Op-ed: After insulting the Arab American mother of a Medal of Honor winner Donald Trump is under pressure from leading Republicans worried that Hillary is building her lead in polls.
“In recent days, Donald Trump disparaged a fallen soldier’s parents,” said Sen. John McCain, who was taken prisoner during the Vietnam War. “He has suggested that the likes of their son should not be allowed in the United States — to say nothing of entering its service. I cannot emphasize enough how deeply I disagree with Mr. Trump’s statement. I hope Americans understand that the remarks do not represent the views of our Republican Party, its officers, or candidates.” Other leading Republicans shared McCain’s comments. Trump also goofed in several interviews, denying that he was buddies with Russia’s Vladimir Putin. Trump also said Russia would never invade Ukraine. Both were demonstrable lies, and the networks showed videos and published stories proving that with glee. Trump also is fighting the powerful National Football League, claiming they sent him a letter saying their schedule will interfere with presidential debates. The league published a statement denying it had sent any such letter. Numerous outlets have published articles saying Trump’s manager, Paul Manafort, has close ties with Putin and the former dictator of Ukraine, who was ousted and now lives in Russia. The theory has been that even ties to Russia would not hurt Trump; he is invincible. But some polls Monday had him behind by 7 percent, one even by 11. Reuters-Ipsos had him behind by 6 percent. Last week the Republican-leading Rasmussen site gave Hillary the first ever lead, one percent. It even gave President Obama a positive approval rating. Real Clear Politics, which averages polls, has dropped Rasmussen. The 538 poll site, which had shown Hillary dropping, now has her rising again. She had dropped to 51 percent but it now has her at 53, based on polls. That means she has a 53 percent chance to win. Its analytic forecast gives her a 62 percent chance to win. http://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2016/07/30/trump-nfl-dispute-whether-league-asked-debates-to-be-moved/ http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/theres-plenty-of-time-for-trump-or-clinton-to-become-likable-enough/ http://www.newtekjournalismukworld.com/robert-weller/traitor-and-draft-dodger-trump-doesnt-know-what-a-hero-is
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The message was on stickers throughout the hall in the city of Brotherly Love. “Love Trumps Hate.” Take that law and order president. It was almost like a Steven Spielberg movie. A series of speakers, including Michelle Obama and Bernie Sanders himself, explained why the former reality show host had ripped off people he worked with building towers which later went bankrupt. As if hearing it from Sanders himself, TV star Sarah Silverman, a Bernie supporter from day one, told those refusing to join the Hillary Clinton bandwagon “you’re being ridiculous.” Sanders said no one was more disappointed than he was, and he knew he had not been treated fairly, but the election of Donald Trump would destroy the country. Many did not buy it and shouted boos or even taped SILENCE signs over their mouths. Sanders endured booing on several occasions, no longer with the Secret Service to protect him. Ironically, Clinton carried California by 438,000 votes. No one in his right mind can believe that whatever dirty tricks the Democratic National Committee pulled, revealed in detail by Russia’s Putin and Wikileaks, Clinton stole California. The FBI is investigating alleged ties between Trump and Putin. Even right-wing media took offense. Speaker after speaker Monday talked about the millions who lost their houses and thousands who lost their loves because of the recession and wars created by President George W. Bush. Even this Tuesday morning media pundits were trying to keep the feud alive. Several networks sought out people who hated Clinton knowing they would not support Hillary. Ironically, nothing that was hacked two days before the convention began, was new. Sanders himself said Wikileaks didn’t say anything he had not already said. Nancy Pelosi, leader of the Democratic Party in the House, hinted on MSNBC this morning that many of the people on the street criticizing Hillary were being paid by Putin. Putin had accused Hillary of interfering in his last election. But none of the speakers Monday day came close to approaching the elegance of First Lady Michelle Obama, much beloved across party lines. "This “is the story of this country, the story that has brought me to this stage tonight, the story of generations of people who felt the lash of bondage, the shame of servitude, the sting of segregation, but who kept on striving and hoping and doing what needed to be done so that today I wake up every morning in a house that was built by slaves. And I watch my daughters, two beautiful, intelligent, black young women playing with their dogs on the White House lawn. And because of Hillary Clinton, my daughters and all our sons and daughters now take for granted that a woman can be president of the United States. " “So, look, so don’t let anyone ever tell you that this country isn’t great, that somehow we need to make it great again. Because this right now is the greatest country on earth! And as my daughters prepare to set out into the world, I want a leader who is worthy of that truth, a leader who is worthy of my girls’ promise and all our kids’ promise, a leader who will be guided every day by the love and hope and impossibly big dreams that we all have for our children.” Speakers joked her speech was so strong it would be used in the next Republican convention, much as a previous Obama speech was used by Trump’s wife, Melania, in the Republican convention. Tuesday night will be another where love is the issue. The love of mothers whose children died in gun massacres. The Republican party and the NRA have consistently fought any effective gun control laws. They claim none would stop all shootings. Imagine if we eliminated laws against burglaries or bank robberies because some times the bad guys get away? That is the Trump mantra: Every man, hopefully carrying a gun, for himself. Military and intelligence leaders find Trump’s close ties with Putin terrifying. He is getting intel briefings, and he won’t have to use Wikileaks to pass on the information he gets. Trump’s funding threats to NATO are being cheered in Moscow. Op-ed: The Republican Convention in Cleveland is getting most of the attention on American television but the public is more concerned about a wave of murders, including many police officers.
The country has been listening to the loud mouth of Donald Trump, the Republican nominee for months, and the only question is how much he will be able to make his vice presidential candidate, Indiana Gov. Mike Pence, dump views he had that were critical of Trump. “When it comes to Donald Trump's selection of Mike Pence as his running mate, things appear to have moved away from suspense and are now just plain tense. “In an odd and seemingly uncomfortable clip of an interview that aired Sunday night on CBS' "60 Minutes," the two men headlining the GOP 2016 ticket appear to disagree on the upsides of running a negative campaign and convey an uneasy rapport with each other.” There has been a series of police killings, including three Sunday in Louisiana. On July 7, five Dallas police were killed. There were other killings, several by ex-military, and there was no doubt the police were killed in revenge, in some cases by men trained in the military, because very few police have been punished for questionable killings of black men and children. Government statistics show more blacks are killed by police than their populations would justify. “In 2015, The Washington Post launched a real-time database to track fatal police shootings, and the project continues this year. As of Sunday, 1,502 people have been shot and killed by on-duty police officers since Jan. 1, 2015. Of them, 732 were white, and 381 were black (and 382 were of another or unknown race).” Roughly half of those killed were black, but whites outnumber blacks by five times. “White people make up roughly 62 percent of the U.S. population but only about 49 percent of those who are killed by police officers. African Americans, however, account for 24 percent of those fatally shot and killed by the police despite being just 13 percent of the U.S. population,” the Post said. One of the black victims, Philando Castile, had been pulled over 49 times before he was killed when an officer noticed a broken tail light. Critics say this is a result of militarizing the police. The problem is there are many thousands of soldiers who have had the same, or even better training. Killer Micah Johnson, who was blown up with a police bomb-laden truck, used “scoot and shoot” techniques he had learned in the Army. Of course there are millions of guns in the U.S., as gun control has largely failed. Someone with a gun doesn’t necessarily need to have been a veteran to know how to be a military sniper to kill. Much can be learned on target ranges and Google. The conservative Website RedState said: “Reasonable people can disagree about the prevalence of police brutality in America, and the extent to which race plays a factor in it. I don't think reasonable people can disagree that excessive police force is punished way less often than it actually happens. And that's the kind of problem that leads to people taking up guns and committing acts of violence - tragically (and with evil intent) against cops who as far as we know have done nothing wrong. “But people's willingness to act rationally and within the confines of the law and the political system is generally speaking directly proportional to their belief that the law and political system will ever punish wrongdoing. And right now, that belief is largely broken, especially in many minority communities.” A Baltimore judge acquitted another policeman Monday in the death of another black man, Fred Gray. Forgetting race for a moment, there is one other issue that no doubt plays in part in who lives and who dies. The U.S. government is under pressure to keep some information about shootings confidential. But does anyone doubt that the poor are more likely be victims of shootings than the wealthy. Some would say the recent racial violence in the U.S. was inevitable with the proliferation of weapons and blacks being the targets of police shootings more than their population would justify.
Even scarier is the growing feeling that the rich have too much control, and the poor are living miserable existences. In other words, those with money in the U.S. have more to worry about than blacks. It has not shut up Donald Trump who supports dictators like Russia’s Putin, and often has responded within minutes to any violence with a warning that he would use nukes and ban people he doesn’t like. His campaign apparently feels whites are so scared they want to hear tweets blaming President Obama for the recent violence. Trump may be going against the flow this time. There were protests Saturday and Sunday across the nation by people who believe police are too quick to use their guns, and are unlikely to be held responsible. More blacks are shot by police than their share of the population would suggest occur. Democrat Hillary Clinton, who has a nearly double-digit lead in some polls, said more has to be done to quiet anxieties about racism. "White Americans need to do a better job of listening when African-Americans talk about the seen and unseen barriers you face every day," Clinton told a largely black group. "We need to try, as best we can, to walk in one another's shoes -- to imagine what it would be like if people followed us around stores or locked their car doors when we walked past ... or, if every time our children went to play in the park, or just to the store to buy iced tea and Skittles, we said a prayer: 'Please God, don't let anything happen to my baby.'” Candidates from both parties throughout the country have urged that politicians not use the recent violence as a way to get elected. How we handled slavery has become a topic again, and not just on Broadway. Art often suggests where a nation in trouble is headed, whether it is South Africa or the U.S. Theaters in Johannesburg were full of plays about the evils of apartheid, and clearly played a role in ending white-minority rule. The Washington Post says the U.S. needn’t fear Nat Turner kind of slave revolts. “But it still must worry about the aggrieved black man,” the Post said. In South Africa, police often found themselves defending white richesse, though they were not by any means wealthy themselves. The danger in the U.S. is not a black majority. It is much more complicated. Many minorities, including Hispanics and Asians, consider themselves modern-day serfs. One thing is clear. Reviews of demographics show minorities are growing. Firstly, they have higher birth rates. Police forces have growing numbers of minorities. The idea that the widespread presence of mobile phones would make police more careful and result in fewer police shootings of civilians hasn’t happened. The Washington Post Gun Archive Project shows fatal shootings by police are not dropping. The shooter in Dallas, who killed five police, was trained in the U.S. Army, served in Afghanistan, said he attacked them because so many fellow blacks were being killed by police. For seniors, President Obama’s visit to Dallas this week will bring back unpleasant memories of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy there. Police shootings of blacks have rarely resulted in convictions. The optic is such that many, perhaps most, see police risking their lives and therefore some deaths that would be called collateral. In Minnesota, a black man was killed by a policeman when a witness said he had told the officer who had pulled him over that he was carrying permitted gun. There is recognition that it is not simply a black and white issue. The conservative Web site RedState said: “Reasonable people can disagree about the prevalence of police brutality in America, and the extent to which race plays a factor in it. I don't think reasonable people can disagree that excessive police force is punished way less often than it actually happens. And that's the kind of problem that leads to people taking up guns and committing acts of violence - tragically (and with evil intent) against cops who as far as we know have done nothing wrong. “But people's willingness to act rationally and within the confines of the law and the political system is generally speaking directly proportional to their belief that the law and political system will ever punish wrongdoing. And right now, that belief is largely broken, especially in many minority communities.” The Media was the Message Canadian communication professor, Marshall McLuhan, 40 years after his death, has been shown to be a fortuneteller more than a communications theorist. The unlikely rapid rise of businessman Donald Trump as a presidential candidate, and what may be the even more dramatic decline, shows that the medium truly is the message. The Canadian died in 1980, before the Internet became the world’s lingua franca. But his determination that electronic transmission of news itself was more important than the news delivered became a widely accepted article of faith in the 2016 presidential race. No matter how racist, stupid, insulting or outrageous Trump became he got more coverage and high poll numbers. He had actually had his own “reality TV” show spawned by his billions in the real estate industry. He also got more viewers for the networks that telecast them when he became a candidate. “It may not be good for America, but it’s damn good for CBS,” said CBS CEO Les Moonves in February. “They’re not discussing issues, they’re throwing bombs at each other.” The inmates were in charge of asylum. Harvard Kennedy School’s Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy studied the beginnings of the race and found there was an “invisible primary,” before the voting, that made it possible for Trump to gain popularity. The report found claims the media favored Trump over the other candidates, and in fact created him. It has been reported that Trump got $2 billion in free coverage on American television. Hillary Clinton, who led in early polling, got the least and most negative coverage. Bernie Sanders got less coverage than Trump but it was much more favorable. Trump bragged at one point that he could shoot someone and his ratings would rise. It has been said that no one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of Americans. But put another way, perhaps his precipitous fall, which has Republican leaders talking of replacing him as their candidate, may make sense. Perhaps people became bored with Trump? If that is the problem then his show will simply be cancelled. Related: Exclusive: Is Donald Trump’s Endgame the Launch of Trump News? Mind Control, Subliminal Messages and the Brainwashing of America Op-ed: President Barack Obama wasted no time Thursday endorsing Hillary Clinton to succeed him, and there was no doubt he was relishing the battle. The Republican party publicly made its no. 1 goal to stop everything Obama tried to do during his eight years as President. His likely narrative will be that former President George W. Bush destroyed the nation’s economy and is at least partly responsible for creating ISIS. Obama will be able to claim credit for drastically lowering the unemployment rate and killing Osama bin Laden. “I’m with her, I am fired up, and I cannot wait to get out there to campaign for Hillary,” Mr. Obama said. Obama said of his former secretary of state, who would become the first female president of the country, “I have seen her judgment, I’ve seen her toughness, I’ve seen her commitment to our values up close. … “She’s got the courage, the compassion, and the heart to get the job done.” Obama said he would begin campaigning with her next week in Wisconsin, and Michelle Obama was expected to join the parade. “I know how hard this job can be, that’s why I know Hillary will be so good at it,” Obama said in avideo. “In fact I don’t think there’s ever been someone so qualified to hold this office. She’s got the courage, the compassion and the heart to get this job done.” Earlier in the day Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders indicated he was leaving the campaign. Later he vowed to work with Hillary Clinton but shied away from endorsing her. That may come later. For the first time ever, Americans will have the choice of a woman as their president. Hillary Clinton won’t have to worry about fighting off a challenge from Bernie Sanders based on technicalities. Clinton won enough votes in the last Tuesday of primaries to prevent Sanders from arguing that she was counting on delegates picked by the party, not voters. Even Sanders’ dream of winning in California, the nation’s most populous state, failed. He had hoped that might give him leverage to take to the convention but he lost by more than 400,000 votes. But at the end it was a somewhat boring evening that cable television had been trying to make it seem like it would be decided at the last minute or perhaps not until the Democrat convention in July in Philadelphia. The New York Times reported Sanders had already begun laying off workers. Even his threat to keep his campaign going drew mostly yawns. He was under pressure from President Obama to withdraw and most pundits expected he would comply within days. Clinton, whose husband, Bill, served two terms as president, has been playing down the fact that she would be the first female president. On Tuesday night she let it all out. “Tonight’s victory is not about one person. It belongs to generations of women and men who struggled and sacrificed and made this moment possible,” she said. “In our country, it started right here in New York, a place called Seneca Falls, in 1848, when a small but determined group of women and men came together with the idea that women deserved equal rights,” she said in a speech in Brooklyn, N.Y. Many leaders around the world are likely to be happy to see her contesting Republican Donald Trump, who is considered too inexperienced to run the most powerful nation in the world. In her speech, she repeated an earlier comment, that the New York billionaire businessman was unfit to be president. “So we all owe so much to those who came before, and tonight belongs to all of you,” she added. She made special mention of her mother, Dorothy Emma Howell Rodham, who died in 2011. “I really wish my mother could be here tonight. I wish she could see what a wonderful mother Chelsea has become and could meet our beautiful granddaughter, Charlotte,” she said. “And of course, I wish she could see her daughter become the Democratic Party’s nominee.” |
Robert Weller
2016 US election news and other news from the USA
Bio
Worked in journalism, including on the Internet, for more than 40 years. Started as a news editor at the Colorado Daily at the University of Colorado, joined a small Montana newspaper, the Helena Independent-Record, and then United Press International. Archives
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