Category Archives: General Interest

April 23, 2016 · 1:39 am

“What kind of parents would…”

I watched a facebook video of a young mother trying to vindicate her discipline choice, which she had posted on facebook last weekend, never expecting it to go viral. The gist of her story is she took her three children to Dairy Queen for ice cream after a day of activities. Her kids grabbed the cones from the server and ran out of the door. She went outside and took their ice cream cones and threw them in the trash, because her children failed to thank the server or her for the ice cream.

Fox news picked up this mother’s story and her parenting has come under attack. Here’s a bit from a PJ Media article, “Mom Brags on Facebook About Dumping Kids’ Ice Cream. Was She Wrong?”:

“Sullivan dubbed herself in her post as the meanest mom ever—perhaps Mommy Dearest. Her adult children will someday let her know if the title fits or if she’s just overly dramatic.”

The article goes on to lecture about good parenting and point out why this mother’s public discipline was akin to abuse. “Mommy Dearest” really… The mother posted a follow-up video to defend herself, describing her day with her children, while her husband was out of town: trip to a coffee shop in the morning, shopping for a birthday present, a birthday party, to a child’s soccer game, then swimming at a friend’s house, followed by eating dinner out with friends capped off by this ice cream stop. Sure seems like too many activities for young kids aged, 8, 7 , and 5. Be that as it may, posting about her discipline on facebook was probably more of a mistake than throwing her kids ice cream cones in the trash and having her parenting judged based on one facebook post.

Having gone through parenting challenges, here’s a lesson in judging parenting from long ago, that shows it’s best not to judge. Our youngest daughter, now in her late 20s, lied a lot as child – yes, that is the truth, she did. She was also very spoiled, being the baby of the family, and of course, she was adorable and knew how to charm people from an early age, which led to her being an expert at getting her own way.

One evening when she was around 10 years old (give or take a year), she had a friend in our home with her and she asked if she could spend the night at that girl’s house. I asked the girl if her mother had approved of having my daughter spend the night. She assured me that her mother said it was okay, so off they went on their bikes to the top of our street and then left down another street to that girl’s house.

My husband was still on active duty in the Army and he got up very early to go to work for PT (physical training) and then a couple hours later he came home to get a shower and get changed into his work uniform. I used to get up and make coffee and talk to him before he left for PT and then talk to him before he left for work.

Just a couple minutes after my husband left for PT, there was knocking on the back door of our house. It was my daughter returning from her sleepover and when I didn’t buy the first lies she told, finally she admitted that her friend had never asked her mother about having the sleep over. My daughter said her friend helped her sneak into their house and told her to sleep in the hall closet. Her friend woke her up early and told her to go home, before her mother found out my daughter was in there. I lectured her, but wasn’t sure how I wanted to punish her, so I fell back on that, “Wait til your father gets home!” line and then I sent her to room.

When my husband returned from PT, he started ranting about, “What kind of parents would let their kid out riding a bike so early in the morning?” He went on and on about some kid flying down the street on a bike, with no headlight on the bike, as he headed to PT. Finally, I couldn’t contain my laughter any longer and I said, “That would be parents like us!” The dismayed look on his face was priceless. So, I told him about her sleep over in the closet. I don’t even remember if we grounded her, I just remember laughing so hard at my husband’s sputtering indignation about “what kind of parents would let a young kid ride a bike so early in the morning”.

Another time she was in third grade and I used to do volunteer work at the Red Cross handling Red Cross messages. I went on post to the Red Cross after our 4 kids went to school. My husband was at home that day for a training holiday. Around noon my husband called me and asked me if I knew where our youngest daughter was. I was confused, because I had sent her off to the bus stop in the morning. My husband informed me that the father of this same girl from the sleep over incident had just brought our daughter home. He caught his daughter and our daughter playing in the woods behind his house. He told my husband that his dogs kept barking, so he went to see what was going on and there were the two girls running around in the woods. My daughter claimed she walked past the bus stop up to that girl’s house and they missed the bus, but then decided it would be more fun to play in the woods all day. Yes, she skipped school in third grade.

Our youngest daughter, married with no children yet, grew into a responsible adult and she’s rather fond of lecturing about how children need rules and firm discipline… The thing about families is they never forget, so she gets reminded of her childhood exploits if she gets too sanctimonious about “proper” parenting.

My parenting advice is never utter the words “what kind of parents would”…

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April 22, 2016 · 10:46 pm

The bitter taste of defeat

My reputation is ruined. For a couple months, I’ve been getting the evil eye from Gus, my granddaughters’ cranky amazon parrot. His cage door stays open and he loves to climb up the outside of the cage to the open tray area on top, which has a wooden perch mounted above. He perches there and squawks loudly, making himself heard over my four noisy granddaughters. About a month ago, I was sitting at their dining room table reading and unaware that Gus was marching across the floor to attack me. One of my granddaughters yelling for me to run, just as Gus latched onto my ankle, gave me my first feel for how strong a parrot’s beak is. He didn’t want to let go of my ankle and when he finally did, he had taken a small chunk out of my ankle.

In the intervening weeks, I am always wary around Gus and as many days I watch my granddaughters after school, it’s become obvious that something about me angers Gus a great deal. Gus also attacks my daughter, so one of my granddaughters said maybe Gus knows I’m their mom’s mom, such is the reasoning of a 9 year-old, but she might be right.

Fast forward to Wednesday, after school, I was sitting on their sofa and not paying attention to Gus, when one of my granddaughters yelled and told me to run. Gus had waddled all the way across the room and was within a yard of me. One of the 9 year old twin granddaughters came to the rescue with a broom from the kitchen and we got Gus onto the broom handle and put him in his cage.

Yesterday, I sat on their loveseat and was reading on my cell phone, when the 10 year-old granddaughter again yelled, “Run Grandma!” I stood up and tried to fend off a parrot attack with my cell phone and one of the granddaughters came with the broom, but Gus had moved from being a fearless fighter to a deranged loco bird intent on annihilating me. Yes, I was being chased around the room by a parrot waddling across the floor (in my defense, he moves pretty darned fast). The 10 year-old ordered me to go outside on the porch until she got Gus back in his cage.

The shame of being run out of the house by a parrot still stings. When the girls told me it was safe to come back inside, the 10 year old gave me a stern talking to. She lectured, “Grandma, you aren’t good in a crisis and you move too slow.” Then she said, “I’m not trying to hurt your feelings, Grandma, but it’s the truth,”

Defeated by a demented parrot……… how do I ever recover my reputation… Ahem, my sons left a BB gun in the bedroom closet when they moved out… Nahh, just joking, I won’t shoot Gus, but that psycho, will be locked inside his cage when I’m at their house:-)

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April 20, 2016 · 12:33 pm

The coup inside Trump Tower

Somehow fitting that America’s two most overblown egos won big in New York yesterday. The media cluelessly warbles on about how Trump referred to Ted Cruz as “Senator Cruz” rather than his trademark, low-class name-calling “Lyin’ Ted”. This made news??? Trump enablers in the media kept pointing out this monumental shift as “evidence” that Trump can “act” presidential, while missing the real story. None of them have really investigated the Trump mass media saturation and delved deeper into Trump’s campaign operations. They buy his “barely any” campaign staff myth, when it’s obvious he hired top notch political opposition research operatives and mass media experts to manufacture that opinion cascade last year. And the billions of dollars of free media Trump was given didn’t happen by accident, the Clintons and their media friends orchestrated this.

The real story from yesterday isn’t the delegate count or even Trump’s win in New York. The YUGE story is that Roger Stone and friends have staged a coup in the Trump campaign and pushed out the stealth dem political operatives, who propelled Trump’s mass media saturation campaign and orchestrated his opinion cascade strategy for the first 10 months of the campaign. Many of Trump’s conservative enablers have commented that Trump doesn’t have much of a staff and Coulter even stated Trump doesn’t have any opposition research team. This is clearly a big lie. For the first 10 months of his campaign, Trump operated in a clearly planned and deliberate manner, where he relentlessly repeated key buzz words and phrases, and he engaged in this sleazy character assassination technique, which I mentioned back in January:

“Early on, the bullying and impulsive outbursts alarmed me, then the endless attacks on anyone whom he felt didn’t treat him “fairly”, on to the vulgarity , but most of all, the way in which he so deliberately slimes people, dumping the dirt he pulls out of his fancy suit pockets, throwing it into the public arena to publicly denigrate other people, then he pretends he’s only speaking “the truth” or often he plays innocent, as if he is merely repeating what other people are saying.”

Trump came to every interview and debate clueless on policy details, but loaded with carefully researched dirt to dump – he had professional opposition research in hand and Lewandowski sure isn’t experienced enough to orchestrate this sophisticated of a mass media operation. The mass media saturation was facilitated by big media honchos to promote Trump as the front-runner. To date Trump has bragged endlessly about how far he has come, while spending so much less than the other GOP candidates, well, of course that’s true, because he was given 24/7 free media coverage – deliberately and calculatingly to make him the “inevitable” GOP nominee. The hand of Bill Clinton in this is obvious – strings were pulled to promote Trump, as the far-right kook, all to set in motion Bill Clinton’s triangulation strategy (here, here, here)

To be clear about the Drumpfzilla vs. the Witch of Chappaqua battle -the stealth dem operatives, whom Trump consulted from the beginning, are now back-burnered. Roger Stone gained Trump’s ear and convinced Trump to hire old Stone friend and business partner, Paul Manafort. Manafort is now the de facto campaign manager, while those dem stealth Clinton operatives are sidelined. That is what happened. Stone and Manafort are now trying to conjure up a real, professional campaign infrastructure – expect more discipline, less name-calling, more serious prepared speeches to rebrand Trump as “presidential” rather than a reality TV gadfly trying to create buzz.

Another Stone friend to watch is Charles R. Black, Jr, a Kasich adviser, who will aid and abet Trump’s efforts to sideline Cruz. Now, despite Trump’s vile attacks on Cruz’ wife, I don’t doubt for a minute that Cruz would accept the VP nod, if Trump offered it. Kasich and Cruz, like Huckabee, Christie and Carson, would sell out to political ambition over principle in a heartbeat.

The Clintons may regret their machinations to create the “GOP Insurgent”, but they still sit snug on vast piles of rotting Trump dirt, which their friends in the media will dump in the near future. So, to recap – Trump hired his own world-class GOP sleaze political operatives to replace those stealth dem ones he hired in the beginning of his campaign – the ones who helped him orchestrate that sophisticated mass media slick propaganda fraud last year – that manufactured opinion cascade of his “winning in the polls”. A diverse, talented GOP field was deliberately and systematically demolished with mass media propaganda and corrupt political machinations, yet the media still babbles on about how Trump the Reality TV candidate can “act” the part…..

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Filed under General Interest, Politics, Public Corruption

April 19, 2016 · 1:17 pm

Drumpfzilla vs. the Witch of Chappaqua

After almost a year of this 2016 presidential campaign, the endless Trump theatrics and bogus allegations, replete with vile, petty name-calling and endless spin (lying) makes me disgusted not only with Trump, but also with his big name enablers. I lost respect for many public figures in the process, especially Rudy Giuliani, who could go on national TV and proclaim that Trump behaves gentlemanly and is a gentleman. That level of bold-faced lying for political purposes rests as something I expect from Hillary Clinton, not from Giuliani, a former federal prosecutor. The Trump demolition of the GOP continues and rather than beat a dead horse and repeat the same mantra daily, I’m working on some other craft projects and also some other topics to write about – hence, not as frequent blog posts.

My fervent hope is that both Hillary and Trump get fired – she to face charges and he as a total lying, conniving fraud, but of course, due to the state of America and the worship of celebrity, my hope rests as, at best, a forlorn one. She will not be held to account for jeopardizing national security on an epic scale and Trump, a TV clown act, who definitely does not possess the integrity, intellectual heft, work ethic or frankly good manners to be President, just might insult his way into the White House.

How smart people can excuse his petty stream of “Little Marco”, “Lyin’ Ted”, Megyn bleeding out of her wherever and Carly’s ugly face taunts, well, I don’t get it. Top that with the fact that the man does not hire the best people, he doesn’t bother to do his homework, he’s corrupt and worse than that he corrupts those who follow him. They begin to believe his lies and convoluted excuses and worse repeat them. No one stole his delegates – he was too lazy, too cheap and most of all believed he could ride free media buzz all the way to the nomination, so he didn’t bother with setting up real state campaign operations.

Trump’s latest RNC delegate rants repeat the same Trump pattern – he didn’t bother to prepare for debates and when he ended up looking like an ignorant ass – he walked away from the debates. However, for months, his enablers bragged that he was different, he didn’t need to know details or prepare, as he would hire the best people, and he even set out mocking Carly Fiorina for her obvious dedicated study and preparation as a negative – boring even. Heck, I caught myself thinking she does sound very prepared as if that was a negative, until I realized Trump was sucking me into his amoral relativistic thinking – he does that to people. He will find a little grain of truth and use it to sell a whole truckload of lies and bullshit. He also connives people into becoming willing participants in his vile attacks and smear campaigns, as they repeat his sleazy dirt. Her studying demonstrated she was worthy of the job she was seeking and Trump’s refusal to follow the rules or put any effort into policy research shows he is UNFIT for the job. He perverts, not only the truth, but people’s moral compass, as he sells you on his entitlement, due to he is rich (successful).

Now, he wants the RNC to ditch all the rules to accommodate him, all because of his own lack of planning and cheapskate campaign tactics have left him without viable state grassroots organization. His free ride with mass media collusion is about to end and he’s now having to pay his way, which he is whining about non-stop. The man is a fraud and worse than that, he corrupts everyone who buys into his delusional conspiracy victim-hood tripe. One can only wonder how he will fare, if he does bare-knuckle his way to the GOP nomination. The media sits poised to turn on him and will unleash the Clinton attack machine. Assuredly, they want Trump to burn down the GOP tent, as they have given Trump billions of dollars of free air time, to that end. However, their fork-tongued, flame-throwing swamp monster, Drumpfzilla, seems to have acquired land legs and he’s as adept at “scorched earth” as the Witch of Chappaqua. The blaze from 2016 may be one for the record books, but let’s hope that America is still left standing and neither of these two vile creatures ends up in the Oval Office!

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April 15, 2016 · 1:15 pm

Another dire U.S. military readiness warning

This morning FOX News ran a report about the alarming state of readiness in Marine aircraft, along with their requisite “military expert” commentary from General Jack Keane. The US Armed Forces has been in an endless state of war since 2001, so this dire readiness state rests as a natural outcome. Some truths hold true for eternity and one of those truths comes from Sun Tzu, in the chapter on Waging War:

2. When you engage in actual fighting, if victory is long in coming, then men’s weapons will grow dull and their ardor will be damped. If you lay siege to a town, you will exhaust your strength.

3. Again, if the campaign is protracted, the resources of the State will not be equal to the strain.

4. Now, when your weapons are dulled, your ardor damped, your strength exhausted and your treasure spent, other chieftains will spring up to take advantage of your extremity. Then no man, however wise, will be able to avert the consequences that must ensue.

5. Thus, though we have heard of stupid haste in war, cleverness has never been seen associated with long delays.

6. There is no instance of a country having benefited from prolonged warfare.

http://classics.mit.edu/Tzu/artwar.html

Everyone in Congress who sits on Armed Services committees and the White House staff, who receive Armed Forces readiness reports, should have been well aware of these looming problems for the last decade. This isn’t just some “new problem” blowing up out of the wild blue yonder; it’s the predictable outcome of more than a decade of protracted war, then compounded by President Obama’s deliberate and willful undercutting defense readiness. When you have an administration more concerned about social engineering than warfighting capability, this decline in military readiness rests as the outcome – the Obama administration deliberately has made decisions designed to weaken the US military – that’s the truth. Now, lacking an ability to prove their “motives”, the Obama chorus will recoil in outrage and insist the President cares about military readiness and national security, so let’s just say the outcome of 8 years of Obama military policy has led to a collapse of American power projection globally and the next administration inherits a US Armed Forces besieged with readiness issues that must be addressed immediately.

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Filed under Culture Wars, Foreign Policy, General Interest, Military, Politics

April 13, 2016 · 7:36 am

Trump’s yuge sense of entitlement

This 2016 Presidential campaign has begun to feel like a never-ending Groundhog Day movie, but here are a few tidbits that caught my attention. Have you noticed the press barely pays any attention to Hillary and Bernie? Since last June, when Trump entered the race, the media devotes its efforts toward hyping Trump’s reality TV campaign.

One of Trump’s big selling points rests on his hyped persona as a great businessman and he reminds us constantly that only he knows how to make “great” deals and that he knows the “best” people to get things done. Then, comes the reality check – Trump most certainly did not hire the “best” people to run his campaign, with Lewandowski creating controversy at every turn, his spokesperson, Pierson, being inexperienced and in the states, Trump, the “great” businessman, failed to adequately staff ground operations for the delegate battles.

Last weekend his ineptitude hit critical mass in Colorado, where the Cruz campaign’s better-organized team captured all 34 of the delegates in Colorado’s unusual delegate selection process. Naturally, Trump declared Colorado’s process unfair and alleges Cruz stole the delegates, but the truth is Trump never bothered to find out how the various state delegate selection processes operate nor did he hire adequate experienced political staffers to organize effective grassroots political operations. At this late date, Trump has hired some Republican Svengali, Paul Manafort, to conjure up the grassroots delegate infrastructure that Trump should have had in place when he announced he was running for President last summer. Manafort, continuing the Trump thuggish MO, hit the media with sound bites declaring the Cruz campaign engages in “Gestapo tactics.” Manafort seems like the perfect fit for the Trump strong man meme-themed campaign.

Since last summer, media chatter warbles on about Trump being a “great” businessman, but here’s the wake-up call – he does not pay attention to details nor does he bother to research issues. He bloviates endlessly with half-baked conspiratorial nonsense and his plans remain overly simplistic drivel, that even a cursory look at the details shows his plans are ridiculous. His centerpiece illegal immigration plan serves as the leitmotif of Trump planning – big booming promises, hollow on details. Last night Bill O’Reilly finally got around to calling the Trump plan centerpiece components, the mass deportation of 11 million illegal immigrants and making Mexico pay for the wall, hogwash. Now, O’Reilly being a Trump enabler allowed Trump’s plans to go unchallenged since last summer, so the late date effort at some journalistic integrity in regards to Trump smells like a self-preservation effort for O’Reilly. Perhaps, he finally stopped inhaling the Trump “greatness” smoke. The detail problems with Trump’s plan have been mentioned by some journalists and I wrote about them last August: here and here.

Let’s hope the lack of attention to details trait is not a family one in the Trump family. Yesterday, the media reported that Trump’s children, Eric and Ivanka, won’t be able to vote for him in the New York primary. They failed to change their voter registration to Republican by the deadline date and were unaware of the details:

“They were unaware of the rules and they didn’t register in time,” Trump said this morning on “Fox and Friends.” “So Eric and Ivanka, I guess, won’t be voting.”

The deadline for registered voters to change party enrollment was Oct. 9, 2015, more than six months ago. The deadline to register as a new voter was March 25.

“They feel very, very guilty. They feel very guilty” Trump said this morning. “But it’s fine. I understand that.”

Records from the New York State Board of Elections show that Eric, 32, and Ivanka Trump, 34, are registered voters who are “not enrolled in a party.”

http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/donald-trumps-kids-eric-ivanka-miss-deadline-vote/story?id=38303943

Trump’s flying by the seat of his pants way of operating, high on cheering crowds and sycophantic friends, like Bill O’Reilly and Rush Limbaugh, giving him a pass on being accountable like other candidates, makes me nervous. I believe in details and while Carly Fiorina’s meticulous debate prep may have sounded stilted at times, at least she put the effort into doing the homework someone seeking the presidency should be expected to do. Trump at this late date still hasn’t bothered to read the details and he’s resorted to hiring some political fixer to magically create a competent campaign operation. Trump’s lack of attention to detail is not “great”. As a detail-obsessed, rule-follower, I am one of those annoying people who reads the directions on packages before even opening it. Heck, I read through recipes a couple times to make sure I understand the instructions, have the necessary ingredients and tools, but also I like to know how long it takes to prepare, so that I can plan when to begin cooking a meal. Trump’s behavior stems from arrogance and a sense of entitlement, not from being stupid or lazy. Trump, just like his friends, the Clintons, operates from a belief in his own superiority and from the belief that rules are for the little people, not for His Greatness to follow.

While seemingly not a YUGE deal, his unwillingness to bother with the “little details” peals as an ominous bellwether warning that Trump is someone who does not play by the rules! He is unethical and will cheat whenever he thinks he can get away with it to “win”. Trump and Hillary are the stardust twins:

Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton are of a piece – they, in clinical terms, are sociopaths – successful, smart, but at their core, both believe the rules don’t apply to them, so now we have the two most overblown egos in America fighting for the same job. From experience, I can tell you that Donald Trump, impulsive, vulgar, ruthless is a man barging ahead, but Hillary Clinton is a woman who believes it is her destiny to be the first female President. And women manipulate and scheme and connive, so in this match-up, despite all Trump’s bluster, Hillary Clinton will win.

Obama’s kind of “surge”

From the Washington Times: “U.S. cuts Syrian refugee screening time in order to handle surge”

“The U.S. is about to start accepting a surge of Syrian refugees — all vetted in less time than originally anticipated by the federal government.

Because of a spike in Middle Eastern refugees needing placement, the Obama administration has decided to rush their vetting process to three months, from the original 18-24 months.

“While the resettlement process usually takes 18 to 24 months, the surge operation will reduce the time to three months,” the Associated Press reported Thursday.”

Great stuff from the Obama administration and the administration goal of relocating 10,000 Syrian refugees in the US is a floor and not a ceiling, according to this report, so the number could increase. You know they can’t possibly properly vet these refugees with the civil chaos in Syria and no way to check that even the passports are legit. If there is any way to undermine US national security, the Obama administration will rush to do it.

Obama’s Syrian refugee program on steroids

Instead of slowing down the process of bringing in Syrian refugees due to serious problems with vetting them, which includes the rampant fraud with fake Syrian passports, the Obama administration has decided to speed up the process and process 600 Syrian refugees a day according to this Washington Examiner report. The goal is to process 10,000 Syrian refugees for entry into the United States by September 30th. Now, the FBI director stated months ago that there’s no way to vet these people due to no data bases to check their passports, names, etc. against, but leave it to the Obama administration to just write another fake narrative.

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Filed under Foreign Policy, General Interest, Politics, Terrorism

April 7, 2016 · 12:31 pm

Trump’s circus train going around the bend?

Guessing, I am like many Americans in regards to this campaign 2016 season and with the world situation too, where the burned out feeling has started to set in. The media hyping every Bernie/Hillary snipe and the GOP consumed by the Trump circus train, well, after the 5,000th time of Trump doing the same lame shtick and his endless repetition of his “winning” or whines about being treated “unfairly”, no wonder the media buzz trying to create “a big story” has me yawning.

The interesting part of the Trump campaign all along has been how his campaign really is organized (or disorganized) internally and who are the real Trump advisers. That his campaign internally is imploding is obvious. The reports of disorganization and in-fighting are now seeping out and that Trump never bothered to invest in the state infrastructure to actually carry a national campaign to fruition strikes me as typical Trump – no details, just all bluster. There’s no “there” there with Trump – he’ s a lot of braggadocio and little substance. Now, the fascinating public statements by Trump’s loyal friend, former campaign manager, Roger Stone, keep piquing my interest. Why has Stone been more visible and vocal as a Trump spokesman than Lewandowski? Why hasn’t Trump disavowed Stone’s comments threatening the GOP party leaders with riots or yesterday, there was a report of Stone threatening to release the hotel room numbers of delegates who switch from Trump supporters to someone else in a contested convention? Why do Trump’s comments about “there would be riots” sound so much like Stone’s and how often do Stone and Trump talk about the campaign?

Here are some Roger Stone stories to consider:

April 5, 2016 – http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2016/apr/5/roger-stone-trump-ally-threatens-delegates/

April 6, 2016 – http://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2016-election/infighting-frustration-rile-trump-s-team-sources-n551131

April 7, 2016 – http://mediamatters.org/video/2016/04/07/on-cnn-newsroom-trump-campaign-official-defends/209803

And from last summer:

August 8, 2015 – http://www.politico.com/story/2015/08/sources-roger-stone-quit-wasnt-fired-by-donald-trump-in-campaign-shakeup-121177

That Trump doesn’t pay attention to details, from eschewing studying policy or preparing for debates to organizing a viable presidential campaign for the long haul delegate battle, seems to be the key takeaway of his entire campaign, – Trump isn’t about the details, he’s about selling the dream. So, whereas the Clintons mastered the grueling ground game details decades ago and even Cruz has put together a formidable state delegate operation, the Trump campaign focused on reality TV hype, creating media sensations, and the power of Twitter rants… Hence, the late, last ditch effort to organize state delegate operations at this late date – the hiring of Paul Manafort, who worked with Roger Stone and Charles R. Black, Jr. (aligned with the Kasich campaign) long ago. One can only wonder how long a man like Manafort, known for his organizational prowess, can contend with dealing with Trump, the master twit of sub-par tweeting and his band of definitely not “great” campaign team of misfits, like Lewandowski and Pierson, and oh, dare I say, the word, “losers”.

http://www.nytimes.com/politics/first-draft/2016/03/28/donald-trump-hires-paul-manafort-to-lead-delegate-effort/

The biggest LIE in the campaign?

Here’s a PJTV interview with Ann Coulter. At minute 2:40 she utters what I suspect will turn out to be the biggest lie of the campaign, when she states Trump doesn’t have any political opposition research team. Coulter insists Trump’s campaign staff is just a couple people running things for months and now a few more. Now, watching Trump show up all through last summer and fall to interviews and debates without policy details, but with his pockets loaded down with sleaze and scurrilous dirt, well someone provided Trump with this meticulous opposition research. Add to this that Trump endlessly warns people to watch out or else, hinting he has more dirt to dump (and often he dumps it, so he’s not bluffing). So, while Coulter may buy into “Trump the political genius”, I call bullshit, loud and clear. Trump came loaded down with huge piles of professionally-gathered opposition research. Who he hired to gather all this dirt remains unknown, but before this election is over, more details will likely emerge.

Trump dominates the news cycle and beyond his policy blunders, this latest controversy over his campaign manager and the former-Breitbart reporter, Michelle Fields, takes the cake for Trump being completely tone deaf and frankly a total idiot. Put aside all the arguments about the he said/she said, put aside the video and audio tapes. Just think about this as a public relations incident and pretend you’re a presidential candidate whose campaign has been alleged to encourage violence. Now, if you have some campaign messages about real issues you’d like to resonate with voters, something like this Fields incident should be something you want to get behind you as quickly as possible.

For the record, I don’t see Fields almost pulled to the floor in the video, but I also do see Lewandowski touch her arm, which puts a lie to Trump initially saying Lewandowski never touched her. So, even if Fields exaggerated, Trump and Lewandowski could have handled this in a gentlemanly fashion and the matter would be history by now. Imagine if the Trump campaign issued a public and private apology to Fields or even imagine the private apology coming with a bouquet of flowers. It would have been very hard for Fields to turn them into cads and this whole escalation could have been avoided. That’s called diplomacy and rising above the situation, but it takes character to do that and Trump lacks it.

Instead, Trump launched into a character assassination of Fields from the beginning. Coulter may applaud Trump’s approach, as she has made a career out of baiting people and creating scenes – from her books, to her TV appearances, to her college campus speeches. Her entire career can be summed up as agitation propaganda of the most vile sort. Her career centers on name-calling and vile demagoguery, then when she provokes a response, she plays the victim of the “vicious Left.” And of course, she has made flipping her long blond hair back part of her public speaking too, her nose goes up in the air with a haughty jaunt and then she flips her hair back, which comes across as a “So there!” To be fair, Coulter only touched her hair one time in this interview and did not do her trademark tossing it back, perhaps because this was a very friendly venue for her.

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