Still, the 2016 version of that gap is a doozy, wider than it’s ever been and growing. Add in another factor: Huge numbers of women with “negative” opinions of Donald Trump don’t simply dislike him but loathe him in visceral ways. In other words, something unusual is going on here beyond party or policy or even politics—something so obvious that most pundits, busy fielding Trump’s calls and reporting his bluster on a daily basis, haven’t stepped back and taken it in.

Even Hillary Clinton, when she comes out swinging, politely refrains from spelling it out. In her recent speech on foreign policy, she declared Trump temperamentally unfit to be president: too thin-skinned, too angry, too quick to employ such “tools” as “bragging, mocking, and sending nasty tweets.” Admittedly, she did conjure up a scary, futuristic image of an erratic bully with a thumb on the nuclear button, describing as well his apparent fascination with and attraction to autocrats like Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong-un. But she stopped short of connecting the Trumpian dots when she concluded, “I will leave it to the psychiatrists to explain his affection for tyrants.”

In truth, most women don’t need psychiatrists to explain the peculiar admiration of an aspiring autocrat for his role models. Every woman who has ever had to deal with a Trump-style tyrant in her own home or at her job already has Trump’s number. We recognize him as a bloated specimen of the common garden variety Controlling Man, a familiar type of Household Hitler.

In fact, Donald J. Trump perfectly fits the profile of an ordinary wife abuser—with one additional twist. Expansive fellow that he is, Trump has not confined his controlling tactics to his own home(s). For seven years, he practiced them openly for all the world to see on The Apprentice, his very own reality-TV show, and now applies them on a national stage, commanding constant attention while alternately insulting, cajoling, demeaning, embracing, patronizing, and verbally beating up anyone (including a “Mexican” judge) who stands in the way of his coronation.

Donald Trump’s admiration of Russian President Vladimir Putin isn’t a good look generally, but it may play particularly badly with Americans of Eastern European descent … and it turns out there are a lot of them in some key battleground states.

In Pennsylvania, according to the most recent Census data available, there are more than 100,000 people of Ukrainian descent; 820,000 of Polish descent (a demographic that tends to lean more Democratic but that cares about strong support for NATO); 46,000 Croatians; and thousands of Lithuanians, Latvians, Albanians, Estonians and people of other Eastern European ethnicities. In Ohio, there are around 40,000 Ukrainians, more than 400,000 Poles, and thousands of Americans of other Eastern European heritage.

Although these groups tend to vote Republican, there may be an opening for Hillary Clinton this year:

“The Latvians are primarily Republicans, as are Lithuanians, Estonians, and many Ukrainians, but Trump has put them in a real bind,” said Maris Mantenieks, a Latvian leader in Ohio’s Eastern European ethnic community. “Because in all honesty they don’t want to vote for [Clinton], and yet again they can’t express their Republicanism due to Trump’s positions.”

These voters, many of whom live in swing states like Ohio and Pennsylvania, are deeply worried by an emboldened Moscow, and anxious over the possibility that the Baltic nations might be the next target of Russian adventurism. Trump’s lavish praise of Putin has exacerbated those concerns — leaving an opening that Clinton’s campaign is leveraging by emphasizing her willingness to get tough with Putin, and her unwavering support for NATO. Earlier this month, Clinton met with Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko in New York — and her allies made sure to publicize the message that Trump snubbed him.

And in states like Ohio, relatively small numbers of defections from traditionally Republican voters could make a big difference.

A video of Donald Trump testifying under oath about his provocative rhetoric about Mexicans and other Latinos is set to go public as soon as Friday, drawing new attention to those comments just weeks before voters cast their ballots in the presidential race.

Trump gave the testimony in June at a law office in Washington in connection with one of two lawsuits he filed last year after prominent chefs reacted to the controversy over his remarks by pulling out of plans to open restaurants at his new D.C. hotel.

D.C. Superior Court Judge Brian Holeman said in an order issued Thursday evening that fears the testimony might show up in campaign commercials were no basis to keep the public from seeing the video.

"This Court finds that Plaintiff has not demonstrated that any subject video deposition contains scandalous, libelous, or other unduly prejudicial material warranting denial of media access," Holeman wrote. "The public shall not be held captive by the suggested eventuality of partisan editing in a manner unfavorable to Plaintiff or the deponents."


More here: http://www.politico.com/blogs/under-the-radar/2016/09/trump-deposition-video-release-schedule-228953

Donald Trump’s charitable foundation — which has been sustained for years by donors outside the Trump family — has never obtained the certification that New York requires before charities can solicit money from the public, according to the state attorney general’s office.

Under the laws in New York, where the Donald J. Trump Foundation is based, any charity that solicits more than $25,000 per year from the public must obtain a special kind of registration beforehand. Charities as large as Trump’s must also submit to a rigorous annual audit that asks — among other things — whether the charity spent any money for the personal benefit of its officers.

If New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman (D) finds that Trump’s foundation raised money in violation of the law, he could order the charity to stop raising money immediately. With a court’s permission, Schneiderman could also force Trump to return money his foundation has already raised.

The Trump campaign did not respond to a request for comment Thursday.

“the council has deservedly attained the reputation for conceiving and promoting the ideas of many who in fact do want to control everything in the world” — ABC news, 2002

Back in 2011, a gang of mainstream media pundits (such as Ross Douthat, Michael Gerson, Mark Pinsky, Lisa Miller, and others) launched an all-out effort to poo-pooh (see 1, 2, 3, 4) reporting, especially from the website I co-founded in 2005 with Frederick Clarkson, concerning ties between various GOP presidential hopefuls (such as Rick Perry) in the 2012 election and the movement referred to as “dominionism”.

Another term for “dominionism” is “Christian supremacy” ; it’s a tendency on the spectrum that runs towards theocracy.

Now, the dominionists are running Donald Trump’s presidential campaign.

As it happens, Donald Trump has just appointed Stephen K. Bannon and Kellyanne Conway to head his faltering presidential campaign.

Both are listed 2014 members of the most powerful and influential dominionist organization in America, the Council For National Policy.

We know this because, conveniently (for secular America at least ), last May 2016 the Southern Poverty Law Center made public an official 2014 membership directory of the secretive, far right, dominionist Council For National Policy.

It was a startling intelligence coup — for years, fragmentary lists of the CNP had sporadically emerged. Now, here it was — the official CNP handbook.

While Bannon was just a CNP member, Conway was listed as being a member of the CNP Executive Committee.

Joining her in that august group were Kenneth Blackwell, Tony Perkins of the (virulently antigay) Family Research Council and reigning matriarch of the religious right Phyllis Schafly — who helped kick start the movement in the early 1970s with her scorched-earth campaign to stop the Equal Rights Amendment.

As the SPLC describes of the CNP membership list featured in the booklet,

“The list is surprising, not so much for the conservatives who dominate it — activists of the religious right and the so-called “culture wars,” along with a smattering of wealthy financiers, Congressional operatives, right-wing consultants and Tea Party enthusiasts — but for the many real extremists who are included.”

Clearly @KellyannePolls doesn't understand the trade embargo law. She just unknowingly confessed that Trump broke it.

Folks falling 4 @CLewandowski_ lie that #TrumpInCuba story is all anonymous sources: It's 90% internal Trump company docs, which I quote.

Also in #TrumpInCuba: Trumps strategy plan & bills 4 effort 2 buy off Jeb Bush, which Trump told GOP never happened.

I cant understand how @CNN can think allowing @CLewandowski_ to lie 2 its viewers unchallenged, this time about #TrumpInCuba, is journalism.

If @CNN keeps allowing @CLewandowski_ to lie bout my stories or me w/o having me there 2 challenge him, I wont appear on the network anymore

.@CNN has GOT 2 stop @CLewandowski_ from lying bout me and my Trump stories. Re: #TrumpInCuba, he said no facts. I quote company documents.

Wow, can @RogerJStoneJr spin a story. Ok, guess Illl have to unload info from his emails and other docs to show he's deceiving @Politico.

Why do I bother engaging these crazy Trump supporters with their endless conspiracy theories, deflections and insane rationalizations?

When Trump's lawyer threatened us on #TrumpInCuba, saying docs didnt exist, @Newsweek offered to post em all online.