MICHAEL O. ALLEN

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Hillary Clinton

Trump on Clinton’s Bigotry: Pot Calling Kettle . . .

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One thing is clear.

Donald Trump does not have a plan to win the office of President of the United States. His intention is to win every news cycle by saying the most outrageous things that occur to him at that given moment.

A short time ago, it was encouraging gun owners to make sure a President Hillary Clinton never gets to appoint a justice to the United States Supreme court who could interfere with their 2nd Amendment rights.

He denied it later but by then it had been covered and covered as breathlessly as possible. I don’t remember which came first, that or that President Obama is the founder of ISIS, with Clinton as a co-founder and the president receiving award from ISIS as their most valuable player.

Again, saturation coverage.

So, why wouldn’t Trump come out and say that “Hillary Clinton is a bigot”?

And this is all part of his outreach to African Americans, people about whom he could care a whit, about whom he has no ideas and very little interest in engaging.

Another Dangerous Trump Idea

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Donald Trump, the GOP nominee for President of the United States, proves daily that he is not in the race to win it. But he aims to cause as much havoc as he can on the way to not winning the presidency.

How else do you explain his efforts to recruit poll watchers in order to combat “cheating” by the Hillary Clinton, the Democratic Party nominee?

Trump is the first candidate for President of the United States to use overtly racist appeals and he has now drafted as his campaign director Stephen Bannon, CEO of Breitbart News, who boasts that his news website is the propaganda “platform for the alt-right.”

Trump's Pledge

What proof does Trump have that Hillary Clinton is somehow planning to steal the election? None but then he’s never needed any to launch charges. His only evidence seems to be that the courts won’t allow some of the various GOP vote-suppression gambits to continue. At least some courts are willing to put a stop to those immoral efforts.

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Donald Trump is Such a Kidder!

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These people. They just can’t take a joke.  First, he sarcastically ran for the office of the President of the United States even though he is not qualified to run the country and he has no ideas how to and is not even interested in running the country. Ruin the country, maybe, but run it, no.
I mean, what’s a joker and a con man to do, right?

Trumpy

Ratings challenged reports so seriously that I call President Obama (and Clinton) “the founder” of ISIS, & MVP. THEY DON’T GET SARCASM?

@realDonaldTrump

Especially when all these people started taking him seriously and started supporting him. They come to his rallies to watch him froth at the mouth and display for all to see that he is unfit to be president.

So, what, he sarcastically called Mexicans criminals and rapists and said he would build a magnificent wall to keep them out of the U.S. And, then, he sarcastically added that, what the hell, let’s keep out Muslims, too. People can’t figure out that he has no idea how to do any of this?

I mean, would a person interested in leading his country demean, denigrate and insult the leader of the country in the crudest and racist manner?

No.

Trumpy SaladAnd then, sarcastically, he called for gun nuts to kill his opponent for president before she gets a chance to nominate Supreme Court justices who might overturn gun rights.

And, yet, for this and other abominable acts and utterances in between, he cannot get these idiotic GOP leaders to stop supporting him and for people to stop following him.

Donald Trump does not mean any of this. It was a lark and now it’s gone too far. If only there’s a way to stop running for president. He’s done everything he could to show everyone he’s not serious but . . . even Republicans are, like, you are our leader. We support you.

What’s a con man to do?

Maybe he should test out one of the theories he propounded upon earlier on in the campaign by going out and shooting someone on 5th Avenue to see if people will stop supporting him then.

It won’t be the most outrageous thing he’s done in this campaign.

Questlove Singes O’Reilly’s on Slavery

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“I dunno if that man’s (never say his name) point is to troll at any cost whatsoever but his entire existence is a 5 steps backwards for any progress made in humanity.”

6-gordonQuestlove ran the following on his Instagram (with the attached photograph): Slavery was inhumane. Slavery was sadistic. Slavery was uncomfortable. Slavery was unjust. Slavery was a nightmare. Slavery was a despicable act. Slavery is the pebble whose ripple in the river still resonates on and on and on and on. I’d like to think most of you have common sense. But there is nothing more dangerous than a man in a suit pretending to be a journalist giving revisionist history on the ugliness that was slavery. What’s so fun and lighthearted about being shackled? being separated from your loved ones? Being molested and raped HOURLY, being branded with hot iron? being property? being castrated? being flogged? being malnourished? living in high stress conditions? forced to lay in your own feces? being sold in a heartbeat? suppressing ANY emotion (with the surprising exception of singing it was illegal —lashes or death–to read, write, “talk back” or “sass”, cry (how many of you heard “you better NOT cry before I give you something to cry about!”), get angry, or even more surprising LAUGHING (a plantation barrel of water was always in proximity to dunk ones head in so one could express emotions and suppress the sound as to not alert your overseer of your “sassing”—deep history I just learned about laughing and the slave period—the first recorded song “The Laughing Song” was the defiant “F%^k Tha Police” of its day (also where the term “Barrel Of Laughs” gets its origin)—I’m getting beside the point. I dunno if that man’s (never say his name) point is to troll at any cost whatsoever but his entire existence is a 5 steps backwards for any progress made in humanity. My dismay is the percentage of people who get their news from memes/headlines/& sources to whom they have 0 clue is feeding them false information. Human Trafficking in any form from today’s underage prostitution, to the private Prison System we exercise here in the US, to the Holocaust to 500 years of Slavery–and all other examples I’ve not mentioned is INHUMANE & Evil. —watch where you get your information from and the company you keep people.

Trump: “More Profiling, Please”

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Donald TrumpIt is no longer a rumor that Bill Clinton talked to Donald Trump in the weeks before he ran for president.

For the people who believe that, Trump gives them ammunition daily. It’s like Trump calls the HRC campaign headquarters each day to get his talking points about how to further kneecap himself. Or, maybe BC is the ventriloquist that makes the Trump dummy spout nonsense to make himself unpalatable to the general election electorate.

How else would you explain Trump on Sunday calling for profiling Muslims?

See a video of his call-in to CBS’s Face-the-Nation here:

Now, why would a former president whose wife was a certain candidate for POTUS be advising another man to get in the race for the same office? Some conspiracy minded people have gone so far as to say that BC planted Trump in the Republican nomination contest to destabilize the GOP and smooth the way for his wife becoming POTUS.

Republicans may believe in profiling but they don’t believe in stating it so baldly as Trump is prone to do on this and on so many other issues that the GOP prefer to hint at, dog whistle, if you will. Trump, God bless him, just prefers to say what he believes.

Mandela Sworn in as Freedom Reigns

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By MICHAEL O. ALLEN, Daily News Staff Writer | Wednesday, May 11, 1994

PRETORIA—Climaxing his journey from political prisoner to nation builder, Nelson Mandela assumed the office of president of South Africa yesterday vowing that “never again” would racial exploitation be tolerated.
In a joyous ceremony that marked the end of the country’s pariah status and celebrated the nation’s transformation into a beacon of racial reconciliation, Mandela proclaimed: “Let freedom reign.”
The American delegation included U.S. Vice President Al Gore, First Lady Hillary Clinton and Jesse Jackson. Gore said South Africa has sent a powerful message to the world that differences can be set aside for the sake of a nation.
Watched by international visitors including Vice President Gore, First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton, Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, and Cuban President Fidel Castro, Mandela spoke in deep, measured tones as he swore allegiance to the new republic and its constitution.
As he said, “So help me God,” shouts of “Viva” rang out from the huge, multi-racial crowd gathered at the foot of the Union Buildings amphitheater.
In his inaugural address, Mandela, 75, urged South Africans to forget past bitterness and unite to end poverty, suffering and discrimination.
“Never, never and never again shall it be that this beautiful land will again experience the oppression of one by another and suffer the indignity of being the skunk of the world. Let freedom reign,” Mandela said, standing on the outdoor podium enclosed in 7 tons of bullet-proof glass.
He made special mention of the role played by President of F.W. de Klerk, with whom he shared the Nobel Peace Prize last year, and recalled the colleagues and comrades who died in the struggle for freedom.
A glorious sun burned away the autumn morning mist as the estimated 50,000 people in the audience watched on mammoth television screens as dignitaries arrived from all over the world.
The audience, made up of largely ANC supporters, was never at loss for entertainment. American and African jazz, as well as South African folk music was also piped in over mammoth speakers.
Cannons boomed when Mandela finished his speech, and the South African security forces—which will have to make the tenuous peace in the nation last—put on a spectacular five-minute show of aerobatics.
Then the party really began as 3,000 performers representing all the nation’s racial groups, sang and danced well into the night yesterday in a show themed: “South Africa—Many Cultures, One Nation.”
The problems facing Mandela and his new government are staggering: 40% unemployment, 50% illiteracy, widespread crime and political violence that has killed 11,000 people since 1990, ethnic polarization and the impatience of tens of millions of blacks demanding a better life now that apartheid is over.

An important question

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I will admit that I grew to dislike Hillary Clinton during the year and found how she ran her campaign as well as the contest with Sen. Barack Obama more than disgraceful. I don’t want her as secretary of state. The president-elect is a lot smarter man than I’ll ever be so, if he wants her in this role, more power to him. He was elected to make decisions like this.

The New York Times published an opinion-editorial, What’s So Special About a Team of Rivals?, by JAMES OAKES that I think is important to read.

Oakes’ piece corrects some of the gauzy history around Abraham Lincoln, fostered largely by Pulitzer-winning historian Doris Kearns Goodwin and her book, Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln, that this was such a monumentally wise idea.

Rather than it being a stroke of genius, Lincoln’s decision to appoint his main rivals for the Republican nomination into his cabinet was rather routine and mundane:

INSPIRED by the wisdom of Abraham Lincoln, President-elect Barack Obama is considering appointing a “team of rivals” to his cabinet — if rumors about the nomination of Hillary Clinton to be secretary of state are true. But there’s more mythology than history in the idea that Lincoln showed exceptional political skill in offering cabinet positions to the men he had beaten in the race for the 1860 Republican nomination.

For one thing, there was nothing new in what Lincoln did. By tradition, presidents-elect reserved a cabinet position, often secretary of state, for the leading rival in their party. John Quincy Adams inaugurated the practice by appointing one of his presidential rivals, Henry Clay, to that post. It was a controversial move in 1824; enemies of Adams denounced the appointment as a corrupt bargain.

By the 1850s, the practice had become a tradition. In that decade, Presidents Millard Fillmore, Franklin Pierce and James Buchanan installed in their cabinets men who had been major rivals for their party’s nomination. Daniel Webster, who lost the Whig Party nod in 1848, became Fillmore’s secretary of state. William Marcy, after failing to win the 1852 Democratic nomination, took the same position in Pierce’s cabinet. Lewis Cass, the Democratic nominee in 1848 and a man whose presidential dreams never diminished, was appointed Buchanan’s secretary of state in 1857. These were not notably successful administrations. Most historians agree that Pierce and Buchanan rank among the worst presidents in American history. There was nothing particularly unusual, or even impressive, when Lincoln followed this well-established practice.

All we’ve heard from the chattering class is “team of rivals”, “team of rivals”, “team of rivals” since news first came out (leaked by the Clintons) that HRC is under consideration by Obama.

The Clintons, Bill and Hillary, are a special dose of poison. They suck up so much of the oxygen in the room whenever they’re involved in anything that, I think, it is best to leave them aside if you do not have to deal with them. I think this is such a time.

The president-elect will have many opportunities to make mistakes. Does he have to start with this one?

October surprise *

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Trey Ellis in HuffPo thinks we should be afraid, very afraid of what Republicans might have up their sleeves for October:

We taxpayers already have shelled out $100 billion on contractors in Iraq since 2003. They have 180,000 employees in country now building what they had assumed would be permanent bases for a permanent occupation of an oil-rich land.

Does anyone really believe that Cheney/Halliburton/Blackwater will relinquish the keys to the American treasury without the nastiest of fights?

For six years Cheney has unleashed a gusher of obscene profiteering with little or no oversight of his petro/reconstruction/military contracting cohorts. You don’t have to be a conspiracy-addicted fan of Jack Bauer’s to understand that they won’t just quietly retire to their yachts in the Gulf of Mexico after regime change and their operations in Iraq are forcibly ended. They understand that not only will they be out of business, but that they could also go to jail — if Democrats hold hearings into war profiteering, just as Truman did as a Senator in 1943.

Remember, when Halliburton et al. first entered Iraq, Republicans had a virtual one-party lock on governance. Democrats acted like frightened little forest animals. The contractors didn’t have to cover their tracks because the vice president of the United States, the de facto ruler of the free world, was their capo.

Me? I sometimes subscribe to the pessimism that the writer voices here. Other times, I am euphoric over Sen. Barack Obama’s chances of winning the presidency. Practically everyone I know supports Obama. My town, which not long ago was a Republican town, is now festooned with “Obama for President” lawn signs.

Yet, this is America we’re talking about. It is at the root of Bill Clinton’s restlessness. Republicans are counting on that thing that Bill feels inately. Bill knows. He has always known this country better than anyone. That’s why he was able to tap what was darkest in the heart of America into two terms in the presidency. Anymore than he wants his wife to win the presidency, he knows that Hillary, warts-and-all, would be easier for Americans to swallow than the pristine Mr. Obama.

Damn Bill!