It’s Wednesday, March 9th, 2016…but before we begin, the latest anti-Trump/pro-Republic campaign ad attacking The Donald’s…”colorful“…and limited…vocabulary:
No, Don; to borrow a phrase from the immortal Tony Soprano…with whose real-life counterparts you undoubtedly had innumerable…er,…”business deals”…
By the way, Trumpeteers, your man was caught in yet another lie last week; and it gets worse.
Please: other than his pie-in-the-sky promises to force Mexico to finance a wall on our southern border and miraculously deport 14 million illegal aliens, what was it again you find so attractive about this flip-flopping Liberal-Dimocrat-in-Populist clothing?!?
Now, here’s The Gouge!
We lead off the mid-week edition with an easy assignment: you tell us what’s wrong with this picture:
Here’s a hint for Progressives…or others who might be learning-impaired:
And Progressive psychopaths at that! Death by firing squad…
…is far too easy an exit after what these treasonous cork-soakers have done to America’s once-mighty Military. In all seriousness, following the verdict of a duly-empowered civilian court or military tribunal, we’d be only too happy to be one of the patriots privileged to pull the trigger.
For those of more tender spirit who find our feelings towards the pond-scum who have needlessly endangered innocent American lives through their abject surrender to social engineering, political correctness and Islamic terror, in all their guises, overly severe, here’s the juice: Ft. Hood wasn’t work-place violence; the Boston Marathon bombing wasn’t an accident; the San Bernardino massacre wasn’t an isolated event; and the inclusion of women in combat units wasn’t intended to heighten force effectiveness or unit cohesion. They resulted exclusively from a failureat the highest levels of the federal government to perform one of the few duties actually delegated to it by our Constitution: specifically, to provide for the common defense! It is THE primary responsibility of Washington; and as you’ll see in the story that follows, the entire government bureaucracy in general, and the executive branch in particular, is failing in their duties miserably!
And the penalty for gross dereliction of duty and/or abandoning one’s post in time of war?!?
Since we’re on the subject of treason, The Washington Free Beacon offers the latest on the deal which just keeps getting better and better…provided you’re playing for the other side!
“Iran on Tuesday again threatened to walk away from the nuclear agreement reached last year with global powers, hours after the country breached international agreements by test-firing ballistic missiles.
Iran’s most recent ballistic missile test, which violates current U.N. Security Council resolutions, comes a day after the international community’s nuclear watchdog organization disclosed that it is prohibited by the nuclear agreement from publicly reporting on potential violations by Iran.
Iranian leaders now say that they are poised to walk away from the deal if the United States and other global powers fail to advance the Islamic Republic’s “national interests.”…”
Too bad America’s “leaders” don’t share their Iranian counterparts’ instinct for self-survival. As our good buddy and long-time reader G. Trevor so insightfully observed (his questions are in green; our answers in red):
If I have this right:
1.Iran violated the nuclear deal by launching a test missile.Yes…for the umpteenth time!
2.The violation was reported to the free world by the IAEA. Yes…for once!
3.Iran says that such reporting of the violation is itself a violation of the nuclear deal. Yes…in accordance with the deal Kerry negotiated and Obama failed to submit to the Senate for ratification…with the help of Senator Bob Corker (R-TN).
4.Iran threatens to walk away from the nuclear deal. Yes…for the umpteenth time!
5.The USA wrings its hands as an unfettered Iran builds its WMDs. Yes…again, for the umpteenth time!
Am I missing anything? Did we really agree to a deal whereby there is no disclosure of any violations?? Are Obama and Kerry THAT stupid? No…they’re THAT antithetically opposed to the interests of the United States!
Next up, courtesy of Balls Cotton and The American Spectator, Jed Babbin offers another view on the odds of her closest confidants…
“…we know that this practice had to be known by the intelligence agencies as well as by President Obama, who emailed her at her “clintonmail.com” address more than a dozen times. Vichy John Kerry sent her at least one email to that address containing classified information while he was still a senator.
Now comes the fun part. Those of us unfortunate enough to have gone to law school were taught that there is no legal significance to someone invoking the Fifth Amendment in testimony. That legal conceit is a fiction we swear by, but we know in our hearts — as does everyone else — that innocent people don’t plead the Fifth.
When Bryan Pagliano pled the Fifth before the Benghazi investigating committee rather than testify about Hillary Clinton’s non-government email system, we knew he was guilty of something, and that “something” was almost certainly willing complicity in violation of the criminal laws regarding the handling and protection of government secrets.
Pagliano’s immunity deal tells us a lot. First, because Justice Department guidelines strongly disfavor immunity agreements, Pagliano’s lawyers must have given the FBI and DoJ lawyers a proffer of testimony to evidence that made the immunity deal worthwhile. What could that be?
Pagliano must have had direction from Clinton — and her top staffers — to set the email system up the way he did. Because he was paid by Clinton — in addition to his State Department salary — he had to be suspicious of the whole matter. He may be able to testify that Clinton told him she wanted a system that would enable her to use it for all her government emails. He would have had to have known that a substantial portion of them had to, going forward, contain classified information.
…I am not yet so cynical as to believe that FBI Director James Comey and his team won’t demand that Clinton and her aides be indicted. It may come down to them threatening to resign loudly if those indictments aren’t forthcoming. If they fail to do so, Clinton and her staffers may get away with very serious crimes.
Last week, Clinton proclaimed herself the most transparent politician in modern history. That’s certainly true in one sense.Hillary Clinton is the most transparently corrupt politician in American history since Boss Tweed.“
But if the thought of a nuclear-armed Iran isn’t scary enough, writing at NRO, Colin Dueck contemplates…
“When you put it that way…what the HELL was I THINKING?!?”
“…American engagement in global affairs since the 1940s has been a force for good. To believe this, you don’t need to be a neoconservative. I’m not. Neither were most of the signatories of our open letter. The letter was signed by a wide range of Republican foreign-policy and national-security analysts, including pro-defense advocates, foreign-policy realists, GOP internationalists, regional experts, and traditional conservative security hawks. Believe me, we sometimes disagree with one another. But one thing we all agree on is that the world would be an even more dangerous place if Donald Trump were president.
Trump can’t defend or affirm an American-led order, because he doesn’t even understand it, much less support it. Nor does he make any clear distinction between America’s allies and our adversaries. Instead, he seems by instinct to nurse a kind of undifferentiated resentment toward all foreigners, with the possible exception of a few dictatorial strongmen, such as Putin, who earn his respect. Trump calls for protectionist trade policies that would impoverish the United States as well as our partners. He calls for Japan and other allies to contribute to their own defenses, without realizing that they already do. His insistence that Mexico will pay for a U.S. border wall is absurd; it will not. He calls for bombing ISIS but otherwise offers no serious strategy. His proposal for a (“temporary”) ban on all Muslims into the United States would of course make counterterrorism much harder, because the U.S. can defeat jihadist terrorists only by cooperating with those Muslims who oppose it. (In our opinion, and in The Donald’s defense, a common mischaracterization of Trump’s proposal.)
These are just some of the substantive ways in which Trump is so often dead wrong on foreign policy and national security. His temperament, judgment, and decision-making style are equally serious flaws.
We know from painful experience, as well as from historical examples, that the personal qualities of an individual are absolutely crucial in determining whether he will be a successful foreign-policy president. The best presidents demonstrate strength in moments of decision, after a thoughtful consideration of the alternatives. Nobody pretends that Trump is thoughtful. But even his claim of strong leadership is a hollow one. Looking over his career in business and entertainment, one can only conclude that Trump’s signature personal qualities aren’t strong at all. On the contrary, he is incredibly erratic, unstable, and thin-skinned. He surrounds himself with yes-men, barks insults at those around him, and builds sham operations that fail for everyone but himself. His standard operating procedure is to issue empty threats multiple times a day, year after year, out of personal pique. Try doing that with hardened autocrats in Beijing, Moscow, Pyongyang, or Tehran, and see what happens when deterrence fails.
…I can’t imagine voting for Hillary Clinton, any more than for Donald Trump. But then, I’m a conservative, and neither of these two candidates is. Clinton versus Trump? Conservatives should hope it doesn’t come to that — and work to prevent it.“
Neither can we…so we are…and will continue to do so right up until Election Day.
In a related item, as NRO‘s David French urgently urges…
“The dictionary definition of patriotism is “a person who loves and strongly supports or fights for his or her country.” That’s true enough, but it feels inadequate to describe the love that causes a person to risk and sometimes sacrifice life and limb for his nation — to storm a beach under fire, to hold the line against overwhelming odds, or to charge through a door without knowing who or what is in the next room. The patriot doesn’t just love his country. He loves his country more than he loves himself.
Now, let us ask: Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz, and John Kasich — are you patriots? I’m not questioning whether you’re moved by the national anthem, support the troops, or are grateful for the blessings of American liberty, or even whether you genuinely believe that your own ideas, policies, and temperament make you the best candidate for president. Presumably every good-faith politician believes that he or she is the best person for the job. But let’s be honest — it is difficult to judge the extent of a man’s patriotism when his own record of public service also happens to coincide with self-interest and personal ambition.
In fact, I grow weary of hearing that politicians are in “public service.” Public service is defined not by one’s position but by one’s actions. Yes, I know that each of you has worked tirelessly in office, and each of you has done some genuine good. You have much to be proud of, but let me ask this: Why is there such overwhelming consensus that it is utterly futile to ask you to put aside your personal ambition not just to save the conservative ideals you’ve held and advanced your entire careers but to save our nation from electing a truly despicable man?
John Kasich, how you can look yourself in the mirror? You’ve won a grand total of 2 percent of the delegates and a whopping 6.6 percent of the popular vote. So far you’ve “succeeded” in allowing Donald Trump to scrape by with a win in Virginia on a night where a loss would have blunted his momentum. You and your camp have responded to calls to drop out of the race with a sneering condescension that is clearly at odds with your very public presentation of compassion and religiosity.
You have a responsibility to leave this race, and every day that you stay in, you are demonstrating your vanity and self-love. You are ending decades of public service with an act of national vandalism and sabotage. Change course or stain your legacy forever.
As for Rubio and Cruz, I agree with my colleague Jonah Goldberg and many others who argue that the best hope for stopping Trump lies in a unity ticket on which two of the GOP’s most talented conservatives pledge to work together to win the primary and to defeat Hillary Clinton. But you both have the harder task.Kasich merely has to have the courage to face the fact that he has no hope of becoming president. He can only be a spoiler. But one of you will have to demonstrate the enormous — and perhaps unprecedented — integrity and patriotism to walk away from a plausible path to the presidency for the sake of providing the conservative movement and the nation with a probable path to defeating Trump. (Though simply waiting 8 years to run again, particularly having been a sitting VICE President is hardly a significant sacrifice, particularly at their age.)
As the race moves inexorably to winner-take-all states, Trump can win 34 percent of the vote (his total so far) and still blow open the delegate count. At the very least, there has to be a unified attack on Trump. The fratricide has to end. Rubio and Cruz are both conservative. They are both men of integrity. The differences between their records and positions are minuscule compared with the vast gulf that separates the two of them from Trump. Each direct attack on the other is a failure — a deliberate decision to place ambition over nation.
There are nine contests between today and March 8. They include strong Cruz states and strong Rubio states. If we can’t reach unity before March 15 — before Trump can achieve a commanding delegate lead with a minority of Republican votes — we are lost. So I’ll ask you again.Do you love this country more than you love yourself?
And if you’re wondering whether I’m questioning your patriotism, I think the answer is clear. You’re damn right I am…”
Which brings us, also courtesy of NRO, to the latest from John Fund, who lends his unerring mathematical skills to a heretofore political problem:
“Donald Trump suffered a sharp drop in CNN’s Political Prediction Market after Saturday’s voting. CNN’s market uses polling and forecasts from more than 100,000 users to predict election outcomes. Trump had a 78 percent chance of winning the GOP nomination before the voting in four states on Saturday. Afterwards, in the wake of his losses in Kansas and Maine, his odds fell to 63 percent. Trump narrowly won Kentucky and tied Ted Cruz for delegates in Louisiana.
Whether or not Donald Trump becomes the GOP presidential nominee will depend in large part on whether his support is declining in strength — as it did on Saturday – or continuing to expand.
If he takes from candidates who have left the race, such as Ben Carson, he is on track to win. If he is declining, he is unlikely to enter the Cleveland convention with the 1,237 delegates needed to win, because many of the delegates bound to win on the first ballot aren’t personal supporters and will probably abandon him. Trump could cut a deal for the delegates of, say, John Kasich, who has been noticeably reluctant to criticize Trump, even in the wake of the KKK brouhaha. But there are obstacles to such a deal as well.
So far, there are signs that Trump’s debate antics, his flip-flops, and the consolidation of the GOP field is slowing him down. As Henry Enten of FiveThirtyEight pointed out, Trump won 35 percent of the vote in Super Tuesday primaries on March 1 and only 33 percent in Saturday’s contests in Maine, Kansas, Louisiana, and Kentucky. He was favored to win the first two states but saw Ted Cruz beat him instead.
…John Hinderaker, of the Powerline blog, acknowledged recently that while anti-Trump forces would be pleased to prevent Trump from achieving a first-ballot victory,such a strategy would carry real risks with it:
A scenario in which Trump goes into the convention as the leader in delegates but is blocked because the competition coalesces around another candidate is hardly ideal. It could result in Trump running as a third-party candidate or, at minimum, many of his backers staying home in November.
But for the anti-Trump forces, those would be manageable problems compared with having Trump himself as the nominee. A barrage of liberal attack ads, his failure to release his tax returns, his inability to hold consistent views on issues, and his sky-high negatives with independent voters would probably doom him against even the ethically challenged Hillary Clinton. In the RealClearPolitics average of all polls, Trump trails Clinton by 3.4 points, while Ted Cruz beats her by 1.5 points and Marco Rubio beats her by 5.0 points…”
“…Mr. Trump, Ted Cruz and their media mouthpieces are claiming it would be political theft to choose the nominee at a contested convention. These timid souls need an education in party rules, political history and muscular democracy.
The Republican Party’s rules say a candidate needs the votes of 1,237 of the 2,472 delegates at the July convention in Cleveland to win the nomination. They don’t say all one needs is a plurality, or to have won the most primaries. There is no moral right to the nomination because a candidate wins 40%, or even 49%, of the delegates. He needs a majority, and the 1,237 number is no secret.
…The premature protests by Messrs Cruz and Trump are entirely self-serving. Both men think they have a good chance to win a plurality of delegates but can’t be sure they’ll get all the way to 1,237. They want to cry havoc in advance so party members will shrink in fear of a GOP breakup if there’s a nominating fight at the convention.
These candidates and Republicans generally should toughen up. If Messrs. Trump or Cruz couldn’t sway a majority at the convention, it would be because they couldn’t convince their fellow Republicans that they have the best chance of winning.Every candidate entered the race knowing the rules, and every candidate has an equal opportunity to exploit them. Mr. Trump certainly has used the accelerated primary calendar to his advantage, racking up a delegate lead before he’s been subject to any real scrutiny…”
Meanwhile, back at the ranch with The Gang Who Still Can’t Shoot Straight, also writing atNRO, Kevin Williamson describes a real-world, no-win scenario any Republican truly interested in saving America will eventually stare square in the face:
A Multiple-Choice Question — and All the Answers Are Political Suicide
“…In 2010, the deficit was 60 percent of revenue ($1.29 trillion deficit vs. $2.16 trillion revenue), whereas in 2015 the deficit was 13 percent of revenue ($439 billion deficit vs. $3.25 trillion revenue). For those of you who habitually ask what it is that congressional Republicans have accomplished, that’s it: Despite having Barack Obama in the White House and a public that clamored for more benefits and lower taxes, the deficit has been reduced substantially in absolute terms, relative to GDP, relative to the federal budget, and relative to revenue, since the height of Democratic power under the Obama-Pelosi-Reid triumvirate.
That triumvirate, let’s not forget, was generously financed by Donald Trump, who thinks he should be the Republican presidential nominee. What might a President Trump do in the way of balancing the budget?
…Bernie Sanders is a partisan of the Growth Fairy, promising that we can have a whole candy shop full of welfare benefits without suffering any cavities in the budget. Jeb Bush was a Growth Fairy man, too, as are most of the other Republican presidential contenders, to greater and lesser extents. Donald Trump is a “waste, fraud, and abuse” man, repeating and repeatingand repeating that formula when pressed about his budget proposals, which are fanciful at best, and more properly described as delusional.
…Donald Trump’s greatest business innovation thus far has been having the foresight to locate a strip joint inside an Atlantic City casino rather than around the corner from it, and that didn’t stop his daft Taj Mahal project from going bankrupt a few times. If you believe that the business acumen of a game-show host is going to allow the U.S. government to increase health-care access while reducing spending on health care, you are a fool.
On matters economic, Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio are vastly preferable to Donald Trump, in the sense that having one foot planted in budgetary reality is preferable to having both feet firmly planted in the ether. But, in truth, none of the Republican candidates has, or has had, a truly plausible and responsible program for balancing the budget, for the simple reason that such a proposal would be political suicide. The public loves the idea of a balanced budget, just so long as you don’t have to reduce spending or raise taxes to get there…”
As for Bernie Sanders, who represents the Whitest state in America, evidently the aging Socialist, who’s never earned an honest day’s wages in his entire life, somehow knows all about the problems the rest of America deals with on a daily basis:
Yeah…and Bill Clinton actually felt our pain. True-believers like Bernie can never accept this one inescapable truth: if certain ghetto dwellers hadn’t allowed Progressive politicians to destroy their families, decimate their environs and enslave them to entitlements, they’d be on an even footing with most of the rest of the country.
And in the Environmental Moment, yet another reason neither Hillary nor Bernie are fit for the presidency:
“…“So by the time we get through all of my conditions, I do not think there will be many places in America where fracking will continue to take place.And I think that’s the best approach, because right now, there are places where fracking is going on that are not sufficiently regulated.”
But the states regulate fracking so well that even the EPA hasn’t been able to find evidence of more than minor groundwater contamination.CNN’s Anderson Cooper then turned to Mr. Sanders, who replied: “My answer is a lot shorter. No, I do not support fracking.”…”
So Hillary and Bernie want to do for fracking…along with $1.50/gallon gas…what The Dear Misleader did for coal…and $4.00/gallon gas! Well frack you…and the donkey you rode in on!
Think about it:
It’s the only promise the prevaricating Progressive ever kept!
“In their “hottest year ever” press briefing, NOAA included this graph, which stated that they have a 58 year long radiosonde temperature record. But they only showed the last 37 years in the graph.
Here is why they are hiding the rest of the data. The earlier data showed as much pre-1979 cooling as the post-1979 warming. I combined the two graphs at the same scale below, and put a horizontal red reference line in, which shows that the earth’s atmosphere has not warmed at all since the late 1950’s…”
Oops. Sorry, honest mistake; you know…like the East Anglia data!
On The Lighter Side…
Finally, we’ll call it a wrap with this appropriate bit of vandalism forwarded by Jeff Foutch:
As Jeff observed, whoever did it should have taken 9/10ths rather than settle for only half!
Oh, we almost forgot; though initially put-off by B. Hussein failing to attend Nancy Reagan’s funeral, particularly as he missed Antonin Scalia’s, no matter.
Assuming we’re still extent, we’ll still attend his; as if we’d miss the opportunity to…
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