OF COURSE, WE’RE DOING THE OPPOSITE BY BANISHING PEANUTS FROM PUBLIC PLACES: More Support for Early Exposure to Peanuts to Prevent Allergies.

HOW DONALD TRUMP PLAYS THE MEDIA:

One producer at a cable news outlet said the process of covering Trump is like being held captive against your will.

“He’s absolutely exploited the media environment to his advantage,” the producer said. “He understands every single tendency that producers of this business have and he tailored his strategy to hold us hostage.”

The producer, like many media professionals interviewed for this article, spoke on condition of anonymity because the campaign still needs to be covered. But also because there’s evidence that speaking even remotely critically of Trump will incite the candidate and may spur him to retaliate by either blocking access to him or by publicly ridiculing the source of the criticism.

So in other words, Trump believes in arguing with his neighbors, getting in their faces, and punching back twice as hard when crossed. He doesn’t bring a knife to a gunfight. Which politician popularized those phrases? How is he covered by the media?

The northeast corridor DNC-MSM overculture has been a cesspool for decades — it’s not surprising that somebody finally figured out how to best them at their own game. (Of course, he could take the GOP with him if and when he implodes, but not all detonations can be controlled.)

Related: “Rubio Tangles with CNN’s Bash in CPAC Question and Answer Session over Media’s Trump Obsession:”

Before finally moving away from Trump (until she snuck in a question about Trump’s flip-flops on torture), Bash earmarked one more question for the state of rhetoric in the campaign:

BASH: Just to follow up, but the rhetoric has been, I mean, I understand you’re saying that you are trying to answer him in some of the things he has been saying, but you know, I can’t explain to my kid about the you’re talking about hands and things like that.

RUBIO: Well, look. I’ll be more than happy to answer another Trump question. I don’t — Donald Trump, he might have grown up the way he did with a lot of money, going to boarding schools. I can tell you this where I grew up, if someone keeps punching someone in the face, eventually someone has to stand up and punch them back.

If Bash wants to have a debate about the level of what’s appropriate rhetoric for cable news, it should be noted that she laughed back on New Years Eve in 2009 going into 2010 at co-host Kathy Griffin’s suggestion that then-Senator Scott Brown’s daughters were whores.

And the MSM wonders why Trump does so well in their environment.

#GREENFRAUD: Everything You Need to Know About the VW Diesel Emissions Scandal.

HMM: New Poll Shows Undecided Voters Breaking for Cruz & Trump.

ON THIS DAY IN 1953, JOSEPH STALIN DIED; his New York Times obit the following day reads like necrophilia: Stalin Rose From Czarist Oppression to Transform Russia Into Mighty Socialist State:

Although he remained an enigma to the outside world to the very end of his days, Stalin’s role as Russia’s leader in the war brought him the admiration and high praise of Allied leaders, including President Roosevelt and Winston Churchill. And, indeed, only a man of iron will and determination like Stalin’s could have held together his shattered country during that period of the war when German armies had overrun huge portions of Russian territory and swept to the gates of Moscow, Leningrad and the Caucasus. Like Churchill in England, Stalin never faltered, not even at moments when everything seemed lost.

When most of the Government machinery and the diplomatic corps were moved to Kuibyshev in December, 1941, in expectation of the imminent capture of Moscow, Stalin remained in the Kremlin to direct the operations that finally hurled the Nazi hordes from the frontyard of the capital. His battle orders and exhortations to the Russian armies and people to persevere in the fight contributed immensely to final victory. Repeatedly, Churchill referred to him in Parliament as Russia’s “great warrior.”

Plus this classic bit of Orwellianism: “But those who survived the purges hailed Stalin as a supreme genius,” which sounds like something out of the Onion.

Speaking of which, I can’t find the text of the article online, but in 2003, the earlier, funnier, pre-Hillary-supporting Onion had a much better headline for their mock 1953 obit on “Russia’s Comback Kid:” “Soviets Mourn Loss of Stalin — ‘Who Will Crush Our Spirits and Destroy Our Will to Live Now?'”

ON THE OTHER HAND, THEY DON’T WASTE MUCH OF THEIR LIFESPANS TRYING TO GET LAID: Why Self-Fertilizing Worms Have Shorter Lifespans.

PETER EGAN EXPLAINS The 32 Signs Of Aging.

21ST CENTURY MEDICINE: Graphene and Quantum Dots Turn a Mobile Device Into a Heart-Rate Monitor.

I’M NOT SAYING IT’S TO TALK TO ALIENS, BUT IT’S TO TALK TO ALIENS: Google Is Building a Big, Mysterious Radio Transmitter in the Desert.

THE MYSTERY OF MELODY, as explored by David Solway:

I am by no means suggesting that other musical traditions are not valid and authoritative and beautiful in themselves, but I am proposing that melody per se, in its richest and most memorable form, was detected—and perfected—by the Western sensibility. I will surely be accused of ethnocentrism in advancing such an hypothesis but it seems persuasive to me and at least worth considering. This is not, however, an argument I relish plunging into, and it remains at a tangent to my main thesis.

All this discussion notwithstanding, I still can’t say what melody is. I do know that melody is something that can be hummed, and that I can’t hum plainchant or rap or Ravi Shankar. Hummability is the basic litmus test of melody. Melody is also something that is deeply satisfying, affording us an inexplicable pleasure that is not somatic. It is sensuous but not sensual, appealing to a dimension of our being that oscillates between the emotional and the spiritual, which is why it can affect our mood in profound ways and compel us to echo, duplicate, replay, rehearse, and listen to it over and over again.

Read the whole thing; it’s a beautiful piece of writing.

As Idiocracy’s co-screenwriter Etan Cohen recently tweeted, he didn’t realize he was writing a documentary, yet that film’s theme of de-evolution certainly does seem to playing out in so many aspects of today’s culture. In music, it can be seen most obviously in the decline of melody over the last quarter century. Tin Pan Alley and mid-century pop crooners such as Bing Crosby and Frank Sinatra were all about melody. The Beatles maintained that tradition, with Paul McCartney writing complex melodies and Lennon somewhat simpler lines, but framed by unique and idiosyncratic chord sequences. Motown’s in-house songwriters could craft brilliant compositions, and both the Beatles and Motown’s influence were so strong, they impacted pop music for years after the Beatles broke up and Berry Gordy dissolved the original Detroit-based Motown studios and moved to L.A. Even the heavy metal of the ’70s and ’80s had songs with strong hooks.

And yet, starting with the proto-rappers the Last Poets of the late 1960s, and then really gathering force as a commercial genre a decade later, rap music is all about the elimination of melody, as is the Cookie Monster-style tone of the post-Metallica leather-lunged “Death Metal” belters that emerged in the late ’80s and ’90s. And while other forms of pop music of today are for the most part gentler on the ears, 2010-era pop all too frequently reduces the lead singer to a warbling a childishly simple melody that’s then massively processed, pitch-corrected, and harmonized via programs such as Auto-tune and Melodyne. The latter is a particularly powerful and user-friendly program, which I love using as a way to add professional sheen to home studio recordings. But in the commercial world, much of today’s studio technology, somewhat akin to digital special effects in movies, is by its massive overuse, moving the craft of pop music backwards.

To refer back to Idiocracy, I wonder what pop music’s long-term future is. Or the lack thereof.

NEWS YOU CAN USE: How to Make a Bow and Arrow By Hand.

TAXPROF ROUNDUP: The IRS Scandal, Day 1031.

WELL, IT’S NOT AS IF SHE’S GOING TO TELL THE TRUTH: “Who wants to take a stab at explaining why, when Clinton is marketing herself as more electable than Sanders, the polling suggests that it’s the other way around?”

MICHAEL NEEDHAM: Religious Liberty In America: The Next Chapter. It’s Impossible To Be Neutral When The Left Is On Offense.

In the minds of many moderate American voters, and certainly the political class in Washington, the Republican Party has a big problem: Whenever it seems to have figured out a formula for success, uncomfortable debates over so-called social issues raised by party-base activists seem to get in the way. In 2012 and 2014, it was the Republican Party’s supposed fixation with contraception. More recently, the issue du jour has been gay marriage.

Buying into the theory that active engagement on these issues is a losing battle that will do more harm than good, the Republican leadership has tried to avoid these thorny issues without alienating its base, to little avail. In 2010, for example, Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels argued that Barack Obama’s successor in the White House “would have to call a truce on the so-called social issues.” The base never got over Daniels’s remark, and Daniels never mounted a presidential campaign.

With last year’s Supreme Court’s decision in Obergefell v. Hodges, some Republicans believe it is now finally possible to retreat from the marriage fight and achieve that long-desired, and politically salving, truce. Ohio Governor John Kasich has argued that “now that the issue of gay marriage is kind of off the table, we’re kind of down to one social issue,” a positive development that, he argues, leaves the party more room to address other concerns like childhood education, the environment, and infant mortality. Republican consultant John Feehery has written: “The Supreme Court has decided that everybody deserves a right to have a family, no matter what their sexual orientation. So be it. Let’s move on.”

Are they right? Have we reached Governor Daniel’s truce? Is it time to move on?

Alas, moving on is not so easy for some Americans. Moving on wasn’t an option for the Catholic Church a decade ago, when the Massachusetts Supreme Court imposed a new definition of marriage equating same-sex unions with those between husband and wife. After that decision, the Church was forced to abandon its adoption services due to laws requiring that it place kids with same-sex couples in contravention of its teachings. Moving on has not been an option for Aaron and Melissa Klein, the owners of an Oregon bakery who were forced under state anti-discrimination law to shut down their business because they could not in good conscience violate their Christian faith by participating in a same-sex wedding.

Read the whole thing.

TED CRUZ ON A BROKERED CONVENTION: “Any time you hear someone talking about a brokered convention it is the Washington establishment in a fevered frenzy. They’re really frustrated because all of their chosen candidates, all of their golden children, the voters keep rejecting. And so they seized on this master plan. We go to a brokered convention and the DC power brokers will drop someone in who is exactly to the liking of the Washington establishment. If that happens we will have a manifest revolt on our hands…. If you want to beat Donald Trump here’s how you do it: You beat Donald Trump with the voters.”

Plus, from the comments: “To say Romney overplayed his hand is assuming he had one to begin with.”

TRUMP TALKS ABOUT LIBEL REFORM, EVERYONE SCREAMS FASCISM. OBAMA ACTUALLY DOES STUFF TO CENSOR SPEECH, AND IT’S CRICKETS. How Fiduciary Rule May Censor Financial Broadcasters Like Dave Ramsey. “Experts both for and against the rule I have talked to agree its broad reach could extend to financial media personalities who offer tips to individual audience members, a group that includes not just Ramsey but TV hosts like Suze Orman and Jim Cramer, as well as many other broadcasters who opine on business and investment matters.”

THOUGHTS ON Hillary’s Casual Relationship With The Law. She should go to jail, not the White House.

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JUST THREE DAYS LEFT UNTIL the launch of LevinTV.

ALTERNATE HEADLINE: BARACK OBAMA ACCUSES FELLOW DEMOCRAT BERNIE SANDERS OF LIVING IN AN ALTERNATE REALITY.

Shot: Obama accuses economy skeptics of living in ‘alternative reality.’*

—Headline, Washington Examiner, yesterday.

Chaser: Real Unemployment Is Over 10 Percent; Wages Fall For Most Workers.

—Headline, Bernie Sanders’ campaign site, September 4th, 2015.

As Timothy Carey of the Examiner tweets, “Gee. I wonder why all these working-class Democrats are looking at Trump these days.”

* Mind you, this is the president who believes his mere presence impacts ocean levels; who thinks letting Iran have the bomb is a super cool and groovy; whose former advisor, now on Hillary’s campaign staff, is a UFO conspiracy theorist; and whose “science” “czar” wants to fire rockets filled with pollution into the upper atmosphere to solve global warming. The alternate reality this administration inhabits makes the Star Trek Mirror Universe look like Disneyworld.

MEDIA APPARENTLY UNAWARE THAT AMERICA HAS SEEN HOTLY CONTESTED PRIMARIES BEFORE.

To be fair, there’s no limit to topics on which the media is unaware. See also, Michael Crichton’s Gell-Mann Amnesia Effect.

Related: Former NY Times Reporter: Media Too Soft on Trump’s Wealth, Possible Mob Ties to Hotel Business in Vegas.

ARE WE FACING THE END OF THE WEST AS WE KNOW IT? “Right now, we are two or three bad elections away from the end of NATO, the end of the European Union and maybe the end of the liberal world order as we know it.” Well, the West has had a pretty lousy ruling class — which, among other things, doesn’t seem to value the existence of the West very much — for quite a while.

WHEN P.C. LEADS TO RACIST SEXUAL STEREOTYPES: University denies racism in expulsion of two black students accused of sexual assault.

Earlier this year, two African-American students filed a lawsuit against their university, alleging racism played a role in the school’s decision to expel them for sexual assault.

The two students had what they described as consensual sex with a white female, and even though the woman bragged to other students about the encounter and every witness present the night of the encounter said it was consensual, the students were expelled.

Now the University of Findlay in Ohio has responded in court to the allegations, denying the most egregious claims.

The lawsuits keep accumulating.

MEMO TO BERNIE SANDERS: Conservatives Also Oppose Corporate Welfare.