Saturday, September 10, 2016 12:51:54 AM
Confessions of a Clinton reporter: The media's 5 unspoken rules for covering Hillary
/cdn2.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/46680092/GettyImages-479465036.0.jpg)
Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton marches in the Gorham fourth of July parade July 4, 2015 in Gorham, New Hampshire.
Sep 3, 2016
1) Everything, no matter how ludicrous-sounding, is worthy of a full investigation by federal agencies, Congress, the "vast right-wing conspiracy," and mainstream media outlets.
2) Every allegation, no matter how ludicrous, is believable until it can be proven completely and utterly false. And even then, it keeps a life of its own in the conservative media world.
3) The media assumes that Clinton is acting in bad faith until there's hard evidence otherwise.
4) Everything is newsworthy because the Clintons are the equivalent of America's royal family.
5) Everything she does is fake and calculated for maximum political benefit.
http://www.vox.com/2015/7/6/8900143/hillary-clinton-reporting-rules
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The Media Coverage of Hillary Clinton Is Out of Whack
The problem isn't the scrutiny of her emails or the Clinton Foundation, but treating such sins as comparable to Donald Trump's.
September 7, 2016
https://newrepublic.com/article/136592/media-coverage-hillary-clinton-whack
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Hillary Clinton and the undisputed media bias against her
Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, right, accompanied by Democratic vice presidential candidate, Sen. Tim Kaine,
September 07, 2016
http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2016/09/07/hillary-clinton-and-undisputed-media-bias-against-her.html [with comments]
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Soledad O’Brien Calls Out Media For ‘Normalizing White Supremacy’
“I’ve seen on-air, white supremacists being interviewed because they are Trump delegates.”
By Zeba Blay
09/07/2016 12:55 pm ET | Updated September 8, 2016
Soledad O’Brien isn’t here for the media normalizing white supremacist ideas during this election, and she’s speaking out.
O’Brien, best known for her “Black in America” series, was a guest on CNN’s “Reliable Sources” on Sunday [September 4, 2016]. During a discussion about how the media has covered Trump vs. Hillary, she pointed out that one of her biggest issues with coverage of the race is how Trump’s white supremacist supporters have been given air time, which in effect legitamizes and normalizes their presence and opinions in political discourse.
“I’ve seen, on-air, white supremacists being interviewed because they are Trump delegates,” O’Brien told host Brian Stetler. “And they do a five-minute segment, the first minute or so talking about what they believe as white supremacists. So you have normalized that.”
The former CNN anchor also referenced a recent Hillary Clinton speech [ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/08/25/hillary-clintons-alt-right-speech-annotated/ ] wherein the presidential candidate spoke about the so-called alt-right, and laid out a “very good argument,” O’Brien said, about the ways in which Donald Trump has fueled the fire of anti-black, anti-Latino, anti-Muslim ideas [id.] throughout his campaign.
O’Brien then pointed out how, while Clinton may have factual evidence to back up her charges against Trump, Trump can simply call Clinton a “bigot [ http://www.cnn.com/2016/08/24/politics/donald-trump-hillary-clinton-bigot/ ]” without concrete examples of her bigotry, and their comments will be covered as “he-said, she-said.”
“When in actuality... Donald Trump said she’s a bigot without the long laundry list of evidence... If you looked at Hillary Clinton’s speech, she actually did have a lot of really good factual evidence that we would all agree that are things that have happened and do exist. They are treated as if they are equal.”
When asked by Stetler whether or not she believes Donald Trump is racist, O’Brien replied that “in this case that is irrelevant.”
She added: “The thing that we’re talking about is [is he] softening the ground for people who are white supremacists, who are white nationalists, who would self-identify that way, to feel comfortable with their views being brought into the national discourse? To the point where they can do a five-minute segment happily on television? And the answer is yes. Clearly.”
Watch the full segment above.
Copyright © 2016 TheHuffingtonPost.com, Inc.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/soledad-obrien-calls-out-media-for-normalizing-white-supremacy_us_57d01d63e4b03d2d459776f9 [with comments], http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iMZNKYcflHs [as embedded; with comments]
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GOP Candidate Quits After Allegedly Sending Rape Messages To Reporter
“Bullying of this kind from would-be politicians makes you fear for your First Amendment rights,” The Daily Beast’s Olivia Nuzzi says.
By Ron Dicker
09/07/2016 10:53 am ET | Updated September 7, 2016
A GOP candidate for local office in New Jersey quit the race [ http://6abc.com/1499728/ ] on Tuesday after a reporter revealed she’d received harassing messages [ http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/09/06/a-republican-candidate-said-he-hoped-i-got-raped.html ] from his social media account, ABC Action News in Philadelphia reported.
Krawitz’s decision came in the wake of damning comments he appeared to have posted on Daily Beast reporter Olivia Nuzzi’s Facebook page on Monday. One, shared by Nuzzi, said: “Fuck. You. Olivia, I. Hope. Somebody. Rapes. You. Today. :)”
Krawitz told the Philadelphia Inquirer his account had been hacked and that he had not written the comments. However, the West Deptford Republican Committee chairman said there is “no reasonable reason” to believe the GOP candidate was hacked.
Olivia Nuzzi
@Olivianuzzi
This man who wants me to be raped today was a Republican candidate for office in NJ http://wdgop.org/ray/ [currently yields "Oops! That page cannot be found. - It looks like nothing was found at this location. Maybe try searching for it?"]
7:25 AM - 5 Sep 2016
[ https://twitter.com/Olivianuzzi/status/772802941442990080 (with comments)]
Olivia Nuzzi
@Olivianuzzi
Krawitz and the West Deptford GOP are now claiming that his account was hacked today.
This is from August 10th:
2:56 PM - 5 Sep 2016
[ https://twitter.com/Olivianuzzi/status/772916343335182336 (with comments)]
Krawitz told the Philadelphia Inquirer his account had been hacked and that he had not written the comments [ http://www.philly.com/philly/blogs/S-Jersey-GOP-candidate-blames-hack-for-rape-comments.html ]. However, the West Deptford Republican Committee chairman said there is "no reasonable reason [ http://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/nj-goper-daily-beast-online-rape-calls ]" to believe the GOP candidate was hacked.
Nuzzi says Krawitz has been trolling her since December 2014. In her own article about the harassment [ http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/09/06/a-republican-candidate-said-he-hoped-i-got-raped.html ], she said Krawitz had left numerous comments on her Facebook page, using the same grammar that appeared in Monday’s comments. In August, Nuzzi said, Krawitz asked her about gun crime in Chicago and called her the c-word.
“When a former reality TV star can become the Republican nominee while offending and belittling entire genders, races, and religions, why wouldn’t a man seeking local office think that encouraging the rape of a woman he hates is OK?” she wrote.
“As a reporter, bullying of this kind from would-be politicians makes you fear for your First Amendment rights,” Nuzzi said in a statement to Action News. “As an American and a woman, it makes you fear for the state of our country and the safety of half the population that inhabits it.”
The latest round of profanity from Krawitz’s social media account appeared after Nuzzi shared a Daily Beast article [ http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/09/05/donald-trump-made-out-with-marla-maples-as-she-delivered-his-child.html ] on Donald Trump’s second wife, Marla Maples.
The Huffington Post left a message with a woman who identified herself as Krawitz’s sister at a number listed for him, but has not yet received a reply.
Copyright © 2016 TheHuffingtonPost.com, Inc.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/michael-krawitz-olivia-nuzzi-harassment_us_57d00042e4b03d2d459759b6 [with embedded video report, and comments]
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Textbook depicts Mexican-Americans as 'lazy,' some out to 'destroy this society,' historians say
06 September 2016 Updated 06 September 2016
http://www.dallasnews.com/news/education/headlines/20160906-textbook-depicts-mexican-americans-as-lazy-some-out-to-destroy-this-society-historians-say.ece
Scholars dismiss controversial proposed Mexican-American studies textbook
September 6th 2016
http://valleycentral.com/news/local/scholars-dismiss-controversial-mexican-american-studies-textbook [with embedded videos]
Report: Proposed Mexican-American textbook rife with errors
“Mexican American Heritage” is a textbook proposed for Texas high school students.
Sept. 6, 2016
http://www.mystatesman.com/news/news/state-regional-govt-politics/report-mexican-american-textbook-for-texas-student/nsSFX/
Texas teachers are uniting to oppose this unbelievably racist textbook about Mexicans
9/7/16
http://fusion.net/story/344682/texas-proposed-racist-textbook/ [with comments]
Critics Call for Texas Board to Reject Mexican-American Studies Textbook
September 7, 2016
http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/curriculum/2016/09/Texas_Mexican_American_Textbook.html
'Racist' Mexican-American history textbook under review in Texas
The Mexican American Heritage textbook is currently under review and is slated to be used in public schools in the 2017-18 school year.
Updated: September 7, 2016
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/racist-mexican-american-history-textbook-review-texas-article-1.2781722
Mexican heritage textbook for Texas schools full of 'offensive stereotypes'
The adoption of Texas textbooks has long been freighted with controversies that have intensified in recent years as the board has become dominated by conservatives.
Ruben Cortez and a committee found Mexican American studies textbook for use in public schools has 141 errors of fact, interpretation and omission
7 September 2016
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/sep/07/mexican-heritage-textbook-texas-offensive-stereotypes
Many opposed to using controversial Mexican-American history textbook in classroom
Small minority in Board of Education publicly opposed to using book
September 08, 2016 Updated: September 08, 2016
http://www.ksat.com/news/many-opposed-to-using-controversial-mexican-american-textbook-in-classroom [with embedded video report, and comment]
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A Closer Look: Trump Tries to Reach Out to Black and Latino Voters
Published on Sep 6, 2016 by Late Night with Seth Meyers [ http://www.youtube.com/channel/UCVTyTA7-g9nopHeHbeuvpRA / http://www.youtube.com/user/LateNightSeth , http://www.youtube.com/user/LateNightSeth/videos ]
Seth examines Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump's attempt to court black and Latino voters.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1QDORdOFvtM [with comments]
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Lawsuit: Current election system of Alabama appellate judges discriminates against blacks
September 07, 2016, updated September 07, 2016
http://www.al.com/news/birmingham/index.ssf/2016/09/voting_rights_lawsuit_seeks_to.html [the complaint ( https://www.scribd.com/document/323263038/NAACP-v-Alabama ) embedded; no comments yet]
Rights group sues Alabama over at-large judicial elections
7 September 2016
http://www.jurist.org/paperchase/2016/09/naacp-sues-alabama-over-at-large-judicial-elections.php
NAACP: ‘Voting discrimination is alive and well in Alabama’
The NAACP federal lawsuit argues Alabama’s statewide, at-large election of judges to the state’s most powerful courts dilutes the voting power of blacks in violation of the Voting Rights Act 1965.
September 8, 2016
In Alabama’s three highest state courts, only whites have donned judges’ robes for 15 years now — and only three African-Americans have ever served on those courts.
[...]
http://www.talkmedianews.com/criminal-justice/2016/09/08/naacp-voting-discrimination-alive-well-alabama/ [no comments yet]
Federal Lawsuit Takes On Alabama’s Entirely White Top Courts
From top to bottom: Alabama’s Court of Civil Appeals, Supreme Court, and Court of Criminal Appeals.
Sep 7, 2016
https://thinkprogress.org/federal-lawsuit-takes-on-alabamas-entirely-white-top-courts-cde688f980e5 [with comments]
It's 2016 and Every Single Judge on Alabama's Highest Courts Is White
A new lawsuit could finally change that.
Sep. 7, 2016
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2016/09/new-lawsuit-says-alabama-judicial-elections-violate-voting-rights-act [with comments]
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Harry Reid: ‘Donald Trump Is An American Nightmare’
“He’s a bigot, he’s a scam artist, he won’t show us his tax return, and Sen. Grassley is holding the Supreme Court vacant for this man,” Reid said.
09/07/2016 Updated September 7, 2016
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/harry-reid-donald-trump-american-nightmare_us_57d025c4e4b06a74c9f1c1d0 [with embedded video, and comments]
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Empathy for Black Lives Matter
By GLENN BECK
SEPT. 7, 2016
In a recent speech [ http://www.redstate.com/absentee/2016/08/13/glenn-beck-rebukes-party-rocks-crowd-redstate-gathering-full-speech-video-rsg16/ ] to a group of conservatives, I made what I thought was a relatively uncontroversial point about the commonalities between Trump supporters and Black Lives Matter activists. I thought this was a simple idea, but the criticism was immediate and sharp: How dare I try to understand the “other side”?
But as people, wouldn’t we all benefit from trying to empathize with people we disagree with?
I consider myself a “classical liberal” — a.k.a. “constitutional conservative” — and I believe the greatness of our country lies in our founders’ creation of a system that allows and encourages all voices to be heard. The only way for our society to work is for each of us to respect the views of others, and even try to understand and empathize with one another. I have always tried to work toward this goal, even though I have often been guilty of conflating the individual with the whole.
My point about empathy is especially pressing today, since these movements and others — the Tea Party, the Bernie Sanders campaign, Occupy Wall Street — share similar grievances: In their own ways, they say: “I am not being heard,” “I don’t feel like I belong anymore,” “I have no control over my future.” I am not placing all of these movements on the same footing in terms of my personal position, nor am I suggesting that, because I find them to be analogous, they are equal. But there are, in my opinion, strong commonalities, both good and bad.
Each movement is made up of at least three factions: believers, political insiders and instigators. I saw these divides emerge in the Tea Party, where self-serving “leaders” — but really just insiders — tried to take control of the movement to their own benefit. Not surprisingly, we have seen the same thing happen with the Occupy Wall Street movement, and the activists who gathered in Ferguson, Mo. (be it as insiders or as instigators).
I am not looking to condemn, I am looking to understand. For some readers, this may be surprising to hear coming from someone like me. But on my show, I often discuss pivot points. Our opinions or perspectives are not impervious to change — nor should they be. My take on Black Lives Matter has not changed 180 degrees, but it has certainly evolved. Here is my pivot point.
After the horrific shootings of five police officers in Dallas [ http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/09/us/dallas-police-shooting.html ] this summer, I had the opportunity to watch an interview with the parents of the gunman by Lawrence Jones, a contributor at The Blaze, of which I am the founder. I was able to see their heartache and sorrow as parents, as Americans and as human beings.
I also saw a lot of hate online. People were shocked that The Blaze portrayed these grieving parents as human beings. It is sad that I feel the need to state the obvious, but my heart bleeds blue for the men and women of our police forces. But what happened in Dallas should be a reminder that we as a nation do not have to riot; we can (and must) come together.
After the massacre, I invited several Black Lives Matter believers on my show. I got to know them as people — on and off air — and invited them back again. These individuals are decent, hardworking, patriotic Americans. We don’t agree on everything, certainly not on politics; but are we not more than politics? I refuse to define each of them based on the worst among them. No movement is monolithic. The individuals I met that day are not “Black Lives Matter”; they are black Americans who feel disenfranchised and aggrieved; they are believers; they are my neighbors and my fellow citizens.
We need to listen to one another, as human beings, and try to understand one another’s pain. Empathy is not acknowledging or conceding that the pain and anger others feel is justified. Empathy is acknowledging someone else’s pain and anger while feeling for them as human beings — even, and maybe especially, when we don’t necessarily agree or understand them.
Again, that’s different from empathizing with self-interested insiders and instigators. Just as I suggest a concerted effort at empathy, we must also stand together to confront the nefarious elements within our movements with equal fervor.
We are a country in trouble, and we have only one way out: reconciliation. We must follow the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s message and method and move away from a pursuit of “winning” and toward reclaiming our shared humanity. We cannot reconcile with those who want to tear up the Constitution or those who want blood in the street. But we can and must reconcile of our own free will with our neighbors and friends.
I pray, knowing my words will likely fall on many deaf ears as I am a flawed messenger, that cultivating empathy for one another, in our communities and in the news media, from our politicians and in our politics, is the path we must choose as a nation. If we don’t, what we have seen this year will be just the beginning of the hate we are about to unleash. America, and the world, has one path to “united we stand and divided we fall.” Which path will we take? Which one will you?
Glenn Beck (@glennbeck [ https://twitter.com/glennbeck ]), a radio host and media personality, is the author, most recently, of “Liars: How Progressives Exploit Our Fear for Power and Control.”
'All Lives Matter' march draws thousands to Birmingham
Conservative talk show host Glenn Beck marched with over 20,000 supporters Saturday through the streets of Birmingham. The "All Lives Matter" march started at the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church and ended at the BJCC where Beck is holding a Restoring Unity Rally.
August 29, 2015, updated August 31, 2015
http://www.al.com/living/index.ssf/2015/08/all_lives_matter_march_draws_m.html [with embedded video, and comments]
© 2016 The New York Times Company
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/07/opinion/glenn-beck-empathy-for-black-lives-matter.html [with comments]
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Giuliani: Trump believes now Obama was born in the U.S.
Hardball with Chris Matthews
9/8/16
Chris Matthews presses one of Donald Trump’s top surrogates, former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani, about the Republican candidate renouncing the birtherism movement once and for all. Duration: 5:25
11 of Trump's most outrageous 'birther' claims
Updated September 9, 2016
http://www.cnn.com/2016/09/09/politics/donald-trump-birther/
©2016 NBCNews.com
http://www.msnbc.com/hardball/watch/giuliani-trump-believes-obama-was-born-in-us-760899651579 , http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AJjR9D6fqMU [with comments]
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Senior Donald Trump Advisor On Birther Comments: We Should Move On
MSNBC Live
9/9/16
Donald Trump’s senior advisor, Boris Epshteyn, defends Trump’s comments on Russia and Vladimir Putin. He also weighs in on the recent comments from Donald Trump surrogates that Trump now believes Obama was born in the U.S. Duration: 6:47
Donald Trump hasn’t questioned Barack Obama’s birthplace since way back in January
September 9, 2016
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/09/09/donald-trump-hasnt-questioned-barack-obamas-birthplace-since-way-back-in-january/ [with comments]
©2016 NBCNews.com
http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc-news/watch/sr-trump-adv-on-birther-comments-we-should-move-on-761463875844 , http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q1r4CqozCYU [with comments]
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U.S. Supreme Court green lights straight-party voting in Michigan
September 9, 2016
http://www.freep.com/story/news/local/michigan/detroit/2016/09/09/supreme-court-michigan-straight-party-voting/89994972/ [with comments]
Supreme Court won’t revive Michigan ban on straight-ticket voting
September 9, 2016
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/courts_law/supreme-court-rejects-michigan-ban-on-straight-ticket-voting/2016/09/09/7ce6bff6-7533-11e6-be4f-3f42f2e5a49e_story.html [with comments]
Supreme Court Allows ‘Straight-Ticket’ Voting in Michigan
Waiting in line to collect ballots during the presidential primary election in Flint, Mich., in March.
SEPT. 9, 2016
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/10/us/politics/supreme-court-voting-michigan-straight-ticket.html
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FBI director: Clinton email case ‘was not a cliff-hanger’
September 7, 2016
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2016/09/07/fbi-director-clinton-email-case-was-not-a-cliff-hanger/ [with embedded video, and comments]
FBI Director Comey Defends Clinton Decision, Says Case 'Not a Cliff-Hanger'
Sep 7 2016
http://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2016-election/fbi-director-comey-defends-clinton-decision-says-case-not-cliff-n644366 [with embedded video, and comments] [original at http://bigstory.ap.org/article/fa6a2af4ac534d70872db26b9b6902ba/fbi-head-clinton-email-matter-not-cliff-hanger ]
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House Democrats Release Emails Between Colin Powell and Hillary Clinton Showing Advice He Gave Her
Hillary Clinton checks her Blackberry from a desk inside a C-17 military plane upon her departure from Malta, in the Mediterranean Sea, bound for Tripoli, Libya.
[ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/09/08/these-61-words-dont-make-colin-powell-look-good-in-the-clinton-email-controversy/ (with comments)]
Sep 8 2016
http://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2016-election/house-democrats-release-email-between-colin-powell-hillary-clinton-n644616 [with embedded videos, and comments]
Colin Powell on use of private email: ‘I stand by my decisions and I am fully accountable.’
Former secretary of state Colin L. Powell speaks during the groundbreaking ceremony for the U.S. Diplomacy Center at the State Department in 2014. On Thursday, he addressed an email he sent to Hillary Clinton telling her that he used a personal computer to do business with other officials and foreign leaders.
September 8, 2016
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2016/09/08/colin-powell-on-use-of-private-email-i-stand-by-my-decisions-and-i-am-fully-accountable/ [with comments]
Condoleezza Rice Aides, Colin Powell Also Got Classified Info on Personal Emails
Feb 4 2016
http://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/rice-aides-powell-also-got-classified-info-personal-emails-n511181 [with embedded video, and comments]
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A Closer Look: Hillary Clinton "Scandals" vs. Donald Trump Pay to Play
Published on Sep 7, 2016 by Late Night with Seth Meyers
Seth examines the integrity and character scandals plaguing presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lv3PiDJiFgw [with comments]
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Trump bragged that his money bought off politicians. Just not this time.
September 7, 2016
Donald Trump used to have a simple theory for how politicians worked. “When you give,” he said last year, “they do whatever the hell you want them to do.”
Now, this year’s Trump seems to think last year’s Trump was wrong.
The Republican nominee is facing new scrutiny over a 2013 episode where his pay-to-play theory of politics seemed to work perfectly — and casting it, instead, as an innocent transaction with no strings attached.
Back then, Trump’s charitable foundation gave a $25,000 donation to a group backing the reelection of Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi. Then, Bondi’s office made a decision that benefited Trump: It declined to pursue an investigation into fraud claims against Trump University.
That case fits an old pattern in Trump’s political giving. Unlike wealthy executives who spread their money broadly — loyal to the same candidates or ideologies year after year — Trump’s gifts have been tightly focused on his own personal and business needs.
He raised money for Jeb Bush while lobbying Bush’s allies to soften the governor’s opposition to casino gambling. He started giving to Virginia state candidates after purchasing a golf course and, later, a winery in the state. And he backed two county commissioners in Palm Beach County, Fla., amid a dispute over airport noise at his Mar-a-Lago estate.
But this week, Trump is no longer playing the self-funding insurgent, and Bondi is one of his prominent supporters. Now, Trump has adopted the same line as many career politicians: that political donations are not always intended to buy favors.
[...]
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-bragged-that-his-money-bought-off-politicians-just-not-this-time/2016/09/07/00a9d1e4-750b-11e6-be4f-3f42f2e5a49e_story.html [with embedded video, and comments]
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Donald Trump says only he can fix a corrupt system. Now we’ve learned that’s another pipe dream.
Video [embedded]:
Here's what you need to know about Trump's improper gift
The Washington Post's David Fahrenthold breaks down the controversy over Donald Trump's improper $25,000 donation to a political group connected to Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi, who was at the time considering whether to open a fraud investigation against Trump University.
By Paul Waldman
September 7, 2016
“I have joined the political arena so that the powerful can no longer beat up on people that cannot defend themselves,” Donald Trump said in his convention speech. “Nobody knows the system better than me, which is why I alone can fix it.”
It was always a bold claim, particularly his accompanying assertions [ https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2016/09/06/yes-trump-does-buy-off-corrupt-politicians-he-confirmed-it-himself-remember ] that he gets whatever he wants from politicians because he gives them money. But as we investigate the tale of his fortuitously timed donation to Florida attorney general Pam Bondi and her subsequent decision not to pursue a fraud case against Trump University, something else is becoming clear: The idea that nobody knows the system as well as Donald Trump is a joke. When it comes to political corruption, he’s about as skilled and successful as he is at selling steaks or vodka.
To set the stage, here’s the Florida story [ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2016/09/01/trump-pays-irs-a-penalty-for-his-foundation-violating-rules-with-gift-to-florida-attorney-general/ ] in brief: In 2013, Bondi’s office had received complaints from Floridians who said that Trump University scammed them out of thousands of dollars, and the office was considering joining a lawsuit that the New York State attorney general had filed against Trump U. While those deliberations were going on, Bondi called Trump and asked him for a $25,000 contribution to her PAC. He made the contribution, and shortly after the check was received, Bondi’s office announced that it would not be joining the New York lawsuit or investigating Trump University on its own. The check to Bondi’s PAC, furthermore, was written by the Trump Foundation, which is an illegal political contribution. Trump says it was just a clerical error, but when the Foundation filed its taxes, it falsely claimed to have made the $25,000 donation to a charity in Kansas with a similar name as Bondi’s PAC.
Last night, the Huffington Post reported [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/donald-trump-pam-bondi-trump-university_us_57cf2c6ce4b0a48094a64854 ] that not only did Trump give Bondi that donation, a few months later he hosted a $3,000-a-person fundraiser for her reelection at his Mar-a-Lago resort. And he gave her what he might call a fantastic deal: While this year he has charged his campaign $140,000 every time it uses the mansion for an event, the Republican Party of Florida paid Mar-a-Lago less than $5,000 for Bondi’s fundraiser.
And today, Steve Eder and Megan Twohey have a piece in the New York Times [ http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/07/us/politics/donald-trump-pam-bondi.html ] that provides some critical context for the Florida story, which is that Trump has not only been a major donor to all kinds of politicians, he has also run afoul of the law with his contributions before. Here are some excerpts:
When a New York State commission investigated contributions to state and local officials in the 1980s, it subpoenaed Mr. Trump, who had contributed $150,000 to candidates in 1985. Under oath, he said he had circumvented the state’s $50,000 individual and $5,000 corporate contribution limits by disbursing his contributions to Mr. Stein, the city councilman, through 18 subsidiary companies...
Years later, Mr. Trump came under fire from the Federal Election Commission for violating a $25,000 annual limit on contributions in the late 1980s. Mr. Trump resisted paying a fine, insisting that he had been unaware of the federal limit and that, once informed of it, he sought refunds.
Only when the commission threatened to take him to court did Mr. Trump agree to a $15,000 civil penalty, records show...
It was with similar reluctance that in 2000, Mr. Trump apologized for failing to disclose to New York State officials that he had spent $150,000 to finance ads opposing a proposed casino in the Catskills, which he saw as a threat to his Atlantic City properties. The ads were created and placed by a political consultant, Roger Stone, and appeared under the name of a front group, the Institute for Law and Society.
A settlement led to what, at the time, was the largest penalty imposed by the state lobbying commission: Trump Hotels and Casino Resorts paid $50,000, and Mr. Stone and the front group each paid $100,000, without admitting wrongdoing. In a statement, all three said they “apologize if anyone was misled.”
I should note that these kinds of articles are exactly what I’ve been advocating for [ https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2016/09/05/trumps-history-of-corruption-is-mind-boggling-so-why-is-clinton-supposedly-the-corrupt-one/ ] when it comes to stories of Trump’s corruption: When news organizations decide to devote resources to investigating the story, new information comes out and we get a fuller understanding of what’s really going on.
So the picture coming into focus is not of someone who knows the system better than anyone. Quite the contrary: It’s a picture of an amateurish bumbler, spreading his money around in ways that get him fined and censured by state and federal authorities because, as he later says when he gets caught, he doesn’t know what the law is or how it works. Someone who knows the system better than anyone — as Trump claims to — knows what the political contribution limits are, knows you can’t skirt them by donating through subsidiaries, and knows you can’t tell the IRS you gave money to some obscure charity in Kansas to cover up an illegal political donation. Trump apparently knows none of these things, nor did he have the sense to hire anyone who could help him maximize the return on his investments in lobbying and campaign contributions while making sure he didn’t break the law.
Even more important, Trump wants us to believe that because he knows the system so well, only he can fix it. So what does he want to change, armed as he is with all this intimate knowledge gained over years of greasing palms and seeking favors? Does he want to lower contribution limits? Create stricter disclosure requirements for political contributions? Impose greater penalties for those who, like him, violate campaign finance laws? Something else entirely? What exactly does Trump want to do?
We have no idea, because he’s never said. Somehow his unique understanding of this corrupt system hasn’t yet produced anything like a plan, an idea, or even a fleeting notion about how it ought to be fixed. It’s almost as if neither his knowledge of the system nor his passion for reform are as extraordinary as he’d have us believe.
© 2016 The Washington Post
https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2016/09/07/donald-trump-says-only-he-can-fix-a-corrupt-system-now-weve-learned-thats-another-pipe-dream/ [with comments]
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Prolific political donor Trump often skirted rules, paid fines
Updated September 7, 2016
http://www.cnn.com/2016/09/07/politics/donald-trump-campaign-donation-fines/ [with embedded videos]
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The Many Scandals of Donald Trump: A Cheat Sheet
Donald Trump celebrates the opening of the Trump Taj Mahal in Atlantic City in 1990. A year later, it was bankrupt.
The Republican nominee’s charitable foundation made a large gift to a Florida politician right before she dropped a damaging investigation. But what else has the foundation done?
Sep 7, 2016
As the old saying goes, those who give to glass foundations shouldn’t throw stones. Or something like that. In any case, after hitting Hillary Clinton hard over the Clinton Foundation, Donald Trump is under fresh scrutiny for his own foundation.
Washington Post reporter David Fahrenthold [ http://www.washingtonpost.com/people/david-a-fahrenthold ] has been reporting for months on the dearth of actual giving that Trump has done, despite repeated vows to donate to charity over the decades, but the story that’s broken through concerns a donation that Trump made to Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi, a Republican, in 2013. At the time, Bondi’s office was deciding whether or not to pursue a fraud case against Trump University [ http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/09/donald-trump-scandals/474726/#TrumpUniversity ] and the Trump Institute [ http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/09/donald-trump-scandals/474726/#TrumpInstitute ]. According to an aide, Bondi personally spoke with Trump, soliciting a donation to And Justice for All, a group backing her reelection. The Trump Foundation cut And Justice for All a $25,000 check, and four days Bondi dropped the investigation.
There are two questions at play here. One is the appearance of a quid-pro-quo. While Trump and Bondi say there was none, this is also precisely the mode Trump has described in the past [ http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/09/trump-buying-politicians/498749/ ]. “As a businessman and a very substantial donor to very important people, when you give, they do whatever the hell you want them to do,” Trump told The Wall Street Journal [ http://www.wsj.com/articles/donald-trump-says-his-past-politics-were-transactional-1438213199 ] in July 2015. “As a businessman, I need that.” He reprised those boasts early in the GOP primary, positioning himself as the only candidate honest enough to say how the game was played—and the only one rich enough to be exempt from it. Now, however, he’s singing a different tune.
Improper influence or not, the donation was illegal. The Trump Foundation, as a nonprofit, cannot give to political causes. Making things more complicated, the Trump Foundation recorded the incorrect recipient as the gift. Eventually, it had to pay a $2,500 penalty to the IRS. Even then, it has not recouped the money, as is required.
That’s not the end of the story. The liberal watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington has filed a complaint [ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2016/09/06/liberal-watchdog-group-asks-irs-to-investigate-trump-foundations-political-gift/ ] with the IRS, accusing the Trump Foundation of violating another rule by using charity to benefit a group’s leader. Meanwhile, The Huffington Post reports [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/donald-trump-pam-bondi-trump-university_us_57cf2c6ce4b0a48094a64854 ] that Trump’s help for Bondi didn’t stop with that $25,000 donation. His family gave more to her, and he also hosted a fundraiser at his tony Mar-A-Lago in Florida—charging less than market rate, and less than he charged his own campaign to host events there.
[...]
The breadth of Trump’s controversies is truly yuge, ranging from allegations of mafia ties to unscrupulous business dealings, and from racial discrimination to alleged marital rape. The stretch over more than four decades, from the mid-1970s to the present day. To catalogue the full sweep of allegations would require thousands of words and lump together the trivial with the truly scandalous. Including business deals that have simply failed, without any hint of impropriety, would require thousands more. This is a snapshot of some of the most interesting and largest of those scandals.
[...]
http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/09/donald-trump-scandals/474726/
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Did Donald Trump Bribe the Florida Attorney General?
Published on Sep 9, 2016 by The Late Show with Stephen Colbert [ http://www.youtube.com/channel/UCMtFAi84ehTSYSE9XoHefig , http://www.youtube.com/channel/UCMtFAi84ehTSYSE9XoHefig/videos ]
Pam Bondi, Florida's AG, accepted a campaign donation from the candidate just days before dropping a fraud investigation into Trump University. Was it wrong, or so wrong it's right? Guess what Donald Trump thinks.
[aired September 8, 2016]
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-kVXz4XCJts [with comments]
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Bill Clinton, After a Year of Restraint, Unleashes an Impassioned Self-Defense
Bill Clinton in Durham, N.C., on Tuesday. “I got tickled the other day when Mr. Trump called my foundation a criminal enterprise,” he said.
Sara D. Davis/Getty Images
By MATT FLEGENHEIMER
SEPT. 9, 2016
At last, Bill Clinton [ http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/c/bill_clinton/index.html ] could not help himself.
He paced the stage during a speech on Tuesday in North Carolina, holding his microphone close. He raised his left index finger. And at once, the meandering address turned sharply, and without prompting, to his charitable foundation, a magnet for criticism in recent weeks.
“We live in a Snapchat-Twitter world,” Mr. Clinton lamented, tilting his head theatrically — a septuagenarian embracing his age, decades after reveling in saxophone cool.
“It’s so much easier,” he said, “just to discredit people and call them names.”
For Mr. Clinton and his extended circle, this election has at times felt like a campaign devised to discredit the former president and call him names.
And after more than a year of uncharacteristic restraint — a notable shift from eight years ago, when his simmering instincts often burdened Hillary Clinton [ http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/us/elections/hillary-clinton-on-the-issues.html ]’s first presidential run — Mr. Clinton seems to have had enough.
“Did I solve every problem? No,” he told a crowd on Wednesday in Orlando, Fla. “Did I get caught trying? You bet.”
In the Democratic primary, he mostly held his tongue as Senator Bernie Sanders disavowed his administration’s approach to trade, criminal justice, gay rights and the deregulation of Wall Street, in part because Mrs. Clinton had been compelled to second-guess much of his record herself.
Yet if the primary doubled as a re-litigation of Mr. Clinton’s policies, which his advisers believe history will judge kindly, the general election has touched a different nerve, taking a black light to Mr. Clinton’s post-presidential legacy.
“His reputation has suffered some since he left the presidency,” said David Gergen, a senior adviser to several presidents, including Mr. Clinton. “There’s no desire on the part of Bill Clinton and his followers to make him the center of the campaign. They want to make Hillary the center of the campaign. So he’s had to take some things. He’s had to fight with one hand tied behind his back.”
Friends of Mr. Clinton’s say he has grown impervious to most criticisms, particularly swipes at his personal indiscretions, which could proliferate in the weeks before the election. Donald J. Trump [ http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/us/elections/donald-trump-on-the-issues.html ] has made winking allusions to Mr. Clinton’s infidelities and other controversies from the 1990s.
But the focus on the Clinton Foundation, which has come under escalating scrutiny over potential conflicts of interest [ http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/23/us/politics/election-clinton-foundation.html ] and foreign donations [ http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/19/us/politics/if-hillary-clinton-wins-foundation-will-stop-accepting-foreign-donations.html ], has rankled him far more, according to those close to the former president, because of his deep personal investment in the foundation’s charitable work over the last 15 years.
In a series of swing-state appearances this week, Mr. Clinton unleashed an impassioned self-defense, by turns sarcastic and almost pleading.
“All we’ve done is save lives,” he told voters in Detroit on Monday.
“I got tickled the other day when Mr. Trump called my foundation a criminal enterprise,” he said in Durham, N.C., on Tuesday, noting that Mr. Trump had paid a fine for making a political donation [ http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/07/us/politics/donald-trump-pam-bondi.html ] using funds from his own foundation.
“If creating jobs and saving lives is bad,” Mr. Clinton said in Orlando the next day, “I guess you can zing me with it.”
Moments later, he wondered aloud how much money Mr. Trump had spent to help the people of Haiti.
Angel Urena, a spokesman for Mr. Clinton, said that the foundation’s mission and those who rely on it “have been President Clinton’s life” since he left office.
“So when someone who doesn’t know the first thing about philanthropy tries to bring the Clinton Foundation into his political sideshow,” Mr. Urena said of Mr. Trump, “President Clinton is going to stand up for it.”
The irritation seemed to have been building for weeks. Mr. Clinton had scarcely appeared on the campaign trail since the Democratic convention. His most public task in the interim appeared to be clapping behind Mrs. Clinton in several cities on a Rust Belt bus tour.
Allies said Mr. Clinton deserved credit for largely holding his fire so far this year, despite persistent bipartisan criticism, avoiding a repeat of 2008, when he seethed over the rise of then-Senator Barack Obama. Most memorably, he appeared to diminish Mr. Obama’s campaign by invoking the Rev. Jesse Jackson’s more quixotic bids in the 1980s.
“He understands,” said Paul Begala, a top campaign and White House aide to Mr. Clinton who now advises a pro-Clinton “super PAC [ http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects/c/campaign_finance/index.html ].” “He used to say this a lot to me: ‘My mother didn’t have to spank me twice for the same mistake.’ ”
An exception came this summer, when Mr. Clinton attracted criticism by chatting at the Phoenix airport with Attorney General Loretta E. Lynch [ http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/02/us/politics/bill-clinton-loretta-lynch.html ] amid a federal investigation into Mrs. Clinton’s email practices.
Still, the Clintons and many in their orbit have long believed they are held to a double standard on questions of transparency, and friends say they consider the tumult surrounding the family foundation to be among the most egregious examples.
They point to the lifesaving work the group has done, particularly in its focus on AIDS [ https://www.clintonfoundation.org/our-work/clinton-health-access-initiative/programs/hivaids ] and malaria drugs [ https://www.clintonfoundation.org/our-work/clinton-health-access-initiative/programs/malaria ], and they suggest that Mr. Clinton is more deserving of a Nobel Prize [ http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/science/topics/nobel_prizes/index.html ] than of accusations of impropriety.
“It bothers the hell out of me,” said James Carville, Mr. Clinton’s chief strategist on the 1992 campaign. “No one likes to be attacked, and he comes under the category of ‘no one.’ But my sense is that the attacks on the foundation are the most painful.”
As Mrs. Clinton slogs through a stretch of middling polls [ http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/24/us/politics/hillary-clinton-donald-trump-polls.html ], with voters still sharply questioning her honesty and trustworthiness [ http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/09/us/politics/hillary-clinton-voters-trust.html ], the family has already bowed at least somewhat to election-year pressures: Mr. Clinton told foundation employees last month that the organization would stop accepting foreign or corporate donations if Mrs. Clinton is elected and that he would resign from its board.
The foundation has accepted tens of millions of dollars from countries that the State Department has criticized for their records on sex discrimination and other human rights issues. Mr. Trump has also seized on the release of emails from Mrs. Clinton’s tenure as secretary of state that include references to foundation donors, accusing her of favoritism.
Speaking to reporters on her campaign plane this week, Mrs. Clinton noted that several watchdog groups had given the charity the highest possible marks.
“A lot of what’s been said is not founded in fact,” she said.
The coming weeks are unlikely to be kinder to Mr. Clinton.
Mr. Trump has said he may bring up Mr. Clinton’s sexual affairs on the debate stage beside Mrs. Clinton, a prospect that some Democrats welcome, hoping it will backfire.
“This has been tried,” Mr. Begala said. “The yurts of Mongolia know that Bill Clinton was accused, and in fact was, unfaithful to his wife.”
Other former aides have found less occasion for whimsy, cringing through an election that has felt interminable and ugly.
The family name will be fine, they say, as long as Mrs. Clinton can return it to the White House. For some, that cannot happen quickly enough.
“I can’t wait for this to be over,” said Mickey Kantor, a longtime friend who served as Mr. Clinton’s commerce secretary, “probably like every other American.”
© 2016 The New York Times Company
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/10/us/politics/bill-clinton-campaign.html
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PRESIDENTIAL: Donald Trump Union League address on National Security - Philadelphia
Published on Sep 7, 2016 by ABC15 Arizona [ http://www.youtube.com/channel/UCIVk1L1-JmpdiGuZcVjImtA / http://www.youtube.com/user/abc15com , http://www.youtube.com/user/abc15com/videos ]
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hZTYfJcez70 [no comments yet] [also at e.g. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZfYVlqe9LVI (with comments)]
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Full Show - Hacking Hillary And Triumphant Trump Showdown - 09/07/2016
Published on Sep 7, 2016 by The Alex Jones Channel [ http://www.youtube.com/channel/UCvsye7V9psc-APX6wV1twLg / http://www.youtube.com/user/TheAlexJonesChannel , http://www.youtube.com/user/TheAlexJonesChannel/videos ]
On this Wednesday, September 7 edition of the Alex Jones Show, we analyze how Hillary Clinton will attempt to shut down independent press and the freeflow of information if she is installed as president. Survivalist writer James Wesley Rawles explains more. Also, Freeway Rick Ross gives his take on national events. And Trump insider Roger Stone discusses Hillary’s coughing fits and how the mainstream media is distancing themselves from her.
Be Prepared for a Contested Election
Bad memories of Florida 2000 could come back if the presidential election is close, and particularly if Trump loses narrowly.
September 9, 2016
http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2016/09/brace-yourself-for-a-repeat-of-the-contested-2000-election.html [with comments]
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BOTRt0w2xqY [with comments]
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How Russia could spark a U.S. electoral disaster
Russian President Vladimir Putin holds a cabinet meeting in Moscow's Kremlin on Wednesday.
(Mikhail Klimentyev/Sputnik/ Kremlin Pool Photo via Associated Press)
By Anne Applebaum
September 8, 2016
“U.S. investigates potential covert Russian plan to disrupt November elections [ https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/intelligence-community-investigating-covert-russian-influence-operations-in-the-united-states/2016/09/04/aec27fa0-7156-11e6-8533-6b0b0ded0253_story.html ].” To those unused to this kind of story, I can imagine that headline, from The Post this week, seemed strange. A secret Russian plot to throw a U.S. election through a massive hack of the electoral system? It sounds like a thriller, or a movie starring Harrison Ford.
In fact, the scenario under investigation has already taken place, in whole or in part, in other countries. Quite a bit of the story is already unfolding in public; strictly speaking, it’s not “secret” or “covert” at all. But because most Americans haven’t seen this kind of game played before (most Americans, quite wisely, don’t follow political news from Central Europe or Ukraine), I think the scenario needs to be fully spelled out. And so, based on Russia’s past tactics in other countries, assuming it acts more or less the same way it acts elsewhere, here’s what could happen over the next two months:
1. Trump, who is advised by several people with Russian links [ https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/global-opinions/how-a-trump-presidency-could-destabilize-europe/2016/07/21/9ec38a20-4f75-11e6-a422-83ab49ed5e6a_story.html ], will repeat and strengthen his “the election is rigged” narrative. The “polls are lying,” the “real” people aren’t being counted, the corrupt elites/Clinton clan/mainstream media are colluding to prevent him from taking office. Trump will continue to associate himself with Brexit — a vote that pollsters really did get wrong [ http://www.cnbc.com/2016/07/04/why-the-majority-of-brexit-polls-were-wrong.html ] — and with Nigel Farage, the far-right British politician who now promotes Trump (and has, incidentally, just been offered his own show on RT [ http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/09/07/kremlin-backed-broadcaster-rt-offers-nigel-farage-his-own-show/ ], the Russian state-sponsored TV channel).
2. Russia will continue to distribute and publish the material its hackers have already obtained from attacks on the Democratic National Committee, George Soros’s Open Society Foundation, former NATO supreme commander Gen. Philip Breedlove [ https://theintercept.com/2016/07/01/nato-general-emails/ ] and probably others. The point will be to discredit not just Hillary Clinton but also the U.S. democratic process and, again, the “elite” who supposedly run it. As we have learned in multiple countries, even benign private conversations and emails can, when published in a newspaper, suddenly look sinister. Speculation seems ominous; jokes menacing. Almost any leak of anything is damaging.
3. On or before Election Day, Russian hackers will seek to hack the U.S. voting system. We certainly know that this is possible: Hackers have already targeted voter registration systems in Illinois and Arizona, according to The Post [ https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/fbi-is-investigating-foreign-hacks-of-state-election-systems/2016/08/29/6e758ff4-6e00-11e6-8365-b19e428a975e_story.html ], and the FBI has informed Arizona officials that it suspects Russian hacking teams. Possible breaches are being investigated in several other states, and it’s not hard to imagine that many are vulnerable. The U.S. election system is decentralized and in some places frankly amateurish, as we learned in Florida in 2000.
4. The Russians attempt to throw the election. They might try to get Trump elected. Alternatively — and this would, of course, be even more devastating — they might try to rig the election for Clinton, perhaps leaving a trail of evidence designed to connect the rigging operation to Clinton’s campaign.
5. Once revealed, the result will be media hysteria, hearings, legal challenges, mass rallies, a constitutional crisis — followed by confusion, chaos and an undermining of the office of the presidency. Trump might emerge from the process as president after all. He will then go on, as promised at so many rallies, to “lock her up,” and of course to open a broad relation with Russian President Vladimir Putin, the only foreign leader he seems to truly admire. Even if Clinton remains as president, she will be tarnished. At least a part of the country will assume she is illegitimate, that the elites/Clinton clan/mainstream media stole the election from “the people.”
6. More likely, the hack will fail, or never even get off the ground. But what’s the downside in trying, or even in letting it be known that it was tried? Rumors of election fraud can create the same hysteria as real election fraud. Already, Russia’s propaganda wire service, sputniknews.com [ https://sputniknews.com/us/20160907/1045070241/kremlin-meddling-claims-russian-analysts-take.html ], has speculated that The Post’s article on Russian electoral manipulation is a clever plot to “to hide the actual efforts at electoral manipulation” and a “good cover for vote-rigging.” That thought will be tweeted and posted and shared by a whole ecosystem of professional trolls and computer bots, over and over again until it finally shows up on authentic pro-Trump websites.
7. And what’s the downside for Trump? If he wins, he wins. If he loses — then there are all kinds of ways to make money from the “election was rigged” narrative. He could start a media company, focused on the conspiracy. He could start a national movement. He could make movies. He could be a hero. Whatever happens, the political process is undermined, social trust plummets further and the appeal of American democracy, both at home and around the world, diminishes. And that, of course, is the point.
Read more on this topic:
The Post’s View: Putin’s suspected meddling in our election would be a disturbing first
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/global-opinions/putins-suspected-meddling-in-a-us-election-would-be-a-disturbing-first/2016/07/25/2e84c374-5280-11e6-bbf5-957ad17b4385_story.html
Jennifer Rubin: What’s the scoop with Russia and the U.S. election?
https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/right-turn/wp/2016/07/27/whats-the-scoop-with-russia-and-the-u-s-election/
Paul Musgrave: Why would Russia interfere in the U.S. election? Because it sometimes works.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2016/07/26/why-would-russia-interfere-in-the-u-s-election-because-it-usually-works/
© 2016 The Washington Post
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/global-opinions/how-russia-could-spark-a-us-electoral-disaster/2016/09/08/303f8502-75e2-11e6-b786-19d0cb1ed06c_story.html [with embedded video, and comments]
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U.S. job openings at record high, skills mismatch emerging
Job seekers listen to prospective employers during a job hiring event for marketing, sales and retail positions in San Francisco, California, June 4, 2015.
REUTERS/Robert Galbraith/File Photo
By Lucia Mutikani
Wed Sep 7, 2016 12:16pm EDT
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. job openings surged to a record high in July, but a lag in hiring suggested employers were struggling to find qualified workers to fill the positions.
The monthly Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey, or JOLTS, released by the Labor Department on Wednesday also pointed to tightening conditions in the labor market, which could spur faster wage growth.
JOLTS, is one of the job market metrics on Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen's so-called dashboard. It was published ahead of the U.S. central bank's Sept. 20-21 policy meeting at which the Fed is widely expected to leave interest rates unchanged.
"There are millions of jobs going begging right now in what has got to be one of the biggest mismatches between skills and lack of qualified help available in the nation's history," said Chris Rupkey, chief economist at MUFG Union Bank in New York. "The economy seems strong enough to weather a rate hike."
Job openings, a measure of labor demand, increased 228,000 to a seasonally adjusted 5.9 million, the Labor Department said. That was the highest level since the series started in December 2000 and pushed the jobs openings rate up one-10th of a percentage point to 3.9 percent in July.
Hiring was little changed at 5.2 million in July, keeping the hiring rate steady at 3.6 percent for a second straight month. But hiring slowed in August, with nonfarm payrolls increasing by 151,000 jobs, a report showed last week. The economy added a total of 546,000 jobs in June and July.
Although Fed officials view the labor market as being at or near full employment, concerns about persistently low inflation have left the U.S. central bank cautious about raising interest rates in the near term.
Job openings were almost across the board. There were big increases in construction, retail, leisure and hospitality, as well as professional and business services.
In a sign of confidence in the labor market, 3.0 million Americans voluntarily quit their jobs in July, keeping the quits rate at 2.1 percent for a second straight month. This rate has rebounded from a low of 1.3 percent in early 2010.
Layoffs were little changed at 1.6 million in July, holding the layoffs rate at a 3-1/2-year low of 1.1 percent. The ratio of job openings to unemployment hit a 15-year high.
"This suggest wages should be pressured higher and, therefore, either price increases will pick up or profit margins will be squeezed further," said John Ryding, chief economist at RDQ Economics in New York.Despite tightening labor market conditions, wage growth has been frustratingly slow. Average hourly earnings have failed to hold above 2.5 percent on a year-over-year basis. Economists say a growth rate of between 3 and 3.5 percent in wages is needed to bring inflation near the Fed's 2 percent target.
(Reporting by Lucia Mutikani; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama and Will Dunham)
© 2016 Reuters
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-economy-jobs-idUSKCN11D1UX
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Hillary Clinton Participates In Commander-In-Chief Forum (Full) | NBC News
Published on Sep 8, 2016 by NBC News [ http://www.youtube.com/channel/UCeY0bbntWzzVIaj2z3QigXg / http://www.youtube.com/user/NBCNews , http://www.youtube.com/user/NBCNews/videos ]
Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton joined NBC's Matt Lauer to answer questions from veterans and discuss her plans for the U.S.
[aired September 7, 2016]
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GC373ASBXs8 [with comments] [original at http://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/commander-in-chief-forum ]
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Donald Trump Participates in Commander-In-Chief Forum (Full) | NBC News
Published on Sep 8, 2016 by NBC News
NBC's Matt Lauer and Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump discuss his plans for dealing with ISIS, the VA and a host of other military issues.
[aired September 7, 2016]
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-yNVAx68FB0 [with comments] [original at http://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/commander-in-chief-forum ]
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Live Feed: Hillary VS. Trump Debate
Streamed live on Sep 7, 2016 by The Alex Jones Channel
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JI1BjnRNoH0 [with comments]
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Donald Trump’s Campaign Stands By Embrace of Putin
SEPT. 8, 2016
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/09/us/politics/hillary-clinton-donald-trump-putin.html [with embedded video]
Garry Kasparov
@Kasparov63
Governor Pence, Vladimir Putin is a strong leader in the same way arsenic is a strong drink. Your country should be ashamed of you.
2:26 PM - 8 Sep 2016
https://twitter.com/Kasparov63/status/773996059949404160 [with comments]
Trump’s Love for Putin: a Presidential Role Model
President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, center, arrived at the Group of 20 meeting in Hangzhou, China, with the Chinese president, Xi Jinping, left, and President Nursultan Nazarbayev of Kazakhstan, right.
SEPT. 8, 2016
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/09/us/politics/donald-trump-vladimir-putin.html
Trump Remarks on Putin Like Saying Hitler ‘Good Guy’: Graham
September 8, 2016
"I think this is the biggest miscalculation since people thought Hitler was a good guy," Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., says of Donald Trump’s praise for Russian President Vladimir Putin in a forum last night.
"The bottom line is if you’re running to be the leader of the free world and you find admiration for Putin, then I think you’re missing the boat on who Putin is."
"Other than destroying every instrument of democracy in his own country, having opposition people killed, dismembering neighbors through military force, and being the benefactor of the butcher of Damascus, he’s a good guy."
[...]
http://www.bloomberg.com/politics/trackers/2016-09-08/trump-remarks-on-putin-like-saying-hitler-good-guy-graham
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What Really Happened at Donald Trump's Intelligence Briefing
Sep 8 2016
[...]
Current and former U.S. intelligence officials who asked that their names not be disclosed told NBC News that many members of the current intelligence community -- leadership and rank and file -- were angered by Trump's comments Wednesday night, and the possibility that he may have disclosed details of his intelligence briefing or attempted to politicize it.
Former CIA and NSA director Mike Hayden, who opposes Trump, told NBC News that in almost four decades in intelligence "I have never seen anything like this before."
"A political candidate has used professional intelligence officers briefing him in a totally non-political setting as props to buttress an argument for his political campaign," said Hayden. "And his political point was actually imputed to them, not even something they allegedly said. The `I can read body language' line was quite remarkable. ... I am confident Director Clapper sent senior professionals to this meeting and so I am equally confident that no such body language ever existed. It's simply not what we do."
Michael Morell, a former acting CIA director who was President George W. Bush's briefer and is now a Hillary Clinton supporter, said Trump's comments about his briefing were extraordinary.
"This is the first time that I can remember a candidate for president doing a readout from an intelligence briefing, and it's the first time a candidate has politicized their intelligence briefing. Both of those are highly inappropriate and crossed a long standing red line respected by both parties," he said.
"To me this is just the most recent example that underscores that this guy is unfit to be commander in chief," Morell continued.
"His comments show that he's got no understanding of how intelligence works. Intelligence officers do not make policy recommendations. It's not their job and anyone running for president should know that. The people who briefed him, I'm pretty sure were career analysts — senior intel professionals. There is no way that they would in any way signal displeasure with the policies of the president."
[...]
http://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2016-election/u-s-official-donald-trump-s-body-language-claim-doesn-n644856 [with embedded videos, and comments] [also excerpted at/see (linked in) http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=125050731 and preceding and following]
Trump Body Language Take Likely Got Lost In Translation: Experts
Sep 8 2016
http://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/trump-body-language-take-likely-got-lost-translation-experts-n645111 [with comments]
Former intelligence officers alarmed by Trump's briefing readout
“I’ve never seen anything like that,” said former CIA Director Michael Hayden
'That's just awful,' says former CIA Director Michael Hayden.
09/08/16 Updated 09/08/16
http://www.politico.com/story/2016/09/trump-intelligence-briefing-readout-227904 [with comments]
*
Trump's shot at top brass rankles military circles
Any attempt to sideline top officers in one fell swoop is viewed by some retired officers and longtime Pentagon officials as undermining tradition.
09/08/16
http://www.politico.com/story/2016/09/trump-criticize-top-generals-fallout-227909 [with embedded video, and comments]
*
A Debate Disaster Waiting to Happen
Matt Lauer moderated the presidential forum on Wednesday.
Doug Mills/The New York Times
By THE EDITORIAL BOARD
SEPT. 8, 2016
There was not much of a contest in Wednesday night’s forum [ http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/08/us/politics/hillary-clinton-donald-trump-national-security.html ] with Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. Mrs. Clinton answered the questions of the moderator, Matt Lauer, in coherent sentences, often with specific details. Mr. Trump alternated between rambling statements and grandiose boasts when he wasn’t lying.
Mr. Lauer largely neglected to ask penetrating questions, call out falsehoods or insist on answers when it was obvious that Mr. Trump’s responses had drifted off.
If the moderators of the coming debates do not figure out a better way to get the candidates to speak accurately about their records and policies — especially Mr. Trump, who seems to feel he can skate by unchallenged with his own version of reality while Mrs. Clinton is grilled and entangled in the fine points of domestic and foreign policy — then they will have done the country a grave disservice.
Whether or not one agrees with her positions, Mrs. Clinton, formerly secretary of state and once a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, showed a firm understanding of the complex issues facing the country. Mr. Trump reveled in his ignorance about global affairs and his belief that leading the world’s most powerful nation is no harder than running his business empire, which has included at least four bankruptcies [ http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/21/us/politics/donald-trump-debt.html ].
Mr. Lauer seemed most energized interrogating Mrs. Clinton about her use of a personal email server while secretary of state. Focusing on it meant that other critical issues — like America’s role in Afghanistan and its ties with China — went unaddressed. He was harder on Mrs. Clinton than on Mr. Trump, reflecting a tendency among some journalists to let Mr. Trump’s deceptions go unchallenged. That certainly was the case when he let Mr. Trump attack Mrs. Clinton for voting for the Iraq war and going into Libya [ https://buzzfeed-video1.s3.amazonaws.com/video/2016/01/19/FromTheDeskOfDonaldTrump2-28-624x350.mp4 ] when Mr. Trump had supported [ http://www.vox.com/2016/9/7/12842998/trump-iraq-libya-lie-command-in-chief-forum ] those actions.
Disputing outright lies may actually be one of the easier challenges for a moderator. The harder task is to pierce fantasies and gibberish. That requires preparation and persistence.
Mr. Trump was asked to explain his qualifications to lead the armed forces. “I have great judgment [ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/09/07/the-first-hillary-clinton-vs-donald-trump-showdown-of-2016-annotated/ ],” was his response. Fortunately, despite the lack of a follow-up question to that non-answer, Mr. Trump was perfectly able to display his abysmal judgment.
He repeated his view that President Vladimir Putin of Russia, who invaded Ukraine and annexed Crimea, is a better leader than President Obama. He denigrated America’s generals as having been “reduced to rubble.” He talked in circles about defeating the Islamic State, boasting of a secret plan that he would not share.
Mr. Trump reinforced his reputation for misogyny by defending his tweet from 2013 suggesting that sexual assaults were to be expected if women serve in the military. And, prompted by an audience question, he adjusted his immigration policy on the fly, suggesting that immigrants who join the military could avoid deportation.
Lucky for him, no one bothered to ask why he should be allowed to be commander in chief when he spent so much time attacking the parents of a Muslim Army captain killed in Iraq. Earlier in the day, Mr. Trump called for a huge expansion of the military that experts said would cost an extra $150 billion [ http://www.crfb.org/blogs/how-much-would-trumps-new-defense-plan-cost ] over a decade. He gave no hint where that money would come from.
At one point, Mrs. Clinton, trying to assure the audience that she would use military force judiciously, said, “We are not putting ground troops into Iraq ever again, and we’re not putting ground troops into Syria.” This left unanswered the question of whether she had made a promise she can’t keep, particularly since there are some Special Operations forces in both battlefields now.
There will be many issues to explore at the three presidential debates. For the sake of the nation, the moderators need to be fully prepared to challenge the candidates, so voters can have a clear picture of how they will lead.
© 2016 The New York Times Company
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/09/opinion/a-debate-disaster-waiting-to-happen.html [with comments]
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Hillary Clinton holds first press conference in 278 days
Published on Sep 8, 2016 by CBS News [ http://www.youtube.com/channel/UC8p1vwvWtl6T73JiExfWs1g / http://www.youtube.com/user/CBSNewsOnline , http://www.youtube.com/user/CBSNewsOnline/videos ]
Hillary Clinton held her first press conference in 278 days Thursday morning. Clinton hit Donald Trump for his remarks the previous night during a Commander-in-Chief forum. See the full presser.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ru2dNrziiGU [with comments]
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Inside the collapse of Trump’s D.C. policy shop
Donald Trump speaks during a town hall on Tuesday in Virginia Beach.
(Evan Vucci/Associated Press)
By Josh Rogin
September 8, 2016
The Trump campaign built a large policy shop in Washington that has now largely melted away because of neglect, mismanagement and promises of pay that were never honored. Many of the team’s former members say the campaign leadership never took the Washington office seriously and let it wither away after squeezing it dry.
Donald Trump often brags about having experts and senior former officials advising him. Wednesday night in a forum on national security, he said, “We have admirals, we have generals, we have colonels. We have a lot of people that I respect.” It’s true that Trump is getting high-level policy advice [sic - generous doses of his very own Trump® Ass Gas™] on a regular basis from senior experts [sic - fellow Trump® Ass Gas™-huffing crackpots] such as Rudy Giuliani and retired Lt. Gen. Mike Flynn. But Trump has never acknowledged the policy shop based in Washington that has been doing huge amounts of grunt work for months without recognition or compensation.
Since April, advisers never named in campaign press releases have been working in an Alexandria-based office, writing policy memos, organizing briefings, managing surrogates and placing op-eds. They put in long hours before and during the Republican National Convention to help the campaign look like a professional operation.
But in August, shortly after the convention, most of the policy shop’s most active staffers quit. Although they signed non-disclosure agreements, several of them told me on background that the Trump policy effort has been a mess from start to finish.
“It’s a complete disaster,” one disgruntled former adviser told me. “They use and abuse people. The policy office fell apart in August when the promised checks weren’t delivered.”
Three former members, all of whom quit in August, told me that as early as April they were promised financial compensation but were later told that they would have to work as volunteers. They say the leaders of the shop, Rick Dearborn and John Mashburn, told many staffers that money was on the way but then were unable to deliver. Dearborn is Sen. Jeff Sessions’s (R-Ala.) chief of staff, while Mashburn is the former chief of staff for Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C).
“I heard it from Dearborn, I heard it from Mashburn. It was understood that we would be paid. The campaign never discussed how much the pay would be. It was never in writing,” said one staffer, who quit last month. “There were some people who were treating it as a full-time job. I suspect that those people were quite astonished when the pay didn’t come through.”
One former adviser told me promises of pay were made when Corey Lewandowski was campaign manager, but then in July, after Paul Manafort took over, he said the policy shop positions would remain unpaid. Dearborn tried repeatedly to get a budget approved by New York headquarters for staff, but failed.
Some former staffers say Dearborn was not responsible for the broken promises of pay for policy staffers.
“Rick Dearborn was always professional and forthcoming with me,” said Pratik Chougule, who held the title of policy coordinator in the D.C. Trump office until he quit last month. “I was certainly under the expectation I would be paid at some point, but I don’t blame Rick Dearborn.”
Campaign spokesman Jason Miller acknowledged that the Washington policy office grew smaller in August, but he called the effort a success.
“The policy shop has been very successful with the campaign. It’s been a large part of the reason Trump has gone on such a positive run over the month of August,” Miller said. “Following the convention, much of the activity has gravitated towards New York, simply because that’s where the full-time multi-floored campaign operation was set up.”
As for promises to pay the policy staffers, Miller said, “No such oral agreements were made.” He said Dearborn is getting paid, in addition to his Senate staff salary, but said Dearborn is following all ethics rules that apply to staffers who also work for campaigns.
The list of people who quit the Trump D.C. policy office is long. It includes J.D. Gordon, who was the office’s director of national security and was instrumental in organizing Trump’s “national security advisory committee,” led by Sessions. Also, conservative author William Triplett, Tera Dahl [ http://councilonglobalsecurity.org/about/staff/tera-dahl/ ] (a former assistant to Michele Bachmann), Ying Ma [ https://yingma.org/about/ ] (who previously worked for Ben Carson) and many others.
Some of the staffers, like Gordon, were working full time for the campaign. Others, like Chougule, pitched in part time while doing other work. Some of the team is still doing work for the campaign. For example, Joe Schmitz, a former Pentagon inspector general who resigned amid scandal, set up a “surrogate war room” and continues to send memos to New York headquarters.
The real policy work in the Trump campaign is now done by a small team based in New York’s Trump Tower, led by Stephen Miller [ http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/06/stephen-miller-donald-trump-2016-policy-adviser-jeff-sessions-213992 ], the staffer who leads the writing of Trump’s policy speeches and travels with the candidate. There are other paid staffers in New York, including deputy policy director Dan Kowalski [ http://www.politico.com/story/2016/08/trump-economic-advisory-team-226709 ]. Walid Phares, the Middle East adviser on Trump’s policy team, was getting paid [ http://mediamatters.org/blog/2016/07/26/trump-campaign-paying-fox-news-analyst-13000-month/211904 ] $13,000 a month in addition to being a paid analyst on Fox News.
In April, when the policy office was stood up, the campaign was bracing for a long primary fight that many inside Trump World thought would last through the convention. But after Trump secured the nomination and the convention ended, the enthusiasm for policy details waned.
“The campaign knew there were doubts about whether Trump had enough knowledge of policy and whether he had good people advising him,” one of the former advisers said. “Later, the rationale for the policy office as the campaign saw it kind of went away.”
The last straw for some came in early August, when the Washington policy shop held two marathon work sessions designed to plan out how to get Trump ready for the policy portions of the upcoming presidential debates. The Washington policy team came up with detailed plans about who would brief Trump on specific policy topics over the course of several weeks.
But after Dearborn worked his staff overtime to get the recommendations, the campaign leadership decided to go in a different direction. “The New York office realized that their candidate would not be receptive to that level of intense preparation,” one former adviser said.
A lot of the policy office’s work seemed to be just for show. For example, it organized national security and economic advisory teams that are not actually advising the candidate on a regular basis. The national security advisory committee met with Trump only once. Some of its members who have gotten a lot of attention, such as Russia expert Carter Page, have never met with Trump one on one.
“The national security advisory board was total nonsense. They had absolutely no say in anything,” one of the former advisers said. “Most of them are just names on paper.”
There are still a few people left in Trump’s Washington policy shop, mostly working part time. Some, including Dearborn, are in the process of moving over to the transition team, which is guaranteed money from the taxpayers, according to a law passed to ensure smooth transfers of power between administrations.
Those who remain now understand that their work is on a volunteer basis and may never actually be seen by the candidate. Those who left have learned a lesson about working on presidential campaigns: You give your time at your own risk. If you don’t have a contract, you don’t have any recourse.
The Trump campaign doesn’t appear to think policy depth is a required quality for a presidential candidate or a presidential campaign to succeed. That may prove to be right, but those who gave their time to work for Trump’s Washington shop didn’t know that upfront. They do now.
“If people are going to vote for Trump, it’s not going to be for policy. That’s not who Trump is; that’s not the campaign,” said one former adviser. “Would I say we had any demonstrable effect on anything they did in the campaign? No. None of us in the D.C. office were in Trump’s inner circle. It’s questionable still who is.”
© 2016 The Washington Post
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/josh-rogin/wp/2016/09/08/inside-the-collapse-of-trumps-d-c-policy-shop/ [with comments]
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Full Show - Hillary Threatens Press: Stop Covering My Health - 09/08/2016
Published on Sep 8, 2016 by The Alex Jones Channel
On this Thursday, September 8 transmission of the Alex Jones Show, we'll recap Wednesday night's Commander-in-Chief forum and determine who came out on top. We'll also examine reports that Hillary Clinton was wearing an earpiece during the event through which she may have received "stealth coaching." On today's show, we welcome documentary filmmaker Dinesh D'Souza to discuss his latest film, "Hillary's America," and the 2016 election. We'll also continue delving into the issue of Hillary's health.
Donald Trump Could Get Booted Off The Ballot In Minnesota
Minnesota Democrats are trying to have Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump tossed off the ballot in their state.
“It is likely none of the Republican electors were legally elected.”
09/09/2016 Updated September 16, 2016
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/donald-trump-minnesota-ballot_us_57d2301de4b00642712ce14f [with comments]
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y0xJab5jBF4 [with comments]
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The Black Eyes in Donald Trump’s Life
Donald Trump in 1979.
Fred W. McDarrah/Getty Images
Nicholas Kristof
SEPT. 8, 2016
Once upon a time, in New York City in the 1950s, a little boy didn’t like his second-grade music teacher, Charles Walker. So, the boy later boasted, he slugged Mr. Walker, giving him a black eye.
“When that kid was 10,” Walker recalled on his death bed, “even then, he was a ——” Oops, gentle reader, time to move on hurriedly with the life story of Donald J. Trump.
Young Donald took on a newspaper route to learn the value of money, but this was not “Leave It to Beaver”: On rainy days, Donald avoided getting wet by delivering papers while being squired around in the family Cadillac.
There are now more than 20 books out about Trump, and while I can’t claim to have read them all — I am not a masochist! — I have waded through his life story so that you don’t have to. You’re welcome! As a reader service, here are highlights.
Donald attended the New York Military Academy, where he thrived despite a regrettable attempt to throw a smaller student out a second-floor window (this comes from one of the best of the biographies, the brand-new “Trump Revealed [ https://www.washingtonpost.com/pb/trumprevealed/ ],” by a team from The Washington Post).
Enough of Trump’s youth; now let’s hurtle through his business career. After graduating from Wharton, Trump joined his dad’s real estate business and, er, worked his way up: At about the age of 25, he was named president of Trump Management.
Unfortunately, the Trumps seemed to have a policy in some properties of not renting to blacks [ http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/24/opinion/sunday/is-donald-trump-a-racist.html ]. “I’m not allowed to rent” to black families, a Trump building superintendent reportedly explained at the time, adding that he was just doing “what my boss told me to do.”
If a black person did make it as far as filling out an application, it was coded — in some cases, “C” for “colored” — to make sure it was not accidentally approved. The Nixon administration sued the Trumps in 1973 for breaking anti-discrimination laws.
Something similar happened with Donald Trump’s pageants. He began with the American Dream Calendar Girl Model Search, but that led to a lawsuit from a woman who said that Trump had groped her and restrained her in his daughter’s bedroom. The lawsuit also alleged that Trump had directed that “any black female contestants be excluded” from his parties. Trump denied the claims.
Back in the world of real estate, Trump had moved into Manhattan. In 1980, preparing to build Trump Tower, he demolished a department store using hundreds of undocumented Polish workers [ http://www.nytimes.com/1990/07/13/nyregion/trump-says-he-didn-t-know-he-employed-illegal-aliens.html ] who were paid less than $5 an hour, sometimes in vodka. Some weren’t paid at all and were threatened with deportation if they complained.
In subsequent litigation, Trump blamed the subcontractor. The judge said that Trump’s aide was on site and that Trump himself should have known.
Ultimately, Trump Tower was a financial success, but the same was not true of Trump’s venture into casinos. Anyone who had invested in his only public company, Trump Hotels and Casino Resorts, when it listed in 1995 would have lost [ http://www.marketwatch.com/story/donald-trump-was-a-stock-market-disaster-2015-07-22 ] about 90 cents on the dollar by 2005.
Trump as a candidate has, of course, refused to release his tax returns. But many years ago he was obliged to release them [ https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trumps-income-tax-returns-once-became-public-they-showed-he-didnt-pay-a-cent/2016/05/20/ffa2f63c-1b7c-11e6-b6e0-c53b7ef63b45_story.html ] for casino regulatory filings — and at that time he paid no federal income tax at all. Because of tax loopholes, he managed to report zero income (actually losses [ http://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2016/03/08/real-trump-tax-scandal-david-cay-johnston/81436212/ ]!) for both 1978 and 1979.
Do I risk losing you with finances? Time to throw in some sex, with a look now at Trump’s family life.
Melania Trump says that her husband “is intensely loyal … he will never let you down.” Then again, she’s his third wife.
His first was Ivana Trump, and he then began a dalliance with Marla Maples, culminating in a dramatic made-for-the-tabloids confrontation between the two women while they were all skiing in Aspen. The resulting divorce negotiations were bitter, with Ivana alleging in a deposition that Trump had raped her; she later backed off that.
Trump then married Maples. She in turn gave way to Melania, who may well have arrived in the States illegally (Melania Trump denies this but hasn’t furnished a convincing explanation for her immigration).
So what does all this add up to?
Whether in his youth, in his business career or in his personal life, Trump’s story is that of a shallow egoist who uses those around him.
Even as a child, he personified privilege and entitlement. In business, he proved a genius at marketing himself but grew his fortune more slowly than if he had put his wealth in a stock index fund. He made a mess of his personal life and has been repeatedly accused of racism, of cheating people, of lying, of stiffing charities.
His life is a vacuum of principle, and he never seems to have stood up for anything larger than himself.
Over seven decades, there’s one continuous theme to his life story: This is a narcissist who has no core. The lights are on, but no one’s home.
© 2016 The New York Times Company (emphasis in original)
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/08/opinion/the-black-eyes-in-donald-trumps-life.html [with comments]
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FNN: Hillary Clinton Rally in Charlotte, NC - FULL SPEECH
Published on Sep 8, 2016 by FOX 10 Phoenix [ http://www.youtube.com/channel/UCJg9wBPyKMNA5sRDnvzmkdg , http://www.youtube.com/channel/UCJg9wBPyKMNA5sRDnvzmkdg/videos ]
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=06xb8G7xnn4 [with comments]
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Donald Trump Cleveland Ohio Charter School FULL Speech 9/8/16
Published on Sep 8, 2016 by LesGrossman News [ http://www.youtube.com/channel/UC-luje1qyKIAOFhts88E3Dw , http://www.youtube.com/channel/UC-luje1qyKIAOFhts88E3Dw/videos ]
Donald Trump is insisting he opposed the from the beginning, even though fact checkers have repeatedly said that claim is false. Radio host Howard Stern in 2002 asked Trump if he supported the looming n. Trump responded, "I guess so." Speaking at a charter school in Ohio Thursday, the Republican presidential nominee said that if had been in the Congress at the time, he would have voted against authorizing the military conflict. Trump made the comments while visiting Cleveland Arts and Social Sciences Academy, a charter school in the predominantly African-American Woodland Hills neighborhood on the city's East Side. His position on the war is coming under increasing scrutiny as he attacks Democratic opponent Hillary Clinton for voting to authorize the while she was in the Senate. He called his opponent "trigger-happy Hillary" on Thursday and repeated his defense that he always opposed the war.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MAbXLHrLBQc [with comments] [also at e.g. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ue-CdQcZiGQ (with comments), http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G7-4oeEChx0 (with comments), and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pJUWbWowhf0 (with comments)]
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Hillary Clinton speaks at National Baptist Convention in Missouri
Published on Sep 8, 2016 by CBS News
Hillary Clinton spoke to the National Baptist Convention in Kansas City, Missouri, on Thursday evening. Clinton's speech focused on how faith led her to her life of public service, and how faith would guide her in the White House if she were elected. See her full remarks.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SBR0c9qC4uo [with comments] [also at e.g. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bGYApvHcWFQ (with comments)]
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Iraq, Hillary and baseball: Donald Trump talks to Larry King (RT EXCLUSIVE)
Published on Sep 8, 2016 by RT America [ http://www.youtube.com/channel/UCczrL-2b-gYK3l4yDld4XlQ / http://www.youtube.com/user/RTAmerica , http://www.youtube.com/user/RTAmerica/videos ]
Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump tells RT's Larry King that he doesn’t dislike Hillary Clinton, but that she’s not the person to make America great again – and that their televised duel Wednesday was more fun than baseball.
https://www.rt.com/usa/358715-trump-larry-king-interview/
Politicking
https://www.rt.com/shows/politicking-larry-king/
Find RT America in your area: http://rt.com/where-to-watch/
Or watch us online: http://rt.com/on-air/rt-america-air/
Like us on Facebook http://www.facebook.com/RTAmerica
Follow us on Twitter http://twitter.com/RT_America
Trump, Speaking On Russian State-Owned Network, Slams ‘Dishonest’ Media
“They’ll take a statement that you make, which is perfect, and they’ll cut it up and chop it up.”
09/09/2016 Updated September 9, 2016
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/donald-trump-larry-king_us_57d21444e4b03d2d4599c20a [with this YouTube embedded, and comments]
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9_5MtZ0Wv70 [with comments]
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Trump campaign elevates the absurd at expense of serious politics
The Rachel Maddow Show
9/8/16
Rachel Maddow reviews the ridiculousness (and sometimes offensiveness) of the fringe conspiracy theories propagated by the Infowars web site and notes that the site's theories are now entertained at the highest level of American politics thanks to credible treatment by Donald Trump and his acolytes. Duration: 12:51
©2016 NBCNews.com
http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow/watch/trump-campaign-elevates-the-absurd-761003075534 , http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J7oaxnOw6QY [with comments]
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Trump brings chaos to typically staid intelligence briefings
The Rachel Maddow Show
9/8/16
David Priess, former CIA daily intelligence briefer, talks with Rachel Maddow about Donald Trump's bizarre remarks about his intelligence briefing and the even more bizarre reports of what took place in those briefings. Duration: 7:18
©2016 NBCNews.com
http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow/watch/trump-brings-chaos-to-usually-staid-briefings-760961603987 , http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N9Bo26ZSA74 [with comments]
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No, Putin did not mean Trump is that kind of 'brilliant'
The Rachel Maddow Show
9/8/16
Rachel Maddow explains how a mistranslation led to incorrect reporting that Russian president Vladimir Putin described Donald Trump as "brilliant" intellectually, and laments that the state of politics is such that we even have to care about such a detail. Duration: 10:50
©2016 NBCNews.com
http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow/watch/no-putin-did-not-call-trump-brilliant-760970819906 , http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uOL_HumFM44 [with comments]
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in addition to (linked in) the post to which this is a reply and preceding and (other) following, see also (linked in):
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=125001712 and preceding and following,
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=125009164 and preceding and following,
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=125066811 and preceding and following
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=125001922 and preceding and following
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=125002381 and preceding (and any future following)
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=125003143 and preceding and following
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=125004159 and following
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=125009164 and preceding and following
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=125010222 and following
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=125010507 and following
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=125011320 and following
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=125014807 and following,
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/cdn2.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/46680092/GettyImages-479465036.0.jpg)
Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton marches in the Gorham fourth of July parade July 4, 2015 in Gorham, New Hampshire.
Sep 3, 2016
1) Everything, no matter how ludicrous-sounding, is worthy of a full investigation by federal agencies, Congress, the "vast right-wing conspiracy," and mainstream media outlets.
2) Every allegation, no matter how ludicrous, is believable until it can be proven completely and utterly false. And even then, it keeps a life of its own in the conservative media world.
3) The media assumes that Clinton is acting in bad faith until there's hard evidence otherwise.
4) Everything is newsworthy because the Clintons are the equivalent of America's royal family.
5) Everything she does is fake and calculated for maximum political benefit.
http://www.vox.com/2015/7/6/8900143/hillary-clinton-reporting-rules
*
The Media Coverage of Hillary Clinton Is Out of Whack
The problem isn't the scrutiny of her emails or the Clinton Foundation, but treating such sins as comparable to Donald Trump's.
September 7, 2016
https://newrepublic.com/article/136592/media-coverage-hillary-clinton-whack
*
Hillary Clinton and the undisputed media bias against her
Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, right, accompanied by Democratic vice presidential candidate, Sen. Tim Kaine,
September 07, 2016
http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2016/09/07/hillary-clinton-and-undisputed-media-bias-against-her.html [with comments]
--
Soledad O’Brien Calls Out Media For ‘Normalizing White Supremacy’
“I’ve seen on-air, white supremacists being interviewed because they are Trump delegates.”
By Zeba Blay
09/07/2016 12:55 pm ET | Updated September 8, 2016
Soledad O’Brien isn’t here for the media normalizing white supremacist ideas during this election, and she’s speaking out.
O’Brien, best known for her “Black in America” series, was a guest on CNN’s “Reliable Sources” on Sunday [September 4, 2016]. During a discussion about how the media has covered Trump vs. Hillary, she pointed out that one of her biggest issues with coverage of the race is how Trump’s white supremacist supporters have been given air time, which in effect legitamizes and normalizes their presence and opinions in political discourse.
“I’ve seen, on-air, white supremacists being interviewed because they are Trump delegates,” O’Brien told host Brian Stetler. “And they do a five-minute segment, the first minute or so talking about what they believe as white supremacists. So you have normalized that.”
The former CNN anchor also referenced a recent Hillary Clinton speech [ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/08/25/hillary-clintons-alt-right-speech-annotated/ ] wherein the presidential candidate spoke about the so-called alt-right, and laid out a “very good argument,” O’Brien said, about the ways in which Donald Trump has fueled the fire of anti-black, anti-Latino, anti-Muslim ideas [id.] throughout his campaign.
O’Brien then pointed out how, while Clinton may have factual evidence to back up her charges against Trump, Trump can simply call Clinton a “bigot [ http://www.cnn.com/2016/08/24/politics/donald-trump-hillary-clinton-bigot/ ]” without concrete examples of her bigotry, and their comments will be covered as “he-said, she-said.”
“When in actuality... Donald Trump said she’s a bigot without the long laundry list of evidence... If you looked at Hillary Clinton’s speech, she actually did have a lot of really good factual evidence that we would all agree that are things that have happened and do exist. They are treated as if they are equal.”
When asked by Stetler whether or not she believes Donald Trump is racist, O’Brien replied that “in this case that is irrelevant.”
She added: “The thing that we’re talking about is [is he] softening the ground for people who are white supremacists, who are white nationalists, who would self-identify that way, to feel comfortable with their views being brought into the national discourse? To the point where they can do a five-minute segment happily on television? And the answer is yes. Clearly.”
Watch the full segment above.
Copyright © 2016 TheHuffingtonPost.com, Inc.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/soledad-obrien-calls-out-media-for-normalizing-white-supremacy_us_57d01d63e4b03d2d459776f9 [with comments], http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iMZNKYcflHs [as embedded; with comments]
*
GOP Candidate Quits After Allegedly Sending Rape Messages To Reporter
“Bullying of this kind from would-be politicians makes you fear for your First Amendment rights,” The Daily Beast’s Olivia Nuzzi says.
By Ron Dicker
09/07/2016 10:53 am ET | Updated September 7, 2016
A GOP candidate for local office in New Jersey quit the race [ http://6abc.com/1499728/ ] on Tuesday after a reporter revealed she’d received harassing messages [ http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/09/06/a-republican-candidate-said-he-hoped-i-got-raped.html ] from his social media account, ABC Action News in Philadelphia reported.
Krawitz’s decision came in the wake of damning comments he appeared to have posted on Daily Beast reporter Olivia Nuzzi’s Facebook page on Monday. One, shared by Nuzzi, said: “Fuck. You. Olivia, I. Hope. Somebody. Rapes. You. Today. :)”
Krawitz told the Philadelphia Inquirer his account had been hacked and that he had not written the comments. However, the West Deptford Republican Committee chairman said there is “no reasonable reason” to believe the GOP candidate was hacked.
Olivia Nuzzi
@Olivianuzzi
This man who wants me to be raped today was a Republican candidate for office in NJ http://wdgop.org/ray/ [currently yields "Oops! That page cannot be found. - It looks like nothing was found at this location. Maybe try searching for it?"]
7:25 AM - 5 Sep 2016
[ https://twitter.com/Olivianuzzi/status/772802941442990080 (with comments)]
Olivia Nuzzi
@Olivianuzzi
Krawitz and the West Deptford GOP are now claiming that his account was hacked today.
This is from August 10th:
2:56 PM - 5 Sep 2016
[ https://twitter.com/Olivianuzzi/status/772916343335182336 (with comments)]
Krawitz told the Philadelphia Inquirer his account had been hacked and that he had not written the comments [ http://www.philly.com/philly/blogs/S-Jersey-GOP-candidate-blames-hack-for-rape-comments.html ]. However, the West Deptford Republican Committee chairman said there is "no reasonable reason [ http://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/nj-goper-daily-beast-online-rape-calls ]" to believe the GOP candidate was hacked.
Nuzzi says Krawitz has been trolling her since December 2014. In her own article about the harassment [ http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/09/06/a-republican-candidate-said-he-hoped-i-got-raped.html ], she said Krawitz had left numerous comments on her Facebook page, using the same grammar that appeared in Monday’s comments. In August, Nuzzi said, Krawitz asked her about gun crime in Chicago and called her the c-word.
“When a former reality TV star can become the Republican nominee while offending and belittling entire genders, races, and religions, why wouldn’t a man seeking local office think that encouraging the rape of a woman he hates is OK?” she wrote.
“As a reporter, bullying of this kind from would-be politicians makes you fear for your First Amendment rights,” Nuzzi said in a statement to Action News. “As an American and a woman, it makes you fear for the state of our country and the safety of half the population that inhabits it.”
The latest round of profanity from Krawitz’s social media account appeared after Nuzzi shared a Daily Beast article [ http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/09/05/donald-trump-made-out-with-marla-maples-as-she-delivered-his-child.html ] on Donald Trump’s second wife, Marla Maples.
The Huffington Post left a message with a woman who identified herself as Krawitz’s sister at a number listed for him, but has not yet received a reply.
Copyright © 2016 TheHuffingtonPost.com, Inc.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/michael-krawitz-olivia-nuzzi-harassment_us_57d00042e4b03d2d459759b6 [with embedded video report, and comments]
*
Textbook depicts Mexican-Americans as 'lazy,' some out to 'destroy this society,' historians say
06 September 2016 Updated 06 September 2016
http://www.dallasnews.com/news/education/headlines/20160906-textbook-depicts-mexican-americans-as-lazy-some-out-to-destroy-this-society-historians-say.ece
Scholars dismiss controversial proposed Mexican-American studies textbook
September 6th 2016
http://valleycentral.com/news/local/scholars-dismiss-controversial-mexican-american-studies-textbook [with embedded videos]
Report: Proposed Mexican-American textbook rife with errors
“Mexican American Heritage” is a textbook proposed for Texas high school students.
Sept. 6, 2016
http://www.mystatesman.com/news/news/state-regional-govt-politics/report-mexican-american-textbook-for-texas-student/nsSFX/
Texas teachers are uniting to oppose this unbelievably racist textbook about Mexicans
9/7/16
http://fusion.net/story/344682/texas-proposed-racist-textbook/ [with comments]
Critics Call for Texas Board to Reject Mexican-American Studies Textbook
September 7, 2016
http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/curriculum/2016/09/Texas_Mexican_American_Textbook.html
'Racist' Mexican-American history textbook under review in Texas
The Mexican American Heritage textbook is currently under review and is slated to be used in public schools in the 2017-18 school year.
Updated: September 7, 2016
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/racist-mexican-american-history-textbook-review-texas-article-1.2781722
Mexican heritage textbook for Texas schools full of 'offensive stereotypes'
The adoption of Texas textbooks has long been freighted with controversies that have intensified in recent years as the board has become dominated by conservatives.
Ruben Cortez and a committee found Mexican American studies textbook for use in public schools has 141 errors of fact, interpretation and omission
7 September 2016
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/sep/07/mexican-heritage-textbook-texas-offensive-stereotypes
Many opposed to using controversial Mexican-American history textbook in classroom
Small minority in Board of Education publicly opposed to using book
September 08, 2016 Updated: September 08, 2016
http://www.ksat.com/news/many-opposed-to-using-controversial-mexican-american-textbook-in-classroom [with embedded video report, and comment]
*
A Closer Look: Trump Tries to Reach Out to Black and Latino Voters
Published on Sep 6, 2016 by Late Night with Seth Meyers [ http://www.youtube.com/channel/UCVTyTA7-g9nopHeHbeuvpRA / http://www.youtube.com/user/LateNightSeth , http://www.youtube.com/user/LateNightSeth/videos ]
Seth examines Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump's attempt to court black and Latino voters.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1QDORdOFvtM [with comments]
*
Lawsuit: Current election system of Alabama appellate judges discriminates against blacks
September 07, 2016, updated September 07, 2016
http://www.al.com/news/birmingham/index.ssf/2016/09/voting_rights_lawsuit_seeks_to.html [the complaint ( https://www.scribd.com/document/323263038/NAACP-v-Alabama ) embedded; no comments yet]
Rights group sues Alabama over at-large judicial elections
7 September 2016
http://www.jurist.org/paperchase/2016/09/naacp-sues-alabama-over-at-large-judicial-elections.php
NAACP: ‘Voting discrimination is alive and well in Alabama’
The NAACP federal lawsuit argues Alabama’s statewide, at-large election of judges to the state’s most powerful courts dilutes the voting power of blacks in violation of the Voting Rights Act 1965.
September 8, 2016
In Alabama’s three highest state courts, only whites have donned judges’ robes for 15 years now — and only three African-Americans have ever served on those courts.
[...]
http://www.talkmedianews.com/criminal-justice/2016/09/08/naacp-voting-discrimination-alive-well-alabama/ [no comments yet]
Federal Lawsuit Takes On Alabama’s Entirely White Top Courts
From top to bottom: Alabama’s Court of Civil Appeals, Supreme Court, and Court of Criminal Appeals.
Sep 7, 2016
https://thinkprogress.org/federal-lawsuit-takes-on-alabamas-entirely-white-top-courts-cde688f980e5 [with comments]
It's 2016 and Every Single Judge on Alabama's Highest Courts Is White
A new lawsuit could finally change that.
Sep. 7, 2016
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2016/09/new-lawsuit-says-alabama-judicial-elections-violate-voting-rights-act [with comments]
*
Harry Reid: ‘Donald Trump Is An American Nightmare’
“He’s a bigot, he’s a scam artist, he won’t show us his tax return, and Sen. Grassley is holding the Supreme Court vacant for this man,” Reid said.
09/07/2016 Updated September 7, 2016
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/harry-reid-donald-trump-american-nightmare_us_57d025c4e4b06a74c9f1c1d0 [with embedded video, and comments]
*
Empathy for Black Lives Matter
By GLENN BECK
SEPT. 7, 2016
In a recent speech [ http://www.redstate.com/absentee/2016/08/13/glenn-beck-rebukes-party-rocks-crowd-redstate-gathering-full-speech-video-rsg16/ ] to a group of conservatives, I made what I thought was a relatively uncontroversial point about the commonalities between Trump supporters and Black Lives Matter activists. I thought this was a simple idea, but the criticism was immediate and sharp: How dare I try to understand the “other side”?
But as people, wouldn’t we all benefit from trying to empathize with people we disagree with?
I consider myself a “classical liberal” — a.k.a. “constitutional conservative” — and I believe the greatness of our country lies in our founders’ creation of a system that allows and encourages all voices to be heard. The only way for our society to work is for each of us to respect the views of others, and even try to understand and empathize with one another. I have always tried to work toward this goal, even though I have often been guilty of conflating the individual with the whole.
My point about empathy is especially pressing today, since these movements and others — the Tea Party, the Bernie Sanders campaign, Occupy Wall Street — share similar grievances: In their own ways, they say: “I am not being heard,” “I don’t feel like I belong anymore,” “I have no control over my future.” I am not placing all of these movements on the same footing in terms of my personal position, nor am I suggesting that, because I find them to be analogous, they are equal. But there are, in my opinion, strong commonalities, both good and bad.
Each movement is made up of at least three factions: believers, political insiders and instigators. I saw these divides emerge in the Tea Party, where self-serving “leaders” — but really just insiders — tried to take control of the movement to their own benefit. Not surprisingly, we have seen the same thing happen with the Occupy Wall Street movement, and the activists who gathered in Ferguson, Mo. (be it as insiders or as instigators).
I am not looking to condemn, I am looking to understand. For some readers, this may be surprising to hear coming from someone like me. But on my show, I often discuss pivot points. Our opinions or perspectives are not impervious to change — nor should they be. My take on Black Lives Matter has not changed 180 degrees, but it has certainly evolved. Here is my pivot point.
After the horrific shootings of five police officers in Dallas [ http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/09/us/dallas-police-shooting.html ] this summer, I had the opportunity to watch an interview with the parents of the gunman by Lawrence Jones, a contributor at The Blaze, of which I am the founder. I was able to see their heartache and sorrow as parents, as Americans and as human beings.
I also saw a lot of hate online. People were shocked that The Blaze portrayed these grieving parents as human beings. It is sad that I feel the need to state the obvious, but my heart bleeds blue for the men and women of our police forces. But what happened in Dallas should be a reminder that we as a nation do not have to riot; we can (and must) come together.
After the massacre, I invited several Black Lives Matter believers on my show. I got to know them as people — on and off air — and invited them back again. These individuals are decent, hardworking, patriotic Americans. We don’t agree on everything, certainly not on politics; but are we not more than politics? I refuse to define each of them based on the worst among them. No movement is monolithic. The individuals I met that day are not “Black Lives Matter”; they are black Americans who feel disenfranchised and aggrieved; they are believers; they are my neighbors and my fellow citizens.
We need to listen to one another, as human beings, and try to understand one another’s pain. Empathy is not acknowledging or conceding that the pain and anger others feel is justified. Empathy is acknowledging someone else’s pain and anger while feeling for them as human beings — even, and maybe especially, when we don’t necessarily agree or understand them.
Again, that’s different from empathizing with self-interested insiders and instigators. Just as I suggest a concerted effort at empathy, we must also stand together to confront the nefarious elements within our movements with equal fervor.
We are a country in trouble, and we have only one way out: reconciliation. We must follow the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s message and method and move away from a pursuit of “winning” and toward reclaiming our shared humanity. We cannot reconcile with those who want to tear up the Constitution or those who want blood in the street. But we can and must reconcile of our own free will with our neighbors and friends.
I pray, knowing my words will likely fall on many deaf ears as I am a flawed messenger, that cultivating empathy for one another, in our communities and in the news media, from our politicians and in our politics, is the path we must choose as a nation. If we don’t, what we have seen this year will be just the beginning of the hate we are about to unleash. America, and the world, has one path to “united we stand and divided we fall.” Which path will we take? Which one will you?
Glenn Beck (@glennbeck [ https://twitter.com/glennbeck ]), a radio host and media personality, is the author, most recently, of “Liars: How Progressives Exploit Our Fear for Power and Control.”
'All Lives Matter' march draws thousands to Birmingham
Conservative talk show host Glenn Beck marched with over 20,000 supporters Saturday through the streets of Birmingham. The "All Lives Matter" march started at the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church and ended at the BJCC where Beck is holding a Restoring Unity Rally.
August 29, 2015, updated August 31, 2015
http://www.al.com/living/index.ssf/2015/08/all_lives_matter_march_draws_m.html [with embedded video, and comments]
© 2016 The New York Times Company
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/07/opinion/glenn-beck-empathy-for-black-lives-matter.html [with comments]
*
Giuliani: Trump believes now Obama was born in the U.S.
Hardball with Chris Matthews
9/8/16
Chris Matthews presses one of Donald Trump’s top surrogates, former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani, about the Republican candidate renouncing the birtherism movement once and for all. Duration: 5:25
11 of Trump's most outrageous 'birther' claims
Updated September 9, 2016
http://www.cnn.com/2016/09/09/politics/donald-trump-birther/
©2016 NBCNews.com
http://www.msnbc.com/hardball/watch/giuliani-trump-believes-obama-was-born-in-us-760899651579 , http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AJjR9D6fqMU [with comments]
*
Senior Donald Trump Advisor On Birther Comments: We Should Move On
MSNBC Live
9/9/16
Donald Trump’s senior advisor, Boris Epshteyn, defends Trump’s comments on Russia and Vladimir Putin. He also weighs in on the recent comments from Donald Trump surrogates that Trump now believes Obama was born in the U.S. Duration: 6:47
Donald Trump hasn’t questioned Barack Obama’s birthplace since way back in January
September 9, 2016
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/09/09/donald-trump-hasnt-questioned-barack-obamas-birthplace-since-way-back-in-january/ [with comments]
©2016 NBCNews.com
http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc-news/watch/sr-trump-adv-on-birther-comments-we-should-move-on-761463875844 , http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q1r4CqozCYU [with comments]
*
U.S. Supreme Court green lights straight-party voting in Michigan
September 9, 2016
http://www.freep.com/story/news/local/michigan/detroit/2016/09/09/supreme-court-michigan-straight-party-voting/89994972/ [with comments]
Supreme Court won’t revive Michigan ban on straight-ticket voting
September 9, 2016
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/courts_law/supreme-court-rejects-michigan-ban-on-straight-ticket-voting/2016/09/09/7ce6bff6-7533-11e6-be4f-3f42f2e5a49e_story.html [with comments]
Supreme Court Allows ‘Straight-Ticket’ Voting in Michigan
Waiting in line to collect ballots during the presidential primary election in Flint, Mich., in March.
SEPT. 9, 2016
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/10/us/politics/supreme-court-voting-michigan-straight-ticket.html
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FBI director: Clinton email case ‘was not a cliff-hanger’
September 7, 2016
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2016/09/07/fbi-director-clinton-email-case-was-not-a-cliff-hanger/ [with embedded video, and comments]
FBI Director Comey Defends Clinton Decision, Says Case 'Not a Cliff-Hanger'
Sep 7 2016
http://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2016-election/fbi-director-comey-defends-clinton-decision-says-case-not-cliff-n644366 [with embedded video, and comments] [original at http://bigstory.ap.org/article/fa6a2af4ac534d70872db26b9b6902ba/fbi-head-clinton-email-matter-not-cliff-hanger ]
*
House Democrats Release Emails Between Colin Powell and Hillary Clinton Showing Advice He Gave Her
Hillary Clinton checks her Blackberry from a desk inside a C-17 military plane upon her departure from Malta, in the Mediterranean Sea, bound for Tripoli, Libya.
[ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/09/08/these-61-words-dont-make-colin-powell-look-good-in-the-clinton-email-controversy/ (with comments)]
Sep 8 2016
http://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2016-election/house-democrats-release-email-between-colin-powell-hillary-clinton-n644616 [with embedded videos, and comments]
Colin Powell on use of private email: ‘I stand by my decisions and I am fully accountable.’
Former secretary of state Colin L. Powell speaks during the groundbreaking ceremony for the U.S. Diplomacy Center at the State Department in 2014. On Thursday, he addressed an email he sent to Hillary Clinton telling her that he used a personal computer to do business with other officials and foreign leaders.
September 8, 2016
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2016/09/08/colin-powell-on-use-of-private-email-i-stand-by-my-decisions-and-i-am-fully-accountable/ [with comments]
Condoleezza Rice Aides, Colin Powell Also Got Classified Info on Personal Emails
Feb 4 2016
http://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/rice-aides-powell-also-got-classified-info-personal-emails-n511181 [with embedded video, and comments]
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A Closer Look: Hillary Clinton "Scandals" vs. Donald Trump Pay to Play
Published on Sep 7, 2016 by Late Night with Seth Meyers
Seth examines the integrity and character scandals plaguing presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lv3PiDJiFgw [with comments]
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Trump bragged that his money bought off politicians. Just not this time.
September 7, 2016
Donald Trump used to have a simple theory for how politicians worked. “When you give,” he said last year, “they do whatever the hell you want them to do.”
Now, this year’s Trump seems to think last year’s Trump was wrong.
The Republican nominee is facing new scrutiny over a 2013 episode where his pay-to-play theory of politics seemed to work perfectly — and casting it, instead, as an innocent transaction with no strings attached.
Back then, Trump’s charitable foundation gave a $25,000 donation to a group backing the reelection of Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi. Then, Bondi’s office made a decision that benefited Trump: It declined to pursue an investigation into fraud claims against Trump University.
That case fits an old pattern in Trump’s political giving. Unlike wealthy executives who spread their money broadly — loyal to the same candidates or ideologies year after year — Trump’s gifts have been tightly focused on his own personal and business needs.
He raised money for Jeb Bush while lobbying Bush’s allies to soften the governor’s opposition to casino gambling. He started giving to Virginia state candidates after purchasing a golf course and, later, a winery in the state. And he backed two county commissioners in Palm Beach County, Fla., amid a dispute over airport noise at his Mar-a-Lago estate.
But this week, Trump is no longer playing the self-funding insurgent, and Bondi is one of his prominent supporters. Now, Trump has adopted the same line as many career politicians: that political donations are not always intended to buy favors.
[...]
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-bragged-that-his-money-bought-off-politicians-just-not-this-time/2016/09/07/00a9d1e4-750b-11e6-be4f-3f42f2e5a49e_story.html [with embedded video, and comments]
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Donald Trump says only he can fix a corrupt system. Now we’ve learned that’s another pipe dream.
Video [embedded]:
Here's what you need to know about Trump's improper gift
The Washington Post's David Fahrenthold breaks down the controversy over Donald Trump's improper $25,000 donation to a political group connected to Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi, who was at the time considering whether to open a fraud investigation against Trump University.
By Paul Waldman
September 7, 2016
“I have joined the political arena so that the powerful can no longer beat up on people that cannot defend themselves,” Donald Trump said in his convention speech. “Nobody knows the system better than me, which is why I alone can fix it.”
It was always a bold claim, particularly his accompanying assertions [ https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2016/09/06/yes-trump-does-buy-off-corrupt-politicians-he-confirmed-it-himself-remember ] that he gets whatever he wants from politicians because he gives them money. But as we investigate the tale of his fortuitously timed donation to Florida attorney general Pam Bondi and her subsequent decision not to pursue a fraud case against Trump University, something else is becoming clear: The idea that nobody knows the system as well as Donald Trump is a joke. When it comes to political corruption, he’s about as skilled and successful as he is at selling steaks or vodka.
To set the stage, here’s the Florida story [ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2016/09/01/trump-pays-irs-a-penalty-for-his-foundation-violating-rules-with-gift-to-florida-attorney-general/ ] in brief: In 2013, Bondi’s office had received complaints from Floridians who said that Trump University scammed them out of thousands of dollars, and the office was considering joining a lawsuit that the New York State attorney general had filed against Trump U. While those deliberations were going on, Bondi called Trump and asked him for a $25,000 contribution to her PAC. He made the contribution, and shortly after the check was received, Bondi’s office announced that it would not be joining the New York lawsuit or investigating Trump University on its own. The check to Bondi’s PAC, furthermore, was written by the Trump Foundation, which is an illegal political contribution. Trump says it was just a clerical error, but when the Foundation filed its taxes, it falsely claimed to have made the $25,000 donation to a charity in Kansas with a similar name as Bondi’s PAC.
Last night, the Huffington Post reported [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/donald-trump-pam-bondi-trump-university_us_57cf2c6ce4b0a48094a64854 ] that not only did Trump give Bondi that donation, a few months later he hosted a $3,000-a-person fundraiser for her reelection at his Mar-a-Lago resort. And he gave her what he might call a fantastic deal: While this year he has charged his campaign $140,000 every time it uses the mansion for an event, the Republican Party of Florida paid Mar-a-Lago less than $5,000 for Bondi’s fundraiser.
And today, Steve Eder and Megan Twohey have a piece in the New York Times [ http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/07/us/politics/donald-trump-pam-bondi.html ] that provides some critical context for the Florida story, which is that Trump has not only been a major donor to all kinds of politicians, he has also run afoul of the law with his contributions before. Here are some excerpts:
When a New York State commission investigated contributions to state and local officials in the 1980s, it subpoenaed Mr. Trump, who had contributed $150,000 to candidates in 1985. Under oath, he said he had circumvented the state’s $50,000 individual and $5,000 corporate contribution limits by disbursing his contributions to Mr. Stein, the city councilman, through 18 subsidiary companies...
Years later, Mr. Trump came under fire from the Federal Election Commission for violating a $25,000 annual limit on contributions in the late 1980s. Mr. Trump resisted paying a fine, insisting that he had been unaware of the federal limit and that, once informed of it, he sought refunds.
Only when the commission threatened to take him to court did Mr. Trump agree to a $15,000 civil penalty, records show...
It was with similar reluctance that in 2000, Mr. Trump apologized for failing to disclose to New York State officials that he had spent $150,000 to finance ads opposing a proposed casino in the Catskills, which he saw as a threat to his Atlantic City properties. The ads were created and placed by a political consultant, Roger Stone, and appeared under the name of a front group, the Institute for Law and Society.
A settlement led to what, at the time, was the largest penalty imposed by the state lobbying commission: Trump Hotels and Casino Resorts paid $50,000, and Mr. Stone and the front group each paid $100,000, without admitting wrongdoing. In a statement, all three said they “apologize if anyone was misled.”
I should note that these kinds of articles are exactly what I’ve been advocating for [ https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2016/09/05/trumps-history-of-corruption-is-mind-boggling-so-why-is-clinton-supposedly-the-corrupt-one/ ] when it comes to stories of Trump’s corruption: When news organizations decide to devote resources to investigating the story, new information comes out and we get a fuller understanding of what’s really going on.
So the picture coming into focus is not of someone who knows the system better than anyone. Quite the contrary: It’s a picture of an amateurish bumbler, spreading his money around in ways that get him fined and censured by state and federal authorities because, as he later says when he gets caught, he doesn’t know what the law is or how it works. Someone who knows the system better than anyone — as Trump claims to — knows what the political contribution limits are, knows you can’t skirt them by donating through subsidiaries, and knows you can’t tell the IRS you gave money to some obscure charity in Kansas to cover up an illegal political donation. Trump apparently knows none of these things, nor did he have the sense to hire anyone who could help him maximize the return on his investments in lobbying and campaign contributions while making sure he didn’t break the law.
Even more important, Trump wants us to believe that because he knows the system so well, only he can fix it. So what does he want to change, armed as he is with all this intimate knowledge gained over years of greasing palms and seeking favors? Does he want to lower contribution limits? Create stricter disclosure requirements for political contributions? Impose greater penalties for those who, like him, violate campaign finance laws? Something else entirely? What exactly does Trump want to do?
We have no idea, because he’s never said. Somehow his unique understanding of this corrupt system hasn’t yet produced anything like a plan, an idea, or even a fleeting notion about how it ought to be fixed. It’s almost as if neither his knowledge of the system nor his passion for reform are as extraordinary as he’d have us believe.
© 2016 The Washington Post
https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2016/09/07/donald-trump-says-only-he-can-fix-a-corrupt-system-now-weve-learned-thats-another-pipe-dream/ [with comments]
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Prolific political donor Trump often skirted rules, paid fines
Updated September 7, 2016
http://www.cnn.com/2016/09/07/politics/donald-trump-campaign-donation-fines/ [with embedded videos]
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The Many Scandals of Donald Trump: A Cheat Sheet
Donald Trump celebrates the opening of the Trump Taj Mahal in Atlantic City in 1990. A year later, it was bankrupt.
The Republican nominee’s charitable foundation made a large gift to a Florida politician right before she dropped a damaging investigation. But what else has the foundation done?
Sep 7, 2016
As the old saying goes, those who give to glass foundations shouldn’t throw stones. Or something like that. In any case, after hitting Hillary Clinton hard over the Clinton Foundation, Donald Trump is under fresh scrutiny for his own foundation.
Washington Post reporter David Fahrenthold [ http://www.washingtonpost.com/people/david-a-fahrenthold ] has been reporting for months on the dearth of actual giving that Trump has done, despite repeated vows to donate to charity over the decades, but the story that’s broken through concerns a donation that Trump made to Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi, a Republican, in 2013. At the time, Bondi’s office was deciding whether or not to pursue a fraud case against Trump University [ http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/09/donald-trump-scandals/474726/#TrumpUniversity ] and the Trump Institute [ http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/09/donald-trump-scandals/474726/#TrumpInstitute ]. According to an aide, Bondi personally spoke with Trump, soliciting a donation to And Justice for All, a group backing her reelection. The Trump Foundation cut And Justice for All a $25,000 check, and four days Bondi dropped the investigation.
There are two questions at play here. One is the appearance of a quid-pro-quo. While Trump and Bondi say there was none, this is also precisely the mode Trump has described in the past [ http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/09/trump-buying-politicians/498749/ ]. “As a businessman and a very substantial donor to very important people, when you give, they do whatever the hell you want them to do,” Trump told The Wall Street Journal [ http://www.wsj.com/articles/donald-trump-says-his-past-politics-were-transactional-1438213199 ] in July 2015. “As a businessman, I need that.” He reprised those boasts early in the GOP primary, positioning himself as the only candidate honest enough to say how the game was played—and the only one rich enough to be exempt from it. Now, however, he’s singing a different tune.
Improper influence or not, the donation was illegal. The Trump Foundation, as a nonprofit, cannot give to political causes. Making things more complicated, the Trump Foundation recorded the incorrect recipient as the gift. Eventually, it had to pay a $2,500 penalty to the IRS. Even then, it has not recouped the money, as is required.
That’s not the end of the story. The liberal watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington has filed a complaint [ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2016/09/06/liberal-watchdog-group-asks-irs-to-investigate-trump-foundations-political-gift/ ] with the IRS, accusing the Trump Foundation of violating another rule by using charity to benefit a group’s leader. Meanwhile, The Huffington Post reports [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/donald-trump-pam-bondi-trump-university_us_57cf2c6ce4b0a48094a64854 ] that Trump’s help for Bondi didn’t stop with that $25,000 donation. His family gave more to her, and he also hosted a fundraiser at his tony Mar-A-Lago in Florida—charging less than market rate, and less than he charged his own campaign to host events there.
[...]
The breadth of Trump’s controversies is truly yuge, ranging from allegations of mafia ties to unscrupulous business dealings, and from racial discrimination to alleged marital rape. The stretch over more than four decades, from the mid-1970s to the present day. To catalogue the full sweep of allegations would require thousands of words and lump together the trivial with the truly scandalous. Including business deals that have simply failed, without any hint of impropriety, would require thousands more. This is a snapshot of some of the most interesting and largest of those scandals.
[...]
http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/09/donald-trump-scandals/474726/
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Did Donald Trump Bribe the Florida Attorney General?
Published on Sep 9, 2016 by The Late Show with Stephen Colbert [ http://www.youtube.com/channel/UCMtFAi84ehTSYSE9XoHefig , http://www.youtube.com/channel/UCMtFAi84ehTSYSE9XoHefig/videos ]
Pam Bondi, Florida's AG, accepted a campaign donation from the candidate just days before dropping a fraud investigation into Trump University. Was it wrong, or so wrong it's right? Guess what Donald Trump thinks.
[aired September 8, 2016]
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-kVXz4XCJts [with comments]
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Bill Clinton, After a Year of Restraint, Unleashes an Impassioned Self-Defense
Bill Clinton in Durham, N.C., on Tuesday. “I got tickled the other day when Mr. Trump called my foundation a criminal enterprise,” he said.
Sara D. Davis/Getty Images
By MATT FLEGENHEIMER
SEPT. 9, 2016
At last, Bill Clinton [ http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/c/bill_clinton/index.html ] could not help himself.
He paced the stage during a speech on Tuesday in North Carolina, holding his microphone close. He raised his left index finger. And at once, the meandering address turned sharply, and without prompting, to his charitable foundation, a magnet for criticism in recent weeks.
“We live in a Snapchat-Twitter world,” Mr. Clinton lamented, tilting his head theatrically — a septuagenarian embracing his age, decades after reveling in saxophone cool.
“It’s so much easier,” he said, “just to discredit people and call them names.”
For Mr. Clinton and his extended circle, this election has at times felt like a campaign devised to discredit the former president and call him names.
And after more than a year of uncharacteristic restraint — a notable shift from eight years ago, when his simmering instincts often burdened Hillary Clinton [ http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/us/elections/hillary-clinton-on-the-issues.html ]’s first presidential run — Mr. Clinton seems to have had enough.
“Did I solve every problem? No,” he told a crowd on Wednesday in Orlando, Fla. “Did I get caught trying? You bet.”
In the Democratic primary, he mostly held his tongue as Senator Bernie Sanders disavowed his administration’s approach to trade, criminal justice, gay rights and the deregulation of Wall Street, in part because Mrs. Clinton had been compelled to second-guess much of his record herself.
Yet if the primary doubled as a re-litigation of Mr. Clinton’s policies, which his advisers believe history will judge kindly, the general election has touched a different nerve, taking a black light to Mr. Clinton’s post-presidential legacy.
“His reputation has suffered some since he left the presidency,” said David Gergen, a senior adviser to several presidents, including Mr. Clinton. “There’s no desire on the part of Bill Clinton and his followers to make him the center of the campaign. They want to make Hillary the center of the campaign. So he’s had to take some things. He’s had to fight with one hand tied behind his back.”
Friends of Mr. Clinton’s say he has grown impervious to most criticisms, particularly swipes at his personal indiscretions, which could proliferate in the weeks before the election. Donald J. Trump [ http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/us/elections/donald-trump-on-the-issues.html ] has made winking allusions to Mr. Clinton’s infidelities and other controversies from the 1990s.
But the focus on the Clinton Foundation, which has come under escalating scrutiny over potential conflicts of interest [ http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/23/us/politics/election-clinton-foundation.html ] and foreign donations [ http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/19/us/politics/if-hillary-clinton-wins-foundation-will-stop-accepting-foreign-donations.html ], has rankled him far more, according to those close to the former president, because of his deep personal investment in the foundation’s charitable work over the last 15 years.
In a series of swing-state appearances this week, Mr. Clinton unleashed an impassioned self-defense, by turns sarcastic and almost pleading.
“All we’ve done is save lives,” he told voters in Detroit on Monday.
“I got tickled the other day when Mr. Trump called my foundation a criminal enterprise,” he said in Durham, N.C., on Tuesday, noting that Mr. Trump had paid a fine for making a political donation [ http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/07/us/politics/donald-trump-pam-bondi.html ] using funds from his own foundation.
“If creating jobs and saving lives is bad,” Mr. Clinton said in Orlando the next day, “I guess you can zing me with it.”
Moments later, he wondered aloud how much money Mr. Trump had spent to help the people of Haiti.
Angel Urena, a spokesman for Mr. Clinton, said that the foundation’s mission and those who rely on it “have been President Clinton’s life” since he left office.
“So when someone who doesn’t know the first thing about philanthropy tries to bring the Clinton Foundation into his political sideshow,” Mr. Urena said of Mr. Trump, “President Clinton is going to stand up for it.”
The irritation seemed to have been building for weeks. Mr. Clinton had scarcely appeared on the campaign trail since the Democratic convention. His most public task in the interim appeared to be clapping behind Mrs. Clinton in several cities on a Rust Belt bus tour.
Allies said Mr. Clinton deserved credit for largely holding his fire so far this year, despite persistent bipartisan criticism, avoiding a repeat of 2008, when he seethed over the rise of then-Senator Barack Obama. Most memorably, he appeared to diminish Mr. Obama’s campaign by invoking the Rev. Jesse Jackson’s more quixotic bids in the 1980s.
“He understands,” said Paul Begala, a top campaign and White House aide to Mr. Clinton who now advises a pro-Clinton “super PAC [ http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects/c/campaign_finance/index.html ].” “He used to say this a lot to me: ‘My mother didn’t have to spank me twice for the same mistake.’ ”
An exception came this summer, when Mr. Clinton attracted criticism by chatting at the Phoenix airport with Attorney General Loretta E. Lynch [ http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/02/us/politics/bill-clinton-loretta-lynch.html ] amid a federal investigation into Mrs. Clinton’s email practices.
Still, the Clintons and many in their orbit have long believed they are held to a double standard on questions of transparency, and friends say they consider the tumult surrounding the family foundation to be among the most egregious examples.
They point to the lifesaving work the group has done, particularly in its focus on AIDS [ https://www.clintonfoundation.org/our-work/clinton-health-access-initiative/programs/hivaids ] and malaria drugs [ https://www.clintonfoundation.org/our-work/clinton-health-access-initiative/programs/malaria ], and they suggest that Mr. Clinton is more deserving of a Nobel Prize [ http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/science/topics/nobel_prizes/index.html ] than of accusations of impropriety.
“It bothers the hell out of me,” said James Carville, Mr. Clinton’s chief strategist on the 1992 campaign. “No one likes to be attacked, and he comes under the category of ‘no one.’ But my sense is that the attacks on the foundation are the most painful.”
As Mrs. Clinton slogs through a stretch of middling polls [ http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/24/us/politics/hillary-clinton-donald-trump-polls.html ], with voters still sharply questioning her honesty and trustworthiness [ http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/09/us/politics/hillary-clinton-voters-trust.html ], the family has already bowed at least somewhat to election-year pressures: Mr. Clinton told foundation employees last month that the organization would stop accepting foreign or corporate donations if Mrs. Clinton is elected and that he would resign from its board.
The foundation has accepted tens of millions of dollars from countries that the State Department has criticized for their records on sex discrimination and other human rights issues. Mr. Trump has also seized on the release of emails from Mrs. Clinton’s tenure as secretary of state that include references to foundation donors, accusing her of favoritism.
Speaking to reporters on her campaign plane this week, Mrs. Clinton noted that several watchdog groups had given the charity the highest possible marks.
“A lot of what’s been said is not founded in fact,” she said.
The coming weeks are unlikely to be kinder to Mr. Clinton.
Mr. Trump has said he may bring up Mr. Clinton’s sexual affairs on the debate stage beside Mrs. Clinton, a prospect that some Democrats welcome, hoping it will backfire.
“This has been tried,” Mr. Begala said. “The yurts of Mongolia know that Bill Clinton was accused, and in fact was, unfaithful to his wife.”
Other former aides have found less occasion for whimsy, cringing through an election that has felt interminable and ugly.
The family name will be fine, they say, as long as Mrs. Clinton can return it to the White House. For some, that cannot happen quickly enough.
“I can’t wait for this to be over,” said Mickey Kantor, a longtime friend who served as Mr. Clinton’s commerce secretary, “probably like every other American.”
© 2016 The New York Times Company
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/10/us/politics/bill-clinton-campaign.html
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PRESIDENTIAL: Donald Trump Union League address on National Security - Philadelphia
Published on Sep 7, 2016 by ABC15 Arizona [ http://www.youtube.com/channel/UCIVk1L1-JmpdiGuZcVjImtA / http://www.youtube.com/user/abc15com , http://www.youtube.com/user/abc15com/videos ]
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hZTYfJcez70 [no comments yet] [also at e.g. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZfYVlqe9LVI (with comments)]
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Full Show - Hacking Hillary And Triumphant Trump Showdown - 09/07/2016
Published on Sep 7, 2016 by The Alex Jones Channel [ http://www.youtube.com/channel/UCvsye7V9psc-APX6wV1twLg / http://www.youtube.com/user/TheAlexJonesChannel , http://www.youtube.com/user/TheAlexJonesChannel/videos ]
On this Wednesday, September 7 edition of the Alex Jones Show, we analyze how Hillary Clinton will attempt to shut down independent press and the freeflow of information if she is installed as president. Survivalist writer James Wesley Rawles explains more. Also, Freeway Rick Ross gives his take on national events. And Trump insider Roger Stone discusses Hillary’s coughing fits and how the mainstream media is distancing themselves from her.
Be Prepared for a Contested Election
Bad memories of Florida 2000 could come back if the presidential election is close, and particularly if Trump loses narrowly.
September 9, 2016
http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2016/09/brace-yourself-for-a-repeat-of-the-contested-2000-election.html [with comments]
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BOTRt0w2xqY [with comments]
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How Russia could spark a U.S. electoral disaster
Russian President Vladimir Putin holds a cabinet meeting in Moscow's Kremlin on Wednesday.
(Mikhail Klimentyev/Sputnik/ Kremlin Pool Photo via Associated Press)
By Anne Applebaum
September 8, 2016
“U.S. investigates potential covert Russian plan to disrupt November elections [ https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/intelligence-community-investigating-covert-russian-influence-operations-in-the-united-states/2016/09/04/aec27fa0-7156-11e6-8533-6b0b0ded0253_story.html ].” To those unused to this kind of story, I can imagine that headline, from The Post this week, seemed strange. A secret Russian plot to throw a U.S. election through a massive hack of the electoral system? It sounds like a thriller, or a movie starring Harrison Ford.
In fact, the scenario under investigation has already taken place, in whole or in part, in other countries. Quite a bit of the story is already unfolding in public; strictly speaking, it’s not “secret” or “covert” at all. But because most Americans haven’t seen this kind of game played before (most Americans, quite wisely, don’t follow political news from Central Europe or Ukraine), I think the scenario needs to be fully spelled out. And so, based on Russia’s past tactics in other countries, assuming it acts more or less the same way it acts elsewhere, here’s what could happen over the next two months:
1. Trump, who is advised by several people with Russian links [ https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/global-opinions/how-a-trump-presidency-could-destabilize-europe/2016/07/21/9ec38a20-4f75-11e6-a422-83ab49ed5e6a_story.html ], will repeat and strengthen his “the election is rigged” narrative. The “polls are lying,” the “real” people aren’t being counted, the corrupt elites/Clinton clan/mainstream media are colluding to prevent him from taking office. Trump will continue to associate himself with Brexit — a vote that pollsters really did get wrong [ http://www.cnbc.com/2016/07/04/why-the-majority-of-brexit-polls-were-wrong.html ] — and with Nigel Farage, the far-right British politician who now promotes Trump (and has, incidentally, just been offered his own show on RT [ http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/09/07/kremlin-backed-broadcaster-rt-offers-nigel-farage-his-own-show/ ], the Russian state-sponsored TV channel).
2. Russia will continue to distribute and publish the material its hackers have already obtained from attacks on the Democratic National Committee, George Soros’s Open Society Foundation, former NATO supreme commander Gen. Philip Breedlove [ https://theintercept.com/2016/07/01/nato-general-emails/ ] and probably others. The point will be to discredit not just Hillary Clinton but also the U.S. democratic process and, again, the “elite” who supposedly run it. As we have learned in multiple countries, even benign private conversations and emails can, when published in a newspaper, suddenly look sinister. Speculation seems ominous; jokes menacing. Almost any leak of anything is damaging.
3. On or before Election Day, Russian hackers will seek to hack the U.S. voting system. We certainly know that this is possible: Hackers have already targeted voter registration systems in Illinois and Arizona, according to The Post [ https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/fbi-is-investigating-foreign-hacks-of-state-election-systems/2016/08/29/6e758ff4-6e00-11e6-8365-b19e428a975e_story.html ], and the FBI has informed Arizona officials that it suspects Russian hacking teams. Possible breaches are being investigated in several other states, and it’s not hard to imagine that many are vulnerable. The U.S. election system is decentralized and in some places frankly amateurish, as we learned in Florida in 2000.
4. The Russians attempt to throw the election. They might try to get Trump elected. Alternatively — and this would, of course, be even more devastating — they might try to rig the election for Clinton, perhaps leaving a trail of evidence designed to connect the rigging operation to Clinton’s campaign.
5. Once revealed, the result will be media hysteria, hearings, legal challenges, mass rallies, a constitutional crisis — followed by confusion, chaos and an undermining of the office of the presidency. Trump might emerge from the process as president after all. He will then go on, as promised at so many rallies, to “lock her up,” and of course to open a broad relation with Russian President Vladimir Putin, the only foreign leader he seems to truly admire. Even if Clinton remains as president, she will be tarnished. At least a part of the country will assume she is illegitimate, that the elites/Clinton clan/mainstream media stole the election from “the people.”
6. More likely, the hack will fail, or never even get off the ground. But what’s the downside in trying, or even in letting it be known that it was tried? Rumors of election fraud can create the same hysteria as real election fraud. Already, Russia’s propaganda wire service, sputniknews.com [ https://sputniknews.com/us/20160907/1045070241/kremlin-meddling-claims-russian-analysts-take.html ], has speculated that The Post’s article on Russian electoral manipulation is a clever plot to “to hide the actual efforts at electoral manipulation” and a “good cover for vote-rigging.” That thought will be tweeted and posted and shared by a whole ecosystem of professional trolls and computer bots, over and over again until it finally shows up on authentic pro-Trump websites.
7. And what’s the downside for Trump? If he wins, he wins. If he loses — then there are all kinds of ways to make money from the “election was rigged” narrative. He could start a media company, focused on the conspiracy. He could start a national movement. He could make movies. He could be a hero. Whatever happens, the political process is undermined, social trust plummets further and the appeal of American democracy, both at home and around the world, diminishes. And that, of course, is the point.
Read more on this topic:
The Post’s View: Putin’s suspected meddling in our election would be a disturbing first
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/global-opinions/putins-suspected-meddling-in-a-us-election-would-be-a-disturbing-first/2016/07/25/2e84c374-5280-11e6-bbf5-957ad17b4385_story.html
Jennifer Rubin: What’s the scoop with Russia and the U.S. election?
https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/right-turn/wp/2016/07/27/whats-the-scoop-with-russia-and-the-u-s-election/
Paul Musgrave: Why would Russia interfere in the U.S. election? Because it sometimes works.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2016/07/26/why-would-russia-interfere-in-the-u-s-election-because-it-usually-works/
© 2016 The Washington Post
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/global-opinions/how-russia-could-spark-a-us-electoral-disaster/2016/09/08/303f8502-75e2-11e6-b786-19d0cb1ed06c_story.html [with embedded video, and comments]
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U.S. job openings at record high, skills mismatch emerging
Job seekers listen to prospective employers during a job hiring event for marketing, sales and retail positions in San Francisco, California, June 4, 2015.
REUTERS/Robert Galbraith/File Photo
By Lucia Mutikani
Wed Sep 7, 2016 12:16pm EDT
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. job openings surged to a record high in July, but a lag in hiring suggested employers were struggling to find qualified workers to fill the positions.
The monthly Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey, or JOLTS, released by the Labor Department on Wednesday also pointed to tightening conditions in the labor market, which could spur faster wage growth.
JOLTS, is one of the job market metrics on Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen's so-called dashboard. It was published ahead of the U.S. central bank's Sept. 20-21 policy meeting at which the Fed is widely expected to leave interest rates unchanged.
"There are millions of jobs going begging right now in what has got to be one of the biggest mismatches between skills and lack of qualified help available in the nation's history," said Chris Rupkey, chief economist at MUFG Union Bank in New York. "The economy seems strong enough to weather a rate hike."
Job openings, a measure of labor demand, increased 228,000 to a seasonally adjusted 5.9 million, the Labor Department said. That was the highest level since the series started in December 2000 and pushed the jobs openings rate up one-10th of a percentage point to 3.9 percent in July.
Hiring was little changed at 5.2 million in July, keeping the hiring rate steady at 3.6 percent for a second straight month. But hiring slowed in August, with nonfarm payrolls increasing by 151,000 jobs, a report showed last week. The economy added a total of 546,000 jobs in June and July.
Although Fed officials view the labor market as being at or near full employment, concerns about persistently low inflation have left the U.S. central bank cautious about raising interest rates in the near term.
Job openings were almost across the board. There were big increases in construction, retail, leisure and hospitality, as well as professional and business services.
In a sign of confidence in the labor market, 3.0 million Americans voluntarily quit their jobs in July, keeping the quits rate at 2.1 percent for a second straight month. This rate has rebounded from a low of 1.3 percent in early 2010.
Layoffs were little changed at 1.6 million in July, holding the layoffs rate at a 3-1/2-year low of 1.1 percent. The ratio of job openings to unemployment hit a 15-year high.
"This suggest wages should be pressured higher and, therefore, either price increases will pick up or profit margins will be squeezed further," said John Ryding, chief economist at RDQ Economics in New York.Despite tightening labor market conditions, wage growth has been frustratingly slow. Average hourly earnings have failed to hold above 2.5 percent on a year-over-year basis. Economists say a growth rate of between 3 and 3.5 percent in wages is needed to bring inflation near the Fed's 2 percent target.
(Reporting by Lucia Mutikani; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama and Will Dunham)
© 2016 Reuters
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-economy-jobs-idUSKCN11D1UX
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Hillary Clinton Participates In Commander-In-Chief Forum (Full) | NBC News
Published on Sep 8, 2016 by NBC News [ http://www.youtube.com/channel/UCeY0bbntWzzVIaj2z3QigXg / http://www.youtube.com/user/NBCNews , http://www.youtube.com/user/NBCNews/videos ]
Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton joined NBC's Matt Lauer to answer questions from veterans and discuss her plans for the U.S.
[aired September 7, 2016]
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GC373ASBXs8 [with comments] [original at http://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/commander-in-chief-forum ]
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Donald Trump Participates in Commander-In-Chief Forum (Full) | NBC News
Published on Sep 8, 2016 by NBC News
NBC's Matt Lauer and Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump discuss his plans for dealing with ISIS, the VA and a host of other military issues.
[aired September 7, 2016]
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-yNVAx68FB0 [with comments] [original at http://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/commander-in-chief-forum ]
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Live Feed: Hillary VS. Trump Debate
Streamed live on Sep 7, 2016 by The Alex Jones Channel
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JI1BjnRNoH0 [with comments]
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Donald Trump’s Campaign Stands By Embrace of Putin
SEPT. 8, 2016
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/09/us/politics/hillary-clinton-donald-trump-putin.html [with embedded video]
Garry Kasparov
@Kasparov63
Governor Pence, Vladimir Putin is a strong leader in the same way arsenic is a strong drink. Your country should be ashamed of you.
2:26 PM - 8 Sep 2016
https://twitter.com/Kasparov63/status/773996059949404160 [with comments]
Trump’s Love for Putin: a Presidential Role Model
President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, center, arrived at the Group of 20 meeting in Hangzhou, China, with the Chinese president, Xi Jinping, left, and President Nursultan Nazarbayev of Kazakhstan, right.
SEPT. 8, 2016
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/09/us/politics/donald-trump-vladimir-putin.html
Trump Remarks on Putin Like Saying Hitler ‘Good Guy’: Graham
September 8, 2016
"I think this is the biggest miscalculation since people thought Hitler was a good guy," Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., says of Donald Trump’s praise for Russian President Vladimir Putin in a forum last night.
"The bottom line is if you’re running to be the leader of the free world and you find admiration for Putin, then I think you’re missing the boat on who Putin is."
"Other than destroying every instrument of democracy in his own country, having opposition people killed, dismembering neighbors through military force, and being the benefactor of the butcher of Damascus, he’s a good guy."
[...]
http://www.bloomberg.com/politics/trackers/2016-09-08/trump-remarks-on-putin-like-saying-hitler-good-guy-graham
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What Really Happened at Donald Trump's Intelligence Briefing
Sep 8 2016
[...]
Current and former U.S. intelligence officials who asked that their names not be disclosed told NBC News that many members of the current intelligence community -- leadership and rank and file -- were angered by Trump's comments Wednesday night, and the possibility that he may have disclosed details of his intelligence briefing or attempted to politicize it.
Former CIA and NSA director Mike Hayden, who opposes Trump, told NBC News that in almost four decades in intelligence "I have never seen anything like this before."
"A political candidate has used professional intelligence officers briefing him in a totally non-political setting as props to buttress an argument for his political campaign," said Hayden. "And his political point was actually imputed to them, not even something they allegedly said. The `I can read body language' line was quite remarkable. ... I am confident Director Clapper sent senior professionals to this meeting and so I am equally confident that no such body language ever existed. It's simply not what we do."
Michael Morell, a former acting CIA director who was President George W. Bush's briefer and is now a Hillary Clinton supporter, said Trump's comments about his briefing were extraordinary.
"This is the first time that I can remember a candidate for president doing a readout from an intelligence briefing, and it's the first time a candidate has politicized their intelligence briefing. Both of those are highly inappropriate and crossed a long standing red line respected by both parties," he said.
"To me this is just the most recent example that underscores that this guy is unfit to be commander in chief," Morell continued.
"His comments show that he's got no understanding of how intelligence works. Intelligence officers do not make policy recommendations. It's not their job and anyone running for president should know that. The people who briefed him, I'm pretty sure were career analysts — senior intel professionals. There is no way that they would in any way signal displeasure with the policies of the president."
[...]
http://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2016-election/u-s-official-donald-trump-s-body-language-claim-doesn-n644856 [with embedded videos, and comments] [also excerpted at/see (linked in) http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=125050731 and preceding and following]
Trump Body Language Take Likely Got Lost In Translation: Experts
Sep 8 2016
http://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/trump-body-language-take-likely-got-lost-translation-experts-n645111 [with comments]
Former intelligence officers alarmed by Trump's briefing readout
“I’ve never seen anything like that,” said former CIA Director Michael Hayden
'That's just awful,' says former CIA Director Michael Hayden.
09/08/16 Updated 09/08/16
http://www.politico.com/story/2016/09/trump-intelligence-briefing-readout-227904 [with comments]
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Trump's shot at top brass rankles military circles
Any attempt to sideline top officers in one fell swoop is viewed by some retired officers and longtime Pentagon officials as undermining tradition.
09/08/16
http://www.politico.com/story/2016/09/trump-criticize-top-generals-fallout-227909 [with embedded video, and comments]
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A Debate Disaster Waiting to Happen
Matt Lauer moderated the presidential forum on Wednesday.
Doug Mills/The New York Times
By THE EDITORIAL BOARD
SEPT. 8, 2016
There was not much of a contest in Wednesday night’s forum [ http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/08/us/politics/hillary-clinton-donald-trump-national-security.html ] with Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. Mrs. Clinton answered the questions of the moderator, Matt Lauer, in coherent sentences, often with specific details. Mr. Trump alternated between rambling statements and grandiose boasts when he wasn’t lying.
Mr. Lauer largely neglected to ask penetrating questions, call out falsehoods or insist on answers when it was obvious that Mr. Trump’s responses had drifted off.
If the moderators of the coming debates do not figure out a better way to get the candidates to speak accurately about their records and policies — especially Mr. Trump, who seems to feel he can skate by unchallenged with his own version of reality while Mrs. Clinton is grilled and entangled in the fine points of domestic and foreign policy — then they will have done the country a grave disservice.
Whether or not one agrees with her positions, Mrs. Clinton, formerly secretary of state and once a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, showed a firm understanding of the complex issues facing the country. Mr. Trump reveled in his ignorance about global affairs and his belief that leading the world’s most powerful nation is no harder than running his business empire, which has included at least four bankruptcies [ http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/21/us/politics/donald-trump-debt.html ].
Mr. Lauer seemed most energized interrogating Mrs. Clinton about her use of a personal email server while secretary of state. Focusing on it meant that other critical issues — like America’s role in Afghanistan and its ties with China — went unaddressed. He was harder on Mrs. Clinton than on Mr. Trump, reflecting a tendency among some journalists to let Mr. Trump’s deceptions go unchallenged. That certainly was the case when he let Mr. Trump attack Mrs. Clinton for voting for the Iraq war and going into Libya [ https://buzzfeed-video1.s3.amazonaws.com/video/2016/01/19/FromTheDeskOfDonaldTrump2-28-624x350.mp4 ] when Mr. Trump had supported [ http://www.vox.com/2016/9/7/12842998/trump-iraq-libya-lie-command-in-chief-forum ] those actions.
Disputing outright lies may actually be one of the easier challenges for a moderator. The harder task is to pierce fantasies and gibberish. That requires preparation and persistence.
Mr. Trump was asked to explain his qualifications to lead the armed forces. “I have great judgment [ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/09/07/the-first-hillary-clinton-vs-donald-trump-showdown-of-2016-annotated/ ],” was his response. Fortunately, despite the lack of a follow-up question to that non-answer, Mr. Trump was perfectly able to display his abysmal judgment.
He repeated his view that President Vladimir Putin of Russia, who invaded Ukraine and annexed Crimea, is a better leader than President Obama. He denigrated America’s generals as having been “reduced to rubble.” He talked in circles about defeating the Islamic State, boasting of a secret plan that he would not share.
Mr. Trump reinforced his reputation for misogyny by defending his tweet from 2013 suggesting that sexual assaults were to be expected if women serve in the military. And, prompted by an audience question, he adjusted his immigration policy on the fly, suggesting that immigrants who join the military could avoid deportation.
Lucky for him, no one bothered to ask why he should be allowed to be commander in chief when he spent so much time attacking the parents of a Muslim Army captain killed in Iraq. Earlier in the day, Mr. Trump called for a huge expansion of the military that experts said would cost an extra $150 billion [ http://www.crfb.org/blogs/how-much-would-trumps-new-defense-plan-cost ] over a decade. He gave no hint where that money would come from.
At one point, Mrs. Clinton, trying to assure the audience that she would use military force judiciously, said, “We are not putting ground troops into Iraq ever again, and we’re not putting ground troops into Syria.” This left unanswered the question of whether she had made a promise she can’t keep, particularly since there are some Special Operations forces in both battlefields now.
There will be many issues to explore at the three presidential debates. For the sake of the nation, the moderators need to be fully prepared to challenge the candidates, so voters can have a clear picture of how they will lead.
© 2016 The New York Times Company
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/09/opinion/a-debate-disaster-waiting-to-happen.html [with comments]
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Hillary Clinton holds first press conference in 278 days
Published on Sep 8, 2016 by CBS News [ http://www.youtube.com/channel/UC8p1vwvWtl6T73JiExfWs1g / http://www.youtube.com/user/CBSNewsOnline , http://www.youtube.com/user/CBSNewsOnline/videos ]
Hillary Clinton held her first press conference in 278 days Thursday morning. Clinton hit Donald Trump for his remarks the previous night during a Commander-in-Chief forum. See the full presser.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ru2dNrziiGU [with comments]
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Inside the collapse of Trump’s D.C. policy shop
Donald Trump speaks during a town hall on Tuesday in Virginia Beach.
(Evan Vucci/Associated Press)
By Josh Rogin
September 8, 2016
The Trump campaign built a large policy shop in Washington that has now largely melted away because of neglect, mismanagement and promises of pay that were never honored. Many of the team’s former members say the campaign leadership never took the Washington office seriously and let it wither away after squeezing it dry.
Donald Trump often brags about having experts and senior former officials advising him. Wednesday night in a forum on national security, he said, “We have admirals, we have generals, we have colonels. We have a lot of people that I respect.” It’s true that Trump is getting high-level policy advice [sic - generous doses of his very own Trump® Ass Gas™] on a regular basis from senior experts [sic - fellow Trump® Ass Gas™-huffing crackpots] such as Rudy Giuliani and retired Lt. Gen. Mike Flynn. But Trump has never acknowledged the policy shop based in Washington that has been doing huge amounts of grunt work for months without recognition or compensation.
Since April, advisers never named in campaign press releases have been working in an Alexandria-based office, writing policy memos, organizing briefings, managing surrogates and placing op-eds. They put in long hours before and during the Republican National Convention to help the campaign look like a professional operation.
But in August, shortly after the convention, most of the policy shop’s most active staffers quit. Although they signed non-disclosure agreements, several of them told me on background that the Trump policy effort has been a mess from start to finish.
“It’s a complete disaster,” one disgruntled former adviser told me. “They use and abuse people. The policy office fell apart in August when the promised checks weren’t delivered.”
Three former members, all of whom quit in August, told me that as early as April they were promised financial compensation but were later told that they would have to work as volunteers. They say the leaders of the shop, Rick Dearborn and John Mashburn, told many staffers that money was on the way but then were unable to deliver. Dearborn is Sen. Jeff Sessions’s (R-Ala.) chief of staff, while Mashburn is the former chief of staff for Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C).
“I heard it from Dearborn, I heard it from Mashburn. It was understood that we would be paid. The campaign never discussed how much the pay would be. It was never in writing,” said one staffer, who quit last month. “There were some people who were treating it as a full-time job. I suspect that those people were quite astonished when the pay didn’t come through.”
One former adviser told me promises of pay were made when Corey Lewandowski was campaign manager, but then in July, after Paul Manafort took over, he said the policy shop positions would remain unpaid. Dearborn tried repeatedly to get a budget approved by New York headquarters for staff, but failed.
Some former staffers say Dearborn was not responsible for the broken promises of pay for policy staffers.
“Rick Dearborn was always professional and forthcoming with me,” said Pratik Chougule, who held the title of policy coordinator in the D.C. Trump office until he quit last month. “I was certainly under the expectation I would be paid at some point, but I don’t blame Rick Dearborn.”
Campaign spokesman Jason Miller acknowledged that the Washington policy office grew smaller in August, but he called the effort a success.
“The policy shop has been very successful with the campaign. It’s been a large part of the reason Trump has gone on such a positive run over the month of August,” Miller said. “Following the convention, much of the activity has gravitated towards New York, simply because that’s where the full-time multi-floored campaign operation was set up.”
As for promises to pay the policy staffers, Miller said, “No such oral agreements were made.” He said Dearborn is getting paid, in addition to his Senate staff salary, but said Dearborn is following all ethics rules that apply to staffers who also work for campaigns.
The list of people who quit the Trump D.C. policy office is long. It includes J.D. Gordon, who was the office’s director of national security and was instrumental in organizing Trump’s “national security advisory committee,” led by Sessions. Also, conservative author William Triplett, Tera Dahl [ http://councilonglobalsecurity.org/about/staff/tera-dahl/ ] (a former assistant to Michele Bachmann), Ying Ma [ https://yingma.org/about/ ] (who previously worked for Ben Carson) and many others.
Some of the staffers, like Gordon, were working full time for the campaign. Others, like Chougule, pitched in part time while doing other work. Some of the team is still doing work for the campaign. For example, Joe Schmitz, a former Pentagon inspector general who resigned amid scandal, set up a “surrogate war room” and continues to send memos to New York headquarters.
The real policy work in the Trump campaign is now done by a small team based in New York’s Trump Tower, led by Stephen Miller [ http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/06/stephen-miller-donald-trump-2016-policy-adviser-jeff-sessions-213992 ], the staffer who leads the writing of Trump’s policy speeches and travels with the candidate. There are other paid staffers in New York, including deputy policy director Dan Kowalski [ http://www.politico.com/story/2016/08/trump-economic-advisory-team-226709 ]. Walid Phares, the Middle East adviser on Trump’s policy team, was getting paid [ http://mediamatters.org/blog/2016/07/26/trump-campaign-paying-fox-news-analyst-13000-month/211904 ] $13,000 a month in addition to being a paid analyst on Fox News.
In April, when the policy office was stood up, the campaign was bracing for a long primary fight that many inside Trump World thought would last through the convention. But after Trump secured the nomination and the convention ended, the enthusiasm for policy details waned.
“The campaign knew there were doubts about whether Trump had enough knowledge of policy and whether he had good people advising him,” one of the former advisers said. “Later, the rationale for the policy office as the campaign saw it kind of went away.”
The last straw for some came in early August, when the Washington policy shop held two marathon work sessions designed to plan out how to get Trump ready for the policy portions of the upcoming presidential debates. The Washington policy team came up with detailed plans about who would brief Trump on specific policy topics over the course of several weeks.
But after Dearborn worked his staff overtime to get the recommendations, the campaign leadership decided to go in a different direction. “The New York office realized that their candidate would not be receptive to that level of intense preparation,” one former adviser said.
A lot of the policy office’s work seemed to be just for show. For example, it organized national security and economic advisory teams that are not actually advising the candidate on a regular basis. The national security advisory committee met with Trump only once. Some of its members who have gotten a lot of attention, such as Russia expert Carter Page, have never met with Trump one on one.
“The national security advisory board was total nonsense. They had absolutely no say in anything,” one of the former advisers said. “Most of them are just names on paper.”
There are still a few people left in Trump’s Washington policy shop, mostly working part time. Some, including Dearborn, are in the process of moving over to the transition team, which is guaranteed money from the taxpayers, according to a law passed to ensure smooth transfers of power between administrations.
Those who remain now understand that their work is on a volunteer basis and may never actually be seen by the candidate. Those who left have learned a lesson about working on presidential campaigns: You give your time at your own risk. If you don’t have a contract, you don’t have any recourse.
The Trump campaign doesn’t appear to think policy depth is a required quality for a presidential candidate or a presidential campaign to succeed. That may prove to be right, but those who gave their time to work for Trump’s Washington shop didn’t know that upfront. They do now.
“If people are going to vote for Trump, it’s not going to be for policy. That’s not who Trump is; that’s not the campaign,” said one former adviser. “Would I say we had any demonstrable effect on anything they did in the campaign? No. None of us in the D.C. office were in Trump’s inner circle. It’s questionable still who is.”
© 2016 The Washington Post
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/josh-rogin/wp/2016/09/08/inside-the-collapse-of-trumps-d-c-policy-shop/ [with comments]
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Full Show - Hillary Threatens Press: Stop Covering My Health - 09/08/2016
Published on Sep 8, 2016 by The Alex Jones Channel
On this Thursday, September 8 transmission of the Alex Jones Show, we'll recap Wednesday night's Commander-in-Chief forum and determine who came out on top. We'll also examine reports that Hillary Clinton was wearing an earpiece during the event through which she may have received "stealth coaching." On today's show, we welcome documentary filmmaker Dinesh D'Souza to discuss his latest film, "Hillary's America," and the 2016 election. We'll also continue delving into the issue of Hillary's health.
Donald Trump Could Get Booted Off The Ballot In Minnesota
Minnesota Democrats are trying to have Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump tossed off the ballot in their state.
“It is likely none of the Republican electors were legally elected.”
09/09/2016 Updated September 16, 2016
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/donald-trump-minnesota-ballot_us_57d2301de4b00642712ce14f [with comments]
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y0xJab5jBF4 [with comments]
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The Black Eyes in Donald Trump’s Life
Donald Trump in 1979.
Fred W. McDarrah/Getty Images
Nicholas Kristof
SEPT. 8, 2016
Once upon a time, in New York City in the 1950s, a little boy didn’t like his second-grade music teacher, Charles Walker. So, the boy later boasted, he slugged Mr. Walker, giving him a black eye.
“When that kid was 10,” Walker recalled on his death bed, “even then, he was a ——” Oops, gentle reader, time to move on hurriedly with the life story of Donald J. Trump.
Young Donald took on a newspaper route to learn the value of money, but this was not “Leave It to Beaver”: On rainy days, Donald avoided getting wet by delivering papers while being squired around in the family Cadillac.
There are now more than 20 books out about Trump, and while I can’t claim to have read them all — I am not a masochist! — I have waded through his life story so that you don’t have to. You’re welcome! As a reader service, here are highlights.
Donald attended the New York Military Academy, where he thrived despite a regrettable attempt to throw a smaller student out a second-floor window (this comes from one of the best of the biographies, the brand-new “Trump Revealed [ https://www.washingtonpost.com/pb/trumprevealed/ ],” by a team from The Washington Post).
Enough of Trump’s youth; now let’s hurtle through his business career. After graduating from Wharton, Trump joined his dad’s real estate business and, er, worked his way up: At about the age of 25, he was named president of Trump Management.
Unfortunately, the Trumps seemed to have a policy in some properties of not renting to blacks [ http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/24/opinion/sunday/is-donald-trump-a-racist.html ]. “I’m not allowed to rent” to black families, a Trump building superintendent reportedly explained at the time, adding that he was just doing “what my boss told me to do.”
If a black person did make it as far as filling out an application, it was coded — in some cases, “C” for “colored” — to make sure it was not accidentally approved. The Nixon administration sued the Trumps in 1973 for breaking anti-discrimination laws.
Something similar happened with Donald Trump’s pageants. He began with the American Dream Calendar Girl Model Search, but that led to a lawsuit from a woman who said that Trump had groped her and restrained her in his daughter’s bedroom. The lawsuit also alleged that Trump had directed that “any black female contestants be excluded” from his parties. Trump denied the claims.
Back in the world of real estate, Trump had moved into Manhattan. In 1980, preparing to build Trump Tower, he demolished a department store using hundreds of undocumented Polish workers [ http://www.nytimes.com/1990/07/13/nyregion/trump-says-he-didn-t-know-he-employed-illegal-aliens.html ] who were paid less than $5 an hour, sometimes in vodka. Some weren’t paid at all and were threatened with deportation if they complained.
In subsequent litigation, Trump blamed the subcontractor. The judge said that Trump’s aide was on site and that Trump himself should have known.
Ultimately, Trump Tower was a financial success, but the same was not true of Trump’s venture into casinos. Anyone who had invested in his only public company, Trump Hotels and Casino Resorts, when it listed in 1995 would have lost [ http://www.marketwatch.com/story/donald-trump-was-a-stock-market-disaster-2015-07-22 ] about 90 cents on the dollar by 2005.
Trump as a candidate has, of course, refused to release his tax returns. But many years ago he was obliged to release them [ https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trumps-income-tax-returns-once-became-public-they-showed-he-didnt-pay-a-cent/2016/05/20/ffa2f63c-1b7c-11e6-b6e0-c53b7ef63b45_story.html ] for casino regulatory filings — and at that time he paid no federal income tax at all. Because of tax loopholes, he managed to report zero income (actually losses [ http://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2016/03/08/real-trump-tax-scandal-david-cay-johnston/81436212/ ]!) for both 1978 and 1979.
Do I risk losing you with finances? Time to throw in some sex, with a look now at Trump’s family life.
Melania Trump says that her husband “is intensely loyal … he will never let you down.” Then again, she’s his third wife.
His first was Ivana Trump, and he then began a dalliance with Marla Maples, culminating in a dramatic made-for-the-tabloids confrontation between the two women while they were all skiing in Aspen. The resulting divorce negotiations were bitter, with Ivana alleging in a deposition that Trump had raped her; she later backed off that.
Trump then married Maples. She in turn gave way to Melania, who may well have arrived in the States illegally (Melania Trump denies this but hasn’t furnished a convincing explanation for her immigration).
So what does all this add up to?
Whether in his youth, in his business career or in his personal life, Trump’s story is that of a shallow egoist who uses those around him.
Even as a child, he personified privilege and entitlement. In business, he proved a genius at marketing himself but grew his fortune more slowly than if he had put his wealth in a stock index fund. He made a mess of his personal life and has been repeatedly accused of racism, of cheating people, of lying, of stiffing charities.
His life is a vacuum of principle, and he never seems to have stood up for anything larger than himself.
Over seven decades, there’s one continuous theme to his life story: This is a narcissist who has no core. The lights are on, but no one’s home.
© 2016 The New York Times Company (emphasis in original)
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/08/opinion/the-black-eyes-in-donald-trumps-life.html [with comments]
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FNN: Hillary Clinton Rally in Charlotte, NC - FULL SPEECH
Published on Sep 8, 2016 by FOX 10 Phoenix [ http://www.youtube.com/channel/UCJg9wBPyKMNA5sRDnvzmkdg , http://www.youtube.com/channel/UCJg9wBPyKMNA5sRDnvzmkdg/videos ]
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=06xb8G7xnn4 [with comments]
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Donald Trump Cleveland Ohio Charter School FULL Speech 9/8/16
Published on Sep 8, 2016 by LesGrossman News [ http://www.youtube.com/channel/UC-luje1qyKIAOFhts88E3Dw , http://www.youtube.com/channel/UC-luje1qyKIAOFhts88E3Dw/videos ]
Donald Trump is insisting he opposed the from the beginning, even though fact checkers have repeatedly said that claim is false. Radio host Howard Stern in 2002 asked Trump if he supported the looming n. Trump responded, "I guess so." Speaking at a charter school in Ohio Thursday, the Republican presidential nominee said that if had been in the Congress at the time, he would have voted against authorizing the military conflict. Trump made the comments while visiting Cleveland Arts and Social Sciences Academy, a charter school in the predominantly African-American Woodland Hills neighborhood on the city's East Side. His position on the war is coming under increasing scrutiny as he attacks Democratic opponent Hillary Clinton for voting to authorize the while she was in the Senate. He called his opponent "trigger-happy Hillary" on Thursday and repeated his defense that he always opposed the war.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MAbXLHrLBQc [with comments] [also at e.g. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ue-CdQcZiGQ (with comments), http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G7-4oeEChx0 (with comments), and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pJUWbWowhf0 (with comments)]
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Hillary Clinton speaks at National Baptist Convention in Missouri
Published on Sep 8, 2016 by CBS News
Hillary Clinton spoke to the National Baptist Convention in Kansas City, Missouri, on Thursday evening. Clinton's speech focused on how faith led her to her life of public service, and how faith would guide her in the White House if she were elected. See her full remarks.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SBR0c9qC4uo [with comments] [also at e.g. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bGYApvHcWFQ (with comments)]
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Iraq, Hillary and baseball: Donald Trump talks to Larry King (RT EXCLUSIVE)
Published on Sep 8, 2016 by RT America [ http://www.youtube.com/channel/UCczrL-2b-gYK3l4yDld4XlQ / http://www.youtube.com/user/RTAmerica , http://www.youtube.com/user/RTAmerica/videos ]
Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump tells RT's Larry King that he doesn’t dislike Hillary Clinton, but that she’s not the person to make America great again – and that their televised duel Wednesday was more fun than baseball.
https://www.rt.com/usa/358715-trump-larry-king-interview/
Politicking
https://www.rt.com/shows/politicking-larry-king/
Find RT America in your area: http://rt.com/where-to-watch/
Or watch us online: http://rt.com/on-air/rt-america-air/
Like us on Facebook http://www.facebook.com/RTAmerica
Follow us on Twitter http://twitter.com/RT_America
Trump, Speaking On Russian State-Owned Network, Slams ‘Dishonest’ Media
“They’ll take a statement that you make, which is perfect, and they’ll cut it up and chop it up.”
09/09/2016 Updated September 9, 2016
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/donald-trump-larry-king_us_57d21444e4b03d2d4599c20a [with this YouTube embedded, and comments]
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9_5MtZ0Wv70 [with comments]
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Trump campaign elevates the absurd at expense of serious politics
The Rachel Maddow Show
9/8/16
Rachel Maddow reviews the ridiculousness (and sometimes offensiveness) of the fringe conspiracy theories propagated by the Infowars web site and notes that the site's theories are now entertained at the highest level of American politics thanks to credible treatment by Donald Trump and his acolytes. Duration: 12:51
©2016 NBCNews.com
http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow/watch/trump-campaign-elevates-the-absurd-761003075534 , http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J7oaxnOw6QY [with comments]
*
Trump brings chaos to typically staid intelligence briefings
The Rachel Maddow Show
9/8/16
David Priess, former CIA daily intelligence briefer, talks with Rachel Maddow about Donald Trump's bizarre remarks about his intelligence briefing and the even more bizarre reports of what took place in those briefings. Duration: 7:18
©2016 NBCNews.com
http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow/watch/trump-brings-chaos-to-usually-staid-briefings-760961603987 , http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N9Bo26ZSA74 [with comments]
*
No, Putin did not mean Trump is that kind of 'brilliant'
The Rachel Maddow Show
9/8/16
Rachel Maddow explains how a mistranslation led to incorrect reporting that Russian president Vladimir Putin described Donald Trump as "brilliant" intellectually, and laments that the state of politics is such that we even have to care about such a detail. Duration: 10:50
©2016 NBCNews.com
http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow/watch/no-putin-did-not-call-trump-brilliant-760970819906 , http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uOL_HumFM44 [with comments]
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Greensburg, KS - 5/4/07
"Eternal vigilance is the price of Liberty."
from John Philpot Curran, Speech
upon the Right of Election, 1790
F6
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