Saturday, November 5, 2016

What Trump has already cost America: And how much steeper the price will grow if he wins

NY Daily News   by Tom Nichols is a professor of national security affairs at the Naval War College and teaches in the Harvard Extension School.


At this point, the brief against Donald Trump becoming President of the United States has been well rehearsed. There is no point in rehashing Trump's positions or policies: He doesn't have any.

And so rather than make the case that Trump would be a bad President (something accepted even by many of those nominally supporting him), we should look at the damage Trump has already done to our nation even by running. We need no clearer warning of a Trump presidency than to look at what he has already inflicted on us as a country and as a people.

Let's start with foreign policy, something most voters don't usually care about very much. Insofar as Trump has a foreign policy, it is based on an almost complete and fawning adoption of Russian President Vladimir Putin's anti-American view of the world.

Trump claims that Hillary Clinton would start World War III, but it is Trump who has already shaken and endangered our friends and allies with his reckless and stupid rhetoric.

This fall, I had the chance to talk with ordinary citizens, students, journalists, and others in cities and towns in Central Europe. Almost all of them expressed the same fear: that America was going to elect Donald Trump and abandon them — our NATO allies — to the same fate Russia has inflicted on Ukraine, Georgia, and especially Syria.

They found it incomprehensible that the United States of America could even think of electing a man so obviously enamored of Putin, whom they fear for good reason. They were mystified at the rise of right-wing nationalism, a problem they assumed was localized to Europe but to which America, at least at the level of presidential politics, seemed immune.

Worst of all, they were disappointed and scared. These are people who once lived behind the Iron Curtain. They hoped in us, believed in us, and admired our system of government. It's partly why they bound their fate to ours. Even if Trump loses, they will never look at us the same way, because they know what we're capable of tolerating in a presidential candidate.

At home, the Trump campaign has scarred us in ways that no future President will be able to heal soon. Trump's entire campaign was based on exploiting divisions in American society, flooding our public debate with fantasies and statistical fakery, from the myth of a rising crime rate to the promise of a wall that will never be built.

Underlying it all was a crass appeal not only to race, but to religious, ethnic, regional, and class prejudices. He has tried to inflame every one of the basic differences in American society that our system of federalism and our charter of universal liberties has overcome since the Civil War to bind us as a republic.

Through all of this, I was determined not to vote for Hillary Clinton. I am a Republican, but I could not mark a ballot for a family I have been hoping for over two decades would leave our political life. That all changed, however, when Trump turned from trying to exploit our differences as a nation and directly attacked our system of government itself.

When it became clear to Trump that he was likely to lose, he decided to lash out and see how many of our constitutional traditions he could take down with him. He made wild claims of electoral "rigging," trucking in conspiracy theories usually relegated to the darkest (and stupidest) corners of the internet. Heedless of the consequences, his bloated self-esteem demanded the destruction of the American electoral system if it would not produce the results he wanted.

Trump might well be too ignorant to understand the danger he was courting, since he seems unable to understand anything that is not directly and immediately about himself. But the various hangers-on around Trump knew exactly what they were doing. People who had once sworn an oath to protect and defend the Constitution gleefully abetted attacks on our most sacred traditions so scurrilous that even Moscow's propagandists were left in the dust trying to keep up.

Trump's deep corrosion of our national identity, both at home and abroad, has been immediate and it will be lasting. Trump has ground away at what was once the basic decency of American voters, trying to erode their faith in their own institutions rather than risk any affront to his spun-glass ego.

While I was overseas, I had to explain over and over that elections in the United States are administered locally, and that most Americans did not really have the stomach for accusing their own friends and neighbors of fraud.

I said that because I believe it, but also because I need to believe it.

Trump's boosters tell voters not to worry, that a new and more responsible Trump would emerge from the Oval Office, that his staff and other Republicans can moderate his behavior. This is a lie. There is no better Trump. A man willing to set over two centuries of constitutional tradition ablaze is not going to find sudden depth and new respect for our system once he is sitting at its pinnacle. [...]

A President should inspire us and encourage us to be better than we are. Trump has degraded us, urged us to be as bestial as we wish, and to immerse ourselves in the kind of hatreds and prejudices that would make our lives in a community and as a nation utterly impossible. He has encouraged us to abandon our duties as citizens of a republic, our heritage as Americans, and our very souls as human beings.

Electing him President will convince him that he was right, and that his coarse, bitter appeals are the right path to power. On Election Day, we must fight back, and tell Donald Trump that we and our country will not be sold so cheaply after being bought, long before he descended a glittering escalator, at a price greater than even a rich man can ever imagine.

Police dog ordered to ‘get him’ as officers kick man in a case of mistaken identity


A St. Paul police officer has been suspended and a second placed on unpaid leave after an arrest that left a man hospitalized for two weeks and prompted an apology from the city’s police chief.

Chief Todd Axtell released a graphic dashcam video of their actions on Friday -- more than four months after the June 24 arrest -- following a use-of-force review and internal affairs investigation. It shows Frank A. Baker, 53, of St. Paul, writhing and screaming as a police dog named Falco bites down on his right leg.

“As St. Paul’s police chief, I’m disappointed and upset by what the video shows,” Axtell said at a news conference. “I’m profoundly saddened. I’m releasing this video today because it’s the right thing to do.”

The video shows six officers standing around Baker, whom they believed matched the description of an armed suspect. Officer Brett Palkowitsch kicks Baker in the midsection three times as Baker is given orders and cursed at.

“Get him, buddy,” an officer says at one point, presumably to Falco. “Get him, buddy. Good.”

Police reports released Friday said the officers were called at 10:08 p.m. that day to the 1800 block of 7th Street E. on a report of people armed with bats, golf clubs and at least one gun. They arrived to find several people standing outside some apartment buildings, but “none of the people appeared to be alarmed, arguing, or fighting,” said a report written by officer Joe Dick. “None of the people were holding bats, golf clubs, or guns.”

Brian Ficcadenti, the first officer to encounter Baker in a parked car behind a building and the one who deployed Falco, was put on a 30-day suspension beginning Thursday.

Ficcadenti wrote in his report that he ordered Baker out of the car because he matched the description of an armed suspect. Baker obeyed. When he ordered Baker to put his hands up, Baker put one hand up and then down and shifted “back and forth” toward his vehicle and another to his left, said Ficcadenti’s report.

“Because of this I was unable to determine if he had anything in his hands or if he was reaching for anything,” Ficcadenti wrote. He said Baker refused to walk to him, so he released Falco. The dog gripped Baker’s leg for about 70 seconds, said a settlement letter written by Axtell.

In the Nov. 3 letter, Axtell wrote that Ficcadenti’s actions violated seven department policies. “Once you did engage [Baker] verbally, you gave him less than 20 seconds to completely comply before releasing your K-9 and running toward the citizen,” Axtell wrote. “This decision created unnecessary risk and was not consistent with policy or training.”

Ficcadenti will not be allowed to return to the K-9 unit. Palkowitsch was placed on unpaid leave starting Thursday. Police confirmed that he is the subject of an ongoing internal affairs investigation. State law prohibits the department from divulging more, said police spokesman Steve Linders.

Palkowitsch wrote in his report that he kicked Baker in the midsection two times because he was moving and stopped complying with Ficcadenti’s orders.

“Again I fully believed that Baker was armed with a firearm and I wanted this now progressively evolving use of force encounter on a gun call to end as fast as possible for the safety at the scene,” Palkowitsch wrote.

Baker stayed prone after the second kick, then reached toward the dog, Palkowitsch wrote, so he delivered a third and final kick.

Along with Dick, the other officers at the scene were Brian Nowicki, John Raether and Anthony Spencer. Spencer is on personal leave, and the others are actively assigned to the Eastern District.[...]

STEPHEN HAWKING ANGERS TRUMP SUPPORTERS WITH BAFFLING ARRAY OF LONG WORDS


 
The theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking angered supporters of Donald J. Trump on Monday by responding to a question about the billionaire with a baffling array of long words.

Speaking to a television interviewer in London, Hawking called Trump “a demagogue who seems to appeal to the lowest common denominator,” a statement that many Trump supporters believed was intentionally designed to confuse them.

Moments after Hawking made the remark, Google reported a sharp increase in searches for the terms “demagogue,” “denominator,” and “Stephen Hawking.”

“For a so-called genius, this was an epic fail,” Trump’s campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski, said. “If Professor Hawking wants to do some damage, maybe he should try talking in English next time.”

Later in the day, Hawking attempted to clarify his remark about the presumptive Republican Presidential nominee, telling a reporter, “Trump bad man. Real bad man.”

Friday, November 4, 2016

NY Daily News Editorial "Bury Trump in a Landslide" - Why Rav Avigdor Miller would not vote for Trump


When deliberating over a presidential endorsement, the Daily News Editorial Board strives to identify the person who offers the greatest promise to brighten the futures of Americans and to safeguard the national security.

Never have we questioned a candidate’s fitness to serve.

Then came Donald Trump — liar, thief, bully, hypocrite, sexual victimizer and unhinged, self-adoring demagogue.

The 16-month campaign since Trump vaingloriously entered the race has horrifyingly revealed that the Big Lie brazenly told — built on smaller falsehoods and spread by social media and a lust for TV ratings — can bring the United States to the brink of electing an aspiring strongman with no moral bearing or self-control.

But, now, with his defeat all but certain, Trump is conjuring for his followers demons that conspire to destroy them and the nation.

Chillingly, he refused in Wednesday night’s debate to commit to honoring the results of the November election. Doing so, he questioned the fundamental soundness of America’s democracy.

Trump’s reckless willingness to damage trust in the electoral process — in order to save face and hold leadership of the paranoid wing of U.S. politics — is the most pressing reason why voters must defeat him in a landslide.

To take full stock of Trump must be to understand the urgency of barring him from the White House, as well as to reckon with how an authoritarian fabulist has gotten so close to leading the globe’s beacon of democracy.

History will mark the presidential contest of 2016 for demagoguery that distorted America’s electoral process from a competition of ideas into, on the one hand, a reach for power based on a cultish thirst for vengeance, and, on the other, a bipartisan drive to save the American presidency itself.

Herewith, we fervently pray, is the political obituary of Donald Trump and all that he stands for.

Donald Trump launched his product in ostentatious spectacle on June 16, 2015, with a full-blown demonstration of demagoguery — defined by the Merriam-Webster Dictionary as the “use of popular prejudices and false claims and promises in order to gain power.”

Connecting with millions who had suffered the loss of jobs and homes in the Great Recession, as well as the loss of opportunities in the shrinkage of industries and the stagnation of wages in the country’s continuing struggle to recover, Trump roared that America had gone to hell and beyond.

A sampling from his opening remarks:

“Our country is in serious trouble. We don’t have victories anymore. We used to have victories, but we don’t have them.”

“The U.S. has become a dumping ground for everybody else’s problems.”

“Even our nuclear arsenal doesn’t work.”

“We got nothing but problems.”

And, finally: “Sadly, the American Dream is dead.”

Next, he railed at villainous enemies — foreigners and evil corporate titans — who were to blame.

Japan: “When did we beat Japan at anything? They send their cars over by the millions, and what do we do? When was the last time you saw a Chevrolet in Tokyo? It doesn’t exist, folks. They beat us all the time.”

Mexico: “They’re sending people that have lots of problems, and they’re bringing those problems with us. They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people.”

China: “They are ripping us. We are rebuilding China. We’re rebuilding many countries. China, you go there now, roads, bridges, schools, you never saw anything like it.”

Next, America’s political leaders have betrayed all but the rich: “We have people that are morally corrupt. We have people that are selling this country down the drain.”

Finally, the superlative wonders of a President Trump would bend the world to his will in order to “Make America Great Again.”

He would not only build a wall along the entire Mexican border to prevent the hordes from stealing American jobs, he would force Mexico to pay for it.

If the Ford car company planned to move a plant to Mexico, Trump would force a begging CEO to reverse course.

“They have no choice. They have no choice,” Trump promised, his vows reaching a crescendo with the words: “I will be the greatest jobs President that God ever created. I tell you that.”

Rage at nightmares that only he and his audiences saw, fury at enemies that only he and his audiences were willing to name and faith that Trump was the savior played out in rally after rally.

“I’m going to make our country rich again,” he declared.

“We’re going to win so much. You’re going to get tired of winning. You’re going to say, ‘Please, Mr. President, I have a headache. Please, don’t win so much,’” he vowed.

Over time, Trump’s pledges grew ever more grandiose.

“I alone can fix it,” he said.

“I will give you everything,” he told supporters for whom the truth was either irrelevant or a conspiracy of lies.

2. TRUMP THE FRAUDSTER [...]

3. TRUMP THE HEAD CASE[...]

Even more notoriously, Trump ridiculed the parents of Muslim U.S. Army Capt. Humayun Khan — who was killed in Iraq — after they criticized his call for banning Muslim immigrants.

He lashed out at Navy veteran John McCain, revered for enduring, with high honor, five brutal years as a Vietnam War captive.

“He’s not a war hero,” Trump declared of McCain, before modifying his venom to say: “He’s a war hero ’cause he was captured. I like people that weren’t captured, OK?”

Trump’s need for unqualified approval — and the high he gets from a whooping throng — are so powerful that he has chased after cheers by musing about violence against peaceful protesters.

“I’d like to punch him in the face,” Trump said of one. About another, he said, “I’ll beat the crap out of you,” adding, “Part of the problem ... is nobody wants to hurt each other anymore.”

4. TRUMP THE FAKE PHILANTHROPIST [...]

A month after the 9/11 terror attacks, while appearing on Howard Stern’s radio program, Trump pledged to donate $10,000 to the Twin Towers Fund.

Between 2010 and 2015 alone, he claimed to have given away more than $100 million.

“I give to hundreds of charities and people in need of help,” Trump told The Associated Press in a 2015 email.

Almost all of this is false. [...]

At the same time, Trump has exploited the foundation for self-dealing.

In 2014, he drew on it to pay $10,000 for a painted portrait of you-know-who at a charity auction at Mar-a-Lago, his Florida resort and residence.

The foundation also spent $20,000 for Melania Trump to purchase a 6-foot Donald portrait; $12,000 to buy a Tim Tebow helmet at a charity auction; and $258,000 to settle legal disputes and unpaid fines involving Trump’s businesses.

In 2013, the Trump Foundation contributed $25,000 to an organization supporting Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi, after Bondi announced she was considering whether to join New York Attorney General Schneiderman’s investigation of fraud at Trump University.

It would be charitable to call Donald Trump a philanthropist.

5. TRUMP THE LIAR [...]

The Republican Party standard-bearer has proven to be the most extraordinary, if not pathological, liar ever to seek the presidency.

Small, large and in-between, Trump’s standard-issue falsehoods are deliberate and purposeful. He spouts them with bravado even after his facts have been proven wrong. And he has done so for decades.

Writing in Politico this year, former New York Post Page Six editor Susan Mulcahy recalled covering the up-and-coming real estate mogul in the 1980s.

“Trump had a different way of doing things. He wanted attention, but he could not control his pathological lying,” Mulcahy wrote.

“He lied about everything, with gusto,” she added.

In a sworn deposition given in the bankruptcy case for Trump Plaza in 1993, Trump’s own lawyer, Patrick McGahn, testified that attorneys always visited the client in pairs. Why?

“We tried to do it with Donald always if we could, because Donald says certain things and then has a lack of memory.”

McGahn added: “He’s an expert at interpreting things. Let’s put it that way.”

The former journalist who actually wrote Trump’s pride-and- joy biography, “The Art of the Deal,” has an even more damning assessment of the would-be President. Asked what he would title the book today, Tony Schwartz told The New Yorker magazine: “The Sociopath.”

During the campaign, Pulitzer Prize-winning PolitiFact has rated fully 71% of Trump’s statements as mostly false, false, or pants-on-fire false. The Washington Post Fact Checker has given 65% of the Trump statements it reviewed four Pinocchios, its worst rating for truthfulness. [...]

Never was Trump, the steadfast liar, on more vivid display than when he claimed to have seen thousands of Muslims celebrating the toppling of the World Trade Center on 9/11.

No one has ever found the television footage.

6. TRUMP THE FLIP-FLOPPER

Equally damaging to Trump’s claim to authenticity has been his epic, cynical shifts on almost every significant issue. [...]

Does Trump want to raise the federal minimum wage?

Last year, Trump said he was “sorry to say it, but we have to leave (the wage) where it is.”

In May, he said he was “looking” at a possible increase in the federal minimum, adding, “I’m open to doing something with it because I don’t like that.”

What is Trump’s perspective on abortion?

Although once “very pro-choice,” he told MSNBC’s Chris Matthews in March:

“You have to ban” abortion, adding that “there has to be some form of punishment” of women if they were to terminate pregnancies after the enactment of such a ban.

An hour later, the Trump campaign said the issue “should be put back into the states.”

An hour after that, the campaign said “the doctor or any other person performing this illegal act upon a woman would be held legally responsible, not the woman. The woman is a victim in this case as is the life in her womb.”

The following day, Trump told an interviewer, “At this moment, the laws are set. And I think we have to leave it that way,” meaning he would not pursue an abortion ban. [...]

Researchers at NBC News have catalogued Trump’s positions on major issues since the start of the campaign.

They found, as of early October: 18 different positions on immigration reform; 15 different positions on banning Muslims; nine different positions on how to defeat ISIS; eight different positions on raising the minimum wage; seven different tax plans, and eight different strategies for dealing with the national debt.

7. TRUMP THE IGNORAMUS

Add genius to the marketing of Trump the Product. He boasted during the campaign that he has an IQ that is “very high” and that, with “one of the highest,” he would finally put high-caliber brainpower in the Oval Office.

Yet his statements have revealed that Trump lacks even rudimentary knowledge of American government and world affairs. Worse, Trump — who has asserted that he knows “more about ISIS than the generals do” and similar boasts — doesn’t know what he doesn’t know.[...]

In March, The New York Times threw Trump this basic test of foreign-policy fluency: “In terms of Israel, and in terms of the peace process, do you think it should result in a two-state solution, or in a single state?”

Responded a clearly clueless Trump:

“Well, I think a lot of people are saying it’s going to result in a two-state solution. What I would love to do is to, a lot of people are saying that. I’m not saying anything.”

He returned after a break with a prepped response: “Basically I support a two-state solution on Israel.”

Finally, Trump expressed utter obliviousness to President Vladimir Putin’s world-defying annexation of the Ukrainian territory of Crimea.

Putin is “not going into Ukraine,” the candidate predicted well after Putin had done just that.

8. TRUMP THE CONSPIRACY THEORIST

As American voters began to see through his sales job, Trump latched onto conspiracy theories to gin up hysteria and distract from his defects.

His latest paranoiac ramblings — that the election will be “rigged” — have taken a presidential campaign deep into the fever swamps at the fringes of American life.

He claimed that “that Google search engine was suppressing the bad news about Hillary Clinton,” and supported the debunked theory that vaccines cause autism.

After Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia died in February at the age of 79, Trump intimated that the famed conservative jurist had been the victim of foul play.

“They say they found a pillow on his face, which is a pretty unusual place to find a pillow,” he told radio host Michael Savage.[...]

9. TRUMP THE TAX EVADER [...]

Finally, summary sheets of Trump’s 1995 state tax returns authenticated by the New York Times revealed that Trump reported an unfathomable $916 million loss in a single year — a claim that would have enabled him to avoid taxes on massive amounts of income for 18 years into the future.

In the debates with Clinton, Trump admitted that in some years he had paid zero income taxes, declaring, “That makes me smart.”

Has Trump written off his private jet and expensive suits, forcing taxpayers to subsidize his lavish lifestyle?

To whom does Trump owe money? Other documentation shows that Trump carries at least five loans, each over $50 million — one of which is held by a German bank. Does Trump owe other foreign financial institutions?

How much does Trump give to charity, and to whom? Trump’s tax plan would limit charitable deductions.

How do the taxes Trump has paid and the deductions and credits he has claimed match up with the tax plan Trump has offered the country?

Would his reform agenda pad his wealth? It appears to put him in line for a bonanza, while preserving the riches he would presumably pass on to his children.

By keeping his tax returns secret, Trump is asking voters to trust him. Request denied.

10. TRUMP THE DIVIDER [...]
If this was the only evidence of calculated racial divisiveness in Trump’s campaign, it would be one thing. It is not.

Last year — in one of the many tweets by racial supremacists that he has promoted to 12 million followers of his Twitter account — Trump disseminated the falsehood that blacks kill 81% of white homicide victims. (The actual number is 15%.)

In February, asked on national television whether he would reject the support of former Ku Klux Klan grand wizard David Duke, Trump said “I just don’t know anything about him.”

He later blamed an earpiece — and said that he disavowed Duke. But the message, the wink and nod, had been sent.

More chilling were images of African-American protesters getting pummeled at Trump rallies, with the candidate himself inciting violence.

With black support as low as 1% in some polls and facing rejection by moderate white suburbanites, Trump this summer began what was billed as an attempt to reach out to black voters — but he did so with racial stereotypes. [...]

As journalist Yair Rosenberg wrote for Tablet magazine, voting for Trump would represent “the mainstreaming of anti-Jewish and anti-minority bigotry into the American government and the country’s political discourse.”

11. TRUMP THE AUTHORITARIAN [...]

Although Russian President Vladimir Putin has squashed dissent and trampled international law with military power, Trump compared Putin favorably with Obama, saying: “I think in terms of leadership, he’s getting an A and our President is not doing so well.”

The Republican presidential nominee outright invited Russian hackers to conduct espionage in the U.S. by penetrating Hillary Clinton’s email server in hope of recovering deleted emails.

And, despite being explicitly told otherwise by the experts, Trump expressed doubt about U.S. intelligence findings that Russia had hacked into Democratic National Committee computers.

It goes well beyond Putin. Speaking about Kim Jong Un, the ultra-absolutist dictator of North Korea who is starving his own people, Trump said:

“If you look at North Korea, this guy, I mean, he’s like a maniac, OK? And you’ve got to give him credit. He goes in, he takes over, and he’s the boss. It’s incredible. He wiped out the uncle. He wiped out this one, that one.”

In July, while musing about longtime Iraqi boss Saddam Hussein, Trump waxed longingly about dictatorial powers:

“He was a bad guy, really bad guy. But you know what he did well? He killed terrorists. He did that so good. They didn’t read them the rights — they didn’t talk, they were a terrorist, it was over.”

Trump has a history of thinking this way. In a 1990 Playboy interview, Trump expressed admiration for the Chinese Communist Party’s murderous crackdown on the Tiananmen Square student protest.

“When the students poured into Tiananmen Square, the Chinese government almost blew it. Then they were vicious, they were horrible, but they put it down with strength. That shows you the power of strength.”

In perhaps his most frightening show of authoritarian tendencies, Trump has signaled that First Amendment guarantees extend only to speech of his pleasure.

He has revoked campaign press credentials of news organizations that fail to offer him sufficient or consistent praise, and he responded to coverage he perceived as negative — the likes of which Presidents face all the time — with threats of lawsuits and by saying:

“I’m going to open up our libel laws so when they write purposely negative and horrible and false articles, we can sue them and win lots of money.”

12. TRUMP THE SECURITY RISK [...]

At the height of his power as a candidate salesman, Trump told the crowd assembled at the Republican National Convention: “The crime and violence that today afflicts our nation will soon, and I mean very soon, will come to an end.”

He has complemented that assertion with the pledge that he will “knock the hell out of” ISIS, and will build a military so strong, “nobody’s going to mess with us anymore.”

Scrutiny of his plans, and Trump’s own words, have given the lie to his cavalier promises.

Some presidential candidates spend decades readying for terrible responsibilities, culminating in having to decide when to send American troops into harm’s way — or even to order a nuclear strike.

Not so Trump, who declared, “I know more about ISIS than the generals do,” and pronounced that the nation’s top brass has been “reduced to rubble” and is “embarrassing our country.”

Even so, Trump has often promised to follow the advice of his generals — after chillingly vowing that he would force military commanders to illegally torture and kill terrorists’ families.

“They won’t refuse,” Trump pronounced. “They’re not gonna refuse me. Believe me.” [...]

Global security rests on interlocking alliances, the most important of which is the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.

Since the end of World War II, NATO allies have stood with each other, on the core notion that an attack on one is an attack on all; the principle was invoked in the wake of 9/11, when allies rushed to America’s side in the war in Afghanistan.

Trump sees NATO as just another contract to be broken. Asked whether he would provide military aid to NATO members Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania if Russia encroached on them, Trump suggested the U.S. would honor treaty obligations only if an invaded country was appropriately paying into NATO’s budget.

It is little wonder why 50 Republican national security officials wrote an unprecedented joint letter saying that Trump “would be the most reckless President in American history.”

13. TRUMP THE MISOGYNIST [...]

14. TRUMP THE ENEMY OF DEMOCRACY [...]

“Hillary Clinton meets in secret with international banks to plot the destruction of U.S. sovereignty in order to enrich these global financial powers, her special interest friends and her donors,” he said.

And no one but Trump could tell the American people what’s really going on because the country’s “corporate media” is engaged not only in a conspiracy of silence but in a covert war to elect Clinton.”

Now, suggesting that Clinton uses drugs to enhance her debate performance, insisting she should be jailed, screaming that the evil forces are rigging the election against him, Trump would rather burn it all down than admit he has miserably failed — and is flailing even in some historically safe Republican states.

In Wednesday night’s debate, he refused to condemn the Russian hacks that have compromised the email of Clinton’s campaign manager, the worst foreign interference in an American election the nation has ever witnessed. Trump wouldn’t even accept the consensus judgment of the U.S. intelligence community that Moscow was responsible.

About whether or not he’ll accept the will of the voters expressed at the polls, Trump told the nation, “I’ll keep you in suspense” — the most direct challenge to the orderly transfer of power modern America has ever seen.

Spitting paranoia, dripping with sore-loser petulance, Trump has stoked the fury of the mob in some of his supporters.

A Milwaukee sheriff urged insurrection with the words, “Pitchforks and torches time.”

In North Carolina, Trump ralliers seriously beat a protester.

In Kansas, the FBI busted a militia called the Crusaders for allegedly plotting mass-casualty attacks on Muslims, with one of the accused plotters writing on Facebook, “I personally back Donald Trump.”

In Arizona, the Republic newspaper and its staff were bombarded with death threats after endorsing Clinton.

Donald Trump is ending his campaign in an ever more inflammatory and destructive assault on American democracy. The end of his presidential dreams must come under an avalanche of anti-Trump votes on Nov. 8.

How To Pronounce משיב הרוח ומוריד הגשם, Geshem Or Gashem?? by Rabbi Shlomo Pollak

There has been a tremendous amount of Torah written and said, regarding this debate....Both "camps" are very adamant that their "Nusach" is the correct one...

What is the debate?

How did the old Siddurim spell it??



For questions and comments, please email us at salmahshleima@gmail.com

'The FBI is Trumpland': anti-Clinton atmosphere spurred leaks, sources say


Deep antipathy to Hillary Clinton exists within the FBI, multiple bureau sources have told the Guardian, spurring a rapid series of leaks damaging to her campaign just days before the election.

Current and former FBI officials, none of whom were willing or cleared to speak on the record, have described a chaotic internal climate that resulted from outrage over director James Comey’s July decision not to recommend an indictment over Clinton’s maintenance of a private email server on which classified information transited.

“The FBI is Trumpland,” said one current agent.

This atmosphere raises major questions about how Comey and the bureau he is slated to run for the next seven years can work with Clinton should she win the White House.


The Hillary Clinton email controversy explained: what we know so far
Read more
The currently serving FBI agent said Clinton is “the antichrist personified to a large swath of FBI personnel,” and that “the reason why they’re leaking is they’re pro-Trump.”

The agent called the bureau “Trumplandia”, with some colleagues openly discussing voting for a GOP nominee who has garnered unprecedented condemnation from the party’s national security wing and who has pledged to jail Clinton if elected.

At the same time, other sources dispute the depth of support for Trump within the bureau, though they uniformly stated that Clinton is viewed highly unfavorably.

“There are lots of people who don’t think Trump is qualified, but also believe Clinton is corrupt. What you hear a lot is that it’s a bad choice, between an incompetent and a corrupt politician,” said a former FBI official.

Sources who disputed the depth of Trump’s internal support agreed that the FBI is now in parlous political territory. Justice department officials – another current target of FBI dissatisfaction – have said the bureau disregarded longstanding rules against perceived or actual electoral interference when Comey wrote to Congress to say it was reviewing newly discovered emails relating to Clinton’s personal server.[...]

Thursday, November 3, 2016

Avraham Baruch Weisel: Alleged molester from Bnei Brak: Police looking for more victims to file complaints



BHOL

יממה לאחר מעצרו, בצעד חריג, המשטרה מפרסמת את תמונתו ופרטיו האישיים של "תוקף הילדים מבני ברק", עליו פורסם לראשונה ב"בחדרי חרדים" • שמו: אברהם ברוך ריזל, צעיר בן 21 החשוד בתקיפת מספר ילדים בעיר. המשטרה פונה להורים לבוא ולהתלונן


התפתחות דרמטית בפרשת "תוקף הילדים מבני ברק", שפורסמה לראשונה ב'בחדרי חרדים' • יממה לאחר מעצרו, בצעד חריג, המשטרה מפרסמת הערב (חמישי) את תמונתו ופרטיו האישיים של "תוקף הילדים מבני ברק", החשוד בסדרת תקיפות ילדים בעיר.

מדובר באברהם ברוך ריזל, צעיר בן ה-21 תושב העיר, שכבר הודה במספר מקרי תקיפה של ילדים בעיר. כפי שנחשף לראשונה מוקדם היותר היום ב"בחדרי חרדים", ריזל אף חשוד בניסיון לשחד את אחד מחוקריו במשטרה.

כאמור, בצעד חריג פרסמה המשטרה את תמונתו ופרטיו, ופנתה להורים בעיר בקריאה לבוא ולהתלונן במידה והחשוד תקף את ילדיהם.

כפי שפורסם מוקדם יותר ב'בחדרי', החשוד סיפר בחקירתו במשטרת מרחב דן על ארבעה מקרי תקיפה נוספים בהם היה מעורב, מעבר למקרה בגינו הוא נעצר. בנוסף, הוא חשוד שהציע שוחד לחוקר במהלך החקירה.

בהודעה שפרסמה המשטרה לפני זמן קצר נמסר: "משטרת ישראל קוראת לקורבנות נוספים אשר נפגעו מהחשוד להגיע למשטרת ר"ג ולהתלונן". כאשר בהודעה פורסם שמו ותמונתו של החשוד - אברהם ברוך ריזל, בן 21 תושב שיכון ויז'ניץ בבני ברק.

כפי שדווח ב"בחדרי", ריזל הספיק לתקוף מספר ילדים, לאחר שהורים לילדים שהותקפו נמנעו מלהגיש נגדו תלונה במשטרה. רק לאחר שאחד ההורים עשה את המעשה הנכון והגיש נגדו תלונה, הצליחו במשטרה לשים עליו את היד ולעוצרו.

מעצרו של ריזל הוארך היום עד ליום שני. ל"בחדרי חרדים" נודע כי קרוביו שכרו את שירותיו של פרקליט הצמרת, עו"ד ששי גז, וזה יגן עליו בדיונים הבאים.





Both candidates are terrible but Clinton's competence makes her dangerous - while Trump is a fool who will accomplish nothing

Yated by Jonathan Rosenblum

A case can be made for each of the candidates. It consists of three words: What’s the alternative? It is no exaggeration to describe Donald Trump as the most poorly prepared man to run for the White House, clueless about the nature of the office and lacking minimal knowledge of any of the issues he would face as president. He is too contemptuous of the office he seeks and the country he would lead to even attempt to remedy either of these failings.

For good measure, he is infantile, distracted from the issue at hand by any perceived slight, a whiny spoiled brat, and a man of low character who lies about his charitable giving (and almost everything else) and about whom a positive word dare not be said lest we convey to our children the idea that moral character does not matter.

And her? The rap sheet is too long to review. Never in the history of the Republic has any high office holder sought to monetize political power on the scale of she and her husband. Stealing the White House furniture when they left the White House and selling pardons in the last days of Bill’s presidency are the perfect metaphors that came before and after.

As president, Clinton’s chief constitutional duty would be faithfully executing the laws of the United States. How can she take an oath to do so, when she has consistently shown that she does not view those laws as applying to herself or her husband? Andrew McCarthy, chief prosecutor in the first World Trade Center bombing case, was not joking when he wrote that Hillary should be prosecuted under the federal racketeering statutes (RICO) for the manner in which she turned the State Department into an adjunct of the influence peddling operation of the Clinton Foundation.

The intertwined tentacles of the Clinton Foundation, Teneo Consulting, and the State Department bear all the markers of a criminal enterprise. Thanks to WikiLeaks and Judicial Watch Freedom of Information Act requests, we now are privy to a raft of email requests for favors from Douglas Band of the Clinton Foundation to senior State Department aides Cheryl Mills and Huma Abedin. Under special dispensation, Abedin was allowed to be simultaneously employed by Teneo Consulting, co-founded by Band, and the State Department. And Mills also took a job with the Clinton Foundation after leaving her job as senior counselor to Secretary of State Clinton.

Perhaps the most egregious State Department intervention on behalf of a major donor to the Clinton Foundation was that benefitting Frant Giustra. In 2005, Bill Clinton lobbied Kazakhstan’s ruling despot to grant uranium mining rights to Giustra’s mining company. Shortly thereafter, Giustra donated $31.3 million to the Foundation and pledged another $100 million.

When that same despot subsequently arrested the director of the state-controlled uranium agency, the State Department energy envoy pressed the Kazakhstan government to recognize the previously issued licenses to Giustra’s company. Subsequently, Russia’s state nuclear energy corporation sought to purchase control of Giustra’s company and thereby gain control of one-fifth of the known uranium reserves. That required approval from Hillary Clinton’s State Department. It was granted.

In 2011, Chelsea Clinton grew so concerned about the way the Clinton Foundation was being run that she commissioned an independent investigation by the law firm of Simpson, Thatcher and Bartlett, headed by Victoria Bjorklund, considered one of the leading national experts in the laws governing foundations and charities. The resulting report was scathing, and included a finding that many large donors expected “a quid quo pro” for their contributions, something that is bright-line illegal. The report further found that the Foundation consistently ignored all standard best practices for foundation good governance.

In a 12-page memorandum included in the report, Douglas Band described how his firm, Teneo Consulting, directed major corporate donors to the Clinton Foundation and otherwise benefitted what he dubbed “Bill Clinton Inc.” during the period Hillary Clinton served as secretary of state. Not only did the Foundation, which employees many long-time veterans of Clinton campaigns and provides luxury travel to Clinton Family members, gain multi-million dollar contributions, but former President Clinton was paid enormous speaking and other fees. One of those perks was an over $17 million dollar contract for serving as “honorary chairman” of a for-profit university. In the memo, Band boasted that he had worked out contracts with clients who donated to the Clinton Foundation that would personally pay the former president $66 million over the next decade.[...]

SO BOTH CANDIDATES are thoroughly unsuited to be president – like Tolstoy’s unhappy families, each in his or her own way. I could respect someone who decides to vote for Hillary out of fear that Trump’s ignorance of foreign affairs and the vanity that makes it impossible to acknowledge that ignorance makes him too dangerous. And I could respect someone who chooses Trump because he will be more supportive of Israel, hopefully appoint better Supreme Court justices, might rely heavily on vice-president Mike Pence, and will not further advance the identity politics destroying America and make it impossible to address urgent problems – in short, because he is not Hillary. And I can respect someone who will not be complicit in either one becoming president and refuses to vote for one or another. [...]

Donald Trump, it must be admitted, exhibits a lot of worrisome authoritarian traits. He has advocated a loosening of American libel laws, speaks admiringly of “strong man” Putin, and seems to believe the president has unlimited powers.

His virtue, however, is that he would be incompetent in acting as president on those tendencies. He doesn’t know where the levers of anti-democratic power lie nor would he have access to them. And his own party would stifle his exercise of executive power at every turn.

Not so Hillary. She knows where the levers are and how to use them. That is the function of a modern Yale Law School education: Learn how to use power in ways that the cretins of the world cannot stop you, even if they happen to be the majority.[...]

Krauthammer explains why he can not vote for Clinton or Trump


The case against Hillary Clinton could have been written before the recent WikiLeaks and FBI disclosures. But these documents do provide hard textual backup.

The most sensational disclosure was the proposed deal between the State Department and the FBI in which the FBI would declassify a Clinton email and State would give the FBI more slots in overseas stations. What made it sensational was the rare appearance in an official account of the phrase “quid pro quo,” which is the currently agreed-upon dividing line between acceptable and unacceptable corruption.

This is nonetheless an odd choice for most egregious offense. First, it occurred several layers removed from the campaign and from Clinton. It involved a career State Department official (he occupied the same position under Condoleezza Rice) covering not just for Clinton but for his own department.

Second, it’s not clear which side originally offered the bargain. Third, nothing tangible was supposed to exchange hands. There was no proposed personal enrichment — a Rolex in return for your soul — which tends to be our standard for punishable misconduct.

And finally, it never actually happened. The FBI turned down the declassification request.

In sum, a warm gun but nonsmoking. Indeed, if the phrase “quid pro quo” hadn’t appeared, it would have received little attention. Moreover, it obscures the real scandal — the bottomless cynicism of the campaign and of the candidate.

Among dozens of examples, the Qatari gambit. Qatar, one of the worst actors in the Middle East (having financially supported the Islamic State, for example), offered $1 million as a “birthday” gift to Bill Clinton in return for five minutes of his time. Who offers — who takes — $200,000 a minute? We don’t know the “quid” here, but it’s got to be big.

In the final debate, Hillary Clinton ran and hid when asked about pay-for-play at the Clinton Foundation. And for good reason. The emails reveal how foundation donors were first in line for favors and contracts.[...]

Of course, we knew all this. But we hadn’t seen it so clearly laid out. Illicit and illegal as is WikiLeaks, it is the camera in the sausage factory. And what it reveals is surpassingly unpretty.

I didn’t need the Wiki files to oppose Hillary Clinton. As a conservative, I have long disagreed with her worldview and the policies that flow from it. As for character, I have watched her long enough to find her deeply flawed, to the point of unfitness. But for those heretofore unpersuaded, the recent disclosures should close the case.

A case so strong that, against any of a dozen possible GOP candidates, voting for her opponent would be a no-brainer. Against Donald Trump, however, it’s a dilemma. I will not vote for Hillary Clinton. But, as I’ve explained in these columns, I could never vote for Donald Trump.

The only question is whose name I’m going to write in. With Albert Schweitzer doubly unavailable (noncitizen, dead), I’m down to Paul Ryan or Ben Sasse. Two weeks to decide.

The Conservative Case for Voting for Clinton


Why support a candidate who rejects your preferences and offends your opinions? Don’t do it for her—do it for the republic, and the Constitution.

If the polls are correct, many disaffected Republicans are making their peace with Donald Trump in the final hours of the 2016 campaign. The usual term for this process is “returning home.” This time, we need a new phrase. The familiar Republican home has been bulldozed and replaced by a Trump-branded edifice. It will require long and hard work to restore and rebuild what has been lost.

Between now and then, however, there is a ballot to face. Last week, I advanced the best case I could for each of the available options. Now, however, comes the time for choosing—and for explicating the reasons for that choice.

Those attempting to rally reluctant Republicans to Trump seldom waste words on the affirmative case for the blowhard businessman. What is there to say in favor of a candidate who would lie even about his (non) support for a charity for children with AIDS?

Instead, the case for Trump swiftly shifts to a fervid case against Hillary Clinton. Here for example are some lines from an op-ed coauthored by Bill Bennett, a high conservative eminence and former secretary of education, and F.H. Buckley, a law professor, Trump supporter, and sometime speechwriter.[...]

The conclusion that follows from such sizzling philippics is that anybody, literally anybody, wearing an “R” by his name should be preferred to the demonic Clinton. “Everybody on this stage is better than Hillary Clinton,” argued former Florida Governor Jeb Bush in the sixth Republican debate, January 2016. Bush surely did not believe that, but in the moment, it must have seemed a forgivable fib. Hillary Clinton would have paid a similar compliment to Bernie Sanders on a Democratic debate stage, but who doubts that privately she would have preferred Jeb Bush to the cranky Vermont socialist?

Demonology aside, most conservatives and Republicans—and yes, many non-conservatives and non-Republicans—will recognize many of the factual predicates of the critiques of Hillary Clinton’s methods and character. The Clintons sold access to a present secretary of state and a potential future president in pursuit of personal wealth. Hillary Clinton does indeed seem a suspicious and vindictive personality. For sure, a President Clinton will want to spend and regulate even more than the Obama administration has done.

Like Henny Youngman, however, the voter must always ask: compared to what?

One of only two people on earth will win the American presidency on November 8. Hillary Clinton is one of those two possibilities. Donald Trump is the only other.

Yes, I fear Clinton’s grudge-holding. Should I fear it so much that I rally to a candidate who has already explicitly promised to deploy antitrust and libel law against his critics and opponents? Who incited violence at his rallies? Who ejects reporters from his events if he objects to their coverage? Who told a huge audience in Australia that his top life advice was: "Get even with people. If they screw you, screw them back 10 times as hard. I really believe it”? Who idealizes Vladimir Putin, Saddam Hussein, and the butchers of Tiananmen as strong leaders to be admired and emulated?

Should I be so appalled by the Clinton family’s access-selling that I prefer instead a president who boasts of a lifetime of bribing politicians to further his business career? Who defaults on debts and contracts as an ordinary business method, and who avoids taxes by deducting the losses he inflicted on others as if he had suffered them himself? Who cheated the illegal laborers he employed at Trump Tower out of their humble hourly wage? Who owes hundreds of millions of dollars to the Bank of China? Who refuses to disclose his tax returns, perhaps to conceal his business dealings with Vladimir Putin’s inner circle?

To demonstrate my distaste for people whose bodies contain mean bones, it’s proposed that I give my franchise to a man who boasts of his delight in sexual assault? Who mocks the disabled, who denounces immigrant parents whose son laid down his life for this country, who endorses religious bigotry, and who denies the Americanism of everyone from the judge hearing the fraud case against Trump University to the 44th president of the United States?

I’m invited to recoil from supposedly fawning media (media, in fact, which have devoted more minutes of network television airtime to Clinton’s email misjudgment than to all policy topics combined) and instead empower a bizarre new online coalition of antisemites, misogyists, cranks, and conspiracists with allegedly ominous connections to Russian state spy agencies?

Is this real life?

To vote for Trump as a protest against Clinton’s faults would be like amputating a leg because of a sliver in the toe; cutting one’s throat to lower one’s blood pressure.

I more or less agree with Trump on his signature issue, immigration. Two years ago, I would have rated immigration as one of the very most important issues in this election. But that was before Trump expanded the debate to include such questions as: “Should America honor its NATO commitments?” “Are American elections real or fake?” “Is it OK for a president to use the office to promote his family business?” “Are handicapped people comical?”

If we arrive at the bizarre endpoint where such seemingly closed questions are open to debate, partisan rancor has overwhelmed and overpowered the reasoning functions of our brains. America's first president cautioned his posterity against succumbing to such internecine hatreds: “The spirit of revenge, natural to party dissension … leads at length to a more formal and permanent despotism. The disorders and miseries which result gradually incline the minds of men to seek security and repose in the absolute power of an individual; and sooner or later the chief of some prevailing faction, more able or more fortunate than his competitors, turns this disposition to the purposes of his own elevation, on the ruins of public liberty.” George Washington’s farewell warning resounds with reverberating relevance in this election year.

We don’t have to analogize Donald Trump to any of the lurid tyrants of world history to recognize in him the most anti-constitutional personality ever to gain a major-party nomination for the U.S. presidency. I cannot predict whether Trump would succeed in elevating himself “on the ruins of public liberty.” The outcome would greatly depend on the resolve, integrity, and courage of other leaders and other institutions, especially the Republican leaders in Congress. To date, their record has not been reassuring, but who knows: Maybe they would discover more courage and independence after they bestowed the awesome powers of the presidency than they did while Trump was merely a party nominee. Or maybe not.

What we should all foresee is that a President Trump will certainly try to realize Washington’s nightmare. He must not be allowed to try.

That Donald Trump has approached so near the White House is a bitter reproach to everybody who had the power to stop him. I include myself in this reproach. Early on, I welcomed Trump’s up-ending of some outdated Republican Party dogmas—taking it for granted that of course such a ridiculous and obnoxious fraud could never win a major party’s nomination. But Trump did win. Now, he stands within a percentage point or two or at most four of the presidency of the United States.

Having failed to act promptly at the outset, it’s all the more important to act decisively before it’s too late. The lesson Trump has taught is not only that certain Republican dogmas have passed out of date, but that American democracy itself is much more vulnerable than anyone would have believed only 24 months ago. Incredibly, a country that—through wars and depression—so magnificently resisted the authoritarian temptations of the mid-20th century has half-yielded to a more farcical version of that same threat without any of the same excuse. The hungry and houseless Americans of the Great Depression sustained a constitutional republic. How shameful that the Americans of today—so vastly better off in so many ways, despite their undoubted problems—have done so much less well.

I have no illusions about Hillary Clinton. I expect policies that will seem to me at best counter-productive, at worst actively harmful. America needs more private-market competition in healthcare, not less; lighter regulation of enterprise, not heavier; reduced immigration, not expanded; lower taxes, not higher. On almost every domestic issue, I stand on one side; she stands on the other. I do not imagine that she will meet me, or those who think like me, anywhere within a country mile of half-way.

But she is a patriot. She will uphold the sovereignty and independence of the United States. She will defend allies. She will execute the laws with reasonable impartiality. She may bend some rules for her own and her supporters’ advantage. She will not outright defy legality altogether. Above all, she can govern herself; the first indispensable qualification for governing others.

So I will vote for the candidate who rejects my preferences and offends my opinions. (In fact, I already have voted for her.) Previous generations accepted infinitely heavier sacrifices and more dangerous duties to defend democracy. I’ll miss the tax cut I’d get from united Republican government. But there will be other elections, other chances to vote for what I regard as more sensible policies. My party will recover to counter her agenda in Congress, moderate her nominations to the courts, and defeat her bid for re-election in 2020. I look forward to supporting Republican recovery and renewal.[...]

Trump expects - despite declaring the election to be rigged - to win in a landslide


It has always been possible that Donald Trump could become president, in the abstract sense. There are a slew of reasons that the map and the electorate were stacked against him regardless of his campaign, of course, but the past few months of polling seem mostly to have been about determining the margin of his defeat rather than his odds of winning. For Trump to win, an awful lot would have to go right.

On Wednesday, a lot did.

At the national level, the race has followed a broad pattern: a big lead for Hillary Clinton that narrows to a tie and then balloons back out. To some extent, the question was where in that cycle we’d land Nov. 8 — a giant Clinton blowout or a narrow fight to the finish. Recent national polls have suggested the latter, that on Election Day the race would be close.

That the race is tightening appears to be largely because of wavering Republicans deciding they could back Trump after all.

A narrowing national race means necessarily that the race is tightening in battleground states, too. As of this moment, Clinton leads in four of the 10 closest battleground states and Trump leads in six, according to RealClearPolitics averages. It’s enough, if we apply those averages to the electoral college, to bring Trump within eight electoral votes of Clinton.[...]