Donald Trump


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11 hours ago, Jon Letendre said:

Actually, you are free to take credit for persuading me, early. I've read only a small fraction, but have followed this thread since July. I had many of the same doubts about Trump as others have. I would come back, read a page or two, and quickly become embarrassed at the doubt, the flimsy, silly, stupid, specific doubt I had entertained. By fall I was totally persuaded you had most of it more or less exactly right.

Jon,

I appreciate your kind words.

I'm sure you understand what I'm going to say, but I want to make this clear for any reader who may have a doubt.

You see, I study persuasion so some people might wonder if I use my new and growing skills here on OL. I don't. I made a promise to myself I would never do that.

I took the hard persuasion road for Trump, but it's the best one possible. Ironically, it is based on the most effective persuasion principle of all: when a person comes to his own conclusion, he is far more convinced than if you tell him something. And you don't need to maintain anything afterward. The person who has persuaded himself of your position will end up arguing for you.

(Notice, I also had to convince myself about Trump before I even started. So even though there is a principle to identify, it is totally spontaneous and not at all covert.)

In other words, there is no way to manipulate people with the principle I used. Not the way I did it.

I am in the reader's hands for he thinks. It's not my choice, it's his. All I do is present my case as best I can, banter a little, discuss objections and other points of view along the way with those who raise them, but under no circumstances do I shut down honest disagreement or doubts. On the contrary, I provide a platform for them.

(I do shut down intimidation, excessive snark, spam and stuff like that because we share a common platform for everyone to use. But I don't shut down different ideas. Not even a person working through ideas out loud so to speak.)

So your conclusion about Trump was the fruit of your own thinking, not my manipulation. Not even my persuasion except for the very limited principle I mention here.

I laid the table. You chose what you wanted to dine on and even whether to come back to the table.

Also, we had no offline communication on this. Hell, I didn't even know you were following the discussion.

I'm saying this to make it clear for readers and highlight the difference between this form and winning an argument to shut people up. When doing it my way, I argue for my position and discuss different points, but I always say to the person, "It's your decision, your conclusion--you do your own thinking." I'll give my honest opinions on what I think is right and wrong, I'll present my facts, and I will even gear them in the direction of my position, but my main goal is to encourage people to think, not tell them what they should think.

I trust readers to do the best they can with their own thinking. And I trust that is exactly what most of them will do. In my experience, that is exactly what they do, too. Frankly, it gives me joy to know I belong to such a species and live in the kind of society where I can do that.

I'll take honest continued disagreement any day over someone shutting up because I humiliated or shamed him though competitive arguing. And if that person comes to the same conclusion I do through his own thinking, I know I will never have to make that case again to him. Why? Because it's no longer my case.

It's his.

That's the best persuasion technique in the world. Not the most practical at times because there's no way to control it, but definitely the most effective.

Michael

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35 minutes ago, KorbenDallas said:

This one's a real bible thumper:

Korben,

And even using that as a standard, Ted promptly betrayed it.

His father clearly said God told him to follow His face, not His hand.

So what did Ted do?

He went out and stole votes from Ben Carson, no doubt praying for success along the way and couching it in, "Thy will be done."

He wanted God to steal Ben's votes with His hand.

I hope Ted likes the results because he discredited himself before many people, including many evangelicals.

Michael

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Tonight I solidified 46 votes for Trump in Medina County of Ohio for Tuesday...been working on this nest for six (6) weeks.   Medina County Ohio Maps and OHGenWeb Links

My nest in Missouri came from work I did on the ground there a few years back and I built on that good will politically and it is now up to approximately 110+ votes for Tuesday, that is spread over two counties.

I won't even brag about how many votes I have a link with in the Red Neck Riviera just south of Alabama.  Been involved down there for 15 years.   Was in Defuniak Springs on September 11th 2001.

A...

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17 minutes ago, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

Adam,

Way to go!

:)

Michael

Thanks, it is a team effort Michael and you led the way.

A...

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3 hours ago, Jon Letendre said:

Ted has an important role in the Senate.

Ted can not win the White House. That's why shitbag Lindsey 'no one would mind if Ted was murdered on the Senate floor' Graham and the other establishment shitbags recommend him.

What's the status between Trump and Cruz at this point?

Irreconcilable, or any possibility that Cruz would endorse Trump, assuming that Trump wins the Republican nomination?

Also, is it clear that Trump will choose Carson for his running mate, again assuming that Trump wins the Republican nomination?

Ellen

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It's funny. I was just reviewing some videos of pundits talking about the canceled Trump rally in Chicago. I had been doing this for a couple of hours.

My soul was burning out with profound irritation at all the bickering and accusations that Trump was this and denials that Trump was not that and the tones of people yelling at each other and the constant self-righteousness and goons being shipped into the rally and faces flashing on the screen distorted with angry challenge and twisted words flying here and there and here and there and bah bah bah bah bah bah bah...

Suddenly, without signal, in the tiniest instant, in a sliver of time, I elevated inside. I shut off the video's sound and experienced a feeling of Nirvanic transcendence.

The little nonstop voice in my head lowered its tone, then whispered: Who gives a shit?

And the most delicious calm came over my entire being.

I became singular with the universe.

All in eternal peace, dude.

I'm still on that high...

It's good...

:)

Michael

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9 minutes ago, Ellen Stuttle said:

What's the status between Trump and Cruz at this point?

Irreconcilable, or any possibility that Cruz would endorse Trump, assuming that Trump wins the Republican nomination?

Also, is it clear that Trump will chose Carson for his running mate, again assuming that Trump wins the Republican nomination?

Ellen

I would be very surprised. Ted went off tonight, placing blame on Trump instead of those who came to violate free speech. "The tone he has set" and such. He sounded just like a terror apologist pointing out that so and so KNEW drawing Mohamad was forbidden. I don't think he will ever get near a Trump administration.

Ben will, but I don't know about VP. He will be great this year. He was great tonight. He can say things Trump should not. The calm, measured, black, brain mechanic is going to reassure that Trump is going to be ok. Ben will bring yet more people in.

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Here is a Facebook post by Ann Coulter.

In addition to her text, which shows what a bunch of thugs showed up at Trump's rally in Chicago (as per her police scanner), she links to a Reddit post giving an eyewitness account from a nonwhite legal immigrant. It's well worth reading and has over 500 comments so far.

Because you were in there, I don't blame you for not knowing, but it was a matter of life and death.I was listening to...

Posted by

Ann Coulter

on 

Friday, March 11, 2016

I'm not so sure anymore that Trump scheduled this on purpose at the university because he knew troublemakers would shut it down. I think something more sinister is occurring.

Michae;

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1 hour ago, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

Ann Coulter [...] links to a Reddit post giving an eyewitness account from a nonwhite legal immigrant. It's well worth reading and has over 500 comments so far.

From the reddit post linked to by Coulter:

EXCERPT:

"More than that, I feel that I experienced today, for the first time in my life, true totalitarianism and authoritarianism, expressed laterally from citizen to citizen, in order to silence opinions from being shared. This enforcement was shared through sheer numbers and intimidation, and in a few cases, violence.

[....]

"This cannot go on. As I finish this, I feel a sense of utter dread and hopelessness for what is becoming of the youth in this country, particularly those of the regressive left. So polarized has political opinion become, that dissenting thoughts on college campuses are now seen as hateful. These people deal in absolutes. They are right, and whatever means they must take to achieve their ends, they will do it. They will not stop themselves from violence or censorship. They will do it, and they will call hell down upon you if anyone dare does upon them the same."

End Excerpt

I don't feel "hopelessness for what is becoming of the youth in this country, particularly those of the regressive left," but I do feel dread hearing direct reports from my husband on an almost daily basis and second-hand reports from colleagues of his both locally and nationally.

Ellen

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My favorite line from Rafael "I hide my Cuban name" Cruz is "...but,in ANY CAMPAIGN, responsibility starts at the top."

So, Righteous Rafael must h ave forgotten to take responsibility for the fraudulent mailing in Iowa and the "stealing" of votes from Dr.Carson with a report from CNN which he failed to check and for forgetting to list certain legally necessary information in his filings with the FEC...or, maybe they don't count when you are the de-latinoed direct representative from God to us slugs down here in the political swamps...

we look up to the top of your campaign Rafael and what do we find?

<iframe src="http://www.nbcnews.com/widget/video-embed/642733123695" width="560" height="315" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

http://www.nbcnews.com/video/ted-cruz-reacts-to-violence-at-trump-rally-642733123695

Here is another classy quote from the Cuban/Canadian citizen and self hating Latino:

Quote

"And when you have a campaign that disrespects the voters, when you have a campaign that affirmatively encourages violence, when you have a campaign that is facing allegations of physical violence against members of the press, you create an environment that only encourages this sort of nasty discord."

There you go again "lying Rafael."

So when you lied on your FEC submission, does that set the culture of your campaign?

Or, are you just a Petrie dish that allows lies to flourish?

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"The final key to the way I promote is bravado. I play to people's fantasies. People may not always think big themselves, but they can still get very excited by those who do. That's why a a little hyperbole never hurts. People want to believe that something is the biggest and the greatest and the most spectacular.

I call it truthful hyperbole. It's an innocent form of exaggeration -- and a very effective form of promotion."  - The Art of the Deal

I haven't read the book. I saw the quote elsewhere online.

There are ambiguous lines between (1) truthful and untruthful hyperbole, (2) innocent and non-innocent exaggeration, and (3) a fair or unfair price of illiquid, hard-to-value things. This is especially so when the future counts. “It's tough to make predictions, especially about the future.” - Yogi Berra. Of course, there are plenty of people in the finance/investment community playing into the fantasies of other people ... and their own.  

I've been researching Trump's business career, mainly pertaining to Trump Hotels and Casino Resorts (THCR). THCR was a publicly traded company, so info on it is more available than a privately-held company like The Trump Organization. The following are several articles from the Wall Street Journal.

Trump's Plan to Sell Castle Raises Investors' Concerns  Aug. 12, 1996, in the midst of THRC's stock price plummet

Trump Hotels Agrees to Sell 51% Stake in Trump's Castle  Jan. 21, 1997

Trump Earned $7 Million Despite Stock's Decline  Apr. 11, 1997

Loss at Trump Hotels Widened To $13.9 Million in 1st Quarter Apr. 22, 1997 

Trump Seeks Steep Premium In Sale of His Casino Holdings  Feb. 6, 1998
"Trump Hotels went public in March 1995 at $14 a share."
"Trump shares closed Thursday at $9.3125"  

P.S. The price exceeded $30 in 1995 before its plunge.

'Pro Forma' Earnings Cloud Important Investment Issues  Mar 1, 2002  
"The first to feel the SEC's sting: The Donald. In January, the SEC accused Trump Hotels & Casino Resorts of failing to mention in an October 1999 statement that its beefed-up $14 million pro forma profit included a one-time revenue gain of $17 million." 

Some Trump Hotels Holders See Stacked Deck  Feb. 3, 2005
"Some shareholders dispute the values the company is placing on the various assets going to, and coming from, Mr. Trump. They claim that the company, which is controlled by Mr. Trump through a 56% stake, is undervaluing assets Mr. Trump is receiving in the reorganization while overvaluing those he's granting."

I suspect there were many more WSJ articles about THCR during the time span, especially during 1996 when THRC's stock price plummeted, but they weren't available to me online.

The articles address some situations where Trump treads close and arguably crosses the ambiguous lines I mentioned above. His selling Castle from his personal assets to THCR was a clear conflict of interest.  

My work career gave me some familiarity with such lines, although pertaining to different kinds of deals. Many years ago I built a math model (computer program) for pricing and valuing variable annuities (VAs). My company would occasionally be solicited to buy inforce blocks of VAs, and I got the task of determining how much the deal was worth, i.e. a fair price range my company might pay for it. Typically the seller wanted about twice as much as I thought it was worth. I might decide the highest price we should be willing to pay was, say, $25 million. The seller wanted, say, $50 million. Using my model I could guess well how the seller might have arrived at $50 million -- by using rosy assumptions about how long the VAs would remain on the books and investment returns on the underlying mutual funds. My $25 million was based on far more realistic assumptions, not a low-ball price. Putting it another way, the seller was looking for a sucker or a "steep premium". (If I had seen a deal with the seller wanting $25 million and I thought it was worth a lot more, I would have recommended buying it at $25 million, but that sort of opportunity didn't occur.)

Change the context to a hypothetical hotel transaction. Without judging either party to a prospective deal as being fair or unfair, suppose one party values the hotel at $35 million, another at $50 million. The first might do so assuming owning it requires paying a lot of interest on a lot of borrowed money and a "low" occupancy rate; the other not having to borrow so much, a "high" occupancy rate, and maybe assuming charging customers higher room rates than current. That a fair price for such an illiquid, hard-to-value property is very debatable should be obvious. 

Moving on to the case of Castle addressed in the first WSJ article, Trump thought it was worth 10 times annual cash flow; the other investors more like 6.7 times annual cash flow. These numbers, of course, involve expectations about future years cash flow, not merely the current or most recent. 

Addenda: In the Feb. 6, 1998 article Trump wanted to sell his shares in THCR at about 3 times their current market value ($27 vs $9). He commented, "The company now is a bigger, better, stronger company with more cash flow than when the stock was at $35. But only the smart people realize that." Now that's bravado!

Several years later Carl Icahn --- what a name, pronounced "I con" :) -- and another investor acquired what had been THRC in bankruptcy and took it private. It's impossible for me to tell how much they paid, since there was a lot of debt acquired, too. However, I bet it was much, much less than $27 per common share, and Mr. Icahn is very smart guy. :) 

Mr. Icahn has endorsed Mr. Trump for President.

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16 hours ago, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

That's a classic. I love David Mamet's stories. He's always writing about cons. :)

Notice AIDA in the clip. The D = Decision instead of Desire.

When you go through marketing educational materials, it's about half one way and half another.

Really?  Here I thought AIDA was original to Mamet.  It always sounded like a parody of the acronyms fed to cold call salesman who need to cope with constant rejection.  Tough life. 

Here’s a better Mamet scene for getting the motivational juices flowing:

 

 

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I want to thank William for the transcript of the Miami debate. I was most interested in Trump's responses so I cut them out and saved them if anyone wants his response about the topics brought up. Oddly to me, Trump comes out a little better on paper than listening to him which may indicate something about me. Here is an interesting excerpt.

Peter

Mr. Trump, let me start with you. Last night, you told CNN quote, "Islam hates us?" Did you mean all 1.6 billion Muslims.

 

TRUMP: I mean a lot of them. I mean a lot of them.

 

DINAN: Do you want to clarify the comment at all?

 

TRUMP: Well, you know, I've been watching the debate today. And they're talking about radical Islamic terrorism or radical Islam. But I will tell you this. There's something going on that maybe you don't know about, maybe a lot of other people don't know about, but there's tremendous hatred. And I will stick with exactly what I said to Anderson Cooper.

 

DINAN: Mr. Trump?

(APPLAUSE)

 

TRUMP: Marco talks about consequences. Well, we've had a lot of consequences, including airplanes flying into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and could have been the White House. There have been a lot of problems. Now you can say what you want, and you can be politically correct if you want. I don't want to be so politically correct. I like to solve problems. We have a serious, serious problem of hate. (APPLAUSE) There is tremendous hate. There is tremendous hate. Where large portions of a group of people, Islam, large portions want to use very, very harsh means. Let me go a step further. Women are treated horribly. You know that. You do know that. Women are treated horribly, and other things are happening that are very, very bad.

(BELL RINGS) Now I will say this, there is tremendous hatred. The question was asked, what do you think? I said, there is hatred. Now it would be very easy for me to say something differently. And everybody would say, oh, isn't that wonderful.

 

DINAN: Mr. Trump, thank you.

 

TRUMP: We better solve the problem before it's too late.

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42 minutes ago, Peter said:

....here is tremendous hate. There is tremendous hate. Where large portions of a group of people, Islam, large portions want to use very, very harsh means. Let me go a step further. Women are treated horribly. You know that. You do know that. Women are treated horribly, and other things are happening that are very, very bad.

 

(BELL RINGS) Now I will say this, there is tremendous hatred. The question was asked, what do you think? I said, there is hatred. Now it would be very easy for me to say something differently. And everybody would say, oh, isn't that wonderful.

 

DINAN: Mr. Trump, thank you.

 

TRUMP: We better solve the problem before it's too late.

You mean like today's NY Times article explains...

Quote

DOHUK, Iraq — Locked inside a room where the only furniture was a bed, the 16-year-old learned to fear the sunset, because nightfall started the countdown to her next rape.

During the year she was held by the Islamic State, she spent her days dreading the smell of the ISIS fighter’s breath, the disgusting sounds he made and the pain he inflicted on her body. More than anything, she was tormented by the thought she might become pregnant with her rapist’s child.

It was the one thing she needn’t have worried about.

Soon after buying her, the fighter brought the teenage girl a round box containing four strips of pills, one of them colored red.

“Every day, I had to swallow one in front of him. He gave me one box per month. When I ran out, he replaced it. When I was sold from one man to another, the box of pills came with me,” explained the girl, who learned only months later that she was being given birth control.

A particular interpretation of the Islamic law is employed by ISIS to permit this exploitation:

Quote

Islamic State leaders have made sexual slavery as they believe it was practiced during the Prophet Muhammad’s time integral to the group’s operations, preying on the women and girls the group captured from the Yazidi religious minority almost two years ago. To keep the sex trade running, the fighters have aggressively pushed birth control on their victims so they can continue the abuse unabated while the women are passed among them.

As the NY Times coldly asserts:

Quote

It is a particularly modern solution to a medieval injunction: According to an obscure ruling in Islamic law cited by the Islamic State, a man must ensure that the woman he enslaves is free of child before having intercourse with her.

Warning read the rest of the article at your own discretion.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/13/world/middleeast/to-maintain-supply-of-sex-slaves-isis-pushes-birth-control.html?emc=edit_na_20160312&nlid=53564225&ref=cta&_r=0

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Someones going to get killed with these attempts to hurt Trump...

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I fixed the video for you, Adam.

Trump is nuts to talk that close to his public in today's environment where groups funded by people like Soros are trying to take him out with violence.

I bet he beefs up security even more now because I don't see him changing his wish to be close to people who love him.

I admit, I got a rush when he said to the crowd, "It's payback time, it's payback time."

Michael

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Objectivism does not permit any variant of the mind-body dichotomy, any split between theory and practice, between one's convictions and one's actions. Ayn Rand

 

No problem is so big or so complicated that it can't be run away from!

Linus Van Pelt in the comic strip, “Peanuts.”

 

Adam wrote: Someone’s going to get killed with these attempts to hurt Trump... end quote.

 

I was thinking about Kandidate Kasich’s assertion that a toxic atmosphere caused disturbances and criminal activity at Trump rallies, so that, in affect Trump inadvertently does it to himself. I don’t think that is the Secret Service’s attitude.

 

Peter

 

Some old quotes about this apparent dichotomy.

 

Roger Bissell wrote: So, when Bill Dwyer asks: "If murder is evil, because it violates people's rights, then why isn't a *belief* in murder evil, if it *leads to* a violation of people's rights?" -- the answer is: IF a belief in murder IN FACT leads to a violation of people's rights, then that idea/belief/sincere conviction is being ~used~ in an ~evil action~. But the belief in murder, even if held as a "sincere conviction," is not ~in itself~ evil, but ~only~ as the guiding mental framework ~by which~ one carries out an ~evil action~. If one passively values murder as one's sincere conviction, but does nothing about it, that conviction is ~not~ evil. It's not even an evil ~intention~, until one ~decides~ that one ~will~ commit murder at some point. end quote

 

From: "Peter Reidy" <peterreidy@hotmail.com>

To: atlantis@wetheliving.com

Subject: Re: ATL: "Evil" ideas

Date: Mon, 08 May 2000 16:29:27 PDT

 

Barbara Branden writes that no one has taken her up on the point that "the concepts of 'good' and 'evil' can apply only to a human being with a volitional consciousness. Since ideas do not have a volitional consciousness, such concepts cannot apply to them."

 

Aristotle did.  Concepts, he observed, can apply in a primary sense to only certain kinds of objects, but secondarily, "by analogy" or "by offshoot" (his expressions), to others.  "Healthy" applies primarily to living things but secondarily to foods, medicines or kinds of exercise.  "Being" and "unit" apply primarily to particular things and secondarily to actions, attributes, relations, etc.  "Good" is, in fact, another of his examples. Actions are good focally, but we can make perfect sense talking about a good time to do something, a good wine, etc.

 

These are Aristotle's own examples, from the "Metaphysics" and "Nichomachean Ethics".  To judge from the number of times he points this out, it seems to have been one of the insights he was proudest of.  The opposite supposition, that a word used properly has only one meaning, was one of Plato's favorite arguments for the forms.

 

This won't be enough to settle the question of whether people can be good or bad to hold certain beliefs, but it leaves open the possibility of calling ideas good or bad because of the acts they promote, just as foods are healthy or unhealthy for their effects on people who eat them.  I haven't been following the discussion closely enough to know if this is what people actually are saying.

 

Peter

 

From: BrantUSASF@aol.com

To: atlantis@wetheliving.com

CC: BBfromM@aol.com

Subject: Re: ATL: "Evil" ideas

Date: Mon, 8 May 2000 22:10:54 EDT

In a message dated 5/8/00 3:30:48 PM US Mountain Standard Time,

BBfromM@aol.com writes: Unless I've missed some post, I don't think anyone has responded to my point that the concepts of "good" and "evil" can apply only to a human being with a volitional consciousness. Since ideas do not have a volitional consciousness, such concepts cannot apply to them.

Barbara. end quote  

 

Then I think you missed a post a made a while back, Barbara. I stated that no ideas existed independent of human consciousness, not even unread in a book until it be read (assuming the author was dead). That from this context ideas can be good or evil only if expressed and/or acted upon, but not within the mind itself. Therefore, ideas can be evil but they need help to be so. Ideas per se? No, they cannot be good or evil, but there is no such thing as an idea per se. There always has to be a human mind attached to it, to reiterate. It is not, by the way, good form to maintain your position for adopting it means forever explaining why ideas are not good and evil (or good and bad, etc.) as your distinction in my opinion is contrived and artificial, maybe arbitrary. Anyway, we need to be able to categorize ideas as this or that and should not exclude moral categories. --Brant

 

 

Ghs wrote in a letter: Now Marx was wrong -- dead wrong, so to speak -- but it is important to distinguish a person's beliefs from his intentions and actions. The fact that a mistaken belief may generate an evil outcome does not necessarily mean that the believer had that outcome as his intention. It is my opinion that Marx would have been horrified by the atrocities that were later committed in his name. Was he in some sense responsible for those atrocities nonetheless? This is a significant and  difficult moral problem, one that I have not yet fully resolved in my own mind. end quotes

 

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3 minutes ago, Peter said:

Objectivism does not permit any variant of the mind-body dichotomy, any split between theory and practice, between one's convictions and one's actions. Ayn Rand

 

No problem is so big or so complicated that it can't be run away from!

Linus Van Pelt in the comic strip, “Peanuts.”

 

Just leave the nickle when the session is over Peter...

Lucy-van-pelt-1-

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From Wikipedia: The history of MoveOn began with its opposition to the impeachment of U.S. President Bill Clinton in 1998. MoveOn has emerged as a powerful fundraising vehicle for Democratic Party candidates. end quote

Michael wrote: Trump is nuts to talk that close to his public in today's environment where groups funded by people like Soros are trying to take him out with violence. end quote

MoveOn is a tool of Hillary Clinton. I speculated that Trump might inspire his supporters to use force against protesters and very little of that has happened but the true brown shirted, totalitarian activity will come from Hillary supporters. Is she directing them? I doubt that a link could ever be established with someone as wily as Old Hickory.  

I think it is permissible for someone to make a citizen’s arrest in the case of disruptions at Trump’s rallies, or to knock the gun out of the hand of a would be assassin. But the organized activity from MoveOn deserves some arrests by the FBI, the jailing of its participants, AND the disbanding of that organization. It was not built to be a nonviolent protest group.

Peter 

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Lots of people in the mainstream press touted the fact that protesters shut Trump down for 14 minutes in the St. Louis rally yesterday. And Trump talked harshly about them. Then these media savants tut-tut-tutted that this led to the Chicago protest last night that resulted in Trump cancelling the rally.

(btw - I saw all 14 minutes of the St Louis protests--it's on YouTube somewhere. It was not all that much of a deal and Trump did not incite violence.)

Something else happened in St. Louis--something far more important--that these media lapdogs didn't talk about.

 

But these mainstream media geniuses don't have to talk about it.

Lots of other people are talking about it. Lots and lots and lots of them.

Wanna put this in Randian terms?

Look at the individual above facing down the mob.

All he's talking about is his wish to pursue his own interests and work to achieve them. Earn them. The mob is howling at him because he is not part of their collective (black) in that part of his soul. One guy at the end kept honking in his face that racism is all he's got. There is nothing else.

This individual is not a movement guy. He's merely someone who sees a solution in Trump and decided it was time for him to wear a hat around the hostile mob. And stand alone doing it. He has a lot of courage and patience.

Don't think there aren't black people like him all over America. There are oodles. Most don't want to be hassled by a mob yelling in their face. So they keep quiet.

But each one votes...

Michael

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I think Trump has figured out how to handle protest disruptions in a manner far better than before. I saw it in the Dayton speech when the guy tried to grab him on stage and the secret service stepped in.

I just saw it again in the later Cleveland, Ohio speech, which I just watched.

Trump has ramped up his sound system.

When a protester or group of protesters erupt during his speech, he gives them about 5 seconds attention, enough to say get them out and say it only once or twice. Then he continues talking over their yelling as security removes them. The only time he pauses is when people chant Trump! Trump! Trump! or USA! USA! USA! 

This is what a leader does. He looks at the fundamental in a situation and deals with that. So what is the fundamental? Well look at rallies in general. What is it that attracts more and more protesters? (Outside of the paid thugs, I mean.)

It's easy.

They want the audience. They want the stage.

Every moment Trump talks about the protesters while they are disrupting his rally, even though they are not physically on stage, they are there by proxy. Ditto for camera time.

Trump has tried different approaches to spin their presence, but now he's just denying them access to his stage. I expect him to continue like this.

The only way they can get on that stage now is through real violence, and that will be counterproductive to their cause. It will take them a few more rallies to realize that they have no more of Trump's stage, so the interest of most in protesting will wither and they will go off to try other things. That party is over.

But I do expect the more vicious ones to come out of the shadows and get real ugly. That will cause some news, but the nasty dudes will thus expose themselves. And that will make it easier for the Secret Service to neutralize them over the long haul.

Michael

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