Presumptuous Politics

Monday, June 20, 2016

Trump suggests 'profiling' in US to stop domestic terrorism

Donald Trump suggested Sunday that the U.S. start “profiling” people inside the country to thwart terrorism, calling it a hateful but “common sense” tactic, in the aftermath of recent terror attacks.
"I think profiling is something we're going to have to start thinking about as a country," Trump said on CBS' "Face the Nation." "I hate the concept of profiling, but we have to start using common sense.”
The presumptive GOP presidential nominee also argued that other countries, including Israel, profile “and they do it successfully.”
Trump, as he has frequently argued, said radical Islamic groups are creating “big problems.”
However, he didn’t directly say those groups should be the sole focus of profiling -- a strategy in which individuals or groups are targeted for additional law-enforcement scrutiny because of race or other characteristics.
Omar Mateen, the shooter in the June 12 massacre at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Fla., was a radicalized Muslim and the subject of two FBI investigations into possible connections to terrorism.
Mateen pledged his allegiance to the Islamic State terror group, even during the attack in which he fatally shot 49 people and wounded dozens of others inside the gay nightclub before being killed by police.
This is not the first time Trump has made controversial comments related to terrorism and radical Islam, particularly after the Orlando attack and the 2015 Paris and San Bernardino, Calif., strikes, all connected to ISIS and radicalized Muslims.

Trump-backing Ryan trying to help GOP in elections but tells members use 'their conscience’

House Speaker Rep. Paul Ryan is trying to keep fellow Republicans in control of Congress but said Sunday he wouldn’t ask them to endorse Donald Trump for the sake of party unity, to save their Capitol Hill majority or keep Democrat Hillary Clinton out of the White House.
“Imagine the speaker of the House not supporting the duly elected nominee of our party, therefore creating a chasm in our party,” the Wisconsin Republican said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” “I don't want to see Hillary Clinton as president. I want to see a strong majority in the House and the Senate.”
Ryan has endorsed Trump but waited about a month after he won enough primaries, caucuses and accompanying delegates in early May to become the GOP’s presumptive presidential nominee. After some direct conversations with Trump and assurances that he would support a conservative agenda, Ryan officially backed Trump earlier this month.
However, Ryan has since criticized some of Trump’s subsequent comments, including the suggestion that an American-born judge presiding over a civil suit against Trump University real estate school could be bias because of his Mexican heritage.
“I disavow these comments,” Ryan told reporters earlier this month. “Claiming a person can't do their job because of race is sort of like a textbook definition of a racist comment.”
After the June 12 massacre at an Orlando, Fla., nightclub committed by Omar Mateen, a Muslim who was apparently self-radicalized, Trump renewed his call to temporarily keep Muslims out of the country.
Still, Ryan suggested Sunday that he wouldn’t tell a Capitol Hill Republican seeking reelection on any party member to back Trump for the benefit the party in 2016.
“The last thing I would do is tell anybody to do something that's contrary to their conscience,” Ryan said.
Ryan, chairman of the GOP nomination convention in July, also said he disagrees with a purported effort by convention delegates to switch their assigned allegiance from Trump to another candidate to deny him the nomination. However, Ryan said he has no authority over such rules and related decisions
“The voters picked (Trump.) He beat Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio and Jeb Bush and everybody else,” Ryan said. “He won the delegates. My place … is to call balls and strikes and just play it by the rules. So it is not my job to tell delegates what to do or what not to do or to weigh in on things like that.”

Sunday, June 19, 2016

Obama Vacation Cartoons

Obama breaks from Yosemite family trip to urge Americans to stop climate change

The number of vacation days President Obama has taken since the beginning of his presidency stood at 161 days. If you add the 28 days of vacation he has taken this year his total comes to 189 days.

President Obama on Saturday broke from his family vacation in Yosemite National Park to urge Americans to act on climate change, which he argued is destroying the country’s precious natural resources.
“Make no mistake, climate change is no longer a threat, it’s a reality,” the president said in a roughly 10-minute speech, ahead of the upcoming 100th anniversary of the National Parks system.
Obama said Yosemite rangers told him that signs of climate change, or global warming, are already occurring across the roughly 761,000-acre park in California.
“Yosemite’s largest glacier, (once) almost a mile long, is almost gone,” said Obama, standing behind the majestic Yosemite falls.
Global warming has in large part been blamed on human activity and on coal and other fossil fuel-burning plants.
The president has been criticized for vowing, since essentially the start of his presidency, to make developing alternative or green energy a priority, while his administration has proposed changes that have the potential to shutter coal-firing plants and prevent new ones from opening.
He also appeared to take a jab Saturday at presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump who has threatened to dissolve the Paris climate change agreement.
“This shouldn't lead to careless suggestions about scrapping an international treaty we spent years putting together,” Obama said.
The president attempted to spread to the responsibility to act on all Americans, saying “that’s especially true for our leaders in Washington” and that “our generation” must make an effort.
“Over the last 100 years, there has been plenty to celebrate,” Obama said. “Over the next 100 years, protecting (open) spaces is even more important.”

Warren blasts Trump on several topics in New Hampshire speech

Another Idiot Attack Dog

Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren continued to fill the role as attack dog Saturday, as she tore into presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump calling him a “thin-skinned racist bully” who shouldn’t be allowed anywhere near the White House.
Warren blasted Trump on several hot button issues over the course of her speech and even openly boasted that she “could really do this all day.”
"Every day we learn more about him, and every day it becomes clearer that he is just a small, insecure moneygrubber who doesn't care about anyone or anything that doesn't have the Trump name splashed all over it," Warren declared speaking before hundreds of fellow Democrats in New Hampshire.
Warren delivered her scathing speech at the state party’s annual convention, riling up the crowd as the general election begins in earnest. Warren stayed focused on Trump, barely mentioning the Democratic Party or speaking about Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders.
"Whether you supported her in the primary or not, we can all say Hillary Clinton is a fighter," Warren said. Spontaneous chants of Sanders' name broke out several times during Warren's speech, but the convention went on with few fireworks.
Warren berated Trump for his remarks on minorities and women, his economic policies, views on climate change and for allegedly using deceptive marketing practices for the defunct Trump University.
She declared Trump is only qualified to be "fraudster in chief" and said he relies on tearing others down.
The speech comes roughly a week after Warren formally threw her support behind Clinton. And while the speech mostly focused on Trump, Warren also talked up Clinton as a fighter for children and families and someone who is never afraid to take on "an army of right-wing lunatics."
"We can whine about Donald Trump. We can whimper about Donald Trump. Or we can fight back. Me? I'm fighting back," Warren said. "Hillary Clinton is fighting back."
U.S. Sen. Jeanne Shaheen and Gov. Maggie Hassan, who is running against Republican Sen. Kelly Ayotte, also railed against Trump in their remarks. Hassan's race against Ayotte is one of the nation's most competitive and closely watched, and Hassan slammed the first-term senator for supporting Trump. Ayotte says she will support Trump as the GOP nominee but has criticized many of his remarks. Hassan said the criticism is not enough.
"Is there anything Trump could do to lose Kelly Ayotte's support?" Hassan said. "Apparently not."

Trump mocks GOP ‘movement’ to stop him at the convention

Donald Trump speaks at a rally Saturday, June 18, 2016, in Phoenix. (Photo: AP Photo/Ross D. Franklin)
PHOENIX, Ariz. — Donald Trump issued a warning on Saturday to Republicans who might be trying to undermine his candidacy at next month’s GOP convention, insisting it wouldn’t be “legal” for his opponents to block him from the party’s presidential nomination.
Speaking to a few thousand supporters here at the final stop of an eight-day, 10-city campaign swing across the country, Trump at first tried to dismiss rumors of a party revolt against his status as the presumptive GOP nominee, calling it a “pure fabrication” by the media.
But the real estate mogul and former reality television star seemed clearly annoyed by the prospect, repeatedly mentioning rumors of a “movement” against him several times to supporters.
“I hear they want to try do something at the convention. Wouldn’t it be funny if Trump gets record setting votes in the states, and somebody what was beat by me like a drum says our nominee [isn’t me],” Trump said. “First of all, it’s not legal, can’t do it. The Republican National Committee is with me 100 percent. Reince Priebus, a very good guy, he said it’s the most ridiculous thing he’s ever heard.”
But Trump wouldn’t let the subject drop and reminded the crowd here of his litany of primary wins. He bragged that he’d won more votes in the GOP primary than Ronald Reagan, Richard Nixon and even Dwight D. Eisenhower, “who in all fairness,” Trump added, “won the Second World War.”
“We won, and we are going to keep winning,” he declared. “They just can’t beat me.”
Though Trump repeatedly insisted that the idea of a coup at the GOP convention was being hyped up by the media, he admitted he could see one of his rivals plotting against him. “They don’t take it easy, and it was a rough vote,” Trump said. “There were some badly injured and wounded people. And I wouldn’t say they love me. I wouldn’t say it.

Trump’s comments were slightly toned down here, compared to a stop earlier Saturday in Las Vegas, where he implied two of his primary rivals — former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush and Texas Sen. Ted Cruz — were trying to steal the nomination away from him.
“By the way, Jeb is working on the movement, just so you understand. I love competition like that. I love it,” he told supporters in Nevada. “And the other one should be obvious to you, but we’ll figure that out very easily.”
Trump has had a rough entry into the general election, in part due to self-generated controversies. These included his response to the Orlando massacre, his racially-tinged criticisms of a federal judge overseeing a lawsuit involving Trump University and his inability to unite a deeply fractured party behind his nomination. Talk has swirled in some GOP circles of launching a long-shot bid to change the rules at next month’s convention to oust Trump as the party’s standard-bearer.

But Trump tried to sound a positive note here in Arizona, citing polls that show him running “essentially even” with his Democratic rival Hillary Clinton, though recent polls have been fairly positive for Clinton. And, Trump said, “We haven’t really started yet. We’re just beginning.”

Still, Trump, at times, sounded irritated about the process of running of president. At one point, he told supporters here, “I need this like I need a hole in the head.”
But there have been bright moments, he allowed. Pointing to all the magazine covers he’s been featured on over the last year, Trump was jubilant. “I feel like a supermodel, but like times 10,” he said.

Donald Trump threatens to self-fund campaign if GOP support wavers

LAS VEGAS — Donald Trump on Saturday claimed most of the money he's been collecting at his recent fundraisers is going to the Republican Party, but also threatened to cut the GOP off if support from the party wavers.
"Right now I'm raising a lot of money for the Republican Party, and a lot of beneficiaries to that, and I like doing it," Trump said.
"Life is like a two-way street, right?" Trump said. "They have to [help], otherwise I'll just keep doing what I'm doing, I'll just keep funding my own campaign...for me, that's the easy way," he said.
Trump's candidacy has been problematic for some in the GOP. Some Republican delegates in Colorado are moving forward with a plan to oust Trump at the party's convention.
And House Speaker Paul Ryan on Friday said he wouldn't instruct House members to vote for Trump, saying they should vote their conscience.
Trump in Las Vegas Saturday dismissed efforts to oust him at the convention as a "hoax" that was "made up by the press."
"First of all, it's illegal. Second of all, you can't do it. Third of all, we, not me, we got 14, almost 14 million votes, 14 million votes in the primary system," he said of the fledgling but growing movement to change the Republican National Convention rules to allow even delegates bound to Trump to vote against him based on their "conscience."
Trump also pointed out the grassroots effort haven't tapped an alternative.
"Who were they going to pick? I've beat everybody," Trump said. "But I don't mean beat, I beat the hell out of them, right? Beat the hell out of them."