Donald Trump plumbs the depths of the pathetic

By Michael J.W. Stickings

His rise and fall as a Republican non-candidate was stunning, if not surprising. Of course, he was never going to run. It was all about attracting the spotlight, about enhancing his stardom, about money, about himself. In that regard, he's a lot like Sarah Palin, his recent dining partner.

Trump's delusional megalomania apparently knows no bounds. And, yes, he's back:

So much for dropping out -- Donald Trump tells TPM he believes he can win the White House as an independent candidate, keeping his name in the presidential game despite declaring last month he would not run for the GOP nomination.

TPM caught up with Trump at the Faith & Freedom Conventionm after he left a closed door meeting with event organizer Ralph Reed and other social conservatives and asked how he figured he'd do as an independent.

"I think I'd do great," he said, telling TPM he believed he could win the White House. As for whether he'll run, he said it depended on the GOP nominee.

"Let's see what happens with the Republicans, who they put up," he said.

Asked if he was consulting with pollsters on a run, he said "I was leading in the polls when I decided to sign a very big contract -- I was actually leading."

Well, no, he wasn't. He was exposed as a national laughingstock at the White House Correspondents Dinner and his poll numbers were collapsing, just like the Birtherism he pushed (and is still pushing).

There's no way he'd "do great" as an independent, but there's no way we're getting to that point. He's not running. Ever.

He desperately needs the spotlight, the media attention, but only on his terms, only when he's the bully. He wants nothing of the all-out media glare that would come with a serious political campaign, and he'd self-destruct along the way, much as he did even as a non-candidate.

He is one of America's most ridiculous national jokes. And this latest stunt, suggesting that he's still in the race, that he still might run for president, is simply and utterly pathetic.

Republican Rapture: Sarah Palin and Donald Trump meet in New York

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Isn't that sort of like crossing the streams, but, you know, in a bad way?

(And, yes, I realize that crossing the streams is what ultimately saved the world. In the movie. Where they got lucky. In real life, well, it might just be political Armageddon.)

More thoughts on the Republican presidential field

By Richard K. Barry

Now Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels is saying that, had he chosen to pursue the Republican nomination for the presidency, he could have beaten Obama. Where have we heard this before?

Oh yeah, Mike Huckabee said the same thing, as did Donald Trump.

This is playground boasting bullshit. If any of these guys thought they could beat Obama, they would have jumped in with bells on. At least Haley Barbour had the integrity to admit that he didn't get in because Obama would just be too hard to beat.

This did, however, get me thinking about what I see as the categories of those who are either running, thought about running or are still thinking about it. It's goes a little something like this:

• Those who feel that this might be their one and only chance to win the thing.
• Those who have no chance of winning either the nomination or the general election but look(ed) on the process as a way to raise their profile or just to push a very specific agenda.
• Those who would have gotten no coverage if the field weren't so weak, so are finding the promise of attention too much fun to pass up (but are otherwise without hope).
• Those who have grown weary of listening to how weak the field is and can't help but at least talk about offering themselves because their egos demand it.
• Corollary to this one: those who can't stand not being talked about as a potential front-runner.
• Those who, when being honest, know that an incumbent president would be hard to beat, especially this one, and know also that they have time on their side, perhaps being young and new to things.
• Those who know that the ideological purity test required by the Republican Party these days is just too hard to navigate.
• And a subset of the previous, those who are being courted by the GOP leadership but who know that the moment they really give it serious consideration, every slight break with conservative orthodoxy that they even thought about would bite them in the ass in a hurry.
• And finally, those who are just delusional (are you listening Newt?)

Make up your own categories. Mix and match. I'll leave it to you to attach names to each grouping. It's a game the whole family can play.

But on that point of candidates who didn't get in but swear that, had they taken the leap, they could have beaten Obama, I have just one thing to say:

I know that if I had only auditioned, I could have been the next American Idol, but I chose not to compete for family reasons. You do believe me, don't you?

(Cross-posted to Lippmann's Ghost.)

Trump dump: The Donald announces he won't be running for president

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Yes, the megalomaniacal blowhard has dropped out of a race he was never even in, a race he had no chance of winning. His star rose quickly in the GOP, not least because Republicans love rapacious greed and because the field without Trump featured the rather undynamic talents of Mitt Romney, Tim Pawlenty, and Rick Santorum, but it faded even faster. It was inevitable, and we all saw it coming, but let us still enjoy whatever schadenfreude we can find in Trump's national embarrassment.

What more needs to be said about the ridiculous joke Trump's non-candidacy was? We wrote about it here, revelling in the utter stupidity of all, following Trump's descent into Birther madness and then his blatant racist assault on President Obama. But what was truly crazy wasn't just Trump but the entire GOP, which, mad itself, embraced the madness with enthusiastic glee, sending The Donald, a self-absorbed non-candidate with a sketchy Republican background, to the top of the charts.

Oh, it was fun to watch, wasn't it? Especially when Obama and Seth Meyers took to the podium at the White House correspondents' dinner and made him look so utterly ridiculous. Finally put in his place, a place in the spotlight to be ridiculed by all, Trump got what he so richly deserved.

So, yes, what more needs to be said? Well, let me turn it over to a couple of writers who got it right in their responses today (I've bolded the best parts):

Joshua Green, The Atlantic

Per ABC News, Donald Trump has just put out a statement announcing he will not run for president. At this point, the news is hardly shocking. It's hard to recall anyone in the recent history of American politics who managed to humiliate himself as quickly and thoroughly as Trump did in his now-aborted semi-candidacy. From his debut as a pseudo-candidate at the Conservative Political Action Committee in February to his Hawaiian "birther investigators" to his becoming a stone-faced national laughingstock at the White House Correspondents Dinner, Trump demonstrated a level of jackassery heretofore unknown, even in national politics.

Seriously, let's pause for a second and contemplate the amount of damage he's inflicted on himself: three short months ago, Donald Trump was our vulgar national mascot of money, a guy who seemed likable enough, kind of funny, amusing on television, and possibly even in on the joke himself (you could never quite tell). He had an easy, enduring celebrity, and a successful show on NBC. Flash forward to today: Trump's name is virtually synonymous with discredited, far-right race-baiting; his political foray underscored the fact that he'd flip-flopped on most issues, which made his hateful blather even more ridiculous; and his once-successful franchise, "Celebrity Apprentice," saw its ratings collapse as its liberal audience abandoned it in droves.

David Weigel, Slate

Who's the winner? Oh, everyone else on the planet. Trump's pre-campaign was an odious and ignorant publicity stunt. The ideas he introduced into the campaign: a punitive tariff on China, forced seizure of Middle East oil fields, questions about Barack Obama's citizenship, and questions about Obama's college performance. (Trump never offered his own college records, even after Justin Elliott of Salon pointed out that the often-stated claim that Trump graduated first in his class was probably a lie.) We can't psychoanalyze the voters who told pollsters they liked Trump -- there were hundreds -- but his collapse suggests they were more interested in the idea of a Mr. Fix-It businessman than they were in the reality of a high-class huckster and rip-off artist.

Oh, sure, I wish he hadn't dropped out. As odious and ignorant as he has proven to be, he could have been a fantastic addition to the Republican field, a great source of material for those of us who write about politics, and an ongoing embarrassment to the Republican Party. Okay, even his presence was bad for America, but I'm sure America could have put up with him for a bit longer.

Alas.

The decline and fall of Donald Trump

By Michael J.W. Stickings

You knew it was going to happen. But maybe you didn't think it would happen so soon:

Donald Trump has had one of the quickest rises and falls in the history of Presidential politics. Last month we found him leading the Republican field with 26%. In the space of just four weeks he's dropped all the way down to 8%, putting him in a tie for fifth place with Ron Paul.

A lot of it no doubt has to do with the release of Obama's long-form birth certificate, a blow to Trump's ridiculous Birther campaign, as well as the killing of Osama bin Laden, which made Trump's self-absorbed shenanigans look even sillier and more irrelevant by comparison, but regardless it was really only a matter of time before even Republicans came to realize he's an arrogant, spotlight-hogging blowhard whose only loyalty is to himself.

For the rest of us, it's been an unpleasant joke. But now we can turn back to a thoroughly underwhelming and indeed embarrassing (for Republicans) Republican presidential field, which today will welcome another arrogant, spotlight-hogging blowhard, if a more determined ideological one, Newt Gingrich.

Good times.

Is Donald Trump a racist?

By Michael J.W. Stickings

He claims not. Actually, and amazingly, he claims he's the least racist person around. The proof he gives is that a black man, one Randal Pinkett, won The Apprentice a few years ago.

Once the guffaws subside, I'll leave you to judge that claim, and the proof, for yourselves.

If Trump wants to cite the Mr. Pinkett's success, however, we may respond by citing the lack of success of one Kevin Allen, another black man who was a contestant on that detestable show:

Apparently he doesn't like educated African-Americans very much,

said Mr. Allen, a highly-educated African-American who made it all the way to Week 14, just a week prior to the finale.

Sour grapes? Maybe, though Trump's condescending treatment of Mr. Allen was certainly inappropriate, if not outright racist.

But these are anecdotes from a reality TV show. More telling is Trump's enthusiastic embrace of Birtherism, which to a great extent is a mask for anti-Obama racism, as well as, more explicitly, his ridiculous assertion that Obama needed affirmative action to get into the Ivy League.

Again, I'll leave you to make up your own minds.

(And to help you do that, allow me to recommend Joe Gandelman, Melissa McEwan, and Kaili Joy Gray.)

Elephant Dung #29: David Koch, of Koch Brothers fame, smacks down Donald Trump

Tracking the GOP Civil War

By Michael J.W. Stickings

(For an explanation of this ongoing series, see here. For previous entries, see here.)

This is soft, mushy dung tied up in a bow.

On Saturday, David Koch told the New York Daily News that Trump isn't exactly his choice for the White House -- and doesn't exactly have what it takes to be president:

"Donald Trump is exposing himself to a lot of attacks," said Koch. "As much as I like Donald, he's sort of asking for it." He laughed again, then observed that "Donald's political positions over the last 10 years have been highly variable and unusual. He's a wonderful guy, but I don't think he should run for office."

Noting Trump's love of press, Koch said the "Celebrity Apprentice" host is "getting more publicity than he ever dreamed about right now." But, he added, "at some point I think he's going to drop out of the race when he realizes that he's really not qualified to be President."

Allow me to quibble:

First, "a wonderful guy"? I suppose right-wing billionaires who prop up the Tea Party and seek to turn government into a wholly-owned subsidiary of Corporate America have their own ideas of "wonderful."

Second, I'm sure Trump has dreamed of this much publicity before. He probably dreams of even more.

Third, this won't be about Trump himself coming to realize he's not qualified to be president. Assuming that he thinks he's qualified, and that's a fairly safe assumption, he'll never not think he's qualified. It's part of who he is, a megalomaniac who thinks he can do no wrong and that he's better than everyone else. He's not even running yet, but should he, if/when he drops out it won't be because he's come to some sort of awareness of his limitations but because he doesn't want to subject himself to the toil and travail, and spotlight, of a serious national political campaign, because he doesn't want the various skeletons in his closet to be brought to light, and maybe also because he knows/suspects he'd lose, however much that contradicts his overriding sense of superiority.

But who knows? Maybe he'll run and maybe he'll even do well. Would you really put it past the GOP to go with a loudmouth megalomaniacal celebrity businessman who panders to its extremism?

In any event, it may be helpful to remember what Koch said.

Obama shines at White House correspondents' dinner

By Michael J.W. Stickings

The White House Correspondents' Dinner is, for the media, a thoroughly self-aggrandizing affair, a disgustingly smarmy occasion for self-important media insiders to hobnob even more openly with the people they cover. (Consider Politico's obsessive coverage.) Nonetheless, it can also be the scene of some fairly remarkable speaking-truth-to-power comedy. (Think back to Colbert's hilarious appearance in 2006.) 

A lot depends on who's there and who's telling the jokes. At the 2011 event last night, SNL's Seth Meyers was funny, if not quite Colbert-level poignant, and President Obama got in some great zingers. For example:

-- "Donald Trump is here tonight. Now, I know that he's taken some flak lately but no one is prouder to put this birth certificate matter to rest than the Donald. And that's because he can finally get back to focusing on the issues that matter, like, 'Did we fake the moon landing?' 'What really happened in Roswell?' And 'Where are Biggie and Tupac?'"

-- "Michele Bachmann is here. She is thinking about running for president, which is weird because I hear she was born in Canada. Yes, Michele, this is how it starts."

The man can tell a joke. Though it certainly helps that his opponents are such easy targets.

Elephant Dung #27: Rand Paul takes aim at Donald Trump's questionable Republican cred

Tracking the GOP Civil War

By Michael J.W. Stickings

(For an explanation of this ongoing series, see here. For previous entries, see here.)

I'm not exactly a fan of Rand Paul, the Tea Party Republican senator from Kentucky. But I've got to hand it to him, he's a funny guy and he's got a knack for hilarious one-line swipes at fellow Republicans. Earlier this month, he took aim at Newt Gingrich. Yesterday, his target was Donald Trump:

Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) on Thursday took a swipe at billionaire businessman Donald Trump, demanding to see his "Republican registration."

While speaking at a breakfast with New Hampshire Republicans one day after "The Donald" visited the Granite State, Paul riffed off the potential GOP presidential candidate's "birther" questions.

"I've come to New Hampshire today because I'm very concerned," said Paul, according to The New York Times. "I want to see the original long-form certificate of Donald Trump's Republican registration."

Paul's comments follow up on some GOP-aligned groups' effort to discredit Trump as a conservative. The free-market Club for Growth has accused Trump of being a liberal for his previous support of universal healthcare and his desire to raise tariffs on China.

It's hard to be a successful Republican when you've got both the Tea Party (via Rand Paul) and the Club for Growth aligned against you. Which is no doubt partly why Trump has so enthusiastically embraced the whole Birther thing and is now channelling his racism (what else is it?) into suggesting that Obama is an affirmative action case.

Now, is Trump a Republican? Yes, no doubt. His wealth-based sense of entitlement and megalomania would seem to indicate that he leans to the right, as would his pro-business (or, to be more precise, pro-Trump business) views. But his own political history is mixed. He has espoused various liberal positions over the years, and he was a registered Democrat for years. As he himself has acknowledged, if prior to his current courting of the Republican base, he's an independent, and he has voted for and financially supported both Democrats and Republicans.

None of this should disqualify Trump from being a Republican today, but of course the Republican Party, and in particular its powerful Tea Party wing, is all about party purification. They're the new Bolsheviks. If you're not Republican enough, Republican as they define it, they'll purge you from the party. We're seeing this happen again and again, with the Tea Party and others on the right challenging even established conservatives like Orrin Hatch, Richard Lugar, and John Boehner. The Republican Party is descending into madness, as I've said many times, and all this ongoing purge is accelerating that descent.

Trump has the media platform, not to mention the temperament, to fight back against those who would challenge him, including Paul. But Paul's onto something. Birtherism aside, Trump just isn't the sort of Republican, if truly Republican at all, to win over enough of the grassroots base to win the nomination, even if he manages to lure some of the party establishment (like Ralph Reed). He's got the anti-Obama attack going, and that's sustaining his popularity in the party, but were he to run that popularity would likely fracture once he was actually subjected to any sort of sustained scrutiny of his record. In that sense, he's got a Romney problem, and it's the sort of problem that's virtually insurmountable. Just ask Mitt.

And just ask Rand, who threw a pile of dung at the upstart Trump. If The Donald insists on remaining in the Republican spotlight, there will no doubt be much more to come.

Whither Birtherism?

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Conservative renegade David Frum may describe Birtherism as a "disgrace" and a "phony controversy," as an issue that effectively ended with yesterday's release of President Obama's long-form birth certificate, and I credit Frum for asking how "this poisonous and not very subtly racist allegation [got] such a grip on our conservative movement and our Republican party" (that would be, his movement and his party) and for denouncing "these racialized attacks on Obama" (not just the Birther allegation but the new allegation, via Donald Trump, that Obama is basically a product of affirmative action, undeserving of his Ivy League education), but actually Birtherism and its various offshoots, however convincingly refuted, aren't going anywhere.

James Fallows explains why: "[Tuesday], about half of all Republicans thought Obama was foreign born, and therefore an illegal occupant of the White House. How many Republicans will think the same thing one week from now? My guess is: about half. We've reached that stage on just about everything. It's probably been true of human beings throughout time, but is more obviously significant in politics now, that generally people don't act like scientific investigators, or judges in moot-court competitions, when parsing the logic and evidence behind competing arguments to come up with political views. They go on loyalty, and tradition, and hope, and fear, and self-interest, and generosity, and all the rest."

Quite true, but I think Fallows is too generous, and too universal in applying his theory. While I acknowledge that ignorance, willful or otherwise, has been a facet of the human condition forever, or almost forever, this isn't so much about "human beings throughout time" as it is about the current state of one of America's two dominant political parties, a party that to a great extent has rejected science in favour of a far-right ideology, mixed with a similarly far-right theology, that wants nothing to do with "logic and evidence" and everything to do with trickle-down economics and "Intelligent Design." Yes, much of this has to do with loyalty, tradition, fear, self-interest, etc., but a lot of it has to do with sheer madness -- and, as I have remarked a number of times, what I find to be one of the defining aspects of our time, politically speaking, is the Republican Party's descent into madness, or rather its ongoing descent into ever deeper levels of madness.

Many Republicans, needless to say, still aren't convinced. Some of them are crazies like Leo Berman, but the issue, in one form or another, will be kept alive by more mainstream Republicans like Trump, Newt Gingrich, and everyone else who, sincerely or not, is trying to appeal to the grassroots base of the party. And of course it will be kept alive on Fox News, on talk radio, and throughout Frum's "conservative movement."

It's ignorance, it's racism, it's madness. And the facts don't matter one bit.

It never ends: Racism, Birtherism, and Barack Obama

By Mustang Bobby 

It doesn't matter if it's Winston from Alabama or Donald Trump or Pat Buchanan, there is always going to be a segment of America that will never accept the fact that Barack Obama was born in the United States, grew up and went to college, including Harvard, and then was elected president. They will continue to say that all he has to do is produce the evidence, and they'll be quiet, but the truth is that no amount of facts or proof will satisfy them, and every time more evidence is produced, they'll say it isn't good enough.

There's a very simple reason for this, and we all know what it is, even if Chris Matthews or Mike Signorile is too polite to say it: it's because Barack Obama is black.

That's it. Nothing else. Period. The End. I really don't understand why we keep dancing around it, and although I know that folks like Mr. Trump and Mr. Buchanan have a reputation for, as Howard Cosell use to say, "telling it like it is," they seem reticent to come out and say that they just don't believe that a black man is capable of being admitted to Ivy League colleges or elected to office without some kind of special treatment or affirmative action. They believe so strongly that the system in America is geared towards the white straight man that it is clearly impossible for anyone else to achieve success on their own.

There really isn't any point in arguing with them or trying to prove them wrong. Like Winston from Alabama, nothing you say will convince them. Chris Matthews and all the rest of the pundits are too polite -- and too much entrenched -- to call out Mr. Trump or Mr. Buchanan for their racism, and so they just leave it out there for the rest of us to ponder. And it will never end. If it wasn't Barack Obama, it would be Hillary Clinton, or Colin Powell or even Michael Steele who got where they did by means other than the usual route of working hard and getting into college and getting a job just like the white kid from Westchester.

So clearly Barack Obama had help, either by violating the Temporal Prime Directive and going back to August 1961 and planting false records in the Honolulu newspapers to say he was born there, and then jumping ahead to get him into Columbia and Harvard without anyone knowing him at those schools -- the subtext there is that those places are so lily-white that a black student would garner attention -- or that he brilliantly bought off everyone ever connected with any of those places to plant him in the right place at the right time.

But if he's so smart and rich, there has to be someone else pulling the strings; no black man could come up with such a plan on his own. So who's really in charge? Ah, that's the conspiracy...

(Cross-posted from Bark Bark Woof Woof.)

Donald Trump attacks Obama with the affirmative action card

By R.K. Barry

Donald Trump has added yet another unsubstantiated claim to his list of attacks on President Obama. Now he is saying, without a bit of evidence, that Obama was not qualified to attend either of the Ivy League schools, Columbia or Harvard, that he in fact attended. As per normal, the Trump burden of proof is based on the "fact" that he "heard" that Obama was a poor student.

The reality, as is well known, is quite different. Obama graduated from Columbia University in New York in 1983 with a degree in political science after transferring from Occidental College in California. He then went to Harvard Law School, graduating magna cum laude in 1991. He was the first black president of the Harvard Law Review.

Okay, those are facts, but Trump wouldn't recognize a fact if it bit him on the ass (as they say).

So, again, as with the Birther nonsense, this is not about facts. This is racism plain and simple. This is intended to appeal to those who can be easily manipulated to froth at the suggestion that certain individuals (African-Americans, women, etc.) are given all the breaks because of unfair government intervention. You know, the usual right-wing knock on affirmative action. On this logic, when an African-American succeeds in such a grand way, there must be something wrong.

Trump is always indignant at the suggestion that he is a racist. But to modify only slightly the words of that great American philosopher Forrest Gump, "racism is as racism does."

Trump knows what he is doing. He understands his audience. He knows that there are components of the conservative base that will follow him to hell and back as long as he continues to attack the president through whatever means required. He knows it won't get him as far as the White House, but this carnival con man also knows that this will keep him on the front pages of newspapers and on the talk-show and news-panel circuit.

Yes, Trump craves fame above all else, especially as a means to further augment his wealth, and he will crawl through the most disgusting muck to get it. Truly despicable.

(Cross-posted to Lippmann's Ghost.)

CNN investigation finds that, yes, Obama was in fact born in the U.S.

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Did we really need a CNN investigation to tell us what we already knew, what the facts told us, namely, that President Obama was in fact born in the U.S., more specifically in Hawaii on August 4, 1961?

No.

But we got one nonetheless and if nothing else it provides additional confirmation.

And what we can also confirm is that Birtherism is not just a delusional conspiracy theory but a blatant lie and complete disregard for the truth.

But will this finally silence the Birthers? Will it put an end to Donald Trump's self-aggrandizing ravings? No, of course not. The facts mean nothing to the Birthers, including Trump, who will no doubt continue to talk up his own secret investigation. Think Progress:

CNN researchers decided to save Trump the trouble and actually investigate. First, they spoke with Dr. Chiyome Fukino, former Hawaii Department of Health Director and a Republican, who took advantage of a state law allowing her to see President Obama's birth certificate stored in a vault. Fukino declared the certificate "absolutely authentic." She even put disputed Trump's suggestion that Obama is hiding that he's a Muslim to rest, pointing out that no birth certificate from that time mentions faith.

Aware of Trump's concern that no one remembers baby Obama, CNN went ahead and found them too. Not only did Hawaii Gov. Neil Abercrombie (D) reiterate his memory of celebrating the birth with Obama's mother, but so did Dunham's college adviser and another mother giving birth in the hospital when Obama was born. She remembered because "in those days, there were hardly any other black babies."

The repeated debunking of the birther conspiracy has convinced numerous Republicans that Trump offers nothing but a "joke" candidacy. Last night, Gov. Jan Brewer (R-AZ) told CNN's John King that this issue "is leading our country down a path of destruction." Americans agree, with 64 percent saying "they would definitely not vote for Trump in 2012" and half of all Americans believing he'd be a "poor" or "terrible" leader. This, however, seems to be another fact Trump will entirely ignore. 

Republicans embrace Birtherism at their peril -- and yet that is precisely what they're doing. Yes, there are some in the "establishment," including Brewer, who are worried about it, but Birtherism is rampant among the base, which explains why so many establishment figures, whatever their own views, are careful not to dismiss it (by insinuating that it might be true or by making it a matter of belief instead of fact) and which helps explain Trump's significant popularity even as a "joke" candidate.

Trump has other things going for him (e.g., broad name-recognition, ubiquitous media presence, myth as self-made Super CEO who possesses astounding business acumen, and lots of money, always popular with Republicans), but his current standing has a lot to do with the fact that he's tapping into the deep reservoir of grassroots Republican paranoia and fear. It's not an accident that he's embraced Birtherism. It's his key to Republican success, should he seek it, and he's not about to drop it just because a CNN investigation says he's crazy.

The facts haven't stopped Republicans before. They won't stop them now either.

Rise against the Republican plutocratic agenda

By Michael J.W. Stickings

The Republican Party is, when you get right down to it, a party of greed and cruelty wrapped up in theocratic moralizing. (It's hardly any wonder that Donald Trump is doing so well, nor that Franklin Graham, one of the party's chief theocrats, is saying such nice things about him.) And perhaps the core of the Republican agenda, more important than the social conservatism, is tax policy that benefits the rich, both individual and corporate, at the expense of everyone else, that punishes everyone else, and especially the poor and others most in need of help, for not being rich.

This has been the case for a long time, but increasingly, it seems, in these difficult economic times and with the American economy (and American hegemony) in such dire straits, likely never to recover, let alone to be what it once was, Americans are waking up to what Republicans are all about and expressing their opposition. The Tea Party expresses the rage of the right, anti-government rage that complements the Republican agenda. This new opposition, garnering less media attention, expresses not the counter-rage of the left, nor even rage at all, but a genuine concern for fairness, compassion, and fiscal sanity in American politics.

Here's Think Progress:

All across America, a Main Street Movement has broken out to defend the middle class against right-wing attacks on labor rights and basic public services. In recent days, this movement has turned on GOP House members who voted to effectively end Medicare and turn seniors over to private insurance companies when they approved Rep. Paul Ryan's (R-WI) radical budget bill.

On Tuesday, Rep. Sean Duffy (R-WI) was the latest congressman to face the ire of Main Street America during a town hall event with constituents who stopped being polite and started getting real.

First, constituents explained they were upset that Ryan's plan would cut off people under the age of 55 from Medicare. Then, others directly challenged Duffy about defending tax breaks for the wealthy for voting to effectively replace Medicare with a voucher system.

Ryan himself, supposedly a courageous advocate for fiscal sanity but really just a right-wing extremist whose focus is on tax cuts for the wealthy and spending cuts to programs for the poor, was challenged by his own constituents the other day. And Republicans are facing significant criticism over their support for Ryan's Medicare-slashing plan.

I suspect we'll see more and more of this. Or, at least, I hope we do. It's time for Americans to say enough is enough to the greed and cruelty of the GOP.

Here's the Duffy clip:

President Obama will never be American enough for Trump and the Birthers

By R.K. Barry

Andrew Sullivan wrote recently about a new CBS/NYT poll which found that 47% of Republicans think Obama wasn't born in the U.S and that another 22% aren't sure. He cited Steve Kornacki, who said that this "doesn't mean they've thought things through and believe an elaborate plot has been carried out, and it doesn't mean that being told actual facts about Obama's birth will sway them."

[Donald] Trump's message may be resonating with so many Republican voters simply because it represents the most blunt and unrelenting attack on Obama's "American-ness" that they have heard from a major Republican. In other words, it may not be the specifics of Obama's birth certificate and hospital records that excite them, it's the idea that someone so prominent is willing to stand up and take so much heat for saying, essentially, "Barack Obama is not one of us."

As a non-white president with ties to places like Kenya and Indonesia, he represents, for many, the fact that the American Century is over -- finally and completely. Because even if these people believe in their heart of hearts that they are not racist, or sexist, or homophobic, or xenophobic, they have decided that a country that embraced these sentiments was at the top of its game in parts of the 20th Century and that this is the country they want back -- a country where a non-white person with a non-traditional life story could not be president, a country in which only those who can "prove" they are "like us" are allowed to be hold the highest office in the land.

When reporters hold up copies of Obama's birth certificate only to be met by non-specific counterarguments from Trump and other Birthers, it is clear that the interlocutors are arguing past each other. Needless to say, when you are having an argument with someone, it's always useful to make sure you are actually in the same discussion.

The good news is that the bigots amongst us know they cannot directly argue their case and so they need devices like the birth certificate issue to give them credibility. The bad news is that when people won't say what they mean it confuses things significantly.

(Cross-posted at Lippmann's Ghost.)

Birtherism, bullshit, and Donald Trump

By Michael J.W. Stickings

The leader of the Birthers, judging simply by celebrity status and media attention, isn't Jerome Corsi or Orly Taitz but rather, as you probably know, Donald Trump, who in his quest for ever more self-aggrandizing publicity, if not for the Republican presidential nomination, has been pushing the Birther lie with extreme prejudice in recent weeks.

In a way, it's become his political claim to fame, or rather his claim to political credibility on the right and with the Republican base, and with the 45 percent of Republicans who don't think Obama was born in the U.S. despite the overwhelming evidence to the contrary. Needless to say, Trump doesn't have any evidence, but he's nonetheless continuing to tantalize not just Republicans but the media with his assertions of some terribly sinister conspiracy. He was at it again on Thursday:

Possibly-serious Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump is giving few details about the investigation he claims to have launched in Hawaii to get to the bottom of where President Obama was born, but the business mogul told CNN Thursday Americans will be "very surprised" by what he has found.

"We're looking into it very, very strongly. At a certain point in time I'll be revealing some interesting things," Trump said on CNN's American Morning.

Trump first claimed earlier this month he had sent investigators to Obama's home state in an effort to find out if the president was indeed born there, as he says he was and several media organization's independent investigations have confirmed.

"I have people that have been studying it and they cannot believe what they're finding," Trump told NBC then.

But Trump has since offered few details about the on-the-ground investigation and, in the interview with CNN Thursday, wouldn't specifically say if it had uncovered new details.

"You'll be very surprised," he said when asked by CNN's Ali Velshi if his investigators have found anything.

It's rather amusing that CNN describes him as "possibly-serious." I think that's actually giving him too much credibility, and too much legitimacy. But what's key here is that Trump isn't providing any details because there just aren't any details to provide. Saying he has investigators on the job is like O.J. saying he's trying to find the "real" killers. Sure, Trump may come up with something, something to advance a Birther conspiracy theory or another, but the way to keep the story going, the way to bring himself even more publicity and to please/appease the GOP's Birther base, is not to provide any new facts, let alone to bring closure to the story, but to keep the media guessing. Whatever you think of Trump, he's a savvy guy and he knows how to play the media. And that's just what he's doing.

At No More Mister Nice Blog, Steve M. explains what's going on:

This is what's going to happen to birtherism, I think: It's going to mutate. It's going to stop being just about whether the birth story is accurate; it's going to morph into a narrative in which an inaccessible document or two in Hawaii get lumped together with (I assume) a larger number of inaccessible documents in Indonesia and Kenya to create an impression (at least to wingnuts) of a president hiding secrets that are too horrible and evil to comprehend.

*****

Trump says, "I'll be revealing some interesting things." Drudge's "source close to the publisher" says, "Obama may learn things he didn't even know about himself!" I'll say it again: the plan is to turn this into A Conspiracy So Vast, an attempt to hide aspects of Obama's youth, in which the birth certificate plays a relatively small part. I'm not saying it'll work -- I'm just saying that's the scheme to keep this fresh and continue gulling the rubes (and, if they play it flawlessly, the mainstream media).

It's not really clear to me what Trump's endgame is. He surely isn't running, and wouldn't win if he did. Is he stupid enough to believe otherwise? And would he really want to open himself up to such scrutiny? Is is just about publicity? Maybe, but how is it beneficial to him as a celebrity businessman to be so blatantly partisan, not to mention to embrace the conspiracy theories of the crazy wing of the GOP?

I'm just not sure, but there seems to be little doubt that his massive ego is driving him, and something else he said on CNN reveals a lot about how he views himself in relation to everyone else. Discussing his net worth, and refuting Forbes magazine's claim that it's $2.7 billion, Trump said this:

I can tell you that's a very low number," Trump said of the Forbes estimate. "It's much more than that. And if I decide to run, which I very well may surprise people, but if I decide to run, I will give a net worth statement essentially. As you know, we have to fill out very detailed forms for the federal government. And I think people will be extremely impressed."

Yes, it's the money, stupid. Trump thinks that it's his wealth that impresses people, that what truly sets him apart from most everyone else is his money. It's like he thinks he can do no wrong because he has so much money. Forget how many times he's been bailed out, or how many of his enterprises have failed. He's a rich man, a richer man than you think, and that, he thinks, makes him better than you -- and it's what apparently gives him automatic political credibility and a shot at the presidency. In other words, he apparently thinks he's invulnerable, that nothing can bring him down, that anything he touches, including crazy conspiracy theories, turns to gold.

In this respect, he's like any of those disgraced CEOs who stole from shareholders and destroyed their companies, except that he's got a lust for the spotlight that far surpasses most and that the media, and especially the right-leaning business media, think he can do no wrong.

I'm not sure even this explains pushing Birtherism, but obviously Trump has made some sort of calculation that being, or at least presenting himself as, the driving force behind a lie advances his personal agenda. I'm sure his "investigation" will continue to excite the rubes in the GOP and the gullible fools in the media, but anything he says, like everything he has said so far, will be thick with bullshit.

Gai kakhen afenyam

By Distributorcap

It is bad enough my peeps have to deal with complete and total douchebags like Eric Cantor and Bill Kristol, but now...

Miss Blood Libel herself -- donning a very prominent Star of David.  Doesn't it look like she is completely stoned on LSD-laced matzoh balls or Xanax-filled haroses. 

On the Sarahnews Network, Miss Blood Libel rushed to the defense of the Trumptaur himself today:

"Well, I appreciate that the Donald wants to spend his resources in getting to the bottom of something that so interests him and many Americans, you know, more power to him," she said presumably referring to an indication by Trump last week that he has investigators on the ground in Hawaii searching for information on the president's birthplace.

Maybe Donald can investigate whether Sarah had a mikvah. Or if she eats cheeseburgers.

Cherem (חרם), is the highest censure in the Jewish community. It is the total exclusion of a person from the Jewish community. It is a form of shunning, and is similar to excommunication in the Catholic Church.

Sarah -- have a glass of Cherem on humanity.

Karl Rove doesn't like Donald Trump -- imagine that

By R.K. Barry

Need any more proof that Donald Trump is the gift that keeps on giving to Democrats?

All you need to know is that a Donald Trump candidacy, with its whack job birther nonsense, scares the crap out of Karl Rove.

As ThinkProgress put it: 

By firmly planting his flag on the right-wing birther conspiracy, real estate mogul Donald Trump is single-handedly driving a deep wedge into the Republican party. His improbable popularity in the polls has motivated some high-profile Republicans to jump on the birther bandwagon while leaving others fighting to deny him any future relevance. President Bush's former adviser Karl Rove let Fox News' On the Record host Greta Van Susteren know that he falls squarely in the second camp. Utterly aghast at his full-time peddling of the birther conspiracy, Rove labeled him a "joke candidate" of the "nutty right" who will never be elected by Republicans or the American people.

The only thing I can say about this is: who among us would have thought that it would be Donald Trump, of all people, who would drive the wedge between crazy right-wingers and the more pragmatic, effective and campaign savvy elements of the GOP? Glenn Beck, Sarah Palin, Michele Bachmann? Sure. Donald Trump? Wow.

It's actually kind of fun to watch Rove's disgust as he talks about Trump.

(Cross-posted to Lippmann's Ghost)

Romney vs. Trump

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Appearing yesterday on CNBC, Mitt Romney took a firmly anti-Birther line:

I think the citizenship test has been passed. I believe the president was born in the United States.

The use of the word "believe" is a bit of a hedge. It's a fact, not a matter of belief/faith, that Obama was born in the U.S. Still, it's a long way off from the insanity not just of the far right of the GOP but of so much of the party mainstream these days, which however non-Birther is careful not to alienate/enrage the Birther base.

Speaking of insanity, a new CNN poll finds Donald Trump leading the Republican field in a tie with Mike Huckabee. It's mostly about name recognition and media presence at this point and so it makes sense -- to the extent that anything involving him ever makes sense -- that Trump is doing fairly well.

Back to Romney, though. He's evidently trying to capture the "sane" wing of the GOP, positioning his apparent sanity (non-Birther) against the insanity of so much of the rest of the party (including Trump and the Birthers). Will that get him anywhere? Not with his RomneyCare record, not with his flip-flopping over the years, and not with the general lack of credibility he has with the hardcore conservatives/extremists who make up the Republican grassroots and who, in a year without a leading establishment candidate (e.g., Dole, Bush II, McCain), will very likely determine the winner. (Pawlenty is trying to be the establishment candidate, but he has a lot to overcome, not least his lack of broad national appeal. The establishment, such as there is one anymore, is so desperate that the party could end up with an embarrassingly unelectable nominee like Sarah Palin or Michele Bachmann that draft-X campaigns are springing up around potential "sane" candidates like Mitch Daniels, Chris Christie, and Jeb Bush.)

There's another reason Trump is doing well in the polls (even if he ends up not running, which is highly likely). Insanity, including Birtherism, plays incredibly well in today's GOP. Romney can try with all his might. For all his faults, he just isn't insane enough to win.

Plouffe challenges Trump, who lashes out at Obama with unbridled idiocy

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Donald Trump -- if the media and especially the (heavily right-wing) business media are to be believed -- may be the most amazing man in American history, the glorious personification of all that is good and decent with America, but he sure has a thin skin:

The White House stopped just short of dismissing Donald Trump as a clown Sunday - calling him a "sideshow" act with "zero chance" of becoming president.

Chief Obama adviser David Plouffe unleashed a barrage of stinging comments on Trump, who has recently trafficked in fringe conspiracy theories about Obama's place of birth while taunting America with hints of a presidential run.

"There is zero chance that Donald Trump would ever be hired by the American people," President Obama's chief adviser David Plouffe told ABC's "This Week with Christiane Amanpour."

*****

Trump countered that he represents Obama's biggest nightmare in the 2012 race and that the White house is running scared.

"I know for a fact that I am the only candidate they are concerned with," Trump told The Daily News. "They are very concerned because I am challenging him as to whether or not he was born in this country where there is a real doubt."

"He should focus on properly dealing with the Chinese, the Saudis and all of the other nations that are ripping off the United States instead of making up quotes about Donald Trump," the "Apprentice" host blustered on. "Barack Obama has done a terrible job as president."

Oh... where to begin?

First, Trump can't know that for a fact, because it isn't a fact. There's no way the White House is concerned about a Trump run. Trump is simply full of shit. The question is whether he believes his own shit.

Second, there's no legitimate issue about where Obama was born. He was born in Hawaii. We have the official documentation to prove it (statement of live birth). Trump has taken up the Birther cause, and is running wild with it, but it merely destroys what little political credibility he had.

Third, you can't really be a good Republican if you're not kowtowing to the Saudis and the Chinese, mostly for business-related reasons. They have the oil (Saudi Arabia), the lucrative export market (China), and the keys to America's economic future and fiscal well-being (China).

Fourth, how exactly has Obama been so terrible? Well, of course, I assume that Trump would rather not extend health insurance to tens of millions of Americans most in need, given how little he cares about those lower than him on the wealth scale, but bailing out Wall Street? Really? Trump opposed that? Given how many times Trump himself has been bailed out over the years, after failure upon failure, he should have a little more appreciation for government handouts to the banks, particularly with so few strings attached. Of course, it's hard to know what exactly Trump thinks about anything given how insanely partisan his rantings are and how he has embraced the crazy conspiracy-mongering of the far right.

Fifth, it is embarrassing, and that's putting it nicely, that anyone takes Trump seriously, particularly those in the media who, if I may give them some undeserved credit, should know better. And yet all we seem to get -- just watch any Trump TV appearance -- is a revolting display of sycophantic fawning. And all because he has money, which buys you credibility in America's depraved political and media culture, and has successfully cultivated the mythology of himself as all-American success story.

But you know, I have to disagree with Plouffe. Trump doesn't have "zero chance" of becoming president. He has a less than zero chance. He's that much of a sordid, massive sham.