Garrison Keillor just concluded an in-depth investigation, which revealed that Donald Trump was not born in America. It is behind a paywall nut if you google, you can get it.
He writes:
I know, it seems outrageous, But it’s getting a lot of attention on some very respectable Web pages – which mainstream media won’t mention:
Donald Trump was not born in Queens,
He was born in the Philippines,
In a hotel in downtown Manila.
Where his hair turned bright vanilla
Due to vitamin deficiencies.
His mom and dad were Celanese
And left him with Franciscan nuns
At the age of fourteen months.
Adopted on the 3rd of June
By a real estate tycoon
Who took the little boy away
To a mansion in the U.S.A.
Bestowing on him great largesse
And naturalized him more or less.
The record of his nativity
Is kept under lock and key
With his tax returns, the MRIs
Showing what’s behind his eyes
Including, according to rumor,
A diverticulated tumor.
I hope it isn’t true, although
It comes from folks who ought to
know.
A week ago, a panhandler in Times Square sat holding a sign, “Give me a dollar or I’ll vote for Trump,” and people laughed and reached into their pockets. His bucket overflowed. He stuffed the bills into his jacket and other panhandlers looked at him with admiration. The man could’ve sold franchises and retired to Palm Beach.
The panhandler knows what every New Yorker knows, which is that the biggest con job since the Trojan horse is taking place in our midst. Millions of Americans are planning to cast their votes for a man who has lived his life contrary to all of their most cherished values. They are respectful, honest, generous, loyal, modest, church-going people with no Mafia connections and good credit records who try not to spout off about things they know nothing about.
Also from the same Keillor article: “The man is a fraud, a tax cheat, a compulsive liar, a clueless playboy, and his presidency would be an unmitigated disaster for the country. If you would make us the laughingstock of the world just to irk your liberal sister-in-law, you are someone who should not be allowed to come within 500 yards of an elementary school.”
Hillary is in no way similar to Trump, not even close. To vote third party is to help Trumpet get elected. Oh by the way, the Russian Greens are very mad at Jill Stein and view her as a sellout and phony. So I guess voting for Jill Stein is voting for the lesser evil who polls at 1% by one poll.
I think most of Trump’s votes outside of the white supremacists faction will be votes against Hillary and not for Trump. Every voter should watch HBO’s latest Last Week Tonight with John Oliver as he compares Trump’s scandals to Hillary’s. If you watch this segment, see if you can count Trump’s raisins at the end vs. Hillary’s.
Hint, for Trump, you are going to have to count really fast or make a wild guess.
I think you are wrong. He had the racist, ignorant ,and Republican vote all along. She is slipping because her base has gone to sleep like in 2010 and 2014. Had she not originally stonewalled the platform changes, not sucked up to Debbie after the DNC hack,not picked a right of center VP, not appointed a neo-liberal transition chief, not sucked up to the Establishment Republican Foreign policy and Economic policy team for endorsements, her numbers would not have dropped 18 points since the convention among young voters. He is not gaining she is losing the base.
Think again.
“Among those who choose Trump over Clinton in the head-to head question on voter preference, 55 percent say their choice is more a vote against Clinton than for Trump.”
http://www.people-press.org/2016/07/07/2-voter-general-election-preferences/
In this recent Pew Research Survey, 42 percent said they will vote for Trump. That means more than 23 percent of those who are voting for Trump are not voting for him but against Clinton. Imagine how many ignorant fools would be supporting Trump if he was running against another candidate without the alleged scandal baggage (that’s never resulted in a conviction no matter how many investigations the GOP has launched against her) Hillary drags around.
Loyd
So if Clinton wasn’t running the Democrat would beat Trump by 25 points. Biden probably by thirty and sanders maybe by forty points.
What a Terrible candidate Obama was he only beat Romney by 4 %
By your logic it should have been 29%
Sorry for thew sarcasm but I think you got my point. Those 23% were never voting for the Democrat no matter who he or she was.
I am not voting for Hillary, I am voting against Trump . But then again I haven’t voted for a Republican for any office since Jacob Javits last ran for Senate in NY in the early 1970’s
Joe, You changed the topic and twisted what I said. I never said anything about Obama beating Romney and Romney is not Donald Trump. The link to the evidence that I provided to the Pew Research Center reveals that 55 percent of the voters who plan to vote for Trump are not voting for him but voting against Hillary Clinton. If some of those voters voted for Romney, I’m sure they were voting for him and not Obama. For many voters, the reason behind their vote has changed. To get around voting for Trump, they are now saying the vote isn’t for him but against Hillary.
If you are saying the Republicans and Republican deplorables which many are. Are using Hillary as an excuse for their vote for a ______ idiot lying demagogue . Then we agree. But 23% of his voters would never under any circumstance vote for a Democrat . If that poll said 5 or 10% then we might have a debate.
Lloyd Lofthouse
Had to say this after a nights sleep “Romney is not Donald Trump “.
One has black hair the other orange hair . Other than that they are pretty much the same. Their policy would decimate far more than the 47% . My problems with Clinton pale in comparison to my problems with any of the Republican candidates. Keeping it to education Democrats bring a slow drip of destruction . Nothing slow as to what Republicans propose. It is like comparing a pick pocket to an ax murderer .
LOL
If I had a choice between a pick pocket and an ex murder, I’d go with the pick pocket and Trump is not a pick pocket.
I read Trump was born in South Africa.
Google the following website to read the article, also has a copy of a birth certificate.
http://trumpbirthers.blogspot.com
And yes again a great show by Oliver who puts Maher to shame.
This was published in the Washington Post Opinion page and the link is
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-biggest-con-job-since-the-trojan-horse/2016/09/21/a8354d9e-8023-11e6-8327-f141a7beb626_story.html?utm_term=.db0f7e4e64bf
Agree with everything but the description of the Trump voter. Yes their are some who have suffered economically and their vote is understandable. But xenophobia and racism are at the heart of the Trump campaign. Those working class voters who vote for him will get slaughtered along with all other members of the working class. A pattern that is over a half century old.
http://billmoyers.com/story/trumps-youngstown-problem-racism-campaign-2016/
http://www.alternet.org/right-wing/white-supremacy-and-trump-fever-toxic-combo-thats-killing-people-white-people
But Clinton’s appeal to Republicans lasted as long as Trump was seen by them as un- electable. In doing so she alienated the youth vote. They are not voting for Stein, most not voting for Johnson. They are sitting home along with a sizable portion of the minority vote (as Bernie said” poor people don’t vote” enough. ) Down 18 points in a month among young voters.
Getting me to vote for her is easy, too much to lose. What will she say to young voters tonight to get them to the polls.
I stayed at a homeless shelter recently where some of the poor people there talked incessantly about how great Trump is. That flabbergasted me. Most are on disability or social security and receive food stamps (SNAP), and Trump represents the people and the party that most want to get rid of those few remaining social programs for people in poverty, those who are disabled and seniors. These homeless people didn’t seem to understand that many of them would not be homeless today if we still had a safety net for more than just families with dependent kids.
I know this personally because, like them, I’m a single person and I don’t qualify for Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) either. That is the only remaining cash assistance program for poor people, but it is just for families with children (and temporary means there’s a 5 year lifetime limit).
Years ago, when I was between jobs and didn’t qualify for unemployment comp, the same private, faith-based, social service agency that is helping me now said I could have food from their pantry if I applied for public assistance. I did get welfare briefly and it was truly a safety net for me, because it enabled me to stay in my apartment until a few months later when I got a job (where I then worked for 14 years).
Today, the lunatic fringe often think they should protect billionaires. Some were economically successful themselves in the past and some believe that someday in the future they are going to be one of them, so they vote against their own best interests today. I did not argue with them about this because my background in psychology tells me that denying people their delusions is not the way to get through to them, but it was very frustrating for me since so much is at stake in the coming election.
“Today, the lunatic fringe often think they should protect billionaires.”
Except that it’s not the lunatic fringe – it’s the mainstream of both parties. Yes, a Trump presidency will be a disaster. But please don’t pretend that Hillary will be much better. Remember who it was who eliminated welfare in the first place.
Yes, both parties have been infiltrated and hijacked and a lot of people have been hoodwinked.
I know that Bill and Hillary are responsible for turning mainstream Democrats against their base and into the money grubbing GOP Lite party. I detest them for that, and for doing what Republicans could only dream of accomplishing before, including “welfare reform” and “education reform.” Similarly, the Kochs quashed any remnants of moderate Republicans and turned the GOP into fanatical Tea Partiers. So, yes, you are right. Both parties have been over-run by free market, me-first, anti-social, neoliberals and it really sucks.
I don’t pretend to support Hillary. I wanted Bernie. But It’s a choice of the lesser evil again, like the last presidential election, when I voted Green. This time though, I won’t risk handing over POTUS and SCOTUS to Trump. I’m hoping that becoming a grandma has softened Hillary.
Dienne
No pretending here not a good choice, but only one choice and then we fight on. Trump will finish what Reagan started.
Homeless Educator,
Please don’t take this as an endorsement of Trump, but it was Bill Clinton, with the explicit support of Hillary, who happily signed the legislation that made it impossible for you to receive public assistance.
Yes, Michael, I remember when that happened. I was furious about it then, and I’m enraged about it now, because I know that I would not be homeless today if Bill had not taken away that safety net.
To Homeless Educator:
I hope that you would seize an opportunity in an environment to cultivate other unfortunate that all human beings are given the same 24 hours each day for an average of 60 years with a brain to work with for 1 stomach, but with two eyes and two ears to understand the truth in reality.
Being an educator with psychology background, you could lead them to sink in their thought about greed, lust and ego in all human beings, but these are overwhelmed in all businessmen. As a result, outsourced jobs, trained H1b Tech contractors, and close down public education and manufactures, these create homelessness in all of you today.
Patriotism is shown in creating jobs, in protecting public education, in aiding all small LOCAL businesses, most of all in strengthening all industrial businesses, BUT NOT BAILING OUT all crooked Wall Street and Banking Businesses in investing in MUSLIM OIL INDUSTRIES world. Back2basic.
May,
I did discuss with several of the homeless people at the shelter the problems with big business and an oligarchy running our country. However, I supported Bernie Sanders and they let me know they were vehemently opposed to him. In fact, when they heard the words “democratic socialism,” the only thing that stuck for them was “socialism,” which they thought of as being the same as supporting Nazis or Communists. I could not get them to see the need for programs and safety nets to help destitute people like themselves, even though I described to them how that has played out in democratic socialist Scandinavian countries.
It didn’t help when Bernie talked about a revolution either, because those folks imagined physical violence, not a political uprising, and they also could not understand the need for class warfare. One Trump advocate repeatedly talked about how most people are moochers, but apparently, it was just fine that he was mooching off our religious community for his second bout of homelessness.
After I got tagged as a “bleeding heart liberal” several times, I realized that if becoming homeless had not changed the conservative world views many of those people held prior to their becoming indigent, then I was not going to succeed in reaching them. Many seemed certain they had just hit a glitch in life and, in no time, they would be back in the middle class (in some cases, the upper middle class), even though several people had been homeless before.
Virtually all of us went to the shelter because we are also friendless and familyless, so we have no one who would take us in or help us out. Few owned up to that though, because it’s a very painful reality that engenders hopelessness. So, many people made some rather impractical plans for enjoying a prosperous future. Those were some of the delusions I did not try to penetrate.
Hi Diane,
I found this interesting because I believe I met the same young man who was seeking money to not vote for trump. I stopped and talked to him for a while. He is quite the artist. Incredibly talented. I found out he was from my hometown of Columbus, Ohio. I could have been his high school principal. All the while I was speaking to him I was wondering what happened in his high school? Was his talent missed? He is obviously very smart. What would I have done if he were my student? I have a former student who I am still working with because he is quite troubled after dropping out two years ago. I have not given up on him yet. And won’t. You should go back and interview that young man. I believe he has an incredible story to tell and I suspect it will reveal a lot about education, missed talents, struggles and frustration up close and personal. I’d be happy to assist. He was quite a nice young man. This is his Facebook page.
Shepherd•of•the•dead•killustration
I always told my kids if they don’t agree with or respect the President they should respect the office.
I’m making an exception for Donald Trump. I don’t admire him and they should actively avoid behaving like him. I’ve never said that about any other US President in my lifetime, but it’s the truth
He has no redeeming qualities that I can see. If he wasn’t rich he’d be just your average con man. A little below average, really. Most the con men I have encountered don’t lie as much as he does.
If Donald Trump owned a chain of car washes in Missouri and was also a multimillionaire would he be a celebrity?
No. No one would know the first thing about him. His career, like real estate, hinged on location and you don’t earn location. Without his coming up in a media center with pricey real estate none of us would ever have heard of him.
i bet there are carwash chain owners who have earned more money.
It’s a bad situation, with the potential to turn into a perfect, epochal storm.
There are many dynamics at work: deep dissatisfaction with the system across political lines, hostility toward a political class that is clueless and tone deaf to the disaffection and fear people have. The interests of that political class, and the Overclass which provides it with such rich subsidies, have diverged from those of the populace at large. And the people know it, however imperfectly.
Another dynamic at work is a venal media elite, which has given Trump billions of dollars in free publicity, all because he’s shrewd enough to provide good TV and good copy. This has embedded and legitimized his nasty tropes in the political agora, making it even cruder and more prone to sadism than it was before.
There’s also the vicious misogyny that Hillary Clinton has been subject to for decades, a steady undercurrent of all the hate, fear, anger, ignorance, perverse fixations, etc. which make up contempt for women. Ugly, repulsive stuff.
But… and there is a “but.”
Hillary has many strengths, extensively covered on the pages of this blog and elsewhere, but she’s an extremely flawed and vulnerable candidate. We saw that in 2008, when she lost the Democratic nomination to a freshman US senator who, though eloquent and with a compelling (though carefully curated) personal story, had but a small fraction of her experience in and around government. We can speak about Obama’s election in 2008 as a lightning strike, and perhaps it was, but the fact remains that the Democratic nomination in 2008 was Hillary’s to lose, and she lost it. At the moment, it seems she could lose this election, too, something that would have been almost inconceivable six months ago.
Hillary is vulnerable and flawed because there really is something fundamentally less-than-honest about her. This has nothing to do with email servers and the Foundation (though those are problematic, too, if not for the reasons usually given), but rather with the bedrock truth that for the Democratic base, she’s just not who she claims to be.
She has not spent a lifetime fighting for the rights of women and children, but has instead sprinkled loose-change support for them amid a career mostly spent representing her family’s political interests and those of the Overclass. Sure, she was a staff attorney for the Children’s Defense Fund decades ago, but when it really mattered, when it came to the deep legislative and trade tectonics that reach into people’s lives, she helped sell women and children out, supporting things like NAFTA, the crime bill and the end of AFDC. Her support of those three acts alone did more to harm the interests of women, children and workers than anything else she might have done before or since, by orders of magnitude. Many people who customarily vote Democratic know this or intuit it, and it poisons the well of support among people who might otherwise push her over the top.
Hillary is also not the political performer that her husband is, which shouldn’t be a knock against her, because how many people come close to Bill in that regard? Nevertheless, you can feel the strain and effort of her trying to be “just folks,” when onstage – it can be cringe-inducing, and in some ways reminds me of Nixon’s stilted performances – and that contributes to many people’s sense that she’s always faking. That may be an unfair criticism, but it’s a reality she’s stuck with.
Still, I guess I’m probably going to feel compelled to vote for her in November.
No, that’s not quite right; I’m not going to vote for Hillary Clinton, but for trying to retain the vestiges of constitutional government and popular democracy that we still have. In a Clinton administration, we might still have some political space to fight for those, and fight against the betrayals that are inevitable if she’s elected. That political space might disappear under Trump, replaced by even uglier things.
Hillary probably deserves to lose, but that doesn’t mean my children and my students, or yours, deserve Trump.
Hillary should know this and step down in the best interests of the country to make sure Trump doesn’t win. But she won’t step down. Her hubris is to deeply entrenched. This is her last chance to gamble she will win the White House and she will blindly go forward ignoring the fact that if Trump wins she will share the blame with the corporate media for giving Trump so much free PR without challenging every lie he said.
Lloyd
Perhaps that should have happened a few months ago. But would Bernie or Biden or Warren be able to step into this with barely over a month to go.
I don’t think Hillary is going to step down so that will probably not be a problem for Bernie or Biden or Warren.
But what if one of Trump’s white supremacist supporters pops Hillary while she is campaigning. Then the DNC will have to step in and appoint her successor and that will throw Trump off balance because his entire campaign is based on a “corrupt Hillary” even though he is way more corrupt than she will every be.
And if Hillary was taken off the board and replaced, most of the voters who are opting out would be re-energized with reminders of Trump suggesting to his supports that they should shoot HRC. I think the undecideds would overwhelming swing away from Trump and toward the replacement. Trump would go down in history probably looking worse then Senator McCarthy from the 1950’s Red Scare movement. Trump would end up being ranked right down there in hell with all the other racists and want-to-be modern Caesars that ran for president: For instance, George Wallace.
If HRC becomes the victim of an assassin, she will go from “Corrupt Hillary” overnight and become a martyr. And we can almost insure that Turmp will say something stupid that will condemn him in the eyes of even some of his followers who will abandon his ship.
Michael Fiorillo
Very well stated.
Slate/Marketplace had a June article that digs into that “something fundamentally less-than-honest about her”. They focus on the welfare issue as illustrating how her ideals get subsumed by pragmatism.
“…people got the idea that Hillary Clinton bears substantial responsibility for welfare reform, because [she] herself boasted of it… in her 2003 memoir, Living History. She [was] ‘concerned with the five-year limit’… but on balance, ‘this was a historic opportunity to change a system oriented toward dependence to one that encouraged independence.'”
The article states HC had minimal input to welfare policy, but in 2003 “conventional wisdom overwhelmingly heralded welfare reform as a success… and she wanted to claim part of the credit for it” tho her support was grudging. “…her cynicism interacted with her idealism in the welfare debate. Clinton has always been torn between her commitment to the welfare of poor women and children—[cites]– and a belief, born of successive political traumas, that liberalism is an electoral liability…”
“…Both Clintons came of age during a time of almost unbroken Republican presidential rule. Both had worked on the George McGovern campaign in 1972 and watched their idealistic, progressive candidate lose every state except Massachusetts to Richard Nixon… ‘which made everybody realize that liberalism can be really politically dangerous,’ says Mark Schmitt… [The] whole arc forward into the 2000s was defined by that New Democrat instinct, that you needed to neutralize issues that were really harmful to liberals and Democrats.'”
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/moneybox/2016/06/hillary_clinton_s_role_in_welfare_reform.html
bethree5,
Hillary’s life and political partner campaigned on a platform of “ending welfare as we know it,” and it was not an empty promise, but one he followed through with. It was a feature, not a bug, of his presidency.
As a public figure, I really don’t care about Hillary’s purported “torments,” (though I do recoil at the disgusting misogyny she’s subjected to), but instead am concerned with her actions, which in this instance were highly destructive in human and economic terms. And no one should say there was no warning about what would happen afterward: Daniel Patrick Moynihan warned at the time about the consequences of ending AFDC, and Peter Edelman, Marion Wright Edelman’s husband, resigned from a high-level government position in protest. In fact, Marion Wright Edelman has referred to Hillary as a personal, but not political, friend. And rightly so: political friends like that leave you with tire marks on your face.
You are correct that the political climate of both Bill and Hillary’s professionally formative years were very different than now; it was a much harsher climate for Democrats nationally at that time. However, instead of developing strategies to maintain traditional Democratic policies, aka “fighting for women and children,” they placed their chips on undermining them, for their own political benefit. That’s what the Democratic Leadership Council, which Bill headed, was all about: triangulating away the interests of labor and African Americans, since the Clinton’s and DLC cynically assumed neither group had anywhere else to go. It’s why the meme of Hillary and Bill’s untrustworthiness has such staying power, even among Democrats and others who don’t suffer from Clinton Derangement Syndrome; it’s because it’s based on facts.
Hillary has apologized for using “superpredator” language in reference to the crime bill of the 1990’s, and perhaps she means it, but to my knowledge she has never expressed any regret for throwing poor women and children, and working people in general (since public assistance at the time provided an income floor that no one could fall below, unlike now), under the bus by eliminating AFDC. Those actions continue to speak louder than anything she might say twenty years later.
Michael Fiorello, on the whole I agree. To, me the Slate/Marketplace article does more than choose an issue that nutshells what makes HC the politician tick. It describes in a nutshell everything that is wrong and unworkable with the ‘New Democrats.’
One thing is certain: no self-respecting rhymer would try to get away with pairing “nuns” and “months.” That’s a slant-rhyme too far. Plenty of rhymes for “nuns,” but “months”? I’m afraid not. 🙂
I guess he was taking poetic license. Revoke his license!
To all educators, lawyers and indecisive voters:
People who love to express their opinions and complain about the 1%, please open the link and read this:
[start article]
Writer Charged With Insulting Islam Is Killed as Extremism Boils Over in Jordan
By RANA F. SWEIS and PETER BAKER
Nahed Hattar, who was recently arrested after sharing a cartoon on Facebook that offended some Muslims, was killed outside a court in Amman. (From NYT on Monday, Sept 26, 2016)
[end article]
I have lived through the influences in literature under Chinese colony, French colony, American support capitalism in Southern Vietnamese, Communist Northern Vietnamese, refugee camp, and Canadian society.
I would be very happy to live in society where being humanitarian is promoted and respected. All wheelers and dealers like Donald Trump, Broad Ed, the Waltons… would not be bothered me a bit. All politicians who suck up to these scumbags do not affect me either. As long as people are well educated and understand how to vote properly to have SCOTUS that is in people’s favor and that is independent to the current GOP’s influence. Back2basic
I am sorry that the link is not shown because I did not subscribe to NYT. Also , my limit reading is done by the end of September. I cannot open the link either.
Russian, Chinese, and some Muslim rich people have bought real estates in US, Canada and Australia where there is oil in the land. They do not live in but they may create chaos in our democratic societies.
It is sinfully that all start-up entrepreneurs become a medium to sell out our security in transportation, hotel business like Lift, Uber, AIRBNB… These entrepreneurs undermine people’s safety after they sell their business to Muslim extremist terrorists. Back2basic
Please, please, PLEASE have someone start looking into and writing about the very crooked and scam artist charter school operators in California operating Oxford Preparatory Academy. For once the CA Department of Education got it right and actually declined to take action on the appeal for these crooks!
Here is a link to the notice sent to Oxford from CDE.
Click to access doc008202.pdf
Even after they are shut down at the state level and are currently being investigated by the state organization that investigates fiscal mismanagement and FRAUD they have the nerve to turn around and submit a charter petition for another brand new school! Please someone start exposing these people!
Here is the link to their press release for their new school.
http://us7.campaign-archive2.com/ u=bbd9a1ec0aaff7ce3be13120c&id=eb56d910a3&e=%5BUNIQID%5D
Missed the first half because I was at Hofstra demonstrating. But could someone please get Donald to a shrink. The operative word word is I I I . Wondering whether he has a prostate problem. He looked like me running for the porta-san after waiting to clear security for two hours.to demonstrate at Hofstra
I was very pleased to see Trump win. He was total “big picture.” Hillary was again lost in a minutiae of details, but I was glad to see her awake for a change.
Regarding the pretentious Garrison Keillor; it is fact that Obama had spent at least part of his pre-political career promoting his “otherness,” where “otherness” has become a sort of fetish and nice resume padding. Whether it was by abandoning his Americanized name or promoting his time in Indonesia or simply by not correcting others had the ‘”audacity” to assume he was born somewhere else.
Like Hillary’s “pneumonia”, a quick release of Obama’s birth certificate would have ended all debate. Instead, they needlessly allowed the secrecy to fester, leading to severe mistrust.
Rum,
You may be the only person in the US who thought Trump won
Unfortunately he’s not . Which does say a lot about Trump supporters.
“Was Chris Christie the 400 pound hacker “
Show us yours Sodomy. “no man born of woman” could think the orangutan won that debate.