Madam President

Hillary more honest and trustworthy than Trump

Photo Illustration by Sarah Rogers/The Daily Beast, via the Daily Beast

Any U.S. citizen who believes that Donald Trump is more honest and trustworthy than Hillary Clinton has not been following the trail of lies Trump leaves behind him at every exchange with a media representative or at one of his violence-prone rallies. Well, at least Nicholas Kristof, NY Times op-ed columnist, isn't buying Trump's fabrications; Kristof tells it like it is regarding Trumpism.

Here's an excerpt from Kristof's September 15, 2016 column:
 

One of the mental traps that we all fall into, journalists included, is to perceive politics through narratives.

President Gerald Ford had been a star football player, yet somehow we in the media developed a narrative of him as a klutz — so that every time he stumbled, a clip was on the evening news. Likewise, we in the media wrongly portrayed President Jimmy Carter as a bumbling lightweight, even as he tackled the toughest challenges, from recognizing China to returning the Panama Canal.

Then in 2000, we painted Al Gore as inauthentic and having a penchant for self-aggrandizing exaggerations, and the most memorable element of the presidential debates that year became not George W. Bush’s misstatements but Gore’s dramatic sighs.

I bring up this checkered track record because I wonder if once again our collective reporting isn’t fueling misperceptions.

A CNN/ORC poll this month found that by a margin of 15 percentage points, voters thought Donald Trump was “more honest and trustworthy” than Hillary Clinton. Let’s be frank: This public perception is completely at odds with all evidence.

On the PolitiFact website, 13 percent of Clinton’s statements that were checked were rated “false” or “pants on fire,” compared with 53 percent of Trump’s. Conversely, half of Clinton’s are rated “true” or “mostly true” compared to 15 percent of Trump statements.

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Whoa! The Donald is sexist!!

Presidential Hillary Clinton, photo via Daily Kos.

 Dear Katalusis readers,

I suppose none of you has guessed by now that Donald Trump is a sexist?!!

Shouldn't the Donald's accusation that all Hillary has going for her is "the woman's card"
have given you a clue as to his distorted view of women? Anyway, the word is out now that the Daily Kos's expose by Kevin Cirilli is published:

CLEVELAND --

TRUMP on Clinton:

"Does she look presidential, fellas? Give me a break."

Attacking a female public figure for her appearance is the dictionary definition of a sexist remark. It’s exactly what women in the workplace face all too often, an attack on their professionalism based on their appearance. There’s no acceptable alternate explanation for this one.

The Clinton campaign is all over it already. Tim Kaine responded with a nice jab at this afternoon’s Clinton-Kaine rally in Cleveland:

“Donald Trump put out a tweet that said she doesn’t look presidential, does she fellas? Does she fellas,” he said repeating the tail end of Trump’s remarks.

“Here’s my prediction, at the end of a second-term Hillary Clinton, Trump will be saying that same thing as he’s hocking bottled water somewhere and we’ve forgotten he ever ran for president.”

Apparently Kaine placed emphasis on the word “fellas”. He didn’t miss the implications either.

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Trump incites Americans to violence

The face of hatred. Photo via Wonkette.

Come on, people! Are we so desensitized by politics as usual in the US of A that we brush aside Donald Trump's casual suggestion that it would be okay to shoot Hillary Clinton or maybe her appointees to the Supreme Court?

Do Americans have no recourse in this situation as the nominee of one of our two major political parties encourages murdering his opponent? .

Are we not even surprised or shocked? How on earth did Donald Trump get as far as he has in our supposedly developed nation? Or maybe if we look a little deeper, we're as underdeveloped as those nations we like to hold up as examples of those backward folks.

My fellow Americans, is there no defense in our supposedly civilized culture against incitement to violence, even murder?

It's past time for Republicans to take action and boot the Donald out of their camp. Dan Rather has the right idea:

Former anchorman Dan Rather has issued a challenge to his colleagues: "This cannot be treated as just another outrageous moment in the campaign." 

Rather is talking about Donald Trump's remark that "Second Amendment people" might be able to stop Hillary Clinton's appointment of Supreme Court justices.

The comment raised the specter of political violence and earned widespread condemnation, though Trump supporters denied that he was encouraging violence.

"To anyone who still pretends this is a normal election of Republican against Democrat, history is watching. And I suspect its verdict will be harsh," Rather wrote on Facebook shortly after it happened on Tuesday afternoon.

Related: New York Daily News calls for Trump to end his campaign
 
Rather -- who covered the assassination of John F. Kennedy in Dallas -- called Trump's "Second Amendment people" remark "a new low," unprecedented "in the history of American presidential politics."
 
Writing about political figures who have reluctantly endorsed Trump, he said, "Many have tried to do a side-shuffle and issue statements saying they strongly disagree with his rhetoric but still support the candidate. That is becoming woefully insufficient. The rhetoric is the candidate."
Fellow journalists were the other audience for his Facebook post.

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Hillary's lead over Trump grows post DNC Convention

Hillary Clinton arrives on the final night at the Democratic National Convention on July 28, 2016.

 Photo by Jim Young, Reuters, via CNBC.

My hope for the America I've known throughout my life has been nearly restored. You understand, I've been seriously worried by the apparent support Donald Trump has -with his ethics of  bigotry and "me first" -
philosophy that he has received from those apparently blind folks who have followed in line behind little Donnie. Hopefully the news of Hillary's bounce from the Democratic Convention will inspire others to check out her years of public service, keeping in mind that relentless attempts by the GOP to take her down have failed. Never once has Hillary been charged of willful wrongdoing and that includes the fake Benghazi and email scandals.

And get this dear readers, little Donnie's response to the above breaking news is to name HRC "the devil" FYI Donnie, Hillary is a saint compared to you. Here's the latest on the general election race between little Donnie and Hillary who has continued to comport herself from a centered position of compassion, respect for others, intelligence, and overall ethical values  throughout her longtime service to her country. Now hear this from NBC:

Following the Democratic National Convention, Hillary Clinton now leads Donald Trump by 8 points — 50 percent to 42 percent — up from a single-point difference last week, according to the latest NBC News|SurveyMonkey poll.

Clinton's gain also comes after a series of controversial comments made by the Republican nominee this past week regarding the family of a fallen American soldier and Trump's suggestion that Russian hackers should seek out deleted Clinton emails. (graphs included below.)

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http://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2016-election/poll-clinton-support-spikes-following-democratic-convention-n621071

Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump?

Trump and Clinton, photo via http://www.eonline.com.

Research Professor of Education, New York University, Diane Ravitch, and I reached voting age in the early 1960s. I'm pleased to report that both Ravitch and I plan to vote for Hillary Clinton this November. Hey, it's either Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump. I'm hoping no self-respecting Democrat will vote for Trump.  

To be clear, Ravitch just published her well thought out reasons why she is voting for Hillary, and I'm with Ravitch on this:

I cast my first vote in 1960, when I was 22. That was before 18-year-olds were allowed to vote. I voted for John F. Kennedy, and I worked in his campaign. I was thrilled when he visited campaign headquarters, and I got to shake his hand. He was exciting and dynamic.

At the time, critics said he was no better than Richard Nixon.

They talked about his father, his money, his privilege, his Roman Catholicism; rumors swirled about his private life but were never reported by the media. 

Public opinion was so divided about JFK, even among Democrats, that Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. felt compelled to write a short book called Kennedy or Nixon: Does It Make Any Difference? Of course, he argued that Kennedy was infinitely preferable to Nixon. Kennedy was elected by a razor-thin margin. Some people said that the corrupt Daley regime in Chicago put him over the top.

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Commonalities of Bernie and The Donald

www.freakingnews.com

Personally, I wish Elizabeth Warren would call out Bernie Sanders, in addition to her tough talk about Donald Trump.  As far as I know, Liz hasn't been upset over some of Bernie's recent demands. Bernie, the losing candidate for the Democratic nominee position, having been a Democrat for about one year, has claimed the right to appoint members of the Party's platform committee, and he's currently demanding a voice in Hillary Clinton's presidential appointments, even though he's warning her not to declare herself the nominee just yet.

Warren needs to acknowledge that Bernie, her favorite for the nominee position, boasts some very superficial claims to authenticity: uncombed hair, rumpled suit, fist raised, perpetual scowl, etc. And yes Bernie does have some things in common with the Trump, for example, both of these grown men frequently throw temper tantrums when they don't get their way.

In the meantime, I'll give Liz due credit for publicly standing up to Trump:

WASHINGTON — Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), amplifying her her recent attacks on Donald Trump, admonished the presumptive GOP presidential nominee in a no-holds-barred speech on Tuesday, calling him “a small, insecure money-grubber who doesn’t care who gets hurt.”

Warren recounted the story of a Nevada family whose home was foreclosed at the height of the 2008 economic crisis while accepting an award from the Center for Popular Democracy, an economic justice organization. The story served as a segue into an excoriation of comments Trump made before the crisis, hoping the housing market would crash so he could profit from it.

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