Source: The Hill

Donald Trump threw a new claim Hillary Clinton's way at a Saturday rally, telling the crowd that she wants to do away with the Second Amendment.

"Hillary Clinton wants to abolish the Second Amendment. She wants to abolish it," Trump said at a Saturday rally in Lynden, Wash.

"Hillary Clinton wants to take your guns away and she wants to abolish the Second Amendment. She wants to take the bullets away."
"We're going to cherish the Second Amendment, we're going to take care of the Second Amendment."

Clinton is in favor of universal background checks, closing loopholes on gun purchases and increasing restrictions on domestic abusers and the mentally ill. And she wants to repeal the law that prevents victims of gun violence from suing retailers or manufacturers, among other measures.

Read more: http://www.thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/279139-trump-tells-rally-crowd-clinton-wants-to-abolish-second

Short version: David Brooks, David Frum are dead. Long live Sean Hannity, Pat Buchanan.

http://www.vox.com/2016/5/6/11592604/donald-trump-paleoconservative-buchanan

But the ideological vision Trump put forward during the Republican primary campaign was deeply conservative, and, more specifically, deeply paleoconservative. The paleoconservatives were a major voice in the Republican Party for many years, with Pat Buchanan as their most recent leader, and pushed a line that is very reminiscent of Trumpism.

They adhere to the normal conservative triad of nationalism, free markets, and moral traditionalism, but they put greater weight on the nationalist leg of the stool — leading to a more strident form of anti-immigrant politics that often veers into racism, an isolationist foreign policy rather than a hawkish or dovish one, and a deep skepticism of economic globalization that puts them at odds with an important element of the business agenda.

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The '90s anti-immigrant panic, and the era's high-profile trade deals, made Buchanan and the paleocons' views on those issues appealing to base Republicans tired of pro-trade, pro-migration GOPers. Mainstream conservatives attacked Buchanan as an anti-Semite, which he is; in 1990 he infamously insisted that 850,000 Jews couldn't have died at Treblinka from diesel fumes. But it wasn't enough to keep him from winning the 1996 New Hampshire primary and emerging as Bob Dole's most serious opposition that year.

After Buchanan's loss then, and turn to the Reform Party in 2000, the paleocon movement descended into irrelevance — and, worse, more open bigotry than ever before. John Derbyshire, perhaps the last real paleocon left at National Review, was canned in 2012 after writing a piece addressed to children full of advice like, "Avoid concentrations of blacks not all known to you personally," "Stay out of heavily black neighborhoods," and, "If planning a trip to a beach or amusement park at some date, find out whether it is likely to be swamped with blacks on that date."

Donald Trump is proposing to simply default on the debt and renegotiate sort of like what Trump did with some of his properties. Yup, lets treat the U.S. economy like a private business. Hey, maybe we can treat social security the way private businesses treat pension assets.

http://www.msn.com/en-us/money/markets/donald-trump-just-threatened-to-cause-an-unprecedented-global-financial-crisis/ar-BBsIua5?li=BBnb7Kz&ocid=iehp

"I would borrow, knowing that if the economy crashed, you could make a deal," Trump said. "And if the economy was good, it was good. So therefore, you can't lose."

With his statement, Trump not only revealed a dangerous ignorance about the operation of the national monetary system and the global economic order, but also offered a brilliant case study in the profound risks of attempting to apply the logic of a private business enterprise to the task of running the United States of America.

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The United States of America, however, is not a real estate development company. If a real estate company defaults on its debts and its creditors lose money, that's their problem. If a bank fails as a result, then it's the FDIC's responsibility to clean it up.

The government doesn't work like that. Right now, people and companies all around the world treat US government bonds as the least risky financial asset in the universe. If the government defaults and banks fail as a result, the government needs to clean up the mess. And if risk-free federal bonds turn out to be risky, then every other financial asset becomes riskier. The interest rate charged on state and local government debt, on corporate debt, and on home loans will spike. Savings will evaporate, and liquidity will vanish as everyone tries to hold on to their cash until they can figure out what's going on.

Of course, almost all of the right, and a very small number on the left, diminish the magnitude of these accomplishments, and continuing to try to water them down, most notably the attacks on Dodd-Frank by the Republican Congress, but President Obama managed to push a fairly liberal agenda in the face of solid opposition by a Republican Congress and conservative court for a good portion of his tenure.

http://www.vox.com/2015/6/26/8849925/obama-obamacare-history-presidents

Love him or hate him, Barack Obama is one of the most consequential presidents in American history — and that he will be a particularly towering figure in the history of American progressivism.

He signed into law a comprehensive national health insurance bill, a goal that had eluded progressive presidents for a century. He got surprisingly tough reforms to Wall Street passed as well, not to mention a stimulus package that both blunted the recession and transformed education and energy policy.

He's put in place the toughest climate rules in American history and signed a major international climate accord. He opened the US to Cuba for the first time in more than half a century, and reached a peaceful settlement to the nuclear standoff with Iran.

You can celebrate or bemoan these accomplishments. Liberals hail them as moves toward a social democratic welfare state and a foreign policy more skeptical of military intervention; conservatives critique Obama's efforts to expand regulation and the government's reach, and accuse him of abdicating America's role as world hegemon.

Trump is hardly an outlier. About ten years ago, Congressional Republicans almost past a bill turning 11 million undocumented immigrants into felons. That was more extreme than anything that Trump has publicly proposed, and Republicans in 2004 were not loudly announcing that this was their intent if elected. Instead, back in 2004, there was a lot of dog whistles and veiled references to illegal immigrants.

Today, Trump is a lot more outspoken about his hate, and it really supercharges his supporters. Think about it. Trump has been erratic on most issues, except for being anti-immigrant. If he is elected, he will have a mandate to go after immigrants, Muslims, etc., just as far right parties in Europe have risen to prominence. The U.S. is not any different. I have no doubt that if he is elected, the bill that was defeated in 2006 would likely be reintroduced and unlike Dubya who drew a lot of Hispanic votes, Trump would owe them no loyalty whatsoever.

http://articles.latimes.com/2005/dec/15/nation/na-felons15

Illegal Immigration Could Be a Felony

WASHINGTON — Under immigration legislation being considered in the House, living illegally in the United States would no longer be a violation of civil immigration law. It would be a federal crime.

But making the nation's estimated 11 million illegal immigrants into felons could deal a fatal blow to the proposed guest-worker program that is a cornerstone of President Bush's immigration overhaul, because immigrants who have committed crimes are not eligible for legal status in the United States.

The move, spearheaded by the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, Rep. F. James Sensenbrenner Jr. (R-Wis.), is part of a push by House Republicans to set the tone for the debate over revising immigration laws that will continue into 2006. The measure could come up as soon as today.

House Republicans want tough border security and enforcement provisions in place before discussion of a guest-worker program. Their clash with pro-business Republicans has created tensions within the party and with the administration that the House bill could intensify.

...that such a large segment of the electorate gravitates to his message of hate whether it be against minorities, women, or Muslims. It always seemed like the more hateful his message, the better he did. So, while Trump should seem to be an ideal opponent, since so many folks view him negatively, he just pretty much locked up the Republican nomination.

I guess I should take some satisfaction that the Republican establishment, Fox News, and their money barons have helped create the environment in which Trump thrived by pandering to racism and stoking resentment among white males against diversity and the advancement of women. However, with the nomination of Trump, we as a nation have proven that we are no different from countries where similar right-wing nationalist movements have taken hold.

In Europe, the rise of Neo-Nazi groups has become more and more acceptable and they have become less of pariah. In the U.S., it is becoming increasingly acceptable to scapegoat minorities, women, immigrants and Muslims, with voters rewarding politicians who preach such hate for telling it like it is.

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-36150807

"Triumph for the extreme right," proclaimed Spain's El Pais newspaper. Britain's Guardian warned of "turmoil" ahead. Italy's Corriere della Sera bemoaned a victory for the "anti-immigrant far right" while Germany's Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung called on traditional political parties to "listen to this wake-up call!"

The Democratic primary has started off with a focus on the issues, but recently as Hillary solidified her lead, the news media has begun to focus on process, polls and VP candidates. Of course, the Republican primary has been almost entirely issue-less with most of the focus on insults and the relative size of a candidate's anatomy. What is amazing is the absence of any comparisons or voter guides discussing where the candidates stand on the issues.

Sure, I can go to the non-partisan Tax Policy Center for a comparison of their tax proposals:

http://election2016.taxpolicycenter.org/

Likewise, there are some relatively unknown sites like on the issues, which really do not do a great job of organizing the information to allow a voter to easily compare candidates:

http://www.ontheissues.org/default.htm

There are some exceptions, but they also have their shortcomings. PBS's comparison is a bit simplistic, since it just focuses on 10 issues:

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/tag/what-the-candidates-believe/

Likewise, the NY Times' presentation is pretty simplistic, though it is easy to skim through:

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/us/elections/candidates-on-the-issues.html?_r=0

Nonetheless, it is disheartening given the extreme nature of the Republican candidates that there is no real mainstream media presentation of what the candidate's stated positions are on the issues.