There is a fairly marked difference between large-scale bombing and targeting specific families for torture or execution. Your likening it to "collateral damage" doesn't seem a good fit. It is direct damage; the object of the violence being perpetrated.

Missed my point, we didn't use to call families, or civilians and cities collateral damage, we called them targets, and we bombed the shit out of them to end wars by removing the will of the other side to fight - both militarily as well as politically.

Terrorists currently operate outside the of the sphere of 'civilized warfare' and as a result face no repercussions for their actions beyond occasionally their own death - there is a school of thought of which I am a member, that total war, as we used to practice, is the only answer to the existential threat we face.  Make sure they understand there will be repercussions on their people, their families, their holy sites, etc., and even if you don't change their minds you can change the minds of everyone around them to the point they no longer have the money or safe hiding places they currently enjoy.

As we have sought to achieve surgical levels of precision in combat to avoid collateral damage there is no denying that our win-ratio has decreased, and fear of us as a dangerous opponent has been diminished.

'Gimp

I'm more comparing Trump to the DPRK Kims and their cult of personality.

And that is why you are so patently, glaringly and completely wrong. 

The Kim's enjoy a forced support, given 'willingly' at the point of gun and in exchange for a pittance of rice to avoid starvation - in much the same way as they 'receive' an astonishing 99.2% of the 'vote'.

You can dislike Trump all you want but the support he is garnering is genuine, and it results from from more than a mere cult of personality.  To suggest otherwise is to once again demean and diminish and completely misunderstand the nature of the phenomenon he is benefiting from.  For a portion of those who support Trump it is no doubt akin to the support Obama enjoyed 8 years ago, but to suggest that Obama's support was solely a result of 'cult of personality' would be to miss the substantial support he recevied from fellow travellers for what he said, and what he represented in terms of governance.

We dismissed his support as shallow and driven by self-centered skulls full of mush, not substantive and deliberate, and we lost not one but two elections to him as a result.

And now, the same wizards of smart who misjudged the electorate in '08 and '12 are doing it again, only this time they are training their fire on one of their own instead of the actual opposition.

'Gimp

Just my take, of course...

...but the whole "Dear Leader" shtick is childish and tiresome.

If anyone cares what I think - which is probably an unwarranted assumption right there.

Bringing the country together is no longer possible, or even desired by the American people. We seem to like our divided war camps and inflexible dogma. There is no "middle ground". Bringing people together mean compromise and compromise means behaving like the "establishment" and establishment is a dirty word now.

You can't fault Obama for not uniting the people and bringing us together. We don't want to be united, or together.

I don't agree at all.  I think the media, education, and government (Dems and Obama) have promoted a divided society where we are not "American" anymore, but a bunch of special interests with different agendas and identities.  I think people want a united purpose, but politicians want to keep us divided for control purposes.

I think Rubio has been put away, he just doesn't realize it yet.   He makes placing third sound like a victory.  If he decides to stay in the headlines down the road will remind us how Rubio allowed Trump to win.

So what makes you think Trump will make it to the White House?  He is losing in nearly every poll to Hillary Clinton (RCP Clinton + 2., and his negatives are lodged at 58%.

Meanwhile Cruz beats Clinton (RCP Cruz + . and Rubio beats Clinton (RCP Rubio +4.7). 

Did you watch the Chris Wallace interview that I posted here yesterday?  Tell me where he actually answered a question.

What troubles me is that you talk about the Cruz and Rubio schoolyard shenanigans, but never say the same thing or worse about Trump, and that's  consistent with all Trump supporters that I know.

Take any issue that I've posted here:  pro-eminent domain to give property to private owners, anti-First Amendment desire to "open up" the libel laws so he can sue people, and numerous other liberal positions, and I don't think I've received one post in defense of Trump. Not one. They have just been ignored.

But they will not go away.

I've heard that the dems are surfacing videos from Trump's appearances on the Howard Stern show, where he is rating women, saying "look at that face, she's only a 5" and "I'd do her".  I'll see if I can find that.  But how will that work with the "GOP war on women" narrative that is guaranteed to come out?

I am not a Trump supporter and feel no need to provide any defense.  I do find several positions he holds problematic although I think each of those issues have had more hay made about them than they deserve with respect to what it appears Trump's position actually is - bottom line is nobody in consideration is an ideal candidate, frankly none of them are even good candidates for a variety of reasons both political as well as personal.

WRT to national polling, it may or may not be accurate - the big unpredictable element is how a candidate Trump would campaign against Hillary (or Bernie), I believe scorched earth doesn't even begin to describe the withering assault I would expect a candidate Trump to unleash - if anyone can move the needle on Hillary (or Bernie) it is Trump, since the establishment has demonstrated again and again they are unwilling/incapable of actually taking it to the opposition - this belief I have by the way is one of the fundamental reasons that people who actively support Trump do so, in their own words - he takes no shit - we the people are tired of being shit on again and again by both parties and Trump is capitalizing on that (almost like he knows what he is doing).

WRT to shenanigans, the reason Trump folks call it out when others do it and not when he does is based on expectations I think more than anything - it is expected from Trump and is considered out of character for the Pols, that is also why they are so bad at it IMO.  He gets benefit of the doubt for his behavior in the same way Cruz is excused by his supoprters, and Rubio is excused by his supporters - there is zero difference there, it is pure human nature to support 'your guy'

WRT war on women trope, my belief is that like every other thing that was supposed to torpedo Trump's campaign, it is based on conventional beliefs, conventional experience and conventional assumptions which are inapplicable for Trump because unlike the other candidates (with notable exception of Dr. Carson) he is not a creation of the establishment or of the political media therefore neither can truly destroy him.  The bullshit identity politics victim card is overplayed and anyone trying to continue using it will be seen as, you guessed it a loser, a yuuuuuuge loooooser.

Trump is riding a populist groundswell that has not, in my opinion, even come close to its zenith - and the continued 'attacks' against him from the esablishment, the media and the Democrats will all only serve to continue to expand his support from the vast middle ground.  The consultant class has been telling both parties for decades that they can only win if they secure the middle, and that only they (the consultants) can help them - Trump is nuking that and that may be one of the best results of his involvement in this campaign season, but only if future candidates are taking notes.

'Gimp

The melting pot you credit as an asset to our country is exactly what Trump and his followers seem to want to greatly restrict.

So wrong as to not be in the same universe.  Immigration does not equal illegal immigration, not the same.

Show one single direct quote from Trump (or any of the folks here who people seem to think support him) that is blanket against legal immigration, I quadruple dog dare you. 

All sovereign nations control immigration to one extent or another - to include legally picking who can and cannot immigrate - without a border a nation is not sovereign.  This can include religious, ethnic or political grounds, and has, not only for America but for many other nations (like Mexico, or Cuba or Japan - basically all of them).  Many do so with fences and walls (e.g., Vatican City).

Many if not most of us are immigrants - my mom's family has been here since the 1700's but my Dad's family didn't come over until the early 1900's.  Came in accordance with the laws in place at the time - processed in through Ellis Island direct from Poland.

Trump is married to an immigrant (Slovenia), his previous wife was an immigrant (Czech) - look past the 2 second soundbites and do some actual research and think for yourself.

'Gimp

I think they are spot on. Trump does not have family values, or religious values, or traditional values. He has Trump values and they are whatever he sees fit. Like he said himself, he could shoot somebody and his supporters wouldn't care. They would just assume that person had it coming. He can do no wrong in their eyes.

Trump supporters are so drunk with this false idea that he is some sort of outsider maverick that is going to come to Washington, kick ass, yell "You're fired!!", shout down liberals, those in congress and clean house. They really hope they are somehow electing King Donald the 1st that will right this ship short order. So whatever he did, does or says is irrelevant. Sadly, they are delusional and it seems nothing can stop this train wreck in the making.

If this is what you actually think then you hold a pretty poor view of a large and growing number of the population. 

This is why Trump does well and people are left scratching their heads (Bush, Christie, Cruz, Kasich, Rubio, the establishment, etc.) - they, and you, are assigning/projecting onto the electorate in a haphazard, ill informed and ultimately petty way, underestimating the reasons why people support him, and worse, debasing people who do as stupid, angry, hate-filled, racist, homophobic anti-immigrant blind followers, etc.

This is the same language used to describe people who listen to Rush Limbaugh, by people on the left who completely don't understand his listeners.  It's the same derisive, dismissive and insulting look-down-your-snoot that we on the right have had to deal with from the left for decades, and now we are using the same tactics in describing people arguably on our side of the fence or those who would join us, for choosing to support the 'wrong' guy - it is truly disappointing.

There are rational and fact-based reason to support or oppose Trump as a candidate, the fact so many folks resort to name-calling not just towards Trump but the people who support him, and the hyperventilating about what those people believe he may or may not do is juvenile.  The fact people who apparently consider themselves intelligent and erudite fall for the very sound-bite attack dog misrepresentation or fabrications about the guy they say are why they can't support him only show they have largely not done any real research themselves, really pot and kettle stuff IMO.

'Gimp