STRAUBINICAL NEWS DIGEST Seven.

  Donald Trump, if we're very lucky, will put to rest a canard that's long rankled me-- the business of Obama's Achilles heel being his exorbitant levels of self-regard. There would seem to be no reason to talk about that anymore as if it's a negative; this season, self-regard is in. It will be interesting to see if Trump, when the dust clears, will have spent more time bragging about the Carrier Miracle than it actually took to do the deal. (A similar phenomenon was observable years ago when The Who's various repackagings and recyclings of a slim discography began to outnumber the original releases.)
  Trump is fond of framing his deeds in a semi-heroic light. For many of his admirers, he's something of a flawed demi-god, combining rough-and-tumble "guy talk" with supernatural abilities, not unlike his mythological analogue, the half-human, half-god Hercules. The eugenically pre-determined dealmaking prowess is why he stepped up to help a brother out, so to speak, but it's the tawdry locker room braggadocio that humanizes him.

  Thus, we have a man taking his self-congratulation show on the road, to make sure nobody accidentally missed what he pulled off, due to a healthy avoidance of the media. It's as if Hercules were traveling from town to town, crowing about what a good job he did cleaning out the Augean Stables.
  He also managed to squeeze in a dramatic plea for some tidying up of the first amendment, speculating aloud in front of a crowd that maybe we need to call Bill Gates to set the ball rolling on shutting down the internet to some degree, to avoid young gullible people being influenced to join the Muslim terrorists. It seems that the propaganda implying to the credulous that being a jihadi is really cool, like being in a boy-band, or on a reality show, is flowing unchecked throughout the Internet. It worries me that if Trump decides to shut down the Internet over a long weekend, Bill Gates might be out and have his cell phone turned off, and America would have to wait 72 hours to shred the constitution. Sad!