Donald Trump as the Republican nominee?

[trish]

So is she his trophy, or is the Trump fortune her trophy? I gotta hand it to her she must have her gag reflex well under control...for he's a disgusting fellow, for he's a disgusting fellow, for he's a disgusting fel-low...nobody can deny.

[onmyknees]

So is she his trophy, or is the Trump fortune her trophy? I gotta hand it to her she must have her gag reflex well under control...for he's a disgusting fellow, for he's a disgusting fellow, for he's a disgusting fel-low...nobody can deny.

Way to keep it classy and on topic Trish. You're firing blanks when you wallow in the sewer and bring someone's mate into the picture, but it doesn't surprise me. You fuckers are a nasty bunch. As heated as it gets on this board...no one I recall brought a politicians spouse or kids into the mix....congradulations you're the first. You're become more vile with each post....At one time you were a classy lady...now you're a sewer snipe. Pathetic

[trish]

Yeah, Faldur should know better than to drag the trophy wife into this. Btw, very classy post there, onmyknees.

[Ineeda SM]

So is she his trophy, or is the Trump fortune her trophy? I gotta hand it to her she must have her gag reflex well under control...for he's a disgusting fellow, for he's a disgusting fellow, for he's a disgusting fel-low...nobody can deny.

Both! He gets to have a babe on his arms and in his bed, and when she decides it's been the right amount of time to divorce the asshole, she will be able to bathe in money for the rest of her life. She's a gold digger, but not a stupid one.

Maybe she's waiting for that groundhog on his head to eat him, then it will all be hers.

[Dino Velvet]

The funny thing about Trump's hair is that I'm sure it's expensive. It's called an "Onion Loaf". I heard him talk about it once.

I'm hoping Trump runs for President. I wouldn't vote for him but the Republican Primary Debates will be must see TV with that cast of characters. I've been enjoying his interview with O'Reilly this week.

[Stavros]

http://elections.nytimes.com/2012/ca...s?ref=politics

The NYT has a short overview of 11 possible Republican runners, but not including Mr Trump. Of this group, Mitch Daniels looks intriguing, although here in the UK a columnist for The Sunday Telegraph has backed Tom Pawlenty. I can't understand how a man who calls himself 'Newt' ever got elected in the first place, etc etc. None of them will win anyway.

[Ineeda SM]

Newt is short for Newton. But the name fits him. He is a slimy little newt.

STAVROS, I can tell you exactly how he got elected. America used to be a nation of leaders, innovators, inventors and very smart people, many years ago. Damn we walked on the Moon with 1960's technology.

At least 50% of this country today are stupid pussies who have no independent thought of their own. They are called christian conservatives, republicans, teabaggers, and hillbillies. They only know how to play follow the propaganda, and they do it so well. The right wing in America preys on them because they are easily led and do not ask questions or challenge them on anything. All they see is a republican politician waving a flag in one hand, and a gun in the other hand. They spit their tobacco, smile and pull the republican lever in the voting booth. It all started in the 1980's when Ronald Reagan the movie actor took on the biggest acting roll of his life. The Presidency. After that, this country went to hell on a fast train without a return ticket.

And as each year passes, they become more stupid than the year before. They gave us Reagan who started the migration of American businesses to other countries. Bush Sr kept with Reagan's policies and fucked us a little more. Then democrat Bill Clinton came in and gave this country the best economy we have ever had, and gave Bush Jr a surplus of $500Billion. Then in just 8 years Bush got us into an illegal war which killed almost 5,000 American soldiers and cost us close to $3 TRILLION in taxpayer money, all so he could impress his daddy.

Now we are in a mess that Bush and the republicans gave us. They are trying to blame Obama because he hasn't pulled a magic wand out of his ass that he could wave and make it all better. I am proud to be an American, and I love my country. It pains me deeply to see where the republicans have taken us, and they don't give a shit. All they care about is greed, money, and power.

NOW! With enough retarded American voters to give us all that shit, can you still ask how Newt got elected?

[Stavros]

It was a rhetorical question, not a literal one, mainly because I used to look at Newts in jars when I was a schoolboy, and I was not impressed.
I think one of the problems people who are politically engaged have, is that most people most of the time do not concern themselves with politics, it can lead to frustration, cynicism and extreme reactions, but its just a simple fact. Most people most of the time are absorbed by family issues, employment issues which are more important to them, I dont know if 50% is the figure but when it comes to making a choice people tend to act on instinct or impulse without thinking issues through, but I think that the influence of 'Christian' 'relgious' and single-issue groups in the US is stronger than it is here in the UK, even though at most elections it is economic issues that tend to be the key factor, and whether or not people 'feel good' about either the incumbent government or the challenger(s).

I think Reagan was elected at a turning point in recent history, I detested him at the time, but a belief that was dominant at the time, that Carter had been an ineffective President and that the USA's perception of itself after Watergate was too morbid, did enable him to win an election by using sunshine and optimism as a selling point. In fact, Carter was on some levels a greater success: the first significant break-through in the Middle East peace process for example, giving Panama the dignity of owning its own canal; the truth is Carter lost Congress early on his Presidency, and was powerless to prevent the Shah of Iran from being thrown out in the Islamic revolution.

But I don't think Reagan was in a position to prevent the trend for outsourcing and re-location from taking place. Capitalism, fundamentally, looks for cheap costs and high returns, the 1980s was a decade when heavy industry was too expensive to run in the UK and USA -the UK lost 25% of its manufacturing base from 1979-1990- and just as there was a time when Singapore, South Korea and Taiwan could compete for that slice of industry, now China with a huge army of low-paid workers, has taken over as the workshop of the world, although its mostly mass consumer goods.

However, the US still has intellectual prowess and huge capital resources, so I don't think you should be so despondent about the future -you have a capacity for re-invention which is absent in the UK, you have the best of the best universities, and as long as people with practical solutions to energy issues and can come up with innovative ways of doing things and making things, it will improve employment opportunities, and the USA will not decline or face ruin.

Foreign entanglemens are probably the hardest issue you need to deal with, primarily because of the residual fear from 9/11 that people outside the USA are plotting to attack it and the US needs to pre-empt such attacks -Pakistan has become dependent on US Aid, Israel less so; India doesn't need aid at all these days; I would suggest you should be more worried about instability in Mexico than in North Africa. Resource management, particularly the way we use water, will become -should become- more important than the current obsession with radical Jihadis, I think in the end that the more extreme elements in US politics will remain outsiders -I hope so!

[Ineeda SM]

But I don't think Reagan was in a position to prevent the trend for outsourcing and re-location from taking place. Capitalism, fundamentally, looks for cheap costs and high returns, the 1980s was a decade when heavy industry was too expensive to run in the UK and USA -the UK lost 25% of its manufacturing base from 1979-1990- and just as there was a time when Singapore, South Korea and Taiwan could compete for that slice of industry, now China with a huge army of low-paid workers, has taken over as the workshop of the world, although its mostly mass consumer goods.

You are right that Carter was seen as a failure even considering his accomplishments. But Businesses in America were encouraged by Reagan to move their manufacturing plants to other countries. He did this through big tax breaks if they could lower their expenses and reinvest their profits in their own businesses. They found they could do that by moving to countries where manufacturing costs were amazingly lower. Ever since Reagan gave them the tax breaks, they saved the money by going abroad, and they just pocketed the tax savings too. Before Reagan, very few companies in the US had manufacturing outside our boarders. Bush Jr increased that tax cut to make it easier for business to move abroad and keep even more profits.

However, the US still has intellectual prowess and huge capital resources, so I don't think you should be so despondent about the future -you have a capacity for re-invention which is absent in the UK, you have the best of the best universities, and as long as people with practical solutions to energy issues and can come up with innovative ways of doing things and making things, it will improve employment opportunities, and the USA will not decline or face ruin.

Most of that is quite true, but it will never happen that way. The right wing in this country wants to keep things the way they are. They like having poor people who need their services. The right wing owns the major industries in the US that control the US, from drug companies, banks, to the big oil companies. If we go GREEN here, the right wing will lose lots of money on oil and coal demand.

Foreign entanglemens are probably the hardest issue you need to deal with, primarily because of the residual fear from 9/11 that people outside the USA are plotting to attack it and the US needs to pre-empt such attacks -Pakistan has become dependent on US Aid, Israel less so; India doesn't need aid at all these days; I would suggest you should be more worried about instability in Mexico than in North Africa. Resource management, particularly the way we use water, will become -should become- more important than the current obsession with radical Jihadis, I think in the end that the more extreme elements in US politics will remain outsiders -I hope so!

Unfortunately the extreme elements of US politics are already in the government. They are the right wing. They are the rich who are greedy to be richer, and don't care who they hurt to do it. That is the main reason behind most of the arguments between the left and right wings here.

Mexico is a lost cause. They have the weakest and most corrupt leaders in North America. They don't even try to stop the drug trade into the US because they get kick-backs from it, and they do nothing to control their boarders because they want their people to go to the US. So boarder control is all up to the USA, and we just don't have the resources needed to handle it.

[Stavros]

First of all I agree with your argument about Reagan and the export of businesses, as I now recall going to a lecture on South East Asia in the mid-80s, its not a subject I have kept up with and I forgot about it. Thanks for the jolt; although I think that there is still a stronger manufacturing base in the US than there is here.

In spite of my negative feelings for Reagan and Bush 1 and 2, I feel positive about the USA in the long term, more so than I do about the UK. There have always been extremists in the USA, and I suppose that we know more about them now because of the internet and the availability of rapid access information generally -but extremists tend to be 'one-trick ponies' and even if they initially acquire support, it doesnt last when the big issues have to be dealt with -crucially the battle between the White House and Congress and the ability of the latter to turn a one-page bill into a revised version of the Yellow Pages means you often end up with something other than was originally intended.

I think re-invention is critical, US industry was at one time based in the north-east, then it moved south-west; black Americans who migrated north are now migrating south; I doubt anyone in 1970 believed Seattle would become the home of a computing revolution. For that reason two cities intrigue me, both of them at opposite ends of the country: Detroit and New Orleans. Both have been devastated, the former by the steep decline in the automobile industry, the latter via Hurricane Katrina. Both also have/had large African American communities, and both are in the process of re-inventing themselves: although there was an argument that New Orleans for geographical reasons should have been abandoned.

I don't know where the New New Orelans is heading, it seems to be a smaller city at the moment with a smaller African-American community, and I don't know if it wil emerge as a kinder, gentler place to live in, retaining its mixed heritage of Jazz, Cajun culture, etc. Detroit on the other hand, is trying to re-invent itself as a green city, and this is the kind of innovative thinking and change that excites me about the USA, more than the jaded freaks who trade in bigotry and hate, because the USA is a 'can do' dare I say, 'Yes we can' type of country.
http://www.greeningdetroit.com/2011/...s-competition/


Be critical, but be positive also.