The Indian Panorama

Tag: 2016 US Presidential Campaign & Election

  • Your Vote Can Make the Difference

    Your Vote Can Make the Difference

    With this year’s tight and controversial presidential race, and with anti-immigrant sentiment at a peak, we can take nothing for granted. This is why I am urgently calling to those among New York City’s more than 1.5 million naturalized citizens, if you are registered to vote, to go to the polls on November 8. Every single vote counts.

    The right to vote is not a given. Some of you have experienced undemocratic governments in places where voting is riddled with fraud, doesn’t happen at all or can put you at risk of reprisals. But as a U.S. citizen, your right to vote ensures your participation in the democratic process that gives you a voice in the decisions that shape your life.

    The electorate has never been so ethnically and racially diverse. According to a Pew Research Center 2016 report, this year 31 percent of the eligible voters are Hispanic, Asian, black or other minorities. In New York City, the Campaign Finance Board confirms that naturalized citizens lead in the gains made in voter registration, and their turnout rates equal or outpace native-born citizens. Yet, New York City hit a historic low in overall voter turnout in the 2014 midterm elections, when barely 20 percent went to the polls. This has to change.

    It is important we understand what is at stake here.

    In 2013, immigrant workers accounted for $257 billion in economic activity — that’s nearly one third of the value of all finished goods and services produced here. Immigrants represent almost half of the City’s workforce. Over 80 percent of dishwashers, nannies, garment workers and taxi drivers are immigrants. Seventy percent of medical and life scientists; 60 percent of civil engineers; 58 percent of registered nurses; and more than half of our dentists, mechanical engineers, tax preparers, and pharmacists are foreign-born. And one in four CEOs in corporations with a presence in our City are immigrants. Clearly, the economic contribution to the City is tremendous.

    So, casting your vote could be a YES to protecting the economic investment made for your children and their children, and to ensuring an enduring opportunity to work. A YES to keeping the doors open for others like you, who want a better life, and whose enterprise keeps our City and this country vibrant and growing. And a YES to protect the right to educate your children, without fear, who will carry on our immigrant tradition.

    Your vote could also be a NO to racism, discrimination and hate.

    It’s time to rally family, friends, and community members to vote. Remember your vote can help speak for those who are not eligible to go to the polls in November, but whose investment and commitment to their American life is just as strong as yours.

    For information about your polling site and ballots in languages other than English go to http://vote.nyc.ny.us/html/forms/forms.shtml, or call the Board of Elections office in your borough.

  • Crime and Candidates

    Crime and Candidates

    Polling for the U.S. presidential election is less than weeks away. Most predictions favor Democrat Hillary Clinton, although the contest with Republican candidate Donald Trump is expected to be closer than many partisan supporters on either side would concede. What struck me most during the three rounds of television debates between the rival candidates was the intensity of mutual recrimination. Each continues to accuse the other of grave misdemeanor. While Mr. Trump believes Ms. Clinton deserved to be sent to jail for using an unauthorized private email server and causing the disappearance of more than 30,000 mails after being subpoenaed by U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the latter accuses the former of tax evasion and inappropriate conduct towards women.

    Mr. Trump’s principal charge against the Obama administration – of which Ms. Clinton had been a vital member for years – is the alleged soft approach to crime and neglect of the inner cities. The Republican candidate demands tough handling of crime, which resonates with his vow to stop immigration, especially of Latinos and Muslims. He believes that crime in the country has become uncontrollable, and the inner city in most urban areas has become a crime haven. His support to the influential National Rifle Association (NRA) is absolute. Ms. Clinton does not share her opponent’s pessimism. Her stance is moderate; she concedes that guns are a problem, but won’t go the whole hog condemning the NRA, obviously because of its widespread influence in the polity and large sections of the white population. One must remember here that President Barack Obama assumed office with a resolve to cut the NRA down to size. Later on his position became wishy-washy.

    Crime in the U.S.

    Crime in the U.S. and its impact nationally has always been an important aspect of the election debate for decades. The release a few weeks ago of crime figures for 2015 by the FBI has intensified the presidential debate. FBI statistics reveal that violent crime in 2015 went up by 4 per cent. Homicides registered an 11 per cent rise. In about 70 per cent of homicides firearms were used.

    The popular impression – one fanned by Mr. Trump – that the whole country has become more violent than before, however, appears skewed because the rise in homicides was confined to a few cities like Chicago, Los Angeles, Dallas and Las Vegas. In a few other important cities, homicides declined – the drop in New York, for instance, was 25 per cent. The reported spurt in murders during the first few months of the current year is again confined to a few cities, with Chicago contributing the bulk. Expert opinion is that crime trends are ephemeral and constantly fluctuating, hence taking any position on the basis of occurrences during a few years alone is preposterous.

    One feature of the U.S. crime scene that should cause consternation to many of us in India is the number of rapes. During last year these went up to 95,000, almost thrice as many as are reported annually in India. Significantly, a majority of rapes occurring in the country are on university campuses: during 2014, there were about 100 universities from each of which at least 10 rape cases were reported. Many American believe that a large number of rapes go unreported. There was a recent controversy over the award of a light six-month sentence to Brock Turner, a Stanford University student, by a judge, even though he was convicted on three counts of felony sexual assault in 2015. Public opinion was so exercised that the judge sought to be reassigned to the civil division instead of criminal trials.

    How do the U.S. police cope with crime?A lot has depended on the proactive role of individual police leaders. Chiefs are appointed by the city mayors, thereby injecting a little of politics into the process of day-to-day policing. The legendary Bill Bratton, who had two spells as Police Commissioner in the New York Police Department (NYPD), made a lot of difference to the city’s public order. His “broken windows” approach, that concentrated on petty crime in decrepit neighborhoods and thereby neutralized those prone to commit grave crime if their minor peccadilloes were ignored, resulted in a drop in crime rates.

    Another of Mr. Bratton’s innovations, one prescribing a computer-aided identification of hotspots of crime by field commanders, also helped. Named CompStat, this procedure made officers in charge of police stations accountable for acting swiftly on rising crime graphs. CompStat has, however, invited criticism that a lot of crime was being suppressed to dress up statistics; Mr. Bratton resigned from the NYPD a few months ago. This is again an index of the growing complexity of policing in the country, and the delicate police chief-mayor relationship.

    Policing with sensitivity

    Two other features of policing in relation to crime control have been frequently discussed across the country. The first of these is the practice of “stop-and-frisk” whereby citizens are stopped and frisked at random. Statistics have often been cited to prove that this was a racist practice. As a result, successive police commissioners – especially in New York City – have had to constantly assuage hurt public sentiment. On their part, the police in many cities claim that the practice had helped to recover firearms which would otherwise have been used to commit crime. While a lot has been done to reduce the frequency and intensity of the “stop-and-frisk” program, sections of the minorities continue to nurse a grievance that many U.S. police departments are insensitive towards them.

    The latest controversy is over the police’s inclination to open unprovoked fire at innocent citizens, especially African-Americans. The most recent one is the October killing of Deborah Danner, an old mentally ill woman of Bronx, by an NYPD policeman. Mayor Bill de Blasio has taken the incident seriously, but has not been able to arrive at any formula that would give reasonable assurance that incidents like these will not repeat themselves.

    Ms. Clinton has mentioned in her campaign the need to build police sensitivity so that African-Americans receives fairer treatment at the hands of the police. Mr. Trump has not had much to say on this. It’s not surprising though, since he proclaims himself to be tough on crime, and any police high-handedness towards the minorities fits into his framework of an America that is free from crime, especially in the inner cities.

    The U.S. crime situation is unusually complex. Race and the varying standards of the more than 15,000 stand-alone police forces are factors to reckon with. The growing number of police casualties makes policemen in many places trigger-happy. Only lip service has been paid to the eternal problem of gun control because of the political connotations involved. How much either Ms. Clinton or Mr. Trump can do to limit the damage caused by free availability of guns or make the police more citizen- friendly is a moot point.

    (The author, R. K. Raghavan, is a former Director of the Central Bureau of Investigation)

  • Why Putin fears a Clinton Presidency

    Why Putin fears a Clinton Presidency

    “For Putin, stopping Clinton is not only an important strategic goal. It is also personal”, says the author – Frida Ghitis.

    Though Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin seem to agree on a number of issues, there is one they apparently don’t see eye to eye on. While Trump argues that Hillary Clinton is too weak to be president of the United States, the Russian President appears to be genuinely afraid of Clinton.

    Evidence is growing that Russia is actively working to undermine Clinton’s presidential prospects. When hackers released the emails of the Democratic National Committee just hours before the Democratic National Convention, internet security specialists found the fingerprints of Russian agencies. Then came the latest hacks of Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta.

    The US government has now formally accused Russia of interfering in the US elections, and every instance of interference so far is clearly aimed at harming the Democratic candidate.

    It’s easy to see why Putin fears Clinton. While the Trump campaign is trying to get voters to focus on Clinton stumbling and coughing, Putin sees her as a real threat to his objectives.

    For Putin, stopping Clinton is not only an important strategic goal. It is also personal.

    Back in 2011, Putin faced the biggest protests the country had seen since the collapse of the Soviet Union. He had served two terms as president, the maximum allowed, and in 2008 had become prime minister, in a maneuver that allowed him to effectively hold power while his ally, Dmitry Medvedev, was president. Then he announced — to much anger, but little surprise — that he would seek a third term as president. Three months later, the opposition erupted in fury when his party won a landslide victory in legislative elections amid allegations of fraud.

    Is Russia trying to influence U.S. election?

    Despite the frigid Moscow temperatures, thousands massed in the streets calling for fair elections and for an end to Putin’s seemingly endless rule. Signs and chants declared, “Putin is a thief !” Putin’s hold on power faced a genuine threat. Then-Secretary of State Clinton openly sided with the protesters. “The Russian people, like people everywhere,” she said, “…deserve free, fair, transparent elections.”

    Putin was fuming. He blamed the protests on Clinton, accusing her of sending “a signal” to the opposition.

    Putin’s personal animosity toward Clinton coincides with his larger strategic goals. In recent years, he has launched an increasingly muscular foreign (and domestic) policy. He is challenging the US, NATO and the European Union at every turn. Despite a shrinking economy — not much bigger than Mexico’s — Russia has used its military power to make it a major player on the global stage.

    How Russian hackers could influence the election

    Russia, according to Western analysts, has mounted a campaign to “discredit the West’s liberal democratic model, and undermine trans-Atlantic ties,” manipulating Eastern European countries and “supporting the far right” against the EU. That “Kremlin Playbook” includes tampering with elections in Europe and the US.

    Clinton stands in direct defiance to Putin’s vision, already partly in place, of a Russia with a sphere of influence that includes the former Soviet territory and, more loosely, Eastern Europe, alongside a weakened Europe, US and NATO.

    In contrast to Trump, she has made countless comments over the years to suggest she would present a much tougher opponent to Putin’s ambitions than Barack Obama has been, saying she thinks the United States must find ways to “confine, contain, [and] deter Russian aggression in Europe and beyond.”

    What Reagan can teach us about handling Russia

    While Clinton looks poised to toughen America’s stance, Trump’s foreign policy coincides with Russia’s. He has suggested he might recognize Russia’s annexation of Crimea, which Putin captured by force from Ukraine; he might suspend economic sanctions against Russia; and would align his policies in Syria with Putin and Assad.

    During the Republican primaries, Clinton came under fire for leading the Obama administration’s failed diplomatic “reset” with Russia. But the former US ambassador to Moscow, Mike McFaul, said she was deeply skeptical that the plan would bear fruit.

    Once out of office, her criticism of Russia became cutting.

    When Putin justified Russia’s 2014 takeover of Crimea as an effort to protect Russian minorities there, Clinton said it was reminiscent of Hitler’s justification for taking over parts of Eastern Europe. Putin later commented that Clinton has “never been too graceful in her statements.” Russia is happy with its new status in the world

    How Russia views the west

    Clinton was implicitly critical of Obama’s restrained response, saying, “I am in the category of people who wanted us to do more in response to the annexation of Crimea and the continuing destabilization of Ukraine.”

    And just as Putin targeted her by name, she, too, has gone after him personally. In a speech last year, she said, “I remain convinced that we need a concerted effort to really up the costs on Russia and in particular on Putin.”

    The most urgent item on the foreign policy agenda for both the United States and Russia is the civil war in Syria. There, the Trump campaign has offered conflicting ideas, but in the most recent debate Trump seemed to stand with Putin.

    While Obama has maintained an extremely restrained approach to the crisis, sending Secretary of State John Kerry to multiple, so far useless, diplomatic marathons with his Russian counterpart even as Russia continues bombing civilians in support of Assad, Clinton sounds determined to impose a no-fly zone, which would defy not only Syria’s army but also Russia.

    She says she would keep the Russians informed, so no clashes occur, adding “I want them at the table,” but it is a sharp departure from the current policy, and one that must sound deeply disturbing to Putin.

    A few years ago, Putin mused, speaking about Clinton, that “It’s better not to argue with women.” It’s clear now why he’s going to great lengths to avoid having to argue with a President Hillary Clinton.

    (Frida Ghitis is a world affairs columnist for the The Miami Herald and World Politics Review, and a former CNN producer and correspondent. The views expressed in this commentary are her own.)

  • 70% of Indian American voters prefer Hillary Clinton, 7% Donald Trump: Survey

    70% of Indian American voters prefer Hillary Clinton, 7% Donald Trump: Survey

    DALLAS, TX (TIP): Asian Indian or Indian American registered voters are overwhelmingly Democratic, with a whopping 70% of the community favoring Hillary Clinton, according to a new National Asian American Survey (NAAS). Donald Trump, in fact, falls into third place with only a meager 7% support for him, outstripped by support for ‘other candidate and leaners’ which shows at 9% support.

    Asian Americans overwhelmingly Democrats, shows new survey

    In line with that, Asian-American registered voters are increasingly identifying as Democrats, with a whopping 11 percentage points increase since 2012, over those in the community who are registered Republicans, according to the survey. Interestingly, Asian-Indian or Indian American community led both the 2012 and the 2016  polls with overwhelming support for Democrats. While in 2012 it was 68% Democratic, with only 10%shown as Republicans, in 2016, 71%registered voters are seen as Democrats vs. 13% as Republicans, for a net gain of one percent. The 2016 survey, released last week, also found that 59 percent of respondents favor Hillary Clinton in this year’s presidential election while only 16 percent prefer Donald Trump – 26 percent are either undecided or favor a third-party candidate, reported fivethirtyeight.com A whopping 79% Indian Americans view Trump unfavorably, with 67% viewing him very unfavorably, the survey found. The NAAS sampled 2,238 Asian-Americans and 305 Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islanders.

    Polling Asian-Americans can be difficult, the report said. Asian-Americans have one of the highest rates of limitedEnglish proficiency, and about 3 in 4 are foreign-born. For these reasons, 45 percent of the interviews in the NAAS were conducted in one of nine languages other than English (Cantonese, Mandarin, Korean, Vietnamese, Tagalog, Japanese, Hindi, Hmong, Cambodian).

    Indeed, “Asian-American” is a broad group that includes many different ethnicities with distinct political traditions. Vietnamese-Americans have historically leaned more Republican than other Asian-American subgroups, for example; Indian-Americans and Japanese-Americans have leaned more Democratic. Still, Democrats have made substantial gains across most ethnic subgroups of Asian-Americans, noted fivethirtyeight.com.

    In the aftermath of the 2012 election, the Republican National Committee (RNC) released a report calling on the party to do a better job connecting with minority populations. The RNC hired a nationalfield director, Stephen Fong, and a national communications director, Jason Chung, to conduct outreach to Asian-American voters. Karthick Ramakrishnan, director of the NAAS, said in an interview that the GOP was “trying to project this image of the Republican Party that was more open, that is more tolerant, that is trying to do significant outreach to the community.”

    Ramakrishnan said the GOP appeared to be making strides in some areas, pointing to the 2014 election of several Asian-American Republicans to seats in California’s state legislature. But he said that the polarizing nature of this year’s GOP presidential nominee seems to be nullifying any gains Republicans might have made and that support among Asian-Americans for the GOP may be lower now than in 2012.

    In previous years, Ramakrishnan said, surveys of Asian-Americans showed larger differences in political preferences between subgroups and between regions of the country. “One way you could put it is that Trump is nationalizing the election for Asian-Americans,” he said.

    Trump’s effect on the concerns of Asian-Americans may be evident in an open-ended NAAS question that asks respondents to name the “most important problem facing the United States.” Ten percent of registered voters in the NAAS said “racism or racial discrimination,” the third-most-common answer, behind the economy and national security. Trump has been criticized for anti-immigrant and racist rhetoric, including saying that Mexican immigrants are rapists, and for proposing to temporarily ban Muslims from entering the country.

  • Hillary Clinton leads in National Polls

    Hillary Clinton leads in National Polls

    WASHINGTON (TIP): Hillary Clinton has built a formidable lead over Donald Trump in terms of opinion poll’s percentage points, but, poll numbers are swinging in Battleground states as Nevada and Florida change status back to “battleground” from “lean Democratic” and now maintain their traditional toss-up status.

    Leaving the battleground states undecided for now, CNN’s electoral outlook has Clinton at 272 electoral votes from states either solidly or leaning in her direction. Trump has a total of 179 electoral votes from the states either solidly or leaning in his direction. 87 electoral votes currently up for grabs in the battleground states will decide this head to head race regardless of what Opinion Polls suggest – remember opinion polls generally tend to have a sample size of about 1,000 people or more and can track movement and general opinion well.

    But the US election is won and lost in swing states and decided by the electoral college system.

    ratingThis means that polls in states that look like they could vote for either candidate play an integral role in election projections.

    As on October 27, most polls here in the US and in UK speak of Clinton’s lead, and a comfortable one, over Trump.

    The Upshot gives Hillary Clinton, the Democratic nominee for president, a 92 percent chance of winning, compared to Republican candidate Donald Trump’s 8 percent. While Trump could still win, The Upshot says: “Mrs. Clinton’s chance of losing is about the same as the probability that an N.F.L. kicker misses a 31-yard field goal.” According to The Upshot, the chance of Clinton winning the election has increased steadily since the beginning of the month: On October 1, Clinton had a 76 percent chance of winning compared to Trump’s 24 percent.

    On October 26th night, FiveThirtyEight ‘s Nate Silver wrote that Trump has “probably narrowed his deficit against Clinton,” but by too little to see any major shift. FiveThirtyEight ‘s election forecast on October 27 predicted that, nationally, Clinton will take 84.4 percent of the vote to Trump’s 15.6 percent. Meanwhile, 46 percent of voters in a YouGov poll published October 27 said they intend to vote for Clinton, while 41 percent said they will cast their vote for Trump.

    Real Clear Politics had Clinton leading Trump by 5.4 points on Thursday, a slight dip from the same time a week ago, when she was up by 6.1 points. The average from Thursday’s polls had Clinton with 48.6 percent support and Trump with 42.7 percent.

    Outlier of The Day: Evan McMullin! According to a SurveyMonkey poll from Utah published on October 27, 29 percent of voters say they will choose McMullin, a conservative independent candidate, the same percentage who say they intend to vote for Clinton. Trump is ahead in Utah by a narrow margin, at 32 percent. McMullin, who is Mormon, has polled highly in the state, where he’s seen as a viable alternative to the brashness and unpredictability of Trump.

    map

    Solid Republican:

    Alabama (9), Alaska (3), Arkansas (6), Idaho (4), Indiana (11), Kansas (6), Kentucky (8), Louisiana (8), Mississippi (6), Missouri (10), Montana (3), Nebraska (4), North Dakota (3), Oklahoma (7), South Carolina (9), South Dakota (3), Tennessee (11), Texas (38), West Virginia (5), Wyoming (3) (157 total)

    Leans Republican:Georgia (16), Iowa (6), (22 total)

     

    Battleground states:

    Arizona (11), Florida (29), Nevada (6), Ohio (18), Maine 2nd Congressional District (1) Nebraska 2nd Congressional District (1), North Carolina (15), Utah (6) (87 total)

    Leans Democratic:

    Colorado (9), Michigan (16), New Hampshire (4), Pennsylvania (20), Virginia (13), Wisconsin (10), (72 total)

    Solid Democratic:

    California (55), Connecticut (7), Delaware (3), DC (3), Hawaii (4), Illinois (20), Maine (3), Maryland (10), Massachusetts (11), New Jersey (14), New York (29), Oregon (7), Rhode Island (4), Vermont (3), Washington (12), Minnesota (10), New Mexico (5) (200 total)

  • Why exactly Donald Trump called Hillary Clinton ‘NASTY WOMAN’

    Why exactly Donald Trump called Hillary Clinton ‘NASTY WOMAN’

    WASHINGTON (TIP): What exactly did Hillary Clinton say that riled her Republican opponent Donald Trump so much?

    She more than hinted that far from being worried about “crooked Hillary” -as Trump calls her – people should be focussing on a crooked, tax-dodging Trump.

    Clinton was talking about policy to do with social security for an aging America.

    “My Social Security payroll contribution will go up, as will Donald’s, assuming he can’t figure out how to get out of it,” she said.

    The reference was obvious. If Trump wriggled out of paying taxes before, he could most certainly do it with Social Security taxes in the future.

    Trump didn’t like what she said one bit.

    “Such a nasty woman,” he retorted.

    And that comment was very likely the final nail in the coffin of his campaign. “This kind of direct insult is very unusual on the debate stage” wrote Vox, a political news site.

    What could have led to such a Trump meltdown? Perhaps it was the verbal pounding Clinton delivered throughout the 90-odd minute third debate.

    Before a look at some of Clinton’s slam dunks, here’s a look at Trump’s own goal.

    Trump – “Nobody has more respect for women than I do. Nobody.”

    Clinton’s knockout punches On Jobs

    “Donald has bought Chinese steel and aluminum. In fact, the Trump Hotel right here in Las Vegas was made with Chinese steel. So he goes around with crocodile tears about how terrible it is, but he has given jobs to Chinese steelworkers, not American steelworkers.”

    On Trump constantly deriding her 30 years in public life

    “He raised the 30 years of experience, so let me just talk briefly about that. You know, back in the 1970s, I worked for the Children’s Defense Fund. And I was taking on discrimination against African-American kids in schools. He was getting sued by the Justice Department for racial discrimination in his apartment buildings.

    In the 1980s, I was working to reform the schools in Arkansas. He was borrowing $14 million from his father to start his businesses. In the 1990s, I went to Beijing and I said women’s rights are human rights. He insulted a former Miss Universe, Alicia Machado, called her an eating machine.”

    (At this point Trump interjects with “Give me a break.” Unfazed, Clinton goes on)

    “And on the day when I was in the Situation Room, monitoring the raid that brought Osama bin Laden to justice, he was hosting the “Celebrity Apprentice.” So I’m happy to compare my 30 years of experience, what I’ve done for this country, trying to help in every way I could, especially kids and families get ahead and stay ahead, with your 30 years, and I’ll let the American people make that decision.”

    On Women

    “In the last debate, we heard Donald talking about what he did to women. And after that, a number of women have come forward saying that’s exactly what he did to them. Now, what was his response? Well, he held a number of big rallies where he said that he could not possibly have done those things to those women because they were not attractive enough for them to be assaulted.”

    (Here, Trump says “I did not say that. I did not say that… I did not say that” and the Moderator Chris Wallace, of Fox News has to jump in with “Her two minutes — sir, her two minutes. Her two minutes.”) Clinton goes on.

    “He (Trump) went on to say, “Look at her. I don’t think so.” About another woman, he said, “That wouldn’t be my first choice.” He attacked the woman reporter writing the story, called her “disgusting,” as he has called a number of women during this campaign. Donald thinks belittling women makes him bigger. He goes after their dignity, their self-worth, and I don’t think there is a woman anywhere who doesn’t know what that feels like. So we now know what Donald thinks and what he says and how he acts toward women. That’s who Donald is.”

    On Trump being a sore loser

    “You know, every time Donald thinks things are not going in his direction, he claims whatever it is, is rigged against him. The FBI conducted a year-long investigation into my e-mails. They concluded there was no case; he said the FBI was rigged. He lost the Iowa caucus. He lost the Wisconsin primary. He said the Republican primary was rigged against him. Then Trump University gets sued for fraud and racketeering; he claims the court system and the federal judge is rigged against him. There was even a time when he didn’t get an Emmy for his TV program three years in a row and he started tweeting that the Emmys were rigged against him.”

    On Trump’s comment that Putin has no respect for Clinton

    “Well, that’s because he’d rather have a puppet as president of the United States.” (PTI)

  • RHC Presents Trump as Lord Vishnu

    RHC Presents Trump as Lord Vishnu

    At the RHC event, Trump on Lotus as he is the incarnation of Lord Vishnu, Hillary and Sonia Gandhi attacking Adani’s $32,000 crore marketing product PM Narendra Modi, were put up by Vincent Bruno of “Hindus For Trump”, an unregistered fringe group with practically no membership!

    Vincent is an American Christian converted to Hinduism, initially I thought he is the face of LGTB Hindu community but now it looks like he is trying to replace aging Francois Gautier, a Frenchman living in India who is earning his bread & butter since 1971 by instigating Hindus how they have been brutally killed by Muslim rulers for centuries.

    Basically he is selling hate against Muslims to ignorant Hindus in the name of singing glory of Hinduism. It is very surprising that Hindus could not find an able Hindu among almost 1 Billion Hindus to guide them about their own religion or who can correctly interpret the famous Holy Hindu Texts that has everything in them to understand Hinduism. It is very surprising why no Hindu organization in USA or India has raised objections to Trump on Lotus.

    pic-2-hillary-sonia-attacking-modiThe RHC event aka Music Masti & Dance aka Trump event on Saturday Oct. 15, 2016 at Raritan Center, Edison, NJ was a garbage event. The organizers aka Shalabh “Shalli” Kumar since mid-September has been changing the event concept by the hour and their current flier has no picture of Trump as well as no mention of charity event for Kashmiri Hindus & Bangladeshi Hindus. Initially it was all day family affair from 12 noon to 11 PM at PNC center on Sep 24, 2016 and then moved to Oct. 15, 2016 at the same venue and finally took place at a scaled down version at Raritan Center, Edison, NJ.

    Right from day one they had no clarity what they intended to do. They had Sri Ravishankar as main attraction in the name of Hinduism. Main attraction for entertainment section was Shahid Kapoor from Bollywood & Ram Charan from South and exhibition on Kashmiri Pundits as well as history of Hinduism. Hinduism attraction Sri Ravishankar and Hollywood attraction Shahid Kapoor and Ram Charan were missing at Raritan. It looks like the organizers brought in C grade dancers from India that is the reason they added Ras Garba! These kinds of dancers are very much available in tri-state area and one does not have to import them from India.

    Shalabh “Shalli” Kumar, a self-centered, self-proclaimed savior of Hinduism has been bragging to save Kashmiri & Bangladeshi Hindus and all the time praising his own achievements and declaring he will donate $1 million to them. When approached for help for a NJ Hindu boy, victim of prosecutorial misconduct, racial bias and fabricated charges this man ran away.

    NJ govt. under pressure from Jewish leaders had put at that time 19-year old Hindu boy since April 2012 in solitary confinement for being a “mastermind in Swastika drawn outside 4 Synagogues”& an amateurish act of arson at 1 by his Spanish Friend Anthony Graziano in Dec 2011-Jan 2012.The Hindu boy was not even present in New Jersey when these incidents took place. He was hundreds of miles away in New Hampshire campaigning for Republican Presidential Candidate Ron Paul. If Shalli Kumar cannot help 1 Hindu how he can be expected to protect millions of Hindus! In every Press Conference he says RHC (Republican Hindu Coalition) is on the patterns of RJC (Republican Jewish Coalition) and RHC is staffed by practically their advisors and he is paying $100,000.00 every month to the staff just to make sure all the compliance and legal guide lines for RHC are strictly followed! He knows all the top Jewish leaders and more than 2 dozen top Republican leaders!

    As far as I am concerned it was another crap event that our photo opportunist PHD (Photo Hungry Desi’s) self -declared community leaders have been doing for decades for self-promotion in the tri-state area in the name of India, Hindus, Hinduism and culture. There are more than a dozen India Day parades every year that are nothing but Mini Pushkar Melas to entertain locals.

    None of our so called community leaders can spell or define culture, religion, politics and help the less fortunate or victims of injustice from the Indian community. None of them has ever taken any stand for victims of racial discrimination, injustice & police brutality. The Jewish leaders can punish & send for counseling an 8-year-old for drawing Swastika, can allow Jewish Police officers to pull a gun on 5 & 9-year-old Hindu children, can call the entire Indian community cockroaches, animals, illiterate & illegal, go home. They can allow their media & reporters to write almost a dozen articles to terrorize and humiliate an 11-year-old Hindu boy for demanding equal rights with Jews & Christians of his town from State Governor in public. They can let the community be humiliated and terrorized. These are our community leaders.

    (The author is a New Jersey based community activist)

  • Putin’s man? Donald Trump denies Hillary Clinton’s charge that he’s the one

    Putin’s man? Donald Trump denies Hillary Clinton’s charge that he’s the one

    Hillary Clinton forcefully accused Donald Trump of favoring Russia’s leader over American military and intelligence experts Oct 19 night, as the Republican nominee pointedly refused to accept the U.S. government’s assertion that Moscow has sought to meddle in the presidential election.

    In a combative exchange in the final presidential debate, Clinton charged that Russian President Vladimir Putin was backing Trump because “he’d rather have a puppet as president of the United States.”

    Trump denied any relationship with Putin and said he would condemn any foreign interference in the election. But he notably refused to accept the intelligence community’s assessment that Russia was involved in the hacking of Democratic organizations. The Clinton campaign has also said the FBI is investigating Russia’s involvement in the hacking of a top adviser’s emails.

    The third presidential debate opened with a measured, policy-focused discussion — a stark contrast to the heated and highly personal clashes that defined the earlier contests. However, Trump quickly reverted to his previous style of repeatedly bursting in to interrupt Clinton as well as moderator Chris Wallace of Fox News. (AP)

  • Donald Trump says he ‘didn’t even apologize’ to his wife, she says he did

    Donald Trump says he ‘didn’t even apologize’ to his wife, she says he did

    WASHINGTON (TIP): Did US Republican Presidential candidate Donald Trump apologize to his wife after revelations he was involved in sexual assault ? His wife Melania said he did+ . Today, at the third and final US Presidential debate, Trump said he didn’t.

    “I would say the only way — because those stories are all totally false, I have to say that. And I didn’t even apologize to my wife, who’s sitting right here, because I didn’t do anything. I didn’t know any of these — I didn’t see these women,” Trump averred.

    Here’s what his wife said on Tuesday to TV show “Fox & Friends” host Ainsley Earhardt – “Those words, they were offensive to me and they were inappropriate… And he apologized to me. And I expect — I accept his apology. And we are moving on.”

    Today’s debate host, Fox News’s Chris Wallace, said that since the release of an 11-year-old tape, in which the Republican candidate boasted about groping women+ , nine women have come forward and have said that he “either groped them or kissed them without their consent.”

    Trump denied their charges.

    ” These women — the woman on the plane, the — I think they want either fame or her campaign did it. And I think it’s her campaign. Because what I saw what they did, which is a criminal act, by the way, where they’re telling people to go out and start fist-fights and start violence,” he said referring to opponent Hillary Clinton.

    Trump’s denial didn’t help him, because Clinton used the opportunity to talk about other nasty comments he has made.

    “At the last debate, we heard Donald talking about what he did to women.

    And after that, a number of women have come forward saying that’s exactly what he did to them. Now, what was his response? Well, he held a number of big rallies where he said that he could not possibly have done those things to those women because they were not attractive enough for them to be assaulted,” Clinton said. (PTI)

  • Trump drops a bombshell: Says won’t accept poll results in case of his defeat

    Trump drops a bombshell: Says won’t accept poll results in case of his defeat

    LAS VEGAS (TIP): Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump threw hints, October 19 that he may not accept defeat in the presidential polls which he has been saying is “rigged”, stunning the political scene and threatening to overturn US’ democratic convention of a smooth transfer of power. His stance drew a sharp attack from Hillary Clinton as the two faced off in the feisty final presidential debate in which she was declared the winner.

    The controversial 70-year-old Republican candidate maintained that he would keep the suspense about accepting the election result till November 8. “I will look at it at the time. I’m not looking at anything now,” he said in response to a question whether he would accept the poll results, during the third presidential debate at the University of Nevada here. “I will tell you at that time. I will keep you in suspense,” he said in the primetime debate that lasted for over 90 minutes, reiterating that the current elections are rigged.

    “The media is so dishonest and so corrupt and the pile on is so amazing, The New York Times wrote an article about it. They don’t even care, it’s so dishonest, they’ve poisoned the minds of the voters, but unfortunately for them, I think the voters are seeing through it,” he said. Trump’s comments at the Las Vegas showdown marked a stunning moment that has never been seen in the weeks before a modern US presidential election, CNN said.

    “The stance threatens to cast doubt on one of the fundamental principles of American politics – the peaceful, undisputed transfer of power from one president to a successor who is recognized as legitimate after winning an election,” it said. Trump’s remarks came after moderator Chris Wallace of Fox News said the peaceful transfer of power, a hallmark of American democracy, depends on the losing candidate accepting the validity of the electoral results.

    Democratic nominee, Clinton, described her rival’s refusal to accept the outcome of the election as “horrifying”, and even went so far as to paint him as a “puppet” of Russian president Vladimir Putin. “He is denigrating and he is talking down our democracy,” said the 68-year-old former secretary of state. “And I, for one, am appalled that someone who is the nominee of one of two major parties would take that position.” “Every time Donald thinks things are not going in his direction, he claims whatever, it is rigged against him,” said Clinton, adding that he has, at various times, accused the FBI, Republican primary process and judicial system of being corrupt.

    Mainstream Republicans were quick to denounce Trump’s comment. Senator Lindsey Graham, a former presidential candidate, said: “If he loses, it will not be because the system is ‘rigged’ but because he failed as a candidate” Republican strategist Ryan Williams found Trump’s statement “deeply concerning”.

    “You have to accept the results unless there are grounds for a recount and at this point it does not appear that we’re heading for a close election.”

    Donald Trump’s son thinks that running for President is a “step down” for his father who is very new to politics. “He (Trump) hasn’t spent his whole life to be up on the debate stage like a career politician. He spent his life creating jobs, building things, doing things that would benefit American workers,” Donald Trump Junior said.

     

  • Vote to See IMPACT -|- Hillary Clinton Vs. Donald Trump

    Vote to See IMPACT -|- Hillary Clinton Vs. Donald Trump

    vote

    Hillary Clinton

    Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton could become the first ever woman President of the United States in January next year. Unlike her Republican rival Donald Trump, Clinton is a veteran politician who has served both as a US Senator and as US President Barack Obama’s Secretary of State. She knows how things work at the White House, having been First Lady during her husband Bill’s two terms as US President.

    Will Hillary Clinton be a good or bad President for India? Here’s a five-point overview of the different ways in which her Presidency could impact India, based on comments she’s made during her campaign, or on promises she’s made in the manifesto on campaign’s website.

    FASTER FAMILY VISA PROCESSING

    In January, Clinton promised to take steps to reduce the family visa backlog, saying that two-fifths of all applicants were from the Asia-Pacific region (which includes India), PTI reported.Many families have had to endure years of separation as a consequence of this backlog, and Clinton said that she would “expand fee waivers” and “increase access to language programmes” in order to help prospective US citizens.

    GREEN CARDS ‘STAPLED’ TO HIGHER STEM DEGREES

    Hillary Clinton says in her manifesto that she’ll “staple” green cards to graduate and doctorate degrees earned by international students in four academic categories – Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM). If she keeps her promise, Indian students in US colleges who earn Master’s degrees and PhDs in academic disciplines such as aerospace engineering or applied mathematics will automatically obtain permanent resident status. This can, of course, be viewed in two ways – as giving Indian scholars better opportunities to contribute to their fields, or as catalyzing ‘brain drain.’

    ‘START-UP VISAS’

    Under a Clinton Administration, foreign entrepreneurs may be able to apply for ‘start-up visas’ and launch companies in “technology-oriented globally traded sectors” in the US, her manifesto says. The entrepreneurs would need their US investors to pledge their financial support to get the visa, and meet employment and performance targets to be eligible for permanent residency. Clinton’s focus, of course, is on creating more jobs for Americans, but that doesn’t change the fact that this a tantalizing prospect for Indian entrepreneurs.

    According to research by the National Foundation for American Policy, immigrants have founded more than half (44 of 87) of America’s startup companies valued at $1 billion or more.

    MAKE IN AMERICA, NOT INDIA

    Like Donald Trump, Clinton has also made the US manufacturing sector one of the focal issues of her campaign. She says in her manifesto that she’ll discourage companies from outsourcing jobs and capital, and reward them for returning jobs to the US. Two of the policy changes she proposes are removing tax breaks for US companies that send jobs abroad, and imposing “an ‘exit tax’ on companies that leave America to lower their tax burden.” So Clinton, like her Republican rival, could make it more difficult for American companies to accept Prime Minister Modi’s invitation to ‘Make In India.’

    DOES CLINTON SUPPORT H1B?

    Clinton’s priority is Comprehensive Immigration Reform (CIR) – an overhaul of the entire US Immigration system, one of whose goals is to provide undocumented immigrants to the US a path to legal status and citizenship. In an interview with Vox.com in July, Clinton said she didn’t want to “mix” CIR with “with other kinds of changes in visas and other concerns that particularly high-value technical companies have.” She added that “keeping pressure on them helps us resolve the bigger problem,” and other options could be explored later.

    Donald Trump

     

    While these comments must have sounded like bad news for US companies using H1B visas to bring in highly-skilled workers, Clinton said later in the month that what she wanted was a “truly comprehensive” system for all kinds of immigrants, including highly-skilled workers.

    Writing for the Economic Times, immigration lawyer and Brooklyn Law School professor Cyrus D Mehta says Clinton “will probably support the H1B programme.” He says she will accept compromises on H1B – such as “increasing the H-1B cap in exchange for imposing certain restrictions on IT companies” – if it will help her make CIR a reality.

    It seemed highly unlikely a year ago, but Republican nominee Donald Trump could very well become the 45th President of the United States in January next year. From an Indian perspective, what exactly would that entail? Here’s a five-point overview of the impact a Trump Presidency could have on India.

    H1B VISAS

    Trump has said he’s in favour of retaining highly talented people in the US, as long as they are in the country legally, according to a PTI report.

    But Trump’s official manifesto proposes that the “prevailing wage” paid to H1B workers be increased to put pressure on US firms to look within the US for talent. “This will improve the number of black, Hispanic and female workers in Silicon Valley who have been passed over in favor of the H-1B program,” it says. It also notes that the H1B doesn’t require American companies to first hire US workers before bringing in overseas talent. “Petitions for workers should be mailed to the unemployment office, not USCIS (United States Citizenship and Immigration Services),” it says.

    Trump has also said the “H-1B program is neither high-skilled nor immigration”, and that he’s “totally committed to eliminating rampant, widespread H-1B abuse.”

    PAKISTAN AND KASHMIR

    Trump has called Pakistan “probably the most dangerous” nation in the world, and has suggested that the US can work with India to keep Pakistan in check. “You have to get India involved … They have their own nukes and have a very powerful army. They seem to be the real check … I think we have to deal very closely with India to deal with it (Pakistan),” Trump said last September. So a Trump-led US government could be open to a rapprochement with India on issues such as Pakistan-sponsored terror in Jammu and Kashmir.

    CHINA’S TRADE LOSS INDIA’S GAIN?

    In his manifesto, Trump vows to work to rebalance the US-China trade deficit, and bring back millions of manufacturing jobs to the US. Writing for the Economic Times, former US diplomat William H Avery says Trump’s best strategy would be to “offset Asia’s (especially China’s) labour cost advantage in manufacturing with a combination of tariff and non-tariff barriers.” Doing so would affect India less than China, as it would be harder to place tariffs on IT services – India’s strength – than on China’s manufactured goods, Avery suggests. “China’s loss is India’s gain,” he concludes.

    MAKE IN INDIA

    On the flip side, Trump’s determination to revitalize the US manufacturing sector may not be good news for American businesses interested in Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Make In India initiative.

    A WINDFALL FOR INDIAN INVESTORS?

    In his manifesto, Trump pledges to “unleash American ingenuity” and make the US “the most attractive place to invest in the world” by lowering corporate tax rate to 15% (from almost 39% as of September 2016). Indian companies exploring the possibility of tapping into the US market may find this proposition enticing.

  • Trump is toast at polls after more women come forward to report “Groper-in-chief”

    Trump is toast at polls after more women come forward to report “Groper-in-chief”

    WASHINGTON (TIP): Several women have come forward over the past 24 hours to accuse Donald Trump of pawing or groping them over the years, even as new polls show Hillary Clinton surging to a 15-point lead among women — enough to sink him at the polls.

    The Trump campaign and its conservative support base, including the right wing media, has trashed the charges, dismissing them as “fabrications” by the liberal media, but coming on the heels of Trump’s own bragging on a hot mic of assaulting women, the allegations are widely seen as credible. “He was like an octopus, his hands were everywhere,” Jessica Leeds, one of he women who claimed to be at the wrong end of Trump’s attention told the New York Times. Now 74, Leeds said Trump began pawing her on a flight in 1980 and described how she bolted from the first class cabin to the back of the plane to escape him. Leeds, and Rachel Crooks, another woman who related a similar experience to NYT when she was a 22-year old receptionist in a realty firm, said they did not make a hue and cry about it because such behavior considered normal in that era, but they told family and friends about it immediately, something the paper confirmed.

    Even as the NYT story was splashing through social media, more women — including a journalist — came forward with similar charges, shaking the Trump campaign to its foundation. Meanwhile, another videotape surfaced of a Trump interview in 1992 in which he is heard boasting that he is going to be dating a girl who was only about ten then in another ten years. At the time Trump was in his mid-40s and had been divorced from his first wife, Ivanka, and was dating Marla Maples, who was to become his second wife. The footage shows Trump asking a young girl: “Are you going up the escalator?” while both are out of view.

  • New York Times dares Donald Trump to sue over sexual assault claims

    New York Times dares Donald Trump to sue over sexual assault claims

    NEW YORK (TIP): The New York Times has refused to retract an article in which two women accused Donald Trump of sexual assault, after the Republican presidential nominee threatened to sue the newspaper. In a letter made public yesterday, a lawyer for theTimes all but dared the property developer to make good on his threat.

    “We published newsworthy information about a subject of deep public concern,” wrote David McCraw, the paper’s assistant general counsel. “If Mr Trump disagrees, if he believes that American citizens had no right to hear what these women had to say and that the law of this country forces us and those who would criticise him to stand silent or be punished, we welcome the opportunity to have a court set him straight.”

    The article, published late on Wednesday, featured interviews with 74-year-old Jessica Leeds, who said Mr Trump had groped her on a flight more than 30 years ago, and with Rachel Crooks, whom Mr Trump allegedly kissed “on the mouth” against her will as she introduced herself to him in 2005, when she was 22.

  • New US President should meet PM Modi in 100 days: American think-tank

    New US President should meet PM Modi in 100 days: American think-tank

    WASHINGTON (TIP): With just 100 days left in Barack Obama’s presidency, a top American think-tank has suggested the new US president should meet Prime Minister Narendra Modi within first 100 days to strongly signal importance of continuing close relations between the two countries.

    In a major report on ‘India-US Security Co-operation’, the Center for Strategic and International Studies ( CSIS+ ) urges the upcoming administration to ensure that India signs the foundational agreements, which it believes is important for strengthening the India-US defense relationship.

    The absence of such agreements will also make it nearly impossible (if not completely impossible) for the US to provide to India certain advanced sensing, computing and communications technologies that India believes are necessary for its own defense capabilities, it said. “The next administration should work with Australia, India and Japan to establish a quadrilateral security dialogue, led by the US State Department and foreign ministries. The dialogue should focus on issues of common interest across the Pacific and Indian Ocean regions,” the report said.

    It said creating a specific opportunity for the US president and Indian Prime Minister to meet in the first 100 days will send a strong signal about the importance of bilateral ties.

    CSIS in its report recommends that the US and India should deepen announced efforts on submarine safety and anti-submarine warfare to include combined training and exercises to expand the capability of both countries as well as their interoperability with each other.

    Seeking to increase the FDI limit in defense sector to 100 per cent, the report also calls for strengthening and expanding the homeland security dialogue. The think-tank recommends the new president should invite India to participate (as an observer or stakeholder) in the Quadrilateral Coordination Group talks with the Taliban.

    It also urges for establishing a US-India dialogue on the Middle East, modeled on the “East Asia Consults” of the US State Department and India’s Ministry of External Affairs. CSIS said Modi’s emergence as a strong leader, just as the US was seeking to consolidate its strategy of re-balance to the Asia Pacific, gave America an opportunity to engage with a rising leader in India, and India an opportunity to reprioritise and rethink its engagement with the world. (PTI)

  • Trump has no plan B if he loses election

    Trump has no plan B if he loses election

    Donald Trump is musing on the possibility of losing the US election in November, an outcome that would render his campaign the biggest waste of time and money in his life. But if the Republican nominee is candidly admitting losing on November 8 is not out of the question, he apparently has not made plans for it. “If we don’t win this election, I don’t know what I’m going to do,” Trump told supporters at a rally in Ocala, in central Florida recently.

    He meanwhile called the decision by the US Justice Department not to press criminal charges against Hillary Clinton for her use of a private email server while Secretary of State “one of the great miscarriages of justice” in United States history and suggested that the Justice Department had colluded with Clinton to spare her any formal legal fall-out. He meanwhile added that politicians in Washington from both parties knew about it. Trump’s comments about Ms Clinton’s email travails further highlighted the angry mood that has taken hold of him since the leaking last weekend of a video of him speaking in offensive terms about sexual advances on women in 2005 and a rush among many Republican leaders to disown him.

    Did they make a deal where everybody protects each other in Washington?” Trump asked the crowd in Ocala. “Do they make deals like this? This is the most heinous thing I have ever seen involving justice in the history of the United States.” There has been speculation that were he to lose the presidency, Trump would leverage the support he has won from a significant swathe of Americans angry at the establishment and disenchanted with their own situations to launch a new conservative media empire, possibly with Stephen Bannon, his campaign CEO who has taken leave from running the rightwing website Breitbart.

    In Florida, Trump again intensified his attacks on Ms Clinton, suggesting for instance that Isis fighters in the Middle East hope she will win because then “they’ll not only take over that part of the world, they’ll take over this country, they’ll take over this part of the world”.

    At last Sunday’s debate, Trump suggested that as president he would appoint a special prosecutor to look into Ms Clinton private server use and have her imprisoned. He again hammered the issue home and made the same promise in Ocala. “This is crime at the highest level,” he told the packed shed of supporters. “She shouldn’t be allowed to run for president.” At her own campaign appearances later on Wednesday, Clinton was expected to challenge Republican politicians to say clearly whether or not they will vote for their own nominee on election day. The strategy was disclosed by John Podesta, her campaign chairman. “Are they with him or are they against him?” Mr. Podesta asked.

  • Indian-American Hindus invite Trump to address their rally on October 15 in New Jersey

    Indian-American Hindus invite Trump to address their rally on October 15 in New Jersey

    NEW JERSEY (TIP): US Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump will address a rally of Hindu-Americans in New Jersey on October 15 and half of the proceedings from the event will be used for the benefit of Kashmiri Pandits.

    The founder of Republican Hindu Coalition (RHC) Shalabh Kumar claimed that this is the first of its kind event where Trump is scheduled to address only one specific ethnic community.

    “…This is a charity concert organized for the benefit of terror victims in various countries…The 50 per cent of the proceeds from this concert will go for the benefit of Kashmiri Pandits in India,” Kumar said.

    Kumar is also Chairman of Indian American Advisory Council to the Republican Party.

  • Locker Room Hangover – Know the Republicans who will not vote for Donald Trump

    Locker Room Hangover – Know the Republicans who will not vote for Donald Trump

    Here’s a list of some of the leading Republicans who have deserted him since the tapes were revealed.

    But it’s not the first time Mr Trump has lost support from colleagues. Republicans have been deserting him for months over various scandals.

    So who is on the “Never Trump” list and who’s still on Mr Trump’s side?

    Republican senators not voting for Mr Trump

    • Kelly Ayotte, New Hampshire
    • Susan Collins, Maine
    • Mike Crapo, Idaho
    • Deb Fischer, Nebraska
    • Jeff Flake, Arizona
    • Cory Gardner, Colorado
    • Lindsey Graham, S Carolina
    • Dean Heller, Nevada
    • Mark Kirk, Illinois
    • John McCain, Arizona
    • Lisa Murkowski, Alaska
    • Rob Portman, Ohio
    • Martha Roby, Alabama
    • Ben Sasse, Nebraska
    • Dan Sullivan, Alaska
    • John Thune, S Dakota

    Republican Congressmen and Congresswomen not voting for Mr Trump

    • Jaime Herrera Beutler, Washington
    • Bradley Byrne, Alabama
    • Jason Chaffetz, Utah
    • Barbara Comstock, Virginia
    • Mike Coffman, Colorado
    • Rodney Davis, Illinois
    • Jeff Fortenberry, Nebraska
    • Scott Garrett, New Jersey
    • Kay Granger, Texas
    • Steve Knight, California
    • Cresent Hardy, Nevada
    • Joe Heck, Nevada
    • Will Hurd, Texas
    • John Katko, New York
    • Mike Lee, Utah
    • Frank LoBiondo, New Jersey
    • Mia Love, Utah
    • Patrick Meehan, Pennsylvania
    • Erik Paulsen, Minnesota
    • Tom Rooney, Florida
    • Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, Florida
    • Mike Simpson, Idaho
    • Chris Stewart, Utah
    • Fred Upton, Michigan
    • Ann Wagner, Missouri

    Other Republicans who will not vote for him

    • Robert Bentley, Alabama governor
    • Jeb Bush, former Florida governor and candidate for the 2016 nomination
    • William Cohen, former secretary of defence
    • Dennis Daugaard, South Dakota governor
    • Carly Fiorina, former candidate for the 2016 nomination
    • Darryl Glenn, from Colorado, running for the Senate
    • Kim Guadagno, lieutenant governor of New Jersey
    • Michael Hayden, former CIA director, former NSA director
    • Gary Herbert, Utah governor
    • Bill Haslam, Tennessee governor
    • Jon Huntsman, former Utah governor
    • John Kasich, Ohio governor, 2016 presidential candidate
    • Susana Martinez, New Mexico governor
    • George E Pataki, former New York governor
    • Tim Pawlenty, former Minnesota governor
    • Condoleezza Rice, former secretary of state
    • Tom Ridge, former Pennsylvania governor; former Homeland Security secretary
    • Mitt Romney, former Massachusetts governor, 2012 presidential nominee
    • Brian Sandoval, Nevada governor
    • Arnold Schwarzenegger, former California governor
  • Indian-Americans Split Support For Donald Trump And Hillary Clinton

    Indian-Americans Split Support For Donald Trump And Hillary Clinton

    Donald Trump failed to save his campaign in the crucial second presidential debate.
    St Louis: Indian-Americans appeared split in their support for the two presidential candidates, with some favouring Republican nominee Donald Trump by calling him “aggresive” in his attack while others saying that the former secretary of state is more “experienced in governance”.

    “Today’s Presidential debate was one of the spirited one,” said Mississippi-based Sampat Shivangi. “Trump was aggressive in attacking Clinton and she appeared subdued. The debate gave a new lease of life to Trump campaign, said Sampat Shivangi, the national president of Indian- American Forum for Political Education and a Republican delegate.

    “But she did well on foreign policy discussions and came across as knowledgeable and command over the issues. Trump faltered on the policy matters. Next two days will decide the fate of Trump’s campaign as to how many more Republican Party leaders well abandon him. But today’s debate seems has given lease to his life,” Sampat Shivangi said.

    “But one thing is certain come what may he will never quit the race as he has nothing to loose,” he added. “After tonight’s debate, I hope the Republican Hindu Coalition follows the lead of Senator John McCain and other Republican leaders and withdraws its support for Donald Trump,” Rajdeep Singh Jolly, a community leader who is campaigning against Mr Trump disagreed.

    “Mr Trump is basically an entertainer, and I don’t believe we should give an entertainer access to nuclear weapons,” he said.

    “Trump sidestepped his boorish videotaped comments by asserting: his was only “locker room” talk, while Bill Clinton actually did the bad deeds. Hillary, who clearly is well experienced in governance held sway, even as Wikileaks’ disclosed “public position” and “private position” petered out without being used to much consequence,” Indian-American attorney Ravi Batra said.

    “But, ultimately this election will come down to: if voters want more of the last few years, you have to vote for Hillary; but, as Trump said, if the voters want a fresh start they have to vote for him.

    “Perhaps, most curious was that terror got treated as shopkeepers deal with shoplifting: better security, but essentially cost of doing business,” Mr Batra said.

    Indian American, Shalabh Kumar of the Republican Hindu Coalition said Trump won the debate.

    “Sixer in Cricket. Touch down in American Football. Home Run in Baseball. Phenomenal incredible WOW, what a night,” Mr Kumar said in a brief statement.

    Meanwhile, a Pakistani-American has said that the second presidential debate has turned to be a “defining moment” for Mr Trump whose election campaign seemed to be over after surfacing of his lewd comments against women.

    “Today’s speech was a defining moment for Donald Trump’s campaign,” said Pakistani-American Sajid Tarar, founder and head of the Muslim Americans for Mr Trump in a statement.

  • Pence wins the Vice Presidential debate 48% to 42% of Kaine; Does Trump win?

    Pence wins the Vice Presidential debate 48% to 42% of Kaine; Does Trump win?

    NEW YORK (TIP): The Trump-Pence ticket is still losing the war, however, and October 4 night’s debate likely only succeeded in keeping hope alive that Donald Trump can mount a comeback, says a BBC news report.

    For the last week, it’s felt a bit like Donald Trump was routed. His woeful first presidential debate performance was compounded by a series of unforced errors, capped by an early morning Twitter tirade and a damaging New York Times story about his near billion-dollar business losses in 1995. His poll numbers headed south.

    The Republican vice-presidential nominee’s primary job – really his only job – was to stop the bleeding and give the campaign an opportunity to regroup. Kaine’s goal was to keep him from doing that. Pence honestly didn’t land too many blows on the Democrat. But first things first. He had to put out the raging dumpster fire that was his team’s campaign over the past week.

    Having said that, sometimes it seemed like Pence was operating in a parallel universe than the one that Trump has inhabited over the past year.

    Time and again, when Kaine pressed him on Trump’s past controversial statements and positions, Pence defended Trump the way he wanted him to be, not the way he really is.

    Take, for example, the exchange on Russia. Pence warned of the threat the nation posed to world order and tried to lay its growing assertiveness at Mrs Clinton’s feet. He called Russian President Vladimir Putin a “small and bullying leader” who wasn’t confronted by the Obama administration.

    As Kaine was quick to point out, however, Trump has showered the Russian president with praise, calling him a “strong leader”. A hard line against Russia is certainly a traditional Republican position – Mitt Romney embraced it in 2012 – but it’s hardly where Trump stands.

    It almost seemed like Pence was more interested in making the case for conservatism the way Americans have known it over the last 30 years than mounting a spirited defense of Trump’s actual positions and statements.

    That may help some wayward Republicans return to the fold in the short term. They need to be back in Trump’s column if he wants to make this presidential race competitive.

    It also may not be a bad move for Pence if he wants to position himself as a possible candidate for the 2020 Republican nomination.

    If there was one exchange that illustrated the challenges Pence faced in defending Trump – and how he, for the most part, survived them – it’s the issue of Trump’s tax returns.

    It’s obviously an area Democrats want to exploit. Hillary Clinton hit the Republican on it multiple times in recent days, and her press aide Jennifer Palmieri told reporters at the debate site that Trump’s possible failure to pay income taxes gives Democrats an opening among white working-class voters.

    When Pence was first asked about Trump’s break with 40 years of tradition by not making them public, he changed the subject. When Quijado pressed him, he said the leaked 1995 tax returns highlighted by the Times showed Trump went through some tough times and “brilliantly” used the tax code “just the way it’s supposed to be used”.

    Kaine pressed him on why Trump has broken his pledge to release his full tax returns, and Pence retreated to Trump’s debunked line that he could only do so after he’s done being audited (a process that Trump himself has said has been going on for 15 years).

    With results like that, it was no wonder Pence would rather not talk about Trump’s record. He put the exchange behind him, however, and moved on to more favorable terrain. Pence’s political jujitsu throughout the debate was quite a remarkable feat, really.

    When Kaine confronted him on Trump’s past controversies, he responded by asserting that the Clinton team was the one waging an “insult-driven campaign”.

    When Kaine attacked Trump’s proposed ban on Muslims entering the US, Pence said “we’re going to put the safety and security of the American people first”.

    When Kaine noted that Trump had suggested women who have abortions should be subject to criminal penalties (a position he later recanted), Pence said they “would never support” such legislation – and then, when pressed, said Trump wasn’t a polished politician and “things don’t always come out exactly the way he means them”.

    “Six times tonight, I have said to Governor Pence I can’t imagine how you can defend your running mate’s position on one issue after the next,” an exasperated Kaine said at one point. “And in all six cases, he’s refused to defend his running mate.”

    “I’m very, very happy to defend Donald Trump,” Pence said – but then opted to change the subject. It clearly frustrated Kaine, it probably will give fact-checkers fits, and Democrats will be in up arms. But it allowed Pence to move on – and, if the Republicans are lucky, turn the page in the coming days.

    That is exactly what Trump needs.

    This debate likely will have little effect on the overall poll numbers – they historically never do. What happens next is up to Trump. Pence did his part, now his running mate has two debates left to take advantage.

  • Trump was slaughtered by his own buffoonery

    Trump was slaughtered by his own buffoonery

    In a world on nodding terms with sanity, that surely would be that. After a gruesomely electrifying, barely moderated first presidential debate, you could stick a fork in Donald Trump in the certain knowledge that his juices would run clear, and give thanks that America will overcome its distaste for Hillary Clinton and make her its 45th President.

    But right now, lest this has escaped you, it is by no means a sane world. No world in which Trump is quoted at shorter odds to reach the White House than the Road Runner, Elmer Fudd, Muttley, Mr. Magoo or any other cartoon character can be considered that. So often have rumors of his political death proved exaggerated that to write the obituary again risks stretching that Einsteinian definition of madness beyond breaking point. He could recover yet again.

    But God alone knows how. Trump was absolutely slaughtered, partly by his own capacious buffoonery, and in part by a Hillary Clinton who started slowly but ended up owning the terracotta grifter. While you might draw the same conclusion from the verbal exchanges, as in fact I will, the optics made a compelling case. Not once in 90 minutes did she cough or touch her water. Red-eyed and snifflier than a cokehead at a white pepper festival, Trump relentlessly sipped his.

    Radiating authoritative stillness, Hillary smiled him to destruction. She grinned at him like an irked but indulgent aunt, while he gurned and fidgeted like a bored and bad-tempered schoolboy.

    For the first 10 or 15 minutes she was tense and unfocused, on the defensive. But once the nervousness lifted, a smile played almost incessantly at the corners of her mouth as she slew both the malicious rumors about her health and her opponent. While she grew in strength the longer it went it was Trump, who does like to question her stamina, who visibly tired. She looked far younger than her 68 years (hats off to the make-up artist). He looked every moment and more of his 70.

    She looked like she belonged on a banknote. He looked like he belonged in detention. With any debate, you can no more overstate the importance of the visual messaging than a candidate’s ability or otherwise to beat expectations. Hillary soared above her caricature as an ailing, humorless virago. She even got more laughs than Trump, who married unusual witlessness (every crack at a zinger fell flat) to the familiar rambling ignorance.

    Trump said so much that was false, stupid and grotesque that it seems invidious to choose a winner. Reminded that he had looked forward to the imminent 2008 crash, which cost some eight million Americans their homes, because it would help him buy property cheaply, he said “that’s called business, by the way”.

    When she suggested he won’t publish his tax returns because they would show him avoiding all federal taxes, he brazenly observed “that makes me smart”. When Hillary accused him of “stiffing” his hotel contractors for their money, he shrugged insouciantly. If we absolutely must pick a champion from a crowded field of braggardly foolishness, the laurels should probably go to the brag about ending the Birther fantasy he peddled for years – and would continue to peddle for years – by forcing Barack Obama to release his birth certificate. The giggle she just about suppressed then erupted later, when he cited his temperament as his greatest presidential asset. The chuckle seemed as lethal to Trump as his own mesmerizing inability to articulate a coherent thought. His sentences were bamboozling hybrids in which one half-expressed idea collided with another. He spoke like the winner of one of those beauty pageants Hillary archly mentioned that he “likes to hang around”.

    After more than a year as a candidate, it was plain that Trump had made no more effort to educate himself on the detail of domestic and geopolitical issues than to jettison the racism and sexism that were the fuel injectors for his insurgency.

    Whether his indolence is more or less staggering than his arrogance is as close a call as this election appeared before this debate. But it is hard to believe that this transparent huckster can recover from being dismantled by Hillary on so many fronts, among them his references to women as pigs, dogs and – in the case of someone Clinton took the trouble to name -“Miss Housekeeping” (purely because she was Latina). Hard, but not impossible. Every instinct screams that even now, with two more debates to come, the combination of Hillary’s wry competence and an angry, outclassed Trump’s cluelessness has settled this race. But writing after a long, draining, sleepless night in which much malt whisky was taken for the nerves, I must acknowledge the perils of wishful thinking.

    There is a chance that the terror of a Trump presidency influences the judgement. Let’s show a little faith in the sense and sanity of our cousins across the Atlantic and make a prediction. To what extent she won it, and he threw it away, is a matter of perspective. But by any objective measure, Hillary gave Trump such an elegantly vicious hiding that it will be she who takes the oath to defend the Constitution on January 20 next year.

    (Source: The Independent)

  • Team Hillary Digs Up Trump’s Playboy Video After His Sex Tape Jibe

    Team Hillary Digs Up Trump’s Playboy Video After His Sex Tape Jibe

    Donald Trump is encouraging voters to check out a “sex tape” featuring the former beauty queen with whom he’s feuding. Hillary Clinton’s campaign is suggesting that a better rental is the adult film in which Trump himself appears.

    With the presidential campaign taking a sordid turn, even many of Trump’s supporters shook their heads, worried that their candidate’s latest outburst could further hurt him among female voters already sceptical but whose support he’ll badly need to win in November.

    The Republican nominee’s a pre-dawn Twitter tirade tore into the 1996 Miss Universe, Alicia Machado, a Venezuela-born woman whose weight gain Trump has said created terrible problems for the pageant he owned at the time. Clinton had cited Trump’s treatment of Machado near the end of their first debate, and Trump has spent days revisiting his complaints about Machado.

    “Did Crooked Hillary help disgusting (check out sex tape and past) Alicia M become a US citizen so she could use her in the debate?” read a tweet Trump posted at 5:30am, one in a series of attacks on her.

    The “sex tape” tweet apparently referred to footage from a Spanish reality show in 2005 in which Machado was a contestant and appeared on camera in bed with a male contestant. The images are grainy and do not include nudity, though Machado later acknowledged in the Hispanic media that she was having sex in the video.

    Muddying the waters: an explicit 2000 Playboy video with a cameo by Trump. In a short clip posted on the website BuzzFeed, Trump pours a bottle of champagne on a Playboy-branded limo on a New York street, surrounded by a gaggle of women.

    “There’s been a lot of talk about sex tapes today and in a strange turn of events only one adult film has emerged today, and its star is Donald Trump,” said Clinton spokesman Nick Merrill, adding he hadn’t seen the film.

    Meanwhile, Trump’s campaign accused the media and Clinton of colluding to set him up for fresh condemnation, to which Clinton retorted, “His latest twitter meltdown is unhinged, even for him.”

    Machado herself took to Facebook to say Trump’s tweets were part of a pattern of “demoralizing women,” calling them “cheap lies with bad intentions.” Planned Parenthood said it showed that Trump’s “misogyny knows no bounds.” And Clinton said they showed anew why someone with Trump’s temperament “should not be anywhere near the nuclear codes.”

    With less than 40 days left in the election, Trump’s broadside threw his campaign into a fresh round of second-guessing the candidate’s instincts and confusion about what to do next. To believers in traditional political norms, it seemed like the opposite of what was needed to win over females, Hispanics and young Americans whose support could well determine the election.

    Shaming Machado over intimate details from her past could be particularly risky as Trump tries to win over more female voters, many of whom are turned away by such personal attacks. It also risks calling further attention to the thrice-married Trump’s own history with women.

    What kind of a man, Clinton asked, “stays up all night to smear a woman with lies and conspiracy theories?”

    Even Trump’s most vocal allies seemed at a loss for words.

    “He’s being Trump. I don’t have any comment beyond that,” said former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, a top supporter. Generally chatty and occasionally critical of Trump, Gingrich said tersely that Trump sometimes does “strange things,” but that Clinton lies. “I’ll let you decide which is worse for America.”

    But Trump’s inner circle followed his lead by refusing to concede any missteps. Trump did not mention the tweets Friday evening as he rallied supporters in Michigan. Instead, he returned to Twitter to invoke Clinton’s famous ad from her 2008 campaign portraying her as the best candidate to pick up an urgent call at the White House at 3am.

    “For those few people knocking me for tweeting at three o’clock in the morning, at least you know I will be there, awake, to answer the call!” Trump wrote.

  • What Were Hillary Clinton’s Emails About? The Emailgate Scandal Explained

    What Were Hillary Clinton’s Emails About? The Emailgate Scandal Explained

    “Emailgate” has plagued Hillary Clinton’s campaign since the push for her nomination began nearly a year and a half ago, painting her as a corrupt politician, or in some cases, an inept one.

    In March 2015, it became publicly known that Hillary Clinton, during her tenure as United States Secretary of State, had exclusively used her family’s private email server for official communications, rather than official State Department email accounts maintained on federal servers. Those official communications included thousands of emails that would later be marked classified by the State Department retroactively.

    The controversy unfolded against the backdrop of Clinton’s 2016 presidential election campaign and hearings held by the United States House Select Committee on Benghazi. Some experts, officials, and members of Congress have contended that her use of private messaging systemsoftware and a private server violated State Department protocols and procedures, as well as federal laws and regulations governing recordkeeping.

    In response, Clinton has said that her use of personal email was in compliance with federal laws and State Department regulations, and that former secretaries of state had also maintained personal email accounts though not their own private email servers.

    In May 2016, the State Department’s Office of the Inspector General released an 83-page report about the State Department’s email practices, including Clinton’s.

    On July 5, 2016 upon concluding its investigation, the FBI stated that Clinton was “extremely careless” in handling her email system but recommended that no charges be filed against Clinton.

    On July 6, 2016, Attorney General Loretta Lynch announced that no charges would be filed.

    On July 7, the State Department reopened its probe into the email controversy.

    On September 2, 2016, the FBI published a report on the investigation into her server which was 58 pages.

    How did the scandal start? 

    For Clinton, the saga began at the start of her tenure as secretary of state. Rather than locking up her personal BlackBerry before heading into her secure office space and using an authorized State Department email address, Clinton fought concerned officials for the ability to exclusively use her personal phone for professional, family and friendly correspondence. After a meeting with Clinton’s chief of staff, specialists from the State Department and National Security Agency expressed concern that hackers could turn the phone into a listening device. Yet Clinton insisted on toting around her beloved BlackBerry.

    What many of those involved—though it’s not clear how many—didn’t know was the more dangerous aspect of the problem: the fact that Clinton’s BlackBerry emails used “clintonemail.com,” the unsecure private server at her home, making her phone not only a potential listening device, but a source for reading sensitive discussions, as well.

    Interest in Clinton’s use of a private email server spiked just after she left office in early 2013, when the New York Times published an exclusive report that cited lawyers and officials who said she may have broken federal law by keeping her emails private rather than submitting them to government recordkeeping.

    The congressional committee investigating Clinton’s response to the attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi demanded that Clinton, her lawyers and the tech companies associated with the accounts turn over all emails relevant to the inquiry. The State Department provided the Benghazi committee with about 15,000 pages of relevant emails from her private server in August 2014. Between May 2015 and February 2016, the State Department continued to make public what would sum up to 30,000 emails. It has yet to release 14,900.

    Why do they matter? 

    Though Clinton and her aides insist her use of the private phone and “clintonemails.com” was a matter of convenience, officials worried about the server’s vulnerability to hacks. To make matters worse, eight email chains contained “top secret” information, 36 held information described simply as “secret,” another eight included “confidential,” information, and about 2,000 have been retroactively classified as “confidential,” the lowest level of classification, according to the Times.

    Aside from making sensitive diplomatic information easy prey for hackers, the scandal also augmented voters’ suspicions that she is far from trustworthy and coincided with a dive in her favorability ratings, according to Gallup. Despite the sheer volume of her opponent Donald Trump’s widely-criticized remarks and reports of his own scandalous behavior, what might’ve been an easier race has become nearly a tie. In a recent McClatchy-Marist poll, for example, while 40 percent of likely voters held favorable views of Clinton, only 36 percent thought she was “honest and trustworthy.”

    Exacerbating the image of dishonesty, Bill Clinton spontaneously met with Attorney General Loretta Lynch on the tarmac of the Phoenix airport on June 27 just as the Justice Department was wrapping up its examination of his wife. And while the Federal Bureau of Investigation director James Comey announced on July 5 the bureau’s decision not to indict Clinton for her actions, he called her use of the private server “extremely careless”—not exactly an ideal quality for a commander in chief.

    But didn’t Colin Powell do it, too? 

    When pressed about her use of the private server at the March 9 democratic primary debate, Clinton claimed that her predecessors “did the same thing.” But former Secretaries of State Madeleine Albright and Condoleezza Rice, the first State Department leaders for which email was available, said they generally did not use the mode of correspondence while in office, as PolitiFact pointed out. Colin Powell, however, did use a personal email address, but not via a private server in his home.

    Clinton might’ve had better luck in her attempt to divert attention from her private server had she pointed to the George W. Bush administration’s 22 million “lost” emails, as reported by Newsweek.

    What’s in the emails, anyway? If you want, you can read them yourself on the FBI’s “Vault” records. Some of them provide humorous insight into the day-to-day workings of the State Department, but others are more serious. Most alarmingly, Clinton used the server to communicate State Department deliberations surrounding a covert drone strike operation, along with many other messages containing classified information. When questioned by the FBI about whether she understood the “C,” meaning “classified,” in the emails sent and received on the clintonemails.com account, Clinton said she thought the letter was used for alphabetical ordering.

    Why are we still talking about this? Nearly a year after Clinton’s former democratic primary opponent Bernie Sanders told her that “the American people are sick and tired of hearing about your damn emails,” the scandal continues to dominate headlines. That’s in part because Republicans in Congress, such as House Speaker Paul Ryan and members of the House Oversight Committee, continued to bring up the issue long after the FBI ended its investigation. Trump has also repeatedly used the scandal as ammo to attack his opponent, giving her the moniker “Crooked Hillary,” which quickly became a hashtag. In his first debate with Clinton on Monday night, he pledged to release his tax returns if she released 30,000 emails—apparently unaware of the fact that 30,000 had already been made public.

    The issue has sparked debates of the media’s creating a false equivalence between Trump and Clinton, with the former candidate said to be held to a lower standard than the latter.

    As the release of Clinton’s remaining emails and the next Clinton-Trump debate approach, don’t expect the issue to go away anytime soon.

  • America ‘needs an adult’ in White House: Michelle Obama

    America ‘needs an adult’ in White House: Michelle Obama

    PHILADELPHIA: Michelle Obama told a diverse and enthusiastic crowd in Philadelphia today that candidates don’t change once they become president and that America “needs an adult in the White House.”

    The first lady never mentioned Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump during the rally at LaSalle University.

    But there was no question that she was warning voters that candidate Trump would be the same as President Trump.

    “The presidency doesn’t change who you are, it reveals who you are,” she told the cheering crowd. She referred to several comments Trump made during and after Monday’s debate, including his apparent acknowledgment that he’s paid no taxes some years. Trump said that makes him “smart.”

    “If a candidate is erratic and threatening, if a candidate traffics in prejudice, fear and lies on the campaign trail, if a candidate thinks not paying taxes makes you smart, or that it’s good business when people lose their homes; if a candidate regularly and flippantly makes cruel and insulting comments about women, about how we look, how we act well, sadly, that’s who that candidate really is,” she said. “That is the kind of president they will be.”

    She said the country needs a leader who is steady and measured because when making war-or-peace decisions, “the president can’t just pop off or lash out irrationally. No, we need an adult in the White House, I guarantee you.”

    She cast Clinton as a tough, compassionate fighter who doesn’t back down and who loves her country. “Experience matters, preparation matters, temperament matters,” she said. “Hillary Clinton has it all. She’s the real deal.”

    The first lady was heading to Pittsburgh for another rally for the Democratic presidential nominee later today. Trump’s campaign reacted to Obama’s speech with a statement saying Clinton is in “panic mode” in Pennsylvania because polls show the Republican presidential nominee surging in the battleground state.

  • Hillary Clinton Wins the First Presidential Debate

    Hillary Clinton Wins the First Presidential Debate

    NEW YORK (TIP): Democrat Hillary Clinton on September 26, defeated Republican Donald Trump in the first presidential debate, 62% to 27%.

    Clinton and Trump took to the stage at Hofstra University on Long Island, Monday, September 26 to begin their first presidential debate and sparred over jobs, taxes, the Islamic State, guns and the former secretary of state’s undisclosed emails, media reports said.

    Moderator Leslie Holt of NBC News opened the 90-minute debate at Hofstra University, Long Island, New York, with the first topic, “Achieving Prosperity” where the first question about putting money back into Americans’ pockets and creating jobs was directed to Clinton, CNN reported.

    Clinton, the first woman to represent a major US party in the presidential race, mentioned her granddaughter’s birthday, and talked about everything from gender pay gaps to paid family leave, to presidential temperament.

    Trump gave a classic answer about China and Mexico stealing American business and jobs.

    “We have to stop our jobs from being stolen from us, we have to stop companies from leaving the United States,” he added.

    Clinton also called on Trump to apologies to people who have worked on the real estate mogul’s properties and have not been paid in full, Politico reported.

    Do “the thousands of people that you have stiffed over the course of your business not deserve some kind of apology from someone who has taken their labor, taken the goods that they’ve produced and then refused to pay them?” Clinton questioned her rival.

    “I can only say that I’m certainly relieved that my late father never did business with you.”

    Following Trump’s opening remarks about reducing taxes, Holt asked Clinton to defend her plan to increase taxes.

    Regarding tax returns, Trump said “I will release my tax returns – against my lawyer’s wishes – when she releases her 33,000 emails that have been deleted.”

    Clinton responded by saying that there was something “really important, maybe even terrible that he’s trying to hide,” Politico reported.

    “Maybe he doesn’t want the American public, all of you watching tonight, to know that he’s paid no federal taxes,” Clinton said.

    Clinton also admitted that she “made a mistake” about her use of a private email server while at the State Department.

    Trump went on to blame Clinton for the rise of the ISIS by noting the Democrat had laid out some of her plans on her website.

    “You’re telling the enemy everything you want to do,” Trump said as Clinton shook her head in amusement. “No wonder you’ve been fighting ISIS your entire adult life.”

    Moderator Holt brought up the recent fatal police shootings of African-American men and asked about healing along lines of race and racism.

    “Unfortunately, race often determines too much,” Hillary said, adding “We have to restore trust between communities and the police… everyone should be respected by the law and everyone should respect the law.”

    Trump said the country needed law and order. “African Americans and Hispanics are living in hell because it’s so dangerous. You walk down the street you get shot,” he added.

    Clinton called for gun control in the US, saying “We’ve got too many military-style weapons on the streets. In a lot of places, our police are outgunned… we need to keep guns out of the hands of those who could do harm.”

    The debate was divided into 6 segments with 15 minutes given to each nominee. Two minutes were allotted to answer a question asked by the moderator, two minutes to reply and the remaining time for the nominees to debate.

    The polls clearly found Hillary Clinton a winner in the debate. Two reputable polls released Wednesday showed that respondents thought Hillary Clinton won Monday night’s debate by a wide margin.

    An NBC News/SurveyMonkey poll found that 52 percent of respondents thought Clinton won, to 21 percent who thought that Trump came out ahead.

    Another from Reuters/Ipsos found that 56 percent of respondents thought Clinton won, to 26 percent who declared victory for Trump.

    Meanwhile, Donald Trump complained about every part of the first presidential debate, from his opponent to the moderator to the subsequent poll results, during a Thursday campaign appearance.

    “I had to put up with the anchor and fight the anchor all the time on everything I said,” Trump said of the debate’s moderator, Lester Holt, at a rally in Bedford, New Hampshire. “What a rigged deal.”This was the 20th US presidential debate and wasorganized by the Commission on Presidential Debates.

  • Hillary Clinton Wins First Presidential Debate, 62% to 27%

    Hillary Clinton Wins First Presidential Debate, 62% to 27%

    Democrat Hillary Clinton on Tuesday defeated Republican Donald Trump in the first presidential debate by 62% to 27%.

    Earlier, Clinton and Trump took to the stage on Monday to begin their first-ever presidential debate and have immediately sparred over jobs, taxes, the Islamic State, guns and the former secretary of state’s undisclosed emails, media reports said.

    Moderator Leslie Holt of NBC News opened the 90-minute debate at Hofstra University, Long Island, New York, with the first topic, “Achieving Prosperity” where the first question about putting money back into Americans’ pockets and creating jobs was directed to Clinton, CNN reported.

    Clinton, the first woman to represent a major US party in the presidential race, mentioned her granddaughter’s birthday, and talked about everything from gender pay gaps, to paid family leave, to presidential temperament.

    Trump gave a classic answer about China and Mexico stealing American business and jobs.

    “We have to stop our jobs from being stolen from us, we have to stop companies from leaving the United States,” he added.

    Clinton also called on Trump to apologise to people who have worked on the real estate mogul’s properties who have not been paid in full, Politico reported.

    Do “the thousands of people that you have stiffed over the course of your business not deserve some kind of apology from someone who has taken their labour, taken the goods that they’ve produced and then refused to pay them?” Clinton questioned her rival.

    “I can only say that I’m certainly relieved that my late father never did business with you.”

    Trump went on to suggest that he had only taken that route four times, and that he was within his legal rights to do so.

    Following Trump’s opening remarks about reducing taxes, Holt asked Clinton to defend her plan to increase taxes.

    Clinton quipped she has a feeling she will be blamed for everything by the end of the night.

    Regarding taxes, Trump said “I will release my tax returns – against my lawyer’s wishes – when she releases her 33,000 emails that have been deleted.”

    Clinton responded by saying that there was something “really important, maybe even terrible that he’s trying to hide,” Politico reported.

    “Maybe he doesn’t want the American public, all of you watching tonight, to know that he’s paid no federal taxes,” Clinton said.

    Clinton also admitted that she “made a mistake” about her use of a private email server while at the State Department.

    Trump went on to blame Clinton for the the rise of the IS by noting the Democrat had laid out some of her plans on her website.

    “You’re telling the enemy everything you want to do,” Trump said as Clinton shook her head in amusement. “No wonder you’ve been fighting IS your entire adult life.”

    Moderator Holt brought up the recent fatal police shootings of African-American men and asked about healing along lines of race and racism.

    “Unfortunately, race often determines too much,” she said, adding “We have to restore trust between communities and the police… everyone should be respected by the law and everyone should respect the law.”

    Trump said the country needed law and order. “African Americans and Hispanics are living in hell because it’s so dangerous. You walk down the street you get shot,” he added.

    Clinton has called for restricted gun control in the US, saying “We’ve got too many military-style weapons on the streets. In a lot of places, our police are outgunned Â… we need to keep guns out of the hands of those who’d do harm.”

    The debate is divided into 6 segments with 15 minutes given to each nominee. Two minutes will be allotted to answer a question asked by the moderator, two minutes to reply and the remaining time for the nominees to debate.

    This is the 20th US presidential debate and is being organised by the Commission on Presidential Debates.