… with Donald Trump today coming close to suggesting Hillary Clinton should be shot.

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UD thinks it’s time to roll out the term Kafkaesque to describe what this nation will be going through until the beginning of November if the Republican party is unable to figure out a way to replace Trump as their candidate. We are experiencing, for the first time in our history, the presidential campaign of a person who exhibits signs of serious mental disturbance.

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Michael Hayden thinks the Secret Service should interview Trump; UD thinks instead that the relevant security outfit should interview his personal physician. Trump behaves like a person with an opioid dependency. (“He’s almost like someone with an addiction who can’t stop,” [one Republic political operative] said. “Until he gets help and admits it, he won’t be able to change.” — UD would suggest that he may indeed be a person with an addiction…)

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For anyone who cares about the future of American politics, the comment represents a dwindling commitment to politics itself, to the notion that, through rhetoric and competition, we might find a common way as a people. Instead, the Republican candidate made a casual nod to the final force of arms. At this stage, so little that Trump says shocks us, but, now and then, it is worth stepping back and regarding the full damage of it all: the wounds to our fading global image of openness and generosity; the stomping on our admiration for intelligence, eloquence, or honesty; and now the blithe contempt for safe and civil government.

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UD thanks Greg.

#7.

#8.

#26.

… fails to endorse – indeed denounces – Trump (H/T: TPM).

Remarkable, thinks UD. Given that the 538 Election Forecast has Trump at 98.4%, Clinton at 1.5% in Oklahoma.

… Titties, by Loudmouthed Dickens.

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In the grand oratorical tradition of Winston Churchill.

From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, an iron curtain has descended across the Continent. Behind that line lie all the capitals of the ancient states of Central and Eastern Europe. Warsaw, Berlin, Prague, Vienna, Budapest, Belgrade, Bucharest and Sofia, all these famous titties and the populations around them lie in what I must call the Soviet sphere.

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Why the Freudian slip?

Cannot stop thinking about Barney Frank, subject of a 2011 Trump tweet.

Barney Frank looked disgusting–nipples protruding–in his blue shirt before Congress. Very very disrespectful.

Buyer’s remorse has more than a few Trump donors looking to cancel their recurring donations.

But the Trump website won’t let you. (Hillary’s will.) ‘Tis in vain, says Vanity Fair:

In 1976, the Supreme Court ruled in Buckley v. Valeo that donating money to a political candidate is a form of free speech. Imagine being forced to scream for an hour once a month, and you get a pretty good idea what disillusioned Trump supporters must be going through.

Here’s the right way to look at it. Your unstoppable donation to America’s Übermensch is part of the hideous Eternal Recurrence in every human existence. Nietzsche argued that the strongest person, the person most able to affirm life, is able to say Everything in my life – all the suffering and confusion and humiliation – if you told me I would have to live it over and over and over again, I would rejoice to do so!

It is only the weak who, like Woody Allen, say:

Nietzsche … said that the life we lived we’re gonna live over again the exact same way for eternity. Great. That means I’ll have to sit through the Ice Capades again.

Your donation to Donald Trump is your Ice Capades.

Be strong.

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UD thanks dmf.

“The financial-services people, as much as many of them would like to see more deregulation, are also deeply frightened by the prospect of a Trump presidency,” [Elizabeth] Warren said. “Nuclear war is bad for business.”

… barrier.

… Disorders, with its at-least-one-guaranteed-billable-disorder-for-every-American (put DSM in my search engine), but she has never denied that in cases of grossly obvious and damaging psychological imbalance it can provide clarity about characteristics and treatment.

Representative Karen Bass, a politician with a background in health care, has launched a petition calling on “mental health professionals to publicly urge the Republican party to conduct an evaluation of Mr. Trump and officially determine if he is mentally fit to lead the free world.” Citing in detail the DSM’s criteria for Narcissistic Personality Disorder, Bass suggests that Trump seems indeed to have been so debilitated by NPD that he should be replaced at the top of the ticket — pending professional confirmation of his condition.

… campaign.

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Plenty of private rooms available.

…poetry.

I’ve read sadism, executive function disorder, narcissism, paranoia, etc.… UD will wade into the stream and propose: hebephrenia.

Remarks of his today in response to a baby crying during his speech.

Don’t worry about it. I love babies. I hear that baby crying, I like it. What a baby. What a beautiful baby. Don’t worry, don’t worry. The mom’s running around like — don’t worry about it, you know. It’s young and beautiful and healthy and that’s what we want… Actually, I was only kidding, you can get the baby out of here. That’s all right. Don’t worry. I, I think she really believed me that I love having a baby crying while I’m speaking. That’s OK. People don’t understand. That’s OK.

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Hebephrenia Update:

Charlie Black, a longtime GOP strategist, [commented: “He’s] Donald and he’s going to operate stream of consciousness a lot of times. You just hope he’ll have more days on message than days on consciousness.”

… President Obama declaring him unfit for the presidency.

Trump’s tweet.

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Second that thought.

HANNITY: So you OK with a Donald Trump candidacy?

BENNETT: No, I’m not OK at all!

That was last October. Despite his anti-Trump vehemence, William J. Bennett also said, in that interview, that he’d support him if he became the nominee.

Bennett’s silence since then suggests that one of the nation’s highest-profile moralists continues to support a man who, even by the most unexacting, unpresidential standards, flagrantly fails every single chapter heading (“Courage,” “Compassion,” “Responsibility”…) in Bennett’s famous Book of Virtues.

If Bennett had included chapters titled “Cynicism” and “Expediency,” UD wouldn’t insist that he now publicly repudiate the human embodiment of the Anti-Book of Virtues. As it is, now that virtually everyone from every direction is, post-Khan, grappling with the fact that a major party has nominated a moral degenerate, it’s especially unconscionable that a person like Bennett, fundamentally animated as a political actor by moral seriousness, a national proselytizer for moral seriousness, says nothing.

Either you have moral standards and moral convictions or you don’t. It costs Bennett little to act on his convictions in this case – he’s not running for office, and no one says he has to vote for Hillary, whom he hates (not a virtue, methinks) with a passion similar to Trump’s. Where is William Bennett in this monumentally important election?

CanYouHearUsNow#

Everyone’s been asking him to, and UD has the transcript, hot off the press, of the candidate’s statement:

I have no one but myself to blame. I do not lay the fault or the blame of the charge at anyone else’s feet. For no one is to blame but Donald Trump. I take the responsibility. I take the blame. I take the fault. The Republican party leadership has been compassionate and kind and considerate and long-suffering toward me with some exceptions. To the thousands and thousands of ordinary Republicans who are godly, that uphold the standards of the Grand Old Party, its representatives that are heralds and criers of redemption, its candidates on the front lines… I have sinned against you and I have brought disgrace and humiliation and embarrassment upon you. I beg your forgiveness. To my campaign staff, you that are already bearing an almost unbearable load, to continue to say and tell the great story of Donald Trump, I have made your load heavier and I have hurt you. Please forgive me for sinning against you.

I know that so many would ask why, why? I have asked myself that 10,000 times through 10,000 tears. Maybe Donald Trump has tried to live his entire life as though he were not human.

Many ask, as I close, this: Will the campaign continue? Yes, the campaign will continue. Under the guidance, leadership and directives of my fine staff, we will continue to take our “Midnight in America” message all over the country. Thank you. Thank you and God bless you.

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There is already, however, talk of plagiarism.