Trump 6- The saga of the lone orange continues

[Scribber]

Certain parts of the media are FINALLY starting to pick up on this story. Fingers crossed that it's all over the media by tomorrow morning. 

I haven't seen anything beyond the articles posted here. I will sleep with my fingers crossed that this "breaks" with MSM in the morning!

[RoseWilder]

Unbelievable. The FBI has been silent all weekend about Clinton, despite nearly everyone begging for answers. Three stories break connecting Trump to Russia and a source from the FBI rushes to say Trump has no ties to Russia and now the New York Times (and several other parts of the media) are accepting this as fact. They're not going "Hmmm, wait a minute, so the same FBI that's clearly trying to hand the election to Trump is now defending him." No, NYT is going "oh, a source in the FBI says there's no connection. Case closed. Let's ignore the 3 articles about Trump's tied to Russia and get back to discussing Hillary and the emails." 

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/donald-trump-russia_us_5817cb54e4b0990edc332a59?z056xm1z3xcbejc3di

I'm so angry right now. Well if the MSM won't make this into the story that it needs to be, then it's up to the public to do it. We'll just have to take to social media and repost the 3 articles about Trump being tied to Russia over and over until it gets the attention it deserves. 

[ALM7]

I just ran across a documentary by Alexandra Pelosi.  Meet the Donors - Does Money Talk {2016}.  It's on HBO and very interesting!

[AmazonGrace]

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/10/donald-trump-faces-a-barrage-of-new-allegations/506060/

I think he only manages to look half clean to many of his voters because we don't know 5% of all the shady things he's done.

 

 

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/01/us/politics/donald-trump-tax.html

Donald Trump Used Legally Dubious Method to Avoid Paying Taxes

[VelociRapture]

3 hours ago, AmazonGrace said:

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/10/donald-trump-faces-a-barrage-of-new-allegations/506060/

I think he only manages to look half clean to many of his voters because we don't know 5% of all the shady things he's done.

 

 

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/01/us/politics/donald-trump-tax.html

Donald Trump Used Legally Dubious Method to Avoid Paying Taxes

My husband, the CPA, read through The NY Times article. He never even learned about the method Trump used in school because it was outlawed in like 1993 (he got his BS in Accounting in 2009.)

He was highly unimpressed with Trump's actions. And glad that it's no longer allowed.

7 hours ago, RoseWilder said:

Unbelievable. The FBI has been silent all weekend about Clinton, despite nearly everyone begging for answers. Three stories break connecting Trump to Russia and a source from the FBI rushes to say Trump has no ties to Russia and now the New York Times (and several other parts of the media) are accepting this as fact. They're not going "Hmmm, wait a minute, so the same FBI that's clearly trying to hand the election to Trump is now defending him." No, NYT is going "oh, a source in the FBI says there's no connection. Case closed. Let's ignore the 3 articles about Trump's tied to Russia and get back to discussing Hillary and the emails." 

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/donald-trump-russia_us_5817cb54e4b0990edc332a59?z056xm1z3xcbejc3di

I'm so angry right now. Well if the MSM won't make this into the story that it needs to be, then it's up to the public to do it. We'll just have to take to social media and repost the 3 articles about Trump being tied to Russia over and over until it gets the attention it deserves. 

They reported what they know so far - that the FBI doesn't think there is a direct link. That doesn't mean the reporters aren't still digging. It just means they haven't found anything they can reasonably publish without risking a lawsuit or retraction or something. The NY Times has a very solid reputation and is well respected around the world. Publishing anything before they have absolute proof to back it up could damage that reputation in  ways other publications (like Slate) may not be affected.

[RoseWilder]

2 hours ago, VelociRapture said:

They reported what they know so far - that the FBI doesn't think there is a direct link. That doesn't mean the reporters aren't still digging. It just means they haven't found anything they can reasonably publish without risking a lawsuit or retraction or something. The NY Times has a very solid reputation and is well respected around the world. Publishing anything before they have absolute proof to back it up could damage that reputation in  ways other publications (like Slate) may not be affected.

And I would be fine with that if the entire media hadn't rushed to write stories about Clinton and the emails when they knew nothing about it. Within 5 minutes it was all over the damn internet and the TV, and they still don't know anything about what's in the emails but that hasn't stopped every news show and Internet news site from talking about it incessantly for days. 

But now, 3 stories emerge that link Trump to Russia and they're silent. Most of the news sites aren't even saying "Slate magazines reports. . . . " The media is almost completely silent

That's what I'm having the problem with here. The double standard. They've spent days making people question Clinton's honesty based on no information at all, but this gets silence. Where are all the endless "is this going to change the way voters view Trump" stories? 

It's infuriating to see the double standard, especially when we have to hear Trump and his supporters whining all the time about how the media is biased in favor of Clinton. 

[VelociRapture]

21 minutes ago, RoseWilder said:

And I would be fine with that if the entire media hadn't rushed to write stories about Clinton and the emails when they knew nothing about it. Within 5 minutes it was all over the damn internet and the TV, and they still don't know anything about what's in the emails but that hasn't stopped every news show and Internet news site from talking about it incessantly for days. 

But now, 3 stories emerge that link Trump to Russia and they're silent. Most of the news sites aren't even saying "Slate magazines reports. . . . " The media is almost completely silent

That's what I'm having the problem with here. The double standard. They've spent days making people question Clinton's honesty based on no information at all, but this gets silence. Where are all the endless "is this going to change the way voters view Trump" stories? 

It's infuriating to see the double standard, especially when we have to hear Trump and his supporters whining all the time about how the media is biased in favor of Clinton. 

Oh I get it completely. I didn't see the Times coverage of the emails - and even if I did, a lot of stuff is in one ear and straight out the other recently (yay pregnancy brain!) 

I just wanted to remind everyone that it's just the first article they've done on it so far. I'd rather have them take their time to collect relevant evidence with any story because it makes whatever they ultimately report much more credible. 

[RoseWilder]

This editorial sums up how I feel about the double standard in reporting on this: 

http://www.dailykos.com/stories/2016/11/1/1589439/-Three-Hours-That-s-Some-Quick-Work

Quote

The article, in one broad brush, attempts to disarm the notion that Russian servers were communicating with the Trump Organization, for example, by citing “Intelligence officials” that state “...the F.B.I. ultimately concluded that there could be an innocuous explanation, like a marketing email or spam, for the computer contacts.” (emphasis mine) Yet, according to the article, no specific inquiries were answered by the F.B.I. regarding that assertion or any of the facts presented by the Times.

Another great point: 

Quote

So, in three hours, from the time the Slate.com article was posted for public consumption, and then — a half hour later — the Mother Jones article by David Corn was published, the NY Times was able to digest the information presented in both articles, review and compare documents and memos utilized by those sources to the information previously made available to Mr. Lichtblau and Mr. Myers, reach out for comment from FBI officials, track down “intelligence officials” for comment, reach out to Congressional leaders on the record (such as Harry Reid) for comment on the briefings and timelines presented in the piece, reach out to the Trump campaign for comment, write the article, confirm the sourcing and freshness of the information presented, draw conclusions against the actions taken by FBI Chief Comey and other players in the Clinton disclosures last Friday, run the article past editors and department heads for review and approval, post to IT for electronic copy conversion and “break the news”.

We're not talking about some vague speculation, like the Clinton email thing from last Friday. We're talking about 3 very well researched, very detailed articles that all link Trump to Russia and the mainstream media is treating it like it's no big deal. They're barely even talking about it. 

At the very least I expected them to be talking about the 3 articles, questioning whether they were valid, talking about whether it would cast doubt on Trump's campaign, etc. But instead, they're treating it like it's a non-story. I just don't understand. It's so frustrating. Every media outlet in the country should be talking about this. At the very least, they should be giving it as much coverage as they gave the email thing. But nope. 

Well, I'll be busy this morning, emailing every news site to let them know how upset I am that they're not talking about this. And I'll be retweeting those 3 articles all over my social media. If the media won't do their fucking job then I guess Hillary supporters will have to do their job for them. Every voter needs to know about those 3 articles before they show up at the polls. 

[47of74]

And I see Paul Ryan (R-coward) has voted for Agent Orange;

cnn.com/2016/11/01/politics/paul-ryan-voted-for-donald-trump/index.html

Quote

Paul Ryan might be done defending Donald Trump, but the House speaker said Tuesday that he still followed through on his pledge to vote for the Republican Party's presidential nominee.

Ryan told Fox News that he already cast his vote in his hometown of Janesville, Wisconsin, but didn't use the real estate mogul's name.

"I stand where I've stood all fall and all summer," Ryan said during an appearance on "Fox and Friends." "In fact I already voted here in Janesville for our nominee last week in early voting. We need to support our entire Republican ticket."

The Wisconsin Republican has had a tense relationship with Trump throughout the campaign, with Ryan frequently drawing the ire of the real estate mogul.

In other words he's too chickenshit not to stand up to Orange Hitler and his deplorable followers.

[RoseWilder]

Here are the links to two of the articles linking Trump to Russia: 

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2016/10/veteran-spy-gave-fbi-info-alleging-russian-operation-cultivate-donald-trump

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/cover_story/2016/10/was_a_server_registered_to_the_trump_organization_communicating_with_russia.html

I'm currently emailing the links to every news organization and asking why they aren't giving this the same amount of coverage that the Clinton email thing is getting. I'm also going to be retweeting the article all over social media. 

If enough people do the same, it won't matter that the mainstream media isn't covering it as well as they should, tons of voters will still hear about it and it might give them pause. It might sway some of the undecideds to vote for Clinton or some of the Trump supporters who are wavering to switch to Hillary or stay home. 

We can do this! 

[Cartmann99]

21 minutes ago, 47of74 said:

And I see Paul Ryan (R-coward) has voted for Agent Orange;

cnn.com/2016/11/01/politics/paul-ryan-voted-for-donald-trump/index.html

In other words he's too chickenshit not to stand up to Orange Hitler and his deplorable followers.

Remember when Ryan disinvited Trump to that rally in Wisconsin? Ryan and the other speakers got booed and Trump supporters kept interrupting their speeches to yell insults at them. Even after that, he still keeps trying to walk the tightrope between the Never Trumpers and the Trumpsters. 

Uh-huh, good luck with that plan, Ryan. 

[RoseWilder]

David Corn defends his story about Trump having ties to Russia: 

https://www.rawstory.com/2016/11/you-cant-handle-the-truth-david-corn-schools-conservative-reporter-on-russia-blackmailing-trump/

[RoseWilder]

The KKK just endorsed Donald Trump. Yet another thing the mainstream media isn't reporting on: 

http://www.dailykos.com/stories/2016/11/1/1589543/-The-Ku-Klux-Klan-makes-it-official-endorses-Donald-Trump-saying-Make-America-Great-Again

 

I think I need someone to talk me off the ledge now. I feel totally deflated by the mainstream media's refusal to talk about Trump and Russia, Trump and the newest tax scandal, Trump and the multiple trials he has coming up. 

All they want to talk about is Clinton and the emails and early voting for the Democrats has dropped. 

I think I'm going to have to take a break from reading political articles for awhile. 

ETA: My brief moment of negativity has passed. I got a mini-pep talk from a friend. Then I donated more money to one of the senators who is in a close election. And now I'm off to go talk to the person I know who is considering voting for Clinton but is reluctant.

[AmazonGrace]

Trumpster can count on the support of his white supremacist homophobe buddies: 

http://www.salon.com/2016/11/01/evan-mcmullin-robocall-from-white-nationalist-says-republican-anti-trump-candidate-is-gay-points-to-lesbian-mother-evan-has-two-mommies/

Evan McMullin robocall from white nationalist says Republican anti-Trump candidate is gay, points to lesbian mother: “Evan has two mommies”

A Donald Trump supporter goes low in a robocall to rally Mormons against an LDS member — and for Donald Trump 

Trying to stave off the very real possibility that independent presidential candidate Evan McMullin could actually win Utah’s six electoral votes instead of Donald Trump, a white nationalist supporter of the GOP nominee is targeting 190,000 Utah voters with a robocall attacking McMullin and accusing him of being secretly gay.

“Evan is over 40 years old and is not married and doesn’t even have a girlfriend. I believe Evan is a closet homosexual.”

In the recorded message, longtime white nationalist William Johnson tells listeners that McMullen is “an open borders, amnesty supporter” who also might be homosexual since his mother divorced his father and is now married to another woman.

“Evan has two mommies. His mother is a lesbian, married to another woman. Evan is okay with that. Indeed Evan supports the Supreme Court ruling legalizing gay marriage,” Johnson says in the message which can be heard above.

McMullin, who is an active member of the Mormon church, says he accepts his mother’s marriage but still opposes legal recognition of same-sex unions.

“As far as my mother’s marriage is concerned, I believe in the sanctity of traditional marriage. It is an important part of my faith,” McMullin told the Salt Lake Tribune. “My mother has a different view. That is OK. I love her very much, and she is one of my best friends. She is a wonderful mother. I wish everyone could have a mother like my mom.”

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: I wanted to ask you about a subject that’s been raised quite a bit during the campaign, even by some of the top Republican leaders—Mitt Romney, for one—Donald Trump’s tax returns. Why do you think he’s resisting so much being able to make his tax returns public?

WAYNE BARRETT: Well, I don’t think we have to speculate about it. And the reason I say that is Tim O’Brien, who was my research assistant on my book and subsequently wrote his own TrumpNation, and he is now at Bloomberg. He’s the editor of the opinion section of Bloomberg Media. And he has seen the tax returns. Now, he hasn’t seen them for the most recent year, but he saw them for a number of years. Donald Trump sued him over his book. And, you know, it was sort of—when my book came out, he publicly threatened to sue me, but he never did. Now, I name 25 mob associates of Donald Trump or whatever, and that doesn’t motivate him to sue. But if you say he’s not worth what he claims to be worth, that’s what Tim—he sued Tim because Tim said he was only worth $200-$300 million. Now, Tim was a business editor at the Times. He was a young guy, just got an MBA from Columbia when he was my assistant, but he has an incredible business head. And so, he sued Tim over that. The litigation went on for six or seven years. And Tim prevailed. But during the course of the litigation, Tim’s lawyers demanded that Donald make the tax returns available. And they did for a number of years. And so, Tim signed a confidentiality agreement, so he can’t specifically reveal what is in the tax returns, but he wrote a piece for Bloomberg very recently that said Donald’s not releasing his tax returns because the income will be far less than he claims it is, the assets will be worth far less than what he says it is, and his charitable contributions are virtually nonexistent. So those are the three primary reasons why he won’t release these returns.

You know, he has made a career—when I say I don’t know why he’s never been prosecuted, maybe the prime time that he could have been prosecuted was at the time of his downfall in 1990 and '91. Well, you know, the banks kept him alive, as he was too big to fail. So they kept him alive. But I wrote in the book—he certainly didn't sue when I said it—I didn’t say that he had made—submitted false financial statements to the bankers to get a billion dollars in personally guaranteed loans. I said he submitted fraudulent ones. Right? And I lay out a case for that in the book. He was engaged in completely defrauding the banks, and the banks knew it. OK? And they were giving him the loans anyway. So, they kept him alive. But even more so than that, the House Banking Committee wanted to do public hearings about it; the banks wouldn’t cooperate. The district attorney of Manhattan was a big friend of Donald’s. Donald was his second-biggest giver. Robert Morgenthau’s second-biggest giver was Donald Trump. Donald was the chairman of the Police Athletic League, which was Morgenthau’s biggest charity. So he was extremely close. He hired—Andy Maloney was the U.S. attorney in the Eastern District. He hired Maloney’s brother. Right? Rudy Giuliani was the U.S. attorney in Manhattan, and we know how close they got. I wrote a whole story about how their relationship developed. I was at Rudy Giuliani’s first fundraiser when he decided to run for mayor, and there’s Donald at the main table. He’s the co-chair of the first Rudy Giuliani fundraiser for the mayorality in 1989. So his relationships with prosecutors and the fact that the bankers—they were embarrassed by what they had done; they didn’t want any investigation of this. So the combination of the two gave—gave them a pass—gave him a pass.

http://www.democracynow.org/2016/7/5/wayne_barrett_on_donald_trumps_broken

[AmazonGrace]

http://www.salon.com/2016/11/01/in-the-media-narrative-hillary-clinton-is-corrupt-so-what-the-hell-is-donald-trump/

 

[AmazonGrace]

Trump and mob ties, and of course he lied again

https://www.yahoo.com/news/video/video-emerges-donald-trump-mob-193737101.html

New video emerges of Donald Trump with mob-linked gambler

Yahoo News Video•November 1, 2016

On Tuesday, November 1, 2016, Yahoo News and Finance Anchor Bianna Golodryga spoke with Yahoo News Chief Investigative Correspondent Michael Isikoff about a new video that shows Donald Trump standing side by side with New Jersey mobster, Robert Libutti, in Atlantic City, NJ, in 1988. Trump has previously denied having a relationship with Libutti.

older stories

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3480988/How-Donald-Trump-long-relationship-mobster-casino-owner-fined-200-000-turning-away-black-customers-Trump-Plaza-Atlantic-City.html

How Donald Trump 'had long relationship with' mobster casino owner who was fined $200,000 for turning away black customers from Trump Plaza in Atlantic City

Atlantic City's Trump Plaza was fined over Robert LiButti's treatment of black and female patrons

Donald Trump claims he couldn't pick LiButti out of a line-up

But LiButti's daughter insists Trump hosted them on multiple occasions

She says they flew his helicopter and visited his yacht with Ivana 

LiButti is banned from New Jersey casinos for his ties with Gambino mob

He also served five years in prison for tax fraud from 1994 

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/donald-trump-attempt-court-mobster-daughter-didn-article-1.2732403

Donald Trump was once threatened with castration after courting the wrong woman — the daughter of a reputed New Jersey mobster, according to a new book.

Trump, while still married to his first wife Ivana, shamelessly tried to seduce the 30-something daughter of Robert Libutti, a high-rolling horse dealer with ties to infamous Gambino boss John Gotti, the book alleges.

When Libutti got wind that Trump was trying to bed his daughter, the Garden State gambler confronted the real estate mogul and issued the most frightening of threats.

...

In 1991, state regulators launched an investigation into allegations that Trump Plaza removed black and female dealers from craps games to accommodate the high roller’s preference for white men running the gaming tables.

One state regulator described Libutti as “the most obnoxious, abusive person that we have had in this town,” according to records released at the time.

Trump Plaza was eventually hit with a $200,000 fine for violating state anti-discrimination laws.

[AmazonGrace]

 

I am crushing on Keith Olberman because his severe rant voice resonates with me lol

 

http://nordic.businessinsider.com/economists-denounce-trump-in-open-letter-2016-11?r=US&IR=T

Hundreds of prominent economists just denounced Donald Trump in an open letter to voters

http://www.nobellaureatesforclinton.us/economics/

19 Nobel laureates endorse Clinton and have this to say about  Trump: 

Quote

By contrast, Donald Trump has no record of public service and offers an incoherent economic agenda. His reckless threats to start trade wars with several of our largest trading partners, his plan to deport millions of immigrants, his trillions of dollars of unfunded tax cuts, his casual suggestion that the United States could threaten default on its debt in order to renegotiate with our creditors as if Treasuries were a junk bond—each of these proposals could jeopardize the foundations of American prosperity and the global economy. His other rash statements about many subjects outside economics have also raised very serious concern

 

[AmazonGrace]

Jim Bakker endorses Trump because Trump is St Peter. 

And buy our book for $150. 

http://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/jim-bakker-donald-trump-is-our-st-peter/

In contrast, 

370 economists from various fine scientific institutions oppose Donald Trump because 

Quote

 

He degrades trust in vital public institutions that collect and disseminate information about the economy, such as the Bureau of Labor Statistics, by spreading disinformation about the integrity of their work.

 He has misled voters in states like Ohio and Michigan by asserting that the renegotiation of NAFTA or the imposition of tariffs on China would substantially increase employment in manufacturing. In fact, manufacturing’s share of employment has been declining since the 1970s and is mostly related to automation, not trade.

 He claims to champion former manufacturing workers, but has no plan to assist their transition to well-compensated service sector positions. Instead, he has diverted the policy discussion to options that ignore both the reality of technological progress and the benefits of international trade.

 He has misled the public by asserting that U.S. manufacturing has declined. The location and product composition of manufacturing has changed, but the level of output has more than doubled in the U.S. since the 1980s.

 He has falsely suggested that trade is zero-sum and that the “toughness” of negotiators primarily drives trade deficits.

He has misled the public with false statements about trade agreements eroding national income and wealth. Although the gains have not been equally distributed—and this is an important discussion in itself—both mean income and mean wealth have risen substantially in the U.S. since the 1980s.

 He has lowered the seriousness of the national dialogue by suggesting that the elimination of the Environmental Protection Agency or the Department of Education would significantly reduce the fiscal deficit. A credible solution will require an increase in tax revenue and/or a reduction in spending on Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, or Defense.

 He claims he will eliminate the fiscal deficit, but has proposed a plan that would decrease tax revenue by $2.6 to $5.9 trillion over the next decade according to the non-partisan Tax Foundation.

 He claims that he will reduce the trade deficit, but has proposed a reduction in public saving that is likely to increase it.

 He uses immigration as a red herring to mislead voters about issues of economic importance, such as the stagnation of wages for households with low levels of education. Several forces are responsible for this, but immigration appears to play only a modest role. Focusing the dialogue on this channel, rather than more substantive channels, such as automation, diverts the public debate to unproductive policy options.

 He has misled the electorate by asserting that the U.S. is one of the most heavily taxed countries. While the U.S. has a high top statutory corporate tax rate, the average effective rate is much lower, and taxes on income and consumption are relatively low. Overall, the U.S. has one of the lowest ratios of tax revenue to GDP in the OECD.

 His statements reveal a deep ignorance of economics and an inability to listen to credible experts. He repeats fake and misleading economic statistics, and pushes fallacies about the VAT and trade competitiveness.

 He promotes magical thinking and conspiracy theories over sober assessments of feasible economic policy options. Donald Trump is a dangerous, destructive choice for the country. He misinforms the electorate, degrades trust in public institutions with conspiracy theories, and promotes willful delusion over engagement with reality. If elected, he poses a unique danger to the functioning of democratic and economic institutions, and to the prosperity of the country. For these reasons, we strongly recommend that you do not vote for Donald Trump.

 

 

TL,DR: they oppose Donald Trump because they think

http://online.wsj.com/public/resources/documents/EconomistLetter11012016.pdf

If Jim Bakker is for Donald Trump, it counts as another reason to vote for somebody else. 

 

 

 

[AmazonGrace]

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/11/perspective-on-the-flaws-of-hillary-clinton-and-donald-trump/506042/

There's Simply No Comparison Between Clinton's Flaws and Trump's

The Democratic nominee’s shortcomings should not blind voters to the catastrophe they’d invite by electing her cruel, undisciplined, erratic opponent.

Quote

At The Week, Damon Linker, who is no fan of Clinton, argues that despite all her weaknesses and petty corruptions, the choice on November 8 is an easy one. Trump “is a menace to American democracy,” he writes, “a know-nothing demagogic con man who hasn’t released his tax returns, who brags about assaulting women, who has invited Vladimir Putin to meddle in the presidential election while also suggesting on the basis of no evidence at all that the election will be ‘rigged’ against him, and who regularly uses social media to promote white supremacists and neo-Nazis (who increasingly feel emboldened to spew their civic poison in public). And that's just the most minimal accounting of Trump's offenses.”

 

Quote

 

Trump has escaped a lot of that scrutiny because no one expects any better.

None of this means that bad news about Clinton should be ignored. It is proper for journalists to keep informing the public about her misdeeds as new information becomes available, whether it concerns her emails or her family’s nonprofit foundation and its donors. There are so many politicians, many Republicans among them, that I would rather have as America’s president. If not for Trump, I would not even consider voting for her. And yet, strikingly, Clinton’s behavior doesn’t come close to the depths of awfulness displayed by her opponent. He isn’t just a little bit worse. He is orders of magnitude worse, and would do irrevocable damage to the country in ways totally unrelated to his preferred policies.

To begin the comparison I invite readers to delve deeper into the new Clinton email information.

The best explainer I’ve encountered comes from Julian Sanchez, a journalist with expertise in the Espionage Act, who reads deep into that statute to explain why the decision against charging Clinton was almost certainly correct, based on all the information we possess. It really does appear that she did not violate that oft-abused statute’s provisions, even though using a private email server did show poor judgment and was almost certainly designed to thwart Freedom of Information Act requests. Voters ought to punish that poor judgment when evaluating Clinton. But if their vote flows from a cumulative comparison of both candidate’s flaws, rather than reflexive disgust at the one that they read about most recently, Trump would easily lose to Clinton even if her emails did violate the law.

And it isn’t even a close call.

It isn’t just that Trump has a staggering record of deliberate cruelty toward strangers and even family members; that he unlawfully used the Trump Foundation to funnel money to an elected official while she was deciding whether to charge him with fraud; or that he deliberately does the most dangerous thing a politician can do in a diverse country, willfully stoking ethnic tensions and anxieties against minority groups in hopes that it will increase his chances of gaining power.

Those things alone would be enough to make him the inferior choice. But they don’t come close to exhausting his flaws. NATO is a lynchpin of global stability. Trump suggested ending NATO as we know it. Trump suggested seizing foreign oil fields. Trump said he would order U.S. troops to perpetrate torture and to kill innocents. Trump spoke chillingly about using nuclear weapons. An erratic, easily baited quasi-authoritarian obsessed with projecting strength cannot be trusted with nukes.

To elect him would immediately crash markets as panicked investors braced for instability. And it would immediately harm America’s global standing, not in a wishy-washy way where Europeans make fun of us, but in concrete ways that court danger.

 

 

As if to agree, Paul Waldman at the Washington Post reviews Trump’s “history of corruption, double-dealing, and fraud” with this “partial list” of his discreditable behavior:

Trump’s casino bankruptcies, which left investors holding the bag while he skedaddled with their money

Trump’s habit of refusing to pay contractors who had done work for him, many of whom are struggling small businesses

Trump University, which includes not only the people who got scammed and the Florida investigation, but also a similar story from Texas where the investigation into Trump U was quashed.

The Trump Institute, another get-rich-quick scheme in which Trump allowed a couple of grifters to use his name to bilk people out of their money

The Trump Network, a multi-level marketing venture (a.k.a. pyramid scheme) that involved customers mailing in a urine sample which would be analyzed to produce for them a specially formulated package of multivitamins

Trump Model Management, which reportedly had foreign models lie to customs officials and work in the U.S. illegally, and kept them in squalid conditions while they earned almost nothing for the work they did

Trump’s employment of foreign guest workers at his resorts, which involves a claim that he can’t find Americans to do the work

Trump’s use of hundreds of undocumented workers from Poland in the 1980s, who were paid a pittance for their illegal work

Trump’s history of being charged with housing discrimination

Trump’s connections to mafia figures involved in New York construction

The time Trump paid the Federal Trade Commission $750,000 over charges that he violated anti-trust laws when trying to take over a rival casino company

The fact that Trump is now being advised by Roger Ailes, who was forced out as Fox News chief when dozens of women came forward to charge him with sexual harassment. According to the allegations, Ailes’s behavior was positively monstrous; as just one indicator, his abusive and predatory actions toward women were so well-known and so loathsome that in 1968 the morally upstanding folks in the Nixon administration refused to allow him to work there despite his key role in getting Nixon elected.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2016/09/05/trumps-history-of-corruption-is-mind-boggling-so-why-is-clinton-supposedly-the-corrupt-one/?utm_term=.534b5b559b56

Trump’s history of corruption is mind-boggling. So why is Clinton supposedly the corrupt one?

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In the heat of a presidential campaign, you’d think that a story about one party’s nominee giving a large contribution to a state attorney general who promptly shut down an inquiry into that nominee’s scam “university” would be enormous news. But we continue to hear almost nothing about what happened between Donald Trump and Florida attorney general Pam Bondi.

I raised this issue last week, but it’s worth an update as well as some contextualization. The story re-emerged last week when The Post’s David A. Fahrenthold reported that Trump paid a penalty to the IRS after his foundation made an illegal contribution to Bondi’s PAC. While the Trump organization characterizes that as a bureaucratic oversight, the basic facts are that Bondi’s office had received multiple complaints from Floridians who said they were cheated by Trump University; while they were looking into it and considering whether to join a lawsuit over Trump University filed by the attorney general of New York State, Bondi called Trump and asked him for a $25,000 donation; shortly after getting the check, Bondi’s office dropped the inquiry.

 

The WP article is from September but bears repeating. 

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People are saying that Donald Trump cannot read. 

 

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http://www.vox.com/world/2016/11/1/13487322/donald-trump-russia-agent-hack

The first is that Russian state interests are intervening in an American election, in a way that hurts Hillary Clinton and thus furthers Donald Trump’s electoral ambitions. The Kremlin, intentionally or not, is serving as a kind of pro-Trump Super PAC, albeit one with access to hackers.

The second is that Trump is deeply committed to reorienting American foreign policy in a pro-Russian direction. He’s said that he’ll do that, repeatedly, and both his campaign and his personal life give us every reason to believe he’s absolutely serious.

Given the power of the US presidency, Trump could go beyond merely altering American foreign policy. If he’s really serious about it, he could alter the very fundamental fabric of global politics, weakening core institutions like NATO that Russia hates. Hillary Clinton, a solid establishmentarian who’s hated by Russia, would do nothing of the kind.

http://www.vox.com/world/2016/11/1/13481594/donald-trump-explained-foreign-policy

How Donald Trump thinks about foreign policy, explained in 7 minutes

Trump actually has a philosophy on foreign policy, and it's terrifying.

http://www.vox.com/identities/2016/11/1/13449340/blacks-for-trump-conspiracy-bad

No, “Blacks for Trump” isn’t the work of white supporters faking diversity. It’s worse.

Their conspiracy theories make Trump’s look mild

http://www.vox.com/2016/11/1/13480416/trump-supporters-sexism

Hostility toward women is one of the strongest predictors of Trump support

But there’s another important factor that these analyses have largely left out: sexism. Three political scientists who studied the connection between sexism, emotions, and support for Trump found that the more hostile voters were toward women, the more likely they were to support Trump.

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He bragged about losing hundreds of friends in  9/11 but of course it was a lie: 

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/02/17/donald-trump-s-hundreds-of-9-11-lies.html

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Third party candidate Evan McMullin is receiving death threats from Trump's deplorables.

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"Trump supporters have attacked me because of my faith. They've attacked my service," McMullin told CNN on Tuesday.

"We've even received some death threats from these white supremacists, even recently, overnight. They've attacked my family."

McMullin, a former House GOP staffer who is seeking the support of conservatives who don't believe Trump is fit for the White House, said it's no surprise Trump's supporters would act like this, given the GOP nominee's own actions. 

"Donald Trump himself has bragged about sexually assaulting women and attacked people for the color of their skin and their faith," he said. "I mean, this is the Republican nominee and none of this should surprise any of us."

 

http://thehill.com/blogs/ballot-box/presidential-races/303839-mcmullin-ive-gotten-death-threats-from-trump-backers

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https://medium.com/@JeffFromNH/reasons-why-he-should-never-be-president-should-never-be-president-b3dce04701ff#.366cox6bz

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195 — Trump’s running mate Mike Pence said that his “VP Role Model Is Dick Cheney.” I have no words for this one. Dick. F — ing. Cheney.

Srsly? 

yeah http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/mike-pence-dick-cheney_us_57deacaee4b0071a6e07d120

http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/psychiatrists-cant-tell-us-what-they-think-about-trump/

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https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/11/01/a-big-dirty-secret-from-donald-trumps-tax-returns-has-been-exposed/

A big, dirty secret from Donald Trump’s tax returns has been exposed

It appears Trump gave his creditors shares of his failing businesses to avoid taxes on hundreds of millions of dollars they granted him in debt relief, a practice that has since been explicitly outlawed, the Times explained.

In short, “He made it up,” said legal scholar Edward Kleinbard of the University of Southern California.