Donald Trump is ignorant, unprepared and bigoted, but are thinking of voting
for him anyway because you doubt he could do much harm — this editorial is for
Your support of the Republican presidential nominee may be
motivated by dislike of the Democratic alternative, disgust with the Washington
establishment or a desire to send a message in favor of change. You may not
approve of everything Mr. Trump has had to say about nuclear weapons, torture
or mass deportations, but you doubt he could implement anything too radical.
Congress, the courts, the Constitution — these would keep Mr. Trump in check,
Well, think again. A President Trump could, unilaterally,
change this country to its core. By remaking U.S. relations with other nations,
he could fundamentally reshape the world, too.
Of course, in many areas Mr. Trump would not have to act
unilaterally. If he won, chances are Republicans would maintain control of
Congress. GOP majorities there would be enthusiastic participants in much of
what Mr. Trump would like to do: gutting environmental and workplace
regulations, slashing taxes so that the debt skyrockets, appointing Supreme
Court justices who oppose a woman’s right to have an abortion. In areas where
Republican officeholders such as House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (Wis.) and Senate
Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.) imagine
themselves acting as a brake on Mr. Trump’s worst instincts,
skepticism is in order. If these supposed leaders are too craven to oppose Mr. Trump as a candidate, knowing the
danger he presents, why should we expect them to stand up to the bully once he
was fully empowered? The president
would appoint officers — a budget director, an attorney general, a CIA chief —
who were disposed to let him have his way. And in the U.S. system, the scope
for executive action is, as we will lay out in a series of editorials next week, astonishingly broad. At
times we have questioned President Obama’s sweeping use of those powers even
when we agreed with his goals, such as his broad grant of amnesty to millions of undocumented immigrants.
Mr. Trump could push it much further. Could
he tear up long-standing international agreements? Round up and expel millions
of longtime U.S. residents? Impose giant tariffs? Waterboard terrorist
suspects? Yes, yes, yes and yes — all without so much as an if-you-please to
Congress. Could he bar the media from covering him? To a large extent, yes.
Could he use the government to help his businesses and, as he has threatened,
injure those he perceives as enemies? Yes, he could.
would be reckless not to consider the damage Mr. Trump might wreak. Some of
that damage would ensue more from who he is than what he does. His racism and
disparagement of women could empower extremists who are now on the margins of
American politics, while his lies and conspiracy theories could legitimize
discourse that until now has been relegated to the fringe. But his scope for
action should not be underestimated, either. In our upcoming editorials, we
will examine some arenas where Mr. Trump has been relatively clear about his
intentions — and where presidential powers are mighty. We hope you will read
them before you vote.
The Greenbrier is a National Historic Landmark and world-class resort that has been welcoming guests from around the world since 1778. The natural mineral springs that drew our first guests over 235 years ago continue to lure visitors to our 11,000 acre luxury retreat today. With a guest list that includes 26 of our country’s 44 Presidents, America’s Resort has long been a favorite destination of royalty, celebrities and business leaders. . . . . This renowned property offers 710 rooms, including 33 suites and 96 guest and estate homes. The Greenbrier has 10 lobbies, 40+ meeting rooms and a complete conference center facility. The Greenbrier offers exclusive services and amenities such as championship golf, fine dining, more than 55 activities, designer boutiques, our world-renowned mineral spa and a 103,000 square foot gaming and entertainment venue. Construction began in 1958 on the 112,544-square-foot bunker, which was built 720 feet into the hillside under The Greenbrier's West Virginia Wing. Once complete in 1961, the facility was maintained in a constant state of readiness by a small group of government employees working undercover as Forsythe Associates, a company hired by the resort for audio/visual support services.
Monday’s presidential debate was a blowout, surely the most one-sided
confrontation in American political history. Hillary Clinton was knowledgeable,
unflappable and — dare we say it? — likable. Donald Trump was ignorant,
thin-skinned and boorish.
Yet on the eve of the debate,
polls showed a close race. How was that possible?
After all, the candidates we
saw Monday night were the same people they’ve been all along. Mrs. Clinton’s
grace and even humor under pressure were fully apparent during last year’s
Benghazi hearing. Mr. Trump’s whiny braggadocio has been obvious every time he
opens his mouth without reading from a teleprompter
So how could someone like Mr.
Trump have been in striking position for the White House?
Part of the answer is that a lot more Americans than we’d like to
imagine are white nationalists at heart. Indeed, implicit appeals to racial
hostility have long been at the core of Republican strategy; Mr. Trump became
the G.O.P. nominee by saying outright what his opponents tried to convey with
If he loses, Republicans
will claim that he was some kind of outlier, showing nothing about the nature
of their party. He isn’t.
while racially motivated voters are a bigger minority than we’d like to think,
they are a minority. And as recently as August Mrs. Clinton held a commanding
lead. Then her polls went into a swoon.
I don’t think so. As I’ve
written before, she got Gored. That is, like Al Gore in 2000,
she ran into a buzz saw of adversarial reporting from the mainstream media,
which treated relatively minor missteps as major scandals, and invented
additional scandals out of thin air.
Meanwhile, her opponent’s
genuine scandals and various grotesqueries were downplayed or whitewashed; but
as Jonathan Chait of New York magazine says,
the normalization of Donald Trump was probably less important than the abnormalization
This media onslaught started with an Associated Press report on the Clinton
Foundation, which roughly coincided with the beginning of Mrs. Clinton’s poll
slide. . . . . As it happened, it failed to find any evidence of wrongdoing —
but nonetheless wrote the report as if it had. And this was the beginning of an
extraordinary series of hostile news stories about how various aspects of Mrs.
Clinton’s life “raise questions” or “cast shadows,” conveying an impression of
terrible things without saying anything that could be refuted.
process came with the infamous Matt Lauer-moderated forum, which might be
briefly summarized as “Emails, emails, emails; yes, Mr. Trump, whatever you
say, Mr. Trump.”
understand this hostility, which wasn’t ideological. Instead, it had the feel
of the cool kids in high school jeering at the class nerd. Sexism was surely
involved but may not have been central, since the same thing happened to Mr.
Then came the debate itself, which was almost unspinnable. . . . . tens
of millions of Americans saw the candidates in action, directly, without a
media filter. For many, the revelation wasn’t Mr. Trump’s performance, but Mrs.
Clinton’s: The woman they saw bore little resemblance to the cold, joyless
drone they’d been told to expect.
How much will it matter? My guess —
but I could very well be completely wrong — is that it will matter a lot. Hard-core Trump
supporters won’t be swayed. But voters who had been planning to stay home or,
what amounts to the same thing, vote for a minor-party candidate rather than
choose between the racist and the she-devil may now realize that they were
misinformed. If so, it will be Mrs. Clinton’s bravura performance, under
incredible pressure, that turned the tide.
things should never have gotten to this point, where so much depended on
defying media expectations over the course of an hour and a half. And those who
helped bring us here should engage in some serious soul-searching.
friends of gays,
reduced posting,
In the wake of Monday's presidential debate, on comment on Facebook summed up Donald Trump's sexism and vulgar treatment of women this way: I find it ironic that an old, ugly, fat white guy, with a
horrible comb-over and an orange spray tan, would criticize a woman on her
looks? New Yorker Magazine - which, like most New York based publications that know Trump well, can't stand the man - has found a wonderful way to humiliate Trump with its next magazine cover (the image is above). How the narcissistic Trump will react is anyone's guess. Mother Jones looks at the fun satire. Here are highlights:
New Yorker this morning gave
us a sneak peak at next week's cover, and boy it's a keeper.
cursory context if you don't get it: In the closing minutes of Monday's
presidential debate, Hillary Clinton called out Donald Trump for his poor
treatment of women. Clinton said Trump called 1996 Miss Universe winner Alicia
Machado, from Venezuela and now an American citizen, "Miss Piggy" and
"Miss Housekeeper." (Trump didn't deny the language he used, and in
fact doubled
down on his attack against the former beauty queen the next day by saying, "She
gained a massive amount of weight and it was a real problem.")
of The New Yorker cover, of course, is classic
role reversal: a portly Trump as the pageant winner, struggling to maintain
dignity while balancing a tiara and holding back tears on a runway under
A federal jury in Buffalo returned the verdict against
Philip Zodhiates, of Waynesboro, on Thursday after hearing during a week long
trial how he had driven Lisa Miller and 7-year-old Isabella Miller-Jenkins from
Virginia to the Canadian border in 2009 so they could fly from Toronto to Nicaragua, and had helped
with their living arrangements in the Central American nation.
Neither Miller nor Isabella, now 14,
have been seen in the United States since.
Lawyers for Zodhiates, the owner of a
direct mail business that serves conservative Christian groups, denied that he
was trying to obstruct the other mother's parental rights by helping Miller,
who became an evangelical Christian after dissolving her civil union with Janet
Jenkins in Vermont.
Miller, who gave birth to Isabella
during the civil union, defied court orders granting Jenkins visitation and
left the country shortly before a court shifted custody to Jenkins, Assistant
U.S. Attorney Paul Van de Graaf said.
Miller also is charged with international parental
kidnapping and conspiracy and is considered a fugitive.
A third defendant, Timothy Miller,
recently was arrested after being deported by Nicaragua, U.S. Attorney William
Hochul's office said Thursday.
A fourth defendant, Kenneth Miller, a Mennonite pastor, was convicted of international
parental kidnapping in Vermont in 2012.
None of the Millers are related. Kenneth Miller, of
Stuarts Draft, Virginia, is serving a 27-month prison sentence.
Zodhiates faces up to eight years in prison when he is sentenced Jan.
In my view, it is unfortunate that criminal charges were not brought against Matt Staver, a thoroughly vie individual and modern day Pharisee, in my opinion. Posted by
Monday night was live
from Hofstra. Saturday night is live from New York.
While Donald Trump and
Hillary Clinton argue over who won Monday night’s debate, inside 30 Rockefeller
Plaza, the winner in the all-important satirical showdown is still being scripted.
That’s where the cast and crew of “Saturday Night Live” gathered Monday night
to watch the debate. And it’s where they’re still sketching out portrayals that
will shape how Americans see their presidential candidates.
SNL, which timed the
launch of its 42nd season for the weekend after the first Clinton-Trump clash,
made one big reveal Wednesday: Actor Alec Baldwin will debut as Trump. But
heading into Saturday, the biggest drama is how Baldwin and SNL will parody the
GOP nominee: Will they mock his sniffles? His hair? His orange hue? His gesticulations?
His supposed microphone malfunction? Or do they cast him in more ominous terms:
as a racist hate-monger? Some comedians are
pressing for the latter. Dean Obeidallah, who
worked on the production staff of SNL for eight years and now has a radio show
on SiriusXM, said late-night comedians “have a moral obligation” to highlight
the darker elements of Trump’s candidacy. “Donald Trump is not a normal
candidate. This is not Mitt Romney, not John McCain. This is a man who has
trafficked in racism, sexism and bigotry,” Obeidallah said.
“Maybe it’s going to take comedians to do the
job that cable news has relinquished for so much of the campaign.”
Samantha Bee took some of her comedy
colleagues and network executives to task for coddling Trump and inviting him on their
programs. “I guess because ratings matter more than brown people,” Bee
exclaimed. “Sure, he’s making life palpably dangerous for Muslims and
immigrants, but, hey, he’s good at entertainment!”
Last season, one faux pro-Trump SNL ad featured stirring testimonials from what at first
appeared to be everyday Americans who ended up as a Nazi, a woman ironing a Ku
Klux Klan hood, and a white supremacist. Historically,
SNL’s political satire has penetrated the national consciousness. It was Will Ferrell as
George W. Bush who coined “strategery,” not Bush himself. And it was Tina Fey
as Sarah Palin who claimed, “I can see Russia from my house,” not Palin. The
skewering tradition dates all the way back to Chevy Chase’s 1976 portrayal of President
Gerald Ford as a klutz, and Jon Lovitz’s disbelief, as Michael Dukakis in 1988,
that “I can’t believe I’m losing to this guy.” In 2000, Al Gore’s own advisers
made him watch Darrell Hammond’s stilted, stiff, sighing impersonation of his debate
performances to show Gore how poorly he was coming off to others.
Lorne Michaels, the creator and executive
producer of SNL, told
Parade this week
that “fundamentally we’re non-partisan,“ but there are growing pressures inside
the satire world to wage a comedic war on Trump in the election’s final weeks.
Spokespeople for SNL did not respond to requests
Debates have long been fertile ground for SNL
and the Baldwin-McKinnon teaser suggested that’s how Saturday’s episode will
open. As it happens, there will be a debate, including the vice presidential
one next week, before each of SNL’s first four episodes this season.
The campaigns, if not the candidates themselves,
Jennifer Palmieri, Clinton’s communications director, hasn’t thought much about
it yet even though she said, “‘Saturday Night Live’ will certainly matter from
now until the election a great deal.” “It’s among the things I
can’t control,” Palmieri said with a hearty laugh. “‘Saturday Night Live’ —
among the things I can’t control.”
Again, I hope SNL brutalizes Trump. The husband and I will be at a wedding at The Greenbrier on Saturday, but we will be sure to tune into SNL afterwards. Posted by
did Adolf Hitler — described by one eminent magazine editor in 1930 as a
“half-insane rascal,” a “pathetic dunderhead,” a “nowhere fool,” a “big mouth”
— rise to power in the land of Goethe and Beethoven? What persuaded millions of
ordinary Germans to embrace him and his doctrine of hatred? How did this “most
unlikely pretender to high state office” achieve absolute power in a once
democratic country and set it on a course of monstrous horror?
host of earlier biographers (most notably Alan Bullock, Joachim Fest and Ian
Kershaw) have advanced theories about Hitler’s rise, and the dynamic between
the man and his times. Some have focused on the social and political conditions
in post-World War I Germany, which Hitler expertly exploited — bitterness over
the harsh terms of the Treaty of Versailles and a yearning for a return to
German greatness; unemployment and economic distress amid the worldwide
Depression of the early 1930s; and longstanding ethnic prejudices and fears of
“foreignization.”
writers — including the dictator’s latest biographer, the historian Volker
Ullrich — have focused on Hitler as a politician who rose to power through
demagoguery, showmanship and nativist appeals to the masses.
“Hitler: Ascent, 1889-1939,” Mr. Ullrich sets out to strip away the mythology
that Hitler created around himself in “Mein Kampf,” and he also tries to look
at this “mysterious, calamitous figure” not as a monster or madman, but as a
human being with “undeniable talents and obviously deep-seated psychological
complexes.” This
is the first of two volumes (it ends in 1939 with the dictator’s 50th birthday)
and there is little here that is substantially new. However, Mr. Ullrich offers
a fascinating Shakespearean parable about how the confluence of circumstance,
chance, a ruthless individual and the willful blindness of others can transform
a country — and, in Hitler’s case, lead to an unimaginable nightmare for the
Ullrich, like other biographers, provides vivid insight into some factors that
helped turn a “Munich rabble-rouser” — regarded by many as a self-obsessed
“clown” with a strangely “scattershot, impulsive style” — into “the lord and
master of the German Reich.”
Hitler was often described as an egomaniac who “only loved himself” — a
narcissist with a taste for self-dramatization and what Mr. Ullrich calls a
“characteristic fondness for superlatives.” His manic speeches and penchant for
taking all-or-nothing risks raised questions about his capacity for
self-control, even his sanity. But Mr. Ullrich underscores Hitler’s shrewdness
as a politician — with a “keen eye for the strengths and weaknesses of other
people” and an ability to “instantaneously analyze and exploit situations.”
Hitler was known, among colleagues, for a “bottomless mendacity” that would
later be magnified by a slick propaganda machine that used the latest
technology (radio, gramophone records, film) to spread his message. A former
finance minister wrote that Hitler “was so thoroughly untruthful that he could
no longer recognize the difference between lies and truth” and editors of one
edition of “Mein Kampf” described it as a “swamp of lies, distortions,
innuendoes, half-truths and real facts.”
Hitler was an effective orator and actor, Mr. Ullrich reminds readers, adept at
assuming various masks and feeding off the energy of his audiences. Although he
concealed his anti-Semitism beneath a “mask of moderation” when trying to win
the support of the socially liberal middle classes, he specialized in big,
theatrical rallies staged with spectacular elements borrowed from the circus.
Here, “Hitler adapted the content of his speeches to suit the tastes of his
lower-middle-class, nationalist-conservative, ethnic-chauvinist and
anti-Semitic listeners,” Mr. Ullrich writes. He peppered his speeches with
coarse phrases and put-downs of hecklers. Even as he fomented chaos by playing
to crowds’ fears and resentments, he offered himself as the visionary leader
who could restore law and order.
Hitler increasingly presented himself in messianic terms, promising “to lead
Germany to a new era of national greatness,” though he was typically vague about
his actual plans. He often harked back to a golden age for the country, Mr.
Ullrich says, the better “to paint the present day in hues that were all the
darker. Everywhere you looked now, there was only decline and decay.”
Hitler’s repertoire of topics, Mr. Ullrich notes, was limited, and reading his
speeches in retrospect, “it seems amazing that he attracted larger and larger
audiences” with “repeated mantralike phrases” consisting largely of
“accusations, vows of revenge and promises for the future.” But Hitler
virtually wrote the modern playbook on demagoguery, arguing in “Mein Kampf”
that propaganda must appeal to the emotions — not the reasoning powers — of the
crowd. Its “purely intellectual level,” Hitler said, “will have to be that of
the lowest mental common denominator among the public it is desired to reach.”
Because the understanding of the masses “is feeble,” he went on, effective
propaganda needed to be boiled down to a few slogans that should be
“persistently repeated until the very last individual has come to grasp the
idea that has been put forward.”
Hitler’s ascension was aided and abetted by the naïveté of domestic adversaries
who failed to appreciate his ruthlessness and tenacity, and by foreign
statesmen who believed they could control his aggression. Early on, revulsion
at Hitler’s style and appearance, Mr. Ullrich writes, led some critics to
underestimate the man and his popularity, while others dismissed him as a
celebrity, a repellent but fascinating “evening’s entertainment.” Politicians,
for their part, suffered from the delusion that the dominance of traditional
conservatives in the cabinet would neutralize the threat of Nazi abuse of power
and “fence Hitler in.”
• “Many Germans
jumped on the Nazi bandwagon not out of political conviction but in hopes of
improving their career opportunities, he argues, while fear kept others from
speaking out against the persecution of the Jews. The independent press was
banned or suppressed and books deemed “un-German” were burned. By March 1933,
Hitler had made it clear, Mr. Ullrich says, “that his government was going to
do away with all norms of separation of powers and the rule of law.” •
Hitler had a dark, Darwinian view of the world. And he would not only become,
in Mr. Ullrich’s words, “a mouthpiece of the cultural pessimism” growing in
right-wing circles in the Weimar Republic, but also the avatar of what Thomas
Mann identified as a turning away from reason and the fundamental principles of
a civil society — namely, “liberty, equality, education, optimism and belief in
Donald Trump is ignorant, unprepared and bigoted, but are thinking of voting
for him anyway because you doubt he could do much harm — this editorial is for
Your support of the Republican presidential nominee may be
motivated by dislike of the Democratic alternative, disgust with the Washington
establishment or a desire to send a message in favor of change. You may not
approve of everything Mr. Trump has had to say about nuclear weapons, torture
or mass deportations, but you doubt he could implement anything too radical.
Congress, the courts, the Constitution — these would keep Mr. Trump in check,
Well, think again. A President Trump could, unilaterally,
change this country to its core. By remaking U.S. relations with other nations,
he could fundamentally reshape the world, too.
Of course, in many areas Mr. Trump would not have to act
unilaterally. If he won, chances are Republicans would maintain control of
Congress. GOP majorities there would be enthusiastic participants in much of
what Mr. Trump would like to do: gutting environmental and workplace
regulations, slashing taxes so that the debt skyrockets, appointing Supreme
Court justices who oppose a woman’s right to have an abortion. In areas where
Republican officeholders such as House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (Wis.) and Senate
Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.) imagine
themselves acting as a brake on Mr. Trump’s worst instincts,
skepticism is in order. If these supposed leaders are too craven to oppose Mr. Trump as a candidate, knowing the
danger he presents, why should we expect them to stand up to the bully once he
was fully empowered? The president
would appoint officers — a budget director, an attorney general, a CIA chief —
who were disposed to let him have his way. And in the U.S. system, the scope
for executive action is, as we will lay out in a series of editorials next week, astonishingly broad. At
times we have questioned President Obama’s sweeping use of those powers even
when we agreed with his goals, such as his broad grant of amnesty to millions of undocumented immigrants.
Mr. Trump could push it much further. Could
he tear up long-standing international agreements? Round up and expel millions
of longtime U.S. residents? Impose giant tariffs? Waterboard terrorist
suspects? Yes, yes, yes and yes — all without so much as an if-you-please to
Congress. Could he bar the media from covering him? To a large extent, yes.
Could he use the government to help his businesses and, as he has threatened,
injure those he perceives as enemies? Yes, he could.
would be reckless not to consider the damage Mr. Trump might wreak. Some of
that damage would ensue more from who he is than what he does. His racism and
disparagement of women could empower extremists who are now on the margins of
American politics, while his lies and conspiracy theories could legitimize
discourse that until now has been relegated to the fringe. But his scope for
action should not be underestimated, either. In our upcoming editorials, we
will examine some arenas where Mr. Trump has been relatively clear about his
intentions — and where presidential powers are mighty. We hope you will read
them before you vote.
The Greenbrier is a National Historic Landmark and world-class resort that has been welcoming guests from around the world since 1778. The natural mineral springs that drew our first guests over 235 years ago continue to lure visitors to our 11,000 acre luxury retreat today. With a guest list that includes 26 of our country’s 44 Presidents, America’s Resort has long been a favorite destination of royalty, celebrities and business leaders. . . . . This renowned property offers 710 rooms, including 33 suites and 96 guest and estate homes. The Greenbrier has 10 lobbies, 40+ meeting rooms and a complete conference center facility. The Greenbrier offers exclusive services and amenities such as championship golf, fine dining, more than 55 activities, designer boutiques, our world-renowned mineral spa and a 103,000 square foot gaming and entertainment venue. Construction began in 1958 on the 112,544-square-foot bunker, which was built 720 feet into the hillside under The Greenbrier's West Virginia Wing. Once complete in 1961, the facility was maintained in a constant state of readiness by a small group of government employees working undercover as Forsythe Associates, a company hired by the resort for audio/visual support services.
Monday’s presidential debate was a blowout, surely the most one-sided
confrontation in American political history. Hillary Clinton was knowledgeable,
unflappable and — dare we say it? — likable. Donald Trump was ignorant,
thin-skinned and boorish.
Yet on the eve of the debate,
polls showed a close race. How was that possible?
After all, the candidates we
saw Monday night were the same people they’ve been all along. Mrs. Clinton’s
grace and even humor under pressure were fully apparent during last year’s
Benghazi hearing. Mr. Trump’s whiny braggadocio has been obvious every time he
opens his mouth without reading from a teleprompter
So how could someone like Mr.
Trump have been in striking position for the White House?
Part of the answer is that a lot more Americans than we’d like to
imagine are white nationalists at heart. Indeed, implicit appeals to racial
hostility have long been at the core of Republican strategy; Mr. Trump became
the G.O.P. nominee by saying outright what his opponents tried to convey with
If he loses, Republicans
will claim that he was some kind of outlier, showing nothing about the nature
of their party. He isn’t.
while racially motivated voters are a bigger minority than we’d like to think,
they are a minority. And as recently as August Mrs. Clinton held a commanding
lead. Then her polls went into a swoon.
I don’t think so. As I’ve
written before, she got Gored. That is, like Al Gore in 2000,
she ran into a buzz saw of adversarial reporting from the mainstream media,
which treated relatively minor missteps as major scandals, and invented
additional scandals out of thin air.
Meanwhile, her opponent’s
genuine scandals and various grotesqueries were downplayed or whitewashed; but
as Jonathan Chait of New York magazine says,
the normalization of Donald Trump was probably less important than the abnormalization
This media onslaught started with an Associated Press report on the Clinton
Foundation, which roughly coincided with the beginning of Mrs. Clinton’s poll
slide. . . . . As it happened, it failed to find any evidence of wrongdoing —
but nonetheless wrote the report as if it had. And this was the beginning of an
extraordinary series of hostile news stories about how various aspects of Mrs.
Clinton’s life “raise questions” or “cast shadows,” conveying an impression of
terrible things without saying anything that could be refuted.
process came with the infamous Matt Lauer-moderated forum, which might be
briefly summarized as “Emails, emails, emails; yes, Mr. Trump, whatever you
say, Mr. Trump.”
understand this hostility, which wasn’t ideological. Instead, it had the feel
of the cool kids in high school jeering at the class nerd. Sexism was surely
involved but may not have been central, since the same thing happened to Mr.
Then came the debate itself, which was almost unspinnable. . . . . tens
of millions of Americans saw the candidates in action, directly, without a
media filter. For many, the revelation wasn’t Mr. Trump’s performance, but Mrs.
Clinton’s: The woman they saw bore little resemblance to the cold, joyless
drone they’d been told to expect.
How much will it matter? My guess —
but I could very well be completely wrong — is that it will matter a lot. Hard-core Trump
supporters won’t be swayed. But voters who had been planning to stay home or,
what amounts to the same thing, vote for a minor-party candidate rather than
choose between the racist and the she-devil may now realize that they were
misinformed. If so, it will be Mrs. Clinton’s bravura performance, under
incredible pressure, that turned the tide.
things should never have gotten to this point, where so much depended on
defying media expectations over the course of an hour and a half. And those who
helped bring us here should engage in some serious soul-searching.
friends of gays,
reduced posting,
In the wake of Monday's presidential debate, on comment on Facebook summed up Donald Trump's sexism and vulgar treatment of women this way: I find it ironic that an old, ugly, fat white guy, with a
horrible comb-over and an orange spray tan, would criticize a woman on her
looks? New Yorker Magazine - which, like most New York based publications that know Trump well, can't stand the man - has found a wonderful way to humiliate Trump with its next magazine cover (the image is above). How the narcissistic Trump will react is anyone's guess. Mother Jones looks at the fun satire. Here are highlights:
New Yorker this morning gave
us a sneak peak at next week's cover, and boy it's a keeper.
cursory context if you don't get it: In the closing minutes of Monday's
presidential debate, Hillary Clinton called out Donald Trump for his poor
treatment of women. Clinton said Trump called 1996 Miss Universe winner Alicia
Machado, from Venezuela and now an American citizen, "Miss Piggy" and
"Miss Housekeeper." (Trump didn't deny the language he used, and in
fact doubled
down on his attack against the former beauty queen the next day by saying, "She
gained a massive amount of weight and it was a real problem.")
of The New Yorker cover, of course, is classic
role reversal: a portly Trump as the pageant winner, struggling to maintain
dignity while balancing a tiara and holding back tears on a runway under
A federal jury in Buffalo returned the verdict against
Philip Zodhiates, of Waynesboro, on Thursday after hearing during a week long
trial how he had driven Lisa Miller and 7-year-old Isabella Miller-Jenkins from
Virginia to the Canadian border in 2009 so they could fly from Toronto to Nicaragua, and had helped
with their living arrangements in the Central American nation.
Neither Miller nor Isabella, now 14,
have been seen in the United States since.
Lawyers for Zodhiates, the owner of a
direct mail business that serves conservative Christian groups, denied that he
was trying to obstruct the other mother's parental rights by helping Miller,
who became an evangelical Christian after dissolving her civil union with Janet
Jenkins in Vermont.
Miller, who gave birth to Isabella
during the civil union, defied court orders granting Jenkins visitation and
left the country shortly before a court shifted custody to Jenkins, Assistant
U.S. Attorney Paul Van de Graaf said.
Miller also is charged with international parental
kidnapping and conspiracy and is considered a fugitive.
A third defendant, Timothy Miller,
recently was arrested after being deported by Nicaragua, U.S. Attorney William
Hochul's office said Thursday.
A fourth defendant, Kenneth Mill
er, a Mennonite pastor, was convicted of international
parental kidnapping in Vermont in 2012.
None of the Millers are related. Kenneth Miller, of
Stuarts Draft, Virginia, is serving a 27-month prison sentence.
Zodhiates faces up to eight years in prison when he is sentenced Jan.
In my view, it is unfortunate that criminal charges were not brought against Matt Staver, a thoroughly vie individual and modern day Pharisee, in my opinion. Posted by
Monday night was live
from Hofstra. Saturday night is live from New York.
While Donald Trump and
Hillary Clinton argue over who won Monday night’s debate, inside 30 Rockefeller
Plaza, the winner in the all-important satirical showdown is still being scripted.
That’s where the cast and crew of “Saturday Night Live” gathered Monday night
to watch the debate. And it’s where they’re still sketching out portrayals that
will shape how Americans see their presidential candidates.
SNL, which timed the
launch of its 42nd season for the weekend after the first Clinton-Trump clash,
made one big reveal Wednesday: Actor Alec Baldwin will debut as Trump. But
heading into Saturday, the biggest drama is how Baldwin and SNL will parody the
GOP nominee: Will they mock his sniffles? His hair? His orange hue? His gesticulations?
His supposed microphone malfunction? Or do they cast him in more ominous terms:
as a racist hate-monger? Some comedians are
pressing for the latter. Dean Obeidallah, who
worked on the production staff of SNL for eight years and now has a radio show
on SiriusXM, said late-night comedians “have a moral obligation” to highlight
the darker elements of Trump’s candidacy. “Donald Trump is not a normal
candidate. This is not Mitt Romney, not John McCain. This is a man who has
trafficked in racism, sexism and bigotry,” Obeidallah said.
“Maybe it’s going to take comedians to do the
job that cable news has relinquished for so much of the campaign.”
Samantha Bee took some of her comedy
colleagues and network executives to task for coddling Trump and inviting him on their
programs. “I guess because ratings matter more than brown people,” Bee
exclaimed. “Sure, he’s making life palpably dangerous for Muslims and
immigrants, but, hey, he’s good at entertainment!”
Last season, one faux pro-Trump SNL ad featured stirring testimonials from what at first
appeared to be everyday Americans who ended up as a Nazi, a woman ironing a Ku
Klux Klan hood, and a white supremacist. Historically,
SNL’s political satire has penetrated the national consciousness. It was Will Ferrell as
George W. Bush who coined “strategery,” not Bush himself. And it was Tina Fey
as Sarah Palin who claimed, “I can see Russia from my house,” not Palin. The
skewering tradition dates all the way back to Chevy Chase’s 1976 portrayal of President
Gerald Ford as a klutz, and Jon Lovitz’s disbelief, as Michael Dukakis in 1988,
that “I can’t believe I’m losing to this guy.” In 2000, Al Gore’s own advisers
made him watch Darrell Hammond’s stilted, stiff, sighing impersonation of his debate
performances to show Gore how poorly he was coming off to others.
Lorne Michaels, the creator and executive
producer of SNL, told
Parade this week
that “fundamentally we’re non-partisan,“ but there are growing pressures inside
the satire world to wage a comedic war on Trump in the election’s final weeks.
Spokespeople for SNL did not respond to requests
Debates have long been fertile ground for SNL
and the Baldwin-McKinnon teaser suggested that’s how Saturday’s episode will
open. As it happens, there will be a debate, including the vice presidential
one next week, before each of SNL’s first four episodes this season.
The campaigns, if not the candidates themselves,
Jennifer Palmieri, Clinton’s communications director, hasn’t thought much about
it yet even though she said, “‘Saturday Night Live’ will certainly matter from
now until the election a great deal.” “It’s among the things I
can’t control,” Palmieri said with a hearty laugh. “‘Saturday Night Live’ —
among the things I can’t control.”
Again, I hope SNL brutalizes Trump. The husband and I will be at a wedding at The Greenbrier on Saturday, but we will be sure to tune into SNL afterwards. Posted by
did Adolf Hitler — described by one eminent magazine editor in 1930 as a
“half-insane rascal,” a “pathetic dunderhead,” a “nowhere fool,” a “big mouth”
— rise to power in the land of Goethe and Beethoven? What persuaded millions of
ordinary Germans to embrace him and his doctrine of hatred? How did this “most
unlikely pretender to high state office” achieve absolute power in a once
democratic country and set it on a course of monstrous horror?
host of earlier biographers (most notably Alan Bullock, Joachim Fest and Ian
Kershaw) have advanced theories about Hitler’s rise, and the dynamic between
the man and his times. Some have focused on the social and political conditions
in post-World War I Germany, which Hitler expertly exploited — bitterness over
the harsh terms of the Treaty of Versailles and a yearning for a return to
German greatness; unemployment and economic distress amid the worldwide
Depression of the early 1930s; and longstanding ethnic prejudices and fears of
“foreignization.”
writers — including the dictator’s latest biographer, the historian Volker
Ullrich — have focused on Hitler as a politician who rose to power through
demagoguery, showmanship and nativist appeals to the masses.
“Hitler: Ascent, 1889-1939,” Mr. Ullrich sets out to strip away the mythology
that Hitler created around himself in “Mein Kampf,” and he also tries to look
at this “mysterious, calamitous figure” not as a monster or madman, but as a
human being with “undeniable talents and obviously deep-seated psychological
complexes.” This
is the first of two volumes (it ends in 1939 with the dictator’s 50th birthday)
and there is little here that is substantially new. However, Mr. Ullrich offers
a fascinating Shakespearean parable about how the confluence of circumstance,
chance, a ruthless individual and the willful blindness of others can transform
a country — and, in Hitler’s case, lead to an unimaginable nightmare for the
Ullrich, like other biographers, provides vivid insight into some factors that
helped turn a “Munich rabble-rouser” — regarded by many as a self-obsessed
“clown” with a strangely “scattershot, impulsive style” — into “the lord and
master of the German Reich.”
Hitler was often described as an egomaniac who “only loved himself” — a
narcissist with a taste for self-dramatization and what Mr. Ullrich calls a
“characteristic fondness for superlatives.” His manic speeches and penchant for
taking all-or-nothing risks raised questions about his capacity for
self-control, even his sanity. But Mr. Ullrich underscores Hitler’s shrewdness
as a politician — with a “keen eye for the strengths and weaknesses of other
people” and an ability to “instantaneously analyze and exploit situations.”
Hitler was known, among colleagues, for a “bottomless mendacity” that would
later be magnified by a slick propaganda machine that used the latest
technology (radio, gramophone records, film) to spread his message. A former
finance minister wrote that Hitler “was so thoroughly untruthful that he could
no longer recognize the difference between lies and truth” and editors of one
edition of “Mein Kampf” described it as a “swamp of lies, distortions,
innuendoes, half-truths and real facts.”
Hitler was an effective orator and actor, Mr. Ullrich reminds readers, adept at
assuming various masks and feeding off the energy of his audiences. Although he
concealed his anti-Semitism beneath a “mask of moderation” when trying to win
the support of the socially liberal middle classes, he specialized in big,
theatrical rallies staged with spectacular elements borrowed from the circus.
Here, “Hitler adapted the content of his speeches to suit the tastes of his
lower-middle-class, nationalist-conservative, ethnic-chauvinist and
anti-Semitic listeners,” Mr. Ullrich writes. He peppered his speeches with
coarse phrases and put-downs of hecklers. Even as he fomented chaos by playing
to crowds’ fears and resentments, he offered himself as the visionary leader
who could restore law and order.
Hitler increasingly presented himself in messianic terms, promising “to lead
Germany to a new era of national greatness,” though he was typically vague about
his actual plans. He often harked back to a golden age for the country, Mr.
Ullrich says, the better “to paint the present day in hues that were all the
darker. Everywhere you looked now, there was only decline and decay.”
Hitler’s repertoire of topics, Mr. Ullrich notes, was limited, and reading his
speeches in retrospect, “it seems amazing that he attracted larger and larger
audiences” with “repeated mantralike phrases” consisting largely of
“accusations, vows of revenge and promises for the future.” But Hitler
virtually wrote the modern playbook on demagoguery, arguing in “Mein Kampf”
that propaganda must appeal to the emotions — not the reasoning powers — of the
crowd. Its “purely intellectual level,” Hitler said, “will have to be that of
the lowest mental common denominator among the public it is desired to reach.”
Because the understanding of the masses “is feeble,” he went on, effective
propaganda needed to be boiled down to a few slogans that should be
“persistently repeated until the very last individual has come to grasp the
idea that has been put forward.”
Hitler’s ascension was aided and abetted by the naïveté of domestic adversaries
who failed to appreciate his ruthlessness and tenacity, and by foreign
statesmen who believed they could control his aggression. Early on, revulsion
at Hitler’s style and appearance, Mr. Ullrich writes, led some critics to
underestimate the man and his popularity, while others dismissed him as a
celebrity, a repellent but fascinating “evening’s entertainment.” Politicians,
for their part, suffered from the delusion that the dominance of traditional
conservatives in the cabinet would neutralize the threat of Nazi abuse of power
and “fence Hitler in.”
• “Many Germans
jumped on the Nazi bandwagon not out of political conviction but in hopes of
improving their career opportunities, he argues, while fear kept others from
speaking out against the persecution of the Jews. The independent press was
banned or suppressed and books deemed “un-German” were burned. By March 1933,
Hitler had made it clear, Mr. Ullrich says, “that his government was going to
do away with all norms of separation of powers and the rule of law.” •
Hitler had a dark, Darwinian view of the world. And he would not only become,
in Mr. Ullrich’s words, “a mouthpiece of the cultural pessimism” growing in
right-wing circles in the Weimar Republic, but also the avatar of what Thomas
Mann identified as a turning away from reason and the fundamental principles of
a civil society — namely, “liberty, equality, education, optimism and belief in