I ranted to the knave and fool,
I acted the obscenest tool,
To transform the polls.
Fit audience I found, but Clinton rules
The voter rolls.

I sought my betters: though in each
Fine manners, liberal speech,
Turn hatred into sport.
Nothing said or done can reach
My sadistic heart.

From a penthouse have I come.
Great pride, great rooms,
Maimed me at the start.
I carry to my bronzéd tomb
A sadistic heart.

Donald Trump’s doctor confuses the American College of Gastroenterologists with Trump University.

A lot of people are saying that this confusion on his part (coupled with multiple verbal anomalies in his letter about Donald Trump’s fitness for the presidency) suggests Dr. Bornstein has serious medical issues which could put into question his official endorsement of the candidate’s physical condition.

Who knows if Trump’s new Don’t-Suck-Putin’s-Cock approach will work? Time will tell.

Conservatives allied with Chancellor Angela Merkel are seeking a ban on Muslim women wearing full-face veils or burqas in schools and universities and while driving in Germany…

Merkel herself has criticized the burqa as incompatible with integration into Germany.

The pedagogical absurdity of faceless people trying to teach faceless people makes schools the obvious first place for a ban (as does the equally obvious danger of people driving around with seriously impaired vision), so it’s no surprise that the German effort to get rid of the hideous burqa starts there.

***************

UD‘s thoughts on the burqa.

Donald Trump statues hit below the belt.

************

Bravo, Washington Post. Very delicately put.

Unlike monuments of most political figures in cities across the globe, the Trump statues are far from flattering. They’re oddly shaped, lack one key element of the male reproductive system and dramatically play down another.

Former Arizona Governor Jan Brewer says she suffered a “stumble of the tongue” on Tuesday when she seemed to call Hillary Clinton a “lying killer” …

“People want a fighter. They’re tired of the lying killer, uh, Hillary Clinton and Bill Clintons of the world,” Brewer told [an interviewer].

When reached by phone by BuzzFeed News on Wednesday, Brewer said she just mispronounced Clinton’s name.

“I was trying to say Hillary Clinton,” Brewer said. “It was a stumble of the tongue.”

****************

(Act Two is here)

Characters

Loose Bannon
Manthefort
Miss Kissy
Pa Trubu
Secessions
Tense Rictus
Watch Their Tails

Location

A room in Trubu Tower.

Tense Rictus, Miss Kissy, Manthefort, Secessions, and Watch Their Tails seated at a splendid table. Excitedly talk over one another as they eat and drink.

Secessions: A toast! To the latest poll! It has us up by twenty points in northern Idaho.

Manthefort, Miss Kissy: A toast! A toast! We’re killing her!

Watch Their Tails: It’s the beginning of the end for that epileptic.

Tense Rictus: I thought we were going with Alzheimer’s.

[Laughter. Shouts of Whatever! Okay!]

[A sudden hush.]

Tense Rictus: Here he comes.

[Enter Pa Trubu with Loose Bannon. The men at the table eye Bannon warily.]

Tense Rictus: Uh, hi, Bannon. What brings you by this lovely afternoon?

Pa Trubu: Gentlemen, I give you my new campaign manager. Manthefort, give Bannon your seat.

[Manthefort’s face flushes. He abandons his seat.]

Manthefort: So where do I sit now?

Pa Trubu: How about… KIEV?

[All laugh except for Manthefort.]

Pa Trubu: My friends, change as we know is a part of life, it’s a part of life, change, change, part of life, and although we’re doing great in Hayden we’re doing unbelievable in Hayden, we’re winning so much in Hayden they’re begging us to do less winning, there’s always room for improvement. Loose Bannon is the attack dog we need at this point in the election cycle.

Loose Bannon [on all fours]: Rrrrrrfff! Rrrrrrrffff!

Pa Trubu: Manthefort – you and Miss Kissy go to the wine cellar and get us another bottle. Tense Rictus, Secessions – walk my dog. [All four leave.] So – Loose Bannon, Watch Their Tails – it’s time for the three of us to get to work.

Well then. You must be in one hell of a sour mood.

I know – it’s cheap to use the exclamation mark, but with this sort of scoop…

I have in my hand the actual IRS document of Donald J. Trump’s returns (background to the controversy here). I reproduce it below.

To Whom My Concern:

I have been the personal [tax] physician of Mr. Donald J. Trump since 1980. His previous [tax] physician was my father, Dr. Jacob Bornstein. Over the past 39 years, I am pleased to report that Mr. Trump has had no significant [tax] problems. Mr. Trump has had a recent [tax] examination that showed only positive results. Actually, all of his results were astonishingly excellent.

If elected, Mr. Trump, I can state unequivocally, will be the healthiest [taxpayer] [well, haha, not really taxpayer] ever elected to the presidency.

… serious People’s Front of Judea Territory.

… vetting.”

People are anxious for details.

The campaign has released this backgrounder.

“[We] asked people who aren’t voting for Donald Trump, would you consider voting for him? And among women, with whom he is down almost 20 points anyway, women who are not voting for him, the number who say, yes, they would consider it is zero.”

**************

First update here.

After Newsweek asked for a copy of the IRS audit letter sent to Trump, a campaign spokesperson last week pointed to the campaign’s website and the letter that was released by Trump’s attorneys at the Washington, D.C., firm Morgan, Lewis & Bockius. A follow-up query to the campaign asking for a copy of the actual IRS audit letter itself has gone unanswered. Newsweek offered to accept a redaction of any personal information that might be in the letter, such as a Social Security number, although generally audit letters contain just a name and address, which in Trump’s case is well known to be Trump Tower.

In lieu of producing the audit letter, there’s really no proof that Trump is being audited.

He’s the one who never asks you a question, talks endlessly about himself — and has nothing to say. He doesn’t read, has no original ideas and thinks he knows more than you do because he once heard something on the news…

Trump hasn’t bothered to learn anything more about the Constitution, or the government, or government policy than he knew a year ago. His campaign still consists of test-marketing insults one rally at a time. Occasionally he tries to impersonate a devoted churchgoer, or an antiabortion activist, or an NRA believer, but he usually botches the role because he hasn’t prepared. And he hasn’t prepared because he’s not really interested in what anyone else believes — not Christians, not anti abortion activists, not gun enthusiasts. He has only one interest.

… His extreme self-regard is one of the qualities that make him unfit to be president… But it also explains why, even as we follow his campaign minute by minute, we feel almost demeaned. All this time, all this attention, and what will we have learned?

The true trademark of the insufferable bore is the conviction that he is doing you a great favor by spending time with you. Trump brings this to his campaign every day — his conviction that he is doing the entire country a great favor, that serving as president would represent an enormous sacrifice.

*******************

[At] a meeting at Trump Tower between Mr. Trump and governors from around the country, Mr. Trump offered a desultory performance, bragging about his poll numbers, listening passively as the governors talked about their states and then sending them on their way.

Mr. Trump never asked them for their support, three people briefed on the meeting said.

… Mr. Trump’s mood is often sullen and erratic, his associates say. He veers from barking at members of his staff to grumbling about how he was better off following his own instincts during the primaries and suggesting he should not have heeded their calls for change.

He broods about his souring relationship with the news media…

[Associates also] described their nominee as exhausted, frustrated and still bewildered by fine points of the political process and why his incendiary approach seems to be sputtering.

He is routinely preoccupied with perceived slights…

[Trump is still] relying impulsively on a pugilistic formula that guided him to the nomination…