trump is serious!!!!!

[wesw]

trump has signed his loyalty pledge.....

[RayThom]

Well I guess we'll eventually find out where his loyalties truly lie. Whether he's the RNC nom, or "redecides" to run as a 3rd party candidate it guarantees the Dems of victory in '16. Run, Trumpy, run.

Oh, and God bless America.

[Econoline]

Maybe it's time to stop laughing?

Labor Day Look at the 2016 General Election For President: Every Democrat Trails Trump, Though Narrowly:
In an election for President of the United States, today, Labor Day, business provocateur Donald Trump narrowly defeats Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden, Bernie Sanders and Al Gore, in head-to-head matchups, according to nationwide polling conducted by SurveyUSA.

Today it's:

• * Trump 45%, Clinton 40%. (There is a 20-point Gender Gap; Trump leads by 18 points among seniors.)
  * Trump 44%, Sanders 40%. (Trump leads by 10 among independents and by 6 among moderates.)
  * Trump 44%, Biden 42%. (Trump leads by 10 among the best educated; Biden leads by 17 among the least educated.)
  * Trump 44%, Gore 41%. (Trump leads by 12 among men and by 18 among voters age 50+.)

Among a subset of registered voters who tell SurveyUSA that they pay "a lot" of attention to politics, the scale tilts to the right: Today it's:

• * Trump 54%, Clinton 36%.
  * Trump 53%, Sanders 39%.
  * Trump 53%, Biden 37%.
  * Trump 54%, Gore 36%.

http://www.surveyusa.com/client/PollRep ... c0cdab26c6

[wesw]

I don t know how reputable or accurate SurveyUSA polling is but.....


I told you so!

if he has the balls to stick with single payer and his "insurance companies are ripping us off" theme, he will soon get the poor people vote too

if you democrats don t want a president Trump, you had better switch up and vote in the repub primary , and....

...vote Kasich!!!

if you think that his "china , japan, and mexico, are killing us" theme is popular, just wait until he starts saying, "the insurance companies are killing us" nowhere to go but up with that theme.....

he won t get the "ivory tower" republican support, but you have to kill a lot of elephants to build an ivory tower. and the rank and file elephants are tired of being killed and are tired of working for peanuts.....

[wesw]

bobby Jindal, who has no chance of winning, has apparently been designated as the official party attack dog against trump.

he threw out the hate bait, let s see if the Donald is smart enough to let this one go, and dismiss Jindal as irrelevant, which he is.

if the Donald is determined to respond in kind to every attack, the attacks will come. they will be as numerous as the stars, and he will be swallowed into the black hole of bickering and revenge.

Jindal s attack this morning was personal and hateful and carefully orchestrated by the powers that be.

is Donald trump smart enough to laugh it off?

[Guinevere]

Well he isn't dumb enough to not say this stuff:

Donald J. Trump, who received draft deferments through much of the Vietnam War, told the author of a coming biography that he nevertheless “always felt that I was in the military” because of his education at a military-themed boarding school.

Mr. Trump said his experience at the New York Military Academy, an expensive prep school where his parents had sent him to correct poor behavior, gave him “more training militarily than a lot of the guys that go into the military.”

That claim may raise eyebrows given that Mr. Trump, now a Republican presidential candidate, never served in the military and mocked Senator John McCain of Arizona, a decorated naval aviator, for his captivity of several years during the Vietnam War.

“He’s not a war hero,” Mr. Trump said in July. “He’s a war hero because he was captured. I like people that weren’t captured.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/09/us/po ... .html?_r=0

[oldr_n_wsr]

bobby Jindal, who has no chance of winning, has apparently been designated as the official party attack dog against trump.

he threw out the hate bait, let s see if the Donald is smart enough to let this one go, and dismiss Jindal as irrelevant, which he is.

if the Donald is determined to respond in kind to every attack, the attacks will come. they will be as numerous as the stars, and he will be swallowed into the black hole of bickering and revenge.

Jindal s attack this morning was personal and hateful and carefully orchestrated by the powers that be.

is Donald trump smart enough to laugh it off?

The powers that be have no clue how to derail him. They are trying anything and it ain't working. Maybe the "overwhelm" approach will work but I doubt it.

[Gob]

Los Angeles: Former members of R.E.M. have reacted angrily to the news presidential hopeful Donald Trump is using their apocalyptic anthem It's The End of the World as a campaign tune.

Trump upset Neil Young earlier this year when he walked out onstage to one of the rocker's hits and now he's facing the wrath of Michael Stipe and his bandmates for making an entrance to R.E.M.'s popular song.

Stipe, Mike Mills and Peter Buck heard about the campaign tune mix up and they have responded with a joint statement demanding that candidates "cease and desist" from using their music.

"While we do not authorise or condone the use of our music at this political event, and do ask that these candidates cease and desist from doing so, let us remember that there are things of greater importance at stake here," they said in a statement.

"The media and the American voter should focus on the bigger picture, and not allow grandstanding politicians to distract us from the pressing issues of the day and of the current Presidential campaign."

Mills and Stipe also took to Twitter on Wednesday to attack the property tycoon, who is hoping to land the Republican candidacy for the 2016 presidential election.
"Go f*** yourselves, the lot of you - you sad, attention grabbing, power-hungry little men," Stipe wrote.

Mills added, "Personally, I think the Orange Clown (Trump) will do anything for attention. I hate giving it to him ..."

[dales]

[Econoline]

Oops, I just posted that story in that other thread where you put the story about "Eye of the Tiger"; what I posted there also made mention of Trump's earlier unauthorized use of Neil Young's "Rockin' In The Free World".

I'll repeat here what I said there: You know, when the people you have chosen to be, in effect, your musical spokesmen, conveying what you see as the mood and emotions you want to project on a particular occasion...when those people are telling you to cease and desist and GO FUCK YOURSELVES, you might want to rethink the actual verbal message coming out of your mouth just a little bit?

[Lord Jim]

Every single thing Bobby Jindal said about Trump today, is absolutely correct...

But it's also obvious that the reason Jindal decided to take this route, is because he's gotten no traction in the polls, and he's likely to follow Rick Perry, (who isn't paying his staff...) as the next man out...

(If Lindsey Graham doesn't beat him to it...)

When was the last time Bobby Jindal got any media attention?

The way to get media attention if you're slipping completely off the media screen in this bizarre, All Trump/All The Time media environment...

is to attach yourself to Trump in some way...

Every morning I wake up and turn on cable news hoping that it's all been a bad dream...

That the political world hasn't been completely turned upside down, and Donald Trump is nothing but a minor player...that I'll wake up up in the morning and the political world will still make sense...

And then Morning Joe comes on, and I switch around to the other cable news shows, and I realize it's not just a nightmare; it's actually happening...

And it's not just a problem for Republicans any more...

Look at the polls...

This "unstable, narcissistic egomaniac" could conceivably win the election....

My favorite line of Jindal's in that speech was:

"He is an unserious, unstable, narcissistic egomaniac..."

That is absolutely spot on...

But he might win anyway...

This unstable, unserious, narcissistic, egomaniac might well become the next POTUS...

In which case I will go with what I said earlier:


DEMPSEY FOR PRESIDENT!

I'd rather have a military coup, then have this narcissistic, egomaniac waste of space become President...

If our democractic-republican system after nearly two hundred years, has rendered up a choice between Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders, it's probably time to say, "well, it was a good run, it was good while it lasted, but it just didn't work...

Time to give up on this whole democracy thing and go with a military coup...

And General Dempsey seems like a very nice fellow...

I'm sure he'll set early elections for a civilian turn-over...

[wesw]

Dempsey seems like a toady to me....

[wesw]

trump was smart enough to dismiss Jindal....

I am becoming more convinced that he is some kind of democrat plant. official destroyer of repubs.

I hope Kasich comes out as a kick ass shaker upper after he wins new Hampshire. he is smart to lay low, nationally, right now. it is a big shit fight and he would only get stinky if he joined in too....

[Big RR]

[quoteI'm sure he'll set early elections for a civilian turn-over...][/quote]

Military despots (even patriotic ones) always do.

[Long Run]

When was the last time Bobby Jindal got any media attention?

The way to get media attention if you're slipping completely off the media screen in this bizarre, All Trump/All The Time media environment...

is to attach yourself to Trump in some way...

Which is why Jeb is making his way back up in the polls as Trump has focused attention on him.

Jindal, thankfully, is not getting any traction (the R's would be buying a pig in a poke with him), which is why he is doing exactly what should not be done with Trump -- he's feeding the troll -- and thereby helping Trump in a base attempt to promote himself.

[Econoline]

Jim - will you please please *PLEASE* edit your post to remove that ENORMOUS image and substitute a more reasonable sized one? Like this one:

(If you click on "QUOTE" you can see the URL for that image.)
(Or just right-click on the image itself and choose "Copy image URL".)

[Lord Jim]

Okay, you can stop crying now...

[Econoline]

Thanks.

[Scooter]

[Guinevere]

Gopnik nails Trump, his supporters, and why it's still unlikely he will win:


http://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-com ... o-remember

Once, and only once, in 2011, have I attended the annual White House Correspondents’ Association dinner in Washington, D.C., on the grounds, as I explained then, that Voltaire is said to have cited when he declined a second invitation to an orgy: once a philosopher, twice a pervert. Luckily for the philosopher in me, it turned out to be an auspicious night. Not only, as we did not know then, was President Obama in the midst of the operation that would lead shortly to Osama bin Laden’s killing; it was also the night when, despite that preoccupation, the President took apart Donald Trump, plastic piece by orange part, and then refused to put him back together again.

Trump was then at the height of his unimaginably ugly marketing of birther fantasies, and, just days before, the state of Hawaii had, at the President’s request, released Obama’s long-form birth certificate in order to end, or try to end, the nonsense. Having referred to that act, he then gently but acutely mocked Trump’s Presidential ambitions: “I know that he’s taken some flack lately—no one is prouder to put this birth-certificate matter to rest than the Donald. And that’s because he can finally get back to the issues that matter, like: did we fake the moon landing? What really happened in Roswell? And—where are Biggie and Tupac?” The President went on, “We all know about your credentials and breadth of experience. For example—no, seriously—just recently, in an episode of Celebrity Apprentice”—there was laughter at the mention of the program’s name. Obama explained that, when a team did not impress, Trump “didn’t blame Lil John or Meatloaf—you fired Gary Busey. And these are the kinds of decisions that would keep me up night.”


What was really memorable about the event, though, was Trump’s response. Seated a few tables away from us magazine scribes, Trump’s humiliation was as absolute, and as visible, as any I have ever seen: his head set in place, like a man in a pillory, he barely moved or altered his expression as wave after wave of laughter struck him. There was not a trace of feigning good humor about him, not an ounce of the normal politician’s, or American regular guy’s “Hey, good one on me!” attitude—that thick-skinned cheerfulness that almost all American public people learn, however painfully, to cultivate. No head bobbing or hand-clapping or chin-shaking or sheepish grinning—he sat perfectly still, chin tight, in locked, unmovable rage. If he had not just embarked on so ugly an exercise in pure racism, one might almost have felt sorry for him.

Some day someone may well write a kind of micro-history of that night, as historians now are wont to do, as a pivot in American life, both a triumph of Obama’s own particular and enveloping form of cool and as harbinger of—well, of what exactly? A lot depends on what happens next with the Donald and his followers. Certainly, the notion that Trump’s rise, however long it lasts, is a product of a special skill, or circumstance, or a new national “mood,” is absurd. Trumpism is a permanent part of American life—in one form or another, with one voice or another blaring it out. At any moment in our modern history, some form of populist nationalism has always held some significant share—whether five or ten per cent – of the population. Among embittered white men, Trump’s “base,” it has often held a share much larger than that. Trump is not offering anything that was not offered before him, often in identical language and with a similarly incoherent political program, by Pat Buchanan or Ross Perot, by George Wallace or Barry Goldwater, or way back when by Father Coughlin or Huey Long. Populist nationalism is not an eruptive response to a new condition of 2015—it is a perennial ideological position, deeply rooted in the nature of modernity: a social class sees its perceived displacement as the result of a double conspiracy of outsiders and élitists. The outsiders are swamping us, and the insiders are mocking us—this ideology alters its local color as circumstances change, but the essential core is always there. They look down on us and they have no right to look down on us. Indeed, the politics of Trump, far from being in any way new, are exactly the politics of Huck Finn’s drunken father in “Huckleberry Finn”: “Call this a govment! Just look at it and see what it’s like . . . . A man can’t get his rights in a govment like this.” Widespread dissatisfaction with all professional politicians, a certainty of having been “sold out,” a feeling of complete alienation from both political parties—“Not a dime’s worth of difference between them” was George Wallace’s formulation, a half century ago—these are permanent intuitions of the American aggrieved. The feelings may be somewhat aggravated by bad times, or alleviated by good ones, but at the height of the prosperous fifties a significant proportion of Americans were persuaded that the entire government was in the hands of saboteurs and traitors at the pay of a foreign power, while in the still more prosperous nineties a similar faction was persuaded that the liberal President was actually a coke dealer who had murdered a friend.


Nor is it at all surprising to find a billionaire businessman representing this ideology, because it is not really members of the economic élite who are its villains—it is the educated élite, and the uneducated outsiders, who are. It is, on the historical record, much more a response to the ceaseless anxieties of modern life than to any financial angst of the moment. Probably the best student of this modern ideology is the conservative historian John Lukacs, whose 2005 book “Democracy And Populism: Fear and Hatred” makes clear how different the nationalist formula is from patriotism properly so called: it rests not on a sense of pride in place or background but in an intense sense of victimization. The cry of the genuine patriot is, Leave us alone to be the people we have always been. The populist nationalist cries, We have been cheated of our birthright, and the Leader will give it back.

The ideology is always available; it just changes its agents from time to time.

And this is where memories of the President’s performance come into play and take on a potency that one might not have understood at the time. For the politics of populist nationalism are almost entirely the politics of felt humiliation—the politics of shame. And one can’t help but suspect that, on that night, Trump’s own sense of public humiliation became so overwhelming that he decided, perhaps at first unconsciously, that he would, somehow, get his own back—perhaps even pursue the Presidency after all, no matter how nihilistically or absurdly, and redeem himself. Though he gave up the hunt for office in that campaign, it does not seem too far-fetched to imagine that the rage—Lukacs’s fear and hatred—implanted in him that night has fuelled him ever since. It was already easy to sense at the time that something very strange had happened – that the usual American ritual of the “roast” and the roasted had been weirdly and uniquely disrupted. But the consequences were hard to imagine. The micro-history of that night yet to be written might be devoted largely to the double life of Barack Obama as cool comedian and quiet commander—or it might be devoted to the moment when new life was fed into an old ideology, when Trump’s ambitions suddenly turned over to the potent politics of shame and vengeance. His even partial triumph in the primary still seems unlikely—but stranger jokes have been played on American philosophers over the centuries.

.