I am aware that there are discussions I don't care to take part in, but I'm hardly throwing out the baby with the bathwater.  Where else can you find a million liberals under one roof?  Compared to the discussions on the conservative imitation site RedState, the most hateful DK discussion is barely even impolite.  You want venom, you gotta go with the conservative bloggers.

There are great DK discussion groups outside politics, including several of my personal interests.  When I post on DK, a million people see it, and I get a ton more feedback than I do here.

"Father Sarducci" had a lot of gags, such as guessing the number of Popes in the Pizza, or wheeling out a bishop-clad dummy in a wheelchair that he introduced as his boss, the 108-year old Cardinal Fungi, who, he said, became as sharp as a tack with just a little quaalude.

But, some commenters make me think of his character, Lazlo Toth (after the deranged vandal of Michelangelo's Pieta, in St. Peter's Basilica)-- a pen name he used to write letters to people (mostly famous or celebrities) pretending to be misinformed or obtuse so as to provoke or tweak the noses of the unsuspecting correspondent.

 It was with glee when he nabbed someone and the correspondence charade was continued at length. The longer the better.   Novello published collections of the correspondence as "Lazlo's Letters," and "Bush to Bush."

Bungling Beijing's Stock Markets
...............
The response of the Chinese authorities was remarkable: They pulled out all the stops to support the market -- suspending trading in many stocks, banning short-selling, pushing large investors to buy, and instructing graduating economics students to chant "Revive A-shares, benefit the people."

All of this has stabilized the market for the time being. But it is at the cost of tying China's credibility to its ability to keep stock prices from ever falling. And the Chinese economy still needs more support.

So this week China decided to let the value of its currency decline, which made some sense: While the renminbi was clearly undervalued five years ago, it's significantly overvalued now. But Chinese authorities seem to have imagined that they could control the renminbi's descent, taking it a couple of percent at a time.

They appear to have been taken completely by surprise by the market's predictable reaction; namely, the initial devaluation of the renminbi was "the first bite of the cherry," a sign of much bigger declines to come. Investors began fleeing China, and policy makers abruptly pivoted from promoting currency devaluation to an all-out effort to support the renminbi's value.

The common theme in these wild policy swings is that China's leadership keeps imagining that it can order markets around, telling them what prices to reach. And that's not how things work.

I'm not saying governments should never interfere with markets, or even set limits on prices. There is, as I've written in the past, a strong case for raising the minimum wage and in general for promoting higher wages for American workers; there's an even stronger case for effective financial regulation.

There's even a case for occasional intervention to prop up asset prices. Three years ago, the European Central Bank's promise to do "whatever it takes" to safeguard the euro -- generally interpreted as a promise that it would buy government bonds if necessary -- worked wonders. Back in 1998 the Hong Kong Monetary Authority purchased large amounts of stock to beat back a hedge fund attack on its currency, and scored a notable success.

But these were short-lived actions, taken at times when markets seemed to have lost their bearings. Staffers at the Federal Reserve used to call these moves "slap in the face" interventions. That's very different from the kind of sustained intervention and political dictation of prices China seems to imagine it can pull off. Do the country's leaders really not understand why that won't work?

If they really don't, that's a big concern. China is an economic superpower -- not quite as super as the United States or the European Union, yet, but big enough to matter a lot. And it's facing tough times. So if its leadership is really as clueless as it has been looking lately, that bodes ill, not just for China, but for the world as a whole.

I was actually looking forward to his explanation as to how watching 'the shows' makes Trump qualified to lead the US military, and of course, will keep us all safer than the rest.  

I honestly think it will be Trump-Carly.

You know, this Trump phenomenon is really quite fascinating. If you recall, we ("we" meaning the TL Community) have expressed the feeling over the past several year that things have gotten so bad that the question of whether the U.S.A. is even fixable has become a real concern. Piece by piece, office by office, agency by agency, all the levers of Government have become so completely corrupted that the term, "opposite sides of the same coin," has taken on a true sense of validity.

The general public, whether the Far Left, or, the Tea Party Right, are united on, at least, one point: The corruption has become so total, the "capture" so complete, the .01% - .99.9% spread so imbedded, that there is, simply, no possible way to fix our country. The attitude of, "Blow it up, and, start all over again," is not as far-fetched today as it might have been just a few years ago.

And, that's the unifying force that Trump has tapped into, and, that's why his candidacy, as inconceivable as it might have been just a short while ago, is not so unconceivable any more.

And, why not, nothing else is working. Americans have seen the country auctioned off, Lock (The Presidency,) Stock (Congress,) and, Barrel (The Supreme Court) to a small group of Billionaires, that they don't even have the strength to "hope" for a better future.

Trump, with his Trademark, "I can't be Bought," has a real appeal for people who, truly, have no reason to feel optimistic under the current system.

That's why Trump has a better chance for success than we thought, and, unfortunately, that's also why Hillary has a real reason to be concerned.