Tuesday, March 15, 2016

No More Trump Talk

I didn't realize it was a problem to defend freedom of speech and assembly along with free and fair elections, nor did I realize he would be a trap to tar anyone who may be predisposed to give him a look.

I actually believed the myths we were told regarding AmeriKan elections and our wonderful democracy. 

Silly me!

"The dangers in talking about Donald Trump" by Nestor Ramos Globe Staff  March 07, 2016

Until the returns from last Tuesday’s primary started to pour in, Jessica Woodbury had been following a hard and fast rule: No political conversations with anyone whose views she didn’t already know.

Woodbury, a writer who works in marketing and describes herself as pretty liberal, was living in fear — afraid, she said, that someone she otherwise liked might be supporting Donald Trump.

“You just don’t ask. You don’t want to know,” said Woodbury, 36. “The possibility that they are a Trump supporter is such a horrible thing.”

Politics and religion have long been taboo when it comes to socializing. But in and around historically liberal-leaning Boston, Trump’s polarizing candidacy has threatened to make even typical small talk feel fraught.

For some, dissecting and debating the catechism with the folks in line at Stop & Shop suddenly sounds like a pretty good alternative.

“I’ve lost friends on Facebook, I’ve lost friends on Twitter,” said Anthony Perrone, a 43-year-old from Wakefield. “I have stopped talking to, or am talking a lot less to, friends in real life.”

Me, too.

And the culprit, said Perrone, a Bernie Sanders supporter, is Trump.

He's responsible for all the ills of the world today, according to the Jew$media.

He's even the reason people are farting in elevators.

One woman who he often played video games with online and considered a friend recently told him she was supporting Trump. Perrone makes no secret of his Sanders support, and let her know how he felt about her decision. Within 10 minutes he’d been blocked.

“She wouldn’t even hear what I had to say. She blocked me on Twitter, she blocked me on the game, she blocked me on Facebook,” Perrone said.

“My neighborhood friend told me the other day that he’s voting for Trump because he’s just an average guy,” Perrone said. He wanted to get into yet another argument, but his wife was waiting for him.

Even some Trump supporters aren’t too keen on announcing their affiliation.

When Janet Dillon, 59, of Newbury, asked her daughter to put up Trump yard signs out front, she demurred. Even though her daughter is planning to vote for Trump, Dillon said, “she’s worried about what people will think.”

I won't be sharing any more of my votes with you or anyone else.

Dillon’s husband — who she said will also be voting for Trump should he be on the ballot in November — was also not too happy to find the family truck festooned with Trump bumper stickers.

But Dillon said that like many Trump supporters she doesn’t care what anybody thinks about her choice. She said she supports his policy ideas — if not his personal style — and expects more people to get on board “as he’s becoming more professional.”

That hasn’t kept her from announcing her support to anyone who will listen — even if some of her relatives wish she’d dial it back a bit.

I will be so don't worry.

“It’s kind of a big joke, because I go overboard sometimes,” she said.

Political conversations have always been risky, said Dr. Susan Heitler, a clinical psychologist. When a friend from childhood learned Heitler was voting for Mitt Romney in 2012, she said, she was promptly excommunicated.

Should they be, and if so, what does that say about the health of our democracy?

“They would rather close you off from their lives than open up their minds to new information,” Heitler said.

I know people like that.

But Heitler, author of “The Power of Two” and a forthcoming book that focuses on how to handle difficult conversations without anger, said the tenor of this year’s elections and the weapons-grade rhetoric coming from the candidates — headlined, of course, by Trump — has made such discussions more perilous than ever. 

Oh, the Globe is promoting a book here.

Nervousness about finding out your friends are on Team Trump even appears to cross party lines.

Amanda Caton, a Ben Carson supporter, said she’s so far “been fortunate” that no close friends have announced their support for Trump.

On Twitter, Caton said she’s reluctant to identify herself to people as an Evangelical Christian for fear she that she might be mistaken for a Trump supporter.

Me, too.

In an e-mail, Caton, 32, of Watertown, said she’s been tempted to ask acquaintances online who they’re supporting. But if it’s Trump, “even though I don’t want to think differently of them for doing so, it’s very hard not to.”

Donna McMahon said she speed-scrolls through Facebook so she can catch pictures of friends and family without alighting on anything that reveals their politics.

“I don’t want to see some of the stuff that I see,” said McMahon, a 58-year-old Clinton supporter from Saugus. “They feel free to be just very bigoted.”

She said she’s excommunicated friends for posts in support of Trump that she said expressed bigotry.

“It seemed like before you could discuss issues, but all of a sudden it started getting into bigotry and ideology,” McMahon said. “Everything became a heated fight.”

So now she just keeps scrolling past the potentially troubling parts in the interest of staying friends.

For Woodbury, last Tuesday was a turning point. Trump’s runaway win in the Massachusetts Republican primary convinced her that she should start asking people who they’re planning to support, and if it’s Trump, trying to understand why.

A liberal from a conservative Mormon family, Woodbury has been pretty good at not rocking the political boat. Trump’s rise, she said, has changed her thinking. 

Interesting.

“I think we have an obligation to talk to people,” Woodbury said.

She tries to be respectful, she said, but this year that can be tough.

“I usually start the primary season with a public statement on Facebook,” she said, like ‘Hey, let’s all be civil.’”

This year, she didn’t bother.

I'm wondering why I did with this.

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Of course, the Zionist war press done more than anyone -- along with the American government, FBI instigators, and the Syrian terrorists they can't track, etc, etc, --  to contribute and frame the foundation for all the toxic talk, but its all Trump's fault.

"Donald Trump’s widespread appeal worries Muslims in Mich." by Tracy Jan Globe Staff  March 07, 2016

DEARBORN, Mich. — Vote, he told the congregation populated mostly by Iraqi Muslims.

 And “not Republican.”  

Isn't that a violation of law separating church and state!? 

Can't preach politics from the pulpit, or aren't supposed to.

The large Muslim community in this diverse Detroit suburb, home to Ford Motor Co. headquarters, has grown increasingly alarmed amid rising Islamophobia many here attribute to Trump’s divisive rhetoric. The GOP front-runner has called for a ban on Muslims entering the country, the surveillance and shuttering of mosques, and the registration of Muslims living in America.

Interviews in recent days with Muslim residents of Dearborn — and participants at a Trump rally a short distance away — showed the deep chasms and resentments that are fueling emotions in this presidential election. Trump has a lead in polls of Michigan Republican primary voters, and Muslims like Hassan Qazwini, the visiting imam at the Az-Zahra Islamic Center just outside Dearborn, are fearful about the message another victory for the businessman would send.

But they don't mind the barrage of Zionist garbage propagated forth in the papers every day?

“Not only Muslims should be alarmed,” Qazwini said. “All these freedom-fighting democracy-loving people should be alarmed by the rise of a man like Donald Trump.”

The 52-year-old cleric knows that his words, videotaped to be posted later on YouTube, will echo far beyond the 300 men and women kneeling before him on the plush red carpet. As leader of Dearborn’s Islamic Center of America, the largest mosque in the country, until last year, he has had an audience with Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama. His opinions matter.

Qazwini compared Trump to Adolf Hitler and accused him of “brainwashing” people with “an agenda based on hatred and bigotry.”

He obviously doesn't read newspapers.

“Inshallah,” he said, using the Arabic term for “God willing,” “I hope the people of this country will heed this warning.”

Wow, he's a Zionist tool.

*  *  *

Earlier Friday, 18 miles away at a community college gym in Warren, Trump commanded the attention of thousands of cheering supporters.

How Hitlerian!

For 70 minutes straight, he delivered his usual broad-ranging stump speech, jeering at his opponents, bragging about his wealth, and — the crowd favorite — building The Wall along the Mexico border.

If one is good enough for Israel, it's good enough for the United States.

Women in flag tank tops danced in the bleachers and waved Trump signs. One voter held a large red mitten-shaped cutout of the state of Michigan with the words “Trump, this mitt loves you,” referencing former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney’s recent denouncement of Trump. A shirtless man in a red tie mimed in the distance.

Ali Harb, a 26-year-old writer for the Arab American News in Dearborn who emigrated from Lebanon 10 years ago, drank in the raucous scene from the middle of the gym floor. Harb had come to his first Trump rally to see for himself how Trump whips up a crowd.

Harb cited a recent state poll that said 61 percent of Michigan Republicans supported Trump’s proposal to ban Muslims from entering the country. His Muslim friends have begun darkly joking whether internment camps would have hookah and Wi-Fi.

He's a "conspiracy theorist!"

His newspaper has been the recipient of taunting tweets: “You, your religion, your national origins are EVIL. You don’t belong in this country.” Another said he wanted to go “target shooting” in Dearborn, home to the highest concentration of Arab Americans in the country — some of whom are Christian.

“Trump is a symptom. He’s not the cause of all of this,” Harb said. “He’s simply rallying the forces of hatred and giving them a mainstream American platform.”

As Trump spoke, protester after protester was ejected from the rally — five rounds in all. Their causes? Unclear, for the boisterous crowd quickly drowned out each one by booing and chanting “USA! USA!”

That chant is what sends fear through me. 

Trump commanded security to “Get ‘em outta here!” He ridiculed the protesters, calling one “meek,” another “stupid.” (The Detroit News later reported that one of the protesters escorted from the rally was a Muslim American who had shouted “Not all Muslims are terrorists!”) \

More on the MoveOn instigators later.

Trump pivoted seamlessly from protests to torture as he touched on the threat of the Islamic State. “They’re allowed to chop off the heads of people but we’re not allowed to waterboard?” he asked voters. They laughed.

Do you see me laughing?

In the crowd, 23-year-old Sean Staniec, who cleans ambulances for a living, said he agreed 100 percent with everything Trump says about Muslims. Having Muslims in the country, Staniec said, means “All they’re gonna do is find another World Trade Center and bomb it. There’s gonna be another Boston [Marathon bombing.]”

David Girjis, 17, said he would vote for Trump because “He tells it like it is.” The high school senior attended the rally with about 70 students who had persuaded the principal to give them the day off.

He's not old enough to vote.

Girjis said that he is friends with a couple of Muslims at school — “They are nice people” — but that a ban would be “the best thing for everyone right now, to keep us all safe.”

This is what bothers me about the idiot right. They buy into the Jewish narrative regarding all the wars based on lies.

Trump has also said Muslims should carry special identification cards and, as recently as Thursday’s GOP debate in Detroit, vowed that if elected president he would abandon the Geneva Convention and kill the wives and children of suspected terrorists.

Then he can join Obama, Hillary, and George W. in the war criminal line. 

Until then....

(He appeared on Friday to back off his proposal to kill terrorists’ families, issuing a statement saying he would be bound by international laws.)

CHECK!

Harb, the journalist, said Muslims are the largest targets of the Islamic State, also known as ISIS. Harb’s old neighborhood in Beirut was hit by two ISIS suicide bombers in November, in which 43 people died — one day before the Paris attacks that elevated Trump’s vitriol.

Not much coverage of that, indicating a U.S.-sponsored covert effort.

Told we are “getting victimized by the terrorists and the people who claim to want to fight the terrorists.” 

Problem is, they are the same people!

Dawud Walid, executive director of the Michigan chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, attended Friday’s service with his 14-year-old son.

Walid, who is African-American and an imam himself, said, “Racism can’t be legislated away. It’s a disease of the psyche and matter of the heart. Trump may not actually believe what he’s saying but he’s studied political trends. He’s a businessman and an actor, and he knows how to play the game.”

--more--"

Veterans support him:

"Local veterans hold rally in support of Muslims" by Laura Crimaldi Globe Staff  February 27, 2016

Local antiwar military veterans gathered outside New England’s largest mosque Saturday to show support for Muslims amid growing anti-Muslim sentiments that some believe have been stoked by the inflammatory tone of the presidential race.

The rally at the Islamic Society of Boston Cultural Center in Roxbury was organized by the Smedley D. Butler Brigade of Veterans for Peace and drew about 200 people.

“When you listen to what’s going on in presidential politics there is a lot of misinformation and some people are really misrepresenting what this religion is,” said Bob Funke, a US Army veteran and coordinator for the local veterans group. “They’re using it as a wedge issue and they’re scaring people. It’s the politics of fear.”

He must read the Globe.

Members of the mosque said they were touched by the support.

“Some of the veterans know Muslims and they saw them as good people,” said Tina Serir Abdallah, 38, of Everett. “There’s 1.7 [billion] Muslims worldwide and the majority of us live in peace.”

Supporters of Veterans for Peace carried white and black flags featuring the group’s logo, a white dove set against a combat helmet, and displayed signs reading “Muslims are not our enemy.”

Speakers included leaders from veterans’ groups and Islamic organizations as well as Boston Police Commissioner William B. Evans, who was last to address the crowd.

“We’re all Muslims deep down,” Evans said. “We all yearn for peace.” 

I thought we were all Jewish deep down.

Evans also visited the mosque in December after a Muslim couple carried out a mass shooting in San Bernardino, Calif. He said Saturday that Boston police treasure their relationship with the Muslim community.

“I don’t think we can tolerate bigotry toward the Muslim population. They’re an important part of our city,” Evans told reporters Saturday. “I just want to reassure them that we’re here for them.”

Nationally, Veterans for Peace has launched a campaign called “Veterans Challenge Islamophobia” to combat anti-Muslim rhetoric.

Supporters of the movement have attended events for Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump in the early voting states of South Carolina and Nevada to denounce his remarks about Muslims, said Barry Ladendorf, president of Veterans for Peace’s national organization.

He said the group does not take partisan political positions, but objects to comments Trump has made about closing some mosques, requiring Muslims to register in a national database, and keeping open the prison at Guantanamo Bay.

“Hate speech is not acceptable,” Ladendorf said. “We’re not against Trump. We’re against the speech.”

Then they have no concept of what they were told they were fighting to defend.

Last week, Veterans for Peace issued a statement criticizing Trump and his GOP rivals Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio for using “pro-torture rhetoric” on the campaign trail.

I'm opposed to torture, not their right to talk about it.

“The torture rhetoric is connected to Islamophobia,” the group said in a statement posted on its website. “Because virtually all of the waterboarding . . . was committed against Muslims, it is our position that the call for continued use of torture is tied to anti-Muslim hate and bigotry.”

Must not be a Boston Globe fan.

After Saturday’s rally, the crowd was treated to lunch inside the center, where some non-Muslim participants observed afternoon prayers. A representative of the mosque answered questions about the building and about Islam.

Yusufi Vali, the center’s executive director, said he was moved by the sight of Muslims and veterans standing together.

He said African-Americans, Mexican immigrants, Native Americans, and veterans have also experienced the same marginalization now facing Muslims.

“What is this deep disease in our society, in our nation, that is causing the rhetoric that we’re seeing at the national level, at the presidential level?” he asked. “I don’t have the answers for this.”

Mariam Mahmoud, 33, of Sharon, became emotional discussing the display of support.

She said women who practice Islam are often targeted because the hijabs they wear to cover their heads identify them as Muslims to others. Mahmoud said she is cofounder of Mercy to All Mankind, a nonprofit Islamic outreach group.

“We really appreciate that someone is standing up during this time to reflect what’s right and stop bigotry,” Mahmoud said. “It takes a lot of courage and bravery.”

She said she was once singled out by a man who made an obscene gesture at her while she was at an intersection with her three children.

“I didn’t even do anything,” Mahmoud said.

Welcome to America!

Armida Commesse, 36, of Foxborough, said she appreciated the veterans’ willingness to learn about her religion.

“It’s like breaking walls down,” she said. “My heart is just so filled with love.”

Speaking of walls..... Israel.

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Someone whose heart is not filled with love:

"An Idaho pastor who led the prayer at a weekend campaign rally for Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz was gunned down outside his church the following day but was expected to survive. Altar Church pastor Tim Remington, who has counseled drug addicts and inmates in this city about 30 miles east of Spokane, Wash., was shot as many as six times Sunday, including in the head and lung, officials said. Officials do not know what prompted the shooting. The Coeur d’Alene Police Department said it is looking for local resident Kyle Andrew Odom, 30, an ex-Marine who is considered armed and dangerous. Remington has been threatened several times by addicts he tried to help through his faith-based recovery program, Outreach pastor John Padula said." 

Then they burned down a school.

RelatedIdaho pastor regains consciousness; suspected shooter arrested

The man accused of shooting an Idaho pastor six times last weekend was arrested Tuesday evening outside the White House?

Proof of Ted Cruz Vote Fraud in Kansas and Maine 

So that is how he "won" Maine.

Related: 

Romney To Be Drafted at Republican Convention

Nancy Reagan funeral plans announced

That crowd is laughing at it, and the pictures are worth a thousand words; you see who is behind Obama?

"Trump wins Mississippi, Michigan primaries" by Julie Pace Associated Press  March 09, 2016

LANSING, Mich. — Republican front-runner Donald Trump swept to victory in the Mississippi and Michigan presidential primaries Tuesday, deepening his grip on the GOP nominating contest despite fierce efforts to block his path.

The primaries offered Trump a chance to pad his delegate lead and turn an eye toward the Democrats and the general election, as he emphasized the importance of helping Republican senators and House members get elected in the fall. Having entered Tuesday’s contests facing a barrage of criticism from rival candidates and outside groups, he reveled in overcoming the attacks.

“Every single person who has attacked me has gone down,” Trump said at one of his Florida resorts. In his typically unorthodox style, the billionaire was flanked by tables packed with his retail products, including steaks, bottled water, and wine.

While a handful of recent losses to Senator Ted Cruz of Texas have raised questions about Trump’s durability, Tuesday’s contests marked another lost opportunity for rivals to slow his momentum. Next week’s winner-take-all primaries in Ohio and Florida loom especially large as perhaps the last chance to stop him short of a long-shot contested convention fight.

Cruz carried the Idaho primary Tuesday; results from Hawaii were not expected until Wednesday.

Governor John Kasich of Ohio was in a fight for second place in Michigan and hoping for a boost heading into next week’s crucial contest in his home state.

For Senator Marco Rubio of Florida, a favorite of Republican elected officials, Tuesday marked the latest in a series of disappointing nights. He emerged from Michigan and Mississippi with no delegates.

Rubio insisted he would press on to his home state’s primary.

“It has to happen here, and it has to happen now,” Rubio told supporters Tuesday during a rally in Sarasota.

If Rubio and Kasich can’t win at home, the GOP primary appears set to become a two-person race between Trump and Cruz. The Texas senator is sticking close to Trump in the delegate count, and with six states in his win column, he has argued that he’s the only candidate standing between the brash billionaire and the GOP nomination.

During a campaign stop at a North Carolina church Tuesday, Cruz took on Trump for asking rally attendees to pledge their allegiance to him. He said the move strikes him as “profoundly wrong” and is something “kings and queens demand” of their subjects. 

He asked them to pledge their votes. A king or queen wouldn't ask that.

“I’m not here asking any of you to pledge your support of me,” Cruz said, to thunderous applause and cheers. “I’m pledging my support of you.”

In all, GOP candidates were fighting for 150 delegates Tuesday.

With Tuesday’s wins, Trump leads the Republican field with 428 delegates, followed by Cruz with 315, Rubio with 151, and Kasich with 52.

--more--"

"Trump and Clinton Win Primaries in Mississippi" by Patrick Healy New York Times  March 09, 2016

NEW YORK — Donald Trump easily dispatched his Republican rivals in the Michigan and Mississippi presidential primaries Tuesday, regaining momentum in the face of intensifying resistance to his campaign among party leaders.

After losing to Senator Ted Cruz on Saturday in Kansas and Maine, Trump needed one of his biggest performances of the campaign to tamp down doubts about his popularity after a week of gaffes, missteps, and questions about the strength of his political organization.

And he got one, demonstrating his appeal with working-class white voters in Michigan, an important battleground state, while beating back especially stiff challenges there from Governor John Kasich of Ohio and Cruz.

Trump, plugging several of his business interests in a victory speech that seemed straight out of QVC, crowed Tuesday night about having prevailed despite “$35 million worth of horrible lies” in advertising and other attacks by his rivals.

I'm so tired of the propaganda pre$$ hatchets with this man. I know he has baggage and is maybe all part of the play; however, it is reaching the point where I no longer care. If they hate him so much there must be something to it.

“There’s only one person who did well tonight, that’s Donald Trump,” he said in Jupiter, Fla., at one of his golf resorts. He also mocked Cruz. “He’s always saying ‘I’m the only one that can beat Trump,’ ” Trump said, imitating his rival, but adding: “He rarely beats me.”

The Republicans now turn to the biggest contests in March: Florida, where Trump is leading in the polls, and Ohio and Illinois, which have similar electorates to Michigan’s.

The results in Michigan were expected to offer clues to Trump’s fortunes in Ohio and Florida, which could energize or end the campaigns of Kasich and Rubio. Trump, the Republican front-runner, was aiming not only for victory in Michigan but also for a muddled outcome for his three rivals, so that none could convincingly claim to be the strongest alternative to him.

I think Kasich squeaks by in Ohio while Rubio loses in a close one. That will deny Trump the delegates and strengthen Cruz's hand.

Trump’s clear victory in Mississippi, one of four states voting Tuesday, showed that he remains the Republican favorite for the nomination and enjoys a fiercely loyal core of support. But the Republican opposition to Trump’s candidacy is just as sturdy, and there are signs that it is widening.

If the anti-Trump forces are to break his grip on the party, their last chance may be next week, when Ohio and Florida vote and Kasich and Rubio put their candidacies on the line in their home states. If Trump does not win those two states, it will be difficult for him, or any other candidate, to capture the nomination before Republicans gather for their convention in Cleveland this July.

The results Tuesday, including Republicans contests in Idaho and Hawaii, were bound to offer important insights about just how vulnerable Trump now is — and whether a Republican Party desperate to stop him can push the race to the floor of the party’s convention this summer.

Even before the votes were counted, there were new signs that resistance to Trump’s candidacy within his own party was growing. The number of Republicans viewing him unfavorably spiked to 46 percent in a Washington Post-ABC poll released Tuesday, the highest figure recorded in that survey since Trump entered the race last year. 

I'm glad I'm no longer a member of the "party."

He has been hurt by what has effectively been the first sustained assault from his rivals and third-party groups about his business dealings as well as by self-inflicted wounds — notably his initial hesitation to disavow the support of a white supremacist figure, David Duke, and his boasting about his sexual endowment at last week’s debate.

PFFFT! 

Keep trying to smear him with that and it is not working.

After appearing to be running away with the race following three consecutive wins last month, Trump has also made the nomination fight more competitive by refusing to build the sort of sophisticated organization that would reflect the seriousness of his candidacy. 

BULLSHIT! 

Related: Trump Unstoppable? 

So much for what the Boston Globe says, 'eh? 

Nothing but shit-shoveling narratives is all!

He was able to overcome his reliance on a skeletal campaign when the race was largely sequenced one state at a time and he could rely on the momentum gained from each new victory. But now that the contests are coming in weekly clusters, his lack of infrastructure is haunting him: He lost two of the three states holding organization-intensive caucuses Saturday.

Whatever, NYT. 

Perhaps just as consequential, Trump has been hurt by the decline of the candidate whom he attacked with such relish in recent weeks: Rubio — or, as Trump has called him, “Little Marco.”

With Rubio reaching a high-water mark of just 17 percent in the four states that voted Saturday, his voters apparently moved to Cruz. The Texas senator won two caucuses, in Kansas and Maine, and narrowly lost to Trump in Kentucky and Louisiana, the sort of conservative-leaning Southern states that Trump dominated four days earlier on Super Tuesday.

Of course, those southern states were supposed to be Cruz's, but whatever. I don't want that wrecking the crap narrative that is being shoveled.

Trump, however, was competing on more favorable terms this week. Three of four states voting Tuesday held primaries, rather than caucuses, and the two biggest delegate prizes, Michigan and Mississippi, had open voting, meaning that the Republican contest was not limited only to Republicans.

Right, it is Democrats and Independents crossing over and voting for Trump, yeah. All those bigoted, racist, Nazi Democrats.

But Trump was facing late threats in both Michigan and Mississippi. Kasich spent much of the past month with Michigan all to himself, as his rivals campaigned elsewhere. And Rubio’s fade benefited Kasich in Michigan, as mainstream Republicans there appeared to drift toward the Ohio governor.

There was less campaigning in Mississippi, but Cruz made a late push there by holding a rally in the Jackson area, and he picked up the endorsement of the state’s governor, Phil Bryant....

--more--"

RelatedSC lawmaker: Remove rebel emblem from Mississippi flag

Maybe he should keep his pants on before calling 911.

Also see:

Trump seems to have game off, on the course 

That's interesting; the Donald did NOT LIE about his golf game!

After Trump endorsement, NASCAR faces the fallout

Thus he drove down to Florida:

"Florida flooded with anti-Trump ad campaigns" by Matt Viser Globe Staff  March 09, 2016

MIAMI — A secretive political group with ties to the billionaire Koch brothers calls Donald Trump a wealthy draft-dodger. A super PAC funded by billionaires brands Trump University a “scam.’’

Oh, the Kochs don't like Trump. Put another feather in his cap.

“Trump picks on workers and widows,’’ says another big-spending organization, the conservative Club for Growth.

From the Florida Panhandle to the Florida Keys, wealthy interests aligned with the Republican Party are blitzing the state with millions of dollars in negative advertising, all aimed at convincing voters that Trump is a really bad guy. Trump’s response? Fight back with blistering ads of his own.

Consider the sources.

The campaign for Tuesday’s Republican primary in Florida is shaping up as a mudslinging battle of the billionaires, who are exploiting Swiss-cheese election spending rules that allow unlimited spending from undisclosed sources. At stake in this all-out spending war is the heart of the Republican Party, say the anti-Trump forces. 

I want to tear the heart of it and eat it.

“On virtually every issue — life, guns, taxes, Obamacare — [Trump’s] got no real core and depth of conviction on this stuff. It’s not ideological at all. It’s personality driven,” said Katie Packer, a former Mitt Romney campaign aide who launched Our Principles PAC in mid-January to oppose Trump.

Like all our politics. Can't be about anything else.

“This guy is very good at convincing people of what he wants them to hear.”

Yeah? 

We are talking politicians here, right?!

The Florida primary, most Republican insiders believe, is one of the last opportunities to derail the runaway Trump train.

They did in Kansas.

After sitting on the sidelines for weeks as Trump rolled up victories in early primary states, the anti-Trump forces have sprung to life.

But with little time left, and Trump’s remaining opponents still struggling to get traction, these moneyed interests have nowhere to turn but the airwaves. Cue the ominous music, gravelly voices, and grainy, unflattering images.

That's not going to work. As soon as the voter hears paid for by.....


“Florida is being set up, ad-wise, as an anti-Trump last stand,” said Elizabeth Wilner, a senior vice president at Kantar Media/CMAG, which monitors political ad spending.

And it will BACKFIRE despite all the voting shenanigans in that state.

“I don’t think I’ve had so many horrible, horrible things said about me in one week — $38 million worth of horrible lies,’’ Trump said Tuesday night in Jupiter, at one of his golf clubs, after winning the Michigan and Mississippi primaries.

He takes it better than I would.

So far, as Trump is quick to point out, it has not worked. Public opinion polls show Trump more than 15 percentage points ahead of his nearest rival in Florida, home-state Senator Marco Rubio. 

But Rubio is closing fast with the help of the Latino vote.

The delegate math of the GOP primary will give Trump an almost unstoppable advantage if he wins Florida and Ohio, which also votes Tuesday. Both are the first big states on the calendar that award delegates on a winner-take-all basis. 

That is why all the dirty tricks have been pulled out.

One of the initial donors to Our Principles PAC, the group run by Katie Packer, was Marlene Ricketts, wife of billionaire J. Joe Ricketts, the cofounder of T.D. Ameritrade, and the matriarch of the family that owns the Chicago Cubs. She gave the group $3 million in January, helping the group send mailers around Iowa and begin running TV ads, according to a recent Federal Election Commission filing.

On Super Tuesday — hours before Trump would win seven of 11 states — a group of top Republican operatives and donors held a conference call to solicit more funds for the super PAC, largely in preparation for the Florida onslaught. The call, which included Paul Singer and Meg Whitman, was first reported by The New York Times and confirmed by someone who was on the call. 

She was the Christie campaign's chief financial officer. 

That explains his failed showing!

“There has been a major response since the call,” said Tim Miller, a spokesman for the PAC. More money has come in over the past week alone than the $4.5 million the group had raised previously, he said.

Packer argues that about 20 percent of Trump’s support comes from people who are following him for the “cult of personality.” But a much larger group, of up to 40 percent, she says, “are reasonable — who can be reasoned with.”

That’s the group they are fighting to persuade.

That is INSANE SELF-DELUSION! 

What makes them think the Trump supporters they disrespect are going to fall back ion line and vote party? 

Why would they?

Another group opposing Trump is American Future Fund, which formed in 2007 and became a force on the national scene when it ran ads against Martha Coakley in 2010.

Most of its activities are run through a nonprofit, which enables it to shield the identity of its donors, but the group has ties to Charles and David Koch. Two of the brothers’ organizations, the Center to Protect Patient Rights and Freedom Partners Chamber of Commerce, gave $63 million to it in 2012.

Related: 

"nonprofits provide new ways for corporations and individuals to influence

As if they didn't have enough already (and the nonprofits also pay no taxes!)

“It took a while collectively for people to realize Trump had a legitimate shot at the Republican nomination, and to corral the forces necessary to oppose him,” said Stuart Roy, a spokesman for the group. “Now there’s a sense of urgency. We believe there’s a pathway to preventing Trump from getting the delegates. But it’s a very compressed timeframe that we’re working on.”

Roy declined to provide any breakdown on the group’s donors, or confirm or discuss the involvement of the Koch brothers.

In the Panhandle — an area rich with military bases, and with religious conservatives — the American Future Fund is running an ad criticizing Trump’s lack of military service. An affiliated group, American Future Fund Political Action, is running an ad attacking Trump’s use of profanity....

PFFFT!

--more--"

Related: KOCH BROTHERS - MAKING AMERICA RIGHT WING 

Oh, Donald Trump's campaign manager Corey Lewandowski is a Koch careerist?

No debating that:

"With candidates focused on policy, no personal attacks in GOP debate" by Matt Viser and Annie Linskey Globe Staff  March 11, 2016

CORAL GABLES, Fla. — The four remaining Republican candidates politely argued over foreign policy, immigration, and Social Security benefits in a presidential primary debate Thursday evening, refraining from the sorts of personal attacks that have dominated some previous debates.

The candidates, speaking with a degree of decorum that seemed to surprise even those on stage, agreed on a crackdown on trade policies, tougher immigration laws, and state-based education policies.

“So far, I cannot believe how civil it’s been up here,” Donald Trump said 30 minutes into the debate.

Trump for most of the debate seemed controlled, speaking in a low and even tone, avoiding the smirks that have become a trademark of his earlier appearances, and making a visible effort to appear presidential. Provoked by Senator Ted Cruz, Trump resisted the bait, tapping his lectern lightly and staring forward stone-faced.

But with key nominating contests looming next week, the shift in tone meant the debate lacked pivotal, breakout moments that would radically shift the dynamics of the race in favor of Trump’s trio of rivals.

I was told in print the opening moments focused on trade.

One of the more notable exchanges came during a discussion over how the country should treat Muslims. Trump, questioned about his recent comment that “Islam hates us,” was asked whether he was referring to all 1.6 billion Muslims.

“I mean a lot of them!” he said. 

Does he know why?

“Presidents can’t just say anything they want,” Senator Marco Rubio said. “It has consequences here, and around the world.”

The Florida senator referenced the number of Muslims who serve in the US military, something none of the other candidates on the stage has done, and recalled seeing the crescent moons — an internationally recognized symbol for Islam — on the tombstones at Arlington National Cemetery.

“I’m not interested in being politically correct. I’m interested in being correct,” Rubio said to loud applause. “We are going to have to work with people in the Muslim faith even as Islam itself faces a serious crisis within it of radicalization.”

Is he a virgin when it comes to Islam?

Trump alone advocated killing civilian family members of terrorists.

“We better expand our laws or we’re being a bunch of suckers, and they are laughing at us,” he said. “They are laughing at us, believe me.”

With trade-battered Midwestern states coming up on the political calendar, the country’s policy toward imports and exports dominated the first portion of the debate.

“We don’t want to lock the doors and pull down the blinds and ignore the world,” said Governor John Kasich of Ohio. 

Ah, verbatim print again, and we do when it's this crap!!

“Nobody knows the system better than me. I know the H1B. I know the H2B,” Trump said, referring to two contentious visa programs for guest workers.

Trump said those two programs are unfair, though he acknowledged that he uses the programs in his businesses.

"I know HIB very well. I use it. I shouldn't be allowed to use it," he said. "It's very, very very bad for workers." 

Oh, Trump knows!!!!  

And he didn't try to weasel around the issue like Mitt and his use of immigrant labor!

The candidates debated five days before Florida, Ohio, and three other states vote in the Republican primary — a crucial day that will determine whether Trump is on a virtually unstoppable track to capture enough delegates for the nomination. The two-hour debate was sponsored by CNN and held at the University of Miami.

Trump over the past week has faced a barrage of attack ads, pointed criticism from rivals, and a drumbeat of negativity by mainstream GOP figures, including former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney, the party’s 2012 nominee.

If Trump wins both Ohio and Florida on Tuesday, his rivals would be hard-pressed to prevent him from gaining the 1,237 delegates needed to secure the nomination heading into the Republican National Convention in July.

“One of the biggest political events anywhere in the world is happening right now, with the Republican Party,” Trump said in his opening statement.

Millions and millions of people are going to the polls, and they’re voting. They’re voting out of enthusiasm, they’re voting out of love,” he added.

He's right about that, although I don't know if it is love they are feeling. He is bringing millions of new voters out though.

Trump predicted he would win the nomination outright — “I think I’m going to have the delegates. OK?” — while Cruz made the case that he was the only candidate who could stop the New York businessman.

A key difference came early on Social Security. Rubio said that he would slowly increase the retirement age. For someone his age, 44, the retirement age would increase to 68. Without such measures, Rubio said, “Social Security will go bankrupt and it will bankrupt the country with it.”

Trump staked out a position to Rubio’s left. “It is my absolutely my intention to leave Social Security the way it is,” he said, adding that he would find savings by clamping down on waste and fraud.

There he goes again. 

Oddly, this didn't make print:

Trump stressed his pro-Israel credentials, noting that some of his grandchildren are Jewish and bragging that he was recently the grand marshal of the Israel Day Parade in New York City.

The author of “The Art of the Deal” seemed to relish the idea of negotiating a peace between Israel and the Palestinians as president. “I’m very, very pro-Israel,” Trump said. 

WELL, that's all I need to know. 

I have two qualifications for president: will he stand up to Israel, and.... 

Okay, I have one qualification for president.

“I’m a negotiator,” Trump mused. “Maybe we can get a deal. I think it’s probably the toughest negotiation of all time. But maybe we can get a deal done.”

Kasich quickly offered a counterpoint. “I don’t believe there is any long-term permanent peace solution,” he said.

Quit sucking up to Israel, will ya'?

If Rubio loses his home state, it would be the final blow after two weeks of struggles. This past Tuesday, he failed to win any of the four states — and in most he did not even meet the threshold to win any delegates.

I expect that tonight, even if Trump's name is not on half the ballots(??!!??).

He has emphatically declared that he would win Florida — and that the winner of Florida would become the GOP nominee. The debate Thursday night was held just 3 miles from Rubio’s home, and at the outset the crowd cheered far louder for him than anyone else.

During a town hall shown by MSNBC on Wednesday, Rubio said he regretted the tone his campaign had taken when he began making fun of Trump, mocking his makeup, his tan, the size of his hands, and even suggesting that he urinated on himself during a recent debate.

“At the end of the day, you know, that’s not something I’m entirely proud of,” he sad. “My kids were embarrassed by it, and if I had to do it again, I wouldn’t.”

“That’s not the campaign I want to run,” he added.

Too late to take it back now. We all saw it. You are not a president, and saying such things has consequences (saw that somewhere above).

Rubio had one of his strongest debates of the campaign Thursday, forcefully making his case through substantive policy arguments and without personal attacks.

Too late.

Trump — who said he would be endorsed on Friday by Ben Carson, who recently dropped out of the race — has teetered between conciliatory rhetoric about unifying the party and the kind of seat-of-the-pants, divisive dialogue that has become his trademark.

Related:

‘‘There’s two Donald Trumps. There’s the Donald Trump that you see on television and who gets out in front of big audiences, and there’s the Donald Trump behind the scenes. They’re not the same person. One’s very much and entertainer, and one is actually a thinking individual.’’

Blasphemer!

In the hours before the debate his campaign was consumed with two separate accusations of assault at his campaign events. In the first, which was captured on video and played over and over on cable television, a man was charged with punching a protester at a rally in Fayetteville, N.C. 

I don't approve of violence, but I recognize instigating agent provocateurs when I see them.

More on that later.

In the second, a reporter at Breitbart News accused Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski of aggressively trying to pull her to the ground, bruising her arms in the process, while she tried to ask Trump a question after an event Tuesday. A Washington Post reporter was nearby and confirmed most of the details.

And who could ever doubt the Washington Post?

“We have some protesters who are bad dudes. They do some bad things,” Trump said when asked about the atmosphere at his rallies. Asked whether his tone was triggering violent responses, Trump said, “I hope not. I truly hope not.”

Kasich has yet to win a state, but polls are showing him gaining ground, largely at Rubio’s expense. He appears better positioned in his home state of Ohio than Rubio is in Florida: A Fox News poll released Wednesday showed Kasich ahead of Trump in Ohio....

PFFFT!

Of course, after Michigan we know polls mean nothing.

--more--"

Pulling no punches now:

"Man charged with sucker-punching protester at Trump rally" by Ashley Parker New York Times  March 10, 2016

A black protester being escorted out of a Donald Trump campaign rally Wednesday in Fayetteville, North Carolina, was sucker-punched and shoved by a Trump supporter, several videos on social media show.

The protester, identified by The Washington Post as Rakeem Jones, 26, was being walked by sheriff’s officers up an aisle at the Crown Coliseum, amid loud boos from the crowd, when a white man in a cowboy hat stepped toward Jones, punched him in the face and shoved him off-balance.

This has the feel of a completely staged event to discredit Trump.

Jones stumbled, then could be seen on the floor surrounded by sheriff’s deputies. In some of the videos, at least two deputies who were following Jones up the arena steps could be seen walking past the man who had just punched Jones.

But Thursday, WRAL, the local NBC television affiliate, reported that a 78-year-old man — John McGraw of Linden, North Carolina — had been charged with assault and battery and disorderly conduct. The station cited the Cumberland County Sheriff’s Office. Messages left with a spokesman for the sheriff’s office were not immediately returned.

A 78-year-old guy? 

How much could he really get on that punch?

It was not the first violent incident at a Trump rally, nor the first with racial overtones. Another African-American protester, a female student at the University of Louisville, was pushed and jostled at a rally in Louisville this month and called “leftist scum” and other racial slurs.

Hope Hicks, a Trump campaign spokeswoman, called such incidents unfortunate but said the campaign had “no control” over its supporters’ behavior. She did note that the campaign plays a safety announcement before each event, instructing the crowd not to touch or harm protesters.

“We obviously discourage any kind of physical contact or engagement with protesters,” she said.

Later in the Fayetteville rally Wednesday, when another in a series of demonstrators was being led out, Trump himself lamented what he called “the good old days” when someone who acted up would be carried out “on a stretcher.”

So says the New York Times.

--more--"

"Obama says GOP’s hostility toward him led to rise of Trump" by Josh Lederman and Steve Peoples Associated Press  March 10, 2016

WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama blames years of knee-jerk GOP hostility toward him for fueling Donald Trump’s rise, arguing Thursday that Republicans have no one to blame but themselves.

Trump’s GOP rivals headed into their final debate before next week’s key primaries wondering if it was already too late to stop him from claiming their party’s nomination.

Relishing the opportunity to ridicule what he called the GOP ‘‘circus,’’ Obama sought to tie Trump to his primary election opponents by claiming they see eye to eye on the issues — even if the flamboyant billionaire puts on a more provocative act. The president said that on immigration and other issues, Trump’s not so different from Texas Sen. Ted Cruz and Florida Sen. Marco Rubio.

‘‘What I’m not going to do is to validate some notion that the Republican crackup that’s been taking place is a consequence of actions that I’ve taken,’’ Obama said in the Rose Garden, citing conspiracy theories about his birth certificate as Exhibit A. ‘‘I don’t remember saying, ‘Hey, why don’t you ask me about that?’’’ 

Now I know that was a red herring and straw man meant to poison the well. 

He wouldn't have brought it up otherwise.

Obama’s diagnosis of the GOP’s ills came as Trump’s rivals appeared increasingly worried that he had all but locked up the nomination, and that if anyone can stop him, it’s Cruz, a polarizing conservative firebrand. Even Cruz’s pickup of an endorsement from Utah Sen. Mike Lee — notably the first from any of his Senate colleagues — underscored just how much he’s disdained within the Republican establishment.

Cruz is there to deny Trump delegates, that's all.

Of course, he could always cooperate with the Donald at the convention. 

Make a deal, if you like.

Illustrating the dire straits for the anti-Trump forces was growing speculation that Rubio, once seen as the best chance to stop Trump, may soon bow out of the race — potentially even before his home state of Florida votes on Tuesday. Rubio’s campaign repeatedly has denied suggestions he’ll get out before the primary, a withdrawal that could at least spare him a potentially humiliating defeat on his home turf. 

He didn't.

Obama, standing alongside Canada’s new prime minister, Justin Trudeau, mused it was ‘‘novel’’ that some Republicans have pointed the finger at him for the deteriorating tone of American politics.

Related:

Mr. Trudeau goes to Washington

Obama, Canada’s Justin Trudeau unveil efforts to fight climate change

Did you see the dinner they had afterwards?

"More than 170 guests sporting tuxedos and designer gowns attended the glitzy state dinner. The White House East Room was transformed by the addition of cascading arrangements of blooming orchids, hydrangeas and amaranth in shades of green and white intended to evoke the coming of spring — much like Trudeau’s election in October has ushered in a new season in Canadian politics. The guest list featured a hefty dose of Canadian star power from actors Michael J. Fox, Mike Myers, Sandra Oh and Ryan Reynolds, along with ‘‘Saturday Night Live’’ creator Lorne Michaels. Professional sports were represented by the U.S. hockey and basketball commissioners, along with retired NBA player Grant Hill and his wife, Tamia, a Canadian singer. A small group of Democratic U.S. senators attended, joined by Republicans Susan Collins of Maine and Orrin Hatch of Utah. Obama and first lady Michelle Obama greeted the Trudeaus as they arrived for dinner, with the wives exchanging cheek kisses. Mrs. Obama turned again to one of her favorite designers, Jason Wu, who dressed her in a midnight blue floral jacquard gown with asymmetrical draping. The prime minister’s wife wore a bright purple dress with coral flower trim by Canadian designer Lucian Matis. The dinner menu was also designed with spring in mind: halibut casserole with spring vegetables; salad with apricots roasted in ginger, cardamom and White House honey; and herb-crusted Colorado lamb drizzled with a Canadian whiskey sauce. The dessert course is cake made with toasted Texas pecans and New England maple syrup, along with a separate hand-crafted sugar sculpture inspired by the Rocky Mountains and bearing an assortment of petite pastries with American and Canadian influences."

Even Obama's daughters were there.

Rather, he said, the Republican establishment had created ‘‘an environment where somebody like a Donald Trump can thrive.’’

I agree with that.

GOP leaders have done that, he said, by telling the party for seven years that ‘‘everything I do is to be opposed, that cooperation or compromise somehow is a betrayal, that maximalist, absolutist positions on issues are politically advantageous, that there is a ‘them’ out there and an ‘us,’ and ‘them’ are the folks who are causing whatever problems you’re experiencing.’’’

No, that's not it; it was the denial of Ron Paul that has done this.

The likelihood of a Trump nomination wasn’t unnerving Hillary Clinton — at least not publicly. The Democratic candidate told voters in Tampa, Florida, that the GOP race wasn’t for her to decide.

‘‘But given what they’ve all said,’’ Clinton said, ‘‘I will take any one of them.’’

For months now, anti-Trump Republicans have been hoping that a winnowed field would allow a single candidate to emerge as a strong alternative that the party could rally behind. In a twist, the playing field has shifted so their best chance for stopping Trump may be if his three remaining rivals all post wins in their strongest states, denying him the 1,237 delegates he needs to clinch the nomination. 

What party once you deny him?

Under that scenario, which Republican candidates and their party’s leaders have been reluctant to discuss, the nomination could be wrested from Trump during a brokered national convention in July. 

And then the bodies will hit the floor!

Though the GOP candidates have been eyeing Florida and its 99 delegates for months, none of Trump’s rivals was expected to campaign aggressively in the state the next few days, facing the strong possibility of a Trump romp there on Tuesday. For Rubio in particular, failure to win in Florida would spur intense calls from fellow Republicans to end his campaign.

Gov. John Kasich, too, was facing a make-or-break contest on Tuesday: this one in his home state of Ohio. Sixty-six delegates are at stake in that contest, which offers Kasich his best opportunity to win his first state and keep his campaign alive.

Yet Trump’s biggest threat remained Cruz, who has secured 359 delegates to Trump’s 458 in the Republican contests held so far. Trump renewed his vigorous criticism of Cruz on Thursday, casting the rival he calls ‘‘Lying Ted’’ as too polarizing to break the Washington gridlock or win a general election.

The coming burst of primary contests also weighs heavily on the Democrats, with Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders aiming to turn his surprising victory in Michigan into continued longevity for a primary battle that many Democrats had figured was nearing an end. Though Clinton is now halfway to the delegate count needed for nomination, Sanders’ success in Michigan offered a fresh rationale for the self-declared democratic socialist to keep fighting Clinton. 

It's over after tonight.

The two tussled a night earlier in a Democratic debate about whose record on immigration makes them the better advocate for Latinos. Clinton faulted him for repeatedly voting against a 2007 comprehensive immigration reform bill, while the Vermont senator faulted her for opposing a 2007 effort to allow people who were in the country illegally to obtain driver’s licenses.

--more--"

Did you see who was serving that state dinner?

"Donald Trump may be the best thing to happen to Latinos" by Marcela García Globe Staff  March 11, 2016

In the age of Donald Trump, such sentiments are implicitly permitted to rise from bigots’ murky mental underbrush out into the open. What happened afterwards demonstrated an important lesson for immigrants: Complacency is no longer an option — not only for immigrants, but for all Americans who care about fundamental values.

A recent analysis of data on Trump supporters found that most of them live in areas that rank high in Google searches for racial slurs and jokes. No, that doesn’t prove a direct correlation, but few can deny that some of Trump’s strongest support is driven by racial and ethnic hostility.

That racial hostility increasingly is out in the open now, laid bare. And that’s a Trump outcome that I welcome. It’s better to face that resentment and antagonism head on. You can’t target it, and hope to eradicate it, while it’s hidden....

I SO AGREE!!

See: 

Six Zionist Companies Own 96% of the World's Media
Declassified: Massive Israeli manipulation of US media exposed
Operation Mockingbird


So what do we do about Jewish supremacism masking itself as news?

--more--"

All that opinion piece was anecdotal shit!

Also see: 

No Sunday Globe Delivery Today

Whose Delivering the Bo$ton Globe These Days?

I wonder if the reporters are still delivering the paper because I haven't seen a story in weeks if not longer.

RelatedGlobe parts ways with home delivery company

That answers that question, and I think I'm going to stop picking it up.

"Skirmishes erupt after Trump cancels Chicago rally" by Jenna Johnson and Mark Berman The Washington Post   March 12, 2016

How odd that my print copy byline is Jose A. DelReal.

CHICAGO - Donald Trump hastily postponed his Friday night rally in Chicago because of ‘‘growing safety concerns’’ created by thousands of protesters inside and outside of an arena at the University of Illinois. The decision immediately sparked nasty verbal and physical fights between protesters and Trump supporters who had been eager to see him that night.

"Protesters and supporters of Donald Trump clashed in sometimes-violent fashion here and in Chicago on Friday, the latest in an escalating series of confrontations that have come to define the front-runner’s rowdy campaign rallies even as he gets closer to securing the Republican nomination.

Later in the day in Chicago, Trump canceled a rally at the University of Illinois at Chicago after brawls broke out at the event site."

I will have more on these thuggish tactics against Trump below.

The Republican front-runner’s rallies have become increasingly violent in the past two weeks, and Trump’s remarks are often interrupted by protesters denouncing his controversial stances, especially those on immigration and the treatment of Muslims. But Trump has never had to cancel a rally because of the threat of protesters.

A crowd of more than 9,000 learned of the cancelation at about 6:35 p.m. Central Time, more than half an hour after Trump was scheduled to take the stage. The thousands of protesters immediately burst into cheers and began chanting: ‘‘We stopped Trump! We stopped Trump!’’

They should have chanted "We oppose free speech! We oppose free speech!" "We are pro-censorship! We are pro-censorship!"

Many of Trump’s supporters, who had waited hours to see him, seemed stunned and a few tried a chant of their own, without much luck: ‘‘USA! USA!’’ As the two sides reacted to the news, skirmishes broke out in the crowd and spilled out of the arena into a mass protest outside.

‘‘It sent a message that Chicago is a very liberal city and it will always be a liberal city because it does not promote hate -- it promotes love and it promotes prosperity,’’ said Farris Ahmad, 23, a protester and junior political science major at the College of DuPage. He was cut off by a group of police sparring with a Trump supporter who had ripped away a cloth sign being held by a protester, sparking a profanity-filled tussle.

Then what is with the record number of shooting deaths and the cops blowing away black men?

‘‘I'm so hurt, I'm so upset -- we were so excited. I just can’t believe there’s that many people that would come in here and destroy this,’’ said Valerie Schmitt, 65, a Trump supporter from Naperville, Illinois, who teared up as she watched the protesters celebrate. ‘‘It’s one thing if they are outside, but this is just a shame that they did this.’’

You should be.

Meanwhile, inside the Peabody Opera House in St. Louis earlier in the day, protesters interrupted Trump eight times, prompting catcalls and chants from the crowd. 

Trump is known for his massive, raucous rallies – part campaign events, part media spectacles, part populist exaltations for his most loyal supporters. But the events have also become suffused with the kind of hostility and even violence that are unknown to modern presidential campaigns. 

Is it?

The candidate himself often seems to wink at, or even encourage, rough treatment of protesters.

“Come on, get ’em out, police, please. Let’s go!” Trump shouted here Friday, complaining that protesters could not be removed more quickly because “nobody wants to hurt each other anymore.”

In incidents around the country this month, local police officers and security personnel frequently have been unable to keep anti-Trump protesters safe when their largely peaceful, if noisy, demonstrations have been met with physical attacks. 

Really? 

Hmmmmmm!

The confrontations have only grown as Trump events have become a regular destination for liberal demonstrators, who are increasingly organizing large contingents through social media.

The clashes almost always feature an uncomfortable racial component as well: Many of the protesters are black or Latino, while Trump’s crowds are almost entirely non-Hispanic whites.

SEE: Credible Account Says Clinton Is Behind Violent Protests at Trump Rallies

With Soros funding at the bottom of it. 

Of course, when some left-wing fa$ci$t that destroys countries by manipulating currencies, that's okay and considered a good thing by so many around here. 

The Chicago Police Department said it was informed shortly before 6:30 p.m. that the Trump campaign had canceled the event, an announcement that took the department by surprise, according to the police chief.

The department ‘‘had no role, we were not consulted or provided an opinion’’ about whether or not to cancel the event, John J. Escalante, the interim police superintendent, said at a news briefing Friday night. A department spokesman said that police did not issue any public safety threats or safety risks before the cancellation.

Looks like a stand down order to me.

The Trump campaign released a statement that said: ‘‘Mr. Trump just arrived in Chicago and after meeting with law enforcement has determined that for the safety of all of the tens of thousands of people that have gathered in and around the arena, tonight’s rally will be postponed to another date.’’

More than an hour before Trump was set to arrive in Chicago, tension was already high in the arena at the University of Illinois at Chicago, where several thousand protesters eager to denounce his message waited alongside several thousand Trump supporters eager to hear him speak. Outside, thousands more gathered. At first the altercations were verbal, with protesters yelling at supporters and vice versa.

In an arena section dominated by protesters, a black man dramatically ripped a Trump campaign sign in half and then quietly held up the two pieces. A young Latino man yelled at a small group of Trump supporters, flashing his two middle fingers. A small group of women repeatedly shouted: ‘‘F--- Trump!’’ As police selectively escorted some of the most disruptive protesters out, the crowd shouted: ‘‘Let them stay!’’

That's provocative! 

F*** them!

While most rally goers quietly watched this unfold, a few Trump supporters directly engaged with the protesters, resulting in nasty verbal confrontations. Dozens of police officers worked to keep the crowd calm and escort out the most disruptive people from both sides. One exasperated Trump supporter walked past the protesters and shouted: ‘‘God! Why do you create fools?’’

As soon as the cancelation was announced, shoving matches broke out between the two groups, and police tried to break up one scuffle after another. Everyone moved outside, and the crowd grew in numbers and the altercations continued. Hundreds of protesters gathered in the streets and in a parking garage, and clashed with Trump supporters leaving the rally.

After the rally was canceled, demonstrators on the streets could be heard shouting ‘‘Bernie! Bernie’’ as well as ‘‘16 shots,’’ a reference to the number of times a white Chicago police officer fired at Laquan McDonald, a black 17-year-old killed in 2014. Large protests erupted in Chicago after video footage of McDonald’s death was released last November.

But those protests have faded in favor of these controlled opposition cut-outs, as have the calls for Rahm to resign.

Escalante said he was not aware of any concerns the Trump campaign had regarding security at the event.

I'm sure they didn't have any. This caught them by surprise.

He said the department was ‘‘confident we had a proper amount of resources’’ and had let the campaign know that, adding that they felt they could provide security for attendees and protesters alike.

Five people were arrested Friday night, Escalante said. He also said two Chicago police officers were injured with non-life-threatening wounds. One of them was hit in the head with a bottle and will need stitches.

Must have been a Trump supporter.

‘‘It is unfortunate that parties on both sides allowed their political views to become confrontational,’’ Escalante said.

Trump later called into MSNBC and said on the air that he did ‘‘the right thing’’ by canceling his rally in Chicago.

‘‘You can’t even have a rally in a major city in this country anymore without violence or potential violence,’’ Trump said. ‘‘I didn’t want to see the real violence, and that’s why I decided to call it off.’’

It was a very.... gulp.... presidential thing to do.

Trump added, ‘‘You have so much anger in the country - it’s just anger in the country, and I don’t think it’s directed at me or anything. It’s just directed at what’s been going on for years.’’

In an interview with anchor Chris Matthews, Trump was defensive and argued that the anger boiling over at his rallies had been building for years and was not spurred by his campaign alone.

Ain't that the truth!

‘‘We have a very divided country,’’ Trump said. ‘‘We have a country that’s so divided that maybe even you don’t understand it. I've never seen anything like it.’’

When Matthews asked whether he would tell his supporters not to engage with protesters, Trump said he wanted them to leave the Chicago arena peacefully.

‘‘I don’t want to see people hurt or worse,’’ he said.

There were 200 Chicago police officers outside the event, and another 100 were called in to the area after the department heard rumors Trump might cancel the event. The University of Illinois at Chicago’s police department was responsible for security inside the building, Escalante said. 

Shades of 1968.

Kevin Booker, chief of the university police, said in a statement that ‘‘the vast majority of attendees at today’s events exercised their Constitutional rights of free speech and free assembly peacefully.’’

Booker said his department had worked with the Chicago police, Secret Service and Illinois State Police, along with as well as campaign and protest organizers, in addressing security for the event.

‘‘The abrupt announcement of the cancellation of the event created challenges in managing an orderly exit from the Pavilion, which nonetheless, was accomplished with no injuries or arrests,’’ Booker said. 

Imagine if he hadn't.

After the event was canceled, the university police called on city police officers to help them inside after fights began to break out in the pavilion, Escalante said.

CBS News reported Friday that Sopan Deb, a journalist covering the Trump campaign, had been detained by law enforcement.

More on him below.

Sanders, en route from Toledo, Ohio, to Chicago to address a rally of his own, expressed concern over the incident.

‘‘I hope that we are not in a moment in American history where people are going to be intimidated and roughed up and frightened about going to a political rally. ... I hope Mr. Trump speaks out forcefully and tells his supporters that that is not what the American political process is about.’’

He did.

One of Trump’s competitors, Ohio Gov. John Kasich (R) blamed Trump for the violence on Friday.

Near as I can tell, he is being blamed for everything that goes wrong anywhere right now and for every single problem on planet Earth. Trump's fault!

‘‘Tonight the seeds of division that Donald Trump has been sowing this whole campaign finally bore fruit, and it was ugly,’’ Kasich said in a statement. ‘‘Some let their opposition to his views slip beyond protest into violence, but we can never let that happen. I urge people to resist that temptation and rise to a higher level.’’

Oh, it is Trump that has sown those seeds, huh? 

Then I'll just ignore the last 15 years of horse $hit media that laid the foundation for the way the American people feel.

Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Florida, stopped short of blaming Trump, but said that the Republican frontrunner is learning that ‘‘words have real consequences.’’

‘‘I wouldn’t say Mr. Trump is responsible for the events of tonight,’’ Rubio said on Fox News, ‘‘but he is most certainly, in other events, has in the past used some pretty rough language, saying in the good old days we used to beat these people up, or I'll pay your legal bills if you rough them up. So I think he bears some responsibility for the general tone.’’

And what about those like you, Marco, pushing for Israel's wars? 

What responsibility you bear for that, huh?

Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, organized an impromptu press conference outside a dinner event in Rolling Meadows, Illinois, and took a harsher tone against Trump.

‘‘The responsibility for that lies with protesters, who took violence into their own hands. But in any campaign, responsibility starts at the top,’’ Cruz said. ‘‘Any candidate is responsible for the culture of a campaign. 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.’’

This from a guy who wants to carpet bomb U.S-created ISIS.

The brawling has cast a shadow over Trump as he gets closer to becoming his party’s standard-bearer. His detractors feel they are being censored through the threat of force, while his supporters – and the candidate himself – say protesters are intentionally stirring up trouble to characterize him negatively. 

That is the way it looks, yeah.

On Wednesday, Rakeem Jones, 26, and several friends visited a large rally in Fayetteville at the Crown Center Coliseum to see the real estate mogul. They began shouting, “Bigot!” shortly after Trump took the stage.

I think people should shout "Asshole" at all political leaders whenever they talk, and don't stop until they leave.

--more--"

A moment of silence, please:

"Mourners say farewell to Nancy Reagan and a bygone Republican era" by Alessandra Stanley New York Times   March 12, 2016

SIMI VALLEY, Calif. — Nancy Reagan was memorialized at her funeral at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library on Friday, closing a chapter of history revered by conservatives as the Republican Camelot.

Eulogists paid tribute to the former first lady whose fierce, unwavering devotion was essential to Ronald Reagan’s success. But mourners were also saying goodbye to an era in the 1980s that has been romanticized by time — and the current meltdown of order and civility in Republican politics.

“They had style, they had grace, and they had class,” Brian Mulroney, who was the prime minister of Canada and a close ally during Ronald Reagan’s second term as president, said in his eulogy.

James A. Baker III, a former chief of staff, Treasury secretary, and secretary of state, spoke, and George P. Shultz, another former secretary of state, was also there. Robert C. McFarlane, President Reagan’s national security adviser, and Peggy Noonan, The Wall Street Journal columnist and Reagan speechwriter, attended, members of a dwindling inner circle of Reagan administration alumni.

Democrats had the grave and glamorous era of JFK, a sparkling time and an irrecoverable one,” Noonan said in an interview. “And now perhaps Republicans look back and feel they, too, had a Camelot.”

Nancy Reagan planned every detail of the service, including the guest list.

Michelle Obama was there, as were two former Democratic first ladies, Hillary Clinton and Rosalynn Carter. So was Caroline Kennedy, the US ambassador to Japan, and former president George W. Bush and his wife, Laura.

Did you see all the huggins

If that doesn't put the lie to the $hit-$how fooley nothing will.

Governor Jerry Brown of California, whose father, Edmund G. Brown, lost to Ronald Reagan in the 1966 election for governor, was there, too. So was Brown’s immediate predecessor, former governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, who sat next to his wife, former television reporter Maria Shriver. 

I'll bet they had plenty of water available.

The marriage to the former Nancy Davis was not Reagan’s first, but it was so loving that Republicans still idealize it, particularly in the way the Reagans glazed traditional roles with Hollywood glamour and a patina of newly minted wealth.

Although the Reagans may have come to Washington as envoys from nouveau riche California, by the end they were pillars of propriety and dignity. To their supporters, they were reverse Kennedys: unapologetically old-fashioned and doting toward each other.

They were also a couple with rebellious children who did not always pay fealty to Reagan family values — their daughter, Patti Davis, 63, was often estranged from her mother and wrote an unflattering autobiography, “The Way I See It.”

Davis, in her eulogy on Friday, recalled the difficulties. “It’s no secret that my mother and I had a challenging and often contentious relationship,” she said, adding that “I tried her patience, and she intimidated me.”

Nonetheless, Davis said, “there were moments in our history when all that was going on between us was love.”

People who grew up alongside the Reagans have less complicated emotions.

Robert H. Tuttle, who worked in the Reagan White House and later became the US ambassador to Britain under President George W. Bush, remembers how Ronald Reagan inspired his father, Holmes Tuttle, one of the original founders of the so-called kitchen cabinet that recruited Reagan to run for governor of California.

“From the beginning, Reagan could articulate what my father and his friends felt was going wrong with the country — higher taxes and overregulation,” Tuttle said. “They felt he had a vision of how great America was and could be again.”

That's TRUMP'S LINE!

Eulogists did not dwell on Nancy Reagan’s tempestuous first years in the White House, which gave way to the causes she took on that improved her public image, notably the “Just Say No” campaign against drug use that was inspired, in part, by the drug-related problems she witnessed among some of her friends’ children.

That's print; the rest is web adders.

The actor Mr. T, who was one of her celebrity allies in the campaign, was at the funeral.

After Reagan began losing his battle against Alzheimer’s disease in the 1990s, Nancy Reagan returned to the stealth combat mode of her White House years. She lobbied behind the scenes to reverse George W. Bush’s block on federal funds for embryonic stem cell research, consulted scientists over private lunches, and used her telephone to push government officials, senators, and journalists.

Tom Brokaw, the former NBC news anchor who befriended Nancy Reagan when he covered her husband as the California governor, also spoke at the funeral.

Even the rivals in Thursday night’s Republican debate, which began with a moment of silence in Nancy Reagan’s honor, seemed to mind their manners as a kind of homage to her notions of decorum. Donald Trump marveled at how “civil” the discussion had turned.

--more--"

So much for that; this the Sunday Globe's top special:

"The GOP’s 2012 nominee had been astonished and dismayed over Trump’s divisive rhetoric and unchecked rise to the top of the party’s presidential field. Yet he kept his counsel for months, refraining from any public rebuke, partly because of worries within his inner circle over what Trump would say in a counterattack. Now Romney felt he could no longer remain silent." 

He should have kept his mouth shut, and what makes you think I give a f*** what that polygamist bastard thinks???? 

Mormons are really known for their diversity, too! 

F***ing hypocrite!!!!!!!!!!!!!

"Trump rally sparks extraordinary stretch in Republican race" by Julie Pace and Thomas Beaumont Associated Press  March 12, 2016

CLEVELAND — In a Republican presidential primary filled with extraordinary moments, a 24-hour stretch that began Friday night stands above them all.

Opponents of Donald Trump were so committed to keeping him from speaking in Chicago that they aggressively clashed with supporters, forcing the GOP front-runner to abruptly cancel his rally before it even began.

The next morning, two of the candidates still fighting to defeat Trump, Florida Sen. Marco Rubio and Ohio Gov. John Kasich, said they were so disgusted by the chaos that they may not support the billionaire businessman if he clinches their party’s nomination.

The establishment got to them! 

Two weeks ago they all said they would at the end of the debate!

And when Trump appeared at another rally Saturday morning in Ohio, he was suddenly pulled midspeech into a protective ring of U.S. Secret Service agents charged with guarding his life after a man leapt over a barrier and rushed the stage.

Now I'm getting worried about a possible assassination!

‘‘Thank you for the warning,’’ Trump told the crowd after he resumed his speech. ‘‘I was ready for ‘em, but it’s much better if the cops do it, don’t we agree?’’

That's usually who is involved in it, yeah.

Each moment has virtually no precedent in modern presidential politics. Taken together, they exposed anew the remarkable anxiety ripping through a country dealing with profound economic and demographic changes, as well as the anger roiling inside one of America’s great political parties.

For those cringing at the discord and Trump’s unanticipated political rise, there were no easy answers Saturday.

Republican traditionalists kept whispering in private conversations about long-shot options for stopping Trump, either at a contested convention or by rallying around a potential third-party option. Trump, meanwhile, could put the Republican nomination out of reach to others in Tuesday’s slate of five delegate-rich primaries.

Trump’s rivals have spent months tiptoeing around his provocative comments for fear of alienating his impassioned supporters. Even in Thursday night’s debate, all three of his remaining rivals — Rubio, Kasich and Texas Sen. Ted Cruz — sidestepped a question about whether outbursts of violence at Trump’s rallies and his statements encouraging supporters to aggressively take on protesters concerned them.

But the images spilling out of Chicago, with young people angrily confronting each other, often divided by racial lines, appeared to be too much.

1968. 

In an interview with The Associated Press, Rubio said he may not be able to support Trump if he’s the GOP nominee, citing the way he’s ‘‘dividing both the party and the country so bitterly.’’

Pfft! 

I sure as hell won't be supporting him.

The Florida senator wouldn’t say whether he’d look for a third-party candidate to support if Trump does become the Republican standard-bearer, but Kasich, who has largely avoided tangling with Trump until now, said the real estate mogul has created a ‘‘toxic environment’’ that makes it ‘‘extremely difficult’’ to envision supporting him as the Republican nominee.

‘‘To see Americans slugging themselves at a political rally deeply disturbed me,’’ Kasich said while campaigning in Cincinnati. ‘‘We’re better than that.’’

Only Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, who is closest to Trump in the delegate count, said he would unequivocally support the businessman if he emerges from the primary victorious. 

If you and Trump put your delegates together.... BINGO!

Ted, how would you like to be Vice President?

That's the way they used to pick 'em! The next closest guy!

That's how H.W. became president after Reagan was shot.

Still, Cruz — eager for Rubio and Kasich to get out of the race after their home-state primaries on Tuesday so he can take Trump on in a head-to-head contest — blamed his rival for encouraging the kind of ‘‘nasty violence’’ that occurred in Chicago.

‘‘More than once I’ve had protesters who get up and raise a point, and if they are being civil and courteous, I’ll actually engage in a conversation with them and treat them with civility and respect,’’ Cruz said. ‘‘I think the way you interact with the citizens expresses what kind of person that you will be.’’

That cast the clearing out of the Occupy protesters in a new light. 


Thanks for the support, Ted!

President Barack Obama, speaking at a Democratic fundraiser in Dallas, said those who aspire to lead the country ‘‘should be trying to bring us together and not turning us against one another,’’ and he urged leaders to ‘‘speak out against violence.’’ 

UNREAL! 

He's done more to divide us than anyone, and as for the violence he has promulgated around the world.... asshole!

With his delegate lead mounting, there’s little evidence that Trump sees any reason to alter an approach that includes encouraging his supporters to aggressively — and sometimes physically — stop protesters from interrupting his raucous rallies. 

They are implying -- lying the key phrase there -- that Trump is approving if not directing all this.

Instead, Trump said at a rally Saturday afternoon in Cleveland, which was also interrupted several times by dozens of protesters, that he thought all the disruptions would help him.

‘‘It just makes all of our friends and supporters more angry. We’re going to go to the polls on Tuesday,’’ he said, predicting a ‘‘resounding victory.’’

It's called a backfire, and it is so bad I'm considering .... never mind.

Nor did Trump moderate elsewhere. On Twitter, he said Rubio and his Republican allies in Florida were trying to ‘‘rig the vote’’ in the Florida senator’s favor and that he’d asked law enforcement to investigate. Florida elections officials said they had not heard of any such problems and had received no formal complaints.

I'm GLAD HE FIGHTS FOR VOTES -- unlike Bernie!

Indeed, Trump appeared eager to paint himself as the victim of the extraordinary events.

Hanging around to many Jews is he.

He complained the well-organized protesters in Chicago intent on keeping him from speaking had violated his First Amendment rights, and questioned why no one was asking Bernie Sanders to defend the actions of his backers.

They did.

Several of the protesters in Chicago said they are supporters of the Democratic candidate.

‘‘They’re Bernie fans!’’ Trump said in Cleveland. ‘‘Hey, Bernie, get your people in line, Bernie!’’

They are not his.

--more--"

"Sanders says Trump lying about protest plot" Associated Press  March 13, 2016

WASHINGTON — Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders said Sunday that Republican Donald Trump is lying when he says the Sanders campaign sent the protesters that disrupted the businessman’s rally in Chicago.

Sanders said on ABC’s ‘‘This Week’’ that anyone following Trump’s campaign ‘‘knows that he tells the truth very, rarely’’ and that in this instance, ‘‘He’s lying again.’’

Friday night’s melee between Trump supporters and protesters broke out after the Trump campaign canceled a rally because of security concerns.

Some of the protesters in the crowd were carrying signs supporting the Sanders campaign.

It's the Clintons tarring two campaigns with one brush!

Trump on Sunday tweeted that if Sanders is sending supporters to his rallies to disrupt them, Trump would do the same at Sanders’ rallies.

“Be careful Bernie, or my supporters will go to yours!’’ he wrote.

Don't fall into the Clinton's trap, Don!

The answer followed from Sanders’ official Twitter account: ‘‘Send them. They deserve to see what a real honest politician sounds like.’’

Looks like it would be a good general election match-up, huh?

Sanders has said Trump’s own words and tactics were responsible for the disruptions.

Blaming the victim, Bernie? 

Jou of all people should know better!

Both Sanders and Trump have roused their supporters by railing against international trade agreements and decades of wage stagnation. But Sanders, along with Trump’s Republican rivals, have noted that Trump adds caustic rhetoric about immigration, drawing protesters who end up clashing with his supporters.

Funny thing is, both voter bases are exclusively white and male -- according to my propaganda pre$$ narrative anyway.

On CNN’s “State of the Union’’ on Sunday, Sanders said that Trump “is a man who keeps implying violence — and then you end up getting what you see.”

That is where the print copy ended, and at least he hasn't voted for a war or approved any bombing or drone strikes yet.

--more--"

And about those wars....

"Veteran queries Donald Trump over comments on John McCain" by Thomas Beaumont Associated Press  March 13, 2016

WEST CHESTER, Ohio — The question-and-answer session ahead of Tuesday’s Republican primary was mostly a love fest for Trump. Over the past several days, Trump’s rallies have devolved into violence between supporters and protesters. They have become heavily secured events teeming with dozens and in some cases hundreds of police.

Although the police presence was obvious in West Chester Sunday, the audience was far friendlier than at the past few Trump stops.

Only two protesters sneaked into the ballroom where Trump was speaking: a man holding a Bernie Sanders for president campaign sign and a woman who faced the news media covering the event and tore a Trump sign in half.

The audience booed and jeered the two until they were escorted out.

Earlier Sunday, Trump confirmed in a television interview that he’s ‘‘instructed my people to look into’’ paying the legal fees for one of his North Carolina supporters charged with assaulting a protester earlier this month.

RelatedNorth Carolina officials decide against charging Trump

The atmosphere has yet to harm the front-runner heading into Tuesday’s primaries, including those in the home states of Kasich and Florida Senator Marco Rubio.

The winner-take-all contests will help determine whether Trump can be stopped short of the required 1,237 delegates required for the nomination, thus forcing a contested Republican convention in Cleveland this summer.

Polls suggest Kasich has a shot at knocking off Trump in Ohio, while Trump appears to be holding his lead in Florida. Rubio has gone so far as to recommend to his Ohio supporters to back their governor. Kasich has not returned that favor.

He's clinging to his delusions.

In a campaign appearance in Bloomington, Ill., later Sunday, Trump defended his supporters who have been charged with assaulting protesters.

‘‘We’re not provoking. We want peace. ... We don’t want trouble,’’ he told a large crowd. Protests sparingly interrupted his remarks.

We know who does, and who benefits by it.

Trump again assured his supporters that their anger and even their occasional punches are righteous, because they are ‘‘disenfranchised’’ economically and provoked by ‘‘disrupters’’ that he says are sent by Sanders’ campaign....

--more--"

Now about that news coverage:

"Journalist detained at Trump rally in Chicago is a BU grad" by Laura Crimaldi Globe Staff  March 12, 2016

A CBS News journalist with ties to Boston was detained Friday night while covering clashes between protesters and supporters of Republican presidential front-runner Donald J. Trump at a planned campaign event in Chicago.

Sopan Deb, 27, was issued a citation for resisting a police officer, the Chicago Police Department said in a statement Saturday. The statement said Deb, who lives in New York City, was temporarily detained, taken to a district station, and then released.

Four people were arrested at the Trump event and remain in custody with charges pending, the police statement said.

The Trump supporters remain in custody?

Deb is a Boston University graduate who previously worked for Boston.com. 

See: Globe cuts 40 jobs via buyouts, layoffs

I didn't want you to miss that.

The statement from Chicago police did not identify Deb as a journalist or provide further details about his encounter with officers.

In an report on “CBS This Morning,” the news organization said Deb identified himself to officers as a member of the media.

“I have ID. Press credentials I can show you,” he said. “I have press credentials I can show you.”

CBS News said Deb interviewed protesters and Trump supporters inside the University of Illinois at Chicago Pavilion, where the candidate was scheduled to speak. Trump’s campaign called off the event before it began, citing security concerns.

The report includes video footage it says Deb captured inside the arena before the rally was canceled, including confrontations between people on both sides.

The video also shows the arena after most people had been dispersed by police and the crowded scene outside the event space. Deb videotaped one arrest and his video camera continued to roll, the CBS News report said, when he was grabbed from behind “without warning” and thrown to the ground.

A person yelling, “Put your hands behind your back!” can be heard in the background on the video. Deb said an officer placed a boot on his neck while he was being handcuffed, according to the report. 

Welcome to how the other half lives!

CBS News also aired footage it says was captured by another news organization that shows Deb, with his hands behind his back, being brought to his feet by an officer. In another clip, an officer puts a pair of eyeglasses on Deb’s face.

Deb was put in the back of a police van while his video camera remained on the ground, the report said. CBS News said the camera was returned to Deb after he was released.

Deb did not respond to requests for comment Saturday. CBS News said Deb has been covering Trump’s campaign since the businessman announced his presidential run last summer.

On Friday at 7:51 p.m., he posted a message to Twitter. “I’ve never seen anything like what I’m witnessing in my life.”

Related: Arrest of Amy Goodman, Democracy Now! Producers at 2008 GOP Convention

How quickly he forgot!

--more--"

Now about those protesters:

http://whatreallyhappened.com/IMAGES/SMALL_modernbrownshirts.jpg 

It occurs to me that you should scroll through the coverage there as I tip my hat to him for the link.

Soros and Other Liberal Donors to Fund Bid to Spur Latino Voters

Soros-Backed Pro Clinton Group Caught Funding Violent Protests to Smear Sanders and Trump

Neoliberal News of the Day: 3/13/2016

Are Agent Provocateurs Disrupting Trump Rallies?

Here is a look at them:





WASHINGTON — Voters in five high-stakes Republican primaries Tuesday will determine whether party leaders have a realistic chance to halt Donald Trump’s march to the nomination, as the steady grind of delegate math becomes more important in the presidential campaign.

HA-HA-HA-HA-HA! 

They are doing EVERYTHING THEY CAN to THWART the will of the VOTERS!

Establishment Republicans trying to keep Trump from being their party’s leader have identified the Tuesday vote as their last best chance to deny Trump the 1,237 delegates he needs for an outright win in the party convention in July. Polls show their chances are shaky because he’s ahead in all but Ohio.

Those Republicans on Monday threw all they had into a novel, bank-shot strategy to stop Trump: work in Florida on behalf of home-state Senator Marco Rubio, and battle in the Buckeye State for Ohio Governor John Kasich. If both challengers win, Trump’s future dims.

And IT WORKED! 

Kasich stole Ohio!

But if Rubio and Kasich lose in their home states, they will probably drop out of the race and Trump will be rolling toward the Cleveland nominating convention in July with buckets of delegates and just one final barrier in his way, Texas Senator Ted Cruz.

Bye, Marco. 

Time to rally 'round Ted! 

Hallelujah!

Florida and Ohio are both winner-take-all states for the GOP. Voters also head to the polls in Illinois, North Carolina, and Missouri — and Republicans will caucus in the Northern Mariana Islands, a US territory.

All told, 367 GOP delegates are up for grabs. After Tuesday, the remaining primaries will deliver results in drips and drabs until early June.

Trump, who already has 460 delegates, has been in a dead heat with Kasich in Ohio. Kasich has said he would probably drop out if he can’t win his home state. He campaigned over the weekend with the 2012 nominee, former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney, in a bid to keep his hopes alive.

Romney remains neutral in the race but has committed himself to doing whatever it takes to stop Trump.

That's not neutral, you pos "reporter."

Trump shifted his campaign schedule to spend more time in Ohio. He has a double-digit lead over Marco Rubio in most Florida polls. The junior senator from Florida had predicted he would win his home state, and many of his donors and supporters expect he will drop out if he doesn’t.

As he made campaign stops in Florida on a tour down Interstate 95 Monday, Rubio criticized Trump.

Trump — whose rallies have been interrupted by protesters and at times led to violence — faced protesters at nearly every stop Monday, in North Carolina, Florida, and Ohio.

The REAL NAZIS! 

And the Republican establishment has also given them their blessing!

“What we don’t have time for is all that petty punk-ass little thuggery stuff that’s been going on with these quote-unquote protesters,” Sarah Palin, a Trump surrogate, told the crowd in Tampa.

Related: Todd Palin expected to recover from snowmobile accident 

I was told Alaska didn't get snow this year. 

WTF?

If Cruz is the only Trump opponent standing after Tuesday, it would inject a new and unpredictable dynamic into the contest: Polls say Cruz performs better in a head-to-head matchup with the New York businessman. Republicans are next planning to debate in Salt Lake City on Monday.

Cruz’s path forward largely relies on him getting a clean shot at Trump, one-on-one, said Rick Tyler, Cruz’s former spokesman. The best way for the math to work in Cruz’s favor is a complicated formula where Trump wins Florida but loses Ohio. 

So much for the math problem I was told about.

“Cruz is the only one in a position to possibly accumulate enough delegates ahead of the convention,” Tyler said. “It would be worth giving the 99 delegates to Trump to get Rubio out of the race.”

But the potential for Cruz to become the nominee narrows significantly if Trump wins both Ohio and Florida because Cruz’s delegate deficit would be greater....

--more--"

Related: Romney To Be Drafted at Republican Convention 

That's the final contingency plan, if needed.

Well, HERE are the RESULTS!

Trump, Clinton win Fla.; Kasich wins in Ohio

So they stole Ohio just as I thought they would! 

On to the convention!

"Here’s how a contested GOP convention might work" by Andrew Taylor Associated Press  March 12, 2016

WASHINGTON — It was 1948 when New York Governor Thomas E. Dewey won the Republican presidential nomination on the third ballot of a contested convention in Philadelphia. Months later, he lost the general election to Democratic incumbent Harry S. Truman.

Could a real contested convention happen again, 68 years later?

If GOP front-runner Donald Trump stumbles in Tuesday’s contests, there’s a chance of a protracted fight in Cleveland in July should favorite sons Governor John Kasich of Ohio and Senator Marco Rubio of Florida defy the polls and take their respective state’s winner-take-all primaries.

He did in Ohio, so....

Delegates are generally bound to a candidate, at least on the first ballot. Whoever wins a majority of the 2,472 convention delegates, or 1,237 votes, at the Republican National Convention in Cleveland is the party’s nominee.

If there is no winner on the first ballot, delegates vote again and again until one candidate gets a majority. On subsequent ballots, most delegates are free to vote for whomever they please.

Most delegates, roughly 4 out of 5, are selected at state or district party conventions and are commonly party activists and loyalists — the establishment types who are more likely to be aghast at the prospect of a Trump nomination.

Relatively few states directly elect delegates already pledged to a candidate. In many cases, those state and local conventions are going to choose actual delegates who may not have a real allegiance to Trump, though the vast majority of such delegates are bound on the first ballot to vote based on the results of their state’s primary or caucus.

So if Trump cannot win on the first ballot, the logical next question is how strongly his delegates support him.

You think he will leave that to chance?

The anybody-but-Trump crowd hopes that denying Trump a majority on the first ballot could rally a majority of the convention around another candidate — perhaps Texas Senator Ted Cruz or even someone not running, like House Speaker Paul Ryan of Wisconsin. 

Keep him in mind.

How many votes Trump gets on the first ballot — whether he falls just shy of 1,237 or significantly short of it — probably will factor into what would happen on a second ballot.

At a GOP debate on Thursday in Miami, Trump said that ‘‘whoever gets the most delegates should win.’’ Cruz said a contested convention would be ‘‘an absolute disaster.’’

Then maybe you and the Donald make a deal?

‘‘There are some in Washington who are having fevered dreams of a brokered convention,’’ Cruz said. ‘‘They are unhappy with how the people are voting and they want to parachute in their favored Washington candidate to be the nominee. We need to respect the will of the voters.’’

Why would they now when they have not for so long?

To have one’s name placed in nomination, a candidate must win the support of a majority of delegates of at least eight states. Trump is the only one who seems sure to qualify under the rule, which was orchestrated in 2012 by Mitt Romney supporters to deny then Texas Representative Ron Paul an opportunity to be nominated and garner attention at that year’s convention.

Oh, I thought that was important, especially regarding Mitt the hypocrite. 

What an absolute a$$hole.

If no one else qualifies under the eight-state rule, it could be difficult to deny Trump the nomination on a second ballot if he is close to the threshold and is the only candidate able to be nominated.

It's going to be difficult in any event because he will have the most delegates even without a majority.

The rules favor Trump, as they are now written. Cruz might qualify under the eight-state rule, but it’s not a sure bet. The other candidates look unlikely to meet this test.

All the rules, however, are subject to change by the convention’s Rules Committee, which is generally stocked with party insiders. Any proposal to change the rules requires a majority vote of the convention, and any effort to change the rules to make it easier to defeat Trump is sure to spark a floor fight with passionate Trump supporters that could turn ugly.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

In 1976, a possible battle loomed between President Gerald Ford and challenger Ronald Reagan, but Ford won on the first ballot. Since then, GOP conventions have been little more than coronations, so there’s the question of how well the system would handle anything more than that.

Anything less will destroy the party.

Basketball arenas aren’t the ideal place for potentially complex parliamentary maneuvering, but interpretation of party rules could tip the balance.

The convention’s chairman, Ryan, has promised to be an honest broker, but he also has discretion in managing the floor dynamics if an effort to defeat Trump gets underway.

--more--"

What will they tell the children?

"For pint-sized pundits, Donald Trump has piqued the imagination" by Dugan Arnett Globe Staff  March 12, 2016

As the presidential campaign has gained intensity, Anna Serafini has found herself troubled by some of the things she’s heard about GOP front-runner Donald Trump.

Unlike some Americans, however, her concerns stem not so much from the presidential hopeful’s controversial comments on immigrants, Muslims, and women — but from matters of a more practical sort.

“What if Donald Trump builds a wall,” the Leominster 9-year-old recently asked in a video posted online, “and the tooth fairy can’t get over it?”

With the race for the White House taking shape after Super Tuesday and a host of primaries in several other states, where candidates stand on the big issues is weighing heavily on the minds of Americans — including those a full decade shy of voting age.

On playgrounds, in classrooms, and around lunchroom tables, armies of pint-sized pundits are carrying out their own version of political discourse. Like a sizable portion of the electorate, their conversations have often centered on Trump, and as the grade-schoolers have attempted to voice their opinions of the high-profile Republican — opinions culled, no doubt, from the bits of information that have trickled down to them from parents, news reports, and pop culture — the result has often been a strange, hilarious mess.

At Angier Elementary School in Newton’s Waban neighborhood for instance, a student recently told second-grade teacher Elizabeth Ross that she’d heard Trump planned to outlaw Oreos — a particularly troubling development since the student in question has a pet guinea pig named Oreo.

And as Tony Serafini, a Leominster father of two, recounted recently, “[My daughter] came home the other day and told me she heard ‘that Donald Trump was going to send all the Italians to France.’ ”

That Trump has piqued the imaginations of young children shouldn’t come as a surprise, says Richard Weissbourd, a lecturer and psychologist at the Harvard Graduate School of Education.

For one thing, his face is a near constant presence on television — where, according to a December Bloomberg report, he has amassed more air time on some network news programs than every other candidate combined.

For another, Trump — with his penchant for name-calling and making funny faces — often invokes behaviors not unfamiliarto many a fifth-grader.

“Sometimes, he’s really talking at their level,” says Weissbourd, who also serves as codirector of the child-focused Making Caring Common Project.

Whatever the draw, Trump has proven as compelling — and polarizing — to the school-aged demographic as he is to the rest of the country.

Some, like fifth-grader Gianna Ciampa, can’t get enough of The Donald.

A bubbly 10-year-old from Bradford, she sometimes accompanied her mom to Trump’s Massachusetts campaign headquarters before the state primary, where she made signs with messages like “Children for Donald J. Trump.”

She likes that Trump isn’t afraid to speak his mind, and it hurts her feelings when people say mean things about him.

I know how she feels, and I don't even like him.

She looks forward to his presidential victory, which she plans to celebrate by “jumping up and down” and then going to school the next day and saying, “Who’s the winner? TRUMP is the winner!”

Others aren’t quite so smitten. Take Griffin Bone, a 10-year-old fourth-grader from Needham, who said he was more of a Jeb Bush man himself (“His father and his brother were presidents, and so he knows a lot about it because he probably visited them a lot”) before Bush dropped out of the race. Griffin frets about what he calls some of Trump’s “silly” ideas.

Most disconcerting, in his mind, is Trump’s plan to construct a wall between the United States and Mexico. Aside from the tooth fairy-related concerns, the wall raises at least one other long-term issue, as well.

Explained Griffin: “We’re not going to be able to go on vacation if there’s a wall, because he won’t let people leave.”

Ten-year-old Mac Ribner of Newton, a budding political agitator with shaggy hair and a fondness for bow ties, recently got himself into trouble at school for a not-so-flattering drawing of the onetime reality TV star.

Asked what it is about Trump that rubs him the wrong way, the fifth-grader muttered “Where do I begin?” before proceeding to rattle off a number of perceived transgressions that included, among other things, a lack of tact, business-related shortcomings (“He’s declared bankruptcy four times, to be exact”), and hostility toward women.

“This is just a minor one,” added Mac, a Hillary Clinton supporter. “But I don’t think his hair looks very good.”

Have we ever had a bald president? 

Whether a Trump presidency actually comes to fruition remains to be seen, of course. Still, some children, likely taking a cue from their parents, have been hustling to build contingency plans.

In recent conversations, a few announced they would be forced to consider a move to Canada if Trump were to win the White House.

They can catch a ride back with Trudeau!

Dennis McCormick, a fifth-grader from Natick, took it one step farther. His mind was all but made up, he said. The only thing left to figure out was which international locale he would call home.

He might end up in Britain, he said, “because if I can’t get to Canada, that sounds like the best option.”

Asked whether his parents were on board with the move, however, the 11-year-old grew quiet. After a brief explanation about a recent addition onto the family’s house, Dennis eventually allowed that his Britain plans might not be quite as set-in-stone as he’d initially suggested.

“We’d probably stay here,” he admitted. “But we just would disagree with him.”

Kids say the damnedest things, don't they?

--more--"

Also see:

"Trump’s blunt, angry, provocative, anti-establishment message has struck a chord among millions of disaffected Americans who have been ignored, abused, scorned, and shit on by the elitist establishment, banking cabal, corrupt politicians and government apparatchiks. The Deep State establishment has overstepped their bounds. Their ravenous pillaging of the national wealth through outsourcing millions of American jobs, largest mortgage control fraud in history, and outrageous gall in shifting their losing bets onto the backs of hard working Americans is about to bite them in the ass."

So what's next, blaming Trump for what happened at the basketball game?

Well, it looks like all the votes are in.

States should abandon caucus system for primaries

Easier to rig machines and time to abandon this.

And as I leave you now.... I want you to know.... just think how much you're going to be missing. You won't have the Propaganda Pre$$ Monitor to kick around any more, because this is my last blog post.

NEXT DAY UPDATES:

Trump supporter receives death threats, home vandalized 

We know who the real Nazis are.

Obama to announce Supreme Court nominee at 11 a.m. 

No comment.

"After Tuesday’s important presidential primaries, here are two conclusions about the race for the White House. First, it is nearly mathematically impossible for anyone other than Republican Donald Trump and Democrat Hillary Clinton to win a majority of delegates before their respective party conventions. Secondly, it will still take Trump and Clinton many months to clinch the nomination, if they do at all. Trump would have also had a much easier shot at winning the nomination outright if Kasich lost Ohio. Instead, Kasich’s win makes it more likely — but far from a forgone conclusion — that Trump will be denied the 1,237 delegates he needs before the GOP convention." 

No comment.

"Trump drive to victory hits a bump in Ohio" by Matt Viser and Tracy Jan Globe Staff  March 16, 2016

WASHINGTON — Donald Trump rolled to victories Tuesday in Florida, Illinois, and North Carolina but narrowly lost Ohio, a split verdict that prevented the New York businessman from locking down the Republican nomination and that gave his opponents reason to hope they can deny him enough delegates to sew up the race.

Trump’s convincing victory in Florida — coming after more than half of the states have voted — forced Senator Marco Rubio to immediately drop out of the race. Although Trump now has a lead so dominant that no other candidate is likely to catch him, his loss to Governor John Kasich in Ohio significantly complicates his path toward winning the 1,237 delegates needed to secure a victory before the GOP convention in July.

It also enhances prospects that the Republican Party, which has been gripped by a rollicking and unpredictable nominating contest, will start the convention without a clear nominee for the first time in decades.

Trump overcame a barrage of negative ads in Florida — as well as violence breaking out at his rallies — to defeat Rubio in his home state and win all 99 delegates. Rubio, who was once the bright light in the Republican Party and who, remarkably, had never lost an election in Florida, announced he was suspending his campaign. Trump had a sizable lead, 46 percent to 27 percent, with 90 percent reporting.

“America is in the middle of a real political storm, a real tsunami,” Rubio said from Miami. “And we should have seen this coming.”

Speaking of tsunamis.... nothing new there.

In addition to Florida, Illinois, and North Carolina, Trump held a razor-thin lead over Senator Ted Cruz in Missouri with 93 percent of the vote reporting. 

It's 99.9% when I awoke this morning and they are still not calling it for him. 

On the Democrat side, Hillary rallied and beat Sanders at the finish line(!!).

Regardless of who wins that state, Cruz now faces a less favorable political map for his brand of staunch conservatism and overtures to evangelicals.

And it was a bad map to begin with. 

He needs to align with Trump so they can flip the finger at the e$tabli$hment.

Trump has benefited from a splintered Republican field, and the key question going forward is whether his momentum can be halted with more time, and more mobilization of the anti-Trump forces.

 That's the question going forward. I won't be.

In order to win the nomination, Trump would need to win about 54 percent of the remaining delegates. Cruz would need to win 77 percent, while Kasich would need almost all of them.

Print told me he would need 90 percent, and you want to check that math because.... 

"Trump will need to win 59 percent of all the remaining GOP delegates to win a majority. Cruz would have to win 80 percent of all remaining delegates to get a majority; Kasich would have to win every single one of them." 

In print I was told Kasich would have to win 110 percent of them. 

If they can't even add why would you believe anything else they say?

In the contests held so far — where he has faced a more crowded field — Trump has won 46 percent of the delegates.

If Trump is unable to secure a majority of the delegates before the convention, Republicans would head to Cleveland without a nominee for the first time since 1976.

During the first round of voting, delegates are generally bound to vote for the candidate who won their state or congressional district. If no candidate secures a majority of the vote, some of the delegates are released to vote for whomever they wish.

Following a sprint over the past few weeks, the race is about to become a marathon. Over the last six weeks there have been 31 contests, awarding 1,422 delegates. Over the next six weeks, there will be nine contests with 407 delegates.

The gap in voting, with two-week stretches at times, could allow the anti-Trump forces to further mobilize. The next Republican debate is scheduled to take place Monday in Salt Lake City, although Trump has yet to commit to it. Utah and Arizona are slated to vote next Tuesday.

Kasich’s win in Ohio — which came with the backing of Republican stalwarts such as 2012 nominee Mitt Romney and former House speaker John Boehner — is his first victory of the primaries and he now must prove that he can win beyond his home base. But with Rubio out of the race, Kasich could threaten Trump in such states as Pennsylvania, Delaware, Indiana, and Wisconsin — where Kasich’s more moderate, optimistic message might resonate.

Cruz is already showing signs of trying to broaden his appeal, trying to win over the more mainstream Republicans who have called him a “wacko bird” and ridiculed him for his hardline tactics in the Senate.

Mike Lee, a Utah Republican, recently became the first Senate colleague to endorse Cruz. And Neil Bush, the brother of former president George W. Bush, recently joined Cruz’s national finance team.

Of Silverado S&L fame? 

Money for nothing, huh?

So what is Cruz, Spanish for Bush?

Romney has been trying to put together an event with Cruz.

He is shameless!

According to exit polls from NBC News, Kasich won among late deciders and moderates.

Kasich also did better among those who want someone who can win in November and who said he shares their values, while Trump did better among those who “tells it like it is” and can bring change. Kasich won college graduates and among those making more than $100,000, while Trump dominated among those without a college degree and those making less than $50,000....

Then it is all boo-hoos for Rubio.

--more--"

UPDATE: Ohio Vote Fraud--Updated

Related:

"If the American presidential election winds up with Hillary Clinton vs. Donald Trump, and my passport is confiscated, and I’m somehow FORCED to choose one or the other, or I’m PAID to do so, paid well … I would vote for Trump. My main concern is foreign policy. American foreign policy is the greatest threat to world peace, prosperity, and the environment. And when it comes to foreign policy, Hillary Clinton is an unholy disaster."

Do you know who Bill Blum is? I do.

Also see: Jeb Bush could mount a convention comeback


Or it will be Romney!

Puh-leeze! 

He's even deafer than the party establishment!

Trump leaves Jews with no easy answers

".... Do you know anyone on the edge of reality versus fiction, slowly becoming aware of what’s happening? Do you know someone finally discerning the difference between the mainstream media-Hollywood 2-dimensional reality versus the full-dimensional organic reality often covered by independent news? Then show them that it’s not just the staged politically driven “news” stories that they need to be aware of, it’s also the politically convenient deliberate emphasis on certain stories while conveniently and deliberately flipping the off switch for other stories. Show them that we are seeing a grand example of this convenient selection of stories right now during the election campaign script.

In the tale that mainstream media is telling us right now, it’s “election year” and the left-right paradigm election campaign puppet show is underway where the candidates get to exchange juicy attacks and people are pulled into the drama deciding who to vote for. The controllers obviously feel that the races deserve their time and space; and from their perspective it wouldn’t be very helpful to have a pack of disruptive mass shootings, false flags, and massive staged events in the way of their political campaign shows.

Beware, however, of political campaign momentum pauses....

--MORE--"