Donald Trump was appropriately slammed and scrutinized by sensible Americans over the last week for his racist attacks on a Federal Judge, and he has looked for a way out since the words about the judge fell out his mouth. Well Trump may have found a way to end the bleeding… albeit temporarily.
Today, the Republican presidential nominee went on Fox News and suggested that President Obama – the same president who waged a very successful war against ISIS and other terrorists in the Middle East – is a terrorist sympathizer.
CNN’s Jake Tapper had something to say about that!
Needless to say, this so-called Pastor has totally given up on the verse in the Bible where God commanded his followers to “preach the gospel to every creature,” and instead, Pastor Steven Anderson has chosen to embrace the works of the killer who mercilessly gunned down 50 human beings and wounded another 52. The pastor praised the terrorist and announced, “there’s fifty less pedophiles in this world.”
“These homosexuals are a bunch of perverts and pedophiles, that’s who was a victim here, a bunch of disgusting homosexuals at a gay bar,” he said. He later added: “The good news is that at least fifty of these pedophiles are not going to be harming children anymore. The bad news is that a lot of the homos in the bar are still alive, so they’re going to continue to molest children and recruit people into their filthy homosexual lifestyle.”
Appropriately referring to the gunman in Orlando’s terrorist attack as a “dipshit terririst,” John Oliver spoke about what has become a familiar passtime in America, and delivered an emotional opening to his show.
Good news: The primaries are over. Well, except for the DC primary this Tuesday, but that one really won’t count for much.
Bad news: The general election is on our doorstep, promising us five months of mudslinging, advertisements across numerous screens and multiple forms of media, and, oh yes, some policy prescriptions.
At this point, Donald Trump is in the midst of a bad media week, what with him questioning a judge because of his ethnic background, and a continuing ignorance of American foreign policy. In fact, if I was Xi Jinping, I’d be very excited about the prospects of Donald Trump being elected because then I could get into a trade war that I’ll win and reap the benefits of an American pullback in Asia. China will be happy to fill that vacuum and make life pretty distressing for Japan and South Korea.
And that’s on top of things that Trump has already said about Mexicans and women and Muslims that didn’t seem to disqualify him in the minds of the slice of the GOP that stood with him during the primaries and that forms the basis of his electoral hopes come the fall. The big problem, though, is that Trump has not unified the GOP, and even though his poll numbers increased briefly, he’s fallen farther behind Hillary Clinton and hasn’t won a horse race poll since the middle of May. And that’s even before Hillary gets her Democratic unity bounce after Bernie leaves the race. Things ain’t looking up for Donald and I think he knows it.
Hillary Clinton has had her bad weeks, but this one was not one of them. She won the Democratic nomination, even without the super-delegates, and she made a blistering speech that savaged Trump as the know-nothing that he is. This woke up many Democrats and Independents who figured that only Trump knew how to manipulate the media. His feeble attempts at belittling her as not looking presidential only showed how un-presidential he is. And for all the talk about his getting the better of her during debates, he’d better understand that she actually knows what she’s talking about on policy, and that’s what people look for in the fall. I have no doubt that Hillary will slice, dice, set it and forget it during the debates, leaving Trump to fulminate and call her names. Good luck with that.
So much has also been said about both candidates being rather unpopular,. but really, most Republicans don’t like Hillary and most Democrats don’t like Trump, so what did you expect? Americans thought Gerald R. Ford was a nice guy, but where did that get him? By the end of a presidential campaign, nobody likes anybody. This time, we’ve just gotten a bit ahead of ourselves.
At this point, it’s Hillary’s to lose. President Obama is finally popular and Elizabeth Warren is the best thing to happen to the Democratic social media feed ever. Trump tried to raise some money over the weekend and many GOP donors followed Nancy Reagan’s advice and just said no. Much of the money will go to saving the Senate and the House from absolute devastation. Hillary will raise an obscene amount of money, win, then appoint a Supreme Court justice who will vote to eviscerate the Citizen’s United decision. Unless the e-mail thing gets worse.
But for political junkies, it’s the mainline, and no matter how this election takes shape, we will follow it. And it’s not even Father’s Day yet.
In an interview with Joy Reid on MSNBC, comedian D.L Hughly got serious for a moment when the subject of Republican presidential nominee, Donald Trump, was mentioned, And before the Trump question was fully asked, Hughley answered, “Donlad Trump is a racist!”
Hughley then associated the rest of the Republican leadership with Trump’s racism, quoting House Speaker Paul Ryan as saying that Trump’s basically a “textbook” racist. “And if you can say that,” Hughley continued about Ryan, “it’s because you’re not affected by racists.”
Hughley ended the piece on Trump saying that “if I’m in a car, I committed a crime and the dude in the car with me pretend that he don’t know, that ain’t going to work. You’re a co-conspirator. And if you know that he is a racist, you’re a co-racist. Simple as that!”
USA Today reports: Donald Trump often portrays himself as a savior of the working class who will “protect your job.” But a USA TODAY NETWORK analysis found he has been involved in more than 3,500 lawsuits over the past three decades — and a large number of those involve ordinary Americans, like the Friels, who say Trump or his companies have refused to pay them.
At least 60 lawsuits, along with hundreds of liens, judgments, and other government filings reviewed by the USA TODAY NETWORK, document people who have accused Trump and his businesses of failing to pay them for their work. Among them: a dishwasher in Florida. A glass company in New Jersey. A carpet company. A plumber. Painters. Forty-eight waiters. Dozens of bartenders and other hourly workers at his resorts and clubs, coast to coast. Real estate brokers who sold his properties. And, ironically, several law firms that once represented him in these suits and others.
Trump’s companies have also been cited for 24 violations of the Fair Labor Standards Act since 2005 for failing to pay overtime or minimum wage, according to U.S. Department of Labor data. That includes 21 citations against the defunct Trump Plaza in Atlantic City and three against the also out-of-business Trump Mortgage LLC in New York. Both cases were resolved by the companies agreeing to pay back wages.
I still don’t agree with the way the media portrayed Bernie Sanders, painting him as a bothersome nobody who should have wrapped up his campaign on January 2nd and leave the stage. But Bernie got some respect today when he met with President Obama. It was a meeting that many Bernie fans respected and appreciated. After the meeting, the president’s expected endorsement of Hillary Clinton was made official.
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“She’s got the courage, the compassion, and the heart to get the job done.”
Yes, there were some politics involved in this un-endorsement, but at least the Illinois senator stepped up and did the right thing.
Kirk, facing a tough fight with Rep. Tammy Duckworth (D-IL) to keep his Senate seat, released a statement saying, “While I oppose the Democratic nominee, Donald Trump’s latest statements, in context with past attacks on Hispanics, women and the disabled like me, make it certain that I cannot and will not support my party’s nominee for President regardless of the political impact on my candidacy or the Republican Party.”
Although some Republicans remain totally blinded by the obvious racist remarks of Donald Trump in reference to the heritage of a federal judge, a small amount of them have seen the light. Marco Rubio, a former Republican presidential candidate, appears to be one of them, and he is apparently pulling away from the leader of his party.
Sen. Marco Rubio wants to make clear that if he speaks at the Republican National Convention this July, he will not be on stage as a Donald Trump surrogate.
“I may not be asked to speak, but if I am at a convention or any Republican gathering for that matter, what I would communicate is the things I believe in,” Rubio said Monday.
He said that no one has reached out to him about a potential speaking slot.
Rubio said his vision is, in some cases, “substantially different from what Donald is offering, and that’s why I’m not sure I’m going to be asked to speak at the convention.”
After Trump’s comments suggested that U.S. District Judge Gonzalo Curiel should not preside over a case against Trump University due to his Mexican-American heritage, Rubio was among the GOP lawmakers saying that Trump should stop the rhetoric.
“I’ve never said I would stand and speak on behalf of someone else’s agenda,” Rubio said. “I would speak about the things I believe in, not somebody else’s platform or on behalf of anyone else for that matter.”
Bill Maher took to his blog to dissect the type of people who will vote for Republican presidential candidate, Donald Trump. And during his research, Maher found that Trump’s voters are basically morans.
“It feels right, doesn’t it? What we’re experiencing now, not just in America, but around the world, is the revenge of the cavemen,” Maher wrote.
While admitting he had no definitive evidence behind his reasoning, Maher was buoyed by a YouGov study asking male respondents to identify themselves on a 0-6 scale of masculinity. While 65 percent of men older than 65 years of age said they were “completely masculine,” only 30 percent of men between the ages of 18 and 29 gave a similar response.
According to Maher, this age difference helps explain Trump’s popularity.
“Trump voters are overwhelmingly male and older, and think the world has gotten too PC, too ‘gay,’ and they’d like their country to be more ‘manly’ again,” the host said. “That’s where Trump comes in. He’s going to kick everyone’s ass. He’s going to win. He doesn’t care about your feelings. He wants to dominate you. This appeals to a certain cross-section of America.”
Yes, miracles can happen in politics. If Bernie Sanders wins the state of California, and if enough superdelegates have second thoughts about presidential front-runner Hillary Clinton and start switching their votes, the Vermont senator could still end up the Democratic Party’s nominee. But whether that happens or not, whether he wins or loses the party’s crown, Sanders is already the winner of 2016 on several fronts.
Indeed, the big story about Sanders is not how big he loses to Clinton, but how close he came to winning and how amazingly well he performed as a candidate. Consider: In less than a year, the maverick outsider went from being dismissed as a protest candidate to a phenomenal, national superstar who almost upset the powerful and deeply entrenched Clinton political machine and changed American politics forever.
The numbers alone are impressive. Even before Tuesday’s six primaries, in New Jersey, New Mexico, Montana, North and South Dakota, and California, Sanders had won 20 state contests, received more than 10.2 million votes and collected pledges from 1,566 delegates, according to The Associated Press — more than enough to earn him the right to take his campaign all the way to the Democratic National Convention in July. In 1976, Jerry Brown carried his challenge to Jimmy Carter onto the convention floor with only 301 delegates.
So many thoughts. So many questions. So much controversy. So much for us to learn from his actions. Such was the man and his effect on the country. Others have written with far more eloquence than I ever could about the legacy of Muhammad Ali, but from where we are now, we had better pay attention because he had so much to teach us about ourselves and where we are as a culture.
Has boxing been the same since he thankfully retired from the ring in 1980? A rhetorical question, to be sure. Yes, we did have Mike Tyson and Sugar Ray Leonard and Thomas Hearns and Ray Mancini, but those were strictly fighters. Boxers. Sportsmen. Boxing has fallen farther than politics into the realm of parody, and as an entertainment choice is pretty much irrelevant. Yes, there was that fight between those two guys about a year ago that promised a great match up, but all I can remember is that people complained bitterly about how much they had to shell out for the Pay-Per-View for a fight that was decidedly terrible to watch. I could look up the fighters’ names, but I figure that if I can’t remember the latest fight of the century, it couldn’t have been memorable. That never happened for an Ali fight, even the ones that only got shown in movie theaters where the cigar smoke was so thick it’s a wonder that the fire alarms didn’t go off. Ali was vital. He was a compelling star. And you couldn’t take your eyes off him.
And, no, I do not ever remember wondering how much money any of his big fights raised, nor how much anybody had to pay to see them.
Ali also became the template for the political athlete. He paved the way for Bill Russell, Bill Walton, Tommie Smith, John Carlos, Billie Jean King and others (though not countless others, unfortunately) who saw that sports was intricately connected to politics and to world events. Anyone like me who grew up during the Cold War must remember the protestations by Olympic officials and sportscasters who said that sports and politics must not mix, only to be roundly and crushingly contradicted by the black gloves, Munich, steroids and doping, the Apartheid banishments, the boycotts of 1980 and 1984, and a certain hockey game in Lake Placid. Ali took a stand on the most controversial issues of his day, Vietnam and Civil Rights and spoke truth to power. He didn’t worry, at least outwardly, about shoe contracts or his personal wealth. He was banished, then reinstated, and won more titles. Then he became the ambassador to the world. He led, and that’s what’s made it possible for other athletes to stand up to racist basketball owners and to speak out when members of minority groups are shot by police under dubious and outright illegal circumstances.
Ali was a Muslim. Think about that if you need to. Imagine Ali and Kareem and Ahmad Rashad and every other athlete and entertainer who became a Muslim and changed their name doing so today in the age of know-nothing politicians and citizens who are utterly ignorant of the religion. Would he ever get a fight? Would the government put him on the no-fly list? How much twitter shame would he have to endure? As controversial as it was for people to become Muslims in the 1960s and 70s, and it was controversial, today we would see boycotts and, likely, violence. Ali was able to take his conversion and make it all about peace. He used his religious beliefs as the basis for his pacifism and his sense of justice. And he was right; institutional racism was far more of a threat to him and other African-Americans in 1967 than the Vietcong.
Ali was neither universally popular nor loved during his athletic heyday, nor should we expect that he would be. But as we are entering another era of domestic change and upheaval, we do need to remember that all people in all professions need to stand up for what is right and for the equal treatment of all people.
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