Let’s go back back back in time, to April 2011.

Donald J. Trump arrived at the White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner in April 2011, reveling in the moment as he mingled with the political luminaries who gathered at the Washington Hilton. He made his way to his seat beside his host, Lally Weymouth, the journalist and socialite daughter of Katharine Graham, longtime publisher of The Washington Post.

A short while later, the humiliation started.

The annual dinner features a lighthearted speech from the president; that year, President Obama chose Mr. Trump, then flirting with his own presidential bid, as a punch line.

He lampooned Mr. Trump’s gaudy taste in décor. He ridiculed his fixation on false rumors that the president had been born in Kenya. He belittled his reality show, “The Celebrity Apprentice.”

Mr. Trump at first offered a drawn smile, then a game wave of the hand. But as the president’s mocking of him continued and people at other tables craned their necks to gauge his reaction, Mr. Trump hunched forward with a frozen grimace.

After the dinner ended, Mr. Trump quickly left, appearing bruised. He was “incredibly gracious and engaged on the way in,” recalled Marcus Brauchli, then the executive editor of The Washington Post, but departed “with maximum efficiency.”

That evening of public abasement, rather than sending Mr. Trump away, accelerated his ferocious efforts to gain stature within the political world. And it captured the degree to which Mr. Trump’s campaign is driven by a deep yearning sometimes obscured by his bluster and bragging: a desire to be taken seriously.

Well that hasn’t worked out well.

Steve Almond wrote about Trump’s contempt for women back in September…which seems like such a dewily innocent time now.

Trump’s central motive for entering the race, after all, was the shame he suffered after being laughed at during a fancy banquet.

He has spent much of the campaign stoking racial and religious resentment. This “politics of scorn” is nothing new in American politics.

But his preoccupation with humiliating and hurting women is unprecedented. To put it bluntly: We’ve never dealt with a politician — let alone a presidential candidate — so nakedly insecure about his manhood, and so hostile towards women.

As a reality TV star, Trump could get away with saying things like, “must be a pretty picture, you dropping to your knees” to a female contestant. His history of making unwelcome romantic advances and sexist comments is well documented.

What’s shocking is how little effort he’s made to control himself as a candidate. Throughout the primary season, he mocked women for being ugly or weak or bimbos, and when they challenged him, he conjured an image of “blood coming out of their wherever.”

He makes zero effort to control himself. The contempt and hostility work for him with people who like that kind of thing…and maybe he’s so addicted to their whoops of joy that he can’t bear to alienate them by controlling his rage and disgust. Or, more simply, maybe he’s just too stupid to figure it out.

The media celebrities who get access to Trump and his surrogates don’t have the guts to ask this question, but they should:

Why does Trump, when he fears he’s being laughed at, so often fantasize about violence against women? Does he really believe that rape is inevitable? And that it will be his role as president to punish women?

The more disturbing question is this: What do the mothers and daughters who intend to vote for Trump feel, deep down, when they hear huge crowds cheer him for saying these things?

That they’re different, so he doesn’t mean them.

Jim Wright on Facebook:

Trump is now actively promoting the conspiracy theory that Clinton was given last night’s debate questions in advance

Guess what?

He’s right.

It was obvious Clinton knew all the questions in advance.

BECAUSE NONE OF THEM WERE IN ANY WAY A SURPRISE.

Leaving aside the utterly ludicrous idea Fox News would (even without the clammy groping right wing hand of Roger Ailes) help out HILLARY GODDAMNED CLINTON in any way, only somebody so appallingly ignorant of reality as Donald Trump could possibly NOT know what questions were going to come up in last night’s debate.

Let’s review, shall we?

First Question: Supreme Court.

Wow. What a surprise. There is no way Clinton could have seen that one coming and been prepared for it without cheating. No way. I mean when’s the last time you heard anybody talk about the Supreme Court in reference to this election? Amiright? Poor Trump was totally blindsided. Sad!

And you can apply that to all the questions. None of them were surprising or complicated or tricky – they were broad questions on subjects that had already been announced. They were questions that any candidate should be able to answer well.

A subset of the SCOTUS question was … Abortion? Seriously? Abortion? Roe V Wade? That’s so 1973. It was settled long ago, right? I mean you never hear anybody talking about abortion. Why would the moderator even bring that up? That’s like hoop skirts and Conestoga wagons, who even cares about that stuff anymore? Abortion. Please.

Second Question: Immigration.

Total shocker. Never saw that one coming. Why would a candidate even have any opinion on immigration? Borders? Refugees? Where to they get these crazy questions? Why don’t they ask things Americans care about? You know, stuff that’s in the headlines and like that?

A subtext of this question was Wikileaks and Russian spying. Again, how would a candidate possibly know to prepare for such topics? I mean, come ON, Russian hacking of emails? It might as well have been “Obscure 18th Century Hungarian Beekeepers who Collected Stamps.” I mean who knows that shit? Other than Jeopardy contestants who’ve never even grabbed a … okay, that’s a bad example but I think I’ve made my point here, Clinton MUST have had advance notice. Obviously. So sad.

Another subtopic: Nuclear weapons. And we’re back to Hungarian beekeepers. Nuclear weapons? What is this? A Cold War debate? Sure if you drink enough and squint your eyes Trump does sort of resemble Margaret Thatcher, but goddamn, folks, nuclear weapons? Who cares? What kind of presidential candidate is prepared to talk about nuclear weapons off the cuff? She had to have cheated, Folks. Had to.

Third Question: Jobs

Jobs. Economy. NAFTA. Taxes. Trade. Obamacare. What the hell does ANY of that have to do with anything? It’s all Hungarian beekeeping! When has ANY of that come up during this election? What kind of crazy old lady would bone up on that stuff if she didn’t know in advance liberal Fox News was going to pull a gotcha on Donald Trump?

Sexual shenanigans? Groping and grabbing? Nasty women? Good grief, Folks, I was totally surprised by that. No idea that was going to come up. Crazy! I mean name one election in American history where sex was even mentioned like at all. See? Nobody talks about that kind of thing, it’s like abortion or gay marriage. I mean how would Crooked Hillary be ready for that? Cheater!

It’s all rigged! All of it, I tell you!!

Dr Jennifer Gunter explains about late-term abortions.

The third and final Presidential debate focused very quickly on abortion. Clinton defended choice and Trump, not one to be bothered with facts, countered with this doozy of line:

“I think it’s terrible if you go with what Hillary is saying in the ninth month you can take the baby and rip the baby out of the womb of the mother just prior to the birth of the baby. Now, you can say that that’s okay, and Hillary can say that that’s okay, but it’s not okay with me. Because based on what she’s saying and based on where she’s going and where she’s been, you can take the baby and rip the baby out of the womb in the ninth month, on the final day. And that’s not acceptable.”

They don’t rip, she says with cold politeness. There is no ripping. Ripping is not what they do.

Perhaps we can forgive Donald Trump for not knowing this as it is hard to believe that a man who bragged that he doesn’t change diapers and said he wouldn’t have had a baby if his wife had wanted him to actually physically participate in its care would have attended the birth of his own children. It’s certainly not for the faint of heart as there is, after all, lots of blood coming out the “wherever.”

Ah, what a “nasty woman,” thank you baby Jesus.

Talking about abortion from a medical perspective is challenging when you are not a health care provider. Even someone familiar with the laws can get confused. For example, Mrs. Clinton made an error speaking about late-term abortion when she said it was a health of the mother issue. Typically it is not (it’s almost always fetal anomalies). However, this error on Clinton’s part only underscores how important it is for politicians to not practice medicine.

To put it in perspective  1.3% of abortions happen at or after 21 weeks and 80% are for birth defects.

Very rare, and mostly because of birth defects. Not done because the pregnant woman suddenly got bored.

After 24 weeks birth defects that lead to abortion are very severe and typically considered incompatible with life. These procedures are either a traditional induction, just like labor, or something that requires instrumentation. Because of the nonsensical partial birth abortion law women who wish to have a dilation and extraction (a modified technique for more advanced procedures) need to have fetal cardiac activity stopped with an injection into the uterus. Either way it’s a 2 or 3 day or even 4 process to get the cervix to dilate enough. The further along in the pregnancy, the more likely the procedure will be an induction of labor, but a skilled practitoner can do a dilation and extraction at 32 or 34 weeks. I’ve never heard of a dilation and extraction for any other reason than severe birth defects and often it is for a woman who has had two or three c-sections for whom inducing labor might pose other health hazards, like uterine rupture. Are we to force women to have c-sections for a pregnancy that is not compatible with life?

Note that c-sections are major surgery.

Why do some women end up with these procedures later on in their pregnancy? Sometimes it can take weeks or even longer to fully understand what is going on with the fetus. Some patients might think they can make it to term and then at 34 weeks cave and ask to be delivered because they just can’t bear one more person asking them about their baby. Do they just smile and walk away or say, “Well, actually, my baby has no brain and will die at birth?” Some women go to term and others can’t. To judge these women for requesting an early delivery is cruel on so many levels. I wrote more about it here if you are interested.  Regardless, terminations for birth defects isn’t ripping “the baby out of the womb in the ninth month.” At 38 or 39 weeks it’s always an induction and is simply called a delivery.

Health of the mother abortions happen earlier.

This definitely happens between 20 and 24 weeks. The most likely scenario is ruptured membranes and an infection in the uterus. The treatment of this is delivery or the infection will spread and kill the mother, however, someone with lupus or renal disease or heart disease (for example) could have a deterioration of their health and with their providers make the decision to have a termination. After 25 weeks this would simply be a c-section or an induction of labor and the baby would go to the neonatal intensive care unit. Between 24-25 weeks there could be some leeway as conditions that are serious enough to require delivery at 24 weeks often also have devastating effects on the fetus. For example, the fetus could be so severely growth restricted making viability at 24 weeks unlikely and a woman with a severe heart condition may not elect to risk her health with a c-section for a likely non viable pregnancy and choose a termination. These are difficult and nuanced decisions and everyone is simply working together to make the best decision for the pregnant person.

Nobody involved needs any help or advice from Donald Trump.

So did you watch it? I watched it except for the last few minutes. I laughed at his furious scowl, his “I shoulda got that,” his “You’re the puppet.” I gaped in astonishment when he wouldn’t say he would accept the outcome of the election. I cringed when he said “bad hombres.” I missed “Such a nasty woman.”

The Washington Post:

[T]he more damaging impression that average voters will be left with from Las Vegas is Trump’s total lack of self-discipline.

Truth. It was an astonishing thing to see. We could tell he was trying, at first, to discipline that rowdy self of his. He spoke more soberly and quietly for the first few minutes, and a little bit more coherently. But it was only for the first few minutes, and after that he simply threw it all out the window and let his id take over. His id is a revolting thing to see, and out of the question for someone with the duties and responsibilities of president of the US.

Most Americans want a president who can control his (or her) impulses. They may not volunteer “self-restraint” as a hallmark of good leadership, but people do not want someone with an irrepressible temper and unhealthy ego in control of the U.S. nuclear arsenal. Trump once again failed that test at the University of Nevada at Las Vegas, squandering his last big chance to change the trajectory of a race that has moved away from him.

Emphasis theirs.

It wouldn’t occur to us to include “self-restraint” in the list of desired talents because it seems such a baseline qualification. “Can talk” and “doesn’t defecate in public” are also taken for granted. (Mind you, Bush Junior’s striking lack of skill in the talking department should have been a disqualifier, in my view.) Nobody expects a giant toddler to try to be president of the US, and yet there he is.

Trump became more agitated as the night dragged on. The split screen was not his friend. You could see him grimacing, rolling his eyes and shaking his head as she talked.

That too, yes, but from the very beginning, even while he was comparatively disciplined while actually talking, he was making a ridiculous, childish face – eyes squinched nearly shut and mouth turned down like the sad/angry emoticon. He looked like a toddler, literally.

The culmination of all this came in the final moments when Clinton, talking about Social Security, took a dig at Trump for not paying federal income taxes. “Such a nasty woman,” he blurted out.

Yet earlier in the debate he had repeated his absurd claim that “No one respects women more than I do.” I think Milo Yiannopoulos probably respects women more than Trump does. The New York Times did a piece the other day that included a gem of a remark I hadn’t seen before:

Trump presents himself as ageless — a bit older than Clinton, but only in man years, which don’t really count. He told the TV doctor Mehmet Oz that he looks in the mirror and sees “a person who is 35 years old,” like a fairy-tale villain with a charmed looking glass. He gets his exercise, he said, by gesticulating at rallies. The bizarre doctor’s note he released concluded that he’d be the “healthiest individual ever elected to the presidency,” then added, “His physical strength and stamina are extraordinary.” His wives get younger with every marriage — the third, Melania, is 24 years his junior — and their youth, Trump says, only makes him more powerful. “You know,” he told Esquire in 1991, “it doesn’t really matter what they write as long as you’ve got a young and beautiful piece of ass.”

Such respect.

Back to the Post.

Trump’s self-absorption also haunted him during the debates. Clinton has spent the past few months trying to frame the election as a referendum on him. She’s succeeded, in part, because Trump’s favorite thing to talk about is, well, Trump.

And he takes everything personally. Trump started his answer on the Supreme Court vacancy, for example, by noting that Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said nasty things about him and claiming that she was “forced to apologize.”

Indeed, and when he tried to defend his love for Putin he included “he says nice things about me.”

We apologize for this extended trainwreck. We join you in hoping it will be over soon.

Talking Points Memo on Trump and voter intimidation.

Civil rights  groups are already gearing up for an especially tense Election Day. Meanwhile, the federal government has been hobbled by a 2013 Supreme Court ruling in its ability to monitor elections in places with histories of voter intimidation. Of particular concern are states with loose open carry laws, where already, some armed Trump supporters have shown an interest in making their presence known at voting sites.

“The idea that people would be standing outside the polls with guns, or even inside the polls with guns, clearly has the potential to turn people away. There’s a long history of this,” said Deuel Ross, an attorney for the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, which is very active in voting rights litigation.

And it’s what Trump actually wants to happen.

Trump has for months complained about the possibility of an election somehow “rigged” against him, but recently, the rhetoric has taken on a more ominous, and even racially-tinged tone, that specifically mentions voter fraud at the ballot box. Last week, he told a mostly white crowd in Ambridge, Pennsylvania, to “watch other communities, because we don’t want this election stolen from us.” He said at rally in Michigan late last month that his supporters, after they vote, should “pick some other place … and go sit there with your friends and make sure it’s on the up and up.”

He’s telling his fans to intimidate voters.

Bad times.

The Voting Rights Act includes a provision that prohibits any attempt to “intimidate, threaten, or coerce” a person trying to vote, and there’s a section of the federal criminal code banning voter intimidation as well. In theory, that could set up a confrontation between federal voter intimidation laws and state open-carry laws (federal law would generally trump state law). However, according to Kristen Clarke, the president and executive director of Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, federal laws are rarely ever used to address voter intimidation claims.

“There’s not just much of a history of the federal government using them,” Clarke said, adding that her group, which monitors elections to ensure all eligible voters can cast a ballot, is more reliant on state and local systems to address instances of voter intimidation.

The Shelby ruling has made it harder for the Feds to watch out for voter intimidation.

The DOJ interpreted the ruling to have also curtailed its ability deploy election observers to the 11 states previously covered by preclearance. This election, the DOJ will only have its elections monitoring program set up in five states — Alabama, Alaska, California, Louisiana, and New York — where federal court decisions have authorized it do so, Reuters reported this summer.

“That safeguard of having specially-trained individuals on behalf of the federal government inside the polls won’t be in place in many communities this November, creating a potentially toxic and vulnerable situation for some voters,” Clarke said.

Because the five conservative justices were wrong that the safeguards aren’t needed any more. So wrong.

It’s worth noting that the Republican National Committee has been under a three-decade-old consent decree — that the Supreme Court in 2013 refused to lift — barring it from engaging in any sort of “ballot security” efforts targeting minorities. The decree is the result of RNC activity decades ago — including the hiring of off-duty cops to patrol around election sites — that Democrats alleged amounted to voter intimidation.

At least one election law expert, UC-Irvine School of Law’s Rick Hasen, has argued that Trump may have violated the decree in his calls for vigilante poll watchers if one interpreted him to be an agent of the RNC. Clarke, meanwhile, called for the RNC case to serve as a guide for what can and cannot be done at the polls in November.

Bad times.

The Boston Globe a few days ago on Trump’s paranoia-stoking.

“It’s one big fix,’’ Trump said Friday afternoon in Greensboro, N.C. “This whole election is being rigged.’’

He saved some of his harshest criticism for the media, which he said is in league with Clinton to steal the election.

“The media is indeed sick, and it’s making our country sick, and we’re going to stop it,” he said.

Mainstream Republicans are watching these developments at the top of the ticket with a growing sense of alarm, calling Trump’s latest conspiracy theories of a rigged election irresponsible and dangerous. They also say the impact of voter fraud or errors on the outcome of elections is vastly overblown.

It surprises me a little that there is apparently no one grown-up and responsible who can reach him – who can sit him down and tell him to take a deep breath, think about something other than himself, and stop trying to burn everything down around him to avenge his defeat. You’d think there would be someone.

While voters have certainly questioned election outcomes, it is unprecedented for the nominee of a major party to do so, historians say.

“What’s really distinct is the candidate himself putting this out front and center as a consistent theme throughout the last part of the campaign, and doing it when there’s no evidence of anything,” said Julian Zelizer, a Princeton University presidential scholar.

Yeah well. Trump is probably the biggest egomaniac in the universe, so nearly everything about his “campaign” is unprecedented.

Trump has recently started encouraging his mostly white supporters to sign up online to be “election observers” to stop “Crooked Hillary from rigging this election.” He’s urging them to act as posses of poll watchers in “other” communities to ensure that things are “on the up and up.”

“Watch your polling booths,” he warned.

His supporters are heeding the call. “Trump said to watch your precincts. I’m going to go, for sure,” said Steve Webb, a 61-year-old carpenter from Fairfield, Ohio.

“I’ll look for . . . well, it’s called racial profiling. Mexicans. Syrians. People who can’t speak American,” he said. “I’m going to go right up behind them. I’ll do everything legally. I want to see if they are accountable. I’m not going to do anything illegal. I’m going to make them a little bit nervous.”

That is illegal.

The Voting Rights Act includes a provision that prohibits any attempt to “intimidate, threaten, or coerce” a person trying to vote, and there’s a section of the federal criminal code banning voter intimidation as well.

It’s illegal to go right up behind them. It’s illegal to make them a little bit nervous.