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Friday, September 23, 2016

Immigration

Here's Why Donald Trump Is More Right About Immigration Than You Think 

If you are right you have been right throughout American history.

Chris Matthews has been pretending to be a liberal, but he is just another white male.

Trump Win?

"The Keys to the White House" is a historically based prediction system. I derived the system by looking at every American presidential election from 1860 to 1980, and have since used the system to correctly predict the outcomes of all eight American presidential elections from 1984 to 2012."

Donald Trump has made this the most difficult election to assess since 1984. We have never before seen a candidate like Donald Trump, and Donald Trump may well break patterns of history that have held since 1860.

We've never before seen a candidate who's spent his life enriching himself at the expense of others. He's the first candidate in our history to be a serial fabricator, making up things as he goes along. Even when he tells the truth, such as, "Barack Obama really was born in the U.S.," he adds two lines, that Hillary Clinton started the birther movement, and that he finished it, even though when Barack Obama put out his birth certificate, he didn't believe it. We've never had a candidate before who not just once, but twice in a thinly disguised way, has incited violence against an opponent. We've never had a candidate before who's invited a hostile foreign power to meddle in American elections. We've never had a candidate before who's threatened to start a war by blowing ships out of the water in the Persian Gulf if they come too close to us. We've never had a candidate before who has embraced as a role model a murderous, hostile foreign dictator. Given all of these exceptions that Donald Trump represents, he may well shatter patterns of history that have held for more than 150 years, lose this election even if the historical circumstances favor it.

I think the fact that he's a bit of a maverick, and nobody knows where he stands on policy, because he's constantly shifting. I defy anyone to say what his immigration policy is, what his policy is on banning Muslims, or whoever, from entering the United States, that's certainly a factor. But it's more his history in Trump University, the Trump Institute, his bankruptcies, the charitable foundation, of enriching himself at the expense of others, and all of the lies and dangerous things he's said in this campaign, that could make him a precedent-shattering candidate.

Debates

“He is a charismatic guy, likes the attention, and will certainly not be intimidated by the bright lights and lots of people watching, he’ll probably thrive on it,” DuHaime, the Christie aide, said.

Back In The Lead

Hillary Clinton has wrested back a clear advantage in polls over Donald Trump just days before their first critical debate.

An NBC News-Wall Street Journal poll conducted this week — viewed by some election experts as the gold standard – found the Democrat leading Trump by six points nationally.

Instead, Trump’s recent polling strength appears to have energized Clinton’s supporters, who now match Trump’s supporters in enthusiasm. And Clinton’s ace-in-the-hole is a battleground map that will require Trump to draw a near-perfect hand.

Police And The Poor

These police murders are symptomatic of the racism structurally embedded in America, the responsibility of which bears no exemption for anyone who lives in this country, especially white Americans, Republican and Democrat, north and south. The innocent lives taken at the hands of the police are not merely a problem of the black community, or recurring anomalies in different police departments, but an issue that faces the entire country and its inability to understand the magnitude of historical and contemporary prejudices that affect our society.

Trump Rhetoric Incites Election Violence

 “This could start to shift into a law-and-order thing that favors Trump and Republicans.”

Trump’s World

This dude is incoherent. And, hence, dangerous. There is an utter lack of curiosity.

On foreign policy, Trump is the worst of all worlds

Trump is a real-estate developer who takes any domestic terrorist attack — whatever the actual circumstances — as confirmation of his views on a lax immigration system, as evidence of a law-enforcement system hobbled by political correctness and as cause for more aggressive profiling of Muslims, Arabs or whomever he is currently defining as the threat. Some of his followers seem particularly pleased when he edges toward declaring Islam itself to be the enemy. “Frankly,” Trump has said, “we’re having problems with the Muslims.”

Trump has hardly distinguished himself in reacting to that conflict, fed by the radiating disorders of the Middle East. As the Islamic State (also known as ISIS) rose, the GOP nominee said, “That’s not our fight.” And: “Let Syria and ISIS fight. Why do we care?” And: “Let Russia fight ISIS, if they want to fight ’em.” But also: Bomb the oil and “take the oil” — which would seem to require a choice between the two. Incantations are preferable to such gibberish.

Those who believe that preening bluster makes up for willful ignorance and dangerously poor policy judgment have found their man. But this is not the worst of it. Anyone who has spent time working in the White House would attest that the single most important presidential attribute is leadership in times of crisis. We have no idea what challenges the next president may face — an outbreak of deadly pandemic flu, the collapse of order in nuclear Pakistan, a cyberattack on the U.S. electrical grid. All we know — or try our best to know — is the character, stability and credibility of the president himself (or herself).

Conservatives trying to justify a vote for Trump argue that the presidency itself would somehow mature him. Yet the Republican nominee has provided little reason to believe he is truly capable of learning or benefiting from good counsel. “My primary consultant is myself and I have a good instinct for this stuff,” Trump has said.

“It is really important to project a sense of calm,” the official said. “A leader understands that people feed off his emotions in a moment of crisis. If he uses wild or frantic rhetoric, it will risk creating a psychological tsunami.”

The president may face simultaneous crises, the official went on, forcing him “to rely on others in the team to give good advice.” And: “If the ego is central to a leader and a crisis occurs, it could lead to rash decision-making.” And: “One cannot solve a crisis by blaming other people. This tone makes it harder to rally the whole nation.” A leader has to “articulate a credible strategy” and honor the “American values that unite us.”