TomCADem
TomCADem's JournalBook Review - In ‘Hitler,’ an Ascent From ‘Dunderhead’ to Demagogue - Timely!
Today, many Americans still tend to normalize or minimize the danger of Donald Trump content that our Nation's checks and balances will keep from abusing his power. Likewise, many Republicans think that they can control or limit his excesses while benefiting from his appeals to racism and religious intolerance.
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/28/books/hitler-ascent-volker-ullrich.html
• Hitler was often described as an egomaniac who “only loved himself” — a narcissist with a taste for self-dramatization and what Mr. Ullrich calls a “characteristic fondness for superlatives.” His manic speeches and penchant for taking all-or-nothing risks raised questions about his capacity for self-control, even his sanity. But Mr. Ullrich underscores Hitler’s shrewdness as a politician — with a “keen eye for the strengths and weaknesses of other people” and an ability to “instantaneously analyze and exploit situations.”
• Hitler was known, among colleagues, for a “bottomless mendacity” that would later be magnified by a slick propaganda machine that used the latest technology (radio, gramophone records, film) to spread his message. A former finance minister wrote that Hitler “was so thoroughly untruthful that he could no longer recognize the difference between lies and truth” and editors of one edition of “Mein Kampf” described it as a “swamp of lies, distortions, innuendoes, half-truths and real facts.”
• Hitler was an effective orator and actor, Mr. Ullrich reminds readers, adept at assuming various masks and feeding off the energy of his audiences. Although he concealed his anti-Semitism beneath a “mask of moderation” when trying to win the support of the socially liberal middle classes, he specialized in big, theatrical rallies staged with spectacular elements borrowed from the circus. Here, “Hitler adapted the content of his speeches to suit the tastes of his lower-middle-class, nationalist-conservative, ethnic-chauvinist and anti-Semitic listeners,” Mr. Ullrich writes. He peppered his speeches with coarse phrases and put-downs of hecklers. Even as he fomented chaos by playing to crowds’ fears and resentments, he offered himself as the visionary leader who could restore law and order.
• Hitler increasingly presented himself in messianic terms, promising “to lead Germany to a new era of national greatness,” though he was typically vague about his actual plans. He often harked back to a golden age for the country, Mr. Ullrich says, the better “to paint the present day in hues that were all the darker. Everywhere you looked now, there was only decline and decay.”
Vox - "Donald Trump lies. All the time."
I think this election underscores the failure of modern MSM and the problem of the herd mentality of media outlets pushing all news through a predetermined narrative. Hillary is dishonest. Trump is a straight shooter. Even folks on the left have sometimes accepted the framing of the candidates. Now, at the 11th hour, some media outlets are starting to abandon false equivalency, but it is too late.
http://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2016/9/26/13016146/donald-trump-liar-media
When Donald Trump went to Flint, Michigan, the pastor at the Baptist church where he spoke had to defend him from hecklers in the audience: “He is a guest of my church, and you will respect him.”
The next day, Trump got on the phone with Fox News and lied. He said that the pastor ambushed him — while the audience took his side and chanted “Let him speak.”
Never mind that there were dozens of eyewitnesses. Never mind that reporters were present — and had been reporting the story accurately for hours by the time Trump commented. Never mind that one of those reporters had a video camera — and the recording makes it extremely obvious that Trump’s account of events isn’t a misunderstanding but a deliberate lie.
This is the point. Donald Trump lies. All the time.
NY Times - A Week of Whoppers From Donald Trump
If Hillary Clinton just uttered one of these lies, the MSM would be announcing that she had disqualified herself from running for President.
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/09/24/us/elections/donald-trump-statements.html?_r=0
1. He said a supportive crowd chanted, “Let him speak!” when a black pastor in Flint, Mich., asked Mr. Trump not to give a political speech in the church.
There were no such chants.
2. “I was against going into the war in Iraq.”
This is not getting any truer with repetition. He never publicly expressed opposition to the war before it began, and he made supportive remarks to Howard Stern.
3. He said any supportive comments he made about the Iraq war came “long before” the war began.
He expressed support for the war in September 2002, when Congress was debating whether to authorize military action.
4. He said he had publicly opposed the Iraq war in an Esquire interview “pretty quickly after the war started.”
The Esquire interview appeared in the August 2004 edition, 17 months after the war began.
Politico - "Donald Trump’s Week of Misrepresentations, Exaggerations and Half-Truths"
What is amazing is that this is coming from Politico, which is rightward leaning. But despite this, you still have the media pushing a false equivalency between the two candidates with even the NY Times defending the practice.
http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/09/2016-donald-trump-fact-check-week-214287?utm_source=huffingtonpost.com&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=pubexchange
As August ended, a new Donald Trump emerged. Coached by his third campaign management team, he stayed on message, read from a teleprompter and focused on policy. It lasted about a month.
After he lied on Sept. 16 that he was not the person responsible for the birtherism campaign to delegitimize Barack Obama’s presidency, POLITICO chose to spend a week fact-checking Trump. We fact-checked Hillary Clinton over the same time.
We subjected every statement made by both the Republican and Democratic candidates — in speeches, in interviews and on Twitter — to our magazine’s rigorous fact-checking process. The conclusion is inescapable: Trump’s mishandling of facts and propensity for exaggeration so greatly exceed Clinton’s as to make the comparison almost ludicrous.
Though few statements match the audacity of his statement about his role in questioning Obama’s citizenship, Trump has built a cottage industry around stretching the truth. According to POLITICO’s five-day analysis, Trump averaged about one falsehood every three minutes and 15 seconds over nearly five hours of remarks.
Bloomberg - Adding Up the Clinton and Trump Health-Reform Proposals
Here is a rare article that actually discusses the real world impact of Trump and Clinton's proposals. Of course, Trump's campaign simply makes an ad hominem attack in response.
http://www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2016-09-23/the-numbers-behind-trump-versus-clinton-health-reform-proposals
Donald Trump’s pledge to repeal the Affordable Care Act, President Barack Obama’s signature health-care law, would result in 19.7 million more people without insurance and widen the federal deficit by $33.1 billion in 2018, according to an analysis conducted by research group Rand Corp. and funded by the Commonwealth Fund, a nonprofit foundation. The Republican nominee’s proposed tax credits would largely benefit higher-income people, the study also found.
By contrast, one of Hillary Clinton’s key health-reform plans could provide insurance to as many as 9.6 million individuals and lower expenses mainly for low- and moderate-income people. It would come at a greater cost to the budget, increasing the deficit by $90.4 billion.
The report offers a detailed look at the policies pushed by the two presidential nominees in a campaign where ugly rhetoric and controversy have often swamped policy discussions. The Affordable Care Act, known as Obamacare, remains a flash point six years after its passage, with Democrats determined to protect it and Republicans vowing to repeal it. The study, coming days before the first Clinton-Trump debate on Monday night at Hofstra University in New York, puts some numbers behind the heated political debate.
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In a statement, the Trump campaign dismissed the study’s findings as “ludicrous” and criticized its approach as a “distraction from the disaster that is Obamacare.” Any replacement to Obamacare would ensure that those now receiving support would be given subsidies or other forms of help to purchase health insurance in the private market through Health Savings Accounts, the campaign said.
Trump Calls Former Defense Secretary Gates a 'Clown'
Source: MSN/NBC News
Donald Trump derided former Defense Secretary Robert Gates, calling the national security official a "clown" and a "mess."
The attacks came after Gates expressed concern about Trump's readiness to be commander-in-chief in a Friday op-ed in The Wall Street Journal. Gates, who served under both Republican and Democratic presidents, wrote that both Trump and Hillary Clinton "have a credibility problem in foreign affairs" before singling out the Republican nominee as "in a league of his own" and "beyond repair" on security issues.
"Mr. Trump has been cavalier about the use of nuclear weapons," Gates opined. "He has a record of insults to servicemen, their families and the military, which he called a 'disaster.' He has declared our senior military leaders 'reduced to rubble' and 'embarrassing our country' and has suggested that, if elected, he will purge them—an unprecedented and unconscionable threat. As of late, he appears to be rethinking some of these positions but he has yet to learn that when a president shoots off his mouth, there are no do-overs."
* * *
"We had a clown today, an absolute clown, Robert Gates," Trump told a crowd. "He's supposed to be an expert. He's been there forever ... he goes out and he says negative things about me. I never met him. I never talked to him. Believe me, I am so much better at what he's doing than he is."
Read more: http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/trump-calls-former-defense-secretary-gates-a-clown/ar-BBwjyn7
A man with god complex with the nuclear codes. We might as well start referring to him as Kim Jong Trump.
Trump Campaign Manager Says Robert Gates Doesn’t Understand Terrorism Threat
Source: Huffington Post
Donald Trump’s campaign manager thinks former Defense Secretary Robert Gates was critical of Trump because Gates doesn’t understand terrorism, she suggested Sunday morning.
“Secretary Gates really should have, I think, in his book been a little bit more forceful about the fact that radical Islam has ideological moorings,” Kellyanne Conway said on CBS’ “Face The Nation.” “He acts like terrorism is something like the weather. It just happens. And we as Americans know that’s not true.”
Trump and his campaign are on the attack after Gates published an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal on Saturday calling Trump “unfit” to be president. Trump referred to Gates as a “clown” in a campaign rally and “dopey” on social media.
Given his decades of experience and numerous high-level positions in the period after Sept. 11, 2001, Gates is likely well aware of the threat terrorism poses.
Read more: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/trump-campaign-bob-gates-terrorism_us_57dead7ae4b08cb14096442c?
Kellyanne Conway asks what does Robert Gates know about national security. He should take lessons from the Cheeto.
Donald Trump revises his economic plan but leaves many questions unanswered
Source: LA Times
Donald Trump scaled back his grandiose plan for tax cuts while proposing more benefits for lower-income households in a speech Thursday, but experts say the numbers in his newly revised economic growth blueprint still don’t add up.
In his most detailed economic plan to date, the Republican presidential nominee essentially halved the amount of tax cuts he will seek to $4.4 trillion over 10 years, in part by capping deductions. At the same time, Trump said his economic strategy — which includes overhauling government regulations, trade and energy policies — would boost U.S. economic growth to 3.5% a year on average, up from 2% in recent years. He promised that his plan would create as many as 25 million jobs over the next decade.
* * *
Trump’s plan would reduce the tax brackets for individual income tax to three from the current seven, with the highest rate dropping to 33% from 39.6%. Deductions would be limited at $100,000 for single filers and $200,000 for married filers, which would restrain high-income filers looking to deduct more for housing and charitable donations.
* * *
“This proposal is less skewed toward the high-income” earners, said Gleckman. Still, he said, the lowering of tax rates, plus Trump’s previously announced idea to repeal the estate tax and alternative minimum tax, would nonetheless still end up disproportionately benefiting higher-earning individuals.
Read more: http://www.latimes.com/politics/la-na-pol-trump-economic-plan-20160915-snap-story.html
What is really amazing is how the plan is designed to help Donald Trump, because even though he scales back some of the deductions of his previous plan, he still keeps the huge cut to the corporate tax rate and the elimination of the estate tax, which he would personally benefit from. Put another, Donald is not earning a salary like many high income individuals, rather a lot of his wealth is tied up in assets and corporate entities. The plan is specifically designed to help Trump.
One Chart Exposes How The Media Bashes Hillary Clinton While Promoting Donald Trump
I can only imagine how this would look if they were to update this June story with the media's recent efforts to reform Trump by covering his numerous non-existent pivots to the center and so-called outreach to minorities and women.
http://www.politicususa.com/2016/06/18/chart-exposes-media-bashes-hillary-clinton-promoting-donald-trump.html
A single chart from a study at Harvard reveals the depth and degree of the media’s bias against Hillary Clinton and promotion of Donald Trump.
A study by Thomas E. Patterson, Bradlee Professor of Government and the Press, at Harvard University, showed that while Donald Trump received nearly universally positive coverage in the year leading up to the primaries, media coverage of Hillary Clinton was more negative than that of any other candidate.
Here is a chart that every mainstream journalist should answer for:
While Clinton was getting a mountain of negative coverage, here was Trump’s coverage:
Oxford Economics: Trump presidency could cost US economy $1 trillion
Source: Reuters
LONDON, Sept 13 (Reuters) - The U.S. economy could be $1 trillion smaller than otherwise expected in 2021 if Republican candidate Donald Trump wins the presidential election in November, economics research firm Oxford Economics said on Tuesday.
While the firm said Trump's policies - including more protectionist trade measures, tax cuts and mass deportation of illegal immigrants - may be watered down in negotiations with Congress, they could have "adverse" consequences.
"Should Mr. Trump prove more successful in achieving adoption of his policies, the consequences could be far-reaching - knocking 5 percent off the level of U.S. GDP relative to baseline and undermining the anticipated recovery in global growth," it said.
* * *
Under its baseline scenario, Oxford Economics expects U.S. gross domestic product - the value of all goods and services produced in the economy - to grow at a fairly constant rate of around 2 percent from 2017, reaching $18.5 trillion in 2021.
Read more: http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-election-trump-economy-idUSKCN11J25M
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