Friday, September 30, 2016

Trump/Clinton clarification






WHAT WOULD THE RIGHT WING SAY ABOUT THE FOLLOWING WOMAN?  WE ALL KNOW THE ANSWER!

 

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Donald Trump Now Thinks Debate Was "A Rigged Deal"

At first, the Donald said he liked Lester Holt and that Lester had done a good job as moderator--but as time went on and the FrankenTrumpster realized how badly he himself had done in the debate, he had to shift gears and go after Holt, Clinton, the microphone, the "liberal media," Alicia Machado, and women at large.  His modus operandi for life:  At all costs, he must always avoid responsibility for his own actions. 

That is the kind of President Trump would make--heaping boastful praise upon himself for his self-perceived successes and never taking personal responsibility when criticized by others for mistakes or failure. But do his supporters care?  Absolutely Not.  They love this man who whines and deflects and points fingers everywhere but at himself.  Maybe because his supporters do the same thing themselves?  Just asking.  

Anyway, the following article tells all about little Donald blaming everyone else for his problems.  Has this man EVER taken responsibility for ANYthing he has said or done that has been rightfully criticized by others?  The answer to that is NO.  


The following Readers' Comments say it best:
Mark Grudzinski · 
I know I shouldn't be surprised, but I'm still surprised he has supporters. Do any of these people pay any attention to the unbelievable inconsistency in his statements? One second he says he won, the next his microphone was faulty and Lester Holt's a big meanie...in a roundabout way admitting he lost. He insists he was against Iraq when the simplest Twitter search proves he was for it. Bragging about not paying taxes. Bragging about taking advantage of the real estate crash.
Like · Reply · 384 · 18 hrs · Edited
George Manchester
Mark, the answer to your question is that long before the debates, his supporters had swallowed his lies and closed their minds and are now marching lockstep to his drumbeat. They are beyond the reach of the truth and it's a sad thing for this country.
Like · Reply · 368 · 18 hrs
Todd Leddy
George Manchester AGREED! Their heels are soooo dug in, there is nothing we can do but mobilze the sane people in this country and make sure we vote for Hillary.
Like · Reply · 186 · 18 hrs
Bruce Dunklin · 
George Manchester : sad and scary
Like · Reply · 76 · 18 hrs
Bill Cross · 
He didn't realize how badly he had done when he first walked out of the debate room. Now that's he finally aware of what happened, he's desperate to find something or someone to blame it on. That "defective mike" excuse got zero traction (unless by "defective" he meant it picked up every sniffle and word that came from him). Now, he's blaming the ref.
Like · Reply · 240 · 18 hrs · Edited
Hillary Allen · 
Works at Toronto Ontario
This is a parody... but it could easily not be:
HEMPSTEAD, N.Y. (The Borowitz Report)—Plunging the future of the 2016 Presidential debates into doubt, Donald J. Trump said on Tuesday morning that he would not participate in the remaining two debates if Hillary Clinton is there.

Trump blasted the format of Monday night's debate by claiming that the presence of Clinton was "specifically designed" to distract him from delivering his message to the American people.

"Every time I said something, she would say something back," he said. "It was rigged."

He also lambasted the "underhanded tactics" his opponent used during the debate. "She kept on bringing up things I said or did," he added. "She is a very nasty person."

Turning to CNN, Trump criticized the network's use of a split screen showing both him and Clinton throughout the telecast. "It should have been just me," he said. "That way people could have seen how really good my temperament is."
Like · Reply · 198 · 18 hrs
Terry Lee
Trump is such a man-baby. He crys about everything. WAAH, the debate was rigged. WAAH, the microphone was defective. WAAH, Lester Holt was mean to me. 

I have never once seen Trump take responsibility for his own failings. Instead, he blames everyone and everything for his failures.
Like · Reply · 161 · 17 hrs · Edited
AJ Williams
Arrested development. I wonder what Trump experienced around the age of 9, when kids typically begin to grasp consequences and personal responsibility.
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Thursday, September 29, 2016

Good book review on "Hitler" -- an Ascent from "Dunderhead" to Demagogue

An excellent review -- should be read by all.  Most will see parallels with one of the candidates in today's U.S. presidency race (clue: a man) -- but Tea Party types will not.

In 'Hitler,' an Ascent From 'Dunderhead' to Demagogue

Credit Patricia Wall/The New York Times

How did Adolf Hitler — described by one eminent magazine editor in 1930 as a "half-insane rascal," a "pathetic dunderhead," a "nowhere fool," a "big mouth" — rise to power in the land of Goethe and Beethoven? What persuaded millions of ordinary Germans to embrace him and his doctrine of hatred? How did this "most unlikely pretender to high state office" achieve absolute power in a once democratic country and set it on a course of monstrous horror?

A host of earlier biographers (most notably Alan Bullock, Joachim Fest and Ian Kershaw) have advanced theories about Hitler's rise, and the dynamic between the man and his times. Some have focused on the social and political conditions in post-World War I Germany, which Hitler expertly exploited — bitterness over the harsh terms of the Treaty of Versailles and a yearning for a return to German greatness; unemployment and economic distress amid the worldwide Depression of the early 1930s; and longstanding ethnic prejudices and fears of "foreignization."

Other writers — including the dictator's latest biographer, the historian Volker Ullrich — have focused on Hitler as a politician who rose to power through demagoguery, showmanship and nativist appeals to the masses. In "Hitler: Ascent, 1889-1939," Mr. Ullrich sets out to strip away the mythology that Hitler created around himself in "Mein Kampf," and he also tries to look at this "mysterious, calamitous figure" not as a monster or madman, but as a human being with "undeniable talents and obviously deep-seated psychological complexes."

"In a sense," he says in an introduction, "Hitler will be 'normalized' — although this will not make him seem more 'normal.' If anything, he will emerge as even more horrific."

This is the first of two volumes (it ends in 1939 with the dictator's 50th birthday) and there is little here that is substantially new. However, Mr. Ullrich offers a fascinating Shakespearean parable about how the confluence of circumstance, chance, a ruthless individual and the willful blindness of others can transform a country — and, in Hitler's case, lead to an unimaginable nightmare for the world.

Photo
Volker Ullrich Credit Roswitha Hecke

Mr. Ullrich, like other biographers, provides vivid insight into some factors that helped turn a "Munich rabble-rouser" — regarded by many as a self-obsessed "clown" with a strangely "scattershot, impulsive style" — into "the lord and master of the German Reich."

• Hitler was often described as an egomaniac who "only loved himself" — a narcissist with a taste for self-dramatization and what Mr. Ullrich calls a "characteristic fondness for superlatives." His manic speeches and penchant for taking all-or-nothing risks raised questions about his capacity for self-control, even his sanity. But Mr. Ullrich underscores Hitler's shrewdness as a politician — with a "keen eye for the strengths and weaknesses of other people" and an ability to "instantaneously analyze and exploit situations."

• Hitler was known, among colleagues, for a "bottomless mendacity" that would later be magnified by a slick propaganda machine that used the latest technology (radio, gramophone records, film) to spread his message. A former finance minister wrote that Hitler "was so thoroughly untruthful that he could no longer recognize the difference between lies and truth" and editors of one edition of "Mein Kampf" described it as a "swamp of lies, distortions, innuendoes, half-truths and real facts."

• Hitler was an effective orator and actor, Mr. Ullrich reminds readers, adept at assuming various masks and feeding off the energy of his audiences. Although he concealed his anti-Semitism beneath a "mask of moderation" when trying to win the support of the socially liberal middle classes, he specialized in big, theatrical rallies staged with spectacular elements borrowed from the circus. Here, "Hitler adapted the content of his speeches to suit the tastes of his lower-middle-class, nationalist-conservative, ethnic-chauvinist and anti-Semitic listeners," Mr. Ullrich writes. He peppered his speeches with coarse phrases and put-downs of hecklers. Even as he fomented chaos by playing to crowds' fears and resentments, he offered himself as the visionary leader who could restore law and order.

• Hitler increasingly presented himself in messianic terms, promising "to lead Germany to a new era of national greatness," though he was typically vague about his actual plans. He often harked back to a golden age for the country, Mr. Ullrich says, the better "to paint the present day in hues that were all the darker. Everywhere you looked now, there was only decline and decay."

• Hitler's repertoire of topics, Mr. Ullrich notes, was limited, and reading his speeches in retrospect, "it seems amazing that he attracted larger and larger audiences" with "repeated mantralike phrases" consisting largely of "accusations, vows of revenge and promises for the future." But Hitler virtually wrote the modern playbook on demagoguery, arguing in "Mein Kampf" that propaganda must appeal to the emotions — not the reasoning powers — of the crowd. Its "purely intellectual level," Hitler said, "will have to be that of the lowest mental common denominator among the public it is desired to reach." Because the understanding of the masses "is feeble," he went on, effective propaganda needed to be boiled down to a few slogans that should be "persistently repeated until the very last individual has come to grasp the idea that has been put forward."

• Hitler's rise was not inevitable, in Mr. Ullrich's opinion. There were numerous points at which his ascent might have been derailed, he contends; even as late as January 1933, "it would have been eminently possible to prevent his nomination as Reich chancellor." He benefited from a "constellation of crises that he was able to exploit cleverly and unscrupulously" — in addition to economic woes and unemployment, there was an "erosion of the political center" and a growing resentment of the elites. The unwillingness of Germany's political parties to compromise had contributed to a perception of government dysfunction, Mr. Ullrich suggests, and the belief of Hitler supporters that the country needed "a man of iron" who could shake things up. "Why not give the National Socialists a chance?" a prominent banker said of the Nazis. "They seem pretty gutsy to me."

• Hitler's ascension was aided and abetted by the naïveté of domestic adversaries who failed to appreciate his ruthlessness and tenacity, and by foreign statesmen who believed they could control his aggression. Early on, revulsion at Hitler's style and appearance, Mr. Ullrich writes, led some critics to underestimate the man and his popularity, while others dismissed him as a celebrity, a repellent but fascinating "evening's entertainment." Politicians, for their part, suffered from the delusion that the dominance of traditional conservatives in the cabinet would neutralize the threat of Nazi abuse of power and "fence Hitler in." "As far as Hitler's long-term wishes were concerned," Mr. Ullrich observes, "his conservative coalition partners believed either that he was not serious or that they could exert a moderating influence on him. In any case, they were severely mistaken."

• Hitler, it became obvious, could not be tamed — he needed only five months to consolidate absolute power after becoming chancellor. "Non-National Socialist German states" were brought into line, Mr. Ullrich writes, "with pressure from the party grass roots combining effectively with pseudo-legal measures ordered by the Reich government." Many Germans jumped on the Nazi bandwagon not out of political conviction but in hopes of improving their career opportunities, he argues, while fear kept others from speaking out against the persecution of the Jews. The independent press was banned or suppressed and books deemed "un-German" were burned. By March 1933, Hitler had made it clear, Mr. Ullrich says, "that his government was going to do away with all norms of separation of powers and the rule of law."

• Hitler had a dark, Darwinian view of the world. And he would not only become, in Mr. Ullrich's words, "a mouthpiece of the cultural pessimism" growing in right-wing circles in the Weimar Republic, but also the avatar of what Thomas Mann identified as a turning away from reason and the fundamental principles of a civil society — namely, "liberty, equality, education, optimism and belief in progress."

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FOX NEWS AND TRUMP: DEBATE DEBACLE GUARANTEED

EXCERPT: Trump's campaign now resembles a Fox News cocoon, or a hermetically sealed bubble. Since the summer, Trump has basically only spoken to Fox News. Gone is the much-touted Trump media accessibility from the Republican primary. It's been replaced with the Trump bunker strategy, where only friendly questioners are allowed and the Republican candidate is able to expound in a fact-free Fox zone.

It's a bubble where Trump doesn't have to explain his long-running birther pursuit, nobody cares about his tax returns, where Russia's president, Vladimir Putin, is admired for his strong leadership, and where bigotry is celebrated.

The Fox News bubble is a welcoming, comforting place for Trump, but it doesn't reflect the reality of American politics today. And this week, that Fox-friendly strategy caught up with Trump. Reportedly uninterested in debate prep, Trump was confronted by a skilled opponent who accessed facts at will and spoke in complete paragraphs.

... Trump represents a presidential nominee who exhibits no intellectual curiosity, nor any commitment to facts. He's the Fox News id.


Barricaded Behind Fox News For Months, Trump's Debate Debacle Was Guaranteed


  
by Eric Boehlert | September 29, 2016 

Looking to make the media rounds on Tuesday morning in an attempt to clean up his Monday night debate mess, Republican nominee Donald Trump actually had only one destination on his schedule: Fox News, of course.

Calling into his allies and supporters on Fox & Friends, Trump promptly made things worse for his campaign. First, he suggested there might have been a debate conspiracy afoot to fit him with a faulty microphone, as a way to explain his shaky performance. ("My microphone was terrible.") Then Trump got even further sidetracked from campaign messaging by fat-shaming a former winner of his Miss Universe pageant: "She was the winner, and she gained a massive amount of weight, and it was a real problem."

For a candidate who was nearly unanimously crowned the loser of the first presidential debate (except for in unscientific online polls he and Fox News have been desperately promoting), Trump's attempt at damage control via Fox News was like the captain of the Titanic circling around the iceberg for a second look.

But of course, they loved Trump on Fox News, even after his debate loss. "A very good night for Donald Trump," announced Sean Hannity. And from news anchor Bret Baier: "I do think he gets credit for just being on the stage." They also tried to spin away his debate lies and conjure up reasons for his lopsided loss.

And that's why Trump's campaign now resembles a Fox News cocoon, or a hermetically sealed bubble. Since the summer, Trump has basically only spoken to Fox News. Gone is the much-touted Trump media accessibility from the Republican primary. It's been replaced with the Trump bunker strategy, where only friendly questioners are allowed and the Republican candidate is able to expound in a fact-free Fox zone.

It's a bubble where Trump doesn't have to explain his long-running birther pursuit, nobody cares about his tax returns, where Russia's president, Vladimir Putin, is admired for his strong leadership, and where bigotry is celebrated.

The Fox News bubble is a welcoming, comforting place for Trump, but it doesn't reflect the reality of American politics today. And this week, that Fox-friendly strategy caught up with Trump. Reportedly uninterested in debate prep, Trump was confronted by a skilled opponent who accessed facts at will and spoke in complete paragraphs.

Meanwhile, "Trump was scattered, swaggering and stumbling," wrote TPM's Josh Marshall. "Just a mix of easily demonstrable lies and nonsensical statements."

Doesn't that sound like another morning with Fox & Friends? Trump represents a presidential nominee who exhibits no intellectual curiosity, nor any commitment to facts. He's the Fox News id.

And while Trump is getting pummeled from all sides for his no-show debate performance, it's Fox News architect Roger Ailes who probably deserves a lot of the blame for the GOP's unfolding calamity.

Not only did Ailes reportedly play a role in Trump's disastrous debate preparation, but Ailes, of course, provided the nominee with a Fox News platform to launch into American politics back in 2011. Since then, Ailes and Trump have been inexorably linked.

Today, Fox News gifts Trump with so many softball interviews you'd think Rupert Murdoch himself were the nominee. Even Republican Sen. Ted Cruz lamented that Ailes had "turned Fox News into the Donald Trump network, 24/7" during the primary season.

What's so astonishing today is knowing that four years ago, all the warning flags for the GOP were whipping in the wind when Mitt Romney tried to run a Fox News campaign to the White House. Romney veered hard to right and adopted the right-wing media's contempt for the lazy "47 percent" of Americans who supposedly live off government handouts. Romney even embraced reality TV show host-turned Fox News favorite Donald Trump, who was fresh off his bogus investigation into whether the first African-American president was allowed to sit in the Oval Office.

Following the second debate in 2012, when the GOP nominee adopted Fox spin and bungled the facts of the previous month's Benghazi terror attack, I wrote that, "Married to the conservative media and all their bogus claims and conspiracies, Romney runs the risk of coming across as badly out of touch with the truth, the way he did last night."

Then, following the GOP's defeat in November, which the Fox bubble never sawcoming:

This grand experiment of marrying a political movement around a cable TV channel was a grand failure in 2012. But there's little indication that enough Republicans will have the courage, or even the desire, to break free from Fox's firm grip on branding the party.

In the wake of Romney's defeat, some Republican operatives did vow to venture beyond the friendly confines of Fox News. And the Republican National Committee's post-election autopsy even stressed the need for the Republican Party to "stop talking to itself." (That's what Fox News is very good at.)

While I knew Fox News had a vice-like grip on the GOP, and the GOP was in love with the angry rhetoric and the free media the cable channel provided, in 2012 I couldn't have imagined four years later the party would not only embrace their failed Fox News strategy, but they'd inject it with steroids and nominate Trump. Or that the GOP nominee would then effectively barricade himself behind Fox News interviews during the general election campaign.

The punchline today? Reports suggest that in the wake of Trump's failed debate performance, Ailes' campaign role may be expanding. The Republican Party now appears to be trapped in a Fox News cycle that chews up GOP nominees.

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Is Trump tameable? What do YOU think?

Republicans want to tame Trump, but he may be their doom

By E.J. Dionne

Donald Trump's near-meltdown in Monday's debate surely gave queasy stomachs to Republicans who have bowed before his candidacy despite their better judgments. Trump threatens to give conservative appeasers a very bad name.

Let it be said that at least some in the party will be able to stand proudly after this god-awful election is over. We're witnessing real courage among those members of the party of Lincoln willing to say openly how genuinely dangerous a Trump presidency would be.

For those whose livelihoods depend on building big audiences among pro-Trump rank-and-file conservatives (think radio talk-show hosts and commentators of various kinds), joining the Never Trump camp carries real risks. For liberals, opposing Trump is about the easiest thing in the world, so we should honor the daring of our temporary comrades.

Unfortunately, the Never Trumpers are a minority on the right. More typical are House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (Wis.) and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.), the most prominent among the GOP contortionists who are hedging their bets.

They send signals that they know how ridiculous and bigoted Trump is, calling out this or that statement when it's convenient to do so. But they endorse him anyway to save their down-ticket candidates while hoping that, should he lose, they can curry favor with the now-large Trump wing of the party after November.

They have made another bet as well: They believe Trump has so little interest in policy that if he were to win he would sign whatever bills a conservative Congress put before him. Trump, they hope, would be quite content just occupying a nice piece of real estate on Pennsylvania Avenue to go with the one, as he mentioned on Monday, that he's presiding over just down the street.

Trump has encouraged this view. He may be unpresidential but he is conversant in making deals and finding the other side's weak spot. He knows the only thing many conservative politicians and interest groups truly care about are big tax cuts for the rich. So he let supply-side conservatives write him a tax plan. Buying the White House by giving away future federal revenues is classic Trump: using other people's money to secure his own ends. Besides, he's now told us he thinks it's "smart" for wealthy people like him not to pay taxes.

It's a cozy arrangement — and entirely rational as far as it goes. But for it to work, Trump has to keep himself under some control, becoming sufficiently conventional not to cause too much heartburn to the establishmentarians. If he did it right, he might even win. But at the least, his job is to run well enough to give the Republicans a chance to hold the Senate as well as the House.

Trump showed on Monday that he may not keep his part of the deal, either because he doesn't want to or because he's incapable of it. And the risk for the party is high. A Trump who exudes sexism, traffics in racism, exhibits a resolute indifference to facts and demonstrates an inability to do his homework will turn off better-educated suburban voters without whom Republicans cannot build their majorities. If more normal Republican politicians continue to collude with Trump, these voters could turn against the whole ticket.

There's precedent, and Massachusetts (because it's now seen as so reliably Democratic in presidential elections) is a prime example of how bad things can get for Republicans. The state was at the forefront of a long-term trend: the steady movement of moderate suburbanites, particularly in the Northeast, away from the Republican Party. For many of them, Barry Goldwater's right-wing candidacy in 1964 sealed the deal.

Take the leafy town of Lexington, similar in its voting patterns to surrounding areas. In 1956, Lexington gave 76 percent of its votes to Dwight D. Eisenhower. In 1960, it resisted home-state favorite John F. Kennedy; Richard Nixon won it with 57 percent. But in 1964, Goldwater received just 31 percent of Lexington's votes. He was simply too extreme for sober, old-fashioned Republicans. Politically, Massachusetts has never been the same since.

Trump is not yet in Goldwater territory, and he might never get there. But unless the Donald of the first debate gives way to a completely different version, he threatens to create another GOP suburban catastrophe pretty much everywhere outside the Deep South. If Trump doesn't adjust, many of the party's enablers will soon have to realize that their best survival strategy is to run as far away from him as possible.

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Wednesday, September 28, 2016

Tuesday, September 27, 2016

Trump meets his Waterloo

Hillary proved last night that she is ready for the Presidency. Trump proved that he is not.  It's that simple, and even the most blind (white supremacists, neo-Nazis) have had to admit it (but Fox News hosts like Hannity will NEVER back down! It's amusing to see them insisting that Trump's performance was stellar).  

Truth is, Tea Party Republicans have been primed ever since Duhmbya to set a very low bar of expectation for their candidates. They want their candidates to match their own ignorance, and most of their candidates do indeed live down to that expectation.  Trump has exceeded all of the lowest expectations in that regard.  Not only is he ignorant of national and global issues, he has revealed himself to the world as an ugly, greed-driven, self-absorbed narcissistic bully, who cares about no one but himself.  He thinks he is "smart" in never paying taxes, while the rest of us carry that load. He wants to continue in that vein and make it possible for all wealthy people to gain more wealth at the expense of the middle class and poor.  He relished that it was good business to have the housing meltdown -- good business for him while the middle class lost their homes and hit poverty levels in their lives.  This is the "champion" that Republicans are putting forward as their hero. Sigh.

And so the world turns....Will Trump show up for the next two debates?  He is already blaming the microphones for his debacle last night.  Stay tuned....and keep the popcorn ready.

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Sunday, September 25, 2016

Robert Reich: Trump's YUGE Bamboozle of his voters (not that they'll care)

Trump's Yuge Bamboozle

By Robert Reich
Friday, September 16, 2016

Donald Trump poses as a working-class populist, but about his new economic plan would be a gusher for the wealthy. And almost nothing will trickle down to anyone else.

According to the independent Tax Foundation, Trump's tax plan would give the top 1 percent an average cut of at least $122,400, while the middle class gets a break of less than $500.

Not incidentally, his plan provides a huge windfall for the Trump family. If Trump is worth as much as he says, his heirs would get a tax break of $4 billion to $7 billion.

Moreover, he'd let global corporations pay just a 10 percent tax rate on untaxed offshore profits – another mammoth gift to big shareholders.

Consider: Apple, Pfizer, Microsoft and other global American corporations hold $2.4 trillion in earnings abroad. They owe some $700 billion in taxes on these earnings. Trump's 10 percent tax rate would raise only about $150 billion. It wouldn't even generate new investment in America. A tax amnesty was tried in 2004 and it was a dud.

Trump says his tax cuts would cost $4.4 trillion over 10 years. He claims most of it would be paid for by economic growth.

We've been here before.

Both Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush tried supply-side "trickle-down" economics. We should have learned two lessons.

First, nothing trickles down. The giant tax cuts on the wealthy enacted by Reagan in the 1980s and Bush in the 2000s enriched those at the top – but the wages of the bottom 60 percent went nowhere. 

Second, such tax cuts produce giant budget deficits. Under Reagan and George H.W. Bush, the federal budget deficit exploded. It took Bill Clinton's administration (of which I was proud to have been a member) to get the budget back in some semblance of balance.

Then, under George W. Bush, what happened? The deficit exploded again.  

Trump would do all this on a far grander scale. He's also proposing a vast expansion of the military, including 90,000 new soldiers for the Army and nearly 75 new ships for the Navy. The tab: an estimated $90 billion a year in additional spending.

This would mean big bucks for military contractors. But it's hard to see how economic benefits trickle down to anyone else.

Perhaps Trump is banking on an indirect fiscal stimulus – the kind of "military Keynesianism" Ronald Reagan employed to fuel growth in the 1980s. But as we learned then, this sort of growth doesn't trickle down, either.

Trump also pledges a gigantic infrastructure building program to "build the next generation of roads, bridges, railways, tunnels, sea ports, and airports."

Hillary Clinton has proposed spending $275 billion on infrastructure over five years.

The Donald is thinking much bigger. "Her number is a fraction of what we're talking about," says Trump. "We need much more money to rebuild our infrastructure. I would say at least double her numbers, and you're going to really need a lot more than that."

Okay, so let's call this $500 billion over five years.

Trump doesn't stop there. A "foundation" of his economic plan, he says, is to renegotiate Nafta, bring trade cases against China, and "replace the present policy of globalism – which has moved so many jobs and so much wealth out of our country –with a new policy of Americanism."

Who would benefit from a retreat from globalism? Maybe giant American corporations that don't export from the U.S. because they already make things abroad for sale in foreign markets. But not average Americans, who'd have to pay more for just about everything.

Choking off trade won't result in more good jobs in America. Trump says his trade policy will bring back manufacturing to the United States. But today's factories are automated. Even in China, numerical-controlled machine tools and robots are replacing humans.

Oh, and Trump also wants to scrap many environmental, health, and safety regulations. He says this will further stimulate growth.

It's another form of trickle-down nonsense. Even if we could get more growth by scrapping such regulations, growth isn't an end in itself. The goal is a higher standard of living for most Americans.

If our air and water are unhealthy, if we're subject to more floods and draughts (especially lower-income Americans who can't afford to protect themselves and their homes from the devastation), if our workplaces and our food are unsafe, what's the consequence? Our standard of living drops.

Trickle-down economics has proven itself a cruel hoax. It's cruel because it rewards people at the top who least need it and hurts those below who are in greatest need. It's a hoax because nothing trickles down.

Trump's "yuge" trickle-down economics would be an even bigger bamboozle.

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Friday, September 23, 2016

As of November 9, there will be a bloodbath at Fox

With the advent of Trump TV cable channel with Ailes at its head, Fox will find itself adrift in no-man's land, not far enough to the right to compete with Trump, and not centrist enough to be in the middle. With all of its top "talent" gone (O'Reilly retired, Hannity at Trump, Megyn at "another channel" (possibly CNN?)), Fox will be looking mighty bleak. But at least there will be a new place for all the "deplorables" to go -- Trump TV will cater to the KKK, the neo-Nazis, the fundamentalist far right-wingers and all the rest of the hate-filled, racist gang that make up his supporters. Ailes is probably out scouting new anchors for Trump TV -- so many stars to choose from: Sheriff Joe Arpaio, David Duke, What an "interesting" state of events coming up... Do take time to read The Revenge of Roger's Angels: How Fox News women took down the most powerful, and predatory, man in media.  It's a doozy of a story!

"As of November 9, there will be a bloodbath at Fox"
by Gaius Publius | September 23, 2016

— from Down With Tyranny!


Roger Ailes with his wife, Elizabeth Tilson, on July 19 in New York City.

In case you're wondering about the date in the headline, November 9 is the first day following the next U.S. election.

Thanks to a heads-up by digby, I took time to read Gabriel Sherman's excellent New York Magazine piece, "The Revenge of Roger's Angels: How Fox News women took down the most powerful, and predatory, man in media," from start to finish in one sitting. I strongly recommend you do the same — it's an excellent example of investigative journalism as well as investigative writing. The piece is a page-turner, and it's very well written.

There's too much information in it to capture here, but near the end there's a section that discusses what Fox becomes post-Ailes, and I'd like to focus on that. If Sherman is right on both of his counts — about the changes at Fox, about the emergence of Trump TV — the media landscape will drastically change post-election.

Will that change be for the better? That's a consideration for another time.

Fox After Ailes

On what Fox is about to become, Sherman writes:

Ailes's ouster has created a leadership vacuum at Fox News. Several staffers have described feeling like being part of a totalitarian regime whose dictator has just been toppled. "No one knows what to do. No one knows who to report to. It's just mayhem," said a Fox host. As details of the Paul, Weiss [a law firm] investigation have filtered through the offices, staffers are expressing a mixture of shock and disgust. The scope of Ailes's alleged abuse far exceeds what employees could have imagined. "People are so devastated," one senior executive said. Those I spoke with have also been unnerved by [senior executive VP Bill] Shine and [Fox general counsel Dianne] Brandi's roles in covering up Ailes's behavior.

Despite revelations of how Ailes's management team enabled his harassment, Murdoch has so far rejected calls — including from [Murdoch's son] James, according to ­sources — to conduct a wholesale housecleaning. On August 12, Murdoch promoted Shine and another Ailes loyalist, Jack Abernethy, to become co-presidents of Fox News. He named Scott executive vice-president and kept Brandi and [PR department executive Irena] Briganti in their jobs. Fox News's chief financial officer, Mark Kranz, is the only senior executive to have been pushed out (officially he retired), along with [Ailes's longtime executive assistant Judy] Laterza and a handful of assistants, contributors, and consultants. "Of course, they are trying to isolate this to just a few bad actors," a 21st Century Fox executive told me.

Many people I spoke with believe that the current management arrangement is just a stopgap until the election. "As of November 9, there will be a bloodbath at Fox," predicts one host. "After the election, the prime-time lineup could be eviscerated. O'Reilly's been talking about retirement. Megyn could go to another network. And Hannity will go to Trump TV." ...

Meanwhile, the Murdochs are looking for a permanent CEO to navigate these post-Ailes, Trump-roiled waters. According to sources, James's preferred candidates include CBS president David Rhodes (though he is under contract with CBS through 2019); Jesse Angelo, the New York Post publisher and James's Harvard roommate; and perhaps a television executive from London. Sources say [Murdoch's son] Lachlan, who politically is more conservative than James, wants to bring in an outsider. Rupert was seen giving Rebekah Brooks a tour of the Fox offices several months ago, creating speculation that she could be brought in to run Fox. Another contender is Newsmax CEO Chris Ruddy.

You may remember the name Rebekah Brooks from the U.K. phone-tapping scandal (emphasis added):

Brooks was a prominent figure in the News International phone hacking scandal, having been the editor of the News of the World when illegal phone hacking was carried out by the newspaper. Following a criminal trial in 2014 she was cleared of all charges by a jury at the Old Bailey, which accepted her defence of incompetence: that she had no knowledge of the illegal acts carried out by the newspaper she edited.[8]

In September 2015, Brooks was confirmed as CEO of News UK, the renamed News International, re-establishing the working relationship with News Corp founder and chairman Rupert Murdoch.

O"Reilly, Hannity, Megyn Kelly and more, all could be gone from Fox News after the election. It will be interesting to watch Fox reinvent itself as the competitor to what may be a network to its right, Trump TV, a network perhaps run by the attack dog, Roger Ailes, who turned Fox into what it used to be.

Trump TV

Trump TV, if it emerges after the election, will throw a spanner into the workings of a once unified right-wing (and alt-right) messaging ecosystem:

The prospect of Trump TV is a source of real anxiety for some inside Fox. The candidate took the wedge issues that Ailes used [in order] to build a loyal audience at Fox News — especially race and class — and used them to stoke barely containable outrage among a downtrodden faction of conservatives. Where that outrage is channeled after the election — assuming, as polls now suggest, Trump doesn't make it to the White House — is a big question for the Republican Party and for Fox News.

As right-wing as they are, both Trump and Murdoch care about the money that goes to the most-watched media outlets. They're about to become competitors for it:

Trump had a complicated relationship with Fox even when his good friend Ailes was in charge; without Ailes, it's plausible that he will try to monetize the movement he has galvanized in competition with the network rather than in concert with it. Trump's appointment of Steve Bannon, chairman of Breitbart, the digital-media upstart that has by some measures already surpassed Fox News as the locus of conservative energy, to run his campaign suggests a new right-wing news network of some kind is a real possibility.

And notice this tidbit, a hint of the infighting to come:

One prominent media executive told me that if Trump loses, Fox will need to try to damage him in the eyes of its viewers by blaming him for the defeat.

A battle for the eyes of the "deplorables" (an unfortunate, though interesting word) between Fox News and Trump TV — as well as for eyes and minds of the non-deplorable segment of the Trump-supporting world — should be fascinating to watch. One hopes they split the pie as they knife-fight to own it. I'd rather see an electorally divided "deplorables" than to see that group united, no matter how weakened their numbers.

As to the non-deplorable portion of Trump supporters — those suffering from the economic ravages of both pro-wealth Democratic rule and pro-wealth Republican rule — perhaps a newly populist Democratic Party can attract them for a change, instead of drive them away. Until a bad deed is done, one can hope for a good result.

Again, if you can spare the time, do read the whole thing. It's fascinating, incredibly lurid, and very well documented. If sexual office politics is your cup of tea, you'll drown in it. Fox News was a pit of predatory males, office women retained and passed around for sex, and mid-to-upper-level executives (of both sexes) who acted as procurers — "talent scouts" — to feed one toxic man's toxic need, along with the needs of those around him. Some of those needs were simply to survive in that kind of environment.

And Ailes? He's still at it, reportedly advising Trump as we speak. Lord help us.

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Sunday, September 11, 2016

SNOWDEN: Best film of the year

Snowden: Best Film of the Year


  
by David Swanson | September 11, 2016 - 7:02am

— from Let's Try Democracy

Snowden is the most entertaining, informing, and important film you are likely to see this year.

It's the true story of an awakening. It traces the path of Edward Snowden's career in the U.S. military, the CIA, the NSA, and at various contractors thereof. It also traces the path of Edward Snowden's agonizingly slow awakening to the possibility that the U.S. government might sometimes be wrong, corrupt, or criminal. And of course the film takes us through Snowden's courageous and principled act of whistleblowing.

We see in the film countless colleagues of Snowden's who knew much of what he knew and did not blow the whistle. We see a few help him and others appreciate him. But they themselves do nothing. Snowden is one of the exceptions. Other exceptions who preceded him and show up in the film include William Binney, Ed Loomis, Kirk Wiebe, and Thomas Drake. Most people are not like these men. Most people obey illegal orders without ever making a peep.

And yet, what strikes me about Snowden and many other whistleblowers I've met or learned about, is how long it took them, and the fact that what brought them around was not an event they objected to but a change in their thinking. U.S. officials who've been part of dozens of wars and coups and outrages for decades will decide that the latest war is too much, and they'll bail out, resign publicly, and become an activist. Why now? Why not then, or then, or then, or that other time?

These whistleblowers -- and Snowden is no exception -- are not passive or submissive early in their careers. They're enthusiastic true believers. They want to spy and bomb and kill for the good of the world. When they find out that's not what's happening, they go public for the good of the world. There is that consistency to their actions. The question, then, is how smart, dedicated young people come to believe that militarism and secrecy and abusive power are noble pursuits.

Oliver Stone's Ed Snowden begins as a "smart conservative." But the only smart thing we see about him is his computer skills. We never hear him articulate some smart political point of view that happens to be "conservative." His taste in books includes Ayn Rand, hardly an indication of intelligence. But on the computers, Snowden is a genius. And on that basis his career advances.

Snowden has doubts about the legality of warrantless spying, but believes his CIA instructor's ludicrous defense. Later, Snowden has such concerns about CIA cruelty he witnesses that he resigns. Yet, at the same time, he believes that presidential candidate Barack Obama will undo the damage and set things right.

How does one explain such obtuseness in a genius? Obama's statements making perfectly clear that the wars and outrages would roll on were publicly available. I found them with ordinary search engines, needing no assistance from the NSA.

Snowden resigned, but he didn't leave. He started working for contractors. He came to learn that a program he'd created was being used to assist in lawless and reckless, not to mention murderous, drone murders. That wasn't enough.

He came to learn that the U.S. government was lawlessly spying on the whole world and spying more on the United States than on Russia. (Why spying on Russia was OK we aren't told.) But that, too, wasn't enough.

He came to learn that the U.S. was spying on its allies and enemies alike, even inserting malware into allies' infrastructure in order to be able to destroy things and kill people should some country cease to be an ally someday. That, too, was not enough.

Snowden went on believing that the United States was the greatest country on earth. He went on calling his work "counter cyber" and "counter spying" as if only non-Americans can do spying or cyber-warfare, while the United States just tries to gently counter such acts. In fact, Snowden risked his life, refraining from taking medication he needed, so that he could continue doing that work. He defended such recklessness as justified by the need to stop Chinese hackers from stealing billions of dollars from the U.S. government. Apart from the question of which Chinese hackers did that, what did Snowden imagine it was costing U.S. taxpayers to fund the military?

Snowden's career rolled on. But Edward Snowden's brilliant mind was catching up with reality and at some point overtook it. And then there was no question that he would do what needed to be done. Just as he designed computer programs nobody else could, and that nobody else even thought to try, now he designed a whistleblowing maneuver that would not be stopped as others had.

Consequently, we must be grateful that good and decent people sometimes start out believing Orwellian tales. Dull, cowardly, and servile people never blow whistles.
_______

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