Categories
RIP

Famed PBS Journalist Gwen Ifill Dead at 61

According to The Daily Beast, Gwen was diagnosed with endometrial cancer about a  year ago.

“I am very sad to tell you that our dear friend and beloved colleague Gwen Ifill passed away today in hospice care in Washington,” WETA President and CEO Sharon Percy Rockefeller wrote in a staff-wide email obtained by Politico. “I spent an hour with her this morning and she was resting comfortably, surrounded by loving family and friends… Earlier today, I conveyed to Gwen the devoted love and affection of all of us at WETA/NewsHour. Let us hold Gwen and her family even closer now in our hearts and prayers.”

Categories
Michelle Obama Politics

Audience Member Tells Michelle Obama to Run for President – Her Response – Video

She is the most popular person in Washington. She is fantastic with a speech and knows how to fire up a crowd and Hillary Clinton failed to smash that glass ceiling, so is Michelle Obama feeling the social media pressure to run for president in 2020?

An audience member shouted his wishes to the First Lady as she began addressing a group of community leaders on the subject of veteran homelessness. “Run for President” the voice said. Michelle’s response was telling…

Categories
Donald Trump Featured

Trump Wants Top Secret Clearance for… His Kids

Can you imagine the uproar, the furor Republicans and quite frankly the furor Democrats would have if a Democratic president-elect wanted Top Security clearance for his kids? But for whatever reason, Donald Trump doesn’t garner the same respond when he makes such a request.

Republican President-elect Donald Trump’s team has asked the White House to explore the possibility of getting his children top-secret security clearances, CBS News said on Monday, citing unnamed sources.

Daughter Ivanka, sons Eric and Donald Jr. and son-in-law Jared Kushner were close advisers to Trump’s campaign and are part of his transition team announced on Friday. The CBS report did not specify for which Trump children top-secret clearance was being sought.

Categories
Donald Trump Featured

GOP Consultant – How Can Trump Serve “All Americans” with Steve Bannon Advising Him

More truth… Donald Trump ran a campaign catering to the most racists among us. When he shockingly won the election, Trump asked that all Americans “come together.” But then he named a known racist, Steve Bannon, as his chief adviser?

Republican Consultant, Ana Navarro could not understand how Trump wants us all come together when a known racist is advising him.

Republican consultant Ana Navarro told CNN’s “New Day” Monday that President-elect Donald Trump was already failing to serve “all Americans” as he promised in his victory speech on Election Day.

“I think that the appointments he makes early on are the first signal he sends about what kind of president he is going to be,” Navarro said. “Many of us are torn by the utter disdain that we have for candidate Donald Trump and the utmost respect we have for the office of the presidency of the United States, and we want to give this guy a chance. We want to extend the olive branch and extend one to us, but if what he is doing is naming somebody like Steve Bannon, who has got such a track record and such a reputation for being controversial, for leading the hunting season against Republicans.”

Navarro said Trump has not been forceful enough in his denouncement of violence against minorities following last Tuesday’s election results.

Categories
Donald Trump Featured Racism

Report – Hate Crimes Skyrocket After Trump’s Win

According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, there have been over 200 hate crimes in the week since Donald Trump was elected.

I guess you can say his election emboldened hate and racism.

Categories
Donald Trump Featured

Russia Already Giving Trump Orders

I like to call him the Russia-elect because Russia played a pivotal role in him winning the election. So now that Donald Trump will be the next president of the United States, the people responsible for his win are telling Trump what they want.

The Kremlin’s spokesman has urged President-elect Donald Trump to begin repairing U.S.-Russia relations by pressuring NATO to withdraw forces from the Russian border. Dmitry Peskov, President Vladimir Putin’s official mouthpiece, said this “would lead to a kind of detente in Europe.” Peskov said in an interview with the Associated Press that the presence of NATO troops near its borders keeps relations tense, as Russia cannot feel “safe.”

“Of course, we have to take measures to counter,” he was cited as saying. Trump repeatedly praised Putin throughout his campaign and echoed the Kremlin’s stance on NATO, at one point even defying Article 5 of the treaty by refusing to commit to defending NATO allies in the Baltics. His detractors have warned that his fondness for Russia may mean unprecedented interference by the Kremlin in U.S. policies, and Peskov’s recent comments appear to be the first indication of that in Trump’s upcoming term.

Categories
Donald Trump Featured

On the Election: This Is Bad, and It’s Going to Get Worse

Remember when Ronald Reagan–the actor–was supposed to represent the nadir of presidential victors? How could we elect a former actor? What a laugh riot.

This is not funny. This is bad.

I’ve read and watched a lot of news and I’m still having trouble reconciling the people who decided in the end that Donald Trump would make a good president. Don’t get me wrong; I fully understand that many Americans are angry and frustrated, have lost their homes while wealthy bankers got bailouts, have seen their communities lose resources, jobs and hope, and generally don’t see Washington as a place where problems are solved. I get that. I feel it too. But it takes a special leap sans parachute to go from that to seeing Donald Trump as the best person to solve these problems.

I especially don’t understand how anybody associated with women (mothers, daughters, sisters) could vote for him after what he said about them. Those kinds of comments disqualify you from being a moral, upstanding person who will represent all Americans. Yet more white women voted for him than Hillary. Many of the articles I’ve read quote women as saying that he was going to bring back jobs. Or they just didn’t like Hillary. Or maybe it was Comey’s letter. It still doesn’t excuse what he said. or make him in any way presidential.

The same thing goes for the other groups that Trump verbally assaulted during the campaign and the bitter, angry tone in which he not only said ugly things, but the way he tolerated that speech, and actions, in his followers. He ran a stupefying xenophobic, hateful campaign, but because enough people decided that despite that, he was the only candidate that would bring back their coal and steel jobs, that they could rationalize him away as refreshingly honest. It’s no wonder that schoolchildren were actually afraid the day after the election.

But the joke will be on those who think that Trump will change Washington. Almost immediately, the same lobbyists and interest group attorneys who genuflect before Republican winners were back in the capital, eager and willing to do whatever bidding the Trump trolls will ask of them. They will serve themselves at his table, but this time in the name of the oil and gas industries and, yes, the same multinational corporations that have no interest or intent in bringing jobs back to the United States. Trump will talk about ripping up trade deals and slapping 35% tariffs on Chinese goods, but that will produce higher prices, higher interest rates and higher anxiety as the world sees America as an adversary, not a friend. Choking off immigration will further erode our economy because new residents are a major source of strength and growth, and if you think that American citizens are eager to pick fruit, clean hotel rooms and do the dirty work at slaughterhouses, then you are in for a rude awakening.

And then there’s the reason why Hillary lost in the states where she needed to win. Much of the reason is in the numbers below.

Republican votes by the year:
2008 59,930,551
2012 60,934,407
2016 59,022,040

Democratic votes by the year:
2008 69,438,98
2012 65,918,507
2016 59,245,315

Democrats didn’t come out in the numbers they did for Obama, and it turned out that the Hispanic juggernaut and African-American support was a myth too. Even with President Obama stumping for Hillary in North Carolina and Florida. That, to me, was a sobering lesson. Not even Obama could get his coalition out in sufficient numbers. I guess too many people in key states just didn’t like Clinton.

Then there’s this piece of political stool-softening that tries to paint Trump as essentially a pragmatist who will likely jettison his most incendiary campaign proposals and rule from the center-right. I don’t believe a word of it. Trump is not experienced enough in the ways of governing, nor do I think he really understands at more than a headline level what’s involved in legislation and how it can hide some explosively nefarious provisions. With both Ryan and McConnell, but also the farthest-right and alt-right voices clamoring for his short attention span, he will be at the mercy of the Republicans who have been slobbering over themselves in anticipation of controlling the levers of power for the first time since 2006.

They will send him cuts to Medicare, Social Security, AFDC, Medicaid and any other social program they can get their hands on, and he’ll probably sign most of them into law. He has promised to work first on an infrastructure bill, but the GOP regulars, allergic to any new revenue, will demand that a costly measure such as that be paid for with corresponding tax breaks to businesses and cuts to other programs. Guess which ones? The GOP will also attach their greatest hits such as cuts to Planned Parenthood, overseas family planning projects, and school programs other than abstinence education while restoring aid to religious institutions, And did you say women’s health programs and abortion? By 2020, we might be wistfully remembering a country that had a heart.

As if the talking heads haven’t been discredited enough, the news organizations are saying that the angry, tweeting, inappropriate, insulting, profane Donald Trump is a character that he will retire, a la Stephen Colbert. That one smells too nasty to even consider. The Donald Trump of the past two weeks is the real imposter and it’s only a matter of time before he loses his cool and his credibility (what he has) over some perceived slight or media report. He’s already advocated for laws that would make it easier to sue for libel, and, like Nixon but with a real personality, he will do something about it. The media will continue to play lap dog for him and find false equivalencies by comparing him to other presidents. There is not comparison. He is the Singularity.

But there is good news. More voters supported the Democratic vision of the country, as evidenced by the popular vote. And Trump’s margins of victory in the states that mattered–Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan–were tiny and were also based on promises that he will have a difficult time keeping. If he and the GOP also decide to repeal the Affordable Care Act and millions lose their health insurance, then the GOP will be toast.  And then there’s the future of the party. Right now, it’s difficult to see who will emerge as the face of the Democrats in the coming years. Sanders can be the driving ideological force, but the party will need a younger face to run for president.

The best news, though, is that this means that the Democrats will likely gain seats in Congress in 2018 because the party in power usually suffers midterm losses. This bodes well for the Senate especially, where the Democrats will need to defend far more seats than the GOP. In the meantime, I expect new Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer to hold the line against the far right.

This will be a difficult four years for the country, and we will even survive this, but only if we agitate, agitate, agitate.

For more, go to www.facebook.com/WhereDemocracyLives or Twitter @rigrundfest

Categories
Celebrities chris rock

SNL – Dave Chappelle and Chris Rock Dissect The Trump Election – Video

Something in this play struck me. While everyone was shocked about the results, Chris and Chappelle apparently knew and expected America to elect someone who got the support of racists like the KKK and White Supremacists.

Yes, we elected the first black president eight years ago then re-elected him again four years ago, but based on this play, and I’m seeing some truths in it, we have not come that far in race relations in this country.

Video

Categories
Donald Trump Featured

White House Investigating “10 Clear Links” of Trump’s Partnership with Russia

Huffington Post is reporting that President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden are reviewing the Democratic Coalition’s investigative report highlighting 10 “clear links” that the FBI failed to investigate about our President-elect’s business ties to Russia, and to the Putin regime.

It’s named “The Dworkin Report.”

“The FBI missed at least 10 key connections between President-elect Trump and Russia when they conducted their investigation and concluded that our President-elect had no links to the country,” said Scott Dworkin, Senior Advisor to the Democratic Coalition and author of the report. “It is imperative that the American people be made aware of this information.”

The Dworkin Report shows that Donald Trump has incorporated almost 250 registered businesses in Russia.

This hard evidence directly contradicts Trump’s prior statements about having no business ties to Russia over the summer.

Additionally, the evidence shows that Trump has travelled to Russia dating back to 1987, before the end of the Soviet Union.

In particular, a visit in 2010 included a tour of St. Petersburg’s Hermitage Museum led by a Russian government official of sufficient ranking, that he earned a personal photo and award from Vladimir Putin earlier this year.

The Democratic Coalition also revealed a 2013 video recorded interview with Donald Trump to MSNBC’s Thomas A. Roberts – which he has confirmed as authentic – where he claimed twice to have a relationship with Putin.

Categories
Donald Trump Featured

Megyn Kelly Says Trump Bought Her “Gifts” for Favorable Coverage on Fox

According to Megyn Kelly’s new memoir, Settle for More, Donald Trump was mad at her long before she asked those pointed questions at the first Republican presidential debate.

In the book, Kelly said Donald Trump tried offering her various “gifts” to influence her coverage of him. These gifts, Kelly said, came months before Donald announced his plan to run for president. She refused them all, setting up herself up for the wrath of the now president-elect Trump.

“Months before announcing his candidacy, [Trump] had tried hard to curry Ms. Kelly’s favor. He sent her notes, including a laudatory comment scrawled across her picture in The New York Times Magazine. (When Vanity Fair reported this, Mr. Trump denied it; Ms. Kelly includes proof, a picture.) Ms. Kelly and her husband declined an invitation to Mar-a-Lago, Mr. Trump’s fabled estate in Palm Beach, Fla. Then Mr. Trump tried, repeatedly and unsuccessfully, to persuade her to let him pick up the tab for the weekend she spent with two girlfriends at the Trump SoHo hotel.

“This is actually one of the untold stories of the 2016 campaign,” Ms. Kelly writes. “I was not the only journalist to whom Trump offered gifts clearly meant to shape coverage. Many reporters have told me that Trump worked hard to offer them something fabulous — from hotel rooms to rides on his 757.”

Categories
Donald Trump Featured

Shooting at Anti-Trump Protest – Protester Shot

A protester was shot during an anti-Donald Trump march in Portland, Ore., where demonstrations against the President-elect have grown increasingly violent over the past three nights, cops said early Saturday, NY Daily News reports.

A gunman was driving by the protesters as they crossed the Morrison Bridge near the downtown area around 1 a.m. The suspect, described as an African-American male in his late teens, got out of his car following a confrontation with a demonstrator and fired off several shots, striking the victim at least once.

The suspect sped off as officers rushed to provide medical aid.

Portland Police Sgt. Pete Simpson told the Daily News that the victim suffered non-life threatening injuries and was taken to a hospital in stable condition. It was not immediately clear what motivated the shooting and the suspect was still being sought early Saturday.

Categories
Celebrities Donald Trump

Gregg Popovich – “It’s Disgusting” that Donald Trump is America’s Leader – Audio

NBA Coach Gregg Popovich let loose on the so-called “values” of those Americans who, as Popovich put it, “would ground their kids for life” if those kids acted like or said the things Donald Trump said during his presidential campaign.

“I’m still sick to my stomach, not basically because the Republicans won, but because of the disgusting tenor and tone of the comments that have been xenophobic, homophobic, racist, misogynistic,” Popovich said. “I live in a country where half the people ignored all that to elect someone. That’s the scariest part of it to me.”

Exit mobile version