Monday Reads: One More Day Until Hillary Clinton Makes History!
Posted: June 6, 2016 Filed under: morning reads, U.S. Politics | Tags: 2016 presidential election, 2016 presidential nomination, Bernie Sanders, Donald Trump, highest glass ceiling, Hillary Clinton 121 Comments
Hillary Clinton takes a selfie with supporters at a rally at Sacramento City College, Sunday, June 5, 2016,AP Photo/John Locher)
Good Morning!!
Hillary had a great weekend, winning the Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico primaries by comfortable margins. She now needs only about 30 pledged delegates to reach a majority and clinch the Democratic nomination. That will happen after the votes come in from the New Jersey primary tomorrow night.
As you know, she will give her victory speech tomorrow night from her Brooklyn headquarters. Hillary Clinton will become the first woman ever to win a major party presidential nomination; and when she goes on to beat Donald Trump in November, she will crash through the highest glass ceiling of all–the presidency of the United States of America!
After our dreams were dashed in June 2008, I wondered if there would be another chance for a woman president in my lifetime. Well, here we are, with a very good chance of seeing that happen! I know you are all as excited as I am. I just cannot wait until tomorrow night! I feel like a kid on Christmas Eve wondering if Christmas morning will ever come.
Hillary Clinton concedes Democratic nomination to Barack Obama in June 2008
NBC News: Hillary Clinton Edges Closer to Clinching Nomination After Puerto Rico Win.
Hillary Clinton won the Puerto Rico primary Sunday, edging even closer to the delegate majority she needs to become the presumptive nominee of the Democratic Party.
A total of 60 pledged delegates were at stake in the island primary contest, which comes ahead of Tuesday’s crucial race in California.
Puerto Rico voters faced long lines and confusion over polling stations, many of which had closed since the Democratic primary in 2008. The island is also in the throes of an economic crisis after having accumulated more than $70 billion of outstanding debt.
Gov. Alejandro Padilla endorsed Clinton on Wednesday, calling her the best candidate to help the government out of the fiscal crisis.
Clinton also notched a victory in Saturday’s caucuses in the U.S. Virgin Islands.
She is widely expected to secure the Democratic nomination on Tuesday when Democratic voters in six states, including California, will head to the polls in the last multi-state primary day of the nomination race.
At a rally in Sacramento late Sunday, Clinton underscored the importance of that primary, telling the crowd: “I want to finish strong here in California. It means … it means the world to me.”
https://twitter.com/politicalmiller/status/739820833456132096
The Clinton Campaign’s main job today is to keep superdelegates from putting her over the top until after her speech tomorrow night.
Of course we still have to deal with Old Mr. Nasty, Bernie Sanders; but nothing he does after tomorrow will make any difference. He is going to find himself shunned and ignored if he continues his path of attacking the Democratic nominee. The man is on his last legs. Here’s what he looked like in California yesterday. Not very presidential.
https://twitter.com/word_34/status/739644631789408256
Sanders may also face a serious challenge to his Senate in 2018. Joy Reid at The Daily Beast: Meet Al Giordano, the Man Who Wants to Take Bernie Down.
If Al Giordano challenges Bernie Sanders for his U.S. Senate seat in 2018, he will tick nearly all of the boxes Sanders checked during his surprisingly robust presidential run.
Nearly zero odds of defeating an entrenched Washington politician? Check.
Little chance of Democratic Party support? Double check! A decades-old history of lefty activism that casts him as a hippie-turned-politico? Check, check, and check again.
So why would he do it? Because in Giordano’s view, and that of his social media supporters, Bernie is losing ugly and hurting Democrats’ chances of prevailing against Donald Trump in November.
“I mean, what haven’t they touched?” Giordano asks, peering at me via a 6-by-4 inch Skype window from his home in Mexico City. “What part of the Obama coalition have they not alienated? It’s like they want to erase the coalition.”
A little about Giordano:
Giordano, a bearded, graying, former reporter with the Boston Phoenix alternative weekly, cut his teeth as an anti-nuclear protester in the early 1980s while living in Rowe, a small Massachusetts town bordering Vernon, Vermont. When he wasn’t filing for the Phoenix, he spent his time protesting the twin nuclear power plants on either side of the state border: Yankee Rowe and Vermont Yankee. And he became close friends with the late leftie activist and anarchist Abbie Hoffman. He has spent the last 19 years in Mexico, where he runs an online newsletter, Narco News, and a school that trains journalists to cover social movements. His claim to fame is winning a First Amendment case against the Banco Nacional de México, which sued him, a Mexican reporter and Narco News for libel over a series of stories claiming a bank official was in league with Central American drug cartels.
Giordano recalls being an early Bernie Sanders supporter.
“I did support him when he first ran for [Burlington] mayor,” he says of Sanders. “I did support him when he first ran for Congress, and then the year he won. I supported him as a journalist and got my newspaper to endorse him.” But he says he cooled to Sanders after the Newt Gingrich-led “Republican revolution” takeover of the House in the 1994 midterm elections. Back then, Sanders was still distancing himself from Democrats, including liberal stalwarts like Barney Frank and Steny Hoyer, who were, in Giordano’s words, “giving Gingrich hell.”
Read the rest at the link.
Democrats in Puerto Rico are blaming the Sanders campaign for the long lines at a vastly reduced number of polling places during their primary yesterday.
Puerto Rico Democrats managed to give Hillary a big win anyway. Here’s what one Clinton voter had to say:
Trump News
Republicans are getting very nervous about their presumptive nominee, according to CNN:
Top Republican officials and donors are increasingly worried about the threat Donald Trump’s attack on a judge’s Mexican heritage could pose to their party’s chances in November — and about the GOP’s ability to win Latino votes for many elections to come.
Trump is under fire for repeatedly accusing U.S. District Judge Gonzalo Curiel, who is overseeing a lawsuit involving Trump University, of bias because of his Mexican heritage. Those concerns intensified Sunday after Trump said he would have the same concerns about the impartiality of a Muslim judge.House and Senate GOP leaders have condemned Trump’s remarks about Curiel, while donors have openly worried that losing Latino voters could doom them in key down-ballot races. Other important party figures, including former Speaker Newt Gingrich, are urging Trump to change his combative, confrontational style before it’s too late.Veteran Republican strategist Rick Wilson warned this weekend that GOP leaders who have endorsed Trump “own his politics.”“You own his politics,” Wilson wrote in a column for Heatstreet, adding later, “You own the racial animus that started out as a bug, became a feature and is now the defining characteristic of his campaign. You own every crazy, vile chunk of word vomit that spews from his mouth.”
The GOP’s deepest fear: A Barry Goldwater effect that could last far longer than Trump’s political aspirations.
Goldwater, the Arizona senator who was the 1964 GOP nominee and a leader of the conservative movement, alienated a generation of African-American voters by opposing the Civil Rights Act — opening the door for Democrats to lock in their support for decades. Republicans fret that Trump could similarly leave a stain with Latino voters.
Of course, Trump is just saying in plain language what Republicans have been dog-whistling for decades. Here’s conservative writer Kathleen Parker: The GOP surrenders to the dark side.
With the surrender of House Speaker Paul Ryan to the Trump crusade, it is fair to wonder what the Republican Party stands for.
Mr. Ryan’s endorsement of Trump, which appeared in an op-ed the speaker wrote for his hometown paper — rather than before a gaggle of reporters and newscasters with his arm draped around Mr. Trump’s shoulders — was a white flag from the establishment opposition.
In his op-ed, Mr. Ryan explained that though he doesn’t support all of Mr. Trump’s ideas (brave!), he’s confident that a President Trump would support the House agenda. Moreover, Mr. Ryan felt that his endorsement was needed to maintain a Republican majority in the House.
In other words, he caved, as most everyone knew he would after a respectable period of resistance.
The party has to stand united, after all. Because, as the Geico guy would remind us, that’s what they do.
Next likely to fall will be evangelical Christian leaders, who are scheduled to meet with Mr. Trump on June 21. The expectation is that Mr. Trump will promise to pick conservative Supreme Court justices who would restore the nation’s social order to a pre-Roe v. Wade, pre-gay-rights version.
If the purportedly devout can accept the ungodly Trump as the nation’s leader, then there really is nothing sacred. But, by God, he’s better than Hillary Clinton, clamors the crowd.
Newt Gingrich objected to Trump’s attacks on a federal judge overseeing a fraud case against Trump “university” and became the latest Trump enemy.
Donald Trump jabbed Newt Gingrich on Monday after the former House Speaker criticized the presumptive GOP nominee for attacking the federal judge overseeing the Trump University lawsuit, saying his critique was “inappropriate.”
Appearing on “Fox and Friends,” Trump said he’d heard Gingrich’s comments about him and “was surprised at Newt. I thought it was inappropriate what he said.”Gingrich, who has drawn scrutiny as a potential vice president pick, joined a chorus of top Republicans rebuking Trump for repeatedly accusing U.S. District Judge Gonzalo Curiel, overseeing a lawsuit involving Trump University, of bias because of his Mexican heritage. Those concerns intensified Sunday after Trump said he would have the same concerns about the impartiality of a Muslim judge.In an interview with the Washington Post, Gingrich said “I don’t know what Trump’s reasoning was, and I don’t care. His description of the judge in terms of his parentage is completely unacceptable.” And on “Fox News Sunday,” he said that it was “one of the worst mistakes Trump has made,” adding: “I think it’s inexcusable.”
The Republicans are not going to be able to control Trump. He’s turning their party into a train wreck, and they deserve it.
So . . . what else is happening? What stories are you following today? Let us know in the comment thread and have a great day!
Lazy Saturday Reads: Float Like A Butterfly; Sting Like A Bee
Posted: June 4, 2016 Filed under: just because | Tags: Morning reads, Muhammed Ali 46 Comments
Float like a butterfly; sting like a bee
Good Morning!!
Famed boxer and anti-war and civil rights activist Muhammed Ali died last night at 74. I’ll never forget how he burst on the scene in the early 1960s with poetry and good humor that made boxing interesting to the public at large for a time. I was so impressed with his poetry and his chants of “I am the greatest!” that I bet my best friend’s brother that he would beat Sonny Liston. And I won that bet.
Later, Ali became a “controversial” figure when he refused to go to Vietnam, got involved with Malcolm X, and became a Muslim. He was much more than an athlete. He was and is an important historical figure who changed America and the world.
Ali during the championship fight with Sonny Liston
The Boston Globe: Muhammad Ali, ‘The Greatest,’ dies at 74.
Muhammad Ali, who declared “I am the greatest” and proved it many times over, infuriating some and captivating countless more as he floated like a butterfly and stung like a bee on his way to winning the world heavyweight championship a record three times, becoming perhaps the most widely recognized person on the planet, died Friday in Phoenix. He was 74.
Mr. Ali had long suffered from Parkinson’s syndrome. The condition was understood to be a consequence of his boxing career.
Mr. Ali was hospitalized in Phoenix with respiratory problems earlier this week, and his relatives gathered around him. The family announced his death Friday.
“There’s not a man alive who can whup me,” Mr. Ali declared before his first bout with Joe Frazier, “the Fight of the Century” in 1971. “I should be a postage stamp. That’s the only way I’ll ever get licked.”
In fact, Mr. Ali wasn’t invincible. He lost that fight, as well as four later prizefights. But he finished with a career record of 56-5, 37 of those victories by knockout.
Later, Ali was admired and respected by world leaders.
When Nelson Mandela was inaugurated as president of South Africa, he corrected a guest who said that he and Mr. Ali were the world’s two most beloved and unifying figures. “If I was in a crowded room with Ali,” Mandela said, “I would stop what I was doing and go up to him. He is the Greatest.”
Mr. Ali’s star power extended to the world of diplomacy. Jimmy Carter appointed him special envoy to lobby African leaders to support the Olympic boycott in 1980. Mr. Ali helped obtain the release of 14 US hostages in Iraq in 1990. Ten years later, he was named a United Nations Ambassador of Peace.
Ali joking around with Malcolm X in 1964
But in the 1960s, he became a pariah when he refused to be drafted.
“When they draft me, I won’t go,” Mr. Ali had declared of the Vietnam War. “I ain’t got no trouble with them Viet Cong. It ain’t right. They never called me nigger.”
Having refused induction in 1967 as a conscientious objector, Mr. Ali was sentenced to five years in prison and a $10,000 fine. He appealed the ruling, and his conviction was unanimously overturned by the Supreme Court, in 1971. But Mr. Ali, who had had his championship and boxing license taken away, lost three and a half years of his athletic prime.
What it gained Mr. Ali was a status and personal authority that extended far beyond the realm of sports. His political stance offended many, but to others it made him a hero and martyr. A 1968 Esquire magazine cover famously showed Mr. Ali with arrows sticking out of him, like St. Sebastian.
A ’60s catch phrase held that the personal was the political. In Mr. Ali’s fists the pugilistic was political. He once described his style as “Be loud, be pretty, and keep their black-hatin’ asses in their chairs.” His very name excited controversy.
Many white Americans were aghast when Ali changed his name, but he wasn’t afraid to stand up for what he believed in.
For years, the decision whether to use “Muhammad Ali” or “Cassius Clay,” the name he rejected in 1964 when he joined the Nation of Islam, was a clear-cut political statement. The New York Times Index didn’t stop referring to him as Cassius Clay until 1972. “Cassius Clay is a slave name,” Mr. Ali declared. “I didn’t choose it, and I didn’t want it.”
Muhammed Ali with Dr. Martin Luther King
I hope you’ll go read the entire Globe obit. Here’s just a bit more on Ali as a boxer.
Standing 6 foot 3 inches, Mr. Ali weighed around 190 pounds when he first won the title. His fighting weight eventually rose to 220 pounds. Perhaps Mr. Ali’s key physical attribute was an 80-inch reach, which allowed him to evade punches with relative ease as he relentlessly jabbed at an opponent.
Where other fighters would duck or catch punches, Mr. Ali would lean back from them. He held his hands by his side, rather than up high to protect his head. Mr. Ali’s phenomenal speed and agility allowed him to fight like a middleweight (Sugar Ray Robinson was Mr. Ali’s idol), yet with a heavyweight’s power.
In his trademark white trunks and red-tasseled shoes, he prowled the ring with a dancer’s grace — the New York City Ballet’s George Balanchine marveled at the speed and dexterity of his legwork — showing off with his Ali Shuffle. “I was the Elvis of boxing,” he once said. Even so, Mr. Ali was as much fighter as boxer.
I’ve quoted way too much; please go read the rest at the above link. Muhammed Ali was a unique individual, always his own person, who refused to be pigeonholed by the media and the powerful in sports and politics. In December 2015, although he was battling Parkinson’s disease, Ali spoke out against Donald Trump’s call to bar Muslims from entering the U.S.
Muhammed Ali with Elvis Presley
From NBC News: Global Tributes to Muhammad Ali, ‘Champion’ and 20th Century ‘Titan.’
From rival sportsmen to world leaders, the world paused Saturday to remember Muhammad Ali – hailing him not only as a “giant” of the boxing ring but also “a true champion for all.”
The 74-year-old boxer and civil rights champion died Friday from respiratory complications after a three-decade battle with Parkinson’s disease.
Ali’s ‘Rumble in the Jungle’ opponent, George Foreman, described the civil rights champion was “one of the greatest human beings I have ever met.”
He said: “No doubt he was one of the best people to have lived in this day and age. To put him as a boxer is an injustice.”
The New York Times described Ali as a “Titan of Boxing at the 20th Century.”
Nevada Senator Harry Reid said the boxer “taught us all about the value of hard work, tenacity and never giving up.”
“He was an inspiration whose tireless work ethic, unmatched skills and supreme self-confidence made him the Greatest of All Time,” the senator said in a statement. “And he showed us that even when you get knocked down, you can always get back up.”
Ali with Bill Russell
Did Reid get that one from Hillary? More tributes at the link.
Reverend Al Sharpton told MSNBC Saturday he was “deeply saddened” at Ali’s passing, adding: “He showed the world how you can risk everything. He gave up the title of heavyweight champion of the world, paying the ultimate price because he believed in something more than just wealth and success. He redefined what success is.
“Then he came back three times and won that title. We should think not only of his boxing skills but what he stood for. He floated in the ring but he stood outside the ring and was a champion.
“People ought to never underestimate that, when he stood up against the wrongs he was one of the most despised people in the country. He took from being one of the most despised to one of the most honored and loved individuals in the world. We will never see anything like that again.”
Read more tributes at the link.
A few more stories on Muhammed Ali:
David Remnick at The New Yorker: The Outsized Life of Muhammed Ali.
Dave Zirin at The Nation: ‘I Just Wanted to Be Free’: The Radical Reverberations of Muhammad Ali.
The New York Times: Muhammed Ali’s Words Stung Like a Bee too.
I’m going to leave it up to you to post other news in the comment thread, because I have a busy day ahead. I’m staying with my nephews for a few days while my brother and sister-in-law are at a family wedding in Indiana.
Just a note on the busy days ahead in politics. Today is the Virgin Islands Democratic primary, with 12 delegates at stake. Hillary should win. Tomorrow Puerto Rico votes, and Hillary should win there too. However there has been a change in the number of voting places there, and that could possibly hurt her according to Armando at Daily Kos. On Tuesday there will be primaries or caucuses in California, New Jersey, Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, and New Mexico. The final primary will be in Washington D.C. on June 14.
So . . . what stories are you following today?
Thursday Reads: The General Election Campaign Begins
Posted: June 2, 2016 Filed under: just because 52 Comments
John and Yoko
Good Afternoon!!
The insane campaign continues, and we are moving into the general election phase despite Bernie Sanders’ whining.
I just can’t wait until next Tuesday when Hillary will clinch the number of delegates for the nomination. She should get quite a few from Puerto Rico on June 5, and get the rest in New Jersey on June 7, before the California votes are even counted. At that point, perhaps President Obama will endorse Hillary. It appears he is already anxious to get started.
The Boston Globe: Obama wades into election debate with Indiana speech.
ELKHART, Ind. — President Obama on Wednesday forcefully inserted himself into the 2016 presidential campaign, assailing Donald Trump and the Republican Party for peddling economic policies that he said would benefit the rich and connected at the expense of a still-struggling middle class.
Obama framed this year’s presidential contest as a choice between a Democratic Party committed to working families and a Republican Party he said was beholden to China, “big oil,” “big banks,” and the wealthiest Americans. White House aides cast the speech as the president’s first major attempt to influence the race to succeed him.
Patti Smith
“If what you care about in this election is your pocketbook; if what you’re concerned about is who will look out for the interests of working people and grow the middle class,” Obama said in a fiery, campaign-like speech, “if what you’re concerned about is the economy, then the debate is not even close.”
Aides said the president, who is expected to ultimately endorse Hillary Clinton, is eager to jump into the carnival-like political debate between Trump and the Democratic nominee.
Railing against one of Trump’s comments — that he would roll back rules imposed on Wall Street — Obama’s voice grew louder as he declared, “That is crazy!” Sleeves rolled up and his finger wagging, the president asked the supportive crowd, “Have we really forgotten what just happened eight years ago?”
The president said that when he hears that working families are voting for the Republican economic agenda, “I want to have an intervention!”
Naturally, Donald Trump was not happy about being criticized by the president: McClatchy: Donald Trump warns Barack Obama he’ll ‘hit him’ like Bill Clinton. Donald is going to learn that Bill and Barack are a lot tougher than he is.
John Cage
Donald Trump, lashing back at Barack Obama after the president waded forcefully into the presidential campaign, on Wednesday said Obama “doesn’t have a clue” and threatened to turn his attacks on him in retaliation.
“This is a president who doesn’t have a clue,” Trump told supporters in Sacramento. “If he campaigns, that means I’m allowed to hit him, just like I hit Bill Clinton.”
Trump’s remarks followed an appearance by Obama in Elkhart, Ind., on Wednesday, where the president warned against the Republican Party’s economic policies and said the GOP was misleading Americans on the condition of the economy.
Rallying supporters at a hangar at Sacramento International Jet Center, Trump said foreign leaders view Obama as a “total lightweight,” and he said Obama should not involve himself in the campaign.
“He shouldn’t campaign,” Trump said. “He should go out and do the job that he’s supposed to be doing.”
Gee, what’s Don the Con going to do, go birther on Obama again? That didn’t go so well the last time.
Frank Zappa
Trump got more embarrassing news yesterday as the media delved into the court documents on his fraudulent “university.” The Miaimi Herald reports: Golf tournament leaving Trump’s Doral course for Mexico.
Whether desiring more cash or less of Donald Trump, the PGA Tour announced Wednesday it’s yanking its annual star-filled event away from the city of Doral after 55 tournaments.
The new location: Mexico City, in a country Trump once stated sent “rapists” to the United States over a border on which Trump wants to build a wall.
What began in 1962 as the Doral Country Club Invitational and has been the World Golf Championships-Cadillac Championship since 2011 will be the World Golf Championships-Mexico Championship starting in 2017. The PGA doesn’t know which course it’ll use. Only Augusta National, home of the Masters; Pebble Beach; and The Colonial in Fort Worth, Texas, have hosted tournaments for more consecutive years than the Blue Monster, the nickname for Trump National Doral’s Blue course.
In a statement released through The Trump Organization, Trump said, “It is a sad day for Miami, the United States and the game of golf, to have the PGA Tour consider moving the World Golf Championships, which has been hosted in Miami for the last 55 years, to Mexico. No different than Nabisco, Carrier and so many other American companies, the PGA Tour has put profit ahead of thousands of American jobs, millions of dollars in revenue for local communities and charities and the enjoyment of hundreds of thousands of fans who make the tournament an annual tradition. This decision only further embodies the very reason I am running for President of the United States.”
Right. Don the Con is upset because some low-paid service jobs will move to Mexico. How embarrassing would it be to have the Masters Tournament overshadowed by Trump’s ugly racist image? How many companies would want their products associated with his hate speech?
New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman has been all over TV for the past couple of days talking about Trump’s fraud lawsuits. From CNN: N.Y. attorney general on Trump University: ‘This is straight up fraud.’ Here he is on Good Morning America.
And here he is on Morning Joe today.
This is serious stuff. A little more from CNN:
Trump is currently facing three separate lawsuits — two class action suits filed in California and one in New York by Schneiderman — which argue the program that took in an estimated $40 million, but was mired in fraud and deception.
Schneiderman’s case argues that Trump and Michael Sexton, the former president of the program, engaged in fraudulent, illegal and deceptive conduct, and that although the program promised to offer courses taught by experts personally selected by Trump, the teachers were neither handpicked nor experts.Schneiderman has repeatedly lambasted Trump and his “university,” telling CNN’s Carol Costello Tuesday on “Newsroom” that Trump “defrauded people out of money. They’re entitled to their day in court.”Frida Kahlo
“This is a hugely important case. If you look at the facts of this case, this shows someone who was absolutely shameless in his willingness to lie to people, to say whatever it took to induce them into his phony seminars,” Schneiderman told CNN. “Telling people who are in hard economic times — we’re talking about 2008, 2009 — people desperate to hold onto their homes, to make some money, convincing them that he will teach them his entrepreneurial secrets.” ….“We sued him in 2013. He says it’s a political case. Nobody in August 2013 thought that this guy was going to be the Republican nominee for president,” the attorney general said Thursday. “Thousands of people were bilked out of millions of dollars. Our first priority is to get their money back and to reestablish the legitimacy of educational institutions in New York State.”
Hillary’s campaign was on this yesterday. From the AP via The Boston Globe: Clinton calls Trump University ‘a fraudulent scheme.’
‘‘Trump University was a fraudulent scheme used to prey upon those who could least afford it,’’ Clinton’s campaign wrote on Twitter Wednesday morning.
Clinton aides suggested the likely Democratic nominee would use Trump University as part of a broader effort to cast Trump as a callous businessman who promises Americans ways to get ahead, but is only concerned with enriching himself. As part of that effort, Clinton has previously hammered Trump for appearing to cheer for the collapse of the U.S. housing market and for failing to make good on pledges to donate to veterans until he was pressured to follow through by the media.
‘‘He is pitching voters that he can help improve their lives, but it is all a scam whose only goal is to promote Trump,’’ Clinton spokesman Brian Fallon said.
Charles Bukowski
And from Politico: Clinton unloads on ‘fraud’ Donald Trump.
At a Newark, New Jersey, event, Clinton wasted no time diving into an attack on Trump, opening her remarks by bringing up the most recent development in the Trump University lawsuit — unsealed testimony in which former staff described the program as a “fraudulent scheme” and a “total lie.”
“Trump and his employees took advantage of vulnerable Americans,” Clinton said, recounting testimony from Trump University employees suggesting that students were encouraged to make risky financial decisions like maxing out credit cards and emptying retirement accounts. “This is just more evidence that Donald Trump himself is a fraud. He is trying to scam America the way he scammed all those people at Trump U. It’s important that we recognize what he has done because that’s usually a pretty good indicator of what he will do, and on issue after issue, we see someone who is unqualified and unfit to be president of the United States.”
Clinton also attacked Trump for the months-long delay in the delivery of money to veterans charities from a fundraiser he held in January with Mike Huckabee and Rick Santorum. Trump attacked the media during a news conference earlier this week for questioning whether the donations had indeed been made, calling one reporter a “sleaze” and deriding another as “a real beauty.”
“Just yesterday we learned the truth about Donald Trump’s big talk about helping veterans,” Clinton said. “It turns out it wasn’t until the press shamed him that he actually made the donations he had promised. For months, it was all just a publicity stunt.”
Pablo Picasso
It’s great to see Hillary ignoring Bernie and seriously focusing on the general election. Here’s how Trump responded:
Donald Trump on Wednesday unleashed a sustained barrage of attacks on Hillary Clinton after the likely Democratic nominee spent the day unloading on the Republican billionaire over his controversy-ridden Trump University.
Trump began by pre-empting Clinton’s next salvo, a foreign policy speech Thursday aimed squarely at Trump, by suggesting the speech is full of “such lies” and capped off his denunciation of the Democrat by insisting Clinton “should not be allowed to run” because of her controversial use of a private email server during her time as secretary of state, which Trump said amounted to a breach of “federal law.”Between those attacks, Trump also called Clinton “a person with no actual talent,” slammed her foreign policy decision-making as secretary of state and recycled an attack previously reserved for his GOP primary opponent, former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush: “low energy.”
Pretty weak. Don the Con is going to have to come up with better material that that. Hillary is “low energy?” Give me a break.
I’ll have a few more links in the comment thread. What stories are you following today?
Tuesday Reads: I’m So Sick of the Tired Media Narrative about Hillary
Posted: May 31, 2016 Filed under: 2016 elections, morning reads, The Media SUCKS, U.S. Politics | Tags: Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton 94 Comments
Henri Matisse
Good Morning!!
I’m having one of those mornings when I feel completely unsettled and discombobulated about current events. All my life I’ve felt like an “outsider,” because I didn’t see the world in the same ways so many other people did.
As I have gotten older, I’ve realized that I’m far from unique; I know many people have this feeling. But when national and world events get as crazy as they are now, that feeling comes back to me. Why are so many people seemingly brainwashed by cultural memes?
We constantly hear and read that Hillary Clinton is a horrible, terribly flawed person who is constantly “struggling” to overcome her opponents because of her awful “speaking style,” her “inauthentic” personality, her “secrecy”–and that’s just from people who are not over-the-top Clinton haters.
From the Bernie bros and the GOP, we hear that she is practically the Devil incarnate–“cozy” with Wall Street and Walmart, a “criminal,” an “enabler,” and on and on. And yet, Hillary has millions more popular votes in the primaries than either Bernie Sanders or Donald Trump.
Why is it that millions of people have no difficulty seeing Hillary’s “humanity,” her kindness, her love for children, her intelligence, her competence, her basic decency when so many in the media can’t? It seems that once people are part of the media in-crowd, they feel they must adopt certain Clinton stereotypes. Why is it that even wholehearted Clinton supporters like Joan Walsh feel compelled to write in every article that she is a “flawed candidate?” What candidate does not have flaws?
Audrey Hepburn
What got me started on this train of thought–for the umpteenth time–is a long piece by Rebecca Traister in New York Magazine: Hillary Clinton vs.Herself. There’s nothing simple about this candidacy—or candidate. I’ll be honest: I couldn’t even finish reading the article. This whole approach to Hillary–that somehow she is her own worst enemy–has just gotten so tired. I can’t take it anymore. Here’s Traister describing the “problem” with Hillary:
All the epic allusions contribute to the difficulty Clinton has long had in coming across as, simply, a human being. She is uneasy with the press and ungainly on the stump. Catching a glimpse of the “real” her often entails spying something out of the corner of your eye, in a moment when she’s not trying to be, or to sell, “Hillary Clinton.” And in the midst of a presidential campaign, those moments are rare. You could see her, briefly,letting out a bawdy laugh in response to a silly question in the 11th hour of the Benghazi hearings, and there she was, revealed as regular in her damned emails, where she made drinking plans with retiring Maryland senator and deranged emailer Barbara Mikulski. Her inner circle claims to see her — to really see her, and really like her — every day. They say she is so different one-on-one, funny and warm and devastatingly smart. It’s hard for people who know her to comprehend why the rest of America can’t see what they do.
“The rest of America?” Isn’t this really a media problem? About 12 million people have voted for Hillary in the Democratic primaries. Around 18 million voted for her in the 2008 primaries. She was elected twice to the Senate from New York. She is well known and admired around the world. Personally, I have no problem seeing Hillary as likable, even when she gives speeches. She has a beautiful smile and to me her personality comes through in debates, interviews, and speeches. But reporters and writers insist on denying my view of reality.
Far from feeling like I was with an awkward campaigner, I watched her do the work of retail politics — the handshaking and small-talking and remembering of names and details of local sites and issues — like an Olympic athlete. Far from seeing a remote or robotic figure, I observed a woman who had direct, thoughtful, often moving exchanges: with the Wheelers, with home health-care workers and union representatives and young parents. I caught her eyes flash with brief irritation at an MSNBC chyron reading “Bernie Sanders can win” and with maternal annoyance as she chided press aide Nick Merrill for not throwing out his empty water bottle. I saw her break into spontaneous dance with a 2-year-old who had been named after her, Big Hillary stamping her kitten heels and clapping her hands and making “Oooh-ooh-ooh” noises. I heard her proclaim, with unself-conscious joy, from the pulpits of two black churches in Philadelphia, that “this is the day that the Lord has made!” and watched the young campaign staff at her Brooklyn headquarters bounce up and down with the anticipation of getting to shake her hand.
Bob Dylan
Why these observations, the crowd reactions, and the fact that Hillary is winning do not convince Traister that the problem is somewhere else than with her, I cannot explain. And that’s why I couldn’t finish the article. Perhaps I’ll go back and read the rest later on.
A good antidote to the fixed media “narrative” about Hillary can be found at Cannonfire these days. Joseph Cannon has been on a mission to expose Bernie and his bros as well as the media memes about “the Clintons.” Today he exposes one of those wacky Bernie bros who have been writing for Huffington Post and Salon throughout the campaign: Meet Crazy Frank Huguenard, a CLASSIC BernieBro. Huguenard is in the news because he posted a piece at HuffPo that was deleted. In it he claimed that Hillary was about to be indicted.
The case instantly became a cause celebre, widely discussed on the right. The author of that deleted article, Frank Huguenard, has aired his grievances on Breitbart.
“Huffpo has yet to respond to my request for an explanation,” Huguenard tweeted at this Breitbart News reporter Monday morning. “I’ve got my sources, they never asked.”
Huguenard later told Breitbart News, “I want to do another story but my HuffPo account has been temporarily disabled. Not sure what’s happening with them.”
I think I know why the thing was deleted: Huguenard is a liar. He falsely claimed that Hillary is being indicted because an official investigation revealed the Clinton Foundation to be a criminal enterprise.
Here is the actual wording:
James Comey and The FBI will present a recommendation to Loretta Lynch, Attorney General of the Department of Justice, that includes a cogent argument that the Clinton Foundation is an ongoing criminal enterprise engaged in money laundering and soliciting bribes in exchange for political, policy and legislative favors to individuals, corporations and even governments both foreign and domestic.
The truth: There is NO GODDAMNED INVESTIGATION OF THE CLINTON FOUNDATION and thus NO INDICTMENT.
Huguenard has no secret sources. If the DOJ were looking into the Clinton Foundation, would a little-known New Age whackadoodle find out before the New York Times or the AP or the Washington Post? If Huguenard has a source, why didn’t he name that source in his HuffPo piece? Why didn’t he offer a name to Breitbart?
Read the rest at Cannonfire, and while you’re there, check out some of Cannon’s other recent posts. He’s on a roll!
Marlon Brando
California Governor Jerry Brown has endorsed Hillary Clinton in an open letter to California Democratic primary voters. An excerpt:
On Tuesday, June 7, I have decided to cast my vote for Hillary Clinton because I believe this is the only path forward to win the presidency and stop the dangerous candidacy of Donald Trump….
Hillary Clinton has convincingly made the case that she knows how to get things done and has the tenacity and skill to advance the Democratic agenda. Voters have responded by giving her approximately 3 million more votes – and hundreds more delegates – than Sanders. If Clinton were to win only 10 percent of the remaining delegates – wildly improbable – she would still exceed the number needed for the nomination. In other words, Clinton’s lead is insurmountable and Democrats have shown – by millions of votes – that they want her as their nominee….
The stakes couldn’t be higher. Our country faces an existential threat from climate change and the spread of nuclear weapons. A new cold war is on the horizon. This is no time for Democrats to keep fighting each other. The general election has already begun. Hillary Clinton, with her long experience, especially as Secretary of State, has a firm grasp of the issues and will be prepared to lead our country on day one.
Now, a couple of Trump stories:
Georgia O’Keeffe
I love this headline at The Telegraph: Donald Trump is a ‘vulgar, demented, pig demon’ says Hillary Clinton’s ex adviser.
Alec Ross, who was senior aide to Clinton during her term as Secretary of State, was speaking at The Hay Festival in Wales about the industries of the future.
Ross, said that the most open countries would have the greatest success in the coming decades because the biggest emerging markets were big data and genomics. But he warned that America could become a more closed society if Donald Trump was elected president.
“We’re having this struggle very publicly in the United States right now where a vulgar, demented, pig demon named Donald Trump is trying to make the United States a more closed society.
“We’ll be saying, no more brown people, no more Muslims, let’s get women back in the kitchen. Let’s make America great again.
“What he’s talking about is taking emasculated men in their forties, fifties and sixties who are not living the life they hoped for in their teens and twenties and saying, ‘you know what? there are people to blame for this. And we’re going to build a wall and we’re going make America great again.
“At the core of that is the struggle between being an open society and a closed society. And so if you want to know where the trillions of dollars of wealth creation that are going to come with the commercialisation of genomics, and the creation of big data companies, and the AI machine learning companies and all of the industries of the future my overarching line here is it’s going to be the most open societies.
Please go read the rest. It’s great.
Edward Gorey
This is a right wing source, but it answers a question that has puzzled me: Byron York: Why Trump attacked Martinez.
Many observers were mystified when Donald Trump attacked New Mexico Republican Gov. Susana Martinez. But the story was really very simple: Martinez hit Trump, so Trump hit back. Especially now that Trump is the GOP’s presumptive nominee, he attempted to make an example of a Republican who won’t get with the program. It might work, or it might not, but from Trump’s perspective it’s the tactic he used to beat 15 rivals for the GOP nomination.
The Trump-Martinez bewilderment focused on four factors: Martinez is Hispanic, she’s a woman, she’s a Republican (head of the Republican Governors Association), and she’s popular. “I think it sent all the wrong signals,” said Newt Gingrich, who has generally been pro-Trump. “You particularly don’t want to see your candidate who needs to…get stronger with Latinos, and stronger with women, attack a Latina woman Republican governor.” ….
“[Martinez] continues to attack him publicly and privately,” one person in TrumpWorld told me recently. Trump has made a principle of hitting back harder than he is hit. And he has been so effective that many Republicans, elected and not, have decided the smart thing is to refrain from taking on Trump, even if they oppose him.
My guess is the fact that Martinez is a woman who dared to stand up to him had something to do with Trump’s angry response.
What else is happening? What stories are you following today?
Sunday Reads
Posted: May 29, 2016 Filed under: just because 24 Comments 
Good Morning!!
Donald Trump has really stepped in it now. At a campaign rally in San Diego on Friday, he trashed the federal judge who is overseeing a lawsuit against Trump’s phony “Trump University.” Think Progress reports:
The case against the real estate mogul’s now-defunct company, which has been accused of scamming students who were misled into paying money for insight from business experts they thought were hand-picked by Trump, is scheduled to go to trial in San Diego federal court shortly after the presidential election. According to his lawyer, Trump is planning on testifying.
In what the Wall Street Journal characterized as an “extended tirade,” Trump spent 12 minutes of his 58-minute speech focused on the case and the California judge who will hear it.
“I have a judge who is a hater of Donald Trump, a hater. He’s a hater. His name is Gonzalo Curiel,” Trump told the crowd. “I think Judge Curiel should be ashamed of himself.”
Trump told his supporters he believes Judge Curiel should be removed from the case, citing the fact that Curiel was appointed to the bench by President Obama. Trump also said he believes Curiel is “Mexican.” The crowd — which had previously shouted “build that wall” — booed loudly.
In previous statements about the case, Trump has pointed to Curiel’s Hispanic heritage to insinuate that he won’t be able to approach the case impartially. Asked on Fox News what exactly Curiel’s ethnicity has to do with the case against him, Trump responded, “I think it has to do perhaps with the fact that I’m very, very strong on the border, very, very strong at the border, and he has been extremely hostile to me.”
Trump University — which was not actually an accredited university and did not hand out degrees — has several fraud cases proceeding against it.
Judge Gonzalo Curiel
Yesterday Judge Curiel ordered the release of documents that Trump had requested be sealed. From Politco:
Just hours after Trump used a campaign speech at a San Diego convention center to unleash a remarkable verbal fusillade against U.S. District Court Judge Gonzalo Curiel, the judge — who also happens to be based in the same Southern California city — acknowledged in a much more measured fashion the criticism Trump has aimed at the court.
“Defendant became the front-runner for the Republican nomination in the 2016 presidential race, and has placed the integrity of these court proceedings at issue,” Curiel said in an order unsealing a series of internal Trump University documents that Trump’s lawyers asked be kept from the public.
The judge’s order didn’t make reference to Trump’s 12-minute tirade Friday afternoon in which the all-but-certain Republican nominee called Curiel a “hater” and again invoked his Latino heritage. However, the judge cited a series of news stories from earlier in the campaign, including an NBC story which noted Trump called Curiel “extremely unfair” and an Associated Press story titled, “Trump: Judge’s ethnicity matters in Trump University suit.” ….
Curiously, the Republican candidate laid into the judge at about the same time the judge was holding a hearing less than a mile away on a motion by the Washington Post seeking unsealing of the Trump University-related files. The judge’s order was released a couple hours after the hearing.
Meanwhile a number of news organizations are reporting that a Canadian version of Trump Tower is in financial trouble. Huffington Post: Trump Tower Toronto To Be Sold Off After Debt Default: Report.
Toronto’s Trump Tower has seen one disaster after another since it opened four years ago, but its latest debacle may be its last.
The Globe and Mail reports that the Trump International Hotel & Tower Toronto is on the verge of being sold to an unnamed new owner after its current one failed to pay back a $260-million construction loan last year.
The sale will likely mean the Trump name will disappear from the building.
Donald Trump himself doesn’t own the Toronto tower — it belongs to Talon Developments, which licensed the Trump brand for the skyscraper, and hired a Trump-owned company to run the property.
Talon’s clients are “no longer interested in the Trump brand” because Trump himself has damaged it, company lawyer Symon Zucker said.
“It’s more important for him to be president than run a successful business,” Zucker told the Toronto Star last month.
Trump Tower in Toronto
The right-wing Washington Examiner is reporting that Trump’s campaign is “low on money.”
Donald Trump’s campaign has alerted Senate Republicans that he won’t have much money to spend fending off attacks from Hillary Clinton over the next couple months.
The notice came when Paul Manafort, Trump’s senior advisor, met with a group of Senate Republican chiefs of staff for lunch last week, sources familiar with the meeting told the Washington Examiner. The admission suggests that Trump will be far more dependent on the GOP brass for money than he has led voters to believe, but it’s consistent with his reliance on the Republican National Committee to provide a ground game in battleground states.
“They know that they’re not going to have enough money to be on TV in June and probably most of July, until they actually accept the nomination and get RNC funds, so they plan to just use earned media to compete on the airwaves,” one GOP source familiar with Manafort’s comments told the Examiner.
That’s a far cry from Trump’s public insistence that he signed a fundraising agreement with the RNC in order to help the party, not himself. “The RNC really wanted to do it, and I want to show good spirit,” he said last week. “‘Cause I was very happy to continue to go along the way I was.” ….
The preemptive fretting about how the RNC plans to spend its money this fall makes some Republicans think that Trump, who has repeatedly insulted Mitt Romney for failing to defeat President Obama in the 2012 presidential election, is preparing to protect his reputation if Hillary Clinton wins.
“He’s going to blame it on the RNC if he doesn’t win in November,” the first source said. “They’re laying that groundwork now.
You have to go to right wing sources to find these kinds of reports, because supposedly “liberal” outfits like The New York Times are too busy trying to tear down Hillary Clinton. I’m not going to excerpt from their latest report on how Hillary is supposedly “struggling,” but you can go read it at the link if you want to.
Paul Manafort
The Washington Post has been hammering Hillary too, but they did manage to publish an interesting article about internal troubles in Trump’s campaign: In campaign chaos, Donald Trump shows his management style.
Interviews with current and former Trump associates reveal an executive who is fond of promoting rivalries among subordinates, wary of delegating major decisions, scornful of convention and fiercely insistent on a culture of loyalty around him….
Honed over decades in business and now suddenly under the glare of a national contest, Trump’s style offers a glimpse of the polarizing management techniques he would carry into the White House. In fashioning his campaign after his real estate and entertainment projects, the mogul has inspired supporters and alarmed critics with his brazen moves.
“He’s always the man in charge,” said Edward Rollins, the veteran Republican strategist who is working for a pro-Trump super PAC….Rollins pointed to the relationship between Trump’s 42-year-old campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski, and his 67-year-old campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, as a prime example of how Trump handles people. While they have worked just steps from each other in recent weeks at Trump Tower in New York, the pair — contrasts in age, experience and personality — have a simmering rivalry over stature and responsibilities within the candidate’s orbit. And Trump doesn’t seem to mind.
Fired Trump staffer Rick Wiley
Last week, Trump abruptly fired national political director Rick Wiley, who had only worked for the campaign since April. According to insiders, it happened because Wiley didn’t suck up to get close enough to Trump.
From his 26th-floor office in New York, Trump — who through a spokeswoman declined to be interviewed for this article — is attempting to bend the nature and norms of a presidential campaign to his unpredictable and outsize personality, eschewing the top-down, consultant-heavy mode used by most candidates.
Rather, Trump functions simultaneously as his own big-picture strategist and micro-managing chief executive. He has gotten involved in intramural skirmishing that has engulfed his campaign, both stoking and calming tensions depending on the circumstances.
“His style can be what I call ‘hands off, hands on.’ He gives people space to think and work and doesn’t get involved in everything each day, but he is the kind of person who can swoop in in a second and change everything,” said Sam Nunberg, a former aide who was let go from the campaign last year following disagreements with Lewandowski and controversy over past racially charged posts on Facebook. “He monitors it all and he comes to check in on things when you don’t expect him.”
Read much more at the link. This doesn’t sound like a very good management style for a presidential campaign, but then Trump will apparently have big media on his side. It’s going to be very important for Democrats to get out every possible vote. Hillary has been very wise to cultivate relationships with local newspapers around the country.
Hillary does have a few defenders in the media, and Joe Conason is one of the best. Conason co-wrote The Hunting of the President: The Ten-Year Campaign to Destroy Bill and Hillary Clinton. From the NY Daily News: The truth about Donald Trump’s old mud: The facts about Juanita Broaddrick, Kathleen Willey, Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton.
Assisted by Nixon-era dirty trickster Roger Stone, Trump is promoting the absurdly sexist message that Hillary Clinton deserves blame for her husband’s alleged misconduct. To make that case, they have been recruiting — and sometimes paying — women who claim that Bill Clinton victimized them.
One of these women is Juanita Broaddrick, an Arkansas nursing home owner who came forward in 1998 to claim that Clinton assaulted her, after signing a sworn affidavit denying that any such incident had occurred. Whitewater independent counsel Kenneth Starr investigated her case, found the evidence “inconclusive” and declined to include her charges in his impeachment brief. Now Broaddrick accuses Hillary Clinton of attempting to “silence” her — even though she said the opposite in a famous NBC News interview.
“Did Bill Clinton or anyone near him ever threaten you, try to intimidate you, do anything to keep you silent?” asked Dateline correspondent Lisa Myers in 1999. “No,” replied Broaddrick firmly. What did Broaddrick tell Starr about Hillary when he put her under oath? An enterprising reporter might ask.
Another former Starr witness excavated from obscurity by Trump and Stone is Kathleen Willey, a former White House aide who claims that Clinton made “unwanted advances” toward her in the Oval Office. Willey’s story too has shifted repeatedly during the 23 years since that incident allegedly occurred.
How she recalled what Clinton had supposedly done — and how she reacted — first began to change when she appeared on CBS’ “60 Minutes.” Having sworn in a lawsuit deposition that she didn’t recall Clinton kissing her, she assured CBS correspondent Ed Bradley several months later that the President “kissed me on the mouth.” Suddenly, she remembered lots of salacious details — and forgot facts and statements that undermined her dramatic account.
Her memory improved around the time that her lawyers secretly began to seek a $300,000 book contract. It is improving faster now that Stone is soliciting donations for an online fund to pay Willey’s mortgage.
There’s more at the link. I’m keeping a link to this story to use between now and November. Conason has updated the information about attacks on Hillary in the book and made it available as a free download at his website The National Memo.
What stories are you following today? Please share your thoughts and links in the comment thread and have a great Sunday!
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