Trâm

[Triển]

Populists Hannity and Trump in 2018: On Fox News, Democrat Joe Biden is portrayed as a senile puppet in the hands of radical socialists, and millions of viewers are served these bizarre distortions every day. Foto: Jim Watson / AFP / Getty Images



American television wasn't always as mercilessly biased as it is today. Until well into the 1980s, a fairness doctrine reigned supreme, one that required the major broadcasters to present controversial political issues from both sides. The regulation was highly controversial, with many conservatives viewing it as an attack on freedom of expression. But the Supreme Court quashed all attempts to overturn it.

It was only under pressure from President Ronald Reagan that the regulation was eliminated. When asked whether the end of the fairness clause was the cardinal sin of American politics, Hundt just shrugs his shoulders. He says that as a cable-only channel, the fairness doctrine anyway didn’t apply to Fox News. Besides, Hundt says, when he looks at the Supreme Court today, he doesn’t believe they would allow a thing like that to happen anyway.

There’s much to suggest that Hundt is right. On Monday, the Senate confirmed Amy Coney Barrett as the third Trump-nominated justice on the Supreme Court. With that move, conservatives now dominate the court. No other U.S. president has transformed the judiciary as profoundly as Trump has in such a short period of time, and his appointees will continue to shape the country for decades to come. Presidents come and go, but federal judges are appointed for life, which gives them power and independence. It was the Supreme Court that heralded the end of racial segregation in schools, the right to abortion and the right to marriage for gays and lesbians -- not Congress or the White House.

That’s why Trump has put so much effort into appointing new judges and justices. Since the start of his term, he has appointed a total of 220 federal judges, 53 of whom sit on the country’s influential appellate courts, which are only one level below the Supreme Court.



One of those judges is Barbara Lagoa. The 52-year-old, pious Catholic, is the daughter of Cubans who fled from Fidel Castro’s socialist regime. Lagoa is a follower of the legal philosophy of constitutional "originalism,” which holds that judges must interpret the constitution in the strictest sense of the word and may, if necessary, orient their interpretations based on the intentions of the Founding Fathers of the U.S.

Lagoa has been part of the Atlanta-based Federal Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit for a year now, where she is adjudicating fully in the Trump spirit. If the president were to get re-elected despite all the adversity he currently faces, it could in part be due to a ruling she played a role in.

Two years ago, the citizens of Florida voted in a referendum to restore the right to vote for convicted criminals after they have served their sentences. It was a far-reaching decision, in part because there are 1.4 million former prisoners in the state, including many blacks who tend to favor the Democrats. Another reason is that presidential elections in Florida have always been extremely close and the state could again be the deciding factor between victory and defeat on Election Day on Nov. 3.

Democrats were outraged when the Republicans in the Florida state legislature responded by passing a law that only allows former inmates to vote again after they have paid all their fees and fines. According to civil rights groups, the law serves the sole purpose of keeping those 774,000 convicted criminals who lack the money to pay their debts to the authorities off the voting rolls. The law eventually landed at the Court of Appeals in Atlanta, where it was upheld by Lagoa and her colleagues - not a huge surprise, given that five of the six judges who moved to affirm the law owed their posts to Trump.

The Democrats and many experts view Trump’s zealousness in appointing judges as an attempt to undermine the will of the majority. "The Supreme Court is too powerful," says Samuel Moyn, a professor at Yale University. He says the U.S. faces a potential culture war if the court overturns the right to abortion. He argues that political decisions need to be made again where they belong: in Congress. Moyn has proposed that steps be taken to curb the court’s influence, for instance by changing the law so that the court could only overturn laws with a qualified majority of six or seven of the nine justices’ votes, which would essentially give the liberal judges veto power over rulings.


President Trump, judge Barrett and their spouses: None of his predecessors transformed the American judicial system as fundamentally in such a short time. Foto: Brendan Smialowski / AFP

It would, of course, be healthier for American democracy if, with the possible end of Trump’s presidency, Republicans and Democrats in the House and Senate could relearn how to work together and compromise as they did for decades.

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There are even a few Republicans who view the Trump era as one they would like to put behind them. Ben Sasse, a Republican Senator representing Nebraska, openly vented his anger over the president a few days ago in a conference call with supporters and staff, saying that Trump "spends like a drunk sailor.” The Senator railed that it is unforgivable that Trump "kisses dictators’ butts” around the world.

But it’s more likely that Sasse will remain a lone voice in a party whose moral foundation has almost completely crumbled. In the past four years, few Senators have shown the courage to stand up to Trump, with the vast majority simply looking the other way when it became apparent that Trump had blackmailed the Ukrainian government in an effort to force them to deliver dirt on his challenger, Joe Biden. They remained silent when the president publicly stated that he had more faith in Russian President Vladimir Putin than in the U.S. intelligence services. Nor was there any outrage when Trump disparaged his government’s pandemic experts as "idiots” a few days ago.

The Trump presidency is the product of the complete disintegration of the substance of the Republican Party, a process that began decades ago. The party suffers from the lack of a unifying ideological bond. The 80 million or so Evangelical Christians who form the core of the voter base have little in common with Wall Street bankers, who by no means consider sex before marriage to be a sin, but want to pay as few taxes as possible on their annual bonuses.


Trump supporters in Arizona Foto: Ariana Drehsler / AFP


It was Newt Gingrich who turned what was then a rather well-behaved party into a populist movement at the end of the 1990s. The movement stirred up sentiment against a purportedly corrupt system in Washington and exploited the party’s ideological void. It led the Republicans in 1994 to win their first majority in Congress in over 40 years. With Trump’s election, Gingrich’s revolution came full circle.

Under Trump’s leadership, there are Republicans running for Congress who openly support the QAnon movement, which promotes an abstruse conspiracy theory that the Democrats are part of a satanic criminal ring that kidnaps children in order to extract a rejuvenating drug from their blood.

Trump is the logical consequence of the racism and hatred that has become the essence of the Republicans over the past three decades, former strategist and campaign consultant Stuart Stevens writes in his recent book, "It Was All A Lie,” a bitter and angry reckoning with his own party. "Trump isn’t an aberration of the Republican Party,” argues Stevens, who led Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign. "He is the Republican Party in a purified form.”

And whoever succeeds Trump in the party won’t be able to afford to alienate the voters Trump has lured with his brash language. "The Republican Party will be taken over by whoever knows how to take up the Trump rebellion and can turn it in a productive direction," says Peter Rough of the conservative Hudson Institute.

There’s just one problem: Who could that person be? Donald Trump Jr. undoubtedly has the trust of the most loyal Trump fans. After the cheering of his fans died down at the campaign rally in Pennsylvania on Tuesday, Trump Jr. shouted: "Make liberals cry again,” an allusion to his father's campaign slogan "Make America Great Again.”

But if Donald Trump loses his re-election bid, the Trump family myth will be shattered. "The president will be seen as someone who failed to deliver on his core promise: To always be on the side of victory,” says Rob Stutzman, a Republican strategist who once served as an adviser to California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger. "Even Trump fans will say: 'OK, that was it,’ and they’ll start looking for someone else.”

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Someone like Nikki Haley, who began her career as the governor of South Carolina and then served as Trump’s ambassador to the United Nations. She quit in late 2018, but unlike former National Security Adviser John Bolton or ex-Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, she avoided a public break with the president. On the contrary, at the Republican National Convention in August, she spoke as one of the few representatives of the old party establishment and called for the president’s re-election.

It is, of course, possible to have doubts about the sincerity of her words given that she, too, has been critical of Trump’s character. But with her speech, she secured the sympathy of those Trump supporters who will be looking for a new political home if the president is defeated. There are no doubts within the party that Haley has her sights set on becoming the first woman in the White House. And she has already proven that she has the agility necessary for the job.

But does she have the power to lead the Republicans back to the path of reason? It’s not only fans of the potential ex-president that any successor would have to keep happy. A successor would also need the support of Fox News. And the station, which often acts as Trump’s personal propaganda channel, has no interest in politicians who allow themselves to get muddled in the boring and tedious business of political compromise. Fox News’ aim is to sow hatred between Americans, says Blair Levin, who was in charge of media policy during Bill Clinton’s tenure and now works for the Brookings Institution in Washington. "And American society offers fertile ground for that hatred.”


Republicans Nikki Haley and Trump in 2018: There are no doubts within the party that Haley has her sights set on becoming the first woman in the White House. Foto: Jonathan Ernst / REUTERS


It appears some kind of evil curse has gripped America. There’s little that could be less helpful for the country right now than for the partisan blockading to continue. Over 12 million people are officially unemployed in the U.S., thousands of families don’t earn enough to put food on the table for their children in the evening. And Congress? It’s not even capable of deciding on an extension of a COVID-19 relief package that cushioned the worst effects of the pandemic until the autumn.

That failure by politicians is making life difficult for people like Jasmine Rognrud. The 26-year-old lives together with her female partner and their cat in a small apartment in Minneapolis. At the moment, she’s experiencing just how ruthless American capitalism can be. Until recently, she worked for a startup. The company didn’t pay a lavish salary, but it did promise a relaxed team atmosphere and the opportunity to be given new responsibilities quickly.

Then the pandemic struck. As sales plummeted, Rognrud’s company began laying people off. She was able to keep her job, but only by accepting a 30-percent salary cut. Still, Rognrud’s boss argued, at least she would be able to keep her health insurance. She agreed, but also soon realized that the salary was no longer enough to cover her bills.

Since then, Rognrud has found a new job, but one in which she has to cover her health insurance out of pocket for $300 a month. She’ll soon celebrate her 27th birthday, and then the cost will go up to $400. With money running low, she’s been forced to stop her treatment for an eating disorder. It’s too expensive. Rognrud says she doesn’t want to complain and that she has co-workers who are worried about losing their apartments.

Joe Biden has pledged help for people like Rognrud. He intends to establish a minimum wage of $15 per hour and has announced the introduction of a public health insurance option that would provide inexpensive coverage for people with low incomes. But the Democrat will only be able to push all that through if his party also manages to win the Senate on Tuesday. And if Biden’s fellow Democrats don’t allow themselves to be intimidated by the toxic political atmosphere the president leaves behind.


Foto: Travis Dove / AFP

Will Trump just walk off the stage if he loses? Before he won the election in November 2016, Trump and friends had been considering launching their own television station. Many Democrats now fear he could revive that idea. In recent months, Trump has often complained bitterly that even Fox News has treated him unfairly. Of course, he wouldn’t have that kind of grief if he had his own station.

"Trump loses money with his hotels, and his golf courses aren’t profitable either," says former Clinton consultant Blair Levin. "But he does know how to make money in the entertainment business. So, the next logical step would be launching a station.”

That’s also what Hundt, the former head of the Federal Communications Commission, the U.S. media regulatory authority, believes. He says Trump has always been envious of Italian media tycoon Silvio Berlusconi, who got rich with television stations that subsequently helped catapult him to the position of prime minister. He says it drove Trump crazy that he didn't come up with the idea himself.

That’s why Hundt believes that after his term, Trump will go knocking on the doors of everyone he’s done favors for. In a first round, he could surely raise a billion dollars for a new station. The list of those he has helped is very, very long, Hundt says.


/* source: https://www.spiegel.de/international...3-4e4b726f7820

[ốc]

Trumphèo ăn vạ:

Trump's lawsuits are diversionary tactic with little legal basis, experts say
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/...ncounted-votes

With millions of votes waiting to be counted in the US presidential election, Donald Trump has effectively threatened to sue his way to re-election. The president and his campaign has promised to bring the election to the supreme court, sued to halt vote-counting in several battleground states and requested a recount in another.

But at this moment, there is no evidence the campaign’s legal challenges will have a bearing on the election result under the law. Instead, the concern is how litigation plays in the court of public opinion, where the suggestion of fraud in one battleground state could cast doubt on the whole election.

Vanita Gupta, president and CEO of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, said Americans should be confident their votes will be counted, but warned of Trump’s history of voting disinformation.

“The more desperate he may become, the more baseless allegations there are about the ways in which states count ballots, about our democratic process and his own authority over this process,” Gupta said.

Post-election litigation is normal. Lawsuits are always filed on election day and the days after in response to issues such as equipment malfunctions, printing errors and polls not opening on time.

Usually, they receive little attention. This year, they are under more intense scrutiny because the president has spent the year making frequent, baseless claims about election fraud.

Hy vọng là kỳ này có gian lận thiệt cho thằng chả bị quả báo ("được giải nghiệp"). The habitual cheater is finally cheated!

[Triển]

Hy vọng là kỳ này có gian lận thiệt cho thằng chả bị quả báo ("được giải nghiệp"). The habitual cheater is finally cheated!

Dà, thầy đã coi quẻ, đoán điềm, giải mông ... xí lộn giải mộng chưa?

[ốc]

Có coi bói tên:

TRUMP =

T.he
R.idiculously
U.gly
M.other
P.hucker

[Triển]

dẹp ..."động"

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'Worrying calls for violence' prompt Facebook to remove rapidly growing pro-Trump group

(Reuters) - Facebook Inc FB.O on Thursday said it had taken down a rapidly growing group where some supporters of U.S. President Donald Trump posted violent rhetoric and baseless claims that Democrats were stealing the election.

On Thursday afternoon, the “Stop the Steal” group, which called for “boots on the ground to protect the integrity of the vote,” was adding 1,000 new members every 10 seconds and had grown to 365,000 members in a single day.

“The group was organized around the delegitimization of the election process, and we saw worrying calls for violence from some members of the group,” a Facebook spokeswoman said in a statement.

She said the move was in line with the “exceptional measures” Facebook was taking during “this period of heightened tension.”

The group’s backers criticized the deletion, saying they were organizing peaceful protests, that they had been working hard to police the comments, and that Facebook had given then no warning. Chris Barron, a spokesman for the group, said their political opponents were also voicing concerns over the election being stolen and organizing for protests but did not face the same problems.

“If Facebook wants to become the arbiter of truth then they’ve got a lot of work to do,” Barron said. In any case, “the election is over, so there’s no election disinformation to be shared.”

A review of a small number of comments posted to the group ahead of its deletion found no direct calls for violence, but its organizing premise - that Republican votes are being “nullified” by Democrats - has no basis in fact. For months, Trump and Republican allies have been laying the groundwork to cast doubt on the integrity of the U.S. election in case the president lost his re-election bid.

As election returns show a brightening picture for Trump’s Democratic challenger, Joe Biden, and as U.S. broadcasters and other major media outlets continue to brush off Trump’s premature claims of victory, the president and his supporters have taken to social media to try to turn the narrative around, floating conspiratorial theories using the hashtag #StopTheSteal.

But social media companies have been signaling less patience for election-related disinformation and calls for violence. On Thursday, Snap Inc's SNAP.N Snapchat removed a video from Trump's account in which Biden said he has an extensive "voter fraud organization." Biden's statement came during an interview in which he was discussing his team fighting voter suppression efforts, and Snap determined that Trump's use out of context violated its policy against undermining the integrity of civic processes.

Trump campaign social media manager Ryann McEnany decried Snap’s action in a tweet, saying in all caps, “Why won’t they let the American people see this!?”

Twitter on Thursday suspended an account used by former Trump campaign manager Steve Bannon after he recorded a video in which he called for beheading FBI Director Christopher Wray as well as government infectious diseases expert Anthony Fauci for being disloyal to Trump. A Twitter spokesman cited the company policy against glorifying violence.

Twitter has also taken measures to curb the spread of misinformation as ballot counting continues. For instance, eight of the president’s 28 tweets since Election Day on Tuesday have been placed behind a warning label saying they contain disputed information.

But the takedowns and warnings are something the “Stop the Steal” group seems to have prepared for. Before Facebook deleted the group, organizers directed new members to an email sign-up page “in the event that social media censors this group.”

Members appeared to be dispersing either to smaller lookalike groups or to more obscure social media services.

Paul Barrett, deputy director of New York University’s Stern Center for Business and Human Rights, praised the group’s removal.

“The social media platforms can’t allow themselves to be used to foment anti-democratic and potentially violent activity,” Barrett said.

The deletion highlights the ongoing concern over Facebook’s groups, which typically work as forums for shared interests but which watchdog organizations and social media researchers have argued can harbor hyper-partisan misinformation.

“Facebook has been enabling and amplifying the infrastructure that’s now being used to attack our democratic process,” said Arisha Hatch, executive director of the Color of Change PAC, the political action committee of one of the nation’s largest online racial justice groups.

Facebook, which normally recommends groups to users that they may want to join, last week suspended these recommendations for political groups and new groups around the election.

The now-removed “Stop the Steal” group was run by the Trump action group Women for America First. The non-profit organized protests against COVID-19 restrictions and supported Trump during his impeachment hearing.

Reporting by Elizabeth Culliford in Birmingham, England and Raphael Satter in Washington; Additional reporting by Paresh Dave in Oakland, California; Katie Paul in Palo Alto, California, and Jack Stubbs in London; Editing by Chris Sanders, Lisa Shumaker and Cynthia Osterman


/* src.: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-u...-idUSKBN27L24G

[Triển]

"the fine print".

Tờ The Wall Street Journal viết vầy không biết giả hay thiệt.

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Trump Fundraising for Legal Challenges Would Also Pay Down Debt
By Julie Bykowicz

President Trump is racing to raise money for an “official election defense fund.” But the fine print on the solicitations tells a different story: Half -- or more -- of any contribution will be used to retire debt from his re-election campaign.

With Democratic nominee Joe Biden ahead in several battleground states as the vote count continues, the Trump campaign is filing lawsuits in at least four states, including Michigan and Pennsylvania.

Starting early Wednesday, the campaign and the Republican National Committee have been sending dozens of daily text messages and emails saying they need financial support to challenge voting procedures.

“We must PROTECT the Election!” says one campaign text Friday signed by Mr. Trump’s son Donald Trump Jr. “My father’s calling on YOU to help bolster our critical Election Defense Fund.”

Clicking through to the donation page, potential givers can review a disclaimer that 50% of any contribution will be used for general election campaign debt retirement and 50% for the campaign’s recount account.

Other Trump fundraising pitches in recent days ask for help to “protect the integrity of this election” but lead to a donation page for Mr. Trump’s “Make America Great Again” committee. The fine print on those solicitations says 60% of a contribution helps the campaign retire debt and 40% goes to the Republican National Committee.

The Trump campaign did not immediately respond to questions about the financing structure for the defense fund, and how much debt the campaign is facing.



Mr. Biden also is seeking new money for legal battles.

His legal fund solicitations don’t include language about debt retirement. But the first $142,000 of any contribution is earmarked for the Democratic National Committee, and the next $2,800 goes to Mr. Biden’s recount account, according to the fine print.

The Biden campaign did not respond to a request for comment.

The national party committees -- the RNC and DNC -- often play a prominent role in financing election legal proceedings.


/* src.: https://www.wsj.com/livecoverage/tru...E7ltxzuW4lIwai

[Đậu]

Joe 273, Trump 214 .

Nói chả phải khoe, chứ mình biết Trump thất cử từ hôm Thứ Tư, Ngày 4 Tháng Mười Một. Cái giờ giấc Trump tuyên bố chiến thắng, trong lúc việc kiểm phiếu đang tiến hành, cũng là lúc Trump tự làm mình thất bại vì sách có nói: "nói trước bước không tới." Tuyên bố hồ đồ sẽ bị hố.

Mình chả cần gieo quẻ gì sốt. Thế mới hày là nhời các cụ ngày xưa đúng hơn Kinh Dịch.

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Khoe thì khoe có sao đậu? Biết trước mà chưa nói tốt hơn là chưa biết mà đã tuyên bố từ đêm thứ ba (hội chứng "lỡ mạnh miệng" của Trâm đảng).

Thấy Trâm đảng gọi BIDEN là "Biggest Idiot Dems Ever Nominated" vậy mà còn thắng Trâm thì Trâm thuôc loại ngu cỡ nào? Nếu có gian lận trong bầu cử thì càng rõ ràng là Trâm quá ngu để cho người ta qua mặt.

Từ trưa tới giờ ngoài đường nghe bà con Mỹ ấn còi xe inh ỏi, nhạc mở oang oang, đám đông thấy nhau là reo mừng. Thiệt tình cứ tưởng Mỹ vừa mới vô địch World Cup 2020.

Well, these moments are brought to you by Trump (Totally Retarded, Utterly Malodorous Pooh).

(Hunter Biden kỳ này chắc hốt vô không biết bao nhiêu là triệu đô la từ Tàu.)