RUTHFULLY YOURS

Donald Trump is not content to bully the residents of just one continent, it seems.

In the mid 1990s, there was Vera Coking, the septuagenarian widow whom Donald Trump tried to squeeze out of her Atlantic City apartment to make room for a limousine parking lot for his nearby casino. Ten years later, in Scotland, trying to foist a golf course and resort onto a stretch of Scottish coastline, Trump encountered a set of equally incorrigible homeowners — and did his best to run them out of their homes, too.

In March 2006, Trump visited Scotland and proposed to build a 36-hole golf course — “the greatest golf course anywhere in the world,” as he would reiterate time and again — along with a 450-room hotel with a conference center and spa, 950 time-share apartments, 36 golf villas, and 500 for-sale houses, and accommodations for hundreds of full-time employees, in Balmedie, Aberdeenshire. He billed it as an economic boon to the country and, in his usual theatrical fashion, as a “homecoming,” waxing poetic about his immigrant mother, who departed Scotland’s Western Isles for the U.S. as a young woman. In reality, it was a vanity project.

“I always wanted to do a golf course in Europe, and of the 211 sites we have looked at, we have seen some incredible places,” said Trump. “But this was something special.” Indeed — more than Trump understood. The Menie Links, north of Aberdeen, is home to the Foveran Links, a designated Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI). The Foveran Links – which is a dynamic dune system that moves several meters annually, giving rise to a unique collection of plants and wildlife — is unique in the United Kingdom.

To build on SSSIs, of which there are 1,400 in Scotland, one requires special permission from the relevant municipal government, which can decide that the potential economic boon from a proposed project outweighs the environmental cost. In November 2007, the Aberdeenshire Council’s Infrastructure Committee rejected Trump’s proposal, 8–7. One month later, though, in a surprise move, the Scottish national government “called in” the plan, removing it from the Aberdeenshire Council’s jurisdiction on the grounds that the plan was of national interest.

In October 2008, the national government gave the green light. “The balance of opinion among people in the northeast of Scotland and among my constituents is very strongly in favor. And that’s because we can see the social and economic benefits.” So said Alex Salmond, then a local Scottish parliamentarian (now known for spearheading last year’s failed referendum effort). According to Salmond, Trump’s project promised 6,000 jobs across Scotland, 1,400 of which would be “local and permanent jobs in the northeast.” Construction revved up.

Dear Donald Trump Fan,I’m going to tell you the truth, friend.
You say you want the truth. You say you want someone who speaks boldly and brashly and bluntly and “tells it like it is” and so on. According to exit polls in South Carolina, voters who want a president who “tells it like it is” are an essential demographic for Trump, just as they’re an essential demographic for Judge Judy and Dr. Phil. You say you want abrupt and matter-of-fact honesty, and you want it so much, you’ll make a man president for it regardless of whether he defies every principle and value you claim to hold.
Personally, I think you’re lying, and I’m going to test my theory. In fact, I believe I’ve already proven my theory because you’re now offended that I called you a liar. But Trump has called half of the Earth’s population a liar at some point over the past seven months, and you loved every second of it. You said you loved it not out of cruelty or spite, but out of admiration for a man who’s willing to call people liars — even if he’s lying when he does it.

Yet here I am employing the same tactic — accurately, I might add — and you recoil indignantly. Over the course of this campaign season I’ve said many harsh words about you and your leader, all of which I stand by, but you’ve never respected my harsh words, or the harsh words of any Trump critic. Indeed, you insist that our tough criticism of you only vindicates your support of Trump, while Trump’s vulgar and dishonest criticism of everyone else also vindicates your support of Trump. You’re tired of people being critical, but you love Trump because he’s critical. You say you like Trump for his style, but you hate his style when it’s directed at him or you.

You say you like Trump for his style, but you hate his style when it’s directed at him or you.

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You say you want someone who’s politically incorrect. You’re so desperate for political incorrectness — a supremely ridiculous reason to vote a guy into the Oval Office, but never mind — that your esteem for him only grows when he belittles the disabled, mocks American prisoners of war, calls women dogs, calls his opponents p*ssies, calls for the assassination of women and children, says he’d like to have sex with his daughter, brags about his adultery, etc.

You’re excited by the most vile statements and most cretinous behavior imaginable — not remotely deterred by any of it, no matter how many times he gloats over infidelity, curses his opponents, and publicly ogles his own children — because, you say, it’s politically incorrect. That is how unfathomably desperate you are for someone to come along and just say what’s on their mind, you claim. You’re so fed up with political correctness that you celebrate political incorrectness without distinguishing between the healthy sort and the “LOL I slept with married women and I’m not sorry” sort. It doesn’t matter if you don’t personally agree, you say, you just respect the hell out of someone who’s willing to shoot straight, even when ”shooting straight” means comparing Ben Carson to a child molester, calling the entire electorate of Iowa stupid, and referring to women as “pieces of ass.”

Trump won South Carolina on the support of Evangelical Christians who were so impressed with his alleged straight talk that they overlooked the fact that he’s a crass, cruel, unrepentant philanderer who says he does not need God’s forgiveness, and who praises Planned Parenthood as “wonderful” and his radically pro-abortion sister as a “phenomenal” candidate for the Supreme Court. That’s how much you pretend to admire bluntness in a man. So much that it overrides literally everything else.

Among South Carolina Republicans who preferred above all else a candidate “who tells it like it is,” 77 percent voted for Donald J. Trump.

That is astonishing, given that Donald Trump’s entire life has been an extended exercise in deception.

Start with his wealth. How much is Donald Trump worth? $1.7 billion? $6 billion? “TEN BILLION DOLLARS,” as he claimed in his presidential filing? Tim O’Brien, then a reporter for the New York Times, wrote in his book TrumpNation: The Art of Being the Donald, that in one 24-hour period, Trump claimed two different net worths differing by $3.3 billion. He has never permitted an independent, third-party audit of his finances. The closest anyone has come is Deutsche Bank, which in 2005 estimated that Trump was worth . . . $788 million. Several sources with knowledge of Trump’s finances have put the number significantly lower.

And Trump has admitted to lying about his wealth. “Have you ever exaggerated in statements about your properties?” he was asked during a deposition in the mid 2000s. “I think everyone does,” Trump replied. “Does that mean that sometimes you’ll inflate the value of your properties in your statements?” the lawyer followed up. Trump: “Not beyond reason.”

Translation: “Yes,” as evidenced by this exchange about a Trump-owned property in Westchester County, N.Y., which Trump claimed had doubled its value in twelve months. “Did you have any basis for that view other than your own opinion?” he was asked during a different deposition. “I don’t believe so, no.”

Trump’s wealth-related lies abound. Did he actually receive $1 million for a 2005 speech, as he told Larry King?? No. He was paid $400,000. He lumped in promotional efforts on behalf of the address to inflate his compensation.

“It’s a lucky thing for conservatives that the likeliest alternative to Mr. Trump for the nomination is the very “establishment Republican” Marco Rubio, the non-jerk of the season who could actually win in November. Too bad his task will be that much harder thanks to the ideological drunks who, when they knew better, cheered the Donald on.”

I thought of Mr. Murphy’s make-believe drunks while listening to Rush Limbaugh and Mark Levin inveigh against Donald Trump following the Republican debate in South Carolina. The Donald had yet again noted that 9/11 had happened on George W. Bush’s watch, adding for good measure that the 43rd president had lied America into war with Iraq.

Donald Trump “sounded like any average host on MSNBC,” marveled Mr. Limbaugh, who was equally aghast that Mr. Trump had defended “Planned Parenthood in language used by the left.”

Mr. Levin was even blunter: “He sounds like a radical kook,” the radio host thundered to his seven million listeners. “To have the leading Republican nominee for president of the United States to make these kinds of statements—and he’s been praised by Code Pink. He should be praised by Code Pink and every left-wing kook organization that hates America. To have him praised for what he said? Terrible. Absolutely terrible.”

It is terrible. So where were Messrs. Limbaugh and Levin last summer, when the Trump candidacy was still a big soap bubble, waiting to be popped by the likes of them? READ ENTIRE COLUMN AT SITE

Several well-funded organizations — including the League of Women Voters and the NAACP — are fighting efforts to prevent non-citizens from voting illegally in the upcoming presidential election. And the United States Department of Justice, under the direction of Attorney General Loretta Lynch, is helping them.

On February 12, these groups filed a lawsuit in D.C. federal court seeking to reverse a recent decision by the U.S. Election Assistance Commission (EAC). The Commission’s decision allows Kansas and other states, including Arizona and Georgia, to enforce state laws ensuring that only citizens register to vote when they use a federally designed registration form. An initial hearing in the case is set for Monday afternoon, February 22.

Under federal law, the EAC is responsible for designing the federal voter-registration form required by the National Voter Registration Act, or Motor Voter, as it is commonly called. While states must register voters who use the federal form, states can ask the EAC to include instructions with the federal form about additional state registration requirements. Some states are now requiring satisfactory proof of citizenship to ensure that only citizens register to vote.

Under Article I, Secion 2 and the Seventeenth Amendment to the Constitution, states have the power to set the “Qualification requisite for electors.” As with many issues, the Left disdains the balance the Framers adopted in the Constitution and objects to this delegation of power to the states. They prefer to see power over elector eligibility centralized in Washington, D.C.

Maryland Senate President Mike Miller (D) is accusing Gov. Larry Hogan (R) and his “staff of right-wing people haters” of orchestrating a hate mail and phone call campaign aimed at him and 28 other Democrats who voted to override Hogan’s veto of legislation that allows felons on parole to vote.

The Baltimore Sun reported the new law, which goes into effect March 10, will unleash a herd of new voters. More than 40,000 former prison inmates will be eligible to register to vote in Baltimore’s mayoral, city council and presidential primary elections this spring.

This is happening in a state where Democrats already outnumber Republicans 2-1.

Under current Maryland law, felons have to complete their probation and parole before being allowed to register to vote, a system that Democrats have called demoralizing and confusing for those released from prison, along with being unnecessary.

The American Probation and Parole Association testified during a General Assembly debate that “civic participation is integral to successful rehabilitation” of prison inmates.

The Baltimore City Council voiced its collective support for General Assembly Democrats by approving a city council resolution that read: “Denying so many of our neighbors the right to vote makes it much more difficult to engage them in the process.”

“The General Assembly was right to open the door to meaningful participation in our society to all non-incarcerated ex-offenders, and it should complete the process by overriding the Governor’s veto at the earliest opportunity in the 2016 legislative session,” the city council resolution concluded.