Donald Trump

[PDS]

2 hours ago, Robert Campbell said:

That is the money quote.

It's from an article by Rick Wilson (known to Breitbart readers from a certain era as "Gollum"),

But one needn't hate everyone else that Gollum hates (he had to perform several extra gollum-gollums, to be even sort of nice to Ted Cruz) to get the point.

Robert

Here, in my opinion, is one of the best cases anybody who is generally anti-Trump has made for voting for Trump.

So, on the one hand, we have Gingrich's thinking for why a Trump supporter might vote Trump.

On the other hand, Wilson gives the best reasons why an erstwhile Republican leaner would not vote for Trump.  

And Jeff Green, in the article I refer to above, gives the reason why somebody who has yuuuuge reservations about Trump might do so anyway.     There are too many money quotes in there to even list...

Nothing emotional or personal about any of these three considered opinions.        

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

20 minutes ago, PDS said:

And Jeff Green, in the article I refer to above, gives the reason why somebody who has yuuuuge reservations about Trump might do so anyway.     There are too many money quotes in there to even list...

David,

I'll take the votes, but I am hugely amused at Green's "oh so superior" tone.

He'll go to his death thinking that Trump supporters (ones he calls Trumpkins) are subhuman. He blames their sub-humanness for Trump's popularity and he is now blaming their sub-humanness for him caving. Here's the money quote (since "money quote" seems to be a thing here on OL recently  ):

Green said:

But I will vote for Donald Trump, because if and when the disaster comes, I don't want the Trumpkins coming here on the night of November 8, as full of hate and ignorance as ever, and screaming "He lost because of people like YOU!"

He'll cave, but he'll do it with his eyes wide shut as he points and screams, It's theeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeemmmm! It's their fault!

 

Michael

 

[Robert Campbell]

18 minutes ago, PDS said:

Here, in my opinion, is one of the best cases anybody who is generally anti-Trump has made for voting for Trump.

!!!

You do have to read all the way to the end to understand why Vodkapundit is willing to vote for Trump.

Robert

[KorbenDallas]

17 hours ago, Robert Campbell said:

On 4/19/2016 at 5:55 PM, Robert Campbell said:

Meanwhile, most of our food gets more expensive.  Maybe Donald Trump doesn't care, but why should we be perpetuating policies that screw American consumers, while leading, in bad years for the worldwide crop, to tortilla riots in Honduras?

23 hours ago, KorbenDallas said:

Inflation is the primary factor in our increasing food costs.

Korben,

If you want to use such a pretentious term as the "corn industry," feel free.  The farmers will still be laughing at the media and their trade associations.

I was able to follow most of what you said, but stopped short at this one statement.  Do you really mean to imply that the price of corn is not a function of supply and demand?

Or that demand for corn to produce ethanol does not increase the total amount demanded, when added to all the demand for corn for food?

Robert

I want to point to a wider context here of the entire post of where the first quote (the one on 4/19/2016) came from, meaning I think you're questioning (hopefully Honestly) my general understanding of micro/macroeconomics and applying that general understanding to Iowa's corn industry, ethanol mandates, etc.  I said in an earlier reply that I was grouping (corn based) ethanol into a wider group of the corn industry.  The mandates shifted the demand for corn (to the right, to get specific), which of course would mean more supply was needed.  There were existing farmers who could increase production.  There were some farmers who found efficiencies to increase production.  There is evidence farmers entered the market to meet this demand, which would be new labor.  Some existing farms hired new labor as well.  So the two questions above (I hope they were asked Honestly), no I did not imply "corn is not a function of supply and demand" or that "demand for corn to produce ethanol does not increase the total amount demanded, when added to all the demand for corn for food".  I get it, had it on both counts.

My comment that "Inflation is the primary factor in our increasing food costs" was in response to your, "Meanwhile, most of our food gets more expensive. Maybe Donald Trump doesn't care, but why should we be perpetuating policies that screw American consumers, while leading, in bad years for the worldwide crop, to tortilla riots in Honduras?"--to which you're linking that our food is getting more expensive to "policies that screw American consumers" and commodity fluctuations.  No, I do not think that these two things are the necessary and sufficient conditions of our recent increasing food costs.  I think the primary factor is inflation, starting from the point of Obama mishandling the recession.  The other factors you described contribute.

_______
 

16 hours ago, Robert Campbell said:

23 hours ago, KorbenDallas said:

Trump wants to keep SS and Medicare funded by reducing waste and abuse in the system, and by using a macroeconomic approach by increasing the number of contributors through tax reform, healthcare reform, and trade reform (details on his website).

Korben,

OK, nice and succinct.

The entire Positions section of the Trump for President website (including the items on tax reform, healthcare reform, and trade reform) doesn't say one word about how Social Security and Medicare will be funded if Trump gets his way.

In 2015, Social Security cost $888 billion (24% of Federal expenditures), and Medicare cost $546 bil (15%). 

What does he plan to do with Social Security (and Medicare) taxes?  His tax reform plan is about personal and corporate income taxes, and the death tax.  And his income tax plan is designed the percentage of the population that doesn't pay income taxes... 

How does he plan to deal with the future unfunded liabilities of both programs?

It's interesting how Big Pharma is the one sector he's emphatically not interested in protecting...  But, OK, if he gets legal imports of prescription drugs still under patent from other countries (whose regulatory approval processes for drugs and medical devices aren't as lengthy or expensive as the FDA's), that would save the Medicare program something (no estimate provided on his site, however).

It's what WSS said about Trump's plan to replace Obamacare: Show us the pig, sir!

Except that his plan to replace Obamacare is much more detailed.

No one in his or her right mind would entrust matters of such importance to a guy who is basically saying: all is An Undertaking to Be Named Later, but you need merely trust to my unbounded beneficence and sagacity.

Robert

Trump said in the 2016 CBS Republican primary debate in South Carolina how he'd handle keeping SS and Medicare funded, and I believe other debates as well.  The sentence I used summarizes what he said.  The reforms lead to more jobs, more payers into the system.  Does it fix the system?  No, of course not.

As far as I know, Trump hasn't addressed future unfunded liabilities.

Trump has talked about his ideas about replacing Obamacare.  Might it be better to formulate a detailed plan once he gets the presidency, having access to the ideas of Congress and data that he might not have as a presidential candidate?

________
 

23 hours ago, KorbenDallas said:

I think he sees the system exists (effects of the mandates) and is making a decision.  Trump isn't considering ethanol a significant factor in energy independence, I used the word "assist" originally.

Trump is for clean coal and independence from overseas oil and gas.  I think we'll see a push for that when the time is right.

 

16 hours ago, Robert Campbell said:

Well, Trump is making a decision about corn-based ethanol, in any event.

Why not make the push you are talking about right now?  What is Trump waiting for?

Robert, I don't know.  You know only Trump would know that.
 

16 hours ago, Robert Campbell said:

Did he declare in favor of corn-based ethanol simply because Ted Cruz was against it?

Maybe.  And I gave this a lot of thought when it happened, but Trump isn't the perfect candidate and as I said before I can see his points about this...  more on this next...
 

17 hours ago, Robert Campbell said:

PS. In light of the efficiency of American agriculture in 2016, or the percentage of the population that works in it, I don't see how you can be serious about diverting corn into ethanol production, damaging car engines for no discernible environmental benefit, in order to save the small number of jobs that would be affected.  Let's hope Trump holds no stake in any Iowa ethanol plants.

Is this implying I am for the mandates?  Not at all.  I was against them from the beginning (and Bush's hydro push), it is a gross overreach.  But like I said before, the system exists and Trump is making a decision.  I think you're underselling the number of jobs that were created from them, not only in Iowa.  And as I said before, maybe it's the right decision to keep them for now.
______

 

17 hours ago, Robert Campbell said:

On 4/20/2016 at 3:34 PM, KorbenDallas said:

I think its simply because he hasn't made it a campaign issue.  Labor will be talked about in the general, if not sooner.

Korben,

Labor will be talked about, all right.

The more important question is whether it will be talked about by Donald Trump.

What, again, is he waiting for?

Robert

I know you know I was saying Donald Trump will talk about labor in the general, if not sooner.  Why is he waiting?

I don't know, but I suspect you won't like it when he does..

And that doesn't imply that I will like it, either.

 

[KorbenDallas]

23 hours ago, Roger Bissell said:

This whole ethanol bit is a perfect example of the insanity gripping our country and the government's meddling in the economy. It's like forcing people to subsidize candle-making and horse-cart driving, in order to "save jobs" - not realizing all the productive, resource-maximizing jobs that could have been created, if the taxpayers had been allowed to spend their money on things they wanted instead.

If it were possible to forcibly imprint in everyone's minds the wisdom and knowledge in Henry Hazlitt's Economics in One Lesson , by slipping some chemical into the water supply, I would cheerfully do it. The absence of that information from people's minds, and the presence of envy and altruism in far too many people's minds, is destroying us. It's only a matter of time, unless something far greater than the Trascists put a stop to the now-creeping-soon-galloping socialism-fascism taking over our land.

REB

I agree with this.  What to do about the lives of the people affected by a removal of such a system like the jobs from the ethanol mandates, though?  This isn't a baited question, it is an Honest one..

Promise 

Edit:  I'm sure the Objectivist answer is nothing, as it was their own volition to choose those jobs.  (Rand had an example similar to this, the context was a business choosing to move to a cheaper city and what about those jobs.. not wanting to search for the exact reference right now, though.)   Was asking the question to see if there were other Objectivish views
 

[Brant Gaede]

43 minutes ago, Robert Campbell said:

!!!

You do have to read all the way to the end to understand why Vodkapundit is willing to vote for Trump.

Robert

Can't get any wryer than that.

--Brant

[Brant Gaede]

Are we all assuming Trump has a lock on the nomination?

--Brant

except you know who

[Robert Campbell]

On April 20, 2016 at 2:06 AM, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

And for some reason, you keep treating Trump's feud with Scott Walker like a jealous lover. The Wisconsin primary election is over.

Anyway, Trump won New York big-time and Cruz even lost by double digits behind Kasich. That shuts down Cruz's "landslide" narrative in the media. Maybe not with him, but the public credibility of that narrative is now blown to shreds. 

Trump wins his landslides with votes, not by manipulating delegate rules. When Cruz tries for votes, he comes in third. That's going to be the new media narrative for at least a week.

Michael,

What do you know about political campaigns?  Have worked for one in a volunteer capacity?  Been a paid staffer or operative?  Been employed by the kind of outfit that Trump says he doesn't need but doesn't mind getting help from (a PAC)?   Ever even applied for a slot in an, um, special-purpose operation such as DDDDT?

I'm not saying this because I have worked in a political campaign (closest I ever got was checking voter registration information for a Libertarian ballot petition drive—off microfiche, which tells you how long ago that was).

I'm saying it because, while I make absolutely no such claims for myself, you keep presenting yourself as an expert on the subject.

I've brought up Trump's ongoing treatment, both of Scott Walker and of the issues that matter to Scott Walker and those who have elected him three times, for two reasons:

(1) Trump, in steering the ship around that iceberg, might actually need to pay attention to those issues.

(2) If he ever does pay attention, and he has actually been elected, he will need the backing of people like Scott Walker and of people who have voted for Scott Walker.  Which instead he has done everything to forfeit, and he's been damn successful.

Something else, though.

Trump lost in Wisconsin.  You're writing about it as though he went in, re-stomped Walker, won the primary, and took nearly all the delegates.

He did the first two.  If he'd won, the answer would be, re-stomping won him a primary.  And, OK, even if it wasn't strictly necessary, it worked.

It didn't work.  He didn't win the primary.

You know, if he'd actually done the third and fourth thing, Donald Trump could be taking his victory lap next Wednesday.   A lot earlier than June 7, in any case.

Instead, he lost a primary that most observers agree he could have won (no one thinks every Wisconsin Republican felt a compulsion to vote for Cruz or for Kasich).  Ted Cruz beat him, and took 36 delegates out of 42.

Trump lost it because of his insistence on re-stomping Walker.  That's Walker's own post mortem on it.

Unforced error by Mr. Trump.  

But how could there be such a thing?  

A being so magnificent never hurts himself.  It was all skullduggery by Paul Ryan, or Mitch McConnell, or Reince Priebus, or Charlie Sykes, or Liz Mair.  

Donald Trump is destined to win every time.  Anything else happens, it was rigged, they didn't play fair, someone was out to screw him.

A man who builds things so magnificent must surely be invincible in electoral politics.

Here's the plodding truth.

Trump wins primaries with votes—except when some place holds a primary and he doesn't win it with votes.

Same thing is trivially true of Cruz. Kasich, even.  Bernie.  Hillary. 

They all win primaries, except when they don't.

Special pleading for Donald Trump is not terribly becoming to anyone.  Especially when Trump is its prime practitioner, and it's so obvious that the rest of it is being done in emulation of his personal example, if not under his direction.

Trump may get to the convention with 1237 delegates on the first ballot.  If he's at or past 1237, he won't have to, and probably won't, miss any delegates from any of the contests that he could have won and, through his own vanity, his own vindictiveness, and his own lack of organization, didn't actually win.  If he's under 1237, he can yell and scream, blame it on everyone in sight, even get Roger Stone to dial him up a small riot or two.  But he will miss those delegates.  You know he will.

Robert

 

 

[PDS]

1 hour ago, Robert Campbell said:

!!!

You do have to read all the way to the end to understand why Vodkapundit is willing to vote for Trump.

Robert

I didn't say they were good reasons.   Just the best reasons (available).  

[KorbenDallas]

Video about the Cruz/Hannity radio dust up, and then Trump talk..

 

[Brant Gaede]

Robert, I remember microfiche when it was brand new. They installed the damn thing in the Gimbels furniture customer service office where I worked 1970-1971 in NYC. I also walked across the street and picked up one of the first (and bulky) telephone answering machines for our use to handle the call overflow. (220 1971 dollars.)

One day I called a guy back who had left a questioning message. A woman answered. I talked a bit. There was a pause. "Brant, is that you?" It was my step mother who was an immigration judge who worked next to the new World Trade Center going up in lower Manhattan. She was walking by this fellow's empty office and heard his phone ring and, on kind of an impulse, picked it up.

--Brant

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

4 hours ago, Robert Campbell said:

I'm saying it because, while I make absolutely no such claims for myself, you keep presenting yourself as an expert on the subject.

Robert,

You make no such claims for yourself? Not even by insinuation through 1,000 leading questions per post?

I'm no expert on how elections have been run. I know Romney and McCain lost. Do I need expertise to know that?  

I do know a little about the bond Trump has with his supporters. And I also know how anti-Trump people ignore that bond, denigrate Trump supporters and keep grasping desperately at any and all theories that can explain to them where the hell Trump came from and where the hell all these people came from. They are not supposed to exist, yet here they are. What the hell happened?

(I know and I say so, but anti-Trump people don't believe me. Actually, I'm not supposed to exist.  )

You said, "Trump wins primaries with votes—except when some place holds a primary and he doesn't win it with votes." Except you left out two little details. Trump wins ALL the primaries he wins with votes and he wins most of the primaries, period.

Ahhh...

That's better.

 

Believe me, questioning my credentials to hold an opinion about an election will not stop Trump from winning. He's winning. You can believe it. And, looking at the upcoming map, it's going to be extremely rough going for Cruz, so Trump will keep winning. But if you want to entertain hope for a little longer, OK. I'm fine with that. We can wait and see. 

Meanwhile, have you noticed? Trump is winning...

 

Michael

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

5 hours ago, Robert Campbell said:

You know, if he'd actually done the third and fourth thing, Donald Trump could be taking his victory lap next Wednesday.   A lot earlier than June 7, in any case.

Robert,

I'm impressed.

Have you thought of offering your expertise in winning elections to the Trump campaign? Or to the Cruz campaign since you support him? It looks like he could use a little help.

 

Michael

[Peter]

Robert wrote about Trump: If he's under 1237, he can yell and scream, blame it on everyone in sight, even get Roger Stone to dial him up a small riot or two.  But he will miss those delegates.  You know he will. end quote

In a Presidential election is everything about the strategy? Sometimes even a mistake spawns a new strategy. You can pander to every Republican like John Kasich and hope to be in the running after 2 or 3 ballots in Cleveland. It has a chance of working. Kasich just will not startle the news corps to bring their focus onto him, like Trump does. When Cruz denigrated New York values it cost him and Kasich getting a combined 51 percent in New York.  Rubio implied a lesser manhood for Trump which did make him out to be a childish jerk, and a loser. He even disgusted his wife. Trump has deliberately lost some delegates in Wisconsin, perhaps thinking it will gain him delegates in other states. I don’t think so. All of the candidates may be sorry for their tactics and would do things differently if they could go back in time.

Trump is committed to visiting the Harrington Delaware Fair tomorrow for a rally. He is going to rack up some more votes soon. He is leading in the polls for the April 26 voting in Rhode Island, Maryland, Delaware, and Connecticut.

Real clear politics polls also for April 26 in Pennsylvania show Trump down to 43.8 Cruz up to 24.6 Kasich up to 23.6.

May 3 to May 24^th. Indiana, Nebraska, West Virginia, Oregon, Washington.

On June 7^th, California Trump 40.4 Cruz 31.4 Kasich 15.8. Montana, New Jersey, New Mexico, and South Dakota are also no June 7^th.

Nothing is sure, other than that Trump could win it with New Jersey and California, but may not, if the smaller states vote for Cruz and Kasich.

Michael, can you predict the path of the nomination? Can anyone else approximately predict the future with the evidence available?

Peter   

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

49 minutes ago, Peter said:

Michael, can you predict the path of the nomination? Can anyone else approximately predict the future with the evidence available?

Peter,

I can predict some things, but not others. I predict them outside the old ways of seeing things, though.

For example, I predict there will not be all that many insider monkeyshines by the time the convention rolls around.

Why? Several reasons, but mostly because backroom deals and insider back-scratching have to be done in the dark to work, when no one is looking. If the public can see it while it is happening, the public gets awfully pissed.

Since a little while back, Trump has been nonstop throwing a big honking spotlight on all of it--especially on the RNC. And he's keeping the pressure up. One little slip and these guys know they are headline fodder for days and not in a good way. That's profession-killing stuff.

Cruz is learning the hard way that backroom deals have unintended consequences when the spotlight is on them. Trump's moniker, Lyin' Ted, is sticking with the public at large despite the protests of Cruz supporters, not because Trump casts magic spells over his followers. It's partly because Cruz won 100% of the delegates in two states where not one vote was cast. There's a big honking spotlight on that and no amount of rationalizations or explanations can make that sound right to independents. If Cruz had taken the spotlight element into account, he would have engineered losing about 3 delegates per state. That would have diluted the spotlight. It's a lot harder when you walk away with the entire pot two times in a row. 

The people at the convention are seasoned political professionals. The thing they fear the most when they make the sausage is the spotlight. And this time there is a huge nationwide spotlight and a hoard of hungry journalists from all sides.

So I predict they will mostly play fair.

Michael

[KorbenDallas]

1 hour ago, Peter said:

Can anyone else approximately predict the future with the evidence available?

Peter, here is a good video that talks about Trump and delegates

 

[PDS]

16 hours ago, Brant Gaede said:

Are we all assuming Trump has a lock on the nomination?

--Brant

except you know who

Now why do you have to go and bring up Phil Coates again? 

[Peter]

Michael wrote about the convention: So I predict they will mostly play fair. end quote

The spotlight is very welcome. May it proudly shine. One can hope the convention is transparent but it is still the Great Dismal Swamp. What is known? Everything goes out the window when the convention doors are locked. Does that mean Trump is the philosophically better candidate? No. Trump calls Ted “Lyin’ Ted” for using the existing system to his advantage. But Trump is the consummate spinner of the truth and the consummate exaggerator.     

So, what is the path to numerical victory? Trump is the only one who can achieve it. I wrote this before I saw a video on the subject was posted.  Thanks Dallas.

Peter

Snips from the Baltimore Sun . . . . Trump's landslide win in Tuesday's New York primary snagged him at least 89 delegates, pushing his total to 845 of the 1,237 needed to secure the GOP nomination. His nearest rival, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, was shut out and trails the Manhattan real estate mogul by nearly 300 delegates. With seven weeks left in the primary season, Trump must capture about 55% to 60% of the remaining delegates for a first-ballot victory at the convention in Cleveland — a formidable but not impossible task. The Republican front-runner is likely to substantially add to his delegate total next week, when five politically friendly states hold their primaries. He stands a good chance to win them all and most of the 172 delegates at stake.

But after Tuesday, a major test looms May 3 in Indiana, the closest thing left on the primary calendar to a pure toss-up. Even if Trump does well there, he will still need a strong performance in California on June 7, the final day of the Republican primary season, to win the nomination before delegates gather in Cleveland six weeks later. "That will be the sort of Waterloo," said Katie Packer, the head of Our Principles political action committee, a group funded by major Republican donors that has spent heavily on advertising to keep Trump from capturing the nomination. "Either he wins or he loses — it's going to happen there."

Trump has retooled his campaign and become a more restrained, better disciplined candidate of late. But the political map and mathematics of delegation selection will dictate his fate as much or more than any personnel move or personality makeover. . . . Other states stack up better for Cruz, including Nebraska on May 10 and Montana on June 7, which, combined, offer 63 delegates. Trump has not done especially well in the country's midsection or less urbanized portions of the West.

[Peter]

What else is wrong with the political system? If you go to Yahoo today, stories abound about how horrible Ted Cruz is. It’s the same on other venues. Suddenly Ted is the victim of The Propaganda Machine. You, Michael, are not a part of it, but what causes a flurry of negative press? Progressive fear? Trump bribes? Both. I think Trump just decided to play the dirty game. If an upcoming movie can BUY press so can a candidate, or a Party. Planting stories is a profession. And it has always been that way going back to the inception of our country and The Free Press (or is that The Fee Press, Hedda Hopper?) NO One should fall victim to the propaganda machine. We shall see if Trusted Ted can locate the origins of his bad press. If I were him I would be sweating.      

That video was very good. I did not even know Indiana played a pivotal role. And strange things can happen in Pennsylvania too. It ain't over.  

Peter

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

28 minutes ago, Peter said:

If you go to Yahoo today, stories abound about how horrible Ted Cruz is. It’s the same on other venues. Suddenly Ted is the victim of The Propaganda Machine. You, Michael, are not a part of it, but what causes a flurry of negative press? Progressive fear? Trump bribes? Both. I think Trump just decided to play the dirty game.

Peter,

This flurry has nothing to do with Trump's efforts or attitudes.

The establishment-owned press (both sides) was lauding Cruz before because it was using Cruz to damage Trump. Once Cruz lost NY as badly as he did, that particular component of the press (which is vast) no longer believes he can hurt Trump, so it is now showing what it truly thinks of him. These press folks have done this with one Republican candidate after another.

There's a pattern there and it's easy to see if you choose to look at it. It's the Big Bad Wolf with Little Red Riding Hood pattern. Come closer, my dear.  

The press is going to do much worse than this to Cruz if he wins the candidacy. There is no question in my mind. Since the possibility of a Cruz candidacy is remote and getting remoter by the day, at least you now get a preview of what might have been.

Michael

[Peter]

Heads up. All my OL letters were going into Junk.

Peter

[Robert Campbell]

12 hours ago, Peter said:

Trump has deliberately lost some delegates in Wisconsin, perhaps thinking it will gain him delegates in other states. I don’t think so. All of the candidates may be sorry for their tactics and would do things differently if they could go back in time.

Peter,

I very much doubt that Donald Trump deliberately lost delegates in Wisconsin, consciously trading them off for future gains elsewhere.

How would re-stomping Scott Walker in Wisconsin get Trump more votes and more delegates in another state later on?  

No one, not even the proprietor of this site, credits the re-stomping in Wisconsin with increasing Trump's margin of victory in New York.  

Does anyone think re-stomping Walker will gain Trump more delegates in Pennsylvania or Indiana or California than he lost in Wisconsin?

Trump himself doesn't think that.

The only people outside of Wisconsin who hate Scott Walker and are likely to vote in a Republican primary, or participate in a Republican caucus or state convention are: Donald Trump, and a few hundred people who shill for him professionally.  So what is the benefit of pandering to such a nanoscopic segment of the electorate?

He did what the vain and vindictive do (seek continued revenge on a former rival for the nomination), and the effect was to cost him the primary and 20 or more delegates.

An unforced error.

Ted Cruz's crack about "New York values" was likewise an unforced error.

It did not bring him present gains in Iowa to offset his future losses in New York, and I doubt he really thought it would at the time.

He'd have been best off putting a cork in it and not casting aspersions on the values allegedly prevailing in any jurisdiction—but if he truly couldn't help himself, he should have confined himself to "liberal Manhattan values."  

Once he said it, Donald Trump was going to profit from ostentatiously construing it as an aspersion not just on the City but on the entire state.  And the New York City media (which normally see Rochester and Rome and Utica, when they see them at all, as modest additional sources of tax revenue) were going to take a brief pause from insuring the election of Democrats, and join right in.

All easily anticipated.

So I don't know whether Cruz is sorry for his crack, though he should be.

As for Trump, how can one who is inalterably magnificent and destined to win ever be sorry for anything?

Robert

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

54 minutes ago, Peter said:

Heads up. All my OL letters were going into Junk.

Peter,

What does this mean?

Email notices from OL about new posts? Or something else?

Michael

[Peter]

I use Outlook, Hotmail, Michael. It is putting just OL, recently into Junk. I clicked on the last two and then clicked not junk, which I had already done with other OL letters. We will see what happens next. It may be an MS glitch.  

Robert wrote: He'd have been best off putting a cork in it . . . end quote

Or better off by taking at least two Di-Gels. I have no proof for my Wisconsin theory or the one that Trump is paying journalists to plant false stories about Cruz.   

A former head of the RNC was just talking to Neal Cavuto who was trying to put a Trump’s worse nightmare spin on the convention rules but the RNC guy would not fall for it. The rules is the rules, cowboy: 1237 on the first ballot gets the prize. Nothing else. If it goes to two ballots? Still deadlocked? Then things get tense. For instance Reagan had a million more primary votes than Gerald Ford BUT Ford had more delegates and was nominated. Abe Lincoln is another example of the rules that have been in place since the inception of the party. Well, so then it must be Trump or Cruz, says Cavuto? No Neal. It is still the delegate count. What don’t you understand about counting, you photo journalist.

Trump will be at the Delaware Harrington Fair Grounds today, about 40(?) miles from me. More people may show up and the line is already long. No protesters as of yet. It’s 77 and there is some rain in the DC area across the Chesapeake heading this way Some big country and Rock and Roll acts play that venue. Trump is a big deal. 

Peter

[KorbenDallas]

2 hours ago, Peter said:

So, what is the path to numerical victory? Trump is the only one who can achieve it. I wrote this before I saw a video on the subject was posted.  Thanks Dallas.

Hi Peter, I posted the video because I didn't know if you would or wouldn't find it interesting...