h/t Instapundit
...Those who are soured on Trump certainly can cite lots of understandable reasons for their distaste -- well beyond his sometimes grating reality-television personality. In over-dramatic fashion, some Against Trumpers invoke William F. Buckley Jr.’s ostracism of John Birchers from conservative circles as a model for dealing with perceived Trump vulgarity. He is damned as an opportunistic chameleon, not a true conservative. Trump’s personal and professional life has been lurid -- as, again, we were reminded by the media-inspired release of a hot-mic tape of past Trump crude sexual braggadocio. The long campaigning has confirmed Trump as often uncouth -- insensitive to women and minorities. He has never held office. His ignorance of politics often embarrasses those in foreign- and domestic-policy circles. Trump’s temperament is mercurial, especially in its ego-driven obsessions with slights to his business ethics and acumen. He wins back supporters by temporary bouts of steadiness as his polls surge, only to alienate them again with crazy nocturnal tweets and off-topic rants -- as his popularity then again dips. He seems to battle as much with GOP stalwarts as Clintonites, often, to be fair, in retaliation rather than in peremptory fashion.
...The counterarguments for voting Trump are by now also well known. The daily news -- riot, terrorism, scandals, enemies on the move abroad, sluggish growth, and record debt -- demands a candidate of change. The vote is not for purity of conservative thought, but for the candidate who is preferable to the alternative -- and is also a somewhat rough form of adherence to the pragmatic Buckley dictate to prefer the most conservative candidate who can win. The issue, then, at this late date is not necessarily Trump per se, but the fact that he will bring into power far more conservatives than would Hillary Clinton. No one has made a successful argument to challenge that reality.
...Nor is the election a choice even between four more years of liberalism and a return of conservatism; it’s an effort to halt the fundamental transformation of the country. A likely two-term Clinton presidency would complete a 16-year institutionalization of serial progressive abuse of the Constitution, outdoing even the twelve years of the imperial Roosevelt administration. The WikiLeaks revelations suggest an emboldened Hillary Clinton, who feels that a 2016 victory will reify her utopian dreams of a new intercontinental America of open borders and open markets, from Chile to Alaska, in the manner of the European Union expanse from the Aegean to the Baltic.
...Trump’s defeat would translate into continued political subversion of once disinterested federal agencies, from the FBI and Justice Department to the IRS and the EPA. It would ensure a liberal Supreme Court for the next 20 years -- or more. Republicans would be lucky to hold the Senate. Obama’s unconstitutional executive overreach would be the model for Hillary’s second wave of pen-and-phone executive orders. If, in Obama fashion, the debt doubled again in eight years, we would be in hock $40 trillion after paying for Hillary’s even more grandiose entitlements of free college tuition, student-loan debt relief, and open borders. She has already talked of upping income and estate taxes on those far less wealthy than the Clintons and of putting coal miners out of work ("We are going to put a whole lot of coal miners and coal companies out of business") while promising more Solyndra-like ventures in failed crony capitalism.
...We worry about what Citizen Trump did in the past in the private sector and fret more over what he might do as commander-in-chief. But these legitimate anxieties remain in the subjunctive mood; they are not facts in the indicative gleaned from Clinton’s long public record. As voters, we can only compare the respective Clinton and Trump published agendas on illegal immigration, taxes, regulation, defense spending, the Affordable Care Act, abortion, and other social issues to conclude that Trump’s platform is the far more conservative -- and a rebuke of the last eight years. There is a reason the politicized media -- from biased debate moderators to New York Times reporters who seek to pass muster in the Clinton team’s eyes before publishing their puff pieces -- have gone haywire over Trump.
Contrary to popular anger against them, Never Trump conservative op-ed writers and wayward Republican insiders do not have much direct influence in keeping Trump’s party support down. Indeed, even after the latest gaffes, it creeps back up even as he is alienating women and the suburbs. The problem is more nuanced. Never Trump conservative grandees help flesh out the Clinton narrative of a toxic Trump that is then translated through ads, quotes, and sound bites to more numerous fence-sitting independents and women: Why should they vote for a purported extremist whom even the notables of the conservative movement and Republican party cannot stomach?
#1
Yes, it's long, much longer than g(r)om posted, but read the whole thing. I'm going to print it for my wife, who can't vote for Trump because he's "too scary".
Posted by: Bobby ||
10/18/2016 7:31 Comments ||
Top||
#2
Her SCOTUS appointments will complete the end of the Constitution as a written contract between the people and its government and will become simply an unwritten constitution of opinions.
In this explosive new video from Project Veritas Action, a Democratic dirty tricks operative unwittingly provides a dark money trail to the DNC and Clinton campaign. The video documents violence at Trump rallies that is traced to the Clinton campaign and the DNC through a process called birddogging.
#5
EIGHT QUOTES FROM DIFFERENT BOOKS
Her actual words:
1) "Where is the God damn flag? I want the God damn fucking flag up every morning at fucking sunrise". Hillary to staff at the Arkansas Governor's mansion on Labor Day 1991. From the book "Inside the White House" by Ronald Kessler, p. 244
(2) "Fuck off! It's enough I have to see you shit-kickers every day! I'm not going to talk to you, too! Just do your Goddamn job and keep your mouth shut." Hillary to her State Trooper bodyguards after one of them greeted her with "Good Morning." From the book "America Evita" by Christopher Anderson, p.90
(3) "If you want to remain on this detail, get your fucking ass over here and grab those bags!" Hillary to a Secret Service Agent who was reluctant to carry her luggage because he wanted to keep his hands free in case of an incident. From the book "The First Partner" p. 25
(4)"Stay the fuck back, stay the fuck back away from me! Don't come within ten yards of me, or else! Just fucking do as I say, Okay!!?" Hillary screaming at her Secret Service detail. From the book "Unlimited Access" by Clinton's FBI Agent-in-Charge, Gary Aldridge, p.139
(5)"Where's the miserable cock sucker?" (otherwise known as "Bill Clinton") Hillary shouting at a Secret Service officer. >From the book "The Truth about Hillary" by Edward Klein, p. 5
(6) "You fucking idiot" Hillary to a State Trooper who was driving her to an event. From the book "Crossfire" ~pg. 84
(7)"Put this on the ground! I left my sunglasses in the limo. I need those fucking sunglasses! We need to go back!" Hillary to Marine One helicopter pilot to turn back while in route to Air Force One. From the book " Dereliction of Duty" p. 71-72
(8)"Come on Bill, put your dick up! You can't fuck her here!!" Hillary to Gov. Bill Clinton when she spots him talking with an attractive female. From the book "Inside the White House" by Ronald Kessler, p. 243
There it is ........book, chapter and page.......the real Hillary:
Additionally, when she walked around the White House, NO ONE was permitted to look her in the eye, they all had to lower their heads with their eyes towards the ground whenever she walked by.
Remember her most vile comment about Benghazi: "What difference at this point does it make?"
Most recent of her outbursts was to Obama when she learned that the FBI was investigating her: "Call off your fucking dogs".
Now it will be clear why the crew of "Marine One" helicopter nick-named the craft,
[American Thinker] "On our issues Trump is perfect," declares the grassroots organization Jewschoosetrump.org, calling on fellow Jews across the country to remember, a word resonant with religious and historical meaning for Jews.
It can't be true--the American Jewish community has "forgotten," or more accurately no longer chooses to remember, the existential threat to Israel, America, and Western civilization posed by Iran and the Iran Deal. (snip) Our children and grandchildren [will] ask us what were we thinking or were we even thinking when we ignored and denied the dangers facing us.
(snip) Are American Jewish leaders once again going to deny reality, hope for the best, engage in altruistic surrender and denial, and feel good and superior for caring first about others rather than the future of our children? This is pitiful and incredibly dangerous. Maybe a psychologist could figure out why our history has crippled our instinct for survival, but shame on us anyway.
(snip) It is an easy choice. We don't even need to scrutinize destroyed emails and hidden speeches. Hillary is for the Iran Deal--she is proud of it and expresses support for Obama's handling of Iran. Trump trashes the Iran Deal and vows to end it. This is reason enough for us as American Jews to choose Trump.
Although Jews are a "rare" minority in America, only 2% of Americans, they are concentrated in the swing state of Florida, as well as Ohio and Pennsylvania. Because of the importance of Florida, Jews could determine the Electoral College tally if the election is as close as expected. Con't.
[The Nation] New research suggests the experience of bias alters our hormones in ways that widen the academic achievement gap.
An onslaught of videos depicting African Americans shot and killed by the police. A Republican presidential candidate who launches his campaign by hurling invective about the supposed depravity of Mexican immigrants and then charges toward the White House with the aid of racist dog whistles. Alt-right power players staking a claim to Donald Trump’s kingdom of bluster and bombast as a resurgent white-supremacist movement, finding a happy home in the Twitter-sphere, turns cyberbullying into the new burning cross.
It should come as no surprise, given the pervasiveness of such race-centered strife and chaos as well as the hyper-saturation of its myriad horrors on social media, that a recent New York Times/CBS News poll found that Americans are as pessimistic about race relations as they were during the 1992 Rodney King riots. Con't, unfortunately.
An excerpt:
One of the more depressing moments of my Australian tour a few months ago was a private dinner with a handful of prominent conservative parliamentarians - by which I mean men and women to the right of Mr Turnbull. The most eminent among them declared confidently that scrapping 18C was "not a first-order priority". We then moved on to discuss what he regarded as the first-order priority, Islamic terrorism in Australia and elsewhere.
I pointed out that one of the reasons why the former (free speech) most certainly is a first-order priority is because, without it, the latter (Islam and the west) cannot be honestly addressed. Theodore Dalrymple a decade ago:
Steyn is right that the main struggle is one of ideas. Unfortunately, political correctness, which is to thought what sentimentality is to compassion, means that the intelligentsia of the West has disarmed itself in advance of any possible struggle.
Political correctness enforced by state power has castrated public debate on the supposed "first-order priority" of our time - to the point where the Dutch courts prosecute opposition politicians over their election platforms, the French courts prosecute novelists over things their fictional characters said, the British police investigate Twitter jokes ...and once free peoples have so internalized these constraints that, even without state intervention, a supposedly free press punishes even the most footling departure from conventional bromides with public humiliation and career derailment. Free speech is always a first-order priority - because, without it, you can't truly discuss any of the others.
As I recently said about the Pegster: the slowest kid in the class finally gets it... The case of Peggy Noonan.
Amongst Republicans there are two kinds of Trump-haters: the never-Trumpers who boast that they’ll never support him, and the non-never-Trumpers who say they’ll do so, but only by holding their noses. By their timidity, the latter reveal the tragic flaw that has prevented Republicans from winning elections. They’ll advance their arguments in favor of the Trump issues, and then go on to express their contempt for the man who had the courage to articulate them. Winners don’t do this sort of equivocating.
It’s like the codas one finds in medieval courtly literature, such as De Amore (The Art of Courtly Love), by Andreas Capellanus, believed to be a Capuchin monk. In this delightful discourse on love, Capellanus teaches how ladies and gentlemen should properly prosecute a love affair. The lover is ardent; his love object is doubtful. It’s all very beautiful. At the end, however, a retraction of the entire concept is required, lest the work be deemed improper by the Church. So there’s a coda, where the worldly priest exonerates himself by describing how disgusting women are and warning men to resist their natural inclinations lest they burn in everlasting hell.
In a variation on this method, Peggy Noonan, Conservatism’s sweetheart, describes four of Hillary’s transgressions, while exonerating herself by damning Donald Trump as well.
Just because I condemn her, doesn’t mean I like him, she protests, and thereby betrays her weakness.
First, there’s Hillary’s Russian connection, including the Uranium One scandal. This is where the Clintons, while Hillary was Secretary of State, pushed forward a number of deals backed by the State Department, which resulted in Russia owning large uranium stakes in Kazakhstan and the U.S. In this way, Russia acquired means to make nuclear fuel and, in return, the Clinton Foundation received $31 million and a pledge of an additional $100 million from one of the principles, and Bill Clinton received $500,000 for giving a speech.
In another deal, Secretary Clinton pushed for a joint U.S.-Russian technology initiative which gave Russia access to U.S. classified and sensitive information, as well to emerging technologies. In return, shares in the consortium were handed out to investors who were also Clinton Foundation donors. Some in the State Department were alarmed, but the Clintons were hugely enriched.
#5
Actually I trust Hillary.
I trust her to drive the last nail into the coffin of civic liberties and human dignity in USA - and hence the rest of the world (because everybody "western" imitates the USA).
I trust her, to support "Palestinians" most egregious demands.
I trust her to heat up the "New Cold War", which her husband created by attacking Serbia.
#6
The biggest difference between most Republicans and most Democrats is Republicans have scruples and won't support a candidate they don't like. Democrats will support their candidate o matter what she's done.
Posted by: Deacon Blues ||
10/18/2016 8:10 Comments ||
Top||
#8
DB- you're absolutely correct. And that goes a long way in explaining why the Republicans haven't won a presidential election since 2004 and-- given the way things are going and barring some unforeseen turn of events-- probably won't win another one in this lifetime; because the Democrats have no scruples and the deck has been stacked against Republicans.
#11
The Republican party has always been an uneasy alliance between fratricidal twins. On the one hand you have the Rockefeller / Establishment / RINO types. On the other you have conservatives, constitutionalists and the religious right.
In the past, when the establishment types won a primary the conservative types would fall in line to support the candidate. What's happened in the last decade is that the conservative types have realized that the establishment types were taking their support for granted. They used to throw us the occasional bone. No longer.
The obvious, and probably belated, result is that conservatives types have stopped automatically supporting establishment type candidates, and without our support they generally can't win.
Now, the establishment types have never felt obligated to support conservative candidates, but there has been change here as well. Now the establishment types are actively working with Democrats and the Left to defeat conservative candidates.
Obviously, this can't continue if the Republican party is to remain viable.
"[FormerSpook] The logical starting point is Russia. As John Schindler recently noted in the New York Observer, we are facing a likely nuclear standoff with Russia in the Baltics region, probably before President Obama leaves office. It's no secret that Vladimir Putin has no regard for the American leader, and he is determined to inflict another humiliation on Mr. Obama before he leaves office.
It's long been obvious that Vladimir Putin and his inner circle view Barack Obama with utter contempt. To the hard men in Moscow, who got their schooling in the KGB, our diffident, wordy Ivy League lawyer president is a weakling--almost a caricature of everything they despise about the postmodern West.
Here the Kremlin mirrors most Russians, who find Obama a puzzling and contemptible man. This is nothing new. I’ve heard remarkable put-downs of our commander-in-chief for years, going back to 2008, even from the mouths of highly educated Russians. Their comments are invariably earthy, insulting, and nowhere near politically correct.
It’s therefore no surprise that Russians view Obama with contempt--and so does their leader. As our president winds up his second term and prepares to move out of the White House, the Kremlin simply isn’t bothering to hide that contempt any longer, even in high-level diplomacy, where a modicum of tact is expected.
Of course, Mr. Obama hasn't exactly helped his cause by ignoring Russian provocations and refusing to make tough choices--and stand behind them. That non-existent "red line" in Syria was followed by Putin making (and keeping) his own vow to support long-time ally Bashir Assad. Pentagon analysts claim Russia's military efforts in Syria have been far from a victory, but that misses the central point. Putin didn't go to war to defeat ISIS; his primary objective was to prevent Assad's military collapse and weaken the U.S.-backed rebel groups trying to depose his regime. By those metrics, the deployment has been successful.
#1
It's long been obvious that Vladimir Putin and his inner circle view Barack Obama with utter contempt.
Most useful idiots are treated that way. Having been raised a red diaper baby, his entire perspective is that its America that always has been wrong. They adjudge him accordingly.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
[The Nation] New research suggests the experience of bias alters our hormones in ways that widen the academic achievement gap.
