Political Pistachio

Saturday, April 02, 2016

American Daily Review: The Living Daylights

Conservative Voice Radio: Terrorists in the Desert

In the Apple Valley area police investigated 15 (later reported as 17) men of Middle Eastern descent shooting guns at 3:00 am in the wilderness.

Conservative Voice Radio discusses the terrorists in the desert, the election, socialism versus capitalism, and much more.

Saturdays at 8:00 am
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www.kmet1490am.com

Missed past episodes? Catch the podcasts HERE.

Friday, April 01, 2016

"Gun-Free" Chicago On Track For 500 Homicides In 2016

by JASmius

It's a hallmark of the lunatic times in which we live that we are almost literally drowning in an ocean of ironies across the issue board, and virtually none of us possess the insight to recognize, much less fully appreciate, them.

Fortunately for all of you, that's why I'm here:

As the first quarter of 2016 nears an end, violence in Chicago has reached levels unseen in years, putting the city on course to top five hundred homicides for only the second time since 2008.

As of 6 a.m. Wednesday, homicides totaled 135, a 71% jump over the seventy-nine killings in the same year-earlier period, official Police Department statistics show. That represented the worst first quarter of a year since 136 homicides in 1999, according to the data.

Shootings have jumped by comparable numbers as well. As of Wednesday, at least 727 people had been shot in Chicago so far this year, a 73% rise from 422 a year earlier, according to a Tribune analysis of department data.

Worse yet, that jump follows two consecutive years in which shootings rose by double digits, the analysis found. Homicides also rose by about 12.5% last year over 2014....

Crime experts caution about making year-to-year comparisons, but Arthur Lurigio, a professor of criminal justice and psychology at Loyola University Chicago, called the escalating violence at the start of the year “alarming.”

“We have to go back decades to find jumps of this magnitude in year-to-year comparisons,” he said. “We’re on our way to five hundred homicides again. We’re going backward.

Yeah, Chicago is going backward, Professor Lurigio. Or, rather, it already WAS backward and it's producing the inevitable and ever-escalating results of that backwardness, manifested in which party has run Chicago practically forever, and the policies - in this instance, suffocating gun control - that have, much less ironically when you fully understand the dynamics at play, flooded the city with guns, all "illegally" obtained, something which only the criminal element is inclined to do, leading to the other thing the criminal element is inclined to do - namely, shooting each other with rabid abandon, much of it the black-on-black gun violence that is so chronically under-reported (because the Left accepts it, Margaret Sanger-esqely) and never more so than when a white cop shoots and kills a black suspect, regardless of the surrounding circumstances.

As Matt Vespa well describes it, Chicago isn't even a bloodbath, it's a war zone.

At this rate, when the last legal gun is confiscated by the city government, the last Chicago resident will be shot and killed.

It's not often that we can be thankful for the public sector's renowned "efficiency," but this is one of those times.

Exit question: Over/under on when Chicagoans will finally get sick of this nightmare and give the GOP the chance to restore their city's "big shoulders"? No, seriously, what are the odds? I'm not sure if even I can count that high.

Trump Now Underwater With Women Voters By Nearly FIFTY POINTS

by JASmius

Again, it's not the snapshot that is telling, but the magnitude of the yawning deficit and the trendlines, which are entirely downward:

It's a testament to two billion dollars of free, overhyped media that the above raging dumpster fire/train wreck numbers and trends haven't attracted much attention. Leaving aside every other demographic, every last one of which is terrible - Trump is down 36%-58% with men - having three out of every four female voters projectile-vomiting at the very thought of "President Trump" is enough to presage a Goldwater/McGovern/Mondale disaster all by itself. Looked at another way, Trump is -47 with more than half the electorate, while Mrs. Clinton is....-3. And ain't no way that The Donald is going to turn around those numbers when he's been publicly treating women like blowup dolls and verbal punching bags (he's got his campaign manager for the literal version) since the Carter administration. And he's spent almost the entire primary campaign doing the same thing - Megyn Kelly's menses and continuing feud, Carly Fiorina's face, Michelle Fields' rag-dolling and subsequent smearing and threatenings with ridiculous counter-charges, ridiculing Heidi Cruz's clinical depression AND looks - reinforcing these entrenched unfavorables almost every time he opens his mouth. Because that is who and what Trump is. It's Trump being Trump, which is to say, one of the biggest bullies America has ever seen. If any of his flacks are getting the first tinglings of buyer's remorse - which I don't buy for a femtosecond - it's awfully late in the game for it.

Apparently, recruiting Sarah Palin and Ann Coulter hasn't been sufficient offset, just as grabbing Ben Carson hasn't quelled the "racism" shrieking.. All of which illustrates that self-respect is, after all, an important ingredient in what constitutes a "strong woman," or man, for that matter.

Here's another interesting polling yardstick that vividly illustrates Trump's utter hopelessness in November:

Translated, what this means is that with the "everybody else" category where polling shows it in the head-to-head matchup, Trump would have to get every last White, non-college-educated man in the country (1) registered to vote, (2) turn them ALL out on November 8th, and (3) they would have to vote for Trump UNANIMOUSLY - and remember, he's down 36%-58% among men in general - just to reach a dead heat, which would mean La Clinton Nostra would defraud Hillary's way to victory anyway.

No tribalistic excuse can change or mitigate or provide a way out of these numbers, Trumplicans. As another old saying goes, twice nothing is still nothing. And zero is Donald Trump's chance of winning in November. For all his "winner" hype and especially the "silent majority" myth, the fact is that Trump has, for the Great Bird only knows what reason, won a fanatical following among fewer than 40% of Republican voters. That's not even a majority of that minority. And for all the imagined hordes of "disaffected white voters" they think he's going to bring to the polls, countless more general election voters viscerally repulsed by the man will swamp any such new voters he does manage to attract.

Twice nothing is still nothing.

Deal with it. But do so quickly, while there's still time to nominate Ted Cruz.

Which may happen anyway from the delegates Trump may be forfeiting from his impulsive foolishness in blowing off the RNC loyalty pledge and thinking he didn't need to brush up on party/convention rules that the Cruz campaign knows religiously. And today we got our first public indication that he may be belatedly gaining that dawning awareness:

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From @maggieNYT and @alexburnsNYT http://www.nytimes.com/politics/first-draft/2016/04/01/donald-trump-clears-the-air-with-republican-leaders/?smprod=nytcore-iphone&smid=nytcore-iphone-share …

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You know how he idiotically said earlier this week that the key to success is "surrounding yourself with unsuccessful people" - which is not only a roaring admission of his own insecurity and the diametric opposite of both what a competent manager does ("knowing what he doesn't know") and what he told Ben Carson he would do as POTUS when he offered him his quid pro quo - looks like he's just discovering how idiotic that advice really is:

The reality of a contested convention has become more real than ever, with Donald Trump facing the risk of losing Wisconsin next week, meaning he’d have to win roughly 60% of the remaining delegates to win the Republican presidential nomination outright. If Trump heads into the convention without the magic number of 1,237, already more than a hundred delegates are poised to break with him on a second ballot, according to interviews with dozens of delegates, delegate candidates, operatives and party leaders...In one of starkest examples of Trump’s lack of support, out of the 168 Republican National Committee members — each of whom doubles as a convention delegate — only one publicly supports Trump, and she knows of only a handful of others who support him privately. Meanwhile, Ted Cruz has been whipping Trump in the quiet, early race to elect his own loyalists to become delegates to the convention, meaning that the Texas senator could triumph through delegates who are freed to vote their own preferences on a second ballot, regardless of who won their State....

The risk of a routing at a contested convention is becoming more acute because of Trump’s uncertain standing going into Wisconsin’s primary on Tuesday. Two polls this week showed Cruz ten points ahead of Trump in the State. A loss in Wisconsin would hardly be devastating, but it would surely embolden the anti-Trump forces in other States, making his efforts to win the 60% of the yet-to-be-awarded delegates to reach the 1,237 figure needed to clinch the nomination outright that much more difficult, according to a Politico analysis. “They’ve got to get their shit together in Wisconsin,” said a top Trump ally in the South. “If he doesn’t have 1,237, I'd be very concerned with what happens in Cleveland.” [emphases added]

Trump may be shocked and dismayed and terrified that politics is proving to be harder than he thought it was - i.e. Ted Cruz is taking him to school - and, of course, blaming "his people" for it, kind of like Skeletor always blamed Beastman and Merman for all his defeats at the hands of He-Man, totally oblivious of the Obi-wan Kenobi Principle....

....but we all know damn good and well that Ted Cruz isn't doing anything that Trump wouldn't be doing himself if he hadn't been too lazy and arrogant to (1) do his due diligence homework and (2) surround himself with "successful people" instead. And if the lugnuts start shooting like shrapnel and the wheels start coming off and the Trump train starts to derail and he falls short, perhaps well-short of the magic number of 1,237 - still, of course, a significant if - and doesn't reach it on the first ballot and his delegates scatter to the four winds and his nomination chances collapse, he and his minions will howl bloody murder about "cheating" and "theft" and blame Cruz and the "establishment" and us #NeverTrumpers and everybody except the one actually culpable for it: the guy staring back from The Donald's gilded mirror. Because Trump will not have been "robbed" or "cheated"; he will have lost at a game at which his opponent was superior.

He will be a loser. With a capital "L".

Never would justice have been more poetic.

The Pro-Trump Chalk Scrawls "Attack" The University Of Kansas

by JASmius

Here's another thing I don't get about this "special snowflake" foolishness: These adult toddlers are freaked out by chalk squiggles spelling something they don't like, and yet if Trump actually held a rally at their school, they would show up ready to rumble with Trump supporters. Which is a double irony, because Trump himself is far more dangerous than his name scribbled on a sidewalk:

KU students took to Twitter this week to express their outrage over the political speech, saying they are troubled that some of their classmates are Trump supporters, and even comparing the chalk messages to the confederate flag.

“The issue is folks in the KU vicinity support a racist, sexist demagogue.”

That's a mostly accurate description. I wouldn't go so heavy on the "racist" part; at worst, Trump's prejudice might be of the harmless Archie Bunker variety, where he doesn't hurt anybody or burn crosses on George Jefferson's front yard, but just says really stupid, ignorant things on a regular basis. And Trump does that on pretty much EVERY subject. He's, in other words, an equal opportunity jackass. On the other hand, don't ask me why he won't renounce David Duke, and don't bother asking him, because you'll never get the same answer twice.

Speaking as somebody who understands the complete historical context of the confederate flag, I think the KU kiddies owe Jefferson Davis and Robert E. Lee an apology.

But instead of trying to censor speech you don't like, boys and girls, why don't you use your own First Amendment right to counter it with speech of your own. Debate; free exchange of ideas; or as Thomas Jefferson once wrote of the university he founded, "this institution will be based on the illimitable freedom of the human mind. for here we are not afraid to follow truth wherever it may lead, nor to tolerate any error so long as reason is left free to combat it." By trying to silence speech you don't like - even chalk scrawls on the pavement - you are, ironically, becoming like the man you loathe.

If I, as a #NeverTrumper, tried to censor all pro-Trump speech - which, of course, I couldn't - I would never do anything else, including bladder voidance and bowel movements. Adding to the debate is far more time-, as well as substance-, effective.

Which simply reflects the utter dearth of knowledge, logic, and communications skills college punks possess these days, and how the so-called "institutions of higher learning" aren't teaching them a damn thing, but are promiscuous in indoctrination and reversing two decades' of emotional growth.

The university said that they would have allowed students to chalk had they applied for approval, but allegedly had staff remove the unapproved chalking the day it was discovered.

With a hose, I'm guessing? Wouldn't the next gentle spring rain have accomplished the same thing?

Former student senator Shegufta Huma....

Yes, your guess was correct....

....however, argued that approval from the University is less important than the message itself, tweeting a photo of one chalking with the caption, “Is this the post-racial paradise folks pretend exists?”

Well, given that it was Barack Hussein Obama who promised that, and has delivered the diametric opposite, I suggest you take the matter up with him.

“The issue isn’t whether a student chalked or if it was approved,” Huma tweeted later. “The issue is folks in the KU vicinity support a racist, sexist demagogue.”

An issue that vexes a great many of us, Scheherazade, and that we could spend 1,001 nights bandying about, as long as I could stay out of bomb jacket range. And that would be a far better option than attempting to silence Trump and Trumplicans, as if that were even possible.

And there lies the greatest irony, and the one thing Trump fans and the special snowflakes have in common: You can't reason either group out of their mindsets, because they never reasoned their way into those mindsets in the first place. It's all emotion and tribalism.

Which still makes my idea of locking Trumplicans and leftwingnuts in the largest building on campus, with ample pay-per-view camera coverage, and seeing what happens pure money. Because one thing I can guarantee is that the result would not be an encounter session.

Trump Campaign Manager Battery Charge Bogus According to Video

By Douglas V. Gibbs

Some folks out there who claim to be a part of a #nevertrump movement are so eager to jump all over Trump's campaign to show everyone how horrible he is. They are seeking more and more ways to point at The Donald and say "See?" The problem is, without realizing it, these people have become nothing more than tools of the propaganda makers. A great example emerged when it came to the battery charge against Trump's campaign manager.

The liberal left will do anything, stoop to any level of deception, to do their will and benefit their agenda of statism. The political machine, of which many call "the establishment", is often a part of the game of deception. Trump, irregardless of his political positions, or whether or not he's a conservative dude, represents something far more dangerous, in their eyes, than a raging Tea Party guy like Ted Cruz. Donald Trump is someone who is outside the system, someone willing to disrupt the system, someone they cannot buy or fill with fear. He is a stick in their spokes, and a bigger hammer in the rock yard.

Trump intrigues me. He's a wildcard. With the other candidates you pretty much know what you are going to get. With Trump, predicting what kind of president he would be is darn-near a crap shoot.

The #nevertrump crowd have been salivating for something good to sink their teeth into, and when Michelle Fields accused the Trump Campaign Manager of battery at one of Trump's events, the anti-trumpsters jumped all over it. The victim? A GOP protected, Ted Cruz supporting, conservative Breitbart News political reporter named Michelle Fields who said she was physically grabbed and nearly thrown to the ground by Trump’s campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski. Was her accusation true? It seemed to be. Why would a conservative be deceptive? Normally, that's the realm of hard left liberal statist progressive socialist commie bastards.

The response by the Trump camp at the time was one of confusion. At the event in question, there were numerous anti-Trumpsters and hostile mainstream media reporters running around making problems, and Trump's people were required to protect him and do what they could to reduce any opportunity for violence. Mr. Lewandowski acted reflexively, knowing that Fields had already been warned not to approach Mr. Trump, in a manner that some believed could be called battery. In a statement after the situation he wasn't even sure if he saw her, or recognized her, or knew she was near him.

Lewandowski said at the time that if he did manhandle Fields, "he didn't recognize her as a Breitbart reporter, instead mistaking her for an adversarial member of the mainstream media."

Anti-Trumpsters called for The Donald to fire his campaign manager. Why? Because someone said he did something that he may, or may not have, done? Where's the evidence?

Donald Trump stood by his campaign manager, trusting that the truth was something other than what was being reported by the unhinged leftists mainstream media.

It turns out the allegation was largely nothing more than a bunch of bull by someone who, despite her conservative lean, was willing to be deceptive to damage Donald Trump's campaign for President. Lewandowski is not innocent, either. He claimed to have never touched Fields, and he did.

Video has emerged to prove what really happened. Michelle Fields was not handled in the egregious manner she claims, but Lewandowski did touch her, did grab her, and did pull her back.

Michelle Fields, did not flinch, did not change her facial expression, did not even notice Lewandowski during the incident. Fields later charged Lewandowski with “battery” claiming he "pulled her down," when in reality he "pulled her back."

Were the bruises on Fields' arm she showed off later real? Possibly. Lewandowski did grab her arm. Some people bruise easier than others, and he likely gripped tighter than he should have in the adrenaline charged situation. Or, she could have (I am not making an accusation, simply suggesting a possibility) self-inflicted those bruises.

Anti-Trumpsters, wanting to protect their narrative that Trump is some kind of unhinged violent radical, jumped all over it regardless of the lack of evidence, and clarity of what really happened. Battery by one of Trump's people was exactly what their narrative had been searching for.

So, while the #nevertrump folks knee-jerked, saying things like, "Trump and his goons will punch just about anybody in the face, won't they?", Trump's team of claiming his folks are angels of innocence are not necessarily exactly accurate, either.

Should any of this influence the GOP nomination? Or is it just a case of silly semantics that has nothing to do with the kind of president Trump would be?

Oh, and one more thing: The Florida prosecutor Who filed the sham charges against Corey Lewandowski is part of Hillary Clinton’s inner circle.

To those reporters out there, far and wide, this should be a lesson in the difference between reporting the news, and trying to shape the news.

-- Political Pistachio Conservative News and Commentary

Michelle Fields: In Her Own Words - Breitbart

Donald Trump's campaign denies getting rough with reporter - CBS News

The Truth About Michelle Field's 'Assault' - YouTube

Hard Starboard Radio: GOP Establishment To The Rescue!

Support for Trump's Mexican border wall drops twenty points, because....Trump; Obama cuts Social Security; Trump won't ban his rich Muslim friends; Hillary Clinton backers charge quid pro quo in Ben Carson's Trump endorsement; Mississippi going the gay way of Georgia?; Obama to sign Paris climate "deal" and enforce it Immediately; Russia expanding its nuclear arsenal to celebrate Obama anti-nuke summit; ISIS churning out chemical warheads in Mosul; Karl Rove: "GOP establishment to the rescue!"; Obama censors French President Hollande's mention of "Islamist terrorism"; and yes, North Korea CAN launch a nuclear attack on the U.S.

Burning down the GOP in a world in flames on Open Thighs Friday at 6PM Eastern/3PM Pacific.

Yes, North Korea CAN Launch A Nuclear Attack On The U.S.

by JASmius

You know how I've been saying for years on this site that it's better to overestimate enemies' capabilities than underestimate them, and that even if, in this case, the NoKos aren't quite able to back up their belligerent threats against us at the time they make them, they sooner or later they will be?

Welcome to sooner or later:

Barack Obama denies North Korea can make a nuclear strike against the U.S. or its allies, claiming they cannot make a nuclear weapon "miniaturized" (small and lightweight enough) for missile delivery.

This is, as we shall see, the party line, the toeing of which is, within the Regime, not voluntary.

The miniaturization myth never made sense technically and is contradicted by the defense community. But a gullible press goes along with Obama's fiction that North Korea may not have nuclear armed missiles because they have not yet mastered warhead miniaturization.

Now a CNN headline reports "Intel Officials: North Korea 'Probably' Has Miniaturized Nuke." CNN interviewed Admiral William Gortney, commander of North American Aerospace Defense (NORAD), the most outspoken senior officer warning North Korea can strike the U.S. mainland. [emphasis added]

So the press embargo has been breached. Which means it's time to double down.

On October 8th, 2015, NORAD Commander Gortney told the Atlantic Council, "I agree with the intelligence community that we assess that they [the North Koreans] have the ability, they have the weapons, and they have the ability to miniaturize those weapons, and they have the ability to put them on a rocket that can range the [U.S.] homeland."

On April 7th, 2015, Gortney said NORAD is moving back into the underground bunker inside Cheyenne Mountain, spending $700 million to further harden the bunker against nuclear electromagnetic pulse (EMP) attack from North Korea and others. [emphases added]

Remember that North Korean "satellite launch" last month?

In March 2016, the [Obam]agon confirmed North Korea recently rolled out a new intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) the KN-14, having longer range than North Korea's KN-08 ICBM deployed in 2012. Both missiles are armed with nuclear warheads and can strike the U.S. mainland. [emphasis added]

So Admiral Gortney has been vindicated, right?

Remember which president we're talking about:

The [Obam]agon also recently announced Gortney will be the first combatant commander replaced by a woman officer, another first for Barack Obama's [feminization of] the military. Perhaps this is merely coincidence, or maybe continues Obama's pattern of punishing those who speak truth about North Korea's nuclear missile threat. [emphases added]

The message is clear: "North Korea can't touch us". And anybody who "boxes with Godbama" will go "down for the count". The question is, why is The One so insistent about that party line? All the more so given that it is less and less tethered to reality? Should we not, in Nick Fury's words, "take the world as it is, not as we would like it to be" so as to maximize our chances of dealing with it safely and effectively? This POTUS certainly doesn't appear to think so.

Does Barack Obama welcome a North Korean nuclear attack on the United States? Or is his ego so stupendous, and stupendously brittle, that he simply cannot and will not change that fantasy and demands that everybody robotically accept it?

And in the end, is there any practical difference between the two?:

Three years ago the defense community got the message not to speak too loudly about nuclear missile threats from North Korea. In 2013, North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un threatened nuclear strikes against the U.S., South Korea, and Japan.

Barack Obama told NBC on April 16th, 2013, he did not believe "North Korea yet had the ability to miniaturize a nuclear weapon to fit atop a missile." White House spokesmen Jay Carney said on April 12th, "...obviously the North Koreans have tested nuclear weapons . . . What they have not done is demonstrate . . . a capability to deploy a nuclear-armed missile--attach a warhead to a missile and fire it."

Ironically, on April 16th, 2013, on the very day Obama told Americans that Kim Jong Un could not strike the U.S., North Korea's KSM-3 satellite passed over Washington, D.C., and New York City at the optimum trajectory for a surprise EMP attack. [emphasis added]

His military has warned him. His intelligence agencies have warned him. And Barack Obama continues to ignore them....

....and will - until....

Well, it sure will "reduce America to the level of the rest of the world". And well below it.

And kill 90% of the U.S. population as well.

All it takes is one time, folks. And Barack Obama either doesn't want to know that, or does know it and cares more about being "right," in direct proportion to how wrong he is.

Or....he welcomes it. Just like any American enemy would.

Which explanation is the most correct is kind of hard to escape, isn't it?

UPDATE: Headline of the week: "North Korea Warns of Famine as Leader Kim Jong Un Nears 300 Pounds".

Obama Censors French President Hollande's Mention Of "Islamist Terrorism"

by JASmius

O might not be conducting suicide bombings or sawing the heads off of captured "infidels," but if he was looking for a post-White House career (assuming he ever leaves), the job of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi's press secretary/public relations flack would be made to order for him:

The White House website has censored a video of French President Francois Hollande saying that “Islamist terrorism” is at the “roots of terrorism.”

Which is odd, as I thought that the whole point of the invention of the term "IslamIST" was to distinguish jihadists from the more general "IslamIC". Apparently The One's pro-Muslim sensibilities are so tender that he can't even abide that much of a rhetorical compromise.

The White House briefly pulled video of a press event on terrorism with Barack Obama, and when it reappeared on the whitehouse.gov website and YouTube, the audio of Hollande’s translator goes silent, beginning with the words “Islamist terrorism,” then begins again at the end of his sentence.

Even the audio of Hollande saying the words “Islamist terrorism” in French have, apparently, been edited from the video.

According to the official White House transcript of Hollande’s remarks, Hollande refers to “Islamist terrorism.” The audio of the bold text in brackets is missing from the video – the only point in the video were the audio is absent:

And isn't it at least a minor miracle that his infernal majesty left the transcript unedited?

“We are also making sure that between Europe and the United States there can be a very high level coordination.

“But we're also well aware that the roots of terrorism, [Islamist terrorism, is in Syria and in Iraq. We therefore have to act both in Syria and in Iraq, and this is what we're doing within the framework of the coalition.] And we note that Daesh is losing ground thanks to the strikes we've been able to launch with the "coalition".”

Actually, no, Francois, "Daesh" is losing ground thanks to massive Russo-Syrian ground and air forces, not yours and Barry's pinpricks.

But I do give the POF credit where credit is do for at least somewhat identifying the enemy and their motivations. Given that France has been more on the front lines of the Islamic invasion of late than we have, that shouldn't be surprising, and it should concentrate their attention sufficiently to be able to put aside puerile political correctness....

....such as this pathetic White House display.

About the only way this jihadi-sympism could have been more egregious is if upon uttering "Islamist terrorism," Obama had leaped up, shouted "Allahu Akbar!" and dove across the table to tackle President Hollande and strangle him with his bare hands

Eh. Maybe next summit.

Karl Rove: "GOP Establishment To The Rescue!"

by JASmius

You know, it just dawned on me who The Architect most closely resembles: Arnim Zola, Hydra's chief scientist in Captain America: The First Avenger....

Twin sons from different mothers, aren't they? And in Tea Party minds, far more than metaphorically, no doubt.

I'll leave that determination to y'all. What I will say is that with the following pot-stirring comments, Dubya's deputy White House Chief of Staff ably animates the axiom that no situation is ever so bad that it still can't be made worse:

HH: Who is the most electable Republican, obviously, John Kasich could be on the list, but of people who could be available to run?

An irrelevant question that I'm surprised Hugh Hewitt asked. Everybody knows that Marco Rubio was the most electable Republican in the field. But he lost and dropped out (although cannily isn't releasing his delegates in order to deny them to Trump). Of the (technically) three candidates remaining, Kasich tops the electability rankings, but his nomination is mathematically impossible. That leaves Ted Cruz or Donald Trump, and Cruz is clearly the more electable of the two. How is that even a matter of opinion?

Wait a minute - "available TO run"? Uh-oh....

KR: Yeah, look, I don’t know. I mean, I think we’re going to, we are not going to be able to be, and shouldn’t be guided simply by polls on this.

Okay.....

I mean, we do need to understand the polls with regard to what the people are thinking about, the people who might be prospective candidates. But in terms of being able to match somebody head to head against Hillary Clinton, that’s going to be difficult to do.

Well, yeah; it's difficult to game out the electability of people who have not been and are not candidates. Doesn't that rather strongly suggest that if they wanted to be, they should have run from day one, and have no business parachuting into the chaos now, which can only render it even more chaotic? Did this conversation really happen?

We’ve got numbers on Kasich. And he is tending to, in most of the polls, beat her. And Ted Cruz runs a lot closer to Hillary than does Donald Trump, tends to, I’ve seen in some polls beat her, but mostly slightly behind her. I think, though, that let’s say this. If we have somebody who we think has, has been battle-tested....

Which, by definition, they have not been in this campaign.

....and has strong conservative principles and the ability to articulate them....

That was Marco Rubio, Karl. How'd his run turn out? Ditto Rick Perry's and, much as I hate to say it, Scott Walker's. If Trumpmania has taught us anything, it is that a large number of Republican voters don't want conservatism, well-articulated or not. They want on a silver platter the buns of people like you. And you're absolutely gorging them with ammunition that is undercutting all the advice you're attempting to render with this doggerel. Can't you see that?

In the words of Red Skull, "Evidently not".

and they are nominated at this convention....

Having neither sought nor earned a single primary/caucus vote.

....there will be a lot of acrimony from the people who were seeking the nomination.

Ya think? And not just the actual candidates, either. Which renders the earlier hypothetical about "alternative candidate" electability pretty much moot, dontcha think?

But if it’s somebody who has, you know, has those convictions that they can express in a compelling way, we could come out of the convention in relatively strong position....

Who cares how compellingly your parachuter can "express those convictions" when not only would nobody else in the party be listening to them but would be trying to find and run them through with rusty pitchforks? You DO realize that that candidate would have your stink all over him/her, don't you, Karl? Why would anybody take that role knowing all of the above that apparently you alone cannot deduce?

....because we do have, you know, look. Donald Trump excites a lot of enthusiasm. But he also excites a lot of anger within the Republican Party and outside of the Republican Party. And a fresh face might be the thing that could give us a chance to turn this election and win in November against Hillary.

You think Trump incites a lot of anger? And, rest assured, he does, just as you describe. But think of it this way: If Trump is the nominee, we #NeverTrumpers walk, and either way his defeat at the hands of Hillary Clinton is a historic massacre. Trump loses, our congressional majorities are history, and the GOP "brand" is garbage for years to come. Whereas if Cruz is the nominee, Trumplicans will bolt, Cruz will lose, but the GOP's identity as the party of conservatism will remain intact, perhaps with at least retained control of the House, and the possibility of rebuilding (yet again) will still exist. But sweeping both of them aside and dropping an "establishment" flunkie - patsy, really - in their place? You'd go from a third of the party sitting out the election to pretty much all of it. If Trumpmania is a five-alarm structure fire, that would be dropping a bomberload of napalm on it.

Even Millard Fillmore....

....the destroyer of the Whigs, is saying, "Whoa, dude, learn from my mistakes" right about now.

The irony - and proof that Rove is BSing - is that if he's looking for a candidate who can "articulate conservatism," he's already got one in Ted Cruz. A fact that a lot of "establishmentarians" like Lindsey Graham and even John McCain have grudgingly acknowledged, because at least they realize that, however much they may detest the Texas juuior senator, he is a bona fide Republican, unlike the New York liberal conman, into whose hands - or, rather, his unwitting mistress, Hillary's - Rove is playing with this lunatic nonsense.

Allahpundit evidently thought about it long and hard and tosses out a method to Rove's madness that my imagination isn't wide enough to encompass:

If you’re going to alienate one part of the base or the other no matter what you do, why not pick the most electable guy you can find and then hope that Democrats will so roundly piss off Republicans of every stripe before November that everyone will put their butthurt aside and vote for the GOP nominee anyway? If the establishment wants Ryan, they could nominate Ryan, let Trumpers and Cruz fans spend the next three months screaming that they’ll never vote Republican again, and then pray that the sheer amount of day-to-day irritation they endure from watching Hillary Clinton campaign finally leads those people to say in October, “F*** it, Ryan it is!” That’s a Hail Mary pass, but nominating Cruz after he’s been weakened by Trump attacks and embittered Trump fans by “stealing” the nomination through delegate chicanery [i.e. knowing the rules better than Trump] is a Hail Mary pass from your own twenty [yard line]. And nominating Trump, given his radioactive unpopularity with the wider electorate, is a Hail Mary pass from your own end zone.

Both true. But an "establishment"-imposed candidate would be akin to Black Sunday....

....and mine might be the only vote that Paul Ryan (and what is it with everybody trying to give the poor guy promotions he doesn't want?) would receive.

Because at least he'd be better than Hillary Clinton. You know, the next President of the United States.

What a clusterbleep.

In happier news (i.e. a contested convention, not the brokered one the Architect is trying to foist upon us), Trump's blowing off the RNC loyalty pledge might cost him South Carolina's fifty delegates, and it's growing increasingly clear that his viability in Cleveland won't survive past the first ballot.

And Senator Cruz's double-digit lead in Wisconsin has now been confirmed.

Now back to your regularly scheduled fratricidal mayhem.....

UPDATE: Add Trump's reneging on the loyalty pledge possibly forfeiting RNC support in a fall campaign to that list.

Trump and the Abortion Gotcha Question

by Douglas V. Gibbs

When Donald Trump first burst on the political scene with his unlikely run for the Republican Nomination for President in 2016, among my problems with him was a lack of political experience. When you are in politics, the liberal left becomes particular nasty in a way that most people don't seem to realize. With the media in their corner, the gotcha questions can be particularly vicious.

Mr. Trump fell for one of the most used attacks I experience, and he had no idea how to answer. As a result, wanting to say something, trying to figure out what was best for his position, he unwittingly shoved his foot, ankle, leg and thigh into his mouth and down his throat.

Dr. Ben Carson, in Trump's defense, said that Trump is still learning how to be a politician. For the most part, I think Carson is correct.

It all began when MSNBC's Chris Matthews demanded a yes or no answer to the question that if abortion were to be banned by the federal government, "should abortion be punished."

"There has to be some form of punishment," Trump said during a televised town hall event.

"For the woman?" Matthews asked, to which Trump replied, "Yes."

Gotcha.

Hillary Clinton jumped all over it. “Just when you thought it couldn’t get worse,” the Democratic frontrunner tweeted. “Horrific and telling.”

First of all, from a constitutional point of view, it would not be up to the federal government to "ban" abortion. They shouldn't have legalized it in the first place. Roe v. Wade was unconstitutional. There is no authority in the Constitution granted to the federal government to dictate internally to the States regarding any medical procedure or practice. So, the question itself was one that was legally unfounded.

Nonetheless, leftist politicians and news media commentators alike jumped all over Trump's response, claiming he is the epitome of the war on women, and how dare he call for the punishment of a woman for trying to exercise her "right to abortion."

Women have been trained by leftism to believe that terminating the life of a baby while it is still in the womb is not only not a bad thing, but that doing such a thing is their "right" as a woman. Meanwhile, an industry, a very lucrative one at that, has emerged. Doctors who perform abortions are becoming very wealthy participating in the wholesale slaughter of the next generation. I often ask, to what god is all of that innocent blood being sacrificed to?

After being made a fool of for his comment, Trump had enough people around him to show him how to back track. . . sort of.

Trump later said that the abortion issue should be decided by the States (accurate), and then falling in line with defenders of the pre-born who say doctors who perform illegal abortions should be punished, not women. It was the doctors who performed the murder, after all, wasn't it?

Texas Senator Ted Cruz, in his statement, pointed out that Trump does not understand the issues because he's not truly anti-abortion, and he is not truly conservative. “Once again Donald Trump has demonstrated that he hasn’t seriously thought through the issues, and he’ll say anything just to get attention. On the important issue of the sanctity of life, what’s far too often neglected is that being pro-life is not simply about the unborn child; it’s also about the mother — and creating a culture that respects her and embraces life.”

“Being pro-life means wanting what is best for the mother and the baby,” March for Life President Jeanne Mancini said in a statement. “No pro-lifer would ever want to punish a woman who has chosen abortion. This is against the very nature of what we are about. We invite a woman who has gone down this route to consider paths to healing, not punishment.”

Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of the Susan B. Anthony List, said in a statement regarding Trump's original assertion, "Let us be clear, punishment is solely for the abortionist who profits off of the destruction of one life and the grave wounding of another.”

Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee said Trump was blindsided by the abortion question. “I don’t think he was prepared. I don’t think he saw that one coming. He handled it poorly,” Huckabee said. “It was a terrible answer. Nobody is going to defend what he said because the idea of, well, we’ve got to have some punishment, and even in his answer, it looked like he was fumbling around trying to figure out what to say."

A bumper sticker I had in the back window of my old pickup read, "One Dead, One Wounded."

When battling the issue of abortion, it is important for those out there to understand that the liberal left's definition of what the Pro-Life movement is all about is not accurate. While they try to label their opposition as a group of screaming whackos filled with hate (interestingly enough, a definition that actually more accurately describes the pro-abortion crowd), it is important that those who fight to defend the lives of the unborn are seen as a voice of love, a group of people who wants to nurture hope, and a movement determined to help those confronted with an unplanned pregnancy. Ours should be a plan that provides education, assistance, help, and love.

-- Political Pistachio Conservative News and Commentary

ISIS Churning Out Chemical Warheads In Mosul

by JASmius

Coming to a European airport or American subway near you:

The Islamic State (ISIS) has been making bombs and training [jihadis]ts at a chemistry lab in Iraq for a year, according to a new report.

The Wall Street Journal reports ISIS has made chemical bombs using peroxide and nitrate and suicide bombs similar to those used in the Paris and Brussels attacks at the University of Mosul.

"The University of Mosul is the best [ISIS] research center in the world," Iraqi General Hatem Magsosi told the Journal. "Trainees go to Raqqa, [Syria], then to Mosul university to use the existing facilities." [emphasis added]

Oh, joy.

The Obama Regime claims to have attempted to take out this ISIS chemical weapons factory with "airstrikes," but "can't confirm" whether the "airstrikes" were successful. Or whether the "aircraft" were even armed. And the "Iraqi army" can't confirm it either, because they run away from ISIS forces a tenth their size.

If you want something done right and you're not willing to do it yourself (via sufficient boots on the ground to recapture and hold territory), sit home and wait to be blown up, I guess.

And/or gassed.

Russia Expanding Nuclear Arsenal To Celebrate Obama Anti-Nuke Summit

by JASmius

I guess Vlad didn't want to get upstaged by the ChiComms. And who can blame him?:

Russia is increasing the number of nuclear warheads in its arsenal by adding multiple, independently targetable reentry vehicles, or MIRVs, a [Obam]agon official said in a report by the Washington Free Beacon.

The buildup violates the New START arms treaty between the United States and Russia, which calls for a reduction in warheads by February 2018, said an official. [emphasis added]

i.e. Another of O's unenforceable "deals". See how well they work?

The United States has decreased its arsenal in recent years while Russia has added deployed warheads and new weapons. The treaty limit is 1,550 warheads — the State [Commissaria]t in January said the U.S. was below the mark at 1,538, and Russia was above it, at 1,648.

The State [Commissaria]t said it can inspect the new MIRV missiles, but an official in the Beacon story said that is not the case. [emphases added]

The following conversation is getting closer all the time:

“I won’t use nuclear weapons. Ever,” said the President, confirming the opinion reached by the teams of Chi[Comm] and Russian intelligence analysts, psychologists and game theorists who had studied the Commander-in-Chief in preparation for that very moment. Deterrence only deters when the threat is credible.

“What are my other options?” asked the President. The general looked down, shuffling papers.

“We don’t have a conventional option.”

“The Army? The Marines?”

“There are a few units forward deployed, but we’ve brought most of our forces home. What we have left we can’t move fast enough and most of it is designed for counterinsurgency, not conventional warfare – we’ve cut our armored forces because they cost so much to maintain. And to move them we’d need foreign ships, but we can’t count on them. We can’t even count on the sea lanes being clear.”

“The Air Force doesn’t have bombers? Fighters?” the President asked.

“Not enough, and not modern enough to get through Chi[Comm] and Russian air defenses.”

The President turned to the [Commissar] of State. “What about our allies?”

“No commitments yet. In fact, there’s been no response from several key allies.”

“We invoked NATO Article 5, didn’t we? We’ve been attacked!” the President shouted.

“They don’t have any significant forces left. Even if they were inclined to assist…”

“Inclined?” asked the President, stunned.

“We need to understand that they may be making a calculated decision…”

The President did understand. “To go with the winner.”

No one spoke; the only sound was the noise of the 747’s [engines] until a communications officer spoke up.

“I have a video transmission off a Chi[Comm] satellite coming … to us. How did they get our communications data?” It was yet another security breach.

“Just put it onscreen,” ordered the President.

The transmission was a split screen, [Xi Jin-Ping] on the left, [Vladimir Putin] on the right. They were smiling.

“What do you want?” the President asked.

[Putin] spoke. “We want peace. We want justice. And that is why we are here to provide you the terms of your surrender.”

I hope those caves are radiation proof.

The Hard Way

By Douglas V. Gibbs

We are making the same mistakes our ancestors have made time and time again throughout history. People don't learn from the experience of others. We learn, when we do, the hard way. While we believe we are changing things, we follow a similar path, and we usually don't get on the right path until people die. Then, once corrected, we get fat, and go off course once again, truly believing once again we have achieved some benevolent, unknown change.

-- Political Pistachio Conservative News and Commentary

Obama To Sign Paris Climate "Deal" & Enforce It Immediately

by JASmius

But don't worry, folks, the ChiComms will also sign on to this act of economic suicide.....later:

The United States will sign the Paris global climate agreement as soon as it can next month and then will start putting it in place later this year, the White House announced Thursday, adding that [Red] China will sign then, too.

i.e. "Later this year". Maybe. And even then, maybe not, or maybe they will, but will never implement it. And even then, only an American invasion could possible enforce it. Agreements with communist dictatorships are endless shades of gray after all.

And between TWO of them? Forget about it.

The United Nations has invited countries to sign the deal at a ceremony on April 22nd, the first day they can do so, reported the Associated Press. The international agreement was reached in December, but needs a critical mass of countries to sign on before the pact is in force. The White House said the U.S. and [Red] China hope that by joining soon, global action to reduce emissions can kick in well before the formal start date in 2020.

Translation: Red China is hoping that by goading the U.S. to join soon, the final collapse of the American economy can kick in well before the formal start date of the Sino-Russian conquest of the United States.

In regard to which, there may be a snag:

The U.S. has run into a major roadblock. In February, the Supreme Court put on hold Barack Obama's emissions limits for power plants. Obama was counting on those cuts to meet the U.S. commitment under the deal.

But have no fear, my friends, Antonin Scalia is worm food now and Justice Garland (or worse) will tie off that loose end.

Never mind that the "deal" is a treaty that has never been submitted to the U.S. Senate for review and either ratification or rejection, and is therefore not constitutionally and legally enforceable. O is going to enforce it anyway on his own "expanded" imperial authority. And there is precedent for it in his nuclear "deal" with Iran, although that one had tacit congressional pre-approval, and this one doesn't.

Just one more gray area, in other words.

Better get your caves ready, 'cause the killer leopard is getting hungry, and Moonwatcher can't be everywhere.

Mississippi Going The Gay Way Of Georgia?

by JASmius

Will Governor Phil Bryant "lie back and enjoy it" as his Peach State counterpart Nathan Deal did a few days ago? And, more interestingly, should he....or shouldn't he?

The devil, as always, is in the details:

Mississippi’s House Bill 1523 says, among other things, that public employees, businesses, and social workers cannot be punished for denying services based on the belief that marriage is strictly between a man and a woman.

Based upon my high-powered understanding of the English language, does that not go a bit beyond forcing "people of faith" to participate in paganistic, perverted mockeries of Christian social rites and rituals? Clergy and justices of the peace and caterers and photographers who belong to Jesus Christ should not be forced to participate in sodoweddings, but the further away we get from that clarity, the more questionable and less legally defensible it becomes. For instance, outside of the aforementioned context, how would a public employee (presumably not the Kim Davis scenario), business, or social worker - all very general categories - necessarily know what a client/customer believed about marriage? Wouldn't they have to ask them? And in most such situations, would that question be one that they would ordinarily ask in the context of doing their jobs? Do you see where this is headed?

Same goes for people who act on the belief that “sexual relations are properly reserved to such a marriage”....

Words mean things, folks. These days, a lot of them mean things different from when I learned them - the word "gay" comes to mind - but “sexual relations are properly reserved to such a marriage” covers a lot more ground than just sodomarriage, or homosexuality, for that matter. If you follow the logic of that statement, where you end up is "public employees, businesses, and social workers" not only asking clients/customers of their views on marriage, but their views on fornication and adultery as well. Now, just to reiterate for the record, I am against all sex outside of heterosexual marriage (and yes, I can't believe I have to etymologically drill down that far), and I have never deviated from that standard and principle in practice, and pray that I never do. But, speaking for myself but, I suspect, for a great many others of like mind, I really would have no desire to inquire of the owner of the local MAACO dealer down the street who's contracted me to keep his books if he's ever sampled the whores of Clark County, Nevada. If the McDonalds owner/operator on South Hill in Puyallup is a bigamist, that's his problem, and I do not nor do I have to approve of it, but how do his indiscretions impose anything upon me?

....and that gender is determined at birth. It says the government can’t prevent businesses from firing a transgender employee, clerks from refusing to license a s[odo]marriage, or adoption agencies from refusing to place a child with a couple who they believe may be having premarital sex.

Gender is determined at conception, actually. Because it's genetic. And "transgender" employees should be subject to termination in "at will" employment same as anybody else, though I will acknowledge that if the most qualified candidate for an, um, opening in a company I owned called himself "Caitlyn," and I wasn't running a day care center or a charter school, that would be toe-curlingly awkward, but I wouldn't have justifiable grounds on which not to hire them.

But you can see the problem by this time, I trust. It's one of indiscrimination. The Religious Liberty Accommodations Act is insufficiently targeted and possesses too large a legislative scope to be practical. It sacrifices reassertion of religious freedoms and Christian civil rights to create at least the appearance of what our atheist enemies have always accused us of plotting: "legislating morality". And it would, of course, be injuncted and struck down before the ink could even dry on Governor Bryant's signature.

So imagine his plight right about now. Phil Bryant has championed religious liberty bills in the past, and justifiably and emphatically so. Now he's faced with one that not only will never survive the legal challenges already warming up against it, but will undermine the cause of religious freedom itself by handing our enemies all the propaganda ammunition to use against us that they could ever want. It's all pain, no gain. And yet ensconsed among all the overreach are worthy items very much, indeed desperately, in need of enacting.

Brothers and sisters, if ever there was a situation tailor-made for the line-item veto, this would be it.

I hope Mississippi has one. Because otherwise, Phil Bryant's will constitute one more job that I'm glad I don't hold.

UPDATE: Woe be unto Christian barbers, as they are the next targets.