I was standing in line at the grocery store yesterday looking at this National Enquirer cover, trying to convince myself I'm too old to be horrified by these things anymore. It made me queasy and a little breathless but I managed to get past it and move my groceries from my cart to the belt.
 

On September 17th of 1981 the greatest of all time, the Nature Boy Ric Flair, put hard times on rival Dusty Rhodes, to win his first world heavyweight wrestling championships.  He is now (sadly) retired but his 16 world championship reigns remain a record, destined to be matched or exceeded by (shudder) John Cena.

Well, here it was, his first belt:

"Breaking News," tweeted the New York Times yesterday, "Trump backed off birther claims: 'President Barack Obama was born in the United States, period.'"

Typical of the Times' election reporting, the tweet made no mention of Trump's lies or his dishonest attempt to shift the blame onto Hillary Clinton. (By contrast, the Washington Post called it straight: "Breaking: Trump admits Obama born in U.S. but falsely blames Clinton for starting rumors.")

But today, the Grey Lady took her gloves off. The headline for the lead story on the front page provocatively declares, "Trump Gives Up Lie But Refuses to Repent."

Everyone wants someone to blame for the election of 2016. It's the media's fault that Donald Trump is running neck and neck with Hillary Clinton. No, it's Hillary's secretiveness and her Wall Street connections. No, it's the bankers. No, it's the economy, stupid. No, it's sexism, racism, reality television. And so on.

Many of these factors do affect the race, but none of them really explains the Trump phenomenon. Sure, Hillary would be further ahead if she were more charismatic or if the press were easier on her, but the real mystery is how a man like Donald Trump is in the race at all.

I've been thinking for a long time about the ways Hillary Clinton might possibly appease the press and get them to look at her as a living, breathing whole person and not just Bad Hillary. I think I've finally got it.

Today, Richard Cohen visits Hazard, Kentucky to profile Trump supporters.  The long and short of it seems to be that eight years of Obama's Environmental Protection Agency pushing the country away from coal asn an energy source has destroyed Eastern Kentucky's economy.  No doubt that, along with low oil and natural gas prices, have taken their toll on the region.

Why study the arts? Some politicians ask the question as a joke, mocking this or that discipline as impractical. Those who defend the arts and humanities answer in economic terms, arguing for the rich and versatile skills one learns in the humanities classroom. I have made that economic case myself. As far as it goes, it is true. But it is not the only argument, and it does not go far enough.

We need the humanities because we are human. We need the arts because we are mortal. We need art and poetry because everyone we love will some day die.

So today, Paul Krugman told it like it is about the newspaper that employs him and its strange "balance via bias" coverage of the Clinton and Trump campaigns, in which the Grey Lady tries to give both candidates equivalent amounts of negative coverage.

Every Labor Day I feel more and more like I'm at a labor union wake and all I can do is pay tribute to what once was a living, breathing, cherished part of so many of our lives.

I was standing there doing nothing — not running, not resisting, in fact smiling… the officer picked me up and body slammed me and put me on the ground and told me to turn over and shut my mouth, and put the cuffs on me.”

James Blake

The media has been puzzling for months over Donald Trump's so-called medical record in which his doctor declared, "If elected, Mr. Trump, I can state unequivocally, will be the healthiest individual ever elected to the presidency."

According to Josh Marshall's theory of Trump's Razor, we should conclude "the stupidest possible scenario that can be reconciled with the available facts."

The stupidest possible scenario is so stupid that it did not even occur to me until now: Trump wrote his own doctor's note and then got his doctor to sign it.

Trump again. I know. I'm obsessed with who he is, how he got here, where he's going, and who's going down with him. Day by day, in every way, it's as if the planet has tilted and those of us still upright are experiencing an existential vertigo.  (In other words, "What the hell is happening??")

In a matter of a precious few months Donald Trump vanquished more than a dozen barely worthy but infinitely better opponents and now he's as astonished as anyone that it's looking less like a political coup and more like a damned junta!

My first post on Dagblog was December 27, 2014; I was a butcher at a grocery store and received a small salary from the church I serve. Dagblog has opened several doors for me: I've had some paid speaking engagements, I've appeared on three talk radio shows- none more frequently than The Hal Ginsberg Morning Show, and I now hold the title of station coordinator for WCHG Allegheny Mountain Radio.

On a slow news Friday in August both Slate and New York ran thumb suckers calling on the Clintons to shut down their foundation.  This is in response to a Clinton promise that the foundation would take no foreign donations during a Clinton presidency. Look, I get it.

Donald Trump is clearly losing this election. What is the media going to do about it?

Even Trump understands that he's way behind in the polls and that those polls are on the level. That's why he shook up his campaign staff this morning to make it more Trump-y. (New campaign motto: "Let Trump be Trump. We're out of other options.") He's doing much worse than Mitt Romney was four years ago, and Romney lost by a solid margin.

As a denizen of the Internets given to spouting personal opinions I'm not easily offended.  I can't afford to be. It's hard enough to write without having to do it curled up in a fetal position, tears in my eyes, sucking my thumb.

But I'm offended by my country.

There are still three months to go and we've already gotten to the smirking-death-threats portion of our general election. I can't even say that I'm surprised Trump did it. I just never expected it so early, and I'm sickened by the thought of how much lower the man will sink by November 8. It will get even worse. I mean, of course it will. There's no doubt. But I'm not looking forward to it.

How many times will we play the same game? Here's how it goes:

1. Donald Trump says something outrageous
2. Outrage ensues
3. Trump pretends to be misinterpreted.
4. Pundits argue about whether Trump was misinterpreted

...and repeat.

Slate has run with a thought experiment that serves as a kind of counter to calls by people like President Obama for Republicans to repudiate their own nominee, for the good of the country.  The idea here is that if populist Democrats had somehow handed the nomination to somebody like Sean Penn, people left of center would not take kindly to being told to vote for Ted Cruz in the name of apple pie and American values.