Monday, February 29, 2016

Eight Of Eleven Surviving ObamaCare Co-ops Are Failing

by JASmius



Going from the launch of healthcare.gov, ObamaCare has been open for "business" for twenty-nine months, and started with twenty-three regional "coops," which were that for which the then-ruling Democrats settled when they couldn't ram a "public option" even through a Congress they controlled with super-majorities   Over that twenty-nine month period, twelve of those coops (to date) have gone OUT of "business" due to their common "business" model being to encourage runaway demand while keeping supply static by all but giving away the product - healthcare - for free.  Or, in other words, a "going out of business" model that was risibly unsustainable (to use one of the Left's favorite terms they use to falsely smear the free market) and couldn't avoid rapid, catastrophic collapse.

Of the eleven surviving coops, eight are on the verge of joining the first dozen.  Which would make twenty out of twenty-three over twenty-nine months.  An 87% (and counting) failure rate at a clip of approximately one every six weeks.

But never mind the facts, ObamaCare is an unqualified success.  Barack Obama signed an executive order saying so:

The chief operating officer for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services told a House committee last week that eight of the eleven remaining ObamaCare co-ops in the nation are "being monitored closely" for "corrective action plans," the Washington Free Beacon reports.

Dr. Mandy Cohen told the House Oversight and Government Reform committee that such "enhanced oversight" occurs when a co-op develops issues with finances, operations, compliance or management processes.

"CMS was aware of this, that almost all of the co-ops incurred losses in 2014," Representative Buddy Carter, Georgia-1 Republican, said to Cohen at the hearing, the Free Beacon reports.

"If you were aware of that and some were already shutting down why did you continue to award the taxpayer dollars in loans?"

I won't bother with Dr. Cohen's response, except to say that while she didn't overtly lie, her reply was akin to being asked "What does two plus two equal?" and answering, "My turds are a lovely shade of green".

But don't sweat it folks.  Those loans only add up to a couple of BILLION dollars that will almost certainly never be repaid, which is why they weren't really "loans" and calling them that WAS an overt but routine falsehood.  That's less than 0.05% of the federal budget.  Not even pocket change.  Hell, not even pocket lint.

By federal government standards, anyway.  At my family's current subsistence level, that sum would last over 133 millennia, give or take a few dozen centuries.  I guess it's all a function of your "business" model, isn't it?

Trump Threatens Retaliation Against Republicans Who Don't Fall In Line

by JASmius



Because it's not ultimately about beliefs or ideology or philosophy or the team or even the "tribe," but ALL about HIM.  The cult of personality, triumphant.  If you're not with Trump, you're against Trump, and therefore must be eradicated from the newly re-named T.R.U.M.P.:



This is also old news.  Trump has made this going-third-party threat countless times since last summer.  And, subtle "gentleman" that he is, that is what made his original gambit - meteor his way into the race, carve out too-large a chunk of the GOP electorate, bolt before actual primaries and caucuses could be held to avoid the embarrassment of defeat, claim the party "establishment" had been "unfair" to him (by not "ensuring" that he would win) and take his supporters with him, splitting the Republican vote and guaranteeing a Sanders or Hillary victory in November - so easily perceivable and deducible.  The thing is, the too-large chunk of the GOP electorate he carved out was big enough to dominate the race against a distressingly overlarge field of rivals who shattered the rest of the GOP electorate into way-too-small chunks that couldn't compete with Trump, a dynamic that lingered way too long, a month into the actual primary season, to where the "poor man's Michael Bloomberg" is poised to run away with the nomination.  And, of course, split the Republican vote and guarantee a Sanders or Hillary victory in November, but also riv the Republican Party for years to come, or maybe permanently, Whig-like.

Here's the question: Given the roaring success of the Trump invasion angle, why is he bringing up his own independent candidacy as a threat in retort to Marco Rubio pretty much declaring last week that he'll never support Trump?  What does he care what Rubio does after he puts the Florida senator away?  He's just another "loser," right?  Is this just typical Trump thin-skinned egotism, or is he, in the wake of his latest debate meltdown in Houston last Thursday, worried that he might underperform in the "SEC primary" tomorrow?

Looking ahead to November, revisit Jake Tapper's question again: He's asking Trump essentially a unity question: "If you're the Republican nominee, are you going to reach out to conservatives to reassure them and bring them and Trumplicans and "establishmentarians" together?"  No mean feat given that every action he's taken since last June has been designed and intended to blast the party apart.  And Trump's reaction was typically reflexive: In essence, a big, fat "F.U." to anybody who doesn't close ranks and drink the Trump-Aid.

The antithesis, in other words, of the "leadership" conservatives have been claiming to want, crave, for the past seven years.  Which is why I maintain that ex-conservative Trumplicans have not only sold out the principles for which they once claimed to stand, but have given up and for all intents and purposes become their (former) enemies.

And that does not bode well for the general election to come:

In 1972, for instance, about a third of Democrats voted for Richard Nixon rather than George McGovern, who won the Democrat nomination despite getting only about a quarter of the popular vote during the primaries. The Democrats’ tumultuous nomination process in 1968 was nearly as bad, with many defections to both Nixon and George Wallace. The 1964 Republican nomination of Barry Goldwater produced quite a few defections. Primary challenges to Jimmy Carter in 1980 and George H.W. Bush in 1992 presaged high levels of inter-party voting in November....

[T]he degree of party unity during the primaries is one of the better historical predictors of the November outcome. That could be a problem for Republicans whether they nominate Trump or turn around and nominate Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz or John Kasich; significant numbers of GOP voters are likely to be angry either way.

Which was always, and remains, the ultimate purpose of the Trump candidacy - just as Bill Clinton insidiously foresaw.

Here's another harrowingly interesting statistic:

Divided Party: % of GOP supporting nominee in November (CNN Poll)
w/ Trump: 76
w/ Cruz: 75
w/ Rubio: 74
(was 93 in 2012, 90 in 2008)

There's not as much parity there as it looks.  I think Rubio voters could reconcile themselves to Cruz, and vice versa; but neither will be able to hold their noses, and suppress their consciences, enough to join the Trump cult.  And the details of that CNN poll prove it:

Sixty-nine percent of Republicans who aren’t supporting Rubio say they’d definitely or probably vote for him as nominee; the same percentage say so of Cruz. Just 52% of GOPers who aren’t voting for Trump say they’d get onboard the Trump train, though; 13% say they probably wouldn’t support him and another 35% say they definitely wouldn’t. If those last numbers held, you’d have nearly 18% of the total Republican electorate boycotting Trump on election day. [emphases added]

I'm not going to speak to or speculate on the motivations of anybody else, but I can give you mine right here and now: Because in a Trump-Rodham or Trump-Sanders showdown, there will be two Democrats on the general election ballot, the only difference between them that one will have an "R" after his name.  And I do not vote for Democrats.  Period.

But the greatest and bitterest irony of all to me is that there are former conservatives, former Tea Party purists, who are now rabid Trumplicans, who are already insisting and demanding that we, yes, TRUE CONSERVATIVES jettison those same principles, as they have, and "get with the program".  And this fanaticism is every bit as despicable, if not more, as was their erstwhile purity fetishism, the common link that irrational, insatiable, mis-directed anger of which they are so smugly proud.

Trump and his cult definitely deserve each other; but the rest of us sure as heck don't.


UPDATE: Nebraska GOP Senator Ben Sasse: "This is an 1860 moment":



Maybe; I think I know what Sasse is getting at here, but there wasn't one firm date, or year, in which the Whig Party disintegrated; it just kind of slowly faded away over the course of the 1850s after Millard Filmore's infamous slavery "compromise" that the Whig base of that day refused to accept.

I think a more apt comparison is "1964 in reverse"; Barry Goldwater's conservative insurgency taking over what had been Nelson Rockefeller's center-left Republican Party.  Only now it's the twenty-first century Al Czervik taking the GOP back on Nelson's Rockefeller's behalf.

And La Clinton Nostra's.

And we all know what happened to the GOP in the ensuing general election, and what the consequences of that were, now don't we?



Hard Starboard Radio: Trump’s Republican Collaborators



Obama's newfound love for presidential signing statements; Mitch McConnell preparing Senate Republicans for Trumpageddon; Donald Trump declares war against the First Amendment; "Trump & David Duke, sitting in a tree, KKKKKKK"; Another Trump mission accomplished: conservatives abandoning Fox News; and Chris Christie discovers he's not Donald Trump.

How'd Benedict Arnold wind up at 7PM Eastern/4PM Pacific?

Bill Clinton's "Shut Up and Listen" sums up Ruling Elite

By Douglas V. Gibbs

Political elites don't respond well to hecklers.  They are above everyone, in their opinion, so why should some lowly dissenter be allowed to talk?

In the case of Bill Clinton, the heckler was a United States Marine who spoke up during a "Hillary Clinton for President" rally in South Carolina.  When the retired Marine Sergeant spoke up about Benghazi, the former President of the United States responded, "Shut up and listen."

The man was hustled out of the room by county deputies, at which point Clinton said, “His mind has been poisoned by lies and he won’t listen.”

The Marine's partner, who had been videotaping the event, then chimed in.  She shouted, “Hillary lied over four coffins, she lied to those families, so all those families are liars?”

The deputies then escorted the woman from the room.

The former president spoke up for his wife, who as secretary of state was responsible for the Benghazi compound’s security, after the crowd quieted down from all of their booing of the "hecklers."

“You can imagine how she feels when people make these charges,” he said. “She lost a lot of sleep over this, believe me.”

And he bemoaned the loss of civility in politics. “Americans have one remaining bigotry,” he said. “We don’t want to be around anyone who disagrees with us.”

Is that why they were escorted out?  Clinton didn't want to be around anyone who disagrees with him?

In reality, we see these kinds of outbursts on both sides, and the actions taken were pretty typical, so I am not surprised the people were escorted out, and I would expect the same to happen at a Republican Rally.  However, what happened did not catch my attention as much as what was said.

"Shut up and listen."  Hardly a response based on a desire to engage in a healthy debate.  It would have been better if Clinton had said nothing, and simply waited for the "hecklers" to be escorted out.  But, "shut up and listen" was an automatic response.  People who believe themselves to be above those around them, to be superior and elite compared to the common citizen, and look down their noses at people, say things like that.

It is much like the way Muslims view non-Muslims.  The slaughter of Christians and Jews mean little to them because as far as they are concerned, Christians and Jews are nothing more than animals.  Killing Christians and Jews, to a Muslim jihadist, is no different than killing a rat in your attic.  In a like manner, the liberal left progressives view their opposition as lower life forms, stupid, and irritating in a manner that could be attributed to a silly child, or a barking dog.  So, Bill Clinton looked down his nose and said, "Shut up and listen."  He might as well have said, "You stupid little child," or "You irritating peasant."  That is the way the liberal left progressives view anybody who is silly enough to oppose them.

While opposing ideas like Net Neutrality, FCC Commissioner Ajit Pai said, "I think it's dangerous, frankly, that we don't see more often people espousing the First Amendment view that we should have a robust marketplace of ideas where everybody should be willing and able to participate."

Meanwhile, Bill Clinton is telling someone who was willing to offer his idea to, "Shut up and listen."

The Freedom of Expression is slipping away because the liberal left is working to silence all opposition.  "Shut up and listen," they are saying - hoping to silence all opposition, in the log run.

"The meaning of peace is the absence of opposition to socialism." -- Karl Marx

-- Political Pistachio Conservative News and Commentary




Obama Decrees Increase In Syrian "Refugee" Influx

by JASmius



Another installment from the non-news news file:

An Obama administration push is reportedly underway for a hike in the number of Syrian "refugees" accepted into the United States.

According to the Washington Examiner, the White House is considering a bigger role to alleviate the crisis sparked by the flood of Syrians leaving their civil war-torn country.

As a result of The One's own pro-ISIS policy that birthed it, turned it loose, and has done everything it can to aid and grow it.  Almost as if contriving a pretext for importing tens or hundreds of thousands of jihadist-infested "refugees" was the whole point of it.

Barack Obama's assistant for immigration policy, Felicia Escobar, told a task force organized by the National Association of Counties about the new tack, the Examiner reports.

"We want to make sure that we can increase our numbers of refugees that are able to settle here," she said.

And the reason for that would be....?

"The need globally is so, so, so massive right now, given all the displacement and conflict around the world, but we also know that we have to do it in a way that's smart." [emphasis added]

First, there is no need to import tens or hundreds of thousands more violent and cultural jihadists into our country to continue its Islamicization.  Second, there are plenty of other places for them to go, including right back to their own country.  And third, there is no "smart" way to facilitate the Muslim overrunning of our country because that is not a "smart" thing to do.  It is, however, a brilliant way of committing cultural and national suicide, in the short and long term.

I don't refer to this country as "Obamerikastan" for nothing.

Here's the punchline for which you've all been waiting:

Sean Conway, a county commissioner from Weld County in Greeley, Colorado, complains he's got to "fight" with the State [Commissariat] to get promised services such as healthcare and interpreters.

"Many times we don't even know that relocation is taking place until it's going on," he said, the Examiner reports. [emphasis added]

Of course.  Fait accomplis are the hallmark of the Obamidency.  That and making sure that American citizens - undoubtedly in "red" States and enclaves - will never see his Islamic Fundamentalist "guests" coming.  In light of the Second Amendment, it's only "fair," after all.

Chris Christie Discovers He's Not Donald Trump

by JASmius



First of all, he's a loser, not making it past New Hampshire.  Second, in his first round of Sunday shows since turning heel on his own party last Friday, Governor Goodyear didn't receive the kid-gloves/slightly starstruck/"knows he's really one of us" media treatment that his endorsee will be receiving for another couple of weeks until the roof falls in on him, but got fricasseed by George Stepanopoulos on ABC's This Week for the cowardly accordianing:



The mental image of the Big Show on his knees in front of an unzipped Donald is too mentally scarring, so substitute instead the picture of how a grilling with that much fat and grease released didn't ignite a fire that burned down the entire This Week studio.

What an ignominious end for the one-time Tea Party rock star, who made uncompromising, pugilistic "like it is"-telling his trademark, and now, six years later, he's reduced himself to nothing more than a big, fat, simpering, obseqious, dissembling toady; Herman Goering to Trump's Adolph Hitler (if you want to go Goddwin on it).  Absolutely pathetic.

And, yes, a coward, which Christie demonstrated by, yes, ducking his scheduled next appearance with Jake Tapper on CNN:

Following the noon endorsement on Friday, CNN announced that Christie would appear on Sunday’s State of the Union program with Jake Tapper, who has interviewed the governor several times in the past. But a source familiar with the matter said Christie’s camp grew concerned that Tapper was going to aggressively question Christie about Trump, and on Saturday night the governor bailed on the interview. This is unusual in the world of Sunday morning network news shows, and the Trump campaign offered the candidate himself in Christie’s place. (That led to an interview in which Trump refused to denounce a former KKK leader’s support for his campaign.)

Chris Christie, the man who built his reputation on getting in the faces of the opposition, now waddling away from the media that was going to, for once, do their jobs by asking him the questions he couldn't answer, because to answer them honestly would be to admit that he has royally and stupendously f'd up.  And that he is a coward and a quisling.

And his former co-partisans haven't been shy in pointing it out:

“It’s pretty disgusting why he did it, because he’s opportunistic,” said Tony Fratto of Hamilton Place Strategies, who worked in the George W. Bush White House. “His days of leadership in the Republican Party are done.”

His days in the Republican Party period should be done.

Fratto also brought up how Christie had previously criticized Trump for his anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant comments. “Did he mean those things, or is he a liar?”

That question has been answered.

Endorsing Trump was “probably not his brightest political move. It’s right up there with the bridge,” said Stuart Roy, a Tom DeLay alum now with Strategic Action Public Affairs. [emphasis added]

Touche.

Meg Whitman wasn't as witty, but nailed it nonetheless:

“Chris Christie’s endorsement of Donald Trump is an astonishing display of political opportunism. Donald Trump is unfit to be president. He is a dishonest demagogue who plays to our worst fears. Trump would take America on a dangerous journey. Christie knows all that and indicated as much many times publicly. The governor is mistaken if he believes he can now count on my support, and I call on Christie’s donors and supporters to reject the Governor and Donald Trump outright. I believe they will. For some of us, principle and country still matter.”

Trump no doubt promised him the attorney-general spot in exchange for this endorsement - everything, remember, is a deal to Trump.  And when Trump goes down in flames eight months from now, what will Double-C have to show for his supreme act of perfidy?  Who in the GOP, in public life, will trust him ever again?  He, and his fellow-travelers (like Alabama Senator Jeff Sessions). as George Will put it today, will find that "nothing will redeem the reputations they will ruin by placing their opportunism in the service of his demagogic cynicism and anti-constitutional authoritarianism."  Sessions just started his new Senate term, so he's got time to recover from this ignominy.  But Christie will be done.

But then what else can anybody expect of the man who struck up that famous bromance with Barack Obama under a week before the 2012 election that helped sink Mitt Romney's campaign at the finish line?

Speaking of which....:

Christie says the GOP Senate should hold hearings on Obama's SCOTUS nominee

Christie's testicles shriveling yesterday probably caught Trump off-guard (and may actually help contextualize his demurral of repudiating David Duke), but does anybody believe that Trump differs from the Jersey dirigible's endorsement of the Obamunist position on the Scalia SCOTUS seat fight?  Criminy, connect the dots, Trumplicans.


UPDATE: No, of course Trump isn't anti-Hispanic....



My God.
This is Trump implying that the judge in the Trump U. case is against him because the judge is Hispanic.


Top Clintonoid & Emailgate Figure Still Retains Top Secret Security Clearance

by JASmius



Of course she does.  Probably because she's black.

But that's not the only reason by a long shot:

Current and former intelligence officials say it is standard practice to suspend a clearance pending the outcome of an investigation. Yet in the case of Cheryl Mills, [Mrs.] Clinton’s former chief of staff at the State [Commissariat], two letters indicate [tada!] this practice is not being followed — even as the [Rodham] email system remains the subject of an FBI investigation.

I hope y'all brought your hazmat suits.

In an October 30th, 2015, letter to Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Charles Grassley, R-IA — who has been aggressively investigating the [Rodham] email case — Mills’ lawyer, Beth A. Wilkinson, confirmed that her client “has an active Top Secret clearance.” The letter said previous reporting from the State [Commissariat] that the clearance was no longer active was wrong and due to “an administrative error.”

i.e. "Mistakes were made" - or, "WHOOOPS!"

A second letter dated February 18th, 2016, from the State [Commissariat]’s assistant [commissar] for legislative affairs, Julia Frifield, provided additional details to Grassley about the “administrative error.” It, too, confirmed Mills maintained the top secret clearance.

So let's talley this up.  Hillary Clinton has been out of Foggy Bottom for over three years, and so has her then-chief of staff.  She was serially and indiscriminately violating federal law with her "privatized" electronic communication system for the entirety of her four-year State tenure, with her chief of staff in full knowledge of and complicity in that criminal conspiracy, spraying top secret information all over the "in the clear" public domain to the tune of over fifteen hundred emails and counting.  Her then-boss is under criminal investigation, SOP for which is to rescind all security clearance to where Miss Mills can't use the john in a federal government building.  And yet she still has her undiminished top secret security clearance to this day.

In God's name, why?  And don't give me that "as a former government official, Hillary had the privilege of assigning a 'researcher'" crap, either.  What possible "research" could the Ugly Dutchess have Mills doing other than trying frantically to cover her tracks from the inside?

The intel community has certainly noticed:

Dan Maguire, a former strategic planner with Africom who has forty-six years combined service, told Fox News his current and former colleagues are deeply concerned a double standard is at play.

“Had this happened to someone serving in the government, their clearance would have already been pulled, and certainly they would be under investigation. And depending on the level of disclosure, it’s entirely possible they would be under pretrial confinement for that matter,” Maguire explained. “There is a feeling the administration may want to sweep this under the rug.”

This is consistent with the "October surprise" gambit I've outlined previously.  It also reeks of the White House noting the results of the Democrat primary in South Carolina on Saturday, Mrs. Clinton's first decisive victory in this campaign.  And it reflects the likely fact that the Regime is still terminally incontinent about protecting classified information, as all the hacking scandals of the past few years have dismally revealed.

And don't forget that Cheryl Mills is black.  And all black people in this country - Democrats, anyway - are above the law.

It's right there in Article I of the Obamatution.

Chris Rockin' The Oscars

by JASmius



I never watch awards shows.  Not the Oscars, not the Emmys, not the Grammies, not the Tonys, not even the ESPYs, and damn sure not the Slammies.  It's all auto-fellating fluff about people and things about which I couldn't care less.  And last night's Academy Awards shindig was no different.  Mrs. Hard Starboard had it on when I got home from visiting my dad and the first thing I did was change the channel to Big Big Theory and Mythbusters reruns.  Because I don't allow garbage on my television.

But Chris Rock's opening monologue, which I had already missed, to my belated chagrin, was more than worth tuning in. for two reasons: (1) I found, to my delighted surprise, that I didn't differ with any common-sensical thing Rock said; and (2) he used the vehicle of humor to impart it, which vastly improves the chances of that common sense being considered, and heeded, by the audience, far moreso than anger ever has, does, or will.



Which is another way of saying that any attempt on the part of any ex-conservative Trumplican to draw any parallel between the Pompadoured Prince and Ronald Reagan should be treated as a capital offense, sentenced to be carried out summarily and immediately.

Exit question: D'ya think all the black racist attacks on this year's Oscars might account for this?

Sunday, February 28, 2016

Another Trump Mission Accomplished: Conservatives Abandoning Fox News

by JASmius



In other words, Megyn Kelly won the battle but lost the war:

As of mid-February, the perception of Fox News Channel among conservatives was at a three-year low, YouGov BrandIndex reports.

The slide among Republican adults age eighteen and older, coincided with the first GOP presidential debate hosted by Fox News in early August, when front-runner Donald Trump clashed with moderator Megyn Kelly....

The scale used by the firm, called a Buzz score, allows people to give scores ranging from 100 to -100, with zero being a neutral perception. Respondents are asked, "If you've heard anything about the brand in the last two weeks, through advertising, news or word of mouth, was it positive or negative?

On January 1st, 2013, Fox News' Buzz score with Republican adults was 49. It had dropped to 38 by the first GOP debate last year.

The fall accelerated this year, dropping to 36 on January 18th, and to 14 on February 12th.

The reason why Fox News has always been embraced by the Right is not because they were the "conservative news network" - because, historically, they haven't been - but rather that Fox was, as their tagline says, "fair and balanced".  They had and have liberal commentators, but there were conservative commentators and programs.  There wasn't just a token rightie on the panel once a week that was single-handedly trying to take on an army of libs; conservatives got a fair shake and a legitimate chance to get their message out.

Fox was fair and balanced.

Donald Trump has changed all that.  With the exception of Megyn Kelly and intermittently with Bill O'Reilly, every other Fox host, show, and commentator is completely in the tank for Trump.  For - and now there's a reason to use this term that I heretofore passionately disdained - True conservatives, tuning in FNC is as disorientating and vertigo-inducing as the rest of Trumpmania.  It's like Job losing his wealth and his entire family (except his wife, which would correspond metaphorically with Megyn Kelly) in a single afternoon.  The Right has won elections and lost elections, lost ground and gained ground, but we have never in the three and a half decades I've followed American politics lost our identity, our collective soul.

Donald Trump is not a conservative or a Republican, he's a liberal Democrat, and perhaps even a Dixiecrat.  He represents everything the Right has ever opposed and existed to stamp out, politically and culturally.  And yet he's become the Republican Obama, and is taking over our party and almost every cultural beachhead we've ever managed to attain, right before our very eyes.  Bill Clinton never managed that.  Even Barack Obama never pulled that off.  Trump is the ultimate enemy within, the terminal, inoperable stage-4 cancer that the Republican Party cannot survive and will keep the Old American Republic moldering in its grave, with no more vehicle by and with which to resurrect it.

And Fox, aside from Megyn Kelly, is his mouthpiece - and the only one he's going to have after March 15th at the latest.  Which will make FNC even more unwatchable than it's become already, The Kelly File alone excepted.

Fox News is no longer fair and balanced.  And that, of course, is their choice.

They simply have....



THE LEMMING DIVIDE

By Allan McNew

A disclaimer: While I may have a shifting belief as to who may be the least of evils, I do not endorse any of the current candidates for President, including Trump, nor do I believe the conspiracy theory that Trump is a Democratic Party plant, regardless of what he would actually do if he won the general election. Having read “The Art of the deal”, written maybe 35 years ago, precluded that notion for me.

There is probably little middle ground in most people's minds concerning Donald Trump, he is either liked or loathed, which leads to either idolize and push him over the top or vilify and destroy him. However, there is too little effort to understand the phenomenon of Donald Trump.

This myopic approach is not helpful, because the underlying problems and resulting unrest will not be resolved.

I could spend hours on the specifics, but the base cause of Trumpism has been that the establishment core of the Republican Party have been too busy masturbating their special interest sponsors as well as each other while ignoring the well being of the nation.

Take illegal immigration. A vast region without enforced borders is not a nation and is doomed to fail. One cannot endorse open borders and clamor for a living wage because the first negates the second, and without limiting immigration to that which ensures full assimilation the nation loses both its identity and character - there is a reason that the foundings of the United States and the Latin American nations lead to such success on one hand and such colossal failure on the other, which has nothing to do with race. There is all sorts of noise about whether to build a border wall or the viability of deporting 12 million people, but no one ever talks about role of the employers, of which large employers buy off both sides of the isle to their own interests. In the meantime, 14th amendment children of illegal immigrants are voting the progressive-Democratic-socialist ticket in ever growing numbers.

So, who are the lemmings in this election? People who are tired of being used as patsies for the establishment status quo and vote for Trump, or the Republican establishment which has been committing slow suicide since Ronald Reagan left the White House – even with now controlling both chambers of Congress?

The Republican party may just well go the way of the Whigs, which failed in part by trying to straddle the political fence, and apparently there is an increasing number of voters who believe it should.

Addendum: To my best recollection, when G.W. Bush finally understood that the nation wanted immigration enforcement, he embarked on a limited show campaign involving a few Midwestern meat packing plants. The agents ran in the front door of the plant, chased the illegals past the office out the back door, caught a few in the field, then quietly released them after the cameras were no longer present. If GW was serious about illegal immigration, the agents would have walked into the corporate headquarters whereupon they would have arrested and subsequently legally crucified everyone with administrative authority.

-- Political Pistachio Conservative News and Commentary

Douglas V. Gibbs Talks Scalia and Apple at the Oath Keepers


The Oath Keepers in Calimesa will be meeting Thursday, March 3, 2016 at the Bob’s Big Boy 540 Sandalwood Dr. Calimesa, CA 92320

Douglas V. Gibbs has been asked to be the speaker, and specifically they have asked him to speak on the consequences and issues surrounding the death of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, and the battle between Apple and the federal government over being able to hack into the phone of the San Bernardino Shooter.

Doug will also have his books available for sale, including his latest book, "Concepts of the United States Constitution."

Douglas V. Gibbs is the host of Constitution Radio on KMET 1490AM, the host of Conservative Voice Radio on KMET AM1490, blogger at PoliticalPistachio.com, the President of the Constitution Association, Director of the Center for the Study of the United States Constitution, columnist for a number of print publications and internet outlets around the country, and a television contributor.

"Trump & David Duke, Sitting In A Tree, KKKKKKK"

by JASmius



Hey, don't get mad at me, Trumplicans, I'm just pre-quoting what's going to be in every Democrat attack ad between the day The Donald (as a Democrat) steals our nomination and November 8th, and with which every Republican incumbent and challenger all the way down to local dog-catcher is going to be tarred as well.  Just like Trump passive-aggressively plays up his birtherism at Rubio's and Cruz's expense.  Sauce for the goose, and all that.

Except in my case, I'm serious as a heart attack about those Donk attack ads, and the Pompadoured Prince's failure to escape that one of many general election holes into which he's dug himself.  Hence the question: Is Trump tolerant of, or even sympathetic to, the KKK, given that white supremacists, led by David Duke, have become such passionate Trump devotees....

When did twitter become the comments section for Stormfront? I missed that memo.

....a function, of course, of his attempt to appear anti-illegal immigration - that Duke recently declared that any white vote for anybody but the New York liberal will constitute racial treason?  That's what CNN's Jake Tapper gave him a golden opportunity to debunk in no uncertain terms this morning - and Trump punted instead:



Tsk, tsk; such shifty ducking and dodging from the "strongman" candidate who "tells it like it is".  And on a question that was not only easy-peasy-lemon squeezy but an attempt by the media he claims to want to sue out of existence to do him an engraved favor.  So what gives?  Is Donald Trump a racist?  Why on Earth didn't he disvow Grand Wizard Duke?

As usual, the answer is....complicated.

Trump did disavow Duke once - fifteen years ago:

Trump clearly knew who David Duke was in 2000. Seems to have forgotten since. pic.twitter.com/Vz5L16GLyP


View image on Twitter

That was then, apparently.  Oh, sure, he's barked the word "disavow" in a "if I tell you what you want to hear, will you go the hell away?" sense here and there, as when he was asked Tapper's question last Friday when he was rolling (literally) out the Chris Christie endorsement.  But Tapper gave him the perfect setting to settle the question once and for all, and he refused to do it.  Why?

Theories abound:

1) He was tired and had a brain fart.  But that would run counter to his claim that he's healthier than Wolverine and never doesn't have an erection.  So scratch that one, even if he will soon be a septuagenarian.

2) He's so stupendously narcissistic that he will not disavow anybody who supports him, no matter who or what it is.  Which might work except for the fact that he did condemn Duke - much as a liberal would - a long, long time ago in a galaxy far, far away - when it suited his purposes to do so.  It just so happen that now he feels that repeating that disavowal so publicly does not.

Which leads us, of course, to my theory:

3) Trump did not set out to attract the Klansman vote, but that was an unanticipated side effect of the wedge issue he used to try and sell himself as a "conservative".  In other words, Trump, a liberal Democrat who clearly thinks that all conservatives and Republicans are "racists," depicted himself on illegal immigration in the way that he believes REAL conservatives and Republicans think and are motivated; not by the Constitution and the rule of law, but by "nativism" and "xenophobia".  So instead of emphasizing the former, he emphasized the latter - "Mexican rapists," etc. - because that's the "language" he thought he needed to speak, and because he wasn't fluent in the other one.  And that just happened to have been right in the wheelhouse of animals like David Duke.

In short, he's committed to this angle, and if he were to backtrack on any of it in the slightest, he fears it would be seen as weakness - to say nothing of bowing to "political correctness," also a concept that he and his drones don't understand (being "anti-PC" doesn't mean being a jerk and/or a monster).

This in turn reinforces what I've believed about the Trump candidacy from day one: that he got into the race to sabotage the GOP, at least for this cycle, and pave the way for a third straight Democrat White House triumph, but has, depressingly, done better than anybody, including Trump himself (which he, naturally, will never admit), dreamed he would.  And now he finds himself the frontrunner and bordering on presumptive nominee, and now his inability to pass for a REAL conservative, and his being a political rookie, is coming back around to start biting him in the ass.

The media fangs, however, will hold off for at least another week or three, until Rubio and Cruz are functionally eliminated.  And then they will start flensing The Donald's coiffed carcass mercilessly.  And Trumplicans will begin to reap the bitter harvest their overemotive, foolish fanaticism has sewn.

Though they will, of course, never admit it.  Not even on Twitter.