Pledges to Coach and Fans that He’ll Get Better at It.

Ah Baylor Baylor Baylor Baylor.

Ah Waco Waco Waco Waco.

That university. That town. A very American crossroads.

I’d turn some of this into a song, but at the moment I’m exhausted from mowing my lawn in hellish heat.

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.

As we’ve been reminded by the ridicule Donald Trump has generated by his hectoring, mechanical repetition of phrases or words in his speech, redundancy makes you look both angry and empty of substance.

Scathing Online Schoolmarm would think that a school superintendent would understand this simple fact. What are you modeling for your students when you talk like Charlie Van Zant Jr., superintendent of Clay County Florida’s schools?

Under pressure for alleged plagiarism and fraud, Charlie recently told an interviewer the following:

[Liars] are trying to take me to task for my principles and values that they can’t stand… These liars are making accusations that are over a year old, that should have been reported to either the Florida Commission on Ethics or me as the superintendent of schools, as per school board policy. But these liars do not want an investigation. These liars want to play the media. These liars knew we would be out of town last weekend, and our staff would have a three-day weekend… The media is being played. They’re playing right into the hands of lying Mrs. Studdard [a school board member], the lying teachers union…

Superintendent Van Zant has certainly learned the word “liar” and some of its variants, and for that we applaud him. But SOS wonders if his efforts to paint his many enemies as, er, liars are really working here.

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.

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UD‘s thoughts on the burqa.

Donald Trump statues hit below the belt.

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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.”

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

An Anglican priest in Australia plagiarizes three books of biblical commentary. Finally his publisher figures this out.

Three volumes by Peter T O’Brien, a theologian, author and priest, have been recalled and destroyed by Eerdmans publishing. Editors found several instances where the text ran “afoul of commonly accepted standards with regard to the utilization and documentation of secondary sources”.

… The initial allegations were made against O’Brien’s ‘The Letter to the Hebrews’. But further examinations of his ‘Letter to the Ephesians’ and Epistle to the Philippians’ found they were also “untenable”.

But this is by far the best part:

“In the [three] New Testament commentaries that I have written, although I have never deliberately misused the work of others, nevertheless I now see that my work processes at times have been faulty and have generated clear-cut, but unintentional, plagiarism.”

(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.

“They got Roger Stone and now they got Roger Ailes,” Hillary Clinton loyalist James Carville told The Daily Beast, not bothering to suppress a giggle over the rogue’s gallery of misfits that seems to be populating the Trump campaign. “I’m waiting for Dick Morris.”

DSK not only shares with several Trump operatives warm links with Ukraine; he will be able to reinforce Ailes’s advice on how to appeal to women.

… serious People’s Front of Judea Territory.

La Bedlam Sans Merci

“Doth Roger Ailes avail thee, Donald Trump,
Alone and madly floundering?
Your edge has withered in the race,
And no birds sing.

I see a fox cub on thy brow,
Its orange fades and lies askew;
And on thy cheeks a fading rose
Fast withereth too.”

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“I face a lady in debate,
Full competent in policy
Her hair is blond, her foot is light,
And she will wipe the floor with me.

Thus desperately I turn to Ailes,
Thus sad and madly floundering,
Though the edge is withered from the race,
And no birds sing.”

… vetting.”

People are anxious for details.

The campaign has released this backgrounder.