Op-ed: The final votes remain to be counted but Hillary Clinton got 2 million votes more than Donald Trump. She got 63 million and he got 61 million.
Sixty-one million people cast ballots for Trump. And the Times and others say as more West Coast votes are counted her margin is likely to increase. Hundreds of thousands of voter fraud were reported on Twitter but a Trump administration is unlikely to investigate. There also were stories of voter suppression. In fact, Clinton has accused the FBI of winning the election for Trump with false accusations. FBI Director “James Comey's announcement of a new inquiry into her use of email while secretary of state shortly before election day had stopped her campaign's momentum,” Clinton told the BBC. This same Comey blocked allegations of Russia intervening on Trump’s side because it was too close to the election. “The Russian government maintained contacts with members of Donald J. Trump’s “immediate entourage” during the American presidential campaign,” one of Russia’s top diplomats said Thursday. “There were contacts,” Sergei A. Ryabkov, the deputy foreign minister, was quoted as saying by the Interfax news agency. “We continue to do this and have been doing this work during the election campaign,” he said. This is the fifth time the winner of the popular vote has lost because States voted in the Electoral College. In all five cases Democrats had the most votes. While Trump has sought to be conciliatory, particularly on Obamacare, it remains to be seen whether the Republicans in the Senate and House will cooperate. And his base will soon be calling him a liar if he backs off. Trump’s “Trump University” fraud trial is still set to begin Nov. 28. The judge handling the case has refused to delay it but has suggested a settlement might be a good idea because the presidency is involved. One again, Trump would be settling a lawsuit with money. And when will be the public get to see his taxes. He may not be able to hide them once he is in the White House. New York Times CNBC New York
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 Op-ed: A movie that has not been released in theaters in the U.S. yet may tell us what to expect if Donald Trump is elected president. It is “High Rise,” and it features British hunk Tom Hiddleston, better known as the characters Loki in the film Avengers and Jonathan Pine in The Night Manager.
If the Republicans get their payback on Hillary Clinton for helping impeach Richard Nixon, and many other acts they consider crimes, it is worth downloading High Rise to see what a class war would really be like. Bloomberg Watergate Clinton The film High Rise, released last year in Canada, was considered a highlight of the Toronto Film Festival. “Biggest surprises of TIFF so far: “…that Ben Wheatley’s High-Rise (Grade: B+) is something I genuinely dig. Wheatley’s labyrinthine black comedy preserves the 1970s setting of J.G. Ballard’s novel, linking its vision of a residential tower regressing into literal class warfare to the rise of Margaret Thatcher…” Toronto Film Festival Reviews For those who judge a movie by its cast, Jeremy Irons is the arch architect of the five towers, if that is a word. Hiddleston plays Thor’s arch enemy in the Marvel series. As in Les Miserables or the French Revolution itself, class warfare develops. This time between those on the top floor and those on the lower flowers. The soundtrack, which ranges from Bach to Abba enhances the film. It gets to the level of eating dogs to survive. Margaret Thatcher is quoted about how pure capitalism is the only answer. The police, apparently too busy with prison riots are only seen once. That is one cop. J.G. Ballard, author of the book, written in 1975, said the architect of the towers “…without knowing it … had constructed a gigantic vertical zoo, its hundreds of cages stacked above each other. All the events of the past few months made sense if one realized that these brilliant and exotic creatures had learned to open the doors.” Amazon says: “When a class war erupts inside a luxurious apartment block, modern elevators become violent battlegrounds and cocktail parties degenerate into marauding attacks on “enemy” floors. In this visionary tale, human society slips into violent reverse as once-peaceful residents, driven by primal urges, re-create a world ruled by the laws of the jungle.” Fighting for canapés? Cake anyone? Before the architect is shot by a journalist he had tried unsuccessfully to have lobotomized – he was the sanest man in the building -- we learned he planned four more towers like this one. It is the kind of thing you might hear from Trump. The residents are selected to get only certain types. At the close he realized he had chosen too many types.  Op-ed: Reports are circulating that Donald Trump has told the New York Times in private not to worry about his racist, xenophobic, anti-abortion, anti-gay statements. The word is that he is just responding to what his supporters want to hear. Using his own logic then, he needs to be asked whether he might be impeached if elected when his supporters realize he used them. That could bring some unnamed vice-president to power who would do what Trump has promised to do. It is the same logic he uses every day of his campaign when he says Hillary Clinton might not be able to service because she will be indicted in her “email scandal.” She has been under investigation for an entire year with no indictment. Of course Trump has been under fire for three years for his “Trump University Scandal” and may be forced to testify about fraud allegations later this year. TV networks, meanwhile, claim Trump is the choice of a majority of Republicans, based on what has been seen in primaries and caucuses. Polling expert Nate Silver said today that “Trump has received only 34 per cent of the Republican vote, aggregated across all primaries and caucuses to have voted so far. He did not really improve on that figure on Super Tuesday; Trump had a combined 33 percent of the vote through the first four states (Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina, Nevada); he got 34 percent in Super Tuesday states themselves.” Do Trump supporters represent what the majority of Americans believe. Polls are constantly being used to support this view. But the same kinds of polls show that a majority of Americans support causes rejected by these people: gay and transgender rights, abortion rights, women’s rights, high minimum wages and more. Trump supporters say this is merely the view of Hollywood. In my experience art has often represented where a country is headed, both in the U.S. and in countries I covered as a journalist around the world. South Africa was a classic example. I often watched plays and heard music that I knew was going to tear apartheid down. I wondered why the government allowed it. I later felt that it wasn’t so much that they allowed, in some cases people were jailed and banned, but that they knew they couldn’t stop it. To try too hard would cause some of their best people to leave the country. They wanted more than just servants and swimming pools. It was impossible for me to watch this year’s Oscars without seeing that the people who run the art world have decided to support human rights. This is not new. Give them an inch and they will take a mile. These films, plays and music make money. That is the bottom line.
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