Posts Tagged ‘DAILY KOS’
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Politics, Social commentary on June 28, 2018 at 1:21 am
President Donald Trump was furious.
Nordstrom department store had just dared to drop the clothing and accessories lines of his daughter, Ivanka.
So, true to form, on February 8, 2017, he aired his displeasure on Twitter: “My daughter Ivanka has been treated so unfairly by @Nordstrom. She is a great person — always pushing me to do the right thing! Terrible!”
Donald Trump
He used his personal Twitter account—@realDonaldTrump—to send this message. In fact, he sent it 21 minutes into his daily Intelligence briefing.
Still not satisfied, he retweeted his attack on Nordstrom on his official POTUS (President of the United States) Twitter account.
In short, he used a taxpayer-funded account to benefit his daughter.
Not content to attack Nordstrom by himself, Trump enlisted other members of his administration as assailants.
One of these was his then-press secretary, Sean Spicer:
“There’s a targeting of her brand and it’s her name. She’s not directly running the company. It’s still her name on it. There are clearly efforts to undermine that name based on her father’s positions on particular policies that he’s taken. This is a direct attack on his policies and her name. Her because she is being maligned because they have a problem with his policies.”
Sean Spicer
Nordstrom retorted that its decision to drop the Ivanka Trump line was “based on performance.”
“Over the past year, and particularly in the last half of 2016, sales of the brand have steadily declined to the point where it didn’t make good business sense for us to continue with the line for now.
“We’ve had a great relationship with the Ivanka Trump team. We’ve had open conversations with them over the past year to share what we’ve seen and Ivanka was personally informed of our decision in early January.”
But for the Trumpinistas, that wasn’t the end of it.
On Februrary 9, 2017, Kelleyanne Conway, a senior adviser to Trump, became a TV shill for Ivanka.
Kelleyanne Conway
Appearing on the Right-wing Fox News Channel program, “Fox and Friends,” Kelleyanne spoke from no less prestigious a forum than the White House itself:
“Go buy Ivanka’s stuff. I hate shopping and I’m going to go get some myself today. It’s a wonderful line. I own some of it. I’m going to give a free commercial here. Go buy it today, everybody. You can find it online.”
For Democrats and even some Republicans, Conway’s behavior was simply unacceptable.
Maryland Democratic Congressman Elijah E. Cummings, a member of the the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, sent a letter to Utah Republican Congressman Jason Chaffetz, who chairs the committee.
In it, he requested a referral to the Office of Government Ethics for possible disciplinary action against Conway.
The office does not have investigative or enforcement authority, but officials there can contact and provide guidance to other enforcement agencies.
Chaffetz told the Associated Press that Conway’s behavior was “wrong, wrong, wrong, clearly over the line, unacceptable.”
Larry Noble, the general counsel of the Campaign Legal Center, a nonpartisan organization of election law experts, said Trump’s tweet was “totally out of line.”
“He should not be promoting his daughter’s line, he should not be attacking a company that has business dealings with his daughter, and it just shows the massive amount of problems we have with his business holdings and his family’s business holdings,” Noble said.
Kathleen Clark, a government ethics expert, said the Nordstrom tweet could make other retailers hesitate to drop the Ivanka Trump brand. They may fear being similarly attacked by the President.
“The implicit threat was that he will use whatever authority he has to retaliate against Nordstrom, or anyone who crosses his interest,” said Clark, a law professor at Washington University in St. Louis.
* * * * *
In 1969, 25-year-old Joe McGinnis became famous overnight with the publication of his first book, The Selling of the President.
At the time, Americans were shocked to learn how Presidential candidate Richard Nixon had been sold to voters like any other product. In fact, the original book jacket featured Nixon’s face on a pack of cigarettes.
Today, Madison Avenue doesn’t simply sell Americans their Presidents. Now—with Donald J. Trump—Americans have a President determined to turn the White House into Trump, Inc.
A single example will serve to illustrate:
On January 27, Trump signed an executive order that:
- Suspends entry of all refugees to the United States for 120 days;
- Bars Syrian refugees indefinitely; and
- Blocks entry into the United States for 90 days for citizens of Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen.
Three countries not covered by Trump’s travel ban:
- Saudi Arabia
- The United Arab Emirates
- Egypt
- Turkey.
Approximately 3,000 Americans have been killed by immigrants from those countries—most of them during the attacks on the Pentagon and World Trade Center on September 11, 2001.
Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Egypt, and Turkey are all countries where President Trump has close business ties. His properties include two luxury towers in Turkey and golf courses in the United Arab Emirates.
The full dimensions of Trump’s holdings throughout the Middle East aren’t known because he has refused to release his tax returns.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Politics, Social commentary on June 27, 2018 at 12:11 am
Fifty-six years after John F. Kennedy gave his first and only Inaugural Address, these words remain its single most-quoted sentence: “Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country.”
John F. Kennedy Inaugural
So millions of Americans who were alive that day—January 20, 1961—were probably shocked when they learned that Melania Trump had a very different view of government service.
On August 20, 2016, The Daily Mail, a British tabloid, published a story accusing her of having once worked as a prostitute.
The newspaper cited a Slovenian magazine’s report that a modeling agency that she worked with in New York in the 1990s also served as an escort business, linking wealthy clients with women for sexual services.
On September 1, Melania sued The Daily Mail in a state court in Montgomery County, Maryland. In early 2017, the Maryland court dismissed the case, saying it did not have jurisdiction.
On February 6, 2017, Melania filed another libel suit against The Daily Mail in the Manhattan Supreme Court.
Required to prove that she had been harmed in some way, Melania did not cite undeserved shame or how much her family and friends had been hurt.
Instead, she argued that the article had ruined her “once-in-a-lifetime opportunity” to cash in on the Presidency.
Melania Trump
According to the complaint that her attorney filed:
”Plaintiff had the unique, once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, as an extremely famous and well-known person…to launch a broad-based commercial brand in multiple product categories, each of which could have garnered multi-million dollar business relationships for a multi-year term during which plaintiff is one of the most photographed women in the world,” the Manhattan suit says.
“These product categories would have included, among other things, apparel, accessories, shoes, jewelry, cosmetics, hair care, skin care and fragrance.
“The [statements] also constitute defamation per se because they impugned on her fitness to perform her duties as First Lady of the United States,” the suit alleges.
Melania is alleging $150 million in damages.
Enter the Emoluments Clause.
This is a United States government law that specifically forbids any leader from using government services to “enrich” the President and his family.
Among the greatest dangers facing the newly-created American government, feared the Founding Fathers, was foreign interference. And this could be obtained through the use of bribes—money or gifts.
The Constitution of the United States
To prevent this, the Founders inserted the Emoluments Clause into Article I, Section 9 of the United States Constitution:
“No title of nobility shall be granted by the United States: and no person holding any office of profit or trust under them, shall, without the consent of the Congress, accept of any present, emolument, office, or title, of any kind whatever, from any king, prince, or foreign state.”
This illustrates one of the dangers of bringing a libel or slander suit.
(NOTE: Libel is a written defamation; slander is a spoken one)
Whoever brings the suit must open himself to unprecedented privacy-invading questions. And, in answering them, he may unintentionally give away revelations that can prove highly damaging.
Another Trump seeking to find out “what the country can do for you” is the President’s daughter, Ivanka.
Starting in 2016, Shannon Coulter, a brand and digital strategist, started the Grab Your Wallet boycott aimed at more than 30 retailers who carry Ivanka’s line of fashion apparel.
Among the retailers targeted:
- Amazon.com
- Belk
- Bloomingdale’s
- Bed, Bath and Beyond
- Burlington Coat Factory
- Century 21
- DSW
- Macy’s
- Marshalls
- TJ Maxx
- Neiman Marcus
- Nordstrom
- Overstock.com
- Ross
- Saks Off Fifth
- Sears
- Walmart
- Zappos
During the first week of February, 2017, Nordstrom told The Seattle Times that it would no longer carry Ivanka Trump’s line of clothing and accessories.
Nordstrom said the decision to drop Ivanka Trump’s line was based on poor sales performance.
“We’ve got thousands of brands,” said a Nordstrom spokesman. “Each year we cut about 10 percent and refresh our assortment with about the same amount. In this case, based on the brand’s performance we’ve decided not to buy it for this season.”
President Trump had often boasted that he would defend the free enterprise system against an intrusive Federal government.
But for a major department store to drop his daughter’s clothing line was too much.
Turning to Twitter, his favorite weapon of insult, the President tweeted: “My daughter Ivanka has been treated so unfairly by @Nordstrom. She is a great person — always pushing me to do the right thing! Terrible!”
Trump drafted other members of his administration to attack Nordstrom.
One of these was White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer.
Spicer said that the store’s decision to stop carrying Ivanka Trump’s clothing and accessories line was nothing less than an attack on the president’s policies and his daughter.
“”I think this is less about his family’s business and an attack on his daughter. He ran for President, he won, he’s leading this country.
“I think for people to take out their concern about his actions or his executive orders on members of his family, he has every right to stand up for his family and applaud their business activities, their success.”
But even more was to come.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Medical, Politics, Social commentary on June 22, 2018 at 12:05 am
To capture the true intensity of the “homeless” problem in San Francisco, you must confront its realities at the street level. Imagine:
- You’re elderly, and walking with a cane—and must often try to negotiate your way around big tents that take up most of a sidewalk.
- You’re riding in a wheelchair along a sidewalk until you come to a large mattress lying directly in your path, with a potentially psychotic “homeless” man lying upon it.
- You find a street teeming with rats—eating the food scraps left by “homeless” people.
- You board a local bus and are forced to sit near a man stinking of feces and/or urine. Naturally, the driver doesn’t put him off—giving you the choice of surviving the stench or getting off to catch another bus.
- You walk into an underground Municipal Railway bus station—and find it littered with derelicts passed out or shooting up heroin in plain sight. Naturally, they don’t worry about picking up their used hypodermic needles. They leave those out for others to step on or pick up at their own risk.
- You’re standing at a bus stop or eating in a restaurant—when a large, filthy, possibly disease-carrying man or woman demands a “handout” from you.
- You can’t use the elevator at the Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) station because “homeless” derelicts have ruined its mechanism with urine and feces.
In 2010, San Francisco voters passed the “No Sit/No Lie” ordinance, which “makes it unlawful, with certain exceptions, to sit or lie on a public sidewalk, or on an object placed on a public sidewalk, between 7AM and 11PM.”
But walk down almost any street in the downtown part of the city and you’ll find sidewalks crowded with stinking, disease-ridden, lice/bedbug-infested, drug-addicted, alcohol-soaked, often psychotic men and women whom city officials politely refer to as “the homeless.”
Among the trappings that go with this population:
- Tents
- Mattresses
- Piles of belongings
- Stolen shopping cards
- Trash
- Half-eaten food
- Empty cans/bottles of alcohol
- Feces
- Hypodermic needles
What you’ll almost never see: Police actually enforcing the “No Sit/No Lie” ordinance.
So much for the will of the voters.
San Francisco officials have effectively washed their hands of the problem. If local residents must put up with repeated violations of the most basic sanitation laws, that’s their tough luck.
What matters to the Mayor and Board of Supervisors is this: The “rights” of those whose filth and behavior pose an immediate threat to public health and safety take precedence over those of tax-paying, law-abiding San Franciscans.
San Francisco residents can be fined $25 to $1,000 for feeding pigeons—but not for feeding street bums.
During the Mayorship of Willie Brown (1996 – 2004), Hizzonor proposed what he thought was a brilliant way for residents to “contribute” to “street people.”
Those who were somehow certified as “homeless” would be issued special electronic “cash cards.” When someone wanted to make a “donation,” s/he would swipe a credit card against the one owned by the street bum, for whatever amount s/he wanted to donate.
But before the program started, someone at City Hall realized a blunt truth: Residents—especially women—weren’t likely to whip out their credit cards in front of a ranting, foul-smelling, probably disease-ridden street bum.
It’s long past time for San Francisco—and other cities—to stop catering to the druggies, alcoholics, mental cases and bums who prey on the guilt or fear of law-abiding, tax-paying citizens.
The same laws that protect citizens against patients with highly communicable diseases like typhoid and cholera should be vigorously applied to those whose filthy habits threaten similar public contagion.
Among such reforms:
- The city should launch a “Please Do Not Feed the Bums” publicity campaign—as it has against feeding pigeons. And it should be backed up with stiff fines for those caught doing so.
- Those living on the street should be given a choice: Go to a local shelter or face arrest and the immediate confiscation of their possessions.
- Bus drivers should have the right to refuse passengers who stink of urine/feces, as they present a potential health-hazard to others.
- The owners of restaurants should likewise be allowed to refuse service on the same basis.
- Those applying for welfare benefits should be required to provide proof of residence. Too many people come to San Francisco because, upon arrival, they can immediately apply for such benefits.
- The city should set up a special unit to deal entirely with removing “street people” and their possessions from city sidewalks. This could be a division of the Sanitation Department, since its personnel are used to removing filth and debris of all types.
San Francisco officials need to:
- Forcefully tell alcoholics and drug addicts: “Your anti-social behavior is not welcome here. Take your self-destructive lifestyles elsewhere. We won’t subsidize them.”
- Take the mentally unstable off the street and place them in institutions where their needs can be met.
- Tell those who are just plain bums: Don’t expect us to support you.
Only then will San Francisco rightly reclaim its former glory as “the city by the Bay.”
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Medical, Politics, Social commentary on June 21, 2018 at 1:45 am
Imagine that, late one night, you wake up and decide to go to the kitchen for a drink of water. You turn on the light—and suddenly find a virtual army of cockroaches hurriedly scurrying across the floor.
In the morning, you call an exterminator, and a “pest control specialist” soon knocks at your door.
“What you need to do,” he says, “is to put out big packets of sugar for the roaches.”
“Wait a minute—don’t roaches love sugar? How is this going to make them go away?”
“It won’t.”
“Then what’s the point?”
“The point is that roaches are God’s creatures, and they need to eat, too.”
A typical cockroach scene
“But they’ve taken over my kitchen. They’re filthy, they leave droppings everywhere and they contaminate the food I’m supposed to eat.”
“You must learn to have compassion for all of God’s creatures, and learn to get along with them.”
“So if I hire you, you’re not going to get rid of them for me?”
“No.”
“So what are you going to do?”
“Help you to accept that they have a right to be a part of your community.”
If a pest control company actually operated like that, how long would they be in business?
Not long.
Yet, in San Francisco, successive mayors and members of the Board of Supervisors operate in exactly that manner toward succeeding waves of human pestilence. And they remain in office for years.
Huge areas of the city are covered in feces, urine, trash and needles. Hospitals overflow with patients that have fallen ill due to the contamination.
NBC News surveyed 153 blocks of the city—an area more than 20 miles. That area includes popular tourist spots like Union Square and the cable car turnaround. It’s bordered by Van Ness Avenue, Market Street, Post Street and Grant Avenue. And it’s also home to City Hall, schools, playgrounds, and a police station.
A typical San Francisco scene
Most of the trash found consisted of heaps of garbage, food, and discarded junk—including 100 drug needles and more than 300 piles of feces throughout downtown. If you step on one of these needles, you can get HIV, Hepatitis C, Hepatitis B or a variety of other viral diseases.
But you don’t have to actually get stuck by a needle to become a victim. Once fecal matter dries, it can become airborne and release deadly viruses, such as the rotavirus.
“If you happen to inhale that, it can also go into your intestine,” says Dr. Lee Riley, an infectious disease specialist at the University of California, Berkeley. The results can prove fatal, especially in children.
As the news unit filmed a typical day’s activity in San Francisco, a group of preschool students, enjoying a field trip, walked to City Hall.
Responding to a reporter’s question, Adelita Orellana said: “We see poop, we see pee, we see needles, and we see trash.
“Sometimes they ask what is it, and that’s a conversation that’s a little difficult to have with a two-year old, but we just let them know that those things are full of germs, that they are dangerous, and they should never be touched.”
San Francisco’s political elite see this blight as well as everyone else. They can’t avoid seeing it, since the city covers 47 square miles.
San Francisco City Hall
Cabe6403 at English Wikipedia [CC BY-SA 3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0) or GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html)%5D, from Wikimedia Commons
One of those who sees the disgrace up-front is Supervisor Hillary Ronen: “Unacceptable. Absolutely unacceptable We’re losing tourists. We’re losing conventions in San Francisco.”
Yet what does she propose as the solution? “We need more temporary beds for street homelessness.”
This is on a par with a “pest control expert” recommending: “We need more sugar to clear up our roach problem.”
Thanks to its mild climate and social programs that dole out cash payments to virtually anyone with no residency requirement, San Francisco is often considered the “homeless capital” of the United States.
According to a 2016 article in the San Francisco Chronicle, there are about 13,000 “homeless” people in San Francisco. Of these, an estimated 3,000 to 5,000 refuse shelter.
In 2016, San Francisco spent $275 million on homelessness—up from $241 million in 2015. Public Works cleanup crews picked up more than 679 tons of trash from homeless tent camps—and collected more than 100,000 used syringes from the camps.
In 2016, San Francisco residents made 22,608 complaints about encampments—a five-fold increase from 2015.
City officials euphemistically call this population “the homeless.” That’s because they don’t want to use words that accurately describe those who comprise the overwhelming majority of this population:
- Druggies
- Drunks
- Mentals
- Bums.
Or, as even many police, social workers and paramedics who wrestle with this population privately refer to them: DDMBs.
Yet the mere citing of statistics—how many “homeless,” how much money is spent on how many people, how much filth they produce—doesn’t capture the true intensity of the problem.
To do that, you must confront its realities at the street level. Which is what we’ll do in Part Two of this series.
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In Bureaucracy, Entertainment, History, Humor, Military, Politics, Social commentary on June 15, 2018 at 12:24 am
Many Republican strategists feared that, after Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton had a lock on the White House for 2016.
And the base of the Republican Party continued to demand candidates who were increasingly Fascistic.
The top officials of the Republican Party decided that science held the answer: They would use cloning to create the perfect, unbeatable Presidential candidate.
They directed scientists from the National Institute of Health to resurrect—via DNA samples—several past, hugely popular Republican leaders.
The first of these was Abraham Lincoln: Destroyer of slavery and defender of the Union. The scientists then introduced him to a sample of Republican voters to gauge his current popularity.
The test audience erupted—but not in the way party officials expected.
“Race-mixer!”
“He’s the reason we have all these damn civil rights laws.”
“He destroyed states’ rights!”
To head off a riot, the scientists rushed the startled Lincoln-clone off the stage.
Then they introduced their next resurrected candidate: Theodore Roosevelt, the trust-busting conservationist.
Again, the test-audience erupted:
“Tree-hugger! Tree-hugger!”
“He’s the guy who broke up the big corporations—lousy Socialist!”
Startled Republican officials hustled the Roosevelt-clone out of the building.
Finally, they brought out their third choice for victory: A cloned Ronald Reagan.
“Not him! He legalized abortion in California when he was Governor!”
“Yeah, and his first wife, Jane Wyman, divorced him. We can’t have a divorced guy in the White House!”
Desperate, Republican leaders went into a huddle.
“What are we going to do?” asked one. “Lincoln, Roosevelt and Reagan were our most popular Presidents.”
“Yeah, but that was in the past,” said another. “We need a candidate who speaks to our base today.”
“Hey, I’ve got an idea. But it’s a bit radical. The guy I have in mind wasn’t actually born in the United States.”
“So what?”
“That would violate the Constitution.”
“Screw the Constitution. You know what our friends in the oil industry say: Why spoil the beauty of the thing with legality?”
So the Republicans again ordered the scientists to return to work one last time.
When the last resurrected candidate was presented to the test-audience, the crowd rose as one, shouting: “That’s him! That’s him!”
“The one we’ve been waiting for!”
“The one who really speaks for us!”
“He’s totally anti-abortion and he hates upity women!”
“Yeah—he hates Socialists, gays and nonwhites, and he really believes in a strong military!”
“All right, all right, I vill do it,” said the clone-candidate. “But the last time I led people to greatness, they proved unworthy of me.
“So I vill do it again—but only under von condition!”
“Yes, yes!” screamed the test-audience. “Anything you want! What is it?”
“Ziss time….”
….no more Mr. Nice Guy!”
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law Enforcement, Politics, Social commentary on April 23, 2018 at 12:17 am
On November 6, 2012, Ann Coulter, the Right-wing activist and propagandist, was devastated by the re-election of President Barack Obama.
“People are suffering. The country is in disarray,” she whined during an interview. “If Mitt Romney [the Republican Presidential nominee] cannot win in this economy, then the tipping point has been reached. We have more takers than makers and it’s over. There is no hope.”
Mitt Romney
So, naturally, Coulter and her fellow Rightists felt dejected.
But by 2016, Coulter no longer felt dismayed. She felt rejuvenated—for she had found her perfect Presidential candidate: Donald Trump.
Appearing on the Right-wing radio program, “The Eric Metaxes Show,” she said: “It is like the fall of Rome but, thank God, and I am not using the Lord’s name in vain, I mean that absolutely literally, thank God for raising up Donald Trump and giving us a chance to save the country.
Donald Trump
“What is the point of talking about abortion or anything else unless you get Donald Trump in to build the wall, deport illegals, end this ‘anchor baby’ nonsense, stop importing 100,000 Muslims a year, in addition to two million Third Worlders per year. It’s madness what this country has been doing.”
Coulter not only spoke on Trump’s behalf–she sang his praises in a 2016 book: In Trump We Trust: E Pluribus Awesome!
Ann Coulter (Gage Skidmore photo)
According to its dust jacket: “[Ann Coulter] argues that a bull in the china shop is exactly what we need to make America great again.
“In this powerful book, Coulter explains why conservatives, moderates, and even disgruntled Democrats should set aside their doubts and embrace Trump:
“He’s putting America first in our trade deals and alliances, rather than pandering to our allies and enemies.
“He’s abandoned the GOP’s decades-long commitment to a bellicose foreign policy, at a time when the entire country is sick of unnecessary wars.”
To Coulter’s delight, Trump defeated Democratic Presidential nominee Hillary Clinton on November 9, 2016.
Although Clinton got almost 2.9 million more popular votes, he swamped her in the Electoral College–304 votes to Clinton’s 227.
Suddenly, for Trump, the Electoral College wasn’t “phoney.”
But by May, 2017, four months after Trump had taken office as President, Ann Coulter was ready to abandon him. Her chief complaint: He hadn’t built the wall along the United States-Mexican border he had promised to erect.
“We want the ruthless businessman we were promised,” she told the Right-wing website, The Daily Caller.
“I guess we have to try to push him to keep his promises. But this isn’t North Korea, and if he doesn’t keep his promises I’m out.
“This is why we voted for him. I think everyone who voted for him knew his personality was grotesque, it was the issues.”
And, on March 28, 2018, she had more choice words for him: “I knew he was a shallow, lazy ignoramus, and I didn’t care. “
“I’d been waiting 30 years for someone to say all these things,” she added, referring to his promise to build a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border.
On April, 1, she—by her own account—had a shouting match with Trump in the Oval Office.
On the Right-wing “Howie Carr Show,” she claimed to have told him: “You’re not doing what you promised to do. Where’s the end of NAFTA? Where’s the wall? Where are the deportations? What are you doing talking about the DREAMers?”
Coulter (doing a Trump impersonation) claimed that Trump said: “I appointed Gorsuch.”
“And I said that doesn’t count. Jeb, exclamation point, would have done that. Rubio would have done that. How is your Presidency different than from Rubio would have done?”
“He’s failing right now,” Coulter told Carr. “The presidency isn’t over yet, he can still come back and do it. But people who voted for him shouldn’t be cheering for him every time he betrays them and this is a total betrayal for him to sign that [government appropriations] bill. It’s a total betrayal for him not to build the wall. And to pretend like it isn’t—yeah he can come back.
“And as I told The New York Times, if he does I’ll start a committee to put him on Mount Rushmore, if he builds that wall. But, right now, if you want to make a bet I don’t think we’re getting the wall.”
But for all her fury at Trump, she’s still peddling her 2016 book, In Trump We Trust, on her website—www.anncoulter.com.
And on April 18, she attacked former FBI Director James Comey, who has strongly criticized Trump during his nationwide tour to promote his newly-released memoir, A Higher Loyalty.
Comey had been fired by Trump on May 9, 2017, for—by Trump’s admission—pursuing “the Russia thing”—a probe into Russian subversion of the 2016 Presidential election.
According to Coulter: “We all owe a debt of gratitude to Comey for showing the American people why he was so badly in need of firing.”
In short: She backed a monster to wreak destruction on those she hated. And now she’s upset with him because he hasn’t acted monstrously enough.
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In History, Law Enforcement, Politics, Social commentary on April 18, 2018 at 12:02 am
May 9 will mark one year since James Comey was fired as FBI director by President Donald Trump.
On April 17, Comey’s memoirs, A Higher Loyalty, appeared in bookstores. The book has generated massive publicity for Comey. And it has also re-ignited the controversial charge that he cost Hillary Clinton the White House during the closing days of the 2016 election.
But is this true?
Actually, there were at least nine reasons for Clinton’s defeat. Part One of this series explored the first five. This part will explore the remaining four.
#6 The coalition that twice elected Barack Obama deserted Hillary Clinton.
Clinton did worse-than-expected among all the groups she was counting on to support her: Blacks, women, youth and Hispanics.
- In 2012, Obama got 93% of the black vote; in 2016, Clinton got 88%.
- In 2012, Obama got 55% of the women’s vote; in 2016, Clinton won 54%.
- In 2012, Obama got 60% of the vote of those under 30; in 2016, Clinton got 54%.
- In 2012, Obama got 71% of the Hispanic vote; in 2016, Clinton got 65%.
Clinton proved less popular even among whites than Obama: In 2012, Obama won 39% of their votes; in 2016, Clinton won 37%.
#7 Trump, adopting the role of a populist, appealed to blue-collar voters. Clinton offered a “love-your-CEO” economic plan—and suffered for it.
Trump visited “Rustbelt” states like Michigan and Pennsylvania and vowed to “bring back” jobs that had been lost to China, such as those in coal mining and manufacturing. Clinton didn’t deign to show up, assuming she had those states “locked up.”
Most economists agree that, in a globalized economy, such jobs are not coming back, no matter who becomes President.
Even so, voters backed the man who came to promise them a better future, and shunned the woman who didn’t come to promise them any future at all.
In May, 2016, Democratic pollster CeLinda Lake had warned Clinton to revamp her economic platform. Clinton ignored the advice.
“Democrats simply have to come up with a more robust economic frame and message,” Lake said after the election. “We’re never going to win those white, blue-collar voters if we’re not better on the economy. And 27 policy papers and a list of positions is not a frame. We can laugh about it all we want, but Trump had one.”
#8 Hillary Clinton gave only one memorable speech during the campaign.
This was the “basket of deplorables” speech, delivered at a New York fundraiser on September 9. It was the only Clinton speech to be widely quoted by Democrats and Republicans.
She divided Donald Trump’s supporters into two groups. The first group were the “deplorables,” for whom she showed open contempt:
“You know, to just be grossly generalistic, you could put half of Trump’s supporters into what I call the basket of deplorables. Right? The racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamaphobic—you name it. And unfortunately there are people like that. And he has lifted them up.
“He has given voice to their websites that used to only have 11,000 people—now 11 million. He tweets and retweets their offensive hateful mean-spirited rhetoric. Now, some of those folks—they are irredeemable, but thankfully they are not America.”
Hillary Clinton (Gage Skidmore photo)
But the second group, she said, consisted of poor, alienated Americans who rightly felt abandoned by their employers and their government:
“But….that other basket of people are people who feel that the government has let them down, the economy has let them down, nobody cares about them, nobody worries about what happens to their lives and their futures, and they’re just desperate for change. It doesn’t really even matter where it comes from.
“They don’t buy everything [Trump] says, but he seems to hold out some hope that their lives will be different. They won’t wake up and see their jobs disappear, lose a kid to heroin, feel like they’re in a dead-end. Those are people we have to understand and empathize with as well.”
#9 After giving this speech, Clinton threw away the good it might well have done her.
First, the day after making the speech, she apologized for it: “Last night I was ‘grossly generalistic,’ and that’s never a good idea. I regret saying ‘half–that was wrong.”
Many of Trump’s followers were racists, sexists and xenophobes—who deserved condemnation, not apologies. By apologizing, she looked weak, indecisive, even cowardly.
Second, having eloquently reached out to many of the men and women who were a prime constituency for Trump, she failed to offer an economic package to quickly and effectively address their vital needs for jobs and medical care.
The reason: She had failed to put one together long ago.
And all she had to offer now was boilerplate rhetoric, such as: “Education is the answer.”
Worst of all, Trump turned her speech against her, tweeting: “Wow, Hillary Clinton was SO INSULTING to my supporters, millions of amazing, hard working people. I think it will cost her at the Polls!”
It did.
Blaming people like James Comey for her defeat only proves that Hillary Clinton has learned nothing from her failed campaigns of 2008 and 2016.
As long as Democrats and their supporters blame everyone else—and refuse to correct their own weaknesses—they will continue to remain a minority political party.
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In History, Law Enforcement, Politics, Social commentary on April 17, 2018 at 12:10 am
“If the election had been on October 27, I would be your president,” Hillary Clinton told CNN in May, 2017.
“I was on the way to winning until a combination of Jim Comey’s letter on October 28 and Russian WikiLeaks raised doubts in the minds of people who were inclined to vote for me and got scared off.”
On October 28, 2016, then-FBI director James Comey announced that the bureau was reopening its investigation into Clinton’s use of a private email server while Secretary of State.
Comey wrote in a letter to Congress that the FBI has learned of the existence of emails that appear to be pertinent to the investigation “in connection with an unrelated case.”
James B. Comey
In national exit polls, Clinton’s use of a private email server troubled 63% of voters. Even so, 24% of those voted for her.
Up until then, Clinton had seemed on her way to winning the election. Even Comey believed she would become the first female President of the United States.
And Clinton did win the popular vote: 65,844,954 (48.2%) to Trump’s 62,979,879 (46.1%), beating him by almost 2.9 million votes.
But Trump emerged the victor in the Electoral College, which actually determines the Presidential winner—with 304 votes compared to Clinton’s 227.
Since November 8, 2016, Clinton and her infuriated allies have blamed Comey more than anyone for her loss. And Comey himself has said that the thought of him swinging the election made him “mildly nauseous.”
If Comey’s action played a role in Clinton’s loss, it was just one of several factors that sent Trump to the White House.
Among these:
#1 Hillary Clinton was an uninspiring candidate. When Barack Obama ran for President in 2008, NBC Anchor Tom Brokaw compared his rallies to Hannah Montana concerts. Audiences were excited by his charisma, eloquence, relative youth (47) and optimism (“Yes We Can!”).
Clinton radiated none of these qualities. She was 67 when she declared her candidacy for President—and looked it. Her speaking voice grated like the proverbial fingernail on a blackboard.
Hillary Clinton
She seemed to have been around forever—as First Lady (1993-2001), as Senator from New York (2001-2009) and as Secretary of State (2009-2013). Those born after 2000 thought of the Clinton Presidency as ancient history. She was offering a resume—and voters wanted an inspiration.
#2 Clinton brought a lot of baggage with her. In contrast to Obama, whose Presidency had been scandal-free, Clinton—rightly or wrongly—has always been dogged by charges of corruption.
During the Clinton Presidency, a failed land deal—Whitewater—while Bill Clinton was Governor of Arkansas triggered a seven-year investigation by a Republican special prosecutor. No criminality was uncovered, and no charge was brought against either Clinton.
After leaving the White House, she and her husband set up the Clinton Foundation, a public charity to bring government, businesses and social groups together to solve problems “faster, better, at lower cost.”
As Secretary of State, more than half of Clinton’s meetings with people outside government were with donors to the Clinton Foundation. If a “pay-to play” system wasn’t at work, one certainly seemed to be.
She cast further suspicion on herself by her unauthorized use of a private email server. This wasn’t revealed until March, 2015–after she was no longer Secretary of State.
She claimed she had used it to avoid carrying two cell-phones. But, as Secretary of State, she traveled with a huge entourage who carried everything she needed. Her critics believed she used a private email system to hide a “pay-for-pay” relationship with Clinton Foundation donors.
#3 As a candidate for President, she “secretly” worked with Debbie Wasserman-Schultz, the chair of the Democratic National Committee, to ensure that she would get the nomination.
As DNC chair, Wasserman-Schultz was expected to be impartial toward all Democratic candidates seeking the prize. This included Vermont U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders, Clinton’s chief competitor.
Bernie Sanders
So Sanders and his supporters were outraged when, on July 22, WikiLeaks released 19,252 emails and 8,034 attachments hacked from computers of the highest-ranking officials of the DNC.
The emails revealed a clear bias for Clinton and against Sanders. In one email, Brad Marshall, the chief financial officer of the DNC, suggested that Sanders, who is Jewish, could be portrayed as an atheist.
#4 The Obamas’ support proved a plus/minus for Clinton. Understandably, President Obama wanted to see his legacies continued—and she was the only candidate who could do it.
So he—and his wife, Michelle—stormed the country, giving eloquent, passionate speeches and firing up crowds on Clinton’s behalf.
President Barack Obama
So long as either Obama stood before a crowd, the magic lasted. But once the event was over, the excitement vanished. Hillary simply didn’t arouse enough passion to keep it going.
Obama’s supporters found Clinton wanting—in attractiveness, grace, eloquence, trustworthiness and the ability to inspire.
#5 Democrats and liberals fell prey to hubris. They dismissed Donald Trump as a bad joke: Surely voters would reject a bombastic, thrice-married “reality show” host who had filed for corporate bankruptcy four times.
Many liberals believed Clinton would bury him at the polls: Blacks, women, youth and Hispanics will turn out huge for her. Democrats will retake the Senate, and maybe even retake the House.
They didn’t.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Military, Politics, Social commentary, Uncategorized on April 16, 2018 at 4:36 pm
From the end of World War II to the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, it would have been unthinkable for a Republican Presidential candidate to find common cause with a Soviet dictator.
But that utterly changed when Donald Trump won, first, the Republican Presidential nomination and, then, the White House. Trump lavishly praised Russian President Vladimir Putin—and even called on him to directly interfere in the 2016 Presidential race.
On July 22, 2016, Wikileaks released 19,252 emails and 8,034 attachments hacked from computers of the highest-ranking officials of the Democratic National Committee (DNC). Early reports traced the leak to Russian hackers.
“Russia, if you are listening,” Trump said at a press conference in Doral, Florida, “I hope you are able to find the 33,000 emails that are missing—I think you will probably be rewarded mightily by our press.”
Donald Trump
This was nothing less than treason—calling upon a foreign power, hostile to the United States, to interfere in its Presidential election.
On December 16, 2016, then-FBI Director James B. Comey and Director of National Intelligence James R. Clapper Jr. agreed with a CIA assessment that Russia intervened in the 2016 election in part to help Donald Trump win the White House.
Trump, however—as both Presidential candidate and President—has steadfastly denied any such role by Russia. An example of this occurred during his exchange with Democratic Presidential nominee Hillary Clinton during the third and final Presidential debate on October 19, 2016:
CLINTON: So I actually think the most important question of this evening, Chris, is, finally, will Donald Trump admit and condemn that the Russians are doing this and make it clear that he will not have the help of Putin in in this election, that he rejects Russian espionage against Americans, which he actually encouraged in the past?
Those are the questions we need answered. We’ve never had anything like this happen in any of our elections before.
CHRIS WALLACE: Well?
TRUMP: [After insisting that Clinton wanted “open borders” and “people are going to pour into this country,” Trump finally deigned to address Wallace’s question.] Now we can talk about Putin. I don’t know Putin. He said nice things about me.
CLINTON: … that the Russians have engaged in cyber attacks against the United States of America, that you encouraged espionage against our people, that you are willing to spout the Putin line, sign up for his wish list, break up NATO, do whatever he wants to do, and that you continue to get help from him, because he has a very clear favorite in this race.
So I think that this is such an unprecedented situation. We’ve never had a foreign government trying to interfere in our election.
We have 17–17 intelligence agencies, civilian and military, who have all concluded that these espionage attacks, these cyber attacks, come from the highest levels of the Kremlin and they are designed to influence our election. I find that deeply disturbing. And I think it’s time you take a stand…
TRUMP: She has no idea whether it’s Russia, China, or anybody else….
CLINTON: …17 intelligence—do you doubt 17 military and civilian…
TRUMP: And our country has no idea.
Trump has repeatedly claimed that there has been “no collusion” between himself and anyone from Russia.
But he has tried hard to shut down any investigation of ties between members of his 2016 Presidential campaign and Russian Intelligence agents.
He has attacked reputable news organizations—such as CNN, the Washington Post and the New York Times—as “fake news” for reporting on the expanding network of proven ties between the Trump campaign and Russia.
On February 15, 2017, Trump privately asked FBI Director James Comey to drop the FBI’s investigation into fired National Security Adviser Mike Flynn, for his secret ties to Russia and Turkey. Comey resisted that demand.
On May 9, 2017, Trump suddenly fired Comey, claiming his motive for doing so was that Comey had mistreated Hillary Clinton during the 2016 Presidential race.
But on May 10, he unintentionally gave away the real reason. It happened during a meeting in the Oval Office with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavov and Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak.
Kislyak was reportedly a top recruiter for Russia’s SVR foreign intelligence agency. He had been closely linked with Jeff Sessions, now Attorney General, and fired National Security Adviser Flynn.
“I just fired the head of the F.B.I.,” Trump told the two dignitaries. “He was crazy, a real nut job. I faced great pressure because of Russia. That’s taken off.”
Comey’s firing resulted in demands for a Special Counsel to investigate Russian efforts to subvert the 2016 election. On May 17, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein appointed former FBI Director Robert Meuller III to do so.
Since then, Trump has repeatedly threatened to fire Mueller to shut down the investigation.
On April 15, during an interview on ABC’s “20/20” to promote his upcoming book, A Higher Loyalty, Comey was asked: Do you think the Russians have compromising material on Trump?
And he answered: “I think it’s possible. I don’t know. These are more words I never thought I’d utter about a president of the United States, but it’s possible.”
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Military, Politics, Social commentary on April 12, 2018 at 12:05 am
As President Donald Trump lurches daily from one crisis to another—most of them of his own making—many Americans ask: “Why do Republicans continue to support him?”
The answer lies in what happened 73 years ago in Berlin—when the “Thousand-Year” Third Reich collapsed after little more than 12 years.
While the Nazi Party ruled Germany from 1933 to 1945, its influence over all aspects of Germans’ lives was suffocating.
“Censorship prevailed, education was undermined, family life was idealized, but children were encouraged to turn in disloyal parents,” reads the back cover of Richard Grunberger’s classic 1971 book, The 12-Year Reich.
“‘Volk’ festivals, party rallies, awards, uniforms, pageantry all played a part in the massive effort to shape the mind of a nation.”
And yet, after the Reich surrendered unconditionally to the Allies on May 8, 1945, a strange thing happened: Virtually no German admitted to having been a Nazi—or having even known one.
American and British soldiers couldn’t find any German veterans willing to admit they had ever fought against Western, democratic nations. All the once-proud legionaries of the Wehrmacht and Waffen-SS swore they had been fighting “the real enemy”—the Russians—on the Eastern front.
Countless Germans claimed to have hidden Jews in their attics. If so, how had six million Jews died horrifically before the Reich fell?
And almost universally, they blamed the conflict on the man they had embraced as their Fuhrer.
In short: Adolf Hitler had lost the war he started—making him a loser nobody wanted to be identified with.
In the decades since, the “loser” tag has continued to stick with those who once served the Third Reich. Mel Brooks has repeatedly turned German soldiers—once the pride of the battlefield—into idiotic comic foils.
Even the fearsome Gestapo was spoofed for laughs on the long-running TV comedy, “Hogan’s Heroes.”
“Hogan’s Heroes”
“Americans love a winner,” George C. Scott as George S. Patton says at the outset of the classic 1970 movie. “And will not tolerate a loser.”
And that is why Republicans have stuck so closely with President Donald J. Trump.
A typical example of this occurred on June 8, 2017 after former FBI director James Comey testified before the United States Senate Select Committee on Intelligence.
Comey revealed that, on February 14, Trump had ordered everyone but Comey to leave a crowded meeting in the Oval Office.
Flynn had resigned the previous day from his position as National Security Adviser. The FBI was investigating him for his previously undisclosed ties to Russia.
“I hope you can see your way clear to letting this go, to letting Flynn go,” said Trump. “He is a good guy. I hope you can let this go.”
This was clearly an attempt by Trump to obstruct the FBI’s investigation.
Yet Republican House Speaker Paul Ryan rushed to excuse his clearly illegal behavior: “He’s new at government, so therefore I think he’s learning as he goes.”
Paul Ryan
David Brooks, the conservative New York Times columnist, offered a more accurate explanation of Trump’s motives. Speaking on The PBS Newshour, Brooks said:
“We are a nation of laws. Donald Trump lives in an entirely different cultural universe. He is more clannist, believing in clan, believing in family, believing in loyalty, not recognizing objective law, not recognizing the procedures that is really how modern government operates….
“It’s not only that he doesn’t know the rules, but at all along and throughout his presidency, he has sort of trampled on the rules almost as a matter of policy, as a matter of character, because he doesn’t believe in that kind of relationships. It’s all personal loyalty, not about laws and norms and standards.”
Republicans don’t fear that Trump will trash the institutions that Americans have cherished for more than 200 years. Institutions like an independent judiciary, a free press, and an incorruptible Justice Department.
He has already attacked all of these—and Republicans have either said nothing or rushed to his defense.
What Republicans truly fear about Donald Trump is that he will finally cross one line too many—like firing Special Counsel Robert Meuller. And that the national outrage following this will force them to launch impeachment proceedings against him.
But it isn’t even Trump they fear will be destroyed.
What they most fear losing is their own hold on nearly absolute power in Congress and the White House.
If Trump is impeached and possibly indicted, he will become a man no one any longer fears. He will be a figure held up to ridicule and condemnation.
Like Adolf Hitler. Like Richard Nixon.
And his Congressional supporters will be branded as losers along with him.
Republicans vividly remember what happened after Nixon was forced to resign on August 9, 1974: Democrats, riding a wave of reform fever, swept Republicans out of the House and Senate—and Jimmy Carter into the White House.
If they are conflicted—whether to continue supporting Trump or desert him—the reason is the same: How can I hold onto my power and all the privileges that go with it?
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GREED IS NOT ENOUGH: PART TWO (END)
In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Politics, Social commentary on June 28, 2018 at 1:21 amPresident Donald Trump was furious.
Nordstrom department store had just dared to drop the clothing and accessories lines of his daughter, Ivanka.
So, true to form, on February 8, 2017, he aired his displeasure on Twitter: “My daughter Ivanka has been treated so unfairly by @Nordstrom. She is a great person — always pushing me to do the right thing! Terrible!”
Donald Trump
He used his personal Twitter account—@realDonaldTrump—to send this message. In fact, he sent it 21 minutes into his daily Intelligence briefing.
Still not satisfied, he retweeted his attack on Nordstrom on his official POTUS (President of the United States) Twitter account.
In short, he used a taxpayer-funded account to benefit his daughter.
Not content to attack Nordstrom by himself, Trump enlisted other members of his administration as assailants.
One of these was his then-press secretary, Sean Spicer:
“There’s a targeting of her brand and it’s her name. She’s not directly running the company. It’s still her name on it. There are clearly efforts to undermine that name based on her father’s positions on particular policies that he’s taken. This is a direct attack on his policies and her name. Her because she is being maligned because they have a problem with his policies.”
Sean Spicer
Nordstrom retorted that its decision to drop the Ivanka Trump line was “based on performance.”
“Over the past year, and particularly in the last half of 2016, sales of the brand have steadily declined to the point where it didn’t make good business sense for us to continue with the line for now.
“We’ve had a great relationship with the Ivanka Trump team. We’ve had open conversations with them over the past year to share what we’ve seen and Ivanka was personally informed of our decision in early January.”
But for the Trumpinistas, that wasn’t the end of it.
On Februrary 9, 2017, Kelleyanne Conway, a senior adviser to Trump, became a TV shill for Ivanka.
Kelleyanne Conway
Appearing on the Right-wing Fox News Channel program, “Fox and Friends,” Kelleyanne spoke from no less prestigious a forum than the White House itself:
“Go buy Ivanka’s stuff. I hate shopping and I’m going to go get some myself today. It’s a wonderful line. I own some of it. I’m going to give a free commercial here. Go buy it today, everybody. You can find it online.”
For Democrats and even some Republicans, Conway’s behavior was simply unacceptable.
Maryland Democratic Congressman Elijah E. Cummings, a member of the the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, sent a letter to Utah Republican Congressman Jason Chaffetz, who chairs the committee.
In it, he requested a referral to the Office of Government Ethics for possible disciplinary action against Conway.
The office does not have investigative or enforcement authority, but officials there can contact and provide guidance to other enforcement agencies.
Chaffetz told the Associated Press that Conway’s behavior was “wrong, wrong, wrong, clearly over the line, unacceptable.”
Larry Noble, the general counsel of the Campaign Legal Center, a nonpartisan organization of election law experts, said Trump’s tweet was “totally out of line.”
“He should not be promoting his daughter’s line, he should not be attacking a company that has business dealings with his daughter, and it just shows the massive amount of problems we have with his business holdings and his family’s business holdings,” Noble said.
Kathleen Clark, a government ethics expert, said the Nordstrom tweet could make other retailers hesitate to drop the Ivanka Trump brand. They may fear being similarly attacked by the President.
“The implicit threat was that he will use whatever authority he has to retaliate against Nordstrom, or anyone who crosses his interest,” said Clark, a law professor at Washington University in St. Louis.
* * * * *
In 1969, 25-year-old Joe McGinnis became famous overnight with the publication of his first book, The Selling of the President.
At the time, Americans were shocked to learn how Presidential candidate Richard Nixon had been sold to voters like any other product. In fact, the original book jacket featured Nixon’s face on a pack of cigarettes.
Today, Madison Avenue doesn’t simply sell Americans their Presidents. Now—with Donald J. Trump—Americans have a President determined to turn the White House into Trump, Inc.
A single example will serve to illustrate:
On January 27, Trump signed an executive order that:
Three countries not covered by Trump’s travel ban:
Approximately 3,000 Americans have been killed by immigrants from those countries—most of them during the attacks on the Pentagon and World Trade Center on September 11, 2001.
Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Egypt, and Turkey are all countries where President Trump has close business ties. His properties include two luxury towers in Turkey and golf courses in the United Arab Emirates.
The full dimensions of Trump’s holdings throughout the Middle East aren’t known because he has refused to release his tax returns.
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