Who could have imagined this? As we noted a week ago, the Trump camp's massive fundraising blitz ending up hitting legislators in numerous foreign countries as well as spamming a seemingly limitless number of victims around the world. According to ReturnPath, 79% of Trump fundraising emails were caught in spam filters, an extremely high rate by industry standards, seemingly because Trump was using purchased or rented lists rather than ones the campaign had grown organically through campaign-related supporter sign ups.

In any case, this led to problems.

I want to share some thoughts on one of the minor subplots in the Dallas police ambush. Mark Hughes was one of the protesters at the demonstration where the ambush took place. He came with a camo t-shirt and a rifle slung over his shoulder. To be clear, Hughes had every legal right to do this under Texas law. He was not breaking any law. Dallas police briefly identified him as a suspect in the case, at different points calling him a "suspect" or "person of interest," noting that it was a rifle which had been used against police officers that night. The alert went out on Twitter, with a picture of Hughes with his gun. Happily, everyone proceeded from that point in the best way possible. A friend alerted Hughes that he'd been identified. Hughes removed his camo shirt and flagged down a police officer to turn over his gun. He was taken into custody, questioned and released around 1am. As Hughes and others noted, it was a misunderstanding that might easily have cost him his life.

According to New York City Police Chief Bill Bratton, Donald Trump tried to hustle a photo op today with the NYPD, the afternoon after the ambush murders in Dallas. This morning as the news was unfolding, Trump's "head of security" Keith Schiller asked that Trump be granted permission to speak at a 3 p.m. roll call at the NYPD Midtown North Precinct.

Bratton rejected the idea, telling reporters the NYPD wasn't there to provide candidate photo ops.

Since I mentioned the 1968 analogy in my initial post this morning I want to return to the subject briefly. In response to that post and that analogy we've had responses from a number of baby-boomer TPM Readers with living memories of that year. A couple have written saying it feels the same and anticipating various dystopian futures. But the great majority have said some version of 'No way, it was so much worse. You can't imagine.' (TPM Reader MR's version is one example I've published.) Indeed, on many fronts we don't have to imagine. Indeed, listen to this from TPM Reader and poli sci professor TL. "I was 21 in 1967. I had a colleague once who was in the 82nd when it got sent to Detroit that year. He said they were suppressing fire from the buildings with .50 machine guns and 75mm RCLs; nothing else worked."

Machine guns used to quell riots in a major American city. It almost beggars belief.

TPM Reader MR walks us through the whole 1968 thing (addressed to me personally) ...

Since I learn a lot from your site, and since you’re a youngster, I thought I’d help you out a bit with the whole “this is just like 1968” thing. Short answer: This is pretty tame compared to 1968. I’ll try to avoid the “back in my day, sonny” routine, but here are some things to consider. You know all of them, but it’s important to consider them in toto:

From longtime TPM Reader BW in Baton Rouge ...

Reflecting on your piece “Taking Stock,” where you said “…the pace of transgression can grow quick enough to build on itself and overmatch the force of communal and inter-communal bonds and social integument…”

Yesterday evening, I attended the “Prayer Vigil for Peace and Unity in the Community in response to the shooting death of Alton Sterling” held at an African-American church in the same part of town where the shooting took place.