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.
Bureaucracybuster's Blog 
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THE ULTIMATE NEW YEAR’S EVE
In History, Social commentary on December 31, 2018 at 12:12 amNew Year’s Eve, 2018, will soon lie behind us.
But for those who consciously lived through Friday, December 31, 1999, there will never be another New Year’s Eve like it.
New Year’s Eve is traditionally a time for people to reflect on the major events of the previous 12 months. Some of these are highly personal. Others have been shared by the entire country.
Some of these remembrances inevitably bring pleasure. Others bring pain.
But at the heart of every New Year’s Eve celebration is the fantasy that you get to start fresh in a matter of hours. And with that fantasy comes hope—that, this time, you can put your sorrows and failures behind you.
New Year’s Eve, 1999, was marked far more by apprehension and fear than joy.
And, especially where Y2K was concerned, news commentators were quick to stoke our anxieties.
For those living on the West Coast of the United States on December 31, 1999, the day began with news reports of celebrations of the New Year in such distant countries as Australia and New Zealand.
“So far,” each of these reports ended, “there have been no reports of Y2K-related outages.”
But the underlying message was clear: Stay tuned—it could still happen. And this message kept blaring for the rest of the day and into the evening.
Long before New Year’s Eve, TV newscasters repeatedly warned that, when midnight struck on January 1, 2000, the three places you did not want to be were:
Countless numbers of people in America and around the world stocked up on food, water, batteries and other essentials for surviving an emergency.
Merchants and police feared widespread rioting and violence. If Y2K didn’t set it off, then fears of a heaven-sent Apocalypse might.
In San Francisco, along Powell Street—a major center of tourism and commerce—store owners boarded up their doors and windows as New Year’s Eve approached. Many closed earlier than usual that day.
At 9 p.m. California time, a friend of mine turned off a VCR and turned on a local news station to watch celebrations—or chaos—unfold in New York City.
If the lights went off in New York at midnight Eastern time, then, in three more hours, the same would happen in California.
When he saw lights glittering in Times Square, he felt reasonably certain that Y2K would probably be a dud.
Fortunately, no Y2K disasters occurred.
Three people I know decided to throw an “End of the World” party. They didn’t believe the world was coming to an end. But they decided to throw an “absolute last blast” party as though it were.
Among the items they stockpiled for this occasion:
It was definitely an unforgettable night.
New Year’s Eve 1999 is now 16 years distant. But some lessons may still be learned from it:
Each year is a journey unto itself–filled with countless joys and sorrows. Many of these joys can’t be predicted. And many of these tragedies can’t be prevented.
Learn to tell real dangers from imaginary ones. Computers are real—and sometimes they crash. Men who died 2,000 years ago do not leap out of graveyards, no matter what their disciples predict.
Don’t expect any particular year to usher in the Apocalypse. In any given year there will be wars, famines, earthquakes, riots, floods and a host of other disasters. These have always been with us–and always will be. As Abraham Lincoln once said: “The best thing about the future is that it comes one day at a time.”
Don’t expect some Great Leader to lead you to success. As Gaius Cassius says in William Shakespeare’s “Julius Caesar”: “Men at some time are masters of their fate. The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars but in ourselves that we are underlings.”
Don’t expect any particular year or event to usher in your happiness. To again quote Lincoln: “Most people are about as happy as they make up their minds to be.”
If your life seems to make no sense to you, consider this: The philosopher Soren Kierkegaard once noted: “Life can only be understood backwards, but it must be lived forwards.”
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