M.G.
M.G.'s JournalIs Donald Trump the Worst Presidential Candidate in American History?
Obnoxious, juvenile, totally inexperienced, grossly unqualified for the job of President.
Those would all be fairly accurate descriptors for Donald Trump.
Sixteen years ago, I thought George W. Bush was the most transparently clownish and awful Presidential candidate of my life, and in fact McCain and Romney were slightly less appalling figures than he. (Though Sarah Palin was probably worse.)
Trump has accomplished the near-miracle of being more awful than Bush by any metric I can gauge. Cartoonishly corrupt, self-destructively mean and flagrantly bigoted to boot, with less actual understanding of policy than a typical college student, Trump has set a new low in a Party that defines the term.
Has there ever been a worse Presidential Candidate, or even a worse human being who has dominated the political news cycles this long? Even Nixon at least had an intelligent grasp of geopolitics and didn't openly swindle thousands of working Americans with a scam "university." I can't think of any popular American figure in my lifetime who has actually publically encouraged violence at rallies. And I have never heard of a political figure who spent much of his youth and middle age embroiled in tabloid sex scandals and prone to boasts about his promiscuity go on to lead the "religious right."
The fool who would be king. What will his legacy be?
Trump is an obvious buffoon. I'd guess that even a sizable percentage of his supporters must, at some level, realize that.
Assuming he loses, as I suspect he will, I wonder what people think his legacy will be?
My guess is that he'll have a fairly minimal long-term impact on the GOP, except possibly pushing them further to the right on immigration and, maybe, opening some space for some their candidates on trade issues.
Broadly, I think the institutions of conservatism are sufficiently strong and well-funded to be able to blow off a buffoon candidate as the equivalent of an embarrassing drunken evening.
We may, however, see more celebrity political candidates in the future. It's not impossible to now imagine, say, an athlete or film director or hip-hop artist successfully mounting a Presidential bid. One thing I really take from this election cycle, other than how stupid a lot of Republican voters really are (yes, there are stupid Democrats, but we don't generally give the tent over to obvious fools) is that celebrity is more powerful than political accomplishment in winning votes.
Any thoughts?
True Story : My Father once met Donald Trump
True Story.
My father once met Donald Trump in the 1980's.
He and his sister were drinking coffee in the lounge of Manhattan's Trump Tower when Donald Trump walked by. He asked them if they liked his building, and proceeded to talk - on and on and on for quite a long while -about its many great features.
"Likable but loud", was my father's sense.
I imagine the subtext of their rather one-sided conversation was "pay attention to me."
Donald Trump, Pagan God. (Satire)
This is satire, but it makes as much sense as anything the pundits are saying in terms of explaining the election.
"The key to understanding this election cycle—and its energetic locus, Trump—is to accept that we are not dealing with an ordinary man, bound by the rules of decorum and the presupposition of coherence. I have another idea. I propose that Donald Trump is the personification of a Norse god named Loki."
http://thebaffler.com/blog/donald-trump-trickster-god
Prominent Trump ally says Cruz may as well be copulating with rodents
I'm 42. This is, without a doubt, the most bizarre election cycle of my life. I honestly can't tell what's real and what's parody at this point. If anyone reading this can provide me with a way of distinguishing between the two right now, please, let me know!
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"Donald Trump’s BFF Roger Stone knows that Donald Trump couldn’t possibly be behind the Ted Cruz sex scandal story the National Enquirer reported this week. DTrump told ABC’s This Week on Sunday that it was not him behind the story saying, “I have no control over the National Enquirer.” Stone echoed the same sentiment on AM970 where he told host Frank Morano that by definition he couldn’t be one of Trump’s henchmen because he’s not being paid. Cruz not only blamed Trump and Stone but he also accused Stone of being someone who copulates with rodents. “Knowing what a couple of these women look like,” Stone continued, “I actually feel like he’s the one who has been copulating with rodents.”
Some have questioned if Ted Cruz will sue the National Enquirer for the story, but Stone claims that Cruz won’t because he can’t. “Again, why won’t he sue. It won’t cost him anything, he’s a lawyer himself…To be absolutely clear, Ted Cruz won’t sue because the allegations are largely true. That’s why he won’t sue.”"
https://www.rawstory.com/2016/03/trump-ally-roger-stone-cruzs-alleged-mistress-are-so-ugly-hes-the-one-copulating-with-rodents/
Ben Carson does not know who wrote the Constitution
Source: Talking Points Memo
Republican presidential candidate Dr. Ben Carson said in an interview that aired Sunday that Thomas Jefferson wrote the Constitution. But in reality, the founding father was the lead author of the Declaration of Independence.
It's not the first time Carson has gotten United States history wrong. As The Wall Street Journal previously flagged, Carson erroneously said the founding fathers had "no elected office experience."
Read more: http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/ben-carson-thomas-jefferson-wrote-constitution
Some "Constitutional Conservative."
Ben Carson literally does not know what the United States looks like
Source: Talking Points Memo
Retired neurosurgeon Dr. Ben Carson on Tuesday expressed his support for a growing contingent of governors who are against allowing Syrian refugees into the United States — but he shared an incorrect graphic of the lower 48 states in the process.
Carson's campaign shared the botched map, which transposed much of New England above New Hampshire, on Twitter and Facebook.
"I am standing with the 31 Governors who are fighting to keep our nation safe," the Facebook post, which has since been deleted, read. "We do not currently have the means to adequately vet the thousands of refugees that the Obama Administration wants to bring into the United States."
Read more: http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/ben-carson-refugee-map-fail
Ben Carson's crack team of advisors literally can't identify what the United States looks like:
Ben Carson's own advisers admit he cannot grasp "intelligent information" about Middle East
Source: New Republic
"It is apparently impossible for Ben Carson to grasp even "one iota of intelligent information about the Middle East."That’s according to Carson’s own national security and terrorism adviser, Duane R. Clarridge, who decided to reveal to The New York Times that Carson is struggling mightily with the basics of foreign policy. Clarridge said Carson needs weekly tutorials so “we can make him smart,” but to no avail. Another adviser, Armstrong Williams, told the Times that the lessons aren’t just getting through. “He’s been briefed on it so many times,” Williams said of a recent flub in which Carson was unable to name the countries he would call on to join a coalition against ISIS. “I guess he just froze.”
While we appreciate their honesty, it’s still pretty amazing that Clarridge and Williams would just offer these details to the paper of record. We can only surmise that they considered it their patriotic duty to make sure the public is informed.
Update: The Carson campaign says the Times, in speaking to Clarridge, had “taken advantage of an elderly gentleman,” who has “incomplete knowledge” of the “daily briefings” Carson receives."
Read more: https://newrepublic.com/minutes/124070/anti-chinese-racial-slur-ben-carsons-foreign-policy-adviser-use
Ben Carson's own advisers think he's too stupid to do the job.
Not just a liar, a dumb liar!
Where does the GOP find its frontrunners, anyway?
I have never met a sane Trump or Carson supporter. Have you?
I talked with a Trump supporter the other day. He told me that the New World Order led by the Rothschilds (yes, this is what he told me) feared honest, strong leaders like Trump. He liked Carson too, but felt his support for mandatory immunization disqualified him from being Presidential material.
This got me thinking about Republicans I know. Not a one who regularly talks to me claims to support Trump or Carlson. I have had some limited contact with supporters of both candidates. Invariably, their politics moves from utter hatred of Hillary Clinton and Obama to a kind of freeform paranoid craziness not unlike what I've described above. The one exception I've encountered was a religious fundamentalist - itself a form of craziness - who liked Carson mostly for being a nice guy.
Is this merely indicative of my own limited perspective, or has someone out there encountered a fully rational adult human being, one comfortable with science and modernity, who genuinely likes and supports either of the two Republican frontrunners? And if so, could you share your experience?
Carson's Yale Story was Embellished, but not Fabricated
Source: Buzzfeed
A former staff member of the Yale Record says that he recalls many of the details of a prank that Dr. Ben Carson wrote about in an autobiography.
The incident has been the subject of media coverage in recent days, after the Wall Street Journal reported on Friday that it found no evidence to support Carson’s claim that he was a victim of a hoax that led him to take a fake psychology test, as he wrote in his 1990 autobiography, Gifted Hands.
In an interview with BuzzFeed News on Monday, Curtis Bakal, an editorial assistant at the satirical Yale Record who says he helped write the fake test, said he was “99% certain the way Carson remembers it is correct.”
“When I read about the story in the Wall Street Journal, I immediately said, to my wife and friend, ‘That was the prank we played at the Record! And Ben Carson was in the class,’” said Bakal, who noted he wasn’t actually present during the taking of the fake test. “We did a mock parody of the Yale Daily News during the exam period in January 1970, and in this parody we had a box that said: ‘So-and-so section of the exam has been lost in a fire. Professor so-and-so is going to give a makeup exam.’”
Read more: http://www.buzzfeed.com/andrewkaczynski/ben-carsons-yale-classmate-we-did-the-prank-test-that-carson#.iq1mbY0oaX
I posted here about Carson's Yale story a few days ago. The story is all about honesty, and honesty compels me to post that the most recent addendum to the story is somewhat more favorable to Carson than was the initial coverage. It seems that the hoax test he took was perpetrated by Yale's parody paper. The long and short of it is that Carson distorted things and recast the event as a morality tale. By any reasonable metric, he fibbed. He also fudged some of the details and got others wrong.
Still amusing, considering he embellished a tale about his supposed honesty, but less of a fraud than the Wall Street Journal story made it appear.
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Member since: Wed Oct 9, 2013, 04:22 PMNumber of posts: 250
