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Scope of Trump’s lies are unprecedented for a modern presidential candidate

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  • PITTSBURGH POST-GAZETTE / TRIBUNE NEWS SERVICE

    Anti-Trump demonstrators participate in “Love Trumps Hate: Rally for Economic and Climate Justice” at the David L. Lawrence Convention Center on Thursday in Pittsburgh, Pa.

  • PITTSBURGH POST-GAZETTE / TRIBUNE NEWS SERVICE

    Anti-Trump demonstrators participate in “Love Trumps Hate: Rally for Economic and Climate Justice” at the David L. Lawrence Convention Center on Thursday in Pittsburgh, Pa.

MIAMI » Donald Trump says taxes in the United States are higher than almost anywhere else on Earth. They’re not.

He says he opposed the Iraq war from the start. He didn’t.

Now, after years of spreading the lie that President Barack Obama was born in Africa, Trump says Hillary Clinton did it first (untrue) and that he’s the one who put the controversy to rest (also untrue).

Never in modern presidential politics has a major candidate made false statements as routinely as Trump has. Over and over, independent researchers have examined what the Republican nominee says and concluded it was not the truth — “pants on fire” (Politifact) or “four Pinocchios” (Washington Post Fact Checker).

Trump’s candidacy was premised on upending a dishonest establishment that has rigged American political and economic life, so many of his loyalists are willing to overlook his lies, as long as he rankles the powerful, said Republican strategist Rob Stutzman.

“It gives him not only license, but incentive to spin fantasy, because no one expects him to tell the truth,” said Stutzman, who worked against Trump during the primaries. “They believe they’re getting lied to constantly, so if their hero tells lies in order to strike back, they don’t care.”

Still, Trump’s pattern of saying things that are provably false has no doubt contributed to his high unfavorable ratings. It also has forced journalists to grapple with how aggressive they should be in correcting candidates’ inaccurate statements, particularly in the presidential debates that start Monday.

At a time of deep public mistrust of the news media, the arbitration of statements of fact, long seen as one of reporters’ most basic duties, runs the risk of being perceived as partisan bias.

But so does the shirking of that role. Fox News anchor Chris Wallace, one of the debate moderators, has faced a storm of criticism for telling CNN: “It’s not my job to be a truth squad.”

After a Sept. 8 town hall on NBC, critics skewered moderator Matt Lauer for failing to correct Trump’s false statement that he opposed the U.S. invasion of Iraq. CBS correspondent Lesley Stahl drew milder reprimands for letting Trump repeat the same lie twice in a July interview on “60 Minutes,” responding “yeah” both times with no correction.

Trump’s Democratic rival faces integrity questions of her own. A new Wall Street Journal-NBC News poll found that 41 percent of voters saw Trump as better than Clinton at being honest and straightforward; just 31 percent thought that Clinton would be better than Trump in that area.

Republicans have used Clinton’s use of a private email server when she was secretary of State to cast doubt on her honesty, saying she has been untrustworthy for decades. Her efforts to fight back were damaged when FBI Director James Comey said in early July that she had been “extremely careless” in her handling of emails that officials said should have been considered classified.

Nonetheless, the scope of Trump’s lies is unprecedented, and he is dogged in refusing to stop saying things once they are proven untrue.

Buzzfeed unearthed an audio recording showing that Trump backed the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq and a 2011 video in which he called for swift military action against Moammar Gadhafi, then the leader of Libya. In the months since then, Trump has lied dozens of times on both issues, saying he opposed the use of force in Iraq and Libya.

Trump campaign spokesmen Hope Hicks and Jason Miller did not respond to an email requesting comment on Trump’s history of falsehoods.

Thomas E. Mann, a resident scholar at the University of California, Berkeley’s Institute of Governmental Studies, said Trump appears to recognize that a faction of the Republican Party has lost respect for facts, evidence and science — presuming, for example, that anything negative said about Obama is probably true.

Moreover, he said, the New York business mogul once thrived as a reality television star playing himself on “The Apprentice,” and in that realm there’s “no need to have any touch with genuine reality — it’s all as he defines it.”

“He’s a salesman,” Mann said. “He’s a con man. He’s hustled people out of money that they’re owed. He’s lived off tax shelters. He’s always looking for a scheme and a con, and in that sphere, you just fall into telling lies as a matter of course.”

In “Trump: The Art of the Deal,” his 1987 best-seller, Trump said “a little hyperbole never hurts.”

“People believe that something is the biggest and the greatest and the most spectacular. I call it truthful hyperbole. It’s an innocent form of exaggeration — and a very effective form of promotion,” he said.

Trump’s coauthor, Tony Schwartz, put it less benignly in a July interview with The New Yorker. “He lied strategically,” Schwartz recalled. “He had a complete lack of conscience about it.”

PolitiFact, a Tampa Bay Times site that won a Pulitzer for its coverage of the 2008 election, has rated 70 percent of the Trump statements it has checked as mostly false, false or “pants on fire,” its lowest score. By contrast, 28 percent of Clinton’s statements earned those ratings.

“As we noted when we awarded Trump our 2015 Lie of the Year award for his portfolio of misstatements, no other politician has as many statements rated so far down the dial,” PolitiFact writer Lauren Carroll reported in June. “It’s unlike anything we’ve ever seen.”

At a recent Trump rally in downtown Miami, supporters vouched for his trustworthiness.

“I think he has been very straightforward, whether people like it or not,” said Rosario Rodriguez-Ruiz, 42, a Republican real estate broker and accountant.

Some in the audience conceded that Trump might have cut corners in business, but said they were more troubled by what they called Clinton’s dishonesty about her email and the deadly raid on the U.S. diplomatic outpost in Benghazi, Libya. Miguel Pita, 56, said Trump had to “bend the rules” to avoid taxes. “I look at it as a ‘Catch Me If You Can’ type of deal,” he said.

Suzanne Roberts, 61, a retired Miami finance professor, said Clinton was “capable of spreading heinous rumors about anything, anyone, at any time.” As Elton John’s “Funeral for a Friend” blasted through the concert hall’s loudspeakers, she said Trump was correct to argue for five years that Obama was born outside the United States.

“He was born on a naval base in Mombasa, Kenya — that’s what I think,” Roberts said. “I’ve done some research.”

A few days earlier, Trump spoke at a black church in Flint, Mich. When he started to criticize Clinton, the pastor interrupted and asked him not to give a political speech.

“The audience was saying let him speak, let him speak,” Trump later told Fox News.

“That isn’t true,” reported National Public Radio correspondent Scott Detrow, an eyewitness. “In fact, several audience members began to heckle Trump, asking pointed questions about whether he racially discriminated against black tenants as a landlord.”

When Trump released his child-care plan on Sept. 13, he said Clinton didn’t have one. She did. He has often described himself as popular among blacks; the latest Wall Street Journal-NBC News poll found 7 percent of black voters support him.

Trump also depicts crime as rising and out of control in America’s inner cities despite years of falling crime rates. He has said that black people kill 81 percent of white homicide victims, when in fact whites kill 82 percent of white homicide victims, according to PolitiFact.

Marty Kaplan, a professor of entertainment, media and society at the University of Southern California’s Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism, has two theories on Trump’s lies.

Perhaps he’s just putting on an act, like P.T. Barnum — a “marketer, con, snake-oil salesman who knows better, knows how to get the rubes into the tent.” Or maybe, Kaplan suggested, Trump is just “completely unconstrained by logic, rules, tradition, truth, law.”

“I’m confused,” he said, “whether the whole fact-free zone that he’s in is a strategic calculation or a kind of psychosis.”

——

©2016 Los Angeles Times

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  • “Trump’s Democratic rival faces integrity questions of her own. A new Wall Street Journal-NBC News poll found that 41 percent of voters saw Trump as better than Clinton at being honest and straightforward; just 31 percent thought that Clinton would be better than Trump in that area.”
    This one TRUE FACT paragraph squashes this one sided biased article does it not? end quote Bill O’Reilly

      • Clinton Claim 1: During the 2008 Presidential campaign, Clinton claimed she landed in Bosnia “under sniper fire” during the 1990s.

        The Facts: Videos uncovered of then-First Lady Clinton’s arrival in Bosnia showed “a calm scene without any obvious danger”.

        Clinton Claim 2: In an interview, Clinton stated that she “came out of the White House not only dead broke, but in debt”.

        The Facts: PolitiFact rated Hillary Clinton’s claim “Mostly False” that she was “dead broke” when she left the White House.

        Clinton Claim 3: Secretary Clinton claimed her e-mail server set up was in “accordance with the rules and the regulations in effect.”

        The Facts: Federal Judge: Hillary Clinton “violated government policy” when she used a private server to store official State Department messages.

        Clinton Claim 4: When talking about immigrant stories, Clinton asserted that “all my grandparents… came over here.”

        The Facts: PolitiFact says it’s “very clear” that Clinton’s claim is “False.” In truth, only one of Clinton’s grandparents immigrated to America.

        Clinton Claim 5: Secretary Clinton emphasized the famous Situation Room Bin Laden photo captured her reacting to the helicopter crash.

        The Facts: In actuality, Secretary Clinton said “early spring allergic coughs”, not the helicopter crash, are responsible for her reaction in the photo.

        Clinton Claim 6: Passing DOMA was a “defensive action” to prevent further action against same-sex marriage.

        The Facts: Independent observers say that “any fair historical analysis” shows DOMA to be “a campaign tactic” by the Clintons.

        Clinton Claim 7: Hillary Clinton claims concern over the cost of college is the impetus for her college affordability plan.

        The Facts: While Secretary Clinton claims she has a plan to lower college costs, her family has “received millions” from universities across the country.

        Clinton Claim 8: Hillary Clinton’s campaign has said they will go carbon neutral.

        The Facts: Months after that pledge there have been no records that show Clinton moving to live up to this pledge, all the while she continues to fly around in private jets.

        Clinton Claim 9: In an interview, Hillary Clinton declared that the Veterans Affairs scandals are not “as widespread as it’s been made out to be”.

        The Facts: Clinton’s campaign was forced to immediately walk back the statement.

        Clinton Claim 10: In response to questions about her tenure at State, Hillary Clinton claimed that there was “a long list” of her accomplishments.

        The Facts: Given multiple chances, Secretary Clinton has been unable to name a “marquee” or “proudest” achievement from her four years as Secretary of State. Finally giving her something in common with Iowa voters.

        • Gee, guess you didn’t read the article. Yes, Clinton has lied. No, she’s not the ideal candidate. But next to Trump she is Mother Theresa.

        • I did read the article and yes there was a few minor notes about Hillary but to me her lies have been non stop and as self promoting and harmful to the country as anything that has been seen. The email scandal is just the latest but certainly as harmful as any

        • You learned your propaganda well grasshopper. lol However you might notice that the attacks against Hillary are relatively minor while criticisms against the Donald are not. For example who really cares where Hillary’s grandparents came from. I would like to see the Donald’s tax returns though.

        • when you enter into a contract to build cabinets for a casino and you don’t pay for them but keep them, thats stealing! when you hire an architect to design a structure, then pay him one half of one third of the agreed upon amount that is what…..lets hear it STEALING!will lying trump do that to lokheed or boeing when he has them build military equipment.good chance since its a pattern. he is not for the working man, he screws the working with his hands man, and kisses up to the rich!

        • Cabinets? Hillary lies to the Benghazi family members to their face. and the best you got from tens of thousand employees is some cabinets?

        • This article basically comes to one point: Trump is a pathological liar. It’s not about Clinton. It’s about Trump. He makes Clinton look like Mother Theresa.

      • Can never top Bubba & his “Lolita Express” tours without his Secret Service detail. Btw…did hear Gennifer Flowers may be sitting next to Markie Cuban?; lol

        • HIE booohoooo…hope your candidate don’t roll her eyes in opposite directions and fall flat on her face…if she does will the earbud roll out?

        • Keonigohan – You’re still lying about that phantom earpiece?

          Can you ever write anything truthful? Ever?

        • Hey GW Bush appointee Federal Judge klastri (aka Kurt on Kauai aka kauai), how you doing? You took your meds? You seemed subdued somewhat.
          Anyway here’s one for you to digest..
          “Look, the average Democrat voter is just plain stupid. They’re easy to manipulate. That’s the easy part.” Hillary Clinton, as told to Dick Morris in “Rewriting History”, 2005

      • First you say Trump doesn’t act “presidential” enough… well now that he is starting to act like a “politician” you complain he lies too much? LOL LOL LOL

        • So we get to choose between two champions of lying, for the highest office. No wonder many will not bother to vote…

        • Not voting is the worst reaction to this tragic comedy. If everyone “wasted” their vote on Gary Johnson, he’d be president.

    • Who are these 41% who believe Donald is honest?

      Birther conspiracy theory – DISHONEST

      Blaming Hillary for birther theory – DISHONEST

      Taking credit for putting birther theory to rest – DISHONEST

      Hiding his tax returns – DISHONEST

      Saying he was against the Iraq War – DISHONEST

      Saying he and Mex Prez never talked about the great wall – DISHONEST

      Saying he has a plan for the wall – DISHONEST

      Saying he knows more than all the generals – DISHONEST

      Saying his Trump Towers provides child care for employees – DISHONEST

      Saying Ted Cruz’ father assassinated JFK – DISHONEST

      Saying he’s made a lot of sacrifices for other people – DISHONEST

      Saying he’s going to win the election – DISHONEST

      etc., etc., etc. – DISHONEST

    • Two points need to be made:

      A. The Democrat’s in cheating to get Hillary nominated don’t have 100% support of their base which is mathematically needed to win an election.
      B. Trump is a classic sociopath, as such he is charismatic, charming, and in the short term cares deeply about what you care about. Hi will mimic your value systems to gain your trust. He will call you a liar first so has to create confusion as to who is pointing fingers at who etc….He thrives off of attention and is addicted to adrenaline and on and on.

    • This shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone, SA printing this article as “news”, it is a prime example of a Trump hit piece, showcasing the corruption in the whole government/press complex, one builds on the next. It is very much like one poster calling the other a liar, nothing more. Bottomline is you need to read the articles and comments and don’t be swayed by this biased publication.

  • The man is a machine when it comes to lies…..this is just sis days worth.

    A Week of Whoppers From Donald Trump
    By MAGGIE HABERMAN and ALEXANDER BURNS SEPT. 24, 2016

    All politicians bend the truth to fit their purposes, including Hillary Clinton. But Donald J. Trump has unleashed a blizzard of falsehoods, exaggerations and outright lies in the general election, peppering his speeches, interviews and Twitter posts with untruths so frequent that they can seem flighty or random — even compulsive.

    However, a closer examination, over the course of a week, revealed an unmistakable pattern: Virtually all of Mr. Trump’s falsehoods directly bolstered a powerful and self-aggrandizing narrative depicting him as a heroic savior for a nation menaced from every direction. Mike Murphy, a Republican strategist, described the practice as creating “an unreality bubble that he surrounds himself with.”

    The New York Times closely tracked Mr. Trump’s public statements from Sept. 15-21, and assembled a list of his 31 biggest whoppers, many of them uttered repeatedly. This total excludes dozens more: Untruths that appeared to be mere hyperbole or humor, or delivered purely for effect, or what could generously be called rounding errors. Mr. Trump’s campaign, which dismissed this compilation as “silly,” offered responses on every point, but in none of the following instances did the responses support his assertions.

    Tall Tales About Himself

    Mr. Trump’s version of reality allows for few, if any, flaws in himself. As he tells it, the polls are always looking up, his policy solutions are painless and simple and his judgment regarding politics and people has been consistent — and flawless. The most consistent falsehood he tells about himself may be that he opposed the war in Iraq from the start, when the evidence shows otherwise.

    1He said a supportive crowd chanted, “Let him speak!” when a black pastor in Flint, Mich., asked Mr. Trump not to give a political speech in the church.
    FOX NEWS INTERVIEW, SEPT. 15.
    There were no such chants.
    2“I was against going into the war in Iraq.”
    SPEECH IN FLORIDA, SEPT. 19.
    This is not getting any truer with repetition. He never publicly expressed opposition to the war before it began, and he made supportive remarks to Howard Stern.
    3He said any supportive comments he made about the Iraq war came “long before” the war began.
    FOX NEWS INTERVIEW, SEPT. 18.
    He expressed support for the war in September 2002, when Congress was debating whether to authorize military action.
    4He said he had publicly opposed the Iraq war in an Esquire interview “pretty quickly after the war started.”
    FOX NEWS INTERVIEW, SEPT. 18.
    The Esquire interview appeared in the August 2004 edition, 17 months after the war began.
    5Before the Iraq invasion, he said, he had told the Fox News anchor Neil Cavuto something “pretty close” to: “Don’t go in, and don’t make the mistake of going in.”
    FOX NEWS INTERVIEW, SEPT. 18.
    Not remotely close. He told Mr. Cavuto that President George W. Bush had to take decisive action.
    6He said that when Howard Stern asked him about Iraq in 2002, it was “the first time the word Iraq was ever mentioned to me.”
    FOX NEWS INTERVIEW, SEPT. 18.
    Mr. Trump expressed alarm about Saddam Hussein and the situation in Iraq in 2000 in his own book.
    7“You see what’s happening with my poll numbers with African-Americans. They’re going, like, high.”
    SPEECH IN NORTH CAROLINA, SEPT. 20; MADE SAME CLAIM IN OHIO, SEPT. 21.
    Polls show him winning virtually no support from African-Americans.
    8“Almost, it seems, everybody agrees” with his position on immigration.
    REMARKS IN TEXAS, SEPT. 17.
    Most Americans oppose his signature positions on immigration.
    9He has made “a lot of progress” with Hispanic and black voters, and “you see that in the polls.”
    FRED DICKER RADIO SHOW, SEPT. 15.
    No major poll has shown him making up significant ground with black or Hispanic voters.
    10He was “never a fan” of Colin Powell.
    FOX NEWS INTERVIEW, SEPT. 18.
    In his book “The America We Deserve,” he named Mr. Powell as among the “best and brightest” in American society.
    11Mr. Trump said that after The Times published an article scrutinizing his relationships with women, “All the women came out and said they think Donald Trump is terrific.”
    FOX NEWS INTERVIEW, SEPT. 18.
    Only one woman who was quoted in the article came to his defense after its publication.
    12“Unlike other people” who only raise money for themselves during presidential campaigns, he also raises money for the Republican Party.
    FOX NEWS INTERVIEW, SEPT. 15.
    Every presidential nominee forms a joint fund-raising agreement to share money with his or her national party.
    Unfounded Claims About
    Critics and the News Media

    It’s not just Mrs. Clinton whom Mr. Trump belittles and tars with inaccurate information. He also distorted the facts about his Republican critics, including President George Bush and Gov. John Kasich of Ohio. And he claimed that Lester Holt, the NBC anchor moderating the first presidential debate, is a Democrat — but Mr. Holt is a registered Republican.

    13In the primaries, Mr. Kasich “won one and, by the way, didn’t win it by much — that was Ohio.”
    FOX NEWS INTERVIEW, SEPT. 19.
    Mr. Kasich crushed him in Ohio, winning by 11 percentage points.
    14Lester Holt, the NBC anchor and debate moderator, “is a Democrat.”
    FOX NEWS INTERVIEW, SEPT. 19.
    Mr. Holt is a registered Republican, New York City records show.
    15The presidential debate moderators “are all Democrats.” “It’s a very unfair system.”
    FOX NEWS INTERVIEW, SEPT. 19.
    Only one, Chris Wallace of Fox News, is a registered Democrat.
    16He said it “hasn’t been reported” that Mrs. Clinton called some Trump supporters “deplorable.”
    SPEECH IN NORTH CAROLINA, SEPT. 20.
    It would be difficult to find a news organization that didn’t report her remark.
    Inaccurate Claims About Clinton

    Mr. Trump regularly dissembles about his opponent, attributing ideas to Mrs. Clinton that she has not endorsed, or accusing her of complicity in events in which she had no involvement.

    17“Hillary Clinton and her campaign of 2008 started the birther controversy. I finished it.”
    REMARKS IN WASHINGTON, SEPT. 16.
    Mrs. Clinton and her campaign never publicly questioned President Obama’s birthplace; Mr. Trump made it his signature cause for five years.
    18Mrs. Clinton had “the power and the duty” to stop the release of unauthorized immigrants whose home countries would not accept their deportation after they were released from prison.
    NUMEROUS SPEECHES, INCLUDING IN COLORADO, SEPT. 17, AND FLORIDA, SEPT. 19.
    The secretary of state does not have the power to detain convicted criminals after they have served their sentences, and has little power to make foreign countries accept deportees.
    19Mrs. Clinton has not criticized jihadists and foreign governments that oppress and kill women, gay people and non-Muslims. “Has Hillary Clinton ever called people who support these practices deplorable and irredeemable? No.”
    SPEECH IN FLORIDA, SEPT. 19.
    She has denounced jihadists and foreign countries on the same grounds, if not necessarily using the same words.
    20“Do people notice Hillary is copying my airplane rallies — she puts the plane behind her like I have been doing from the beginning.”
    TWITTER, SEPT. 20.
    He did not invent the tarmac rally or the campaign-plane backdrop.
    21Mrs. Clinton destroyed 13 smartphones with a hammer while she was secretary of state.
    SPEECHES IN FLORIDA, SEPT. 15 AND SEPT. 19.
    An aide told the F.B.I. of only two occasions in which phones were destroyed with a hammer.
    22He said Mrs. Clinton is calling for “total amnesty in the first 100 days,” including “a virtual end to immigration enforcement” and for unauthorized immigrants to receive Social Security and Medicare.
    SPEECH IN COLORADO, SEPT. 17.
    She has not proposed this.
    23Mrs. Clinton is “effectively proposing to abolish the borders around the country.”
    NUMEROUS SPEECHES, INCLUDING IN TEXAS, SEPT. 17.
    She is not even proposing to cut funding for the Border Patrol.
    24“Hillary Clinton’s plan would bring in 620,000 refugees in her first term alone,” and would cost $400 billion.
    NUMEROUS SPEECHES, INCLUDING IN NORTH CAROLINA, SEPT. 20.
    She endorsed admitting 65,000 Syrian refugees this year, on top of other admissions. Mr. Trump is falsely claiming that she wants to do this every year and is estimating the cost accordingly.
    Stump Speech Falsehoods

    Some warped or inaccurate claims have become regular features of Mr. Trump’s stump speech. He routinely overstates the scale and nature of the country’s economic distress and the threats to its national security, and exaggerates the potential for overnight improvements if he were elected.

    25“Our African-American communities are absolutely in the worst shape that they’ve ever been in before — ever, ever, ever.”
    SPEECH IN NORTH CAROLINA, SEPT. 20.
    No measurement supports this characterization of black America.
    26Fifty-eight percent of black youth are not working.
    NUMEROUS SPEECHES, INCLUDING IN FLORIDA, SEPT. 16, AND COLORADO, SEPT. 17.
    This misleading statistic counts high school students as out of work. Black youth unemployment actually was 20.6 percent in July.
    27Many dangerous refugees are being welcomed by the Obama administration. “Hundreds of thousands of people are being approved to pour into the country. We have no idea who they are.”
    NEW HAMPSHIRE SPEECH, SEPT. 15.
    The Obama administration has admitted more than 10,000 Syrian refugees, using an extensive screening process.
    28“We have cities that are far more dangerous than Afghanistan.”
    NUMEROUS SPEECHES, INCLUDING IN FLORIDA, SEPT. 16; COLORADO, SEPT. 17; NORTH CAROLINA, SEPT. 20; OHIO, SEPT. 21; AND A FOX NEWS INTERVIEW ON SEPT. 21.
    No American city resembles a war zone, though crime has risen lately in some, like Chicago. Urban violence has fallen precipitously over the past 25 years.
    29Ford plans to cut American jobs by relocating small-car production to Mexico, and may move all production outside the United States.
    FOX NEWS INTERVIEW AND NEW HAMPSHIRE SPEECH, SEPT. 15.
    Mark Fields, Ford’s chief executive, said it was not cutting American jobs.
    30“We have a trade deficit this year with China of approximately $500 billion.”
    NORTH CAROLINA SPEECH, SEPT. 20.
    He has made this claim repeatedly, but the trade deficit with China is significantly smaller.
    Esoteric Embellishments

    Mr. Trump often dissembles on subjects of passing interest, like the news of the day or the parochial concerns of his local audiences. But his larger pattern of behavior still holds: These misstatements, too, accentuate the grievances of his supporters, and cast his own ideas in a more favorable light.

    31Senator Bernie Sanders fell victim to “a rigged system with the superdelegates.”
    SPEECHES IN NEW HAMPSHIRE, SEPT. 15, AND NORTH CAROLINA, SEPT. 20.
    Mr. Sanders did not lose the Democratic nomination because of superdelegates. Mrs. Clinton beat him in pledged delegates, too.

      • Whereas everybody stops to read yours. They’re easy, plus they appeal to a certain sick fascination… Akin perhaps to that reflex some have to slow down and look at a traffic accident.

        • Sunday NYT Sunday edition. Haha You know better. Most people don’t read the establishment hogwash. Bernie’s folks backing Trump as well as independents. Trump moving up in the polls.

        • Sarge, again you best not go to Internet publications run out of some moms basement or a bunker outside Waco, for all your info. The NYT is one of the most read papers in the world, depending if the Guardian is in the top spot–they alternate.

        • NYT not doing that well..”Like many newspapers faced with declining print circulation and falling advertising revenue, The Times has looked for new revenue opportunities. It has focused on virtual reality, video and branded content, for example, and pushed aggressively into Facebook Live. The company produced more than 400 Facebook Live videos in the quarter….http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/29/business/media/new-york-times-co-q2-earnings.html?_r=0.”…

        • You are mistakenly conflating, as you do with a great many issues: all papers are in an inflection of time that the business is dramatically changing, that said, for ALL papers globally, the NYT sits in either the number or two position for most read papers in the world.

        • Here is some good news Ike. Comments?>>>Jim’s Mailbox
          Posted September 23rd, 2016 at 11:45 AM (CST) by Jim Sinclair & filed under Jim’s Mailbox.

          Jim/Bill,

          I’m not going to burden you, or myself, with fact checks as we all read the same daily missives from the Mainstream Media.

          I’ve decided to alter, hard as it may be, my habitual focus on minute by minute attention to breaking news items and price changes regarding the domestic and global economies. My reluctance to step back and view the forest has done more harm to my thinking than I care to admit.

          So let’s look at the forest, and forget about the trees:

          -Excessive liquidity via trillions of dollars in QE has been futile in creating economic growth.

          -QE is a recipe for eventual hyperinflation.

          -Equity markets are in the process of rolling over. Look at ALMOST any stock and you’ll find a rounding top pattern.

          -China/Russia have been buying and hoarding gold, hand over fist.

          -China/Russia are promoting their own currencies in international trade, leading to the eventual demise of the U.S. Dollar.

          -Derivative markets have exploded to over $1 quadrillion.

          -Banks, pension funds, hedge funds, etc. have all been accumulating high risk assets in search of yield.

          -Most Western nations have accrued massive amounts of debt, mathematically impossible to pay off.

          -The November elections in the U.S., no matter who wins, will lead to massive infrastructure and defense spending (not to mention ever increasing entitlements).

          -Negative interest rates are not only draining pensioners’ source of livelihood, but contributing to the demise of pension funds themselves.

          -As a sidebar, negative interest rates are slowly creating an atmosphere of social discontent with the prospect of banning currency. Now people are forced to pay banks to keep their deposits, and pay governments to purchase their bonds. This can erupt into violent protest among the public, as keeping cash under the mattress (the best investment available to the common man at the moment) will no longer be an option.

          -We are as the cusp of slowly losing our Constitutional rights. Our forefathers fight in 1776 to preserve our liberties will have been for naught.

          -Criminal charges against the financial community, for fiscal improprieties and lack of adherence to their fiduciary responsibilities, are nowhere to be found. Simply look at the recent Well Fargo debacle where the executive responsible for the massive fraud Carrie Tolstedt) gets released, yet is accommodated with a $125 million parting bonus!

          -We are at war with every part of the globe. If that’s not the beginning of WW3, I don’t know what is.

          -We are fighting alternative religious sects (read Muslims), alternative nationalities (read Latinos), alternative skin colors (Blacks and Asians), and last but not least…..our Allies in trade and commerce throughout the world.

          I find that all these points (and there are many more) to be an irreversible movement toward the bowels of Hell. Let the Fed raise rates or let them lower rates. It really doesn’t matter. There is no turning back.

          Markets are no longer free, but manipulated and controlled to such an extent that all your economic education can be tossed out the window. It no longer applies.

          On a positive note………………the Nasdaq hit a new all time high!

          CIGA Wolfgang Rech

  • Politico: “Though few statements match the audacity of his statement about his role in questioning Obama’s citizenship, Trump has built a cottage industry around stretching the truth. According to POLITICO’s five-day analysis, Trump averaged about one falsehood every three minutes and 15 seconds over nearly five hours of remarks.

  • I’m so not a fan of life time politicians but anyone that would lie straight faced to the families of the Benghazi families is just so wrong I cannot understand. Why anyone would even consider this woman for President is beyond my comprehension. Bernie a child of the sixties with warped ideas. Yeah I could see him. Even the Senator that said she was native American. I could see her running. But Hillary? How can one defend her on anything she has done in her lifetime? From Whitewater to the white house and all the scandals in between the Clintons have shown themselves to be as far from presidential as you can get. So what does the party of slavery and the most recent KKK member try to do. Turn everything around to make Trump into the exact thing they are guilty of. Be aware of these life time politicians. They will try anything to get to the white house. I’ll go with the outsider everytime. A guy that has created jobs and businesses at an international level and has succeeded because building businesses is what works in the US. Hillary hasn’t done anything but spend taxpayer dollars her entire adult life. and has been involved in more scams than any living politician today. Yes, her husband is not included. He’s semi retired. Are Americans going to continue to turn a blind eye to politicians that run America into the ground . I’m tired of it.

      • Absolutely. On the other hand the Republican establishment is making me pretty sick lately too. I would mind seeing someone shake it all up. Politicians have made a huge mess of things.

      • The Trump Fan (not GOP) Playbook: Pretend to believe everything he says, no matter how wrong it is.

        For now let’s look at just one Donald untruth: He cannot release his tax returns because he is under audit–WRONG.

        He is lying to the public, to the media, and to his supporters. The general public and the unbiased media KNOW that is incorrect. Smart people are sure he is hiding something. Smart people want to know what he is hiding. Does that make sense? YES.

        Trump fans, it is okay to support and vote for him. It is BETTER if you see the facts, think about them, then make your own intelligent judgment. PLEASE do a little research—about Donald J Trump.

        • “Smart people are sure he is hiding something. Smart people want to know what he is hiding. Does that make sense? YES.”

          Not it does not, it is bad logic.

          How would you know what smart people know? At best it would be yourself, and some would seriously question even that.

      • Republican playbook: Preach conservatism but once in office practice Voodoo economics. Sorry republicans, balancing the budget by increasing wasteful spending while reducing revenue will generally not result in balanced budgets.

        • He did not pay SOME of the workers.
          It is a misleading exaggeration to say “He didn’t pay the workers”

          Trump’s answer to this was that in the few cases where this happened, it was because their work was substandard, and he does not pay full value for subpar work.

        • A few cases?? Please, in the specific case of his bankruptcies, his direct actions, have a straight line to thousands of contractors and subcontractors not getting paid.

  • LA Times: “Never in modern presidential politics has a major candidate made false statements as routinely as Trump has. Over and over, independent researchers have examined what the Republican nominee says and concluded it was not the truth — but “pants on fire” (PolitiFact) or “four Pinocchios” (Washington Post Fact Checker)…the scope of Trump’s falsehoods is unprecedented, and he is dogged in refusing to stop saying things once they are proved untrue.”

  • Washington Post: “An examination by The Washington Post of one week of Trump’s speeches, tweets and interviews show a candidate who not only continues to rely heavily on thinly sourced or entirely unsubstantiated claims but also uses them to paint a strikingly bleak portrait of an impoverished America, overrun by illegal immigrants, criminals and terrorists”

  • NY Times: “Donald J. Trump has unleashed a blizzard of falsehoods, exaggerations and outright lies in the general election, peppering his speeches, interviews and Twitter posts with untruths so frequent that they can seem flighty or random — even compulsive.”

  • I think Barry Hussein is the son of Frank Marshall Davis just as Web Hubbell is Chelsea’s dad. As for Barry’s birthplace, I think he was born in Manchuria, definitely not Hawaii.

  • “I’m confused,” he said, “whether the whole fact-free zone that he’s in is a strategic calculation or a kind of psychosis.”

    Of course even supposing we knew the answer to that, it wouldn’t make a bit of practical difference.

  • The tactics to be successful in business [very often a win loose proposition when layers are in the game] are very different from those of being in politics. Both professions involve bending the truth to the point of … non-truth. And, as it relates to government ease/propaganda … many official government messages [in the USA and else where] are not focused on the truth.

  • hillary’s america, by dinesh d’souza, expose of the democrat party history and the female felon’s criminal enterprises. despite amazon’s deletions of positive reviews d’souza’s book has received an 83% positive (5 star) reviews.

    stronger together, by the female felon and kaine, reveals their plans to redistribute the wealth of america with failed socialist policies. despite amazon’s deletions of negative reviews the female felon’s book has received an 86% (one star) negative reviews.

  • It cracks me up how each side wants to act “holier-than-thou.” Both candidates are the most disgusting people who have ever run for president. I came home from Vietnam many years ago believing we have two major problems in this country…the republican party and the democrat party. Over the years that belief has only been reinforced. If we could get rid of all politicians, (and “world leaders” for that matter, it would be a much better world. Since, obviously, we can’t, I’m not terribly optimistic.

  • A better headline might be

    “Depth of Hillary’s lies are unprecedented in US political history”

    Imagine keeping top secret material on an unsecured email server, a very serious crime.
    It is the cyberworld equivalent of putting a package of top secret documents on the sidewalk in front of your house.
    And then imagine pretending you did not know what you were doing was not OK.

    And then imagine that when a subpoena for the server contents was ordered, that you refused.
    And then imagine that you claimed that you could be trusted with deleting the “personal” data and would hand over the rest.
    Imagine claiming the deleted material were items like going to yoga class but then going to the trouble of “bleaching” the disk so it could not be confirmed.
    Imagine physically smashing all the iphones that may have been used for the emails, so the emails could not be recovered from them.

    Hard to believe this is reality.

  • Let’s take an example from Finnegan. He states of Trump that:

    “He says he opposed the Iraq war from the start. He didn’t.”

    Trump is recorded in Esquire magazine in August 2004 as saying
    “Look at the war in Iraq and the mess that we’re in. I would never have handled it that way. Does anybody really believe that Iraq is going to be a wonderful democracy where people are going to run down to the voting box and gently put in their ballot and the winner is happily going to step up to lead the county?”

    The war started in 2003 about a year earlier. In August of 2004 things were going well. Hindsight had not yet set in for those who supported it, like Hillary and all the others. This occurred later. This was the beginning of the war, and supports Trump’s recent statement in Cleveland:

    “I was opposed to war from the beginning,” Trump said.
    This is a true statement, he saw in the beginning that it was not going to be good, when all who were behind it were still fully on board.

    Supposed evidence that he was not opposed at the start in 2003 is unconvincing, and could be interpreted to say the opposite.
    For example, he is quoted as saying on Cavuto’s show in March 2003

    ” looks like a tremendous success from a military standpoint”

    The inclusion of the word “military” is very telling. Yes it was a military success, but the specific inclusion of this qualifier indicates that this does not mean it is going to be a political, cultural or historical success. Trump makes a simple statement of fact that does not support the spin that is later added to it.

    Trump would not have known about the facts of the invasion before it happened. If he had considered opinions beforehand I could find no demonstrative evidence as to what they were. From his considered recorded remarks made after it started, at the beginning, it seems more likely to conclude that he was against it, as he says he was.

    I think Finnegan is taking facts, spinning them to suit his narrative, and then confusing them to be the facts.

  • Finnigan states:
    “He says he opposed the Iraq war from the start. He didn’t.”

    Trump is recorded in Esquire magazine in August 2004 as saying
    “Look at the war in Iraq and the mess that we’re in. I would never have handled it that way. Does anybody really believe that Iraq is going to be a wonderful democracy where people are going to run down to the voting box and gently put in their ballot and the winner is happily going to step up to lead the county?”

    The war started in 2003 about a year earlier. In August of 2004 things were going well. Hindsight had not yet set in for those who supported it, such as Hillary and all the others. This occurred later. This was the beginning of the war, and the Esquire quote supports Trump’s statement in Cleveland:

    “I was opposed to war from the beginning,” Trump said.

    We can quibble about “start” and “beginning” but what is clear is that he was never clearly on board like Hillary and the others, and that he made forceful, recorded statements against it at the beginning of the war, while the others were still fully behind it, and would be for years to come.

  • I’m not confused…

    “I’m confused,” [Marty Kaplan, a professor of entertainment, media and society at the University of Southern California’s Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism,] said, “whether the whole fact-free zone that [Trump’s] in is a strategic calculation or a kind of psychosis.”

    Trump is a crazy man.

  • It’s funny that the best argument either candidate can make for being elected is how bad the other candidate would be for America. Sad really, the world must be laughing at us.

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