The Playoffs Begin

An anonymous source sent the New York Times documents showing that Donald Trump reported a nearly $1 billion loss on his 1995 tax returns -- which could have helped him avoid paying any federal income taxes for 18 years, the paper reported on Saturday.

—Politico

OK now. 95 and 18 carry the thirteen is 2013*: the earliest year he'd need to pay any tax on his first $50 million each year. The tax code patting him on the head for being such a titanically poor businessman, saying, here, you've destroyed a billion dollars in wealth, the next billion's on us, and hey, let's go and give you back the last three years worth of taxes you might have paid to get you back on your feet.

*But no, the count begins three years before the loss was incurred and lasts for 15 years after [this rule makes no sense to me but is attested by reputable sources]. So 2010 would be the earliest possible end of the freeloading.

All the Political Acumen Of The Guy At The End Of The Bar

“Yeah, I guess so. I wish the first time it was done correctly,” Trump responded. —Howard Stern Confirms Trump Said He Was For Iraq War In 2002

When Trump spoke those words, the hardline warhawk criticism of the first President Bush was, and had been for a decade, that he didn't "finish the job" in Iraq during Desert Storm. The warhawks went on about this endlessly. They've long comprised a considerable contingent of the two major American politicial parties, and make up a good portion of "independents" as well. They forever see a good excuse for war somewhere. Desert Storm, swift and decisive as it was, did not sate their wetted appetite for military conflict. They groused formally at the Project for a New American Century, where the blueprint for "finishing the job" was sketched out.

Trump's "I guess so," signals a wistful acquiescence to what, failing to be done before by the first Bush, must be corrected now by his son.

Ah, Sweet October

Saturday was Day 5 of NL Wild Card Week. The New York Mets won (87-74), securing home field in the win-or-go-home Wild Card playoff game scheduled for Wednesday. The St. Louis Cardinals (85-76) won as well, overcoming a three run deficit in the late innings. The San Francisco Giants (86-75) beat the best pitcher in baseball, Clayton Kershaw, behind rookie pitcher Ty Blach, who shut out Kershaw's Dodgers on three hits over eight innings. With one game left in the regular season, the Giants now have three shots at advancing to the Wild Card game: by winning tomorrow, by St. Louis losing tomorrow, or by beating St. Louis in a tie-breaker game on Monday.

Wild Card Week Wends Its Way To Its Scheduled End: Day 4

Friday was Day 4 of Wild Card Week. The Mets (86-74) and Cardinals (84-76) both won convincingly. The Giants (85-75) came from behind, contrary to their most recent practices, and drubbed the Los Angeles Dodgers 9-3 behind Madison Bumgarner, who won his 15th game of the season and 100th of his career. With two games left in Wild Card Week and the season, the Giants crucially continue to play no worse than the Cardinals.

Your Intermittently Posted Daily National League Wild Card Week In Review: Days 2 and 3

The Mets won again on Wednesday, Day 2 of National League Wild Card Week, and the Cardinals and the Giants both lost. The Mets thus gained the inside track for home field in the Wild Card game next Wednesday. The Giants are playing no worse than the Cardinals, which suits their needs.

Thursday was Day 3 of Wild Card Week. The Mets (85-74) had Thursday off, their final three games of the season beginning Friday against the Philadelphias. St. Louis (now 83-76) won its game against Cincinnati, though not without a measure of controversy over the final play of the game, and the Giants (84-75) greeted the return of Johnny Cueto from an injury by scoring multiple times in three separate innings, a rarity for the club which has been shut out nine times since the All Star Break. The Giants continue to play no worse than the Cardinals.

Wild Card Week. Day One

The Mets scored 12 runs in their win today, the Cardinals scored 12 runs in their win today, and the Giants scored 12 runs in their win today on this, the first day ofWild Card Week.

Annals of Rhetorical Arts

1. Pro Tip:

A "debate" is not a yelling, pal.

2. Two notable Tweets chirped by witnesses to last night's curious affair of the Donald who sniffed in the night:

a)DEBATE HOUR 2: THE SNIFFENING, said the one Tweet, and

b)Donald Trump's nose is running faster than the jobs leaving this country, said the other.

Three Stumble Toward The Line

All the San Francisco Giants need do is play as well as the St. Louis Cardinals for the final six games of the season and a playoff spot is assured. Whether they are up to the challenge is to be seen. Signs in the last couple of months have been less than encouraging, as the Giants piled up (used advisedly) a 25-41 record after reaching the All Star break with the best record in baseball. They fell from an eight game lead in their division to hanging-by-fingernails playoff contenders in a three-way jostle with the New York Mets and the St. Louis club for one of two post-season wild card playoff spots.

In 2014 the Giants advanced to and won the World Series from a wild-card playoff berth, so it can be done, and is, as always, a consummation dtbw.

On the one hand, it is an even-numbered year. On the other, 30 blown saves so far. THIRTY!!!!

The Bondi Boodle

Most news sources agree that Donald Trump was required to pay a fine of $2,500 and reimburse his foundation from his own personal funds for the $25,000 his foundation spent, illegally, in support of Pam Bondi's re-election campaign.

Does all this mean that Pam Bondi doesn't have to relinquish the money we know she's been given illegally by the Trump Foundation? She gets to keep all that? That seems like a doable deal for Trump, paying a 10% tax on a $25,000 investment in a pliable Bondi.

So that's what I wonder. Does Pam Bondi keep the cash?

Holding Our Nose, The Endorsement Goes To . . .

"…going two weeks without saying something misogynistic, racist or xenophobic is hardly a qualification for the most important job in the world."

— Conservative Cincinnati Enquirer [failing to endorse a Republican for president for the first time in nearly 100 years] Endorses Dem: ‘It Has To Be' Clinton Talking Points Memo, September 23, 2016

Surely the Enquirer's standard would disqualify a wide swath of the demos, the people Trump speaks for, often explicitly, from ever succeeding to the presidency, and that's, you know, so elitist, and like, discrimination.

Inadvertent Geyser

Junction of Seventh Avenue and Soquel Avenue,  Santa Cruz, September 13, 2016

The Stretch Run

The last time the San Francisco Giants were set to begin a three-game series against the San Diego Padres was July 15, coming out of the All Star break. The Giants had the best record in baseball at the time, and had won their previous nine games against the Padres.

It seemed a certain measure of optimism was warranted.

Now, instead of optimism, a fan's residuum of hope remains, with three games now against an inferior team while the division-leading Los Angeles Dodgers visit New York, where the recently resurgent Yankees are still within scuffling distance of a playoff spot.

The Giants at this juncture are three games behind the Dodgers, but still have six games head-to-head against them, with 20 games left on the regular schedule.

What seemed such a certainty scant months ago remains conceivable with best play.

BREAKING! MUST CREDIT MLB AT BAT

Just now Larry King is doing play-by-play of the sixth inning of the Dodgers/Marlins game on radio station WINZ's Marlins broadcast, a guest spot, his presentation full of the utterly long-winded and heartily pronounced banalities that have always been the bedrock of his appeal, but fortunately enough for him, particularly for an avowed Dodger fan such as King, the inning breaks out for the Dodgers with back-to-back homers and they take a 4-0 lead, knocking the pitcher out of the game and giving his partner on the broadcast a chance during the change to draw him out on the looming retirement of Vin Scully, longtime Dodger announcer, for whom King delivers a eulogy-worthy off-the-cuff encomium.

His program on RT has drawn some attention for broadcasting an interview with Donald Trump.

The inning ends, he's gotta leave, plane to catch, big hearty Jimmy Durante fare-thee-well and he's gone.

Dodger pitcher Rich Hill is throwing a perfect game.

Foundation and Empire

In two cases, he has used money from his charity to buy himself a gift. In one of those cases — not previously reported — Trump spent $20,000 of money earmarked for charitable purposes to buy a six-foot-tall painting of himself.

— David Farenthold, washingtonpost.com

Trump On The Stump

During this morning's walk I wondered if my impression of Trump's performance at last night's event (my first extended direct exposure to his campaign style) — that he emitted a consistently rambling, at times incoherent stream of bluster throughout — was shared by an appreciable number of my fellow citizens. You never know about these things. Later in the day Obama, responding to a question about Trump, asked everyone to “just listen to what he says and follow up and ask questions about what appear to be either contradictory or uninformed or outright wacky ideas."

It's comforting that my impression wasn't completely off track: I'm willing to compromise on the President's diagnosis of "wacky," with "dangerously uninformed" as a friendly amendment to an otherwise unobjectionable formula.

Props

Before he's too cold in the ground I just want to acknowledge in passing the similarities in the lives and contributions of the recently deceased Rudy Van Gelder and Wallace Stevens, two guys from New Jersey. Stevens was a medical doctor and Van Gelder an optometrist, though each will be remembered more for what they crafted in the hours outside of their ostensible professions, however capable they may have proved to be in carrying out their credentialed duties.

Van Gelder's recordings for Prestige and Blue Note and Savoy forever realized the epitome of sounds New York City's jazz musicians of the '50's and '60's would present to posterity.

Weather, That Is To Say, Climate.

Even during peak hurricane season, hurricanes that pass north of the Delmarva Peninsula [that odd huge sprawl of southtending land with Chesapeake Bay on one side and Delaware Bay and the ass end of New Jersey across the water on the other] typically weaken because of cooler ocean waters that limit the growth of central thunderstorms. But not Hermine. This sort of storm arguably wouldn’t be possible without the near-record high ocean temperatures currently offshore.

—We Haven’t Seen Many Storms Like Hermine, Eric Holthaus, FiveThirtyEight.com Sept 3, 2016

But "near-record high ocean temperatures" are the ground floor of the new normal. If Hermine is the sort of storm sustained by the new normal, then she will have many sibs in coming years.

Operating The Grift To Make America Great Again

Trump nearly quintupled the monthly rent his presidential campaign pays for its headquarters at Trump Tower to $169,758 in July, when he was raising funds from donors, compared with March, when he was self-funding his campaign, according to a Huffington Post review of Federal Election Commission filings.

— via

Constructed With Reference To The Buddha

Land Of Medicine Buddha Grounds, Santa Cruz, CA, 2009

That's A Whole Lot Of Arctic Hydrocarbon

At stake for ExxonMobil is a massive $500 billion deal with Rosneft, a state-owned Russian oil company, to drill for oil in the Russian Arctic.

—Buzzfeed News, Congress, Worried About Trump, Is Trying To Tie The Next President’s Hands On Russia

Variations On A Theme By Redding

Opo Research

What will people who now support Trump say when they understand that his famous hair is actually the harvested pelt of this endangered species? Huh, Mr. Libertarian, huh?

The Tragically Attractive Tamarind, Seattle, 2008

Bucket of Flowers

Flowers, Disarranged, 2008

For When Being Enough Of A Republican Isn't Enough

There are those among Republicans who would counsel Trump to make no more of a fool of himself than he already has, but beyond sending a presidential candidate to his room they sense no sure way to ensure Trump's public probity. The Culpability Index is counting down the hours left for them to plausibly deny association with him.

Mot

I was opining, as I am wont to do at times, on the state of the current Presidential election campaign. There is no way the Republicans can lift Donald Trump back up, I averred. The party's only saving move now is a whole-hearted attack on Hillary Clinton, dragging her down farther than Tump has fallen by employing the harshest possible criticisms they can offer, however germaine, and soon.

"She slept with Bill Clinton!" said Jesse.