Media (502)
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Telling Lies
(Door Hugo Kijne te Hoboken USA)
Politicians will say almost anything to get elected, but exactly when are they lying? Lying is generally defined as knowingly giving false statements or saying things that are not true. The active word here is knowingly. Pretty much everything GOP candidates say about their tax plans for instance, each of which is some version of supply side economics, is not true. Since Ronald Reagan’s ill-fated and brief trickle-down experiment it is public knowledge that cutting taxes for the rich while reducing government spending doesn’t produce jobs and only increases deficits, but as long as there are economists who sing the praises of such policies politicians can claim not to know their detrimental effects. So sometimes politicians can say things that are not true without actually lying, but most of the time the following happens: A politician says something outrageous, often referring to dubious sources, and subsequently that statement is debunked by journalistic fact-checking. Once it has publicly and beyond a shadow of doubt been shown that what that politician said was not true, and he keeps repeating it, he’s telling a lie.
Lying is by no means a prerogative of male politicians. On the Republican side Carly Fiorina is a serial liar, although she’s not very good at it. Her entire record as the chief executive of Hewlett Packard, the high tech company she all but ran into the ground, is public knowledge, but she keeps denying that her tenure there was a disaster. More damaging are the lies Fiorina keeps telling about Planned Parenthood. In spite of proof that a video she claims to have seen was doctored, and that events it depicted never took place as shown, she keeps repeating her line about a baby ‘its heart beating, its legs kicking’ of which the parts were harvested to be sold. The deranged drifter who killed three people at a Planned Parenthood clinic in Colorado last Friday was heard mumbling something about baby parts, and could easily have been inspired by Fiorina. The Governors who are running often proclaim imaginary policy accomplishments in their state and a popularity they can only wish for, although some of them probably are genuinely delusional in that respect, while Senators tend to embellish their family history.
But the biggest liar of all is Trump. He started his campaign by saying that Mexico sends rapists and drug dealers across the border, and from there it has been downhill. Recently Trump tweeted crime statistics that would show that 81% of white murder victims were killed by blacks, while the real number is 15%. Then he outdid himself by declaring that he had seen thousands of Muslims in Jersey City cheering as the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center came down.
When confronted about the egregiousness of that statement Trump doubled down but also undermined himself. He had not actually seen the Muslim crowd but only heard about it, and it could have been in Paterson instead of Jersey City. His final ‘argument’ was that hundreds of people had called or tweeted him that they had seen or heard the same thing.
It’s Trump's model. He repeats a lie so often that some of his half-witted followers start believing that it’s true and feed it back to him, which he then uses as ‘proof.’ With so much insincerity on the other side, it’s no wonder that Hillary’s emails have become an afterthought.
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Hoboken USA
Hugo Kijne is een Nederlandse kennis van mij, die al heel lang in de USA woont. Hij is onlangs gepensioneerd, maar werkte in het stadsdeel Staten Island als manager van de afdeling volwasseneneducatie aan de City University van New York, de grootste stadsuniversiteit van de Verenigde Staten.
Hij woont in Hoboken, een plaatsje in New Jersey aan de ‘andere kant’ van de Hudson recht tegenover Manhattan. Heeft twee nationaliteiten, maar dat leidt in dat toch behoorlijk conservatieve land nooit tot problemen. Hij heeft een brede belangstelling, volgt de Amerikaanse politiek zeer goed en is verder ondermeer een golf- en honkballiefhebber.
Met regelmaat verzorgt hij op mijn blog columnachtige bijdrages onder de titel: Home From Abroad.
Hij noemt dat zelf entries.
Tot nu toe zijn verschenen:
1. Guns
2. Trump's Narcissism
3. Ben Carson
4. ISIS
5: It Ain't Over Until the Fat Lady Sings
6: Jersey City
7: Telling lies
8: DigiD
9: Sinatra
10: My country, tis of thee
11: Birtherism campagn
12: Correspondents
13: The Trump presidency
14: Two Ducumentaries
15: Social security
16: Luigi
17: The Oscars Ceremony
18: Jackie Obama
19: St. Patrick's day
20: Raul
21: Ted & The Donald
22: Walking with ghosts
23: Yankees & Politics
24: Trump's personality
25: Con men
26: Stop the Bern
27: Mrs. Clinton's Emails
28: Ali
29: Hard choices
30: The second amendment
31: #Trexit
32: Globalization
33: Civil war
34: Wazzup with Chris
35: How Hillary wins
36: Branding
37: A huge mess
38: Trump T.V.
39: Deplorables
40: The final stretch
41: Tealeaves
42: Turning Point?
43: Gettysburg
44: A fly on a pile of shit
45: The Donny Horror Show
46: Terrible times
47: The unexpected debacle
48: A desk murderer
49: The empty headed presidency
50: The Trump Team
51: Can Trump still be dumped?
52: Pussygrabber-in-chief
53: Trump & Putin
54: The Asterisk President
55: Illegitimate
56: Narcissism squared
57: A doctor's office
58:The Vulgar President
59: The Chaos Presidency
60: A mole or a useful idiot
61: Trumpgate
62: All the president's men the Sequel
63: Bullshitter in chief
64: Four problems
65: That was the week that was
66: Curveballs
67: Wag the dog
68: Why Trump plays golf
69: The first hundred days
70: Trump's Looks and Sounds
71: Patterns
72: Field Trip
73: Collusion, Espionage or Treason?
74: The World’s Laughingstock
75: Pitching is the name of the game
76: A ''Dear Leader" event
77: Trump is losing it
78: Inside Trump
79: Russioan Roulette
80: All in the family
81: Chaos and panic
82: Priorities
83: The art of lying
84: The Dog Days of August
85: A Narcissistic Racist
86: A week in the old country
87: Trump''s Third Dovorce
88: Screwballs
89: It's Miller Time
90: ''Believe me''
91: A fucking moron
92: One Busy Week
93: The Myth
94: Does Trump triumph?
95: Mueller's Web
96: Flip-Flop in China
97: The Pinnacle of Hypocrisy
98: Flipping Flynn
99: Trump Unmoored
100: The Imperial Presidency
101: Blow-job
102: Equity Theory
103: Trump's Biggest Lie
104: Eskimo's in the White House
105: Fox and Friends
106: Shithouse and Chaos
107: Dreamers and Mueller
108: State of the Union
109: Everybody loves a parade
110: Comforter-in-Chief
111: Cowardice and Insanity
112: The Chaos Presidency Revisited
113: Little Rocket Man, I Prresume
114: You're fired
115: Drums of War
116: Look Mama, without Lawyers
117: Back to the base
118: A Mafia Boss
119: Lawsuits Galore
120: Meltdown
121: Hizzoner speaks
122: Politics of Destruction
123: Full Protection
124: Treason
125: Pardons Galore
126: Killing Comey
127: The Art of Making Friends
128: Babies as Hostages
129: Justice Pirro
130: Due Process
131: Putin is fine
132: My grandfather and Trump
133: Legal Matters
134: Follow the Mone
135: The Mueller Interview
136: Lordy, There Are Tapes
137: The Illegitimate Presidency
138: The I-Word
139: Crazytown
140: It's Mother Nature, Folks
141: Deny, Deny, Deny!
142: Here Comes the Judge
143: Daddy's Favorite Klutz
144: Mob Rule
145: A Thorough Investigation
146: Resentment and Hatred
147: Toxicity
148: Running Scared
149: Darkest Hour
150: Thankful for Me
151: Bombshells
152: Sentencing Memos
153: Triple Trouble
154: Distractions
155: Road Trip
156: The Kremlin in DC
157: A Rat in the Hous
158: Rudy''s Marbles
159: A Big Fat Defeat
160: A Nationale Security Threat
161: One Sentence
162: Planet Trump
163: Running the Gauntlet|
164: No Nobel
165: Fallout
166: The Long Game
167: John McCain is dead
168: The Mueller Mess
169: Completely Exonerate
170: Trump's Orbit
171: Trump's Pin Cushion
172: Legal Trench Warfare
173: Stonewall Barr
174: Above the Constitution
175: King Donald
176: Nancy is Praying
177: Mueller speaks
178: God Save the Queen
179: Trump and the Zodiac Killer
180: Elvis is in the House
181: Countdown to Mueller
182: Trump's Gettysburg Address
183: The White House of Horrors
184: Send Her Back
185: No Nothing is Something
186: Of Mice ans Men
187: A Rock Star in El Paso
188: Trump Yells at the Data
189: The King of Kings
190: A Welcome Relief
191: Trump is Never Wrong
192: Tango with the Taliban
193: For whom the Whistle Blows
194: Distressed and Deflated
195: "BULLSHIT"
196: Great and Unmatched Wisdom
197: Nancy Neuters Putin’s Pooch
198: U Usefull Fucking Moron
199: ‘Lock Him Up’
200: The Dumbo Defense
201: Before the Fall
202: Starting to Fall
203: Saving Thanksgiving
204: Escape from London
205: Plumber-in-Chief
206: A Very Ugly Word
207: How Nancy Stole Christmas
208: A Not So Happy New Year
209: Superman from Krypton
210: Lying on the Fly
211: Greetings from Davos
212: Bring in the Clowns
213: Trump Unleashed
214: Rule of Law No More
215: Johnny
216: A Tale of Two Crises
217:Ignorance and Disinformation
218: Paying the price
219: Trump always knew
220: A Second Desk
221: A different tone?
222: Cheerleader
223: Scapegoating
224: The King of Ventilators
225: Definitely not a Docta
226: Every day a 9/11
227: Transition to Greatness
228: More Stupidity Every Day
229: Freedom of speech
230:Trump fans the flames
231: A Piece of Cake
232: Dull as Dishwater
233: TRump versus the Pandemic
234:Trump versus the Majority
235: Trump versus Black America
236: It's All about Trump
237: Trump's Balloon is Empty
238: Panic in the Oval
239; The Empty Presidency
240: Trump's Worst Nightmare
241: Trump Interrupted
242: It's all about Trump now
243: Trump Promises Fascism
244: Trump is a One Trick Pony
245: Trump’s Pyrrhic Strategy
246: Trumps Pyrrhic Strategy
247: A Billion Dollar Terrorist
248: Trump's Biggest Gamble
249: Superman andd -Spreader,
250: Running Against Dr. Fauci
251: Lincoln He Is Not
252: Cliffhanger Time
253: Raging and Ranting
254: Trump Sits in a Cell Already
255: The Coup that Frizzled
256: The 170 Million Dollar Man
257: The Art of Losing
258: The Snake and the Turtle
259: The Martial Law
260: Trump Scorches the Earth All Around
261: Another Perfect Call
262: Death in the Capitol
263: After the Falll
264: Guilty as Hell
265: The Post-Insurrection Party
266: Democracy or Fascism
267: The House in 2022
268: Circus McCarthy is in town
269: Trump's Indictment
270. A Town Hall
271: Trump is toast
272: The whole Trump Mafia Family Indicted
273: Trump is racing against the Times
274: The Big House or the White House
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Jersey City
(Door Hugo Kijne te Hoboken USA)
Jersey City, the second largest city in New Jersey with 265,000 residents, is located south of Hoboken, where I live. You can only enter Hoboken from the south through Jersey City and vice versa, so the populations are well acquainted. Ethnically Jersey City is divided into four major groups: Hispanic or Latino (28%), Black or African-American (26%), Asian (24%) and Non-Hispanic White (22%). Racially Whites are the largest group, with 33%. A more detailed look reveals that Jersey City is the ultimate melting pot: The Hispanic contingent primarily comes from Ecuador, Mexico, Puerto Rico and Cuba, and there are African-Americans from Nigeria and Kenya. The Asians come from India, the Philippines, China and Vietnam, and for the Non-Hispanic Whites the most reported ancestries in the last US Census were Italian, Irish, Polish and German, although there are also leftovers of earlier English and Dutch populations. With so much diversity there has to be a high level of cross-cultural tolerance in Jersey City, maybe only similar to the level of tolerance in New York City, the neighbor across the Hudson.
Muslims constitute 4.5% of all religious adherents in Jersey City, and among them there is significant diversity as well. Surprisingly, the fastest growing segment of the Muslim population is Latino, but there are also African-American, Pakistani and Bangladeshi Muslims. Although Jersey City’s population has a significant Arab-American segment it does not constitute the majority of the city’s Muslims, because it includes a large Egyptian Coptic community. At a rally in Birmingham, Alabama, last Saturday, Donald Trump declared that on 9/11/2001 he watched thousands and thousands of people in Jersey City cheering as the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center were coming down in lower Manhattan. He could only have been referring to the local Muslim community, but his ‘eyewitness’ account was quickly debunked. The Jersey City police department denied that something like that ever happened, and there was no video footage of it, which if it existed would have been shown by all networks, both immediately after 9/11 and frequently during the years that since have passed. So Trump was lying, plain and simple.
From the beginning racism and xenophobia have been at the core of Trump’s campaign. Playing into the sentiments of the white part of the American underclass, he used the announcement of his candidacy to proclaim that Mexico is sending rapists and drug dealers across the border, and trumpeted that 11 million undocumented aliens should be deported. After the Paris attacks he found something even better, now mobilizing the anti-Muslim feelings of the same group.
Trump’s only campaign issue is destructive on three levels. Geopolitically it plays straight into the hand of ISIS, which is desperate to frame its quest as a war against infidels and the West, and undoubtedly appreciates that Trump obliges. Domestically it weakens the tolerance that is the fabric of the US society, and finally it sows fear in the hearts of Hispanics and Muslims alike.
Last Friday ABC showed a special by Barbara Walters, showing Trump as a family man with wife and kid, children from earlier marriages, and grandchildren playing in his office. I was reminded of footage of Hitler playing with his dogs, an appropriate association in this case.
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It Ain't Over Until the Fat Lady Sings
Hugo Kijne is een Nederlandse kennis van mij, die al heel lang in de USA woont. Met regelmaat verzorgt hij columns op mijn blog onder de titel Home From Abroad. Daar ben ik hem dankbaar voor.
Hij heeft een nieuwe roman geschreven onder de titel ''It Ain't Over Until the Fat Lady Sings''.
U kunt hem -en mij- een plezier doen door het boek HIER te nomineren.
Het wordt genomineerd om door Kindle/Amazon als e-book gepubliceerd te worden. Het is een nieuw soort competitie, die de 'breakthrough novel' competitie vervangt. Hoe meer nominaties des te groter de kans dat het gepubliceerd wordt.
De Inhoud:
How working for a crazy boss could kill you
Martin Noordhof’s employer replaces his boss with a creature that has no management skills and not the foggiest idea about the work that he does, but at the same time has no inhibitions about telling him how to do his job. His new boss has Narcissistic Personality Disorder, and Martin finds out that being in a subordinate position to such a person is constant torture. The creature demands the immediate execution of every insane instruction, and the book tells the story of Martin's resistance.
Voorwoord
This is a little book about something that could happen to almost anybody who is in the workforce. Unless you are a CEO or a business owner your boss’s boss can suddenly decide to get rid of your boss, and replace him or her with a creature that has absolutely no management skills and not the foggiest idea about the work that you do, but at the same time has no inhibitions whatsoever about telling you how to do your job.
If you are particularly unlucky that creature suffers from a condition known as Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD). Dealing with someone with NPD is always unpleasant, but being in a subordinate position to such a person is torture. The creature with NPD cannot accept the notion that it is less than perfect, and therefore cannot learn, because acquiring new knowledge would imply that something had previously been missing and it had therefore been imperfect.
So the afflicted person who is now your boss will never try to understand your job, listen to your ideas about how problems can be solved, or allow you a certain amount of autonomy. Contrarily, this creature will only accept complete obedience and demand the immediate execution of every one of its instructions, no matter how damaging to the operation for which you are responsible. And as if that were not enough, it won’t accept responsibility for anything that goes wrong, even if its orders were followed to the letter.
For your new boss could not have made a mistake: the only explanation for any disaster is your intentional failure to obey. That perceived insubordination will lead to punishment, the only contingency of reinforcement that the creature considers effective. Unlike it, you are the one who has to learn, and that will be hammered into your brain until it bleeds and your life slowly starts flowing away.
Home From Abroad
1. Guns
2. Trump's Narcissism
3. Ben Carson
4. ISIS
5: It Ain't Over Until the Fat Lady Sings
Ga HIER naar de blog van Hugo
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- Categorie: Media (502)
Home From Abroad
Hugo Kijne is een Nederlandse kennis van mij, die al heel lang in de USA woont. Hij is onlangs gepensioneerd, maar werkte in het stadsdeel Staten Island als manager van de afdeling volwasseneneducatie aan de City University van New York, de grootste stadsuniversiteit van de Verenigde Staten.
Hij woont in Hoboken, een plaatsje in New Jersey aan de ‘andere kant’ van de Hudson recht tegenover Manhattan. Heeft twee nationaliteiten, maar dat leidt in dat toch behoorlijk conservatieve land nooit tot problemen. Hij heeft een brede belangstelling, volgt de Amerikaanse politiek zeer goed en is verder ondermeer een golf- en honkballiefhebber.
Met regelmaat verzorgt hij op mijn blog columnachtige bijdrages onder de titel: Home From Abroad.
Hij noemt dat zelf entries.
ISIS
(Door Hugo Kijne te Hoboken USA)
Since ISIS has claimed responsibility for the most recent terrorist attacks in Paris the question has again come up in the US media who exactly is responsible for ISIS. Answers are being provided on three levels. First, there are dummies who simply blame ISIS on Islam. Although undeniably there are strong inhumane, intolerant, violent and misogynistic elements in Islam the large majority of Muslims in the world is not involved in terrorism, so apparently religion alone is not enough. Second, there are those who blame the emergence of ISIS on Dubya and Cheney. As an immediate explanation this makes a lot of sense. Without the invasion of Iraq on false premises in 2003, the subsequent disbanding of the Baath Party and the Iraqi army, and the installation of a Shiite-friendly anti-Sunni government in Baghdad, there probably would never have been Al Qaeda in Iraq, the precursor of ISIS. Republicans have tried to shift the blame to Obama, claiming that everything was going according to plan in Iraq until he halted the surge and started pulling US troops out, but that fantasy has been effectively debunked.
And then there is a third explanation that puts the ultimate blame with the ruling cliques in the Muslim world who promote an ultra-conservative branch of Islam, Wahhabism, finance radical clerics and madrassas, are consumed by anti-Shiite paranoia, and keep Sunni populations in the Middle East uneducated and dependent. In July 2013 the European Parliament identified Wahhabism as the main source of global terrorism, and although Obama still has some peculiar difficulty calling radical Islamic terrorists for what they are, the US Government concurs with that opinion. But that creates a problem. The main promoters and sponsors of Wahhabism are the Saudis, who are among America’s best customers when it comes to purchasing military equipment, and are also considered one of the US’s best ‘friends’ in the Middle East, second only to Israel. It would appear that when your second best friend is responsible for the existence of your worst enemy it is time to either reconsider the friendship, or, if US business interests are more important than fighting terrorism, accept part of the responsibility for ISIS.
The idea that the US is partly to blame for ISIS through its support for the Saudi rulers was forcefully brought forward by author and former talk show host Dylan Ratigan on last night’s Bill Maher Show, and it contains bad and good news. The bad: it undermines the US authority to speak critically of and act effectively against ISIS. The good: it identifies the ultimate source of ISIS’s relative strength and gives the US more than military tools to fight it.
It is almost too absurd for words that King Salman of Saudi Arabia, the number one sponsor of Islamic terrorism in the world, is received with full protocol at the White House by Obama, and that John Kerry cannot stop lavishing praise on the Saudis for their ‘constructive role’ in the Middle East. What is he hoping for, that miraculously his words one day will come true?
Barack Obama is right that putting US boots back on the ground in the Middle East will only make the mess in Syria and Iraq bigger, but there is no excuse for not putting maximum diplomatic and economic pressure on the sponsors of terrorism who are our ‘allies.’
Home From Abroad
1. Guns
2. Trump's Narcissism
3. Ben Carson
4. ISIS
Ga HIER naar de blog van Hugo
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