Tweet from Hillary Clinton’s chief strategist Joel Benenson: “Polls drop. Trump dumps mgr. — S. Beckett: ‘There’s man all over for you, blaming on his boots the faults of his feet.’”

However — UD has long argued that the urtext for the Trump phenom is Ubu.

We are seeing a very serious role reversal in the Clinton-Trump race. The very criticisms that men unfairly hurled at politically ambitious women are now actually true about Trump. The old stereotypes and attack lines for women have suddenly become part and parcel of who Donald Trump really is:

Who is the most emotional, off-the-wall, candidate? Donald Trump.

Who is shrill and flailing at his rallies? Donald Trump

Who has little knowledge or understanding of the issues confronting the country? Easy one, Donald Trump.

Who lacks basic competency in governing? Donald Trump, hands down.

Who routinely makes statements that lack credibility, don’t rely on facts and depend on his “mood” at the time? Yup, Donald Trump.

We shouldn’t necessarily believe the polling, [Trump’s] arguing, because Americans who intend to vote for Trump are too embarrassed to admit it when asked for their preference in surveys. Once you account for the fact that Trump supporters feel a sense of shame, and don’t want to acknowledge their true beliefs to pollsters, maybe he’s doing far better than the data suggests.

Is there anything to this? I doubt it – there was some chatter about this during the GOP primaries, but the polls tended to be pretty accurate – though it says quite a bit about Trump’s candidacy that he’s been reduced to reassuring partisans by telling them that he has secret supporters who don’t want to admit they’re voting for him.

Headline of the day.

Look, he hasn’t quite yet actually been convicted of anything… More than enough reason to emblazon his name all over your Institute for Global Health…

America’s dumbest state builds a stadium.

In coming weeks more GOP leaders could decline to support [Trump]. The awkward pose of polite distance could turn into a stampede — or to change the metaphor, ships deserting a sinking rat.

A recent Science Friday investigated the absence of research studies of gun violence. Why does the CDC, for instance, shy away from supporting this sort of research?

The NRA “declined to come on the program,” but sent a statement complaining that researchers typically fail to mention positive outcomes associated with gun ownership, and only incorporate

“negative” outcomes such as suicide and/or homicides.

… jealous of Donald Trump’s success.

It’s been a way arty week for UD: A local production of The Drowsy Chaperone featuring her cousin; Bloomsday in Chestertown; piano/violin duets at my place with my friend Annie (Saint-Saens, The Swan; Schubert, Serenade; a stab at Mozart, Sonata No. 7); and, at the moment, a photography exhibit in DC – ‘eighties pix of The Smiths. (Here’s the book.) UD was dragged here

by her sister the Morrissey fanatic. (The photographer is the woman in the black dress/black shoes.)

The duets were initially nerve-wracking and then exhilarating. UD – a hopeless amateur at the piano – has never tried actually performing with another person, and Annie is a serious violinist. But UD accepted her invitation to play some pieces together, and it went pretty well. More importantly, UD experienced the great and somewhat astonishing pleasure of creating with another person celestial harmonies. She found herself thinking about a line from Albert Schweitzer — he recalls that when he was young something as simple as the two-part harmony in the song In The Mill by the Stream “thrilled me all over, to my very marrow, and similarly the first time I heard brass instruments playing together I almost fainted from excess of pleasure.”

[L]egal scholars are deeply dismayed by Trump’s suggestion in February that if he wins in November he intends to “open up our libel laws, so that if they [the press] write purposely negative and horrible and false articles, we can sue them and win lots of money”.

“If you open up the libel laws, the first person who would be sued is Donald Trump,” said Richard Epstein, a law professor at the University of Chicago who is highly regarded in conservative legal circles. “He makes false and malicious statements about public and private people … I regard him as semi-hysterical and self-righteous [and] utterly unfit to be president of the United States.”

There’s every reason to think that Trump can pull off the near-impossible task of losing by more than 10 percent and possibly by much more. Moreover, as he continues to feud with members of his own party, he’ll drive down the value of the Republican brand so the party could end up losing both the Senate and the House. If he manages this feat, Trump will truly have left his mark on American politics.

… scoots.

The board of trustees is also on its way out.

It’s a start.

Plenty of background on the U of Smell: Put Louisville in my search engine.

… Once the university became aware of [multiple] reported [sexual] assaults [alleged against a student], SFU conducted a safety assessment with the RCMP and “undertook measures to ensure the safety of the campus community,” spokesman Kurt Heinrich said. He refused to say what those measures were.

But whatever was done, the second complainant’s mother says it wasn’t enough.

The alleged assailant was in one of her daughter’s classes, the mother said in a telephone interview. Her daughter ran into him in the residence. She saw him at the gym and in the dining room.

If none of her dorm friends was home, she would lock herself in her room and not go to the dining room for meals.

In mid-February, the mother wrote to SFU President Andrew Petter after her daughter was told that there were at least two women who had gone to police about the male student. She also later wrote to Provost Jon Driver and spoke to him on several occasions.

A few weeks later, the young woman — who loved her classes — quit university and moved home.

Eventually, the alleged assailant was moved to another residence after continued complaints from her friends. No warnings were given to female students there about the new resident.

And, far from being punishment, someone familiar with the case described it “a massive room upgrade.”

… but somehow the upcoming tax evasion trial of Jerry Sandusky’s lawyer (he also steals clients’ money) just kind of puts the cherry on top of the whole big classy world of Happy Valley.

***********

Update: See the comments for a correction.