I’m blogging hurt this morning. I’ve had a hellacious head cold the last few days. It’s best described as a chest cold. It feels like I’m carrying Oscar around in a Baby Bjorn. And he’s a big boy. There’s a krewe meeting tonight that I hope to attend, but I don’t want to spread this thing around: as far as I know, they’re all Hillary voters.

Having requested a mulligan even though I do not golf, let’s skip the foreplay and get down to it. Do I hear inane snickering? Is it Billy Bush? I must be hallucinating; told you I was under the weather.

The Hispanic/Latino Wave: I’m feeling wishy-washy so I’m going to alternate the terms. Whatever the label, Latino voters have arrived in 2016. It should not surprise anyone that a group that has been consistently denigrated by one candidate is supporting  his opponent. It has, however, surprised the inside the beltway punditocracy. I suspect that’s because, like  Trump, they think of them only as “the help.” They’re more than just cooks, dishwashers, yard men, housekeepers, construction workers, and fruit pickers. They’re human beings who are saying no to those who demean and degrade them in the best way possible: at the ballot box.

The reports of Hispanic turn out for early voting in Nevada and Florida has me confident that they will be colored blue on Tuesday. Trump needs to win both states to take the election. He’s toast. I don’t care if it’s close or not. He’s toast and marmalade for tea.

The other wonderful thing about the Latino Wave is that it reduces the importance of Iowa and Ohio. Hillary can lose both those states and still win.

A personal story. There are two Mexican guys doing some work next door. Like most of the migrant workers I’ve met over the years, they’re polite and cordial. I was outside and one of them pointed at my Clinton-Kaine sign and said, “My new hero. Hillary.”

Roll Latino wave, roll. Roll Hispanic wave, roll.

You say Latino, I say Hispanic. Let’s call the whole thing off. Now that I’ve quoted Ira Gershwin for the gazillionth time let’s move on,

Fear Is The Key: I was on Twitter Saturday during the LSU-Alabama game, which my Tigers lost 10-0. Our defense was magnificent and I think Nick Saban had poopy pants several times during the game, which is most gratifying.

Anyway, I was online when Team Trump’ did some epic conclusion jumping:

https://twitter.com/JackPosobiec/status/795075052098224129

I guess that makes HRC a pussy but they didn’t go there. This was retweeted by all the Top Trumpers and they’ve made it into a thing even after the truth came out.

As everybody with a brain now knows, the incident involved a Never Trump Republican, Austyn Crites, a sign, and a fear-crazed crowd: 

“I had a sign that said ‘Republicans against Trump.’ It is a sign that you can just print off online.”

Initially, there was the expected reaction of people around him booing, he said. “And then all of a sudden people next to me are starting to get violent; they’re grabbing at my arm, trying to rip the sign out of my hand,” he said.

He said he could not be sure but “it looked like” Trump was pointing at him, and may have been “instigating something”. Either way, the crowd piled on him, he said, kicking, punching, holding him on the ground and grabbing his testicles.

He said he was a wrestler in his youth and used his training to turn his head to the side to maintain an airway open as he was being choked by one man who had him in a headlock. “But there were people wrenching on my neck they could have strangled me to death,” he added.

Crites said when he was on the ground he heard someone yell “something about a gun” and he kept telling those on top of him that he had merely been holding a sign.

Notice that the Trumpers *assumed* without any evidence that Crites was packing heat. It’s yet another sign of how fearful and paranoid they are.  It’s a good thing that there were metal detectors at the Reno event otherwise it might have been a bloodbath. It would have been blood red instead of silver and gold:

We’ve become so used to Team Trump lying that it’s not shocking that they continue to describe this incident as an assassination attempt. It’s what they do on a daily basis as described in a must-read piece by Daniel Dale of the Toronto Star, Donald Trump: The unauthorized data base of false things. Dale found over 500 outright falsehoods. Believe me. Don’t believe the Insult Comedian.

Since this is Odds & Sods, there has to be a Who song involved, amirite? It’s one by John Entwistle called Dangerous that closes with the refrain, “fear is the key to your soul.”

Docudrama Of The Week: Let me pose a quick question: What do Justice Robert Jackson and Donald Trump have in common? They were both played by Alec Baldwin. I just re-watched Baldwin’s fine performance as Jackson in the 2000 mini-series ,Nuremberg. It was a good way for this history nerd to pass a few hours whilst sick.

It’s on the YouTube if you’re interested. There’s also a clip of Baldwin as Jackson’s closing argument. The writers had the good sense to use Jackson’s own words:

I give Nuremberg 3 1/2 stars, an Adrastos grade of B+ and a rousing Siskelian thumbs up. End of this oddball but salient variation on a regular Saturday post feature.

Let’s finish things up with a discussion of the most disturbing thing about Campaign 2016: the awakening of dormant anti-Semitism. Thanks, B3 Brownshirts.

The Ugly Underneath Revisited: On October 13th, Donald Trump gave an ominous speech jam-packed with anti-Semitic code words. Here’s how I concluded a post entitled The Ugly Underneath:

I think it’s important for those of us who know history to take a firm stand against Trumpism. That’s why I’ve started comparing him to Hitler at his least disciplined. Hitler had the good sense to *keep* the ugly underneath until he had enough support to enact his racist program. Trump has no self-control but he is every bit as ugly, which is why he needs to lose in a landslide. Some of us are worried that he’ll refuse to concede on election eve, whip his supporters into a frenzy, and provoke a sort of American Kristalnacht. The good news is that most Trumpers are, well, pussies and are unlikely to riot if it’s a blow-out. Let’s hope so.

The B3 Brownshirts have adapted excerpts from that speech into a “populist,” rabble rousing “closing argument” teevee spot:

Railing against “elites” whatever that means is fashionable now. Three of the so-called criminal economic elitists shown in the ad, Janet Yellen, George Soros, and Lloyd Blankfein have one thing in common: they’re Jewish. Here’s what Senator Al Franken has to say about this noxious ad:

Speaking on CNN’s State of the Union, Franken told host Jake Tapper the advert was acting as a “dog whistle to a certain group in the United States”. He called the political commercial “an appeal to some of the worse elements in our society in the closing argument” of the election.

“I’m Jewish, so maybe I’m sensitive to it. But it clearly had an Elders of Zion feel to it, the international banking crisis conspiracy.”

The Protocols of the Elders of Zion was a fabricated text first published in 1903 that circulated around Europe disseminating a vicious conspiracy about a Jewish plot for world domination over the economy and culture.

Have I mentioned lately how much I love Al Franken?

Team Trump continually uses anti-Semitic rhetoric, code words, and dog whistles. Their defense is that the Insult Comedian’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, is Jewish and Ivanka is a convert. You know, the old “some of my best friends are…” dodge.  Josh Marshall sums up my feelings about where Trump himself stands quite nicely:

… my general belief is that Trump believes in various anti-Semitic stereotypes, probably largely drawn from his upbringing – time and place. But I don’t think he holds or did hold any particular animus toward Jews. Indeed, we have pretty reliable accounts of his thinking in anti-Semitic stereotypes in a way that people often interpret as philo-semitism. Like he wants Jews with yarmulkes as his accountants and money managers and not blacks. A former Trump executive claimed he said: “Black guys counting my money! I hate it. The only kind of people I want counting my money are short guys that wear yarmulkes every day.”

That’s Archie Bunker-style anti-Semitism. He only wanted Jewish doctors and described his preferred law firm as “Seven Savage Jews.” I wonder if the Donald calls Jared meathead?

Here’s Josh’s closer:

So is Trump himself an anti-Semite? I have no idea. It doesn’t matter. He’s running an anti-Semitic campaign. That’s all that matters.

I’ve long thought that anti-Semitism is a “canary in a coal mine” form of bigotry. It’s somewhat easier to cloak in pseudo-populist dog whistles than other forms of racism. When anti-Semitism rears its ugly head, there’s more bigotry to come. As Josh said, I have no idea if Trump is personally anti-Semitic, but Stephen Bannon is, and he’s running an anti-Semitic campaign on behalf of Trump who’s clearly a textbook anti-African American racist. Thanks, B3 Brownshirts.

When I wrote the original Ugly Underneath post, I had a lively discussion on Social Media with some fellow music lovers as to whether that was the right XTC song to use as the post title. I remain convinced it was: anti-Semitism is the hate that can be cloaked in seemingly benign populist language. That’s why it’s the Ugly Underneath. One friend suggested the more overtly political song, The Ballad of Peter Pumpkinhead. It does feature an asssassination and since Team Trump has been on about a fake one, I’ll give Andy Partridge and XTC the last word:

I fibbed about the last word thing again. I couldn’t resist posting my lovely election picks map again:

My worst case scenario is still pretty darn good: Clinton 324, Trump 214 and a 50-50 Senate. I stand by my earlier forecast, but cannot believe I forgot to mention Arab American and Muslim voters in Michigan as one reason Trump will not be the first Republican nominee to carry Michigan since 1988.

That is all.