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It is difficult for "reasonable" liberals to justify their vote for Hillary so they resort to all kind of twisted logic and, in the process, resemble political pretzels.
The more radical liberals, who have taken over what was once the centrist Democrat Party of Sam Nunn and even "Ole" Bill, have walked off the reservation and fallen off the cliff so they are beyond redemption - think Bernie and Pocahontas Warren
All I can say is the more revelations surface about Hillary, the more comfortable I am having voted for Trump. There is much that concerns me about Donald but the Pant Suit Lady is just totally flawed. She even lacks a sense of humor.
To make matters even worse, those with whom she associates and who are inexplicably drawn to her, would never dare tell her what they know she would reject and/or what they truly think so they e mail each other their actual feelings. We owe a lot to Assange, who is also a questionable character.
When I think of a comparison, and I admit comparisons can be odious, I see Trump as the circus ringleader but when I think of Hillary I see the female version of Lucifer. As for Podesta, Huma Abedin, her perverted husband, Lynch, Soros and the societal leeches who form the Clinton Fraternity et. al. I pray for our nation and cry for those who find them acceptable..
What a pathetic crowd of amoral and corrupt creeps.
I wish I could be clearer but I admit to not being a trained writer.
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Vernon Jordan is my idea of a reasoned Democrat. He is bright, sees both sides of an issue, has proven he can be partisan but generally makes a decision that I either support and/or understand and think it well reasoned.
When it comes to this article (See 1 below) Mr. Jordan touches on a subject I have discussed many times.
I even discussed this with Kim Strassel when she was here and with Bret Stephens, who also stayed with us many years ago and when WSJ ownership changed. At the time, Bret was encouraged because he believed, as happened, the new owners would spend money on technology.
Corporate ownership of media outlets has had mixed results. Financially, it has probably kept afloat organs that could not have survived. Meanwhile, distant corporate ownership has also, I believe, resulted in less focus on the local community and has created more focus on entertainment than objective, reasoned and unbiased reporting. The editorial page also seems to have become more visceral. Finally, when the front page allows the name of the reporter to be published I believe that is another reason why news reporting has become slanted.
A society, particularly a democratic one, depends upon mass media news sources for much of its information. When it is biased and less objective that is a dangerous phenomena. If this election proved anything it is how biased the mass media has become.
Even a strong paper like, The Wall Street Journal, just reported a series of personnel "buyouts" due to significant advertising revenue declines.
This bias takes many forms and all are destructive. That the mass media is held in contempt, its readership is shrinking and its financial strength rests on declining advertising is unhealthy. We need a free press if we are to remain reasonably informed and thus, free.
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Is Iranian commander speaking the truth? You decide. (See 2 below.)
This was originally published in The Jerusalem Post! (See 2a below.)
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We have house guests from our old Atlanta neighborhood arriving today and then, followed by our oldest daughter and her husband. So few, if any, memos until after the election.
Have a great weekend.
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Dick
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1)
Both Old and New Media Are Failing Voters
Whatever the outcome of the election, we need business models that foster quality journalism.
The Spin Room before the presidential debate, Sept. 26. PHOTO: THE WASHINGTON POST/GETTY IMAGES
The technology, media and telecom industry has had an unprecedented impact on this election. I think everyone—Democrat, Republican or independent—can agree that this year’s Republican nominee could never have gotten this far without the ascendancy of new media and the decline of the old.
Donald Trump bypassed the old media gatekeepers, the so-called “media elite,” and took his message straight to the electorate, using Twitter. Partisan websites and bloggers amplified his message. Mainstream television, under pressure from new media, gave the candidate abundant free airtime, because his behavior was good for ratings.
This election may be remembered as the first where the relentless march of technology, having transformed the media landscape, began to disrupt our political process. Now, some would say our political process needs disrupting—and they may have a point.
The technology itself is nonpartisan. The same social media that fueled the Republican candidate gave voice to Black Lives Matter. Technology is a great gift to mankind. But it is a gift like fire. Its power for good is equaled only by its power for destruction. And sometimes I fear that destruction is gaining the upper hand.
Now, just days before a presidential election that would have been unimaginable four years ago, it is time for us to pause and consider: What have we wrought?
For better or worse, technology has destroyed the business model of traditional journalism. The great new institutions of the 20th century, print newspapers, the evening broadcast news, the trusted anchorman, are fading relics. In their place we have unlimited information, unfiltered, all the time. In this year’s presidential campaign, we are witnessing what happens when longstanding public institutions are dismantled without a plan for what follows.
In the new media landscape, the wall between news and entertainment is crumbling. The value of news is measured by its popularity. The loudest voice gets the most listeners. A lie bears equal weight as a fact.
By giving everyone a voice, and every voice unlimited reach, we have opened our national dialogue to bullies, bigots and buffoons—on both sides of the aisle.
This is not only an American problem. Extreme views are gaining ground in Europe. And in the run-up to the Brexit vote, one leader famously said that the public was tired of experts.
Yesterday’s news institutions were far from perfect. But they served an important civic role. They served as filters of information, sorting out facts from lies, and truth from innuendo. They gleaned the significant from the frivolous.
They set a standard for public discourse. And that standard was reasonably high. At their best, they helped to create what Thomas Jefferson called an enlightened citizenry. Jefferson knew that an educated public was the most effective bulwark against “the perversion of power into tyranny.”
I am not suggesting, or even wishing, that we could return to the past. But the time for disruption has passed. Now it is time to create, and to support, organizations that educate and enlighten the public. New media has given new voice to ignorance, and fear, and the worst of human nature. We have to fight back with truth, and reason, and our own best selves.
Raising the standards of what passes today for public discourse will not be easy. But if anyone can do it, it is people in the technology, media and telecom industry. They are the innovators and inventors. They influence what the public sees, and hears, and shares.
They are the people who discovered fire. Now they must ensure that we are protected from the fire.
Regardless of the results of next week’s election, for years to come our nation will be in need of some serious healing. This is the challenge. We need business models that support quality journalism. We need to use technology’s capacity to clearly, and quickly, delineate facts from lies—regardless of their source, and to develop media that require civility and respect when people exchange opinions.
In the last presidential race, in 2012, only 58% of eligible voters actually voted. That means 93 million people who were eligible to vote did not bother to vote. If we could get those 93 million people to vote, I am confident that America would be a better place.
Ninety-three million people ought not to be sitting out this, or any election. We need media platforms to urge everyone to vote as if the future of America depends on it—because it does.
Mr. Jordan is a senior managing director of Lazard. This article is adapted from a speech he delivered this week in New York City.
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2)IRAN COMMANDER SAYS U.S. IN 'STRONG DECLINE'
BREITBART
BREITBART
“America is no longer number one and the first power of the world,” deputy Revolutionary Guards commander Hossein Salami told thousands gathered outside the former US mission in Tehran.
“America’s political will can no longer manage political and military development in… the world of Islam. America’s political power has strongly declined.”
Every year on November 3-4, Iran celebrates the 444-day siege of the embassy when more than 50 diplomats, staff and spies were taken hostage by Islamist students demanding the extradition of the shah, who had fled to America after being deposed a few months earlier in the Islamic revolution.
The crisis severed US-Iranian diplomatic ties for decades, but Tehran last year clinched a deal with world powers to curb its controversial nuclear programme in exchange for an easing of economic sanctions.
Protesters on Thursday chanted the traditional rallying cries of “Death to America” and “Death to the House of Saud”, in reference to Iran’s regional rival Saudi Arabia.
The US remains Iran’s main enemy, and Tehran and Washington back opposing sides in several regional conflicts, including Syria and Yemen.
“Our fight with the Americans will continue” Salami said. “Pursuing our ideals in the world of Islam and in Iran, we will recognize no stopping point or red line.
He also warned the US not to criticize Iran’s ballistic missiles, calling its system “the real center of our power (that) must be strengthened.”
2a) Trump’s true opponent
ByCaroline Glick
As these lines are being written it is Thursday morning in the US. Wikileaks announced hours ago that it is about to drop the mother lode of material it has gathered on Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton.
The focus on Clinton’s alleged criminality in the final weeks of the election brings the 2016 presidential race full circle. Since the contest began in the summer of 2015, it was clear that this would be an election like no other.
After eight years of Barack Obama’s White House, America is a different place than it was in 2008, when Obama ran on a platform of hope and change.
Americans today are angry, scared, divided and cynical.
The outcome of this presidential election will determine whether Obama’s fundamental transformation of America will become a done deal. If Clinton prevails, the Obama revolution will be irreversible.
But even support or opposition to Obama’s revolution is not what this election is about. The anger that Americans’ feel is more powerful than mere policy differences – no matter how strongly felt.
More than a referendum on Obama, Tuesday vote will be a vote about Republican nominee Donald Trump and what he has come to represent. Voters on Tuesday will have to decide what they oppose more: Trump or what he stands for.
Trump is without a doubt a morally dubious candidate.
Popular resentment and animosity towards the powers that be was enough to win Trump the Republican nomination. And as he closes the gap with Clinton in the lead up to Tuesday, chances are rising that it will be enough to get him into the White House as well.
But as angry as they were at Bush, Republican anger at their leaders has grown exponentially during Obama’s tenure in office.
In both the 2008 and 2012 elections, millions of Republican voters were appalled by their successive nominees’ refusal to go on the offensive against Obama. In 2008, Sen. John McCain refused to mention Obama’s deep and longstanding ties with radical political and social forces, including his decades’ long relationship with his pastor, Jeremiah Wright, who regularly preached hatred for America from his pulpit.
In 2012, Mitt Romney simply choked. He couldn’t make a competent case against Obama or withstand media criticism, that as the Republican nominee he should have expected.
Republican voters took an even dimmer view of their congressional leadership. In both the 2010 and 2014 congressional elections, Republicans won big in both houses of Congress. The voters’ clear wish was for their lawmakers to check Obama. But instead, the Republican leadership lashed out at their own voters while failing time after time to check Obama’s perceived abuse of power.
Case in point of course was the Republican Senate leadership’s failure to view Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran as a treaty, despite the fact that it clearly met the standard to be so viewed. By going along with Obama’s lie that the nuclear deal, which destroyed 70 years of US nuclear nonproliferation policy in one fell swoop, was a mere presidential agreement, the Senate leaders enabled Obama to implement his radical deal with little difficulty.
Anti-Trump voters can be grouped into three often overlapping categories. First, of course there are the Democrats. These voters want Clinton to win. They support what Obama has done as president. They support Clinton because they want to see Obama’s policies continued and because they think she is the best candidate for the job.
The third group of anti-Trump voters oppose him because they believe that he is unfit to serve. They are Republicans and Independents.
Trump is rising because Republicans who have been undecided or have supported Libertarian Gary Johnson have decided to make their peace with him.
By Wednesday we will know whether the Republicans and Independents who are now accepting Trump will be enough to put him over the top. But what is clear enough today is that the voters who reject the establishment and view it as incurably corrupt will give Clinton no quarter if she manages to eke out a victory. At the same time, the establishment’s hatred of Trump will foment Washington battles the likes of which we have never seen, if he wins on Tuesday.
There is a lot hanging in the balance in this election. But only one question will determine the outcome.
If Trump wins on Tuesday, it will be the establishment he defeats.
2a) Trump’s true opponent
ByCaroline Glick
As these lines are being written it is Thursday morning in the US. Wikileaks announced hours ago that it is about to drop the mother lode of material it has gathered on Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton.
Previous Wikileaks document drops set the stage for FBI director James Comey’s letter to Congress last Friday, when he informed lawmakers that he has ordered his agents to reopen their probe of Clinton’s private email server, which he closed last July.
One week on, the FBI probe still dominates election coverage. If Wikileaks is true to its word, and even if it isn’t, Clinton and her campaign team will be unable to shift public attention away from the ballooning allegations of criminal corruption. This will remain the story of the election when polls open Tuesday morning.
The focus on Clinton’s alleged criminality in the final weeks of the election brings the 2016 presidential race full circle. Since the contest began in the summer of 2015, it was clear that this would be an election like no other.
After eight years of Barack Obama’s White House, America is a different place than it was in 2008, when Obama ran on a platform of hope and change.
Americans today are angry, scared, divided and cynical.
The outcome of this presidential election will determine whether Obama’s fundamental transformation of America will become a done deal. If Clinton prevails, the Obama revolution will be irreversible.
If Republican nominee Donald Trump emerges the winner, America will embark on a different course.
But even support or opposition to Obama’s revolution is not what this election is about. The anger that Americans’ feel is more powerful than mere policy differences – no matter how strongly felt.
More than a referendum on Obama, Tuesday vote will be a vote about Republican nominee Donald Trump and what he has come to represent. Voters on Tuesday will have to decide what they oppose more: Trump or what he stands for.
Trump is without a doubt a morally dubious candidate.
His prolific record of trash talking make the allegations of sexual harassment leveled against him by multiple women in recent weeks ring true. So too, his willingness to truck in racially charged rhetoric, like his accusation that the Mexican government is sending its rapists and violent criminals across the border for Americans to deal with, has made him toxic for millions of American voters.
But for his supporters, who Trump is, is less important than what he represents.
What he represents is the voters’ rebellion against the American establishment – not just the political establishment, but the full spectrum of the American elite. From Washington to Wall Street, from college campuses to the media, tens of millions of Americans believe that their establishment is rotten to the core. And they support Trump because he is running against the establishment.
Popular resentment and animosity towards the powers that be was enough to win Trump the Republican nomination. And as he closes the gap with Clinton in the lead up to Tuesday, chances are rising that it will be enough to get him into the White House as well.
How did we get to this point?
Trump’s rise has been in the making for a decade.
During the Bush administration, many Republicans quietly fretted that George W. Bush and his advisers didn’t know what they were doing in Iraq. They were angered even more by Bush’s bank bailout in 2008 and his massive increase of the national debt.
But as angry as they were at Bush, Republican anger at their leaders has grown exponentially during Obama’s tenure in office.
Since Obama entered office he has used the powers of his office to seize powers no president had ever dared to claim. And Republicans – who bore the brunt of the damage his policies caused – expected their presidential nominees and congressional representatives to protect them. They expected them to curb Obama’s perceived abuses at the IRS, the EPA, at the border with Mexico, the Justice Department, in the healthcare industry, the military, the State Department and beyond.
In both the 2008 and 2012 elections, millions of Republican voters were appalled by their successive nominees’ refusal to go on the offensive against Obama. In 2008, Sen. John McCain refused to mention Obama’s deep and longstanding ties with radical political and social forces, including his decades’ long relationship with his pastor, Jeremiah Wright, who regularly preached hatred for America from his pulpit.
In 2012, Mitt Romney simply choked. He couldn’t make a competent case against Obama or withstand media criticism, that as the Republican nominee he should have expected.
Republican voters walked away from their party’s defeat with the sense that their candidates cared more about what media said about them than they cared about winning.
Republican voters took an even dimmer view of their congressional leadership. In both the 2010 and 2014 congressional elections, Republicans won big in both houses of Congress. The voters’ clear wish was for their lawmakers to check Obama. But instead, the Republican leadership lashed out at their own voters while failing time after time to check Obama’s perceived abuse of power.
Case in point of course was the Republican Senate leadership’s failure to view Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran as a treaty, despite the fact that it clearly met the standard to be so viewed. By going along with Obama’s lie that the nuclear deal, which destroyed 70 years of US nuclear nonproliferation policy in one fell swoop, was a mere presidential agreement, the Senate leaders enabled Obama to implement his radical deal with little difficulty.
Trump was elected to be the Republican presidential nominee because Trump is the opposite of McCain, Romney and their counterparts in the GOP’s congressional leadership ranks. Trump isn’t merely running against Democrats and the liberal establishment. He is running against the Republican establishment as well. And his supporters love him for it.
Trump began building his anti-establishment credentials as soon as he announced his candidacy. At the first Republican primary debate in August 2015, he effectively declared war against the Republican establishment when he refused to pledge to support whatever candidate the party elected to serve as its nominee.
And the establishment understood that he was the gravest threat to their power and began attacking him.
What they didn’t understand was that he had goaded them into a fight that they could only lose.
The secret of Trump’s success has been a simple logical calculation. As the anti-establishment candidate, he has managed to castigate every criticism launched against him – no matter how valid – as the ravings of the corrupt establishment.
The establishment has not thrown in the towel though. According to one analysis, 91 percent of the media coverage of Trump’s campaign has been negative.
But the negative press has only strengthened his supporters’ conviction that he is the man of the hour.
But the attacks, again, have boomeranged.
A poll taken by USA Today earlier this week demonstrates this point. The poll asked likely voters, “What do you think is the primary threat that might try to change the election results?”
For months, the Clinton campaign has claimed that Russian President Vladimir Putin is interfering in the election on Trump’s behalf. Yet a mere 10 percent of voters polled said that “foreign interests such as Russian hackers,” would try to steal the elections.
On the other hand, 46 percent said the news media would. Another 21 percent said “the national political establishment” was intervening in the elections to shift the vote in the direction they wish.
In other words, 67 percent of voters believe that the establishment Trump is running against is trying to steal the elections.
Anti-Trump voters can be grouped into three often overlapping categories. First, of course there are the Democrats. These voters want Clinton to win. They support what Obama has done as president. They support Clinton because they want to see Obama’s policies continued and because they think she is the best candidate for the job.
Second, there is the establishment itself. In August The Washington Examiner polled Washington elites.
Among members of the Beltway establishment, support for Clinton is overwhelming. She beat Trump 62-22 percent. Twenty percent of Washington Republicans said they support Clinton.
These first two groups of anti-Trump voters support Clinton because they are more or less satisfied with the way things are.
The third group of anti-Trump voters oppose him because they believe that he is unfit to serve. They are Republicans and Independents.
It is this third group that brings us to the greatest anomaly of the election. According to Real Clear Politics’ average of polling data, Trump is trailing Clinton in national polls in a four-way race 43-45 percent. But at the same time, a mere 38 percent of Americans have a favorable view of him. In other words, millions of Americans who cannot stand Trump intend to vote for him on Tuesday.
This anomaly is explained by the public’s revulsion with the establishment. And this brings us to the Wikileaks documents and the FBI’s reopening of its criminal probe of Clinton and her team.
Clinton’s support levels have not dropped in the polls in the week that passed since Comey informed Congress that he had reopened the email probe.
On October 28, the Real Clear Politics poll average placed voter support for Clinton at 44.9 percent. On November 2, it had risen to 45.3 percent.
In the same time period, Trump’s support level rose from 41 to 43.6 percent.
Trump is rising because Republicans who have been undecided or have supported Libertarian Gary Johnson have decided to make their peace with him.
The renewed investigations against Clinton are not driving her voters away from her. As Clinton herself argued hours after Comey’s decision became public, her supporters have already factored in her legal difficulties. Trump is rising because with every new report of Clinton’s alleged corruption, Republican and Independent voters are reminded of how corrupt the establishment has become.
Their view of the lesser of two evils is shifting.
By Wednesday we will know whether the Republicans and Independents who are now accepting Trump will be enough to put him over the top. But what is clear enough today is that the voters who reject the establishment and view it as incurably corrupt will give Clinton no quarter if she manages to eke out a victory. At the same time, the establishment’s hatred of Trump will foment Washington battles the likes of which we have never seen, if he wins on Tuesday.
There is a lot hanging in the balance in this election. But only one question will determine the outcome.
If Trump wins on Tuesday, it will be the establishment he defeats.
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