A Downward Path For The Drumpf...

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Purveyor of Truth

Update news on Mr. Drumpf, non of it good for him or the GOP. Given he has no consistent or credible plan or agenda, other than to build a big beautiful wall on the southern border, sending 11 million illegal aliens back to their country of origin, keeping Muslims out of the country, starting trade wars with current trading partners, and "Making America Great Again" (without any real specifics as to what that means), the Drumpf is giving America what rational folks always knew. A boatload of bulls*it.

Donald Trump has collapsed in general election polls

Donald Trump's 3 positions on abortion in 3 hours

GOP launches contested convention website

Donald Trump: Sure, I Might Use Nuclear Weapons In Europe. Hell, I Might Use Them In Chicago, Too.

Watching a once respected and effective party implode is really a sad sight. But given the trajectory of its obstructionist and often irrational activities it is not at all surprising Drumpf was the ultimate outcome. And now? The party is kicking itself in the arse for its shortsightedness.


UPDATE

Is it just me or is there a pattern emerging with Drumpf employees? Leaders set the example. Never forget that.

An executive who helps run Donald Trump’s hotel chain was arrested for attacking a young mother outside his ritzy downtown Brooklyn condo.

Nathan Crisp was charged with misdemeanor assault for repeatedly slamming a 27-year-old mother of two against the sidewalk during a clash outside his doorman building on Gold St. on Easter Sunday.

Victim Sheneik McCallum claims she pulled over outside the Avalon Fort Greene condo tower to make sure one of her infants was secured into a baby seat when Crisp yelled at her to get off private property.

After the two continued to quarrel, Crisp, 34, allegedly blocked the young mom’s car with his own vehicle and attacked her, according to community advocate Tony Herbert. He threw her to the ground twice, according to cops.

Crisp was taken into custody shortly after the attack and given a desk appearance ticket, according to police. He is due to answer the misdemeanor charges in court on May 2.

McCallum suffered bruises to her head and foot but was not hospitalized, cops said.

Trump Hotels executive Nathan Crisp busted for Easter beatdown on mother of two

Pretty Much So...

Philadelphia Micro Brewery Goes Anti Drumpf...

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Now here is a craft brewery that has their politics absolutely correct! When the occasion arises to travel to Philadelphia this brewery will most definitely be on my stop list for a few patriotic brews.

A brewery in Philadelphia has launched a range of anti-Donald Trump beers in a bid to discourage Americans against supporting the Republican frontrunner ahead of this year's US elections.

The Dock Street Brewery revealed on 28 March that it has made its first beer in its anti-Trump range, the Short Fingered Stout, a reference to the size of the 69-year-old real estate mogul's hands. The beverage is being sold in a bottle with a label that features a mock image of Trump and the slogan. 'Friends Don't Let Friends Vote Drumpf'.

Brewery officials said to NBC they used the name Drumpf after Comedy Central host John Oliver encouraged its use as part of his criticism of Trump, with the Drumpfs being the original name of Trump's ancestors.

"We described it as a bitter and delusional stout with an airy, light-haired head atop a so-so body. Don't worry, it's bark is worse than it's bite. This big baby comes in a somewhat conservative 4.5%," said Marilyn Candeloro, an official at Dock Street Brewing Company.

Video and more BELOW THE FOLD

A Rational and Honorable Republican...

“By leading by example I’m showing what a rational, responsible guy would do that really wants the constitutional process to go forward.” 

Mark Kirk could have been back in Illinois waging what might be the most difficult reelection campaign in Congress. Instead, the Republican senator was on Capitol Hill Tuesday drawing national attention for meeting with Supreme Court nominee Merrick Garland.

Kirk became the first Republican to meet with Garland, a huddle that took place in the middle of a long congressional recess and was covered by more than 50 journalists. It featured some impromptu remarks by Kirk, who's been tight-lipped in the Capitol as he fights to save his job in November.

Sitting beside Garland in his office, Kirk lavished praise on the Illinois native as a “brilliant” legal mind who is “one of the most eminent jurists in the country.” Then he shifted to his own party’s blockade of Garland, remarking that Republican senators who won’t even meet with Garland are “too close-minded.”

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“Judge Garland, he’s been duly nominated by the elected president of the United States to fill a vacancy which we know exists on the court. We need open-minded, rational, responsible people to keep an open mind to make sure the process works,” Kirk said. “When you just say you’re not going to meet them and all that, it’s too close-minded."

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“This is a perfect opportunity for Senator Kirk to illustrate his independent brand,” said one national GOP strategist, adding that it could help him politically since Garland is from the Chicago area.

Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and other Senate leaders are giving Kirk plenty of space by to carve out his own stance on the Supreme Court. He's receiving little pressure to toe the party line, sources said. Earlier this month Kirk demanded that Republicans “man up” and vote on the nomination. It was a stark contrast to Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wisc.), who faces a similarly perilous reelection path but said Tuesday in an email that he is "getting strong support" back home for backing McConnell's "no hearings, no votes" strategy.

Publicly, Kirk and McConnell have agreed to disagree.

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Back home in Illinois, Kirk’s stance has drawn mixed reviews. Democrats are urging him to oppose McConnell as the head of the Senate GOP, a non-starter, while a prominent law professor praised Kirk in the state’s largest newspaper but pleaded with him to go further and convince his colleagues to take up Garland.

Still, Kirk is winning allies who don’t traditionally speak well of Republicans. On Thursday, a coalition including Planned Parenthood and the Sierra Club will hold a press conference thanking the senator for his stance.

There are indeed rational, sensible, and patriotic Republicans that yet live and work among us. Apparently a few remain in congress representing American interests (rather than their own and the party interests) and fighting to uphold The Constitution. Senator Kirk is one of the few and is deserving of thanks from ALL rational conservatives and republicas.

Find the complete article BELOW THE FOLD.

Via: Memeorandum

Obama and Presidential Golf...

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Caught an article today in the WASHIGTON Examiner that falls into the category of unimportant trivia. It had to do with how much golf President Obama has played since becoming president. As to why the author felt inclined to devote time to the President's link time shall be left to you to decide for yourself.

President Obama, fresh from his whirlwind spring break trip to Cuba and Argentina, hit the links for some R&R Saturday, playing his 281st round since becoming president. He was at Andrews for over five hours.

That is slightly more than three quarters of a year of days playing the presidential sport for Obama. The president typically plays for at least four hours, sometimes longer, putting his time at over 1,100 hours golfing, or at least 46 full 24-hour days.

After quickly reading the info I decided to have a bit of fun.

Days in Office - 2,622

Hours in Office - 62,928

Days Playing Golf - 46

Hours Playing Golf - 1,104

Rounds of Golf Played - 281

Hours per Round - 3.92

So, according to my calculations President Obama has played 1 day of golf in each 57 days (0.018%), he has played 281 rounds of golf in 2,622 days for an average 1 round every 9.331 days, he has averaged 25.206 min/day of golf, he has played 1,104 hours of golf in 62,928 in office (0.018%.

Given the President is on duty 24/7 in what is undoubtedly one of the highest pressure jobs in the world he certainly hasn't abused his use of golf for relaxation.

Some data on other presidents playing golf while in office. And a bit more.

More Unethical Misrepresentation By The Drumpf Campaign...

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Do these nut jobs ever think rationally or are they always dwelling in the land misrepresentation, fear, and political darkness?

THE HILL - A senior aide to the Donald Trump campaign said on Sunday that half a million U.S. girls are at risk for genital mutilation because of uncontrolled immigration.

"You want to talk about women’s issues? Here’s something we should be talking about,” said Stephen Miller. “It is a fact: As a result of uncontrolled migration into this country – you can look this up, it’s a statistic from Equality Now – half a million U.S. girls in this country are at risk of female genital mutilation.”

He immediately faced opposition from the rest of the panel, which included Neera Tanden, the president of the Center for American Progress, who said his comment is an example of the Trump campaign saying “something outrageous.”

The report he cited, issued by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, states that half a million women and girls in the U.S. are at risk because they were born in countries were female mutilation is a tradition or have parents who were born in those countries.

Quoting a statement from a reputable source such as the CDC when used in the proper context is absolutely acceptable. Quoting out of context for the purpose of advancing fear or misinformation is both disingenuous and unethical. Something Drumpf and his henchmen are most often wont to do.



Via: Memeorandum

Are Americans Losing Their Rational Perspective?...

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Woo Hoo! Strap em on and saddle up. Time for a convention at the Okay Corral. Backed by your NRA and patriotic cowboy republicans. Making America "safe" and Great Again.

This nation, in its growing fear of multiple boogeymen in the form of immigrants that don't look like us, and Muslim Americans that don't practice the approved faith are opting to put law enforcement into the hands of untrained individuals in the mistaken belief it will make them safer.

You want more safety? Increase the presence of qualified law enforcement professionals. Including local police, the FBI, the CIA, and National Guard. All under one central command with an orchestrated proper response to whatever threat or disturbance may develop.

Those advocating this insanity are asking for a major accident to happen. Injecting heat into an environment were emotions will be running high and certain disagreement will be present makes absolutely no rational sense.

But hey, we're talking abut the republican party and the NRA here. Two entities not known as of late for making much sense.

Washington (AFP) - More than 22,000 people have signed a petition calling for Americans to be allowed to carry firearms at the Republican National Convention -- because the ban puts lives at risk.

Guns are not allowed inside the Quicken Loans Arena in Cleveland, where the event -- which could descend into a heated battle for the party presidential ticket -- is taking place in July.

The petition went up on the Change.org website and by Saturday had been signed by 22,633 supporters in just a few days, with numbers rising fast.

"Cleveland, Ohio is consistently ranked one of the top 10 most dangerous cities in America," says the petition, which among others is addressed to the Republican presidential frontrunner Donald Trump and his rivals Ted Cruz and John Kasich.

"By forcing attendees to leave their firearms at home, the RNC and Quicken Loans Arena are putting tens of thousands of people at risk both inside and outside of the convention site."

In the event of an attack on the venue people there "will be sitting ducks," raising the specter that the Islamic State extremist group could target it, the petition says.

"We are all too familiar with the mass carnage that can occur when citizens are denied their basic God-given rights to carry handguns or assault weapons in public," the petition adds.

Firearms were banned by the Secret Service at the Republican convention in Tampa in 2012, US media say.

Via: Memeorandum

Exposing The Donald...

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The following excerpt of an article written by Brent Budowsky and published in The Hill is spot on in defining Donald Trump as well as the strategy his opponents should use to defeat him.

A “Trump the loser” branding strategy would weave undisputed facts into a compelling narrative that voters understand.

When Trump the loser created businesses that went bankrupt, he turned workers and investors who trusted him — as Caesar trusted Brutus — into victims who lost their jobs and money because they believed in him.

When Trump the loser makes money from sales of clothes made in low-wage China and complains that wages for Americans are too high, those deals helped make China great, not America. In his low-wage deals on foreign-made clothing, Trump was a friend to American workers the way Benedict Arnold was a friend to the original tea party patriots.

When repeated polls show Trump the loser being overwhelmingly defeated by Hillary Clinton and by Bernie Sanders, his contagious losing will turn GOP members of the House and Senate into losers for having to defend or support him. When he falsely claims numerous polls show him defeating Clinton in November, Trump the loser becomes Trump the liar.

When Vladimir Putin toys with Trump’s vanity by praising him, Trump the loser reciprocates by praising Putin effusively even when he is asked about rumors that the Russian strongman has ordered the murder of journalists.

When Trump tells The Washington Post the day before a terror attack in Brussels that NATO is not as good a concept as it used to be, and that he is afraid of starting World War III by opposing Russian aggression in Ukraine and Chinese aggression in the South China Sea, Trump the loser would make Putin and Chinese aggressors the winners. No wonder more than 100 Republican national security leaders warned that Trump is unfit to be commander in chief.

While Trump the loser spent more than 20 years praising Clinton — as recently as 2012, when she was finishing her tenure as secretary of State, which he then praised with admiration — he now claims he did so because he was an influence-peddling businessman currying favor with her.

When Trump the loser keep his tax returns secret, is this the public relations equivalent of a witness taking the Fifth Amendment on grounds of self-incrimination? Perhaps the self-proclaimed great dealmaker doesn’t want voters to learn some details about the deals he brags about so often.

Elizabeth Warren is right. Trump is a loser.

Truth is Trump's enemy and those who seek and speak truth should be taking every possible step to expose Trump for the con artist he really is.

Full article available BELOW THE FOLD.

Hannity Shouting Match With Jorge Ramos...

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Wednesday evening the Hannity Show was representative of what often happens when two ideologues with opposing views get together to discuss issues.

Hannity again succeeded in coming across very poorly to the more rational viewing audience. Although he likely was cheered by those who support the xenophobia, misogyny, bigotry, and demagoguery of one Donald J. Trump.

It is becoming more and more apparent that Hannity obviously does.

Click HERE to view the video.

Things quickly went off the rails Wednesday night when Fox News host Sean Hannity welcomed Univision anchor Jorge Ramos onto his program to discuss coverage of Republican front-runner Donald Trump.

Hannity accused Ramos of taking Trump out of context in regards to the billionaire’s remarks on immigration — something the conservative personality called “fundamentally unfair.

“I’m simply reporting what Donald Trump has been saying,” Ramos said.

“That’s not true,” Hannity shot back.

“Donald Trump said that Mexican immigrants are criminals, rapists and drug traffickers,” Ramos said.

Things escalated when Hannity asked Ramos if some of the individuals entering the U.S. from Mexico are criminals.


“Excuse me! I don’t need lectures from you!”

Share:
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“Do you acknowledge some are?” he asked. “Answer that!”

“I’m not here to defend any criminals,” Ramos said.

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“You can be much more challenging with Donald Trump,” the Univision anchor told Hannity.

“Excuse me! I don’t need lectures from you!” Hannity quipped. “Because you act like a sanctimonious objective reporter and you got an agenda! You support open borders, you support illegal immigration and you seem to be willing to risk the lives of Americans.”

“I’m just being tough on Democrats and I’m being tough on Republicans,” Ramos said. “I’m just being completely independent.”

"You’re not independent! That’s a lie! You don’t support the rule of law in America!” Hannity said.

“I’ve been tough on Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton,” Ramos said.

“Big deal. What do you want, a medal?” Hannity sarcastically asked to end the segment.

In the second segment, Ramos continued to go after Hannity for not being tough on Trump.

“I saw your forum on March 9 in North Carolina. You had an hour with Donald Trump. More than 30 questions and comments. Not even once did you challenge Donald Trump on the largest mass deportations, on banning 1.5 billion Muslims,” Ramos said.

“Or even criticizing him for his sexist remarks on women!” Ramos added. “You didn’t even ask for an apology for your colleague Megyn Kelly.”

“I don’t need your lectures, thank you very much,” Hannity shot back, before accusing Ramos again of taking Trump’s comments “out of context.”

Complete article HERE

Ayup. Certainly is clear Hannity gets tied in knots when challenged and he has no reasoned response. A YUUUUGE and great Trump backer. Which of course renders Hannity a non objective journalist. Precisely what he accuses Ramos of being.

Via: Memeorandum

The Voice of Irrationality and Bigotry...

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Today felt like a good day to visit a few ultra rightwing websites to see what extreme views were circulating following the terrorist attacks in Brussels. It didn't take long to come across a real doozy,

First stop, World Net Daily, also known as World Nut Daily by the more sane and reasonable folks of America. Considered a credible news source by almost no one outside of the most wildly extreme conservative circles we immediately hit pay dirt.

Many of you no doubt will remember congresswomen Michelle Bachmann, a conservative and very religious republican from Minnesota. She was rather looney back when she represented the good people of her district, but it seems time has not been kind to her intellectual acumen.

Mrs. Bachmann, in all her rightwing religious "wisdom", has chosen the terrorist attacks in Brussels this week to unleash an attack on President Obama as he visited Cuba, our heretofore estranged neighbor 90 miles off the coast of Florida.

Bachmann has reasoned that perhaps God is reminding folks about the inferiority of foolishness in the face of wisdom. Wisdom we can only conclude is reflective of hers and that of the minority that reasons as she does. Of course there Bachmann also implies that Obama is somehow evil because, well, he thinks differently as well as rationally.

Or maybe our president’s humiliation comes in a manner so devastating it makes one wonder whether the Creator of humankind isn’t reminding this world of the inferiority of foolishness in the face of wisdom.

The president once again mocked his nemesis, the Jewish people and the nation of Israel, by cleverly turning the international press corps toward his brilliant work in Cuba, instead of covering ongoing Islamic attacks against the Jewish state as outlined that very same day at the annual pro-Israel AIPAC meeting in Washington, D.C.

History changed less than 24 hours later in the blink of an eye, and the rug was pulled out from under his well-laid plans.

Obama’s slavish press corps was forced to turn their uncritical gaze from adoring him to revealing the newest carnage in Brussels.

Our eyes were spellbound.

Suicide vests worn by young Muslim men with a plan blew at the American Airlines counter, at the Starbucks and within four blocks of our American Embassy in the shadow of a neutered, ineffective NATO.

The irony is no longer ironic.

Bits and pieces of flesh and blood, some Americans, all innocents, were scattered – scattered to further the act of conquest by Islam against the continent once enlightened by the beliefs and values of Western Christendom.

Three men committed to a false God and a doctrine of demons chose death to advance Western civilization’s defeat.

This week, some 2,000 years ago, a Jewish Savior named Jesus willingly gave His life as a substitutionary sacrifice to pay for the sins of all humankind, to reconnect us with the God who made us.

This compare-and-contrast of competing worldviews was soberingly and glaringly revealed.

One religious worldview brought peace and life, another glorified death and the cult of suicide. {More Here}

Bachmann is living life in a bubble, a bubble created by rightwing evangelical extremists and bigots that would have us believe only the Christian and Jewish God is real and therefore legitimate. Bachmann, and those who think as she does, would have us believe all other God(s) those named differently) are evil and apparently deserve vanquishing by the sword.

Bachmann, as well as other rightwing demagogues and hate mongers, want you to believe all Muslims support the Islamic terrorist agenda and that they wish all westerners harm. This is irrational as well as far from the truth.

All rational people recognize that evil exists in this world. Evil exists because people exist. People with bigotry and prejudices. Michelle Bachmann and her prejudices and bigotry are evil. President Obama understands this and he is working to change the paradigms that perpetuate irrationality and evil. For this he should be applauded and thanked, not reviled.

Thank the 24/7 non stop conservative cable "news" cycle for the above as well as the GOP's right flank that decided in 2009 that it would spread BS and fabrications ad infinitum in the attempt to discredit everything President Obama tried to accomplish. Nothing else mattered and it still doesn't.

For more CONTINUE ON TO HERE.

Is Trump Insecure?...

To Donald Trump supporters, I pose this question: When you think back on your high school, your platoon during basic training, your frat brothers, men you've dated, or the regulars at your local bar, did the loud guy who boasted about his anatomical endowments strike you as a confident winner, or deeply insecure?

Was he comfortable in his skin and ready to lead others, guided by the needs of the task at hand, or was he desperate to fill a void in his psyche with attention-seeking?

These are not idle questions.

Once again, the Republican frontrunner for the presidential nomination is talking at length about his penis to the national press. His comments came in an interview with the Washington Post’s editorial board. Its editor, Fred Hiatt, harkened back to a GOP debate where Trump went out of his way to assure Americans that “there's no problem” when it comes to his genitals. “You are smart and you went to a good school. Yet you are up there talking about your hands and the size of your private parts,” Hiatt said. “Do you regret having engaged in that?”

He could’ve quickly dispatched the question.

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Instead, he spoke about the matter at great length, starting with the most unnerving defense of his behavior that he could’ve offered. “No, I had to do it,” he said. “Look, this guy. Here’s my hands. Now I have my hands, I hear, on the New Yorker, a picture of my hands. A hand with little fingers coming out of a stem. Like, little.”

He wants to lead the U.S. military. Yet he tells us that he had to act as he did partly because of a cartoon on the cover of a magazine. What could Vladimir Putin bait Donald Trump into doing with a strategic joke about his executive branch?

Trump’s apparent insecurity only grew more conspicuous as the interview wore on.“Look at my hands,” he said. “They’re fine. Nobody other than Graydon Carter years ago used to use that,” he continued, name-checking another Manhattan media figure whose opinion he evidently cares about. “My hands are normal hands.”

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I don’t care a whit about what’s considered “presidential” by the Washington Post editorial board. But I am averse to elevating a man who lacks the self-confidence to be a stable president and covers up that fact by engaging in endless, hyperbolic bluster. Trump supporters, can you name a great leader who brags like your champion?

There’s a reason for that.

It surely appears so from here.

Via: Memeorandum

Obama On the Right Path With Cuba...

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President Obama, again doing the right thing. For America as well as Cuba and its people.

HAVANA — “Sí se puede,” President Obama told the Cuban people Tuesday in a nationwide address that promised a new beginning and a bright future together. “Yes we can.”

“It is time now for us to leave the past behind,” he said, clearly speaking told those watching him on television across the island, as much as to the restricted audience inside an ornate, colonial-era theater here. “It won’t be easy, and it will take time.,” but “we can make this journey as friends and as neighbors and as family.”

The speech was like nothing Cubans here have heard in many years. He issued an emotional appeal for an end to decades of “painful and sometimes violent separation” between those who left for new lives in the United States—who were long officially reviled here as traitors—and those who remained behind. He called on the government to unleash the “full potential” of Cuban ingenuity and youth by opening its doors to free expression and communication.

Later Monday morning, Obama met at the U.S. Embassy here with 13 of the most prominent political dissidents on the island, including Jose Daniel Ferrer and Elizardo Sanchez, who favor normalization, and Antonio Rodiles and Berta Soler, who have said the United States has reached out to Cuba but gotten nothing in return.

“All of the individuals around this table have shown extraordinary courage,” Obama said before the closed-door session began.


Before they sat at down, the dissidents were invited to dip their hands in red, white or blue paint and apply them to a work of art that formed the outline of both countrys’ flags. The interactive work was donated by Cuban artist Michel Morabal, who gave a similar one to the Cuban Embassy in Washington.

Why some conservatives in America have a problem with scraping a policy that has been a failure simply escapes all logic. However, in making a stab at it, one can only conclude ideology and stubbornness is the explanation. Even when reason points to the direction taken by President Obama.

Read more BELOW THE FOLD.

Via: Memeorandum

Donald Trump's Vast Unpopularity...

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Donald Trump continues to enthrall his most avid and fervent supporters, regardless of what he says or does. For them he is the American Savior who will Make America Great Again. We can only think he means to so so by taking America back to the idylic 1950's. Especially since he has been very short on specifics and when he occasionally offers some his numbers and logic just don't add up. Putting all that aside, here's some news on The Donald out today.

If Republicans nominate Donald Trump as their presidential candidate, he would be the least popular major party nominee in at least three decades of Washington Post-ABC News polling.

Trump’s unfavorable rating stood at 67 percent — two-thirds of all Americans — in a March Post-ABC poll, including 56 percent who had a “strongly” unfavorable impression of him. Just 3 in 10 had a favorable impression of Trump (15 percent “strongly”).

American politicians tend to be more unpopular than usual these days, but it's hard to overstate how bad Trump's numbers are with all Americans. In fact, Trump’s highly negative ratings appear to have no equal among major party nominees in presidential campaigns over the past 32 years.

The chart below shows the highest unfavorable rating for Democratic and Republican presidential nominees at any point between their campaign launch and the general election.

From Mondale to Trump, highest negative candidate ratings

Highest percent of Americans rating each candidate "unfavorable" during their campaign in Washington Post-ABC News polls.

So, 33% of Americans don't find Trump to be unfavorable. We can only assume they are the angry Americans that likely don't fully understand for sure what they should be angry with, or why.

More BELOW THE FOLD.

Via: Memeorandum




UPDATE

The prospect of a Donald J. Trump nomination is accomplishing what a diverse and talented field of Republican presidential contenders could not: uniting the party’s big-money donor establishment.

Some of the wealthiest conservative givers in the country are helping pay for a series of last-ditch attacks to wound Mr. Trump, disclosures filed on Sunday night revealed, even after previously backing rival Republican candidates. And officials involved with the political groups have made clear that they are aggressively raising more money to fight Mr. Trump, hoping to deprive him of enough delegates to win the Republican nomination outright. That would set the stage for a contested convention in July.

Our Principles PAC, a group set up to highlight Mr. Trump’s past liberal positions, took in $4.8 million last month, with a roster of donors that shows it has significantly expanded beyond the Ricketts family, which provided the group’s early funding.

Beyond the Rickettses, who collectively provided another $2 million to the group, Our Principles raised $500,000 from William E. Oberndorf, a California investor who had previously backed Jeb Bush, and $100,000 from Harlan Crow, a Texas real estate developer, who had supported Senator Marco Rubio of Florida. Our Principles also raised $1 million from Warren Stephens, an Arkansas investment banker who gave large checks to “super PACs” backing four candidates who have since quit the race.

The stream of new money confirms that the Republican Party’s financial elite — who put hundreds of millions of dollars behind more conventional presidential candidates, only to watch almost all of them falter — believes that a focused and well-financed attack campaign could still halt Mr. Trump in his march toward the party’s nomination.

“You have all these people who backed different candidates, and now they are uniting,” said Brian Baker, a political adviser to the Ricketts family. “These are people who backed Senator Cruz, Governor Kasich, Governor Christie, Senator Rubio — all stripes. And they are all conservatives.”

Mr. Stephens and his brother also gave $2.5 million last month to a super PAC connected to the Club for Growth, a free-market activist group that was one of the first outside organizations to take on Mr. Trump. All told, the group, whose members met last week to discuss how to escalate their efforts against Mr. Trump, raised $4 million in February, three times as much as it had raised any other month this election cycle.

Graphic

Rubio’s Exit Leaves Trump With an Open Path to 1,237 Delegates

An interactive delegate calculator that lets you simulate how the 2016 Republican nomination could unfold.

Trump against either a Clinton or Sanders challenger is a liberals dream matchup given Trump's unpopularity among so many.

More BELOW THE FOLD.

Via: Memeorandum

As trump Starts His Welcome Decline...

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For democrats the following is most certainly a harbinger of good news. Independents and rational republicans are definitely cheering the news as well. As trump works to divide the nation those of us who wish to unite it in pursuit of achieving the common good are hoping for a coalition of reasonable and rational thinking fiscally conservative individuals to come together and defeat the republican ticket in November,.

SALT LAKE CITY — If Donald Trump becomes the Republican Party's nominee, Utahns would vote for a Democrat for president in November for the first time in more than 50 years, according to a new Deseret News/KSL poll.

"I believe Donald Trump could lose Utah. If you lose Utah as a Republican, there is no hope," said former Utah Gov. Mike Leavitt, a top campaign adviser to the GOP's 2012 nominee, Mitt Romney.

The poll found that may well be true. Utah voters said they would reject Trump, the GOP frontrunner, whether former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton or Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders is the Democratic candidate on the general election ballot.

While Clinton was only slightly ahead of Trump — 38 percent to 36 percent — Sanders, a self-declared Democratic socialist, holds a substantial lead — 48 percent to 37 percent over the billionaire businessman and reality TV star among likely Utah voters.

"Wow. Wow. That's surprising," said Chris Karpowitz, co-director of Brigham Young University's Center for the Study of Elections and Democracy. "Any matchup in which Democrats are competitive in the state of Utah is shocking."

For those who view this as good news continue reading BELOW THE FOLD.

Via: Memeorandum


UPDATE  3/20/16 6:50 PM

A man captured on video punching and kicking a protester at a Donald Trump rally in Tucson, Arizona, was charged with assault with injury, police said.

The man, identified as Tony Pettway, 32, was arrested inside the Trump event and charged with the misdemeanor before being released, the Tucson Police Department said.

The incident began when an anti-Trump protester -- wearing an American flag shirt and carrying a sign that read "Trump is Bad for America" -- was being escorted out by law enforcement at the Republican presidential hopeful's rally Saturday.

Pettway, who was also in the crowd, then allegedly reached over, grabbed the sign out of the protester's hand and punched and kicked him in an incident that was caught on video.

Video Here

Enjoy the Weekend!

The Republican Party, under Trump, is headed for a combustive breakup. Ronald Reagan envisioned a shining city on a hill. Trump represents nothing more than a thug with money. Can the man who shouts “I’d like to punch him in face!” and “Knock the crap out of them!” about protesters possibly quote Abraham Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, Dwight Eisenhower or Reagan in his acceptance speech? He could, but it would be no more plausible than a fish doing a tap dance.

In temperament and judgment, this is now Trump’s party. And take him at his word: His supporters will riot, as he predicted this week, if he doesn’t get his way. Sane Republicans, perhaps a third of the party, have no choice but to plot an honorable discharge. The exit polls in Ohio found that 42 percent of Republicans said they would consider a third-party candidate. They can also support Hillary Clinton, or sit this one out. But they cannot show up in Cleveland and have their principles paved over by Trump’s bullies.

There is no getting around how much Trump’s followers now echo his darkest sentiments. In Tuesday’s exit polls, huge majorities of Trump supporters backed his call to ban Muslims from entering the country, and for rounding up and deporting 11 million illegal immigrants.

H/T Progressive Eruptions.

Why Donald J. Trump Must Not Win in 2016...

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Purveyor of Truth

These are the times that try men’s souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands by it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman.  Thomas Paine

With not much going on today there was lots of time to set sit and contemplate the positive things our  country stands for. It was an opportunity to think about how fortunate we are to enjoy relative economic freedom and the right to choose our religious beliefs free from government interference, to have our civil liberties protected by rule of law, to live in a land that has embraced diversity and many different cultures, and to look forward to an even brighter and better future. Despite my best efforts to avoid it my thoughts kept going back to Donald J. Trump and the possibility of him as president. As a result my day eventually turned to uneasiness.

Donald J. Trump stands against many of the principles that has made America a nation that many have envied and indeed sought to come to it's shores in the hopes of starting a better life. This has been true since America's beginnings as a nation state.

As a people we have overcome many injustices, the greatest injustice being the enslavement of blacks. Since the conclusion of The War Between the States (the so called Civil War) American has been fighting the very real reality of institutional racism and the resulting lack of economic opportunity for people of color. As well, our system of justice has not served the minority community in America well. The results of both are evident yet today.

It has taken years (by far too many) and the struggles of literally thousands during the Civil Rights Movement to move our nation to a more equitable society for all. Yet there remains much that still needs to be done if we are to achieve the society Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. talked about and dreamed of.


Donald J. Trump, by his own words and actions, has caused millions  of truly patriotic Americans to question whether his slogan Make America Great Again maybe isn't just code for resetting America back to the past. A past it has worked hard to break free from. His nationalism, xenophobia, divisiveness, rudeness, crudeness, lack of respect for international law, his apparent willingness to ignore the constitution, and his absolute refusal to accept responsibility for events caused partially, if not wholly, by his words and actions is certainly reason to work to make the possibility of him become president an impossibility.

In closing I refer you back to the top of the post. It is time for patriotic Americans to stand shoulder to shoulder and fight to make sure Donald J. Trump's bit for the presidency goes down I flames and becomes a pile of cold ashes.

Check this out for some recent stuff HERE and HERE.

The Enduring Delusion...

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Purveyor of Truth

Ronald Reagan presided over both a recession and great job growth, and, he told us government was not the solution, that it was the problem. He lifted American's spirits and made us feel good about our nation again after the Iran hostage crises and Jimmy Carter. He said that economic growth created by lower taxes and less regulation would create the rising tide that would lift all boats, and so he oversaw a reduction in top tax rates from 70% to 28%. He raised taxes too during his tenure in the White House, 5 times, yet the federal debt tripled from 994 billion to 2.9 trillion. He talked about reducing the size of government and getting it off the backs of the American people, yet he actually only reduced the growth of government. And, he increased defense spending to levels not seen since WW II.

Since 1980 and the Reagan "conservative" Revolution the GOP has been preaching the same gospel to achieve growth and prosperity, lowering taxes and cutting regulations. From 1989 (after the debt tripled from 1981-1989 under Reagan) to the present the debt has increased from 2.9 trillion to 19.1 trillion, a 659% increase. Largely due to the profligate war spending and the financial collapse during the GWB administration.

As we approach another presidential election year the candidates of the GOP are, to one degree or another, holding fast to the cherish mantra of lowering tax rates, reducing regulatory burdens, increasing defense spending, reducing the size of government, and a whole lot of increased expenditures from building a wall along the southern border to deporting 11 million illegal immigrants. Somehow the numbers just don't add up. Again.

James Surowiecki has a very good article in The New Yorker, following are excerpts from the article.

In 1980, the third-party Presidential candidate John Anderson succinctly summed up Ronald Reagan’s promise to simultaneously cut taxes, increase defense spending, keep government services intact, and balance the budget: “Reagan’s budget is constructed with mirrors.” Sure enough, Reagan presided over eight years of deficits that tripled the national debt. Yet the Republican faith that you can tax-cut your way to deficit reduction has never dimmed. This year’s Republican race is dominated by candidates whose budgetary plans make Reagan’s look downright reasonable.

Not surprisingly, the most extreme plan is Donald Trump’s. He would slash taxes across the board, reducing revenues by nine and a half trillion dollars over the next decade, according to estimates by the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center. Yet he has also promised to balance the budget, protect Social Security and Medicare, and not cut services. How? Well, he says he’ll get rid of “waste and fraud and abuse,” and abolish the Department of Education and the Environmental Protection Agency. And he thinks that the tax cuts would spur an economic boom, so that revenues will actually increase.

This is pure fantasy. Those spending cuts would save just a tiny fraction of what he claims, and the revenue projections have no basis in reality. Yet, unrealistic as Trump’s ideas are, they differ from those of his chief opponents only in degree, not in kind. Marco Rubio wants to couple a $6.8-trillion tax cut with significant increases in defense spending, while Ted Cruz has proposed an $8.6-trillion tax cut with—guess what?—significant increases in defense spending. Naturally, Rubio and Cruz have been vague about where they’d find the necessary trillions in cuts, and about how what the government does would be affected. This is par for the course. Paul Ryan’s infamous budget of 2012 would have effectively eliminated nearly all the federal government’s non-defense discretionary spending, even as he insisted that he wanted to “strengthen” the social safety net and keep the government investing in infrastructure.

The candidates are engaged in a familiar dance. Voters always say that they’re worried about the deficit, but, as Brendan Nyhan, an assistant professor of government at Dartmouth, put it to me, they’re skittish when cuts are specified: “They may have a symbolic preference for cutting spending, but that’s different from their actual preference for spending on programs they like.”...

If you enjoyed the teaser the rest of the article can be found BELOW THE FOLD

Trump's Advantage In Free Media Exposure...

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Purveyor of Truth

Some interesting bits of information.

... Mr. Trump is hardly absent from the airwaves. Like all candidates, he benefits from what is known as earned media: news and commentary about his campaign on television, in newspapers and magazines, and on social media. Earned media typically dwarfs paid media in a campaign. The big difference between Mr. Trump and other candidates is that he is far better than any other candidate — maybe than any candidate ever — at earning media.

No one knows this better than mediaQuant, a firm that tracks media coverage of each candidate and computes a dollar value based on advertising rates. The mentions are weighted by the reach of the media source, meaning how many people were likely to see it. The calculation also includes traditional media of all types, print, broadcast or otherwise, as well as online-only sources like Facebook, Twitter or Reddit.

Its numbers are not quite an apples-to-apples comparison to paid advertising. But they do make one thing clear: Mr. Trump is not just a little better at earning media. He is way better than any of the other candidates.

Click here to see bar graphs with all candidates

Mr. Trump earned $400 million worth of free media last month, about what John McCain spent on his entire 2008 presidential campaign. Paul Senatori, mediaQuant’s chief analytics officer, says that Mr. Trump “has no weakness in any of the media segments” — in other words, he is strong in every type of earned media, from television to Twitter.

Over the course of the campaign, he has earned close to $2 billion worth of media attention, about twice the all-in price of the most expensive presidential campaigns in history. It is also twice the estimated $746 million that Hillary Clinton, the next best at earning media, took in. Senator Bernie Sanders has earned more media than any of the Republicans except Mr. Trump.

Somehow there just seems to be something wrong or unethical with this picture. Like maybe the candidate that generates the most revenue for the networks receives the most "earned media",  regardless of whatever substance or value they may or may not have.

Full story at TheUpshot.

Via: Memeorandum

How Trump Became a National Paradox...

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Purveyor of Truth

While never a huge fan of Paul Krugman, he is expressing the truth of the matter with his explanation of the rise of Donald J. Trump and Trumpism. Primary responsibility for the rise of the beast rests squarely at the feet of movement conservatives, however, the GOP establishment, by choosing to not challenge the fallacies carry with them responsibility as well.

Establishment Republicans who are horrified by the rise of Donald Trump might want to take a minute to remember the glitch heard round the world — the talking point Marco Rubio couldn’t stop repeating in a crucial debate, exposing him to devastating ridicule and sending his campaign into a death spiral.

It went like this: “Let’s dispel with this fiction that Barack Obama doesn’t know what he’s doing. He knows exactly what he’s doing.” The clear, if ungrammatical, implication was that all the bad things Republicans claim have happened under President Obama — in particular, America’s allegedly reduced stature in the world — are the result of a deliberate effort to weaken the nation.

In other words, the establishment favorite for the G.O.P. nomination, the man Time magazine once put on its cover with the headline “The Republican Savior,” was deliberately channeling the paranoid style in American politics. He was suggesting, albeit coyly, that a sitting president is a traitor.

And now the establishment is shocked to see a candidate who basically plays the same game, but without the coyness, the overwhelming front-runner for the Republican presidential nomination. Why?

The truth is that the road to Trumpism began long ago, when movement conservatives — ideological warriors of the right — took over the G.O.P. And it really was a complete takeover. Nobody seeking a career within the party dares to question any aspect of the dominating ideology, for fear of facing not just primary challenges but excommunication.

You can see the continuing power of the orthodoxy in the way all of the surviving contenders for the Republican nomination, Mr. Trump included, have dutifully proposed huge tax cuts for the wealthy, even though a large majority of voters, including many Republicans, want to see taxes on the rich increased instead.

But how does a party in thrall to a basically unpopular ideology — or at any rate an ideology voters would dislike if they knew more about it — win elections? Obfuscation helps. But demagogy and appeals to tribalism help more. Racial dog whistles and suggestions that Democrats are un-American if not active traitors aren’t things that happen now and then, they’re an integral part of Republican political strategy.

During the Obama years Republican leaders cranked the volume on that strategy up to 11 (although it was pretty bad during the Clinton years too.) Establishment Republicans generally avoided saying in so many words that the president was a Kenyan Islamic atheist socialist friend of terrorists — although as the quote from Mr. Rubio shows, they came pretty close — but they tacitly encouraged those who did, and accepted their endorsements. And now they’re paying the price.

Indeed. More evidence that unintended consequences of actions can have startling and disconcerting end results.

For more of this spot on article continue reading BELOW THE FOLD.

Via: Memeorandum

How Trump, Clinton, Sanders, and Others are Wrong On Trade Trends With China...

Rational Nation USA
Purveyor of Truth

Just like on so many other issues Donald J. Trump is wrong on China and trade. In fairness, both Hillary Rodham Clinton and Bernie Sanders are wrong as well. The New Yorker, with links to verifiable data shows us just how wrong they all are.

Not long ago, a video mocking Donald Trump’s obsession with China was posted on YouTube, a mashup splicing together some two hundred and fifty instances in which he has said “China” during his speeches. The context of his remarks on the subject, inexorably, is this: “They’re stealing our jobs; they’re beating us in everything; they’re winning, we’re losing.” These sentiments have struck a chord with many struggling Americans, particularly those in the unemployed and underemployed working class.

The message has resonated so well, in fact, that other Presidential candidates have felt compelled to demonstrate a properly high level of indignation toward China’s economic prowess. Marco Rubio and Hillary Clinton, for instance, have complained about the country’s underhanded trade practices and their impact on American jobs. And then there’s Bernie Sanders, a longtime critic of globalization. “Corporate America said, ‘Why do I want to pay somebody in Michigan a living wage when I can pay slave wages in Mexico or China? We’re going to shut down, we’re going to move abroad, we’re going to bring those products back into this country,’ ” he said at last week’s Democratic debate, in Flint, Michigan. “They’re going to start having to, if I’m President, invest in this country.”

It’s a simple and effective pitch, with a ready set of scapegoats. But despite what the rhetoric would have us believe, global manufacturing is trending in a positive direction for the U.S. Factory jobs are on the rise here, and many of these new jobs are coming back to North America from China, which is struggling to maintain its manufacturing capacity. Since March, 2010, when manufacturing employment in the U.S. hit a trough of 11.45 million jobs, nearly a million new factory positions have been created, most of them in the Southern states, particularly North Carolina, South Carolina, and Tennessee. Better still, the jobs are typically good ones: across that same five-year period, average hourly manufacturing wages have increased over ten per cent, to more than twenty dollars. On the whole, U.S. manufacturing, as measured by the Purchasing Managers’ Index, has steadily expanded.

Meanwhile, according to Quanton Data, which tracks global job postings by industry, open manufacturing positions in China have been dropping consistently since 2012, down nearly six per cent in that time. In January, the country’s Ministry of Commerce reported that factory activity has contracted for six months, falling to a three-year low. In addition, foreign direct investment in Chinese manufacturing was flat for all of 2015, while China’s balance of trade with the U.S. barely budged, despite the strong dollar. Moreover, China’s exports tumbled in February by twenty-five per cent, after falling eleven per cent in January.

The picture that emerges from these statistics is much more nuanced than the one the Presidential candidates are offering: it reveals China to be something less than a rapacious economic winner, and the U.S. to be enjoying an industrial resurgence that seemed unimaginable a decade ago. There are many blue-collar workers who have been left out of this picture, to be certain, but if the candidates truly want to help those people, they should begin by at least acknowledging the recent shifts in global manufacturing and understanding their genesis and impact.

Perhaps the biggest stimulant to American manufacturing is the move toward reshoring. In recent years, companies have increasingly been bringing manufacturing jobs back to the U.S. from China and other countries. The practice received its most public boost in 2012, when General Electric announced plans to invest a billion dollars in an appliance plant in Louisville, Kentucky, reshoring four thousand jobs that had been in China and Mexico, and adding, over time, nearly twenty thousand factory positions at the plant’s regional suppliers. Walmart has also helped to stoke demand for U.S. manufacturing, thanks to an initiative, launched in 2013, to purchase an additional two hundred and fifty billion dollars worth of American-made goods by 2023, which it hopes will create as many as three hundred thousand new jobs.

Economists and manufacturing experts have assembled convincing statistics which demonstrate that these moves were part of a broader trend. According to data provided to me by the Reshoring Initiative, a nonprofit trade organization, in the past five years, about a hundred thousand manufacturing jobs have returned to the U.S. from overseas, sixty per cent of them from China. If you fold in new U.S. plant openings by companies headquartered elsewhere (that is, foreign direct investment in manufacturing), the number jumps to two hundred and fifty thousand. An additional fifty thousand jobs were saved when companies that had planned to go offshore changed their minds.

Continue reading BELOW THE FOLD for the rest of the positive story.

RNC Will Actively Work To Derail Obama SCOTUS Nomination...

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Purveyor of Truth

Article II, Section 2: “[The President] shall nominate, and by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, shall appoint…Judges of the Supreme Court.”

The Constitution certainly doesn't speak volumes on the nomination and appointment of justices to the SCOTUS, the above is all it says. It establishes no time frame in which the such nomination and appointment shall be made, nor does it establish specific guidelines or procedures that the senate shall follow while giving Advice and Consent to the president.

SHALL - v. 1) an imperative command as in "you shall not kill." 2) in some statutes, "shall" is a direction but does not mean mandatory, depending on the context.

From the above legal definition of the word shall we see that it can be interpreted as mandatory or as a direction not meant as mandatory. Because of the limited verbiage in the Constitution, lack of a specific time frame for action, and no procedural guidelines with respect to nomination and appointment of Supreme Court Justices it is difficult to argue that the current republican senate is acting without regard to the Constitution if it postpones confirmation until after the 2016 election. What's clear however is that the republican leadership and the RNC are acting out of purely partisan and ideological considerations, not necessarily in the best interest of the country. Having said the foregoing I suppose that depends on ones partisan political beliefs.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Republican Party is launching a campaign to try to derail President Barack Obama's nominee to the Supreme Court, teaming up with a conservative opposition research group to target vulnerable Democrats and impugn whomever Obama picks.

A task force housed within the Republican National Committee will orchestrate attack ads, petitions and media outreach to bolster a strategy that Senate Republicans adopted as soon as Justice Antonin Scalia died last month: refusing to consider an Obama nominee out of hopes that the next president will be a Republican.

The RNC will contract with America Rising Squared, an outside group targeting Democrats that's run by a longtime aide to GOP Sen. John McCain. GOP chairman Reince Priebus said it would be the most comprehensive judicial response effort in the party's history.

Priebus said the RNC would "make sure Democrats have to answer to the American people for why they don't want voters to have a say in this process."

SKIP

Key to the GOP's strategy will be targeting Democrats facing tough races over their insistence that Obama, in his final months in office, gets to pick a justice that could reshape the court's ideological balance for decades. In addition to presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders, the RNC said it would target Democratic Senate candidates in Colorado, Ohio, New Hampshire, Florida and Pennsylvania, among others. The party also plans to target Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee.

In the end it could very well be determined by the electorate, just as the republicans wish it to be. Let the voters speak .
Via: Memeorandum

Trump Campaign Continues To Experience Protests At Rallies, the Result of His Divisive and Inflammatory Rhetoric...

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Purveyor of Truth

Donald J. Trump, the man republicans must defeat and deny him the GOP nomination if the party is too be saved. Should he (may the Gods forbid) receive the GOP nomination he must be defeated in November 2016 regardless of who the democratic nominee is.

(CNN)—Donald Trump on Saturday called for protesters who disrupt his rallies to be arrested, one day after altercations and protests forced him to cancel a campaign rally in Chicago.

The comments capped a tumultuous day on the campaign trail in which a demonstrator rushed a stage where Trump was speaking.

Trump also accused Bernie Sanders' supporters of sowing unrest at his events and the GOP front-runner refused to back down from his rhetoric that some have cited as the cause of heightened tension at his rallies.

Trump's call to arrest protesters came at a campaign event in Kansas City, Missouri, where he was repeatedly interrupted at the beginning of his address.

"I'm going to ask that you arrest them," Trump said to the police. "I'll file whatever charges you want. If they want to do this ... we're going to go strongly for your arrests."

Trump said arresting protesters would "ruin the rest of their lives" by giving them a "big arrest mark."

"Once that starts happening, we're not going to have any more protesters, folks," Trump said.


SKIP

Trump began the day by blaming supporters of Sanders, the Vermont senator seeking the Democratic presidential nomination, of disrupting his Chicago event, where many in the audience chanted the senator's name after the rally was called off.

"Some represented Bernie, our communist friend," Trump said in Dayton, Ohio, his first campaign appearance since the Chicago event was postponed.

Later in the day, Trump said protesters at his Cleveland event are "Bernie's crowd."

"You know Bernie was saying Mr. Trump should speak to his crowd," Trump said. "You know where they come from? Bernie's crowd. They're Bernie's crowd."

And when a protester momentarily disrupted Trump's rally, the GOP front-runner again said the demonstrator was a "Bernie person."

"Get your people in line, Bernie," Trump said.

Sanders, however, pushed back against Trump, calling on him to denounce violence at his rallies and labeling him a "pathological liar."

SKIP

"I don't think our supporters are inciting. What our supporters are doing is responding to a candidate who has, in fact, in many ways, encouraged violence," Sanders said at a news conference in Chicago. "When he talks about ... 'I wish we were in the old days when you could punch somebody in the head.' What do you think that says to his supporters?"

Sanders also referred to an incident this week in which a black protester was sucker-punched by a Trump supporter as he was being led out of a rally.

"So the issue now is Donald Trump has got to be loud and clear and tell his supporters that violence at rallies is not what America is about and to end it," Sanders said.

In a statement issued later Saturday, Sanders added: "As is the case virtually every day, Donald Trump is showing the American people that he is a pathological liar."

SKIP

The other 2016 presidential candidates continued their attacks on Trump on Saturday over the violence at the Chicago rally.

"If you play with matches, you're going to start a fire you can't control," Hillary Clinton said at a caucus kick-off event at a local YMCA in St. Louis. "That's not leadership. That's political arson."

Florida Sen. Marco Rubio said he still plans to support the Republican nominee in the general election, but it's "getting harder every day."

"I think we also have to look at the rhetoric coming from the front-runner in the presidential campaign," he told reporters in Largo, Florida. "Someone who's basically encouraged people in the audience to rough up anyone who stands up and says something he doesn't like."

Rubio said if the anger from voters continues, the country will "continue to be ripped apart at the seams."

Texas Sen. Ted Cruz accused Trump of encouraging his supporters to physically assault activists.

"Unlike Donald Trump, I don't ask people in the audience to punch people in the face. I don't ask them to engage in physical violence against protesters," he said in Kansas City. "And I think the way you interact with the citizens expresses what kind of President you'll be."

Ohio Gov. John Kasich -- who has made running a positive campaign a central part of his appeal to voters -- initially declined to criticize Trump on Friday night, saying he couldn't comment on the rallies as he had never been to one. Later, he issued a statement, saying Trump had been sowing "seeds of division" that "finally bore fruit."

But by Saturday morning, Kasich -- who, like Cruz, had declined to blame Trump for violence at his rallies, called a news conference to denounce Trump.

"Donald Trump has created a toxic environment, and a toxic environment has allowed his supporters and those who sometimes seek confrontation to come together in violence," Kasich told reporters in Sharonville, Ohio. "To see Americans slugging themselves at a political rally deeply disturbed me. We're better than that."

Read full article HERE.


If you would, we ask you to take a moment and reflect on Trump's campaign and his obvious divisive nature. After doing so we ask which of the 14 characteristics of fascism do you believe Trump represents.

1. powerful expressions of nationalism
2. distain for the importance of human rights
3. identification of enemies
4. supremacy of the military
5. rampant sexism
6. controlled mass media
7. obsession with national security
8. religion and ruling elite tied together
9. protection of powerful corporations
10. power of labor suppressed
11. disdain for intellectuals and the arts
12. obsession with crime
13. rampant cronyism
14. fraudulent elections

A New Gallup Poll and the Dangers of The Donald...

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Purveyor of Truth

A new Gallup Poll on March 11th shows just how unpopular Donald J. Trump is among Hispanics.

PRINCETON, N.J. -- Presidential candidate Donald Trump has a major image problem among U.S. Hispanics, with 77% saying they view him unfavorably and just 12% viewing him favorably. This gives Trump by far the most negative image among Hispanics of any of the four Republican candidates. He also has a much more negative image among Hispanics than the two Democratic candidates. SOURCE

Trump's recent message that he is going to be a unifier certainly hasn't resonated with Hispanics. It is easy to understand why given his xenophobia and nationalist rhetoric.



Moving on to a related issue concerning Trump and his political resemblance to a previous era in history. Fedja Buric has an excellent article in this past Friday's SALON in which he draws many analogies between Mussolini's fascism and what he terms as Trumpism. A detailed and well thought out article Buric makes it startling clear why people of reason and good judgement, whatever their political party or ideology may be, should unite and do everything they can to stop Trump.

Following are a few excerpts from the article as teasers for those who wish to better understand what is driving Trump and Trumpism.

Like Mussolini, Trump rails against intruders (Mexicans) and enemies (Muslims), mocks those perceived as weak, encourages a violent reckoning with those his followers perceive as the enemy within (the roughing up of protesters at his rallies), flouts the rules of civil political discourse (the Megyn Kelly menstruation spat), and promises to restore the nation to its greatness not by a series of policies, but by the force of his own personality (“I will be great for” fill in the blank).

To quote Paxton again, this time from his seminal “The Anatomy of Fascism”: “Fascist leaders made no secret of having no program.” This explains why Trump supporters are not bothered by his ideological malleability and policy contradictions: He was pro-choice before he was pro-life; donated to politicians while now he rails against that practice; married three times and now embraces evangelical Christianity; is the embodiment of capitalism and yet promises to crack down on free trade. In the words of the Italian writer Umberto Eco, fascism was “a beehive of contradictions.” It bears noting that Mussolini was a socialist unionizer before becoming a fascist union buster, a journalist before cracking down on free press, a republican before becoming a monarchist.

Like Mussolini, Trump is dismissive of democratic institutions. He selfishly guards his image of a self-made outsider who will “dismantle the establishment” in the words of one of his supporters. That this includes cracking down on a free press by toughening libel laws, engaging in the ethnic cleansing of 11 million people (“illegals”), stripping away citizenship of those seen as illegitimate members of the nation (children of the “illegals”), and committing war crimes in the protection of the nation (killing the families of suspected terrorists) only enhances his stature among his supporters. The discrepancy between their love of America and these brutal and undemocratic methods does not bother them one iota. To borrow from Paxton again: “Fascism was an affair of the gut more than of the brain.” For Trump and his supporters, the struggle against “political correctness” in all its forms is more important than the fine print of the Constitution.

To be fair, there are many differences between Italian Fascism of interwar Europe and Trumpism of (soon to be) post-Obama America. For one, Mussolini was better read and more articulate than Trump. Starting out as a schoolteacher, the Italian Fascist read voraciously and was heavily influenced by the German and French philosophers Friedrich Nietzsche and Jean-Marie Guyau, respectively. I doubt Trump would know who either of these two people were. According to the Boston Globe, Trump speaks at the level of a fourth grader.

There are other more consequential differences, of course: the interwar Italy was a much bigger mess than the USA is today; the democratic institutions of this country are certainly more resilient and durable than those of the young unstable post-World War I Italy; the economy, both U.S. and worldwide, is not in the apocalyptic state it was in the interwar period; and the demographics of the USA mitigate against the election of a racist demagogue. So, Trump’s blackshirts are not marching on Washington, yet.

SKIP

The Very Fascist Origins of Trumpism

That white supremacist groups back Donald Trump for president of the United States, and his slowness to disavow the support of David Duke, all illuminate the fascistic origins of Trump the phenomenon. In fact, Paxton acknowledges that while Fascism began in France and Italy, “the first version of the Klan in the defeated American south was arguably a remarkable preview of the way fascist movements were to function in interwar Europe.” That the KKK was drawn to the Trump candidacy, and that he refused to disavow them speak volumes about his fascistic roots.

Like Fascism, Trumpism has come about on the heels of a protracted period of ideological restlessness. Within the Republican Party this restlessness has resulted in a complete de-legitimization of the so-called GOP establishment.

much more BELOW THE FOLD.

A Most Unbelievable Endorsement...

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Purveyor of Truth

Ben Carson, the reserved and quite voice for civility and inclusiveness, has endorsed the man for president that most would think his polar opposite, Donald J. Trump. It is difficult to grasp why Dr. Carson would endorse Trump, a man who spreads xenophobia and who has a extreme nationalistic agenda. A plausible argument can be made that Trump may be a white supremacist, given his response when questioned abut the David Duke endorsement and his initial unwillingness to disavow Duke and the KKK. Duke was a prior Grand Wizard of the KKK.

Quin Hillyer at National Review had this to say on the Carson endorsement.

Dr. Ben Carson has just made a hypocrite of himself and done great damage to the country by endorsing the moral monster, Donald Trump.

Carson has spent an entire campaign pleading for honor and decency and decorum, only to endorse a man who is the crassest, most vulgar, most deceitful person in the race — a man who has repeatedly attacked in the most vicious ways, and lied about, every other candidate in the race. Trump is a man who has repeatedly incited violence at his rallies, saying that protesters should be punched out and carried away on a stretcher, and promising to pay the legal bills of those who throw the punches.

And now, Trump is flat-out lying in denying the well-documented, audio-taped roughing up of a (female) reporter by Trump’s wannabe thug of a campaign manager.

Carson has talked about the need for a president to understand poverty, yet has endorsed a multi-million-dollar inheritor who has spent his entire career leaving others impoverished by walking out on his debts, but refusing to pay full bills, and by trying to use to power of the state to seize their land.

Worse, Carson is endorsing a man who has mocked his religion and who quite literally likened him to a child molester. In doing so, Dr. Carson has disgraced himself.

We wholeheartedly agree.

Via: Memeorandum

Trump in Caricature...

More truth in pictures.

Trump, You Ain't No Ronald Reagan...

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Purveyor of Truth

Trump, as well as many in the GOP today, certainly doesn't have the following in common with President Ronald Reagan or President George H.W. Bush, two men Trump wouldn't have earned the right to shine their shoes.

Unfortunately there are a yuuuge number of people who share Trump's vision for America. Our advice is simple, BUYER BEWARE.





h/t Progressive Eruptions

Sanders Campaign Out Raises Clinton Campain in February... Out Performs In Debate

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Purveyor of Truth

Hillary Rodham Clinton who is undergoing FBI investigation over her alleged inappropriate use of her e-mail server to send classified material if facing another serious challenge that could also derail her hopes of being POTUS. In a two words, Bernie Sanders. Sanders is out performing her I raising money and raked in 12 million more than HRC in February. His campaign has gotten traction and he is effectively taking the fight to Hillary.

As me and my better half watched the democratic debate Sunday night we were impressed with Sanders performance (no, my wife did not think Bernie's hush remark was sexist) and came away with a sense that Sanders is both honest and knowledgeable, even though we are not in agreement with some of his agenda. Although we do believe Sanders would be more dedicated to and successful in handling Wall Street and its excesses.

Clinton's campaign is, to say the least, concerned with the growing popularity and interest in Sanders campaign.

Campaign manager Robby Mook issued another panicked email to supporters Monday -

After another weekend of contests, Donald Trump has two more wins, and he’s added to his already formidable lead in the delegate count.

Hillary is the only candidate who can take Trump down, but this primary isn’t over yet. We’re still losing the money race — Bernie’s campaign outraised us by $12 million in February — and even though we picked up delegates, we lost 3 of this weekend’s 4 contests.

We cannot afford to give this nomination away — there’s simply too much at stake.

In stark contrast to the GOP/TeaPublican debate(s) the democratic presidential debate last night was actually a debate.

Via: Memeorandum

27 Profitable Companies Escape Paying Any Taxes ...

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Purveyor of Truth

Isn't there something ever so slightly wrong with this picture?

USA TODAY - Death and taxes are supposed to be two certainties of life. But a few companies have at least escaped the taxes part. Investors, though, don't seem all that impressed.

There are 27 companies in the Standard & Poor's 500, including telecom firm Level 3 Communications (LVLT), airline United Continental (UAL) and automaker General Motors (GM), that reported paying no income tax expense in 2015 despite reporting pre-tax profits, according to a USA TODAY analysis of data from S&P Global Market Intelligence.

Only profitable firms were included in the analysis since firms that lost money - like many energy companies - wouldn't be expected to pay taxes.

Escaping the taxman, so far, hasn't been an advantage at least in the eyes of investors. Shares of the companies that paid no taxes are down 11% on average over the past 12 months, which is more than twice the 4.8% decline by the S&P 500 during the same period.

More BELOW THE FOLD.


Via: Memeorandum

A Bit of Humor...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ONRQZshyrPI&ebc=ANyPxKoHvKLSWEMWYX6QY2J4T2xtW1Wpaql9LZ-YYKbFQ4qhx-s22X15-0SweKfOmOrYU6CCcyBNYTaxU2fGmR33OCUm0_94Rg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c2DgwPG7mAA&ebc=ANyPxKoHvKLSWEMWYX6QY2J4T2xtW1Wpaql9LZ-YYKbFQ4qhx-s22X15-0SweKfOmOrYU6CCcyBNYTaxU2fGmR33OCUm0_94Rg


UPDATE