Donald Trump

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

18 minutes ago, Robert Campbell said:

It has nonetheless occurred to him that Steve Deace and Charlie Sykes are not employees of Karl Rove.

Robert,

You don't have to be an employee to be a useful idiot.

Those who justify the actions of neocons are just as guilty for the Endless Wars as the leaders.

I consider formal neocons and useful idiots as part of the establishment Republicans.

EDIT: Let me add a thought from the Breitbart article you linked to:

Quote

The conservative movement and the establishment have gone to so many happy hours together in Washington it’s hard to know exactly where one ends and the other begins.

That's what I mean when I say "establishment Republicans." That blend (including the entire staff of useful idiots at the National Review).

btw - There are plenty conservatives supporting Trump (Jeff Sessions and so on). These tend to have fewer happy hours together with the neocons.

Michael

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Robert,

That Breitbart article by Patrick Howley was fairly good.

I have one main beef with it, though.

Howley said:

But it’s not all corrupt. Out in flyover country, there are conservative activists who genuinely support Cruz just because they genuinely support Cruz. No one could make the argument that Iowa conservative radio star Steve Deace, a Cruz supporter who rails against Trump, is doing it for any kind of malevolent reason. Same goes for the conservative talkers in the Milwaukee area like Charlie Sykes.

I don't know anything about Steve Deace, but the same goes for Charlie Sykes?!!

The same Charlie Sykes who said: I'm More Anti-Trump Than I Am Pro-Cruz; Cruz Wasn't My First, Second or Third Choice?

That Charlie Sykes? That's the Charlie Sykes who genuinely supports Cruz just because he genuinely supports Cruz?

Dayaamm!

Google is your friend, Mr. Howley, and that was featured stuff in the mainstream. It makes me wonder what else you missed.

Michael

[Brant Gaede]

1 hour ago, PDS said:

I hear he also has a Big Schlong, a world-class memory, the 'best words", the finest physical health of anybody who has ever run for office, and he's a billionaire.   We know these things because Donald has told us so.

Most people--assuming they ever took the habit up--learn to quit bragging when they are in their teens.  

What can be said about somebody who is still bragging on himself at the age of 69?

Seriously, when is the last time anybody on this thread met a grown man who still brags on himself? 

I do.

--Brant (72)

blush--I've founded myself out (bragging about bragging)

"I am the greatest!"

[Brant Gaede]

Objectivists brag to each other for each other.

"You are the greatest."

[now both wait a few days for appearance's sake]

"You are the greatest."

Therefore they don't have to seem to be Muhammad Ali, "I am the greatest!", to whom Rand gave a special dispensation (likely because Ali didn't know there was a Rand to brag about).

This is an example of the trader principle in action.

--Brant

can lead to romantic love problems

[9thdoctor]

2 hours ago, PDS said:

Seriously, when is the last time anybody on this thread met a grown man who still brags on himself? 

Remember Phil Coates?

[PDS]

4 hours ago, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

David,

That's the Christian influence on archetype.

Competent people who brag without guilt are considered immature or villains in our Christian culture.

Frankly, when all these campaign discussions started and Trump entered the race, seeing this is RandLand and all, I was surprised at the intensity of the loathing and vitriol against Trump's swagger.

People prefer the Christian even as they preach the Randian. And this is embedded deep in their souls. The passion and content of their pronouncements prove it.

(And they say Christianity and Objectivism cannot mix. ) 

Here's something to think about. I've done a lot of reading on archetypes, neuroscience, modern psychology, etc., and disgust at bragging never comes up as innate, at least not in the stuff I have read. So it's a pretty good bet this is learned after birth, and learned from the culture (not just the parents) to boot.

I, for one, don't mind the bragging seeing how Trump is competent. Even Rush Limbaugh got it that most Trump supporters know Trump is performing a a playful schtick more than affirming precise facts when he exaggerates. (He even goes on top comedy shows to joke about it, saying yuuuuuuuuuuuge and so on.)

But even if it were pure narcissism, I can think of a lot worse. For instance, the crap we have had for decades: polite proper respectable people (having the correct Christian balance of humility and empathy in their public personas) who engineer and implement hideous useless indecent wars for profit and get the children of others to do the fighting and the dying.

I'll take bragging any day over killing the young for money. I don't like a culture where most people praise and/or justify the polite monsters and hate the productive braggart with all their might and souls, but this is the culture I live in. It looks like Christianity has been wielded as a powerful tool and has worked splendidly for cultural indoctrination.

I don't have to be that way, though. And I'm not.

The corrupt may inherit the earth and preach the meek will inherit the earth to pacify the masses, but they don't inherit me.

Long live the loud proud producer. He or she inherits me.

Michael

Then how come you never brag?*

How come Jonathan never brags about his gorgeous artwork?*

How come Howard Roark didn't brag?*

Michael: the difference between having swagger and being a 69 year-old braggart is rather immense.    Braggarts are bullshit artists.   Let's not pretend otherwise.  

(*hint:  in each of my examples, the person let's his work and actions speak for themselves).  

[PDS]

1 hour ago, 9thdoctor said:

Remember Phil Coates?

Thank you.  My point exactly.  

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

40 minutes ago, PDS said:

Let's not pretend otherwise.

David,

Let's? As in "let us"? As in "let you and me"?

Heh.

Please don't include me in your Christian tut-tut-tutting.

Trump is a high-end achiever and deserves the right to say every word he says, even when it's hyperbole.

Michael

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

2 hours ago, 9thdoctor said:

Remember Phil Coates?

Dennis,

Ha!

If you are comparing Trump to Coates, talk about a thrasonical equivalency!

 

(I'm not saying you are, but others are.)

I once went to a lecture by Phil in a TAS conference. There must have been a whole 25 people there and I wager half of them were in a coma.  

On the other hand, Trump did a rally earlier tonight in Bethpage, Long Island, NY, with unbelievable energy in the hall. 

You are looking at 17,000 braggart-lovers because not only did they not tell the Trump the braggart to go away, they came to see him brag.

In fact, millions of folks in the USA are coming out for Trump, so by definition, they are all braggart-lovers.

Probably braggarts, all of us.

Tut-tut-tut... The USA is doomed, huh?

 

Is there anywhere in the universe anyone could possibly imagine loads of people like that coming out to see Phil?

There's a premise in this thrasonical equivalency that needs some serious checking.

 

Michael

[william.scherk]

39 minutes ago, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

[Y]our Christian tut-tut-tutting

Are you running out of categories, Michael?

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Take this, you Cruz lovers!

MOONIES FOR CRUZ
by Ann Coulter
April 6, 2016

Since she spreads this around the web like a press release, I'll give the whole thing here:

 

Quote

 

Congratulations to Ted Cruz for winning his fourth primary! Usually Donald Trump wins the primaries -- where you go and vote, like in a real election. Cruz wins the caucuses -- run by the state parties, favored by political operators and cheaters. 


Until now, the only primaries Cruz has won are in Texas (his home state), Oklahoma (basically the same state) and Idaho (where Trump never campaigned). 


So now, Cruz has finally won an honest-to-goodness primary. This is great news for him, provided: (1) the general election is a caucus, and (2) the national media universally denounce Cruz's Democratic opponent the same way the Wisconsin media denounced Trump. 


In that case, Cruz should do fine. 


The Cruz-bots don't care. They don't care that they're being used as a cat's-paw by the Never Trump crowd, and that a brokered Republican convention is more likely to end with Bernie as the nominee than Cruz. 


The Cruz cultists don't even care about plain honesty, which I always thought was a conservative value. Republicans used to be appalled by guttersnipe, lying political operators like the Clintons. Now they are guttersnipe, lying political operators like the Clintons. 


It's all hands on deck to stop the only presidential candidate who wants to save America from the cheap labor plutocrats. 


Cruz has flipped to Trump's side on every important political issue of this campaign -- which only ARE issues because of Trump. These are: 


-- Quadrupling the number of foreign guest workers to help ranchers and farmers get cheap labor: Cruz was for it, and now is against it. 


-- Legalizing illegal aliens: Cruz was for it, and now is against it.

-- The Trans-Pacific Partnership deal: Cruz was for it, and now is against it. 


-- Building a wall: Cruz was against it, and now is for it. 


These are all positions Cruz has changed since being a senator -- most of them he's flipped on only in the last year. I'm supposed to believe that U.S. senators can sincerely change their minds about policies it was their job to know about, but a New York developer can never change his mind about pop-offs he made more than a decade ago. 


Back in 1999 -- 17 years ago -- when Donald Trump was considering a presidential run on the Reform Party ticket, he said this when asked about abortion by Tim Russert on "Meet the Press": "Well, look, I'm very pro-choice. I hate the concept of abortion. I hate it. I hate everything it stands for. I cringe when I listen to people debating the subject. But you still -- I just believe in choice." 


Russert then asked him specifically if he'd ban partial-birth abortion. Trump said, "No. I am pro-choice in every respect and as far as it goes, but I just hate it." 


A year later, Trump wrote in his book "The America We Deserve": "When Tim Russert asked me on 'Meet the Press' if I would ban partial-birth abortion, my pro-choice instincts led me to say no. After the show, I consulted two doctors I respect and, upon learning more about this procedure, I have concluded that I would indeed support a ban." 


Sometime in the intervening 16 years, Trump became fully pro-life. 


You can say you don't believe him -- just as you might say you don't believe Cruz has truly changed his mind on amnesty, the wall, or the Trans-Pacific Partnership, etc. But to claim Trump is pro-choice today -- present tense -- is what's known as a "lie." 


But that's what Cruz says over and over again, including in a campaign ad -- and not one of those "super PAC" ads that count even less than a retweet. A Cruz ad plays the clip from that 1999 interview where Trump says, "I am pro-choice in every respect," repeats it three times, and then cuts to a narrator proclaiming: "For partial-birth abortion, not a conservative." 


These are the kinds of lies that used to drive conservatives crazy when the Clintons did it. Not anymore. All's fair in smearing Trump. 


Trump has said a million times that he'd scrap Obamacare and replace it with a free market system (which, by the way, he explains a lot more clearly than Washington policy wonks with their think-tank lingo). Merely for Trump saying that we're "not going to let people die, sitting in the middle of a street in any city in this country," Cruz accuses him of supporting "Bernie Sanders-style medicine." 


Yes, because Trump is against people dying in the streets, Cruz says that Trump thinks "Obamacare didn't go far enough and we need to expand it to put the government in charge of our health care, in charge of our relationship with our doctors." Over and over again, Cruz has repeated this insane lie, telling Fox's Megyn Kelly: "If you want to see Bernie Sanders-style socialized medicine, Donald Trump is your guy." 


Trump's alleged support for the kind of national health care they have in Scotland and Canada is another big fat lie. Trump was issuing his usual effusive praise before he drops the hammer -- "It actually works incredibly well in Scotland. Some people think it really works in Canada." Then he continued, in the very same sentence: "I don't think it would work as well here. What has to happen -- I like the concept of private enterprise coming in. ... You have to create competition." 


Cruz and his cult-like followers lie about Trump wanting a health care system akin to Canada's and Scotland's. They lie about his supporting Obamacare. They lie about his supporting partial-birth abortion. They lie about his ever having been a Democrat. They lie about his campaign manager assaulting a female reporter. 


I tried being nice after Florida, when it became clear that Trump was the choice of a majority of Republican voters, nearly choking on a column praising Cruz for his admirable flip-flops to Trump's positions on immigration and trade. I censored loads of anti-Cruz retweets. But -- as with the Clintons -- you offer these Cruz-bots an olive branch and they bite off your hand. 


The next thing I knew, the Cruz cult was accusing Trump's campaign manager Corey Lewandowski of criminal battery for brushing past a female reporter. Anyone who claims this video shows a "battery" is as big a liar as the liberals who lined up to say Clinton did not commit perjury when he denied having "sexual relations" with Monica Lewinsky. 


If James Carville and Paul Begala had a baby, it would be a Cruz supporter. 

They lie about my own tweaking of Trump -- I didn't like the Heidi retweet! -- amid a tidal wave of support. Trump is the only presidential candidate in my lifetime who will build a wall, deport illegals and pause the importation of Muslims. He's the only one who cares more about ordinary Americans than he does about globalist plutocrats. Does anyone really think I'm "tiring" of him because of a retweet? 


Apparently, for slavishly devoted Cruz-bots, a normal human making a small criticism of her preferred candidate is unfathomable! That fact alone proves how dishonest they are about their own candidate. 


I was under the misimpression that I was dealing with adults and not swine like Carville and Begala, willing to twist someone's words to win a momentary political advantage. Mostly, I was under the misimpression that honesty was still a conservative value.

 

 

Incidentally, it is refreshing to see Coulter talk about Cruz's form of coming to a distorted conclusion and hammering it--the form I call "lawyerly." (Coulter prefers the term "lies."  ) Specifically, his claim that Trump is for Obamacare because he doesn't want people to die in the streets. Or taking a lukewarm statement by Trump  from 16 years ago and presenting it as Trump's vigorous current position, even though Trump constantly says the contrary. Things like that.

This has bothered me about Cruz for awhile, and not just with the way he talks about Trump. He did that stuff with all the other candidates.

Enjoy, mah dahlinks...

 

Michael

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

1 minute ago, william.scherk said:

Are you running out of categories, Michael?

William,

Jeez... once something like the root of an archetype is clearly identified, how many categories do you want for it?

It's not a matter of running out of categories. It's a matter of having found the correct one.

Sometimes the truth hurts. I wish it didn't...

 

Michael

 

[william.scherk]

6 minutes ago, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

. once something like the root of an archetype is clearly identified

Yeah.  

[PDS]

45 minutes ago, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

David,

Let's? As in "let us"? As in "let you and me"?

Heh.

Please don't include me in your Christian tut-tut-tutting.

Trump is a high-end achiever and deserves the right to say every word he says, even when it's hyperbole.

Michael

I didn't think stating that braggarts are bullshit artists was a controversial statement.   I stand corrected.  

I think the fact that Trump is a pathological braggart is highly relevant to his fitness for office.    For example, when Trump claims that he is going to eliminate 18 trillion in national debt in 8 years, a concerned citizen might wonder whether this is bragging, hyperbole, or something to count on.  

I don't think anybody's religion--or lack thereof--has anything to do with this thread.    Do you, Michael?   

[william.scherk]

5 minutes ago, PDS said:

I don't think anybody's religion--or lack thereof--has anything to do with this thread.

Once the archetype is correctly identified, though, David, assigning to a Badness category is appropriate, perhaps. Not everyone loves the Beatles. In other words, Beatle-Haters. Hating and tut-tutting and cultishness. That is really all there is, and you sir are part of the Sploodge.  You might as well be a Moonie. Insert Smiley Here.

[Brant Gaede]

National debt should not be reduced except by using the printing press. Just keep rolling it over.

--Brant

higher taxes--not!

reduce spending and reduce taxes for that reduction of spending is reduction of money into the economy = recession

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

53 minutes ago, PDS said:

I don't think anybody's religion--or lack thereof--has anything to do with this thread.    Do you, Michael?  

David,

I don't think you understood what I was saying. Or maybe you haven't given much thought to cultural archetypes.

You don't have to be a Christian to adopt the archetypes that are present in a predominantly Christian culture. You do that just from growing up in the culture.

Ditto for Muslim cultures.

Ditto for Asian cultures.

Dittos for Native American cultures

And so on.

This is one of the things Rand was trying to undo with her fiction. Or at least offer an alternative for a rational romantic culture. She called it sense of life, life as it could and should be, the perfect man, and so on, but the humble hero was a thing she loathed, especially when a hero was the mediocre man next door. I have not read any elevation of humility as a moral quality in her writing.

I don't know what she would have thought of Trump. I suspect she would have loved his sense of life, loved his stance of protecting America and isolationism, and hated some of his policies. In fact, in my mind, she might have considered Trump's bragging over the top (although I think she would have been vastly amused at the effect it has), but she would have gone scorched earth and blasted the anti-bragging thing as catering to the worst in the Christian (i.e. altruistic) sense of life (that is, apologizing for being good and competent as the standard of morally good behavior). I think she would have called this pure sanction of the victim, but nobody has any way of knowing for sure. She's dead.

Jonathan said somewhere he thinks she would have had the hots for Trump. That sounds right to me. But that's me.

Michael

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

58 minutes ago, william.scherk said:

Yeah.  

Yeah.

[william.scherk]

Just now, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

Or maybe you haven't given much thought to cultural archetypes.

Not everyone loves the Beatles.  

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Just now, william.scherk said:

Not everyone loves the Beatles.

William,

I guess not. So what? The young sure loved rebellious rockers, though.

An archetype is not an individual.

burp...

 

Michael

[william.scherk]

2 minutes ago, Anti-Christian Beatle Hater said:

Yeah.

Beatle Hater.

[tmj]

I wonder if Donald shredded Fab 4 posters into bits and pieces

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

45 minutes ago, tmj said:

I wonder if Donald shredded Fab 4 posters into bits and pieces

tmj,

Nah...

Trump has used "Revolution" by the Beatles to great effect in some of his rallies.

btw - This runs the left nuts.

 

Michael

[Brant Gaede]

President Clinton.

[Peter]

Brant projects a future with a President Clinton. That’s doomsday fiction though I saw that a majority of Wall Street gurus and money types have said the same. Is that wishful thinking? Trump has 758 delegates. Cruz has 499. Kasich has 144. Colorado and Wyoming are up next and then New York. How many want an open convention and how many want a closed convention? Let me see a show of hands . . . OK, that’s 700 for an open and 600 for a closed and 37 undecided’s. But the really tough number is the unfavorable types in the General Election who will never vote for you and in that Trump is the hands down winner . . . which makes him the loser.   

Peter 

Notes: MSNBC's Steve Kornacki on the Map: After Wisconsin Loss, Trump Still Has "Tight, Narrow" Path to 1,237 Delegates Posted on April 5, 2016. So after tonight it looks like he'll be roughly at 760. What does he need to do? Next state up, New York. Big favorite. Can he get 80 of those 95. If he does, he sits at 840. That's very much within his reach. Take a look through the rest of the northeast (and loose definition of northeast, we'll throw West Virginia, Maryland in there too). If he does really well here, the way he is supposed to do, if he's not too hurt, he could come out of that with 1015 as his total out of the northeast. If he got a narrow win in Indiana and added 30 to that he's sitting at 1045. If he could then go out to the west coast or California, the Pacific coast and get 175 out of that he's sitting at 1,220. . . . . What you see, though, it is a very tight, very narrow path for Donald Trump. It still exists, but a lot of things have to go his way.