personal information of our donors and it’s always worrisome when personal information is stolen,” Podesta told ABC News. “And that's true whether it’s Target or Sony or, or the DNC."

A review of the documents by ABC News found the material includes detailed personal information about many of the party’s wealthy supporters. One file, titled “Big Spreadsheet of All Things,” appears to list every single donation made to the party...

 And Trump has asked foreign governments for hacking help:

Which prompted this reaction from Clinton:

The conservative columnist at the Weekly Standard and Fox News, Stephen Hayes, tweeted the following:

This is hhhuggge. While it's obvious money has to purged from influencing our political system once and for all, something our activist conservative supreme court justices just don't seem to get, we're still left in this dangerous place. As pointed out by Wired.com:

WikiLeaks Has Officially Lost the Moral High Ground: WHAT THE HECK is going on at WikiLeaks? In the last two weeks, the font of digital secrets has doxed millions of Turkish women, leaked Democratic National Committee emails that made Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign look bad but also suggested the site was colluding with the Russian government, and fired off some seriously anti-Semitic tweets.

Remember the near Turkish coup?

(Release of) the so-called Erdogan Emails was particularly egregious. The organization said that the infodump would expose the machinations of Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan immediately after the attempted coup against him, but instead turned out to be mostly correspondence and personal information from everyday Turkish citizens. Worse, it included the home addresses, phone numbers, party affiliations, and political activity levels of millions of female Turkish voters. That’s irresponsible any time, and disastrous in the week of a coup.

This Democratic convention moment still stands out:

Will history be changed by Time Traveling Robots from the Future?

The title is just one great idea from a few of my favorite panels below by Tom Tomorrow, and This Modern World. Also see the Incredible Trump:

John Oliver - Bringing Feelings to a Fact Fight!!! Newt: "The current view is that liberals have a whole set of statistics which theoretically may be right..."

Republican feelings may just replace our terribly outdated Constitution. About 3 minutes in, Jon Oliver nails it...

Scott Baio makes a fool of himself...again!!!

MSNBC host Tamara Hall proved tough journalism is the Republican Party's real enemy.

Armed with the facts, Hall held celebrity right wing big mouth Scott Baio's feet to the fire for misogynistic tweets and flaming hypocrisy. If only the media would do this to our actual politicians.

I normally don't post stuff like this, but this was too much fun to miss. It starts with reality show star Antonio Sabato saying "if you understand Obama...I mean that's not a Christian name is it?" It quickly goes downhill from there:



Baio bashed Obama for rephrasing an old saying used in self defense classes, described this way in the Wall Street Journal:

Barack Obama said he would do to counter Republican attacks “If they bring a knife to the fight, we bring a gun,” Obama said at a Philadelphia fundraiser Friday night. “Because from what I understand folks in Philly like a good brawl. I’ve seen Eagles fans" ... John McCain’s campaign immediately accused the Democratic candidate of playing the politics of fear.

Yes, Baio and other right wingers interpreted that as a threat. In context, not so much:

Obama made the comment in the context of warning donors that the general election campaign against McCain could get ugly. “They’re going to try to scare people. They’re going to try to say that ‘that Obama is a scary guy,’” he said. A supporter yelled out a deep accented “Don’t give in!”

“I won’t but that sounded pretty scary. You’re a tough guy,” Obama said.

Trump's Careless Plagiarism Denied!!!

More dangerous than the outright plagiarism running rampant in the Republican Party, is the media's promise to make this whole story go away. It's like they can't wait to move on to something else. Reporter after reporter and radio news reports are repeatedly saying in their coverage that this will go away and won't matter at all. Oh, okay. Amazing.

Here's the offending speech by Melania Trump, a speech she said before the convention she wrote herself:



The irony is that Trump would just happen to plagiarize elements of Michelle Obama's speech, one of the Republican Party's most despised first ladies, next to Hillary of course.

I wonder what Scott Walker would say about this top-of-the-ticket recklessness, since he made such a big thing about plagiarism against his Democratic opponent Mary Burke.

It's clear from my conservative friend in Milwaukee that this won't change his mind about who he'll vote for, and even he thinks this is a disaster.

We should have seen this coming after Trump ripped off Walker's campaign symbol:

The excuses and denial from the Trump team are hilarious. Check out the endless stream of bullshit; Melania says she wrote the speech; Trump manager Paul Manafort's non-denial; Christie saying 93% is original; Queen gave no authorization for song; Speech writer who originally tweeted the plagiarism; Conservative David Frum trashing campaign saying they tell lies, blame others, don't take responsibility:

I liked this...

OH NO!!! These tweets have now surfaced...assuming they're real, Trump's got a problem:

Trump's 60 Minutes interview exempts Pence, not Hillary, from backing Iraq war!

I am so tired of lazy reporting. Never once has the media mentioned the unrelenting negative smear campaign Hillary Clinton has had to endure since the early 1990's, when she tried to put together health care reform. Gee, I wonder why her negative numbers are so high today, anyone venture a guess?  

And Democrats have bought into it hook, line, and sinker, as usual.

Now thanks to the 60 Minutes interview with Trump and VP pick Mike Pence, I now have a few other complaints to get to, like the built in Republican double standards no one seems to care about. 

First, Republicans have never admitted out loud that going into Iraq was a historical disaster. No criticism of Bush, no anger directed at Cheney or Rumsfeld for lying this nation into that war. In fact, ISIS grew out of one of those lies (check out Frontline). But now that Trump is saying it was "badly handled" and a mistake, every Republican voter is quietly admitting it too. 

Of course vocal Democratic opponents, politicians and voters alike, were cowards and weak on national security at the time. They were mocked by eye rolling conservatives who simply wrote it off as just more "Bush bashing" rhetoric. 

But that's all forgotten now. Like Trump, they were always against the Iraq war:  

Donald Trump: Yeah, you went to Iraq, but that was handled so badly. And that was a war-- by the way, that was a war that we shouldn't have entered because Iraq did not knock down--excuse me

Lesley Stahl: Your running mate--voted for it.

Donald Trump: I don't care.

"I don't care?"

What follows is another frustration; a persons past only counts against them if they're a Democrat. Obama's college papers, his pastor, his community organizing...etc., horrific stuff? State Supreme Court Justice Rebecca Bradley's comments bashing "totally stupid or entirely evil" Democratic voters, the gay community, abortion is murder, feminism...etc., that's all too far in the past to count against her ability to be impartial today. 

But Hillary's support of the Iraq war? 

Lesley Stahl: What do you mean you don't care that he voted for?

Donald Trump: It's a long time ago. And he voted that way and they were also misled. A lot of information was given to people.

Lesley Stahl: But you've harped on this.

Donald Trump: But I was against the war in Iraq from the beginning.

Lesley Stahl: Yeah, but you've used that vote of Hillary's that was the same as Governor Pence as the example of her bad judgment.

Donald Trump: Many people have, and frankly, I'm one of the few that was right on Iraq.

Lesley Stahl: Yeah, but what about he--

Donald Trump: He's entitled to make a mistake every once in a while.

Lesley Stahl: But she's not? OK, come on--

Donald Trump: But she's not--

Lesley Stahl: She's not?

Donald Trump: No. She's not.

Lesley Stahl: Got it.

Just this morning, the author of Trump's "Art of the Deal" Tony Schwartz was so troubled by the thought of a Trump presidency that he made these amazing comments:



And this racist presidential wannabe had this to say about Obama's body language of all things, because Trump couldn't find anything in to criticize in his speech about the Baton Rouge shooting:

“I watched the president. Sometimes the words are OK. But you just look at the body language — there’s something going on. There’s something going on. There’s just bad feeling. It’s probably something that we really don’t know and maybe we can’t feel it unless we’re black.”

What Mike Pence brings to America...

Let's take a look at what Gov. Mike Pence brings to the Trump ticket:

Was Pence Trump's pick after-all? 

Or this from Reason.com, where radical conservatives like Trump and Pence won't rein in constitutional chaos:

Judge Andrew P. Napolitano: "This is another example of let's not preserve and protect and defend the Constitution, let's find ways around it to achieve our ends." 

Anti-Trump Wisconsin Republicans Hatch Plot?

While Wisconsin may be considered a purple state, it's managed like it has only one legitimate ruling authority. The rise of the right wing authoritarian movement in Wisconsin has hatched a rogues gallery of "pricibled" leaders intent on cleansing the country of any and all of its socialist inclinations.

Scott Walker, Paul Ryan, and the ever reliable loonie tunes RNC chair Reince Priebus, after successfully pillaging the state, may now be turning their attention to the presidential election:

Inside the plot to ‘save’ the GOP from Trump — with Paul Ryan’s help if a group of renegade delegates from the speaker’s home state of Wisconsin gets its way, Ryan’s duties won’t stop there.

He will also, they hope, allow his fellow Wisconsinites to block Trump from winning the nomination.

Can these Cheeseheads really overthrow Trump at the convention? And will Ryan, who officially supports the presumptive nominee, actually wade into a civil war on the convention floor and deliver the Donald’s deathblow?

“I personally believe there are enough delegates who will abstain to keep Trump from getting the nomination on the first ballot,” Dane Waters, an official with Delegates Unbound, tells Yahoo News. “And I think that will open up a lot of options for the delegates.” 

Will Delegates Unbound be able to pull any of this off? They are, at the very least, a serious group. Their leader is Eric O’Keefe, a respected political activist in Wisconsin who worked aggressively to bolster Gov. Scott Walker during the 2012 recall campaign, and they are “rumored to be better organized than the more publicized efforts focused on the Rules Committee.”

Trump backer Ryan can't back away fast enough...

Continuing our weekly feature, Reason's Paul Ryan Backs Trump, we have this newly discovered gem in the JS:

In no uncertain terms, Ryan's only complaint about Trump is that he's really a bad racist guy with a love for tax cuts. Other than that....

"Anti-Semitic images, they've got no place in a presidential campaign. Candidates should know that," Ryan said. "I really believe he's got to clean up the way his new media works," Ryan responded. "One of the few times I spoke out against him during the primary, very forcefully, was in this area -- when he failed to disavow white supremacists."

Ryan called out Trump earlier this year when he initially declined to disavow the support of former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke, one of many prominent white supremacists backing Trump.

Ryan also panned Trump's plan to block all Muslims from entering the U.S., saying it's “not what this party stands for and more importantly, it’s not what this country stands for.”

Many other voters are getting to know the real Paul Ryan too, discovering just what makes him the party's wonder kid:

Trump presidential campaign Tweet features image lifted from racist anti-Semitic message board.

So the Trump staff are surfing racist, anti-Semite websites, anyone surprised? That's the shocking revelation that the Trump team can't bring themselves to admit. Why the hell not, it's not like Trump hasn't already cemented his creds as the racist and bigoted P.T. Barnum of Republican candidates for president. 

Here's the offending Trump Tweet w/picture, with the "sheriffs" star on it, next to the original "8chan's/pol" message board picture for anti-Semites and white supremacists:

Mic discovered Sunday that Donald Trump's Twitter account wasn't the first place the meme appeared. The image was previously featured on 8chan's /pol/ — an Internet message board for the alt-right, a digital movement of neo-Nazis, anti-Semites and white supremacists newly emboldened by the success of Trump's rhetoric — as early as June 22, over a week before Trump's team tweeted it.         

Of note is the file name of the photo, HillHistory.jpg, potentially a nod to the Neo-Nazi code for "HH," or "Heil Hitler," which the alt-right is fond of hiding in plain sight. The watermark on the lower-left corner of the image leads to a Twitter account that regularly tweets violent, racist memes commenting on the state of geopolitical politics.  

For some odd reason, the unapologetic Trump changed the star to a circle:

Trump quickly blamed Microsoft for the "sheriffs" star, but in fact, Microsoft's star is labeled "6-pointed star" with no reference to the sheriff's badge featuring rounded circles on the points. The Hill:

Donald Trump late Monday blasted “false attacks” by Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign over his use of a six-pointed star in a tweet, saying Clinton is trying to divert attention away from “dishonest behavior.”

“These false attacks by Hillary Clinton trying to link the Star of David with a basic star, often used by sheriffs who deal with criminals and criminal behavior, showing an inscription that says ‘Crooked Hillary is the most corrupt candidate ever’ with anti-Semitism is ridiculous,” he said in a statement.

Trump's campaign said they didn't get the image from 8chan's/pol, but oddly forgot this one time to attribute the picture to a source, something they normally do to a fault. Just so you know, here are other images at 8chan's/pol:

Trump's a real Republican alright, will increase national debt $11.5 Trillion...but GOP will get their damn tax cuts.

I had to laugh at the title of this amazing "both sides" do article from The Hill: 

Analysis Trump, Clinton plans not in line with balancing national debt

That's not good, right? Well, five paragraphs into the story, I did the old "spit take" with my morning coffee:

The report directly compares the fiscal impact of Trump's and Clinton’s proposals, building off the previous non-partisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget (CRFB) analyses that examined their proposals separately. The analysis also looks more deeply at the revenue and spending implications of the likely nominees’ policy proposals.

CRFB found that over a decade, Trump's plans would increase the debt by $11.5 trillion and Clinton's would raise it by $250 billion.

Ah, gulp. But you'd never know how far apart Clinton and Trump were if you just read the first couple of paragraphs. Call it media spin favoring Trump:

Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton would both face challenges to put the national debt on a sustainable path under their current proposals but Trump would have to go to far more extreme measures to rein in debt if his policies were enacted.

Neither of the presumptive presidential nominees have put forth ideas to address the debt ... “Both candidates, at a time when our debt is already at record levels, would not put forth a plan that would put the debt on a sustainable path," CRFB President Maya MacGuineas said on CBS’s “Face the Nation” on Sunday. "But that said, the plan of Donald Trump would add much, much more to the debt than Hillary Clinton.” 

Here are some details 

Clinton’s tax plan would raise $1.25 trillion, while Trump’s tax plan would cost $9.25 trillion. And Clinton’s immigration policies would also produce savings, while Trump’s plan would have costs, the report found. 

This will blow your mind...and remember, Republicans will still vote for Trump:

If Trump wanted to put debt on a sustainable path after enacting his proposals, he would have to cut spending by 27 to 37 percent, raise tax rates by 17.5 to 20.5 percentage points, accelerate economic growth by 160 to 390 percent, or enact some combination of these options, according to the report.

...in contrast....

In order for Clinton to put debt on a sustainable path, she would have to cut spending by 6 to 15 percent, increase all tax rates by 3.5 to 8.5 percentage points or increase economic growth by 35 to 125 percent. She could also could take a combination of these actions, the CRFB said.

To be perfectly honest, I would much rather have the following problem than anything Trump would unleash:

Clinton has promised not to raise taxes on anyone making less than $250,000, but she would need to raise the top tax rate to 64 percent to stabilize the debt if she only raised taxes on high earners.

Bloomberg View posted a story that came to this not so surprising conclusion:

Paul Ryan's Tax Blueprint Looks a Lot Like Trump's: Ryan and Trump are often portrayed as uneasy allies on a number of political fronts. But when it comes to taxes and fiscal policy, they are kissin' cousins.