QUESTION ASKED: “Trump was best when he challenged Clinton’s self-serving story about her homebrew email server. ‘I take responsibility for using a personal email account,’ she responded. ‘Obviously, if I were to do it over again, I would not. I’m not making any excuses. It was a mistake. And I am very sorry about that.’ If there were a debate fairy, then I’d make one wish. Can someone please ask Clinton: What does it mean when you take responsibility? How is it different from when you do not take responsibility?”

CHANGE: Turkey Questions Historical Treaty Defining Regional Borders.

Тhe spat erupted after Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan took the country and the region by surprise last month by calling into question the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne, which defined modern Turkey’s borders.

He declared Turkey had been blackmailed by foreign powers into giving up vast swaths of territory that were once part of the Ottoman Empire. Although Erdogan focused his criticism on the loss of Aegean islands to Greece, it is Turkey’s southern borders he had in mind, according to visiting Carnegie Europe scholar Sinan Ulgen.

“The message should be seen more of a signal in relation to Turkish polices towards the south, Syria and Iraq. I read it as a backdrop to a policy that tries to build domestic support for a more long-term presence, particularly in Syria, by pointing out, at allegedly past historical mistakes,” Ulgen said.

Years ago I was only joking when I wondered if we could con the Turks into taking back the Arab Middle East, but Erdogan might be serious.

MAYBE THE ELECTORAL COLLEGE SHOULD JUST PICK SOMEONE GOOD, WHETHER THEY’RE RUNNING OR NOT: Dem elector floats rejecting Clinton.

A Democratic elector in Washington says that if his party’s presidential nominee, Hillary Clinton, wins the state, he may shirk his duty to cast his vote for her in the Electoral College.

“How can I say and do and be who I am and then cast a vote for somebody that’s the same as [GOP nominee Donald] Trump?” Robert Satiacum Jr. asked Politico in an interview published Wednesday.

“They may be male, female, but they’re in the same canoe. I have to either step down from being this thing I was elected to be or I’ve got to step down from being myself. That’s the teeter totter I’m on.”

That nice Mitt Romney might be available.

A PROBLEM BOTH PARTIES HAVE BEEN HAPPY TO IGNORE: The 40 Year Nuclear Procurement Holiday.

The U.S. Navy has delayed the construction of the new Ohio replacement submarine beyond their original plans by four years, and increased the hull life to a record 41 years to accommodate the delay. Reducing the number of deployed nuclear-capable submarines from 12 to 10. As for the submarine-launched D-5 Trident missile, a required service life extension program is being planned due to their being no planned replacement.

The Minuteman III land based nuclear deterrent, first placed in its silos in 1970 is now 46 years old and would not be replaced until 2030 if approved, 60 years later and well beyond life expectancy. The U.S. Air Force had to execute a service life extension program or SLEP including both a GRP (guidance replacement program) and PRP (propulsion replacement program) starting in 1993 and completed in 2010, further delaying needed modernization.

The third leg of the U.S. nuclear triad, the replacement for the aging B-2 stealth bomber is still facing a budget battle and will still not fill the shortfall created by the cancellation of B-2 production at 21 planes even if the new B-21 comes online in 2025.

An awful lot of bills are past due.

I HOPE WE’RE NOT TOO MESSIANIC, OR A TRIFLE TOO SATANIC: Stumping for Hillary, Obama Claims He Is Not A Demon.

Barack Obama morphed into Christine O’Donnell so slowly, I hardly even noticed.

HOW THE GOVERNMENT SHOULD PUNISH COLIN KAEPERNICK’S ANTI-PATRIOTISM.

Read the whole thing.

QUESTION ASKED: Could absentee ballots spell trouble for Donald Trump in North Carolina?

Traditionally, Republicans have had a big advantage in absentee voting. Older, rural, and military voters are often more conservative and have favored this method over their Democratic counterparts, who historically enjoy a larger percentage of the early in-person vote.

So far this cycle, registered Republicans continue to hold an overall advantage in requested ballots but are well behind where they were four years ago at this time. On top of that, registered Democrats and independents have increased their participation in the absentee process compared to 2012, both in requested and returned ballots.

McCain lost North Carolina in the second-closest state of 2008, while Romney won there in 2012 by 92,004 votes out of about 4.4 million votes cast.

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE, LEGAL EDUCATION EDITION: Laura Rosenbury Stakes Her Deanship On Raising Florida’s Ranking To #35; Amidst Claims Of Sexism, Her Regime Comes Under Fire, With The Graduate Tax Program Its Flashpoint. “It is a challenge to untangle how Ms. Rosenbury, a former law professor and administrator at Washington University in St. Louis, managed to get crosswise with so many people in the space of just 15 months. Interviews with more than a dozen professors, and with alumni, administrators, and staff members, suggest that the dean’s change agenda has created the impression that she sees the law school and many of its inhabitants as problems to be solved rather than as assets to be mobilized.”

That’s an easy mistake to make, but a toxic one.

WELL, IT’S HARD TO ARGUE WITH THAT: Trump hits ‘pay-to-play’ Clinton in new ad.

Donald Trump accuses Hillary Clinton of building a fortune based on trading political favors in the GOP presidential nominee’s latest ad, released Wednesday.
“The Clintons: from dead broke to worth hundreds of millions,” the video’s narrator says.

“So how did Hillary end up filthy rich? Pay-to-play politics.”

The ad goes on to accuse Clinton’s family foundation of accepting money from “criminals, dictators [and] countries that hate America.”

It rehashes some of the more biting accusations against the Clinton Foundation, including that it “exploited Haitians in need” and turned over “American uranium rights” to a Russian company whose backers included foundation donors.

“Hillary Clinton only cares about power, money and herself,” the ad concludes.

The Trump campaign has quickly seized on Tuesday’s ABC News report that showed State Department officials sought to prioritize requests from Clinton family friends looking for land disaster relief grants, arguing that it’s proof Clinton put her friends above the people of Haiti.

The new video will be rotated into the campaign’s ad buys in battleground states and also air nationally, the campaign said.

To paraphrase Henry Kissinger, it’s a good ad, and it has the added advantage of being true.

THERE THEY GO AGAIN: Scotland to publish independence referendum consultation bill next week.

Scotland will publish a fresh independence referendum Bill for consultation next week, part of a strategy to ensure that Scotland’s voice is heard in the negotiations to take Britain out of the European Union, First Minister Nicola Sturgeon announced on Thursday.

“There is no rational case for taking the UK out of the single market and there is no authority for it either,” she told delegates at her Scottish National Party conference.

She said it would be an act of “constitutional vandalism” to try to ignore Scotland’s parliamentary voice on the issue.

Politically, Britain without Scotland would be a lot like the U.S. without California, Illinois, and New York.

THE 21ST CENTURY ISN’T TURNING OUT AS I’D HOPED: United Nations human rights commissioner claims Trump is ‘dangerous’ to the world. (And if you’re wondering, UN man’s country locks up journalists and doesn’t let Muslim women marry Christian men.)

CULTURE OF CORRUPTION: Revealed: How Hillary’s top aide worked for the State Department and the Clinton Foundation at the SAME TIME – and even coached Bill on his tangled web of business interests.

2016, MAN: Feminist Writer Says We Need to Put an End to ‘Orgasm Privilege.’

MY FAVORITE PART OF THE OBAMA ERA IS ALL THE REGIONAL HEALING: The New War Between The States.

This reflects an increasingly stark conflict between two very different American economies. One, the “Ephemeral Zone” concentrated on the coasts, runs largely on digits and images, the movement of software, media and financial transactions. It produces increasingly little in the way of food, fiber, energy and fewer and fewer manufactured goods. The Ephemeral sectors dominate ultra-blue states such as New York, California, Oregon, Washington, Massachusetts, Maryland, and Connecticut.

The other America constitutes, as economic historian Michael Lind notes in a forthcoming paper for the Center for Opportunity Urbanism, the “New Heartland.” Extending from the Appalachians to the Rockies, this heartland economy relies on tangible goods production. It now encompasses both the traditional Midwest manufacturing regions, and the new industrial areas of Texas, the Southeast and the Intermountain West.

Contrary to the notions of the Ephemerals, the New Heartland is not populated by Neanderthals. This region employs much of the nation’s engineering talent, but does so in conjunction with the creation of real goods rather than clicks. Its industries have achieved generally more rapid productivity gains than their rivals in the services sector. To some extent, energy and food producers may have outdone themselves and, since they operate in a globally competitive market, their prices and profits are suffering.

It’s not even the economic divide that’s the worst, it’s the smug basket-of-deplorables, standard-redneck contempt.

I HAVE A NEW COLLECTION OUT:  Dragon Blood.

Sometime ago I realized I had so many short stories out that they were ‘hiding’ my novels, with the result that I was underperforming my friends with fewer works out (in indie, I have no visibility into day by day numbers in traditional, of course.) So I decided to bring them down.  It worked.  I make more on the novels now.  BUT I don’t want work sitting in the drawer, not strutting their stuff and bringing home money.  So I decided to assemble the short stories into collections.  This is the first of those.  There will be others.  Each has at least one short story I didn’t have up before.  (Though most have been published in anthologies or magazines.) So, this is the first one of those.

DEMOCRAT MINNESOTA GOVERNOR: Obamacare ‘no longer affordable’ for many.

Gov. Mark Dayton’s criticism comes as his state is facing massive rate hikes and shrinking competition in its Obamacare insurance marketplace next year. Dayton’s comments also come almost a week after Donald Trump and Republicans seized on former president Bill Clinton’s remarks lamenting Obamacare’s affordability problems.

Dayton told reporters the law has “many good features to it” but needs help from Congress to make coverage more affordable, according to a transcript provided by his office. However, he said the law, which covers 20 million people, has “some serious blemishes and serious deficiencies.”

Premiums for individual plans in Minnesota will increase on average by 50 percent to 67 percent next year. Several insurers have pulled out of the state’s Obamacare marketplace since opening three years ago, when Minnesota boasted some of the lowest premiums in the country.

That means it’s working.

WHAT TOLKIEN SAID. DOUBLE. WITH A CHERRY TWIST: Papers, Please.

THEY ALWAYS EAT THEIR OWN: Death by HR: Google and yahoo age and sex discrimination cases.

MY HUSBAND’S SHORT COLLECTION IS ON SALE FOR 99c THIS WEEK: Spooky-hoods.

POLITICS IS LIKE GARLIC. IT GETS ALL OVER EVERYTHING: You’re ruining Facebook (and friendships) with political rants.

WHEN VISITING SWEDEN WAS UNIMAGINABLE: ‘The Greatest Dream in the History of Dreams’.

IT’S TIME TO GROW UP NOW: This is fun, but let’s talk jobs and economy.

IN THE EMAIL, FROM JAGI LAMPLIGHTER WRIGHT: Rachel and the Many-Splendored Dreamland (The Books of Unexpected Enlightenment Book 3).

INDEED: Writing about the King’s musketeers is cultural appropriation, as is writing about Colorado diner owners or a future USAIN cult. Why a Politically Correct World Wants Writers Who Don’t Use Imagination.

BREAKING: Two Police Officers Shot in Boston.