Clinton is guilty of SWF (Speaking While Female), and emailgate is just a reminder to us all that she has no business doing what she’s doing and must be punished, for the sake of all decent women everywhere.
FBI Chief James Comey has shown himself to be another bully of the same kind. He has repeatedly talked down to Clinton, admonishing her as a bad parent would a 5-year-old. He has accused her of “poor judgment” and called her use of a private email server “extremely careless.”
It gets said the US military can fight at most two and a half wars at any one time. What does that mean?
That is a statement of military capability. That is not a fiscal statement. Fighting two and a half wars non stop would be a surefire way for America to go bankrupt.
War is meant to be a weapon of last resort. It is not just because of democracy and diplomacy and peace and bloodshed and the ugliness and the unintended consequences. It is also dollars and cents. Wars are terribly expensive.
From the macro perspective, considering America was already fighting two wars in the Bush era, it was but inevitable that America would step back in the Obama era. The pendulum needed to swing.
America's costs in Iraq and Afghanistan ran into the trillions. That was one of the three or four reasons why the 2008 financial meltdown happened. Money is not free.
So how many wars can America fight at any one point in time? Two and a half.
But ideally America should fight zero wars. America should keep the powder dry, just in case. But, for the most part, America should work extra time to exhaust all other options first. Armies are almost like nuclear weapons, not meant to be used.
But when you do use them, you want to make sure all peaceful options were exhausted first, and they are in top shape, and the mission is well defined and achievable, and you are in and out. Open ended wars are not even wars.
America's founding mission is a total spread of democracy. Organizing immigrants and giving them voting rights in at least the big cities would go a long way. The "hombres" can be soldiers of democracy. The forces of democracy are proving less aggressive about using digital tools to spread democracy than those who would use the same to suppress peoples. Taking microfinance to two billion women would further the cause of democracy like few other things. Grassroots political organizing is the best way to spread democracy. It is also much less expensive than wars. And if you handle immigration right it is all paid for. People do it themselves. Remittance has done way more for the Global South than foreign aid ever did. Stop demonizing people.
In the early 2000s Russia actually expressed interest in joining NATO. Russia apparently was rebuffed. That is mind boggling from the peace perspective.
It can be imagined the military industrial complex in America did not like the idea. When you don't have an enemy it is hard to justify a large defense budget.
On the other hand Russia has not exactly gone down the path of democracy. And it does not seem to have discovered some alternate path to putting its economy on a sound path to rapid progress.
Russia is Second World.
Be that as it may it is for Russia and America as the two leading nuclear powers on the planet to take the lead to creating a world free of nuclear weapons. Why keep weapons that everyone knows can never be used? Why leave the options open for false alarms that might end human civilization?
And while the two powers figure out their mutual dynamic, Syria suffers. The innocents in Syria suffer. It is a sad situation.
America could have done a much better job of winning the Cold War. It did not do enough to help Russia in the aftermath. It did not do a good enough job of face saving of a defeated rival.
And it is not too late for Russia to choose the path of democracy as the only available way to rapid economic progress and true greatness.
Letting go of Assad would be a good small step in that direction. Assad is irredeemable. Assad is deplorable. This guy has attacked his own people like Hitler attacked people in other countries.
What drives people? When your professional obligation is to uphold the laws and the constitution but you helplessly undermine your chain of command and your department guidelines and your heart says to not obey because your boss is a black woman (that don't look right) and you are moved by the ideologies of racism and sexism as certainly as the electrons are moved by electric forces and you are okay with Huma Abedin being a Hillary Clinton surrogate but a Pakistani Indian American is getting too close to the president for your comfort, what do you do? You make one last ditch effort. You would rather a madman near the nuclear code than a Pakistani Indian American near the President Of The United States.
The FBI did it to John Liu, who is born in New York City. He looked too Chinese to possibly occupy the second most powerful office in the country.
This is how you know racism in America's criminal justice system is a very real issue.
On Clinton Emails, Did the F.B.I. Director Abuse His Power?
his former GOP rival, Marco Rubio, repeated his earlier concerns about Trump only this week, saying America can't give "the nuclear codes of the United States to an erratic individual."
In the atomic age, when decisions must be made very quickly, the presidency has evolved into something akin to a nuclear monarchy. With a single phone call, the commander in chief has virtually unlimited power to rain down nuclear weapons on any adversarial regime and country at any time.
would be free to launch a civilization-ending nuclear war on his own any time he chose.
The only real protection against nuclear disaster is total elimination of nuclear weapons.
Ronald Reagan expressed incredulity that he would be allowed only six minutes to decide whether to trigger Armageddon based on blips on a radar screen.
Although no president during the atomic age appears to have ever lost his grip on reality to such an extent that an insane nuclear act might have resulted, top advisers to President Richard Nixon tried to constrain his launch authority during the Watergate scandal that ultimately forced his resignation. His secretary of Defense, James Schlesinger, quietly instructed the Pentagon war room to double check with him if Nixon contacted it to order up a nuclear strike. Nixon’s mental stability, and his heavy drinking, caused concern within his inner circle that he might behave erratically out of despair and depression. Alcoholism in a future nuclear monarch is of course quite beyond the pale.
about three serious false alarms in the United States and three in the Soviet Union/Russia that could have led to a very bad call by their leaders have occurred.
Both Putin and President Barack Obama are reminding each other, to a degree we haven’t seen since the Cold War, that they have nuclear buttons at hand.
As with his predecessors, Trump’s power over the life and death of entire nations would be practically unbounded.
There are no restraints that can prevent a willful president from unleashing this hell.
a common expert view that the bomb is slowly but surely spreading around the world, and that proliferation may be unstoppable unless ALL nations including the nuclear-armed countries get serious about universal nuclear disarmament.
the double-standard of the nuclear “haves,” cigarettes dangling from their lips, lecturing the “have nots” to give up smoking is unsustainable over the long term.
Altogether only 15 minutes would elapse before 850 land- and sea-based missile warheads would take flight. There would be no stopping, no recall, no turning back the salvo. In all likelihood, a return volley of Russian missiles would be triggered. The scale of the ensuing disaster defies comprehension. In a large-scale nuclear exchange, hundreds of millions of lives would be extinguished in a few agonizing hours. A global humanitarian catastrophe would ensue to seal the fate of civilization itself.
So far, most respected Republican advisers have boycotted the Trump campaign.
Trump certainly has not yet made a convincing case that we could sleep soundly with him at the helm.
we’re in genuinely uncharted territory with Trump: we’ve simply never seen a candidate with this much disregard for typical Constitutional values get this close to the White House. There’s no precedent for what might happen if he got there. For another, if you look at how our system of checks and balances is really built, it has relatively few resources to stop an authoritarian president from violating the Constitution and getting away with it. And the third reason may be the most unsettling of all: In a democracy, the final brake on the tyrannical exercise of power is public opinion. And polls suggest the American public has never been as skeptical of democracy or as open to authoritarian alternatives like military rule as it is right now. If a President Trump really blew down the walls of our system, a worryingly wide swath of the public would likely stand behind him.
Even Richard Nixon, as close to an out-and-out crook as the White House has known, finally resigned when Congress moved to impeach him. It’s simply not clear that Donald Trump would do the same.
If he wanted to close down mosques, or have his cronies prosecute political opponents, he probably could.
The Supreme Court's role as arbiter of what’s constitutional is ultimately just a matter of tradition, and Trump has already proved his willingness to flout tradition when it happens to suit his interests.
impeachment requires both a simple majority in the House and a two-thirds majority in the Senate. Considering how scared most GOP officials have been of taking on a Presidential candidate with authoritarian tendencies, it is far from certain that many of them would prove more courageous in the face of an authoritarian President. And by the time the will to impeach him has built, and the highly complex proceedings completed, it would in any case be far from clear how much of the republic there would be left to save.
countries like Hungary, Russia or Iraq did have carefully designed institutions with intricate checks and balances; but because the politicians who inhabited these systems had little commitment to liberal-democratic norms, they failed to protect democracy.
it isn't primarily the legal genius of the Founding Fathers that has made American democracy uniquely stable, but, at least as importantly, the deep commitment of ordinary Americans to liberal norms like the separation of powers. It is the people's love for democracy, not the protections their democracy affords them on paper, that is the final check on the tyranny of the majority which the founders so feared.
the Constitution cannot save us from our politics
Now the party of Ronald Reagan is being led by a man with no discernible ideological leanings, save for an affinity with some of history’s ugliest.
“The likelihood of the Republican Party surviving this, of there being another Republican president in the future, is small,” said one movement conservative who served in the Bush White House. “I don’t think the party survives.”
Far from the halls of the Hoover Institution and big Washington policy shops is a force they cannot control: the Trump campaign, a small collection of social-media gurus, Breitbart alumni, and Trump family members who have managed to capture the majority of Republican voters in the U.S., and who may use their new power to launch a media network, or take over as the new axis of the GOP, or both. And as the old establishment looks on in horror, the civil war in its ranks has already begun.
“I’ve never seen so many really smart people at a loss for what to do,” says the head of one prominent conservative think tank. “They’re pulling their hair out, to the extent they have any hair left.”
“We’ve known the cause of death while the patient was still alive on the table.”
There is pretty universal agreement in conservative circles that the immediate cause of death was blunt force trauma with a loud, orange object.
there is wide disagreement as to whether this was a sudden, unpredictable trauma—a piano falling on you as you walk down the street—or the result of deep-seated, sclerotic disease.
“The ugliness of those forces is real. The number of people who supported Trump is alarming.
Some among them just think it’s time to start over. “If you can’t resurrect the Republican brand with less than half a billion dollars and spending four to eight years to get it done,” Glover, who is on the board of Roy’s new think tank, said, it might be time to think about starting something new.
The party she envisions is one with “a Jeb Bush platform but with a 21st-century bolt on acknowledging climate change, gay marriage and campaign finance reform that’s First Amendment-compliant.”
Trump could only have happened to a party that was already paralyzed by an identity crisis—one that still has to be dealt with in addition to the secondary identity crisis wrought by Trump.
three disparate factions that find themselves squabbling under the Republican tent—the Trump fans, the stand-pat establishment, and the conservative Jesuits—
What the orange dragon chooses to do after the drubbing Republicans are sure he’s going to get might be the difference between the final nail in the GOP coffin, and a revival. And again, few really believe in the latter, not even the stalwarts. “I have a feeling no one’s going to learn a lot from this campaign because of the unique nature of Trump,” says the think tank head. “I’m one of the people who is feeling a lot of angst.” If he starts a media company, says Ayres, “It will be far harder to heal the wounds that he opened up, and far harder to put Humpty Dumpty back together again.”
“It’s in Trump’s nature to continue to want to be relevant, to have people come to Trump Tower to lick his boots for years to come,”
As for the people who hope Trump will simply melt away on November 9 and remove the threat of collapse from the Republican Party? “I appreciate but do not share their optimism,” says Soltis Anderson. “I feel like we are in for a pretty long civil war.”
“I cannot tell you the number of times they would say to me, ‘If your husband wins, are you going to keep his last name?’ ” she told me. “I heard it over and over and over.”
The Road Trip That Changed Hillary Clinton's Life
After they made their way deeper into Arkansas, bypassing Little Rock and curving through the Ozarks, the women stopped at a ramshackle restaurant for lunch. Mrs. Ehrman was growing more alarmed as she took in the surroundings.
“I said to her, ‘Hillary, you’re never going to get French bread here. You’re never going to get Brie,’ ” she recalled in a final plea, but by then Mrs. Clinton had made up her mind. “She wasn’t even listening to me at that point,” Mrs. Ehrman said.
They arrived in Fayetteville, home of the University of Arkansas, on one of the rowdiest weekends of the year. The hilltop town, with its canopy of oak trees, had become a swarm of drunken football fans, their faces painted red and their heads covered with hats shaped like the university’s hog mascot. The Razorbacks were playing a major rival at the time, the Longhorns of the University of Texas.
“It was then that I broke down and cried when I thought, ‘She’s going to live here?’ ” Mrs. Ehrman said. “I just cried. I just absolutely cried.”
Mrs. Ehrman took a plane back to Washington and paid someone to drive her Buick home. “I thought, ‘I’m getting out of here tomorrow morning. I don’t belong here,’ ” she said.
Texas Republicans are slowly coming to grips with the unthinkable: Hillary Clinton has a shot at winning the nation’s most iconic red state.
Texas is the beating heart of the modern Republican Party, and the cornerstone of any GOP nominee’s electoral strategy. It’s also home to the most recent Republican president, George W. Bush, and to two serious recent GOP contenders for the White House, Sen. Ted Cruz and former Gov. Rick Perry.
And Texas is where the party’s most prominent donor base is clustered.
Don't kid yourself. This guy Trump is not going anywhere. He is going to launch a TV network and milk 20 million people all he can. Call that one party. It is going to be like one of those right wing parties in Europe.
Then there is the Utah guy McMullin. He is very clear he is not running to win. He is running to launch a center right political party.
The Libertarian party is a Republican party. I think it also wants to abolish the Education Department.
The GOP civil war begins after November. They need to lose to Hillary first. Then they can get on with the real competition.
Republicans made a fateful choice back then to tie their prospects to a medium addicted to rage and the conspiracy theories that fuel it. That came back to haunt them with the candidacy of Donald Trump. Now they find themselves between a rock and a hard place. Either they continue on the current path of promoting the rage-making machine, or they take Rampell’s advice and decide to go to war with right-wing media – which might actually become their final Waterloo.
Bilal Elcharfa was pouring cereal for his children before school this month when his 7-year-old daughter, Maaria, walked into the kitchen, calling for him.
“Baba, I had a scary dream,” she said, hugging him tight. “About Donald Trump.”
Mr. Elcharfa, a taxi driver, had dealt with his own share of anti-Muslim sentiment, like the time a passenger refused to pay his fare because he said Muslims needed to pay for the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
Maaria said that if Mr. Trump became president, “I’m going to stay in my room forever.”
Mass injustice doesn't result from a "few bad apples," but from the mass of people willfully supporting injustice.
I remain desperate to protect you from a society that quietly but habitually tells you that as a girl, you're not equal to boys -- that you're more valued for your body than your brains, that you don't deserve the same opportunities let alone the same basic respect. And the truth is, black men and women are still treated vastly differently under our laws and in our communities.
After all, you're only eight years old. But I know you understand the difference between right from wrong. And I know that you know the things Donald Trump has said about Mexicans and veterans and Muslims and women are wrong.
You've said that if Donald Trump wins, you want to move to India.
Hillary Clinton taking the White House, the Senate and the House and Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren beating the drums in the US Senate creates a perfect environment for a progressive agenda like has not been possible since the time of FDR. This is not about making the right noise, this is not about reckless tax and spend your way to utter powerlessness, this is not about whiny liberalism when you would rather be in opposition so you can sneer at power and take delight and get nothing done. This is about creating a new American majority and being the natural party of power for a generation.
I am for tax increases and tax cuts and closing the loopholes of corporate welfare. The most immediate thing America could do for global warming is stop subsidizing dirty energy.
A 65% death tax is of utmost importance. Everyone with a net worth of $5 million and above should take one look at Donald Trump and conclude "I don't want my children to end up like that" and eagerly agree to a 65% death tax. Love one another was never meant to stop with your family.
Health has to start with wellness. Industrialization is not the only thing America has messed up and brought the planet to the brink. The American antibiotics industry and the industrial scale agriculture industry and the media have colluded to kill half the gut bacteria of Americans. That is the number one reason Americans are so fat. Eating right is half of wellness. More fruits and vegetables is so important somebody named Michelle Obama could become president just on that agenda.
America should import as many yoga gurus from India as it has imported software engineers.
If Americans simply learned to walk more and talk more, that would go a long way. When someone is lonely they are more likely to overeat. Gluttony is sin. Because you are abusing a body that God created in His own image.
Americans were fat enough in 1980 but if Americans were to slim down to the obesity levels of 1980, America saves over a trillion dollars in health care. That is how you save Social Security and Medicare, by everybody slimming down.
By the time you turn 35, you should eat half of what you were eating before. By 45, it should be 50%.
But once you fall sick, you fall sick. Adding the public option was liberal fantasy when Obamacare was enacted, now it has become a national emergency. And expand Medicaid and Medicare. Enlarge the network of free health clinics. Fund them better. You want to get the best of Canada and America. The blend is the best.
Mental health has to be elevated to the same status as physical health. That is the right way to fight the war on drugs. But America is such a fundamentally racist country the resultant stress among African Americans alone gives rise to mental health issues. America has to cure racism like it has to cure obesity. The cure now exists.
Every father and mother on earth is but a foster father and foster mother. It takes a planet to raise a child. All children were created by God. No child should have to go hungry. Pre-K education has to be universal. Only strong families and strong communities can sustain strong schools, but strong schools can help foster strong families and strong communities. Faith is the glue that brings it all together. African Americans should learn gratitude and forgiveness more than anyone else if they want to get ahead of everyone else. The best prayers are prayers of gratitude.
Digital technologies have not been used enough in education to bring the costs dramatically down. Every textbook at school and college should be available online for free in PDF format. There should be online communities of students. All lectures should also be available in video format online for free.
Prices on education should be falling like prices on computers have fallen over the decades.
And America should legalize the 16 million who are already here. You save a trillion dollars immediately if you do not round them up and deport them. Also, the American economy would quite literally collapse if you do somehow manage to deport them. America wanting to deport the 16 million is like a semi truck moving at 70 miles per hour saying, I am flying now, get rid of some of those wheels.
And bring in one to two million new people every year. You don't want to create all sorts of high paying jobs and have no one to take them. Immigration is the only reason America is the number one economy. Immigration is the only available way to shore up Social Security and Medicare. Besides all world will become one country long before 2050.
America has a mission. That is a total spread of democracy. Instead of invading countries it should give immigrants voting rights. Irish immigrants used to vote in Boston as green card holders. America is not a white country of white immigrants. America is a country of immigrants, period.
Sin is sin. If you are poor and sinful, you are sinful. If you are rich and sinful, you are sinful. Donald Trump is an unrepentant sinner, a messenger of hate, a Pied Piper to what he calls "the poorly educated." And he is in good mood because he is going to milk that crowd all he can after November. He is going to build a TV network. Trump University was a fiscal scam. Trump TV is going to be a moral scam. The dude envisions peddling hate all the way to making a billion dollars, or so he thinks.
The Democrats should not give up on that crowd. The message should be, repent, let go of the hate, come to love. Love all your fellow human beings. Racism is sin. Sexism is sin.
This crowd most stands to benefit when the Universal Basic Income is enacted.
Women and minority populations could gradually break the corporate glass ceilings, but the faster way is to simply blow it all up through entrepreneurship. It is for the progressives in power to fight monopoly situations, and to bring forth the education and health paradigms of a knowledge economy, and to expand access to credit so more people can go into entrepreneurship.
2017 should be a great start to a great progressive year.
America should consider spending 10% of its defense budget to connect every human being to the Internet. You can not bring everyone to America but you can take America to everyone.
Getting global warming right is super important. Global warming is proof humanity has not handled industrialization well. Only a humanity that can do right by climate change could truly harvest the technologies of the future. Artificial intelligence, genetic engineering, biotechnology, all these are much deeper digs into nature than old industrialization. They could be much bigger disasters than global warming, but they don't have to be. They will not be if Universal Spiritual Centeredness is achieved. Artificial intelligence, genetic engineering, biotechnology are all limited to the first four dimensions. God is the Ultimate Intelligence, the 10th dimension, the final dimension.
Barack Obama experienced racism from racist Republican Senators. Hillary Clinton should be prepared for some sexism on the global stage, to be blunted with the might of the most powerful political office on the planet. You should hear some of the things Duerte and Zhirinovsky are saying. Ordinary women around the world are watching with much hope. It is about them. 160 million women in America should wake up on behalf of the three and a half billion women out there.
Pro life is caring about every child on the planet at concrete policy levels. Microfinance is the magic bullet with which to touch two billion women. Did I say entrepreneurship? Put 10% of America's defense budget into microfinance.
Members of the media quickly seized on the event, calling it a test drive for Trump TV, the post-election television network that Trump is rumored to be considering in the event he loses in November. Despite reports that his son-in-law has been talking to media dealmakers about Trump TV, Trump himself has denied he has any interest in such a thing.
Elizabeth Warren is the US president we need, but can't have – this time
She’s a champion of workers’ rights, campaigning for those employed in the “gig” economy to get basic employment protections and social security. She has fought for a genuine living wage, arguing that the minimum wage would have risen to$22 an hour if it had increased at the same rate as productivity. She has demanded action to crack down on corporate tax avoidance, passionately making the case that “there is nobody in this country whogot rich on his own. Nobody.”
She has courageously embraced the Black Lives Matter movement, demanding reform of the police to stop the unjust killing of black Americans.
Deepika Padukone to present award at MTV EMAs
प्रियंका चोपड़ा और दीपिका पादुकोण का जो क्रौसोवर हुआ है वो किस लिए? स्वाभाविक है टैलेंट है।
लेकिन एक बिजनेस एन्गल भी है। हॉलीवुड वाले इन्डियन मार्केट को टार्गेट कर रहे हैं।
बॉलीवुड में देखो। पिक्चर बनाते हैं हिन्दी में लेकिन इन्टरव्यू से लेके अवार्ड फंक्शन सब इंग्लिश मीडियम।
अमरीका मार्स गया। तो भारत भी गया। और बहुत कम खर्चे में। उसी तरह बॉलीवुड वाले को इंग्लिश में फिल्म बनाना चाहिए अमरीकी मार्केट के लिए। ग्लोबल मार्केट
के लिए।
Strictly business.
जब गोरों ने भारत पर राज किया तो 30 करोड़ भारतीयों पर तीन लाख गोरों का राज था। सैनिक, सिपाही, कर्मचारी सब भारतीय।
दुनिया के इतिहास में मानसिक गुलामी का उससे बड़ा उदाहरण नहीं मिलेगा।
अभी टेक्नोलॉजी में देखो। सैनिक, सिपाही, कर्मचारी सब भारतीय।
St. Hillary?
“St. Hillary?” @paramendra https://medium.com/@paramendra/st-hillary-6b7b17aba911
Assange believes WikiLeaks was a primary driver of the Arab Spring, which led to major uprisings in around a dozen countries. This is the stage on which Assange believes he plays — the equal of a world leader, still the biggest story in the world.
Assange is a gifted public speaker, with a talent for playing the media, struggling with an inability to scale up and professionalise his operation, to take advice; a man whose mission was often left on a backburner in his efforts to demonise his opponents.
These are traits often ascribed to Donald Trump, the main beneficiary of WikiLeaks’ activities through the reaction, and its modern-day champion during presidential debates. Those traits have left Assange a four-year resident of a Harrods hamper–laden single room in a London embassy.
There are a few people surrounding Donald Trump who, for their own reasons, have chosen to step in front of the bus of his campaign—his wife, Melania, for one, and even Rudy Giuliani. They arguably didn’t have much to lose, and stood to gain significantly, if things had worked out. The one person who does appear to have a great deal at stake in terms of reputation and personal ambition in Trump’s flame-throwing final stand is Ivanka Trump.
She embraced the family philosophy of turning everything into an opportunity for personal enrichment; the morning after she introduced her father at the Republican National Convention, shebroadcast on Twitter an image of herself wearing one of her fashion label’s dresses on the stage with the exhortation: “Shop Ivanka’s look from her #RNC speech.”
She went on to say that nothing could prepare a person to be the child of a Presidential candidate, and that the media has been “vicious” to her and her family. It was hard not to feel a bit sorry for her when she described being followed by a pack of photographers on the way to drop her children at school in the morning. Ivanka said that she often didn’t recognize the person—her father—the press portrayed.
after such a sickeningly sexist and racist campaign, one that exposed so starkly how far our society has to go......
a trash-talking, burn-it-to-the-ground demagogue....... He has never held office or otherwise served his country, never acceded to the authority of competing visions and democratic resolutions......
he does not accept the authority of constitutional republicanism—its norms, its faiths and practices, its explicit rules and implicit understandings. That much is clear from his statements about targeting press freedoms, infringing on an independent judiciary, banning Muslim immigration, deporting undocumented immigrants without a fair hearing, reviving the practice of torture, and, in the third and final debate, his refusal to say that he will accept the outcome of the election. Trump has even threatened to prosecute and imprison his opponent.
The prospect of such a President—erratic, empty, cruel, intolerant, and corrupt—represents a form of national emergency.
his temperamental authoritarianism—a trait echoed in his admiration of Vladimir Putin.
The consistencies of Trump’s character are matched by the inconsistencies of his policy positions.
The combination of free-form opportunism, heroic self-regard, blithe contempt for expertise, and an airy sense of infallibility has contributed to Trump’s profound estrangement from the truth.
Her story is about walking through flames and emerging changed, warier and more determined. In her intelligence, in her gimlet-eyed recognition of both the limits and the possibilities of government, she’s a particular kind of inspirational figure, a pragmatist and a Democratic moderate.
Not even a sound defeat is likely to cause Trump to recede from view. Now, as he trails in the polls and declares the election “rigged,” thanks to a collusion of the media, political élites, and inner-city “communities,” he seems to be preparing the ground for an unlovely and prolonged assault on a Clinton Presidency. Even some Republican leaders who have withdrawn their support for him have adopted his maximalism. Speaker of the House Paul Ryan has said that Clinton wants to strip away all color and joy from the lives of Americans. Senator John McCain has sworn that he will work in the Senate to block any Supreme Court nominations that a President Clinton might make. Neither has come to terms with the ways in which his party’s rhetoric and tactics have enabled Trump’s rise. If anything, their hope seems to be that the swell of passions he has brought together will not dissipate but propel their own ambitions.
Obama inherited a financial crisis when he took office. The civil crisis that Clinton will inherit is less sharply defined, but her political legacy will depend upon her ability to alleviate it.
the non-stop logorrheic rainbow of horror constantly shooting from Trump’s mouth........ all of this was just one more step in the long, absurdist slog of the Russianization of this campaign......
When Trump and his acolytes accuse protestors of being well-organized, paid saboteurs, I hear echoes of Kremlin television accusing people who came out in Moscow’s Bolotnaya Square to protest for democracy in 2011 of working for the U.S. State Department. When Trump lies and injects conspirological plots into the mainstream, when I hear his supporters echo them back to me as gospel because “it’s on the Internet,” I feel like I’m back in Russia, listening to people tell me about George Soros and his nefarious plots. And then I hear about George Soros from Trump supporters who tell me that he has both created the Black Lives Matter movement and hacked American voting machines.
When Trump talks about regulating the “dishonest” press or about jailing Clinton, these echoes become deafening.
But when Trump questions the peaceful transfer of power, when he, essentially, says that he will only accept the election results if he wins, when his supporters talk of assassinating Clinton if she becomes president, and of blood flowing in the streets if Trump doesn’t, the moment I’m transported to is not a Russian one, but an American one.
I just read somewhere earlier that Republicans are scared Michelle Obama might run for the Senate and I was like, dang, how did they beat me to such a good idea!
That would be an excellent outcome. Hillary Clinton has not had a better surrogate this year. Michelle Obama is such a natural. Michelle took the gender issue by the horns. I think that partly explains Hillary's great confidence in the third debate.
And then I don't see why Michelle Obama can then not run for president in 2024.
People with last name Obama have been known to do that. Enter the Senate, then enter the White House.
I am on record from years ago right at this blog suggesting let's just declare Michelle queen and be done with this First Lady business. And since Bill Clinton can't be First Lady I think my idea has new relevance. It's still not too late. Where is an executive order when you need one?
After 44 men in there, what's two women? Besides black women find themselves at the intersection of both race and gender. It is a unique sociopolitical position to be in.
Send guys named Bill and Barack off to the golf courses. Let the women run the show.
In this final phase of the campaign there is only one thing Hillary has to fear. You hope Donald Trump does not spend any time doing research. Because when Donald Trump does research he has a tendency to go into the tabloid section of the research library and with Donald you know how it is. Donald Trump never came across a conspiracy theory he did not like.
So pray in this final phase of the campaign Donald Trump does not go to the research library. That is one risk Hillary 2016 can not take.
Nobody but nobody can take away Wyoming from Donald Trump. Put Wyoming in the Donald Trump column please.
I am absolutely not worried.
If you lose more than 45 states, and the Senate, and the House, and 30 state legislatures and then turn around and say, "I dunno," why will I not be worried!
This guy is facing a tsunami. That blue you see Donald is not the sky, it's the ocean coming at you.
No TV network will be asking for your opinion on November 9. Your defeat will be so total.
The gender pressure has been building. Every time America has not elected a woman president that has added to the pressure. After 44 men that is a lot of pressure. That is why this is going to be a gigantic volcanic eruption. Women are being strategic about coming out only in the final few weeks.
She is a cat with two lives. She gave one life to making Bill Clinton president, with another life she is making herself president. What every top caliber politician has done one time she has done two times. That is a lot of preparation. Donald Trump is a feather weight boxer who is seeing both Muhammad Ali and Mike Tyson in the ring, and it is not just because he is seeing stars. There really are two boxers in the ring, Hillary times two. And I am not talking Bill Clinton. More on that later.
She has the brains. Someone of middle class background who went to top schools on merit and was top student there.
Thomas Edison said genius is 99% perspiration. Discipline and hard work are perhaps Hillary Clinton's defining qualities and that aspiring girls and women would most benefit from emulating. She puts in the hours. No short cuts there. She has all the qualities of a good student.
She has sound political instincts. I believe you could compare her in that department with any contemporary politician anywhere, or any in history. She is as good as they come. And I am not talking policy wonkiness. That is different. Paul Krugman is quite a policy wonk but I would not send him into the boxing ring.
She is a policy wonk, and not every successful politician is. She could have happily worked at some think tank her entire working life.
It does not hurt to be married to Bill Clinton, a world class political talent in his own right.
Getting beat by Barack Obama in 2008 makes her a cat with three lives.
2016. After 5,000 years of men running the show it had to happen in 2016. Being in the right place at the right time, Hillary got lucky.
And God gave her the most unqualified candidate in history to run against. Mother Mary obviously desires gender equality on earth.
As disgusting as Donald Trump is at every possible level, personal to political, polls show he is about to possibly lose in deeply Republican places like Kentucky and Texas.
This is a sign American democracy is actually working. Talking fascist is still free speech. But getting your ass whooped when you do so is democracy.
As our special report this week sets out, Russia confronts grave problems in its economy, politics and society. Its population is ageing and is expected to shrink by 10% by 2050. An attempt to use the windfall from the commodity boom to modernise the state and its economy fell flat. Instead Mr Putin has presided over a huge increase in government: between 2005 and 2015, the share of Russian GDP that comes from public spending and state-controlled firms rose from 35% to 70%. Having grown by 7% a year at the start of Mr Putin’s reign, the economy is now shrinking. Sanctions are partly to blame, but corruption and a fall in the price of oil matter more. The Kremlin decides who gets rich and stays that way. Vladimir Yevtushenkov, a Russian tycoon, was detained for three months in 2014. When he emerged, he had surrendered his oil company.
The Kentucky poll is a good reminder that Trump’s slide isn’t only occurring in national polls. Donald Trump is in decline in solid Republican territory....... there are serious questions about whether Donald Trump will win deep red states like Arizona, Utah, Kentucky, and Texas. ..... What is unfolding is nothing less than the destruction of the far-right led Republican Party.
Donald Trump vs. American Democracy
People are acting aghast. How could Donald Trump suggest he might not accept the election results? Such an affront to American democracy.
Really?
The US Senate is refusing to let President Obama make an appointment to the Supreme Court. The US constitution says he is the only person who can.
How is that not like putting the US constitution into the acid tank?
100% obstructionism of a black president because he is black for eight years non stop - - - how is that not an affront to the very idea of democracy?
Barack Obama Offers Blistering Takedown Of GOP Obstructionism In Pitch For Health Care Law
First is for the 19 states that have refused to take up Obamacare’s Medicaid expansion to do so, in the process covering millions more poor adults. Second is to beef up the subsidies provided to people who get their coverage from the law’s health insurance exchanges. And third is to set up a government-run public option program ― which Obama called a “public plan fallback” ― in geographic areas with the highest prices and least competition.
If Hillary Clinton can't confront Donald Trump she can't confront the dictators around the world, plain and simple. Trump is a fascist, a sociopath with enormous bad manners.
But we saw in the third debate Hillary absolutely can confront Donald Trump. This was my favorite of the three debates. I saw Hillary go for the kill.
My definition of success is Hillary taking the House. And the way to take the House is to go on the attack. And she did.
You can not shy from the evil and the ugly. You have to take it head on. Hillary did. She took Trump head on.
I also thought she looked great. Of all the colors she wears, and she wears many colors, I think white looks best on her.
Men are much less imaginative in the colors they wear. Red tie? Trump probably wears one in bed. The guy is monotonous.
I think this debate worked much better than the second one because Donald Trump was not allowed to walk around the stage. That is the prescription. Cage Donald Trump and you will have a decent country. Build a wall around the guy.
On issues, I think everyone with a coal job today can be shifted to solar installation jobs and there would be a shortage of workers. And these jobs would be all over the country instead of just near the coal mines.
What has been most confounding to me in this election is on climate change Trump has basically been saying let's turn the entire planet into one big gas chamber. Where is the outrage? Hitler has nothing on this guy. Hitler is a hand grenade to this guy's atom bomb.
This guy wants to jail opponents, silence the press and build gas chambers. Such thoughts used to be limited to extreme fringes. What has become of America? Where is the sanity?
Bill Clinton gave the longest economic expansion on record and record surpluses because of NAFTA. But the mistake that was made was half that surplus should have been ploughed into investing in human capital, namely education and health, to prepare Americans for the next generation of higher paying jobs. That was not done. Don't blame that on NAFTA.
The precise people who voted for the party that absolutely got in the way of a $3 trillion stimulus in 2009 (which was every literate economist's prescription) and thus prevented a quicker recovery are now complaining there was not a quick recovery. And are threatening to vote for the same party all over again.
Trump is a pickpocket who came out of nowhere to capitalize on the situation. Look fire, he is saying, so you look the other way, so he can pick your pocket, give himself and his super rich golf buddies a massive tax cut. And the people whose pockets will get picked are rooting for him in large numbers. Whatever happened to common sense?
This guy might hate Mexicans but he absolutely intends harm on poor white folks.
Trump is a disaster train nobody should have to ride on. America's enemies would wish Trump on America.
Good thing this thing will be over in a few weeks. If this guy is allowed to run for president for just three additional months the stock market would crash. Never before has America been in a situation where some dude could start wars simply by running for president.
Who is this guy? Really.
Trump's recorded sexist talks that have been revealed is what the glass ceiling is, folks. The glass ceiling is sexist bonding around sexist words. That is precisely what it is. What do you think the glass ceiling is? You think it is gorilla glass like on the iPhone? No, the glass ceiling is chimpanzee glass, it is Donald Trump saying sexist things and getting away with it.
In hindsight now Hillary's tanking numbers in August now look like a blessing. And by tanking I mean it was down to a dead heat.
Now she is in double digits and can take 100% of the credit. This is the way it should be. Her rising confidence levels show she is feeling the love.
Democracy works after all. The American democracy is resilient enough to process a fascist and spit him out. American democracy will emerge stronger after all has been said and done.
As they say in soccer, this has been a hattrick. Hillary has won three debates in a row.
Hillary Clinton, Mocking and Taunting in Debate, Turns the Tormentor
Republicans despondent that Trump threw away final debate - POLITICO
Steve Schmidt, who guided John McCain’s 2008 presidential campaign, said Trump’s refusal to commit to accepting election results would overshadow any strong moments he had.
“It’s the one and only headline that matters coming out of the debate,” said Schmidt. “It’s absolutely unprecedented for any presidential candidate in the history of the country.”
Trump tweets at 3 a.m. that he won debate - POLITICO
Hillary Clinton’s 3 debate performances left the Trump campaign in ruins - Vox
And it’s not just the presidential race. Betting markets now predict Democrats will win the Senate. Polls have started showing Democrats in striking distance of the House. The GOP has collapsed into a mid-election civil war, with the party’s presidential nominee openly battling the speaker of the House.
Trump’s meltdown wasn’t an accident. The Clinton campaign coolly analyzed his weaknesses and then sprung trap after trap to take advantage of them.
Clinton’s successful execution of this strategy has been, fittingly, the product of traits that she’s often criticized for: her caution, her overpreparation, her blandness. And her particular ability to goad Trump and blunt the effectiveness of his political style has been inextricable from her gender. The result has been a political achievement of awesome dimensions, but one that Clinton gets scarce credit for because it looks like something Trump is doing, rather than something she is doing — which is, of course, the point.
It began in the first debate. "Donald," she kept saying. No one quite knows why Trump so loathes the sound of his first name, but he does.
Each debate has followed the same pattern. 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.
her assault on Trump flummoxed his usual mode of defense, which is to dominate and insult the other men on the stage. By the end of the final debate, Trump was reduce to spitting that Clinton was "such a nasty woman," a line that spoke to both his horror at being challenged by a woman and his complete inability to control what came out of his mouth after 80 minutes on a stage with Clinton.
Trump has been, at every turn, underprepared, undisciplined, and operating completely without a strategy. In one of the third debate’s most unintentionally revealing moments, Trump said, "I sat in my apartment today ... watching ad after false ad, all paid for by your friends on Wall Street," an inadvertent admission that he was inhaling cable news when he should have been prepping for the debate.
Clinton has been, at every turn, prepared, disciplined, and coldly strategic. She triggered Trump’s epic meltdown purposely, and kept Trump off balance over multiple weeks that probably represented his last chance to turn the election around. She was ready for every question, prepared for every attack, and managed to goad Trump into making mistakes that became the main story the day after every single debate.
We aren’t used to this kind of victory. 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. 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.
With 19 days to go, Clinton’s lead is bigger than ever | Larry J. Sabato's Crystal Ball
there are some surprising conservative places where he is registering very thin, soft support.
He’s barely ahead in some polls of Alaska, Indiana, Missouri, South Carolina, and Texas
Seriously, did you ever even for a second think Utah would be a Toss-up in late October?
The Trump campaign’s Arizona crisis reminds us in some ways of how John McCain’s 2008 campaign ended up losing Indiana. Because McCain was at a resource disadvantage against Obama — just like Trump is now outmanned against Clinton — the 2008 nominee could hardly spare any resources to protect Indiana, a typically red state where Obama vastly out-organized and out-spent him. Obama was able to very narrowly flip the state.
Today’s changes push Clinton to 352 electoral votes, the highest we’ve had her in the whole election cycle
BuzzFeed CEO: I Heard Ivanka Trump Talk About "Mulatto Cocks"
Ivanka Trump distances herself from father’s campaign: ‘I’m not a surrogate, I’m a daughter’
“Perhaps due to her beauty, serene composure, and ability to translate her father’s half-literate ramblings into semi-coherent policy proposals, Ivanka Trump has remained unscathed by her father’s 16-month effort to ruin the family name,” Kirchick wrote this week. “Which is inexplicable, because all that Ivanka’s involvement in this campaign has revealed is that she’s the pretty face of a white nationalist political movement, a truly bizarre place for a University of Pennsylvania-educated, Upper East Side doyenne to wind up.”
War And Peace: Trump Book Report
Crime And Punishment: Trump Book Report
The Old Man And The Sea: Trump Book Report
Bible: Trump Book Report
One Hundred Years Of Solitude: Trump Book Report
My Life by Bill Clinton: Trump Book Report
The Audacity Of Hope by Barack Obama: Trump Book Report
It Takes A Village by Hillary Rodham Clinton: Trump Book Report
Earth In The Balance by Al Gore: Trump Book Report
Dreams From My Father by Barack Obama: Trump Book Report
Hilarious hashtag on how Trump interprets classic literature
The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran: Trump Book Report
Clinton Probably Finished Off Trump Last Night | FiveThirtyEight
क्वान्टिको अभी तक देख नहीं पाया। लेकिन हिट शो है। तभी तो सीजन दो तक आ गई। मेरे पास टीवी नहीं। गरीब आदमी।
हॉलीवुड बिजनेस है। पैसे छापते हैं। प्रियंका चोपड़ा के मार्फत भारत का मार्केट ताक रहे हैं।
अब एक मुवी बना रहे हैं। बेवाच।
सलमान का एक मुवी आया। सुल्तान। पहलवान। मैंने अभी देखा नहीं। लेकिन ट्रेलर देखा है। लन्गोटी पहने सलमान चक्कर लगा रहे हैं।
अभी तक किसी ने एक कमेंट नहीं मारा। कि देखो। सलमान ने भारतीय पुरूष की तौहीन कर दी। सारी की सारी बॉडी दिखा दी। लन्गोटी मैचिंग कलर का है। लगता है जनाब नंगे घुम रहे हैं। भारतीय परम्परा सन्सक्रिती सब सत्यानाश।
अभी तक किसी ने एक कमेंट नहीं मारा।
बिकीनी और लन्गोटी में क्या फर्क है? कोई फर्क नहीं।
बेवाच में जो बन्दा हीरो है वो अभी हॉलीवुड में टप पेड ऐक्टर है। नम्बर वन। काला आदमी। एक काला आदमी वाशिंग्टन में रिटायर हुआ नहीं दुसरा हॉलीवुड पर छा गया।
प्रियंका चोपड़ा ने तो I came I saw I conquered वाली बात कर दी। सत्य नादेला, सुन्दर पिचाइ और प्रियंका चोपड़ा, तीनों बराबर। लेकिन रफ्तार के हिसाब से तीनों में नम्बर वन प्रियंका।
This is a geopolitical shift.
These days when I think of Donald Trump the face that shows up on my mindscreen is that of Alec Baldwin.
What just happened?
Is the man really that unsmiling and ugly? And fat?
And devoid of ideas?
The guy is so lacking in anything that can even remotely be called public policy it looks like he is a cardboard cutout.
I can't tell the difference.
Will Alec Baldwin please show up for the third debate? He is equally ugly, what with all the makeup, but he is not sickening.
This is the first time a top Bollywood star has eased into being a top Hollywood star. This is big.
America and India now are what America and Britain used to be. The oldest modern democracy and the largest democracy are natural allies.
Priyanka Chopra is like Satya Nadella and Sundar Pichai. She is a role model.
And she stays Indian.
Donald Trump has threatened to jail his opponent. And before that he has threatened to silence the media.
That is all Idi Amin.
Idi Amin has come to America.
Entrepreneurs who do well should get excited about a 65% death tax after the 2016 race. You don't want your kids to end up like Donald Trump. Donald Trump is exhibit A for what a child should not end up like. This guy is an unrepentant sinner. He has no character, "no reputation to save," as the New York Times put it. Every sin in the book and Donald Trump is unrepentantly guilty of it. He is a fast food glutton, for example. The guy lies like nobody who has run for any office in this country. He has stiffed thousands of vendors who have done work for him. That is cheat and steal in spades. This guy is a "bozo," like Robert De Niro said.
Paying a 65% Death Tax is a small price to pay to make sure your kids don't end up in hell.
when it comes to Christian men still supporting Trump, “Disappointed seems like too soft a word. It’s devastating.”
Donald Trump is like a really, really, really bad student on his way to sitting for a final exam, a seventh grader with zero preparation sitting for a SAT, and potty mouthed, extremely, completely, shamelessly bad mannered, so bad mannered the parents have taken a cue from Elvis and left the building instead of owning up to as to whose child this might be.
The ideological tussle lasted almost seven full decades. The capitalism communism tussle defined the 20th century. It is said only the Bible has been circulated more than Lenin's works. The decades after World War II were stark, primarily due to the nuclear angle.
The dog eat dog capitalism that Lenin theorized against was much tempered by FDR who responded primarily to the Great Depression. Stalinism was basically authoritarianism. The basic human rights, the basic freedoms, freedom of religion are the bedrock. The economic part of it did not work either. Ends up free enterprise is fundamental. Property rights are basic.
But Russia has always loomed large in Europe even during the era of Tsars. By geographic size it is still the biggest country in the world. The Russians would like to believe they are a major power in the world. They would like their geopolitical pull to be felt. Between them America and Russia continue to have most of the nuclear weapons in the world. And Russia has a defense industry that looks for buyers all over the world. Saber rattling is good for business.
The ideological tussle is not final, it never is. American democracy is not a finished product but a work in progress. And the economic paradigms it has been functioning in will soon prove inadequate. The world is about to enter an unprecedented era of major productivity gains largely driven by technology. The capitalism communism tussle was liquid water physics. The era of steam physics is right round the corner. New political and economic paradigms will be needed. And such theoretical work should never be tied to nationalism of any culture or country. Was Einstein's theory of relativity Jewish? Nope.
Is Russia a democracy? Is Russia a market economy? Is Putin a new Tsar? Russia is not a democracy like the ones in Western Europe, obviously. And Russia does not seem to have a hard nosed focus on economic growth like China. At some level Russia would like a status of equals relationship with the United States that it thought it had during the Cold War, based primarily on the fact of its large nuclear arsenal and a still impressive military.
Saudi Arabia is no democracy by any stretch of imagination but America seems to do business with it just fine.
There is a fissure. Russia, Pakistan, China and North Korea form one ideological belt, America, Europe, India and Japan form another belt. Democracies and non democracies have a tendency to needle each other. But it is not clear cut. Russia and India have a friendship that is unique. That is a good thing. That perhaps is a safety valve lest things go a little out of hand between Russia and the West.
China is not a Saddam dictatorship. It can be argued China has campaign finance reform that American progressives wish they had.
America has campaign finance reform to do. Race relations in America are in a sorry state. So it is not like America has a perfect political system. The gender churn of the 2016 race is a global spectacle.
Jobs are being lost in all countries to automation but there are demagogues in many countries who are busy channeling the resultant anger in the direction of other countries.
The technological innovation is about to speed up so much it will not only ask for new political and economic theory it will also upend the geopolitical map of the world. Understood well it can be for the collective good of all humanity. Russia and America cooperating with the end goal of a nuclear weapon free world is what is best for the general welfare of the ordinary citizens in both those countries.
Nuclear technology is decades old. Showing off nuclear is like someone bragging about an early mobile phone in this era of smartphones. Nuclear is not the next big thing. It is old technology. The next is nano and bio.
Syria and Yemen make both America and Russia look bad, as if it is okay for a large number of innocent people to die while the big powers of the world play their geopolitical chess games.
Syria is top of the list. The world is failing Syria. Who violated the ceasefire? America? And if the American military action was a mistake, were the Syrians and Russians invited for detailed briefings and verifications?
The Arab world is in turmoil. It is a world primarily struggling with itself. It is a culture asking for validation. There is an aspiration for freedom and democracy where you can kick the can down the road but not forever.
I read Tolstoy's War And Peace cover to cover during what would be the freshman year in the American high school system, Class 9. That is all I did an entire vacation. The mind was blown, to say the least. Compared to it novels of western literature started looking like little short stories. Then I read Dostoyevsky's Crime And Punishment and the mind was blown all over again. The mind was blown a third time with Gabriel Garcia Marquez' One Hundred Years Of Solitude.
The GDP is not the only measure of greatness. The rat race of chasing the dollar is not the only meaningful life. In fact if the rat race is your only life it is not much of a life in the first place. Life has to have a higher meaning.
And if it is about wealth if humanity can conquer global warming it can take itself to an Age Of Abundance, an era that will make the America of today look like a Third World country. And it will be global. All world will have become one country long before 2050 anyways.
Both Russia and America should approach the present from that future. There is much common ground possible. There is much for the two powers to do together.
Russia is the country that gave political asylum to Snowden, the whistleblower who has ignited debate on privacy in the era of mass surveillance. Ends up the American state is as knee deep as the Chinese state when it comes to surveillance.
This debate concludes with a netizen bill of rights. The debate has not even started yet.
The Russian political system is itself an unsettled debate. The right system will give Russia good economic growth.
Putin has a modest background. Yeltsin basically handed over Russia to Putin impressed by his ability to execute, to get things done. In the years after the collapse of the Soviet Union Russia was in free fall. There were bread lines, for example. Putin stabilized the country. But in the process became a new Tsar. One hopes for the sake of Russia that is not the final reality.
Democracy is good.
