Donald Trump

[Barnsley]

There goes Ted Cruz ....

So a Clinton v Trump Presidential Election , which if what I have read is true , the majority of Americans want neither to President.

[Brah]

Some don't even want them to be Americans...

[BBCWatcher]

That's practically always true, especially at this point in the election cycle. Mr./Mrs. "Perfect" is never on the ballot.

[earthfriendly]

It is not all gloom and doom lah. Maybe, he will be the man with the will and ability to push for the simplification of the tax code. Which will benefit the entire citizenry. Cure the paralysis that is plague-ing Washington DC.

Speaking of tax code, my husband just received an amended W2. After we have already filed our tax return. Will need to meet with our tax preparer again. We think the HR got confused about some HSA (health insurance) issue. This is not the first year they adopted the HSA model and they are not that small of a company. Anyway, employees are compensated $250 for the trouble. It is just costing businesses more, the more complicated they make the tax code. And the time invested trying to comply.

[Strong Eagle]

Anyone who would vote for Trump is a racist... or more than willing to look the other way when it comes to racists who support Trump. Supporters of Trump _may_ not be racists and certainly all racists support Trump. He does nothing to stop them. Look at the hate spewed by so many at Malia Obama announcing her college choice... and Trump says not a word in condemnation.

It is inconceivable that a rational person could support Trump, for so many reasons. Racism, mysogeny, ignorance, narcissism... what more could we want in a president.

[earthfriendly]

Well, well, well, there are people out there who are weary of career politicians and bureaucrats. And he had managed to learn the rope in spite of his non-political background. I just don't think he is that incorrigible lah. He is playing to the tune of the mob (celebrity culture) to get to the prize. He will understand what is best for the country. I just don't think his IQ to be that low or irrational. Now, he is playing the role of an entertainer. But later on, he can pick up another role, that of which is to serve his country. Remember, he offered to buy up the plot slated to be a muslim center as it was causing too much divisiveness. And I don't think he is anti-immigrant (once again pandering for votes) as his (ex) wives are all immigrants themselves.

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-m ... JI20100909

"The people chose him, in part, because it is a total rejection of the political establishment as it now stands. That's an ominous sign, it seems to me, for Hillary Clinton, who is a pure product of that political establishment."

https://www.facebook.com/msnbc/posts/11 ... %22R%22%7D

[earthfriendly]

Also, I did not see Trump partake (or encourage) in the berating of Malia.

I mean, a candidate can easily paint himself to be a Mr. Nice Guy. All that lip service. But then comes the litmus test. Can he actually deliver during his presidency? Does he have what it takes. He is not as dumb as he looks. It is a ploy. Like an impressionist, he can morph into any character that he so chooses.

Same kind of scenario playing out in SG. People are rooting for the god-awful Chee Soon Juan in an attempt to break the stronghold of PAP. They are weary of that steamroller, that is the PAP.

https://thoughtsofrealsingaporeans.word ... -campaign/

Politics as usual, will no longer cut it. It will now be Politics Unusual. For the 21st century

[PNGMK]

As we left the meeting my friend asked me what I thought of this new party leader. With all the arrogance of 21 I replied: ‘A harmless lunatic with the gift of oratory.’ I can still hear his retort: ‘No lunatic with the gift of oratory is harmless.’”

[JR8]

And I don't think he is anti-immigrant (once again pandering for votes) as his (ex) wives are all immigrants themselves.

Yep, I agree with your post. Eagle is suggesting unattributed public comments, and then trying to pin these suggested comments directly on Trump, and so attempting to create a bogeyman.
Compare Trump vs the Obama's and Clinton's. The latter two, same race and nationality each, same universities, same course studied - Ivy league law-school power couples. Talk about incestuous, what do any of them know about life outside their comfortable same-same lives? And which one of the dynasties will be next to run, Michelle maybe, or Chelsea, and soon I'm sure it'll be Malia's 'my turn too'.

In comparison Trump is completely outside of the established DC political box, and naturally Dem's don't like that. Think of all the cosy and very well paid DC pols sitting on their gold-plated gravy-train for life, facing a new station manager from outside their tribe.

EF quoting: ""The people chose him, in part, because it is a total rejection of the political establishment as it now stands. That's an ominous sign, it seems to me, for Hillary Clinton, who is a pure product of that political establishment."

Exactly.

[JR8]

Excerpts from this Sundays piece by one of the UK-Telegraph's senior political columnists...
[I when I got to the point in green]
---------------
'Ignore the sneering elites - Donald Trump can win'
...
... The political class, and the pundits who cosy up to them, cannot understand why he has become the first man since Eisenhower to get to a US general election without having held any elected office.
That is because they have a pitiful understanding of the American people, who no longer conform to the patronising stereotypes of the past – stereotypes rooted in a deference to machine politicians that the contemptuous and often corrupt behaviour of those politicians has destroyed completely. Something similar is true in Britain, which is why so many in Westminster can’t grasp why the Leave campaign prospers in the polls.

...Mr Trump has a chance of the White House because modern Republicans have either governed disastrously – such as George W Bush – or had nothing to offer except platitudes and drivel, as with Mitt Romney in 2012.
... Hillary Clinton – a dismal machine politician ...Mr Trump will cause millions of Americans who have not hitherto voted in general elections to turn out on polling day, precisely because he offers something not normally available at general elections.

...Mrs Clinton will find him hard to tackle, compared with the central casting politicians she has hitherto fought either for the Senate or when she took on Barack Obama for the nomination in 2008. Trump is unpredictable, and won’t play by the Queensberry rules[*]. He will goad Mrs Clinton about her campaign funders, and the favours she has done for Wall Street. He will goad her about her conduct during the inglorious presidency of her much-diminished husband. He will goad her about the attack on Benghazi in which an American ambassador died while she was Secretary of State. He will goad her about using her hacked private email server to store state secrets, for which she still could end up being indicted. He will goad her about her – absurdly – taking a campaign donation in return for attending his last wedding. And he will goad her about things he hasn’t even thought of yet. Tens of millions will love it.

...Just as dangerous as radical Islam is Russia, an aggressive kleptocracy that has expanded its territory and influence not least thanks to the inertia of America under President Obama and the impotence of the EU. When Presidents Putin and Trump first sit down together – two self-obsessed egomaniacs and narcissists who have much in common – the result will either be a new cold war or the most remarkable alliance in history.

No wonder traditional politicians are so distressed. A peasants’ revolt is under way in America – as, indeed, it is in Britain and in much of Europe – and they are the target of the revolutionaries’ anger. It threatens nothing less than the end of an old order – an order that has failed because of its contempt for the feelings of voters who believed they lived in a democracy.
Perhaps Donald Trump has alienated too many Americans to win. But in the present climate, only a fool would say he won’t.'[/i]
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/05 ... p-can-win/

----------------
*Just in case: The official rules of professional boxing.

[JR8]

[sundaymorningstaple]

[BBCWatcher]

For what it's worth, as I write this Iowa Electronic Markets' bettors estimate that the Republican nominee has about a 30% chance of winning a majority of votes cast in the 2016 presidential election.(*) Bettors now consider Trump's chance of winning the Republican nomination to be nearly 100%. Putting those two figures together bettors currently think Donald Trump has slightly less than a 30% chance of being sworn into office on January 20, 2017.

The "over-under" is currently 59-41, meaning that the current betting consensus is that the Democratic nominee (most likely Hillary Clinton) will receive 59 votes to every 41 for the Republican nominee (most likely Donald Trump). If that's the actual result it'd easily be among the top 10 blowouts in U.S. presidential election history, comparable to Ronald Reagan's defeat of Walter Mondale in the 1984 election.

(*) Although the presidency is not decided based on the national popular vote, the Electoral College result is highly correlated with the popular vote. The Electoral College result diverged from the popular vote only four times in U.S. history: three times in the 1800s, and then in 2000.

[Strong Eagle]

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid ... =3&theater

[sundaymorningstaple]

That doesn't surprise me at all. After all, all four of them helped get us into the mess we're in today and all are part of the political machine regardless of which camp the originally came from. Add to that, one is biased because of the wife running, two are biased because of Jeb and the other is the sitting clown. No surprises there.