Trump enters the stage

Wendy, mischief is bred young, and 16 is old enough to cause damage. The point I was trying to make is, that the seeds of a paralleled situation kept growing. That’s why they put young people in prison just the same. There are 5 year old murderers out there.

That Assange is dead would surely been known by now, he had too many contacts, including the embassy in London he was holes up in.

But I guess anything is possible.

(CNN) Of late, House Republicans have experienced something of an uptick in expectations – as the party’s base has stirred to life amid the battle over the confirmation of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh and President Donald Trump’s relentless focus on a caravan of people moving toward the nation’s southern border in hopes of gaining entry.

“This will be the election of the caravan, Kavanaugh, law and order, tax cuts, and common sense,” Trump said on the campaign trail in recent days.

There’s no question that there has been some marginal narrowing of things like the generic ballot test in recent national polls, movement that suggests that the most catastrophic outcome for House Republicans – seat losses upward of 40 – are less likely today than, say, a month ago.

In that vein, some Republicans seized on new data from a poll of 69 battleground House districts by The Washington Post and the Schar School that shows 50% of voters backing the Democratic candidate in their district and 47% supporting the GOP candidate.

That 3-point gap seems like really good news for a party that has faced, at times, double-digit deficits in the generic ballot. Right? Wrong – on a couple of fronts.

  1. This is not a generic ballot question
    The generic ballot tests goes like this: “If the election were today, would you vote for the Democratic or Republican candidate running in your district?” This is not that. The Post story on the poll notes: “Surveys identified the major-party candidates by name in each district.” So, in each of these 69 battleground seats, the respondents were given the actual names of the two major party candidates on the ballot and asked to choose which candidate they would prefer. Then those numbers were aggregated into the total percentage choosing the named Democratic candidate in their districts and the total percentage choosing the Republican one.

  2. These districts are not 50-50 partisan splits
    Lost, I think, amid the focus on the 50%-47% number is the fact that of these 69 districts, 63 of them are currently controlled by Republicans. Forty-eight of them were carried by Trump in 2016. And in that election, the Republican candidates took 56% of the vote in these 69 seats as compared to just 41% for the Democrats. This is not neutral ground – or anything close to it. These are seats that, in the main, Republicans, in anything close to a status quo national political environment, would have very little worry about winning. That these districts are even marginally competitive speaks to the tilt of the playing field; that the Democratic candidates have a lead – albeit a narrow one – shows just how difficult this environment still is for Republicans.

One other point worth considering here: The 3-point Democratic edge is statistically unchanged from the 50%-46% advantage in these 69 districts that the Post-Schar poll found in the beginning of this month. Also unchanged is the fact that women are the reason for Democrats’ lead; women went for the Democratic candidate by 15 points in the earlier poll and favor the Democratic candidates by 13 points – 55% to 42% – in this latest survey.

What the Post-Schar polling finds then is not good news for Republicans but good news for Democrats. In the battle for the House, the terrain of which should overwhelmingly favor Republicans, Democrats are running even or even slightly ahead. And that fact hasn’t changed throughout a month that, broadly speaking, has been a good one for Republican efforts to gin up excitement and intensity in their base.

The Point: Numbers don’t always tell the story that a cursory glance suggests they do. Or the story you want them to.

Ccoming down to a kind of pseudo reality- or ?

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Ford Says American Steel Is Now the Most Expensive in the World Thanks to Trump

Michael Ballaban
Today 10:10am
Filed to:TMS

Expensive trade wars, who the shorts REALLY want to win, and burning BMWs. This is the Morning Shift for October 23, 2018.

1st Gear: Trade Wars Are Good, And Easy To Win

President Donald Trump started a trade war with China and seemingly the rest of the world, and he began the war by hiking up tariffs on steel and aluminum. While the intended purpose was to “bring steel back” or somesuch, the market forces at work are vastly greater than any mere tariffs that can be thrown at such a globalized commodity.

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The end result? Steel is just way more expensive now, Ford says, according to Bloomberg:

Ford Motor Co. said Donald Trump’s tariffs have made steel more expensive in the U.S. than any other market, escalating the company’s criticism of the president’s trade war.

“U.S. steel costs are more than anywhere else in the world,” Joe Hinrichs, Ford’s president of global operations, said Monday at an event marking the start of Ranger pickup production at a factory west of Detroit. He added that Ford is talking to the administration about the tariffs: “We tell them that we need to have competitive costs in our market in order to compete around the world.”

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Bloomberg goes on to note that last month Ford CEO Jim Hackett said that the trade wars have already eaten a billion dollars off of the company’s profit, and that’s with most of its metals already sourced from the U.S.

This is what winning feels like.

2nd Gear: The Ford Ranger Won’t Steal Too Many F-150 Sales, Ford Thinks

This is mostly unrelated to the previous gear, but while we’re here talking about Ford, let’s be here, in the moment, to talk about Ford.

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Ford doesn’t think the new 2019 Ford Ranger will eat too much into its goose that lays golden eggs, the Ford F-150.

Also, it came from the same person, Joe Hinrichs, the aforementioned head of Ford’s global operations, speaking at the same event, but this time to a different publication. From Automotive News:

Ford Motor Co. doesn’t believe the midsize Ranger will steal much business from its profit-generating full-size F-series trucks when the smaller pickup returns to North American showrooms early next year.

“There always will be some substitution, but this is more of a lifestyle vehicle for people who want to use it for different purposes,” Joe Hinrichs, Ford’s president of global operations, said Monday at an event celebrating the Ranger’s expected start of production here next week. “The F-150’s gotten bigger over time and more expensive. We believe there’s room now to slot the Ranger in very nicely in the showroom.”

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While the new Ranger won’t exactly be cheap, starting at around $26,000, its big sibling, the F-150, has gotten so monumentally huge and expensive that Ford doesn’t think they’ll eat into each other too much.

Okay, okay, so “monumentally huge and expensive” means it’s got a base price of around $28,000, just $2,000 more than a Ranger, but Hinrichs is right. They’re different trucks for different people. I’m sure Ford will be fine.

3rd Gear: Dyson Wants to Build Cars in Singapore (?)

Dyson, the company that makes the vacuums and the weirdly over-powered bathroom hand dryer things that just spray water everywhere, also has a multi-billion dollar electric car program, in case you forgot. They want to build three electric cars entirely from scratch, and they’ve already made the crucial step of being very British and getting an old World War II airfield as a test track.

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Dyson hadn’t yet said where it was going to build cars, if it ever does. But CEO James Dyson is a prominent Brexiteer, so in keeping with that Patriotic™ theme, you’d expect it to be built by striking coal workers in Yorkshire or something.

But no.

The cars are going to be built in Singapore, the Guardian says:

The British manufacturer chose Singapore because of its proximity to “high-growth markets” in Asia, the chief executive, Jim Rowan, said in a memo to staff on Tuesday. The plant will be completed in 2020, with the car to be launched in 2021.

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The Guardian goes on to say that Dyson already has a plant there, so it makes some semblance of sense for the company.

4th Gear: A Private Equity Firm Buys Magnetti Marelli

Magnetti Marelli is a parts supplier owned by Fiat Chrysler Automobiles. Or rather, it was owned by FCA, because now it is own by private equity firm KKR, through Calsonic, Reuters reports:

Japan’s Calsonic Kansei, owned by U.S. private equity firm KKR, has agreed to buy Fiat Chrysler’s Magneti Marelli for 6.2 billion euros ($7.1 billion) to form the seventh-largest independent car parts supplier.

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Congrats to all the rich people involved.

All the workers… eh.

5th Gear: BMW Recalls Diesels Due To Risk Of Fiery Death

If you own one of these cars, please get it fixed. Fiery death ain’t nothin’ to play around with.

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Reverse: Surely This Can Never Happen Again (It Will Happen Again)

On this day 89 years ago, the stock market completely tanked, kicking off the Great Depression. Obviously we’ve all learned our lesson since then.

Neutral: What Should Cars Be Made Out Of?

Clearly, steel is out of the question. It’s too expensive. I propose we make them out of wood. Wood can be a sustainable resource if harvested properly, and Morgans are good cars. The logic of this argument cannot be defeated.

6TH GEAR: ICYMI
Why Soldiers Carry Heavier Loads

Yes Meno, listen to those polls created by libtard MSM, the same polls who were wrong about the 2016 election cuz they’re so reliable, right? :laughing: :laughing: :laughing:

Wendy You have got a point there, but Fox News is just as bad and that corroborates the early prediction I had , that the Trumpian neo Kantian is not working, as attached to a escape route via pragmatic utility. Forgive the philosophic addendum, from which I have difficulty to get away from

As a consequence , he has under lying issues!

But maybe the Republicans can find a way , way out.

Fox News

POLITICSPublished October 23, 2018 Last Update 8 hrs ago
October surprise? 5 things that could rock the midterms
Kaitlyn Schallhorn By Kaitlyn Schallhorn | Fox News

Continue Reading Below

From the growing caravan of migrants making its way toward America’s southern border to a pledge of new tax cuts for middle-income Americans, the midterm season could yet hold a few twists and turns between now and Election Day.

The Nov. 6 elections are widely seen as a referendum on the Trump administration and Republican policies pushed in the past two years. Democrats hope to take control of the House and Senate, where Republicans hold a narrow lead.

But a series of developments could tilt the final outcome. Thousands of migrants are heading to the U.S. border seeking asylum, tensions with multiple foreign nations seem ready to boil over and Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election is nearing a close.

Read on for a look at five potential October surprises.

Mueller drops a bombshell
Continue Reading Below

Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election appears to be wrapping up as he reportedly is readying his team’s findings.
Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election appears to be wrapping up as he reportedly is readying his team’s findings. (AP Photo/Charles Dharapak)

Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian involvement in the 2016 presidential election has continued for more than a year — and he’s reportedly close to delivering his core findings.

This is likely to happen after the midterms. A pair of anonymous U.S. officials told Bloomberg that Mueller is getting ready to answer the two questions on everyone’s minds: whether Trump actually obstructed justice, and if he or his campaign colluded with Russia to win the White House.

But while the final product is not expected until after the elections, any hints about the findings or additional charges could invigorate Democrats – or even rally Republicans convinced the probe is a “witch hunt.” Meanwhile, if Democrats take the House of Representatives in November, party leaders are expected to re-open the probe into alleged collusion between Russian officials and the 2016 Trump campaign, calling back key witnesses, looking into Twitter messages between Donald Trump Jr. and WikiLeaks and allowing public hearings with top Trump officials.

FOX NEWS MIDTERM ELECTIONS HEADQUARTERS

So far, Mueller’s team has secured six guilty pleas and verdicts, including from four former Trump campaign advisers, and one jury conviction. He has pending indictments against more than two dozen others and three Russian companies.

Caravan confrontation escalates
Central American migrants walking to the U.S. start their day departing Ciudad Hidalgo, Mexico, Sunday, Oct. 21, 2018. Despite Mexican efforts to stop them at the border, about 5,000 Central American migrants resumed their advance toward the U.S. border early Sunday in southern Mexico. (AP Photo/Moises Castillo)

As thousands of migrants continue their trek through Mexico toward the U.S. border, Trump has threatened to call in the military for reinforcement and slash aid to El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras. The confrontation could escalate in the days ahead.

Trump has made illegal immigration a rallying cry for his Republican base throughout the midterm elections, and the thousands of Central Americans traveling toward the border have become a highly visible example. He’s heaped the blame for illegal immigration and the caravan, specifically, on Democrats.

“Every time you see a Caravan, or people illegally coming, or attempting to come, into our Country illegally, think of and blame the Democrats for not giving us the votes to change our pathetic Immigration Laws!” Trump tweeted. “Remember the Midterms!”

DEMOCRATS AVOID SPARRING WITH TRUMP ON CARAVAN AS MIDTERM NEARS

While Trump’s continued focus on the caravan — particularly on social media — could rouse Republican voters, it could also do the opposite, boosting turnout among Democrats who seem more sympathetic toward the many migrants who have said they are fleeing widespread violence, poverty and corruption in their home countries.

“I think you run the risk of angering minority voters across the board, Latino, black and Asian-Americans and also alienating and distancing from whites, including conservatives and moderates now that they see what’s happening with the family separations,” Matt Barreto, co-founder of the research firm Latino Decision, told The Associated Press.

If the past is any indicator, the caravan is likely to disperse some as it continues through Mexico, with groups traveling at different rates and some choosing to seek asylum in Mexico.

New Trump tax cuts?
Ahead of the midterm elections, Trump just promised a new round of tax cuts for “middle-income people.”

With Congress not in session until after the elections, Trump has conceded there wouldn’t be a vote until after Nov. 6. But the plan is clearly aimed at middle-class voters, and Trump said Monday he’s looking at a 10 percent cut, with plans to unveil a new measure within the next two weeks.

Trump said the package will be a “major tax cut for middle-income people,” and unlike the 2017 tax overheal, won’t focus on businesses. He said his administration, House Speaker Paul Ryan and Rep. Kevin Brady, the Republican chair of the House Ways and Means Committee, are all “working on it.”

Impeachment talk heats up
The possibility of Democrats gaining control of the House after the election would give them an opportunity to launch impeachment proceedings. And there have been increasing whispers about that scenario.

Still, in several key races, Democrats want to distance themselves from the idea in order not to alienate moderate and conservative voters.

Texas Senate candidate Beto O’Rourke, who faces incumbent Sen. Ted Cruz in a fierce battle, has found a way to dance around the topic. He said while he would vote for impeaching Trump, he’s not in favor of actually initiating the proceedings at the moment.

TRUMP WARNS ‘MARKET WOULD CRASH’ IF DEMOCRATS IMPEACH HIM

But a more open embrace of impeachment by Democratic leaders and candidates could boost GOP turnout.

Republicans have used the possibility of impeachment as fodder in their campaigns. During a debate between Florida gubernatorial candidates Andrew Gillum and Ron DeSantis, the former Republican congressman accused his opponent of not being able to work with Trump to get things done for the state if he’s elected.

“You need to be able to work with the president,” DeSantis said. “Andrew can’t do that. He wants to impeach Trump, he’s always saying bad things about him.”

Foreign tensions flare
An escalation of tensions with a foreign nation could also impact the upcoming elections — as multiple relationships hang in the balance.

From trade with China to the pullout from an arms control treaty with Russia to Saudi Arabia’s inconsistent and widely challenged responses to the death of an activist, Trump’s response is pivotal.

What exactly happened to Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, whom Saudi authorities claim died in a fistfight with officials in the consulate in Turkey, has rolled into the midterm elections. Candidates have sparred over criticisms of the administration’s response to Saudi Arabia’s inconsistencies and defense of the United States’ relationship with the Gulf nation.

TRUMP NOT SATISFIED WITH EXPLANATION OF KHASHOGGI’S KILLING

In a debate with her GOP challenger, Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren said the country needs a stronger response to Saudi Arabia and charged Trump “is showing he is not capable.”

But Republican Rep. Geoff Diehl said it’s imperative to “continue to have a relationship” with Saudi Arabia, pointing to the many businesses in Massachusetts that do business in the kingdom.

Additionally, ties between the U.S. and China are continuing down a path of acrimony amid a trade policy kerfuffle and accusations the communist nation plans to influence upcoming elections.

Vice President Mike Pence has accused China of launching an “unprecedented effort” to influence the 2018 and 2020 elections to unseat Trump, warning the communist nation is responding to the president’s tough trade policies.

He pointed to Trump’s tough line on Beijing, particularly Trump’s decision to impose $250 billion in tariffs on goods coming from the country. He said in response, Beijing is using its power “to interfere in the domestic policies of this country and to interfere in the politics of the United States.”

WORLD War 3 fears have been sparked after 50,000 NATO troops arrived in Norway to start one of the biggest military exercises since the Cold War in a huge show of force against Russia.

There is a sense that there is an evolving connection, between war fears, war rattling and the paranoia over the illusive charges of international politics. Can the nature and the intentions behind such be collaborated, or dismissed?

What did I say?

Read more news from CNN
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Scaramucci says Trump is a ‘liar’
By Devan Cole, CNN
Updated 9:54 AM EDT, Wed October 24, 2018

Washington (CNN) Former White House communications director Anthony Scaramucci said Wednesday that President Donald Trump “is a liar” and that he “should probably dial down the lying.”

Appearing on “New Day” to promote his new book, “Trump: The Blue-Collar President,” Scaramucci was asked by CNN’s John Berman about the President’s pattern of spreading falsehoods and what he would call someone who spreads lies.

Scaramucci said such people are “like a rascal, like a scoundrel.”

“I asked you what do you call someone who likes to lie? You said a scoundrel,” Berman replied. “Another thing you could call someone who likes to lie is a liar. Is he a liar?”

“OK, well we both know that he’s telling lies. So if you want me to say he’s a liar, I’m happy to say he’s a liar,” Scaramucci said.

“Nobody should lie. I’m not a big believer in lying. But politicians happen to lie,” he said.

“You want to say that to the camera? To the President?” Berman asks.

“Nobody should lie,” Scaramucci said after turning to the look directly into a camera. “But, you know, you’re a politician now, so politicians lie when their lips are moving, and so all these people lie. But you should probably dial down the lying because you don’t need to. You’re doing a great job for the country. So dial that down, and you’ll be doing a lot better.”

The former White House official said that there’s “an entertainment aspect” to the President’s lying.

“When he goes to a rally like that, you know, there’s a level of embellishment there because he’s playing to the crowd,” he said. “He’s playing for the laughs. And you know, that’s been his persona, that’s been his style. And by the way, you can’t really argue with the success of it.”

Scaramucci left the White House in July 2017 after only 10 days on the job and an infamous, expletive-laden interview he gave to The New Yorker in which he ripped top White House officials by name.

Since then, Scaramucci has remained a visible media figure, often defending Trump but at times making public appeals about curtailing some of his behavior and changing policies.

What did I say about the comic clown entertainer? I f has come home to roost.

But while read my lips is rare, here otnnegsnfor acceptance aa a modus operans. Still, Woodrow Wilson haunts the White house, and it did not fare very well.

Here is the latest poll on expectations regarding the upcoming elections:

FiveThirtyEight’s forecast for the midterms puts the likelihood of Democrats taking the House at more than 70 percent. Their chances of taking the Senate are lower, but Republicans are hardly a lock despite a very favorable map for them. And if Democrats manage to eke out a majority in both houses of Congress, here is the poll’s really bad news for Trump: Half the country wants him impeached.

Now from the press secretary this:

POLITICS
Twitter Explodes After ‘Gaslighter’ Sarah Sanders Accuses CNN Of Dividing America
“So it was bad when Trump implied it might be fun if someone shot Hillary Clinton.”
By Lee Moran
10/25/2018 04:05 AM ET

White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders sparked anger on Wednesday after she accused CNN president Jeff Zucker of dividing America.

Earlier in the day, President Donald Trump called for Americans to “come together in peace and harmony” after authorities seized suspicious packages containing “potential explosive devices” that were sent to CNN and the homes and offices of leading Democrats, including former presidents Barack Obama and Bill Clinton.

Zucker issued a combative response to Trump’s appeal:

Sanders fired back with a tweet, in which she accused Zucker of ignoring Trump’s call and instead choosing to “attack and divide” the country:

Sanders’ response did not go over well on Twitter, where people accused her of hypocrisy, suggested she send the same message to the president and reminded her of all the times Trump has attempted to incite violence:

breitbart.com/politics/2018 … -campaign/

Yes, Fixed, the point is taken, but there is always a cross bleeding between the parties , Mcain was likewise I believe , so was Trump himself a one time democrat I think he changed affiliation five times meaning little except to show that there is great of uncertainty among the representation and what it is really that is being represented. Is it a matter of interest that can be gleaned from such variance, and does that imply one that is more a show of intentional self heading motives, or one that begins with socially constructed acts of benefit?

The deep South was at one time faithfully Democratic , so is it merely a matter of changing labels, due to the content of the dynamics having changed, or is it merely an example of irrefuted presence of some thing much more ominous, the sunset of the political corrected lack of transparency? Such is usually subject of undeniably falsified heavily funded
Political expression , regardless of their validity .

That is the cesspool, and the most that can be said about it, is that its consistent with more mud slinging
then efforts to clarify the reasons and possible outcome of gaining social rather then personal benefits.

I think to a larger part the latter , the need to hold roles of power , is the facade behind which such tremendous shifts occur, irrespective of public support or gain, and this is why, all is in such turmoil now, because it’s election time.

If things don’t turn out well for either party, the fixers can always come in, to gain precious time, to try to minimize the damage by using the public’s loss of memory in direct proportion to regain support.

President Trump derided rival billionaire Tom Steyer as a “wacky” and “crazed & stumbling lunatic” on Sunday, after Steyer – who was one of the prominent liberals to receive a threatening suspicious package last week – said he “absolutely was blaming” Trump for creating an atmosphere in which “anything can bubble up, and anything is bubbling up.”

POLITICO

How a Democratic majority could undermine the Mueller probe
If Democrats retake the House, they want to aggressively open probes into issues the special counsel is also investigating.

By DARREN SAMUELSOHN 10/28/2018 05:04 PM EDT
Adam Schiff
Rep. Adam Schiff, the likely new chairman of the House Intelligence Committee if Democrats win power in November, has signaled plans to focus on unfinished business related to the Russia investigation. | Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

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Democrats have religiously deferred to special counsel Robert Mueller over the last 17 months, hamstrung by their lack of congressional power and expressing faith that the respected investigator will get the job done if left alone.

That could all change after November.

Story Continued Below

If Democrats retake the House in the midterm elections, they’re prepared to use their newfound subpoena power to aggressively open probes into President Donald Trump’s finances and connections to Russia. But doing so — just as Mueller appears to be entering the final laps of his own probe — would create tensions between the special counsel and a newly crowned majority party replenished by scores of freshman lawmakers who rode into Capitol Hill on an anti-Trump wave.

House Democratic aides have been meeting informally in recent months to discuss ways to do their jobs while avoiding stepping on Mueller’s toes in 2019, even toying with the idea of calling the special counsel in for a private bipartisan briefing.

“The House may want to start their oversight by bringing in special counsel Mueller to hear from him,” said former California Rep. Henry Waxman, who chaired the House Oversight Committee during the final two years of the George W. Bush administration and has been meeting informally with House Democrats to discuss investigation strategies.

Potential conflicts could come on many fronts. For starters, Democrats will be eager to see Mueller’s findings and hard-pressed to give him space if he’s not finished yet. If Mueller’s Justice Department supervisors resist making the special counsel’s work public, a clash could emerge.

Perhaps most potentially disruptive: Democrats could cause Mueller problems if they start granting immunity to witnesses whom the special counsel still wants to question or prosecute.

“It’s something that I think we have to handle with great care,” House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) conceded last week during an event at Harvard University.

“We won’t interfere,” the potential next House speaker added. “We shouldn’t. We won’t. But we do have to have one thing that we should all agree on: the truth for the American people and where the truth leads us is another thing.”

Pelosi’s pledge is easier said than done, though, with early signs that the two sides could overlap just as Democrats gear up for an open 2020 presidential primary season.

Democrats on the House Intelligence Committee earlier this year released a “partial list” of more than 70 people, organizations and companies they said Republicans refused to fully pursue as part of their Russia investigation.

California Rep. Adam Schiff, the likely new chairman of the panel if Democrats win power in November, has signaled plans to focus on that unfinished business, including hearings on suspected money laundering at the Trump Organization and issuing a subpoena for communications between the president and his oldest son, Donald Trump Jr., surrounding a 2016 meeting with a Russian attorney who was promising to deliver dirt on Hillary Clinton.

On the House Judiciary Committee, Democrats poised to begin impeachment proceedings have offered up an oversight road map that signals potential conflicts with Mueller. In August, they called for a Justice Department briefing to glean more details about former Trump personal lawyer Michael Cohen’s guilty plea and the allegations that Trump directed him to break campaign finance laws. They’ve also called for an examination into Trump potentially abusing his pardon power, as well as his associates implicated in crimes from the Mueller investigation.

It’s not known to what extent Mueller is probing these areas, but Democrats concede that poking around could inadvertently draw out the special counsel’s own investigative interests far sooner than the special counsel might like.

“It’s a problem I’d like to have one day,” said a senior House Democratic aide.

Come January, Democrats say they will reassess their oversight plans based on the election outcome and to take into account whatever stage Mueller is at in his investigation. They’ll also need to consider whether Attorney General Jeff Sessions and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein remain in their jobs. Trump has signaled interest in changing up his DOJ leadership, a move that would mean new oversight of the special counsel’s investigation.

If history is any guide, an aggressive Congress and the Justice Department don’t always get along, especially when there’s an independent counsel involved.

Already, there are ongoing disputes between Trump-allied Republicans on Capitol Hill and the Justice Department over documents and briefings tied to the origins of the government’s Trump-Russia investigation.

Story Continued Below

Further back, in 2008, Democrats — led by Waxman — argued that President George W. Bush thwarted their investigations into the leak of a covert CIA officer’s identity by invoking executive privilege in response to a subpoena for Vice President Dick Cheney’s testimony to the FBI.

And during the investigations into the Reagan administration’s secret sale of arms to Iran, Congress’ decision to offer immunity in exchange for testimony from retired Marine Corps Lt. Col. Oliver North and Reagan national security adviser John Poindexter drove a federal appeals court to vacate the two officials’ convictions.

Lt. Col. Oliver North
Lt. Col. Oliver North testifies before Congress in the Iran-Contra probe. Congress’ decision to offer immunity to North and John Poindexter later led to their convictions being reversed. | AP Photo

The Watergate scandal was a rare example of the judicial and congressional branches working in tandem. Special prosecutor Leon Jaworski in 1974 even sent a road map of his work with a federal grand jury to the House Judiciary Committee, which helped pave the way for impeachment proceedings and President Richard Nixon’s resignation.

Not all legal experts believe having Congress put its stamp on work that’s simultaneously part of an active law enforcement probe is a bad thing.

“Being supportive of an investigation doesn’t in the end mean deferring to the criminal investigators,” said John Q. Barrett, a former associate counsel who worked under independent counsel Lawrence Walsh during the Reagan-era investigation into secret U.S. arms sales to Iran. “When you’re the minority and powerless to do the investigation, then it’s easy to be cheering for the Justice Department investigation. But when you’re the majority and doing your own House investigation, you may well butt heads.”

Douglas Letter, a recently retired DOJ senior attorney who teaches at Georgetown University Law Center, noted that Congress and Mueller have “totally different goals.”

The congressional investigation is designed to give the American public a report on what happened in the 2016 election and “whether there’s anything political that can be made of it,” he said. Mueller, in the meantime, is a criminal investigator whose job is to identify crimes and prosecute the perpetrators.

But Republicans will be quick to pounce on the earliest whiff of oversight overreach. They’re primed to point out changes in tone from lawmakers who have been deferential to the Justice Department. Schiff, for example, has been insistent that DOJ shouldn’t give up information about core parts of the Mueller investigation.

“If the shoe is on the other foot in a month and a half, let’s see if he stays consistent,” said William Moschella, the former head of Justice Department legislative affairs office during the George W. Bush administration.

Trump allies slammed Pelosi earlier this week after she said during a CNN event that subpoena power was “a great arrow to have in your quiver in terms of negotiating on other subjects.”

“This is what they do in Third World countries. Disgusting concept and a slippery slope that America wants no part of,” Eric Trump wrote on Twitter.

“It’s about politics for them,” Mark Corallo, a former spokesman for the Trump personal legal team and the Bush DOJ, told POLITICO. “If they think there’s political advantage to stepping on the special counsel’s toes, they’ll do it.”

Most observers believe, though, that the Democrats will hold back from causing problems for Mueller, at least for a few months, if they take the majority. Some predicted that Democrats could even try to strike an arrangement with the special counsel to let his team operate for six months or so without significant congressional pressure.

For Democrats, though, that’s a narrow window before other demands start taking over, said Paul McNulty, a former George W. Bush deputy attorney general.

“There won’t be any purchase of a long-term peace,” he said.

Dark Knight, Westworld) to paint a very grim picture of the dangers of development, reliance upon, application of and usage of Artificial Intelligence in our society today.

According to a previously released statement about the film, Paine says, “I hope we inspire people to keep technological tools working on behalf of the greater good and stay aware of what’s happening in the meantime.” Yet the tone of the film seems to somewhat override such a noble goal to which the former part of the sentence aspires.

While there is some quick reference to the benefit that AI can provide mankind such as more accurate disease diagnosis and lessening of fatal car crashes via self-driving cars (which one would have the clear hope that the data relating to the number of self-driving car crashes changes fast in order to support such a statement), the majority of the film leans heavily toward doom and gloom with such terms as “Faustian bargain” used through the documentary to describe our interaction with advanced technology.

SpaceX founder and chief executive Elon Musk speaks after announcing Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maezawa as the first private passenger on a trip around the moon, Monday, Sept. 17, 2018, in Hawthorne, Calif. Musk is also adamant regarding a conservative approach to Artificial Intelligence. (AP Photo/Chris Carlson)

The view that machines will dominate us because they will become “smarter” or simply teach themselves to pick their own targets and release missiles that will annihilate at will via autonomous weapons is reinforced throughout Do You Trust This Computer. Google is alluded to as being the dark, secretive seat of which personal data will be used for harm. And basically, anyone who has a job, no matter what their profession, will become unemployed.

And that’s the lighter side.

The issue with this documentary is, not that it gets any of the above completely wrong but that it offers no counter-views nor calls-to-action in an era of empowerment of individual voice, cultural paradigm shifts and growing enthusiastic movements pertaining to social good that could be harnessed to drive a better way in AI. It seems the filmmakers’ objective is paralysis by fear instead.

There are no directives about, for example, the importance of contacting policymakers to encourage proper regulation. There is no probing into why most of the life-like robots injected with AI always seem to take the shape of one’s (read: the male creator’s) ideal human you can finally get to do what you want. And the film misses a real opportunity for depth by not exploring how bias and subconscious make-up of engineers creating such algorithms impact the applications of them, how that can be combatted and the psycho-social reasons behind our need for and desire to control and replicate intelligence in the first place. That is the foundation for any discussion within artificial intelligence because it is the root cause for all that springs forth in terms the drive for continued expansion and application.

Ben Goertzel, chief scientist of Hanson Robotics Inc., left, interacts with the company’s humanoid robot “Sophia” during the Rise conference in Hong Kong, China, on Tuesday, July 10, 2018. The conference runs through July 12.

Where such other tech-docs succeed at creating connection is where Do You Trust Your Computer falls a bit short in that it seems to have no more cards to play than that of generalized fear. In an era of racial tension and identity politics, perhaps tie-ing the concerns around the technology in terms of how it relates specifically to that such particular emotionally-charged area could do more to elicit the concern the film seems so desperate to provoke rather than spreading around overall terror. One cannot reach people today just based on general mayhem because, unfortunately, this is the now the everyday occurrence (see: record-breaking hurricanes, bombs sent to media and much, much more). Such social movements that the film seems to be trying to spark typically need to be tied to a specific cultural narrative in order to take hold, and it does not.

This documentary is more a look at what, primarily, Caucasian males in prime positions (mixed with a sprinkling of a couple of Caucasian females) fear about Artificial Intelligence with no infusion of other minds, values and concerns about the technology from both inside and outside of the United States. Thus, the homogeneity also makes for a pacing that is, at times, monotonous.

New Jersey Senator Cory Booker who has expressed concern about the links of algorithms with prison sentencing and profiling. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)

While the interview subjects are noteworthy and the direction is solid, somehow this piece comes off as just a bit self-aggrandizing like a cold parent who glumly says, “I told you so” after a misbehaved child touches a stove to really see if it’s hot or not even after the parent says not to touch it. There is no real empathy here or deeper explanations around concerns and insights that are needed to help truly create change and understanding within the massively problematic area of AI that is so very much fraught with issues.

As viewers might sit and ponder after viewing such a film, perhaps that greater questions we should all be asking ourselves is not only how to do more than just worry about the potential ending of society by machines but also what to do, simultaneously, to make society patently better each day so that even makes it worth preserving anyway.

The achievement to synthesize by appearently inconsistent functional -utilitarian informational derivatives and pragmatic common sense notions, presenting a processed time testing of increasing rates of change of technical development, may present a continuous applied format, and get rid of increasing senses of uncertainty and fear. It is imperative to bypass missed variables which still present aggregates of overly wide assumptions.

’ forecasting power trends and public sentiment .’

In reference to the basic elevated mistrust of the intrusion of technology into political processes. (As in the basic charge leveled against Ms. Clinton’s negligence with her telephone.) - starting the expansion into the collusive efforts between suppression and analysis.
the truth versus fake contest between the center and the periphery; the liberal and conservative, and the nationalistic vs. the global signifiers.

Clinton reference is mine.

As there are already fear related opinions that express the likelihood of continuing tech intrusion into the upcoming Congressional election, the question is bound to arise of how the effect of uncertainty of this may bear on the outcome of the election, regardless of the relative truth or falsity of such a possibility.

There may come other opinions which again produce convincing arguments regarding the probable reality behind such possible conflation between various levels of probability/improbability: causing a reductio absurdum.

Artifizielintelligenz existiert schon. Es gibt es zwitschen den Bezeichnungen und Nuetzhaftlichkeiten. Werthe ohne Bekanntheit oder Dastellung, oder nie schlafend… Sie schaffen sich einen Neunen Realitaet aus unserer Nichtshaftlichkeit.

That’s good. But when I am having insomnia, it is when everyone can pretend to be unconcerned, and unconnected. A reversal can/may take place on a Universal transformative metamorphosis, and that is maybe the missing transcendental link sought for .

Artifizielintelligenz existiert schon. Es gibt es zwitschen den Bezeichnungen und Nuetzhaftlichkeiten. Werthe ohne Bekanntheit oder Dastellung, oder nie schlafend… Sie schaffen sich einen Neunen Realitaet aus unserer Nichtshaftlichkeit.

President Donald Trump’s job approval rating plunged 4 percentage points last week amid a wave of violence, the latest troubling signal for Republican chances in upcoming midterm elections.

White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders held her first briefing in 26 days on Monday, following the murder of 11 people at a Jewish synagogue in Pittsburgh over the weekend. Not surprisingly, things went off the rails almost immediately after she began taking questions.

“This atrocity was a chilling act of mass murder, it was an act of hatred, and above all it was an act of evil,” Sanders said, at times choking up. “We all have a duty to confront anti-Semitism in all its forms…our nation mourns the loss of these extraordinary Americans.”

The nice sentiment lasted approximately 4.1 seconds, and the rest of the briefing was full of exchanges like this one, in which Sanders exploded at the suggestion that President Donald Trump isn’t “unifying” the country and proceeded to spit out the same drivel (90 percent of what the media says about Trump is negative! No one blames Bernie Sanders for Steve Scalise’s shooting!!!) that you could have found on MAGA Twitter since we found out suspected mailbomber Cesar Sayoc was a Trump superfan.

And so it goes on.

There is no way this problem can be solved long term .

Short term yes, by invictivrs, political cowering, simulated guesses and approximations, even now, the puzzling anxiety ridden atmosphere blown up to unrecognizable dimensions, philosophy become life become a zoo filled with dead end zones of unphilosophical enigma.

No, the dialogue must produce more then an assumed theme based on technical manpower shifting zombies living in insecurity depending on whims of broken down signs of derelict monuments to fallen denied heroes, the huge gamble of wait and see if they can live with it may turn the triangle up side down, the absurd will come back to haunt.

And if they can live in a secured thought out world without poaching vainly from their brother next door they do and can produce measured and controlled in a non wasteful market where 1 or 2 children will suffice.

Otherwise there be a chain down from controllers to the controlled , and at the very top big brother.

Or: The whole thing will collapse from greed and avarice.

It has to come from inside, substantial lack of covered inequality will not work because the soul of man will be stolen orbit will look like.

Can psychic realism tale center stage?

Like the Shadow, haunting by the hunted, it the race to find the rattiest , no longer human but living in a lonely convergence , bare sunlight illusive chains of spiraling grey vapor , the haunt is all about us, living as if,
as if the auto, Mata matters, Abstract
Mata is Stata’s matrix language. In the Mata Matters column, we show how Mata can be used interactively to solve problems and as a programming language to add new features to Stata. In this quarter’s column, we look at the programming implications of the floating-point, base-2 encoding that modern computers at ya Matt’s tarts data, infusion.

Of pleasing delight here and there, the signified not looking drastically but withering away from basic rot. No no no the new means absolute lobotomy of the past in abstraction, linger though the scent and the faint glow of undertow.

Philosophy

Primary secondary process
Universalization = opposites
Inervening variable shortcut
Boundaries - melting boundaries
Only top down trickle done
Short circuit - -memory - lost or stored in different file for upload
Shift to wider signifiers,
Older signifiers wider- more presumptive acceptance.
Changes in space time upon more
Shared presumption -hypothetical
Its on ok

Intellectual bonding or enclosing of
Mutually exclusive content
Alphaville scenario old hat

Carl Solomon

Brilliantly founded by Trump by contradiction brining the level down to where people get in touch with the widest possible logical foundation of denial and projection

Alteration or variation between storages short and long term forgotten and remembered with as many found fill ins makes and breaks space time

Different storages universal or regional~leads to Ayer/Russel reductio.

… …

… … …

… … … …

.
Yet from an aesthetic point of view, its binding to differentiate object from the overall subject, and is it that the focus of the feminine defines what the object is, the male objective of carefully calibrating what is, what it is?

Or uncovering it disassociating it from the predisposing one background, causing all kinds of trouble trump disassociating the transsexual being from their opposites have any bearing on representation. As art form?

It deprives the formal realization of intentional pre envisaged boundaries of the era of enlightenment enlightenment at least in art, the ideal testing in the phenomenal congruence.

That leaves parties to the aesthetic presumed vulnerability .

But can a focus be had to either when the edges are not blended?

That’s why excursions into real expression and impression, causing strange abstractions of what they really intended.

An existential failure .

Art for its sake turning into a misnomer.

Does that verify the preponderemce and place the signal which signifies the preferred objective?

Can distance and time emuliate finer contours again? To be great again or not to be, that is the question. But what’s so great about being (grate).

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Trump shocks with racist new ad days before midterms
Analysis by Stephen Collinson, CNN
Updated 1:58 AM EDT, Thu November 01, 2018

(CNN) In the most racially charged national political ad in 30 years, President Donald Trump and the Republican Party accuse Democrats of plotting to help people they depict as Central American invaders overrun the nation with cop killers.

The new spot, tweeted by the President five days before the midterm elections, is the most extreme step yet in the most inflammatory closing argument of any campaign in recent memory.

The Trump campaign ad is the latest example of the President’s willingness to lie and fear-monger in order to tear at racial and societal divides; to embrace demagoguery to bolster his own political power and the cause of the Republican midterm campaign.

The ad – produced for the Trump campaign – features Luis Bracamontes, a Mexican man who had previously been deported but returned to the United States and was convicted in February in the slaying to two California deputies.

“I’m going to kill more cops soon,” a grinning Bracamontes is shown saying in court as captions flash across the screen reading “Democrats let him into our country. Democrats let him stay.”

The ad recalls the notorious “Willie Horton” campaign ad financed by supporters of the George H.W. Bush campaign in the 1988 presidential election. Horton was a man and convicted murderer who committed rape while furloughed under a program in Massachusetts where Democratic nominee Michael Dukakis was governor.

The ad has since come to be seen as one of the most racially problematic in modern political history since it played into white fear and African-American stereotypes. It was regarded at the time as devastating to the Dukakis campaign.

Trump’s ad, while just as shocking as the Horton spot, carries added weight since, unlike its 1988 predecessor, it bears the official endorsement of the leader of the Republican Party – Trump – and is not an outside effort. Given that Trump distributed it from his Twitter account, It also comes with all the symbolic significance of the presidency itself.

In a first reaction, Democratic National Committee Chairman Tom Perez said the ad was a sign of desperation and suggested that Trump was losing the argument over health care that is at the center of the Democratic campaign.

“This is distracting, divisive Donald at his worst,” Perez said on CNN’s “Cuomo Prime Time.”

“This is fear mongering. … They have to fear monger and his dog whistle of all dog whistles is immigration. This has been Donald Trump’s playbook for so long.”

“Family unification to invasion”
The Trump ad also flashes to footage of the migrant caravan of Central American asylum seekers that is currently in Mexico, which Trump says is preparing an invasion of the United States, implying that everyone in the column of people fleeing repression, poverty and economic blight is bent on murder and serious crime on US soil.

“Who else would Democrats let in?” a caption asks.

A source close to the White House told CNN’s Jim Acosta that the web ad was produced by Jamestown Associates for the Trump campaign for the midterms and was designed to fit into Trump’s broader immigration push and to change the argument from “family unification to invasion.”

“It’s clearly working. We are all talking about it and not health care,” the source said.

Trump has repeatedly warned that the caravan is laden with criminals or also includes Middle Eastern terrorists. He has offered no evidence for such claims, however, and even admitted last week there is no proof to support them.

Trump fills final days of midterms with false promises and divisive rhetoric
The President has also often used racially suggestive rhetoric in his tweets and launched his presidential campaign in 2015 with a tirade against Mexicans. But he accuses the media, which points out his frequent falsehoods and flaming rhetoric, of being to blame for national divides.

Controversy over the new ad is certain to explode across the final days of the election in which polls suggest Democrats could take back the House of Representatives but Republicans could keep or even expand their Senate majority.

The new campaign ad was the culmination of a day on which the President staked out ever more extreme positions.

He took advantage of his role as commander-in-chief to promise to triple the number of troops to 15,000 that he has pledged to send to the southern border to repel the caravan – which is still hundreds of miles away.

He also made a dubious claim of presidential power to reinforce his vow to change the Constitution on his own to end birthright citizenship that is guaranteed by the 14th Amendment.

A sign of weakness?
Trump’s combustible strategy is coinciding with an energetic final campaign swing featuring 11 rallies that opened in Florida on Wednesday night.

His increasingly inflammatory tactics are allowing him to refocus next Tuesday’s election on his chosen issues, after a week of serial bombings and shootings that drowned out his closing argument.

Still, Democrats are increasingly confident five days out that they will take back the House, which they lost in the 2010 midterms.

“Up until today, I would have said, 'if the election were held today, we would win,” former and possibly future speaker Nancy Pelosi said on “The Late Show” on CBS Tuesday.

“What now I’m saying is, we will win.”

Nancy Pelosi is right. Democrats should win the House on Tuesday.
One way of looking at Trump’s increasingly frantic approach is that it is a sign of political weakness, because it seems to be a bid to drive up turnout in red state Senate races but might imply that tight House elections, that could be affected by such rhetoric, are out of reach.

However, everyone wrote Trump off in 2016, and it’s possible his combative approach could defy pollsters again.

In another extraordinary development on Wednesday, the sitting President lashed out at the House speaker of his own party five days before an election, in a possible preview of a post-voting blame game.

Paul Ryan had had dismissed the President’s birthright gambit, but Trump told him in a tweet to do more to save the House.

“This is a great way to screw up the message a week before the election,” a senior GOP aide told CNN’s Acosta.

“First the birthright comment itself and now attacking the top Republican in Congress who is trying to save our majority.”

The President insisted he would not blame Ryan if Democrats won the House, though sounded less confident about Republican prospects in that chamber than in the Senate.

“I know we’re doing well in the Senate and it looks like we’re doing OK in the House. We’re going to have to see,” Trump told reporters.

Critics have accused Trump of abusing his power by sending troops to the southern border as part of a campaign stunt on a mission that has yet to be defined and he has implied will feature combat troops, but will in fact be made up of support forces.

But Defense Secretary James Mattis said Wednesday “we don’t do stunts” and said the troops were being sent to offer “practical support” at the request of the Department of Homeland Security.

However, Democratic Rep. Jackie Speier of California accused Trump of squandering taxpayer funds in a desperate bid to buy votes, and predicted the American people would see through the plan.

“We are sending 10 to 15,000 troops, which means we are going to spend between $100 (million) and $150 million so he can have, I guess his surprise, his October surprise,” she said on CNN’s “The Situation Room.”

Trump will Thursday press on with his pre-election blitz in Missouri, where he is trying to take out Democratic Sen. Claire McCaskill in the first of two rallies in the state in the next few days. Before Tuesday he will also visit West Virginia, Indiana twice, Montana, Florida again, Georgia, Tennessee and Ohio.

But two senior GOP sources told CNN’s Jeff Zeleny that the President had been asked to steer clear of Arizona and Nevada amid concern he could hurt rather than help Republicans locked in tight Senate races.

Trump : as the playboy.
Of the western world.

Rehearsal for Playboy of the Western World

The riotous history of The Playboy of the Western World
When first staged in Dublin in 1907 JM Synge’s play caused a riot. Two years later its author was dead but his play was soon to go global
Declan Kiberd

Fri 23 Sep 2011 17.55 EDT First published on Fri 23 Sep 2011 17.55 EDT
'Whenever a country produces a man of genius," said WB Yeats of his friend John Millington Synge, “that man is never like the country’s idea of itself.”

Ireland in 1907 saw itself as ready for self-rule and it expected its artists to promote the image of a steady, sober, self-reliant people. Instead, with The Playboy of the Western World, Synge gave them a play in which a village loon splits his father’s head open with a spade, runs away, tells people he “killed his da” and is promptly installed as a hero by excitable women and drunken men. Worse still, this drama was staged not in some backstreet art-house, but at the Abbey, Ireland’s national theatre, one of whose mission statements was to show that Ireland was not the home of buffoonery but of an ancient idealism.

Even before the opening night of Saturday 26 January 1907, trouble was brewing. Synge’s relation with nationalists had always been uneasy. They didn’t like the frenchified themes of his earlier plays such as The Shadow of the Glen, in which a frustrated young wife in the Wicklow mountains walks away from her home and marriage into the arms of a tramp whose name she doesn’t even know.

Nationalists also resented the implication behind the Abbey project that there could ever be an Irish national literature in English, the language of the coloniser. Synge believed that there could, albeit in an English as Irish as it is possible for that language to be. So he created sentences in which standard English was reconfigured by peasants who were thinking still in Irish: “Is it you that’s going to town tomorrow?” “Is it tomorrow that you’re going to town?” Emphasis is achieved not by tonal underlining but by bringing the key word forward to the start of the sentence.

His labours to appease Irish Ireland were in vain. Protesters against his new play uttered “vociferations in Gaelic”, according to newspaper reports. They insisted that the Irish were not by nature a violent people – and on the second night they stormed the stage and rushed the actors to prove their point. Some of the actors were in silent agreement with them. The Abbey had, after all, recruited many stalwarts from the ranks of advanced nationalism, who had joined in the belief that it was one of the few liberated zones in an occupied country. No wonder that members of the cast felt conflicted. One Abbey hand had warned that the bad temper and violence on stage (the Playboy tries to repeat his murder before being burned by a lighted sod) would inevitably spill over into the pit.

Throughout Ireland, in the aftermath of the Playboy riots, local councils passed motions condemning the Abbey. Catholics took particular offence at the way in which a writer of Protestant Ascendancy background causes the Playboy, Christy Mahon, to utter such imprecations as: “With the help of God, I killed him surely, and may the holy immaculate mother intercede for his soul.” But others were outraged too. Some writers who had admired Synge’s earlier work felt that now he had gone too far. “It is not against a nation that he blasphemes,” wrote Patrick Pearse in a journal of the Gaelic League, “so much as against the moral order of the universe.” The Irish Times’s critic identified one cause of the trouble: “It is as if a mirror were held up to our faces and we found ourselves hideous. We fear to face the thing. We scream.”

Synge had some idea of what might happen. “My next play will make them hop,” he promised a friend. The role of Christy Mahon, father-slayer, was played by an actor who was the Woody Allen of the theatre, no more than five feet three inches in height and one normally cast in comic roles. It is a mark of the mediocrity of life in the Mayo village that peasant girls can turn such an unpromising figure into a celebrity. Christy provides a blank space which they can fill with their dreams.

At the centre of the play is a clear implication that the besetting vice of the Irish is not pugnacity but paralysis – a point made in the same period by the young James Joyce, in those short stories which would be published (after delays) as Dubliners in 1914.

It was predictable that ancient Gaelic hero-cults would flourish against a backdrop of social poverty and colonial torpor. The most notable of these surrounded the epic warrior Cuchulain, who fought and beheaded enemies in single combat, before dying strapped to a pillar while a raven drank his blood. That blend of pagan energy and Christlike suffering must have struck Synge as ridiculous. It was as if the Irish were being allowed to find only in the remote past a disguised version of the “muscular Christians” of the imperial present, a Celtic hero who was really just a public schoolboy in drag.

The audience at the Abbey on the opening night was predominantly male. Its members were already committed to the fabrication of male heroism through the Cuchulain texts of Yeats and Lady Gregory, which they saw as offering an antidote to the triumphalist militarism of the British imperial army.

Yeats was away in Scotland at the outset and Synge laid low with flu. Thinking all well, a relieved Lady Gregory (who didn’t like it at all) wired Yeats: “Play a great success.” Her next telegraph was different: “Audience broke up in disorder at the word shift.”

What offended were lines in which Synge had remodelled a scene in the life of Cuchulain. In the epic the hero underwent a “battle rage” after fighting, which so terrified his comrades that they would not permit him to reenter the city of Emain Macha. Eventually, they solved the problem in high style: 30 virgins were sent naked across the plain of Macha, walking towards the hero. Being a bashful lad, he blushed, bowed low, and, so the manuscripts say, “with that his battle rage left him”.

Rage turned to riot when Christy voiced his love for the publican’s daughter in a reprise of that scene: “It’s Pegeen I’m seeking only and what’d I care if you brought me a drift of chosen females, standing in their shifts itself maybe, from this place to the Eastern World?” Synge had clad his maidens in shifts, presumably to mollify strict moralists among his Abbey audience. But perhaps he half-suspected a truth which Hugh Hefner would later turn into a different Playboy business: that a scantily clad woman can be even more inflammatory to the jaded imagination of male puritans than one who is wholly naked.

The Russian writer Maxim Gorky found in the play “a subtle irony on the cult of the hero”. So did, in all fairness, many of the rioters. They were not fools or knaves, but proud, clever people, some of them leading public intellectuals who knew that their deepest convictions were being thrown into question.

Some may have felt that their very virility was being mocked. Synge’s play, like earlier dramas of Shaw and Wilde, is filled with gender-bending, based on the theory that womanly men are attracted and attractive to manly women. Christy’s delicate feet are fetishised by women who seem far more muscular than any man in the village. When some women catch Christy preening himself in a mirror, it is as if Synge is inverting that ancient pictorial tradition whereby a male artist placed a mirror in the hand of a female (who held it up to her face in a painting titled Vanity). Now, it is Christy who is tokenised as sex object and toyboy by village girls. As he holds the mirror shyly against his back (effectively holding it up to his own bottom), the women giggle: “Them that kills their fathers is a vain lot surely.”

If psychologists are right to say that the sense of masculinity is less strongly rooted in males than that of femininity in women, then it’s not surprising that members of the audience tried to vindicate their manhood by throwing punches or emitting howls. On Monday 28 January 1907 the play was mostly inaudible amid shouts of “kill the author”. On Tuesday a returned Yeats not only called in the Dublin Metropolitan Police (“Know I would accounted be / True brother of the DMP”) but identified for arrest those intellectuals whose names he knew. Outside, the young Sean O’Casey, who couldn’t afford the shilling admission fee, was pushed back and forth by what he called “Gaelic Leaguers foaming at the mouth”.

Synge insisted that his plot was not to be taken as social realism. Rather it was an “extravaganza”, a semi-abstract account of what he called “the psychic state of the locality”. The word “shift”, he pointed out, had been used without offence in Love Songs of Connacht, a best-selling collection edited by – of all people – the president of the Gaelic League. But then perhaps, he waspishly added, you could get away with things in Irish that you couldn’t smuggle through in English. In similar mode, he once delighted a hospital doctor by saying as he emerged from an anaesthetic: “May God damn the bloody Anglo-Saxon language in which a man can’t swear without being vulgar.”

Certain contemporaries thought that Synge was hurt more by the controversy than he pretended. That seems unlikely – he gave as good as he got, and then some. His own family turned a blind eye to the row. A nephew recalled that the morning after the riots, when papers were filled with reports, Synge’s mother disdained even to mention the topic. She never recognised his career or his genius.

Two years later, he was dead – but The Playboy was soon to go global. Abbey actors who brought it to the US were arrested. Back in Ireland, that same Patrick Pearse who had called for a boycott of the Abbey now began to identify with Synge, as he rehearsed his own martyr’s role as leader of the Easter rising. By 1913 Pearse had revised utterly his image of the playwright, describing him as a patriot who baffled his people by using images which they could not understand.

In the wider world, The Playboy was soon recognised as a masterpiece. A play about parricide, appearing just after Freud defined the Oedipus complex, was destined to fascinate. Antonin Artaud saw it as the true origin of the theatre of cruelty. The young Jean-Paul Sartre insisted on taking Simone de Beauvoir to repeated viewings, so that she might understand the existential values of a protagonist without filial obligation who “wished to derive only from himself”. Among socialists such as Bertold Brecht Christy was treated as a proletarian insurgent against a corrupt order, though Synge’s irony at the making and unmaking of celebrities may also inform one of Brecht’s most cited exchanges: "Unhappy the land that has no hero. No; unhappy the land that needs a hero. "

In Trinidad in the 1980s, Mustafa Matura rewrote the text as The Playboy of the West Indies. More recently, back in the Abbey, a Nigerian Christy from the pens of Bisi Adigun and Roddy Doyle is a new, urban, multicultural take on the old story. But the real author, like the true playboy, was Synge. As Bernard Shaw said: “His libel on Ireland was really the truth about the world.”

Not that everyone has loved it. When it was finally staged in the west of Ireland, audiences were bored rather than annoyed, saying that “You could see the like of that carry-on any day in the pub.” The dismissive view has had some distinguished overseas supporters. The poet Philip Larkin downed a second gin-and-tonic during the interval of a performance in the Oxford Playhouse, decided that it was “all balls” and didn’t go back for the second half. But then he didn’t need a Synge to tell him what your dad can do to you.

The Playboy of the Western World is at the Old Vic, London SE1, until 26 November. oldvictheatre.com