Donald Trump Clears Up His Comments About George W. Bush and 9/11 (VIDEO)

Like I said, I'll be surprised if Trump's comments on 9/11 make any difference at this point. No one's relitigating the Iraq war. Well, Bernie Sanders is, since his vote against the war is his sole foreign policy credential. But most GOP voters are worried about jobs and the economy, immigration, to say nothing of current problems in the Middle, not whether Bush 43 cooked the books.

Here's Trump with John Dickerson on this morning's Face the Nation. It's good, vintage Trump:

Kristen Keogh's Valentine's Day Forecast

Via ABC News 10 San Diego:

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BONUS: From Charles Murray, Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960-2010.

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AoSHQ: Why Trump Damaged Himself Tonight

Here's Ace with the analysis, "The Ego Has Landed: Why Trump Damaged Himself Tonight":

The "ego" in the headline doesn't actually refer to Trump's ego, for once. Rather, it refers to the voters' egos.

I think Trump hurt himself badly tonight, enough to knock him out of his first-place standing in most states. Oh he won't completely disappear -- but 2nd Place Trump is not the same thing as Frontrunner Trump.

Trump damaged himself with his claim that Bush lied us into war in Iraq. Not botched the intelligence, not read too much into thin intelligence.

Most Republicans, I think, would agree that that.

No, Trump claimed that Bush deliberately lied us into war.

First, this is alarming because it once again demonstrates that Trump has a conspiratorial mind. It's not enough for the conspiracist to say someone was wrong -- no, they have unrealistically black/white minds, and if you made a bad call, you must have lied.

That conspiracism was always present in his claims about Obama's birth certificate. But that bit of fantasy was about Obama, someone the average Republican voter isn't exactly eager to man the battlements for.

This corker -- this Al Gore roar of quote -- is about George W. Bush, someone still looked upon with affection by most of the party.

Which brings us to the second problem.

If Donald Trump is right, and George W. Bush deliberately schemed with his neo-con advisers to "lie" us into a phony war with Iraq, what does that say about the average Republican voter who supported Bush from 1999, voted for him, defended him through the recount, cried with him on 9/11, agreed with him on Iraq, defended him from ceaseless liberal attacks on him during the war, defended him from Obama's never-expiring "Blame Bush" blame-shifting, etc.?

If Trump is right, then we're not just wrong to have supported him. If Trump's right, we're goddamned rubes and fools to have defended this Actual Hitler-Level Monster for going on 17 years now...

Well, like I said earlier, Trump's comments didn't go over very well with me, although I doubt they're going to have much of an impact on his support. Frankly, who's to say voters are interested in relitigating the Iraq war? I just don't see it. There's so many more current issues facing the electorate, things to which Trump's campaign has nailed down perfectly.

Donald Trump Towers 22-Points Ahead of Ted Cruz in New South Carolina GOP Poll (VIDEO)

The poll was conducted before last night's debate, and with the huge military presence in the Palmetto State, Trump's number's could take a dive. But considering all that's happened so far in this campaign, I doubt it.

At CBS News, "Poll: South Carolina still solidly for Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton." (Via Memeorandum.)

And watch, at Face the Nation, "Trump, Clinton lead in latest CBS News poll of South CarolinaFace the Nation on CBS."

How Conservative is Donald Trump?

Here's the panel on "Face the Nation" this morning:

Sunday Cartoons

Flopping Aces', "Sunday Funnies," isn't posted yet. (Here's last week's.)

But see Reaganite Republican, "Reaganite's SUNDAY FUNNIES," and Theo Spark, "Cartoon Roundup..."



Cartoon Credit: Legal Insurrection, "Branco Cartoon – Street Talker."

Donald Trump Forces Republicans to Relitigate the Iraq War

So, Trump nailed down the Code Pink constituency last night:

Code Pink is ecstatic with Trump's performance during last night's debate https://t.co/WaNv7QGLLh

— Sam Stein (@samsteinhp) February 14, 2016

“I watched the debate last night and LOVED IT — @medeabenjamin on Donald Trump. https://t.co/WaNv7QGLLh

— Sam Stein (@samsteinhp) February 14, 2016

Dennis Kucinich said he was heartened to hear Trump’s position on the Iraq War https://t.co/WaNv7QGLLh

— Sam Stein (@samsteinhp) February 14, 2016

And from Byron York, at the Washington Examiner, "Trump forces GOP to take uncomfortable look at Iraq War":

So once again, Trump has gambled. Maybe his frankness will allow other Republicans to loosen up and admit their doubts about the Iraq war...

— Byron York (@ByronYork) February 14, 2016

GREENVILLE, S.C. — The Republican presidential candidates met in debate just hours after learning of the death of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia. Beyond that, the debate came at a time when the entire world economy has the jitters; when yet another attempt to bring peace to Syria is in tatters; and when the Republican establishment is more nervous than ever about the continued strength of Donald Trump. And with all of that going on, the most passionate exchange of the entire event was about … relitigating the Iraq War.

It's not shocking that George W. Bush's decision to invade Iraq would come up nearly 13 years after the fact; it pops up in Democratic debates these days, too. But the exchange between Trump and Jeb Bush over Iraq Saturday night wasn't just a passing reference. It was in some ways the debate Republicans mostly didn't have back in 2004, when Democrats were consumed with the war. And here in Greenville, as has happened elsewhere in this campaign, the candidate named Bush had a hard time dealing with the subject.

The back-and-forth started when moderator John Dickerson brought up a 2008 interview with CNN in which Trump said he was surprised that Democrats had not impeached George W. Bush over the war, and that it would be "a wonderful thing" if they had.

On stage Saturday, Trump would not repeat what he said about impeachment — there are apparently limits even for Trump. But he did not hesitate to talk about Iraq. "Obviously, the war in Iraq was a big, fat mistake, all right?" Trump said. "We spent $2 trillion, thousands of lives, we don't even have it. Iran has taken over Iraq with the second-largest oil reserves in the world."

"George Bush made a mistake," Trump continued. "We can make mistakes. But that one was a beauty. We should have never been in Iraq. We have destabilized the Middle East."

And finally: "They lied," Trump said of the Bush administration. "They said there were weapons of mass destruction, there were none. And they knew there were none. There were no weapons of mass destruction."

I love Trump, but he's losing me here. And if you think back, earlier in the campaign he's said he oblititerate the terrorists and we'd win the war on terror, so he's not too consistent in his ideological positions.

Oh well, at least he's once again dominating the debate, although perhaps not in the direction I'd prefer.

Still more.

More at Memeorandum.

WATCH: Ronda Rousey, Ashley Graham, Hailey Clauson Revealed for SI Swimsuit 2016 Cover (VIDEO)

Following-up, "Ronda Rousey, Ashley Graham, and Hailey Clauson Score Unique Covers for Sports Illustrated Swimsuit 2016."

Now watch, the big reveal, "Ronda Rousey, Ashley Graham, Hailey Clauson Revealed as 2016 SI Swimsuit Cover Models."

Ronda Rousey, Ashley Graham, and Hailey Clauson Score Unique Covers for Sports Illustrated Swimsuit 2016

At WeSmirch, "History in the making: Ronda Rousey, Ashley Graham & Hailey Clauson each score a SI Swimsuit 2016 cover!"

And on Twitter:

Podcast: The decision behind the @SI_Swimsuit covers (@MJ_Day with @SI_MaggieGray) https://t.co/oArZrTVF7e pic.twitter.com/fpsTWWLxfl

— Sports Illustrated (@SInow) February 14, 2016

Supreme Court Thrust to Center of Presidential Campaign

Amazing how much Scalia's death has roiled an already intense political season.

At the Los Angeles Times, "Scalia's death puts Supreme Court at the center of the presidential campaign":

Justice Antonin Scalia's death has turned a second-tier topic into a central facet of the 2016 presidential campaign: Among the new president's first acts likely will be nominating a justice who will determine the balance of power on the Supreme Court.

Potential court openings haven't dominated debates thus far in the campaign, and voters have not often raised it, aside from a suggestion to Hillary Clinton that, if elected, she'd appoint President Obama. But Scalia's death changes all that, vaulting into prominence a choice that will determine the country's course on voting rights, abortion, immigration, campaign finance, the environment and other contentious issues.

The battle lines were drawn within minutes of the death announcement, with Obama saying he would nominate a successor and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, who controls the schedule, saying that the Senate should not take up an appointment in the 11 months remaining in the president's term. Republican presidential candidates immediately backed McConnell. Democrats objected, arguing that selecting a justice is Obama's job — and deciding in prompt fashion is the Senate's.

The political ramifications are many: Democrats and Republicans will have an issue around which to rally voters who might have considered the court a secondary issue, if that. Obama will have a chance to appoint a nominee who could influence political races up and down the ticket by appealing to a specific demographic group, even if the nominee is not ultimately confirmed.

Candidates in hot Senate races will be pressed to say how they would vote on Obama's pick, since those elections will determine who controls the nomination process next year. And voters will witness a contemporaneous example of the Washington gridlock that already has inflamed anger on both sides in this presidential campaign.

“Maybe a Supreme Court vacancy will remind people that presidential elections are not circuses — they really are important,” said Charlie Cook, a nonpartisan political analyst. “The stakes just went up, and now everyone knows it.”

Keep reading.

Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia Dead at 79

Everything is so much more politicized than, say, 30 years ago.

Back then, it seems to me, there'd have been an announcement of the justice's death, and the president would've waited until after the holiday weekend to make a statement and announce his intentions to appoint a nominee.

Not Obama though. We'd barely gotten the news about Scalia and Obama was out with a White House television statement. (And then, the entire political class, as seen on Twitter, has handicapped the upcoming appointment, giving Scalia's loved ones hardly any time to grieve. It's not for me to say, I guess. That's they way things are nowadays. It just appears unseemly.)

The obituary's at the Los Angeles Times, "Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia dies at 79; fiery conservative fought liberalism's tide":

Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, an eloquent conservative who used a sharp intellect, a barbed wit and a zest for verbal combat to resist what he saw as the tide of modern liberalism, has died. He was 79.

Scalia died while on a hunting trip in West Texas, according to a statement issued Saturday by Texas Gov. Greg Abbott. The death was later confirmed by the U.S. Marshals Service and the Supreme Court.

Scalia died at the Cibolo Creek Ranch, a 30,000-acre retreat of antebellum forts bought and restored by Houston millionaire John Poindexter.

Scalia had gone to his room Friday night and was found dead Saturday after he did not appear for breakfast, the Marshals Service said.

At about 2:45 p.m. Saturday, people at the ranch summoned a Catholic priest from Presidio, 30 miles away, to minister last rites to the justice, who was a Catholic. “It appeared as though he had passed away in his sleep," said Elizabeth O'Hara, a spokeswoman for the Diocese of El Paso...

More.

Obama's comments are here, "Obama to Nominate Scalia Successor ‘In Due Time’ (VIDEO)."

'Jeb is so wrong!' — Donald Trump and Jeb Bush Clash at #GOPDebate in South Carolina (VIDEO)

The stacked crowd was out of control.

Lame.

At Politico, "Trump: Boos coming from pro-Bush 'lobbyists'.



Also, "Trump: Jeb 'so wrong' on ISIS," and "Trump blames George W. Bush for 9/11."

And see, "Trump bludgeoned in nastiest GOP debate yet":

An all-out brawl broke out on Saturday night’s debate stage, as the GOP candidates viciously tried to wound each other ahead of next weekend’s South Carolina primary.

Donald Trump skewered Jeb Bush for standing by his brother and the Iraq War. Bush slammed John Kasich for supporting Obamacare’s Medicaid expansion. Marco Rubio and Trump called Ted Cruz a serial liar, and Cruz bit back, retorting that Rubio is weak on undocumented immigrants and Trump would nominate liberal judges.

The barbs were often indiscriminate and unrestrained, drowning out CBS’s moderators and egged on by a vocal audience that booed Trump and Cruz.

“You are the single biggest liar,” Trump growled at Cruz, after Cruz suggested he’s an unreliable conservative.

The melee was the unmasking of dynamics that have largely played out by press release or in one-off one-liners on the campaign trail. It’s a sign of the rising stakes in South Carolina, which could define the contours of the race over the next few months as a three-way contest among Trump, Cruz and an establishment-backed candidate like Rubio, Bush or Kasich. Ben Carson, a retired neurosurgeon who has trailed in polls, is also hoping the squabbling helps lift his soft-spoken brand, though he had few opportunities to stand out during the debate...

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Also, from Charles Murray, Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960-2010.

Plus, David Horowitz, The Black Book of the American Left Volume 5: Culture Wars.

BONUS: From Dick and Liz Cheney, Exceptional: Why the World Needs a Powerful America.

Donald Trump's America

Via Mark Tapscott, at Instapundit, "CHARLES MURRAY NAILS “TRUMPISM” – Buzz is growing about this superb analysis of the Trump phenomenon."

Following the link takes us the Murray's piece at AEI, "Trump’s America":

If you are dismayed by Trumpism, don’t kid yourself that it will fade away if Donald Trump fails to win the Republican nomination. Trumpism is an expression of the legitimate anger that many Americans feel about the course that the country has taken, and its appearance was predictable. It is the endgame of a process that has been going on for a half-century: America’s divestment of its historic national identity.

For the eminent political scientist Samuel Huntington, writing in his last book, “Who Are We?” (2004), two components of that national identity stand out. One is our Anglo-Protestant heritage, which has inevitably faded in an America that is now home to many cultural and religious traditions. The other is the very idea of America, something unique to us. As the historian Richard Hofstadter once said, “It has been our fate as a nation not to have ideologies but to be one.”

What does this ideology—Huntington called it the “American creed”—consist of? Its three core values may be summarized as egalitarianism, liberty and individualism. From these flow other familiar aspects of the national creed that observers have long identified: equality before the law, equality of opportunity, freedom of speech and association, self-reliance, limited government, free-market economics, decentralized and devolved political authority.

As recently as 1960, the creed was our national consensus. Running that year for the Democratic nomination, candidates like John F. Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson and Hubert Humphrey genuinely embraced the creed, differing from Republicans only in how its elements should be realized.

Today, the creed has lost its authority and its substance. What happened? Many of the dynamics of the reversal can be found in developments across the whole of American society: in the emergence of a new upper class and a new lower class, and in the plight of the working class caught in between.

In my 2012 book “Coming Apart,” I discussed these new classes at length. The new upper class consists of the people who shape the country’s economy, politics and culture. The new lower class consists of people who have dropped out of some of the most basic institutions of American civic culture, especially work and marriage. Both of these new classes have repudiated the American creed in practice, whatever lip service they may still pay to it. Trumpism is the voice of a beleaguered working class telling us that it too is falling away.

Historically, one of the most widely acknowledged aspects of American exceptionalism was our lack of class consciousness. Even Marx and Engels recognized it. This was egalitarianism American style. Yes, America had rich people and poor people, but that didn’t mean that the rich were better than anyone else...

Keep reading.

Al-Shabaab Claims Responsibility for Somalia Laptop Jet Bombing (VIDEO)

At CNN, "Al-Shabaab claims responsibility for Somalia in-flight jet blast":

(CNN) The jihadist group Al-Shabaab on Saturday claimed responsibility for a bomb blast on a Somali passenger plane this month -- an explosion that authorities say killed only the alleged bomber.

The Daallo Airlines plane, which took off from Somalia's capital bound for Djibouti on February 2, landed back in Mogadishu despite the blast, which Somali authorities say was caused by a laptop computer containing a bomb.

The bomber -- identified by authorities as Abdullahi Abdisalam Borleh -- was sucked out of the airliner through a hole from the explosion.

In a statement released online, Al-Shabaab said the operation targeted "Western intelligence officials and Turkish NATO forces aboard the airplane bound for Djibouti."

The statement admitted that the bombing did not go as planned.

"While the operation did not bring down the plane as Allah had decreed, it struck terror in the hearts of the crusaders," the statement reads.

The group vowed to continue targeting "Western intelligence teams" that operate in Somalia...

Keep reading.

Rachel McAdams and Michael Keaton in Santa Barbara (VIDEO)

The Santa Barbara Independent Film Festival was last week. Rachel McAdams and Michael Keaton caused quite a stir with their appearance in town.

Via KEYT News 3:

How Far Left Has America Moved?

From S­tuart Stevens, at the New York Times:

FROM the earliest days of Barack Obama’s presidency, a comforting assumption developed among much of the center-right political world. The thinking went like this: President Obama was far more liberal than the majority of the country. But given his extraordinary political talents, the fatigue of the George W. Bush years, the economic crisis and the excitement of electing the first African-American president, the country picked him not because of his ideology but in spite of it.

Once this unique political figure was no longer on the ballot, America would revert to the less liberal, more center-right direction that was the norm after World War II. Under this scenario, President Obama wasn’t some profound historical shift but more of an eccentric diversion.

Now it’s February 2016 and an obscure socialist — O.K., a Democratic Socialist — from a tiny state just beat one of the most powerful forces in the Democratic Party in the New Hampshire primary. On the Republican side, a man whom National Review, the conservative movement’s flagship publication, has vigorously denounced, also won New Hampshire in a rout.

How did we get here?

When he entered the presidential race in 2007, Mr. Obama had amassed a voting record that was ranked by National Journal as the most liberal in the United States Senate. In the Democratic primary, Hillary Clinton’s campaign warned that the young senator’s record would lead to defeat in November. In that general election, Senator John McCain prosecuted the same ideological case, with little success. Big hunks of America had fallen in love with Mr. Obama.

Keep reading.

New York Shoe Robber Loses His Arm When Theft Victim Runs Him Over in Honda Pilot (VIDEO)

At NYDN, "Thief tries to stick up Brooklyn driver in Air Jordan sale scam, but victim hits robber with car, possibly causing him to lose arm — WARNING, GRAPHIC CONTENT."

Watch, "Victim in robbery runs over attempted crook."

It's Going to Feel Like Summer This Weekend, and the Beaches Are Going to Be Packed (VIDEO)

Slather up the sunscreen and head down to the water, lol.

Watch, at CBS News 2 Los Angeles, "Hot Weekend Weather Is Expected to Pack the Beaches."