Racism Casts 'Dark Shadow' Over United States, Says UN Expert

Black Lives Matter protesters. (photo: AFP)

By teleSUR

29 July 16
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The official raised alarm over police brutality and impunity, mass incarceration, and racial bias in the U.S. criminal justice system.

he United States is struggling to adequately tackle structural racism and criminal justice issues, which is impacting the rights to freedom of peaceful assembly, a United Nations human rights expert warned.

“People have good reason to be angry and frustrated at the moment,” said Maina Kiai, the Special Rapporteur on the rights to freedom of peaceful assembly and of association in a statement Thursday.

Much of the focus of social movements such as Campaign Zero and Black Lives Matter has been the racial bias of police in the United States and the fact that people of color are placed behind bars at a much greater rate than whites for crimes they are statistically no more likely to commit, Kiai pointed out.

“And it is at times like these when robust promotion of assembly and association rights are needed most. These rights give people a peaceful avenue to speak out, engage in dialogue with their fellow citizens and authorities, air their grievances and hopefully settle them,” he added.

According to U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics, African-American males are six times more likely to be incarcerated than white males and 2.5 times more likely than Hispanic males. Indeed, though they make up less than 13 percent of the U.S. population, nearly 40 percent of the United States’ 2.3 million prisoners are African-Americans.

"There is justifiable and palpable anger in the Black community over these injustices. It needs to be expressed. This is the context that gave birth to the non-violent Black Lives Matter protest movement and the context in which it must be understood," Kiai stated.

According to a Pew Research survey carried out in August 2014, 7 in 10 Black people in the U.S. say police departments do a poor job of holding officers accountable for misconduct and racial bias.

That perception is supported by evidence. Investigative news website ProPublica looked at fatal police shootings of teenagers aged 15 to 19 between the years 2010 and 2012 and found that Black teens were killed at a rate of 31.17 per million, compared to 1.47 per million among white teens.

"The Black Lives Matter movement is simply a reaffirmation that Black lives do in fact matter, in the face of a structure that systematically devalues and destroys them, stretching back hundreds of years," Kiai added.

Majority of Republicans Now Support Full Marijuana Legalization

Marijuana dispensary. (photo: Elaine Thompson/AP)

By Steven Maxwell, MintPress News

27 July 16

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With several more states voting to legalize cannabis in some fashion this November, expect to see the walls of prohibition continue to crumble.

rohibition of cannabis is over. It may not be legally over yet, but in the minds of men and women, it’s over.

A new YouGov poll shows a new record high of Americans now support the legalization of marijuana by a widening gap. Americans that support legalization grew to 55% while those who support prohibition fell to 33%.

The poll showed for the first time a majority of republican voters now support marijuana legalization. Not for medical cannabis, mind you, because a large majority already supported that. A majority of GOP voters now support full legalization for all uses, including recreational.

With several more states voting to legalize cannabis in some fashion this November, expect to see the walls of prohibition continue to crumble.

The Only Defense America Has Against Donald Trump Is His Opponent

By Frank Rich, New York Magazine

28 July 16

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ost weeks, New York Magazine writer-at-large Frank Rich speaks with contributor Alex Carp about the biggest stories in politics and culture. Today: the Trump show at the Republican National Convention, Ailes's ouster, and where the GOP goes from here. 

Party conventions traditionally offer candidates a chance to reach voters who may not have paid close attention to the primaries, and to sharpen their tone for the general-election campaign. Was Donald Trump's RNC acceptance speech noticeably more presidential than his primary campaign? And if so, does that improve his chances against Hillary Clinton?

An angry tirade, devoid of facts and policies and delivered in a nonstop shout, is not presidential. It wasn’t really a speech, even though it went on for some 75 minutes. (If Trump had been listening to it instead of delivering it, he would have left before halftime.) But none of that really matters in the case of Trump, who has created his own reality and gotten untold millions of Americans to buy into it. Last night, he wasn’t trying to reach out to fence-sitters, centrists, or independents and convert them. What he wanted instead was to ratchet up the fears of any racists, nativists, Second Amendment zealots, and garden-variety hard-right Republicans who had somehow slept through the primaries and still might be rallied to register and vote.

The speech was one long piercing dog whistle. And it just may have penetrated the mad dogs he wanted to reach and mobilize.

Watching it, I was struck once again by how ill-prepared the so-called liberal press is to deal with the Trump phenomenon. Commentators on CNN and MSNBC noted some of the downsides of his speech but gave high marks for style (“very forceful,” according to Wolf Blitzer; “rousing” at its conclusion, according to Chris Matthews) as if it were just another business-as-usual political speech to be graded (on a curve).

There was lots of in-the-moment fact-checking by our top news organizations — no mean task given the dense web of deceit Trump was spinning — but the appeal of the Trump phenomenon has nothing to do with facts and will not be countered by facts.

Trump is about anger, resentment, hatred — stark emotions that override rationality and are immune to its niceties. Trump is utterly ignorant about any issue you can name, and always has been, but those who will vote for him don’t care. He is their voice — of rage — as he reiterated constantly from the podium.

No, the only defense we have against Trump is his opponent. She must make sure that the other America, the America that is appalled, victimized, and scandalized by Trump and what he represents, goes to the polls to vote "no." Is Hillary Clinton up to it? I don’t know. Yes, she could win by a landslide. But she could well lose, and to believe otherwise is to live in the cocoon of, yes, the liberal media — the cocoon that gave us all of those poll analysts who said Trump could never win the nomination and who kept saying it was only a matter of time before the Republicans’ “best candidate” (that would be Marco Rubio, remember him?) would emerge from the pack to save the day.

A chilling article by Aaron Blake of the Washington Post tracking Clinton’s downward trajectory as the convention convened makes it clear how close this is going to be.

While 49 percent of registered voters “strongly dislike” Trump, 47 percent feel the same way about Clinton — in other words, a statistical dead heat of detestation. She has got to rise above that — with a vice-presidential pick, to be announced imminently, who will rally voters rather than bore them, with a convention that isn’t a smug and relentlessly rational legal brief but a fierce rallying cry that also speaks to the emotions, if higher emotions than Trump’s. This is a war in which the country hangs in the balance. You don’t win wars with civility and bullet points.

And speaking of war: Trump’s speech did everything it could to incentivize an ISIS attack. Not only did it offer the provocation of sustained Muslim-bashing, but it set Trump up as the strongman America needs to stamp out terrorism overnight. Nothing could be more helpful to ISIS than a chaotic and self-immolating Trump presidency that weakens America, and little could be more helpful to Trump’s prospects than a terror attack this fall. You felt he was rooting for that last night.

The unexpected ousting of Fox News' Roger Ailes cast a shadow over the convention events this week. How much will his absence at Fox affect the power of the conservative Establishment?

The conservative Establishment has been in disarray from the moment Trump declared his candidacy, no matter what Fox News or anyone else had to say about it. But the constituency so brilliantly brought together by Fox News — essentially the Sarah Palin–tea party–Trump base of the GOP — is not the Establishment and will not be affected by Ailes’s departure. The network is financially essential to the Murdoch empire, not only because of its own huge profits but also because of its value as leverage to promote and monetize other Fox channels in the cable-satellite ecosystem. So it’s hard to imagine that any Murdoch heir with an eye on the bottom line will change its overall identity. Clearly the 85-year-old Rupert Murdoch appointed himself temporary leader in order to bar the door should any of the network’s most highly rated personalities try to bolt.

What will ultimately erode Fox News over time has nothing to do with politics: It will fall victim to the slow but inexorable death of television as we have known it, and particularly of cable news, which has an old audience (average age 68, and overwhelmingly white, in the case of Fox) and is increasingly obsolete as either a news or opinion delivery system in the new age of social media.

But while we wait for that, much more needs to be known about Ailes’s behavior and those who covered it up. Greta Van Susteren, Sean Hannity, Bret Baier, and Bill O’Reilly (who settled his own 2004 sexual-harassment case out of court) all stood up publicly for Ailes after the former anchor Gretchen Carlson filed her lawsuit. Did none of them have a clue as to what was going on? I imagine that’s what they’ll assert. As you may recall, the Murdochs claimed utter ignorance of the criminal phone-hacking done on behalf of their newspaper empire in the U.K. Can they get away with this in America — in a case that may have involved multiple instances of predatory sexual behavior over years in their workplace? If Ailes was the Bill Cosby of Fox News, the full story can hardly be swept under the rug by his resignation. It must be adjudicated in a court of law.

From the roll-call shouting match on its first day to Ted Cruz's pointed refusal to endorse his party's candidate, the convention has shown the deep divisions remaining within the GOP. Where does the party go from here?

The notion that the GOP is deeply divided is based on a conceit of the mainstream media: that the #NeverTrump crowd — roughly speaking, the defeated Jeb Bush–Marco Rubio–John Kasich political class, their donors, and the elite conservative Times–Washington Post–Wall Street Journal op-ed columnists who echo them — represent one-half of the supposed divide and that the insurgent Trumpists represent the other. But the two camps in this ostensible civil war are not evenly matched. The #NeverTrump crowd is actually the party’s fringe. Trump did win the Republican primaries decisively, and his voters are the true GOP.

That party is all white — only 18 of the convention’s 2,472 delegates were black, in the estimate of the Washington Post. And Trump’s absurd expression of LGBT solidarity notwithstanding, it’s a homophobic party — its platform not only opposes same-sex marriage and same-sex civil-rights protections but endorses reparation “therapy” for young gay people. And it’s a nativist party that has corporate backers who talk about immigration reform but that in reality has done nothing to advance that cause even when a president sympathetic to it (George W. Bush) was in power.

Whatever Ted Cruz’s fate within the GOP, it would be ridiculous to say he differs from Trump on any of the issues so attractive to the base; even in his supposedly rebellious convention speech, he made a point of endorsing Trump’s signature issue, a wall along the Mexican border. Let us also remember that Paul Ryan, Mitch McConnell, Rubio, Newt Gingrich, Sheldon Adelson, and nearly everyone else with true power in the Republican Party has signed on to the Trump GOP even if they make a show of holding their noses while doing so. The Wall Street Journal editorial page, once a platform of principled conservative opposition to Trump, is now rationalizing any outrageous thing he says or does on the grounds that Hillary Clinton would be worse. They are all selling their souls to the devil — but in truth they did so the moment John McCain cynically put Palin, all but indistinguishable from Trump, on his ticket eight years ago.

So what is the future of the GOP? Win or lose this fall, it will remain, as it has been for some time, the last outpost of old white America. Riding in on a wave of anti-Obama rage, Trump has made explicit the racial animus that was implicit in the Nixon-Reagan-Bush years. He not only wants to be the new Nixon, but the new Spiro Agnew, Jesse Helms, Lee Atwater, Pat Buchanan, and all of the rest combined. Even if he goes down, his followers are going to be creating havoc for years to come, doing their best to make real the horrific Armageddon-tinged portrait of the nation that Trump drew in his dark and corrosive acceptance speech. The white dead-enders are doomed by demography in the end, but not at the pace one might wish.

Melania Trump lies about getting a degree

Apparently it runs in the family

According to an article in the New York Times by Jason Horowitz, "Melania Trump’s cribbing last week of Michelle Obama’s lines was not the first time she claimed something that was not hers.

"For months now, reporters have noted that Ms. Trump, who grew up in the small Slovenian town of Sevnica, did not obtain an undergraduate degree in architecture from the University of Ljubljana, as her professional website claimed she did. Instead, she left after her first year to pursue a modeling career in Milan."

Why Are Fish Suddenly Dying By the Millions?

In Vietnam the incidents of dead fish have become so bad that soldiers are being deployed to bury them.

By Ruth Milka

SOURCENationofChange

Over the past several months there has been an alarming number of dead fish and other sea creatures washing up all over the planet. In many places more than 30 tons of fish have washed up dead.

Chile, a place where there is a massive amount of coast with beautiful beaches, is awash with dead animals. The Smithsonian Magazine states:

As Giovanna Fleitas reports for the Agence France-Presse, the South American country’s beaches are covered with piles of dead sea creatures—and scientists are trying to figure out why.

Tales of dead animals washing up on shore are relatively common; after all, the ocean has a weird way of depositing its dead on shore. But Chile’s problem is getting slightly out of hand. As Fleitas writes, recent months have not been kind to the Chilean coast, which has played host to washed-up carcasses of over 300 whales, 8,000 tons of sardines, and nearly 12 percent of the country’s annual salmon catch, to name a few.

The fish are piling up so quickly it is difficult for Chile to even make a dent in the clean up.

In Vietnam the incidents of dead fish have become so bad that soldiers are being deployed to bury them:

Millions of fish have washed up dead along a 125-kilometre stretch of the Vietnamese coast in one of the communist country’s worst environmental disasters.

Soldiers have been deployed to bury tonnes of fish, clams and the occasional whale that began dying in early April along the north-central coast, including some popular tourist beaches.

Vietnamese officials facing growing anger over the disaster have not announced the official cause of the deaths, which have affected the livelihoods of tens of thousands of families.

In southern China, 35 tons of dead fish appeared in a lake in the Hainan province. Local authorities say that the fish died as a result of salinity change.

In Bolivia thousands of dead fish washed up on the shores of Lake Alalay. And in Brazil more than 200 tons of dead fish were removed from the Furnas Lake in Alfenas.

Several more examples include India, Cambodia, Colombia, and Indonesia. In most of these cases the cause is unknown. Could it be climate change? Human effect on the environment? Let’s hope we can remedy some of the problem before it gets worse.

Fox News Is a Cesspool of Sexism. Firing Roger Ailes Won't Fix That

Roger Ailes. (photo: Jim Cooper/AP)

By Jessica Valenti, Guardian UK

20 July 16
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With or without its leader, this is a network that bans its female on-air talent from wearing pants and the coverage is shockingly antagonistic to women’s rights

his week, all signs point to Roger Ailes being fired from his position as head of Fox News. If ousted, it will be over sexual harassment claims – poetic justice at its very best. This is a man presiding over a network with a legendary disdain for women and women’s rights, taken down by a woman, Gretchen Carlson, who was the target of some of the worst of it. 

Carlson alleges, among other things, that Ailes told her, “You and I should have had a sexual relationship a long time ago, and then you’d be good and better and I’d be good and better.” He said this, amazingly, in a meeting about sexual harassment. Carlson also claims that her contract wasn’t renewed as direct retaliation for complaining about the pervasive harassment and sexism she faced.

And New York Magazine reported on Tuesday that Megyn Kelly says Ailes sexually harassed her as well, and that she’s told as much to Fox investigators. As more women come forward about Ailes – while others are perhaps unable to because of non-disparagement clauses in their employment contracts – the likelihood of his “resignation” increases. (Fox News denies a decision has been made.)

But removing one lascivious man can’t turn around the mess of misogyny that is Fox News. This is a network that bans its female on-air talent from wearing pants, where a host characterized a military operation against Isis led by a woman as “boobs on the ground” and the ethos of the coverage is shockingly antagonistic to women’s rights.

There was the time, for example, that Fox contributor Erik Erickson said that men should be “dominant” over women in families. Or when an all-male panel bemoaned the rise of female breadwinners in the United States. Or when a host wondered if there was something about the female brain that was a “deterrent” to being a business executive. Or, my personal favorite, when Andrea Tantaros suggested that a female high school teacher who sexually abused a student did so because of … feminism. 

Oh, and these are just incidents from one year at the network.

I have no doubt that the leadership of a man who may have told a woman “you might have to give a blowjob every once in a while” for him to help with her career would impact the tone of coverage on women at Fox News. But the disparagement of women at Fox, whether its employees or its viewers, isn’t just about Ailes. So long as the network is a mouthpiece for the right, it will continue to reflect outdated notions about women’s roles.

The entire conservative movement is built on a foundation that assumes traditional gender roles are best, that women belong in the home and that it is natural for men to be sexually aggressive. That is not a problem that begins or ends with one man; it’s a problem with an entire vision of politics and society.

As feminism becomes more and more powerful, as women refuse to take harassment and slights sitting down, bosses and leaders like Ailes will find it harder to make excuses for their horrible behavior. But if we’re thinking bigger, I can’t help but hope as the presidential election draws closer that this trend will broaden, and women will deliver a clear message to the country’s most famous misogynist: you’re fired.

'Just a cheap fraud and TV huckster who got in way over his head...'

(Gazette Blog Editor's note: This is the conclusion of a very, very, very long piece on the GOP Convention by Rolling Stone's Matt Taibbi.  Here he talks about Donald Trump's acceptance speech at the end of the convention.  It is a riveting and revealing read.)

By Matt Taibbi

Rolling Stone

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Then came Thursday night.

With tens of millions of eyes watching, Trump the Beltway conqueror turtled and wrapped his arms around the establishment's ankles. He spent the entirety of his final address huddled inside five decades of Republican Party clichés, apparently determined to hide in there until Election Day.

And not just any clichés, either. Trump ripped off the Republican Party's last-ditch emergency maneuver, a scare-the-white-folks spiel used by a generation of low-

charisma underdogs trailing in the polls.

Many observers called it the most terrifying speech they'd ever seen, but that had a lot to do with its hysterical tenor (the Times amusingly called it "almost angry"), the Mussolinian head-bobs, the draped-in-flags Caesarean imagery, and his strongman promises. It was a relentlessly negative speech, pure horror movie, with constant references to murder and destruction. If you bought any of it, you probably turned off the tube ready to blow your head off.

But it wasn't new, not one word. Trump cribbed his ideas from the Republicans he spent a year defaming. Trump had merely reprised Willie Horton, Barry Goldwater's "marauders" speech, Jesse Helms' "White Hands" ad, and most particularly Richard Nixon's 1968 "law and order" acceptance address, the party's archetypal fear-based appeal from which Trump borrowed in an intellectual appropriation far more sweeping and shameless than Melania's much-hyped mistake.

He even used the term "law and order" four times, and rehashed a version of Nixon's somber "let us begin by committing ourselves to the truth" intro, promising to "honor the American people with the truth, and nothing else."

In place of Nixon's "merchants of crime," Trump spoke of 180,000 illegal immigrants roaming the countryside like zombies, hungry for the brains of decent folk.

"The number of new illegal-immigrant families who have crossed the border so far this year already exceeds the entire total from 2015," he cried. "They are being released by the tens of thousands into our communities, with no regard for the impact on public safety or resources." The tragic story of Sarah Root, killed by a released immigrant, was just Willie Horton without the picture.

He mentioned cities in crisis, a rising crime rate, and an opponent who promised "death, destruction, terrorism and weakness" for America. His argument really came down to that: Vote for me or die.

As for his populist critiques of money in politics and the pay-for-play corruption in both parties that made up so much of his stump speeches, the same critiques that Bernie Sanders used to throw a scare into Hillary Clinton, they took a back seat in crunch time.

Trump was always just smart enough to see that the same money backs the Jeb Bushes and Hillary Clintons of the world. But he never had the vision or the empathy to understand, beyond the level of a punchline, the frustrations linking disenfranchised voters on both the left and right.

Presented with a rare opportunity to explain how the two parties stoke divisions on social issues to keep working people from realizing their shared economic dilemmas, Trump backed down. Even if he didn't believe it, he could have turned such truths into effective campaign rhetoric. But such great themes are beyond his pampered, D-minus mind. Instead, he tried to poach Sanders voters simply by chanting Bernie's name like a magic word.

In the end, Trump's populism was as fake as everything else about him, and he emerged as just another in a long line of Republican hacks, only dumber and less plausible to the political center.

Which meant that after all that we went through last year, after that crazy cycle of insults and bluster and wife wars and penis-measuring contests and occasionally bloody street battles, after the insane media tornado that destroyed the modern Republican establishment, Trump concluded right where the party started 50 years ago, meekly riding Nixon's Southern Strategy. It was all just one very noisy ride in a circle. All that destruction and rebellion went for nothing. Officially now, he's just another party schmuck.

Archibald MacLeish once wrote a poem called "The End of the World," about a circus interrupted when the big top blows away. The freaks and lion-tamers and acrobats are frozen mid-performance, and the "thousands of white faces" in the audience gasp as they look up at the vast sky to see, after all the fantastical performances in the ring, the ultimate showstopper: emptiness, an endless black sky, "nothing, nothing, nothing – nothing at all."

Trump's finale was like that. When we finally pulled the lid off this guy, there was nothing there. Just a cheap fraud and TV huckster who got in way over his head, and will now lead his hoodwinked followers off the cliff of history.

'Loose cannon...is never better than an aimed shot'

  GEORGE TEMPLETON 

       COMMENTARY       

By George Templeton
Gazette Columnist

Trump

“The whole modern world has divided itself into Conservatives and Progressives.  The business of Progressives is to go on making mistakes.  The business of Conservatives is to prevent the mistakes from being corrected.”  G. K. Chesterton

Honesty

Donald Trump is not just an unusual candidate.  He claims to be a strong leader.  Leadership can be by command, example, or consensus.  Leaders accept responsibility for things that they cannot control.  They accomplish only what others will allow. 

The news explained that the benevolent dictator’s honesty requires him to deny political correctness.  He knows the answer instead of finding it.  He is just being honest, but propaganda is about self-interest, not honesty.  If you think Donald is just flamboyant and charismatic, you are deceiving yourself.  Many mistakes are found, but there is no happy face or convincing dream.

This election is about values, largely shared by conservatives and progressives, not “imprecise” policies.  We are all for law and order, patriotism, life, peace, and equal opportunity, but they don’t define policies that empower choices.  Republicans will vote for Trump out of hope that he will make our country great again.  Their truth is accessible only to conservatives.  It needs no evidence.  They want change, but will it make things better?  A loose cannon, loaded with chains, rusted nails, and broken bottles is never better than an aimed shot.

My comments follow quotes from Donald Trump’s rambling speech, revealing a mind that changes subject in the middle of a sentence.  The full speech, given in Westfield, Indiana on 7-12-2016, can be watched on C-Span.

Humility

BILL O'REILLY SAID, THE SINGLE GREATEST POLITICAL PHENOMENON THAT HE'S SEEN IN HIS LIFETIME. NOW HE'S A PRO. A SMART GUY AND TOUGH. TOUGH. BUT THE SINGLE GREATEST POLITICAL PHENOMENON THAT HE'S SEEN IN HIS LIFETIME IS DONALD TRUMP AND ALL OF US, THE WHOLE THING. WE'VE BEEN ON THE COVER -- WE'VE BEEN ON THE COVER OF "TIME" MAGAZINE, SO MUCH THAT IT BECOMES ROUTINE. IN FACT, THEY JUST TOLD ME, MR. TRUMP, SIR, YOU'RE ON THE COVER OF "TIME" MAGAZINE AGAIN THIS WEEK.

A statesman is not excessively concerned with himself.  When “we” are on the cover of Time magazine, “I” brings in “you”.  The “I” within “we” is the lord of every sentence it speaks.

Deal

WE CAN NEVER, EVER FORGET THE HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS OF GREAT DEALS AND GREAT THINGS THAT OUR POLICE ALL OVER THE COUNTRY DO.

The policeman said, “You were speeding and I’m writing you a ticket”.  Donald said, here’s $20 if you just forget the ticket!  When you are a hammer, everything looks like a nail.

Law and Order

WE HAVE CROOKED HILLARY CLINTON, AS CROOKED AS YOU GET. I MEAN, YOU SAW THAT WITH THE E-MAILS. IT'S A RIGGED SYSTEM, FOLKS. IT'S A RIGGED SYSTEM. JUST REMEMBER IT. IT'S A RIGGED SYSTEM. IT'S RIGGED IN SO MANY DIFFERENT WAYS. WE'RE GOING TO STRAIGHTEN IT OUT.

One must join the system to change it.  The Ship of State cannot be turned on a dime, by tearing it apart.  It’s the law, not trial by opinion, even though Republicans don’t agree.

Trade

AND YOU KNOW WHAT? THEY'LL BE HAPPY TO PAY FOR THE WALL. WE HAVE A TRADE DEFICIT WITH MEXICO THAT YOU WOULDN'T BELIEVE. BILLIONS AND BILLIONS AND BILLIONS OF DOLLARS A YEAR. WE'RE LOSING ON THE BORDER. WE'RE LOSING ON TRADE.

Nationalism is not a greater force than globalization.  American companies have billions of dollars invested in Mexico.  What will they do if Mexico asks them to leave?  Business deals are “win-win” agreements.  There are no losers except in the eyes of those outside of the deal.

YOU LOOK AT JAPAN, THE BIGGEST SHIPS YOU'VE EVER SEEN FLOATING IN, AND I WAS IN LOS ANGELES, THEY FLOAT IN THESE MASSIVE, MASSIVE SHIPS LOADED UP WITH CARS. AND THE CARS ARE POURING JUST LIKE -- I MEAN, NASCAR. I LOVE NASCAR. I LOVE BRIAN FRANCE. HE ENDORSED ME FROM NASCAR, RIGHT. NASCAR. IT IS LIKE NASCAR DRIVERS. KING RICHARD ENDORSED ME. A LOT OF THE GUYS ENDORSED ME. RICHARD PETTY.

What does NASCAR have to do with trade policy or Donald’s presidential qualifications?

Geo-politics

WE HAVE PEOPLE THAT ARE POLITICAL HACKS NEGOTIATING FOR US AND PEOPLE THAT DON'T KNOW WHAT THEY'RE DOING. I HAVE THE GREATEST BUSINESSMEN IN THE WORLD THAT HAVE ENDORSED ME, INCLUDING PEOPLE LIKE CARL ICAHN, GREAT BUSINESSMAN. WE HAVE SOME OF THE GREATEST NEGOTIATORS, MAYBE THE GREATEST IN THE WORLD AND WE DON'T USE THEM. WE USE POLITICAL HACKS.

There will be winners and losers in every trade deal.  Trade is inherently political.

FRANKLY WE'RE IN SERIOUS JEOPARDY, AND WE MADE A POWER OUT OF IRAN. WE MADE A POWER. NUMBER ONE, WE SHOULD HAVE NEVER GONE IN AND NEGOTIATED THAT DEAL UNTIL WE GOT OUR HOSTAGES BACK. EVER. EVER. WE SHOULD HAVE NEVER, EVER GONE IN. AND WHAT YOU SAY IS, FOLKS, WE HAVE TO GET THEM BACK. AND IF YOU DON'T WANT TO GIVE THEM BACK, YOU LEAVE THE MEETING. YOU LEAVE THE MEETING. AND YOU DOUBLE UP YOUR SANCTIONS, YOU WOULD HAVE HAD THEM BACK WITHIN 24 HOURS, I GUARANTEE YOU THAT. BUT WE DIDN'T DO THAT. I KEPT WAITING FOR THE WHOLE DELEGATION, I KEPT WAITING FOR THEM TO LEAVE, TO GET UP AND LEAVE. I USED TO SAY GET UP AND LEAVE. PERFECT. GET UP. WE DIDN'T WIN ANYTHING. THE ONLY TIME THAT KERRY LEFT WAS AT 73 YEARS OLD TO GO INTO A BICYCLE LACE WHERE HE FELL AND BROKE HIS LEG, RIGHT. AND I ALWAYS TELL PEOPLE, I PROMISE YOU I WILL NEVER ENTER A BICYCLE RACE WHEN I'M IN THE MIDST OF AN IMPORTANT NUCLEAR NEGOTIATION, I PROMISE.

America was not the only country in the negotiation.  It is muddled thinking that prioritizes hostages and Kerry’s bicycle accident along with a nuclear arms race.   

Immigration

THEY'RE GOING TO COME IN LEGALLY. AND THERE ARE GOING TO BE PEOPLE THAT LOVE OUR COUNTRY. THEY'RE NOT GOING TO BE PEOPLE THAT HATE OUR COUNTRY. THEY'RE NOT GOING TO BE PEOPLE THAT WE DON'T KNOW WHERE THEY COME FROM. THEY'RE NOT GOING TO BE PEOPLE THAT COME FROM THE MIGRATION THAT DON'T HAVE PAPERWORK, THAT DON'T HAVE PASSPORTS, THAT WE HAVE NO IDEA WHERE THEY'RE FROM. WE HAVE NO IDEA WHAT THEIR MOTIVES ARE. WE'RE GOING TO SAY NO. SORRY. NO.

Psychologists tell us that fear is the most powerful motivator.  We must not become paranoid.  

Demons

HILLARY CLINTON THROUGH HER INCOMPETENCE DIRECTLY AND INDIRECTLY CREATED ISIS. AND NOW SHE WANTS TO GET RID OF IT. SHE SAYS YES, WE WILL FIGHT ISIS. SHE IS THE ONE THAT CREATED IT WITH STUPIDITY, WITH STUPID, STUPID POLICY. POLICY THAT'S ONLY GOING TO GET WORSE. SHE IS THE ONE THAT CREATED IT.

She sounds even more powerful than Donald.

Safe Zones

IN SYRIA, WE'LL BUILD SAFE ZONES, AND WE'LL GET OTHER PEOPLE TO PUT UP THE MONEY, BECAUSE WE'RE GOING TO OWE VERY SOON 20 TRILLION, TRILLION WITH A T.

Who will maintain and protect the safe zone?

Oil

WE'RE GOING TO BE SMART AGAIN. WE'RE GOING TO MAKE GREAT MILITARY, AND BY THE WAY, I SAID FOR YEARS WE'VE GOT TO KEEP THE OIL.

Income from the oil is critical to the economy of these countries.  What will the world say if we take over their resources?

Prayer

AND BY THE WAY, WHEN OUR ENEMIES ALL OVER THE WORLD, INCLUDING OUR FRIENDS ALL OVER THE WORLD LOOK AT WHAT'S HAPPENING TO OUR COUNTRY, WHERE THE OTHER NIGHT YOU HAD 11, THINK OF IT, 11 CITIES POTENTIALLY IN A BLOWUP STAGE. MARCHES ALL OVER THE UNITED STATES, AND TOUGH MARCHES, ANGER, HATRED, HATRED. STARTED BY A MANIAC THAT SOME PEOPLE ASKED FOR A MOMENT OF SILENCE FOR HIM. FOR THE KILLER, FOR THE KILLER. OKAY?

Christians pray for all humanity.

Persecution

I'M TELLING YOU, FOLKS, AND I TELL IT ALL OF THE TIME, BECAUSE AS A REPUBLICAN, AND AS A REPUBLICAN CONSERVATIVE, WE ARE AT A TREMENDOUS DISADVANTAGE. YOU LOOK AT THE WAY THEY TREAT CROOKED HILLARY, YOU TAKE A LOOK AT THIS COMPARED TO THE WAY THEY TREAT OTHER PEOPLE, OR THE WAY THEY TREAT ME, THEY ARE SOME OF THE WORST HUMAN BEINGS ON EARTH. I REALLY MEAN IT.

Donald feels persecuted and cannot resist striking out at every perceived injustice to himself.  He can’t just let it go.  He thinks he is always right.  That blocks constructive criticism.

Fighter Jets

OUR MILITARY IS SO DEPLETED, OUR MILITARY HAS FIGHTER JETS THAT ARE IN USE FLOWN BY GREAT, GREAT AMERICAN PEOPLE THAT ARE SO OLD, AND THEY CAN'T GET PARTS FOR THE FIGHTER JETS. THESE ARE PEOPLE FLYING THESE JETS NOW IN COMBAT. THEY CAN'T GET PARTS. SO THEY GO TO THE PLANE GRAVEYARDS IN THE DESERTS. THEY GO TO MUSEUMS WHERE THEY HAVE SIMILAR PLANES, AND THEY STRIP APART TO USE FOR OUR FIGHTER PILOTS TO FLY. THIS IS WHAT WE'VE BEEN REDUCED TO.

Support of the 1970”s A-10 Warthog kept Luke Field in Arizona from being closed.  No equivalent replacement exists.  The B-52 bomber has been upgraded and could be flying until 2040.

Celebrities

WE LOVE BOBBY KNIGHT. DO WE LOVE BOBBY KNIGHT? OH, THAT BOBBY KNIGHT. I LOVE MY BOBBY KNIGHT. WE HAD SO MANY COACHES, GENE AND DIGGER AND BOBBY. WE HAD SO MANY COACHES. LOU, LOU HOLTS. WE HAD SO MANY COACHES THAT CAME OUT IN OUR FAVOR. I DO WELL WITH COACHES. BUT THE COACHES LIKE ME. BUT BOBBY WAS OUT HERE WORKING REALLY HARD. AND I COULD SEE IT RIGHT AT THE BEGINNING. THIS WAS GOING TO BE THE WATER SHED. BUT BOBBY CAME OUT AND I CAME OUT AND WE WENT TO A RINAS -- ARENA ARENAS, YOU'VE NEVER SEEN SO MANY PEOPLE. MAYBE YOU'VE BEEN AT SOME OF THE ARENAS. IT IS AMAZING.

Celebrities are not authorities.

Jobs

MY DEFINITION OF "TRADE" IS THAT I WANT TO MAKE GREAT DEALS FOR THE AMERICAN PEOPLE. YOU CAN CALL IT WHATEVER THE HELL YOU WANT. OKAY. AND WE'RE GOING TO. WE'RE GOING TO BRING OUR JOBS BACK. WE'RE GOING TO BRING OUR MANUFACTURING BACK.

Jobs have been leaving America since the mid-seventies.  Manufacturing problems have become international incidents.  Global business has to service production costs, geography, and culture.

PEOPLE AND COUNTRIES TAKE OUR COMPANIES AND TAKE OUR JOBS, THERE ARE GOING TO BE CONSEQUENCES. THEY WON'T TAKE THEM. BECAUSE WE'RE NOT GOING TO LET CARRIER COME IN AND MAKE AIR-CONDITIONERS IN MEXICO AND SELL THE AIR-CONDITIONERS TO US, ACROSS A VERY STRONG BORDER NOW, WITHOUT CONSEQUENCE.

Global competition drove our companies to export jobs.  No one took them.

The Decider

Stanch conservatives want Donald Trump as a figure head, like the Queen of England, to sign into law the bills created by a Republican supermajority in the House and Senate.  But what happens when he no longer has to read from a teleprompter?

Donald Trump's Convention Speech Rings Terrifying Historical Alarm Bells

Donald Trump. (photo: Carolyn Kaster/AP)

By Jon Schwarz, The Intercept

22 July 16
readersupportednews.org

 
onald Trump’s speech accepting the Republican nomination for president will probably go down as one of the most frightening pieces of political rhetoric in U.S. history.

Even for people who believe the danger of genuine authoritarianism on the U.S. right is often exaggerated, it’s impossible not to hear in Trump’s speech echoes of the words and strategies of the world’s worst leaders.

Trump had just one message for Americans: Be afraid. You are under terrible threats from forces inside and outside your country, and he’s the only person who can save us.

The scariest part is how Trump subtly but clearly has begun melding together violence against U.S. police and terrorism: “The attacks on our police, and the terrorism in our cities,” he said, “threaten our very way of life.”

This is the favorite and most dangerous message of demagogues across all space and time. After all, if we know our external enemies are deeply evil, and our internal enemies are somehow their allies, we can feel justified in doing anything at all to our internal enemies. That’s just logic.

And if anything, Trump’s speech is actually more terrific, fabulous and huge than those of previous fanatics, since he promises he’s going to fix everything overnight. “The crime and violence that today afflicts our nation will soon — and I mean very soon — come to an end,” Trump says. “Beginning on January 20th of 2017, safety will be restored.”

This use of fear to destroy democracy is so old that it’s described exactly in Plato’s Republic, written in Ancient Greece around 380 B.C.

Tyranny, says Socrates in The Republic, is actually “an outgrowth of democracy.” And would-be tyrants always in every instance claim to be shielding regular people from terrible danger: “This and no other is the root from which a tyrant springs; when he first appears above ground he is a protector.”

Trump said that he is going to “protect” Americans or some aspect of American life 13 times tonight.

That makes sense, since as he portrayed the world, we desperately need protecting:

Nearly 180,000 illegal immigrants with criminal records, ordered deported from our country, are tonight roaming free to threaten peaceful citizens. …

Egypt was turned over to the radical Muslim brotherhood. … Iran is on the path to nuclear weapons. …

This is the legacy of Hillary Clinton: death, destruction, terrorism and weakness. …

My plan will begin with safety at home – which means safe neighborhoods, secure borders, and protection from terrorism. …

I have joined the political arena so that the powerful can no longer beat up on people who cannot defend themselves. …

America was shocked to its core when our police officers in Dallas were brutally executed. … I have a message to every last person threatening the peace on our streets and the safety of our police: When I take the oath of office next year, I will restore law and order to our country. …

         We must also address the growing threats we face from outside America. …

Men, women and children viciously mowed down. Lives ruined. Families ripped apart. … Only weeks ago, in Orlando, Florida, 49 wonderful Americans were savagely murdered by an Islamic terrorist. …

We Will Make America Safe Again.

As The Republic explains, leaders like this inevitably end up “standing up in the chariot of State with the reins in his hand, no longer protector, but tyrant absolute.” This is how liberty “passes into the harshest and bitterest form of slavery.”

The good news is that if you turn off cable news — apparently the only source of Donald Trump’s knowledge about the world — and go outside, you’ll find that the U.S. is probably safer today than it’s ever been.

Despite the misleading statistics Trump used again tonight, the rate of murder and crime overall remains far, far lower than in the past. You also don’t need to worry about ISIS: even after the massacre of 49 people in Orlando, it’s likely more Americans will be killed by bee stings in 2016 than by terrorism.

Nonetheless, anyone who knows anything about the past must be genuinely worried that a major party could nominate someone like Trump. As the German philosopher Hegel famously said 200 years ago, “What experience and history teach is this — that people and governments never have learned anything from history.”

Top 4 Republican Plagiarisms of the Democrats

Melania Trump, wife of Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, waves as she speaks during the Republican National Convention. (photo: Reuters)

By Juan Cole, Informed Comment

22 July 16

readersupportednews.org

 

he scandal over Melania Trump’s stealing Michelle Obama’s lines for her convention speech should make us recall the ways in which GOP strategists have on many occasions stolen a Democratic line but put it to the opposite purpose.

But first, it is worth noting that the lines Mrs. Trump took over from Michelle included a plea that people be respected. Her husband has disrespected more people in the past year than I think any presidential candidate in history has.

Here are some instances of sticky fingers or the even more insidious ‘sticky reverse fingers’. The Republican party is forced to behave this way because it primarily represents the rich, not a very attractive program.

1. Teddy Roosevelt took over from the democrats a critique of big corporations, then called ‘trusts,’ and used it to make himself popular.


2. Woodrow Wilson issued his famous 14 points on the right of people to self-determination and democracy after World War I. George W. Bush took up the line about other countries’ right to democracy, but used it as a pretext to invade and occupy Iraq. I don’t think he understood that ‘self-determination’ bit very well.


3. In his 1970 State of the Union address, Republican President Richard M. Nixon shocked Democrats in the Senate by lifting their party’s talking points on several issues almost verbatim. The Democrats had put forward ideas on fighting crime. Nixon stole them. The Democrats had sounded the alarm about the environment. Nixon took over their rhetoric. But Democratic politicians pointed out that Nixon only wanted the facade of the Democratic proposals, constructing a sort of rhetorical Potemkin Village. He would not actually ask Congress for enough money effectively to implement these proposals, and where Congress anyway appropriated the money, he refused to spend it. So he only talked about fighting pollution, taking over a Democratic issue for himself, but did not actually do as much about it as he could have. Nixon gave us Earth Day, but the air and water could have gotten a lot cleaner than he made them.


4. When Mitt Romney was governor of Massachusetts, he signed the 2006 health care law that had been in part inspired by the demand of Democratic Party activists that the number of people without health care be reduced.. But Romney went on to disavow the very similar Obamacare in the 2012 elections, and to pledge to repeal it. You get the sense some politicians only want a program if they can take full credit for it; it isn’t about the lives saved.

Grifting USA: Snake Oil Salespeople Rule the Stage at the RNC

Florida attorney general Pam Bondi. (photo: Reuters)

By Amanda Marcotte, Salon

21 July 16

readersupportednews.org

 

Trump is a con man, so it's no surprise that his campaign studded the speaker's list with disreputable people

hile the second half of Wednesday night’s RNC programming was dominated by the usual professional politicians one expects at events like this (and fireworks thanks to Ted Cruz) the earlier parts of the evening were downright puzzling. After Laura Ingraham worked the crowd into an orgasmic frenzy of hate towards both Hillary Clinton and the press, the hard-won energy drained out of the room as the gathered were subject to one frankly weird speech after another.

Phil Ruffin, Pam Bondi, Eileen Collins, and Michelle Van Etten: These speakers ranged from uninspiring to being Ambien in human form. Bondi managed to look alive at parts and Collins confused the audience by talking about government having roles outside of cracking skulls and kicking hippies, but it was Ruffian and Van Etten that truly made no sense from an aesthetic or political perspective.

Ruffin was a trollish man whose speech was so boring that it started to feel like a human rights violation. Van Etten, portrayed as an entrepreneur, was somehow even worse, so bad that the cringe could be felt across Twitter.

Sure, the Trump campaign is scooping from the bottom of the barrel for convention speakers, but was this really the best he could do? The crowd, as evidenced by the ecstatic response they offered Ingraham, was primed and ready to go nuts at the drop of a hat. It took effort to bore and confuse them. So one has to wonder: Why these people? Why not roll out a few more talk radio demagogues like Ingraham, since that’s clearly who the crowd wants to see?

Perhaps the reason is that three out of four of these people — more than the pundits, family members or career politicians otherwise populating the stage — represent the true heart and soul of the Trump campaign. With the exception of Collins — who  didn’t endorse Trump — and whose presence simply makes no sense at all, what these speakers have in common is a certain affection for the hucksters and grifters of the world. 

Ruffin is a casino owner, albeit a more successful one than his buddy, Trump. Bondi ostensibly has a respectable job, as the attorney general of Florida. But she is also in serious political trouble, as it came out months ago that she dropped a lawsuit against Trump University, one Trump’s most obnoxious scams, after Trump donated $25,000 to her campaign. And Van Etten is not really an entrepreneur. She’s a grifter who made her money running a multilevel marketing scam selling useless vitamin supplements.

Between these three, we get a full eyeball of what Trump means by making America “great” again, which apparently means making America safe for sleazy operators who would rather make their money through grifts and bribery than through a hard day’s work.

There’s something telling about the Trump campaign’s willingness to trot out the kind of bottom-feeders  that most Republican politicians politely pretend are not the backbone of their party. Perhaps it is a sign of unawareness, a demonstration that Trump’s people have no idea that there’s something unsavory about being unsavory.

Or perhaps it’s a savvy move, to populate the byways of a respectable institution of the RNC with snake oil salesman, in order to make their candidate seem normal instead of what he is, a lazy reality TV personality who is so bad at business that his various ventures have performed less well than putting his money in basic investment account.

Of course, that is attributing savvy to a campaign so lazy that they allowed Melania Trump, who was supposed to humanize the candidate, go out on stage with a plagiarized speech.

No, the likelier explanation for this roster of embarrassments is that these grifters are just the kind of people Trump likes and the kind of people he wants to roll out as the best and brightest that his campaign has to offer as surrogates.