Tornado Alley (PROG)

[F6]

Donald Trump’s Presidential Run Began in an Effort to Gain Stature


Donald J. Trump announcing his campaign for president in June 2015. He began testing the waters, and laying the groundwork, several years before.
Credit Todd Heisler/The New York Times


Mr. Trump and his wife, Melania, arriving at the White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner in April 2011.
Credit Michael Reynolds/European Pressphoto Agency


The dinner in 2011 where President Obama used Mr. Trump, then flirting with his own presidential bid, as a punch line.
Credit Chris Kleponis/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images


“There are some things that you just can’t imagine happening in your life.” — Mitt Romney, receiving a Trump endorsement in 2012.
Credit Monica Almeida/The New York Times

By MAGGIE HABERMAN and ALEXANDER BURNS
MARCH 12, 2016

Donald J. Trump [ http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/us/elections/donald-trump-on-the-issues.html ] arrived at the White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner in April 2011, reveling in the moment as he mingled with the political luminaries who gathered at the Washington Hilton. He made his way to his seat beside his host, Lally Weymouth, the journalist and socialite daughter of Katharine Graham, longtime publisher of The Washington Post.

A short while later, the humiliation started.

The annual dinner features a lighthearted speech from the president; that year, President Obama chose Mr. Trump, then flirting with his own presidential bid, as a punch line [ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k8TwRmX6zs4 (next below; with {over 38,000} comments)].

He lampooned Mr. Trump’s gaudy taste in décor. He ridiculed his fixation on false rumors that the president had been born in Kenya. He belittled his reality show, “The Celebrity Apprentice.”

Mr. Trump at first offered a drawn smile, then a game wave of the hand. But as the president’s mocking of him continued and people at other tables craned their necks to gauge his reaction, Mr. Trump hunched forward with a frozen grimace.

After the dinner ended, Mr. Trump quickly left, appearing bruised. He was “incredibly gracious and engaged on the way in,” recalled Marcus Brauchli, then the executive editor of The Washington Post, but departed “with maximum efficiency.”

That evening of public abasement, rather than sending Mr. Trump away, accelerated his ferocious efforts to gain stature within the political world. And it captured the degree to which Mr. Trump’s campaign is driven by a deep yearning sometimes obscured by his bluster and bragging: a desire to be taken seriously.

That desire has played out over the last several years within a Republican Party that placated and indulged him, and accepted his money and support, seemingly not grasping how fervently determined he was to become a major force in American politics. In the process, the party bestowed upon Mr. Trump the kind of legitimacy that he craved, which has helped him pursue a credible bid for the presidency.

“Everybody has a little regret there, and everybody read it wrong,” said David Keene, a former chairman of the American Conservative Union [ http://conservative.org/ ], an activist group Mr. Trump cultivated. Of Mr. Trump’s rise, Mr. Keene said, “It’s almost comical, except it’s liable to end up with him as the nominee.”

Repeatedly underestimated as a court jester or silly showman, Mr. Trump muscled his way into the Republican elite by force of will. He badgered a skittish Mitt Romney into accepting his endorsement on national television, and became a celebrity fixture at conservative gatherings. He abandoned his tightfisted inclinations and cut five- and six-figure checks in a bid for clout as a political donor. He courted conservative media leaders as deftly as he had the New York tabloids.

At every stage, members of the Republican establishment wagered that they could go along with Mr. Trump just enough to keep him quiet or make him go away. But what party leaders viewed as generous ceremonial gestures or ego stroking of Mr. Trump — speaking spots at gatherings, meetings with prospective candidates and appearances alongside Republican heavyweights — he used to elevate his position and, eventually, to establish himself as a formidable figure for 2016.

In an interview on Friday, Mr. Trump acknowledged that he had encountered many who doubted or dismissed him as a political force before now. “I realized that unless I actually ran, I wouldn’t be taken seriously,” he said. But he denied having been troubled by Mr. Obama’s derision.

“I loved that dinner,” Mr. Trump said, adding, “I can handle criticism.”

Phantom Campaign

Even before the correspondents’ dinner, Mr. Trump had moved to grab a bigger role in political affairs. In February, he addressed the annual Conservative Political Action Conference [ http://cpac.conservative.org/ ]. Organizers gave Mr. Trump an afternoon speaking slot, and Mr. Keene perceived him as an entertaining attraction, secondary to headliners like Mitch Daniels, then the governor of Indiana.

But Mr. Trump understood his role differently. Reading carefully from a prepared text, he tested the themes that would one day frame his presidential campaign: American economic decline, and the weakness and cluelessness of politicians in Washington.

Over the next few months, Mr. Trump met quietly with Republican pollsters who tested a political message and gauged his image across the country, according to people briefed on his efforts, some of whom would speak about them only on the condition of anonymity.

One pollster, Kellyanne Conway, took a survey that showed Mr. Trump’s negative ratings were sky-high, but advised him there was still an opening for him to run.

Another, John McLaughlin, who had been recommended to Mr. Trump by the former Clinton adviser Dick Morris, drew up a memo that described how Mr. Trump could run as a counterpoint to Mr. Obama in 2012, and outshine Mr. Romney with his relentless antagonism of the president.

Roger Stone, a longtime Trump adviser, wrote a column on his website envisioning a Trump candidacy steamrolling to the nomination, powered by wall-to-wall media attention.

After all that preparation, Mr. Trump rejected two efforts to “draft” him set up by close advisers. If his interest in politics was growing, he was not yet prepared to abandon his career as a reality television host: In mid-May, Mr. Trump announced that he would not run and canceled a planned speech to a major Republican fund-raising dinner in Iowa.

Latching On to Romney

Having stepped back from a campaign of his own, Mr. Trump sought relevance through Mr. Romney’s. Again, Mr. Trump’s determination to seize a role for himself collided with the skepticism of those he approached: While he saw himself as an important spokesman on economic issues and a credible champion for the party, the Romney campaign viewed him as an unpredictable attention-seeker with no real political foundation.

Still, given his expansive media platform — in addition to his reality-show franchise, Mr. Trump was a frequent guest on Fox News — and a fortune that he could theoretically bestow upon a campaign, Mr. Trump was drawing presidential candidates seeking his support to his Fifth Avenue high-rise. In September 2011, Mr. Romney made the trip, entering and exiting discreetly, with no cameras on hand to capture the event.

The decision to court Mr. Trump, former Romney aides said in interviews, stemmed partly from the desire to use him for fund-raising help, but also from the conviction that it would be more dangerous to shun such an expert provocateur than to build a relationship with him and try to contain him.

The test of that strategy came in January 2012, before the make-or-break Florida primary, when Mr. Trump reached out to say he wanted to endorse Mr. Romney at a Trump property in the state. Wary of such a spectacle in a crucial state, Mr. Romney’s aides began a concerted effort to relegate Mr. Trump’s endorsement to a sideshow.

The Romney campaign conducted polling in four states that showed Mr. Trump unpopular everywhere but Nevada, and suggested to Mr. Trump that they hold an endorsement event there, far away from Florida voters.

On the day he was to deliver the endorsement in Las Vegas, according to Mr. Romney’s advisers, Mr. Trump met with Romney aides and said he hoped to hold a joint news conference with Mr. Romney, raising for the campaign the terrifying possibility that Mr. Romney might end up on camera responding to reporters’ questions next to a man who had spent months questioning whether the president was an American citizen.

In an appeal to Mr. Trump’s vanity, the Romney campaign stressed that his endorsement was so vital — with such potential to ripple in the media — that it would be a mistake to dilute the impact with a question-and-answer session.

“The self-professed genius was just stupid enough to buy our ruse,” said Ryan Williams, a former spokesman for the Romney campaign. While they agreed to hold the event in a Trump hotel, the campaign put up blue curtains around the ballroom when the endorsement took place, so that Mr. Romney did not appear to be standing “in a burlesque house or one of Saddam’s palaces,” Mr. Williams said. On stage, as the cameras captured the moment, Mr. Romney seemed almost bewildered. “There are some things that you just can’t imagine happening in your life,” he told reporters as he took the podium, taking in his surroundings. “This is one of them.”

Mr. Trump insisted in the interview that the Romney campaign had strenuously lobbied for his support, and described his own endorsement as the biggest of that year. “What they’re saying is not true,” he said.

But if Mr. Trump expected a major role in the Romney campaign, he was mistaken. While Mr. Trump hosted fund-raising events for Mr. Romney, the two men never hit the campaign trail together. The campaign allowed Mr. Trump to record automated phone calls for Mr. Romney, but drew the line at his demand for a prominent speaking slot at the Republican National Convention. (Mr. Trump recorded a video to be played on the first day of the convention, but the whole day’s events were canceled because of bad weather.)

Stuart Stevens, a senior strategist for Mr. Romney, believed that Mr. Trump had been strictly corralled. “He wanted to campaign with Mitt,” Mr. Stevens wrote in an email. “Nope. Killed. Wanted to speak at the convention. Nope. Killed.”

Still, to Mr. Romney’s opponent that year, the accommodation of Mr. Trump looked egregious. Mr. Obama, in a speech on Friday, said Republicans had long treated Mr. Trump’s provocations as “a hoot” — just as long as they were directed at the president.

Building an Operation

Only a handful of people close to Mr. Trump understood the depth of his interest in the presidency, and the earnestness with which he eyed the 2016 campaign. Mr. Trump had struck up a friendship in 2009 with David N. Bossie, the president of the conservative group Citizens United [ http://www.citizensunited.org/ ], who met Mr. Trump through the casino magnate Steve Wynn.

Mr. Trump conferred with Mr. Bossie during the 2012 election and, as 2016 approached, sought his advice on setting up a campaign structure. Mr. Bossie made recommendations for staff members to hire, and Mr. Trump embraced them.

Mr. Trump also carefully cultivated relationships with conservative media outlets, reaching out to talk radio personalities and right-wing websites like Breitbart.com [ http://breitbart.com/ ].

By then, Mr. Trump had won a degree of acceptance as a Republican donor. Advised by Mr. Stone, one of his longest-serving counselors, he had abandoned his long-held practice of giving modest sums to both parties, and opened his checkbook for Republicans with unprecedented enthusiasm.

Mr. Trump began a relationship with Reince Priebus, the Republican National Committee chairman, who was trying to rescue the party from debt. He gave substantial donations to “super PACs [ http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects/c/campaign_finance/index.html ]” supporting Republican leaders on Capitol Hill.

In 2014, he cut a quarter-million dollar check to the Republican Governors Association, in response to a personal entreaty from the group’s chairman — Chris Christie. Still, Mr. Trump’s intentions seemed opaque.

In January 2015, Mr. Trump met for breakfast in Des Moines with Newt and Callista Gingrich. Having traveled to Iowa to speak at a conservative event, Mr. Trump peppered Mr. Gingrich with questions about the experience of running for president, asking about how a campaign is set up, what it is like to run and what it would cost.

Mr. Gingrich said he had seen Mr. Trump until then as “a guy who is getting publicity, playing a game with the birther stuff and enjoying the limelight.” In Iowa, a different reality dawned.

“That’s the first time I thought, you know, he is really thinking about running,” Mr. Gingrich said.

On June 16, 2015, after theatrically descending on the escalator at Trump Tower, Mr. Trump announced his candidacy for president, hitting the precise themes he had laid out in the Conservative Political Action Conference speech five years earlier.

“We are going to make our country great again,” Mr. Trump declared. “I will be the greatest jobs president that God ever created.”

Still, rival campaigns and many in the news media did not regard him seriously, predicting that he would quickly withdraw from the race and return to his reality show. Pundits seemed unaware of the spade work he had done throughout that spring, taking a half dozen trips to early voting states of Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina and using forums hosted by Mr. Bossie’s group to road test a potential campaign.

Even as he jumped to an early lead, opponents suggested that he was riding his celebrity name recognition and would quickly fade. It was only late in the fall, when Mr. Trump sustained a position of dominance in the race — delivering a familiar, nationalist message about immigration controls and trade protectionism [ http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects/p/protectionism_trade/index.html ] — that his Republican rivals began to treat him as a mortal threat.

Mr. Trump, by then, had gained the kind of status he had long been denied, and seemed more and more gleeful as he took in the significance of what he had achieved.

“A lot of people have laughed at me over the years,” he said in a speech days before the New Hampshire primary. “Now, they’re not laughing so much.”

Related Coverage

Reporter’s Notebook: Covering Donald Trump, and Witnessing the Danger Up Close
MARCH 12, 2016
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/13/us/politics/covering-donald-trump-and-witnessing-the-danger-up-close.html

Will Trump Send [Some] Working-Class Whites to the Democrats?
MARCH 8, 2016
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/08/opinion/campaign-stops/will-trump-send-working-class-whites-to-the-democrats.html

More Latinos Seek Citizenship to Vote Against Trump
MARCH 7, 2016
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/08/us/trumps-rise-spurs-latino-immigrants-to-naturalize-to-vote-against-him.html

Rank and File Republicans Tell Party Elites: We’re Sticking With Donald Trump
MARCH 4, 2016
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/05/us/politics/donald-trump-republican-party.html

Inside the Republican Party’s Desperate Mission to Stop Donald Trump
FEB. 27, 2016
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/28/us/politics/donald-trump-republican-party.html

For Donald Trump, Friends in Few Places
MARCH 11, 2016
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/13/nyregion/for-donald-trump-friends-in-few-places.html

First Draft: Mitt Romney and John McCain Denounce Donald Trump as a Danger to Democracy
MARCH 3, 2016
http://www.nytimes.com/politics/first-draft/2016/03/03/mitt-romney-donald-trump/

Donald Trump’s Rally in Chicago Canceled After [sic - Before] Violent Scuffles
MARCH 11, 2016
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/12/us/trump-rally-in-chicago-canceled-after-violent-scuffles.html

Donald Trump Urges Party to Unite, but Resistance Remains
MARCH 11, 2016
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/12/us/politics/trump-urges-party-to-unite-behind-him-but-resistance-remains.html

At Trump University, Students Recall Pressure to Give Positive Reviews
MARCH 11, 2016
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/12/us/politics/donald-trump-trump-university.html

© 2016 The New York Times Company

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/13/us/politics/donald-trump-campaign.html [with comments]


--


‘You Have to Brand People,’ Donald Trump Says


Donald J. Trump campaigned in Boca Raton, Fla., on Sunday.
Credit Eric Thayer for The New York Times

By Ashley Parker
March 13, 2016

BOCA RATON, Fla. — Trump University may be closed and embroiled in controversy, but Donald J. Trump offered his fans a free lesson in branding Sunday evening at an outdoor rally here.

As he began to talk about two of his remaining Republican rivals — Senators Ted Cruz of Texas and Marco Rubio of Florida — Mr. Trump quickly transitioned to his favored nicknames for the two men.

“Lyin’ Ted,” he said, before spelling it out, letter by letter, for the crowd: “L-Y-I-N-apostrophe.”

“We can’t say it the right way,” he explained. “We’ve got to go — Lyin’! Lyin’ Ted!”

Turning his attention to Mr. Rubio, whom he calls “Little Marco,” Mr. Trump spelled out his preferred nickname: “L-I-D-D-L-E. Liddle, Liddle, Liddle Marco.”

“You know, you have to brand people a certain way when they’re your opponents,” Mr. Trump said, before relishing in perhaps his most devastating description of this election cycle — calling Jeb Bush, the former governor of Florida, “low energy.”

“Like Jeb Bush — we call him low energy, low energy,” he continued. “And I don’t care talking badly about him. He spent $29 million in negatives on me, $29 million. Can you believe it? Of other people’s money. Of his lobbyist and his special interest money.”

Finally, Mr. Trump concluded his education interlude.

“But you’ve got to brand people,” he said, going on the describe the original Republican field. “So we started off with 17 people who were up on this stage, and what the hell did I know about this stuff? I’ve never done this before, right? So we start off with 17 people, now we’re down to four. Bush was favored, then Walker was favored, then another one was favored, they’re all favored.”

“Now,” he finished with a flourish, as the crowd roared, “Trump is favored.”

© 2016 The New York Times Company

http://www.nytimes.com/politics/first-draft/2016/03/13/you-have-to-brand-people-donald-trump-says/ [with comments]


*


How Trump Rebranded the GOP

He's the greatest brander of his time, but he can't take all the credit for this one: The party had to destroy its old brand first.
March 17, 2016
http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/03/how-trump-re-branded-the-gop-213745 [with comments]


--


The rise of Donald Trump is a terrifying moment in American politics


Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images


Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images

Updated by Ezra Klein on February 10, 2016, 12:22 a.m. ET?

On Monday, Donald Trump held a rally in Manchester, New Hampshire, where he merrily repeated [ http://www.vox.com/2016/2/9/10950182/donald-trump-ted-cruz ] a woman in the crowd who called Ted Cruz a pussy. Twenty-four hours later, Donald Trump won the New Hampshire primary [ http://www.vox.com/2016/2/9/10956740/new-hampshire-primary-results-trump-sanders ] in a landslide.

I'm not here to clutch my pearls over Trump's vulgarity; what was telling, rather, was the immaturity of the moment, the glee Trump took in his "she said it, I didn't" game. The media, which has grown used to covering Trump as a sideshow, delighted in the moment along with him — it was funny, and it meant clicks, takes, traffic. But it was more than that. It was the frontrunner for the Republican nomination for president showing off the demagogue's instinct for amplifying the angriest voice in the mob.

It is undeniably enjoyable to watch Trump. He's red-faced, discursive, funny, angry, strange, unpredictable, and real. He speaks without filter and tweets with reckless abandon. The Donald Trump phenomenon is a riotous union of candidate ego and voter id. America's most skilled political entertainer is putting on the greatest show we've ever seen.

It's so fun to watch that it's easy to lose sight of how terrifying it really is.

Trump is the most dangerous major candidate for president in memory. He pairs terrible ideas with an alarming temperament; he's a racist, a sexist, and a demagogue, but he's also a narcissist, a bully, and a dilettante. He lies so constantly and so fluently that it's hard to know if he even realizes he's lying. He delights in schoolyard taunts and luxuriates in backlash.

Trump is in serious contention to win the Republican presidential nomination. His triumph in a general election is unlikely, but it is far from impossible. He's not a joke and he's not a clown. He's a man who could soon be making decisions of war and peace, who would decide which regulations are enforced and which are lifted, who would be responsible for nominating Supreme Court justices and representing America in the community of nations. This is not political entertainment. This is politics.

Trump's path to power has been unnerving. His business is licensing out his own name as a symbol of opulence. He has endured bankruptcies and scandal by bragging his way out of them. He rose to prominence in the Republican Party as a leader of the birther movement. He climbed to the top of the polls in this election by calling Mexicans rapists and killers. He defended a poor debate performance by accusing Megyn Kelly of being on her period. He responded to rival Ted Cruz's surge by calling for a travel ban on Muslims. When two of his supporters attacked a homeless man and said they did it because "Donald Trump was right, all these illegals need to be deported," he brushed off complaints that he's inspiring violence by saying his supporters are "very passionate."

Behind Trump's success is an unerring instinct for harnessing anger, resentment, and fear. His view of the economy is entirely zero-sum — for Americans to win, others must lose. "We're going to make America great again," he said in his New Hampshire victory speech [ http://www.vox.com/2016/2/9/10956660/donald-trump-new-hampshire ], "but we're going to do it the old-fashioned way. We're going to beat China, Japan, beat Mexico at trade. We're going to beat all of these countries that are taking so much of our money away from us on a daily basis. It's not going to happen anymore."

Trump answers America's rage with more rage. As the journalist Molly Ball observed [ http://www.vox.com/2016/1/15/10774102/donald-trump-debate-winner ], "All the other candidates say 'Americans are angry, and I understand.' Trump says, 'I’M angry.'" Trump doesn't offer solutions so much as he offers villains. His message isn't so much that he'll help you as he'll hurt them.

Trump's other gift — the one that gets less attention but is perhaps more important — is his complete lack of shame. It's easy to underestimate how important shame is in American politics. But shame is our most powerful restraint on politicians who would find success through demagoguery. Most people feel shame when they're exposed as liars, when they're seen as uninformed, when their behavior is thought cruel, when respected figures in their party condemn their actions, when experts dismiss their proposals, when they are mocked and booed and protested.

Trump doesn't. He has the reality television star's ability to operate entirely without shame, and that permits him to operate entirely without restraint. It is the single scariest facet of his personality. It is the one that allows him to go where others won't, to say what others can't, to do what others wouldn't.

Trump lives by the reality television trope that he's not here to make friends. But the reason reality television villains always say they're not there to make friends is because it sets them apart, makes them unpredictable and fun to watch. "I'm not here to make friends" is another way of saying, "I'm not bound by the social conventions of normal people." The rest of us are here to make friends, and it makes us boring, gentle, kind.

This, more than his ideology, is why Trump genuinely scares me. There are places where I think his instincts are an improvement on the Republican field. He seems more dovish than neoconservatives like Marco Rubio, and less dismissive of the social safety net than libertarians like Rand Paul. But those candidates are checked by institutions and incentives that hold no sway over Trump; his temperament is so immature, his narcissism so clear, his political base so unique, his reactions so strange, that I honestly have no idea what he would do — or what he wouldn't do.

When MSNBC's Joe Scarborough asked Trump about his affection for Vladimir Putin, who "kills journalists, political opponents and invades countries," Trump replied, "He's running his country, and at least he's a leader, unlike what we have in this country." Later, he clarified that he doesn't actually condone killing journalists, but, he warned [ http://www.mediaite.com/online/trump-vows-he-would-never-kill-journalists-but-i-do-hate-them/ ] the crowd, "I do hate them."

It's a lie that if you put a frog into a pot of water and slowly turn up the heat the frog will simply boil, but it's a fact that if you put the American political system in a room with Trump for long enough we slowly lose track of how noxious he is, or we at least run out of ways to keep repeating it.

But tonight is a night to repeat it. There is something scary in Donald Trump. We should fear his rise.

© 2016 Vox Media, Inc.

http://www.vox.com/2016/2/10/10956978/donald-trump-terrifying [with embedded video report]


--


Time to fire Trump

The front-runner is unfit to lead a great political party, let alone America
Leader
Feb 27th 2016
http://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21693579-front-runner-unfit-lead-great-political-party-let-alone-america-time-fire-trump [with comments]


*


Donald Trump is not fit to be president of the United States

Editorial
March 2, 2016
http://www.latimes.com/opinion/editorials/la-ol-donald-trump-unsuited-to-be-president-20160302-story.html [with comments]


*


We met with Donald Trump. Electing him will still be a radical risk.

Editorial
March 21, 2016

AS DONALD Trump observed during a visit to The Post on Monday, we have been critical of his candidacy, so give him credit for agreeing to sit down with us and answer questions for more than an hour [ https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-partisan/wp/2016/03/21/a-transcript-of-donald-trumps-meeting-with-the-washington-post-editorial-board/ ]. Unfortunately, the visit provided no reassurance regarding Mr. Trump’s fitness for the presidency. “I’m not a radical person,” he told us as he was leaving. But his answers left little doubt how radical a risk the nation would be taking in entrusting the White House to him.

There was, first, a breezy willingness to ignore facts and evidence. Are there racial disparities in law enforcement? “I’ve read where there are and I’ve read where there aren’t,” Mr. Trump said [id.]. “I mean, I’ve read both. And, you know, I have no opinion on that.” Global warming? “I am not a great believer in man-made climate change,” he said.

In that, Mr. Trump is not different from many Republican politicians these days. But no one can match the chasm between his expansive goals and the absence of proposals to achieve them. He would remake the nation’s libel laws, but how, given Supreme Court jurisprudence on the First Amendment? “I’d have to get my lawyers in to tell you,” he said. How could he implement a ban on noncitizen Muslims entering the country? “Well look, there’s many exceptions,” he said. “There’s many — everything, you’re going to go through a process.”

His answer to racial disparity and urban poverty is to create jobs. But how? “Economic zones,” “incentives” and improving the “spirit” of inner-city residents. “You have to start by giving them hope and giving them spirit, and that has not taken place,” Mr. Trump said. How would he push back against Chinese expansionism [ https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-us-is-heading-toward-a-dangerous-showdown-with-china/2016/03/15/c835a1b4-eaf2-11e5-b0fd-073d5930a7b7_story.html ] in the South China Sea? “We have to be unpredictable,” Mr. Trump said. “We’re totally predictable. And predictable is bad.”

An empty policy basket makes almost impossible the kind of substantive debate on which democracies depend. And while it is true that ambiguity sometimes can be useful in diplomacy, a lack of clarity also can be dangerous, enticing rivals to be aggressive and allies to seek new friends.

The latter risk does not seem to worry Mr. Trump: He describes the fundamental U.S. alliances that have helped keep the peace for the past half-century as essentially obsolete. “NATO is costing us a fortune,” he said. “I think NATO as a concept is good, but it is not as good as it was when it first evolved.” He asked why Japan and South Korea, which already pay a substantial share of the costs of U.S. bases, don’t pay 100 percent. We asked: Does the United States gain nothing by a forward presence to help maintain the peace? “Personally, I don’t think so,” Mr. Trump said. It might have made sense when we were “a very powerful, very wealthy country,” but “we’re a poor country now.”

Given Mr. Trump’s belief that we don’t treat him fairly, we invite readers to read the full transcript [ https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-partisan/wp/2016/03/21/a-transcript-of-donald-trumps-meeting-with-the-washington-post-editorial-board/ ] or listen to the audio recording of our conversation, both of which we’ve posted online [id.]. He answered questions about violence at his rallies, voting rights for the District of Columbia (he would favor a voting representative in the House but not statehood), promoting democracy overseas and the seemliness of trading insults and threatening critics. His defense of the latter was telling: “I mean, actually I think it is presidential because it is winning.” Which suggests one more difference between us: our definition of what is presidential.

Read more:

The Post’s View: Is Mr. Trump a threat to democracy?
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/is-mr-trump-a-threat-to-democracy/2016/02/26/d02ed222-dcd9-11e5-925f-1d10062cc82d_story.html

The Post’s View: To defend our democracy against Trump, the GOP must aim for a brokered convention
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/to-defend-our-democracy-against-trump-the-gop-must-aim-for-a-brokered-convention/2016/03/16/074399d4-eb9c-11e5-bc08-3e03a5b41910_story.html

The Post’s View: GOP leaders, you must do everything in your power to stop Trump
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/gop-leaders-you-must-do-everything-in-your-power-to-stop-trump/2016/02/24/d993b548-db0e-11e5-891a-4ed04f4213e8_story.html

Danielle Allen: The moment of truth: We must stop Trump
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/moment-of-truth-we-must-stop-trump/2016/02/21/0172e788-d8a7-11e5-925f-1d10062cc82d_story.html

© 2016 The Washington Post

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/we-met-with-donald-trump-electing-him-is-still-a-radical-risk/2016/03/21/bfbe5498-ef90-11e5-85a6-2132cf446d0a_story.html [with embedded audio clips, and comments]


--


President Trump: A 6-year-old with nuclear weapons?

Trump biographer Michael D'Antonio says Donald Trump has often let his inner child dictate his behavior

Trump: "When I look at myself in the first grade and I look at myself now, I'm basically the same."

By Michael D'Antonio
Updated 4:19 PM ET, Fri March 4, 2016

Editor's Note: Michael D'Antonio is the author of the new book "Never Enough: Donald Trump and the Pursuit of Success [ http://www.amazon.com/Never-Enough-Donald-Pursuit-Success/dp/1250042380 ]" (St. Martin's Press). The opinions expressed in this commentary are his.

(CNN) — When I asked Donald Trump in 2014 about his temperament, he readily volunteered this: "When I look at myself in the first grade and I look at myself now, I'm basically the same. The temperament is not that different."

As a grade-schooler Trump threw cake around a birthday party and gave a teacher a black eye because, as he wrote in his own book "The Art of the Deal", the man didn't know what he was talking about. Trump told me in interviews I did with him for a biography that as a boy he just "loved to fight." Pressed to explain, he added, "Any kind of fight, I loved it, including physical."

The grown-up Donald also told me that he doesn't respect the people he meets in life because "most people aren't worthy of respect." This is the motto of the vestigial aspect of the personality that a psychotherapist would call his "inner child."

As a child at the private Kew-Forest School in Queens, where the young gentlemen wore ties and blazers, young Donald likely didn't meet up with the kind of New York public school boys who would have helped him learn to respect others. Instead he became a prep-school terror that no one could manage. His exasperated parents finally sent him off to a military academy. There, grown men whom Trump described as drill sergeants who would "smack the hell out of you," taught him that adults play by bully-boy rules, too.

Bully boy

Which brings us to Thursday's debate. Again in a coat and tie, Donald was the misbehaving bully boy. You could almost hear the squeals of little kids as Trump taunted his opponent, a United States senator, by repeatedly calling him "little Marco" and boasted about the size of his own penis. For Sen. Ted Cruz he used the phrase, "Lyin' Ted." The moderators, playing the role of teachers on the playground, struggled for control. "Mr. Trump it's not your turn," said Chris Wallace, in a stern tone young Donald must have heard a thousand times. "You'll get your turn, sir."

And so it went, for much of the debate among candidates who believe they should be President of the United States and commander in chief of the world's most powerful military. That means control of the U.S. nuclear arsenal, which if detonated would be sufficient to destroy civilization several times over.

Having realized, late in the game, that they are being bested by an out-of-control child, Sens. Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio got down on his level. The live audience often responded with hoots and jeers. They too expressed themselves as out-of-control children, forgetting their manners and ignoring the fact that they had come to hear from men who seek to lead the greatest power the world has ever seen.

How much of Donald Trump's inner child is on display in his business career? One of his former executives, Barbara Res, wrote [ http://www.nydailynews.com/opinion/barbara-res-donald-trump-boss-article-1.2525669 ] in the New York Daily News, "He has an incredible temper and he lashes out at everyone..."

And a letter [ http://www.jeffpearlman.com/one-mans-letter-to-donald-trump/ ] recently revealed by writer Jeff Pearlman attests to his mistreatment of his fellow owners in the now-defunct United States Football League. After recounting Trump's terrible behavior, including "personal abuse of the commissioner and various of your partners" who disagreed with him, John F. Bassett, owner of the Tampa Bay Bandits, warned him to behave or "I'll have no regrets whatsoever punching you right in the mouth."

Could he be provoked?

Fortunately, in many settings, Trump has controlled his childish tendencies. In negotiations with banks and governments he has generally behaved like an adult. We can hope that he would do so on the nation's behalf. However others, including terrorist groups and other nations, who have seen how he can be provoked during the campaign may be tempted to do the same to a President Trump.

In addition to his lack of impulse control, Donald has long exhibited a child's inability to accept responsibility. This trait is familiar to those have seen Trump in action over the years. During the demolition of the building that occupied the Trump Tower site, he was caught destroying precious artwork that was supposed to be preserved. He offered excuses of the sort you'd hear from a kid who just broke a window with a baseball.

Next came an insult-spiced brawl with the mayor of New York, ridiculous claims about the British royal family buying his real estate, and an ugly tabloid sex scandal. In the cases of his failed airline, four huge bankruptcies, and more ugly controversies than can be counted, Donald offered excuses but not a sense of responsibility.

Victims of Trump's abusive behavior number in the thousands, and include, on a civic level, many communities where he promised big investments and developments but delivered much less than was expected. In Scotland [ http://www.scotsman.com/news/environment/defeated-donald-trump-turns-his-back-on-scotland-1-3301941 ], for example, he demanded and received permission to destroy part of a sensitive eco-system to build a golf course but walked away [ http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/donald-trump-fails-to-deliver-on-golf-resort-jobs-pledge-8693854.html ] from his commitment to build housing. His excuse was that he wasn't treated well enough by the Scots.

Trump's admirers

Yet Trump's admirers can be counted in the millions. They watch him grin and scowl and listen as he lets fly with the most ugly kinds of rhetoric, and find themselves excited by his enthusiasm and lack of restraint. This is the paradoxical effect of the bad little boy. Yes, he's out of line and must be taught to respect others. However the sight and sound of someone behaving with such an unbridled enthusiasm is also thrilling.

When Trump sees a protester and says, "I'd like to punch him in the face," he is expressing the kind of aggressive impulse we have all felt but learned to control He is also showing us what he thinks of us. As he told me, Trump always operates with the assumption that human beings are vicious creatures. "Man is the most vicious of all animals," he has said. This is the assumption he has brought to the campaign.

This week, as his opponents attempted to take Trump down using his own methods, elders in the Republican Party have expressed their alarm and begun to call on voters to settle down. Talk of convention chaos and even a breakaway effort to promote a third candidate to face Trump and the Democratic Party's nominee suggests more chaos in the month ahead.

The outcome will depend on whether the grownups get control or our own inner children, set loose in the excitement of Boy Donald's performance, choose to run wild.

Related Articles:

Cruz and Rubio tag-teamed Trump
http://www.cnn.com/2016/03/04/opinions/republican-debate-opinion-buck-sexton/index.html

Missing on GOP debate stage: A future president (Opinion)
http://www.cnn.com/2016/03/04/opinions/republican-debate-opinion-mel-robbins/index.html

Will Romney's blistering attack on Trump backfire?
http://www.cnn.com/2016/03/03/opinions/mitt-romney-blistering-attack-on-donald-trump-zelizer/index.html

Is Trump the new Silvio Berlusconi? (Opinion)
http://www.cnn.com/2016/03/03/opinions/trump-the-new-silvio-berlusconi-opinion-benghiat/index.html

Donald Trump and the battle for the soul of America
http://www.cnn.com/2016/03/02/opinions/trump-and-americas-soul-obeidallah/index.html

© 2016 Cable News Network. Turner Broadcasting System, Inc.

http://www.cnn.com/2016/03/04/opinions/president-trump-six-year-old-with-nuclear-weapons-dantonio/ [with embedded video clip, and comments]


--


The Blind Leading the Dumb


Alex Wong via Getty Images

By Lawrence M. Krauss
03/21/2016 07:59 pm ET | Updated Mar 21, 2016

Following his impressive primary wins on Tuesday, Donald Trump is well on his way to securing the Republican nomination for president. His xenophobia, misogyny and deceitfulness have all been manifest, but have done little to stem the excitement of many among the Republican electorate in his campaign. His lack of understanding of key foreign policy matters was on display in the last Republican debate and caused some momentary qualms, but clearly not enough to affect the recent round of primary voting.

However, a key characteristic of The Donald, which, when combined with lack of public service experience, is particularly worrisome and also has not been sufficiently emphasized when critiquing his candidacy. He just isn’t very smart, in spite of his frequent self-assessments to the contrary. Like George W. Bush he has very little intellectual curiosity about the world around him, and like Bush, he seems to be relatively unaware of his own limitations in this regard. But unlike Bush he appears to have few knowledgeable resources to lean on, and little willingness to do so if he did.

This week, in an interview on MSNBC’s Morning Joe program, Mr. Trump said he was the person he listens to most on foreign policy. “I’m speaking with myself, number one, because I have a very good brain and I’ve said a lot of things.”

As the fictional police officer Dirty Harry once proclaimed, “A man has to know his limitations”. My own concerns about Trump’s delusions in this regard first hit home for me when I was communicating with a well-known friend whom I respect for both his humility and his intelligence. He described meeting Trump on numerous occasions, and on one such occasion Trump told him, “You are one of only three people I have ever known who are smarter than me”. As my friend put it to me, “No person who was actually smart would be likely to say something like that”.

Either Trump only talks to those who play up to his delusion, or he simply doesn’t listen to those who might burst his bubble. Either way, that is a cause for worry. We have seen in Iraq, or following the flooding in New Orleans, how a president without a willingness to question the basic facts that advisors may provide him with, can embroil this country in dangerous and ultimately disastrous policy decisions.

Trump’s lack of basic knowledge or even an interest in knowledge was clearly on display than last week, when he secured the endorsement of former neurosurgeon and presidential candidate Ben Carson. At a press conference announcing the endorsement, Trump stated “I was most impressed with his views on education. It’s a strength. It’s a tremendous strength.” As a result, Trump indicated that on matters of education, Carson is “going to be involved with us”.

As I have described in an earlier post, Carson is, however, if anything anti-education. He is certainly on the record as anti public education. He has stated, “The best education is the education that is closest to home, and I’ve found that for instance home-schoolers do the best, private schoolers the next best, charter schoolers the next best and public schoolers the worst.”

Besides the obvious fact that charter schools are in fact, public schools, his claim is not substantiated by any data.

As for actually teaching children the basic features of science, or far more importantly opening their minds to explore new ideas, Carson will have none of it. He has argued that evolution and the Big Bang are the work of the devil. He claims the Earth is 6000 years old, and wants children not to be dissuaded from their faith by the evidence of the scientific establishment, who he views as both godless, and liberal.

We should not let such a man anywhere near children’s schools.

Almost 30 years ago, Alan Bloom wrote The Closing of the American Mind. In it he argued that political correctness, moral relativism, and the social mores surrounding rock music had taken over the popular psyche, replacing sound critical thinking based in classical philosophy, and ultimately dehumanizing young people, leading to a rejection of the quest for truth. A generation later we are seeing quite the opposite. Political leaders are emerging who yearn to return to the earlier times so romanticized by Bloom, yet whose minds, like Trump’s and Carson’s, are closed on a whole different scale. Like a steel trap, nothing appears to get in, and as far as I can see, nothing of substance gets out. And the quest for truth is essentially completely abandoned, as is the deeper notion that truth matters at all.

For all of his bravado, obnoxiousness, hatred, and vitriol, the scariest thing about Trump to me is his unique combination of ignorance about the world, convolved with ignorance about himself.

Lawrence M. Krauss [ http://krauss.faculty.asu.edu/ ] is Director of the Origins Project [ https://origins.asu.edu/ ] at Arizona State University, and the author, most recently of A Universe from Nothing [ http://www.amazon.com/Universe-Nothing-There-Something-Rather/dp/1451624468 ].

Copyright © 2016 TheHuffingtonPost.com, Inc.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/lawrence-m-krauss/the-blind-leading-the-dumb_b_9519384.html [with comments]


--


An Open Letter to My Republican Friends

By Richard North Patterson [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/richard-north-patterson/ ]
Novelist and contributing opinion writer
03/22/2016 07:19 am ET | Updated Mar 22, 2016

Dear Cherished Friends,

The Republican Party has become intellectually and morally bankrupt, a mockery of its traditions — corrosive to our society, our civility, and our capacity to govern. This is not a temporary condition; it is woven into the fabric of the party. Unless and until it reverses course, you should take your votes and money and walk away.

I never thought I would presume to say this. I respect that your allegiance is rooted in considered beliefs and years of loyalty which, at the beginning of my political journey, I shared. I certainly don’t think I have all the answers, and I enjoy exploring our differences. You inform me, correct me and, most generously, tolerate me. You care, as do I, about the world we are leaving the next generations.

Our friendship far transcends our political beliefs. We share each other’s celebrations, enjoy each other’s successes. I value your advice. You’ve helped me through hard times, and some of you have helped my kids as well. You are loyal friends, generous members of the community, and deeply committed parents and grandparents. My world, and the larger world, would be a grayer place without you.

Knowing you as I do, I know that you are troubled by the direction of your party. Little wonder — you are mainstream Republicans whose mainstream has run dry. But I also accept that, for you, the Democrats may not be the answer — that you see them as feckless devotees of identity politics and too much government, don’t trust Hillary Clinton, and believe that Bernie Sanders would drive us off the fiscal cliff. I’m not writing to quarrel with these beliefs. Nor do I suggest that unchallenged dominance by the Democrats would serve the country well.

But to compare the two parties at this time in our history is to indulge in false equivalency. For rationalizing the GOP’s pathology by responding with a partisan tit-for-tat is not adequate to the circumstances. The sins you perceive in Democrats are the usual ones — misguided policies, ill chosen means for dubious ends, and the normal complement of rhetorical dishonesty and political squalor. However mistaken you may find Clinton and Sanders on the issues, their debate is addressed to the world as it exists and therefore open to a sensible critique. The squalor to which the GOP has sunk, an alternate reality rooted in anger and mendacity, transcends mere differences in policy, threatening the country with profound, perhaps irreparable, damage.

This is not simply about Donald Trump. For Trump is not the result of forces which will come and go, but of a deterioration within the Republican Party that has been accelerating for years. The GOP has become a Frankenstein monster, assembled from dysfunction, demagoguery, myopia and myth, nurtured in a fever swamp where lies and hysteria kill off reason. Nothing better will arise until you help drive a stake through its heart.

One of our ongoing disagreements has been about the nature of the party, and where you fit within it. With respect to GOP extremism in areas like climate denial, gun violence or reproductive rights, you often say, “but I’m not like that.” But the party is. You may be moderate in your views; the party is not. Even candidates with temperate instincts must go along to survive, or meet the fate of Jon Huntsman, mocked for publicly accepting climate change and evolution.

Long since, the GOP killed its moderates and trashed everything they stood for. It has replaced respected figures like William Cohen, Richard Lugar and John Danforth with rigid ideologues like Ted Cruz and Mike Lee, and social illiterates like James Inhofe, Jeff Sessions and Richard Shelby. On issue after issue, they have embraced an orthodoxy rooted in extremism and divorced from fact. These dynamics forced Mitt Romney to win the nomination by running so far right that he could never get back. And what was the lesson learned among the party base? That Romney was not nearly extreme enough.

In short, the Republican Party no longer belongs to you, or you in it. 2016 has proven the point.

I saw this coming not because I’m uniquely prescient, but because I began writing reality-based political novels 20 years ago. I hung around with party pros, consultants, lobbyists, donors, pollsters, officeholders and political partisans, some of whom became my friends. Bit by bit, I saw the party sell out its agenda for short-term gains with disastrous long-term consequences. Eventually the GOP’s train wreck became inevitable — no longer a matter of if, but when.

How did this happen? Start with the relationship between the party establishment and its base. Your family, and mine, occupy a privileged slice of American society. Not so for most members of the GOP electorate. They are folks that few of us know very well: evangelicals; modestly educated whites threatened by economic dislocation; and people whose distrust of government partakes of paranoia.

Economically, they are not natural allies of the party of business or its wealthy donors, who tend to focus on tax cuts and free-market principles irrelevant to the base. So in exchange for pursuing its economic agenda, the party offered evangelicals a faith-based vision of America: barring abortion, banning gay marriage, and giving government preferences to fundamentalist religious institutions. Why should business people care, the reasoning went, when we can rally these voters with promises which, however illusory, cost us nothing?

But as “promise keepers,” the party failed its fundamentalist flock. Abortion remains legal; gay marriage became a right; the constitution prevents government from enshrining religious preferences as law. So there was nothing to stop evangelicals from noticing that their own lives were often harder and less secure.

Ditto other members of the middle and working classes. The real causes of their woes are globalization, the Great Recession, the housing crisis, and an information society which marginalizes blue-collar jobs. But the GOP never addressed these complex forces with any kind of candor — let alone proposed solutions like job retraining and educational access for their kids.

Barren of ideas for helping its base voters, it resorted to blame-shifting and scapegoating — of government, Obama, illegal immigrants, Muslims and other minorities. Instead of looking forward, the party indulged a primal nostalgia for simpler times, an imaginary white folks’ paradise which can never be resurrected.

Some of this was shameful. The GOP countenanced a race-based birtherism directed at our first black president, giving Donald Trump a political foothold. It nurtured xenophobia that targeted all Muslims at home and abroad. It pretended that illegal immigrants were poisoning our economy. It aped the mindless masters of talk radio and trafficked in conspiracy theories. It embraced Tea Party dead-enders who claimed that shutting down the government, at whatever cost, was the only answer.

In Congress, the party resolved to deny Obama reelection by grinding the legislative process to a halt, then blaming him for gridlock as if its tactics played no role. Political polarization polluted foreign-policy — as when all 300 Republicans in Congress turned the Iran deal into a political wedge issue, shunning the careful consideration it deserved in favor of shrill and simpleminded denunciations. In the world of the GOP, our many and complex problems had but one misbegotten cause: that Barack Obama was president.

So-called mainstream Republicans competed to fan the flames of outrage, poisoning political discourse. Typical was the establishment’s darling, Marco Rubio, who claimed that Obama was not simply wrong, but trying to destroy America as we know it. Republican politics became not faith-based, but hate-based.

For the Republican base, nothing changed.

Except, of course, their rising anger, stoked by yet more empty and diversionary anti-Washington rhetoric that only deepened their sense of impotence. Focused on the donor class, party leaders charged the Democrats with “class warfare” against the less than embattled rich, while still failing to acknowledge through substantive policies the very real struggles of its rank-and-file. The election in 2014 of yet more Republican senators and congressmen made no difference in the lives of the people who supported them.

Not unreasonably, the base came to believe that our governmental and financial institutions — including the Republican Party — were controlled by an elite that was indifferent to their plight. And so demagogues like Donald Trump and Ted Cruz became the agents of their frustration and despair. Like the sorcerer’s apprentice, the party lost control.

Among the casualties was the agenda most dear to the Republican establishment. Its insensitivity to the base has eroded support for free trade. Despite its claims of fiscal probity, the GOP continued its meretricious complaints about deficit spending — for which, as ever, it blamed the Democrats’ self-serving rhetoric about protecting Social Security and Medicare — while proposing tax cuts for the wealthy that would explode the national debt. And consider this: How do tax cuts at the top benefit the struggling middle and working classes? And wouldn’t slashing or privatizing Social Security further threaten their fragile place in our society?

But set aside the party’s disingenuousness with respect to the economic and fiscal concerns that, in many cases, have gained it your allegiance. In other important areas the party has abandoned serious thought. Instead, the alternate reality of the GOP has created a closed intellectual system immune to fact or reason, imposing a mindless political fundamentalism on its candidates which no reflective person, least of all you, can any longer support.

Here is the fact-free theology one supports every time one votes for a Republican candidate for president, senator or representative:

Climate denial. In the anti-science world of the GOP, man-made global warming is a hoax — just ask Ted Cruz or Donald Trump. This is one of many areas where the party perpetuates ignorance among its base, separating them from the populace at large. In a recent Gallup poll asking if human activity was a factor in climate change, a 85 percent of Democrats and 68 percent of independents answered yes. Republicans? Only 38 percent. Faced with overwhelming scientific consensus, the party will not even consider how to combat this existential menace.

Denial of evolution and general scientific knowledge. I know you can’t believe this, but a Pew Research poll showed that over 50 percent of Republican voters don’t accept the theory of evolution. When the core of the party thinks that The Flintstones was a documentary — and none of its presidential candidates dare say otherwise — the broader implications for policies rooted in scientific inquiry are disturbing. Hence people like Trump who profit by suggesting that vaccination engenders autism.

Gun violence. The GOP slavishly follows the NRA line. It has opposed any effort to curb gun violence, hiding behind paranoid nonsense about disarming all Americans. Its only answer to our unique and devastating mass slaughter is that more Americans should carry guns — quite literally, that the black churchgoers in Charleston mowed down by a madman should have brought weapons to their place of worship.

Racism. Given that all of you deplore it, I can feel you bridling. But the troubling signs proliferate. Voter suppression laws aimed at minorities in states where no evidence of fraud exists. Scapegoating American Muslims — many of whom have more experience defending our country than any of us — as potential terrorists. Targeting illegal immigrants whose presence owes as much to American business interests as to their own desperation.

Want more? Ignoring the glaring evidence of unequal law enforcement against blacks which, in some cases, includes unjustified police shootings. Upholding a death penalty that disproportionately targets minorities and the poor — not a few of whom turn out to be innocent.

And still more? Gutting programs that seek to recognize the impact of race and class, often because they are deemed “unfair” to far more advantaged whites. Tolerating a relentless disparagement of our president that reeks of racism — imagine, if you will, the outcry if a black congressman had shouted “liar” at George W. Bush during a State of the Union Address. The party which claims to be “race-blind” has become blind to its own tacit bigotry.

Curbing reproductive rights. Protected by Roe v. Wade and our own privilege, it is easy for us to ignore what the GOP is doing beyond our field of vision — our daughters, after all, have access to safe and legal abortion and any form of birth control they need. But this is not so in America at large, where Republican legislatures and the Congress are working overtime to limit access to abortion and reproductive care, often at great cost to women and their families.

The GOP’s senseless war on Planned Parenthood is only part of it. How many of us know that, due to draconian laws sponsored by Republicans, 90 percent of American counties have no legal abortion provider? How many of us have stopped to consider that no healthy family needs GOP-sponsored parental consent laws, which in authoritarian, abusive and incestuous families can lead to the murder of a daughter?

All this is central to the rigid orthodoxy that Republican presidents and legislators will be forced to follow, now and in the future. Mitt Romney did; Marco Rubio has; Paul Ryan will. No matter how personally attractive, no candidate will change this party until forces outside the party make dramatic change imperative.

I appreciate that this conclusion is depressing. No doubt many of you will object to some aspect of my indictment. Fair enough. But I doubt that you are much inclined to dispute most of its particulars — if only because you’ve acknowledged them yourselves.

And there are still more issues to consider. Why hasn’t the GOP made creative efforts to confront the problems of middle-class and working people — many of whom have now turned to Donald Trump — seeking solutions that are consistent with its philosophy? Are we squandering the talents of our young people by saddling them with prohibitive student debt, cheating our society in the bargain? Are we stifling struggling families by not trying to retrain their breadwinners?

For that matter, what sense does this phony war on Obamacare make when the GOP offered no alternatives — even to deal with pre-existing conditions or the ruinous effects of catastrophic illness? When did the GOP stop caring — I mean really caring, not offering bromides about liberating the engines of free enterprise — about the everyday life of citizens who are falling behind?

One can debate the best policies and solutions for all this — and we should. But the GOP has utterly abdicated its responsibility to participate in reasoned governance, and so given us Donald Trump.

Trump’s policies, such as they may be, are a disastrous expression of bottled up resentment among the base, a blind lashing out at all they feel besets them. Again and again, he offers phony and dangerous prescriptions that betray his complete ignorance of the most basic rudiments of governance, economics, domestic policy, and national security. He caters to racial antagonism, spreading its toxins in the party and the country as a whole. As a man, he is an intellectually vacant and self-obsessed misogynist clearly in the grips of a profound personality disorder which makes him unfit to lead. He is not simply a disgrace to the party, but a product of all that disgraces it.

And yet it is not Donald Trump who best captures the party’s sickness. It is that the only possible alternative in the GOP as it exists is not John Kasich, but Ted Cruz.

Indeed, Cruz expresses the disease in its purest form. He is gratuitously cruel in his comments about others — who can forget his deathless assertion that, in debate, “Mitt Romney French-kissed Barack Obama.” He uses his own GOP colleagues as targets for lies, slander and smears. He panders to hatred and suspicion of all Muslims. He casts his irresponsible grandstanding — like trying to shut down the government — as lonely heroics. He denies climate change and compares himself to Galileo. He wallows in fake piety while perpetrating dirty tricks. He demonizes disagreement and lies without compunction. He shows no real empathy for anyone.

His campaign appeals to fear, not hope. His transcendent calculation is repellent; his apocalyptic and nihilistic “conservatism” exists solely to slake his craving for power. His coalition is evangelicals, gun fanatics, nativists, climate deniers and Tea Party atavists — and even many of his ideological allies despise him. He is Joseph McCarthy reborn, a man without conscience, willing to say anything. Choosing between Trump and Cruz depends on whose personal and political pathology you fear most.

I can’t imagine you will ever make such a choice. That this is the only choice you have makes it imperative to leave the GOP.

I’m not urging you to become Democrats. I’m not even trying to win an argument. I simply want our political arguments to make sense in the world of reality, the better to move our country forward with the goodwill and considered judgment required by these challenging times.

So what I profoundly hope is that, collectively, you will abandon the Republican Party until it becomes worthy of the country we love in common. Because, in the end, a big chunk of our common future may depend on you.

With abiding friendship,

Ric

Copyright © 2016 TheHuffingtonPost.com, Inc.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/richard-north-patterson/an-open-letter-to-my-repu_b_9497274.html [with comments]


--


Day of the Demagogue

Trumpian Deportation Fantasies and American Realities

By Tanya Golash-Boza
Posted at 7:14am, March 24, 2016

Tomgram: Tanya Golash-Boza, How Many Presidents Does It Take to Deport 11 Million People?

Donald Trump’s presidential campaign was never birthed; it was always birthered. The man who, as his wife told [ http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2015/08/donald-trump-marie-brenner-ivana-divorce ] a Vanity Fair reporter back in 1990, had a book of Hitler’s speeches in a cabinet by his bedside, has an unerring eye for how to wield anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant sentiments for his own benefit. Back in 2011, while considering a presidential run, he birthed his first version of the birther controversy, the claim that Barack Obama was born not in Hawaii but Kenya and so was the ultimate Muslim outsider (and an illegitimate president). It was his equivalent of dipping a toe in the political waters and testing the temperature before diving in -- and he still credits that ludicrous claim with burnishing his reputation. ("I don't think I went overboard. Actually, I think it made me very popular... I do think I know what I'm doing," he said [ http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/donald-trumps-history-raising-birther-questions-president-obama/story?id=33861832 ] in 2013.) This time around, if Donald Trump has proven anything, it’s that he knows exactly what he’s doing and just what impact the symbols he calls up -- from that Obama birth certificate [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/11/donald-trump-birther-this-week_n_3739675.html ] to Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio [ http://abc7news.com/politics/arizona-offers-model-for-how-trump-might-win-the-white-house/1253351/ ] -- are likely to have. It’s clear enough that he’s been a student of the trade of demagogue, that he has a natural flair for it, and that when he births a new symbol, it tends to be potent.

None more so than the Wall (which should by now be capitalized). You know just what wall I mean without my writing another word. There’s only been one wall on the planet since his campaign began and, classically enough for our moment, it arrived by escalator [ http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/donald-trump-rode-escalator-2016-presidential-announcement/story?id=31801433 ]. It came full blown, wrapped in a Trumpian ribbon, all 2,000 miles of it strung along the Mexican border of his mind, complete from day one with “rapists,” and the news that “they” were taking our jobs in return for “drugs” and “crime.”

A package deal, that wall arrived full grown on June 16, 2015, when Donald Trump and his present wife, Melania, descended by escalator from the heavens of Trump Tower in New York to announce his presidential bid to the planet. And that wall -- the idea, that is, of purifying our American world of “them” by keeping undocumented immigrants out and getting rid of those already here -- was from that moment at the heart of everything he did. As he said [ http://time.com/3923128/donald-trump-announcement-speech/ ] that day, “I would build a great wall, and nobody builds walls better than me, believe me, and I’ll build them very inexpensively, I will build a great, great wall on our southern border. And I will have Mexico pay for that wall. Mark my words.”

And they were worth marking. Anyone who has watched [ http://www.buzzfeed.com/tamerragriffin/trump-wall-at-the-trump-rally ] his rallies since knows that those words have become the call-and-response [ http://www.mediaite.com/tv/trump-created-a-terribly-catchy-call-and-response-with-his-crowd-in-vermont-tonight/ ] chorus at the heart of Trumpismo, our new nativist celebrity religion. That the wall (no less the idea that Mexico will cover the cost of building it) is a fantasy isn’t beside the point, it’s the point itself. What would you expect but a fantasy version of future American life from the presidential candidate nominated by The Apprentice, whose closest adviser is, by his own admission, himself [ http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-elections/us-election-2016-be-afraid-be-very-afraid-donald-trump-is-his-own-foreign-policy-adviser-a6940111.html ]. In such a world, the wish, however malign, is truly the father of reality and the world a fantasy object.

Unfortunately, such fantasies have real consequences, which is why TomDispatch asked Tanya Golash-Boza, author of Deported: Immigrant Policing, Disposable Labor, and Global Capitalism [ http://www.amazon.com/dp/1479843970 ], to explore both the walling in and deportation dreams (or nightmares) of Trump and his rival Ted Cruz and what exactly to make of them.

-Tom

In 2006, when I first began researching deportations, George W. Bush was president and quietly building a deportation machine in the Department of Homeland Security. Outside of small activist circles, few Americans knew that deportations had been rising since 1996 due to legislation signed by President Bill Clinton. Nor could anyone then have imagined that the next President would be a Democrat, the son of a Kenyan immigrant, and would make Bush look like a piker when it came to record-high deportations [ http://www.counterpunch.org/2013/03/11/obamas-mass-deportations/ ]. Nor, for that matter, would anyone have dreamed that deportation would become a -- possibly the -- signature issue of the 2016 presidential campaign.

And yet, all of this and more has come to pass in a blistering season of demagoguery, nativism, and outright racism. As again would have been unimaginable a mere decade ago, Republican front-runners Donald Trump [ http://www.cnn.com/2015/07/29/politics/donald-trump-immigration-plan-healthcare-flip-flop/ ] and Ted Cruz [ http://thinkprogress.org/immigration/2016/01/05/3736142/ted-cruz-out-trumps-trump/ ] have both promised to deport every last one of the estimated 11 million [ http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2015/11/19/5-facts-about-illegal-immigration-in-the-u-s/ ] undocumented migrants in the United States, the whole lot of them, while as a bonus banning [ http://www.defenseone.com/feature/when-national-security-and-nativism-collide/ ] Muslims from the country. Trump gave his particular proposals a special twist by labeling Mexicans coming across the border as “rapists [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/9-outrageous-things-donald-trump-has-said-about-latinos_us_55e483a1e4b0c818f618904b ],” and immigrants more generally as “snakes [ http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/donald-trump/12194161/After-tomorrow-Donald-Trump-could-be-unstoppable.html ].”

On the issue of deportations, the Republican presidential hopefuls differ in only one tiny way: Trump claims he will allow the “really good [ http://www.cnn.com/2015/07/29/politics/donald-trump-immigration-plan-healthcare-flip-flop/ ]” immigrants to return, while Cruz [ http://thinkprogress.org/immigration/2016/01/05/3736142/ted-cruz-out-trumps-trump/ ] wants to get rid of every last undocumented immigrant permanently.

To put all this in perspective, here’s the crucial thing you need to understand: with such “proposals,” we have been plunged into a grim fantasyland. You can be guaranteed that neither of these men has spent a serious moment considering what it might really mean to deport those 11 million actual human beings. Behind such a program there can be no real plan, because it would prove both unaffordable and unworkable (leaving aside its utter inhumanity). Undoubtedly, neither Trump nor Cruz cares about the details of all this, since the point is to arouse deep fears of loss and visceral betrayal in the white working class voters they want to attract. But it’s worth taking their proposals seriously enough to ask a relatively straightforward question: Is it feasible to deport 11 million people?

Deporter-in-Chiefs?

Any plan to deport all undocumented migrants would involve an inconceivably massive expansion of the current deportation program, which since 1996 has already experienced significant growth. The highest number of people ever deported from the United States in a given year is 237,941. That was the number of “interior removals [ https://www.ice.gov/removal-statistics ]” reported by the Department of Homeland Security’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in 2009. A removal, by the way, is a deportation that involves a court process, while an interior removal [id.] is a deportation involving a person who is arrested inside the United States and is not a recent border-crosser.

Keep in mind that those 237,941 undocumented immigrants expelled from the country represented a far higher number of deportations than had ever previously been experienced. Before 1995, there were never more than 50,000 total removals (including people caught crossing the border). Only in 2003 were figures for interior and border removals reported separately, at which time there were 30,000 [ http://www.migrationpolicy.org/research/deportation-and-discretion-reviewing-record-and-options-change ] interior removals. A concerted effort in the years that followed would translate into a seven-fold increase in the number of interior removals during the Bush presidency.

When President Obama took office in 2009, he topped the Bush numbers, overseeing record deportations and keeping interior removals steadily above 200,000 [ https://www.ice.gov/removal-statistics ] until 2012. Then those numbers began to decline, dropping to a still hefty 69,478 interior removals in 2015. For his early deportation record, Obama earned the title of “deporter-in-chief [ http://www.politico.com/story/2014/03/national-council-of-la-raza-janet-murguia-barack-obama-deporter-in-chief-immigration-104217 ]” from immigration activists, as well as the ire of the Latino community. Perhaps due to pressure from that community, he has in recent years rolled back deportations, in addition to issuing an executive order that grants temporary authorization to stay and work in the United States to immigrants who came here as children. He also issued another executive order that would grant the same protections to their parents, although it is still held up in the courts [ http://immigrationimpact.com/2016/01/19/supreme-court-will-review-dacadapa-case/ ].

Now, for the future: the promise to deport all 11 million undocumented migrants in, assumedly, two four-year presidential terms would mean the deportation of 1,375,000 people annually, or six times that all-time high of 237,000. In other words, Donald Trump or Ted Cruz would have to almost match Bush’s seven-fold increase in deportations on a truly monumental, essentially inconceivable scale. The more realistic question in the grim world of deportations would be: Could one of them even get back to the 237,000-a-year figure? It’s far from clear that any president could actually restore such record-high deportation rates today (forget the promise of millions).

As it happens, ramping up deportations again would require cooperation from local criminal law enforcement, which is unlikely. In reality, local police departments have been moving away from such cooperation over the past few years, in part due to criticism that such programs encourage racial profiling [ http://www.nashvillescene.com/pitw/archives/2012/12/12/aclu-tn-slams-287g-in-davidson-county-and-beyond ] while diminishing trust [ http://www.immigrationpolicy.org/just-facts/287g-program-flawed-and-obsolete-method-immigration-enforcement ] between communities and the local police.

The dramatic increase in deportations under President Bush relied heavily on increased cooperation between local police and ICE, due to real limitations on the ways in which immigration laws can be enforced. Whereas local police officers are empowered to patrol the streets and arrest people suspected of committing crimes, immigration law enforcement agents are not authorized to pull people off the streets simply because they suspect they might be undocumented. An important reason for this: there is no way you can figure out a person’s immigration status simply by looking at them.

Only Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) agents are authorized to rely on “Mexican appearance [ https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/422/873/case.html ]” when deciding whom to interrogate and they can only operate up to 100 miles from the border. Interior immigration enforcement is mostly carried out by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents with the help of local police officers who can indeed inquire about someone’s immigration status, but only after such a person has been stopped on reasonable suspicion of committing a crime.

There are currently about 5,000 ICE agents in the country. Their capacity, with limited cooperation from local law enforcement, seems at the moment to be about 70,000 deportations a year, as evidenced by 2015 numbers. To get those deportations back above 200,000 would involve gargantuan and expensive efforts and a restoration of the frayed [ https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/dhs-finds-resistance-to-new-program-to-deport-illegal-immigrants/2015/08/03/4af5985c-36d0-11e5-9739-170df8af8eb9_story.html ] relationship between ICE and local police departments.

Home and Workplace Raids

How, then, are 5,000 ICE agents, or even 15,000 -- the number Donald Trump [ https://www.donaldjtrump.com/positions/immigration-reform ] wants -- going to deport more than a million people annually? In reality, there is no way that those numbers would be enough to arrest and expel the nearly 4,000 people a day, or 1,460,000 people a year that Ted Cruz [ http://dailycaller.com/2016/02/22/cruz-now-wants-ice-agents-to-round-up-and-deport-all-12-million-illegals-video/ ] implies he would reach in his presidency.

It may seem like 5,000 agents should be capable of arresting at least one person each a day and so meet those goals. But the process is simple only in a Trumpian fantasy world. In the real world, locating and then arresting the undocumented is anything but a straightforward process. After all, ICE agents can’t go around interrogating people to find out if they are undocumented and then sweep them off the streets. They can, however, arrest people in their homes -- if they have a warrant.

Once an investigation is completed and such a warrant has been issued, an ICE raid on the home of a suspected undocumented migrant usually involves about a dozen agents working through the National Fugitive Operations Program that has come under harsh criticism [ http://www.migrationpolicy.org/article/obama-administration-signals-it-may-review-number-bush-immigration-policies ] for its remarkable inefficiency. To have such a home raid described is to begin to understand why such raids tend to work out so poorly.

In February 2010, Maximo, a Dominican citizen who lived in Puerto Rico and experienced just such a raid, described the process to me. He shared an apartment in San Juan with two other men, a Venezuelan and a Puerto Rican. Early one morning, they heard loud banging on the door. Maximo tried to sleep through it, but it only got louder. Finally, he got up. Before he could answer the door, however, the ICE agents decided to break it down and he found himself surrounded by several of them, guns drawn, demanding to see all of the occupants of the apartment. The three men were then ordered to sit on the floor. Finally, Maximo was given his clothes and allowed to get dressed.

When asked for identification, he gave them his Dominican passport. Was he, they then asked, in the country illegally? He admitted that he indeed was, which led to his arrest and dispatch to an immigration detention center. There, he signed a voluntary departure order and two days later was deported to Santo Domingo. In other words, that day’s work for at least a dozen officers led to the deportation of a single Dominican as his housemates were legal permanent residents. This is typical of the kinds of “successes” that ICE agents have.

Among other things, the next President could revisit the worksite enforcement [ https://www.ice.gov/worksite ] strategies implemented during the Bush years to find undocumented workers. Such worksite raids, however, have proven even less effective and efficient than home raids.

Consider the 2008 Postville raid [ http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/13/opinion/13sun2.html ] in Iowa, at the time the largest of its kind ever. Start with the fact that it took almost a year and a half of investigation and planning to pull off. In December 2006, federal agents began to look into a worksite enforcement operation in Postville, a town with 2,273 inhabitants, 968 of whom worked at Agriprocessors, a kosher slaughterhouse and meat processing plant. On Monday, May 12, 2008, the plan became a reality as 900 agents [ http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2008/07/14/opinion/14ed-camayd.pdf ] descended on the town. Cooperation among several federal and local agencies was necessary for this to happen. In all, 389 [ https://books.google.com/books?id=bCceCwAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=immigration+nation&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjF4-Hiwc3LAhVX0GMKHREgD3YQ6AEIJTAB#v=onepage&q=december%202006&f=false ] immigrant workers were arrested, though only half of them were eventually deported. In other words, ICE spent a year and five months working on a case that required almost 1,000 agents on the ground and eventually resulted in fewer than 300 deportations.

So let’s put this simply: there is no quick and easy way to deport millions of people from the United States, in part because we are a nation that values individual rights and requires at least some semblance of a process before a person is uprooted from his or her home or workplace. It is not within the purview of the executive branch to topple existing laws and judicial processes in order to carry out the mass removal of a significant segment of the population.

In sum, President Obama has done about as much damage as is presently possible to undocumented migrants and their families within these legal and judicial constraints. Trump and Cruz’s claims that they will do significantly more are baseless -- unless the American system were to be changed in fundamental ways (and even then, achieving their goals would prove unlikely in the extreme).

Walls and Other Fantasies

Add to all of this an even greater and more literal fantasy edifice: Donald Trump’s wall. That future 80-foot competitor to the Great Wall of China is slated to cover the 2,000-mile-long southern border, sport all the latest in surveillance technology, and (as The Donald regularly reassures audiences at his rallies) be paid for by the Mexicans. As it happens, Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto, who recently compared [ http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/mar/07/mexican-president-compares-donald-trump-rhetoric-to-hitler-and-mussolini-enrique-pena-nieto ] Trump’s language to Hitler’s, disagrees [ http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2016/03/mexico-president-trump-wall/472686/ ]. He’s made it abundantly clear that he would never comply with such a demand, while the previous Mexican president, also citing [ http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/feb/28/two-former-mexican-presidents-compare-donald-trump-to-hitler ] Hitler, has simply termed the very idea “stupid.” Felipe Calderón [ http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2016/03/mexico-president-trump-wall/472686/ ], Peña Nieto’s predecessor, said the Mexican people won’t “pay any single cent for such a stupid wall!”

In Trump’s far-fetched proposal lurks a crucial irony of our moment: Mexicans are no longer emigrating in large numbers to the United States. Over the past decade [ http://www.pewhispanic.org/2015/11/19/more-mexicans-leaving-than-coming-to-the-u-s/ ], more Mexicans have returned from the U.S. than headed illegally for it. Undocumented border crossings from Mexico have, in fact, been falling for the last 15 years, in part thanks to a sharp decline [ http://foreignpolicy.com/2015/08/18/donald-trump-immigration-border/ ] in the fertility rate in that country and the consequent lack of demographic pressure for people to leave.

And don’t forget that the wall would be a staggering infrastructure project. It would, for instance, require 10% [ http://www.defenseone.com/ideas/2016/03/what-it-would-take-build-trumps-border-wall-mexico/126514/ ] of all the cement produced in the United States in a year. And then there’s the issue of the price. It is estimated that just fencing in the full 2,000 mile border would cost up to $25 billion [ http://www.cnbc.com/2015/10/09/this-is-what-trumps-border-wall-could-cost-us.html ], or a quarter of what the federal government spends on infrastructure annually. An 80-foot, high-tech wall would cost far more. And let’s not forget that infrastructure in the U.S. is falling apart [ https://hbr.org/2015/05/what-it-will-take-to-fix-americas-crumbling-infrastructure ]: highways are crumbling and mass transit systems are in desperate need of repair and modernization. Imagine the federal government, spurned by the Mexicans, spending tens of billions of dollars on such a wall when Amtrak [ http://www.railwayage.com/index.php/passenger/intercity/amtrak-fy-2015-budget-something-has-to-change%E2%80%9D.html ], for example, is barely scraping by with an annual budget of $1.6 billion, while other developed countries are leaving us in the dust with 200-mile-per-hour bullet trains.

All this means that the proposals to “build a wall” and “deport them all” that have animated this election season are quite fantastical. And then there’s the irony that such plans come from a political party that has long criticized government spending and waste. On wasting money, we’re talking textbook cases here.

In short, taken on their own “merits,” the numbers don’t add up. The costs would be tremendous. The disruption to American life in which the undocumented play a little noticed but crucial [ http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/176099/tomgram%3A_aviva_chomsky,_a_newspapers_crisis_reveals_unreported_worlds/ ] role would be far more unsettling than any of Donald Trump’s or Ted Cruz’s admirers imagine, and no wall or deportation program will protect them from the actual forces decimating their lives (and life spans [ http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/21/us/life-expectancy-for-less-educated-whites-in-us-is-shrinking.html ]). In fact, looked at piece by piece, in a purely practical way, the present deportation debate, which has proven extremely effective in raising the temperature of the political moment, is simply the essence of the demagogue.

Should Donald Trump or Ted Cruz win the presidency, they are guaranteed to make life hell for millions of undocumented human beings living in and working extremely hard in this country, and their plans would fail dismally -- but that failure would undoubtedly prove to be a horror all its own.

Tanya Golash-Boza is an associate professor of sociology at the University of California, Merced. She is the author of five books, her most recent being Deported: Immigrant Policing, Disposable Labor, and Global Capitalism [ http://www.amazon.com/dp/1479843970 ] (New York University Press), which explains mass deportation in the context of the global economic crisis. In addition, she has written on contemporary issues for Al Jazeera, the Boston Review, the Nation, Counterpunch, the Houston Chronicle, and the Chronicle of Higher Education. She tweets as @tanyaboza.

Copyright 2016 Tanya Golash-Boza

http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/176119/ [also, without Tom Engelhardt's introduction, at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/tanya-golashboza/day-of-the-demagogue_b_9540120.html (with comments)]


--


American Demagogue


Illustration by Tom Bachtell

By David Remnick
March 14, 2016 Issue

Nearly three decades ago, Howard Kaminsky, of Random House, called on the real-estate developer and self-marketing master Donald Trump at his office on Fifth Avenue. Kaminsky brought along a cover design for “Trump: The Art of the Deal,” its author’s literary début. Trump seemed reasonably happy. Just one thing, he said. “Please make my name much bigger.”

It was all so funny once. For a long time, Trump, with his twenty-four-karat skyscrapers, his interesting hair, and his extra-classy airline, was a leading feature of the New York egoscape. The editors of the satirical monthly Spy covered him with the same obsessive attention that Field & Stream pays to the rainbow trout. Trump never failed to provide; he was everywhere, commandeering a corner at a professional wrestling match, buying the Miss Universe franchise and vowing smaller bathing suits and higher heels. You could watch him humiliate supplicants on “The Apprentice” and hear him on “The Howard Stern Show” gallantly describing the mystery of Melania’s bowel movements (“I’ve never seen anything—it’s amazing”) and announcing that, “without even hesitation,” he would have had sex with Princess Diana. As early as 1988, Trump hinted at a run for the White House, though this was understood to be part of his carny shtick, another form of self-branding in the celebrity-mad culture.

And now here we are. Trump is no longer hustling golf courses, fake “universities,” or reality TV. He means to command the United States armed forces and control its nuclear codes. He intends to propose legislation, conduct America’s global affairs, preside over its national-intelligence apparatus, and make the innumerable moral and political decisions required of a President. This is not a Seth Rogen movie; this is as real as mud. Having all but swept the early Republican primaries and caucuses, Trump—who re-tweets conspiracy theories and invites the affections of white-supremacist groups, and has established himself as the adept inheritor of a long tradition of nativism, discrimination, and authoritarianism—is getting ever closer to becoming the nominee of what Republicans like to call “the party of Abraham Lincoln.” No American demagogue––not Huey Long, not Joseph McCarthy, not George Wallace––has ever achieved such proximity to national power.

Meanwhile, the elders of the G.O.P., like House Speaker Paul Ryan, have declared their disgust, unless, like Governor Chris Christie, of New Jersey, they have sold their souls for a place at Trump’s feeding trough. As yet, no detestable remark, no flagrant display of ignorance, no scummy business deal has dissuaded his followers. Nor will Trump be defeated by the putatively scathing critiques of the commentariat (including this one). Quote his most hateful eruptions––about Mexicans, about Muslims, about women, about African-Americans––and the next day will still bring an arena filled with voters who find him incorruptible precisely because he is rich, and who vibrate to his blunt assessments of the American condition. Last month, John Oliver, a master of the extended comic decimation, opened video fire on Trump after many months of resisting the subject. So hilarious! So devastating! And then Trump cleaned up on Super Tuesday. Don’t they watch HBO in the S.E.C. states?

Pull the camera back, and Trump can be viewed as part of a deadly serious wave of authoritarians and xenophobes who have come to power in Russia, Poland, and Hungary, and who lead such movements as the National Front, in France, and the Independence Party, in the United Kingdom. Vladimir Putin and Trump have expressed mutual admiration. It’s not hard to see why. Putin has obliterated the early shoots of Russian democracy as evidence of weakness and obeisance to the West; his eighty-per-cent popularity rating is built on arousing nationalism and a hatred of minorities (ethnic and sexual), the suppression of dissent, and a bare-chested macho image. Trump says approvingly, “At least he’s a leader, unlike what we have in this country.”

Yet how has Donald Trump, the coddled scion of a New York real-estate baron, emerged as a populist hero? How does the beneficiary of a draft deferment due to bone spurs on his feet get away with questioning the military record of John McCain, who endured five years as a prisoner of war? Trump believes that his appeal is based largely on what he calls his heroic lack of “political correctness” but which is more accurately described as a breezy penchant for race-baiting, war crimes, and content-free policy pronouncements. At rallies, Trump gets some of his loudest cheers when he calls for the expanded use of torture (methods “a hell of a lot worse” than waterboarding), for the construction of a walled-off southern border (it will be “a beautiful wall”), and for the immediate replacement of Obamacare with . . . “something terrific.”

The question remains why the Trump phenomenon has proved so buoyant and impregnable. Some have earnestly ascribed it to broad social and economic forces, particularly the “new normal” of stagnating wages, underemployment, and corporate “offshoring” and “inversion.” Yet those factors were at least as pronounced in the last election cycle––and Republicans chose as their nominee the father of comprehensive health care in Massachusetts.

The socioeconomic forces are real, but Trump is also the beneficiary of a long process of Republican intellectual decadence. Paul Ryan denounces Trump but not the Tea Party rhetoric that propelled his own political ascent. John McCain holds Trump in contempt, but selected as his running mate Sarah Palin, the Know-Nothing of Wasilla, one of Trump’s most vivid forerunners and supporters. Mitt Romney last week righteously slammed Trump as a “phony” and a misogynist, and yet in 2012 he embraced Trump’s endorsement and praised his “extraordinary” understanding of economics.

The G.O.P. establishment may be in a state of meltdown, but this process of exploiting the darkest American undercurrents began with Richard Nixon’s Southern Strategy and, more lately, has included the birther movement and the Obama Derangement Syndrome. Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz, who compete hard for the most extreme positions in conservatism, decry the viciousness and the vacuousness of Trump, but they started out by deferring to him––and now they ape his vulgarity in a last-ditch effort to keep pace. Insults. Bigotry. Nationally televised assurances of adequate genital dimensions. This is the political moment in which we live. The Republican Party, having spent years courting the basest impulses in American political culture, now sees the writing on the wall. It reads “Donald Trump,” in very big letters.

© 2016 Condé Nast

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/03/14/behind-the-trump-phenomenon


--


Trump Is Charming, and Hitler Loved Dogs



By Noam Bramson
[Democratic] Mayor of New Rochelle, NY
03/25/2016 06:39 pm ET | Updated Mar 25, 2016

“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 an entertainer, and one is actually a thinking individual. [As voters] begin to see the real individual there, I think we’re going to be comforted as a nation.”
- Dr. Ben Carson

Speaking from personal experience, I’d say Carson has a point. Several years ago, when Trump Plaza in New Rochelle topped-off to become the tallest structure in Westchester County, the future GOP front-runner came to town to celebrate the occasion [ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=etOqjNwYdJI (next below; no comments yet)].

As mayor, I joined him for an elevator ride to the top floor of the still-unfinished building and then, later, for a short walk to a local restaurant with other community leaders.

I had never been a fan of Trump’s flashy style and expected to find the man repellent in person, but, in fact, he was quite appealing: pleasantly soft-spoken, warm, friendly, an engaging storyteller, and, most surprisingly, a thoughtful listener. I couldn’t help myself - I liked him.

And I am not alone. Sheldon Adelson and Clay Aiken, two people who are unlikely to have much else in common, have both described Trump as “very charming.” Tom Brady, who can probably have his pick of social relationships, has “always enjoyed the company” of his “good friend” Trump. Even Trump’s former butler calls him “entirely a nice guy.”

True, Trump’s charms have been mainly under wraps in the snarling arena of the Republican primary campaign. But if, as seems likely, Trump advances to the general election, with a new, wider audience to win over, then his gentler qualities may be put to better use.

Will many Americans be, as Carson puts it, “comforted?” It is quite possible.

So this seems an important moment to remember one of history’s vital, but underappreciated, lessons: monsters can be charming.

Search the Internet for “Adolf Hitler with dogs [e.g. https://www.google.com/?gws_rd=ssl#q=Adolf+Hitler+with+dogs ],” and you will find some odd little films of the Fuehrer at his alpine retreat. He looks every bit the kindly country gentleman, as he dotes lovingly on his German shepherd and watches puppies skitter around the terrace.



To the modern viewer, these films are disorienting. Knowing today the colossal scale of Hitler’s monstrosity, one expects it to overspill every aspect of his persona, to be horribly visible from all angles. We picture Hitler in a perpetual rage, striding about the Reich Chancellery, glowering and declaiming at henchmen. He seems the kind to kick a dog, not pet it.

But no. And it’s not just the happy afternoons in the Berchtesgaden with the dogs. Here is Hitler on the Berlin social circuit, being gushed about for his dazzling wit. There he is laying a gentle hand on a sweet pig-tailed girl, who beams back at him adoringly. The incongruity of it all is difficult to process... which makes the lesson hard to absorb.

And Hitler was hardly unique among historical figures in presenting such confusing incongruities.

Stalin composed poetry and contributed a lovely singing voice to his church choir, before going on to murder millions of his countrymen and enslave the rest.

The Shah of Iran cut a dashing figure in his finely-tailored western suits, entertaining celebrities amid strutting peacocks and flowing champagne. Meanwhile, his secret police, dressed more somberly, entertained dissidents with electrical implements and fingernail extractions.

Nero delighted his subjects by competing personally in athletic competitions and appearing on stage as an actor, when he wasn’t otherwise occupied beating his pregnant wife to death and then mutilating her replacement.

There is also a distinct sub-species of strongman-clown. Idi Amin with his overstuffed, sweat-coated comic bluster. Kim Jong-Il with his strange hair, platform shoes, and peculiar Hollywood obsessions. The first could have starred in his own sitcom, the second was the real-life inspiration for a real-life (albeit puppet-acted) comedy film. It is easy to laugh, until you remember the thuggery, hijackings, nuclear tests, and mass starvation.

All these plays against type, these incongruities, are unsettling precisely because we expect danger to be easier to spot and harder to disguise, because we want monsters to present themselves helpfully in horns and cloven feet and are surprised when sometimes they don’t.

But monsters, it seems, can be nice to children. They can be kind to animals. They can be loyal to friends. They can be comically oafish or gracefully elegant, sharp dressers and talented writers, and many other things that are “comforting,” or at least unthreatening.

They are still monsters.

Comparing any contemporary American political figure to Hitler can be extravagantly unfair. A disclaimer is required: Donald Trump gives no indication of being a would-be mass murderer or world conqueror (sadly, torturer and war criminal cannot be ruled out, given his explicitly supportive statements on these topics.) It’s not even clear that Trump is a real bigot - his pronouncements have the air of opportunistic demagoguery more than of genuine personal prejudice. Is Trump a crypto-fascist? Who knows? It seems just as likely that he has no coherent political philosophy whatsoever, beyond self-aggrandizement.

But that’s where the disclaimer ends, because whatever Trump’s inner thoughts, Trump’s candidacy, his message, is fascist - fascist to the core.

How else can one label the simmering undercurrent of violence, the mocking contempt for norms of civil discourse, the drumbeat of demonization, the simplistic and counterfactual mythologies, the cult of personality, the elevation of strength above all other virtues?

The message is all-too-familiar:

Trust in me and we shall be great once more. The traitors in our midst and the hordes at our gate shall be swept away. What they took with their clever tongues and grasping hands shall be ours again. For I am a strong man with a hard fist, and I am your champion.

No matter the language, setting, or era, the essence of this appeal is ever the same. And when it moves a people to action, it always - always - ends in tragedy.

A campaign won on such a basis would be profoundly, disastrously harmful to our democracy, even if the policies of the subsequent presidency proved to be innocuous. The validation of the message is, by itself, enough to do catastrophic damage to the strength and durability of our political institutions and culture. Like an illness that wipes out our resistance, it would leave us more vulnerable to the next infection, and the next after that. In this sense, Donald Trump’s success presents the most serious and frightening internal challenge that American democracy has ever faced.

Yet Trump’s incongruities, like those of others in history, can conceal the full ominous scale of our danger. The problem is not that Ben Carson may be wrong in his observations about a second “cerebral” Trump with the capacity to comfort and charm; the problem is that Carson is probably right.

And even if not, there is already at work an equally potent numbing agent for our threat instincts: Trump’s sheer outrageousness. Those who prove resistant to his charms - who are mortified by his antics - still tend to see Trump as an embarrassment more than a menace, as a clown more than a danger. How can we really be frightened by someone who hawks wines and steaks during a victory speech, as though CNN were QVC? By a guy who cheerfully debates the hotness of various women with Howard Stern? By a performer who issues a trademark catchphrase on The Apprentice and assures us that his hands and other parts are amply-sized? A laughingstock yes, and that’s bad enough, but a true threat to our democracy? It doesn’t add up.

Until we remember that Hitler loved dogs.

Copyright © 2016 TheHuffingtonPost.com, Inc. (emphasis in original)

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/noam-bramson/trump-is-charming-hitler-_b_9530610.html [with comments]


--


How the Rest of the World Sees the Trump Candidacy


ASSOCIATED PRESS

By Mary Buffett
03/22/2016 05:51 pm ET | Updated Mar 23, 2016

So much has been written about Donald Trump in the last few weeks that I have chosen not to further clog the internet with my own disgust. Watching the Trump campaign mock the other candidates into submission has been unsettling to watch, since Trump has offered little more than his reality television show as an idea of how he would govern. The regular fights that break out at his events and his threats to win the nomination in the streets if necessary remind us of the unsettling behaviors in Germany and Italy in the early 1930s. Trump’s political campaign has devolved into a freak show that demonstrates our worst selves on the global stage.

However, we also have to remember that the whole world (not just Americans) is watching Donald Trump. I get calls and emails from overseas wondering if Americans have lost their collective minds. Is the United States a safe place to invest long term? They wonder if Trump is the result of a society too hooked on celebrity and pseudo celebrity for its own good. They ask what would draw some Americans to an authoritarian mindset in a constitutional democracy. They wonder because they have seen it in their own histories and have heard stories firsthand from parents and grandparents alike.

All of the hallmarks are there to see and only the armbands or the paperhanging logos are missing. The fascist nightmare that launched a Second World War didn’t just happen on its own and nations like Germany and Japan have had their own national conversation about what took place in the 1930’s and 1940’s. It had help.

The key ingredients have been in place for some time. There is a strong mix of ultra-nationalism combined with a smattering of racial or social resentments that comes with Trump. They become the “dog whistle” for those who blame their failures on other people. Trump, like Fascists who have come before him in other places, appears unbeatable even with falsehoods that are falling out of the sky. There are no Trump steaks for sale anywhere, certainly not in the Sharper Image. The magazines that Trump supposedly ran are long gone. The winery that he talked about has nothing to do with Donald Trump, as was pointed out by Comedy Central’s “The Daily Show.”

My peers in Europe look on with dismay and disgust because they have seen this before. What took place in Nazi Germany bears no repeating but the fascist impulse took place in other nations, like Japan, Spain, and Italy. Puppet Nazi sympathizers led by the Quislings and the Petains of the world opened their countries to the horrors of Nazi genocide.

Even England, which escaped Nazi invasion, was not immune from this fascist impulse. While Edward VII and his wife Wallis Simpson were openly pro-Nazi, the real danger remained with Sir Oswald Mosley, a member of the British aristocracy who headed up the British Union of Fascists. While thankfully long forgotten, he and his terrible group ran roughshod through Jewish communities and fought others on the streets of London. Only his internment after the Second World War began put an end to his nonsense.

My friends from around the world tell me that there is nothing new under the sun and they are right. Fascism has been called by other names over the years but it always lurks in the shadows. The combination of ultra-nationalism and a collection of resentments can sometimes make hatred seem reasonable to those who should know better. The growth of Syrian refugee crisis has energized the national Front in France and neo-Nazi skinheads on the street. In countless countries around the world, xenophobic nationalists like Vladimir Putin or kleptocrats like Zimbabwe’s Mugabe wrap themselves in national colors and social resentments.

So this brings us back to the Presidential Election and Donald Trump. The one saving grace of the nomination process is that it has forced Americans to take a good hard look at those who leverage racial hatred for political gain. Last week on PBS News Hour, the program focused on a North Carolina family who was volunteering for Donald Trump. Only after the show was broadcast did people realize that the tattoos of Grace Tilley, a 33 year old Trump volunteer, were commonly displayed by a variety of hate groups. Americans might be slow to react to this kind of internal threat but we have rejected our own internal Fascists and will do so again with Donald Trump, just like Americans who rejected David Duke, George Wallace, Father Coughlin, and a whole host of others who were destined for history’s ash heap.

While Donald Trump is now the odds on favorite to win the nomination, my friends in the rest of the world tell me that we should learn from their mistakes as opposed to making new ones of our own.

Copyright © 2016 TheHuffingtonPost.com, Inc.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mary-buffett/how-the-rest-of-the-world_b_9526168.html [with comments]


--


Donald Trump embodies how great republics meet their end



The Americans will have to decide what sort of person they want to put in the White House

Martin Wolf
March 1, 2016 4:21 pm

What is one to make of the rise of Donald Trump [ http://www.ft.com/topics/people/Donald_Trump ]? It is natural to think of comparisons with populist demagogues past and present. It is natural, too, to ask why the Republican party [ http://www.ft.com/topics/organisations/Republican_Party_US ] might choose a narcissistic bully as its candidate for president. But this is not just about a party, but about a great country. The US [ http://www.ft.com/topics/places/United_States_of_America ] is the greatest republic since Rome, the bastion of democracy, the guarantor of the liberal global order. It would be a global disaster if Mr Trump were to become president [ http://www.ft.com/topics/themes/US_presidential_election ]. Even if he fails, he has rendered the unthinkable sayable.

Mr Trump is a promoter of paranoid fantasies, a xenophobe and an ignoramus. His business consists of the erection of ugly monuments to his own vanity. He has no experience of political office. Some compare him to Latin American populists. He might also be considered an American Silvio Berlusconi, albeit without the charm or business acumen. But Mr Berlusconi, unlike Mr Trump, never threatened to round up and expel millions of people. Mr Trump is grossly unqualified for the world’s most important political office.

Yet, as Robert Kagan [ https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/trump-is-the-gops-frankenstein-monster-now-hes-strong-enough-to-destroy-the-party/2016/02/25/3e443f28-dbc1-11e5-925f-1d10062cc82d_story.html ], a neoconservative intellectual, argues in a powerful column in The Washington Post, Mr Trump is also “the GOP’s Frankenstein monster”. He is, says Mr Kagan, the monstrous result of the party’s “wild obstructionism”, its demonisation of political institutions, its flirtation with bigotry and its “racially tinged derangement syndrome” over President Barack Obama [ http://www.ft.com/topics/people/Barack_Obama ]. He continues: “We are supposed to believe that Trump’s legion of ‘angry’ people are angry about wage stagnation. No, they are angry about all the things Republicans have told them to be angry about these past seven-and-a-half years”.

Mr Kagan is right, but does not go far enough. This is not about the last seven-and-a-half years. These attitudes were to be seen in the 1990s, with the impeachment of President Bill Clinton. Indeed, they go back all the way to the party’s opportunistic response to the civil rights movement in the 1960s. Alas, they have become worse, not better, with time.

Why has this happened? The answer is that this is how a wealthy donor class, dedicated to the aims of slashing taxes and shrinking the state, obtained the footsoldiers and voters it required. This, then, is “pluto-populism”: the marriage of plutocracy with rightwing populism. Mr Trump embodies this union. But he has done so by partially dumping the free-market, low tax, shrunken government aims of the party establishment, to which his financially dependent rivals remain wedded. That gives him an apparently insuperable advantage. Mr Trump is no conservative, elite conservatives complain. Precisely. That is also true of the party’s base.

Mr Trump is egregious. Yet in some respects the policies of his two leading rivals, Senators Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio [ http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/32d33d8c-df05-11e5-b7fd-0dfe89910bd6.html ], are as bad. Both propose highly regressive tax cuts [ http://taxfoundation.org/blog/comparison-presidential-tax-plans-and-their-economic-effects ], just like Mr Trump. Mr Cruz even wishes to return to a gold standard. Mr Trump says that the sick should not die on the streets. Mr Cruz and Mr Rubio seem to be not quite so sure.

Yet the Trump phenomenon is not the story of just one party. It is about the country and so, inevitably, the world. In creating the American republic, the founding fathers were aware of the example of Rome. Alexander Hamilton argued in the Federalist Papers [ http://www.constitution.org/fed/federa70.htm ] that the new republic would need an “energetic executive”. He noted that Rome itself, with its careful duplication of magistracies, depended in its hours of need on the grant of absolute, albeit temporary, power to one man, called a “dictator”.

The US would have no such office. Instead, it would have a unitary executive: the president as elected monarch. The president has limited, but great, authority. For Hamilton, the danger of overweening power would be contained by “first, a due dependence on the people, secondly, a due responsibility”.

During the first century BC, the wealth of empire destabilised the Roman republic. In the end, Augustus, heir of the popular party, terminated the republic and installed himself as emperor. He did so by preserving all the forms of the republic, while he dispensed with their meaning.

It is rash to assume constitutional constraints would survive the presidency of someone elected because he neither understands nor believes in them. Rounding up and deporting 11m people is an immense coercive enterprise. Would a president elected to achieve this be prevented and, if so, by whom? What are we to make of Mr Trump’s enthusiasm for the barbarities of torture? Would he find people willing to carry out his desires or not?

It is not difficult for a determined leader to do the previously unthinkable by appealing to conditions of emergency. Both Abraham Lincoln and Franklin Delano Roosevelt did some extraordinary things in wartime. But these men knew limits. Would Mr Trump also know limits? Hamilton’s “energetic” executive is dangerous.

It was the ultra-conservative president Paul von Hindenburg who made Hitler chancellor of Germany in 1933. What made the new ruler so destructive was not only that he was a paranoid lunatic, but that he ruled a great power. Trump may be no Hitler. But the US is also no Weimar Germany. It is a vastly more important country even than that.

Mr Trump may still fail to win the Republican nomination [ http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/5b0be968-dff3-11e5-b67f-a61732c1d025.html ]. But, should he do so the Republican elite will have to ask themselves hard questions — not only how this happened, but how they should properly respond. Beyond that, the American people will have to decide what sort of human being they want to put in the White House. The implications for them and for the world of this choice will be profound. Above all, Mr Trump may not prove unique. An American “Caesarism” has now become flesh. It seems a worryingly real danger today. It could return again in future.

Letter in response to this column:

Trump’s progress raises concerns over a populist tyranny / From Daniel J Aronoff
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/f469b460-e074-11e5-8d9b-e88a2a889797.html

© The Financial Times Ltd 2016

http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/2/743d91b8-df8d-11e5-b67f-a61732c1d025.html [with embedded video report, and comments]


===


Real Time with Bill Maher: New Rule – Crass Warfare (HBO)

Published on Feb 26, 2016 by Real Time with Bill Maher [ http://www.youtube.com/channel/UCy6kyFxaMqGtpE3pQTflK8A / http://www.youtube.com/user/RealTime , http://www.youtube.com/user/RealTime/videos ]

In his editorial New Rule, Bill Maher takes viewers to a not-too-distant future where the crass language of the campaign trail makes its way into the Oval Office. Original air date: February 26, 2016.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IqFGZOUhO1M [with comments]


--


Donald Trump's Hitler Speech: Real Time With Bill Maher

Published on Mar 5, 2016 by Silly [ http://www.youtube.com/channel/UCnXOOzlclaoJuMbFW8WVYMw , http://www.youtube.com/channel/UCnXOOzlclaoJuMbFW8WVYMw/videos ]

Donald Trump's Hitler Speech. Original air date: March 4, 2016.

Vanity Fair: Trump Kept a Volume of Hitler's Speeches By His Bedside
Mar 01, 2016
http://www.weeklystandard.com/vanity-fair-trump-kept-a-volume-of-hitlers-speeches-by-his-bedside/article/2001343

7 Takeaways from Vanity Fair’s 1990 Profile of Donald Trump

August 5, 2015
http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2015/08/donald-trump-marie-brenner-ivana-divorce

Trump Once Threatened To Sue Over A Report He Owned A Book Of Hitler Speeches
He told Barbara Walters, “I’m probably going to sue Vanity Fair” over the report.
Feb. 18, 2016
http://www.buzzfeed.com/andrewkaczynski/trump-once-threatened-to-sue-over-a-report-he-owned-a-book-o [with embedded video, and comments]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3bEVI5Kls_A [with comments] [via/embedded at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/bill-maher-donald-trump_us_56db2fe1e4b03a405678dc08 (with comments)]


*


Real Time with Bill Maher: Politics of Love vs. Politics of Hate (HBO)

Published on Mar 4, 2016 by Real Time with Bill Maher

Bill Maher and his guests – Rep. Donna Edwards, Ari Shapiro, Matt Lewis and Sarah Silverman – discuss the violent rhetoric and behavior of Donald Trump and his supporters compared to Hillary's message of love and kindness in this clip from March 4, 2016.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6kjto_usg0M [with comments]


*


Real Time with Bill Maher: New Rule – The Empathy Gap (HBO)

Published on Mar 4, 2016 by Real Time with Bill Maher

In his editorial New Rule, Bill Maher calls out Republicans for refusing to get on the humane side of an issue unless they have been personally affected by it. Original air date: March 4, 2016.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BVwFmdipfZg [with comments]


--


Real Time with Bill Maher: Is Donald Trump a Con Man? (HBO)

Published on Mar 11, 2016 by Real Time with Bill Maher

"The Confidence Game" author Maria Konnikova joins Bill Maher to discuss the psychology behind Donald Trump's behavior in this clip from March 11, 2016.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rY7WrX98I2o [with comments]


===


this is part 2 of a 6-part post -- part 1 of this post is the post to which this is a reply, and part 3 is a reply to this post -- the '..., see also (linked in):' listing below is, subject only to further updates for any newer post(s) of note I pick up before completing this post, common to all 6 parts of this post


--


in addition to (linked in) the post to which this post is a reply and preceding (in particular but without limitation http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=120074878 ) and (other) following, see also (linked in):

http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=120987980 and preceding (and any future following)

http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=120989855 and preceding (and any future following)

http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=120989982 and preceding and following

http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=120993260 (and any future following)

http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=120993613 and following

http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=120994138 and following

http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=120994871 and preceding (and any future following)

http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=120995180 and preceding and following

http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=120995318 and preceding (and any future following)

http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=120995344 and preceding and following

http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=120995496 and preceding (and any future following)

http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=120995571 and preceding and following

http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=120996133 and following

http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=120996261 and preceding (and any future following)

http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=120996319 (and any future following)

http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=120997630 and preceding and following,
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=121452103 and preceding and following

http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=121000506 and following

http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=121000581 and following

http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=121002447 (and any future following)

http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=121003611 and preceding and following,
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=121084341 and preceding and following,
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=121112398 and preceding and following,
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=121190451 and preceding and following,
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=121225771 and preceding and following,
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=121226003 and preceding (and any future following)

http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=121004751 and preceding (and any future following)

http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=121004937 and preceding and following,
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=121078327 and preceding and following,
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=121190777 and preceding (and any future following)

http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=121005157 and preceding (and any future following)

http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=121005963 and following

http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=121006103 and preceding and following

http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=121006519 and following

http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=121006561 and preceding (and any future following),
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=121006601 and preceding (and any future following)

http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=121006779 and preceding (and any future following)

http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=121007556 and preceding (and any future following)

http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=121007567 and preceding and following

http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=121010867 and following,
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=121314803 and preceding and following,
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=121314803 and preceding and following

http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=121014388 (and any future following)

http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=121023338 and preceding and following

http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=121023602 and preceding (and any future following)

http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=121042212 and following,
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=121081063 and preceding (and any future following)

http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=121042439 (and any future following)

http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=121047347 and preceding (and any future following);
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=121047359 and preceding and following;
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=121047364 and preceding (and any future following);
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=121055600 and preceding and following;
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=121058494 and preceding (and any future following);
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=121062216 and preceding (and any future following);
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=121156643 and preceding and following;
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=121181732 and preceding (and any future following);
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=121276667 and preceding (and any future following);
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=121276742 and preceding (and any future following);
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=121319810 and preceding (and any future following);
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=121319812 and preceding (and any future following);
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=121326335 and preceding and following

http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=121049042 (and any future following)

http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=121049291 and following

http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=121052387 and preceding and following

http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=121052729 (and any future following)

http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=121052765 and preceding (and any future following)

http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=121056746 and following

http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=121057199 and following,
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=121083248 and preceding (and any future following),
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=121083250 and preceding and following

http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=121057368 and following,
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=121534413 and preceding (and any future following)

http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=121059830 (and any future following)

http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=121062953 and following

http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=121065296 (and any future following)

http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=121069135 and following

http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=121077214 (and any future following)

http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=121078164 (and any future following)

http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=121079764 (and any future following)

http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=121082322 and preceding and following

http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=121083835 and preceding (and any future following);
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=121083839 and preceding and following

http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=121085443 and following

http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=121085770 and following,
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=121109903 and preceding (and any future following)

http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=121099543 and following

http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=121105343 and following

http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=121107713 (and any future following)

http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=121111702 and preceding (and any future following)

http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=121121137 and following

http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=121126225 (and any future following)

http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=121139516 (and any future following)

http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=121141399 and following,
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=121161369 and preceding and following,
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=121180436 and preceding and following,
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=121191500 and preceding and following,
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=121217550 and preceding (and any future following),
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=121220986 and preceding and following,
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=121221056 and preceding and following,
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=121285432 and preceding (and any future following)

http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=121147046 and following,
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=121165771 and preceding and following,
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=121189663 and preceding (and any future following),
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=121222974 and preceding and following,
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=121272273 and preceding and following

http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=121148337 (and any future following)

http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=121150619 and preceding (and any future following)

http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=121151569 and following

http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=121151928 and preceding and following

http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=121152470 and preceding (and any future following)

http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=121154574 and preceding (and any future following)

http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=121161665 (and any future following)

http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=121161702 (and any future following)

http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=121172584 (and any future following)

http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=121181153 and following,
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=121394948 and preceding and following

http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=121181614 and following

http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=121181633 and following

http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=121182972 and preceding and following,
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=121415676 and preceding and following,
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=121421997 and preceding (and any future following),
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=121422743 and preceding (and any future following),
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=121422887 and preceding and following,
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=121423035 and preceding and following,
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=121423066 and preceding and following,
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=121423941 and preceding (and any future following),
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=121425159 and preceding and following,
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=121450096 and preceding and following,
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=121509399 and preceding (and any future following)

http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=121187368 and following

http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=121188642 and following,
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=121221298 and preceding (and any future following)

http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=121188741 (and any future following)

http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=121194009 and preceding (and any future following)

http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=121200448 and following

http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=121200625 (and any future following)

http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=121216563 (and any future following)

http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=121220295 and following,
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=121392882 and preceding and following,
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=121471720 and preceding and following,
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=121472699 and preceding (and any future following),
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=121476727 and preceding and following,
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=121478790 and preceding and following

http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=121221007 and following,
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=121221778 and preceding and following,
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=121222117 and preceding and following,
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=121256570 and preceding and following,
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=121285810 and preceding and following

http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=121221174 (and any future following)

http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=121222732 and preceding and following,
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=121403412 and preceding and following

http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=121222996 (and any future following)

http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=121227618 and following

http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=121229411 and following

http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=121231490 and following

http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=121233213 (and any future following)

http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=121233531 and following

http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=121239359 (and any future following)

http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=121245200 and following

http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=121245533 and following

http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=121250992 and following

http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=121252698 (and any future following)

http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=121254076 and preceding and following

http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=121254308 and preceding (and any future following)

http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=121254365 and following

http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=121255066 and preceding (and any future following)

http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=121257313 and following,
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=121275904 and preceding (and any future following),
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=121296209 and preceding (and any future following)

http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=121257324 (and any future following)

http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=121257328 and following

http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=121269675 (and any future following)

http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=121270222 (and any future following)

http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=121283893 and preceding (and any future following)

http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=121287385 and preceding and following

http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=121287908 and following,
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=121310397 and preceding (and any future following)

http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=121300861 (and any future following)

http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=121301431 and preceding and following,
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=121312005 and preceding (and any future following),
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=121319983 and preceding and following,
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=121320709 and preceding (and any future following),
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=121333918 and preceding and following,
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=121354789 and preceding and following,
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=121362478 and preceding and following,
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=121363336 and preceding (and any future following),
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=121364542 and preceding and following,
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=121365201 and preceding and following,
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=121482113 and preceding (and any future following)

http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=121313454 and preceding (and any future following)

http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=121319097 and following,
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=121352530 and preceding and following,
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=121353521 and preceding (and any future following),
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=121389651 and preceding and following,
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=121390098 and preceding and following,
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=121390773 and preceding (and any future following)

http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=121322673 and following,
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=121322896 and preceding and following,
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=121325421 and preceding and following

http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=121324470 and preceding and following

http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=121332647 (and any future following)

http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=121334978 and following

http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=121349015 and preceding (and any future following)

http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=121352605 and preceding (and any future following)

http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=121355153 and following

http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=121357941 and following

http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=121358236 (and any future following)

http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=121358822 (and any future following)

http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=121358919 and following

http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=121360770 (and any future following)

http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=121361189 and following,
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=121364251 and preceding and following,
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=121364255 and preceding (and any future following)

http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=121362538 (and any future following)

http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=121369396 (and any future following)

http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=121370760 and following

http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=121374386 and following,
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=121394827 and preceding and following,
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=121420242 and preceding and following

http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=121384490 and following

http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=121385109 and following

http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=121386798 and following,
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=121392200 and preceding and following

http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=121391854 (and any future following)

http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=121397316 and following,
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=121456936 and preceding (and any future following)

http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=121404696 (and any future following)

http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=121407461 and following

http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=121410319 (and any future following)

http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=121420983 (and any future following)

http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=121421877 (and any future following)

http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=121425020 and preceding and following

http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=121427490 (and any future following)

http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=121438121 and following

http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=121451017 and preceding (and any future following)

http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=121451913 and following,
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=121453177 and preceding and following,
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=121463619 and preceding and following,
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=121470993 and preceding (and any future following),
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=121484521 and preceding (and any future following),
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=121531494 and preceding and following

http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=121467714 (and any future following)

http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=121468286 (and any future following)

http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=121470783 (and any future following)

http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=121471774 and following

http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=121473695 and preceding (and any future following)

http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=121474035 and preceding (and any future following)

http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=121479354 and following

http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=121479699 and preceding (and any future following)

http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=121481097 (and any future following)

http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=121489416 (and any future following)

http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=121489483 and following

http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=121491493 and following

http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=121493310 and following,
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=121533288 and preceding and following

http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=121499872 (and any future following)

http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=121500425 and following

http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=121507049 and preceding (and any future following)

http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=121507080 and following

http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=121507357 and preceding (and any future following)

http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=121507902 (and any future following)

http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=121508221 and following

http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=121508327 and following

http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=121523081 (and any future following)

http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=121533054 (and any future following)

http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=121533347 (and any future following)

http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=121534304 and following