In any normal election year, we’d compare the two presidential candidates side by side on the issues. But this is not a normal election year. A comparison like that would be an empty exercise in a race where one candidate — our choice, Hillary Clinton — has a record of service and a raft of pragmatic ideas, and the other, Donald Trump, discloses nothing concrete about himself or his plans while promising the moon and offering the stars on layaway. (We will explain in a subsequent editorial why we believe Mr. Trump to be the worst nominee put forward by a major party in modern American history.)

The reaction to Hillary Clinton’s candidacy has been unconventional. The percentage of Americans who hold a “strongly unfavorable” view of her substantially exceeds the percentage for any other Democratic nominee since 1980, when pollsters began asking the question. Antipathy to her among white men is even more unprecedented. According to the Public Religion Research Institute, 52 percent of white men hold a “very unfavorable” view of Clinton. That’s a whopping 20 points higher than the percentage who viewed Barack Obama very unfavorably in 2012, 32 points higher than the percentage who viewed Obama very unfavorably in 2008, and 28 points higher than the percentage who viewed John Kerry very unfavorably in 2004.

If a known con artist peddles a potion that he claims will make people lose 25 pounds and enjoy a better sex life, we don’t just quote the man and a critic; we find ways to signal to readers that he’s a fraud. Why should it be different when the con man runs for president?

....Our job is not stenography, but truth-telling. As we move to the debates, let’s remember that to expose charlatans is not partisanship, but simply good journalism.

America has seldom been so divided going into a general election. And that division is showing up even in the housing markets of states that traditionally vote Democratic and those that vote Republican.

A new report issued by a real estate data company, HouseCanary, and given exclusively to the Guardian found that over the last four decades, housing prices have risen significantly higher in blue (Democratic-leaning) states than in red (Republican-leaning) states.

Since 1984, blue states have seen their house values go up from an average of $85,000 to $312,000, while red states saw an increase from $75,000 to $184,000. Blue states now account for 77% of the total value of homes in United States.

Higher housing prices in the liberal-leaning blue states might have a twofold effect on voters’ outlooks: while homeowners feel the benefits of the economic recovery, those who do not own homes are grappling with the effects of income inequality as house prices increase – often out of their reach.

....Unlike with many previous technologies that took Americans almost by surprise, we can see what’s coming, and we have plenty of time [if we start planning NOW] to figure out a plan of action.

We could adopt a big, smart retraining program for affected drivers. Granted, in recent years, many lawmakers and laid-off workers have complained that there often aren’t enough jobs for those who’ve labored to learn new skills. Katz says the government should create public-sector jobs so these drivers are not consigned to long-term jobless purgatory.

Laid-off drivers, gas station attendants and others will need help beyond traditional unemployment insurance. Perhaps they should receive adjustment assistance just like factory workers who lost jobs because of imports.

For those wondering where all that money will come from, there’s an obvious source. Uber, Ford, Google and other companies eager to earn billions from driverless cars no doubt will press Congress to enact a law creating a nationwide green light for these cars as well as uniform national regulations. In exchange for enacting such a law — which should happen only when these cars are proved safe — Congress could levy a special tax on each driverless mile to finance programs for retraining, adjustment assistance, unemployment insurance and perhaps government jobs.

The loss of 5 million factory jobs since 2000 has devastated families and communities across the country. The nation could well lose an equal number of driving-related jobs in the next 10 or 20 years, but a similar devastation need not follow.

Sam's Club has recently gone live in all of its 645 U.S. stores with its new scan and go service, Walmart Vice President of Operations Transformation at Sam's Club Shawna Bowen told TheStreet. Scan and go works pretty much as it sounds. While a shopper is in a Sam's Club, they open an app and scan each item's barcode. If the item doesn't have a barcode, it could be easily looked up. The app keeps a running total of the items in the cart. A person can then checkout by paying in the app. They then show the receipt on the phone to an employee standing by the door, known as a greeter, who double checks that nothing has been lifted for free. The service closely resembles how a person checks out at an Apple retail store, with items being purchased getting scanned into handheld devices carried around by employees.

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....If the pipeline from Iran to Syria it could create an energy hub in Syria, and could block Qatar gas sales to Europe at a time when Qatar’s gas exports to the U.S. have dropped to zero, largely due to increasing U.S. domestic production of natural gas. Thus Qatar would be limited to the Asian LNG market as it scrapped for the EU market with Iran, Iraq, Syria, and Russia. And the only thing that could make it worse is happening: Europe is forecast to take more than half of U.S. LNG exports by 2020.

Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and their confederates are in it to win it, and the fighting in Syria has focused on the pipeline routes. Aleppo province, which would host the Qatari pipeline, is where Turkey wants to establish a buffer zone to support “moderate” rebel forces. If Turkey can control this territory, it will bolster the Qatari pipeline and ensure its own preeminence as the energy hub in southern Europe, where it would gather oil and natural gas from Russia, Central Asia, the Caspian, the Eastern Mediterranean, and the Middle East, and become less reliant on Russian gas, which accounted for over 50 percent of its imports in 2014. But Russia hasn’t been standing still: it has surrounded Turkey on three sides by occupying Crimea, sending more troops to Armenia, and deploying the S-400 air defense system to Syria, creating a no-fly zone, and maybe a “no-buy” zone for potential customers of Qatari gas.

....To succeed in its pipeline goals, Qatar will have to make serious investments in the Turkish end of its project as well as resisting political pressure from Russia. Until then, it will be limited to making LNG shipments to Europe by tanker. In the meantime, these pipeline geopolitics have contributed to serious consequences for the Middle East.

Europe’s biggest slum – around 10,000 migrants are squeezed into a sprawl of wasteland east of Calais – will be no more in a few weeks. Bulldozers will raze an eyesore that has acquired new political significance in the run-up to next spring’s French presidential elections.

Few child refugees appear to have a fallback strategy once the Jungle is no more. As rumours circulate over when the forced eviction will happen, aid organisations in the camp have already begun distributing suitcases.

The injection of uncertainty has caused panic among the camp’s unaccompanied children. On Saturday charities said they were witnessing signs of “hysteria”. Some warn that youngsters are taking increased risks as they attempt to climb on to lorries heading into the port, fearing that their chance of reaching the UK is fading.

A humanitarian catastrophe is looming over northern Iraq. As many as a million people are expected to stream out of Mosul when Iraqi government forces, backed by the United States, move to retake the city from ISIS, which took control two years ago. The much anticipated military operation could begin as early as next month, but aid workers here say they do not have anywhere near the resources, money, or manpower to deal with the expected human tide.

“It’s a nightmare—a disaster heading our way,’’ Alex Milutinovic, the director of the International Rescue Committee in Erbil, told me. “The Iraqi government is determined to destroy ISIS, but it is impossible to accommodate the number of refugees the military operation is going to produce.”

Heavy bombardment of the rebel-held eastern area of Aleppo has left about 1.75 million people without running water, the United Nations has said.

Intense attacks on Friday prevented repairs to the city’s damaged Bab al-Nayrab pumping station, which supplies water to 250,000 people in the eastern parts of the city, according to the UN’s children’s agency, Unicef.

In retaliation, the nearby Suleiman al-Halabi station, which pumps water to 1.5 million people in the west of Aleppo, was switched off, it said.

“Nearly 2 million people in Aleppo are once again with no running water through the public network,” said Hanaa Singer, a Unicef representative in Syria. “Depriving children of water puts them at risk of catastrophic outbreaks of waterborne diseases and adds to the suffering, fear and horror that children in Aleppo live through every day.

Larry Sanders, the older brother of Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), who lives in the U.K., is taking a page from his brother's book and running for the parliamentary seat left empty by former Prime Minister David Cameron.

And in keeping with family tradition, he will campaign on a platform to end social inequality and neoliberalism. The elder Sanders, who was chosen by the Green Party, opposes privatization of healthcare and, as a retired social worker, wants to highlight the impacts of austerity on public services.

"In Britain, as in the U.S., we have had an increase in inequality in the last 30 years, and that's having all sorts of consequences," he told the Guardian on Friday—comments that probably seemed familiar to some American readers. "Many people can't afford houses who you would have expected to not long ago."

"We need to show that we don't want Britain to be the most unequal country in Europe. We don't want unmet health needs to increase when we already have too few doctors, nurses, and hospital beds," he said in a separate statement. "We don't want the government to impose unworkable contracts on 50,000 precious doctors, when it is clear that the supposed reason for the contract, a seven day hospital service, can't be done at present funding."

"This is a rich, capable, and decent country," he said. "We can do better."

One after another on Wednesday, the members of the Senate banking committee scored bullseyes, as they peppered Stumpf with questions, demanding explanations for Wall Street’s latest banking scandal. Just why had thousands of Wells Fargo employees fraudulently opened credit and deposit accounts in customers’ names, without the knowledge of those customers?

Stumpf’s interrogation at the hands of the bipartisan panel exposed both his personal failings and those of the bank. He failed to craft the kind of articulate and convincing responses that the senators, the bank’s customers and Americans as whole had demanded.

He stumbled. He fumbled. He couldn’t remember details. He passed the buck; he promised to get back to the senators with information. He wasn’t the kind of slick advocate for his own cause that more polished debaters like Jamie Dimon of JP Morgan Chase, or even Lloyd Blankfein of Goldman Sachs, have been when in similar plights.

Nor were the senators willing to extend a helping hand. This time, a big bank had finally gone too far. It hadn’t violated the trust of big institutional investors or even of homebuyers that might have over-leveraged themselves. Wells Fargo had cheated the most ordinary Americans: anyone opening a deposit account with the bank.

Wells Fargo’s mantra, in pushing its rank and file employees to cross-sell products, was “eight is great”. These workers faced pressure – up to and including threats of losing their job – to get every bank customer to sign up for eight products and services, regardless of whether they actually needed them.

The Senate banking committee clearly showed that eight wasn’t great. It also tore the lid off Wells Fargo’s toxic culture and revealed what I’ll call the eight deadly sins, as displayed by the bank and Stumpf himself.

Helicopter money comes in two forms, which could (and should) be dropped together. The first is to put purchasing power directly into the hands of consumers – for example, by issuing each voter or citizen with smart cards worth $1,000 each. The Swiss economist Silvio Gesell, who originally proposed a scheme of “stamped money” at the start of the last century, added a stipulation that balances unspent after a month should be taxed, to discourage hoarding.

Alternatively, helicopter money could be used to finance infrastructure spending. The advantage of such “monetary financing” is that such spending, while adding to the deficit and leading to a permanent increase in the money supply, would not increase the national debt, because the government would “owe” the money only to its own banker. This would eliminate the offsetting negative expectation of higher taxes.

....Until this debt problem is resolved – and the only way to resolve it is to negotiate a debt write-off – European expansion (the absorption of New Europe into Old Europe) seems over. But the transition to this future solution will not be easy. Financial interests still wield dominant power over the EU, and will resist the inevitable. Gordon Brown already has shown his colors in his threats against Iceland to illegally and improperly use the IMF as a collection agent for debts that Iceland doesn’t legally owe, and to blackball Icelandic membership in the EU.

Confronted with Mr. Brown’s bullying – and that of Britain’s Dutch poodles – 97% of Icelandic voters opposed the debt settlement that Britain and the Netherlands sought to force down the throat of Allthing members last month. This high a vote has not been seen in the world since the old Stalinist era.

It is only a foretaste. The choice that Europe ends up making will likely drive millions into the streets. Political and economic alliances will shift, currencies will crumble and governments will fall. The European Union and indeed, the international financial system will change in ways yet to be seen. This will be especially the case if nations adopt the Argentina model and refuse to make payment until steep discounts are made.

....The battle lines are being drawn regarding how private and public debts are to be repaid. For nations that balk at repayment in euros, the creditor nations have their “muscle” waiting in the wings: the credit rating agencies. At the first sign a nation is balking in paying in hard currency, or even at the first hint of it questioning a foreign debt as improper, the agencies will move in to reduce a nation’s credit rating. This will increase the cost of borrowing and threaten to paralyze the economy by starving it for credit.

The Financial Times headline is uncharacteristically dramatic: America’s Middle Class Meltdown: core shrinks to half of US homes.