Baltimore or Less

Here is a viral video by Kimberly Klacik who is a black woman running as a Republican for the House 7th District seat from Baltimore. Unfortunately her chances are nil to none.


STAND UP FOR AMERICA!

Revealing

From daily timewaster blog

Mortality rates are too small by 1,000 ... except NY, by 100.

Headlines

Trump warns against panic amid first US coronavirus death

Coronavirus live update: White House issues new travel warnings, first US death confirmed

Americans canceling domestic travel ...

Molten: Poll shows Trump earns more than twice as much trust as media

Russia pledges to reduce tensions following Turkey talks

Amazon sellers struggle to keep products in stock amid coronavirus outbreak

Gates: may be ‘once-in-a-century’pathogen we’ve been worried about’

Google, Facebook, and Twitter support internet free speech — in Pakistan

New York might cancel Republican presidential primary

Washington state confirms first coronavirus dearth

Independents outnumber registered Republicans for the first time ...

Trump calls for lower rates amid coronavirus fallout: ‘Fed should start being a leader’

Coronavirus in Italy, over 1,100 infected, 29 dead

Lookin' Foreward

From Mostly Cajin blog

Headlines

These headlines are real ... they have all been discovered on Internet news sites.

Janet Jackson announces pregnant at 50 ...

Colin Kaepernick: the flag is just a piece of cloth

[Podesta e-mails] touted relationship with Loretta Lynch ...

U.S. Navy destroyer again targeted by missiles from Yemen ...

Detective investigating NBA star's rape claims found shot dead ...

NYC mulls ban on flushable wipes ...

Museum invites visitors to desecrate image of Virgin Mary

Rasmussen poll: Trump over Clinton by two points ...

Dem governor turns: Obamacare no longer Affordable ...

More dead voters, fraud cases discovered in CO ...

Clinton rape protester beaten at Vegas rally ...

100,000 PA voters switch from Democrat to Republican ...

With Both Barrels

There has been a dramatic change in the tenor of media coverage of this presidential race ... presumably because the "establishment" media now sees that Donald Trump has a shot at winning. Before, he was entertainment ... now things are for keeps.  I don't recall ever seeing a more evocative turn-around on television like has occurred on Morning Joe since the Republican convention. When Trump was fighting 16 other hopefuls for the Republican nomination, Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski were all sweetness and light toward Trump. They honey-talked him almost every morning ... mostly by phone  ... and clearly were playing him for higher ratings.

Now I almost can't watch these two harpies anymore ... who find the most trivial  things to excoriate Trump with. Of course Trump knows the game that they are playing and won't appear on their show anymore ... which causes white spittle to form on their lips as they continually try to let him have it with both barrels. Can't they see the change in their own behavior ... and how hypocritical they appear? I guess that this is of no concern to them as their ambition overtakes any comity.

And of course, these two media mavens are not alone in trying to take Trump down. Even such Op-Ed  stalwarts as Maureen Dowd has taken fingers to keyboard to paint a grotesque hypothetical word picture of Trump after the election ... see: NY Times Op Ed. I can understand Ms. Dowd's displeasure ... but I can't fathom her vitriol ... nor that of many others.

Why is there such a uprising against Trump ... which, of course, means support for an even more distasteful and dangerous Hellary Clinton? I can only surmise that it is because Hellary still, with all her warts, represents the status quo. She is not going to give, like Trump, a voice to the voiceless in America. Trump, even more than Bernie Sanders, has come to champion the downtrodden middle class in this country. And this is a clear and present danger to the Washington elites. Too much could and probably would change ... not good. So the establishment is fighting back ...

With both barrels ...

Magic Words

No, they're not "hocus pocus" nor "abracadabra" ... they're "radical Islam." Now, both Hellery and Obummer have coordinated their message, sarcastically saying that the phrase that the president was forever loath to utter was somehow magical and, if said, would solve our terrorist problem. "Is there a military strategy that is served by this [phrase]?" Very clever ... very political ... very Clintonian ... to take a long-standing negative and turn it against Trump and the Republicans (myself included) ... see: The Hill Video.

Now, this phrase, which the president first used in this political turn-about, is no longer a refusal of our president to identify our enemy, it is now an indication of the pettiness of his opposition. How wily ... yet how very insidious. If the president now says these words, it will be to mock his and Hellery's opposition ... it will not be to take the first step toward rallying the country against our enemy.

How low we have sunk ... and how very dangerous things have become ... when our enemy is elevated by this political legerdemain by Trump's opposition. Such a snide identification of our mortal enemy as mere "magic words" says nothing more than we should not consider them as our enemy ... but as evidence of misguided paranoia on the part of those who would resist.

I realize that this logic is somewhat circuitous  ... and may not register with many (the reason why it as so diabolically clever) ... but nevertheless it is real ... and causes me more than a modicum of concern for our collective willingness to resist those forces which are clearly coming over the hill.

I agree with Trump ... when the president and presumptive Democrat candidate feel that they can belittle him for suggesting a first step in defeating the radical Islamists is to call them by name ... "there is something going on here." I also agree with Trump when he says that Obummer seems more angry toward him here than he is toward the Orlando shooter.

Afterward: See also: Powerline Comments.

Conservation of Energy

In physics there is a law that states that, "in a closed system, the total amount of energy is conserved," Apparently, this is also true in politics ... as recently exemplified by Mitt Romney's attack on fellow Republican and presumptive presidential nominee, Donald Trump. Since Romney could really not find the gumption or the traction to attack with force his Democrat opponent, Barack Obummer, during his run for this same post in 2012, Romney. therefore has plenty of energy leftover to vilify his follow-on Republican candidate ... see: NBC News Story.

It is really a shame that these recent brickbats could not have been used four years ago against his then Democrat opponent, Obummer. Romney might have saved our country a whole parcel of grief over this last leaderless term of our now child president.

And has Romney directed any of his current vitriol against Trump's presumptive opponent, Hellery Clinton? No? Strange!

Afterthought: Many of those voters, who didn't pull the lever for Romney in 2012, are now cheering him on ... so sad.

The In Crowd

"I'm in with the in crowd" -- Dobie Gray Sings

Yes, it's true ... many too many people traditionally vote for candidates whom they think are going to win. That is why media companies produce polls based on biased samples or on questions slanted to get the results they want. And this is why, more and more often, we are seeing polls that miss the actual voting results by an embarrassing degree ... particularly in times like the present when there is a popular revolt growing against such media manipulations.

So, is Hellery beating both Trump and Cruz by the amounts being touted in most of the current media polls ... and losing to Kasich (the Republican candidate preferred by Democrats to be run against)?

I have my serious doubts ...

Afterward: Now in one non-media poll it is a little closer ... see: George Washington University Poll.

The Difference between the Parties

There is an interesting and bright-line difference between the Democrat and Republican parties in the United States. When, in 2008, there arose within the Democrats a charismatic fraud and a charlatan, the old guard and media outlets of this party embraced him enthusiastically and rode him to power. Now, in 2016, when an equivalent bigger-than-life blaggard appears within the Republican party, the establishment of this party disavows him and goes into full panic mode ... trying to excise him like a cancerous tumor.

If I Won the Powerball

When  I was a youngster I dreamt of having a million dollars. Today this amount is but a piffle ... if you don't have at least a billion, you are a nobody. So this Wednesday's Powerball drawing has given me a chance to upgrade my dream ... and go for being a billionaire. If I'm so lucky on Wednesday, the issue then would become ... how to spend all this dough? Let me suggest some interesting ways:

- Set up the Potts Foundation to combat global warming ... fund it with 500 million dollars

- Get some new wheels ... perhaps a Rolls

- Like many of the Silicon-Valley billionaires, spend money to live forever

- Hire Jim Cramer to manage my money

- I might emulate Rupert Murdoch ... get divorced and marry a young chippie ... see: Daily Mail Article

- Buy a 200 foot yacht and park it off of St. Barts for the winter

- Buy a gun for every registered Republican voter who doesn't already own one

- Provide full-ride college funding for all my grandchildren

- I might even purchase a sports team

A Tale of Two Parties

The two party system in the United States is a sham. The Democrat party is no longer recognizable as the home of Sam Nunn, Herbert Humphrey, Barbara Jordan and JFK. This party, under the leadership of Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, Nancy Pelosi, and Harry Reid has successfully moved far left and is about to take this turn even wider. This party no longer wishes the United States to be the leader on the world stage (a stance once called isolationism) and has alienated many allies. It no longer wants a strong military ... witness our president's recent veto of the military appropriation legislation. It wants open borders with very loose enforcement of immigration laws. It is anti-capitalistic ... except for Mom and Pop capitalism ... according to Hillary Clinton in the recent Democrat presidential debate ... and crony capitalism ... according to our president. It favors single-payer health care. It desires European-style nanny-state Socialism with very high taxes funding an ever-growing welfare state. It tolerates repressive Communist governments in Cuba, Venezuela, and China. It has fully swallowed the myth of global warming as a way of expanding the reach of government. It embraces political mendacity ... now dismissed as "spin." It abets the Black Lives Matter movement ... clearly an anti law enforcement cabal.

The Republican Party, under the leadership of Mitch McConnell and John Boehner, is effectively Democrat-light ... a bunch of prancing eunuchs. It only offers token resistance to all the excesses of the galloping Left. It lives in dread of the slings and arrows of the main-stream media (clearly an arm of the Democrat party). It can only give lip service to resisting the tax and spend policies of our fifth-column politicians ... in fact often adding its own precious ornaments to frequent congressional Christmas-tree legislation. It is a party that has lost its way after Ronald Reagan showed it how powerful conservative policies could produce domestic economic growth and international hegemony. Somehow, these lessons were submerged by their own success. Now, some on the Right have realized this backsliding and are trying to restore the idealism that wrought these national benefits. However, the old-time Republican establishment is resisting such a revitalization ... and would prefer the comfort of the current status quo.

Enter Donald Trump who has sensed the frustration of the conservative class in this country and has the communication skills to convince many of them that he can champion the roll-back of the Democrats' excesses. Whether he can or not seems unimportant to his acolytes as they see the demise of our national identity and are willing to grasp any avenue out of  this perdition.

Gravity

The force of gravity is agreed to by 98% of all scientists ... so it clearly must be true.  (However, Einstein did believe that it is just a warp in the space-time continuum.)

Gravity also exists in politics. So now we see how uber-liberal Bernie Sanders is the gravitational attraction pulling Hillary Clinton to the left ... and Donald Trump is a similar force pulling some of the Republican presidential contenders to the right. And, to my mind, this is a good thing for, of late, the Democrat and Republican parties have become two sides of the same coin.

This political gravity then might mean that, come the next presidential election whoever the candidates, the voters should be given a real choice for a change. How very special ...

The First Republican Debate

The upcoming Fox News Republican presidential-candidate debate to be held on August 6th in Ohio will have only ten participants based upon their poll rankings. Thus there is plenty of jockeying by the many declared and undeclared Republican candidates to make it onto this Fox stage ... as this probably will seal the fate of those not invited. Therefore which polling to be used is a major issue ... see: Washington Examiner Article and Washington Post Story.

If I had my druthers I would like the debaters chosen to be Ted Cruz, Carly Fiorina, Dr. Ben Carson, Marco Rubio, Jeb Bush, John Kasich, Scott Walker, Donald Trump, Chris Christie, and Bobby Jindal. I think that this group represents a sensational cross-section of conservative thought and accomplishment. I would have few reservations if any of these people become the eventual Republican candidate ... although I would prefer Scott Walker or Marco Rubio ... with possibly Fiorina or Carson as the veep candidate. (I reserve the right to change my mind after the debate.)

This group then would comprise two Hispanic senators, one woman, one black, one Indian-American Southern governor, two very successful Midwest governors, one straight-talking East Coast governor, one multi-billionaire, and one, a former Southern governor from the Bush dynasty. And three of these debaters would also be accomplished private-sector professionals (when was the last time that happened?) What then could be a better cross section of patriotic conservative Americans?

Unfortunately not making the stage would be Mike Huckabee, Rick Perry, Rick Santorum, Rand Paul, George Pataki, Lindsey Graham.and a slew of other lesser wannabes (see: 2016.Republican Candidates List.). Few of this group float my boat.

No Trump

Multi-billionaire Donald Trump again announced for the presidency yesterday and threw some red meat to the assembled crowd ... saying for one thing that he would build a wall on our southern border and make Mexico pay for it!. The Donald certainly doesn't lack for ego ... and this is the major off-putting aspect of his personality ... see: Daily Mail Article and Video. Surely Trump might do, as president, many of the things that need doing ... reasserting America's place on the world stage ... restoring our infrastructure ... bringing the American fiscal budget more in balance ... getting our economy moving (even promising 4% annual GDP growth) ... and making this country great again.

And, after eight years of lackluster rule by his current doppelganger, the American voter might be ready for such an offbeat solution ... even radio host Howie Carr here in Boston is rooting for The Donald. However, I somehow feel that Trump is in this race more for the ride and is unlikely to move the masses of the voting public to his side. I could be wrong. I've been wrong before ... predicting Ronald Reagan had no chance. But, if Donald Trump is the Republican nominee ... despite his already trashing of some of his Republican opponents ... I strongly suspect that enough opposition research will come out on him as to sink the very slim chance that he might have. He has lived a very fast and loose life after all.

But then again so has Hillary

Foaming at the Mouth

Ted Cruz is announcing his candidacy for the U.S. presidency today, the anniversary of the passing of Obamacare, and much of the media and the looney left are foaming at the mouth with hatred. This morning on the MSNBC show, Morning Joe, both Mika Brzezinski and Donnie ("often wrong but never in doubt") Deutsch could not come up with enough derisive adjectives to express their disdain for this Texas senator. I had to switch channels.

Despite his legacy of media pans and even some Republican critics, Ted Cruz will be a formidable candidate for his perspicacity and combativeness. He is a very good debater and is well versed on all the critical issues facing our nation. Beyond his mediocre polls and the vitriol likely to come his way from many talking heads in the days ahead, I would not count him out. I personally would prefer the somewhat softer-edged Hispanic, Marco Rubio, as the Republican candidate ... but, like the surprising comment from John McCann, if Cruz becomes his party's candidate, I would support him.

It may be that, given how our current Emperor is doing his damnedest to diminish this country, by the time the next election comes around, we may have the appetite for a little more militancy on the part of the Republican candidate. If Hillary Clinton or some other female is the Democrat candidate, then it may well be another election pitting the head against the heart ... a contest that, this time, could well favor the head ... someone like the " courageous conservative" Cruz.

Bile Green

Can Dartmouth sink any lower? For a rarity at the college on the hill, a conservative was invited to speak to the undergraduates. Apparently the college Republicans had invited Rick Perry, outgoing governor of Texas, to speak at an open event and he drew a number of anal-sex questions from the audience ... some of which were printed on a flyer that was passed out by a sophomoric sophomore, Ben Packer. A typical example was, "Do you [Rick Perry] dislike bootysex because the peeny goes in where the poopy comes out?"

Another green weenie in the audience, senior Emily Sellers, asked the governor if he might engage in anal sex for a large campaign contribution. Wow … such disrespect from seemingly liberal artists! And freshman, Timothy Messen, snidely queried if Rick Perry thought that homosexuals were equivalent to alcoholics. Obviously not everyone in the audience was so crass, but to read more of the details of this sour event see: Breitbart Story.

Because of a recent similarly scatological story coming out of Harvard ... see: UK Daily Mail Story, and an overwhelming vote of the Dartmouth faculty to abolish fraternities and sororities, I was commenting to my wife that college professors must live in a parallel universe ... and she agreed. They must have dispatched pedagogical space ships to bring some of their more naively insipid students along with them.

Obviously, the Dartmouth administration cannot and should not punish these miscreant students like it once attempted to stifle campus conservatives for "vexatious" speech. But it surely would be appropriate to embarrass them (and a few of the more notorious faculty members) in some public way.

Afterward: Here is a link to a related article: Powerline Piece.

Turd in the Punch Bowl

Paul Mirengoff of the Powerline blog has pointed out how the Libertarian candidate in Virginia, Robert Sarvis, is personally responsible for getting Democrat Terry McAuliffe elected governor last year and possibly causing Democrat Mark Warner to be re-elected senator from that state yesterday … see: Oh Those Libertarians. In each case the number of votes that Sarvis received would have been more than sufficient to tip the election results back to the Republicans ... Ken Cuccinelli and Ed Gillespie respectively..

Is this Libertarian dude on the Democrat’s payroll?

Hog Tied

Joni Ernst has jumped into Iowa politics with a bang-up commercial which has pushed her to the front of the pack of Republicans vying for the nomination to replace, if elected, the retiring Tom Harkin in the U.S. Senate … see: Washington Post Story. She claims in this “break-through” television ad that she grew up on a Iowa farm castrating hogs and so she will know how to “cut the pork” in Washington.

I must confess that she is a compelling candidate just on the basis of her chutzpah, great smile and her vow for fiscal austerity. However, I too have spent some time on a farm as a youth … and, as I recall, the castration process for hogs did not involve any cutting. The way that it was done in Pennsylvania was to place a very strong, tight rubber band around a shoat’s scrotum which cut off the blood supply. After a few weeks this piglet’s testicles turned black, dried up, and fell off.  Nice and neat … and bloodless.

So perhaps, if Ms. Ernst is nominated and elected, she might take a goodly supply of strong rubber bands with her to Capitol Hill.  Nah! Most males at that venue are eunuchs anyway.

The Enigma

Governor Chris Christie is an enigma to me.  He probably is as thuggish as President Obama or the Clinton's … he is from New Jersey after all.  As an example, I do suspect he purposely zinged Mitt Romney right before the last presidential election with his bear hug of Obama  … possibly as retribution for not being picked as Mitt's Vice Presidential running mate. And this had a lot to do with Romney losing the election. I also think that he is more involved in the bridge-gate dust-up than he lets on.  And moreover I believe that, when he was being vetted him for the Vice Presidential slot, Romney’s people found more skeletons in Christie’s closet.  These are bound to eventually come out.

But then again, the man thinks mostly good conservative thoughts and communicates these thoughts well.  He recently spoke to an Economic Club of Chicago gathering in which he convincingly debunked the recent Democrats’ gnashing of teeth over "income inequality." Quoting from the New York Times he said:

The problem is that Americans do not want income equality, suggesting that it is antithetical to the country’s abiding belief in “income opportunity” that rewards hard work and merit. “You want income equality? That is mediocrity,” he said. “Everybody can have an equal, mediocre salary.”

You can see the previous quote in the following Times article, but you need to slog through a number of brickbats first … see: NY Times Article.  (Funny how quickly the Times turned on Christie once Hillary was the presumptive Democrat nominee in 2016.)  I did see Christie deliver these ideas on television and he was quite convincing … dead on … something that the far left needs to worry about if they are going to continue flexing their Socialist muscles over this issue.

There will be a lot of back and forth with this Christie fellow over the next three years.  I don’t think he has a chance of being President … but, if he wanted to, he could serve an enormously useful function in the upcoming election.  He could be the Republicans’ junk-yard dog … popping all of the left’s pomposities as they raise their poll-tested syrupy heads … kind-of like the James Carville of the right.  Then maybe, if the Republicans can regain the White House, he might be rewarded with some useful administrative post … say Chief of Staff or Congressional Liaison?

He, like he has done in New Jersey, could help fix things.