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NPR, “Could Trump ‘Undermine The Legacy Of The Obama Presidency’ With The Stroke Of A Pen?” 15 Nov 2016:

New Yorker writer Evan Osnos talks about the executive orders and other actions that Trump can use to undo existing agreements on climate change, immigration and foreign policy.

[...]

DAVE DAVIES, BYLINE: Well, Evan Osnos, welcome back to FRESH AIR. How reliable are campaign promises as a predictor of a president’s agenda in office, and will Trump be different?

EVAN OSNOS: I assumed that, like, I think like a lot of Americans, that campaign promises are not very valuable in terms of actually predicting the course of a presidency. We - you know, we tend to remember when campaigns say things that they don’t then fulfill. But actually, the political science on this is pretty clear, and it tells a very different story, which is that if you go back over the history of the presidency, you find that presidents tend to achieve the majority - the overwhelming majority of the things that they set out to accomplish when they were candidates.

[...]

DAVIES: Now, when people look at Donald Trump, some would say it’s not clear that he has any deeply held political beliefs. I mean, he used to be pro-choice. He used to be a Democrat. He’s kind of been all over the place over the course of his business career, and a lot of what he says seems kind of improvised, but we have some clues. I mean, there are two big appointments just announced. The Republican National Committee chairman, Reince Priebus, will be Trump’s chief of staff, and at the same time, his campaign CEO, Steve Bannon, who is from the right wing Breitbart News, will be a senior adviser with equal status to Reince Priebus. What does this tell us about Trump’s likely agenda?

OSNOS: Right. Well, I think a lot of us were very wary of the idea that Trump as president would actually do a lot of the things that he said as a candidate partly because he was, you know, obviously from way outside the mainstream and - of previous presidents. So perhaps the political science was useless. But there are a couple of things that I think are important to keep in mind. One is that the appointment of Steve Bannon as chief strategist and a counselor to the president is an extension of something that was very clear when this piece was written, which was that Donald Trump will move around on a lot of issues. He’s fluid, for instance, on what he would do on the technical basis of an H-1B visa, for instance, or whether or not he would allow school teachers to carry guns in the classroom.

But on three core ideas, he has stayed completely consistent. One of them is his belief that the United States is fundamentally being damaged by immigration. Number two is his belief that trade deals have done more damage to the United States than they have helped. And number three is his belief that the United States does too much for the world. As he said in 2015, I want to take back everything that the United States has given the world.

Steve Bannon, in his career at Breitbart, really transformed that organization into the principal exponent of those three ideas. So what you see today is Donald Trump is trying to balance the strategic objectives that his campaign road to victory in the form of Steve Bannon with the practical necessity of how do you actually operate within Washington. And for that, Reince Priebus, the new chief of staff, is the ultimate Washington professional. He has been here for his professional life. He has really risen to the top ranks of the Republican establishment, and he’s now in the position to be able to try to help Donald Trump achieve his objectives.

DAVIES: You know, there’s a point of view that says, yeah, ideologues can have their say, but it’s the chief of staff who controls the president’s schedule that really moves the levers of power. Do you have an opinion about whether one will be more important than the other?

OSNOS: I think if you look at the way that those two roles have been used in recent history, you find that they are both important, and in many ways, that’s the design here. Steve Bannon has called Breitbart, which was his media organization, quote, “the platform of the alt right,” unquote. And that is the previously fringe movement on the conservative far-right edge, which was founded by Richard Spencer who lives in Montana and believes in the separation of the races. And that has now moved sort of further into the mainstream as a result of Steve Bannon’s rise within the Trump campaign and now his installation in the White House. But in order to get those ideas accomplished, you need somebody who really is just as skilled as anyone in sort of managing the levers of inside power in Washington, and that’s where Reince Priebus comes in.

DAVIES: OK, I want to talk about some of the areas of policy that will matter here. And we’ll try and figure out, you know, what Trump has said, what he believes, what he is really committed to and what he can actually accomplish by himself and what he needs congressional action for. One thing that people have talked about is that President Obama has done a lot with executive orders because of the gridlock in Congress and that President Trump, once he is inaugurated, can immediately undo a bunch of stuff simply by signing executive orders, repealing President Obama’s initiatives. Is that true?

OSNOS: Yeah, that’s true, and that’s an explicit part of the incoming Trump administration’s plan. Campaign advisers described it to me as a first-day project, by which they meant that on the first day or within a few days Donald Trump would seek to sign as many as 25 executive orders, or uses of executive power in other forms, that would, in the words of one adviser, erase the Obama presidency.

I should point out that every president when they come in uses executive powers in one form or another. Barack Obama, for instance, signed nine executive orders in the first 10 days. Doing 25 would be ambitious. People who have been through transitions before tell me that’s not realistic. But he could do several things that would significantly undermine the legacy of the Obama presidency. His team has talked about this since Election Day, that one of the things that’s important to them is to restart exploration of the Keystone Pipeline.

They will significantly expand the pace and intensity of deportations. They will seek to, if not formally remove the United States from the Paris climate agreement, then they will be able to take steps that basically undermine it so they can make sure the United States is not enforcing restrictions on carbon output. They can restrict funding and so on. So they can do things right away with the stroke of a pen that would pretty significantly undermine the legacy of the Obama presidency.

DAVIES: Is there some fine print here? I mean, I believe I’ve read that when some executive orders have gone past the rulemaking stage…

OSNOS: That’s right.

DAVIES: ...There’s a process. What does that mean?

OSNOS: Yeah, that’s right. The hyperbole in saying that they would undermine the Obama presidency is that once an executive order has gone beyond what’s known as the rulemaking stage, then that means that in order to undo it there has to be, for instance, a period of public comment. There has to be other bureaucratic steps. And that can take as much as a year or more depending on how efficiently the bureaucracy goes about it. And that’s meaningful because I think the question of how civil servants will interpret efforts to try to undermine previous initiatives matters. But the relevant point is that by issuing the executive order the clock on that process begins.

DAVIES: OK. Well, let’s look at some specific policy areas and figure out what might happen. Let’s start with climate change. You just mentioned that. Do we - what do we know about his views on climate change and the extent to which he is committed to them based on his appointments so far?

OSNOS: Well, as a candidate and before, Donald Trump has expressed a lot of skepticism about climate change. He’s called it a hoax. At one point, he described it as a hoax that was perpetrated by the Chinese in order to try to undermine American competitiveness. He later said that was a joke. Since Election Day, some of the appointments that he’s made have made clear that he’s going to make good on his belief that American energy policy and attempts to combat climate change are going in the wrong direction. So, for instance, Donald Trump’s transition team for the EPA, the Environmental Protection Agency is run by somebody named Myron Ebell who has been really one of the most outspoken skeptics of climate change, runs a program here called the Competitive Enterprise Institute, and it opposes regulation. It’s not clear exactly who funds it, but in the past, it was funded by fossil fuel companies including Exxon Mobil and others.

So this would be, I think, safe to say a radical change in the way the United States has talked and thought about climate change. One of the people that he has also indicated could be powerful in terms of shaping energy policy is Harold Hamm who was a billionaire who founded the shale oil company Continental Resources. He’s been a big contributor to the Koch brothers fundraising network, and there is so far no indication that Donald Trump did not mean what he said when he talked about climate change being a hoax that has damaged American competitiveness.

DAVIES: Are there some specific things President Trump could do immediately to change the direction of climate policy?

OSNOS: Yeah, he could. The Paris climate deal is a formal matter, requires four years to unwind. So in the interim, he could immediately suspend American payments to the deal in effect. These are the payments that the United States would make to U.N.-affiliated agencies that would be in charge of both implementing the deal and then also helping developing countries pay for making some of the concessions and transitions that are required in order to implement it.

[...]

DAVIES: You talk to some experienced people in immigration for your piece in The New Yorker about what it would take to affirmatively go out and find millions of undocumented workers and get them out of the country. You want to share a bit of that with us?

OSNOS: Yeah. I spoke to Julie Myers Wood, for instance, who was the head of Immigration Customs and Enforcement under George W. Bush, and she is opposed to Donald Trump-stated policies on immigration in many ways. But she also said that it’s a big mistake to assume that his ideas are so radical as to therefore be impossible, and that was her major point to me was that there are tools that are at the disposal of a president that would allow them to do this dramatic escalation of deportation. For instance, a president could give the IRS files to ICE, to Immigrations Customs Enforcement. So IRS files are considered to be the most reliable source of home addresses because a lot of undocumented immigrants who pay taxes, for instance, put in a reliable home address so that they can receive their refund.

If the president allowed it, that would then make it much easier for enforcement agents to be able to go out and find people. Another thing that would be at the disposal of a President is what’s known as 287-G of the Immigration Act which would allow the local and state agents, basically cops of one kind or another, to be enlisted in service of the deportation project. So that’s how you begin to see, for instance, local police being brought in for the purposes of raiding farms or factories and beginning to achieve the deportation numbers that he’s talked about.

But in order to do so, it would take a significant escalation of manpower and also of resources. But what came clear from my reporting on the subject was that it’s a big mistake to assume that it’s - this is binary that you either will have the system as it exists today or you would have some completely unimaginable system that Donald Trump has talked about. There is in fact a spectrum in between that Trump could move fairly substantially down the road to achieving his objectives on immigration.

[...]

DAVIES: Let’s talk about trade and the economy. You know, one of his core principles you said is the belief that trade deals have harmed America’s economy and killed jobs. What authority would he have immediately to remake or undo American trade policy?

OSNOS: The president has broad authority on trade. So, for instance, right away, the president could end American participation in the Trans-Pacific Partnership. I think it’s fair to assume that the TPP as it’s known is now dead. But beyond that, he could also force Canada and Mexico to renegotiate NAFTA or withdraw from it eventually.

There is a process in the case of NAFTA. He couldn’t just do it immediately. But when it comes to slapping tariffs, for instance, on other countries, there’s two ways to do it. One requires Congress and one doesn’t. If he goes after specific categories of goods - so if he says, for instance, that, you know, Chinese exports of one specific type, let’s call it, you know, chicken or tires or something like that, then he can use his own presidential power to do that sort of on an emergency basis. But if he’s going to try to impose a broad-based tariff against a country, that would actually require the consent of Congress.

But I think the important point is that he has the ability to change the tenor of the trade relationship with a country by talking about it in other ways. And as we all know, you know, he talked about China in very harsh terms during this campaign. My own sense based on talking to his trade advisers and his China specialists was that that was a kind of theater. I don’t believe that Donald Trump is prepared actually in any way to go to a trade war with China, I think, meaning that, you know, one of the things that his advisers said to me was that Donald Trump’s persona that he - you know, he’s confrontational, he says outrageous things, that that would have a chilling effect on the other side and that China would then fall in line. That’s their theory. They’re not actually prepared for the full economic consequences, which would be severe and profound, of a trade war with the world’s second-largest economy.

DAVIES: Well, this is an interesting and important question. And you can’t predict the future, but if, in fact, one of his core beliefs is that this is a big problem, we have to fix this to rebuild the American economy, what do the economists you talk to expect to happen? Are we going to have a trade war? What would it do?

OSNOS: A trade war could be a really dramatic turn in American economic history. If you talk to independent analysts, people who are not involved in either campaign, somebody - there’s a guy, for instance, named Mark Zandi, who’s an economist at Moody’s Analytics. And he’s worked for Republicans and he’s worked for Democrats in the past. And what he says is that Trump’s plan, if he actually did the things that he said he would and triggered a trade war with China that that would put probably somewhere around 4 million Americans out of work. And then over the ensuing recession that it would also cost the economy another 3 million jobs that would have been created otherwise.

Most economists broadly agree that a trade war would be hugely damaging to the United States.

[...]

DAVIES: One of the things he also says he wants to do is immediately cut the regulatory burdens on businesses on Wall Street. Can he do that himself?

OSNOS: He can. The president has authority, ultimate authority over 15 executive agencies. And he would be able to direct them to change the pace and spirit in which they are issuing regulations. He has said - I’m not clear on whether this is legally possible - that he wants to do a version of what Vice President-elect Mike Pence did in Indiana.

Pence created an agency that was dedicated to suspending the creation of all new regulations except for public health and safety.

[...]

DAVIES: He’s promised big tax cuts. Will they really happen?

OSNOS: That, I think, is one of his better bets. He’s got a Republican Congress on his side. And at this point, it’s hard to see them not doing it.

DAVIES: And what kind of tax cuts are we talking about? I mean, for those of us who haven’t carefully followed his campaign positions, are they upper income, middle income, everybody?

OSNOS: They provide the greatest relief to the upper stratum of the tax base, so the highest earners will do best. There is also tax relief for the sort of upper-middle-class. Then corporate tax rates will be substantially relieved.

[...]

DAVIES: Let’s talk about foreign and military policy. He’s criticized the deal with Iran. Can he scuttle that deal by himself?

OSNOS: Yes, he can. What he has said he wants to do is renegotiate the deal with Iran, and renegotiate is a sort of a flexible word. It’s not clear what he means entirely. But were he to try to reopen that deal, that could actually - that could really change the course of things more broadly beyond just the Iran deal because at that point what happens is that Iran - and Iran specialists told me as much months ago - would regard the United States seeking to renegotiate the deal as an abrogation of the deal.

At that point, they would say that the United States has basically not held up its end of the bargain, and they would have the right - the legal authority and the right - to restart the development of nuclear energy. So I think he’s going to find once he begins to get into the details of this that by simply announcing that he’s going to renegotiate that might not achieve the effect he has in mind. It might actually hasten the restart of the Iranian nuclear program.

[...]

DAVIES: When you wrote about Donald Trump and his policies towards the military and towards foreign affairs, the issue of temperament comes up. This is a loaded word. He hated being criticized for his temperament. But you have - you found a quote from his book “Think Like A Billionaire.” It can be smart to be shallow, that he has a penchant for making big decisions quickly, that he trusts his gut. Share what - some of what you learned about what that might mean from your conversations with military and intelligence officials.

OSNOS: Yeah. When you talk to a broad range of people who have been involved in the most sensitive national security questions, you know - these are the people who’ve been in the Situation Room at crucial moments particularly from Republican administrations what they’ll tell you is that the crucial ingredient is whether or not a president is impetuous, whether or not the president makes decisions before they have as much information and as many competing points of view as possible. And often as one - James Woolsey who is a former director of the CIA is now an adviser to the Trump administration - before he became an adviser to Trump, he said to me in an interview that very often the first information that a president receives is wrong. And we’ve seen that beginning all the way from Vietnam up to the present day. And part of the sort of crucial patience that’s required is the ability to both wait until you have a fuller picture and then also be prepared to act. But if you act on the basis of limited information, history suggests to us that we would have made a lot of catastrophic choices.

[...]

DAVIES: You know, last year, you wrote about white nationalist groups that have embraced Trump, and they feel he’s expanded their reach, given them some legitimacy and, of course, since the election there have been some very troubling cases of swastikas, racist graffiti, some assaults racist hate speech. You know, some would see this as just a fringe that is an embarrassment to most Republicans and conservatives I’m wondering what you make of this and what the impact will be of Trump being in the White House?

OSNOS: Well, in some ways, this was a storyline that I think people who generally covered politics didn’t initially embrace, you know, the idea that somehow the alt-right or the white nationalist world would be even talked about in a discussion of an incoming presidential. It was so ludicrous that we didn’t even really do it. And then it just became very clear early on in the Trump campaign that they were a part of this phenomenon. The neo-Nazi website endorsed him for president 12 days after he announced. And later you follow it all the way through 20 months later. He was endorsed by the newspaper the KKK. Steve Bannon has been - who is now chief strategist in the White House - has been really the sort of principal thinker in terms of how do you take ideas that exist way out on the far right and get them in front of people’s eyes that are more conventional readers?

And at Breitbart, that’s really what he did. He sort of - it became the platform for the alt-right. When I spoke on Election Day to a white nationalist leader named Matthew Heimbach as the sort of results became clear, I said, you know, how are you feeling? And he said vindicated. And what he said was that this campaign and that the victory of Donald Trump has shown that there is an appetite out there for his ideas, even if people can’t quite bring themselves to say so.

You know, I just have to say, I mean, this was so preposterous that we’d be talking about this a couple of years ago, that it’s a reminder of how much politics have changed and been changed by the candidacy of Donald Trump. Now, look, how that actually translates into a White House, we don’t yet know. But Steve Bannon is now a couple of steps from the Oval Office, and that’s - we’re in uncharted territory there.

DAVIES: Evan Osnos, thanks so much for speaking with us.

OSNOS: Thanks for having me, Dave.

Interviewed at the ADDE conference in Stockholm 4 Nov., Rolandas Paksas recommends Lithuana’s participation in The Intermarium.

Visigrad Post, Lithuania – Interview with Rolandas Paksas, former President of Lithuania: “The Visegrád group could be a great ally for the Baltics and Lithuania, and we shall strengthen the cooperation.”

Ferenc Almássy conducted an interview in Stockholm with Rolandas Paksas, MEP, former President and former Prime Minister of Lithuania, and former mayor of Vilnius. The controversial national-liberal politician accepted a request to answer a few questions for the Visegrád Post on 4 Nov. 2016, as he participated to a congress of the ADDE in Stockholm.

Ferenc Almássy: Thank you for your time Mr. President. Is it the case for you that you consider the Visegrád group a potential useful ally for Lithuania and for the Baltic states, for a military, economical and of course political cooperation? Within the EU, Orbán in Hungary, PiS in Poland but also Fico in Slovakia are doing a lot to support the idea of a Europe of sovereign nations. So, how do you see the V4, from a Baltic, or more precisely, a Lithuanian point of view?

Rolandas Paksas: In my opinion, yes, the Visegrád group could be a great ally for the Baltics and Lithuania, absolutely. When I served as Lithuanian President, and Lithuania became member of the EU on May 1, 2004, I was absolutely supporting the EU’s membership of Lithuania, and I was very active in the campaign for the referendum on this topic, as I saw the membership as a very good opportunity for the country’s future.

But it is a pity, the EU has changed. And not in the good direction. We have now one state, I mean, the European Union has became a state, with its unique capital, its own rules and one leader, but also many bureaucrats in Brussels.

So I see the Visegrád group as a possibility to save the European Union. The EU should be a Union between equals. No matter how much population of how many languages are spoken in a country. We need a new way in order to save the European Union, and I agree therefore that the Visegrád group is a good possibility for all of us.

FA: You are speaking about saving the European Union, but what is then your opinion on Brexit?

Rolandas Paksas: This is the decision of the people. And not stupid people or poor, uneducated people as we were told, each day, ten hours a day, by mainstream media. Not at all. It was the decision of clever people in order to save England and the European Union. For me it is a great pity that the opportunity to save the European Union right after Brexit has not been taken. The European Union should have been changed after the Brexit ; but actually, I saw the exact opposite. I see ugliness and dictator-like behaviors from Brussels’ bureaucrats, and from the leaders of the European Union, and it seems to me, if nothing changes, that the European Union has four of five years left.

FA: The Visegrád countries are under the economical rule of Germany…

Rolandas Paksas: Yes!

FA: …but what is the situation in the Baltics countries, I mean, from an economical point of view?

Rolandas Paksas: Baltics countries are given money by the European Union. Economically, people are counting on this. Of course, it looks like a very good business to get four euros when you invested one! But that will not last. It is temporary. And it does not have a strong ground.

FA: How do you see the future of the Baltic countries if they stay in the EU and if the EU doesn’t change?

Rolandas Paksas: I’m MEP for the second time. Seven years ago, for ideas such as the ones shared by the members of the ADDE, I saw 70 to 90 votes in the parliament. Nowadays, we can reach 250, sometimes 300, so basically the half of the parliament. Such is the situation in Lithuania and the Baltic states. People’s ideas have changed a lot. People in Lithuania now fight for their nation, their culture, their language, and for the Lithuanian tradition. They do not want to be part of an other union destroying our country. We were in such a union once, it was called the Soviet Union. So no more of that, no more…

FA: Do you think the Baltic countries should join or at least be strong partners of the V4 to avoid such evolution?

Rolandas Paksas: I am absolutely in favor of any stronger cooperation. But our establishment is not ready for that.

FA: For what reason?

Rolandas Paksas: There are several reasons. For one, it’s money. For another, it can be their position, their career… Our establishment is not ready for that.

FA: But you do think it is Lithuania’s national interest to cooperate strongly with the V4?

Rolandas Paksas: Absolutely. And I think the establishment will change within a couple of years…

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“This year, the organizers of the March of Independence, which commemorates the independence regained by Poland after November 11, 1918, against Germany and Bolshevik Russia, invite the Europeans to join them in Warsaw to assert their patriotism and protest against the “Islamization of the continent” (Video seen by clicking here or the image above).

On 11 November 1918, Poland reclaimed its independence after 123 years of occupation. Every years on the 11th of November, hundreds of thousand of Polish patriots celebrate their Independence Day. This year we are dedicating our independence to all of Europe. Now is the time when patriots of our whole continent must unite and fight together. We must defend our nations, traditions and culture. We must say no to multiculturalism and the dangerous experiments being conducted on the peoples of Europe. We see what radical Islam really stands for. Corrupt politicians and the establishment media are trying to make us believe that Europe must accept millions of immigrants. It is simply impossible to accept such numbers of people who do not understand or respect our cultures or obey our laws, and there are many terrorists among them. This is an invasion.

...join us in Warsaw on the 11th of November for the largest patriotic march in Europe.We invite you to the demonstration of freedom in Europe for the people of Europe. We are waiting for you. Tomorrow does belong to us.

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“They are both essentially neo-liberal candidates, who will do nothing to impede imperial expansion” - Hedges, 7 Nov 2016:

“Trump is a Public Relations disaster for The Unites States” - and that’s part of why the establishment is against him - “but the establishment is so hated that when they trotted out Mitt Romney to attack him, people just laughed: it’s the Romney’s, the Clinton’s, the Obama’s - it’s the establishment that people are turning against which is why Hillary Clinton is having such a difficult time competing against such an imbecilic and indisciplined and impulsive and frankly ignorant candidate.”

Hillary’s camp has been able to manipulate the electoral process all the while. With that, she’s had the press on her side, including to the point of pressuring the FBI to shut down the belated email investigations.

The New Observer had previously run stories (such as this and this) more critical of Trump’s candidacy.

Such critical distance from support of (((Trump’s candidacy))) would be more in line with the position here. However, the truth is that both candidates suck from an ethno-nationalist perspective - that means that Hillary sucks too.

While it is likely that TNO is being maneuvered into a position of controlled opposition regarding the election, they have reason to believe that they are bucking the trend of other “newspaper” endorsements -

Whether it is bucking the system or being co-opted successfully as controlled opposition in regard to the election 2016, let’s give a hearing to TNO’s argument now, having drifted toward endorsement of Trump though it has.

- I present the article in full with the compensation of including their fund raising pitch at the end -

TNO, “Crooked Hillary’s Crimes: A Partial List”, 6 Nov 2016:

Hillary Clinton has now committed far more legal misdemeanors than even impeached President Richard Nixon, and would, under normal circumstances, be barred from running for office.

The controlled media, however, continues to protect and promote Clinton because they hate Donald Trump so much, and because they are as corrupt as she is.

The recent announcement by the FBI that emails linked to Clinton’s illegal email server had been found on disgraced former congressman Anthony Weiner’s laptop computer, showed once again that Clinton had clearly breached the law in this regard.

At the same time, the string of WikiLeaks revelations from the Clinton Foundation have shown without question that the Clinton-controlled State Department engaged in blatant “pay-for-play profiteering” and arms deals with all manner of states and companies.

The WikiLeaks-Podesta email revelations show that Clinton and her team are utterly ruthless and prepared to engage in the most corrupt, underhanded, and nasty manner.

Apart from smearing Latinos as “needy,” the emails reveal that the Clinton team think that Catholics are “stuck in medieval times” and show that Clinton aides bartered with plutocrats for Secretary of State Clinton’s face time on the basis of cash donations.

As revealed in the anti-corruption website’s video tapes, Clinton’s staff have bragged on film of provoking violence at Trump rallies and bringing in voters by bus to cast illegal ballots.

In addition, a Project Veritas Action investigator caught Molly Barker, the Director of Marketing for Hillary Clinton’s national campaign, knowingly breaking campaign finance law by accepting a straw donation from a foreign national. Contributions from foreign nationals are illegal under federal election law, and straw donations (contributions made in the name of another person) are also illegal.

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The Himalayan Times, ‘Fact check: Greatest hits of a fact-challenged presidential campaign’, 05 Nov 2016:

WASHINGTON: At times it has seemed as though this presidential campaign was occurring in some alternate universe. Up is down, no means yes, day is night.

Donald Trump’s tweets, speeches, interviews, debate statements, news conferences and off-the-cuff remarks — that is, pretty much every utterance made during his waking hours — have been a source of hyperbole at hyper-speed. His misstatements have been so ubiquitous that Hillary Clinton’s slippery words often slithered right on by unnoticed.

Trump made pernicious use of fictional numbers, concocted certain events and both contradicted and mispresented his earlier self.

Clinton took actual facts and went beyond them, promising more than she can deliver, cherry-picking numbers and otherwise standing for the lawyerly Washington tradition of paying partial heed to reality while bending it to her advantage. Cautious by nature, she was most inclined to stretch facts to their snapping point when on the defensive about her email practices, which was often. Clinton’s defensive position, in essence: The dog ate my homework.

With Election Day finally, nearly upon us, some lowlights from both candidates:

For Trump, day is night

On Clinton’s approach to borders: “She wants to let people just pour in. You could have 650 million people pour in and we do nothing about it. Think of it. That’s what could happen.”

The facts: For this to happen, every other country in the Americas, from Mexico south to Chile’s southern tip, and a chunk of Canada would have to empty its entire population into the US.

But wait, there’s more.

Trump said that under Clinton, this could happen “in one week.”

This was no a slip of the tongue — at several events he’s spoken of 600 million coming in under Clinton; at another, 650 million. This doesn’t faintly resemble anything Clinton has proposed for the US (population 325 million).

Trump is riffing off of a leaked Clinton speech to bankers in which she spoke of her dream of a “hemispheric common market, with open trade and open borders.” The remarks in context suggested an interest in free commerce, not necessarily the free movement of people. But no one is talking about packing whole populations from other Western Hemisphere countries into the US like sardines.

Numbers are always pliable in the political arena; for Trump they are often whatever he wants them to be. He routinely overstates the US trade deficit by hundreds of billions of dollars, no matter how many times he’s called on it.

On the battle of Mosul, Iraq, and other operations against Islamic State militants: “Whatever happened to the element of surprise?”

The facts: Many generals agree with Trump that it is folly to tell ISIL that it is about to be attacked. But those are armchair generals. Real ones tend to see the value in pre-announcing a major offensive.

In the case of Mosul, signaling an assault in advance was a way for Iraqi forces to warn civilians in the city and to encourage a resistance movement to weaken ISIL before the battle began. Moreover, any element of surprise had been long lost; preparations for the battle began more than a year ago, with the US part in it under close scrutiny by Congress.

More broadly, Trump’s theory that secrecy should surround all such operations reflects a lack of understanding of how this battle against ISIL has developed over the past two years, as well as certain obligations to keep Congress informed. Basic decisions like when to assault Mosul are left to the Iraqi government, because it is the Iraqis who will have to govern the place when the fighting is done.

The US wants the Iraqis to own the Mosul problem – both militarily and politically — so they don’t repeat the mistakes that allowed ISIL to capture the city in the first place.

Mosul was the obvious last major target of an Iraqi counteroffensive against ISIL, whose ability to defend the city had been undermined by months of US airstrikes against its leaders and financial and military resources. Surprise was not an option.

When Clinton accused him of calling climate change a hoax invented by the Chinese: “I did not. I did not.”

When asked about telling people on Twitter to check out a sex tape: “It wasn’t ‘check out a sex tape.’”

The facts: On these and other occasions, Trump has blithely denied making statements he plainly made — even though he was caught on tape making them.

In a 2012 tweet, he wrote: “The concept of global warming was created by and for the Chinese in order to make US manufacturing non-competitive.” He later claimed he was kidding, but he’s also repeated the claim that climate change is a hoax, and one that benefits China. In 2014: “Snowing in Texas and Louisiana, record setting freezing temperatures throughout the country and beyond. Global warming is an expensive hoax!”

During this campaign, he also tweeted “check out sex tape and past” of former 1996 Miss Universe Alicia Machado, whom Clinton discussed in a presidential debate as an example of Trump’s derogatory comments about women.

Machado, a Clinton supporter, criticised Trump for body-shaming her by calling her “Miss Piggy” when she gained weight. Was there a sex tape? In a manner, yes. Machado was filmed in a 2005 Spanish-language reality show in bed with a man; no nudity is seen but she said they were having sex in the footage.

Trump: “I was against the war in Iraq, because I said it’s gonna totally destabilise the Middle East. … I was opposed to war from the beginning. … “I would not have had our troops in Iraq.”

The facts: Trump publicly supported the war before it started and praised its early progress. He’s insisted otherwise uncountable times, despite the record.

It’s true he wasn’t a cheerleader for the March 2003 invasion. For example, he said a few months before the war that the economy and North Korea were bigger problems. But that’s hardly opposition. In September 2002, he told Howard Stern on the radio, when asked if he would back an invasion, “Yeah, I guess so.” Days after the invasion, he said it “looks like a tremendous success from a military standpoint.”

Moreover, Trump offered support for a hypothetical invasion of Iraq in his 2000 book, suggesting he would favor a pre-emptive strike if Iraq were viewed as a threat to national security.

Trump did turn against the long-running war before many in Washington did. But that does not show the foresight he claimed when campaigning against Republican primary rivals who backed the invasion and when campaigning against Clinton, who voted in the Senate for the war. He was not against it when the decisions were being made about whether to start it.

Trump: “I watched when the World Trade Centre came tumbling down. And I watched in Jersey City, New Jersey, where thousands and thousands of people were cheering as that building was coming down. Thousands of people were cheering. … It was on television. I saw it.”

The facts: This early head-scratcher, from November 2015, helped set a pattern of tall tales that would continue through the campaign. It also fed into one of the signature insults of a campaign full of them — when Trump appeared to mock the disabilities of a New York Times reporter whose recollections from New Jersey after the 9/11 attacks did not support his own.

No video or other proof of large-scale celebrations of the falling towers by Muslims in New Jersey ever emerged.

Serge Kovaleski of the Times, who was working for The Washington Post in 2001, reported in the week after 9/11 that authorities in New Jersey detained and questioned “a number of people who were allegedly seen celebrating the attacks.”

Kovaleski has a congenital condition that restricts joint movement. In a speech, Trump went after the “the poor guy, you oughta see this guy” — making jerking gestures and taking a mocking tone.

Trump later denied he was imitating Kovaleski and further claimed “I have no idea” who he is and didn’t know of his condition. But Kovaleski said he had met Trump repeatedly, in face-to-face face interviews and at news conferences, and “Donald and I were on a first-name basis for years.”

On why he continued to raise questions about Barack Obama’s country of birth even after the president produced his birth certificate in 2011: “Nobody was pressing it, nobody was caring much about it.”

The facts: Trump himself continued to press false theories about Obama’s birthplace after they were debunked. His claim that the matter faded when the birth certificate came out belies his efforts to keep the myth alive.

“Was it a birth certificate?” he asked in a 2012 interview. “He was perhaps born in Kenya. Very simple, OK?” Trump said in 2014. “Who knows about Obama?” Trump asked in January 2016.

Clinton: The dog ate my homework

“For those of you who are concerned about my using personal email, I understand. And as I’ve said, I’m not making excuses. I’ve said it was a mistake and I regret it.”

The facts: She has made a variety of excuses on the way to a grudging acknowledgment that her use of a personal server and email for State Department business was wrong.

She’s said she used personal email because she wanted the simplicity of a single digital device, although it turned out she carried several devices. She said her email practices were “approved” when they were not — they merely had not been expressly prohibited at the time for the secretary of state.

She said she didn’t understand that material marked with a “c” that passed through her personal communications system meant it was confidential. She said other secretaries of state did it first. That’s partly true, but in a limited way and not with their own servers. She said she never passed on classified material in her system. The FBI found she passed on three email chains with information that had classified markings in the body of the emails; the State Department contended two of those chains held unclassified material.

On the Trans-Pacific Partnership: “I did say I hoped it would be a good deal.”

The facts: Clinton heartily supported the Pacific trade deal in speeches around the world as secretary of state; she did not merely hope it would turn out well. Clinton declared in Australia in 2012, “This TPP sets the gold standard in trade agreements to open free, transparent, fair trade, the kind of environment that has the rule of law and a level playing field.” Similar speeches elsewhere affirmed her belief that the deal, still under negotiation, was “groundbreaking,” ”exciting” and “embodied” 21st century standards.

That position became awkward if not untenable in her Democratic primary race against Bernie Sanders, a foe of the deal, and she turned against it. Her less-than-detailed explanation: The deal as finally negotiated did not measure up to her standards for protecting US wages, jobs and national security. Yet the final deal contains some of the strongest labor protections of any US trade agreement.

The subject became Exhibit A in the case made by critics that she lets political currents, instead of personal conviction, guide her.

A hacked email from Clinton adviser Joel Benenson may have inadvertently lent weight to that suspicion. “Do we have any sense from her what she believes or wants her core message to be?” he asked. “Sanders has simplicity and focus.”

Clinton: “I don’t add a penny to the national debt.”

The facts: Not true, according to the nonpartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget. It estimates her increased spending in areas such as infrastructure, more financial aid for college and early childhood education, would increase the national debt by $200 billion over 10 years. That is far less than their estimate for Trump, who they predict would add $5.3 trillion over 10 years. But it’s plenty more than a penny.

One for the road

Trump to Clinton: “You’ve been fighting ISIS your entire adult life.”

The facts: The Islamic State group did not exist for almost all of Clinton’s adult life. She’s 69. ISIL is 4.

The Israel Advisory Committee to Donald J. Trump has issued a statement describing the positions of the GOP presidential candidate, and expressing their gratitude on Wednesday to those who helped over the past few months.

The team began with the “unbreakable bond between the United States and Israel,” which it said is “based upon shared values of democracy, freedom of speech, respect for minorities, cherishing life, and the opportunity for all citizens to pursue their dreams.”

Point two, said the team, is that “Israel is the state of the Jewish people, who have lived in that land for 3,500 years. The State of Israel was founded with courage and determination by great men and women against enormous odds and is an inspiration to people everywhere who value freedom and human dignity.”

Remember, these are campaign points of the GOP presidential candidate for the United States. The election is next Tuesday.

Point three: “Israel is a staunch ally of the U.S. and a key partner in the global war against Islamic jihadism. Military cooperation and coordination between Israel and the U.S. must continue to grow.

It goes on. And on. Frankly, it sounds a lot like a real ally is supposed to sound.

Another promise included in the platform is the pledge by Trump to “ensure that Israel receives maximum military, strategic and tactical cooperation from the United States, and the MOU will not limit the support that we give. Further, Congress will not be limited to give support greater than that provided by the MOU if it chooses to do so…”

Of special interest was the was the pledge to oppose efforts to delegitimize Israel, impose discriminatory double standards against Israel, or to impose special labeling requirements on Israeli products or boycotts on Israeli goods.”

In addition, Trump pledged that if he is elected, his administration “will ask the Justice Department to investigate coordinated attempts on college campuses to intimidate students who support Israel.”

But the real kicker came in the following related list of points:

“A two-state solution between Israel and the Palestinians appears impossible as long as the Palestinians are unwilling to renounce violence against Israel or recognize Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state. Additionally, the Palestinians are divided between PA rule in the West Bank and Hamas rule in Gaza so there is not a united Palestinian people who could control a second state. Hamas is a US-designated terrorist organization that actively seeks Israel’s destruction. We will seek to assist the Israelis and the Palestinians in reaching a comprehensive and lasting peace, to be freely and fairly negotiated between those living in the region.

“The Palestinian leadership, including the PA, has undermined any chance for peace with Israel by raising generations of Palestinian children on an educational program of hatred of Israel and Jews. The larger Palestinian society is regularly taught such hatred on Palestinian television, in the Palestinian press, in entertainment media, and in political and religious communications. The two major Palestinian political parties — Hamas and Fatah — regularly promote anti-Semitism and jihad.

“The U.S. cannot support the creation of a new state where terrorism is financially incentivized, terrorists are celebrated by political parties and government institutions, and the corrupt diversion of foreign aid is rampant. The U.S. should not support the creation of a state that forbids the presence of Christian or Jewish citizens, or that discriminates against people on the basis of religion.

“The U.S. should support direct negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians without preconditions, and will oppose all Palestinian, European and other efforts to bypass direct negotiations between parties in favor of an imposed settlement. Any solutions imposed on Israel by outside parties including by the United Nations Security Council, should be opposed. We support Israel’s right and obligation to defend itself against terror attacks upon its people and against alternative forms of warfare being waged upon it legally, economically, culturally, and otherwise.

“Israel’s maintenance of defensible borders that preserve peace and promote stability in the region is a necessity. Pressure should not be put on Israel to withdraw to borders that make attacks and conflict more likely.

“The U.S. will recognize Jerusalem as the eternal and indivisible capital of the Jewish state and Mr. Trump’s Administration will move the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem.

One week ago, Trump told American voters in Israel at a video rally outside the walls of the Old City of Jerusalem, “My administration will stand side by side with the Jewish people and Israel’s leaders to continue strengthening the bridges that connect not only Jewish Americans and Israelis but also all Americans and Israelis. Together, we will stand up to enemies like Iran bent on destroying Israel and her people. Together, we will make America and Israel safe again.”
Hana Levi Julian

About the Author: Hana Levi Julian is a Middle East news analyst with a degree in Mass Communication and Journalism from Southern Connecticut State University. A past columnist with The Jewish Press and senior editor at Arutz 7, Ms. Julian has written for Babble.com, Chabad.org and other media outlets, in addition to her years working in broadcast journalism.

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TNO, “Suit against US/Israel Aid Advances”, 3 Nov 2016

The potentially precedent-setting lawsuit against the U.S. Government for its blatantly illegal aid to Israel has advanced another step forward, the Institute for Research: Middle Eastern Policy (IRmep) has announced.

A federal court judge has granted a motion amending the original lawsuit to include additional evidence of the defendant’s—the U.S. Government’s—unlawful activities.

       
Acting Israeli National Security Adviser Jacob Nagel (l) and U.S. Undersecretary of State Tom Shannon—both wearing U.S.-Israeli flag pins—during the Sept. 14 signing of the Memorandum of Understanding giving Israel $38 billion in U.S. military aid over a 10-year period. Photo credit IRmep.

According to a statement issued by IRmep, on November 1, 2016, federal judge Tanya Chutkan granted a motion to amend their August lawsuit that seeks to block U.S. foreign aid to Israel.

The IRmep statement read:

Our amended complaint adds the following items:

Executive Order 13526 prohibits classifying information as “secret” in order to engage in unlawful activities, in this case gagging information about Israel’s nuclear weapons program in order to provide massive foreign aid to Israel.

Timing of aid disbursement. Over the past decade Congress has included illegal [Memorandums of Understanding] MOU aid to Israel in December omnibus spending bills. The judge must issue an injunction before then. She must also block funding if additional bills seeking to provide aid beyond MOU amounts become law.

Former Nuclear Regulatory Commission Victor Gilinsky confirmed, in an analysis mentioning this lawsuit, that intelligence officials are near unanimous that the 1979 “Vela incident” was an Israeli nuclear weapons test.

How files similar to those sought by IRmep on Israel’s nuclear weapons are “disappearing” from UK national archives.

Former Secretary of State Colin Powell’s leaked confirmation that Israel had 200 nuclear weapons.

The mere fact that the lawsuit—based on a 1976 U.S. law which forbids aid to any nuclear-armed state which has not signed the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT)—is still alive, is an indication that the Jewish lobby has so far been unable to suppress it.

Israel is not a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, but is a known nuclear power and recipient of U.S. aid. Most recently, the Jewish lobby-controlled U.S. government signed a new $3.8 billion per year “aid” deal to Israel, in open violation of the 1976 law once again.

The controlled media has, to no one’s surprise, almost completely suppressed news of the suit, and the granting of the amended motion.

       
Above: How Jewish lobby works: Anti-Defamation League chief Jonathan Greenblatt, right, head of a so-called “civil rights” organization, was one of the enthusiastic attendees at the signing of the $38 billion handover to the Jews-only state of Israel. The Jewish state, which Greenblatt and the ADL of course support, has racially-based immigration and citizenship policies, and builds walls to keep out non-Jews—all policies which Greenblatt and Jewish lobby opposes in America and all European nations.