Donald Trump Archives - Page 51 of 55

East Lothian-based Brightwater aims to recruit thousands of SME customers. “A successful cleaning entrepreneur has joined the battle to win business customers from Scottish Water with a focus on small and medium-sized enterprises. Roger Green founded the Brightwater supply operation with e-commerce veteran Richard Rankin…”

Polly ticks, again

“Domestic terrorism” means activities with three characteristics.

It’s been a very newsworthy period, and I haven’t been able to write about any of the polly ticks of it. I was mourning my friend. I’ve been ill.

So here is a potpourri of stories, some of which I think are interrelated.

I have been told to my face, “Racism will go away if we would only stop talking about race!” Exhibit #666 to the contrary is Rick Tyler For Congress, a third-party candidate from Tennessee, who has an unapologetic racist campaign. He has borrowed Donald Trump’s slogan and “improved” on it. There’s been outrage over the candidate’s “Make America White Again” billboard, which he has, reluctantly, taken down.

But it DOES point out the obvious: Not everyone enjoyed the past ‘greatness’ in America.

SCOTUS got one correct

Abigail Fisher’s Supreme Court loss: A massive blow to mediocre white people coasting on their racial privilege. Here’s the relevant piece of information:

“In 2008, 47 such students were admitted who had lower grades or test scores than Fisher. Forty-two of them were white. Only five were people of color.

“Fisher and her lawyer Blum were not challenging the admission of the 42 white students.

“Instead, Fisher’s argument was narrowly that she should have been admitted instead of one of those students of color. It was the case that collapsed any distinction between opposing affirmative action and demanding that white people be given preference.”

BREXIT

Now that UK has left the UN EU, we discover that people are surprised that the position they voted for – as a protest – actually is coming to pass.

There were huge Google spikes in search inquiries for “What is the EU?” in the UK, after the polling closed but before the results were announced. Of course, this doesn’t mean it was just the folks who voted for the annoying portmanteau Brexit who were looking it up; it may also been the 28% who didn’t bother voting at all. The fervent nationalism, anti-immigrant and anti-elite drove the anti-EU agenda.

The vote means a second Scottish independence vote ‘highly likely’. I was opposed to the first vote when Scotland stayed (barely); not so sure about the next one. And will Ireland unite?

The lesson of the Brexit: Take Donald Trump very seriously.

The House of Representatives sit-in

After the massacre in Orlando, there was a boring conversation about whether the events constituted terrorism. Naturallymit does. From the FBI:

“Domestic terrorism” means activities with the following three characteristics:
Involve acts dangerous to human life that violate federal or state law;
Appear intended (i) to intimidate or coerce a civilian population; (ii) to influence the policy of a government by intimidation or coercion; or (iii) to affect the conduct of a government by mass destruction, assassination. or kidnapping; and
Occur primarily within the territorial jurisdiction of the U.S.

SO the church shootings in Charleston, SC: terrorism. But one should balk at limiting the term to those actions perpetrated by a Muslim.

Speaking of which: the National Rifle Association called civil rights icon John Lewis a terrorist “for giving a speech on gun control and staging a sit-in at the House of Representatives.” As the quote goes, “They know not of what they speak.”

This is clear when you hear the primary complaint about the sit-in, which is that it was just a publicity stunt. Obviously, they are not versed in non-violent direct action, for OF COURSE it was a publicity stunt. Most protests are.

Another complains that the Democrats didn’t have a sit-in for other issues. True enough. But sometimes things just reach a tipping point. As Lewis said, “The time to act is now. We will be silent no more. The time for silence is over.”

Forty-nine people were murdered at the Pulse nightclub primarily from a Sig Sauer (modeled in the AK-47, for the pedantic who try to negate the gun control debate with semantics.) Then a Senator from Connecticut, who filibustered for four bills to be voted on; there was a vote, and they were all defeated. The sit-in created a tipping point.

The flaws in the various bills can be discussed. But I think there’s some reasonable bill that would ban assault weapons, get background checks for those buying weapons at gun shows, have a seven-day background check for those who are on the no-fly list to ascertain if they really represent a risk – the aforementioned John Lewis was once on the roster. The NRA has essentially blocked the Centers for Disease Control from getting funding to study the issue of gun violence on communities. A bill would require what has become a dirty word; compromise.

That the Democrats used the opportunity to raise money is definitely true, as I got my fair share of solicitations. But I’m used to both parties using any opportunity to pass the hat; I wish I could be more outraged. I think is true: House Democrats Didn’t Win The Battle, But They Are Preparing To Win The War.

This is a picture of the remains of a banner set on fire on the front lawn of the Albany (NY) Damien Center’s temporary home at the city’s First Lutheran Church this past week. As the Facebook comment read: “In the wake of the Orlando tragedy, it is very disheartening to have this happen in our local community. We appreciate all of our community’s support and love extended and stand in unity with our LGBT community during this time.”

This Broadway sings for Orlando video always makes me verklempt.

News Cliche

My current pet peeve in news articles is the use of the phrase “that no one talks about” or the variation, “that no one is talking about.” For instance, ‘Richard Burr’s the most vulnerable Republican Senator that no one’s talking about’. It seems arrogant. The words suggest that Everyone Else has missed this important angle of a larger narrative, but that writer, singularly, is sage enough to have unearthed it.

Donald Trump is 70

“It is easy to be ‘holier than thou’ and say the voters are stupid etc. That is totally missing the point.”

I’ll admit it: I used to watch the reality show The Apprentice, for the first two seasons. As a business librarian, I thought it was an interesting concept to see which contestant could meet various challenges to get a job in the organization of one Donald J. Trump. The hotelier was pompous and arrogant, but interesting enough. But I never saw Celebrity Apprentice, because that seemed to violate the original premise.

Virtually everyone was wrong about Donald Trump running a sustained, let alone successful campaign for the Republican nomination for President, including me. Except for Ann Coulter, and THAT fact is its own punishment.

Jeff Sharlet wrote in Esquire:
“After hearing Seth Myers shell Donald Trump from the podium, at the 2011 Correspondents’ Dinner, I didn’t think Trump would or could ever want to retry professional politics.

Recently, comedian Jon Stewart referred to Trump as a “man-baby”, but when he left his show in August 2015, he too just saw the comedic aspects of Candidate Orange. I wonder when he would have decided that Trump just isn’t funny anymore, as his protege Larry Wilmore on The Nightly Show did in December 2015?

He has such an…interesting history. His past crude sex talk doesn’t seem to affect Donald Trump’s Amen Corner.

Then there’s the fact that Trump Used His Aliases For Much More — And Worse — Than Gossip. “In his fictional identities, Trump could also be quite threatening… Trump: What’s The Deal recounts a wide variety of Trump lies, exaggerations, and manipulations, but the misconduct of greatest interest to voters may be his threatening litigation in a scheme to deny payment to about 200 illegal Polish immigrants tearing down the old Bonwit Teller building on Fifth Avenue (an act of architectural vandalism). Many of the men lacked hardhats or face masks, used sledgehammers rather than power tools, had to pull out live electric wires with their bare hands, in a building laced with asbestos — all in blatant violation of worker safety laws.”

Trump Didn’t Pay Hundreds Of Employees, which should surprise no one. Plus Trump University was a bigger fiasco that we thought. A recent New York Times investigation notes Even as Donald Trump’s Atlantic City casinos failed, he made millions — and others paid the price. There’s a Biblical parable about doing well with the small things, then you’ll be given responsibility for the larger things. Given his track record, I’m not optimistic about his fiscal policy.

One could easily find ten things about Donald Trump that his supporters should have to defend. But as this cartoon notes, Donald is just recycling.

As a Boston Globe headline read, the Trump rally oozes fear, anxiety, and paranoia. His supporters share a common trait: perceived victimhood.

Yet, my distrust of Trump comes not from his positions, or his statements, but rather his apparent utter lack of conviction. Last month in the Boston Globe:

“Donald Trump says so many things that are offensive, incorrect, and dishonest that it is often impossible to keep up. In just the past few days, he’s flip-flopped on his tax position, his support for raising the minimum wage, and his so-called Muslim ban. He even denied he imitated a public relations executive in the 1980s named John Miller or John Barron, even though he’s publicly joked about it for years and there’s an audiotape to prove it.”

Former Presidential candidate Pat Buchanan Tells Trump to Stay Offensive. He writes, “Why, then, should he apologize for speaking the truth, as he sees it?: But the sentence before: “Assume, as we must, that Trump believes what he said.” And, largely, I don’t.

Can he hold the same policy position for longer than 24 hours? His tax plan is a fraud, but it surely will NOT lose him the election.

And he occasionally softens his rhetoric: “Look, everything, honestly, is going to be up… we’re going to negotiate. I can’t make these decisions myself. We have Congress…we have to deal with a lot of people. I mean, you know, I can’t just take executive orders like Obama and .. it’s me, and lots of congressmen and lots of senators and lots of everything. So I would say that certain things will be changed, certain things will be, stay exactly the same.” So the red meat ranting that won him the nomination now pivots to a seemingly rational being. Except when it doesn’t.

No wonder they are mocking Trump, even in New Zealand.

Trump aide Paul Manafort called the presidency the “ultimate reality show.” And Trump is way better at playing it than the others. He may have already destroyed the GOP by pointing out its irrelevance to his nomination.

This Quora response is at least partially correct: “As a Wall Street Journal article recently put, Trump did to the Republican party what AirBnb did to the hotel industry. Airbnb ignored the middlemen and directly went to the hosts & guests – with the simplest model. In the same way, Trump made the party irrelevant and directly went to the voters.

“It is easy to be ‘holier than thou’ and say the voters are stupid etc. That is totally missing the point. Trump’s rise has revealed a fundamental flaw in the US political system – its effective two-party system doesn’t give a voice to diverse interests.”

‘President Trump?’ Here’s How He Says It Would Look. And I think it could very well happen. No, that is NOT my desire, but rather my fear. And it’ll be his disgusting victory lap, rather than Obama’s measured response, that we’ll hear after a national tragedy, in this case, after 49 people died in the Orlando attack.

Listen to Ken Burns at Stanford University’s June 12 commencement ceremony: “For 216 years, our elections, though bitterly contested, have featured the philosophies and characters of candidates who were clearly qualified. That is not the case this year. One is glaringly not qualified.

“So before you do anything with your well-earned degree, you must do everything you can to defeat the retrograde forces that have invaded our democratic process, divided our house, to fight against, no matter your political persuasion, the dictatorial tendencies of the candidate with zero experience in the much-maligned but subtle art of governance; who is against lots of things, but doesn’t seem to be for anything, offering only bombastic and contradictory promises, and terrifying Orwellian statements; a person who easily lies, creating an environment where the truth doesn’t seem to matter; who has never demonstrated any interest in anyone or anything but himself and his own enrichment…”

From The New Yorker:

If Trump came to power, there is a decent chance that the American experiment would be over. This is not a hyperbolic prediction; it is not a hysterical prediction; it is simply a candid reading of what history tells us happens in countries with leaders like Trump.

Countries don’t really recover from being taken over by unstable authoritarian nationalists of any political bent, left or right—not by Peróns or Castros or Putins or Francos or Lenins or fill in the blanks. The nation may survive, but the wound to hope and order will never fully heal. Ask Argentinians or Chileans or Venezuelans or Russians or Italians—or Germans. The national psyche never gets over learning that its institutions are that fragile and their ability to resist a dictator that weak.

Finally: “Last of all comes…the tyrant…In the early days of his power, he is full of smiles, and he salutes everyone whom he meets…making promises in public and also in private, liberating debtors, and distributing land to the people and his followers, and wanting to be so kind and good to everyone…This…is the root from which a tyrant springs” -Plato

This is what overt racism looks like

Ironic then that Trump refers to Judge Curiel as a “hater.”

Racism is one of those words so ugly that people will contort all logic to deny its existence, especially when it comes to themselves. So I was THRILLED when Leon Wolf, in the ultraconservative website Red State, wrote on 3 June: “This is What Overt Racism Looks Like.”

I am sorry, but there is nothing else to call this. The Wall Street Journal has… released an interview with Donald Trump in which Trump explains his repeated and continued attacks on Gonzalo Curiel, the judge assigned to the Trump University case. Curiel’s decision to release records related to the case in response to a public interest request filed by the Washington Post has clearly infuriated Trump…

In a rambling tirade against the judge…, Trump said, among other things, that Curiel was “a Mexican, we think.” (Curiel, as it happens, is from the Chicago area, but his parents are of Mexican heritage.) The WSJ finally got around to asking Trump the question that should have been asked from the first moment he mentioned the judge’s ethnicity, which was actually a couple months ago when Curiel refused to dismiss the case on summary judgment. That question, of course, is “Why would you bring up the judge’s ethnicity at all?”

An excellent question. Note that NOW Trump says his words were misconstrued. I call BS.

Trump’s answer was, shall we say, revealing:

…Mr. Trump said U.S. District Judge Gonzalo Curiel had “an absolute conflict” in presiding over the litigation given that he was “of Mexican heritage” and a member of a Latino lawyers’ association. Mr. Trump said the background of the judge, who was born in Indiana to Mexican immigrants, was relevant because of his campaign stance against illegal immigration and his pledge to seal the southern U.S. border. “I’m building a wall. It’s an inherent conflict of interest,” Mr. Trump said.

So, because the judge is of the same ethnicity as the people who would be presumably kept out of the United States by a wall, he clearly cannot be fair and impartial. Donald Trump is suggesting an ethnic litmus test for federal judges.

Think about what Trump is saying for a minute. Forget that Trump himself repeatedly bragged on the primary campaign trail that he would win the Hispanic vote and focus on what he is now saying: he is saying that no Hispanic person on earth can be trusted to give him a fair hearing. He is saying that no one – even a Mexican born in America – can be trusted rule impartially in accordance with the law simply because of Trump’s stance on whether there ought to be a wall on the Southern border.

This was not a slip of the tongue that he walked back. In fact, on CBS’s Face the Nation this past Sunday, he confirmed his intent.

Keep in mind, Curiel himself is not an illegal immigrant, or even an immigrant. I have no idea whether his parents were even immigrants or illegal immigrants. They are of Mexican heritage, therefore he cannot be trusted to pass judgment on Trump, who supports a wall on the Mexican border.

Look, there’s no other way to say this: that’s just overt racism. Saying that this guy has a “conflict of interest” against Trump solely based on his Mexican heritage is also an accidental admission on Trump’s part that he is opposed to Mexicans.

And THAT is what racism looks like in this modern world. It’s not separate water fountains or derogatory names. It’s suggesting that a judge of an ethnic minority, at least when he’s in conflict with Trump, cannot be trusted to give a fair hearing on an issue that affects his tribe.

Might not a white male be biased IN FAVOR of the wall? And how would you measure this? Or is that one should automatically disqualify women judges in cases of contraception, black judges in any case about racial discrimination, LGBT judges in gay equality cases, any judge that isn’t a Christian in the separation of church and state doctrine, et al.? The implication is that the non-minority (or man) would be MORE fair, somehow, makes no sense to me.

Or should we ban white judges from trials involving white defendants?

It is ironic then that Trump refers to Judge Curiel as a “hater.” Because it is the Republican nominee for President who’s showing the disdain. In the short term, painting the attributes of oneself onto another may work in the short term, but is generally rooted out.

“I love Hispanics!” is a weird thing to say about a group of people who you say are inherently untrustworthy when it comes to anything they say about you, Mr. Trump.

He’s not dog whistling it any more. He’s not doing the wink-and-nod thing. He’s flat out saying: you cannot trust anything this guy says about me because he’s a Mexican. If that isn’t racism, I don’t know what is.

In the comments, in the various news columns about this story, several people have said, “But Trump has a point.” Yes, the “point” is that Trump is making racist observations, and one rationalizing their legitimacy means those commenters ought to check their own biases.

No, he’s not really going to build a wall, and let Mexico pay for it. He will not be able to get every Muslim to be blocked at the border. But he has made it the norm to be racist and to vent these kinds of un-American things.

Yet the Republican leaders reacted to Trump’s most recent racist rantings as though they came “totally out of left field,” when it’s been consistent with his message literally since he announced for president. The question is whether the party will continue to disavow their candidate’s bigotry.

And Trump may be interfering with the due process of the legal proceeding. The judge cannot comment on the case, per the code of conduct. HuffPo says: “Legal scholars said Trump could face consequences for slamming the judge, although many have speculated that Curiel was unlikely to sanction him formally.” The judge can, but probably WON’T slap down Trump because it’ll be seen by others through both a political and racial lens.

The Central Park jogger and Donald Trump

The case of the Central Park jogger made headlines well beyond New York City in the late 1980s and early 1990s.

This photo of The Donald along with a picture of a full page advertisement was reposted on Facebook by my fellow former Binghamtonian, John Hightower. He writes that “the $85,000 worth of ads, ran in May 1989 in The New York Times, The Daily News, The New York Post and New York Newsday. The 600-word appeal, signed DONALD J. TRUMP, is titled ‘BRING BACK THE DEATH PENALTY. Bring Back Our Police!'” This involved a woman jogger being attacked in New York City’s Central Park a month earlier.

“FIVE juvenile males, including 4 BLACK and one HISPANIC were arrested and tried. They came to be referred to as THE CENTRAL PARK FIVE. After their 1990 trials, they received SENTENCES ranging from 5 to 15 years. They individually spent between 6 to 14 YEARS in PRISON.

“HOWEVER, 12 years later, in 2002, a person, with NO relation to the accused, a male, CONFESSED to raping the jogger. DNA EVIDENCE confirmed his involvement. If ‘MR. KNOW IT ALL-TRUMP’ had HIS way, the INNOCENT FIVE would have been EXECUTED. The convictions against the Central Park Five were vacated, and they have SUED the City and the State. So far they have received about $40 million, and additional legal settlement is being sought.”

PLUS

The mind of Donald Trump. Narcissism, disagreeableness, grandiosity — a psychologist investigates how Trump’s extraordinary personality might shape his possible presidency.

Why D.C.’s think tanks can’t figure out Trump.

The Nazi Tweets of ‘Trump God Emperor’.

There will be a motion picture based on sexually explicit Donald Trump fanfiction.

Tom the Dancing Bug: Donald and John, a Boy and His Imaginary Publicist.