Tuesday, April 26, 2011

Donald Trump: Mouth in Gear, Brain in Neutral

Donald Trump likes to run his mouth.  Like media whore Ann Coulter, he doesn't much care what it is that he says, so long as it gets him attention, so he tends to focus on the sensational and ignore the factual.
This appears to be appealing to at least a segment of the conservative base, who also don't seem to care very much about a factual basis for their beliefs, and are almost exclusively ideology driven.

We have rights to privacy in this country.  While there is a definite segment of our society which is sickly voyeuristic, consuming the most intimate details about the lives of celebrities and others, there is no entitlement on their part just because they want information to get information. 

There are individuals and organizations which ARE entitled to verify data.  That has been done, in the case of the president to the satisfaction of the appropriate government entities.

Trump is the worst kind of panderer, appealing to the lowest common denominator, when he makes statements like:
NEW YORK -- Real estate mogul Donald Trump suggested in an interview Monday that President Barack Obama had been a poor student who did not deserve to be admitted to the Ivy League universities he attended. Trump, who is mulling a bid for the Republican presidential nomination, offered no proof for his claim but said he would continue to press the matter as he has the legitimacy of the president's birth certificate.
Trump does not hesitate to make a statement as if it were fact, based on unconfirmed gossip.  This is not the conduct of a serious presidential candidate.  It is the conduct of a media clown, not unlike other right wingnuts, like Glenn Beck or Rush Limbaugh or Michele Bachmann.  Sadly, this reduces the level of our public discourse, and diminishes the value of our method of representative government which is based not only on one vote for each person (human being person, not corporation), but is also dependent on an informed and intelligent electorate - not ignorant idiots.

Trump goes on to run his rather nasty, stupid mouth:
"I heard he was a terrible student, terrible. How does a bad student go to Columbia and then to Harvard?" Trump said in an interview with The Associated Press. "I'm thinking about it, I'm certainly looking into it. Let him show his records."
Heard......from whom?  Birther queen batshit crazy Orly Taitz?  News bulletin, Donald - you don't have the right to pry into anyone else's life, and the very idea that you think you do raises some of the same issues about anyone intruding and invading privacy as the discussions over abuses of the Patriot Act to snoop on American citizens. 
Obama graduated from Columbia University in New York in 1983 with a degree in political science after transferring from Occidental College in California. He went on to Harvard Law School, where he graduated magna cum laude 1991 and was the first black president of the Harvard Law Review.
Unless you can prove some factual basis to assert that Obama didn't deserve to graduate magna cum laude, or that he didn't honestly get elected president of the Harvard Law Review by his fellow students after qualifying as a candidate for that position, you are promoting a very hateful position, a racist position, Mr. Trump. The bar for such a factual basis must of necessity be very high.

Further, Don, you are displaying precisely why it is that no respectable, responsible person in this country should give you the time of day, much less a vote for any office.  That this garbage appeals to conservatives is a potent reminder to me of why I am no longer a conservative, and why I find people like you, Mr. Trump, repugnant.  Don, you diminish all of us.

And incidentally - the decision to wear your hair in that ludicrous way is far more reminiscent of Bozo the Clown than it is either dignified or presidential.  We had a joke in office for two terms, prior to Obama.  We don't need another one; we've only just begun to regain our position in relationship to the other nations of the world again.  Let's not blow it this quickly, shall we Mr. Trump?  We can all see you're wearing a badly styled comb over.  It didn't look good when Rudy Guiliani did it, it doesn't look good on you.  Obviously you think we are all so stupid we are fooled by this - we're not.  There is nothing wrong with a man being bald; it can be very sexy, very virile.  This, what you are doing is just silly.  It insults us, it doesn't benefit you.  That's unlike you Donald; you're usually better at being self-serving.

1 comment:

  1. Actually, Mr. Trump has made this comment before the NYT interview … I heard him state that during his speech in Boca Raton.

    Is this the classic dodge … you know question something about someone else before anyone can question anything about your policies … or past ?

    While President Obama has had media attention for years on his personal life, Mr. Trump is largely unknown.
    Fortunately, A&E Biography profiled him:
    Donald Trump was an energetic, assertive child, and his parents sent him to the New York Military Academy at age 13, hoping the discipline of the school would channel his energy in a positive manner.
    Trump did well at the academy, both socially and academically, rising to be a star athlete and student leader by the time he graduated in 1964.
    He entered Fordham University and then transferred to the Wharton School of Finance at the University of Pennsylvania from which he graduated in 1968 with a degree in economics.

    Hmmmm … was there any events of importance in the mid'60s ... like VietNam ... help me out here, as I recall there was no lottery for the draft until after 1968, therefore, Mr. Trump would have been subject to the draft just as others of the time were … oh, sure there was a possibility of a deferment for education ( my memory is not good, but was that something that George Bush may have done)
    or being married ( once again, my memory is not the best, but is that something that Dick Cheney did)
    or both (gosh, these memory lapses are really kicking in, but is that something that Newt Gingrich did?)

    So, let’s consider the facts :
    Mr. Trump attended New York Military Academy;
    in 1964, at the age of 18, Mr. Trump would have been required to register with the Selective Service at his draft board;
    and in 1968, when Mr. Trump left college at the age of 22, he would have been ripe for the draft unless there was a deferment for real estate executives.

    So in the spirit of asking for birth certificates and school records, would Mr. Trump provide his draft card and deferment records ?

    Remember by bringing up educational accomplishments, Mr. Trump is also setting up other potential candidates to discuss their own … for example, is it not correct that Michele Bachmann was a member of the final graduating class of Oral Roberts' law school and is considered an alumnus of Regent University …

    I am afraid that this will blow up on Mr. Trump, as America has been waiting for too long to make an alumni from Oral Roberts and Regent University it’s first President.

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