Lies! Lies! I can't believe a word you say.
Greetings, fellow Dot Calm Readers, Freedom Fighters, and Truth Crusaders!
I'm not sure whether to laugh or punch the radio or the computer at each new doody-plop of ridiculousness oozing from Donald J. Trump's fish-lipped face-anus.
So many lies, so little time.
It's like he's working at it, making a concerted effort to spew as many falsehoods as physically possible.
According to Politico, Trump averages one misstatement every 5 minutes.
Here's a small excerpt (click through to the article for the details):
His remarks represent an extraordinary mix of inaccurate claims about domestic and foreign policy and personal and professional boasts that rarely measure up when checked against primary sources.
Many were straight-up wrong, such as his claim that the United States has a “$500 billion a year trade deficit with China,” which has been debunked over and over by fact checkers, and his statement that he never settles lawsuits, when in fact he has. ...Certainly, many politicians stretch the truth – the practice of political fact-checking began long before the 2016 election cycle. But none so much as Trump.
PolitiFact agrees, as posted on US News & World Report: Fact-Checking Website: Donald Trump Lies 76 Percent of the Time ...
Let's examine a juicy little nugget from this article, shall we?
"PolitiFact checked 77 Trump statements and found that 76 percent of them were Mostly False, False or Pants on Fire. In other words, for every four statements Donald Trump makes, only one of them is true..."
In fact, if you Google PolitiFact's file on Trump, whose lies are as numerous as his business failures, you'll see that they awarded Trump's entire 2015 campaign as "Lie of the Year."
I wonder whether there will be an actual tipping point where Trump's campaign crashes and burns under the weight of all the lies. Oh sure, people like my Tea Party Christian friend in their determined ignorance will not be dissuaded from thinking that Trump's been raised by gawd to save the nation and the world. They'd vote for him even if, as he says, he shoots someone right in front of them. They'd vote for him even if Hillary were 100% exonerated from every wrongdoing and falsehood she's ever been accused of (oh, haha--I'm making my sides hurt...stop, stop!!). Some people are just proof to facts. But are there really so many fact-proof, low-information voters that Trump could win no matter what he does?
Perhaps Trump is smarter than we think...perhaps he is conducting an elaborate experiment, heaping lie upon lie and outrage upon outrage just to see if...or where...there is a tipping point beyond which a campaign implodes into a black hole. (Oh, haha, LOL, no, stop, my sides are KILLING me...! [doubles over in tears of laughter])
Don't forget to read Dot Calm's shadow's favorite independent sources of news and information:
Daily Kos
AlterNet
Peas, friends. Hug yourselves and each other for me--please and thank you! Thanks for being good to yourselves and your loved ones--especially your elderly friends and rellies. And thanks for reading. I appreciate you!
- Dot Calm's shadow
Consider the preemptive Blogger phuqued-up phormatting disclaimer to be in effect. Grrr.
-- Dot Calm's shadow
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-- Conservative Clown Car
Here's the title of the article in the link:
Alex Jones: “It Is Surreal To Talk About Issues Here On Air And Then Word-For-Word Hear Trump Say It Two Days Later”
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Oopsie! ISIS founder Barack O'Bama reportedly just took out the leader of ISIS in Afghanistan in an airstrike. Conservative Clown Car concludes that, if true, it must've been an accident.
Trump only blames O'Bama for ISIS when he's not blaming Bush, Cheney, Rove...
Reagan, King, and Kennedy families slam Trump for inciting assassination
("Reagan" and "King" refer to Patty Davis and Bernice King respectively. Warning: the CNN article linked under "Reagan" is loaded with adware--it yaps and is slow to load. If you don't need all the details as packaged in bulky, bloated, unnecessary CNN frou-frou, just read the Snopes article linked under "King." It loads quickly, presents the facts, and is free from big-news-website bullshit.)
Vox: Here are the women who have publicly accused Roger Ailes of sexual harassment
The article mentions that there are at least 20, listing 10 named and 10 anonymous victims.
Vox: RuPaul just gave the most politically pragmatic endorsement of Hillary
I have to give a spoiler of RuPaul's statement because it's just too juicy and delicious: "...If you're a politician...there are a lot of things that you have to do that you're not proud of. There are a lot of compromises you have to make because it means that you can get this other thing over here. And if you think that you can go to fucking Washington and be rainbows and butterflies the whole time, you're living in a fucking fantasy world. So now, having said that, think about what a female has to do with that: all of those compromises, all of that shit, double it by ten. And you get to understand who this woman is and how powerful, persuasive, brilliant, and resilient she is. Any female executive, anybody who has been put to the side — women, blacks, gays — for them to succeed in a white-male-dominated culture is an act of brilliance. Of resilience, of grit, of everything you can imagine. So, what do I think of Hillary? I think she's fucking awesome. Is she in bed with Wall Street? Goddammit, I should hope so! You've got to dance with the devil. So which of the horrible people do you want? That's more of the question. Do you want a pompous braggart who doesn't know anything about diplomacy? Or do you want a badass bitch who knows how to get shit done?..." Dot Calm just lurved her some RuPaul. Methinks I do, too. The article does a nice job of unpacking all the goodness in the remarks so you can really wrap your mind around them and savor them.
BuzzFeed: Donald Trump Praised Putin For Bashing The Term “American Exceptionalism” In 2013
Oh ho, my Tea Party Christian friend--Mister American Exceptionalism himself--would shit kittens if he knew that his idol, Donald J. Trump, disparaged the term! Hee HEE!!
Vox: Breitbart thought the polls were biased against Trump. So it did its own poll. Clinton won.
Vox: Right now, polls show Donald Trump losing every single swing state
(Give that 'un a Nelson "HA HA!" too!)
Vox: Milwaukee's riot didn't happen in a vacuum. It happened in the US's most segregated city.
As the article points out, Martin Luther King, Jr., hated riots. He hated them with a passion. But he lived right smack-dab in the middle of the oppression himself; as an insider, he understood why the riots happened even as he exhorted his Black brothers and sisters not to act out in violence: "A riot is the language of the unheard." If only the privileged whites in this great nation of ours could develop some empathy toward our Black brothers and sisters who lose their loved ones daily to those in uniform who are sworn to "protect and serve" us all. I speak for myself, too...I'm so freakin' white that I glow in the dark, and, despite money being tight, I am nonetheless hanging onto a middle-class lifestyle, even if I do forego the little luxuries I used to be able to afford because I need to watch my nickels and dimes now. I could make more money if I wanted to--I'm still young enough to be upwardly mobile--but I'd rather spend time with my dad than kill myself at work. And that's only one difference between me and my brothers and sisters in Baltimore, Milwaukee, and the rest of the American cities who are hurting right now. I'll never know what it's like to hear the clerk page "security" because I just walked into a store where I grew up shopping in my home town. I'll never know what it's like to worry about being shot by a cop pulling me over for a traffic violation. I'll never know what it's like to worry about my kids not coming home from school because one wore a hoodie to exams or the other is out late at night, taking the bus home after an evening football game the week before homecoming. I'll never know what it's like to lose my beloved twelve-year-old because he was playing with the wrong toy at the Wal-Mart. I'll never know what it's like to get that stomach-sinking call at 3:00 a.m. telling me that my husband or wife or brother or sister or nephew or niece or whichever loved one was gunned down like a dog and left to die like a dog, bleeding in the middle of the street without even first aid...left bleeding, face down, while handcuffs were put on...HANDS UP, STILL SHOT...only to have his or her and our family's reputation dragged through the mud as the media immediately and without question label the murder as "justifiable" because the victim was Black and therefore "no angel." THIS IS WRONG. IT IS EVIL. It infuriates me, just as it did poor Dot Calm. She lived in an agony of helpless frustration as strangers as well as friends were shot down throughout her life. She identified so strongly with Black mothers who lost children like Trayvon Martin that the daily shootings devastated her. IT HAS TO STOP...and we all MUST unite and do what it takes to make it stop NOW. In the meantime, I wish we all could just take a minute and learn as much as we can about WHY our beautiful Black brothers and sisters are rioting instead of taking the non-violent, non-destructive measures of civil disobedience that King favored. News flash, o my privileged white friends: Blacks are NOT violent. They are no more inherently violent than whites. And they are no less inherently intelligent, self-disciplined, or whatever other stereotype you may think applies. In other words, if our wounded Black brothers and sisters are so frustrated and angry and desperate that they're rioting, then doncha think there must be a really good reason--a reason so powerful that, if you were in their shoes, you'd be rioting, too?
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As seen in recent headlines
and remarked by Robby Mook
at the Hillary Clinton campaign:
"Last month,
Trump and the GOP
raised over $80 million.
And he hasn’t
spent one dollar
on any TV advertising.
...[L]iterally since the general election began,
he hasn’t spent any money
whatsoever
on one of the most critical components
of a winning campaign."
Any guesses on where the money went?
Bueller?
...BUELLER??
Personally, I'd bet dollars to doughnuts
that Trump funneled every yummy penny
into his own failing businesses...
renting his own jets, suites, meeting rooms, etc.
to himself.
Ya think my Tea Party Christian friend
would just hug himself if he knew
that this is how his campaign donations
are being spent?
I'd bet dollars to doughnuts on that one, too...
he and his ilk are only too happy
to give their hard-earned money
to those who already have too much.
In such cases,
a fool and his money are soon parted...
both giver and receiver
have more dollars than sense.
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Mailbag
From Change.org--make Trump release his tax returns!
Petition by Steven Gill, Austin, TX
Every
U.S. Presidential candidate since Richard Nixon has voluntarily
released copies of their tax returns to the public so that voters can
assess the amount and sources of income, taxes paid, charitable
contributions and other data which can affect our propensity to elect
them.
Donald
Trump has refused to do so, claiming this might affect audits of his
returns currently underway. This claim, on its face, is absurd, since he
would simply be releasing information the IRS already has. No new
information would be disclosed.
We
should insist that Mr Trump adhere to the same custom as past
Presidential candidates, and encourage the FEC to make tax return
disclosure a requirement in future elections.
|
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| |
| No new offshore oil leases in the Gulf of Mexico | |
| The petition to the Obama administration reads:
"The pending lease sale of nearly 24 million acres in the Gulf of Mexico for oil and gas drilling will put Gulf residents, the environment, and the fight to battle climate change at serious risk. Stop the sale of offshore oil leases in the Gulf of Mexico immediately."
Add your name:
|
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I just don't seem to be in a big mood for running petitions etc. today. So, as promised, dear ones, I looked into the "Democracy Now!" story on the Clinton Foundation's peddling of access. Doesn't look good for Hillary, oh no. Can you say, "conflict of interest"? Oh yes. And yet she is still the far lesser evil of the two, one of whom apparently will become president. Even Noam Chomsky, who is deeply principled, urges us to vote for Hillary for that reason. Like I keep saying, Hillary will not nuke the status quo...she will give us the breathing room to keep fighting for a freer, fairer America. And I'm sure she will do a few nice things for the disadvantaged of this country and the children of the world (although I'd prefer she also keep her hand out of the till). In contrast, Trump would not only plunge both of his stubby, grubby, orange hands into the till, but there's way too good of a chance that he'd spawn the apocalypse that evangelicals like my Tea Party Christian friend dream of...with nasty gleams in their eyes. Like the Muslims, Christians WANT the End Times...they long for it, they ache for it...and they seem only too willing to do themselves what their gawd can't.
-- Dot Calm's shadow
From Democracy Now!--Did Companies & Countries Buy State Dept. Access by Donating to Clinton Foundation?
TRANSCRIPT
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
ELIZABETH TRUDEAU: The department’s actions under Secretary Clinton were taken to advance administration policy as set by the president and in the interests of American foreign policy. The State Department is not aware of any actions that were influenced by the Clinton Foundation.AMY GOODMAN: One of the newly released email exchanges is about billionaire Nigerian-Lebanese developer Gilbert Chagoury, who contributed between $1 [million] and $5 million to the Clinton Foundation. The emails show a top Clinton Foundation executive writing to Abedin and Mills, asking for help putting Chagoury in touch with the U.S. ambassador to Lebanon. Abedin responds, "I’ll talk to jeff," referring to then-U.S. Ambassador Jeffrey Feltman. On Wednesday, Gilbert Chagoury’s spokesman said Chagoury, quote, "was simply passing along his observations and insights about the dire political situation in Lebanon at the time," unquote.
For more, we go to Santa Barbara, where we’re joined by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist James Grimaldi. He’s a senior writer at The Wall Street Journal and has covered the Clinton Foundation since 2014.
Welcome to Democracy Now!, James. You’ve been covering the Clinton Foundation for years. Can you talk about what this latest group of emails suggests, and how significant it is, about the relationship between the Clinton Foundation under Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and—between the State Department under Clinton and the Clinton Foundation?
JAMES GRIMALDI: Well, I think this confirms what we sort of knew. There are obvious ties and relationships. The key tie here would be Douglas Band, who was a top aide to Bill Clinton. He helped Bill Clinton create the Clinton Foundation, and sort of devised how he would spend his days in retirement. He was very close, of course, to Cheryl Mills and Huma Abedin. At one point he was employing, as a contractor, Huma Abedin, as Huma was working at the State Department. And during this time of the Lebanese elections, Mr. Band sent an email, as you described just now, regarding one of their greatest benefactors, Mr. Chagoury, and suggested that the State Department have the person who was a lead—the ambassador to Lebanon speak to Mr. Chagoury.
It shows how donations to the Clinton Foundation win access to, you know, state diplomatic—State Department diplomatic officials. It sort of begs the question, if he hadn’t given that money to the Clinton Foundation, whether he would have had that kind of easy access. I would say it would probably be unlikely. It certainly would not happen as swiftly. Possibly, that State Department ambassador might have consulted with this person regarding that issue, but it sure shows or seems to create an appearance of a conflict of interest, that perhaps he bought access by making those donations to the Clinton Foundation.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Well, speaking of that issue of conflict of interest, you’ve noted that during her confirmation hearings as secretary of state, Secretary Clinton specifically said that she would take, quote, "extraordinary steps ... to avoid even the appearance of a conflict of interest." How well do you think she has followed through on that, on that promise?
JAMES GRIMALDI: Well, over the past year, we have looked at that issue. And what I did was I went into the lobbying records to see which companies and other entities were lobbying the State Department, and also looking to see how many of them had given to the Clinton Foundation. And one of our findings was that at least 60 companies had lobbied the State Department, had given as much as $26 million, and many of those companies, 44 of those 60, had participated in what they call commitments, or philanthropic projects, that were valued by the Clinton Foundation at $3.2 billion.
So then we went to look and see if Mrs. Clinton had done anything for these companies at the time that they were making these gifts. And we looked at several companies—UBS, Boeing, General Electric and Microsoft and others, Wal-Mart—who seemed to have been getting favors from Mrs. Clinton, perhaps for good reason—promoting American companies and American jobs—but also coming at the same time that there were donations going to the Clinton Foundation.
AMY GOODMAN: You wrote an extensive piece, James, last year about Clinton’s complicated connection with UBS. Can you talk about that, just as an example?
JAMES GRIMALDI: Right. That’s one of our deeper dives into one of the banks that was involved. And we know that Mrs. Clinton is very close to a lot of the Wall Street banks. In this case with UBS, they were in a bind. A whistleblower had come forward, an American who was helping UBS find Americans who wanted to dodge taxes in Switzerland, literally recruiting them to open accounts in Switzerland that would be then hidden from the Internal Revenue Service. He blew the whistle on that.
The government, IRS and DOJ, wanted 50,000 accounts that they knew about in which Americans were hiding taxes—hiding their income in the UBS Swiss bank accounts so they wouldn’t be taxed. In the end, UBS did not want to provide those names, because there was a law in Switzerland that said they couldn’t reveal that kind of confidential information. In the end, they only gave about 5,000 of those 50,000 names. And we saw the donations from UBS to the Clinton Foundation increase from a little under $60,000 to $600,000, plus they participated in a $30 million inner-city loan program and then hired Bill Clinton to do speeches around the country for $1.5 million.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Of course, UBS was not only closely tied with the Clintons. As I recall, Robert Wolf, the head of UBS Americas, was one of the big fundraisers for President Obama—in fact, famously was playing golf with President Obama when the Justice Department announced its deferred prosecution agreement with UBS on this issue of the accounts. So, there seems to have been a—you also raised the issue of whether other foreign policy objectives of the government were not included in the negotiated deal to eventually get Switzerland to give up at least some of those bank accounts?
JAMES GRIMALDI: Right. Well, that’s how Hillary Clinton got involved. And we know this, thankfully, to WikiLeaks. The cables that were obtained under WikiLeaks happened to be that snapshot in time when these discussions were going underway. And what we saw was that when the Swiss foreign minister came to Hillary Clinton and said, "We really would like to take care of this UBS problem," Hillary said, "Well, we have a few things we would like, as well." And this was the time that the Clinton administration—I’m sorry, the Obama administration was eager to close Guantánamo Bay. And Mrs. Clinton was pressuring Switzerland to take some of the less dangerous detainees, in particular, some Chinese Uyghurs who were deemed to be not particularly dangerous, which they eventually agreed to do. That seemed to be part of the overall deal that was made between the United States and Switzerland regarding UBS.
AMY GOODMAN: So, explain the evolution of the Clinton Foundation. I mean, not long before Hillary Clinton announced for president, didn’t they rename the Clinton Foundation the "Bill, Hillary & Chelsea Clinton Foundation"?
JAMES GRIMALDI: Right. And she became very, very involved in the fundraising between the time that she left the State Department and when she announced her run for the presidency. She helped raise as much as $250 million from many of these same corporations in order to bulk up the endowment to keep the Clinton Foundation running in the future. In addition, she was giving a lot of speeches, as was Bill Clinton giving speeches, that were being paid, as, famously, we know Bernie Sanders brought up the fact that she was taking money from Wall Street and banks regarding speeches, up to $250,000 a pop. We may hear a little bit more about that today or in the coming days, because we understand that the Clinton campaign is getting ready to release their most latest tax returns. We already know some of this from her personal financial disclosure form, but we might see additional information coming out of her tax returns today.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And what about the public-private partnerships that Clinton established while she was secretary of state with some major corporations, and the relations of those corporations to the Clinton Foundation?
JAMES GRIMALDI: Well, exactly. You know, there’s usually never a stop in what you can do in terms of contributions you can make to the various Clinton pots. You know, you’ve got money that you can donate to the foundation. You can partner—at the State Department there are these partnerships between the Clinton Foundation and corporations. Some of that went into building an Expo in China for the Chinese world fair that they held there. And the Clinton Foundation—Mrs. Clinton, at the State Department, was very eager to see those being built, because, apparently, under the Bush administration, it really had kind of had a—reached a point where they hadn’t raised enough money to even have a pavilion there. But then you could see that there are money coming from corporations to their own personal wallet, their purses, campaign contributions. It just seems as if there are many, many places that you can make a contribution and you can partner with either Mrs. Clinton at the State Department or get involved at the Clinton Foundation.
AMY GOODMAN: I want to turn to a clip of Hillary Clinton on CNN back in June. Anderson Cooper asked her about the lack of transparency of donations to the Clinton Foundation from foreign countries.
HILLARY CLINTON: We had absolutely overwhelming disclosure. Were there, you know, one or two instances that slipped through the cracks? Yes. But was the overwhelming amount of anything that anybody gave the foundation disclosed? Absolutely.AMY GOODMAN: So there you have Hillary Clinton saying this. James Grimaldi, can you talk about what happened when President Obama tapped her to be secretary of state? And what were the rules around what would happen with the Clinton Foundation?
JAMES GRIMALDI: Well, let me also respond to the clip. I would say the disclosure is underwhelming. Yes, they have disclosed more than they’re required to under internal revenue law, but when they disclose it, they don’t tell you the date, they don’t tell you the amount. The disclosure is very skimpy. Someone could make a donation; the only way you know is if they’ve increased in one category, from, say, $1 [million] to $5 million, to $5 [million] to $10 million, and then there’s an asterisk that’s placed next to the name of a donor, that’s released either quarterly or annually. It’s very opaque, I think, in terms of what’s disclosed. Disclosure was required by the Obama administration when she came in, but they were very vague about what those rules would be. And I think they went to the least amount of effort that they could.
Also, for any fundraising that was to be done, they were supposed to consult with the ethics officers at the State Department. But so far, we’ve only found a handful of examples where they ever said no. And in those cases, they were really in sort of the extreme. Bill Clinton wanted to give a speech in North Korea. And I think there may have been some efforts where he wanted to raise some money in China, as well. So, we’ve obtained many of those disclosure requests. And, in fact, there have been some others that are still coming out through some of these emails. But like I said, it doesn’t look like the State Department pushed back very often.
AMY GOODMAN: Wasn’t there a rule? Didn’t they change—didn’t they change a rule around countries, that countries—the Clinton Foundation would not accept contributions from countries—
JAMES GRIMALDI: Yes.
AMY GOODMAN: —during that time, but then that changed?
JAMES GRIMALDI: Right. So, what they—what they did was they said, "We really don’t want you raising money from foreign governments," because she’s going to be, obviously, dealing with foreign governments. So they stopped doing that. And then, what we realized, when they did, they were very quiet. They didn’t announce it. They posted on their website the 2014—I guess, in 2015, for the previous year, we saw that, immediately, the Clintons had gone back to many of these Middle Eastern countries—the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia and others, Qatar—that would have raised some questions. So, in other words, in this interregnum in between when she was at the State Department and when she ran for—announced her run for president, they ended up going back to the very countries that some people had raised a lot of questions about. And there are many who have raised questions about raising money from these governments and many of these sheikhs in Saudi Arabia and others in countries that have very questionable human rights and certainly don’t have equal rights for women.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And to your knowledge, this issue of foreign governments donating to an American charitable philanthropy, is there any other philanthropy in the United States that has comparable donations from foreign governments as the Clinton Foundation?
JAMES GRIMALDI: Well, probably not at this scale. But I do know that there are certain government entities that make contributions, sort of like we do with USAID. I know that Switzerland, you know, will—has, I think, a lottery that donates. Canada—it was interesting, the Canadian State Department was making contributions, coming from the same agency that was lobbying the Clinton—I’m sorry, lobbying the State Department regarding the Keystone XL pipeline. Obviously, Canada wanted that pipeline to come through. It was eventually stopped. But there were donations from that same Canadian State Department that went to the Clinton Foundation around the time that—that’s is one that slipped through, in terms of a government donation, around the same time that they were lobbying Hillary Clinton to accept the Keystone XL pipeline.
AMY GOODMAN: How does Saudi Arabia fit into this picture, James?
JAMES GRIMALDI: Saudi Arabia, there are sheikhs and others who have made donations. They’re very big supporters, as is Abu Dhabi. Interesting, we had a story last year that talked about Abu Dhabi also donating around the time that their airline, their upstart airline, wanted to receive a U.S. Customs facility in their airport. It was like a very—frankly, not a very common route, and it was sort of a plum get for them to get this preclearance facility in Abu Dhabi for their airline.
AMY GOODMAN: Well, you write that Bill Clinton received $1 million for two appearances sponsored by the Abu Dhabi government, the United Arab Emirates, that were arranged while Hillary Clinton was secretary of state.
JAMES GRIMALDI: That’s right. Those were—those came through agencies, the tourism agency, the tourism agency obviously being run by Abu Dhabi, but one of the also big sponsors or participants in that agency was the very airline that wanted this special facility, the preclearance facility, at their airport.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: You’ve also written about Clinton’s relationship to the Energy Pioneer Solutions. Could you talk about that company and what it was seeking?
JAMES GRIMALDI: Yeah, that’s a very interesting company. Energy Pioneer Solutions was founded by Scott Kleeb, who was a candidate for Congress in Nebraska. His wife happens—Jane Kleeb happens to be one of the big opponents of the Keystone XL pipeline, so very well known in Nebraska. But interesting, this company, which weatherized homes and put in insulation, had as its co-owners the treasurer of the Democratic National Committee, Mark Weiner, a Rhode Island official very close to Bill and Hillary Clinton going back to the '70s and to their ’92 campaign. He recently passed away during the Democratic National Convention, and Bill Clinton mentioned him in his speech at the convention. And Bill and Hillary both went to his funeral. He was a co-owner, as was a woman who lives about three miles from Bill and Hillary's house in Chappaqua, New York. This company received a $2 million commitment that was arranged by the Clinton Foundation and the Clinton Global Initiative. And Bill Clinton called the energy secretary, Steven Chu, in order to get them an $840,000 grant. That’s raised some questions about whether the Clinton Foundation is being used to sort of feather the nests of many of their friends.
AMY GOODMAN: This is a for-profit company.
JAMES GRIMALDI: It is a for-profit company. Very unusual for a for-profit company to get a federal grant from the Department of Energy. And the company isn’t doing too well. As I understand it, they’re reconfiguring their business plan. And it has not worked out, I think, as they had expected. But I think it may still be incorporated in Nebraska.
AMY GOODMAN: Finally, a big issue that’s been raised is, you know, the relationship of the close advisers to Hillary Clinton and the Clinton Foundation, Cheryl Mills, in particular, who goes back to being Bill Clinton’s attorney during—defending him during the impeachment hearings in Congress, then now the right-hand person of Hillary Clinton. And one of the issues raised in this email—in the emails is that she went to New York on her own dime, they are now saying, took a train up, to help choose the new head of the Clinton Foundation during her tenure as, you know, top State Department official. Any issues here with that, James?
JAMES GRIMALDI: Well, she’s at the center of everything involving Hillary Clinton at the State Department. She’s basically Hillary’s consigliere at the State Department. And she is the keeper of all the Clinton secrets. And she also would be the enforcer, at times, when Bill Clinton might have been pushing too hard for some of these questionable donations. But there’s no question she was sort of in the middle of every major decision that’s ever been made by the Clintons, a very, very close adviser to Bill and Hillary Clinton, and very close to Hillary, and, in fact, had an official position in the State Department.
AMY GOODMAN: Finally, could the Clinton Foundation exist as it is now if Hillary Clinton is president?
JAMES GRIMALDI: Well, Bill Clinton was asked that question. He hasn’t really answered it. He said he doesn’t want to count his chickens before they’re hatched. But I think all of the people around Bill Clinton, including people in the Clinton campaign, say there’s really no way it could continue to operate. And I think that Bill is pushing back on that, from what we understand, that he wants to continue to do some of the good work that they do—for example, helping to negotiate AIDS drugs in Africa at better prices. The Clinton Health Initiative, I think, really wants to continue to raise money. Many of these foreign donations are actually going to the Clinton Health Initiative—Health Access Initiative, as it’s known, or CHAI.
And so, I think there’s this—there’s a tension between the Clinton campaign for president and the Clinton Foundation about what exactly will happen. Those negotiations are well undercover. They’re not transparent. We don’t know what they are. We don’t know what will happen. And I don’t foreclose the possibility that the Clinton Foundation will continue to operate and that they will raise money from some of the same places. And I think that, really, these questions need to be asked of the Clinton campaign: If she plans—if she plans to continue—you know, whether Bill plans to continue to run the Clinton Foundation as it is, what form it will take, what it will look like and how it will raise money.
AMY GOODMAN: James Grimaldi, thanks for being with us, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist—
JAMES GRIMALDI: Thanks for inviting me.
AMY GOODMAN: —senior writer at The Wall Street Journal, has covered the Clinton Foundation for a number of years. This is Democracy Now! We’ll link to his articles at democracynow.org.
We’ll be back, looking at Trump’s latest comments that President Obama and Hillary Clinton are the founders of ISIS. But we’ll go way beyond that. A remarkable full issue of The New York Times Magazine is coming out this weekend with one author. And we’re going to be speaking with him, Scott Anderson, looking at the wars of the Middle East since the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003. Stay with us.
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Here's the Vox article on Donald Trump's stochastic terrorism against Hillary Clinton. Last time, I only ran the link. It's important enough of a topic for me to run the whole article.
-- Dot Calm's shadow
Vox--Trump’s 2nd Amendment comment wasn’t a joke. It was "stochastic terrorism."
Many saw Donald Trump’s latest shocking comment, about how "Second Amendment people" might be able to do something to stop Hillary Clinton from picking the Supreme Court judges she wants, as beyond the pale. Whether or not it was a joke, the implication of his comment is pretty clear: that gun owners could use their weapons to stop either Clinton herself or liberal judges from implementing gun control.
The explicit-sounding call to violence is bad enough. But even worse is that, intentionally or not, Trump has been laying the groundwork for this idea for a while. From his talk of "rigged elections" to his suggestion that we need Russia to hack Clinton’s emails if the Justice Department won’t indict her, Trump’s message is clear: Clinton is so corrupt, and the system that favors her is so broken, that our ordinary democratic and legal processes aren’t equipped to handle it. She should be thrown in jail, but she probably won’t be.
It’s a pretty short step from that idea to violent fantasies of going outside the law for real justice — even from official sources like the Republican Party of Riverside County, California, which recently tweeted a picture of a hangman captioned "Ready For Hillary."
And there’s an unsettling parallel for this kind of rhetoric and what it can lead to, as law professor David S. Cohen pointed out Wednesday in a Rolling Stone op-ed: anti-abortion terrorism.
Cohen, who has studied and written about violence and intimidation against abortion providers, points out that while anti-abortion violence is usually carried out by a "lone wolf" — like the Planned Parenthood shooter in Colorado Springs — it’s also incited, quite predictably, by the inflammatory rhetoric of prominent groups or officials.
Cohen says that this phenomenon is called "stochastic terrorism": using language and other forms of communication to incite random acts of violence that are "statistically predictable but individually unpredictable." It’s not a legal term, but it can help us understand just how dangerous Trump’s statements are:
Let's break that down in the context of what Trump said. Predicting any one particular individual following his call to use violence against Clinton or her judges is statistically impossible. But we can predict that there could be a presently unknown lone wolf who hears his call and takes action in the future.
Stated differently: Trump puts out the dog whistle knowing that some dog will hear it, even though he doesn't know which dog.
Planned Parenthood itself is explicitly making the connection between Trump’s remarks and last year’s attack on its clinic. "Words matter, and calls for violence are not a joke," Planned Parenthood Action Fund vice president Dawn Laguens said in a statement. "Planned Parenthood’s brave medical professionals and staff members know all too well how violent rhetoric can lead to real tragedy."
It’s a pattern that abortion providers in particular have seen play out time and again. Public figures or advocates demonize a person or group as a loathsome, inhuman monster, often using violent imagery and righteous rhetoric — like comparing abortion to slavery, or saying it’s worse than the Holocaust. Then when someone commits the act of violence that many people would consider an appropriate response to such extreme atrocities (who wouldn’t kill Hitler if they had the chance?), those same public figures react with shock and say that no one could have predicted this.
But it’s very predictable, statistically if not individually. Right after a series of anti-abortion videos made the baseless claims that Planned Parenthood is staffed by "butchers" who "sell baby parts" — claims that were then repeated incessantly by Republican officials and lawmakers — violent threats against abortion providers skyrocketed, and the FBI took notice. And pretty soon, Robert Lewis Dear was ranting about "baby parts" after killing three people and wounding nine at a Planned Parenthood.
Trump has suggested before that Hillary Clinton might be a murderer. But his obsessions with how "crooked" Hillary is and how the system is "rigged" to favor her may actually be more relevant here, and more dangerous.
In the years before Dr. George Tiller was murdered in his church in Kansas, anti-abortion groups like Operation Rescue conducted a relentless campaign against Tiller, calling him "Tiller the Killer" and demanding that he be jailed. Some activists went so far as to distribute "Wanted" posters featuring Tiller’s picture and address. Operation Rescue also gathered enough petition signatures to take advantage of a state law that let citizens force a grand jury trial, although there were no indictments from either of the two grand juries convened as a result of citizen petitions. Tiller was also tried, and acquitted, on charges of illegal abortion brought by the attorney general of Kansas.
But after Tiller was acquitted, Operation Rescue and its president Troy Newman continued to insist that it wasn’t over, and that Tiller still had to be "brought to justice" through some other means. Newman (who has argued before that murdering abortion doctors may be justifiable) also pushed conspiracy theories that Tiller had bought off the local district attorney or other politicians with "blood money."
Tiller’s murderer, Scott Roeder, had some connections to Operation Rescue and shared the group’s obsession with Tiller’s trial. To be clear, Operation Rescue disavowed Roeder and said he was never "a member, contributor, or volunteer" with the organization. But many critics said that it didn’t matter whether Roeder was actually affiliated with the group: Operation Rescue had relentlessly, and recklessly, pushed the narrative that Tiller was not just a murderer and a criminal, but a murderer and a criminal who was thwarting our normal system of justice. It was only a matter of time before someone took that message to heart and acted extrajudicially.
As my colleague Dara Lind has pointed out, Trump is tapping into powerful forces that he can’t necessarily control with his constant drumbeat of delegitimizing rhetoric. And if Trump is actively egging those forces on, there are predictable consequences to his behavior.
Update: This article has been updated to clarify the circumstances around Tiller's trial and the citizen grand juries convened against him.
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I recently saw a headline recently confirming that Trump's incitement to violence isn't new--it's his legacy. I couldn't find that headline, but I found the article it may have been based on...it's in Politico. Unfortunately, however, Politico is being a pain in the ass--it's got a malware ad and is running super-slow. So I'm running the full article here. Maybe Politico, Newsweek, CNN, and the other big lumbering websites that load on the frou-frou bullshit will get the hint. In the mean time, read it here ad- and bullshit-free, friends.
-- Dot Calm's shadow
Politico--Trump's long dalliance with violent rhetoric
Beyond his own incendiary comments, he's done little to mute loose talk of killing Clinton and Obama.
In May, the Secret Service investigated Donald Trump’s butler over a Facebook post saying that President Barack Obama “should be shot as an enemy agent.”
Secret Service agents also interviewed a Trump campaign adviser last month, after he said that Hillary Clinton “should be put in the firing line and shot for treason.”
In December, Trump himself appeared on the radio show of the conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, who has warned that the federal government might round up gun owners “like Jews in Nazi Germany.”
And refrains of “hang the bitch” and “kill the bitch” have grown increasingly common at Trump rallies.
Even before Trump’s Tuesday remark that “Second Amendment people” might stop Hillary Clinton’s Supreme Court appointments, his associates and supporters had repeatedly called for violence against Clinton and Obama, while right-wing leaders and militia groups that support Trump speak of an armed response to federal gun control efforts.
Trump’s campaign said his Tuesday remark was merely a call for gun owners to unite against Clinton this fall. But outraged Democrats said Trump had, at a minimum, made a horribly ill-advised joke about mounting armed resistance to Clinton.
Some analysts said that, whatever Trump’s intended meaning, the comment was dangerous in a campaign already colored by violence, from assaults on protesters at Trump rallies to talk of rebellion and civil war among far-right Trump supporters.
“There is no question that there’s more violent and hateful speech” in this campaign than in past presidential contests, said Heidi Beirich of the Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks domestic extremism and hate speech. Militia groups and others filled with rage against the government and Democrats like Clinton and Obama “are emboldened by this campaign and its rhetoric.”
Beirich and others blame Trump for legitimizing talk of violence throughout the campaign, including his jokes about punching and roughing up protesters, his defense of torturing terrorist suspects and even his infamous crack — complete with a pantomimed gunshot — that he could “shoot somebody” in midtown Manhattan and not lose any political support.
Trump supporters say he can’t be held responsible for every incendiary comment made by someone he knows or who supports him, and note that Trump himself has been the target of online death threats, some of which the Secret Service has investigated. “Certain members of the media and various organizations seem to expect Mr. Trump to instantly track down and condemn every irresponsible comment posted anywhere on social media by anyone claiming to be a supporter,” Jason D. Greenblatt, executive vice president and chief legal officer of the Trump Organization wrote in a letter to The Washington Post in May. Trump, he added, is “not responsible for other people’s irresponsible invective.”
But Democrats say that’s not good enough. “The truth is he is responsible, because he could stand there and say, ‘Stop it,’ and tell them no. But he doesn’t,” says Robert Shrum, a Democratic strategist who has run several presidential campaigns.
For instance, Trump only mildly rebuked Al Baldasaro, a New Hampshire state representative and informal campaign adviser, after he said on a radio show last month that Clinton should be shot for treason related to the lethal September 2012 attack on a U.S. compound in Benghazi, Libya. Baldasaro advises Trump on veterans’ issues and has appeared next to Trump at campaign rallies.
After Baldasaro’s statement circulated nationally, Trump’s spokesman Hope Hicks said only that the Trump campaign was “incredibly grateful for his support, but we don’t agree with his comments.” Trump did not sever ties with Baldasaro, whom he called out by name at a rally in New Hampshire on Saturday. “Al has been so great,” Trump said. “Where’s Al? Where’s my vet?”
By contrast, when Hillary Clinton’s 2007 New Hampshire campaign co-chairman made a public reference to Barack Obama’s use of marijuana and cocaine as a young man, he was forced to relinquish his campaign title, and Clinton personally apologized to Obama on an airport tarmac.
Trump issued a stronger response in May after media reports revealed that a longtime butler at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida had posted several Facebook messages calling for Obama’s execution. One April 2015 post by the 84-year-old Anthony Senecal said Obama should be “hung for treason,” while another in May of this year lamented that Obama had not been shot years ago. In that case, Hicks issued a statement noting that Senecal had not worked for Trump for years and that “we totally and completely disavow the horrible statements made by him regarding the President.” (According to news reporters, both Senecal and Baldasaro were investigated by the Secret Service, which routinely follows up on threats against presidents and presidential candidates.)
Another Trump associate to call for Clinton’s death is his longtime political adviser Roger Stone, who tweeted in July 2014 that Clinton “must be brought to justice — arrested, tried, and executed for murder.” (Stone was replying to another tweet which accused “leftists” of “making common cause with jihadis.”) Stone spent several years as a Trump confidant and helped to run his 2016 campaign before the men parted ways last fall over undefined strategic differences.
Calls for violence against Clinton are not hard to detect at Trump events. At an event in Ashburn, Virginia, last week, a pre-teen boy in the press area shouted “take the bitch down!” with his nearby mother’s approval. On Tuesday, a reporter at a Trump rally in North Carolina tweeted that someone had shouted, “Kill her! Kill her!” — a refrain that has been heard at more than one Trump campaign events in recent weeks, along with calls for Clinton’s hanging.
The proceedings at last month’s Republican National Convention did not threaten Clinton’s life, but did feature loud calls for her imprisonment for using a private email server while she was secretary of state. Chants of “lock her up” repeatedly emerged from the crowd on the convention floor on two different nights.
“We haven’t seen anything like this in American politics,” said Shrum, who argued that the vitriol around the Trump campaign exceeds even the often-coded racial signals surrounding the 1968 campaigns of Richard Nixon and George Wallace. “Those were dog whistles. Trump’s a siren.”
Of particular concern to experts who track hate speech is the rise of violent rhetoric among anti-government militias and white supremacist groups with which Trump does not directly associate, but that generally root for him.
Trump’s comment about the “Second Amendment people” could resonate with militia groups that often speak of armed resistance to the government. In April, the popular anti-government group Oath Keepers published an essay on its website warning of “outright civil war” in the event that Clinton is elected. “The level of hatred among conservatives for that woman is so stratospheric I cannot see any other outcome,” wrote the author, Brandon Smith, a regular contributor to the site.
In particular, right-wing leaders warn of a supposed federal plan to seize firearms on a mass scale that could lead to domestic conflict. Among them is Jones, the Texas-based host of the radio show and website “Infowars.” A promoter of 9/11 conspiracy theories with a large following, Jones often speaks of a liberal “disarmament agenda.” In January, he warned listeners that the government is “coming for our guns to enslave us,” including through the use of Nazi-style ghettos.
Trump appeared as a guest on Jones’ show a few weeks before, on Dec. 2. During that appearance, Jones told the Trump that “90 percent” of his listeners supported him. “Your reputation is amazing,” Trump said. “I won’t let you down.”
At times, Trump has seemingly condoned the use of violence in politics. During a December appearance on MSNBC, Trump was unfazed by allegations that Russian president Vladimir Putin had ordered the execution of journalists. “I think our country does plenty of killing also,” Trump replied, adding: “There’s a lot of stupidity going on in the world right now. … A lot of killing going on and a lot of stupidity and that’s the way it is.”
Trump has called the 1989 Chinese government crackdown on student-led demonstrations in Tiananmen Square “vicious” and “horrible,” but said it “shows you the power of strength.” In January, he said of the North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un, who had recently executed a group of alleged traitors that included his own uncle: “You’ve got to give him credit … this guy doesn’t play games.”
There are few clear precedents for Trump’s Tuesday comments about “Second Amendment people.” But his campaign’s statement, which attacked a “dishonest media,” contrasted with past cases where politicians quickly apologized for remarks construed as intimations of violence.
Rejecting calls that she drop out of the Democratic primary race in May 2008, Hillary Clinton cited the June 1968 assassination of Robert F. Kennedy to underscore the notion that it was not late in the race by historical standards. After observers thought Clinton seemed to be suggesting that Obama might also be shot, her campaign quickly issued a statement expressing “regret” if her comment “was in any way offensive.”
And in November 1994, Republican Sen. Jesse Helms of North Carolina said Bill Clinton was so unpopular on military bases in his state that “he better watch out” and “have a bodyguard” if he were to visit. Helms apologized the next day.
“Of course I didn’t expect to be taken literally when, to emphasize the cost and concerns I am hearing, I far too casually suggested that the president might need a bodyguard, or words to that effect,” the conservative North Carolinian said.“I made a mistake .... which I shall not repeat.”
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Democracy Now!
Friends, please listen to or read the segment on the Milwaukee riots. Remember what I said above about getting a clue and growing some empathy? Todaze DN! has what we need to get started.
-- Dot Calm's shadow
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Movies!
Apparently, I still can't face even my favorite current events videos...so here are more Mr. Deity vids for you to giggle at. Enjoy!
Oh, before we jump in, a PSA about misterdeity.com: do NOT go there. According to my Norton, it may have been hacked. If, like me, you want to support the show but don't want to risk hitting a hacked site, go to Patreon's page: https://www.patreon.com/MrDeity. I just did!
Here's why Mr. Deity removed his hand of protection from the United States...
Like his fundamentalist followers and apologists, Mr. Deity is apparently not very good at science and math...
Mr. Deity on what hell is and who goes there and why...his justice is so...loving, after all. What loving father wouldn't treat his children this way?
Did I say "apologist"?
Whaddayamean that Jesus isn't even theologically necessary?!?? Except that of course he isn't!
No magical beings?!?? My Tea Party Christian friend would be devastated!!
Mr. Deity's chosen people don't get cool stuff, like the ancient Greeks did...science, math, logic.... Naw, instead of getting electronics kits like the cool kids, they were the ones getting socks and underwear for xmas!
So good...so funny!
Mr. Deity presents a timely episode of The Way of The Mister: Reparative Therapy. Do NOT eat or drink anything while watching! Lolololol...!!! I love it. I'd like to see The Satanic Temple make a thing out of this version of reparative therapy!!!!!
'Til next time, check out these great channels:
...or, if you just want something mindless and fun, try Tested
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Stumpy Trumpy Rumpy Pumpy...
but they left out Pence
...with Trump as "lucky Pierre"
Stumpy Trumpy Rumpy Pumpy...
but they left out Pence
...with Trump as "lucky Pierre"
posted by Dot Calm @ 5:19 PM
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