The Trump thread: All things Donald

[MintJulie]

Tonight I'm embarrassed to say I'm from Michigan.
Trump 37.1%
Kasich 25.3%

Too close to call for the Bern and Hillary Clinton

[watcher1]

Tonight I'm embarrassed to say I'm from Michigan.
Trump 37.1%
Kasich 25.3%

Too close to call for the Bern and Hillary Clinton

Bernie upset Hillary in Michigan. 

[Lois]

Michigan has fared badly from free trade agreements.  Both Trump and Sanders are against them.

[watcher1]

Michigan has fared badly from free trade agreements.  Both Trump and Sanders are against them.

Wasn't it Ross Perot who said if the United States ratifies NAFTA the huge swooshing sound you will hear would be American jobs heading south?   Globalization  -how to pay American workers like their counterparts in China.  And one wonders why the middle class is fading away...

[herschel]

Bill Clinton and every one of his successor sycophant ass-kissers to corporate fascism have stuck their fingers in the eye of the Michigan working class, one administration after another, kicked them in the gut, trashed their cities, given them brown poisoned river water to drink, and now they want to be elected for eight more years of the same continuing assaults? Any Michigander with a shred of concern for blue collar families had two choices, Sanders or Trump. The emasculation of America as an industrial power is well underway, and gathering steam. Don't expect the working class to take this lying down.

[Katiebee]

LBJ was the last President who would compromise and get things done. He alone was instrumental in advancing civil rights, equality, and social reform.

Everyone else has remained unwilling to compromise. Our form of given enemy was designed to function under compromises. No one gets all they want, everyone gets some of what they want.

No one gets excluded from the process.

That's how it is supposed to work. Unfortunately the dogma purists refuse that concept and demand all or nothing.

And so we get nothing.

[Lois]

I don't trust Trump.  He's just paying lip service to working people.  Bernie is the way to go if you want to stop bad trade deals.

I don't know what can be done to fix the bad trade deals that have already been made.  It will take help from Congress, and we all know that's a dead end.

[MissBarbara]

LBJ was the last President who would compromise and get things done. He alone was instrumental in advancing civil rights, equality, and social reform.

Everyone else has remained unwilling to compromise. Our form of given enemy was designed to function under compromises. No one gets all they want, everyone gets some of what they want.

No one gets excluded from the process.

That's how it is supposed to work. Unfortunately the dogma purists refuse that concept and demand all or nothing.

And so we get nothing.

Your points are well taken.

There are many who would disagree that LBJ was "alone" in advancing Civil Rights. People like Martin Luther King, for example.

And it must be borne in mind that the "dogma purists" exist on both side of the aisle, and that obstructionism is a two-way street.

In other words, while the steady complaint from the Left that Obama has been trying his hardest, while being constantly obstructed by the Right, bears some truth, Obama himself bears more than a little responsibility for his lack of success on certain issues, including ones, like Immigration Reform, that he posed in his initial campaign as hallmarks of his presidency. And GOP obstructionism is far from alone from explaining his failure in this area, and several others.

Finally, LBJ he was far from simply a "Great Compromiser." If you read Robert Caro's books (and I very strongly recommend that everyone does), his "compromising" was supported by a heavy dose of strong-arming, threatening, horse-trading, backroom dealing, etc. And he had strong support in both houses of Congress, and served at a time when the GOP was in complete disarray after the fiasco of the 1964 presidential election. Which is, by no means, a criticism of LBJ. I wonder if Obama had just a small portion of LBJ's backbone and muscle, how much he could have accomplished!

[Gina Marie]

No words needed...

[Lois]

The Donald has called for violence, and gets his wish. Let's hope Trump's smart enough, however, to realize that the violence will come from both sides. Violence begets violence, and Trump's rallies have suddenly become dangerous environs to visit.

Trump Defends Comments Encouraging Violence At Rallies: Some Protesters Are ‘Bad Dudes’

A day after a black man was punched in the face by a white Donald Trump rally attendee and then wrestled to the ground by police officers, Trump shrugged off any responsibility and expressed sympathy for the anger his supports feel.

Asked at Thursday’s Republican debate whether he might have created a tone of violence, Trump responded “I hope not. I truly hope not.” While saying he has not condoned violence against protesters, he defended his supporters as having “tremendous passion.”

“When they see protesters, when they see what’s going in on the country, they have anger. They don’t like seeing bad trade deals, higher taxes, loss of their jobs.”

Violence by Trump supporters has been a recurring issue at his campaign events.

Moderator Jake Tapper noted that Trump has frequently egged on his supporters, “including February 23: ‘I’d like to punch him in the face,’ referring to a protester. February 27: ‘In the good ol’ days, they’d have knocked him out of seat so fast.’ February 1: ‘Knock the crap out of them, would you? Seriously, okay? Just knock the hell.” He also noted that Trump promised last month to pay for the legal fees of any supporter who roughs up a protester.

“We have some protesters who are bad dudes, they have done bad things,” Trump replied, “They are swinging, they are really dangerous and they get in there and start hitting people. And we had a couple big, strong, powerful guys doing damage to people — not only the loudness, the loudness I don’t mind. But doing serious damage.”

Watch the video:

http://thinkprogress.org/politics/2016/03/10/3759034/trump-defends-violence-at-rallies/

[Bexy]

No words needed...

Anti-Trump protesters are just as retarded.

[joan1984]

  Only leftists hear the call of Donald Trump "for violence". What he has said, as the various demonstrators who disrupt every one of his events, is "Get them outta' here" with the crowd roaring it's approval every time. His way of staying on message.

  We shall forever be shown the one white guy at a Trump rally, who after being spit upon, punched the 'demonstrator' being frogmarched past him, and that man has been arrested, and charged with assault. Unknown if the 'demonstrator' was charged with anything.

  Rioters who planned antics in Chicago caused safety concerns, and cancellation of the event Trump supporters attended to hear their Republican Primary Candidate, the one all the other Candidates wanted to agree to support them if they won, speak. His rights, and therefore our collective rights, were denied due to the usual Democrat thugs in Chicago, and those weasels blaming Donald Trump do so at their political peril... but they are hoping for short term gain via media exposure.

  Will see. The fact that the organized thugs in Chicago included Obama's Occupiers, his Black Lives Matter rabble, and his political sponsors from his professional agitator days, and Weather Underground, is just a paragraph 26 footnote... nothing to be seen here, move along. Chicago Police had no idea they might have a problem with the "students" who openly organized for weeks to riot at the Trump event.

  Guess Chicago has been distracted by other events. Their daily death count is not the distraction of course, not even a honorable mention. Obama's Rahm Emanuel is starting to smell like guests who have overstayed their welcome there, which is entertaining, and sad at the same time somehow.

[watcher1]

Gandhi and MLK both espoused non-violent protests.  Resorting to violence usually plays into the hands of the people one is violently protesting about.  A few Chicago columnists from the Chicago Sun-Times, the liberal paper of the two in Chicago, denounced Friday night's violent protests as sending the wrong message.

Let Trump sink on his own words.

[Elizabeth]

"Rise Of The Brown Shirts".....Anyone.??
I wonder if the Trump Bullies will try to carry it over at the ballot box......??
WOW De-Ja Vu.....1939.

Love,
Liz

[Lois]

A restaurant in Chicago has found their own way to protest Trump:

[herschel]

This is the kind of shit you have to put up with when you enter politics. It's a dirty game.

[Lois]

 
  Will see. The fact that the organized thugs in Chicago included Obama's Occupiers, his Black Lives Matter rabble, and his political sponsors from his professional agitator days, and Weather Underground, is just a paragraph 26 footnote... nothing to be seen here, move along. Chicago Police had no idea they might have a problem with the "students" who openly organized for weeks to riot at the Trump event.

You are so full of hate and anger.  I feel sorry for you.

[tc]

"…jingoism, racism, fear, religious fundamentalism: these are the ways of appealing to people if you’re trying to organize a mass base of support for policies that are really intended to crush them."

~Noam Chomsky

[joan1984]

"Rise Of The Brown Shirts".....Anyone.??
I wonder if the Trump Bullies will try to carry it over at the ballot box......??
WOW De-Ja Vu.....1939.

Love,
Liz

By the brown shirts, do you mean #BlackLivesMatter; or #WeatherUnderground; or Bill Aires and the leftovers from the 1968 Dem Convention; or just Chicago everyday thugs who organized the riot plans to block a free speech Campaign event?

[Katiebee]

On a different tact, but loosely related,


http://www.salon.com/2016/02/12/the_bundy_brigades_delusional_last_stand_what_the_failed_wing_nut_revolt_really_tells_us/

But what was most obvious in the long, long list of grievances that Fry, Anderson, her husband Sean, and the fourth person, Jeff Banta, was that these were people steeped in the muddled and reactionary right-wing politics that have turned the base of the Republican Party into a stew of resentment and victimization. These were people who have spent years being told by conservative media that everyone is out to get them and everyone is stepping all over them while minorities and liberals and immigrants and jackbooted federal officers steal their jobs and their guns and turn America into a giant, sharia-ruled suburb of Tijuana.

And now, having stood up to all those forces, the people in Malheur had been abandoned by the very groups they had been told repeatedly were with them all the way. Where were the Oath Keepers, who have sworn to defend the Constitution and have supposedly infiltrated the FBI? Where were the right-wing radio and TV hosts who spent years firing them up? Why wasn’t Sean Hannity parachuting into Oregon with a camera crew to bring the struggle to a national audience? Where were the American people, and why weren’t they storming the barricades to help these four souls who had taken a stand for everyone’s rights?

You could hear it coming for hours. First there was the disbelief that no one, not undercover Oath Keepers posing as FBI agents or Rush Limbaugh in L.L. Bean outerwear and a surplus Desert Storm Humvee, was coming to rescue them and kick off a revolution. There was the dawning awareness that they might just be a bunch of sad-sack working stiffs huddled in the miserable cold in the ass end of nowhere, soon to be held accountable for the various laws they had broken.

In short, they became aware that, far from being great patriots striking a blow for tyranny, they might not actually matter. That it had all been a grift to keep them tuning into talk radio and reading Twitchy.

In their shock, they lashed out. They complained that the ACLU wasn’t out there standing up for their First Amendment right to protest. They bitched that people would have cared if they were Black Lives Matter activists. They wondered why no one cared that Obama “has billions of dollars for gun control” — a sentiment that is a) untrue and b) the occupiers somehow didn’t realize might be made desirable to a lot of people by the example of their own little armed camping party.

This is what 60 years of fear-mongering in the conservative movement has wrought. This is the end result of a grand paranoia fueled by a vast archipelago of right-wing news sites and think tanks and TV and radio shows lying to you. This is the end a person comes to after imbibing for years the angry shouts and finger-pointing and blaming of everyone else for the slow erosion of living standards and working-class wages and stagnation. It ends with you huddled over a can of lukewarm Dinty Moore stew, cold and alone and casting one angry eye at the federal agents standing implacable, patiently waiting for you to give it up and go home, while the other angry eye searches the horizon for a cavalry that is too busy counting the money it grifted of you to come help you now.

About the only satisfaction to take from this whole incident is that at least no one died yesterday, and that the people the GOP has played for suckers for decades are now getting their revenge on the party establishment by nominating Donald Trump for the presidency. Unfortunately if he wins, those of us who have always known Fox News was a scam are going to suffer too.