general

Recommended: a Scientific American article titled How the FDA Manipulates the Media.
Short version: for major breaking stories such as its (meager) regulation of e-cigarettes, the FDA gives certain journalists a time-window of advance access to the news in exchange for the promise not to seek any adverse reactions to it. Needless to say, Scientific American is not one of the journalistic Heathers given access, so its coverage is blunt. The best part is reading emails (obtained via FOIA) between FDA news managers and journalistic suck-ups, supposedly the cream of the profession. From the SciAm story:

Of all the media outlets, the New York Times was the only one to mention the close-hold embargo: “FDA officials gave journalists an outline of the new rules on Wednesday but required that they not talk to industry or public health groups until after Thursday's formal release of the document.” (“I felt like I wanted to be clear with readers,” Sabrina Tavernise, the author of the story, later told [Margaret] Sullivan, the New York Times' public editor at the time. “Usually you would have reaction in a story like this, but in this case, there wasn't going to be any.”)

The FDA was not pleased that the omertà had been broken. “I have to say while I generally reserve my editorial comments, I was a little surprised by the tone of your article and the swipe you took at the embargo in the paper—when after combing through the coverage no one else felt the need to do so in quite that way,” the FDA's Jefferson upbraided Tavernise in an e-mail. “To be clear, this is me taking stuff personally when I know I shouldn't, but I thought we had a better working relationship than this…. I never expect totally positive coverage as our policies are controversial and complex, but at least more neutral and slightly less editorialized. Simply put, bummer. Off to deal with a pissed Fox News reporter.”

Tavernise promptly apologized. “Geez, sorry about the embargo thing. Editors were asking why we didn't get to see it so I was asked to put a line in to explain,” she wrote.

Supporters of returning the Clinton family to power, faced with their candidates' abundant negatives, have opted to ratchet up the fear rhetoric. Consider this bizarre warning to "millennials" from Informed Comment:

You need to vote for Hillary Clinton or you may die in a fiery apocalypse that will make the plot of The Walking Dead seem like a story you tell to small children to comfort them and help them fall asleep.

Vote for the Walking Dead so The Walking Dead doesn't become possible, or something like that. Reminiscent of Hillary Clinton's justification for her Iraq War vote.

The Clintons' recent Russia-baiting might actually offer a more plausible road to Apocalypseville than electing a loudmouth Washington newbie. As Hillary demonstrated in Libya, she has practical experience in reducing countries to a smoking ruin. Yet Informed Comment isn't talking about a protest vote for Trump here, but a conscience vote for the Greens or Libertarians. The Clinton apologists insist that voting against the corrupt two party system is "throwing away your vote." They want you to vote for the Clintons and then go quietly vomit somewhere.

coiffured announcer (voice on large-format TV screen overhead): ...it seemed important for the mayor to say the incident wasn't terrorism...
customer (talking back to the TV): That's because it wasn't terrorism.
drycleaners proprietor: It wasn't terrorism? What was it?
customer: Some guy with a grievance.
drycleaners proprietor: Huh.
customer: It's important for the ruling class to keep us scared at all times.
drycleaners proprietor: That's the way it is.

Matt Taibbi writes for Rolling Stone, which favors returning the Clintons to power. Normally Taibbi speaks his mind in spite of this bias but his bosses must have been delighted with a recent column trashing Trump.
In a campaign speech in New Hampshire, Trump itemized some of the dubious Clinton Foundation activity that upsets people on both sides of the political aisle but has been under-reported until recently:

--Ridiculously huge speaking fees paid to Bill Clinton by companies that had business before Hillary's State Department;

--Clinton Foundation moves to give foundation donors suspicious reconstruction contracts in Haiti and a seat on an intelligence advisory board;

--Clinton Foundation machinations on behalf of a Russian uranium company;

and other examples of shady ethics that have been well documented by the center-left. Taibbi mentions these points but rewrites them so they fit a comical narrative about how Trump is a bad speaker when he reads from prepared remarks. Taibbi blows right past the substance and makes this a "process" story, which is one of the main flaws of conventional, DC-based election coverage.

Speaking of American exceptionalism and flag-waving, please see this Paul Pillar post from the National Interest, by way of Lobelog (the parts that interested me are in bold):

Hillary Clinton gave a speech this week in which American exceptionalism was a major theme. She obviously chose that theme partly because it would appeal to her specific audience (an American Legion convention) and partly because it would enable her to criticize Donald Trump, who has said he doesn’t like the term “American exceptionalism” because people in other countries don’t like to hear it and feel insulted by it. Trump is right about that, although in many other respects he shows he doesn’t have qualms about insulting people in other countries, including the country he briefly visited on Wednesday and has described as a nation of rapists and drug dealers.

America is indeed exceptional in some obvious respects, and there is nothing wrong with Americans reminding themselves of that, as long as they do not stick the concept in the face of non-Americans. It is some of the corollaries that tend to flow in an unthinking fashion from the concept of American exceptionalism that have caused problems. Several such tendencies in American exceptionalist thinking have contributed to bad policy.

One particular common corollary of the notion of exceptionalism that Clinton emphasized in her speech was that of indispensability. “We are the indispensable nation,” she said. “So no matter how hard it gets, no matter how great the challenge, America must lead.” As with exceptionalism itself, it certainly is true that the United States is, or at least has been, indispensable in some respects. An example would be the role of the U.S. dollar as a reserve currency and of U.S. government debt as an instrument in international finance. The problems come from the tendency—which is implicit in much of the wording of Clinton’s speech—to consider the United States and U.S. leadership as indispensable in addressing all significant problems abroad. But not all problems abroad are U.S. problems, not all such problems are solvable, what solutions there are do not all come from the United States, and in some problems U.S. involvement or leadership is instead counterproductive.

A related and common tendency is to invoke the physical metaphor of a vacuum. “When America fails to lead,” said Clinton, “we leave a vacuum that either causes chaos or other countries or networks rush in to fill the void.” The vacuum metaphor has several problems when applied to foreign policy. It understates or overlooks altogether whatever was present before any outsiders rushed in. It incorrectly assumes a zero-sum or mutual exclusion relationship between the supposedly indispensable superpower and any other players who may be involved.

Once again, the reviled Trump is the person making sensible statements while the Secretary of Vacuum-Filling spouts dangerous nonsense.