Obama : Trump vote remarks ‘dangerous’

President Barack Obama has said Republican Donald Trump’s insistence that he might not accept the election result is “dangerous”.

Speaking at a campaign rally in Miami for Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton, the president said Mr Trump’s comments undermined American democracy.

Mr Trump refused in a televised debate to say he would accept the outcome of the election on 8 November.

He later said he would accept a “clear” result but left a challenge open.

Speaking in Ohio on Thursday, Mr Trump said, with a grin: “I would like to promise and pledge to all of my voters and supporters and to all of the people of the United States, that I will totally accept the results of this great and historic presidential election – if I win.”

In the same speech, he said he would accept a clear election result but reserved the right to file a legal challenge in the case of a questionable one.

Hours later, the president said that sowing the seeds of doubt in people’s minds about the legitimacy of US elections provided a boost to the country’s enemies.

“You’re doing the work of our adversaries for them, because our democracy depends on people knowing that their vote matters,” said Mr Obama.

Mr Trump has been heavily criticised by many in his own party by suggesting he might not accept the election result.

For days, he has claimed the election is rigged against him, due to media bias and voter fraud.

During Wednesday night’s debate with Mrs Clinton, when moderator Chris Wallace asked Mr Trump if he would accept losing to her, the Republican nominee said he would “keep you in suspense”.

Mr Trump’s campaign manager, Kellyanne Conway, later insisted that the candidate had meant he would not concede until the “results are actually known”.

Republican Senator John McCain, who lost to Mr Obama eight years ago, said: “A concession isn’t just an exercise in graciousness. It is an act of respect for the will of the American people, a respect that is every American leader’s first responsibility.”

First Lady Michelle Obama also joined the attack on Thursday, saying “you do not keep American democracy in suspense”.

With the Clinton camp – Kim Ghattas, BBC News

Hillary Clinton walked on to her campaign plane to the cheering and clapping of her aides.  

        

She told reporters she was relieved and grateful and joked there would be “no more naps”- a reference to Trump’s repeated description of her prep days off the campaign trail as naps.

Mrs Clinton’s stand-in for Mr Trump during the mock debates was one of her close aides, Philippe Reines, who took the role so seriously that he wore Trump cufflinks, shoe lifts and the same red tie as Mr Trump. After the debate, Mrs Clinton and Mr Reines embraced and he called her a “badass hombre”.

Clinton aides said she would continue to highlight Mr Trump’s refusal to pledge he would accept the results of the election. But would it be a real crisis on election day? Not if the result was a decisive win, they seemed to quietly indicate.

If Mrs Clinton and her team felt that she had closed the deal on stage, they kept their confidence in check. But the mood on the plane was certainly relaxed.

At the Ohio rally, Mr Trump also reiterated a claim he made during the debate, that Mrs Clinton and President Obama were responsible for inciting violence at a Chicago rally earlier this year.

The crowd erupted into cheers of: “Lock her up!”

During the debate, he called Mrs Clinton a “nasty woman”.

Mr Trump has trailed Mrs Clinton in the polls after facing damaging fallout over a video that emerged of him making obscene remarks about groping women.

When asked to address the allegations made against him by several women in the wake of the video, Mr Trump said the claims had been “largely debunked”.

Mr Trump’s comments come after a 10th woman came forward to accuse him of sexual assault on Thursday at a news conference.

Karena Virginia said Mr Trump allegedly touched her breast at the US Open in 1998 and made offensive comments about her to a group of men.

The two candidates are scheduled to appear at a charity dinner on Thursday night in New York.

Polls suggest Mrs Clinton is ahead nationally and in key battleground states.

Source: BBC

There’s no media conspiracy against Trump

Source: Robert J. Samuelson | The Washington Post

Date: 19-10-2016 Time: 11:10:05:pm

Regardless of who wins the election, the press — or, at any rate, what used to be called the “mainstream” media — may be the big loser. Donald Trump is making a case that he’s the victim of an orchestrated media campaign to defeat him, and although the charge is not true, it may stick among his devoted followers.

We live in an era of fragmented news sources. People can pick not only what’s interesting and agreeable but also what confirms their opinions, convictions, and biases. There are more choices than ever. A new Pew survey finds that adults “often” get their news from the following sources: TV, including cable (57 percent); online, including social media and smartphones (38 percent); radio (25 percent); and print newspapers (20 percent).

News has become akin to religion; it’s accepted or rejected as a matter of faith, depending on the source. Consider another recent Pew poll. Respondents were asked whether on major issues Trump and Hillary Clinton supporters agree on basic facts, even if they disagree on solutions. The finding: 81 percent said they disagree even on basic facts.

Trump is now ratcheting up this process to a new level of mistrust. The essence of his charge is that most mainstream media reporters and editors (the type of people who work at CNN, The Washington Post and the New York Times) don’t like him, don’t agree with him, or both, and have skewed their coverage to engineer his defeat. There is cooperation, implicit or explicit, with the Clinton campaign.

Trump is right in one sense: Much of the press dislikes him.

Take me as an example. I’m a slightly right-of-center columnist at The Post. I am no great fan of Clinton, but I believe that President Trump would be a disaster. He doesn’t know anything about governing, is proud of his ignorance, stirs hatred of his critics and would throw his opponent (Clinton) in jail. This last threat is one we associate with dictatorships, not American democracy.

I suspect that most Post reporters and editors feel this way, though I have no hard evidence. (For what it’s worth, the nonpartisan Center for Public Integrity has disclosed that 480 “journalists” have made nearly $400,000 in campaign contributions, more than 96 percent of which went to Clinton. Many news organizations, including The Post and the New York Times, bar contributions and involvement in partisan politics.)

But this doesn’t mean the press has hatched a conscious campaign to defeat Trump. The counterweight to personal preference is a professional ethos that emphasizes evenhandedness — at least among mainstream media organizations. Note also that editorial pages are run separately from the news pages.

Let’s put this in context. All through the primaries, Trump skillfully played the media to get free airtime. He also used the media as a whipping boy, part of the dreaded “elite” that is allegedly ruining America. For these months, the media was Trump’s unwitting ally.

Now, the landscape has changed. Trump is the subject of blanket coverage, much of it unfavorable. He apparently didn’t pay federal income taxes for many years; he not only has made lewd comments about women but (as my colleague Eugene Robinson suggests) he also appears to be a sexual predator; he says nice things about Vladimir Putin and ignores his secret national-security briefings.

These stories are anti-Trump, but they’re not unfair. They address a central issue in any presidential election: personal character. If Trump dislikes the results, he has mostly himself to blame, because he has been mainly responsible for projecting and defining himself. If a free press is not supposed to explore questions of character and political philosophy, what is it supposed to do?

True, if the exploration were one-sided, the media would be playing favorites. But the press has also focused on Clinton’s embarrassments. Her use of a private email server has generated hundreds of stories; so have potential conflicts of interest involving the Clinton Foundation, as have her lucrative speaking gigs. But Clinton’s sins — secretiveness, arrogance, greed — seem less offensive than Trump’s, which include lying, bigotry and alleged sexual misconduct.

Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump believes there's a global conspiracy to stop him from becoming president – but it's not the first time he's pushed unfounded theories. (Peter Stevenson/The Washington Post)

Should Trump win, he will likely use his new powers to attack the media he dislikes. If he loses, the media — or, at any rate, much of it — will be cast as a villain. Defeat will justify more false claims that he has been the victim of a “rigged” election. There was a time when the mass media was a unifying force in national life. That time has long passed.

POEM: "Hello, Honorable-sir"

Ghana's EC Chairperson Charlotte Osei and Kennedy Agyapong, MP.

Here we go again; the rants of a vile male chauvinist
who dares talk down womanhood
only to give evidence he's a male supremacist--
your misogynistic-self cast doubt on your manhood.
Unfortunately your "Rambo" needs are entrenched by this patriarchal society
with your lots who far too often are
silent or scared to jab your frivolous insanity.


You sick bully!
Your shenanigans are but vastly folly
and I suggest you get a grip of your self, you're almost an island--
even your puppets with a finger
or two in your mouth would rather take a chance and risk a bite than stand
with a man with everything but wit.
Sadly you clones who are everything misfit
with such horrid auric
are the ones who continue to spew toxic
into bright futures far better than yours--


Too bad somewhere today a girl or woman
with a hard earned position faces sexist remarks

worse, from a fellow girl or woman.
So while we all are at it, people of courage and will 

must take chances, starting from our homes and schools 

were much of these are deeply rooted --
deal with this rooted cancer with all the needed tools
else we risk darker times than this.
Beyond the rhetoric we must take action
not forgetting our failure to act is but an action.


So, 'honorable',
you have failed the many men and  women who think you are adorable
who likewise want to be called honorable--
your likes are not found in today's well stationed societies--
far lost in those long gone primitive centuries.

Source: cmcghana.blogspot.com/Crabbe Nathaniel.