Category Archives: 2016 President Election

Donald Trump declines to disavow David Duke

The New York Times reports: Donald J. Trump declined on Sunday to disavow the support of David Duke, the white nationalist and ex-Ku Klux Klansman, who has called Mr. Trump “by far the best candidate.”

Mr. Duke, a former member of Congress who once ran for president, is famous for his white supremacist views and is generally considered a pariah in politics. In an interview with CNN, Mr. Trump pleaded ignorance about him.

“Well, just so you understand, I don’t know anything about David Duke,” Mr. Trump said. “I don’t know anything about what you’re even talking about with white supremacy or white supremacists.” [Continue reading…]

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Umberto Eco’s definitions of modern fascism seem ever more prescient

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Christopher Dickey writes: Here in Europe, people know a thing or two about fascism.

It is not, as it was when Bernie Sanders was young, a term tossed around by left-wing activists to describe anyone opposed to progressive ideas, whether presidents or parents.

No, here in Europe, by various names — as Fascism, Nazism, Stalinism — it was the living, vibrant, vicious force that led directly to the most horrific global war in history. More recently, it took root and lingered as an active ideology in Latin America, providing a crude foundation for the repressive revolutions and dirty wars that raged from the ’60s through the ’80s.

Indeed, the fundamentals of fascism are with us today, in the killing fields of ISIS-land, in the madness of North Korea, and also, sadly, in battered democracies from newly militaristic Japan to xenophobic, isolationist parties in Europe. And, yes, in somewhat more subtle forms fascism can be found on the campaign trail in the U.S. of A.

When I saw last week that the great Italian intellectual Umberto Eco had died, I was reminded of a long essay he wrote for the New York Review of Books more than two decades ago. And, re-reading it now, it strikes me as an important guide to our thinking about this powerful, almost primal political force, its seductive strength and its inherent, enormous dangers. [Continue reading…]

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Donald Trump’s grandfather was an illegal migrant and ‘Trojan horse’

By Stefan Manz, Aston University

During New Year celebrations in Cologne, there were more than 500 reported attacks against women, including robbery and sexual assault. Most of the suspects are of North African origin, and some are thought to have entered the country illegally or as asylum seekers.

The news was welcome campaign fodder for US presidential hopeful Donald Trump. Referring to German chancellor Angela Merkel’s open door policy on refugees from Syria, he commented in his usual rhetoric: “I don’t know what the hell she is thinking”.

Trump went on to say that he did not want to have “people coming in from migration from Syria (sic)” as these were aggressive young men who “look like they should be on the wrestling team”. More dangerously still, Trump believed such people could act as terrorist “Trojan horses”.

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In political leanings, Catholics mirror average Americans

Since Catholics make up the largest religious denomination in the U.S. (69.5 million members, which is 22% of the population), it makes sense that their political leanings would be close to the average among Americans of all and no religious affiliations.

Still, since in the media there is a tendency to associate religious with right-wing, it’s worth noting that Catholics lean Democratic rather than Republican — 44% vs. 37% — by exactly the same proportions as do all U.S. adults.

Pew Research breaks down the numbers for all religious groups:

The political preferences of U.S. religious groups

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Sheldon Adelson is hedging his bets in this presidential race

Politico reports: Few of the Adelsons’ associates wanted to be quoted talking about the famously temperamental self-made billionaire, who is known for valuing loyalty and holding grudges. But, with Tuesday’s GOP presidential caucuses in his backyard looming, several expressed concern that Adelson’s hesitance could have long-lasting consequences. Time is running short, they say, for major donors to fund an assault to try to slow the momentum of GOP front-runner Donald Trump.

While Adelson, whose political involvement is largely animated by his support for Israel’s defense, is thought to distrust Trump on the issue, an Adelson adviser suggested his boss had no plans to spend big on behalf of — or against — any candidate in the tumultuous GOP primary.

“I don’t see any involvement until there is a nominee,” the adviser told POLITICO.

If Adelson sticks with that plan — a big “if” given his reputation for writing massive checks with little warning — it could remove a major source of anti-Trump cash and also could hamper Republicans’ general election chances up and down the ballot.

The prospect is a serious source of concern for other Republican megadonors and operatives, who have offered a range of explanations for Adelson’s sudden tightening of his purse strings.

“Nobody knows exactly why he’s still on the sidelines or when he might come off,” said one operative with ties to Adelson, “but the party needs him to get in the game before it’s too late.” [Continue reading…]

In the past, Adelson’s concern has been to back the candidate who he thinks would best serve his interests. His greater interest right now might not be to support the stop-Trump campaign but instead to avoid making Trump his enemy. Both Trump and Adelson operate in a world where loyalty gets rewarded and enemies get punished.

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Trump’s remarks on pigs’ blood elicit challenge from sister of Chapel Hill victim

The New York Times reports: Suzanne Barakat, the sister of a Muslim student killed alongside his wife and sister-in-law last year in an attack in North Carolina, challenged Donald J. Trump to meet with her after a speech in which he spoke approvingly of killing Islamic terrorists with bullets dipped in the blood of pigs.

Ms. Barakat, 28, said the comments and other anti-Muslim rhetoric from Mr. Trump, including a proposal to ban Muslims from entering the country, have contributed to an atmosphere of intolerance that she fears could have deadly consequences.

“It allows for the Average Joe to see Muslims the way Craig Hicks saw my brother and his wife of six weeks and her sister,” she said, referring to the man who killed her relatives last February. “As ‘The Other,’ as subhuman, because of their faith.” [Continue reading…]

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Pope Francis and the Republican Party’s unchristian values

Religion should be kept out of politics — unless we’re talking about abortion, gay marriage, family values or any other issue where apparently it’s reasonable for religion to enter politics.

But for an Argentine pope to shove his nose into a U.S. presidential election, ranks in audacity close to Fidel Castro threatening America.

No doubt there are lots of Republicans who are convinced that Francis is really just a commie dressed in white — another Latino revolutionary out to stir up trouble.

In fact, the remarks the pope made yesterday that were reported as an attack on Trump were simply a rather basic enunciation of Christian values — as expressed in the Sermon on the Mount.

Maybe the Republicans would prefer the pope to refrain from preaching altogether. They might be happier if henceforth he simply be the Catholic church’s chief smiley face.

Michael Sean Winters writes: The difference could not be more stark. Pope Francis, in Ciudad Juarez yesterday, called for justice for migrants and an economic structure that serves people before profits and measures its health by the degree to which it includes everybody. Meanwhile, the Republican party’s presidential candidates are falling all over themselves to see who can be the toughest on immigration and the idea that profit is not the final arbiter of economic relations is viewed not just skeptically but as a kind of heresy.

The pope gave three talks in Ciudad Juarez, one to prisoners, one to workers, and a sermon at a Mass alongside the border with the United States. All three were a kind of rhetorical photographic negative of the attitudes we see championed by today’s Republican Party. [Continue reading…]

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Trump: I’ll be ‘neutral’ on Israel and Palestine

The Hill reports: GOP presidential front-runner Donald Trump on Wednesday refused to pick sides in the conflict between Israel and Palestine.

“You know, I don’t want to get into it,” he told hosts Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski during a MSNBC town hall in Charleston, S.C.

“If I win, I don’t want to be in a position where I’m saying to you [my choice] and the other side now says, ‘We don’t want Trump involved,'” the real estyate mogul said of potentially winning the presidency and then brokering a lasting peace deal.
“Let me be sort of a neutral guy,” the billionaire added. “I have friends of mine that are tremendous businesspeople, that are really great negotiators, [and] they say it’s not doable.

“You understand a lot of people have gone down in flames trying to make that deal. So I don’t want to say whose fault it is — I don’t think that helps.” [Continue reading…]

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Trump campaign manager: Assad ‘keeping things in check’ in Syria

BuzzFeed reports: Donald Trump’s campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski, said in an interview on Tuesday that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad is “keeping things in check” in the war-torn country.

The conflict in Syria, which has been ongoing for four-and-a-half years, has resulted in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Syrians, and created a refugee crisis in the region. Trump has said he wants to work with Russia on Syria to defeat ISIS and opposes overthrowing Assad.

Appearing on the John Fredericks Show, Lewandowski, defending Trump’s position, said, “He is very, very bad individual, but he is an individual who, in his country, is keeping things in check because he is such a bad guy they’re afraid of him.” [Continue reading…]

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The more Donald Trump defies his party, the more his supporters cheer

The New York Times reports: Mark Jebens, a veteran of 22 years in the Marine Corps, found no fault with Donald J. Trump’s scathing criticism that President George W. Bush “lied” about weapons of mass destruction while leading the United States into war in Iraq.

“At the end of the day, a lot of good Marines and sailors and airmen died over something that wasn’t there,” said Mr. Jebens, who served three combat tours in Iraq. “So you’ve got to ask tough critical questions. In the military we called it a debrief or a hot wash.”

Mr. Trump’s hot wash of Mr. Bush in a debate on Saturday, including a suggestion that he did not heed intelligence warnings before the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, convinced many Republicans that Mr. Trump had finally gone too far, tarring a former president who is popular in military-friendly South Carolina, and uttering charges that Rush Limbaugh, for one, called “liberal Democrat lingo.”

But numerous military veterans interviewed at Trump rallies in South Carolina this week, including Mr. Jebens, said they had no problem with Mr. Trump’s comments, even if they did not entirely agree with him. [Continue reading…]

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How Scalia’s death might help our planet

Eric Holthaus writes: Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia’s death at a remote Texas ranch has triggered a political earthquake and instantly changes the outlook for a host of high-profile issues the court is currently considering. But perhaps none of these are as consequential as the fate of the planet itself. As Climate Central’s John Upton wrote, “in dying, Scalia may have done more to support global climate action than most people will do in their lifetimes.”

Scalia’s death comes just days after the Supreme Court issued an unprecedented stay that temporarily blocked the implementation of the Clean Power Plan, Obama’s centerpiece climate legislation. The Clean Power Plan isn’t perfect, but it was on pace to double the already accelerating rate of coal-fired power plant retirements by 2040. Last week’s surprising action by the Supreme Court — dubbed a “nightmare scenario” by the Hill — raised substantial fears among environmentalists that the court’s conservatives might eventually block the Clean Power Plan completely. At the very least, the stay buys some time for Republican hopefuls in this year’s presidential election; if one were to win, he could just cancel the executive order that launched the plan in the first place.

The stay is still in place, but the climate law experts I talked to say Scalia’s death greatly boosts the eventual survival chances of the Clean Power Plan. A 4-4 court would guarantee that the lower court ruling would stand—and the D.C. Circuit Court is expected to approve the plan. [Continue reading…]

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Peter Van Buren: Minimum wage, minimum chance

To say that we live on a 1% planet isn’t just a turn of phrase. In fact, it would undoubtedly be more accurate to speak of a .1% or a .01% planet.  In recent years, wealth and income inequalities have grown in a notorious fashion in the United States — and, as it turns out, globally as well. In January, Oxfam released a report on the widening gap between global wealth and poverty. It found that, between 2010 and today, the wealth of the poorest half of the planet’s population fell by a trillion dollars, a drop of 41%, while that of the richest 62 people (53 men and nine women) increased by half a trillion dollars.  Put another way, those 62 billionaires were wealthier than the bottom 50% of the world’s people, while the richest 1% owned more than the other 99% combined.  The direction in which we’re heading is obvious.  Just consider that, in 2010, it took 388 of the super-rich to equal the holdings of the bottom 50%; now, that number is 326 people smaller.

Keep that trend line in mind as you read about TomDispatch regular Peter Van Buren’s latest adventures in the minimum-wage economy. Back in 2014, he described for this site how, having lost his State Department job for being a whistleblower on the Iraq War, he fell for a time into the low-wage world. As he wrote, “And soon enough, I did indeed find myself working in exactly that economy and, worse yet, trying to live on the money I made. But it wasn’t just the money. There’s this American thing in which jobs define us, and those definitions tell us what our individual futures and the future of our society is likely to be. And believe me, rock bottom is a miserable base for any future.” His experiences in a big-box retail store inspired him to write his novel, Ghosts of Tom Joad: A Story of the #99Percent. As last year ended, he returned to the minimum-wage world, now — thanks in particular to Bernie Sanders — part of the national conversation. And here’s what he found. Tom Engelhardt

Nickel and dimed in 2016
You can’t earn a living on the minimum wage
By Peter Van Buren

When presidential candidate Bernie Sanders talks about income inequality, and when other candidates speak about the minimum wage and food stamps, what are they really talking about?

Whether they know it or not, it’s something like this.

My Working Life Then

A few years ago, I wrote about my experience enmeshed in the minimum-wage economy, chronicling the collapse of good people who could not earn enough money, often working 60-plus hours a week at multiple jobs, to feed their families. I saw that, in this country, people trying to make ends meet in such a fashion still had to resort to food benefit programs and charity. I saw an employee fired for stealing lunches from the break room refrigerator to feed himself. I watched as a co-worker secretly brought her two kids into the store and left them to wander alone for hours because she couldn’t afford childcare. (As it happens, 29% of low-wage employees are single parents.)

At that point, having worked at the State Department for 24 years, I had been booted out for being a whistleblower. I wasn’t sure what would happen to me next and so took a series of minimum wage jobs. Finding myself plunged into the low-wage economy was a sobering, even frightening, experience that made me realize just how ignorant I had been about the lives of the people who rang me up at stores or served me food in restaurants. Though millions of adults work for minimum wage, until I did it myself I knew nothing about what that involved, which meant I knew next to nothing about twenty-first-century America.

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The pragmatic case for Bernie Sanders

Christopher D Cook writes: As Bernie Sanders defies expectations with a resounding New Hampshire victory and a virtual tie in Iowa, Democratic Party leaders still insist Hillary Clinton is the pragmatic choice to beat Republicans and bring effective leadership and change — if incremental — to Washington. Clinton and her supporters frame the race, and her appeal, as a matter of “ready on day one” leadership and “get things done” practicality. But what does the record show, and what do leadership and pragmatism really mean?

On the pragmatics of electability, nearly every major national poll consistently shows Sanders equaling or bettering Clinton against all Republicans. Polls show Sanders nearly tied with Clinton nationally and rising. On electability, if anything, Sanders has the edge right now. There is nothing empirical to suggest Clinton’s superior electability — quite the contrary given her loss to Barack Obama in 2008 and her flagging campaign this year. While Clinton might gain more moderate Independents (particularly against a polarizing Republican nominee), Sanders can inspire massive Democratic and liberal Independent turnout and likely win over many white working-class swing voters.

Clinton’s most persistent attack—parroted by mainstream media — claims that Sanders’s agenda is perhaps laudable but unrealistic. Moderation is more effective, she claims. However, this is a misreading of American politics and factual comparisons of the candidates’ track records. [Continue reading…]

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For Bernie Sanders, foreign policy is an afterthought

David Ignatius writes: Sanders’s statements on Syria suggest that he would take a position embraced by many self-described realists. His first priority, he has said, would be a “broad coalition, including Russia,” to defeat the Islamic State. “Our second priority must be getting rid of [President Bashar al-Assad], through some political settlement, working with Iran, working with Russia.”

Some critics would argue that it’s immoral to make replacing a leader who used chemical weapons a secondary concern. But Sanders’s defenders could argue that foreign policy is about making clear choices, especially when they aren’t easy.

Foreign policy just hasn’t been on Sanders’s radar: His campaign website lists 22 important issues. “Income and wealth inequality” is at the top, and 19 are about domestic policy. Just three involve foreign concerns, and one of these is climate change, which Sanders has described as the biggest threat to national security.

Unease about Sanders partly reflects the fact that he seems to have no real foreign policy mentors. The Sanders campaign made comical missteps in the past few weeks when it tried to name his key foreign policy advisers. Several of them said they had briefed the candidate just once or twice; one was a full-time White House staffer. [Continue reading…]

In place of foreign policy advisers, Sanders is most likely relying on foreign policy advice: the less said, the better.

Politically, that might be sound advice during an election campaign, but it has a corrosive effect because it does nothing to challenge the affliction that always distorts the way America deals with the world: the prevailing sense that the rest of the world doesn’t matter.

Isolationists can’t effectively tackle global issues — including climate change.

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Donald Trump’s history as a reckless gambler

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Michael Crowley writes: In January 1992, a Japanese one-time billionaire named Akio Kashiwagi was found dead in his palatial home near Mt. Fuji. The scene was gruesome. The house’s white paper screens were spattered with blood. The 54-year-old had been stabbed as many as 150 times. By some reports the weapon of choice was a samurai-style sword.

The crime was never solved, though it bore the hallmarks of a killing by Japan’s criminal yakuza. Ostensibly a real estate investor, Kashiwagi was a mysterious figure reputed to have underworld connections. He was also one of the world’s top five gamblers, a “whale” in casino parlance, willing to wager $10 million in a single gaming bender.

And that is how he crossed paths with Donald J. Trump, then a budding Atlantic City casino mogul. In 1990 the two men had an epic and remarkably personal showdown in which millions of dollars changed hands in a matter of days, before it all ended in a flurry of recriminations. One of the Japanese mogul’s last statements to the U.S. media, through an aide, involved his plans to burn a copy of Trump’s book, The Art of the Deal.

After his murder, the New York Times reported that he owed at least $9 million to casinos in Atlantic City and Las Vegas. One unnamed casino Atlantic City executive told the paper that Kashiwagi had owed the Trump Plaza Hotel and Casino $4 million.

Trump is obsessed with winning, a topic he usually brings up in the context of his merciless deal-making style. But a crucial question about any would-be president who may be confronted with questions of war and peace is his attitude toward risk. Some presidents — Barack Obama comes to mind — are highly averse to it. Others roll the dice, as George W. Bush did when he invaded Iraq.

The story of Akio Kashiwagi, drawn from Trump’s memoirs and news accounts from the day, offers a revealing window into Trump’s instincts. It shows that Trump isn’t just a one-time casino owner — he’s also a gambler, prone to impulsive, even reckless action. In The Art of the Comeback, published in 1997, Trump explains that until he met Kashiwagi, he saw himself as an investor who dealt only in facts and reason. But his duel with the great whale in action made him realize “that I had become a gambler, something I never thought I was.”

Perhaps just as important, when gambling failed him, Trump didn’t quit: He doubled down. But he did it shrewdly, summoning a RAND Corporation mathematician to devise a plan that would maximize his chance of fleecing his Japanese guest.

And it worked. Kind of. In Trump’s recollection, which he shared for this story, his showdown with Kashiwagi was another one of his many great wins. Just don’t look too hard at the ledger. [Continue reading…]

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The Clintons earned over $3.5 million in paid addresses to pro-Israel organizations

Sarah Lazare and Max Blumenthal report: Bill and Hillary Clinton are under increasing scrutiny from the mainstream press over paid speeches they have given to big banks in exchange for millions of dollars. According to CNN, the couple has earned a total of $153 million in lecture fees from companies and organizations affiliated with the financial industry.

But the media has been conspicuously silent about the large sums the Clintons have raked in from paid addresses to pro-Israel organizations, including the Jewish National Fund (JNF), which directly participates in the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians and Bedouin citizens of Israel. An evaluation of Hillary Clinton’s public disclosures from 2001 to 2015 shows that she and Bill, and their daughter, Chelsea, have earned roughly $4 million in speaking fees from pro-Israel organizations, including JNF and organizations allied with the right-wing government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The vast majority of these documented payments — $3,599,999 — have gone toward the Clintons’ personal income, and up to $450,000 has been funneled into the Clinton Foundation. [Continue reading…]

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The conservative playbook for keeping ‘dark money’ dark

By Robert Faturechi, ProPublica

How do you stop states and cities from forcing more disclosure of so-called dark money in politics? Get the debate to focus on an “average Joe,” not a wealthy person. Find examples of “inconsequential donation amounts.” Point out that naming donors would be a threat to “innocents,” including their children, families and co-workers.

And never call it dark money. “Private giving” sounds better.

These and other suggestions appear in internal documents from conservative groups that are coaching activists to fight state legislation that would impose more transparency on the secretive nonprofit groups reshaping U.S. campaign finance.

The documents obtained by ProPublica were prepared by the State Policy Network, which helps conservative think tanks in 50 states supply legislators with research friendly to their causes, and the Conservative Action Project (CAP), a Washington policy group founded by Edwin Meese, a Reagan-era attorney general.

Dark money is the term for funds that flow into politics from nonprofit groups, which can accept donations of any size but, unlike political action committees, are not required by federal law to reveal the identities of their donors. The anonymity has been upheld by courts that cite as precedent a 1958 Supreme Court ruling that the state of Alabama could not demand that the NAACP turn over a list of its members.

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