Pitching and wooing black America

Reading the headlines with interest today as different media outlets describe Donald Trump's pitch to African Americans in Detroit. With the "help" from Ben Carson, Trump sought to demonstrate empathy.  However, his Republican Party has shown anything but that.

While running for President, Ben Carson had this to say.

"Asked about racial strife in America, this prominent, groundbreaking black politician, long on ideas but not governing experience, called for unity, not conflict.
"Our strength as a nation comes in our unity," he said in a national radio interview. "We are the United States of America, not the divided states. And those who want to divide us are trying to divide us, and we shouldn't let them do it." 

http://www.usnews.com/news/the-report/articles/2015/10/02/ben-carsons-different-take-on-race

Such strategy would be opposed to Donald Trump's approach which appears to be divisive.

Ask why Black America looks to be more dissatisfied today than before Obama, for instance? Carson and Trump blame Obama, while Obama is a president who has sought to make improvements against the tide of a hostile Republican Congress.

Republican policy has it that people in need should work harder to make a difference on their own. They deny that the nation isn't providing sufficient opportunity, not only for Black Americans but poor and middle-class Americans' too.

Make an exception to that when Donald Trump blamed NAFTA, Mexicans and Chinese for undermining all Amercian workers' opportunities.

Trump has a point. Yet, the ball has been in the Republican Congress' court for a long time and there has been no movement to address the need for a sustainable economy that ensures sufficient opportunity for a good life for all Americans who work for it.

Details, American voters must press for details that define and describe how all Americans will be provided adequate upward mobile opportunities commensurate with their best effort.

Brookings Institute research indicates that half of Black Americans born poor stay that way.

Brookings

How to Select an American President: Why Hillary is struggling in 'deep blue' ?

How to Select an American President: Why Hillary is struggling in 'deep blue' ?: The news is that Trump is closing the gap in Wisconsin. Why is this happening? There are several reasons: 1. The Democratic Party ground t...

Why Hillary is struggling in 'deep blue' ?

The news is that Trump is closing the gap in Wisconsin. Why is this happening? There are several reasons:

1. The Democratic Party ground team in Wisconsin is not doing its job, and that includes the youth around Madison who need to fan out throughout the state with support from party leadership including Hillary.

2. The Democratic Party needs to provide more substance than just empathy for working people in need of jobs and upward mobile opportunity.

3. Hillary Clinton needs to provide tailored solutions to citizens that are hard hit by an economy that has failed them. She needs to advocate sustainable economic engineering in places like Wisconsin with Federal policies that support State economic development.

Citizens are enamored by strong sympathy expressed by Trump, and by Trump's pointing to "foreigners' as the reason for their lack of progress. Of course, Trump is conflicted by his party's policies that favor corporations and their actions that have outsourced jobs.

Trump suggests the need to force a China policy that will be fairer to American workers. He also suggested a trading partnership with Mexico that will do the same. The trouble with the latter is that taking back more jobs from Mexico exacerbates the problems there.  Pushing China around or punishing them might lead to higher cost of goods for struggling Americans. Trump's policy ideas don't compute.

The best thing that Trump has done is to have shifted the conversation to real issues. Now, Hillary must compete and win. Both are vying for the hearts and minds of American voters.

The Wall Street Journal

How to Select an American President: Our young enemies

How to Select an American President: Our young enemies: From having read an email from Foreign Policy this morning, noted is that a 31-year-old Turki al-Binali is ready to become ISIS chief mufti...

Our young enemies

From having read an email from Foreign Policy this morning, noted is that a 31-year-old Turki al-Binali is ready to become ISIS chief mufti. Mufti means the head scholar in the vernacular of Islam.

At any rate, the entire U.S. military establishment led by well-schooled and educated leaders are up against these relatively younger people. This instance demonstrates how terrorists of lesser might can put the world's greatest armies up against the ropes. In the long run, they may not win the battles. However, there may be no winners of the war until or unless the terms are more clearly defined.

The battle for hearts and minds is about providing sustainable economies and sufficient upward mobile opportunities for those who prepare themselves to address it. Such preparation comes from the support of communities and their governments.

In the absence of functioning, attentive, and effective governments, the vacuum may be filled by undesirable entities that include radicalized terrorists and extremists. Terrorism is a symptom of the problem that is from dysfunctional government and the absence of sustainable economies.

"By Paul McLeary with Adam Rawnsley 

Messaging. Operating under the assumption that Islamic State’s chief of operations and propaganda, Abu Muhammad al-Adnani, was indeed killed in an airstrike earlier this week, the race is on to figure out who might replace him. A team over at the New York Times identifies two men: Turki al-Binali, a 31 year-old senior ISIS cleric who is believed to be the group’s chief mufti, and Abu Luqman, also known as Ali Mousa Al-Shawwakh, who was the first ISIS-installed ruler of Raqqa and one of the group’s chief Syria strategists. He’s also older than Binali, having worked as a recruiter for jihadists back in the early days of the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003." 

Foreign Policy

'The millennial ISIS preacher radicalizing the next generation of jihadis'
The New York Post

How to Select an American President: Most disturbing and perplexing

How to Select an American President: Most disturbing and perplexing: Up against the wall, Clinton must answer Trump. News, this morning from Fox, is that Trump is now within two percentage points from Hillary ...

Most disturbing and perplexing

Up against the wall, Clinton must answer Trump. News, this morning from Fox, is that Trump is now within two percentage points from Hillary Clinton in the national polls. While the media continues to say that Clinton will defeat Trump, one must wonder. Wonderment includes:

Why are so many Americans favoring the brash, undiplomatic, and untrustworthy Republican over the more diplomatic and politically accomplished Democrat?

• The answer may be found in that rich folks fear taxation and income redistribution and are willing to remove the veil from their bigoted feelings to defend their greed?

• The answer may be found in profound ignorance and psycho-sociological deficiencies among the lower end of the American republic who are prone to exploitation?

In both instances, the answers are complex. However, for a political party and candidate, competing to win, victory can only come from the trenches. That is the candidate and associated warriors must get to work canvassing communities and presenting cogent solutions to the public that is in need.

When Trump talks about building a wall between the U.S. and Mexico for billions of dollars, that is buffoonery. When he talks about renegotiating NAFTA to make America more competitive to create jobs, that strikes home with an appeal.

What specifically are the alternatives? What is Clinton's answer to halting the immigration problem and to settling the displaced illegal immigrants? What changes would she favor in making America more competitive so that workers here have a greater opportunity?

To a larger extent, how can the American economy be made sustainable in a globally competitive world?

Make Donald Trump get off the fence and into the trenches with details. That is what voters need to hear.

"Donald Trump flew into a nation he has constantly berated during his campaign to meet President Enrique Peña Nieto and said they discussed a wall Trump has vowed to build on the US southern border, but not his demand that Mexico pays for it -- an assertion the Mexican president later disputed. 

"Who pays for the wall? We didn't discuss," Trump had said when asked by a reporter during a news conference following their meeting in Mexico City. "We did discuss the wall. We didn't discuss payment of the wall. That'll be at a later date." 

But Peña Nieto later claimed the two had discussed the wall and who would pay for it -- and he had "made it clear" to Trump it wouldn't be Mexico." 

http://www.cnn.com/2016/08/30/politics/donald-trump-enrique-pea-nieto-mexico/

Mad Magazine