Captain Buzz Arrives In Puerto Rico

by JASmius



And it has claimed its first fatality there - and the victim was neither female nor pregnant:

Health officials on Friday confirmed the first U.S. death of a patient infected with the Zika virus in Puerto Rico.

The man, who was in his seventies, died from severe thrombocytopenia, a bleeding disorder caused by abnormally low blood platelets, which are needed for blood clotting.

Dr. Tyler Sharp of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's Dengue Branch in San Juan told Reuters the patient had Zika virus disease, which included symptoms of fever, rash and body pain.

Shortly after those symptoms subsided, the man developed "bleeding manifestations" which sent him to the doctor for treatment.

Sharp said the man was diagnosed with a rare Zika complication known as immune thrombocytopenic purpura or ITP, an autoimmune disorder in which the immune system attacks blood cells, called platelets.

Sharp said the ITP case followed the same pattern as patients with Guillain-Barre Syndrome, a paralyzing neurological disorder linked to Zika infections in which the immune system attacks nerves. In both cases, the autoimmune attack occurs after symptoms of Zika have cleared.

A heretofore unobserved complication of Zika or a mutation?  If the latter, it appears to be mutating awfully quickly, and in ways that might stop being so rare.  Currently virologists and medical personnel don't know anything about that process or those complications and have no way to stop it.  Eventually they will, but the virus is spreading with far greater rapidity.

Puerto Rico has 683 confirmed Zika cases, 65 of which are pregnant women, and five confirmed Guillain-Barre Syndrome complications.  There are over a quarter of a million confirmed and suspected cases in the Caribbean, Mexico, Central and South America.

And it's headed on our direction.

Just one more way in which my beginning-of-year prediction that 2016 would be the most cataclysmic year in American history is coming inexorably true.

Trump Claims, Blows Off Conservatism, Embraces Obamunist "Pragmatism"

by JASmius



....in one sentence:

I’m a conservative, but at this point who cares? We’ve got to straighten out the country. [emphasis added]

Which means he's not a conservative, or he would have known "who cares" and why it matters: Because only a return to constitutional conservatism has a hope in merry hell of straightening out the country.

But no.  Donald Trump won't tell us what he's going to do to "straighten out the country," offers us no track record, no political executive accomplishments, not even a claimed philosophical lodestone or compass to follow - because he has no idea what he's going to do to "straighten out the country" (and could not care less), has no track record, no political executive accomplishments, or any political record at all, and no philosophy beyond "Me, me, me," his "stubby fingers," and his ingrained New York liberal instincts that come vomiting out at high velocity whenever you challenge and press him in the slightest.  No, we're just supposed to "trust him"....by blind faith (just like his witless drone supporters do) in his "winner-winner-chicken-dinner" instincts.  You know, those of the man who has made a career, and now evidently a national pastime, of starting up YUUUUGE projects, burying them in undercapitalized, high-interest debt, and then riding them into the ground, always parachuting clear just before impact to be off to the next bankruptcy.  The man whose emotional instability may be equaled only by his mental instability, whose instinct is to insult and attack and nad-punch but never to stop...think...lift.  The man whose judgment is immensely....questionable, to be bending over backwards charitable.

We are to see Donald Trump as a blank screen, a tabula rasa onto which to project our hopes and dreams.

Is this starting to sound familiar.....?



For the love of God, Trumplicans, he's even come up with a name for your personality cult:

Not only does Donald Trump want to make America great again, he also wants to make it smart again.

The Republican front-runner has another slogan for his campaign, as it enters its 12th month ahead of Tuesday's primary in Indiana: The "smart movement".

“We have a movement going on. You know, in a way I call it the smart movement," Trump told an audience in Evansville, Indiana. [emphasis added]

Is this ringing any bells....?



Trump is using Obama's campaign gimmicks, Obama's slogans almost word for word, duping you into servile entrancement the same way Obama hypnotized low-information voters in two general election campaigns.  He's doing this deliberately because he knows you're all too brainwashed to either notice or care how YUUUUGEly he's laughing at you while at the same time rubbing our noses in both facts as well as how thoroughly he has shattered the Republican Party and the conservative movement.

Case in point - Senator Mike Lee (R-UT) on John Boehner "going Trump":



Allahpundit unloads further:

“Trump versus Cruz” was the starkest possible test for the professional GOP of how much they really care about conservatism as an ideology. Trump is....unelectable and stands guilty of nearly every moral and political vice in the conservative handbook; Cruz, although personally detested by Beltway types, is universally recognized as brilliant, well-organized, and committed to the ideology the party claims to support. This is what’s known as an easy call. Yet practically no one in Congress stepped up for Cruz, and now here’s Boehner yesterday actually suggesting that Trump is preferable....

This is the hard reality that Mike Lee’s struggling with in the clip and that grassroots conservatives have been struggling with for months, namely, that conservatism as a philosophy of governance clearly means next to nothing to all sorts of people who claim to subscribe to it, from Republican pols to “conservative” media to grassroots activists. They’ve either gone all-in for Trump cultism or they’ve let their personal pique towards Cruz lead them into preferring a guy who’s unfit for the office by temperament, civic knowledge, and experience. And no matter what happens now — Trump crashes in the general election, Cruz figures out a way to deny him in Cleveland, or whatever weird alternate scenario you can concoct — that fact will remain. Trump could lose 538-0 this fall, retire from public life, and it will still be the case that the “conservative party” consists to no small degree of people who palpably don’t much care about conservatism. Where do Lee and his fellow-travelers go from there? Say what you will about the left, at least they really do seem to believe in leftism.

I still think it's more a case of the "establishment" hating Cruz more than they back Trump - that and their disinclination to "FIGHT!  FIGHT!  FIGHT!", even, apparently, for their very political careers - but the bitterest irony that could come out of Trumpageddon is that the proof of the long-touted Tea Party charge that the "establishment" isn't conservative would have been exposed by a New York liberal interloper who swept in and led just about the entire GOP except for us #NeverTrumpers away from that same constitutional conservativism.

Talk about doubling down on Pogo.



It's brought me to another never-ever-expected life moment where I have to string together words that have never been strung together in this combination and order before: Michael Moore is right.

Michael Moore 

✔‎@MMFlint

The Republican Party (1854-2016). Born in Jackson, MI (1st convention held), died and buried at 725 5th Ave, New York City aka "Trump Tower"

12:24 PM - 28 Apr 2016

 
•  406406 Retweets
 
•  1,0481,048 likes

Except that he means that Tweet as a celebration; for surviving true conservatives, it is a lamentive eulogy of our hopes and dreams.  The one solace for me being that, as I've been telling all you dear readers for the past thirty-two months, the Old American Republic actually perished on November 6th, 2012, so Trumpmania is simply the last rigor mortis twitch.  That's where cynicism will always have the advantage over raging anger: emotional stability and an even morale keel.

Fit companions for a moral and philosophical center:

So, yes, the options are all bad — in the short term. But broaden your view beyond the race against Hillary, and the choice becomes easier: Will you sacrifice your integrity, your moral fiber, and your intellect for the sake of a single election cycle? A person who spends the next several months defending the indefensible, trying to make sense of the senseless, and excusing the inexcusable stands to do permanent damage to his reputation and the reputation of the movement he represents....

But there is also moral capital, and it’s far more fragile than its political counterpart. Once it’s squandered, even a lifetime of good works is often not enough to rebuild moral authority. God forgives the repentant, surely, but it is still often prudent for people not to trust them. And who will trust the moral judgment of those who ultimately choose to devote weeks and months of their lives to making an aggressively ignorant serial liar the leader of the free world? Trump is not the “best of bad options”; he is a cataclysm. If he defeats Hillary Clinton, his presidency will fail, and Republicans will suffer for a generation. If he loses, there’s a good chance he’ll turn the GOP into a shadow of its former self, a party reduced to holding only its safest seats and maintaining whatever political influence it still has through identity politics and clever gerrymandering.

The first step is to back Ted Cruz to the bitter end. Of course he’s not a perfect vehicle for the conservative movement; in many ways his own rhetoric has contributed to the present crisis. But there is a quantum difference between an informed, committed, and passionate conservative — whatever his faults — and a deceitful, Machiavellian liberal. Cruz is down to his Hail Mary pass, and conservatives should do all they can to help him succeed.

And if he fails, we should continue to clearly and consistently articulate our core convictions — and to reiterate as loudly and as often as possible all the reasons that both candidates will fail the American people. Neither Trumpism nor [Mrs.] Clinton’s unprincipled progressivism will do anything except exacerbate America’s structural divisions, long-term security challenges, and looming fiscal crises. Partnering with either candidate is like boarding the Titanic despite knowing it will sink. [emphases added]

A banquet of thought for those inclined to give Trump "the benefit of the doubt" or trundle out the Hillary scarecrow.

Just to show that I'm capable of closing on an optimistic note, here's a Trumpmentum-bucking Indiana poll:

Ted Cruz leads Donald Trump by double digits in a new poll of Indiana, which hosts the next contest in the GOP presidential primary on Tuesday.

The Texas senator leads the real estate mogul 45% to 29% among registered voters, according to a poll by the Mike Downs Center for Indiana Politics.

“This is good news for Cruz, but the volatility of the electorate means all campaigns should view these results cautiously,” pollster Andrew Downs said in a statement....

The survey was conducted among four hundred registered likely voters in Indiana April 13th–27th and has a margin of error of 4.9 percentage points.

Sure, every other poll over the past ten days has said the opposite, and the trend is going in the other direction.  But they're all biased and in the tank for Trump, and the MDCFIP poll is the only REAL poll with the ACCURATE state of the Indiana GOP primary race.  Isn't that how you Trumplicans roll?

Exit Tweet: Two words - party unity:

 Follow

ABC News Politics 

✔‎@ABCPolitics

Donald Trump says there 'has to be unity' in GOP, mocks Jeb Bush

1:27 PM - 29 Apr 2016

 
•  2727 Retweets
 
•  2929 likes

Obama Regime Breaches National Phone-Number Database Security

by JASmius



Come to think of it, is has been a while since the last major cybersecurity faceplant coming out of the Obama Regime.  I figured that was because there wasn't any federal or supposed-to-be-protected-by-the-feds databases that hadn't already been completely looted by our enemies.

Guess I was wrong, and the latter were just taking a breather to assimilate all of that data - and now they're back for another helping:

Federal officials fear that national security may have been jeopardized when the company building a sensitive phone-number database violated a federal requirement that only U.S. citizens work on the project.

The database is significant because it tracks nearly every phone number in North America, making it a key tool for law enforcement agencies seeking to monitor criminal or espionage targets.

Now Telcordia, a Swedish-owned firm, is being compelled to rewrite the database computer code — a massive undertaking — to assuage concerns from officials at the FBI and Federal Communications Commission that foreign citizens had access to the project. These officials fear that if other countries gain access to the code, they could reap a counterintelligence bonanza, learning the targets of U.S. law enforcement and espionage investigations. [emphasis added]

It follows the Age Of The One cybersecurity template to a fair-the-well: the Regime tried to "fix" what wasn't broken by dropping the no-bid contract the feds had had with Neustar, a northern Virginia contractor that had competently handled the security functions of the Number Portability Administration Center (NPAC) for almost twenty years, in favor of a cheaper one with Telcordia, a subsidiary of Sweden-based Ericsson, and got what they paid for:

The security rewrite began in March after the agencies learned that a Chinese citizen with a U.S. work permit had helped write the system code, said individuals familiar with the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive matter. Seven other foreign citizens, including a British engineer, also worked on the project, although it was the Chinese engineer who raised red flags for officials. [emphases added]

Use of any but U.S. citizens on any aspect of the NPAC is supposed to be strictly prohibited.  But guess who is constitutionally-charged with enforcing the laws of the land, including this one: the same bunch that outsourced a cybersecurity function directly affecting national security to a foreign cybersecurity firm in contravention of U.S. law in the first place.  And guess who they're having completely re-write the NPAC database security code?  Telcordia!  Could this get any better?

Maybe if they put a Russian, an Iranian, and a North Korean on the team this time 'round.  Heck, maybe they'll even walk into a bar, first.

Email of the Week: Minimum Wage versus Military Wage

Posted by Douglas V. Gibbs

-- Political Pistachio Conservative News and Commentary

Chaos in California. . . when parody and reality slap into each other

By Independent Correspondent Marvin J. Finklewitz, Jr.

Today a female pro-Trump rally participant touched off a near riot in
Southridge when she used her nose to reach across the street and break
the hand of a peaceful anti-Trump protester. “It's the most extraordinary thing I've ever seen” said British visitor Nigel Ditheringham. The unnamed suspect was detained and arrested on suspicion of assault with a deadly weapon due to her being rumored to be a master of an obscure martial art called Hanataka-do.

Senators Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio met in the college town of San Crucero de los Mojados to have a convivial lunch at “The Cuban Sandwich” near the university. However, as they passed in front of the “El Pocho Loco Authentic Cali Cuisine” restaurant, a number of feather festooned Aztec Dancers burst out the door of the establishment. Shouting “We are indigenous!”, they overpowered and bound the two Senators, bent them backwards over a couple of trashcans and ritually sacrificed them with
obsidian blades, cutting their hearts out and throwing the bodies down the hill across the street in a makeshift re-enactment of the ancient custom of mud bottomed Tenochtitlan, which has been buried under Mexico City for 500 years.

A table of Cal State Chancellors, pounding down Mongolian Mothers in the front outside dining area of the "Ethnic Zone" gastropub, observed this with all the wonderment of an anthropologist discovering a previously unknown tribe in the Amazon jungle of Brazil. They applauded and toasted
“The strength of cultural diversity within the Latino Community” when suddenly, beating their drums anew, the Aztec Dancers pounced on the Chancellors and summarily dispatched them in like manner.

California State Senate Grand Poobah Kevin de Leon and California Lieutenant Governor Gavin Newsom held a joint press conference in which they announced the latest middle-of-the-night gut and amend legislation, which changed the “Provide California Water Act” from funding construction of desalination plants near large coastal cities to provide water in time of drought by reclaiming funds from the bullet train project to declaring a new state holiday – Transgender Schnauzer Day.
All state offices will be closed on that day of observance.

Their press prop was a dog placed on a table with Newsom having a hand on it's shoulders and de Leon resting his palm on the root of the tail. The dog itself had male reproductive gear that would shame any four legged participant in the Mule Day festival at Bishop, California.

Facebook tycoon Mark Zuckerburg unveiled a plan to provide the jobless in California with a living wage by erasing the national borders and rolling out a red carpet path for foreigners to come to California, then denounced the richest 1% as oppressors of the American population. In
other news, Zuckerburg bought up all the housing around his own domicile, evicted the whole neighborhood, returned most of it to natural habitat – reserving some for a large Japanese Zen garden, then built a double wall perimeter around it and hired a security firm to patrol it with armed guards and attack dogs in order to have privacy. In the meantime, Zuckerburg marketed and sold data mined information of everyone who uses Facebook while using basement wage foreign labor to
tend his grounds and manage his servers. 

Zuckerburg is among those who sent $27.00 each to Bernie Sanders.

Satire by Allan McNew

-- Political Pistachio Conservative News and Commentary

Red China Bars USS John C. Stennis From Hong Kong

by JASmius



Well, at least the ChiComms didn't put two or three cruise missiles into Johnnie Reb and send it to the bottom of Beijing's lake.

That'll probably be the highlight of our next supercarrier's visit:

[Red] China denied a request from a U.S. aircraft carrier for a port visit in Hong Kong, the State [Commissaria]t said Friday, in an apparent sign of mounting tension in the disputed South China Sea.

Defense [Commissar] Ash Carter and his Philippine counterpart visited the carrier, USS John C. Stennis, in those waters two weeks ago, a move that irked Beijing.

Gabrielle Price, spokeswoman for East Asia, said the [commissaria]t was recently informed that a request for a visit by the Stennis and accompanying vessels was denied. She said the U.S. has a long record of successful port visits to Hong Kong, including a current visit by the USS Blue Ridge, and it expects that will continue.

She referred further inquiries to the Chi[Comm] government.

The Blue Ridge is the command/flagship of the U.S. Seventh Fleet, in case you're wondering.

The floor's open for questions, folks.  Like are the ChiComms planning to seize the Blue Ridge and doesn't want the Stennis nearby to be able to intervene?  How will the PLN (People's Liberation Navy) greet the next attempted port call by a U.S. warship?  Airborn interception?  Waterborne interception?  That aforementioned trio of ship-killing cruise missiles?

One thing's for sure: the ChiComms aren't "irked"; they simply see their window of opportunity ever expanding for conquest in the Western Pacific....and beyond.

Get Ready For....The Las Vegas Raiders

by JASmius



Well, I promised a more palatable afternoon palate-cleanser than Kim jong-Un's "pleasure squad," and I think I've found it - although I'm not sure that it might not give the Director a bout of heartburn:

Mark Davis was beaming as he posed with fans behind a black and silver “Las Vegas Raiders” banner. He made a few jokes before delivering a $500 million commitment to a new stadium in the city for his team.

Then the owner of the Raiders got serious about the prospects of getting fellow NFL owners to allow him to move from Oakland to a city the league has long shunned because it has legal sports betting.

“Let’s give them an offer they can’t refuse,” Davis said. “They’re going to approve it based on that.”

Little more than an idea a few months ago, the possibility of the Raiders moving to Las Vegas inched a bit closer to reality Thursday when Davis appeared before a stadium commission to not only pledge to move the Raiders to the city, but put $500 million into the $1.4 billion facility that would house the team.

I know, because he's told me on many occasions, that the Director wants the Raiders to remain in Oakland, believes they belong there and should stay there.  If they were going to move, I'm not sure what destination he would consider to be acceptable or even tolerable.  Vegas is 40% closer to his domicile than is Oakland, so that would be a favorable factor.  He does not, to my knowledge, gamble, but I'm reasonably sure he would enjoy the Star Trek Expeience, which is rumored to be returning to Sin City later this year after an eight-year absence, so that would also be a point in Vegas's favor.  And then there are all the buffets to make his feet even less visible.  I'll have to ask him tomorrow,

As to the NFL, I don't think a lot of imagination is required to picture their likely reaction, which is pretty much the entirety of why Mark Davis is proving himself to be a blackmailing chip off the old block.  This, in fact, several-ups his late father Al, who only used L.A. as a sledgehammer against the league's one time virtual ban on franchise relocation.

Key to that gambit was the fact that the elder Davis moved the Raiders southward without league approval and used that act of defiance as the grounds for an anti-trust lawsuit against the league to trying to stop him that he eventually won.  In this case, #1 son is more likely trying to use a Las Vegas move as leverage to get the same kind of plumb Bay Area stadium deal that the 49ers got from Santa Clara that became "the Big Bell Bottom":(i.e. Levi's Stadium).  But how much leverage would that threat really give him?  There's a reason why major pro sports leagues keep the home of legal sports betting at arm's-length, after all, and it's pretty much self-explanatory: the integrity of the game.  The NFL has never even played an exhibition game in Las Vegas, and the last time any pro football league did so, it was the AFL in 1964, a preseason contest between the Houston Oilers and the....Oakland Raiders.  If Mark Davis followed in all his old man's footsteps, it might just backfire on him because the league might well have a stronger case for blocking that move.

In any case, to the degree that a planned Raiders move was bona fide, Davis the Younger has to take at least part of the blame for getting beaten to the punch by the now-Los Angeles Rams, who pulled the relocation trigger first.  Ditto the (hated by Raiders fans) San Diego Chargers and the Spanos family.  The rest of the NFL fandom universe was looking at the comical prospect of Los Angeles going from having had no NFL franchises over over twenty years to having three at the same time.  The Rams are going to be residing at the old L.A. Memorial Coliseum for the time being.  A second relocated franchise might have played at Angel Stadium (where, ironically, the Rams used to play before they moved to St. Louis in 1994).  Where would a third one have moved in?  The Rose Bowl?  I can't imagine coordinating with UCLA would have been without complications.

I guess that's the OTHER reason why Mark Davis rang up Sin City.

Exit question: Would Raiders cheerleaders wear big, gaudy headdresses, a smile, and....nothing else?


UPDATE: The Raider's second-round draft pick is an Illinois defensive end named....Jihad (Ward).

Yes, we'll definitely be talking football tomorrow.

Kim Jong-Un's "Pleasure Squad"

by JASmius



I guess the Un-dictator wanted to top any The Interview sequel that Seth Rogen and James Franco and Sony could ever throw together.  Heck, maybe this WAS the Interview sequel and the NoKos stole it when they hacked Sony a year and a half ago:

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has a group of teenage girls who follow him wherever he goes to "serve his needs", according to recent reports.

The Mirror claims the practice, which began with former leader and Kim's father Kim Jong Il, involves a group of girls known as the "Gippeumjo," or Pleasure Squad.

You'll understand if I don't post any pictures more nausea-inducing than the one above.

The girls are reportedly taken from their schools and examined by a doctor to ensure their virginity, and eventually end up in the group that follows Kim around.

The girls are not always called on for sex, but the Mirror reports that it "does occur". Some of the girls being taken for Kim's group are as young as thirteen. [emphases added]

Sounds downright....Mohammedan, doesn't it?

Try to picture laying on your back, staring up at this face....



....and then try to keep your tree-bark lunch down.



Of course, I'm kidding - there's no way Kim's stubby little arms could hold up bulk of that mass.  You'd have to imagine look down into that face and swallowing your violently-expelled stomach contents back down to avoid barfing in that bulbous skull-front, which would probably earn you a bullet through the head a couple of seconds later.

Yeah, that was an afternoon palate-cleanser, even if it wasn't a breath-freshener.  Let me rummage around and see if I can't come up with something more Dramamine-esque.

Obama Imperial Gun Confiscation Update

by JASmius



Two items bobbed to the surface today, one relatively benign, the other fraught with ominousness:

Barack Obama announced new steps Friday to help curb gun violence, including by identifying the requirements that "smart guns" would have to meet for law enforcement agencies to buy and use them as well as sharing mental health records with the federal background check system. [emphasis added]

You see the dichotomy.

Smart guns use various technologies to prevent an accidental shooting or help track down a missing gun....

As Obama unveiled a[n illegal, unlawful, unconstitutional] plan last January to expand federal background checks for gun purchases, he directed the [Commissaria]ts of Defense, Homeland [Ins]ecurity and [Inj]ustice[, Revenge & Coverup] to conduct or sponsor research into smart-gun technology. Obama also instructed the agencies to regularly review the availability of such technology and to promote its use.

In a report released Friday, the [Inj]ustice[, Revenge & Coverup] and Homeland [Ins]ecurity [commissaria]ts said they expect to complete the work of identifying the smart-gun requirements by October.

The Defense [Commissaria]t will continue to help manufacturers test smart firearms under real-world conditions at the U.S. Army Aberdeen Test Center in Maryland.

Aside from the question of whether these are congressionally-created and -funded programs, the "smart gun" angle seems relatively harmless, as long as its use is "researched" and "tested" and "promoted" as opposed to "required" or "mandated".  For Barack Obama, this is an almost stunning level of imperial restraint and might actually border on "common sense".  If technology can contribute to gun safety in the same way that gun safety courses and training do, that sounds like something the NRA is probably already promoting itself.

But the mental health record "sharing" is back to despotic business as usual:

The president also called for more attention to be paid to the mentally ill. The Social Security Administration will publish a proposed rule to help ensure that mental health records about people who are prohibited from buying a gun are reported to the background check system. The public will have sixty days to comment after the proposed rule is published in the Federal Register. [emphasis added]

And those comments will have absolutely no effect on whether or not the rule is illegally implemented, so what's the point another than to get further on the Regime's punitive radar screen?

Again we have to ask the question: How expansive and coonveniently Agenda-serving is the White House's definition of "mental illness"?  We know that they favor including PTSD in that category, which would forcibly disamr many veterans, for example.  Taken to its ultimate (i.e. Soviet) extreme, "mental illness" could be stretched to include Second Amendment support and the "wrong" ideological and political leanings.  It could be made to take any form and encompass any number of demographics to maximally achieve The One's policy and partisan objectives.  In short, "justifiable, 'common sense'" gun confiscation.  And the low-information voter herd would probably slurp it right down like a doggie treat.

There's a big difference between "promotion" and "encouragement" of technologies to actually make firearms safer and bureaucratic character assassination to justify Second Amendment contraction.

Consider that my "public comment" (or "shooting" off my mouth), Barry, in lieu of blowing my nose in a Federal Register that would require a months-long sinus infection to fully accomplish.  And I had one of those once, and wouldn't care to repeat it.

Anti-Trump Violence in Southern California

By Douglas V. Gibbs

I was asked to join many of my friends out there in Costa Mesa for a huge rally for Donald Trump only a few days after madness ensued right up the road in Anaheim.  A large number of those folks who were in Costa Mesa for Trump are involved in a group called "We the People Rising," whose primary focus is the illegal alien invasion.  When I got home last night scenes from the madness that resulted at the Trump Rally, caused by anti-Trump rioters, were flashing across the television screen. . . and the first face I saw was my friend Raul.

The biggest argument used by anti-Trumpsters against Trump is that they think he is racist, and they attack folks like Raul who supports Trump because they claim the presidential candidate is racist against Mexicans because of his stance on immigration.

This is not the first time Raul has been attacked for being a supporter for Trump.  When Anaheim's city council earlier this week was working to pass a ridiculous measure against what they consider to be Trump's "racist rhetoric," my buddy Raul Rodriguez was pepper-sprayed by an anti-Trump agitator.

Notice, the alleged racist against Mexicans who supports the racist Donald Trump that was attacked with pepper-spray is named Raul Rodriguez.

Think about it, for a moment.

You know, it's interesting.  My wife was born in Mexico, immigrated here legally, naturalized in 2007, and is a huge supporter of Trump.  It is the promise of a wall between us and Mexico that primarily attracted her support.  She's been saying we need a wall for years.  She rejects being a hyphenated Mexican-American, too.  "My dad brought us here to be Americans, not Mexicans.  If I wanted to be Mexican, I'd go back to Mexico."

The liberal left's agenda refuses to accept such talk.  Their premise says that either you are allowing anyone and everyone into the country, or you are a racist.  And if you don't like it, they will get violent to prove their point.

Just ask Raul Rodriguez.

So, as the Trump rally began, rioters began to rage outside Trump rally in Costa Mesa.  They acted in a manner that reminded me more of animals throwing temper-tantrums than people trying to get across their political viewpoint.  They smashed a police car, hurled rocks at motorists, and committed a number of other violent acts.  Among the anti-Trump protesters hundreds were waving Mexican flags.  The violent rioters outnumbered the cops, and overwhelmed police presence.  The video from the event shows how violent, and bloody, the scene truly got.

Another pair of friends of mine were noticed by the Trump campaign, and Robin and Ly wound up on stage with Donald Trump.  He saw their banners memorializing Americans killed by illegal aliens, and he asked them to be on stage with him to honor the families of those killed by illegals.  According to Sean Hannity, Trump is the only GOP candidate to respond to a letter for the victims.

When people scream at me that Donald Trump is a racist, my first response is, "What has he said that you consider racist?"

They can't claim that his rhetoric regarding illegal aliens is racist, for he is simply asking that the law is enforced, and that the federal government does its job of securing the national border.  Have you ever seen Mexico's southern border, with its razor wire and heavy patrols?

I, personally, am not a Trump-fan, per se.  I do, however, understand the argument used by his supporters.  The federal government has refused to protect the union from invaders, be it through illegal immigration, or Islamic migrants.  Trump not only stands in favor of protecting our borders, but he is adamant about it.  And, a large portion of Americans believe that the political machine has become a ruling class. . . that when you get down to the inner-workings of the political establishment, there really isn't any difference between the two political parties.  They work together to protect their power, not to do what is best for the country, or in the case of the GOP, to support their very constitutional party platform.  And, as a result of their maladministration (to use James Madison's term), America is losing ground on being the great country it has always been.  We are losing grip on our American System, and its foundation, and there are invaders coming into the country who specifically want to destroy the American way of life, to change it into something it was never intended to be.  Trump says he plans to stop that, to be an immovable object standing in the way of those who would destroy the American Way.

Is it possible for one man to make America great again?  And, if he is capable of that, at what point does his power to do so retreat back into the Constitutional concept of limited government?  In other words, Trump supporters believe it takes a strong personality to stop the slide into destruction our nation finds itself in, but can that strong personality be contained if it decided to head in a destructive, totalitarian direction?

If Trump gets the nomination as the GOP candidate in the 2016 General Election, I will vote for him, because as bad as some people may think he is, I believe him to be better than someone like Hillary Clinton.  To be honest, though, if we are doing our job of being informed and active, it shouldn't matter who is in the White House.  If we are doing our job as citizens, our representatives will ensure the President is doing as we desire.

It's up to us.

-- Political Pistachio Conservative News and Commentary

SCOTUS Lets Stand Texas Voter ID Law

by JASmius



First North Carolina, now Texas; I hope this is the start of an election integrity counter-trend.

Although the latter is not quite to that optimistic level:

The Supreme Court on Friday rejected an emergency appeal to stop Texas from enforcing its challenged voter ID law. But the court said it could revisit the issue as the November elections approach.

The law has been in effect for recent elections, even after a trial judge struck it down in 2014 and an appellate panel found last year that the law had a "discriminatory effect" on minority voters.

Which is tantamount to saying that they can't read, pat their tummies and chew bubble gum at the same time, or tie their shoelaces without ensnarling them together.  A racist slur, in other words.  That's how I would take such elitist presumptuousness if I were a member of one of those maligned demographics.

The challengers in the ongoing lawsuit argue there is no reason to allow the requirement to show picture identification at the polls to remain in place.

Other than that their frivolous and insulting litigation has not reached a favorable conclusion yet.  They don't award the Lombardi trophy at mid-season, after all.  Or would the Texas plaintiffs like to review Judge Thomas Schroeder's ruling for the resoundingly valid reasons why?  I'm guessing probably not.

Ditto Olympus....for now.

But justices rejected the plea in a brief order Friday. The full New Orleans-based [and constitutionalist-leaning] appeals court will hold a new hearing on the Texas law in May.

The high court said that it is aware of "the time constraints the parties confront in light of the scheduled elections." If the full appeals court has not issued a ruling by July 20th, the court said, it would entertain a renewed emergency appeal over the voter ID law. [emphasis added]

And probably decide the same as they did today, since they would almost certainly deadlock on this case as well, effectively affirming the likely Fifth Circuit decision.  Besides, if Trumpageddon reaches such proportions that the Lone Star State becomes flippable, voter fraud really isn't going to play any relevant factor in that outcome, now is it?

Exit question: Let's just say, purely for the sake of argument, that a Trump-Rodham race was close, and it played out identically to the Bush-Gore 2000 election only with Hillary seventeen hundred votes or so on top in Florida.  Most of us remember the surreality of the post-election campaign where Al Gore tried to "count" and sue his way to victory in a bloodless coup attempt, a civic atrocity that became the model and standard for all the successfully stolen elections the Dems have collected since then.  In the exact same situation, with The Donald seventeen hundred votes short of the presidency, would Trumplicans support his following Fat Albert's horrible example, or would they want him to graciously concede, how ever bitter the loss?

Yeah, that was a rhetorical question.

Trump Campaign “Utterly Divorced From Reality”

by JASmius



I've been reporting for weeks now how Trump's stratospheric negatives with pretty much every voter demographic, his eating of Hillary Clinton's polling dust, his across-the-board polling underperformance versus the reviled Mitt Romney four years ago, and explaining how what matters in polls outside of the weekend before an election is the size of the margins and the trends across all polls.  If they're all saying pretty much the same thing and headed in pretty much the same direction - as is the case with Trump - then "liberal bias" cannot account for anything more than a small fraction of these numbers.  To try and pretend otherwise, and to argue that the very personality and tactics that have buried The Donald in this Grand Canyon-esque general election hole are somehow going to catapult him to November triumph rather than digging him even deeper and turning the Empress into a sympathetic figure, playing right into her inevitable playing of the "vagina card", is pure delusion.

Donald Trump cannot "experience" his way to victory, because he has none.  He cannot "substance" his way to victory, because he is the epitome of policy ignorance and leftist instinct.  And his only card - insult (or "entertain") his way to victory - will cause mass cathartic orgasmic release among his followers, but that will backfire on him as well.

Trump cannot win.  And nominating him is tantamount to forfeiting the White House to Hillary Clinton - with or without #NeverTrumpers.

That was Ted Cruz's argument this morning on the Hugh Hewitt program, and he made it almost as deftly as I did:

HH: Senator, Ross Douthat in the New York Times wrote a very interesting column, I don’t know if you’ve had a chance to see it yesterday, but he points out 300 million Americans, 125 million will vote, [and] Donald Trump [ha]s [won] about ten million votes, I’m not sure what your vote total is, he’s won more votes than you. Nevertheless, Douthat argues that in this primary electorate, the Trump support seems unwilling to accept evidence that Donald Trump will not win in the fall, that they reject that evidence as bias, that he will put New York and Michigan into play and in fact, Corey Lewandowski yesterday said he would win Massachusetts, others say Pennsylvania. What do you make about those arguments and what do you make about Douthat’s assumption regarding their unwillingness to deal with what the media puts out as facts?

Pardon me a moment gentlemen....



....I had to get that out of my system.

TC: I didn’t read that particular column, but I can tell you on the merits that the Trump campaign operates in a fact-free environment. They are utterly divorced from reality. The numbers are clear, if Trump is the nominee, Hillary wins and she wins by double-digits. He gets obliterated. Donald Trump right now is losing the State of Utah [or was as of five weeks ago]. Utah as you know, may well be the reddest State in the Union. If a Republican cannot carry the most conservative State in the Union, we’re looking at a “Walter-Mondale”[-magnitude] blowout. I will note in contrast, that if I’m the nominee, we [can] win. We carry key swing States, we carry independents, right now I’m beating Hillary Clinton with young people by double-digits, but let me tell you the even more broad point of even just electability – it is stunning how many issues Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton agree on. If you’re a social conservative, it should bother you that Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton both agree on taxpayer-funding for Planned Parenthood and both of them think Planned Parenthood is wonderful, that’s their word. It should bother you that Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton both agreed with Bill Clinton on banning many of the most popular firearms in America. As the president, I’m going to defend the 2nd amendment, not seek to ban guns.

And so on and so on and so on.  See the whole tale of the tape here.

Here are the comparative electability numbers in another bellwether "red" State that has only gone "blue" once in the past seventy years - Arizona:



Trump trails the Ugly Dutchess in the Grand Canyon State by seven, while Cruz leads her by five.  Just sayin'.  Or as Captain Ed put it, "If Arizona’s really in play, then the GOP is in deep, deep trouble."

But Trumplicans just don't care.  And that has happened before in American political history.  Our conservative forebears in the Goldwater movement didn't push him over the top in 1964 because they were trying to defeat the functionally invincible Lyndon Johnson, fresh off the JFK assassination tragedy; they were trying to seize the Republican Party from the real RINOs as the national political vehicle and home for the conservative movement, which it has been - until now.  The extreme Left didn't inflict the 1972 McGovern disaster on the Democrat Party because they thought he could unseat President Nixon - he was probably the only Donk candidate who couldn't - but because they were "anti-war," anti-American, pro-communist vermin forty years ahead of their time, and he represented them.  It was a gigantic middle finger to the country they hated, and they flipped it.  And Nixon was reelected in an LBJ-Goldwatereque landslide.

Sometimes nominating electorates just make emotional, irrational, suicidal choices.  It's just been a lifetime or more for most of us since Republicans have committed such electoral hari-kari.

That's what Trumplicans are reprising now:

It requires staggering self-deception to place the blame for a Trump general-election defeat anywhere except where it would belong: squarely on the shoulders of Donald Trump. It’s not on account of a Twitter hashtag that the average polling spread for the last month has [Mrs.] Clinton winning by 8.5 points, or that only five head-to-head polls in the last year projected that Trump would run better than [Mrs.] Clinton (and even then only modestly). It’s not because of a handful of vocal conservatives that Trump’s unfavorable ratings started, when he announced last June, at 68% — and that they are at nearly the same place now. That’s on Donald Trump.

And so would be a loss in November. Trump has unprecedented name recognition. He’s garnered some $1.9 billion in free publicity during this presidential cycle — more than six times as much as his closest competitor (Cruz). He has “Ten Billion Dollars” at his disposal. Trump has everything he needs to be president. If he can’t do it because there is a group of conservatives who are not interested in rallying around an untrustworthy liberal who mocks the handicapped and calls women “pigs” — isn’t that his problem? Isn’t it Trump’s problem if a whole lot of conservatives think that women shouldn’t be punished for having abortions, that the president of the United states shouldn’t retweet white supremacists, and that American foreign policy shouldn’t be operated like a protection racket? If Donald Trump wants conservative votes, isn’t it his job to show that he represents conservatives? And if those conservatives won’t acquiesce, then Trump’s supporters can go out and find other people who will vote for him. That’s also how elections work.

But Trump’s partisans won’t do that — because winning this election is not actually what they’re about. They’re not about “making America great again.” They’re sure as hell not about party unity. They’re about vengeance. They’re about crushing the conservatives they believe have betrayed them. They’re about tying the villains to the tracks and pushing the TrumpTrain™ full-steam ahead. [emphasis added]

Most Trumplicans are not "alt-right" white supremacists; they're ex-Tea Partiers who were far more "populist" than conservative.  They saw the Right as a means to an end - the slaying of Obamunism - and, entering politics in the "red wave" 2010 cycle, got the mistaken impression that politics was easy and all they had to do to win forever was "FIGHT!  FIGHT!  FIGHT!"  The 2012 cycle should have taught them otherwise, that politics is tough, that the other side gets to "FIGHT!  FIGHT!  FIGHT!" back, that they fight dirty, and that constitutionalist principles constrain us from reciprocating in kind.

But it didn't.  They rejected that lesson.  And that's when this intra-party fissure opened up.  They either let their anger overwhelm them or were always dominated by it, but either way, "winning" was more important to them than any set of philosophical principles, they saw that our principles were "restraining" Republicans from playing dirty in retaliation, and so they had no more use for conservatism or the GOP.  And then along came an unprincipled, unscrupulous New York liberal conman who embodied every bit of the "win at any cost, by any means necessary" "ethic" and promised them he'd "schlong" their professed enemies - which now included conservative Republicans - and it was off to the races.

And it'll be all downhill from there.  Which will only stoke their raging recriminations incendiarily more.

Ted Cruz bouncing back in Indiana next Tuesday is pretty much a necessity to derail that crazy train.  And the Texas senator just picked another leg up in that effort - or a thigh, at least:

Jonathan Karl 

✔‎@jonkarl

Mike Pence will endorse @tedcruz today, a source familiar with his plans tells me.

7:18 AM - 29 Apr 2016 · Arlington, VA, United States

 
•  287287 Retweets
 
•  229229 likes

Dan Balz 

✔‎@danbalz

Pence after endorsing Cruz: I urge everyone to make up their own minds.

9:15 AM - 29 Apr 2016

 
•  3535 Retweets
 
•  2222 likes

Gee, thanks, Governor.... I think.