The recording of Donald Trump’s comments about women has created a firestorm. First, let’s listen to the recording itself that was caught on a ‘hot mic’, when the people being recorded did not know that their microphones were on, because it has to be heard to be believed. This 2005 recording was obtained by Washington Post reporter David Fahrenthold.
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The video below of two women who call themselves Trumpettes (and wear T-shirts to proudly prove it) is quite revealing of the widely differing perceptions between supporters and critics of Donald Trump that I wrote about earlier. They defend Donald Trump and say that what most observers consider a bad few weeks and debate performance are actually deceiving. They believe it is all part of a grand plan to lull Hillary Clinton into a false sense of security and that he is going to simply rip into her at the next debate.
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I have written before about how, for the blind, darkness is not the prison that sighted people imagine it to be. The sense of sight tends to overwhelm all the other senses but in its absence, they develop and use all their other senses in ways that enable them to navigate their way through the world incredibly well, usually without the need of assistance from sighted people.
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President Rodrigo Duterte of the Philippines is a foul-mouthed boor who has authorized a campaign of extra-judicial murders of those suspected of drug dealing that has resulted in an estimated 3,000 deaths. The US administration has raised concerns about the violations of human rights in the Philippines.
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To little surprise, there are now reports from sources within the Trump camp that say that the boss is upset with the praise that Mike Pence’s performance in Tuesday’s debate is getting. Apparently Trump can’t stand someone who even tells lies better than him.
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There has been a disturbing rise of a virulent strain of Hindu extremism in India, similar to the Muslim extremism we have seen in neighboring Pakistan and Bangladesh and to Buddhist intolerance in Sri Lanka. In India, one form that this has taken is attacking those who eat beef, which observant Hindus do not do due to the cow having been raised to almost sacred status.
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The idea that many of our perceptions of other people are shaped by our own biases and expectations is not new. What is quite extraordinary is how extreme this divergence is when it comes to Donald Trump. Where his critics see ignorance, his supporters see a big picture person who leaves the details to others. Where his critics see someone who cheats and stiffs other people and finagles his taxes, his supporters see a brilliant business mind. Where his critics see a petty, narcissistic, insecure person who lacks self-awareness and cannot acknowledge even the smallest mistake or fault, his supporters see a dominant and inerrant man, who is so sure of himself that he never needs to back down. Where his critics see a racist, misogynist, xenophobe, his supporters see someone who is not afraid of being ‘politically incorrect’. Where his critics see arrogance, his supporters see self-confidence. Where his critics see a lack of empathy, his supporters see a hardheaded realist.
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It has become a cliché that the real scandal in the US is not what is illegal but what is legal and this is amply demonstrated in the way that the real estate industry has obtained massive loopholes that benefit themselves and that Donald Trump has then exploited for his own benefit.
David Cay Johnston is a veteran reporter whose beats are economics and taxes. I have read a couple of his books and have linked to him frequently because he knows his stuff. As a bonus, he has also been following Trump’s career for several decades and this combination makes him the perfect person to explain what might be going on with Trump’s massive tax loss in 1995 that has been in the news this week.
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For those like me who expected a boring debate between the two running mates Tim Kaine and Mike Pence, each so low-key that wags called the event ‘The Battle of the Blands’, were surprised. It was quite lively though not very informative. The latter feature is not unexpected, since campaigns now put all their substantive positions on their websites and simply refer viewers to them and use the debates to paint broad-brush pictures of themselves and their opponents.
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