2016 Republican Presidential Clown Car Begins!

No. Not even close. And neither am I overlooking the nature of that kind of question - the sheer ugliness, as well as dishonesty, of the motives behind your foul posting.

No, I don't. As you read, explicitly, in my post. So what is your problem - Can't read, or won't read?

No, they aren't. Your problem here is visible - you don't know any leftwing pundits. You have no idea how the leftwingers have been reacting to Trump's remarks.

Here's a clue: the same way they have been reacting to Coulter's, Limbaugh's, Hannity's, O'Reilly's, Name-him bigshot Republican evangelical's, Name-him redstate Republican governor's, etc etc etc etc, for forty years and more. What's Trump saying that the leading Republican intellectual voice of the Reagan era we are still in - Rush Limbaugh - hasn't been saying since 1992? It's just a fact - nothing Trump has said is even slightly shocking to anyone who has been listening to the hate radio, "conservative intellectuals", and redstate politicians of the Reagan era. Nothing is even new, in his bombast and truculent repetition of Luntz terms.

The only people who could possibly think that leftwing pundits are shocked by Trump are people who have forgotten the past forty years of Republican media rhetoric - which would be typical of Trump supporters, actually. These are people who can't remember anything their hero and savior W did or said for eight years, after all.

That's one of the problems with being reality based - there is by and large only one reality. We don't even need indoctrination academies (which is lucky, since we can't afford the rightwing think tank archipelago). We end up all thinking alike about stuff, like the fact that Trump is repeating the same talking points and representing the same folks as Limbaugh has since 1992, or that this candidacy of Trump's has been following the trajectory that was obviously most likely given the nature of the Republican base and the corruption of US media, just because we can remember what happened from one year to the next.

We all know, as a consequence, which way is "up" and who was right about the Iraq War and the difference between shit and shinola (War Chief Donald, of the Tribe Who Rubs Shit In Their Hair, may also know the difference - hard to say). Hive mind, as you put it - as opposed to mindless hive, apparently.

Problem is: Donald is one of the monsters we "lefties" (slightly left, solidly libertarian, in my case) have been trying to warn our country about, starting with Nixon's "Southern Strategy" (the word "Southern" in that term meant ignorant white racial bigot) and picking up urgency with Reagan's ascendency and the closure of the American political discussion (the man was a joke until he won and a disaster afterwards, just like W, but try getting that into the "respectable media"). And so his supporters are a threat. Not the ideologies or positions or any of the stuff the next bigmouth media rep will turn their ADD gripping nose ring toward, but the now organized and violent incommunicado bulk of the subpopulation itself, choosing our dominant representation in the corridors of real power.

 

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A news article suggests, on the unsupported say-so of one person, that Trump's subcontractor hired a few people who may have been illegal immigrants. And you consider that a smoking gun against Trump? More importantly, do you *want* to deny immigrants the opportunity to work and provide for themselves and their families? Trump should be your hero if his capitalistic ventures are providing employment for unskilled laborers. At this point you are all over the map with your beliefs, to the point you are effectively arguing against yourself. I suspect you don't have any of your own views. You're simply grasping at straws to belittle someone who doesn't bow down before the PC police.

You rent them? Why don't you have illegal immigrants move into your family home, free of charge, without any prior screening? You shouldn't have a problem doing this if you're against border control and screening of immigrants.

 

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no joe i'm not. this is just like your ignorant claim about grand juries and minority crime. your ignore facts in favor of ideology. the fact remains what i said is factual which even a cursury glance at the status of US territories will show.

first off it wasn't even the primary focus of my post which i'm pretty sure you didn't read. and secondly you don't think how birth right citizenship applies to all americans is relevant to a conversation on birth right citizenship?

actually they are.

which is why if it is offered it must be offered to all or none. its this crazy idea of justice something you've proven to be against.

are you just about done with your childish rant derailing the topic. and cherry picking is rich coming from you. lets see you cherry picked a sentence to rant about so you could feel superior. well you failed and got schooled on a topic you clearly didn't research and once again showed you piss poor attitude and pro injustice viewpoint. no please if you wish to continue please address the substance of my post or please do us all a favor and be quiet.

 

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Yet clearly you have an issue with a policy that aims to slow the influx of illegal immigrants into the U.S., and by association, Trump. Yet then you claim that he actually supports illegal immigrants. So shouldn't that make him your hero? You've just nuked your own argument with an internal contradiction.

What were their names? Was their any evidence to corroborate their claims? It's pretty easy to make such assertions, but much harder to actually substantiate them. The fact that you ate such supposition up hook line and sinker is a clear indicator of your bias.

The Daily Beast is a left-wing publication, and I consider any of its claims with a grain of salt due to that inherent bias. Furthermore, even your own source admits that Trump was judged as not having been aware that illegal immigrants were contracted. Yes, better screening should have been in place, but it wouldn't have been an issue in the first place if better border control had existed.

Why do you collect money off them? Let them move in with your family and live off you, rent free! Make sure you pay for their utilities and food as well, and induct any children that are born into your family. We'll send a few of our illegal immigrants over to you as well, since you're so generous. If you're against stringent border control at a national level, you shouldn't be against it at a personal level, right?

 

What statement? That it's good Trump wants to tighten up border control? Why on earth would you take issue with that?

I have the legal documentation to prove I'm a citizen, yes. Oh, were you trying to make some sort of witty argument, but have it backfire?

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So your information isn't second-hand, it's *third-hand*. A personal anecdote from an unverifiable source that has been passed through two media outlets is considered reliable by you? Wow, liberals will grasp at any straw to support their wacky worldviews, but will ask for the sun and the stars if you dare challenge them.

Just out of curiosity, if a friend of a friend of mine told you I claimed to be the King of England, you'd call me "Your Majesty"?

Not all immigrants work and contribute to society. Some (note, *some*) only take and cause trouble. That's why border control exists. Why on earth Trump is ridiculed for wanting to protect the U.S's borders and socioeconomic interests is beyond me.

 

Just thought the last couple of blog posts here were worth the visit: http://driftglass.blogspot.com

It's beyond you because you are making shit up to confuse yourself. No one is ridiculing anyone for wanting to protect US borders and socioeconomic interests.

What Trump's faction of bigoted wingnuts is being ridiculed for is taking Trump seriously when he advocates effectively walling off Mexico on the Mexican side, and then physically deporting (to somewhere, presumably on the other side of that wall) eleven million people who have been living in the US for years - all their lives, some of them - on the grounds that they were let in by mistake in the first place. This to be a government project, paid for by taxation.

The London Bridge rebuild in Arizona was a privately funded operation: http://www.historybyzim.com/2013/09/the-london-bridge-in-arizona/

Having the Party of Reagan's chief spokesman and political leader (and better communicator than Reagan ever was) advocate somebody rebuilding the Berlin Wall along the entire border with Texas, Arizona, New Mexico, and California is one thing; having such a project funded by the taxpayer and run by the government at Reagan Party behest is what makes the joke work.

The deportation skit is just the brilliant comedian expanding the joke - how far can he push it and hold the thread? Can he get all these "libertarian" and "small government" folks to roar with approval at the prospect of internal concentration camps for the undocumented awaiting deportation? Can he exempt the fraction his business buddies want to keep on the payroll on the grounds that "Work Earns Freedom"?

 

Because Bells lives in Australia and Australia has something better than walls to keep people out. It has an ocean. Australia doesn't have a border problem.

Well the truth is that people at both ends of the political spectrum will grasp at straws. What you need to understand is, illegal aliens aren't the problem. The problem is our antiquated immigration laws. And the fact is the vast majority of illegal aliens are needed here in the US. They provide much needed services and are valuable contributors to or nation's economy. I just wish they would learn the language as many of our ancestors did when they immigrated to this land. Keeping them out of the American main stream as is currently the case just exacerbates the language problem. We need to fix our immigration system.

Trump is doing the demagogue thing. He's smart enough to know what he has been advocating is wildly impractical and damaging to the economy. But it works as a political device with people like you and your fellow right wingers, so he does it.

Well, not all native born Americans contribute to society either. So what's your point? Trump isn't being ridiculed because he wants to protect the nation's borders. He is being ridiculed because his solutions are ridiculously impractical, and they wouldn't do what he claims they will do. They would exacerbate our illegal immigration problems. They wouldn't fix them.

How much more are you willing to pay to deport all the illegal aliens? How much more tax are you willing to pay? When the economy tanks because we don't have enough labor, are you willing to suffer lower wages or perhaps unemployment to send illegal immigrants back home? Unlike many developed countries our country still has a growing population, largely because of immigrants. And that is good for us economically and militarily. The unpleasant fact for you is we need immigrants and illegal immigrants are vital to our nation's economy and military health.

 

Mod Hat ― No go

This manner of dishonesty is neither useful nor appreciated. Deliberate omission, a rhetorical sleight you have even tried with me in complaining about disciplinary action, is dishonest.

Given that the next sentences in the post you were responding to offered first-hand information, and that you avoided addressing those offerings entirely, the above-quoted paragraphs are unacceptable.

Consider this the only warning you will get; if we catch you lying like that again↑, the consequences will be severe.

 

Just because a politician says something or advocates something, it doesn't mean they believe it. I don't for a moment think Trump really believes his bullshit. Say what you will about Trump, but the man isn't that dumb. He's just feeding the Republican base as Republican entertainers have done for many decades now.

 

Australia has oceans, the US has deserts. Australia has a bigger immigration flux than the US - a quarter of the population is foreign born. Australia has a refugee problem, a serious one (Muslims, even) - US at least can pretend its illegals are not refugees (part of the pretense that what's going on in Mexico and south is not US involved violence). And so forth.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immig...ements-PermanentSettlerArrivals-A1830884F.svg

 

The Puppetmaster

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What strikes me is how every time it comes up, this reminder almost immediately becomes necessary.

What I can't figure out about Trump is how long before the invisible strings break. He's a great puppeteer; it's actually extraordinary to watch him lead the GOP candidates around like no decent expression could properly convey. Which reminds, of course, why this whole immigration argument is so contentious; he opened his campaign with a loud salvo against Mexico and its people. And he's getting the candidates to trip over each other trying to outdo him. Whatever he says, their first instinct is to try to out-Trump him. And if that turns out to be what he's actually doing, the question is whether he's a genius or an antisocial megalomaniac. I suspect the latter, but ... holy shit, just look at the show he's putting on.

But look at the result. Gov. John Kasich of Ohio―remember him? he of the abortibudget↗?―is emerging as the moderate, and seems to be supplanting Jeb Bush as the "serious candidate". And, you know, for anyone willing to sit through the massive, twenty minute A-block, Rachel Maddow↱ from Thursday last finally laid it out, although they're hardly the first. I mean, you know, I quote Benen a lot, and what is striking isn't how many of Jeb's gaffes he covers, but how many the candidate makes. And it's true, at the time I thought maybe the gaggle was being a bit hard on him about the birthright terminology question; they're really belligerent in the TRMS block―and so is he, except he's terrible at truculence―but, as it turns out, Jeb can't help himself, and managed to gaffe it up even worse↱. And, you know, even more: Why, Jeb? Why take a mulligan on Planned Parenthood and women's health↱? Part of the reason Jeb is imploding is that he actually doesn't know how to play this hardliner game. It's even more painful than watching Democrats try to one-up Republicans with dumb campaign ads. Keeping up with the Jonesephant just isn't going to be a graceful endeavor, but for the time being Democrats can sit back and wait for the candidates to define themselves while Republicans chase after the Trumpephant. And John "Abortibudget" Kasich ends up looking like a moderate. And Jeb just can't keep his head above water. This is unlike anything we've ever seen.

And in the middle of it all sits Mr. Trump, like the puppetmaster he has always enjoyed being.
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Notes:

Maddow, Rachel. "New hypothesis: Jeb Bush is bad at his job of running for president". The Rachel Maddow Show. msnbc, New York. 20 August 2015. Television. msnbc.com. 26 August 2015. http://on.msnbc.com/1hPhcpa

Benen, Steve. "Jeb makes 'anchor babies' mess even worse". msnbc. 25 August 2015. msnbc.com. 26 August 2015. http://on.msnbc.com/1fDt8J0

—————. "Jeb trips over 'women's health issues' yet again". msnbc. 25 August 2015. msnbc.com. 26 August 2015. http://on.msnbc.com/1hZDkNH

 

The Trumpephant Effect

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This seems relevant to my prior post↑, actually:

Michael Parra, a Hispanic Republican from Colorado, doesn't agree with all the hard-line positions on immigration taken by Donald Trump, including the deportation of 11 million undocumented people already in the United States.

He does see an unexpected upside: The front-running Republican candidate is laying out clear positions on an issue that has bedeviled his party -- and that's prompting his competitors to do so, too.

"This has never been brought to the forefront of the national discussion in the last eight years the way it has in the past few days," said Parra. "And that's because of Donald Trump."

Similar sentiments were voiced in interviews with a half-dozen Hispanic Republican voters like Parra, who compose a crucial demographic for winning the White House in the battleground states of Nevada, Florida and Colorado. They reject the conventional wisdom of party moderates that voters will punish candidates with far-right views on immigration. They say the potential that such outspoken talk could awaken voters outweighs risks that it will fatally tar conservatives as anti-immigrant.

(Deprez↱)​

We might wonder if the GOP will listen to its actual hispanic voters. The thing is that liberals and moderates have been warning about the dangers of this kind of fearmongering and xenophobia, but, you know, we're too far left of the GOP; our opinions on such matters seem generally disqualified at the outset in conservative quarters.

The only people who can make it clear to the GOP are hispanics who, for whatever reasons, vote Republican. We might also wonder if the Party is capable of listening.
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Notes:

Deprez, Esmé E. "Hispanic Republicans credit Trump with forcing candidates' hands". The Chicago Tribune. 21 August 2015. ChicagoTribune.com. 26 August 2015. http://trib.in/1PzDDth

 

Has Trump promised better TV if elected president?

 

Not yet. But if asked, he would likely say he has already done that.

 

Unfortunately, "Trumpetmaster" Doesn't Quite Work, So Here's More on the Puppetmaster

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Alright, start with the backstory, according to Steve Benen↱:

The obvious problem for Republicans watching Donald Trump with dismay is that the New York developer is dominating in practically every poll. The less obvious problem is his influence over the Republican conversation – and what happens when Trump's rivals try to keep up.

The GOP frontrunner, for example, took a fairly bold line on birthright citizenship: just because someone is born on American soil, Trump argued, doesn't make them an American citizen, 14th Amendment be damned. A new litmus test was born – soon, every Republican was pressed on the same issue.

Some struggled more than others. Just ask Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (R), who offered three very different answers over the course of six days.

Also note what happened when Fox News' Megyn Kelly asked Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) to weigh in this week ....​

And from there he quotes a Politico story about Mr. Cruz sparring with Megyn Kelly of FOX News about the question of birthright citizenship. So on and so forth.

But then there's this, from Greg Sargent↱ at the Washington Post:

Kelly is absolutely right to note, in the context of the birthright citizenship debate, that Trump has answered questions "explicitly," while Cruz won't. This illustrates, once again, that Trump's immigration plan, if you can call it that, has had the effect of making GOP evasions on the overall immigration issue much harder to sustain.​

This GOP contest was already going to be strange enough, but the Trump Effect so far seems to be both exponential and multivalent. In a way, he's stripping the GOP to the bone, and it really is kind of ugly. We've noted, before, the notion of a strange conspiracy↑ theory↑ about Trump as a phantom candidate, so of course it invokes Hillary Clinton, but it does actually remind the question of just why Mr. Trump is eviscerating the Republican Party like this. Does this signify some larger plan to rebuild the GOP? Does this signify some plan to outright destroy it? The thing is that with Trump, such megalomania seems entirely possible. But this could also be the natural result of his astounding egocentrism caught up in the moment, and he's just doing what he does best by making the market sector dance. And, in truth, unless he really is a mad genius of legendary caliber, that latter is the likeliest. Still, though, the effect is nearly unbelievable.
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Notes:

Benen, Steve. "Cruz hedges on controversial immigration posture". msnbc. 27 August 2015. msnbc.com. http://on.msnbc.com/1fHWCFt

Sargent, Greg. "Morning Plum: Megyn Kelly nails it on why Donald Trump matters". The Washington Post. 26 August 2015. WashingtonPost.com. 27 August 2015. http://wapo.st/1F0wOeH