Fascist behavior from the American Left

Very similar to Hitler's brownshirts

PROTESTS outside a Donald Trump rally in New Mexico turned violent Tuesday night as demonstrators threw burning T-shirts, plastic bottles and other items at police officers, overturned trash cans and knocked down barricades.

Police responded by firing pepper spray and smoke grenades into the crowd outside the Albuquerque Convention Center.

During the rally, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee was interrupted repeatedly by protesters, who shouted, held up banners and resisted removal by security officers.

The banners included the messages “Trump is Fascist” and “We’ve heard enough.”

At one point, a female protester was physically dragged from the stands by security.

Other protesters scuffled with security as they resisted removal from the convention centre, which was packed with thousands of loud and cheering Trump supporters.

Trump responded with his usual bluster, instructing security to remove the protesters and mocking their actions by telling them to “Go home to mommy.”

He responded to one demonstrator by asking, “How old is this kid?”  Then he provided his own answer: “Still wearing diapers.”

Trump’s supporters responded with chants of “Build that wall!”

The altercations left glass at the entrance of the convention centre smashed.

During the rally, protesters outside overran barricades and clashed with police in riot gear.

They also burned T-shirts and other items labelled with Trump’s catchphrase, “Make America Great Again.”

Tuesday marked Trump’s first stop in New Mexico, the nation’s most Hispanic state.

Governor Susana Martinez, head of the Republican Governors Association and the nation’s only Latina governor, has harshly criticised his remarks on immigrants and has attacked his proposal to build a wall along the US-Mexico border. The governor did not attend the rally and has yet to make an endorsement.

Trump read off a series of negative statistics about the state, including an increase in the number of people on food stamps.

“We have to get your governor to get going. She’s got to do a better job, OK?” he said, adding: “Hey, maybe I’ll run for governor of New Mexico. I’ll get this place going.”

The governor’s office fired back, saying Martinez has fought for welfare reform. “The potshots weren’t about policy, they were about politics,” said spokesman Michael Lonergan. “And the Governor will not be bullied into supporting a candidate until she is convinced that candidate will fight for New Mexicans, and she did not hear that today.”

Trump supporters at the rally said they appreciated his stance on boosting border security and stemming the flow of people crossing the border illegally, but some said they were frightened by the violent protests outside.

Albuquerque lawyer Doug Antoon said rocks were flying through the convention centre windows as he was leaving Tuesday night. Glass was breaking and landing near his feet.

“This was not a protest, this was a riot. These are hate groups,” he said of the demonstrators.

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The filmmakers hoping to take down Hillary Clinton

“DONALD Trump will win in a landslide,” producer of the explosive documentary Clinton Cash, Steven K Bannon, declares to news.com.au.  “It’s going to be a win of Reagan proportions.”

The controversial film, based on the best-selling book by Peter Schweizer, investigates how the Clintons managed to reconfigure their finances, from being “dead broke” when they left the White House in 2001 to amassing in excess of $US150 million with $US2 billion in donations to their foundation in only a few years.

The film was recently screened at the Cannes Film Festival to an audience of journalists and theatre distributors glued to their seats.

“What I find shocking is that there’s this thought process that Hillary Clinton is going to be president of the United States, and to even think of Donald Trump is a joke,” Bannon says.

“Journalists think it’s inconceivable that she is not going to be president of the United States. Then they see the film and the first reaction you get is, ‘How come nobody knows this stuff? How come it’s not out in the popular press?’”

The film chronicles the years in which the Clintons and their foundation amassed money and where they got it from, including fees paid to Bill Clinton for speeches while his wife was secretary of state. This includes $US1.4 million he received for two speeches in Nigeria in 2011 and 2012, during the time the country’s president, Goodluck Jonathan, was under fire for his human rights record.

Peter Schweizer, author of the book of the same name, says: “The political leaders who enriched them and how they have been enriched affects the decisions they make. We should care who is putting money in the pockets of politicians. If you are a cabinet officer in the United States you should not have a foundation that is taking money from foreign governments and foreign entities. We need to have those reforms or this is going to become widespread.”

Bannon is the executive chairman of the politically conservative Breitbart news site and he’s honest about wanting to take the Clintons down.  “Trump is a product of a seething populism and nationalism that is the driving political force,” he says animatedly.

“We were the first guys to give Trump an interview three years ago in May of 2013. The mainstream just laughed at him but I’m a filmmaker and I watch the audience. They were leaning into what Trump said when he talked about making America great again, getting jobs back and stopping immigration.

“I don’t like to prognosticate but I was the very first guy three years ago that said Trump will be the Republican nominee and was mocked and ridiculed.”

Bannon is sipping his morning coffee on the sun-dappled patio of Cannes’ iconic Carlton Hotel, perched on the Mediterranean Sea where the likes of George Clooney, Blake Lively, Justin Timberlake and an endless array of models are milling about.

“George Clooney, who is a moron, came here to Cannes and gave a press conference saying, ‘Under no circumstances will Trump ever be president. Hillary Clinton will be the next president.’ Well, we can’t wait to make George Clooney eat his words. He has a false patina of intellectualism and this is what a hypocrite he is; he talks all this trash about money and politics and global warming but lives up in Italy at the villa [on Lake Como] and flies around in a jet,” he says.

Taking a decidedly no-holds-barred approach, Bannon says of the Clintons, “They are trailer trash. They are grifters.”

And on the age-old question, the subject of many a classic country music anthem, why did Hillary stand by her man? “Because she is possibly about to become the most powerful person in the world, and possibly the first female president of the most powerful nation in the history of the earth,” Bannon says.

Though the documentary is largely seen as a tool for the Republicans during this historic election year, Clinton Cash has also proved to be an aid for Democratic candidate Bernie Sanders.

“It’s a great weapon for Sanders. The polling shows Hillary Clinton’s biggest weakness is not her competence as Secretary of State, as a senator or her stand on women’s issues, it’s that people don’t trust her,” he says, leaning in.

“Particularly when it comes to money. Sixty-five per cent think she’s dishonest, but Bernie hasn’t used that and I think one of the reasons is quite simple: these people roll very hard. The Clintons play smash mouth,” he says. “They will come at you.”

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"Never Trump" does not own conservatism

"He's a mere celebrity whose ignorance will destroy the Republican Party and if, God forbid, elected president, he will start World War III"

But enough about what the Washington Establishment said about Ronald Reagan. That was 40 years ago when he challenged President Ford. Let's talk about now and how the Washington Establishment continues to brush Trump off as a mere celebrity whose ignorance will destroy the Republican Party and if, God forbid, elected president, he will start World War III.

My take is that if a person does not want to vote for Trump, fine. I respect that. If you want to leave the party as a matter of principle, I am OK with that.

However, the Never Trump crowd is another kettle of fish that need to be fried. If you write for the oldest conservative magazine in Washington (National Review) yes, you are are part of the Washington Establishment. That is how it works. If you are a Fox News contributor based in the nation's capital, you are are part of the Washington Establishment. Ditto the Weekly Standard. Ditto a host of think tankers. Stop pretending you are some sort of renegade. You live in the American Versailles. You are part of it.

There is nothing wrong with the Washington Establishment except a $19 trillion national debt, a string of wars, the rise of the Islamic State, the tanking of the economy, borders that are unprotected, and free trade agreements that have forced Wal-Mart to quit its "Buy American" policy.

For all their malarkey about the free market and capitalism, few in the Washington Establishment live in that world. They get huge salaries from tax-exempt corporations that survive on tax-exempt donations.

Their ignorance of how capitalism works showed this year. In the marketplace of ideas, they lost. For all their huffing and puffing, they could not  blow Trump down because his ideas trumped his personality. Got that? The only Cult Of Personality is that of Cruz who frankly is another empty suit, only he comes with a Bible.

His promise of running a constitutional government is laughable. We already do. Congress writes laws, the president carries them out, and the Court decides whether the laws pass constitutional muster. Yes, the Roberts Court upheld Obamacare, but it also struck down DC's gun law and McCain-Feingold. You may disagree with the Court but that does not make the rulings unconstitutional.

Nor does opposition to Trump make you more conservative than me.

Free trade?

Patrick Buchanan pointed out that from Lincoln to Coolidge (and of course, Hoover) Republicans and conservatives stood for protective tariffs.

From Buchanan:

During his presidency, Congress passed and Abe signed 10 tariff bills. Lincoln inaugurated the Republican Party tradition of economic nationalism.

Vermont’s Justin Morrill, who shepherded GOP tariff bills through Congress from 1860 to 1898, declared, “I am for ruling America, for the benefit, first, of Americans, and for the ‘rest of mankind’ afterwards.”

In 1890, Republicans enacted the McKinley Tariff that bore the name of that chairman of ways and means and future president.
“Open competition between high-paid American labor and poorly paid European labor,” warned Cong. William McKinley, “will either drive out of existence American industry or lower American wages.”

To paraphrase Archie Bunker, mister, we could use a man like Bill McKinley again. The economy thrived.

And the reality is that Reagan was less free trade than Trump is. Reagan slapped tariffs on Japan like it was nobody's business to protect Harley Davidson and others.

Trump is about reaching out. Never Trump is about crawling into a shell. So be it. But that is not a high road they are on.

SOURCE

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