A cry for help in Trumpland!
This 35-page “top secret” report on madman Trump’s ties to the Russians is as lurid as his hair color!
THIS DANGEROUS, RIDICULOUS PAWN will soon be our next president!
Sad.
Click on the blue-colored link below to read the report…
– R.T.
https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/3259984-Trump-Intelligence-Allegations.html
Donald Trump as POTUS – be afraid. Be very afraid. pic:R.T.
By Steven R. Maher
Donald Trump’s surprise election as President of the United States has created deep-seated anxiety among American voters who favored Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton. Some fear Trump will destroy the environment, bring terrorist attacks to American soil with his inflammatory, hate-filled rhetoric, cause a nuclear war; others fear he will cut off their social security benefits, Medicaid, health insurance. Still others are afraid that Trump will turn America into a quasi-fascist state. These fears are particularly pronounced among women who fear Trump’s misogyny, immigrants who fear being singled out for hate and harassment, the LGBTQ community who fear vice president-elect Mike Pence’s history on gay rights … the list goes on. And on.
I Googled the phrase “Trump anxiety.” Up popped help-line telephone numbers, suicide emergency websites and “Trump anxiety hotlines.” Well, I too have concerns about a Trump Presidency, but they haven’t reached the level of suicide. These are some factors liberal Democrats should keep in mind:
Oldest constitutional democracy
The United States of America is the greatest country in the world. Starting out as a conglomerate of feuding states with competing interests, it managed to defeat the greatest empire since Rome, evolved after a fierce civil over African-Americans to the point where we twice elected an African American President, and flowered into a nuclear monopoly that sent men to the moon. Betwixt these events, America rescued the planet from the twin evils of fascism and communism.
We are the world’s oldest constitutional democracy. Amid a ferocious civil war, Abraham Lincoln went forward with an election for a second term that no one believed he would win. But he did. The 1930s depression would have sparked a class war in any other country. We got instead the calming words of Franklin Roosevelt: “We have nothing to fear but fear itself.”
Democrats should keep Roosevelt’s words in mind as Trump raises his right hand in January 2017 to swear fealty to the constitution.
We have survived the challenges of the past 240 years because our government was created by the founders with someone like Donald Trump in mind! They didn’t expect every President to be like George Washington. They expected voters to occasionally elect a Richard Nixon or a Donald Trump.
To mitigate the damages such individuals could cause, they set up a government of checks and balances. Power to create laws, raise revenue, and declare war was restricted to the Congress. Power to command the armed forces (greatly restricted after Lyndon Johnson’s Vietnam war and Nixon’s Watergate scandal) and run the executive branch were given the President. Power to interpret the laws to the constitutional provisions is left to an independent judiciary. To safeguard the rights and property of the citizenry, the first Congress passed a “Bill of Rights,” the first 10 amendments to the constitution.
In short, Donald Trump will not be walking into a dictatorship or monarchy.
He won’t be able to push a button and eliminate freedom of the press.
Nor will he able to fulfill some of the more bizarre promises he has made to his supporters.
Members of the military have warned Trump they will not torture prisoners; nor will they kill innocent noncombatants because their family members are terrorists.
There will be 200 years of constitutional precedent in defense of our rights and masses of lawyers both ready and eager to take Trump on.
In front of Worcester City Hall: folks react to Trump V. pic:R.T.
By Steven R. Maher
Ronald Reagan told a great anecdote whenever he had a set-back: the story was about a young teenage boy who came home and saw horse manure all around the house. The teenager became happily excited. Looking at the mess, the boy’s mother asked him why he was so happy. “Gosh mom,” said the teenager,” with all this horse manure, there has to be a pony in here somewhere.”
Political earthquake
On November 8, 2016, a political earthquake off the Richter scale struck the United States of America. In a surprise few Americans have experienced in their lifetimes, Donald J. Trump captured the Presidency in an astounding upset. Against the findings of the pollsters, pundits, and political elites, Trump was elected the 45th President of the United States.
“I will be studying this for the rest of my life,” pollster Larry Sabado told Fox News, admitting that he, like so many others of his profession, blew it.
The 2016 Presidential election will fascinate historians and political scientists for generations to come. The accusations, name calling, and negative television spots will be pored over by analysts to see what worked and what didn’t. We can expect voluminous studies of the FBI’s and Russian intelligence’s rather brazen interventions in the electoral process. Which polls accurately predicted the outcome will be fodder for the pundits. The careers of political consultants will be made or broken.
Most importantly, how did Trump win, while making provocative remarks that in any other election would have instantly destroyed his candidacy?
“Trump did not create the forces that propelled his candidacy,” conservative columnist Patrick J. Buchanan wrote in a column published the day before the election. “But he recognized them, tapped into them, and unleashed a gusher of nationalism and populism that will not soon dissipate.”
Trade deals
Buchanan, who worked in both the Nixon and Reagan administrations, ran for President in 1992 in the Republican primaries based substantially on his opposition to trade deals like NAFTA. Since then, Buchanan has stuck to traditional conservative ideals, denouncing the budget deficits caused by George W. Bush long before anyone had heard of Barack Obama or the Tea Party. In one memorable column, Buchanan said Bush made Bill Clinton, with his balanced budgets and controlled spending, look like Barry Goldwater.
But the two things Buchanan most railed against were the trade deals that deindustrialized America, and the “neocon” advocacy of America’s involvement in endless wars. The losers on both were America’s white working class, whose jobs were sent overseas to the benefit of the Republican elite, and whose sons and daughters were sent overseas to fight in places like Iraq.
Buchanan was an economic bellwether, a Paul Revere of the right who urged a return to the economic nationalism of Alexander Hamilton. The first Secretary of the Treasury, Hamilton called for the implementation of tariffs on imports to protect and promote American manufacturing.
America’s city, towns and suburbs were hollowed out in the three decades since Buchanan sounded his alarm. As the major industries faded away to China or Mexico, the smaller businesses in the supply chain began to close their doors leaving behind empty buildings, industrial park vacancies, and devastated inner cities. “Company towns” became as desolate as the steel mills of Ohio, as the companies fled in search of cheaper labor. The company towns often no longer had the company to support them. Many of these were in the rural parts of America, which turned out in droves on election day to vote for Donald Trump.
This writer saw this first hand during a visit to an insurance appraiser on West Boylston Street in Worcester. I had not been in that neighborhood in ten or fifteen years and was shocked at the number of closed restaurants, shuttered businesses and sense of economic dislocation that was palpable in a neighborhood which had once teemed as a hub of economic activity.
Populist billionaire
Trump was not the first “populist billionaire” who saw in the trade deals the undoing of America. In 1992 – the same year Buchanan sought the Republican nomination – Ross Perot ran as an independent, calling on the federal government to balance its budgets, invest in infrastructure, and opposing trade deals like NAFTA.
Perot would compare a Tennessee auto worker making $15 an hour to a Mexican making $1 an hour. Under NAFTA, said Perot, “the Mexican worker’s wage would go up to $8 an hour, while the American worker’s wage would go down to $8 an hour.”
“Doesn’t make you feel warm all over, does it,” Perot would sneer.
Perot was reportedly told by Republican political consultant Edward Rollins it would cost $130 million to finance a viable campaign. Perot apparently didn’t believe in himself enough to risk the money, and went on to place third as a fringe candidate.
Unique campaign
Trump didn’t mimic Perot’s mistakes. Trump ran for the Republican nomination instead of running as an Independent. Trump also put into his campaign the money necessary to win.
The Donald ran a unique campaign. It revolved entirely around Donald Trump. Trump flew from state to state for campaign rallies. He seemed to draw strength from the cheering throngs, and they responded in kind, growing stronger from Trump’s confidence and self-assuredness, their faith deepened, their commitment strengthened. Clinton’s campaign would bus voters directly from her rallies to the local city clerk’s office to register and vote. Trump’s supporters didn’t need to be bused to vote; they showed themselves able to get to the voting booth on their own.
Trump’s speaking tours reminded some of Harry Truman’s whistle stopping train tour of the country in 1948. Truman’s 1948 victory was probably the last time an America election surprised the people as much as Trump’s triumph did.
Trump’s rough edges appealed to America’s working classes as much as they appalled the political elites. Showing a marked disinclination towards political correctness, Trump vigorously denounced illegal immigrants, profiteering businessmen who shipped jobs overseas, ISIS, and other threats to the republic. He bluntly termed George W. Bush a liar and said Bush should have been impeached. Trump made himself an easy target for commentators of all stripes to sling their rhetoric at.
Looking back, it seems the more Trump was attacked, the more it solidified his base. “They believe Trump alone will secure the borders and rid us of a trade regime that has led to the loss of 70,000 factories and 5 million manufacturing jobs since NAFTA,” noted Buchanan. “They believe Trump is the best hope for keeping us out of the wars the Beltway think tanks are already planning for the sons of the ‘deplorables’ to fight.”
Clinton ran a sophisticated Presidential campaign. Her debate preparation and performance were extraordinary. Her ground game was state of the art and would have, in any other election season, brought her victory.
What Clinton did not speak to was the anger felt by the large mass of white noncollegiate American males. They remembered a time when getting a good paying manufacturing job, buying a home, and raising a family on the man’s income alone seemed part of an American birthright. In this regard, Clinton’s gender likely counted against her. Bill Clinton’s incredible economic performance as President in the 1990s – the 23 million new jobs, the large budgetary surpluses – were apparently a distant memory to those traumatized by the Great Recession. Many of the millennials who came of age since the 2008 election had no personal memory of the 1990s boomtime.
Americans also thought that Trump would keep them safer. The 2016 election took place against a backdrop of terrorist attacks and mass murders by deranged or deluded jihadist wannabees and homegrown self-described “patriots”. Trump talked of walling off Mexico to keep out illegals, and stopping the flow of drugs to stem the tide of the opioid epidemic. In an America worried by the display of disrespect to lawful authority, Trump presented himself as a law and order candidate sympathetic to law enforcement.
Democrats made the same mistake with Trump in 2016 that they made in 1980 with Reagan. They believed that Reagan’s rhetoric was so bizarre and out of place with ordinary Americans that he would be easily defeated. The November 8, 2016, dramatic electoral denouement reminds one of the adage that those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it.
FBI and the Russians, too
There is one other factor which needs to be recounted in looking at the 2016 election results. That is the intervention in the election of two outside entities: the American Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR).
“If Trump wins, I suspect he owes a big ‘thank you’ to Jim Comey,” New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof tweeted on election day.
Politico reported, “There is some evidence that Comey’s actions did erode Clinton’s lead in the polls. Before Comey’s bombshell announcement that he was investigating another batch of emails found on Anthony Weiner’s computer, 538 [a polling website] gave Clinton an 81 percent chance of winning, but it dropped to a 65 percent chance after Comey’s Oct. 28 letter to Congress.”
There is a good chance historians will conclude that Comey’s letter to Congress, announcing he was reopening the email investigation, destroyed Clinton’s campaign. The emails were found on Anthony Weiner’s laptop. Weiner, who was the husband of top Clinton aid Huma Abedin, was being investigated for texting to a fifteen old girl pictures of Weiner half-naked.
The polls were trending towards Clinton at that moment, showing Clinton with double digit leads in the battleground states like Florida and North Carolina, which Trump later won. Political pundits at the time were talking of the Democrats being certain to recapture the Senate, and as to the many Congressional seats Clinton’s expected landslide coattails would bring in with her. The Democrats, at the time this is being written, picked up one Senate seat and seven House seats. Hillary Clinton was not the only potential winner knocked out of the box by Comey.
Trump got the news of Comey’s reopening of the investigation as he was getting ready to speak before a rally. Trump reportedly caucused with his campaign advisers, stepped off the plane, and the over the next eight days proceeded to vitriolically denounce with gusto “Crooked Hillary” for email crimes which she would surely be indicted for. Trump said the nation would be paralyzed by a constitutional crisis if Clinton were elected.
“Maybe the system is not as rigged as I thought,” commented Trump.
Fox News’ Bret Baier broadcast a report that sources at the FBI confirmed that five foreign intelligence agencies had hacked into Weiner’s computer and found confidential information. Baier’s statement was completely and totally false, but by the time he retracted the story two days later it had gone viral in the right-wing blogosphere.
This was enough to rally old time, Clinton-hating Republicans to get behind Trump. These newly enthused Republicans likely provided Trump’s margin of victory.
Vladimir Putin, a former agent in the Communist secret police, the KGB, had an old human motive for having the SVR dump, in the weeks leading up to the election, documents damaging to Clinton. Revenge. Putin blamed the United States for the breakup of the Soviet Union, and both Obama and Clinton for the colored revolutions in the Ukraine and eastern Europe. The SVR had hacked into Clinton campaign manager John Podesta’s email. and then proceeded to release them over WikiLeaks daily in batches, which Fox News in particular played up. The Clinton campaign must have experienced the daily release of embarrassing emails, showing infighting and backstabbing, like the slow drip drop of a Chinese water torture.
Comey’s announcement of his closing the reopened investigation was probably an attempt to make things right. That didn’t stop Trump, as fast as his mind could think and his tongue speak, from repudiating his position earlier in the day that the process was not rigged and the FBI would see justice done. Trump immediately reversed himself and took to once again denouncing a rigged system that would steal the election.
For Hillary Clinton, the damage was done. Comey’s October 28 announcement was a bell which couldn’t be unrung.
This writer, looking at the matter objectively with the end of the campaign and the passage of time, believes that Comey was altruistically motivated by a desire to announce the reopened investigation before someone inside the FBI leaked the Weiner emails. Comey, who is a person of conscience, is likely to spend the rest of his life torturing himself mentally for electing Donald Trump President.
The pony in the room
The noted historian Arthur Schlesinger wrote that American history has been one of cycles, in which pro-government liberals have alternated with small government conservatives.
Democrats will not have to refight old battles over Social Security and Medicare, which Trump has promised to preserve and expand. Trump has promised to replace Obamacare with something better, not leave elder health care to the tender mercies of the market place. He is not talking George W. Bush’s hogwash of privatizing Social Security. Trump recognizes the dangers of deficits, and is uniquely positioned to make the politically painful decisions necessary to balance the federal budget.
If Trump succeeds in reviving the manufacturing industries, he may be planting the seeds for a Democratic renewal. Democrats might want to see this as the pony in the room. A revitalized working class with a strong union movement might be the Democrats’ pathway back to power when the next liberal cycle begins.
By Steven R. Maher
Hillary Clinton may have been defeated in the electoral college, but she apparently has won the majority of votes in the 2016 presidential election.
This happened to candidate Al Gore as well in 2000. Filmmaker Michael Moore has called for the abolition of the electoral college. Given that George W. Bush and Donald J. Trump were not the choice of the majority of American voters, that might not be a bad idea.
During a class in public speaking I took at Nichols College, the professor illustrated the way language can be used to mask a falsehood without telling an outright lie. (This would be something along the line of saying, “It all depends on what the meaning of the word ‘is’ is.”)
During the Cold War, there was a contest to see who built a better car: the United States or the Soviet Union. The American automobile won. Pravda, the Soviet newspaper (ironically, given all the lies it told, Pravda is Russian for “Truth”), reported the results as follows: “In an international competition of automobiles, the Soviet vehicle came in second, while the American vehicle came in next to last.”
The Pravda statement was true. It was a clever way of disguising the truth, which is that Americans made a better car than Russians. Reading it, one would think there were many nations participating in the competition. This wasn’t so, but the Russians were denying the truth without lying.
Another example of this would be: “Donald Trump was elected President in a landslide, with Hillary Clinton coming in second.”
That would be true if you looked at the electoral college only. It would disguise the fact that a majority of the American electorate voted for Clinton for President and rejected Donald Trump.
There is no mandate in this election for Trump.
Michael Moore is right. We should abolish the electoral college.
******
For Donald Trump. Joan and Bob sing Woody:
By Steven R. Maher
Hillary Clinton’s decisive wins in the three Presidential debates was no accident. If she’s elected President on November 8, 2016, Clinton will owe her victory to a well planned and ruthlessly executed undertaking to provoke Donald J. Trump into destroying himself in front of American voters, by manipulating Trump’s own psychological insecurities against him. Clinton’s plans to do so were published by the New York Times on August 29, 2016, one month before the first debate on September 26, 2016.
“Rarely are debate preparations as illuminating about the candidates as a debate itself, but Mrs. Clinton’s and Mr. Trump’s strikingly different approaches to the Sept. 26 face-off are more revealing about their egos and battlefield instincts than most other moments in the campaign,” said the newspaper in the August 2016 article. “Mrs. Clinton, a deeply competitive debater, wants to crush Mr. Trump on live television, but not with an avalanche of policy details; she is searching for ways to bait him into making blunders. Mr. Trump, a supremely confident communicator, wants viewers to see him as a truth-telling political outsider and trusts that he can box in Mrs. Clinton on her ethics and honesty.”
Primary contests differed
Both candidates were shaped by their completely different primary experiences. Clinton, apparently expecting a coronation, found herself barely able to fend off a challenge by Bernie Sanders, a self-avowed socialist and comparatively unknown Vermont Senator. Clinton emerged from the primaries victorious, but shell shocked by her own negative ratings and performance. She understood her own shortcomings as a debater, and was open to new ideas. Clinton knew she needed a new game plan to win.
Trump’s road to the Republican nomination reinforced his inherent self-confidence, a cocksureness than often trespassed into arrogance, and sometimes into megalomania. Trump’s insurgency in the GOP began with a bellicose denunciation of Mexican immigrants as rapists and criminals, and to the amazement of both the political classes and pundits, continued as he won primary after primary. Trump systematically devastated his Republican opponents with slash and burn comments, tagging them with pejorative nicknames like “Little Marco”, “Lying Ted”, or “Low Energy”. Pundits repeatedly wrote Trump’s political obituaries, only to retract them after Trump won the next primary.
Trump understandably developed a belief in his own omnipotence. His rhetorical excesses and personal insults had given him the Republican nomination. Trump had no reason to believe the same tactics wouldn’t bring him victory in the general election.
“I can handle Hillary,” Trump told the New York Times. “I believe you can prep too much for those things [debates]. It can be dangerous. You can sound scripted or phony – like you’re trying to be someone you’re not. I know who I am and how I got here.”
Clinton’s plan
Clinton set up a debate committee within her campaign. They conducted “a forensic-style analysis” of Trump’s debate performances. Unlike a Jeb Bush or Marco Rubio, Hillary Clinton refused to be silenced when Trump repeatedly interrupted her. Most of the time, she kept on speaking as Trump tried to talk over her. There were a few occasions where Clinton wisely said nothing and let Trump continue talking, recognizing that Trump’s line of argument was self-defeating.
Clinton seemed acutely aware that there would be a split screen during the debate, perhaps because during the primaries there was a split screen during her debates with Sanders. Trump, who usually had anywhere from three to sixteen Republican on the debate stage with him, seemed totally unaware that voters were watching him as he grimaced and grunted, assessing Trump partly on that basis. Clinton had a Reaganesque smile on her face as Trump spoke, while Trump looked like the Grinch who stole Christmas as Clinton talked. Clinton’s self-discipline was enormous.
Clinton’s campaign debriefed Trump’s ghostwriter of “The Art of the Deal”, Tony Schwartz, who lived with Trump for eighteen months while co-authoring the book. They consulted with psychologists about Trump, who advised Clinton how she could take advantage of Trump’s male chauvinism by identifying “trigger points” where Clinton could goad Trump with needling remarks; that Clinton was a woman was woven into the fabric of these trigger points.
“Trump has severe attention problems and simply cannot take in complex information — he will be unable to practice for these debates,” said Schwartz. “He’ll use sixth-grade language, he will repeat himself many times, he won’t complete sentences, and he won’t say anything of substance.”
Schwartz’s prediction was clairvoyant. Trump refused an offer from conservative talk radio host Laura Ingraham to play Clinton in a mock debate. While Clinton spent precious, dwindling campaign days in mock debates with Democratic operative Ron Klain playing Trump, Trump stuck to his campaign rallies. And Trump did indeed act like a six grader during the third debate after Clinton called him Vladimir Putin’s puppet: “No puppet. No puppet,” Trump said. “You’re the puppet.”
Machado trigger
The first debate was a disaster for Trump. The last trigger point was the straw that broke Trump’s psyche – Clinton’s retelling of the Alicia Machado story, a Venezuelan beauty contestant Trump allegedly called “Miss Piggy” after she gained weight. Trump couldn’t let go of the Machado tale. He tweeted about Machado at 3:00 AM a few days later, an episode which raised questions about Trump’s mental stability and lack of self-discipline.
Each debate “followed the same pattern” wrote Ezra Klein on the Vox website. “Trump begins calm, but as Clinton needles him, he falls apart, gets angrier, launches bizarre personal attacks, offers rambling justifications for his own behavior, and loses the thread of whatever question was actually asked of him.”
Trump didn’t change his attitude toward debate prep. He refused to participate in mock debates. It was as if Trump had been overcome by inertia. During the third debate Trump admitted he did not prepare for the debate that day, but instead watched Clinton’s commercials attacking Trump all day long.
“We aren’t used to candidates winning not so much because of how they performed but because of how they pushed their opponent into performing,” concluded Klein. “But the fact that we aren’t used to this kind of victory doesn’t make it any less impressive. Hillary Clinton has humbled Donald Trump, and she did it her way.”
****
Oh, Lord, stay with us! pic:R.T.
By Steven R. Maher
Fox News is the cable channel liberals love to hate. While portraying itself as “fair and balanced” in its reporting, flamboyant commentators like Bill O’Reilly, Megyn Kelly and Sean Hannity organize Fox’s ideological base of Republicans and conservatives with their attacks on various villains, especially Hillary Clinton. So, it was with some glee that the left greeted with delight news that Fox founder Bill Ailes was forced to resign under a cloud of controversy due to allegations of sexual harassment.
Now it turns out that two Fox network stars, Bret Baier and Hannity, ended up retracting false statements about Hillary Clinton and her presidential campaign.
“Continue to an indictment”
In a special report, Baier on November 2, 2016, broadcast the following, per a transcript on the “Real Clear Politics website:
“Here’s the deal,” said Baier. “We talked to two separate sources with intimate knowledge of the FBI investigations. • “One: The Clinton Foundation investigation is far more expansive than anybody has reported so far. Several offices separately have been doing their own investigations.
• “Two: The immunity deal that Cheryl Mills and Heather Samuelson, two top aides to Hillary Clinton, got from the Justice Department in which it was believed that the laptops they had, after a narrow review for classified materials, were going to be destroyed. We have been told that those have not been destroyed — they are at the FBI field office here on Washington and are being exploited.
• “Three: The Clinton Foundation investigation is so expansive, they have interviewed and re-interviewed many people. They described the evidence they have as ‘a lot of it’ and said there is an ‘avalanche coming in every day.’ WikiLeaks and the new emails. They are “actively and aggressively pursuing this case.” Remember the Foundation case is about accusations of pay-for-play… They are taking the new information and some of them are going back to interview people for the third time. As opposed to what has been written about the Clinton Foundation investigation, it is expansive.
• “The classified e-mail investigation is being run by the National Security division of the FBI. They are currently combing through Anthony Weiner’s laptop. They are having some success — finding what they believe to be new emails, not duplicates, that have been transported through Hillary Clinton’s server.
“Finally, we learned there is a confidence from these sources that her server had been hacked. And that it was a 99% accuracy that it had been hacked by at least five foreign intelligence agencies, and that things had been taken from that…
• “There has been some angst about Attorney General Loretta Lynch — what she has done or not done,” continued Baier. “She obviously did not impanel, or go to a grand jury at the beginning. They also have a problem, these sources do, with what President Obama said today and back in October of 2015. I pressed again and again on this very issue… The investigations will continue, there is a lot of evidence. And barring some obstruction in some way, they believe they will continue to likely an indictment.”
A meal of his own words
Baier soon found himself having to eat a huge meal consisting of his own words. On Friday November 4, 2016, Baier during a Fox news alert admitted many of the “facts” quoted above were completely and totally false.
“Baier said he relied on a single anonymous source within the FBI for his report about an alleged hack of the server,” the Washington Post reported on November 4, 2016. “’I was quoting from one source about his certainty that the server had been hacked by five foreign intelligence agencies. As of today, there still are no digital fingerprints of a breach, no matter what the working assumption is within the bureau.”
“I explained the phrasing of one my answers to Brit Hume on Wednesday night, saying it was inartful the way I answered the last question about whether the investigations would continue after the election,” the Post further quoted Baier. “And I answered that yes, our sources said it would, they would continue to, likely, an indictment.
“That just wasn’t inartful. It was a mistake and for that I’m sorry. I should have said they will continue to build their case. ‘Indictment,’ obviously, is a very loaded word, Jon, especially in this atmosphere, and no one knows if there would or would not be an indictment, no matter how strong investigators feel their evidence is. It’s obviously a prosecutor who has to agree to take the case and make that case to the grand jury.”
Baier’s false allegations quickly made their way to the Internet and conservative columnists. Pat Buchanan devoted a whole column to what Baier said, stating that the Justice Department should make known before the election if Baier’s story was true, so the American people wouldn’t elect Clinton.
Sean Hannity apologizes
One person who was slow to take down from his website Baier’s retracted falsehoods was Fox commentator Sean Hannity. A few days earlier Hannity apologized after he made false remarks on his radio show that President Barack Obama, First Lady Michelle Obama, and Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren had deleted tweets favoring Hillary Clinton.
“Fact is they didn’t,” Hannity later tweeted. “I humbly apologize. Live radio.”
Jett and Lilac…
…Downtown Worcester: On a cold afternoon this mom puts a plastic covering over the baby carriage to help keep her little one warm and out of the wind. pics:R.T.
By Steven R. Maher
Four days until the Presidential election, the polls continue to trend to Donald J. Trump.
States like Colorado, which were recently considered solidly blue, now are almost dead even.
For Democrats and Hillary Clinton, these are times that try men’s (and women’s) souls. Recently I was talking to a fellow political junkie about the election and he suggested watching Lawrence O’Donnell’s “Last Word” on MSNBC at 10 PM. On Wednesday, November 2, 2016, I took his advice and watched the show, and quickly grabbed the remote to record it. There was an excellent report on a poll of early voters which indicates that there may be an undercurrent of support for Clinton among “Never Trump” Republicans. A poll by “Targetsmart” and William & Mary of early voters show Clinton may be doing much better in the race than mainstream polls indicate.
• Targetsmart’s polling shows that Clinton is capturing 28% of Florida Republican early voters. Thus, when the early voters are merged with potential voters, the actual Clinton vote is 46% versus 40% for Trump. Mainstream polls have shown Trump dead even with Clinton in Florida. Targetsmart is “the only tracking survey with early voting returns in Florida,” said O’Donnell.
• The poll showed Trump leading Clinton in Arizona by 49% to 44%. The same poll shows incumbent Republican Senator John McCain ahead of challenger Ann Kirkpatrick by a 54% to 41% margin.
O’Donnell believes that 5% of the McCain voters voted for Clinton. Clinton has 33 Arizona field offices set up to organize voting by identified Clinton supporters. Arizona Republic reporter Dan Nowicki told O’Donnell that Trump had little organization on the ground in Arizona, and is relying on his campaign rallies and free media to get his voters to the polls. Despite the hit from the FBI probe, Clinton doubled her Arizona media buy to $1 million.
• In Wisconsin, the Marquette University poll – which is considered the gold standard for that state – had Clinton leading Trump by 46% to 40%. Democratic Senatorial candidate Russ Feingold is leading Republican Ron Johnson by a margin of 45% to 44%. The 4% difference between Trump’s standing in the poll and Johnson’s are, according to O’Donnell, Republicans favoring Clinton.
• In swing state Ohio, Republican Senatorial candidate Ron Portman is openly approaching Clinton supporters at campaign events for campaign sign locations. Most polls have Ohio dead even.
It may be too early to count Clinton out. She has invested millions of dollars into setting up field offices in the swing states to get out the vote. As the campaign dwindles down to the last few days and the polls continue to tighten, historians may credit Clinton’s election to her long ago decision to invest in her “get out the vote” organization.
Rose, a few days ago…
By Rosalie Tirella
I’ve hesitated to write about all the politicians up for election (locally and nationally) who’ve been accused of sexually assaulting women. Groping them, coming out of nowhere and touching their vaginas, attempts at strangulation, posting photos of genitalia on State House computer screens.
Has there ever been a sicker crop of political candidates? Yes! Of course there has been! But today we’ve got the Internet, social media, smart phone cameras that also video- and audio-record …these technological marvels can catch, record for posterity and disseminate every punch, every push, every cry…every sick pic.
This behavior is sick – but it happens ALL THE TIME. By angry powerless men AND happy, powerful, rich, connected, politically ambitious men. Many love their wives. Bill Clinton, Donald Trump; and closer to home with allegations of assault, sexual creepiness: State rep candidates Moses Dixon, John Fresolo…Democrats, Republicans, and every political party in between, the pervs are everywhere. Make no mistake: their behavior IS criminal.
I can also write about this issue, like all women, from a personal perspective: having bad experiences with men who thought nothing of hurting me – they felt they were just being “guys.” Taking advantage of their God-given right – after all, I’m just a girl. Like all the girls. Like all the girls that all the creeps treat like shit because they feel ENTITLED. Because they are desensitized.
Former U.S. Prez Bill Clinton, Democratic presidential nominee Hillary’s hubby, was a big pig – probably as big a pig, if not bigger! – than the guy vying to be prez today – Donald Trump. The women, all disgusted and feeling violated, have spoken. We know all the Bill trauma, let’s focus on this presidential election!: Trump has gone up to female strangers and kissed them, touched their vaginas, pressed for sex, pressed for affairs – private parts, private feelings, a woman’s body/soul – her personal space, physical special stuff!
Years ago, when I lived in the ol’ hippie commune I mentioned a few columns ago (a very good experience over all!) I had a guy at the farm-commune come up from behind me and touch my pussy just like Donald Trump did to his victim! It’s 30 years later and I still remember and think about the incident – it still UPSETS AND ANGERS ME. I was in our big walk-in refrigerator in the farm house putting eggs in cartons, I think. I was all alone, bending over – maybe the refrigerator door was ajar. Well, from out of nowhere Randy comes from behind and just tickles my pussy, from behind – through my blue jeans. I jerked up, startled. Creeped out. He just smiled and left the refrigerator. I never told anyone at the farm. Randy was a respected farm hand, a nice guy according to everyone, well liked by all. Where was I, a 19 year old girl, to go with this? My feelings? I kept the encounter to myself – and kept away from Randy the entire time I lived on the commune.
Trump thinks casual pussy touching is ok: he says it is mere LOCKER ROOM shenanigans – joking around! A boy bein’ a boy! Like towel snappin’! Being free.
Wrong, Donald! Listen to all the women who have been creeped out by your behavior over the decades! LISTEN to them.
Yet tons and tons of men DO shit like this all the time and don’t get that it’s wrong, criminal. They pooh pooh the behavior. Parents/families, school, sports teams, churches, society have all validated this behavior; it’s the guys’ privilege, their prerogative – just funnin’. Even flirtin’. After all, they’re so cute, handsome, funny, smart, rich …
Or … they’re so sad, lonely, needy … You fill in your own adjective. Excuses for hurting and shaming women must not be tolerated. Men must be re-educated!
FOR HIS LOCKER ROOM STATEMENT ALONE DONALD TRUMP SHOULD NOT BE VOTED PRESIDENT IN 2016. America needs to be in 2016: AWARE. SENSITIVE. EQUALITY LOVING. These times do not call for Trump. They never did.
Now to state rep candidate Moses Dixon: We were gonna endorse Dixon, but I tend to believe what his girlfriend at the time said about him: He hit her and tried to choke her; she feared him; she feared for her safety; she got herself a lawyer. We women do not do all this stuff – painful, so painful going public with such intimate chaos/hurt – to make things up, to play games with guys.
I think Moses’s Republican opponent is pointless, that Dixon would serve the district in better and smarter fashion than she has, a lightweight of an incumbent if ever there was one. The district NEEDS a strong progressive Democrat! But I CANNOT AND WILL NOT ENDORSE AN ABUSER. Even a politically progressive one. And what does “progressive” mean, if your personal life is so “regressive”?
Once again state rep candidate John Fresolo: an excellent, effective former state rep who really got and advocated for my district: the Kelley Square grime, crime and shootings scene. The Union Hill drug houses, inner-city poverty, job losses, kids struggling to find their futures, old people afraid to live in their houses with all the crime swirling around their homes, their old haunts. And Fresolo delivered the bacon, the goods for the district! For years! He was well liked, considered to be hard working, a true and loyal friend. Heck! His mom lived on Jefferson Street – 7 minutes away from me. Fresolo came up the real Worcester blue collar nitty gritty way, and he represented a district that reflected his roots!
But then out came his genitalia!!!…photos of which were posted, I am praying, accidentally, on every computer in every nook and cranny of our beloved, gold domed, stately State House. Always the claims about Fresolo’s treatment of women dogging Fresolo. Not good. Then finally this, on a personal note, which makes me not wanna endorse him: About a year ago he and I were gonna go out for coffee, maybe a mini-date breakfast kinda thing. I was lookin’, maybe he was, too. Well, within a few hours of making the breakfast date, John was asking me to text him naked pictures of myself!!!! God! It was all so fast – and weird …and gross. I declined – and then canceled our breakfast.
Clearly, Fresolo has issues with women – issues that can – and have – imploded his political career. Too bad – I still think, if elected, he’d do better for the district than incumbent Dan Donahue, a pleasant guy who may just be too sweet and entitled to really get passionate about our issues. And we have all the big city ones right here, folks! A true challenge – that Fresolo would have been up to.
When does the personal become the political?
For me, it’s when the dicks abuse dick power.
Tuesday, Nov. 8 – GET OUT AND VOTE! pic: R.T.
By Edith Morgan
It’s time to “bite the bullet” and VOTE: decide who will be our next president. I have been a fully convinced supporter of Bernie Sanders and still support his ideas. But with the election less than a month away, it’s time to take sides.
This will not be the first time in my many years of voting that none of the candidates is a perfect match for what I would like to see in government, but this time, there is one choice that is, to me, utterly impossible, while the alternative is one that is at least amenable to reason and can be moved.
If “politics is the art of the possible,” then by his own words and deeds, Donald Trump has pretty much let us all know that he is unmoveable, knows better than the rest of us what to do in all cases, and will not follow advice from any of us. He has said he will practice revenge on anyone who attacks him, has the most simplistic answers (when he answers at all) to complex problems, and appears to believe that violence is the answer to all problems. But even more than those traits, what worries me most is his overbearing egotism and self-centeredness.
I was a refugee from Germany and always grow fearful when I hear talk from someone who spent a lifetime gaming our democratic system, using “the little people” and using all the tricks of the authoritarians that are so familiar to me. European history is replete with stories of the self-identified “supermen” who do not believe that the laws apply to them, that they are exempt from them, and can do what they desire. So, under no circumstances could I ever bring myself to vote for this bosom buddy of the evil Roy Cohn, and who employs the techniques athat many in my age group will recognize from the Joe McCarthy days.
I can not stay home on November 8, because I know, from having attended the State Democratic Convention and watched the National Convention, that we have succeeded in including in the platform of the Democratic Party many of the things we had been supporting. It will be up to us not to go into a coma after the election, but to see to it, by constant pressure, that our platform is carried out.
I know that neither I nor anyone can have any influence on Trump. But I know that Hillary Clinton can be moved – and I do not believe that the e-mails, Benghazi (so many of our overseas personnel were killed constantly before the Democrats were in power) and Bill’s transgressions are anywhere near to what we would get under Trump.
Beyond that, there are other things on the ballot – the 4 Questions and other races. As is often heard, “all politics is local” and the decisions that most closely impact us are closer to home.
The top of the ballot gets the most attention, but the rest of it affects us here in Worcester the most. So let’s pick and choose – but get there – and CHOOSE.
Let’s be done with this shit parade!!! pic: R.T.
By Steven R. Maher
Donald J. Trump and Hillary Clinton both claimed victory in the second Presidential debate on October 9. Clinton didn’t score a knock out that ended the campaign that night. Trump didn’t hit a grand slam that would make his campaign unstoppable. This observer’s opinion is that the debate itself was a draw, but Trump, by shoring up his base, gained more from the encounter than Clinton did.
It looked like Clinton’s goal was to avoid a catastrophic error, not score a knockout. Trump’s performance was so superior to his first debate performance that by comparison he looked better. By throwing red meat to his followers (“You’d be in jail”), Trump shored up his base.
Debate backdrop
The debate took place against a backdrop of Trump’s campaign imploding. Three days earlier the Washington Post put online on a video of Trump, unaware he was being recorded, talking about how he groped women without permission, and was entitled to grabbing women’s sex organs uninvited by virtue of Trump’s celebrity.
Dozens of Republican Senators and Congressmen bailed out like rats on a sinking ship from Trump’s Titanic, tweeting out criticisms of Trump or calling on him to withdraw from the race. It almost looked like the party’s establishment had been waiting for this moment to withdraw their support from the embattled Trump, just when he needed it most. One was reminded of Franklin Roosevelt’s observation during World War II that Italian dictator Benito Mussolini had stabbed France in the back, after the Nazis had defeated the French Army, and Mussolini only then declared war on a beleaguered France.
This unseeming sight was such that Fox News’ conservative commentator Bill O’Reilly, a self-described “traditionalist“, derided the Republican deserters as “weasels.” Monday morning O’Reilly stated that Trump won the first third of the debate of the 90-minute debate, no one won the second third, and Clinton won the last third.
What Trump did right
What did Trump do right? He resorted to the politically incorrect excessive rhetoric that reminded his Republican base of the reasons they voted for Trump in the first place. He hauled in four victims of Bill Clinton’s alleged sexual peccadillos for photographing by the media prior to the debate, and then seated them prominently in the front row of the debate audience. He called Clinton the “devil”, said she would be in jail if he were President, and denouncing Bill Clinton’s philandering as worse than Trump’s “locker room talk”.
It was raw red meat for Trump’s supporters. They ate it up. Trump also showed leadership by saying before, during, and after the debate that he would under no circumstances withdraw from the race. This was enough to staunch the bleeding. Suddenly, the rainstorm of public defections of Republican Congressmen dried up. Knowing that hordes of Trump’s followers will materialize in large numbers on Election Day, Republican candidates undoubtedly did not want to antagonize potential Republican votes. They will probably await the next Trump blunder – a 3:00 AM tweet or embarrassing tape of Trump saying something best left unsaid – to abandon the GOP nominee.
The one discordant note the day after the debate came from Speaker of the House Paul Ryan. In a telephone call to GOP Representatives, Ryan told the Congressman participating that each one could take a public stance on Trump that would best benefit their campaign without fear of retaliation, and that he would neither defend Trump in public nor campaign for Trump. But Ryan was emphatic that he would not withdraw his endorsement of Trump. If Trump had performed as disastrously at the second debate as he did at the first, Ryan would have thrown Trump overboard without any further ado, sending Trump off to sleep with the fishes.
Clinton apparently went into the debate with a more subtle agenda. With Trump’s campaign imploding, it looks like she decided to judiciously say as little as possible, letting Trump damage himself by his own statements.
With her polls and popularity growing by the day, with Democrats solidly behind her, and the Republican establishment turning on Trump with a vengeance, Clinton may have decided to go for a stalemate and not risk her hard won frontrunner status. After what Clinton has been through in the last year and a half, Hillary may have concluded the safest thing was to get through the last two debates with a stalemate after her stellar performance in the first round.
On one point, this has proven an excellent approach. Clinton skillfully evaded having the post-debate news cycle being dominated by her husband’s sexual adventures by reminding everyone present about Michelle Obama’s advice to take the high road, and not commenting on the often troubled Clinton marriage. It was superb piece of maneuvering on Clinton’s part.
The parallax view
The word parallax is defined in various dictionaries as an event or object, which seen from different viewpoints, being interpreted totally differently depending on the vantage point of the observer. This phenomena was noted American sociologists by the dissimilar reactions of white Americans and Afro-Americans to the OJ Simpson verdict, or the contrasting responses to the tragic police shootings of African-American males. How events are perceived differently by Afro-Americans has sometimes astonished white Americans.
Men and women, due to their inherent differences and experiences, may have experienced the parallax phenomena regarding this second debate. During the debate Trump paced around the room, stood gripping a chair, or lurking immediately behind Clinton as she answered questions. It looked like Trump was invading Clinton’s personal space. Some of the female commentators stated they were creeped out by Trump’s lurking behind Clinton.
Indeed, Trump’s own campaign manager, Kelly Ann Conway stated in a post-debate interview with Chris Matthews, that she would know if Clinton had a bad night, if the media criticized Trump for standing so close to Clinton. Trump would have been well advised to return to his seat and sit until the next question. After all, Al Gore had done this once in 2000 to George W. Bush during a debate, and was widely perceived as trying to bully Bush, losing many votes in the process.
The key to this election will be the suburban woman voter. The same type of blowback Gore experienced may hit Trump for his behavior on stage, and if current polls are accurate, Clinton will win by a massive margin among this electoral cross-section. Seem from their perspective, Trump supporters saw a man who heroically threatened to put Clinton in jail, called her the Devil, lurked behind her in a threatening manner and saw Trump drag out her husband’s alleged sexual victims for public display like trophies. Seen from the perspective of female voters, with a lifetime of being discriminated against and being disrespected by the male chauvinists of this world, this might have looked like something completely different.