GOP Primaries/Caucuses Discussions, Jokes and Predictions

[piscator]

Not convinced Bernie or Hillary are even close to being as dumb as Trump

The 19 most offensive things about Donald Trump's taco bowl tweet

trump is not that dumb,n the way he recovered magnificently from multiple bankruptcies shows it. Still is a Death Star sized Ahole, though...

They weren't personal bankruptcies. Moreover, Trump probably looks at bankruptcy protection as "Winning".

....

Atlantic City partnerships

Trump’s alleged mob dealings were not confined to New York. According to reports from the Huffington Post and Philadelphia Inquirer, Trump made a deal in Atlantic City with Kenneth Shapiro, an associate of mob boss Nicky Scarfo, and mob-connected labor boss Daniel Sullivan.

Trump seemed aware of this, calling Shapiro "a third-rate, local real estate mafia" and Sullivan "the guy who killed Jimmy Hoffa."

Nonetheless, in 1981, Trump leased a portion of the land for Trump Plaza and Casino from a company the two men controlled, according a report by New Jersey gaming regulators. The company refused to cooperate with the authorities, and Trump eventually ended the partnership and bought out their shares.

Later Trump brought on Sullivan as a labor negotiator at the Grand Hyatt Hotel and introduced the man to his own banker, according to the Los Angeles Times.

Through intermediaries Trump bought the property for the casino from the "crown prince" of the Philadelphia mob, Salvatore Testa, for $1.1 million in 1982. Multiple media reports and an unauthorized biography about Trump allege this was more than twice its market value. (Testa purchased the property in 1977 for $195,000.)

According to The Federalist, two construction companies controlled by Nicky Scarfo ended up building Trump Plaza and Casino.

"You had contractors that were supposedly mob-oriented all over Atlantic City," Trump said when the Wall Street Journal asked him about it, adding that "every single casino company used the same companies, just I hope you will say that."

A few years later, Trump’s organized crime connections extended overseas. In 1992, a Senate subcommittee named Danny Leung, who was then the vice president for foreign marketing at Trump Taj Mahal, as an associate of the Hong Kong-based organized crime group 14K Triad.

"Leung has also given complimentary tickets for hotel rooms and Asian shows to numerous members and associates of Asian organized crime," reads the report, which also identified three other triad-connected business associates or former employees of Trump’s gambling empire.

According to gaming regulators, Leung "flew in 16 Italian organized crime figures from Canada who stole more than $1 million from the casino in a credit scam," reported the New York Daily News in 1995. "The incident was never reported because Trump never filed charges."

Leung, who had a separate contract to bring gamblers from Toronto to the casino, denied the affiliation to organized crime, and his casino and junket licenses were renewed. (The Trump Taj Mahal declared bankruptcy in 1991, and his other Atlantic City properties folded a decade later.)

Mob-linked business adviser

And there’s Felix Sater, "a twice-convicted Russian émigré who served prison time and had documented mafia connections" and the subject of the ABC story Cruz referenced.

Sater pleaded guilty to a charge of money laundering in 1998 and was indicted again in 2000 for taking part in a $40 million stock scheme involving four Mafia families, according to the New York Times report.

From 2003 to 2007, Sater traveled the country promoting projects for Trump, and his company was a partner in the Trump SoHo hotel. Trump told the Times he "never knew that."

Three years later, Sater returned to the Trump Organization and had business cards that described him as Trump’s "senior advisor," the AP reported. Trump told the AP that he’s "not familiar" with Sater.

Our ruling

Cruz said, "There have been multiple media reports about Donald's business dealings with the mob, with the mafia."

While it’s important to note that these connections were not atypical in the real estate and casino businesses in the 1980s, Cruz’s statement is accurate. Media reports have linked Trump to mafia bosses and mob-connected business associates for decades.

We rate the claim True.

http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter ... inked-mob/

[Forty Two]

The drums had been beating for weeks about a major New York Times expose in the works that would demolish Trump once and for all by revealing his sordid lifetime of misogyny. When it finally appeared as a splashy front-page story this past Sunday (originally titled “Crossing the Line: Trump’s Private Conduct with Women”), I was off in the woods pursuing my Native American research. On Monday, after seeing countless exultant references to this virtuoso takedown, I finally read the article—and laughed out loud throughout. Can there be any finer demonstration of the insularity and mediocrity of today’s Manhattan prestige media? Wow, millionaire workaholic Donald Trump chased young, beautiful, willing women and liked to boast about it. Jail him now! Meanwhile, the New York Times remains mute about Bill Clinton’s long record of crude groping and grosser assaults—not one example of which could be found to taint Trump.

Blame for this fiasco falls squarely upon the New York Times editors who delegated to two far too young journalists, Michael Barbaro and Megan Twohey, the complex task of probing the glitzy, exhibitionistic world of late-twentieth-century beauty pageants, gambling casinos, strip clubs, and luxury resorts. Neither Barbaro, a 2002 graduate of Yale, nor Twohey, a 1998 graduate of Georgetown University, had any frame of reference for sexual analysis aside from the rote political correctness that has saturated elite American campuses for nearly 40 years. Their prim, priggish formulations in this awkwardly disconnected article demonstrate the embarrassing lack of sophistication that passes for theoretical expertise among their over-paid and under-educated professors.

When I saw the reporters’ defensive interview on Monday with CNN anchors Kate Bolduan and John Berman, I felt sorry for the earnest, owlish Barbaro, who seems like a nice fellow who has simply wandered out of his depth. But Twohey, with her snippy, bright and shiny careerism, took a page from the slippery Hillary playbook in the way she blatheringly evaded any direct answer to a pointed question about how Rowanne Brewer Lane’s pleasantly flirtatious first meeting with Trump at a crowded 1990 pool party at Mar-a-Lago ended up being called “a debasing face-to-face encounter” in the Times. The hidden agenda of advocacy journalism has rarely been caught so red-handed.

http://www.salon.com/2016/05/19/camille ... ald_trump/


If this is what they have on Trump and women, then he's in the clear -- http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/15/us/po ... .html?_r=0

Rich guy likes beautiful women, and makes advances on them, sometimes hooking up with willing participants....

oh, the humanity.

He "built an image as a young playboy..." The horror....

He "had a variety of girls..." slut!

Donald hired a woman, in the early 1980s, as head of of construction in his company -- but, Donald's father Fred had more traditional ideas of gender roles, and chided Trump about it, causing Trump to continue to do as he pleased and hire women..... oh, no!!!! My soggy knees!!!

He was "forward" with young, adult, over-21 year old, women. LOL. Some folks thought he was immature about women...

Wow -- he really does come across as a monster.

Trump will have field day with this -- of course, he's a candidate for President, but has the NY Times or any other major newspaper done an expose on any other candidates? Did anyone take interest in Bill Clinton's dalliances with women? No girl by girl discussion of Bill's attitudes and conduct with women....and he had rape allegations, sexual assault allegations, and sexual harassment allegations against him...back then, his private conduct had no bearing on the presidency. Now, Trump liking hot young women indicates his unfitness for duty. So transparent.

And, of course, the NY Times writers had to lie to fit a narrative --

"The New York Times told us several times that they would make sure my story that I was telling came across, they promised several times that they would do it accurately, they told me several times and my manager several times that it would not be a hit piece and that my story would come across the way that I was telling it and honestly and it absolutely was not,” Brewer Lane said. “They did take quotes from what I said and they put a negative connotation on it. They spun it to where it appeared negative. I did not have a negative experience with Donald Trump.”

Brewer Lane dated Trump and said that the presumptive Republican nominee “never made me feel like I was being demeaned in any way, he never offended me in any way.”

“Obviously they feel like they need to do something to make him look bad or go along with their article,” Brewer Lane said.

“Why do you think the left — the mainstream media — is so obsessed with just creating this headline about how Donald Trump treats women?” host Ainsley Earhardt asked.

“I don’t know. I think that they’re just reaching for straws,” Brewer Lane said, adding that her manager has reached out to the reporter to say they would be telling her side of the story.

“It just gives journalists a bad name, but I’m glad you’re here to set the record straight,” Earhardt said.

Brewer Lane finished the show by saying that she would be supporting Trump in a general election.

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/poli ... /84435570/

That NY Times article and the reaction showing that they just make shit up, is what will gain Trump votes. http://money.cnn.com/2016/05/16/media/t ... ews-cycle/

[Svartalf]

The list of celebrities for Trump is growing, too --

Kirstie Alley -- love Kirstie Alley -- especially in her Saavik role on Wrath of Khan.

Pete "Charlie Hustle" Rose -- great baseball player, and Trump supporter.

Paul O'Neill of the Yanks -- another great baseball player.

Jon Voigt - if his balls can produce Angelina Jolie, his opinion matters...

Dennis Rodman - ambassador to North Korea, and Trump supporter

Of course, the Motor City Madman - Ted Nugent!

Mike Tyson, and if Trump needs a bodyguard, Tyson might be a good choice

Loretta Lynn, standing by her man Trump

Lou Ferrigno - the Incredible Hulk -- don't make him angry!

Is it just me or is this a pretty nice collection of have been and never were ?

[Sean Hayden]

It's that damn liberal bias man. I think it was in Playboy that we learned Bill Clinton "eats pussy like a champ".

[Forty Two]

Would 'twere there was a liberal bias. It's a leftist bias these days....

[piscator]

The list of celebrities for Trump is growing, too --

Kirstie Alley -- love Kirstie Alley -- especially in her Saavik role on Wrath of Khan.

Pete "Charlie Hustle" Rose -- great baseball player, and Trump supporter.

Paul O'Neill of the Yanks -- another great baseball player.

Jon Voigt - if his balls can produce Angelina Jolie, his opinion matters...

Dennis Rodman - ambassador to North Korea, and Trump supporter

Of course, the Motor City Madman - Ted Nugent!

Mike Tyson, and if Trump needs a bodyguard, Tyson might be a good choice

Loretta Lynn, standing by her man Trump

Lou Ferrigno - the Incredible Hulk -- don't make him angry!

Is it just me or is this a pretty nice collection of have been and never were ?

They were all someone at one time. Most are just old now. Most (except Loretta) have had other public lapses of judgement. Loretta didn't graduate high school, and it was Tammy Wynette who sang Stand By Your Man.

Ted had to pay over $20,000 in fines to the State of Alaska for hunting violations Ted's crew documented while "Ol Whack'em and Stack'em" was making a hunting bear over bait video in Alaska. Not only can Ted not keep a band together, but he's getting too old to keep his film crew from jamming it up his ass every time he drops the soap. A genuine asshole for who there could be no other than Trump.
Marcheline Bertrand kept her children away from their father John Voight until the day she died in 2007. She's probably just a man-hating feminist though. JV is 78 years old.
Pete Rose was a compulsive gambler who bet against his own team. That's why, as good as he was, he'll never be inducted into the Hall of Fame. His epic moral failure did more damage to the sport of baseball than any other man, living or dead.

[piscator]

Matt Taibbi does smartassed New Journalism like Tom Wolfe and Terry Southern, maybe even better...






Donald Trump crushed 16 GOP opponents in one of the most appalling, vicious campaigns in history. His next victim? The entire Republican Party

...During the campaign, surprising numbers of Americans were even willing to believe Cruz might also be the Zodiac Killer. The infamous Bay Area murders began two years before Cruz was born, but 38 percent of Floridians at one point believed Cruz either was or might be the Zodiac Killer.
Were they serious? In an age when Donald Trump is a presidential nominee, what does "serious" even mean? In any case, the cybercomics who fanned the flames of the Cruz-Zodiac meme will someday be first-ballot entrants in the Trolling Hall of Fame.

Finally, on the morning of the Indiana primary, Cruz woke up to hear opponent Trump babbling that Cruz's own father had been hanging out with Lee Harvey Oswald before the assassination of John F. Kennedy, a bizarre take on a ridiculous National Enquirer story that Trump, of course, believed instantly. Trump brought this up on Fox and Friends, which let him run the ball all the way to the end zone. "I mean, what was he doing with Lee Harvey Oswald, shortly before the death – before the shooting?" Trump asked. "It's horrible."

American politics had never seen anything like this: a presidential candidate derided as a haggardly masturbating incarnation of Satan, the son of a presidential assassin's accomplice, and himself an infamous uncaptured serial killer.

Despite the media humiliations, Cruz talked passionately of his supporters' resolve. "Just a few days ago, two young kids, ages four and six, handed me two envelopes full of change," he said. "All of their earnings from their lemonade stand. They wanted the campaign to have it."

The crowd cooed: Awwww! There was no way he could quit now and let those kids down. Except that moments later, Cruz did just that, announcing he was suspending his campaign because "the path to victory has been foreclosed." Then he fled the stage like he was double-parked.

The air vanished from the ballroom. Cruz supporters went nuts.

Nooooo! they screamed, hugging each other and crying. Many volunteers were from faraway states. They expected to be continuing on somewhere the next morning. Now they were all basically fired.

"What the fuck do we do now?" whispered one.

...

This avalanche of verbose disgust on the part of conservative intellectuals toward the Trump voter, who until very recently was the Republican voter, tells us everything we need to know about what actually happened in 2016.

There never was any real connection between the George Wills, Andrew Sullivans and David Brookses and the gun-toting, Jesus-loving ex-middle-class voters they claimed to embrace. All those intellectuals ever did for Middle America was cook up a sales pitch designed to get them to vote for politicians who would instantly betray them to business interests eager to ship their jobs off to China and India. The most successful trick was linking the corporate mantra of profit without responsibility to the concept of individual liberty.

Into the heartland were sent wave after wave of politicians, each more strident and freedom-y than the last. They arrived draped in the flag, spewed patriotic bromides about God, guns and small-town values, and pledged to give the liberals hell and bring the pride back.

Then they went off to Washington and year after year did absolutely squat for their constituents. They were excellent at securing corporate tax holidays and tax cuts for the rich, but they almost never returned to voter country with jobs in hand. Instead, they brought an ever-increasing list of villains responsible for the lack of work: communists, bra-burning feminists, black "race hustlers," climate-change activists, Muslims, Hollywood, horned owls...

By the Tea Party era, their candidates were forced to point fingers at their own political establishment for votes, since after so many years of bitter economic decline, that was the only story they could still believably sell.

This led to the hilarious irony of Ted Cruz. Here was a quintessentially insipid GOP con man culled straight from the halls of Princeton, Harvard, the Supreme Court, the Federal Trade Commission and the National Republican Senatorial Committee to smooth-talk the yokels. But through a freak accident of history, he came along just when the newest models of his type were selling "the Republican establishment sucks" as an electoral strategy.

Cruz was like an android that should have self-destructed in a cloud of sparks and black smoke the moment the switch flipped on. He instead stayed on just long enough to win 564 delegates, a stunning testament to just how much Republican voters, in the end, hated the Republican kingmakers Cruz robotically denounced.

All of these crazy contradictions came to a head in Indiana, where Cruz succumbed in an explosion of hate and scorn. The cascade started the Sunday night before the primary, with a Cruz stump speech in La Porte that couldn't have gone worse.

Things went sideways as Cruz was working his way into a "simple flat tax" spiel, a standard Republican snake-oil proposal in which all corporate, estate and gift taxes would be eliminated, and replaced with a 10 percent flat tax and a 16 percent consumption tax. Not because the rich would pay less and the poor would pay more, but because America and fairness, etc. He was just getting to his beloved money line, claiming, "We can fill out our taxes on a postcard," when a 12-year-old boy interrupted with cries of "You suck!" and "I don't care!"

Cruz couldn't quite handle the pressure and stepped straight into the man-trap the moment presented....


...


Trump, meanwhile, spent the night basking in voluble self-admiration from Trump Tower in New York. This is becoming his victory ritual. The lectern from which he spoke said it all: TRUMP – VICTORY IN INDIANA – NEW YORK CITY.

Trump's naked disdain for the less-glamorous American flyover provinces he somehow keeps winning by massive margins continued to be one of the livelier comic subplots of the campaign.

From seemingly wondering if Iowans had eaten too much genetically modified corn to thanking the "poorly educated" after his Nevada win, Trump increasingly doesn't bother to even pretend to pander. This, too, is a major departure for the Republican Party, whose Beltway imageers for decades made pretending to sincerely prefer barns and trailers to nightclubs and spokesmodels a central part of their electoral strategy.

Not Trump. Hell, he went out of his way to brag about being pals with Tom Brady in the week before the Indiana primary, and still won by almost 20 points. Given the level of Colts-Patriots antipathy, this is a little like campaigning in Louisiana wearing a BP hat, or doing a whistle-stop tour through Waco with Janet Reno.

After his crushing win, Trump gave a breathless victory speech. It was classic Trump. "The people of Indiana have been incredible," he said. "I campaigned and I made lots of speeches and met lots of incredible people... You don't get better. The crowds got bigger and bigger... I didn't want to leave... We had a tremendous victory tonight... Boy, Bobby Knight was incredible."

He had a few choice words for the GOP leadership. "I want to thank and congratulate the Republican National Committee, and Reince Priebus," he croaked, as his heavily-made-up, Robert Palmer-chicks collection of wives and daughters twisted faintly in a deadpan chorus behind him.

"It is not an easy job, when you have 17 egos," Trump went on, smiling. "And now I guess he's down to one."

The crowd roared. The RNC had kissed Trump's ring. That was it, right there, the death of the modern Republican Party.


...

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/ne ... 18?page=10

[Animavore]

This is a reconciliation post. 42, I get it now. I know the last time we talked I rage quit, but you've helped me understand Trumpism. I done a lot of reading on Trump since, and America's discontent with the established order. I was being stubborn and pre-judgemental. I don't like the guy and I choose a narrative which suited my prejudice. I still think he's a terrible choice, but understand better the electorate now and the conditions allowing this happen.
So thank you.

[laklak]

If he wins it will have nothing to do with his suitability as a candidate and everything to do with the utterly tone deaf GOP and Democratic establishment. It's like Dunning-Kruger on a national scale, they were so far up their own asses that they utterly failed to accurately assess either the sheer number of Americans sick to death of the status quo or the depth of their feelings. There has been talk, for as long as I can remember, about a "right wing backlash". It was one of me ol' Da's favorite grumbles, "You just wait, people are sick of this, there's going to be a backlash!'. It's a canard that was trotted out during the Reagan elections, both Bushes, and as far back as Tricky Dick's "Silent Majority". But none of them even come close to The Donald. It's a rough beast, no doubt, and it's slouching it's way towards the District of Columbia.

[piscator]

Willing to bet 80% of them can't enunciate what they mean when they say "Status quo". But if they did, it would bear little resemblance to what most of the rest of us think the word means.

[Tyrannical]

Status quo are hillary voters lol

[Tyrannical]

New Washington Post poll has Trump +2 over Clinton, wash post not happy lol

[piscator]

Into the heartland were sent wave after wave of politicians, each more strident and freedom-y than the last. They arrived draped in the flag, spewed patriotic bromides about God, guns and small-town values, and pledged to give the liberals hell and bring the pride back.

Then they went off to Washington and year after year did absolutely squat for their constituents. They were excellent at securing corporate tax holidays and tax cuts for the rich, but they almost never returned to voter country with jobs in hand. Instead, they brought an ever-increasing list of villains responsible for the lack of work: communists, bra-burning feminists, black "race hustlers," climate-change activists, Muslims, Hollywood, horned owls...

The horse and sparrow theory of economics works a lot better for the horse than you.
You can blame Obama first, but that ain't exactly workin' out either. Hillary isn't going to be a very good scapegoat for your voting choices either. She's a product of herself, not of a political machine.

One of these days, you might accept responsibility for your own happiness, but judging by the spoiled little tittybabies I saw prancing around in Burns, Or, that's not going to happen either. LOL

So the Trump Party to the rescue. Military school might just give you the discipline you can't seem to find in yourselves.

[DaveDodo007]

Christ, non of you seem to understand what is happening around you. This is the first Internet driven election in the Western world. Trump is going to the Whitehouse driven by dank memes circumventing the main stream media corporate whores. Bernietots are just as fanatical as the Trump supporters but are too young to effect change but owe nothing to the democrat party and have no interest in voting Hillary. Any establishment candidate has nothing to offer the disaffected voter. Hillary has no grass root support and comes across like a dead fish that smells a bit. Because of her Wall St. support she is the status quo, name me someone who is excited about a Hillary victory? Trump will win because any attacks will be seen as the as the elite are trying to censor him. They have played the sexism and racist card too often for it to be effected.

[Tyrannical]

https://www.donaldjtrump.com/positions/tax-reform

His tax plan isn't too bad, a high personal deductible and eliminating most tax loop holes the rich use.