Posts Tagged ‘GEORGE W. BUSH’
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Politics, Social commentary on September 8, 2016 at 1:21 am
In late July, Donald Trump’s new spokeswoman, Katrina Pierson, accepted an impossible mission that even Jim Phelps would have turned down:
Convince Americans that Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton were responsible for the death of Captain Humayun Khan, who was killed by a truck-bomb in Iraq in 2004.
Appearing on CNN’s The Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer on August 2, Pierson said: “It was under Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton that changed the rules of engagements that probably cost his life.”
Katrina Pierson
Totally ignored in that scenario:
- President George W. Bush lied the nation into a needless war that cost the lives of 4,486 Americans and wounded another 33,226.
- The war began in 2003–and Khan was killed in 2004.
- Barack Obama became President in 2009–almost five years after Khan’s death.
- Hillary Clinton became Secretary of State the same year.
- Obama, elected Illinois U.S. Senator in 2004, vigorously opposed the Iraq war throughout his term.
Pierson’s attempt to rewrite history touched off a frenzy on Twitter, leading to the creation of the hashtag #KatrinaPiersonHistory. Its purpose: To mock Pierson’s revisionist take on history.
Among the tweets offered:
- Hillary Clinton slashed funding for security at the Ford Theater, leading to Lincoln’s assassination.
- Obama gave Amelia Earhart directions to Kenya.
- Remember the Alamo? Obama and Hillary let it happen.
- Obama and Clinton kidnapped the Lindbergh baby.
Not content with blaming President Obama for the death of a man he never sent into combat, Pierson claimed that Obama started the Afghanistan war.
Appearing again on CNN, Pierson said the Afghan war began “after 2007,” when Al Qaeda “was in ashes” following the American troop surge in Iraq.
“Remember, we weren’t even in Afghanistan by this time,” Pierson said. “Barack Obama went into Afghanistan, creating another problem.”
In fact, President George W. Bush ordered the invasion of Afghanistan following the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.
Millions of Americans who lived through 9/11 remember that.
When your spokeswoman becomes a nationwide laughingstock, your own credibility goes down the toilet as well.
In July an Associated Press/GfK poll found that half of Americans saw Donald Trump as “racist”–and only 7% of blacks viewed him favorably.
There are numerous reasons for this:
- His enthusiastic support by racist white supremacist organizations such as the Ku Klux Klan and the American Nazi Party.
- His “birther” attacks on President Obama as a non-citizen from Kenya–and thus ineligible to hold the Presidency.
- His attacks on the Black Lives Matter movement and calling on his supporters at rallies to rough up minority protesters.
Since 1964, blacks have overwhelmingly voted for Democratic Presidential candidates. President Lyndon B. Johnson’s won their loyalty with his support for and passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
President Johnson signing the 1964 Civil Rights Act
Republican Presidential candidate Barry Goldwater opposed it–as did the majority of his party.
Since 1964, fewer than six percent of blacks have voted for Republican Presidential candidates. Whites have not only remained the majority of Republican voters but have become the single most important voting bloc among them.
John McCain received four percent of black votes in 2008 and Mitt Romney received six percent in 2012. When a Republican collapses into single digits among blacks and other minorities, it reduces the number of white votes a Democrat needs to win the presidency.
To counter this, Donald Trump has turned to his Director of African-American Outreach: Omarosa Manigault.
Trump made the appointment just hours before the first night of the Republican National Convention.
Omarosa Manigault
Manigault is best known as the villain of Trump’s reality-TV show, “The Apprentice”–where she was fired on three different seasons. Her credentials include a Ph.D. in communications, a preacher’s license, and topping TV Guide’s list of greatest reality TV villains in 2008.
During the Clinton administration she held four jobs in two years, and was thoroughly disliked in all of them.
“She was asked to leave [her last job] as quickly as possible, she was so disruptive,” said Cheryl Shavers, the former Under Secretary for Technology at the Commerce Department. “One woman wanted to slug her.”
In her role as Trump’s ambassador to blacks, Omarosa has inspired others to want to slug her. Appearing on Fox Business, she ignored Fox panelist Tamera Holder’s question on why blacks should support Trump,and then mocked her “big boobs.”
Manigault isn’t bothered that blacks regard Trump so poorly in polls: “My reality is that I’m surrounded by people who want to see Donald Trump as the next president of the United States who are African-American.”
Appointing as your public relations director a woman who gratuitously insults and infuriates people is not the move of a smart administrator. Nor the move of a smart Presidential candidate.
If Donald Trump becomes President, he will inherit the authority to appoint thousands of officials to domestic and foreign agencies. Voters have a right to judge him on the quality of the appointments he has already made to his own campaign.
A review of those named within this series gives serious cause for concern.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Politics, Social commentary on September 7, 2016 at 12:18 am
Even the Secret Service can’t protect Donald Trump from the notoriety of his supporters.
The current manager of Trump’s Presidential campaign is Stephen Bannon, who’s under fire for anti-Semitic remarks and having been registered to vote at a vacant house in Florida.
But before Bannon signed on, his predecessor was Paul Manafort, whom Trump hired to add stability to his often scattershot campaign.
Paul Manafort
For Trump, Manafort came with a dangerous liability: His longstanding ties to pro-Russian politicians in Ukraine–which inevitably led to Vladimir Putin.
For years, Manafort worked for Viktor Yanukovych, a Putin protege who was deposed as Ukraine’s president in 2014 amid widespread demonstrations.
In August, the New York Times unearthed handwritten ledgers that listed $12.7 million in cash payments to Manafort from Yanukovych’s political party between 2007 and 2012.
Trump’s own ties to Putin were already facing increasing scrutiny for a number of reasons:
- Trump’s and Putin’s public expressions of admiration for each other’s toughness.
- The removal from the Republican party platform, written at the convention in Cleveland in July, of references to arming Ukraine in its fight against pro-Russian rebels who have been armed by the Kremlin.
- In July, high-ranking Democratic officials–including presumptive Presidential nominee Hillary Clinton–were embarrassed by a hack of thousands of Democratic National Committee emails. This was quickly traced to Russian hackers allegedly working on behalf of the Kremlin. Their alleged motive: To tip the election in favor of Trump.
- Trump drew more suspicion upon himself by inviting Russia to find 30,000 emails deleted from the private server used by Clinton while she was Secretary of State in the Obama administration: “I think you will probably be mightily rewarded by our press.”
Added to Manafort’s embarrassing ties to Russia was another minus: He and Trump didn’t get along. Trump had begun calling him “low energy”–a term he once aimed at his former GOP rival, Jeb Bush.
Manafort wanted Trump to bring more self-discipline to the campaign and concentrate his fire solely on his Presidential rival, Hillary Clinton. Instead, in late July, Trump ignited a days-long feud with members of a Gold Star family, costing him support within the veterans community.
Manafort also wanted Trump to establish a conventional chain-of-command organization typical of a Presidential campaign. But Trump resisted, preferring to improvise and rely on his instincts and the counsel of his family.
In late August, Trump fired him.
Foreign policy nearly always plays a major role in Presidential elections. Yet Trump has shown a surprising lack of respect for a detailed knowledge of it.
Asked on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” who he consults about foreign policy, Trump replied; “I’m speaking with myself, number one, because I have a very good brain and I’ve said a lot of things.”
In late August, former Republican Congresswoman (2007-2015) Michele Bachmann claimed that she was now advising Trump on foreign policy.
Michele Bachmann
A member of the Right-wing Tea Party, Bachmann has said that diplomacy “is our option” in dealing with Iran–but wouldn’t rule out a nuclear strike.
Among the statements she’s made:
- “I don’t know how much God has to do to get the attention of the politicians. We’ve had an earthquake; we’ve had a hurricane. He said, ‘Are you going to start listening to me here?'”
- “Carbon dioxide is portrayed as harmful. But there isn’t even one study that can be produced that shows that carbon dioxide is a harmful gas.”
- “President Obama waived a ban on arming terrorists in order to allow weapons to go to the Syrian opposition….U.S. taxpayers are now paying to give arms to terrorists, including Al-Qaeda.”
- “I’m a believer in Jesus Christ. As I look at the End Times scripture, this says to me that the leaf is on the fig tree and we are to understand the signs of the times, which is your ministry, we are to understand where we are in God’s end time history.”
A woman who believes that God causes earthquakes and hurricanes, and that mankind has arrived at “End Times,” can hardly be a comfort to rational voters.
Another Trump adviser is former Fox News CEO Roger Ailes. His assignment: Prepare Trump for the upcoming fall debates with Clinton.
But Ailes comes with huge notoriety: In July he was fired from Fox News on multiple charges of sexual harassment.
At first, only Fox News anchor Gretchen Carlson dared accuse him. But then more than two dozen women came forward to accuse Ailes of sexual harassment.
On September 6, Carlson reached an out-of-court settlement with the parent company of Fox News for a reported $20 million.
At least two other women have settled with Fox, an anonymous source told the New York Times. And others may be planning to file lawsuits.
All of which makes Ailes the poster boy for sexual harassment.
Trump has been married three times and has often boasted of his sexual conquests–including ones he believes he could have had.
(Shortly after the 1997 death of Princess Diana, he told a radio interviewer he could have “nailed” her if he had wanted to.)
In a mid-March CNN/ORC poll, 73% of female voters voiced a negative view of Trump. Associating with a notorious sexual harasser like Roger Ailes can only do even more damage to his candidacy.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Politics, Social commentary on September 6, 2016 at 12:08 am
“The first impression that one gets of a ruler and his brains is from seeing the men that he has about him.
“When they are competent and loyal one can always consider him wise, as he has been able to recognize their ability and keep them faithful.
“But when they are the reverse, one can always form an unfavorable opinion of him, because the first mistake that he makes is in making this choice.”
So wrote the Italian statesman Niccolo Machiavelli more than 500 years ago in his famous treatise on politics, The Prince.
And his words remain as true in our day as they were in his.
Niccolo Machiavelli
They are especially important to remember when evaluating Donald Trump’s talents as an administrator.
In pursuing the Presidency, he is seeking the most powerful office in the world, one that would give him authority to appoint thousands of officials to domestic and foreign agencies.
Consider some of those he has placed around him in his campaign for President:
Founder of Latinos for Trump Marco Gutierrez told MSNBC’s Joy Reid: “My culture is a very dominant culture. And it’s imposing, and it’s causing problems. If you don’t do something about it, you’re gonna have taco trucks every corner.”
At a Tea Party for Trump rally at a Harley-Davidson dealership in Festus, Missouri, former Missouri Republican Party director Ed Martin reassured the crowd that they’re not racist for hating Mexicans: “Donald Trump is for Americans first.
“He’s for us first. It is not selfish to support, or to be for, your neighbor, as opposed to someone from another nation. And Mexico, Mexicans, that’s not a race. You’re not racist if you don’t like Mexicans. They’re from a nation.”
From the outset of his Presidential campaign, Trump has polled extremely poorly among Hispanic voters. This is perfectly understandable, given his comments about Mexicans as:
“When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best. They’re sending people that have lots of problems, and they’re bringing those problems with us. They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists.”
Trump has also promised to “build a great, great wall on our southern border and I will have Mexico pay for that wall.”
Donald Trump
These comments made Trump the winner of the Republican primaries, where voters always nominate the most extreme Rightist candidate.
But the general election phrase requires Republican and Democratic candidates to appeal to both their base and beyond it. As a result, Trump is now desperate to attract the votes of Hispanics.
Comments such as those by Marco Gutierrez and Ed Martin guarantee this won’t happen.
Wayne Root, opening speaker and master of ceremonies at many Trump events, told Virginia radio host Rob Schilling that people on public assistance and women who get their birth control through Obamacare should not be allowed to vote:
“If the people who paid the taxes were the only ones allowed to vote, we’d [Republicans] have landslide victories. But you’re allowing people to vote. This explains everything! People with conflict of interest shouldn’t be allowed to vote. If you collect welfare, you have no right to vote.
“The day you get off welfare, you get your voting rights back. The reality is, why are you allowed to have this conflict of interest that you vote for the politician who wants to keep your welfare checks coming and your food stamps and your aid to dependent children and your free health care and your Medicaid, your Medicare and your Social Security and everything else?”
Wayne Root
According to a March Gallup poll, 70% of women–or seven in 10–have an unfavorable opinion of Trump.
Such comments as Root’s aren’t going to increase Trump’s popularity with them. Nor with anyone who receives Medicaid, Medicare or Social Security.
Donald Trump’s new campaign manager, Stephen Bannon, was charged with misdemeanor domestic violence, battery, and dissuading a witness in 1996, after an altercation with his then-wife, Mary Louise Piccard, in Santa Monica, California.
Picard also said in a 2007 court declaration that Bannon didn’t want their twin daughters attending the Archer School for Girls in Los Angeles because many Jewish students were enrolled there.
Stephen Bannon
Not only is this certain to lose Trump votes among women, it will make him unpopular among Jews. A campaign manager charged with anti-Semitism could cost Trump heavily Jewish states like New York and Florida.
In addition: Bannon and another ex-wife, Diane Clohesy, were registered to vote at a vacant house in Florida, a possible violation of election laws in a key swing state.
Republicans have vigorously denied voting rights to tens of thousands on the pretext of “voter fraud.” More than a dozen states still have voting restrictions in place since 2012.
A Washington Post investigation found just 31 credible cases of voter fraud from 2000 to 2014, out of an estimated 1 billion ballots cast in the U.S. during that period.
Meanwhile, voting rights groups have been fighting back–and winning.
“Voter ID” laws in Texas, Wisconsin and North Carolina have been found discriminatory against minorities–who traditionally vote Democratic.
With evidence of Republican fraud like that supplied by Trump’s own campaign manager, victories against “Voter ID” laws may well increase.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Military, Politics, Social commentary on September 1, 2016 at 12:07 am
As the 2016 Presidential race gets ever closer to the finish, it’s well to consider Donald Trump’s ideas about democracy.
In 2011, as the 2012 Presidential race began heating up, Trump didn’t have a very high opinion of Mitt Romney, the man who then seemed the likely Republican nominee for President.
On April 17, 2011, toying with the idea of entering the Presidential race himself, the always self-promoting Trump said this about Romney, the former Massachusetts governor and GOP candidate:
“He’d buy companies. He’d close companies. He’d get rid of jobs. I’ve built a great company. I’m a much bigger businessman and have a much, much bigger net worth. I mean my net worth is many, many, many times Mitt Romney.
Donald Trump
“Mitt Romney is a basically small-business guy, if you really think about it. He was a hedge fund. He was a funds guy. He walked away with some money from a very good company that he didn’t create. He worked there. He didn’t create it.”
Trump added that Bain Capital, the hedge fund where Romney made millions of dollars before running for governor, didn’t create any jobs. Whereas Trump claimed that he—Trump—had created “hundreds of thousands of jobs.”
So Romney himself may have been puzzled when Trump announced, on February 2, 2012: “It’s my honor, real honor, and privilege to endorse Mitt Romney” for President.
“Mitt is tough, he’s smart, he’s sharp, he’s not going to allow bad things to continue to happen to this country that we all love. So, Governor Romney, go out and get ‘em. You can do it,” said Trump.
And Romney, in turn, had his own swooning-girl moment: “I’m so honored to have his endorsement….There are some things that you just can’t imagine in your life. This is one of them.”
Mitt Romney
Throughout the 2012 Presidential race, Trump continued to “help” Romney—by repeatedly accusing President Barack Obama of not being an American citizen.
Had that been true, Obama would not have had the right to be President—since the Constitution says that only an American citizen can hold this position.
Of course, that was entirely what Trump wanted people to believe—that Obama was an illegitimate President, and deserved to be thrown out.
Come election night—and disaster for Romney. And Trump.
When it became clear that Romney was not going to be America’s 45th President, Trump went ballistic on Twitter. Among his tweets:
- More votes equals a loss…revolution!
- Lets fight like hell and stop this great and disgusting injustice! The world is laughing at us.
- We can’t let this happen. We should march on Washington and stop this travesty. Our nation is totally divided!
- The phoney electoral college made a laughing stock out of our nation. The loser one!
- He lost the popular vote by a lot and won the election. We should have a revolution in this country!
To put Trump’s rants into real-world perspective:
- According to Trump, the electoral process works when a Republican wins the Presidency. It only doesn’t work when a Democrat wins.
- “We should march on Washington” conjures up images of another Fascist–Benito Mussolini–marching on Rome at the head of his Blackshirts to seize power. Which, in a democracy, is treason.
- “The phoney electoral college made a laughing stock out of our nation. The loser one!”
This last is startling, on three counts:
First, the 2012 Republican Platform spoke lovingly about the need for preserving the Electoral College:
“We oppose the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact or any other scheme to abolish or distort the procedures of the Electoral College.
“We recognize that an unconstitutional effort to impose ‘national popular vote’ would be a mortal threat to our federal system and a guarantee of corruption as every ballot box in every state would become a chance to steal the presidency.”
Second, the loser didn’t win: He lost. With votes still being counted (as of November 8) Obama got 60,652,238. Romney got 57,810,407.
Third, in 2000, Al Gore won the popular vote (50,999,897) to George W. Bush’s 50,456,002. But Bush trounced Gore in the Electoral College (271 to 266).
Still, that meant Bush—not Gore—would head the country for the next eight years. And that was perfectly OK with right-wingers like Trump.
It was only when Obama won the Electoral College count by 332 to 206 that this was—according to Trump–a “travesty.”
And Trump’s solution if voters dare to elect someone other than Trump’s pet choice: “Revolution!”
This comes perilously close to advocating violent overthrow of the government. Otherwise known as treason–a crime traditionally punished by execution, or at least lengthy imprisonment.
When former President Andrew Jackson was close to death, he asked his doctor: What act of my administration will be most severely condemned by future Americans?
Andrew Jackson
The doctor threw out a couple of guesses.
“Not at all!” replied Jackson. “Posterity will condemn me more because I was persuaded not to hang John C. Calhoun [the South Carolina Senator who created the doctrine of “secession” that ultimately led to the Civil War] as a traitor than for any other act in my life!”
If Donald Trump inherits control of America’s nuclear weapons, future historians—if there are any—may feel that Barack Obama should have done the same for Trump.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Military, Politics, Social commentary on August 12, 2016 at 12:22 am
Psssst! The Republicans and Chinese Communists (“Chi-Coms”) have something in common.
They both much preferred the foreign policy of George W. Bush to that of Barack Obama.
It’s one of the many fascinating revelations offered in Confront and Conceal: Obama’s Secret Wars and Surprising Uses of America Power.
The author is David E. Sanger, the chief Washington correspondent for The New York Times.
Early in 2011, Sanger had lunch at the Central Party School outside Beijing. This is where the party’s leadership debates questions that are thought too controversial to air in public.
A retired general in the People’s Liberation Army sat down next to Sanger and, in a relaxed moment of candor, said:
“I sat through many meetings of the People’s Liberation Army in the 80s and 90s where we tried to imagine what your military forces would look like in 10 to 20 years.
“But frankly, we never thought that you would spend trillions of dollars and so much time tied down in Afghanistan and the Middle East. We never imagined that as a choice you would make.”
Chinese military parade
And, writes Sanger: “Not so secretly, the Chinese were delighted by the Bush-era wars. The longer the United States was bogged down trying to build democracies in foreign lands, the less capable it was of competing in China’s backyard.
“But now that America was emerging from a lost decade in the Middle East, the Chinese began to ask: How should China respond? With cooperation, confrontation, or something in-between?”
And the Chinese were equally thrilled that the United States had squandered so much of its treasury during the eight-year Bush Presidency.
In the decade following 9/11, the Pentagon went on an unprecedented spending binge. The defense budget grew by 67%, to levels 50% higher than it had been per average year during the Cold War.
According to Sanger: “An estimate [the New York Times] put together for the tenth anniversary of the [9/11] attacks suggested that the United States had spent at least $3.3 trillion.”
These monies had gone on
- securing the country;
- invading and trying to rebuild Afghanistan and Iraq; and
- caring for wounded American soldiers.
“Put another way,” writes Sanger, “for every dollar al-Qaeda spent destroying the World Trade Center and attacking the Pentagon, America had spent $6.6 million in response.
“The annual Pentagon budget of $700 billion was equivalent to the combined spending of the next twenty largest military powers….
“The world had come to expect that America would underwrite global security, regardless of the cost. Obama was determined to change that mind-set.”
In short, America became financially and militarily vulnerable during the Presidency of George W. Bush.
And this flatly contradicts the standard Republican line: Obama is a weak President–and is betraying us to the (pick one or both) Muslims/Communists.
It also speaks volumes that the two most important members of the George W. Bush administration declined to attend the 2012 Republican National Convention. Just as they declined to attend the 2016 one.
That, of course, meant former President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney.
George W. Bush and Dick Cheney
And why was that? Perhaps it’s because polls show that a majority of Americans continue
- To blame Bush for lying the country into a needless, bloody and expensive war with Iraq.
- To blame him for presiding over the 2008 Wall Street meltdown.
- To see Dick Cheney as the Dr. Strangelovian manipulator of George W. Bush.
Even former President George H.W. Bush said he wouldn’t attend the convention.
It’s possible that Bush, Sr., didn’t want to serve as a reminder that his son left the White House with the lowest popularity rating of any modern President.
And that was just fine with those planning to attend the convention–especially its nominee-to-be, Mitt Romney.
They wanted to do with George W. Bush what Nikita Khrushchev and his fellow Communists did with the embarrassing Joseph Stalin: Bury him far from public view.
Romney certainly didn’t want the viewing audience to be reminded that the United States sharply declined in wealth and prestige during the eight-year reign of George W. Bush and a Republican Congress.
Romney and his fellow conventioneers also didn’t want to remind the country of something else: That Obama has spent most of his own Presidency trying to undo the harm his predecessor did, in both foreign and domestic policy.
Thus, now approaching the 2016 election, the Republican party finds itself torn.
Its leaders want Americans to believe that Barack Obama is the worst President in the history of the Republic. Donald Trump, its nominee for President, has even accused Obama of being “the founder of ISIS.”
This ignores that ISIS didn’t join Al-Qaeda until October, 2004–more than a year after Bush invaded Iraq. And that it was Bush’s destruction of Iraqi stability under Saddam Hussein that enabled ISIS to spread like a cancer throughout Iraq and Syria.
So while Republicans rail that Obama is the worst President in American history, they know that most Americans believe that title goes to the last Republican one.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Military, Politics, Social commentary on August 4, 2016 at 12:21 am
At one time, Americans believed that the wholesale rewriting of history happened only in the Soviet Union.
A classic example of this occurred in the Great Soviet Encyclopedia.
Lavrenti Beria had been head of the NKVD, the dreaded secret police, from 1938 to 1953. In 1953, following the death of Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin, Beria was arrested and executed on orders of his fellow Communist Party leaders, who feared they were targets of a coming purge.
Lavrenti Beria
But the Great Soviet Encyclopedia had just gone to press with a long article singing Beria’s praises.
What to do?
The editors of the Encyclopedia wrote an equally long article about “the Bering Straits,” which was to be pasted over the article about Beria, and sent this off to its subscribers. An unknown number of them decided it was safer to paste accordingly.
Today, the Republican party is furiously rewriting history in a desperate attempt to win the 2016 Presidential election.
Specifically, its members are now trying to convince Americans that:
- Donald Trump, their nominee for President, did not insult the parents of Captain Humayun Khan, who was killed by a truck-bomb in Iraq in 2004; and/or
- Barack Obama is responsible for Khan’s death. And so is Democratic Presidential nominee Hillary Clinton.
That is history according to Trump’s spokeswoman, Katrina Pierson.
Since July 28, Trump has found himself embroiled in a no-win war-of-words with Khan’s father, Khizr, and his mother, Ghazala.
Khizr was a featured speaker at the Democratic National Convention, and he used the opportunity to attack Trump:
“If it was up to Donald Trump, [Humayun] never would have been in America. Donald Trump consistently smears the character of Muslims. He disrespects other minorities, women, judges, even his own party leadership. He vows to build walls and ban us from this country….You have sacrificed nothing and no one.”
Trump predictably responded during a July 30 interview with ABC News’ George Stephanopoulos.
“I think I’ve made a lot of sacrifices,” said Trump. “I work very, very hard. I’ve created thousands and thousands of jobs, tens of thousands of jobs.”
And, on Twitter, he posted: “I was viciously attacked by Mr. Khan at the Democratic Convention. Am I not allowed to respond? Hillary voted for the Iraq war, not me!”
Trump has been bitterly attacked by veterans’ organizations for his running feud with the Khan family.
Republicans are desperate for Trump to end the conflict and return to attacking his Democratic opponent, Hillary Clinton.
Presumably, that was the assignment given to Trump’s spokeswoman, Katrina Pierson.
Appearing on CNN’s The Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer on August 2, Pierson said: “It was under Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton that changed the rules of engagements that probably cost his life.”
Katrina Pierson
Totally ignored in that scenario:
- President George W. Bush lied the nation into a needless war that cost the lives of 4,486 Americans and wounded another 33,226.
- Barack Obama did not become President until 2009–almost five years after Khan’s death.
- And Hillary Clinton did not become Secretary of State until the same year.
Pierson argued that Trump should be exempt from apologizing to the Khan family because he “never voted for the Iraq War.”
“Hillary Clinton did,” Pierson added. “And then she didn’t support the troops to have what they need.”
It’s true that Clinton, elected U.S. Senator from New York in 2000, voted in 2002 to support Bush’s attack on Iraq.
But Obama, elected U.S. Senator from Illinois in 2004, strongly opposed the Iraq war from the onset of his term. In fact, he made it a major issue during his 2008 Presidential race against Arizona U.S. Senator John McCain.
Pierson’s attempt to rewrite history touched off a frenzy on Twitter, leading to the creation of the hashtag #KatrinaPiersonHistory. Its purpose: To mock Pierson’s revisionist take on history.
Among the tweets offered:
- Hillary Clinton slashed funding for security at the Ford Theater, leading to Lincoln’s assassination.
- Obama introduced John Lennon to Yoko Ono, and well, you know.
- Obama gave Amelia Earhart directions to Kenya.
- Remember the Alamo? Obama and Hillary let it happen.
- Obama and Clinton kidnapped the Lindbergh baby.
- Obama decided that too many lifeboats would offend radical Islamic terrorists abord the Titanic.
- Barack Obama convinced the serpent to tempt Eve in the Garden of Eden.
- Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton organized The Spanish Inquisition.
The effect has been to turn Trump’s spokeswoman into a nationwide laughingstock. And her efforts to rewrite history have not helped Trump.
On August 3, Pierson appeared on CNN’s New Day. She admitted being wrong about the timeline and said she had been trying to say that Donald Trump has no connection to the Khans.
Later on CNN, Anderson Cooper Khizr Khan to comment on Pierson’s allegation.
“Do I need to say anything?” Khan replied. “Lack of understanding, lack of factual correctness, it’s just nothing but political vote pandering.”
In George Orwell’s novel, 1984, the unnamed Party’s slogan is: “He who controls the past controls the future. He who controls the present controls the past.”
The same holds true for Republicans: They hope to rewrite the past, as Joseph Stalin did, to wash away their crimes and errors–and pin these on their self-declared enemies.
And thus gain–and retain–absolute power over 300 million Americans.
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In History, Military, Politics on August 1, 2016 at 1:13 am
Donald Trump has changed Presidential campaigning–perhaps forever.
First, He has made angry and brutal attacks on a wide range of persons and organizations–including his fellow Republicans, journalists, news organizations, other countries and even celebrities who have nothing to do with politics.
Among those groups–and the insults Trump has leveled at them:
- Mexicans
- Prisoners-of-War
- Blacks
Second, he has weaponized social media. He has made Twitter an essential arm of his campaign, swiftly insulting his opponents and keeping them constantly off-balance. He has proved himself a master at the tabloid news culture and thoroughly in tune with his target audience.
Third, since announcing his candidacy on June 16, 2015, he has gotten a year’s worth of free media publicity. This has nothing to do with a networks’ conspiracy to favor Trump.
Instead, it owes to the media’s lust for sensational copy. And scenes of conflict–such as making brutal attacks on others–generate huge viewership.
This has been most apparent in debates, during which he belittled his Republican opponents with insulting nicknames.
- “Little Marco” – Florida U.S. Senator Marco Rubio
- “Goofy” – Massachusetts U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren
- “Lyin’ Ted” – Texas U.S. Senator Rafael Eduardo “Ted” Cruz
And looking beyond the Republican primary cycle, he created one for his future Democratic antagonist: “Crooked Hillary”–Hillary Clinton, former First Lady, U.S. Senator from New York and Secretary of State.
Political pundits have marveled at Trump’s ability to cast aside the long-held niceties of political discourse and not have to pay an electoral price for it. But that time may be coming to an end.
On July 22, Wikileaks released 19,252 emails and 8,034 attachments hacked from computers of the highest-ranking officials of the Democratic National Committee (DNC).
Cyber-security experts believe the hackers originated from Russia–and that Russian President Vladimir Putin may well have authorized it.
The emails revealed the DNC’s bias for Clinton for President. And they showed clear animosity toward her lone challenger, Vermont U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders.
Sanders’ supporters had long charged that the DNC and its chair, Debbie Wasserman-Schultz, were plotting to undercut his campaign. Now thousands of them were descending on the Democratic nominating convention in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, as furious protesters.
Five days later, on July 27, Trump held a press conference in Doral, Florida. Always ready to pounce on any perceived sign of weakness, he aimed yet another attack on Clinton:
“Russia, if you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing. I think you will probably be rewarded mightily by our press.”
Trump hoped to score points on Hillary Clinton’s using a private email server as Secretary of State. Instead, he ignited criticism–of himself–on both Left and Right.
“This has to be the first time that a major presidential candidate has actively encouraged a foreign power to conduct espionage against his political opponent,” said Jake Sullivan, Clinton’s chief foreign policy adviser. “This has gone from being a matter of curiosity, and a matter of politics, to being a national security issue.”
Republican Speaker of the House Paul Ryan was equally quick to react: “Russia is a global menace led by a devious thug,” said Brendan Buck, Ryan’s spokesman. “Putin should stay out of this election.”
“If he is talking about the State Department emails on her server, he is inviting a foreign intelligence service to steal sensitive American government information,” said Michael Hayden, head of the CIA under President George W. Bush.
“In addition to its implications for national security today,” wrote Benjy Sarlin, political reporter for MSNBC, “the incident raised disturbing questions about how Trump would govern as president. If a leader is willing to turn to ask foreign spy agencies to target a political opponent, what would he ask of his own spy agencies?”
The avalanche of criticism has led Trump to claim: “I was only being sarcastic.”
Only his most hardcore followers seem to believe it.
Since the end of World War II, the Republican party has taken an intensely anti-Communist stance. Now its nominee for President has not only exchanged compliments with an ex-KGB agent but has even invited him to target his Democratic opponent.
For at least one normally conservative newspaper, that’s simply too much. In a July 27 editorial, The Dallas Morning News declared:
“Words have meaning. The world is listening. And what the world is hearing is a man demonstrating that he is unfit to sit in the Oval Office.”
The ancient Greeks believed hubris–overweening pride–to be the greatest of sins. And, they warned, it was usually punished by divine wrath.
In his book, The World of Herodotus, Aubrey de Selincourt writes that the Greek historian filled his book, The Histories, with “stories of the perils of pride–pride of wealth, pride of power, pride of success, and, deadliest of all, the pride which leads a man to forget that he is a nothing in the sight of the gods.”
Trump has long boasted of his wealth, power and success. Perhaps his time of reckoning has finally arrived.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Military, Politics, Social commentary on July 28, 2016 at 12:08 am
“Russia, if you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing. I think you will probably be rewarded mightily by our press.”
The speaker was Donald Trump, holding a July 27 press conference in Doral, Fla.
Donald Trump
And he was urging a foreign leader to hack into the private email server of his Presidential rival, Hillary Clinton.
Five days earlier, Wikileaks had released 19,252 emails and 8,034 attachments hacked from computers of the highest-ranking officials of the Democratic National Committee (DNC).
Cyber-security experts believe the hacking originated from Russia–and that Russian President Vladimir Putin may have authorized it.
Politicians on the Left and Right expressed outrage at Trump’s remarks.
But this is not the first time the Right has jeopardized American security.
During the 2012 Presidential campaign, supporters of Mitt Romney accused President Barack Obama of leaking top-secret details of the U.S. Navy SEALs raid on Osama bin Laden’s compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan.
The raid, launched on May 1, 2011, resulted in the death of the 9/11 mastermind and the capture of a treasury of highly sensitive Al Qaeda documents.
According to Right-wingers, Obama wanted to provide Hollywood screenwriters with material for a movie to glorify his role in authorizing the raid.
In August, 2012, the Right found its own secrets-leakers. And they operated under the name of the Fox News Network.
Their motive: To promote a book–No Easy Day: The Firsthand Account of the Mission That Killed Osama Bin Laden. It was slated to hit bookstores on September 11–the 11th anniversary of Al Qaeda’s attacks on the Pentagon and World Trade Center.
It had been penned under the pseudonym “Mark Owen.” But the real name of the author–a 36-year-old former Navy SEAL Team Six member who took part in the raid–was Matt Bissonnette, of Wrangell, Alaska.
Bissonnette’s real name became public after multiple sources leaked it to Fox News–who revealed it on August 23.
The Navy SEALs who killed bin Laden had previously been left unidentified.
Fox News had repeatedly accused President Obama and members of his administration of treasonously leaking military secrets to the media to glorify the President.
Many former and current SEAL members feared that the book would release information that could compromise future missions.
U.S. Navy SEALs insignia
One Navy SEAL told Fox News, “How do we tell our guys to stay quiet when this guy won’t?” Some SEALs called Bissonnette a “traitor.”
And Colonel Tim Nye, a Special Operations Command spokesman, said the author “put himself in danger” by writing the book.
“This individual came forward. He started the process. He had to have known where this would lead. He’s the one who started this, so he bears the ultimate responsibility for this.”
But Bissonnette placed more than his own life in jeopardy. He endangered the lives of every one of the men who participated in the bin Laden raid.
If Bissonnette fell into the hands of Al Qaeda terrorists or sympathizers, he could conceivably be tortured into revealing at least some of the names and locations of his former team members.
And Fox News not only revealed his true name but the town where he lived.
Even the liberal Nation magazine was appalled at the recklessness of this Right-wing propaganda outlet. Jeremy Scahill, a writer for Nation, tweeted:
“Why on earth would FOX News publish the alleged identity of one of the ST6 members who was in the OBL raid? Seriously.”
Millions of Right-wing Americans have been conditioned by decades of Fascistic propaganda to believe that:
- Democrats are all traitors–or at least potential traitors.
- Even those Democrats who aren’t traitors are too weak-kneed to protect the nation from its sworn enemies.
- Democrats (have betrayed) (are betraying) (intend to betray) national security secrets to the Soviet/Chinese Communists.
- Democrats have (betrayed/) (are betraying) (intend to betray) national security secrets to Islamic Jihadists.
- Only Republicans can be trusted to protect the nation.
Republicans blamed President Harry S. Truman for “losing China” to the forces of Mao Tse Tung in 1949. America could not have prevented a corrupt and incompetent Chiang Kai-Shek from being driven off the Chinese mainland by Mao’s overwhelmingly powerful armies.
Then, in 1950, Senator “Tail Gunner Joe” McCarthy charged that the State Department was infested by Communists–and that the Truman administration knew it but refused to take action. The charges were false.
Joseph R. McCarthy
During the 2008 Presidential campaign, Republicans charged that Barack Obama was really a Muslim non-citizen who intended to sell out America’s security to his Muslim “masters.”
Attacking the patriotism of their opponents has repeatedly elected Republicans:
- It elected Dwight Eisenhower President and turned Congress Republican in 1952 and 1956.
- It elected Richard Nixon President in 1968 and 1972.
- It elected Ronald Reagan President in 1980 and 1984.
- It elected George H.W. Bush President in 1988.
- It gave Republicans control of the Congress in 1994 (although Bill Clinton had been elected President in 1992).
- It elected George W. Bush President in 2000 and 2004.
- It gave control of the House to Republicans in 2010 and the Senate in 2014.
And now Republicans hope this appeal will elect a man who has openly called on Vladimir Putin to hack into American computers.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Military, Politics, Social commentary on July 7, 2016 at 12:16 am
On July 6, FBI Director James Comey recommended that the Justice Department not prosecute Hillary Clinton for using a private email server during her tenure as Secretary of State.
Almost immediately afterward, Donald Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee for President, responded on Twitter: “FBI director said Crooked Hillary compromised our national security. No charges. Wow! #RiggedSystem.”
Paul Ryan, the Republican Speaker of the House of Representatives, claimed to be similarly outraged: “Declining to prosecute Secretary Clinton for recklessly mishandling and transmitting national security information will set a terrible precedent.”
“What Director Comey’s statements made clear was that Hillary Clinton’s decision to use a personal unsecured server to send work-related emails while service as Secretary of State—including classified information—was extremely irresponsible,” said House Republican Majority leader Kevin McCarthy.
But 28 years ago, Republicans maintained a tight-lipped silence on another matter involving sensitive national security secrets. That was when news broke that Nancy Reagan, as First Lady, had shared these with a court astrologer.
When President Ronald Reagan wanted advice on whether to nuke the Soviet Union or meet with its leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, his most important adviser wasn’t the CIA or Pentagon.
It was Joan Quigley, a San Francisco-based astrologer.
Ronald and Nancy Reagan
Nancy had met Quigley on “The Merve Griffin Show” in 1973. Quigley gave Nancy–and through her, Reagan himself—astrological advice during the latter’s campaign for the Republican Presidential nomination in 1976.
That effort failed to unseat President Gerald Ford–who was defeated by Jimmy Carter. But four years later, in 1980, Reagan defeated Carter to become the 40th President of the United States.
On March 30, 1981, a mentally-disturbed loner named John W. Hinckley shot and critically wounded Reagan. Fixated on actress Jodie Foster, he believed that by shooting the President he could gain her affection.
Shortly after the shooting, Merv Griffin told Nancy that Quigley had told him: If Nancy had called her on that fateful day, she–Quigley–could have warned that the President’s astrological charts had foretold a bad day.
From that moment on, Nancy regularly consulted Quigley on virtually everything that she and the President intended to do.
When Reagan learned of Nancy’s consultations with Quigley, he warned her: Be careful, because it might look odd if it came out.
Nancy may have been speaking on a scrambler-equipped phone. But Quigley–at her San Francisco office–was on an unsecured line. Thus, foreign powers–most notably the Soviet Union and Communist China–could have been privy to President Reagan’s most secret intentions.
Joan Quigley
Nancy passed on Quigley’s suggestions as commands to Donald Regan, chief of the White House staff.
As a result, Regan kept a color-coded calendar on his desk to remember when the astrological signs were good for the President to speak, travel, or negotiate with foreign leaders: Green ink highlighted “good” days; red ink “bad” days; yellow ink “iffy” days.
Donald Regan, no fan of Nancy’s, chafed under such restrictions: “Obviously, this list of dangerous or forbidden dates left very little latitude for scheduling,” he later wrote.
Forced out of the White House in 1987 by Nancy, Regan struck back in a 1988 tell-all memoir: For the Record: From Wall Street to Washington.
Regan’s book revealed, for the first time, how Ronald Reagan had actually made his Presidential decisions.
All–including decisions to risk nuclear war with the Soviet Union–were based on a court astrologer’s horoscopes. Rationality and the best military intelligence available played a lesser, secondary role.
The last major world leader to turn to the supernatural for advice had been Russian Czar Nicholas II. His adviser had been Grigori Rasputin, a Siberian peasant whom Empress Alexandra believed was the only man who could save her hemophiliac son–and heir to the throne.
Grigori Rasputin
In 1990, Quigley confirmed the allegations in an autobiography, What Does Joan Say?: My Seven Years As White House Astrologer to Nancy and Ronald Reagan.
The title came from the question that Ronald Reagan asked Nancy before making important decisions–including those that could risk the destruction of the United States.
Bragged Quigley: “Not since the days of the Roman emperors–and never in the history of the United States Presidency—has an astrologer played such a significant role in the nation’s affairs of State.”
Among the successes Quigley took credit for:
- Strategies for winning the Presidential elections of 1980 and 1984;
- Helping Nancy Reagan overhaul her image as a spoiled rich girl;
- Defusing the controversy over Reagan’s visiting a graveyard for SS soldiers in Bitburg, Germany;
- Pursuing “Star Wars” as a major part of his strategy against the Soviet Union;
- The Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty;
- Protecting Reagan from would-be assassins through timely warnings to Nancy; and
- Moving Reagan from seeing the Soviet Union as the “Evil Empire” to accepting Mikhail Gorbachev as a peace-seeking leader.
Thirty-five years after he became President, Ronald Reagan remains the most popular figure among Republicans. His deliberately-crafted myth is held up as the example of Presidential greatness by Right-wing candidates.
Curiously, however, none of them mention his approach to government-by-astrologer.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law Enforcement, Military, Politics, Social commentary on June 29, 2016 at 12:01 am
Even at the height of World War II, citizens of the United States could take comfort in the following:
- Nazi Germany had a capitol–Berlin–and a single, all-powerful leader–Adolf Hitler. Once Berlin was occupied and Hitler dead or captured, the war would be over.
- And, for all their ferocity, German soldiers were easy to recognize: They wore gray uniforms, spoke German and waved flags emblazoned with swastikas or imperial eagles.
Wehrmacht soldiers marching through conquered France
Today, Western nations under attack by Islamic “holy warriors” face none of those advantages. Islam has no single capitol city–or leader.
Nor do Islam’s jihadist legions wear uniforms. Many of them don’t speak Arabic or wear clothing associated with Arabs, such as flowing robes and headdresses.
More ominously, millions of Islam’s potential “warriors” live within the very Western nations they despise. They can get all the instruction and inspiration they need to wreck havoc simply by going to the Internet.
Or, if they have the money, by traveling overseas to such terrorist-recruiting centers as Syria or Afghanistan.
And yet, faced with an unprecedented threat to their security, many Western leaders refuse to publicly acknowledge this fundamental truth:
Even if the West isn’t at war with Islam, Islam is at war with the West.
Leaders like President Barack Obama, who insisted, at a White House Summit on Countering Violent Extremism in February, 2015: “We are not at war with Islam. We are at war with people who have perverted Islam.”
David Cameron
And leaders like British Prime Minister David Cameron, who said on August 29, 2014: “Islam is a religion observed peacefully by over a billion people. Islamist extremism is a poisonous ideology observed by a minority.”
On June 20, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) issued a censored version of gunman Omar Mateen’s call to a 9-1-1 operator. While taking a break from slaughtering 49 defenseless men and women and wounding another 53, Mateen pledged his loyalty to ISIS.
Fortunately for the United States, the Bureau hasn’t always been so craven.
Ronald Kessler, author of the 2011 book, The Secrets of the FBI, quotes Arthur M. Cummings, the Bureau’s then-executive assistant director for national security:
“I had this discussion with the director of a very prominent Muslim organization here in [Washington] D.C. And he said, ‘Why are you guys always looking at the Muslim community?’”
“I can name the homegrown cells, all of whom are Muslim, all of whom were seeking to kill Americans,” replied Cummings. “It’s not the Irish, it’s not the French, it’s not the Catholics, it’s not the Protestants. It’s the Muslims.”
Occasionally, Muslims will condemn Al Qaeda. But “rarely do we have them coming to us and saying, ‘There are three guys in the community that we’re very concerned about,’” said Cummings.
“They don’t want anyone to know they have extremists in their community. Well, beautiful. Except do you read the newspapers? Everybody already knows it. The horse has left the barn.”
Cummings has no use for such Politically Correct terms as “man-caused disasters” to refer to terrorism. Nor does he shy away from terms such as “jihadists” or “Islamists.”
“Of course Islamists dominate the terrorism of today,” he says bluntly.
In May, 2014, Steven Emerson, a nationally recognized expert on terrorism, posted an ad in The New York Times, warning about the dangers of PC-imposed censorship. And he posed the question: “How can we win the war against radical Islam if we can’t even name the enemy?”
He has a point–and a highly legitimate one.
Imagine the United States fighting World War II–and President Franklin Roosevelt banning the use of “fascist” in referring to Nazi Germany or “imperialist” in describing Imperial Japan.
Imagine CNN-like coverage of the Nazi extermination camps, with their piles of rotting corpses and smoking gas ovens, while a commentator reminds us that “Nazism is an ideology of peace.”
Then consider these Islamic terrorist outrages of our own time:
- The 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center in New York City and the Pentagon in Washington, D.C., which snuffed out the lives of 3,000 Americans.
- The 2004 bombing of Madrid’s commuter train system.
- The attack on the London subway in 2005.
- The killing of 13 U.S. Army personnel at Fort Hood, Texas, by a Muslim army major in 2009.
- The bombing of the Boston Marathon in 2013.
- The kidnapping of 300 Nigerian schoolgirls by Boko Haram in 2014.
- The slaughter of 12 people at a Paris satirical magazine that had published cartoons about the Prophet Mohammed in 2015.
- The murders of more than 100 people in ISIS attacks across Paris in 2015.
- A series of deadly terrorist attacks in Brussels, killing 31 and injuring 270 in 2016.
In every one of these attacks, the perpetrators openly announced that their actions had been motivated by their Islamic beliefs.
In his groundbreaking book, The Clash of Civilizations (1996) Samuel Huntington, the noted political scientist at Harvard University, noted:
“The fundamental problem for the West is not Islamic fundamentalism. It is Islam, a different civilisation whose people are convinced of the superiority of their culture and are obsessed with the inferiority of their power.”
The West may not be at war with Islam–as countless Western politicians repeatedly assert. But Islamics have no qualms about declaring that they are at war with the West.
Bureaucracybuster's Blog 
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A RULER AND HIS BRAINS: PART THREE (END)
In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Politics, Social commentary on September 8, 2016 at 1:21 amIn late July, Donald Trump’s new spokeswoman, Katrina Pierson, accepted an impossible mission that even Jim Phelps would have turned down:
Convince Americans that Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton were responsible for the death of Captain Humayun Khan, who was killed by a truck-bomb in Iraq in 2004.
Appearing on CNN’s The Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer on August 2, Pierson said: “It was under Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton that changed the rules of engagements that probably cost his life.”
Katrina Pierson
Totally ignored in that scenario:
Pierson’s attempt to rewrite history touched off a frenzy on Twitter, leading to the creation of the hashtag #KatrinaPiersonHistory. Its purpose: To mock Pierson’s revisionist take on history.
Among the tweets offered:
Not content with blaming President Obama for the death of a man he never sent into combat, Pierson claimed that Obama started the Afghanistan war.
Appearing again on CNN, Pierson said the Afghan war began “after 2007,” when Al Qaeda “was in ashes” following the American troop surge in Iraq.
“Remember, we weren’t even in Afghanistan by this time,” Pierson said. “Barack Obama went into Afghanistan, creating another problem.”
In fact, President George W. Bush ordered the invasion of Afghanistan following the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.
Millions of Americans who lived through 9/11 remember that.
When your spokeswoman becomes a nationwide laughingstock, your own credibility goes down the toilet as well.
In July an Associated Press/GfK poll found that half of Americans saw Donald Trump as “racist”–and only 7% of blacks viewed him favorably.
There are numerous reasons for this:
Since 1964, blacks have overwhelmingly voted for Democratic Presidential candidates. President Lyndon B. Johnson’s won their loyalty with his support for and passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
President Johnson signing the 1964 Civil Rights Act
Republican Presidential candidate Barry Goldwater opposed it–as did the majority of his party.
Since 1964, fewer than six percent of blacks have voted for Republican Presidential candidates. Whites have not only remained the majority of Republican voters but have become the single most important voting bloc among them.
John McCain received four percent of black votes in 2008 and Mitt Romney received six percent in 2012. When a Republican collapses into single digits among blacks and other minorities, it reduces the number of white votes a Democrat needs to win the presidency.
To counter this, Donald Trump has turned to his Director of African-American Outreach: Omarosa Manigault.
Trump made the appointment just hours before the first night of the Republican National Convention.
Omarosa Manigault
Manigault is best known as the villain of Trump’s reality-TV show, “The Apprentice”–where she was fired on three different seasons. Her credentials include a Ph.D. in communications, a preacher’s license, and topping TV Guide’s list of greatest reality TV villains in 2008.
During the Clinton administration she held four jobs in two years, and was thoroughly disliked in all of them.
“She was asked to leave [her last job] as quickly as possible, she was so disruptive,” said Cheryl Shavers, the former Under Secretary for Technology at the Commerce Department. “One woman wanted to slug her.”
In her role as Trump’s ambassador to blacks, Omarosa has inspired others to want to slug her. Appearing on Fox Business, she ignored Fox panelist Tamera Holder’s question on why blacks should support Trump,and then mocked her “big boobs.”
Manigault isn’t bothered that blacks regard Trump so poorly in polls: “My reality is that I’m surrounded by people who want to see Donald Trump as the next president of the United States who are African-American.”
Appointing as your public relations director a woman who gratuitously insults and infuriates people is not the move of a smart administrator. Nor the move of a smart Presidential candidate.
If Donald Trump becomes President, he will inherit the authority to appoint thousands of officials to domestic and foreign agencies. Voters have a right to judge him on the quality of the appointments he has already made to his own campaign.
A review of those named within this series gives serious cause for concern.
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