What does the sole of a sensible shoe taste like?

Hillary's emails may or may not amount to evidence of a crime, but they certainly make for some fun reading. For example, suppose you were thinking that you were not good at ingratiating yourself with people in power. You know, you always wanted to lick the boots of greatness, but you never really got the chance. Well, now you can follow the example of great Clinton friend Lanny Davis (but be sure not to lean over your keyboard or anything else that might be damaged by vomit when you read the tweet below):

Lanny Davis asked Hillary to talk to a reporter writing a profile, and this is how the email started. pic.twitter.com/qHSyJZ4Opk

— Gabriel Debenedetti (@gdebenedetti) September 1, 2015

If we had good reporters, somebody would ask Lanny whether the soles of Hillary's sensible shoes would taste better with a little salt, or maybe even a strip of bacon?

Reparations? Not in This Life!

Mere de Hammer with brother Cliff 1949

Cliff 1950 on grandparent's front
 steps

Grandparents 1955

Mom and Cliff  on grandparent's swing1954

"When Clyde Ross was still a child, Mississippi authorities claimed his father owed $3,000 in back taxes. The elder Ross could not read. He did not have a lawyer. He did not know anyone at the local courthouse. He could not expect the police to be impartial. Effectively, the Ross family had no way to contest the claim and no protection under the law. The authorities seized the land. They seized the buggy. They took the cows, hogs, and mules. And so for the upkeep of separate but equal, the entire Ross family was reduced to sharecropping."

Ta-Nehisi Coates

Here's another family of the same generation that was "reduced to sharecropping". I doubt very much their standard of living was any higher than Clyde Ross and his family. But some would have the descendants of Tobe and Prudence (my grandparents) pay REPARATIONS to the descendants of Clyde Ross. Why? Because Clyde was poor? Because he couldn't pay his taxes which the author implies were not owed? The fact is I don't owe Clyde Ross or his family a damned thing, and if I'm forced to pay I will exercise my God given right to defend my rights. If YOU choose to throw your money away out of some misplaced guilt then that's up to you. Keep me out of it!

"Conservatism" is NOT Serving Conservatives!

Have Republicans suddenly gone stupid? They can read a poll. They know what Trump's candidacy is all about. They know what the base wants but yet they resist. Plus, oddly, much the same thing is going on on the Democrat side, but that's another post for another day.

So what's the end game here? A couple of months ago Jeb, (the quintessential establishment, monied, out-of-touch, disingenuous, elitist prick) was thrilled about Donald Trump. The thinking was he'll bloody the small fry while Jeb flies above the fray. WRONGO! Jeb might be the first out... and why? Because the people who control this party ain't the party. They might control most of the money but they don't control us.

There are already signs that a few of these candidates are starting to get it, IMMIGRATION is the key. They're still very tentative, this is the age of Obama after all, and they don't want a trumped up charge of racism to kill their candidacy. But it's encouraging that a couple have stuck their toe in the water. If their numbers go up look for every last one of them to try to "out wall" the other. Our goal is to SHUT DOWN THE BORDER COMPLETELY, impose a moratorium on ALL immigration for 10 years so as to "digest" the legal immigrants that have flooded the country for 20+ years as well as institute a visa system that TRACKS tourists and students etc. that are responsible for 40% of illegal immigration. Also to do away with "anchor babies" which any honest, thoughtful and reasonably intelligent person knows is not a Constitutional right.

So, don't be fooled by "conservatives". John Boehner and Mitch McConnell are "conservatives". They are of course false-flag progressives and the immigration issue is just smoking them out. So let's keep it up and we may just win this party back...and an election too!

A post about Elizabeth Warren, but not politics

In the morning mail we find this story, in which Elizabeth Warren, granted the great boon of seeing Pope Francis address the United States Congress, offers her granddaughter Warren's one and only "guest ticket." Granddaughter declines, because school.

Huh? A once-in-a-lifetime chance to see a pope -- even a Commie pope -- address the United States Congress, and freaking school is the conflict? This is elevating a given day of school, which for almost everybody, including no doubt Warren's granddaughter, is trackless hours of nonsense punctuated by occasional real learning, to a status it does not deserve.

It is tempting to pin this on Warren somehow, since I am sorely tempted by any opportunity to pin anything on her, but the ugly truth is that a huge proportion of aspiring and educated parents of the striving class would make the same foolish decision (recognizing, because the milk of intellectual honesty flows through my veins, that I actually have no basis for knowing why school was a conflict in this case -- perhaps it was on the day of a stage production for which the granddaughter was to be center stage, so to speak, or some shit like that), regardless of the consequences for actual learning, curiosity, or, most importantly, the urgent and permanent need to acquire stories with which to entertain kith and kin over the decades.

That is all.

Ten Reasons Why Reparations for Blacks is a Bad Idea for Blacks - and Racist TooBy: David Horowitz FrontPageMagazine.com | Wednesday, January 03, 2001

One
There Is No Single Group Clearly Responsible For The Crime Of Slavery
Black Africans and Arabs were responsible for enslaving the ancestors of African-Americans. There were 3,000 black slave-owners in the ante-bellum United States. Are reparations to be paid by their descendants too?

Two
There Is No One Group That Benefited Exclusively From Its Fruits
The claim for reparations is premised on the false assumption that only whites have benefited from slavery. If slave labor created wealth for Americans, then obviously it has created wealth for black Americans as well, including the descendants of slaves. The GNP of black America is so large that it makes the African-American community the 10th most prosperous "nation" in the world. American blacks on average enjoy per capita incomes in the range of twenty to fifty times that of blacks living in any of the African nations from which they were kidnapped.

Three
Only A Tiny Minority Of White Americans Ever Owned Slaves, And Others Gave Their Lives To Free Them
Only a tiny minority of Americans ever owned slaves. This is true even for those who lived in the ante-bellum South where only one white in five was a slaveholder. Why should their descendants owe a debt? What about the descendants of the 350,000 Union soldiers who died to free the slaves? They gave their lives. What possible moral principle would ask them to pay (through their descendants) again?

Four
America Today Is A Multi-Ethnic Nation and Most Americans Have No Connection (Direct Or Indirect) To Slavery
The two great waves of American immigration occurred after 1880 and then after 1960. What rationale would require Vietnamese boat people, Russian refuseniks, Iranian refugees, and Armenian victims of the Turkish persecution, Jews, Mexicans Greeks, or Polish, Hungarian, Cambodian and Korean victims of Communism, to pay reparations to American blacks?

Five
The Historical Precedents Used To Justify The Reparations Claim Do Not Apply, And The Claim Itself Is Based On Race Not Injury
The historical precedents generally invoked to justify the reparations claim are payments to Jewish survivors of the Holocaust, Japanese-Americans and African- American victims of racial experiments in Tuskegee, or racial outrages in Rosewood and Oklahoma City. But in each case, the recipients of reparations were the direct victims of the injustice or their immediate families. This would be the only case of reparations to people who were not immediately affected and whose sole qualification to receive reparations would be racial. As has already been pointed out, during the slavery era, many blacks were free men or slave-owners themselves, yet the reparations claimants make no distinction between the roles blacks actually played in the injustice itself. Randall Robinson's book on reparations, The Debt, which is the manifesto of the reparations movement is pointedly sub-titled "What America Owes To Blacks." If this is not racism, what is?

Six
The Reparations Argument Is Based On The Unfounded Claim That All African-American Descendants of Slaves Suffer From The Economic Consequences Of Slavery And Discrimination
No evidence-based attempt has been made to prove that living individuals have been adversely affected by a slave system that was ended over 150 years ago. But there is plenty of evidence the hardships that occurred were hardships that individuals could and did overcome. The black middle-class in America is a prosperous community that is now larger in absolute terms than the black underclass. Does its existence not suggest that economic adversity is the result of failures of individual character rather than the lingering after-effects of racial discrimination and a slave system that ceased to exist well over a century ago? West Indian blacks in America are also descended from slaves but their average incomes are equivalent to the average incomes of whites ( and nearly 25% higher than the average incomes of American born blacks). How is it that slavery adversely affected one large group of descendants but not the other? How can government be expected to decide an issue that is so subjective - and yet so critical - to the case?

Seven
The Reparations Claim Is One More Attempt To Turn African-Americans Into Victims. It Sends A Damaging Message To The African-American Community.
The renewed sense of grievance -- which is what the claim for reparations will inevitably create -- is neither a constructive nor a helpful message for black leaders to be sending to their communities and to others. To focus the social passions of African-Americans on what some Americans may have done to their ancestors fifty or a hundred and fifty years ago is to burden them with a crippling sense of victim-hood. How are the millions of refugees from tyranny and genocide who are now living in America going to receive these claims, moreover, except as demands for special treatment, an extravagant new handout that is only necessary because some blacks can't seem to locate the ladder of opportunity within reach of others -- many less privileged than themselves?

Eight
Reparations To African Americans Have Already Been Paid
Since the passage of the Civil Rights Acts and the advent of the Great Society in 1965, trillions of dollars in transfer payments have been made to African-Americans in the form of welfare benefits and racial preferences (in contracts, job placements and educational admissions) - all under the rationale of redressing historic racial grievances. It is said that reparations are necessary to achieve a healing between African-Americans and other Americans. If trillion dollar restitutions and a wholesale rewriting of American law (in order to accommodate racial preferences) for African-Americans is not enough to achieve a "healing," what will?

Nine
What About The Debt Blacks Owe To America?
Slavery existed for thousands of years before the Atlantic slave trade was born, and in all societies. But in the thousand years of its existence, there never was an anti-slavery movement until white Christians - Englishmen and Americans -- created one. If not for the anti-slavery attitudes and military power of white Englishmen and Americans, the slave trade would not have been brought to an end. If not for the sacrifices of white soldiers and a white American president who gave his life to sign the Emancipation Proclamation, blacks in America would still be slaves. If not for the dedication of Americans of all ethnicities and colors to a society based on the principle that all men are created equal, blacks in America would not enjoy the highest standard of living of blacks anywhere in the world, and indeed one of the highest standards of living of any people in the world. They would not enjoy the greatest freedoms and the most thoroughly protected individual rights anywhere. Where is the gratitude of black America and its leaders for those gifts?

Ten
The Reparations Claim Is A Separatist Idea That Sets African-Americans Against The Nation That Gave Them Freedom
Blacks were here before the Mayflower. Who is more American than the descendants of African slaves? For the African-American community to isolate itself even further from America is to embark on a course whose implications are troubling. Yet the African-American community has had a long-running flirtation with separatists, nationalists and the political left, who want African-Americans to be no part of America's social contract. African Americans should reject this temptation.
For all America's faults, African-Americans have an enormous stake in their country and its heritage. It is this heritage that is really under attack by the reparations movement. The reparations claim is one more assault on America, conducted by racial separatists and the political left. It is an attack not only on white Americans, but on all Americans -- especially African-Americans.
America's African-American citizens are the richest and most privileged black people alive -- a bounty that is a direct result of the heritage that is under assault. The American idea needs the support of its African-American citizens. But African-Americans also need the support of the American idea. For it is this idea that led to the principles and institutions that have set African-Americans - and all of us -- free.

"The Case for Reparations"

In the category of confronting one's own predispositions, for me a life-long endeavor, consider reading Ta-Hahisi Coates' essay "The Case for Reparations" if you have not already done in the year since it was published. With a few qualifications -- I think Coates unnecessarily weakened its otherwise considerable power with a pointless digression on climate change toward the end -- I found it persuasive.

Among the many things that might be said, and have been said, about Coates' essay, there are several worth mentioning.

Coates distinguishes between establishing the fact of the debt for which reparations would be owed and the means by which reparations might be paid, and offers no detailed or even useful solution to that end. One might say that the means of the reparations and the case for reparations are intertwined with no hope of separation. If reparations were cheap and easy, surely we would have done at this point. It is the probability that they would be vast, after a true accounting of the value stolen from American slaves and their descendants, that makes this such a difficult discussion. Of course, if the unspoken fear of the scope of reparations keeps us from a full reckoning of the underlying injustice, then we stand at the brink of admitting its enormous scale. But only at the brink.

Coates' solution is to support HR 40, a bill that John Conyers introduces every year. According to Coates, HR 40 would establish a commission to study the feasibility of paying reparations, including their size and the device for making payment. It is easy to dismiss Coates for signing up for what seems like a dodgy way around the feasibility question. It is also easy to charge that a reparations commission would become just another means for stirring up Democratic constituencies. I disagree. I think Conyers bill has not gone anywhere, even in Democratic Congresses, because it would fracture the Democratic coalition, of which more later.

The greatest value in Coates essay, and the reason intellectually honest Americans of good will ought to read it, is that it teaches that African-American poverty and social pathology have extremely deep and aged roots, were exacerbated by government policies from the left and right for 100 years after emancipation, and that expectations for their rapid amelioration are woefully misguided. A further exploration of this history and its consequences for African-American social and economic parity would be, I think, the greatest value in a reparations commission, at least if it demanded rigorous standards in the history it produced.

If Coates' essay has a glaring flaw, it is that he argues for African-American exceptionalism -- that oppression of African-Americans was and is unique in scope, duration, and consequences -- without exploring the consequences for other groups that make claims against the privileged. If African-Americans have a unique claim to a remedy that we have mostly ignored, then what ought our response be to claims from blacks not descended from American slaves, Latinos, LGBTs, women, and other constituencies important to Democrats? One suspects that even Democratic Congressional leaders have bottled up Conyers' bill precisely because there is no politically useful answer to that question. If we were to decide that African-American descendants of slaves (and perhaps Native Americans) deserved reparations and nobody else did, the required distinction between the proposed recipients and other groups would blow away the justification for a huge number of big government programs and other legal preferences for ethnic constituencies. And, worse for the academics, it would establish a "hierarchy of oppression," which is anathema to the ideologues in the field.

For my part, I have long regarded reparations as the only sound basis for demographic preferences in hiring, contracting, or university admissions because, well, all the other rationales make no sense at all. That view is extremely unpopular, though, because it requires liberals to admit there is no real basis for preferences for constituencies other than African-American descendants of slaves and Native Americans, and it requires conservatives to acknowledge that African-American poverty and social pathology depend heavily from slavery and Jim Crow, those ugly stains on the American virtue that conservatives hold so dear.

Regardless, it cannot hurt you to read "The Case for Reparations." Or can it?

Who's On First, Who's Out First?

Ok, those of us who follow politics closely have had a chance to see what's out there, so let's do a little critiquing shall we? Who is looking good with STAYING POWER, who's just staying afloat with money and who's on life support?

1. Trump: Who woulda figured? But I still don't see him going anywhere. As I've said repeatedly, he's riding ONE issue and his support is no more than a clarion call to the establishment; GET IMMIGRATION FIXED! Some are still too friggin' dumb to see this simple fact and, well, money can't by me love and if you think crossing a border for money is love then your ass is grass.
2. Bush: See previous. But I am enjoying the slow burn of the country club Republicans! I hope it hurts!
3. Carson: I like Ben Carson. The man has good ideas, his politics are right on and he's brilliant. But smarts ain't enough. Although he's a quick learner, politics at this level requires a skill set few possess. I doubt he'll be able to keep up but if he can then I'm onboard all the way.
4. Rubio: Marco is the best politician in the bunch. He comes across as being genuine without pandering. I can see him winning but I still don't trust the guy on immigration. If he nails that down it's off to the races.
5. Walker: After what he did in Wisconsin Walker was a lot of folk's early choice, including mine. But he's kind of bland on the stump. Dullsville might play in Racine (Cheeseheads in general are very subdued, unless they're playing the Vikings) but he's got to show some fire along with the ice.
6. Cruz: I think Ted Cruz is deceptively brilliant. He's been careful not to criticize Trump and is even cozying up to him a bit. His views on immigration are nearly identical but a lot less bombastic. I think he's positioning himself to pick up the pieces when Trump does finally implode.
7. Huckabee: The religious fundamentalist's candidate. He's gonna pull 10% just about everywhere apart from Greenwich Village, Chapel Hill, Provincetown and the Maryland Eastern shore, but that's it, he's maxed out. He's an also, also ran.
8. Fiorina: I LOVE THIS WOMAN! If the Tickbite primary were today I'd vote Fiorina President and Earl "The Squirrel" Odell for mayor (the man is to squirrels what Mini-soda dentists are to lions!). I like her style, I like her demeanor, I like her policies and I like her guts. Politics is funny. As a woman she could turn the tables on Democrats and get through a lot of things a man perhaps couldn't. Choosing her would put identity politics in our corner for a change.
9. Paul: Trump nailed him, too WEIRD!
10. The rest: Kasich (Bush clone) Christie (sell by date expired) Perry (retread...with holes) Jindal (too nerdy) Gilmore (who?) Graham (fat girl in a bikini, can't bear to look at him) Pataki (a New Yorker, really?) Santorum (a Yankee version of Huckabee).

Now, nobody here gets your putter to flutter? There are others you know. Let's have a look.
•Andy Martin; a lawyer from Connecticut. He has a long history of litigation (as a defendant) and some view him as an anti-semite. Too bad, he coulda been in the hunt.
•Kerry Bowers; ECU educated and Nevada resident, Bowers is a 30 year career military guy and from what I read a quality conservative through and through. But come on dude, you might want to start off with something a little more attainable than President. Just the fact you're running calls your judgment into question.
•K. Ross Newland; in a nutshell a religious zealot.
•Jack Fellure; this guy is hilarious. He's been running for President since 1988. Part of his platform is to bring back prohibition and criminalize homosexuality. He'd do well in Tehran I'm thinking.
•Jefferson Sherman; gee, the name is so schizophrenic, anyway he's a garden variety, small government conservative.
•John Dummett Jr.; a self-described small government conservative who feels "disenfranchised" by both the Republicans and Democrats. I can relate John.
•Shawna Sterling; hates GMOs and vows to ban them from school cafeterias. Pennsylvania Avenue here we go!
•George Bailey; black preacher with heart disease. He needs to talk to Dr. Carson I'm thinking.
•Mark Everton; hates the federal reserve and advocates a one term limit for Presidents. Sounds right to me.
•Estaban Oliverez; a Geraldo Rivera Republican. He needs a show on MSNBC, he'd be right at home.
• Michael Bickelmeyer; I LOVE THIS GUY! He, and I quote "takes a dim view of terrorists and drug traffickers...and wants to fry them from orbit". Holy Shit Batman, this dude is happening! Damn! Where can I send money!
•Bartholomew James Lower; solar power nut.
•Eric Cavanagh; favors a 100% "porn tax" and would "wipe away" all criminal records after three months! Hmmm, wonder what this guy's life experiences have been? No idea but I sure don't want him moving in next door I don't mind telling you.

Jesus, anyway what with the dogs and the kid and Sgt. Major yelling in my ear (Blogging again!? That's it, I'm getting a new car) I forgot what I was posting about.
By the end of September the first out will be all of #10 starting with Gilmore and Graham with Perry not far behind. The rest might hang on a bit longer but you won't even know they're there. By Christmas we'll have maybe five or six solid candidates, and guess what? Jeb might not be one of them.

Well that's it. I report and you can piss off.

Joseph Nocera thinks his readers are idiots

This is an old school TigerHawk post, insofar as I bash The New York Times just because. I know, I know, it is small of me to do, but not all blogging grows from greatness.

In this morning's column, Joe Nocera denounces a particular analyst's humping of Tesla (TSLA) stock, and darkly suggests it is akin to Henry Blodget's bull call on Amazon in 1998. Fair use excerpt:

Do you remember when Henry Blodget first became famous?

No, it wasn’t when the then-New York attorney general, Eliot Spitzer, unearthed those notorious emails Blodget wrote as Merrill Lynch’s Internet analyst, the ones in which he privately disparaged companies he was publicly touting. That came later.

It was 1998, the height of the Internet bubble. Blodget was then an analyst with CIBC Oppenheimer, and the “it” stock of the moment was Amazon, which had as many detractors as it had boosters.

One day that December, with the stock at about $240 a share — and with no change in Amazon’s fundamentals — Blodget, an Amazon bull, raised his price target to $400. That day it popped more than $45; within three weeks it hit Blodget’s target. Some months later, I wrote an article about his coverage of Internet companies. It was titled “The Cheerleader.”

During the current six-year bull-market — a market that has also seen its share of excess — a new “it” stock has emerged: Tesla Motors. Led by the charismatic Elon Musk, Tesla is a company that makes beautiful, and thus far very expensive, all-electric cars, vehicles that are so fantastically well made that Consumer Reports just gave the Model S P85D sedan its highest rating ever.

Tesla is also, however, a company that eats through cash, loses money on every sedan it sells, routinely overpromises what it will deliver to Wall Street and is regularly in need of new funding.

That’s not to mention other factors impinging on Tesla: the falling price of oil, for instance, which diminishes demand for electric cars, or the fact that a number of traditional luxury auto brands are poised to get into the electric vehicle game. It’s not hard to make a case that, at around $250 a share, Tesla is as insanely overvalued as any Internet stock in the late 1990s.

And guess what? Just like the Internet stocks of yore, Tesla has its own Wall Street cheerleader: Adam Jonas, Morgan Stanley’s auto analyst.

But here's the thing. Amazon is up 10 times since Blodget made the call that Nocera ridicules, or 988% vs. around 200% for the Nasdaq and the Dow, notwithstanding the popping of the Internet bubble in early 2000. I know this in part because I shorted Amazon in 1998 for basically the same reasons that Nocera attacks Tesla now. It was a very useful learning experience for me.

The point, of course, is not to vindicate Henry Blodget or rescue Adam Jones, who is more than capable of defending himself. Indeed, Nocera seems to have justified Jones better than Jones ever could. The next Amazon, you say? Bring. It. On.

But how do you write that column, and how does your editor publish that column, without a whisper of a hint of an acknowledgement that, well, people who acted on their belief in Blodget in 1998 (and had the discipline to maintain their conviction for a few years) are far happier today -- or at least wealthier -- than people who believed Nocera? We don't even get a single "to be sure"?

You need to read the NYT so you know what is going on inside the lefty echo chamber, but it is very hard to believe anything on its editorial pages at face value. Otherwise, for example, you would think that Joe Nocera can distinguish a good securities analyst from a bad one.

Addendum (10:47 am ET, Aug 31): In a very down morning for the stock market, TSLA is up. There are no doubt many explanations, but some of it probably has to do with Nocera comparing it to AMZN in 1998. At least that's my theory for purposes of this post.

On Anchor Babies

Jeb Bush got into a little trouble with the prone to fainting crowd this week in his embrace of the term "anchor babies".  I find nothing objectionable in it, and I am glad that he has not repudiated himself on its use.

This morning, I came across this headline on Twitter:  "Hate Label "Anchor Babies" enters 2016 Playground"  ,  and I nearly fell out of my chair.

There you have it friends.  "Anchor Babies" = "Nigger".   Why?  Well, because someone or some group finds it offensive, and they deem it "hate" speech.  Now I know that the story doesn't equate the two, and even mention the hateful word I used above (note: I do not use "N-word".  I am an adult.) But as soon as you begin to throw around the term "hate speech" you move quickly and invariably to the most hateful term of all, a term that DOES in fact have a great deal of meaningful negativity behind it--rather than the straightforward meaning of "anchor baby" which in absolutely no way, shape, or form denotes particular ethnicity.

Drip....drip....drip....

Marco Rubio News

Marco Rubio was on Hugh Hewitt's radio show last night.  Below, please find a link to a 15 minute or so interview with him, an interview that contains some great stuff on the state of the Navy and his plans for it.

http://www.hughhewitt.com/wp-content/uploads/08-28-MarcoRubio.mp3

Also--there's no reason to fret about the GOP front-runner---Howard Dean had better numbers in 2004 at this point....

Get out those checkbooks and give until it hurts!

BIG FAT Free For All (or if you're a Lib, fee for all) Friday!

Just saw something on the Interstate that makes the new NCSU vomit machine seem redundant? Donald Trump licking the red off your candy and Mama won't make him stop? Hitch your wagon to a falling star and now the future looks very...rural? Then let's hear about it. But just remember, unless you've just been shot down with a Glock 19 on live TV, you're having a better day than the Clintons.
Peace be with you.

Social Issues to the Rescue

YES!

So, now we have a Republican Party which refuses to talk about, confront, even acknowledge social issues and their impact on American politics. We have thrown up the white flag of surrender on gay marriage, abortion, transgenderism (whatever the fuq that is) and just about anything MSNBC deems a "freedom". Apparently you have a Constitutional right to abort your 30 week "fetus" (at government expense) and Planned Parenthood (half a billion a year in taxpayer subsidies) has a right to part it out like a Southern California chop-shop... for even more money. What you don't have is the right to bitch about it. Just shuddup and go along, you're gonna screw up everything, we don't want to hear it Redneck.  

Do you guys remember Nixon's "Southern Strategy"? Probably not, I doubt you even remember Nixon. Anyway what Nixon did from the '68 election (which he won by a whisker over arguably the worst candidate who ever lived Hubert Humphrey) to the '72 election, which he won in a landslide, was peel away the Southern, white, Protestant vote and the Northern Catholic social conservative vote. He went from about 48% to 61% in four years. Not too shabby. Anyway Nixon did it by appealing to the "silent majority" of patriotic, God fearing, hard working Americans who weren't smoking dope and listening to Jimi Hendrix (and even a few who were, present company accepted). Hell he even got a lot of union endorsements. As you might imagine that shift scared the Holy living shit out of the Democrats and played a major role in their "shoot the moon" strategy to get Nixon at all costs, and they pulled it off.

So, tell me again how a socially conservative Republican Party will hurt themselves? Will it hurt with Southern whites? No, I think not. Will it hurt with Catholics? No, I don't think so. Will it help attract all those "naturally conservative Hispanics" Republicans are always yapping about? I'm thinking HELL YES!

Here's the thing. When Nixon put together this new coalition he lost the Republican left. The Rockefella, Jacob Javits, Henry Cabot Lodge, Lowell Weicker wing of the party was LIVID! They didn't have a lot of numbers but they had the money, and now they had no place to spend it. Well they've made a comeback (of course) and guys like GHWB, Bob Dole and yes Mitt Romney are THEIR kinda guys. In terms of direction and policy they aren't all that concerned about losing, they just want to control the money pot every few years. But what they absolutely DON'T want and will not tolerate is another Reagan.

So, now you know. Our brilliant Republican leaders have lost the Reagan Democrats, the Northern Catholics, and they're about to lose Southern whites. Go along with Jeb or one of these other Northeastern, Midwestern Republicans and you'll be no better off than with Hillary. The litmus test this cycle is immigration (the ultimate social issue). If they won't give us that then they don't want us and the Republican Party is yesterdays news.

Just Remember, Folks....

A government empowered to deport 11 million people is a government with a lot of power you might not want it to use elsewhere.

You're WHAT Kind of Republican?

Well, it seems some of our brilliant strategists in the Republican Party are demanding Donald Trump take a "loyalty oath" in order to be on the primary ballot in some states. Virginia and North Carolina (among others) are currently floating trial balloons to gage the reaction. It's not going well.

Jeb (among others) has been saying Trump is not a "real" Republican and certainly not a conservative with a "proven conservative record". Boy that's rich ain't it, coming from a Bush? Ok fine, let's examine our "big tent" party and see who's the "real" Republican.

In 2010, 2012 and 2014 we were promised...
Obamacare would be defunded. We got NOTHING!
Obamacare would be delayed. We got NOTHING!
The individual mandate would be delayed. We got NOTHING!
Congress and the Cabinet would be covered under Obamacare. We got NOTHING!
Deny certain types of birth control coverage. We got NOTHING!
Medicare would be means tested. We got NOTHING!
Government employee pension reform. We got NOTHING!
Defund Obama's executive amnesty. We got NOTHING!
An abortion ban past 20 weeks. We got NOTHING!

Will I go on? Plus according to the Washington Times the GOP is actually running ads against some members who actually took those promises seriously!

So, if these are our "real" Republicans you may count me among the politically homeless. But I ask you, has there ever been a political party so out of touch with their base? Forget winning or losing, how can a party even survive being the lapdog of the opposing party?

The Republican Party has some splanning to do, and whatever candidate eventually wins this nomination he or she has a lot of housecleaning at the top if they have even the remotest hope of winning. That's the issue isn't it, winning? McCain didn't want to win, Romney didn't have the balls to win and our current leadership isn't interested in winning. These people aren't "real" Republicans, they're real LOSERS! 

I've Seen This Movie Before

How did we come to this? We've got a celebrity businessman dominating the Republican field while the "serious" candidates are having trouble getting MENTIONED in the media, much less getting their message out. Why is this happening? How can this be? Well because of one issue: IMMIGRATION! I've said it before, in fact I've said it so much CW wants to kill me, and that is for many of us this is THE ONLY ISSUE! Give us what we want or we're bailing. Even if you as a good, middle-of-the-road Republican can't personally see the importance and urgency of the issue, at least you can recognize it's important TO US. And what's important to an important constituency should should be important to YOU. So what's the problem?

Did you ever see the movie A Bridge Too Far. Sure you did. Anyway Robert Redford (no acting prick that he is) is asked the best way to take a bridge and his reply was from both sides at once. That's what's happening on the issue of immigration, and that's the Republican's problem. Guys like Sheldon Adelson and Mark Zuckerberg (Marco Rubio is his "personal Senator" according to Trump) throw the big bucks at Republicans who are desperate to get their message out (which takes lots of cash) and now they're in a pickle. On one side their consultants tell them they have to have the Hispanic vote or the party will be a dinosaur real soon and their big donors INSIST on kissing immigrant ass because they want the cheap labor. But on the other side they're under tremendous pressure to get guys like me to the polls, without which they have no hope in hell of winning (ask Romney, 4 million right wingers stayed home in 2012). Brother it is a BIG problem.

So what's to be done? Apparently our 19th hole friends hope to ride out the storm and chip away at Trump's support as the quick kill failed miserably. The fat-cat donors seem to have coalesced around Jeb I guess thinking that one candidate, rather than fifteen has a better chance of breaking through the Trump noise machine. Plus Jeb is a nice, safe Republican...just their kinda guy. But if you want to know the truth they don't give a damn who wins Republican or Democrat, they've taken the bridge from both sides.

Now, let's talk Biden a second. From what I gather here is the strategy.
•Obama wants a "reliable" Democrat to win, someone that will not threaten his legacy or his influence within the party...that ain't Hillary. Therefore the steady drip drip drip of bad news instigated by the administration.
•To kill off Hillary overtly would be problematic for Democrats, the Clintons in general are beloved by a ton of very active leftists. Plus Hillary is a woman, if Biden takes her down it will piss off the feminists/lesbians mightily and who knows, they might just stay home. But...BUT if Hillary is indicted then Biden can say well Golly Gee, she did it to herself.
• Supposedly Biden is planning (when the time comes) to announce he will serve only one term but Elizabeth Warren will be his running mate. This will of course salve the wounds of feminists and give the party a possible twelve long years in office. It's brilliant actually, if it works.
• The key is getting rid of Hillary, when the time comes, without a lot of drama. Bill Clinton still has the mojo to pitch a bitch and damage any Democrat's chances so the question is what's to be done with him? What would it take for him to play ball after Hillary is cast into the wilderness? I'm thinking they'll drum up some legal problems for him maybe? Who knows but they ain't got nothing he wants.
• Timing is very important for Biden. You don't want Hillary out until it's too late for others to jump in. What's the point in killing Hillary off if you've got to go through a brutal primary with fifteen other DEMOCRATS who have jumped in to fill the void? Biden wants to be the calvary riding in to save the day... at the last minute.

So, there's my dime-store analysis. Now hit the road, you're bothering me.

Wake Up and Smell the Stench

Why hasn't there been any serious challenges to Obamacare? It seems our Republican politicians have talked about nothing else since Pelosi & company jammed it down our throats in 2009. Why did John Roberts, on two separate occasions, turn legal somersaults rather than strike down the law and send it back to Congress?

There can only be one answer and you know what it is before I even say anything. The Republicans in power (I dare not say establishment, CW is now going nuts when I use that word) of which John Roberts is a member in good standing, they all wanted the law. Big business and their mouthpiece the Chamber of Commerce want this law. The investment class on Wall Street, one of Barack Obama's biggest contributors want this law. They want it because the expense of providing healthcare for their workers negatively impacts their bottom line. They would rather the government do it, it's as simple as that.

Obamacare has done a lot of damage to the Democrat Party. The people spoke loud and clear in TWO elections and what they were saying was STOP THE PROGRESSIVE AGENDA! The Republicans rode this outrage to victory after victory all across the political spectrum from school boards to state houses and governorships to majorities in Congress. But as it turns out we were just platooning players in and out of the game all playing for the same team and the coach is BIG SPECIAL INTEREST. There is no doubt in my mind had the Supreme Court struck down Obamacare the Republicans would have made every effort to "fix" the law, but it would have exposed them unnecessarily as the liars and hypocrites they are, hence Robert's ruling.

We no longer have a democracy. We have fallen prey to one of the pitfalls of freedom, rule by oligarchy. We have a political class that has organized and conspired against the people. Neither side minds who is in power because they know "the system" will not change. The Republicans who control Congress have done no more and no less than the Reid and Pelosi controlled Congress. Oh they want the control alright, but in no way will they upset the applecart, Democrats and Republicans NEED each other.

Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders are perfect manifestations of this reality and what happens when a candidate goes off the reservation. I'm not saying these guys are the answer, but they sure as hell have SOMEBODY upset. The thing is we need to realize we are in a war not with Republicans or Democrats but with progressives IN BOTH PARTIES who are opposed to individual liberty, the rule of law and representative government. Do we want a new feudalism ruled by a paternalistic, top-down political hierarchy with little respect or regard for the regular folks? Of course not, and now's your chance to take the country back. I urge you to reject this multiple-choice party system where only "approved" candidates have a shot, or you could continue to support some billionaire's candidate (and that's where the real competition is, between THEIR candidates), in which case enjoy your Obamacare.

Proud To Be One!

I just watched Bill O'Reilly (DVR-ed from Thursday night) spend nearly his whole show on how the Republican Party was in GREAT shape this presidential election cycle but is courting disaster due to extremists within the party talking all this 14th. Amendment nonsense. Nativist he calls us. That's an interesting word I haven't heard bandied around since the first time we got reamed with Simpson-Missoli. Is that the right word though? When I think of nativists I think of the Japanese for instance. You know, zero immigration, 99.9998 ethnic Japanese, no foreigner can own land, friendly but ultimately hostile to outsiders etc. Gosh I'm pretty sure I'm not that so what does the word actually mean?
nativism

noun

1.

the policy of protecting the interests of native inhabitants against those of immigrants.

2.

the policy or practice of preserving or reviving an indigenous culture.

Ok, that sounds like me alright; protecting native inhabitants, preserving the culture. Holy Shit that is exactly me! So by extension if one isn't a nativist then one has little or no interest in protecting America from the abuses of illegal immigration. Is that a reasonable assumption? What would THAT person be called I wonder? A traitorous, seditious asshole maybe? A chump, a fool, a go along to get along company man? Gee I don't know,  all these descriptions sound so APPROPRIATE, I can't decide.

Getting back to Bill, I'm starting to get this FAUX NEWS stuff. I've rarely seen a more one sided presentation on any network. Most of the shows on Fox have at least ONE opposing voice, even Hannity who is much more partisan than O'Reilly. Not this one. Now I don't mean to say they don't play the old news show game of getting two, three, four guys on one side beating the hell out of one, lone, deer-in-the-headlights member of the opposition (the Sunday shows have done that since forever: Cokie what do you think? How 'bout you Sam? Ok George, give us your opinion...if you must. Great, sorry to cut you off George, Cokie and Sam, how fuqed up are George's views?). Anyway Bill had some Berkeley professor and an establishment guy tell us that we're all crazy, anchor babies are as American as apple pie and always have been.

I'm gonna try one last time to get through to you numbskulls, so bear with me. The concept of anchor babies is like a penniless bum going into a liquor store and chugging a bottle of MD 20/20. If he gets caught before he gets it all down he gets thrown out of the store and told never to return (which he may or may not do as there is little penalty for ignoring such a command). If he does kill the bottle in one go, he gets an unlimited gift card for all the booze he wants. Plus he can claim a gift card for not only his immediate family, but his extended family, and they in turn can get a gift card for anybody he might have missed. Now, considering booze ain't free and sooner or later the store's credit will run out, and the freeloaders have no interest in the store whatsoever as they have contributed nothing and can walk away at anytime with no negative repercussions of any kind, how long do you think the store will remain open? THAT my friends is our immigration system and no one is talking about it WITH CONVICTION other than Donald Trump.

Therefore, I proudly announce that I am indeed a NATIVIST, doing my best to keep others from giving away the store. Join me please, because if we don't win this fight RIGHT NOW we'll all end up with nothing.

My morning coffee

Anybody out there have a cooler coffee mug than this?

I didn't think so.

On Jimmy Carter's Cancer

I need some advice, friends, because I think I may be on the wrong side of this one, and there may be a character fault at issue.  Like the rest of the country, I received the news this week that former President Jimmy Carter has cancer, first of the liver, and now of the brain.  This is of course, terrible news for him, for his family, and for anyone who loves him. He has lived a remarkable life, and he has influenced the lives of countless others.

And yes, I realize that much of the coverage of this event stems from the fact that he was our President, that he is a public figure.  But nowhere--nowhere--in the coverage, have I heard anyone bring up the fact that this man is 90 YEARS OLD!  And while I certainly would not want the man to be in any pain or distress, I find myself wondering what people's reactions would be if he were to pass away tomorrow.  I read also of the experimental treatment he'll be undergoing--and wonder--not because he is a Democrat, but because he is 90 YEARS OLD-- whether this isn't just another example of the degree to which our medical system is out of whack, where a huge percentage of what gets spent on people's medical care in their lives is spent in the last year--just trying to keep them alive a little longer.  

I know, I know.  There is something cold and unloving about even raising the issue.  But I am.  Because I think that if I were in Mr. Carter's position, I'd find a way to quietly check out.  Surrounded by those I love and perhaps imbued with palliative medicines--but I don't think that there is a whole lot of good to be done here.  I don't know where the cutoff is--this is a good question.  At 50, I am not ready to die just yet, but I've talked this over many times with the Kitten and tried to convince her that I'd not want to sacrifice the quality of my life in order to extend it.  She says I feel that way because I am healthy, and that if I found myself terminally ill, I'd feel differently.  I guess the best I can say is, I hope not. 

"She really didn't think it through."

In the category of damning admissions, a Clinton-staffer with no doubt reduced job security dared breathe a bit of truth:

“She’s answered this many times and she did have her own email account,” Palmieri said. “Others have done it before and it was just more convenient and she kept it like that.”

“She didn’t really – that’s the thing, she didn’t really think it through,” she added of Clinton. “She has said, had she – she would have done it differently.”

Boldness, er, added.

Hillary may have a high IQ, but it is not even slightly clear that she can think more than a couple of moves ahead. Her campaign has been in firefighting mode for months, mostly because she does not seem to see the next trainwreck coming, whether regarding her emails, Bernie Sanders, and so forth. That would seem to be a poor trait in a prospective president.

Calling All Constitutional Scholars

When exactly did the judiciary take over the country? Who decided the courts could rewrite law, ignore the will of the citizenry, take over whole government agencies and unilaterally mandate things like tax policy? Who gave a bunch of Goddamn lawyers the keys to the store?

I don't need to document the abuses of the courts (especially the federal courts), you remember them well from Obamacare to overturning voter mandated propositions in defense of marriage. My question is why are we putting up with this crap? This is NOT a balance of powers, this is a power grab.

Here's the latest outrage making the news, the 14th Amendment. When it was written its intent was to prevent Southern states from denying citizenship to newly freed slaves. It was NOT written to bestow citizenship on the offspring of every squatting peon who could swim a river! The authors of the Amendment address this very issue, they were VERY clear. As evidence I offer the Amendment itself.

All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.

So, if all those born on American soil regardless of their circumstance are citizens, then please tell me what is the purpose and meaning of "and subject to the jurisdiction thereof"? I can tell you the guys who wrote the Amendment said it absolutely DID NOT mean birthright citizenship, but the courts since at least the 80's say it does. Therefore some judge (or judges) gets a backdoor rewrite of the Constitution because they think they know best and screw the law!

Ladies and gents THIS is how tyranny is achieved. THIS is the rot, the cancer; the subjugation of law to politics. This bastardized interpretation of 14th Amendment that we have been forced to live under to the detriment of our citizen's wealth, livelihoods and security is a perfect example of the corruption of an out of control judiciary, and it doesn't take a Constitutional scholar to see that.  

Side with the Democrats or Side with the Republican Establishment, same result.

Evidently the Wall Street Journal had a recent editorial asserting that if Republicans go down the Trump road on immigration our goose will be cooked for decades to come. They cite German and Irish immigrants from the 1920's as proof. Really!? I guess it's sorta like the Republican opposition to the Civil Rights movement resulting in blacks voting Democrat for five decades. Oh wait, it was the Democrats who fought against the Voting Rights Act etc. and Republicans who, wait...I'm all confused now. Who was it again?

I haven't read the piece as it's behind a pay wall but what do they say will happen if we do go down the open borders road, how will our goose fair then?

From what I gather they were talking about food rotting in the fields of California because of labor shortages. My question is don't we have PLENTY of illegals in California at the moment? If illegal labor is the key to farm labor shortages, farmers should be rolling in cheap labor. Plus I guess the WSJ is less concerned about Jerry Brown cutting off the farmer's water resulting in miles upon miles of unused farmland and thousands of bankrupt farmers. They must have missed that "farm crisis"!

I am sick to DEATH of these scare tactics! The Republican establishment can go straight to hell! I am NOT a Goddamn fool and I won't be played for a fool. The idea that hard working, law abiding Americans of any race or creed would want open borders is insane. Plus the idea that we will alienate Hispanics is absolute bullshit as well. I am at war with illegals picking my pocket and raping my country (both figuratively and literally) and my goal is to make damn sure THEY DON'T VOTE! So the argument is moot.

Now, a footnote. You're going to be hearing a lot about the 14th Amendment in the coming weeks. Let me be the first to tell you, THERE IS NO BIRTHRIGHT CITIZENSHIP under the law! It is an invention by leftist jurists in defiance of the Constitution. The authors of the Amendment addressed this very issue: "this will not, of course, include persons born in the United States who are foreigners, aliens, who belong to the families of ambassadors or foreign ministers accredited to the Government of the United States, but will include every other class of persons." 

The "White Male" Crime Wave?

And if you think this is BS, google Texas' Most wanted, you'll see many more examples!

H.L. Mencken describes the presidential race of 2015

Over lunch today I read one of H.L. Mencken's columns, dated February 9, 1920, in which he slices up the small army of presidential candidates under consideration that year. The opening paragraph reminds us that American politics is, shall we say, ever thus:

All of the great patriots now engaged in edging and squirming their way toward the Presidency of the Republic run true to form. This is to say, they are all extremely wary, and all more or less palpable frauds. What they want, primarily, is the job; the necessary equipment of inescapable issues, immutable principles and soaring ideals can wait until it becomes more certain which way the mob will be whooping. Of the whole crowd at present in the ring, it is probable that only Hoover would made a respectable President. General Wood is a simple-minded old dodo with a delusion of persecution; Palmer is a political mountebank of the first water; Harding is a second-rate provincial; Johnson is allowing himself to be lost in the shuffle; Borah is steadily diminishing in size as he gets closer to the fight; Gerard and the rest are simply bad jokes. Only Hoover stands out as a man of any genuine sense or dignity. He lacks an intelligible platform and is even without a definite party, but he at least shows a strong personality and a great deal of elemental competence. But can he be elected? I doubt it.

The players are different in 2015, but not unrecognizable to modern tweeters. One might easily swap in Biden for Leonard Wood (although McCain would be a better analogy), Clinton for Palmer, Perry for Harding, O'Malley for Hiram Johnson, Cruz for William Borah, and Pataki or Webb or anybody else for James Gerard. One can overdo the analogy -- I do not suggest that Perry will win in the end -- but the basic point holds: There have been many characters in American presidential politics, and will be again. No doubt the campaign of 1920 was considered oh so important at the time, and yet it turned out not really to matter at all. Harding was soon gone, and Calvin Coolidge presided over most of two terms in which he did damn near nothing. And very effectively, at that.

There are two interesting items from later in the same column. The first is Mencken's argument for believing that Hoover could not be elected. It seems that anti-English sentiment was strong in the United States in the years following World War I, and William Randolph Hearst sold papers to Irish-Americans by stirring it up. Hoover was Hearst's favorite whipping boy, an easy target because the Great Humanitarian from West Branch had earned most of his huge fortune abroad, especially in London. His eventual nomination and election in 1928 no doubt turned on his leading the relief efforts following the massive Mississippi floods of 1927.

Then there is this (emphasis added):

Two issues show some likelihood of surviving. One is the issue of national independence -- what is now visible as the anti-English question. The other is the issue of personal freedom. Between Wilson and his brigades of informers, spies, volunteer detectives, perjurers and complaisant judges, and the Prohibitionists and their messianic delusion, the liberty of the citizen has pretty well vanished in America. In two or three years, if the thing goes on, every third American will be a spy upon his fellow citizens. But is it going on? I begin to doubt that it is. I begin to see signs that, deep down in their hearts, the American people are growing tired of government by fiat and denunciation. Once they reach the limit of endurance, there will be a chance again for the sort of Americanism that civilized men can be proud of, and that sort of Americanism will make an issue a thousand times as vital as the imitations put forward by the Prohibitionists, the Palmer White Guard, the Wilson mail openers and the press agents of the American Legion.

We, too, are damned tired of government by fiat and denunciation, yet that is what he have suffered through, not to mention spies, messianic delusion, and "mail openers," albeit of the digital sort. My vote will go to the first candidate who genuinely speaks up for freedom that matters, instead of fanning grievances of ethnic, gender, or sexual identity, stoking angry nativism or confessional resentment (the left and right sides of the same coin, really), bashing people who make the economy grow, or refighting lost culture wars. Who is that man or woman today?

Prove Mencken right, if 95 years late.

HRC's emails: It is not the crime, or the cover-up, but the failure of leadership

The response of media, the GOP, and partisan Democrats to Hillary Clinton's email mess is largely bound up in the technical question of potential legal culpability, and whether the destruction of these emails amount to some sort of cover-up. Is Hillary vulnerable to prosecution, or would she be if the Obama Justice Department were not seemingly in the tank? Or was she merely following Colin Powell's precedent?

Sadly, these questions are not very relevant to Clinton's fitness for the presidency, however much they interest people who are following the horse race. Yeah, yeah, crimes, blah blah, but anybody who makes a decision or has a job that entails executive function commits some sort of crime every day. No, really, crimes per se cannot be disqualifying, because then the presidency would be purely a function of prosecutorial discretion, and that would be bad. We need to stop caring nearly so much about crimes.

However, in the selection of our president we should care about rank stupidity and bad leadership. Hillary was stupid, because in the last five years or so more or less everybody alive has learned that network security is a big problem for private corporations and government agencies alike. Network security is so important that the federal government, the same one Clinton worked for, actually demands that business corporations, such as the one I work for, disclose the precautions they have implemented to avoid security breaches. Executives and directors of public companies have learned that the reputation or even survival of their organization may depend on good IT security. And, no, the fact that the Chinese seemed to have taken the Obama Administration to the cleaners does not mean that Clinton was being responsible, unless of course she knew about those security breaches in advance, which would raise other questions.

Worse, Clinton demonstrated absolutely abysmal leadership of her own organization, the United States Department of State. Why would the rank and file in the State Department take security seriously if the Secretary not only acts as if it is a joke, but invites others in her agency to correspond with her via a manifestly insecure server? Good leadership involves eating one's own cooking, and good leaders follow the rules that they impose on everybody else.

The importance of "tone at the top" is not only a core principle of effective leadership, it is a critical feature of federal regulation across industries. Sarbanes-Oxley's "internal controls" requires enshrine "tone at the top" as a key indicator that the audited business has a good culture of compliance. The FDA loses its mind if, on an inspection, it learns that a business's senior leadership, which is criminally liable for breaches of the Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act, does not act in accordance with law. Sentencing guidelines for business crimes promulgated by the Justice Department depend, again, on tone at the top.

Is there any question, really any at all, that the email mess reveals that Hillary Clinton's tone from the top undermined respect for security protocols, whether or not she committed a crime? Is this not a huge failure of leadership? And is not that highly relevant to the selection of our next president?

Release the hounds.

Maybe I'm Wrong on Immigration

Ok CW, I could be wrong on immigration, so please share with us YOUR plan. Not Rubio's, not the Weekly Standard's and not David Brook's, but YOUR plan. In a perfect world if you could wave a magic wand and it would be so, how would CW deal with the problem? I don't know, maybe you don't think there is a problem, or the problem isn't as immediate as I've made out. Just tell us.

Take as much time as you like, just describe the problem as you see it and describe the solution in as much detail as possible. Don't be afraid to get specific. Maybe I'm out to lunch here and if I am,  I want to know about it. Show me where I'm going wrong.

Two Embarrassing Wars!

There's a war going on (as you may have noticed) in both political parties. The Democratic's war is the "establishment" against the openly socialist/communist Bernie Sanders. It's the Woodstock generation of Ho Chi Minh hardcore leftists against the merely fascist Progressives. It's a fun war to watch and I am enjoying it immensely! This is a war between those who may still want some modicum of a private sector as opposed to Marxists who, if given half an chance will start nationalizing everything they can get their hands on. But as Nietzsche said, if it happens it is necessary and this war has been brewing a long time. Leftists in general pride themselves on discipline in thought and message, so this is a rare opportunity to see them air some dirty laundry, and it's only going to get better...enjoy.

Which brings me to our war. CW would disagree I'm guessing but the Reagan wing of the party (for lack of a better term) has been pushed aside for far to long. We have been good team players. Since WWII, 70 long years we have had two, exactly two candidates that represented us; RR and Barry Goldwater (and Goldwater was a shit candidate). We've had Eisenhower, Nixon, Ford, Bush 1, Bob Dole, GWB, John McCain and Mitt Romney. Each and everyone an establishment kinda guy. Now I don't mean to imply these weren't good men (some of them) but not many were into doing away with the Department of Education...if you catch my drift. Which brings me to my point.

The establishment hates guys like me. They're embarrassed by us with our "economic freedom" talk and anti-big government rhetoric. They HATE our emphasis on social issues which they see as a BIG loser, even though the Democrats talk about nothing else and ride social issues to victory time and time again!

Within the GOP there are progressives just like in the Democrat Party, a bit different in their approach but still Progressive in their attitudes and beliefs. Here's one I saw today, a ex-GWB speechwriter who now writes for the Washington Compost, a Mr. Michael Gerson. This guy is using all the buzzwords of the left, "right-wing, xenophobic, beyond the bounds of civil discourse" etc. in an attempt to delegitimize our views and keep us marginalized. He wants to purge Trump from the party. I've never seen anything like it. The establishment is so threatened they want to publicly PURGE the front runner! Well I say I've never seen anything like it, but that's not true. They were making the same noises in the 70's when Ronald Reagan was a threat, just not as overt.

The question is have you establishment types lost it? Have you gone absolutely crazy? Would you actually commit suicide in a year when the Democrats are such a mess that a Republican can't help but win, just to maintain control of the Party?

I've told you what to do, take Trump's issue from him. Get your guy (or gal) to come out strongly on immigration. Make it the cornerstone of his/her campaign. If your candidate can't or won't do that then don't give them your support, that's what WE are doing. I'm not crazy about Trump but I might vote for him just to send a message to K Street. Don't make me do something I don't want to do! The longer this goes on the less credibility these people will have when they eventually DO come out for shutting down immigration, and believe me they will if they have any hope of winning. You guys need to get a grip and you can start by getting these Progressive idiots like Michael Gerson under control! Jesus you're starting to embarrass ME!

I am NOT being a Jerk!

CW gave me the business last night, and I'm a little pissed. He said something along the lines of "yeah we know your views on Trump, so just shut up and let the grownups talk". That was very dismissive and very hurtful. I cried myself to sleep! How could CW be so MEAN! This morning I'm a wreck and I can't stop shaking. I think I'm getting a rash!

So here's the deal, I'm a good Republican. I've voted Republican since Richard Nixon in 1972. With all those votes for President, and untold votes for Congressmen, Senators, Governors etc., only a few represented my views (one of course being Rockin' Ronnie Reagan who comes in on the Hammer-is-always-right-o-meter at 87.3%). I have been a loyal team player. I've voted for and given money to guys I knew weren't really my cup of tea but I did it because #1 they were better than the alternative and #2 my day would come.

Well apparently my day doesn't come. I don't get a say. One third to one half of this party wants one thing this election, we want IMMIGRATION dealt with. That's all we want. We can live with Bush or Rubio or whomever, but if all these illegals aren't sorted it makes no difference who we support, no Republican will ever be elected President again, at least not in our lifetime. Conservatism will be dead. Freedom will be dead. Representative, republican government will be dead.

Just the other day Bernie Sanders said to make no mistake, this was about the fundamental transformation of America. Do you think that's an idle threat? Do you think he means Euro-socialism like Barack Obama? I don't think so. I think Sanders could very well be the nominee, and if there's one thing communists are good at it's subverting elected governments, and if Sanders wins every hardcore foaming at the mouth commie son-of-a-bitch will come out of the woodwork and you'll see what Eastern Europe had to put up with for 50 years. Farfetched you say? Don't count on it. I didn't think Obama could get away with half of his shit, but he did.

So we can continue this game of chicken if you want. You guys can continue to ignore us thinking we'll come around...but not this time. You can't put us off anymore, the future is here, either listen to your consultants and your special interests or listen to 50% of your base. We are not your enemy. We are your friends and we are trying to save you from yourselves, and save the damn country in the mean time.

There are three possible outcomes as I see it: No compromise within our party and the Democrats win and we get their version of "immigration reform" and the country becomes California where no Republican will ever win again. Second, we "conservatives" go along (as usual) and we get a establishment Republican version of "immigration reform" and the country becomes California where no Republican will ever win again. Third, we get our candidates to go on record that they will be as aggressive with our immigration laws as Obama has been with Obamacare, in which case we have a chance to reestablish a free Constitutional Republic as our founders intended.

If that's being a jerk then so be it.

They Won't Because They Can't!

Take a look. One of these individuals has the rare opportunity to jump to the head of the pack and maybe even lock up the 2016 Presidential race FOR THEMSELVES within a scant 48 hours (if it takes even that). All they have to do is one tiny little thing. What's that Hammer? Are you nuts? I knew you were an inbred, Redneck, stump-jumpin' fool from the asshole side of nowhere but why are you wasting valuable blog real estate on obvious BS?

Here's why my Ivy League (or public Ivy) educated, Brooks Brothers/Johnston & Murphy wearing, dickie-bow loving friend. The answer is right before your very eyes. All one must do is hit the immigration issue HARD for one, just ONE news cycle. Come out in no uncertain terms and tell the American people that Donald Trump is RIGHT on immigration. Furthermore, just like President Obama has used executive orders to give de facto amnesty to millions of raggety assed, malnourished, pox ridden future low-riders and MS-13 members (and their extended family including grandma who immediately qualifies for ss benefits) you too will use that power to EVICT every Goddamned last one of them. Plus if an employer gets caught hiring an illegal (let me think) it's a 10 grand fine for each offense, next offense jail time. Hold on I'm not finished, in addition not only are we building a wall we're building a DMZ to extend into Mexican territory (that's right, 38th parallel kinda stuff). Yep, that should do it.

So why not, what's the holdup? These people know the score, they know why Trump is making fools of them, so why pray tell are they sitting on their asses? Well because their asses don't belong to them, they belong to the Chamber of Commerce. These guys (and gal) to one degree or another depend on bidness money, and business likes cheap labor, cheap money and wide open trade deals.
Business has no morality. Business has no conscience. Business is in the business of making money. They'll push to modernize a Stalinist government in China if it's good for their bottom line. They'll push to open up a potentially nuclear Islamic state if there's profit in it. They'll sell their daughter to a Turkish whorehouse if the quarterly report demands it. THAT'S why we have laws and politicians, to protect THE COUNTRY from people doing stupid things that are not in the best interest of the PEOPLE. Look, I don't blame them, I wouldn't have it any other way. It's not their job to police themselves. But when they start buying politicians to advance a destructive agenda like open immigration, well it's time to show them who's boss.

I got a sad reality check for some of you, Trump ain't going nowhere. If you establishment types want a President Trump (or worse a President Hillary) then just keep it up. Haven't you learned anything in the last few days? This is NOT politics as usual. No smear tactic (legitimate or otherwise) will damage Trump in the slightest, in fact it makes him stronger. At the moment Trump is invincible because he's the only one talking about the elephant in the room, the issue YOU people refuse to talk about and the ONLY issue for middle class Americans. You people, the establishment base needs to go to YOUR money people and tell them this open borders stuff ain't flying anymore, DROP IT! This is an establishment problem and only the establishment can fix it, I just told you how. But I'm not optimistic. There are no bigger fools in all of politics than politicians who dance to special interest fiddles. The candidates won't do it because they can't do, they're too frightened.

The Elites and their Lies

Watergate, the hard left's coming of age party. I remember it well. It was like Ravel's Bolero starting off as just a heartbeat, a phrase, a steady beat but constant and changing, unrelenting. Probing, finding its way, unsteady at first but gaining confidence as it gained momentum. Finally, after two years of Woodward and Bernstein and Sam Ervin and Howard Baker (along with guys like Fred Thompson and Rufus Edmisten) the Nixon Administration was bled out. The evil that was Nixon with his thuggish, ham-handed anti-communism and his foolish attempt to actually win the Vietnam War was over. America's defeat in SouthEast Asia had been secured and Nixon was banished in disgrace. Mission accomplished.

I'm sure most of you don't remember Watergate, or care. But when Hillary Clinton talks about a "right wing conspiracy" she speaks with the voice of experience because there was a left wing conspiracy out to get Nixon, and she was witness to it with a ringside seat. It was a well organized, concerted effort to forever drive a stake into the heart of one of the most effective anti-communists in US history and thereby advance the cause of socialism.

As brilliant as Nixon was in some areas, he was a total idiot in others. Overall Nixon was not a good President. He was a big government, establishment Republican. His economic policies sucked (he repeatedly ignored one of his advisors advice, a Prof. Friedman from the University of Chicago) and he cared not a whit for domestic issues. They were just the price a President pays for the fun part, foreign policy. THAT was Nixon's love, the international chess game of power politics, and he was damned good at it.

I'm not defending Nixon in any way, but the methods used against him, the lies, the deceptions in order to ruin him were just as bad as his crimes. When compared to previous administrations like LBJ's or Roosevelt's, hell he was an amateur.

After 40 years the facts are still coming in, but I think it's clear that Watergate was a coup d'etat. It was a conspiracy by the left to bring down a sitting President whom they hated and despised. Ironically as good as Nixon was at the foreign policy game, he was lousy at the Capitol Hill, Washington Post game.

The lesson here is politics is war, and our opponents will do anything and everything they can to win. What's also clear is that Republicans, especially our establishment Republicans, still haven't learned the simple fact that there are no rules in politics.

So, Why the Dems?

Why are the Dems so hot and bothered about Trump? If you think the Republicans are having a hissy fit they're downright restrained compared to Democrats. Why would that be I wonder? As a conservative if the Democrats had some bat-shit crazy non-politician ruining their debutant ball I'd sit back and enjoy the show. But no so the Demo-rats. Why?

Simple, Trump's ascension can be attributed to one issue; IMMIGRATION. They know this is a very dangerous problem if it gains momentum. It cuts across party lines and ruins their plan to, as Ann Coulter said "Turn America into a Third World hellhole" with an electorate of highly needy and therefore reliable voters. They cannot allow that to happen, that's why they've made common cause with the Republican Party establishment. That's why we conservatives are fighting a two front war, one against the liberal establishment (with all it's tentacles) and one against our friends teeing off about now at The Firestone or perhaps Marlin fishing off St. Martin.

Keep your eye on the ball and keep up the pressure. Taking back our country will not get done unless we do it. It's now or never.

Marco Rubio's Meet the Press Interview

Really good job here by Senator Rubio.  Handles abortion right off the bat. Strong.  The man is really, really good on his feet.