I am almost in complete agreement with David Brooks regarding his assessment of Donald Trump in his latest New York Times column:Keep reading.
He is a childish man running for a job that requires maturity. He is an insecure boasting little boy whose desires were somehow arrested at age 12. He surrounds himself with sycophants. “You can always tell when the king is here,” Trump’s butler told Jason Horowitz in a recent Times profile. He brags incessantly about his alleged prowess, like how far he can hit a golf ball. “Do I hit it long? Is Trump strong?” he asks.So why am I almost in agreement with Brooks?
Well, to put it very simply, what Brooks has written about Trump could just as easily be said of Obama.
Remember when Michael Jordan dissed Obama's golf game shortly before the 2014 mid-term elections? While Obama acknowledged Jordan was a better golfer he added, "Of course if I was playing twice a day for the last 15 years, then that might not be the case." I realize Obama has played golf 270 times since taking office, but the idea he could compete with one of the greatest athletes in American history is delusional. But, of course, Obama would think like that. This is, after all, a man who has said with complete conviction, "I'm LeBron, baby. I can play on this level. I've got some game."
It takes a certain amount of hubris to think an iPod full of one's speeches is a fitting gift for anyone much less a Queen. Speaking of the Brits, it doesn't say a lot for Obama's maturity that he saw fit to blame British PM David Cameron for the debacle in Libya. To Obama, leading from behind means attacking one's friends from behind...
Here is the list of current federal and state GOP officials, former Republican officials, and private citizens who have formally endorsed Trump if anyone else is interested in joining me. Each and every one of his endorsers should be held accountable in their future elections or political ventures.Jan Brewer and Sarah Palin are on the list, two of my favorite conservatives, heh.
“If his poll numbers hold, Trump will be there six months from now when the Sweet 16 is cut to the Final Four, and he will likely be in the finals.”More.
My prediction, in July of 2015, looks pretty good right now.
Herewith, a second prediction. Republican wailing over his prospective nomination aside, Donald Trump could beat Hillary Clinton like a drum in November.
Indeed, only the fear that Trump can win explains the hysteria in this city. Here is The Washington Post of March 18: “As a moral question it is straightforward. The mission of any responsible Republican should be to block a Trump nomination and election.”
The Orwellian headline over that editorial: “To defend our democracy, the GOP must aim for a brokered convention.”
Beautiful. Defending democracy requires Republicans to cancel the democratic decision of the largest voter turnout of any primaries in American history. And this is now a moral imperative for Republicans.
Like the Third World leaders it lectures, the Post celebrates democracy—so long as the voters get it right.
Whatever one may think of the Donald, he has exposed not only how far out of touch our political elites are, but how insular is the audience that listens to our media elite.
Understandably, Trump’s rivals were hesitant to take him on, seeing the number he did on “little Marco,” “low energy” Jeb and “Lyin’ Ted.”
But the Big Media—the Post, Wall Street Journal, New York Times—have been relentless and ruthless.
Yet Trump’s strength with voters seemed to grow, pari passu, with the savagery of their attacks. As for National Review, The Weekly Standard and the accredited conservative columnists of the big op-ed pages, their hostility to Trump seems to rise, commensurate with Trump’s rising polls.
As the Wizard of Oz was exposed as a little man behind a curtain with a big megaphone, our media establishment is unlikely ever again to be seen as formidable as it once was.
And the GOP?
Those Republicans who assert that a Trump nomination would be a moral stain, a scarlet letter, the death of the party, they are most likely describing what a Trump nomination would mean to their own ideologies and interests...
Most excellent.
From Professor Mark Perry, at AEI:
In 2009, Canadian economist Ross McKitrick was asked by a journalist for his thoughts on the importance of the annual one-hour event in energy self-flagellation and green nitwitery known as Earth Hour, which takes place today, March 28, at 8:30 p.m. Here is his excellent response (my emphasis)...Keep reading.
The Leftist effort to sever objective immutable sex differences from both meaning and cultural recognition and to promote the fiction that one’s sex can change marches on. Within hours of the filing of the Pupil Physical Privacy Act (HB 4474) in Springfield, which would prohibit students in public schools from using restrooms and locker rooms designated for the opposite sex, Equality Illinois, an organization dedicated to the normalization of sexual perversion and confusion, flew into a paroxysm of deceit:Keep reading.
HB4474…would stigmatize transgender and gender non-conforming youth by requiring them to use separate restrooms and locker rooms.Despite the demagogic rhetoric of Equality Illinois, policies and practices that acknowledge and respect objective, immutable, and important sex differences do not “stigmatize” or “attack the well-being” or “dignity” of gender-dysphoric students. Respect and valuation of humans does not require affirmation of all their feelings, beliefs, desires, or actions. In fact, sometimes respect and valuation of humans includes not affirming some of their feelings, beliefs, desires, or actions. Many would argue that allowing a boy or girl to deny the meaning and import of their sex through cross-dressing, rendering themselves sterile through the use of cross-sex hormones, and mutilating their healthy bodies is profoundly disrespectful—an egregious denial of their dignity.
This bill is an attack on the well-being and dignity of transgender and gender non-conforming students. It says to them that they are not respected and valued in the very spaces where they should be safe and affirmed.
The only fair option is to ensure transgender students have access to the facilities that correspond to their gender identity.
The Left believes—sort of—that all reality is determined by the subjective feelings and desires of each individual. So a person’s maleness or femaleness is determined by their feelings not by their, well, maleness or femaleness.
But, it’s a horse of a different color, when other people “feel” that maleness and femaleness is inextricably linked to objective, immutable sex, or when they believe that it’s wrong to pretend people are the sex they are not, or that treating others with dignity requires affirming their wholeness. In such cases Leftists, who with alacrity and regularity violate the law of non-contradiction, claim their subjective feelings (and assumptions) should be considered immutable, absolute, objective truth—you know, unlike each person’s sex...
There is so much anger out there in America: “Anger at Wall Street. Anger at Muslims. Anger at trade deals. Anger at Washington. Anger at police shootings of young black men. Anger at President Obama. Anger at Republican obstructionists. Anger about political correctness. Anger about the role of big money in campaigns. Anger about the poisoned water of Flint. Anger about deportations. Anger about undocumented immigrants. Anger about a career that didn't go as expected. Anger about a lost way of life. Mob anger at groups of protesters in their midst. Specific anger and undefined anger and even anger about anger.”Hat Tip: Instapundit, "ARE YOU FEELING THE LIGHTWORKER’S HOPE-AND-CHANGE YET?"
This anger is the culmination of long-emerging trends in American life: “The decomposition of traditional institutions. The descent of politics into reality-TV entertainment. Demographic and economic shifts quickening the impulses of inclusion and exclusion and us vs. them. All of it leading to this moment of great unsettling, with the Republican Party unraveling, the Democrats barely keeping it together, and both moving farther away from each other by the week, reflecting the splintering not only of the body politic but of the national ideal.”
The largest manhunt in Europe came to a dramatic end Friday when police in Belgium arrested a fugitive linked to the Paris terrorist attacks that killed 130 people in November.More at that top link.
Salah Abdeslam, a 26-year-old French national who grew up in Brussels, was captured in a raid that sent loud bursts of gunfire reverberating through the city's Molenbeek neighborhood.
“We got him,” tweeted Belgium's secretary of state for asylum and migration, Theo Francken.
Abdeslam was injured in the leg during the raid and police were preparing to question him late Friday, hopeful that he will reveal crucial information about a Europe-wide network of Islamic extremists.
Images from French TV showed a man with a seemingly injured leg, wearing an off-white hooded top, being bundled into a police car by several armed officers in combat gear. The identity of the man in the footage was not immediately known...
“The city has a fetish for banning things (among many other weird fetishes, some of which are OK I guess). Things that are currently unwelcome in San Francisco: McDonalds Happy Meals, Segways, plastic bags, soda vending machines, and gay people with opinions…It’s little wonder that companies like Twitter and Facebook, based in San Francisco, are so rapidly descending into the wacky politics of social justice, censorship, and blatant anti-conservatism.”
After Bernie Sanders' wife took a tour of Maricopa County's Tent City Jail with Sheriff Joe Arpaio, critics today accused her of acting as a "prop" in the spread of racist propaganda.More.
Among the naysayers was Democratic U.S. Representative Ruben Gallego, who, in a Facebook post, advised Jane Sanders "to take a less naive approach" to promoting her husband's policies if she "is serious about winning over Latino voters in Arizona."
Gallego is an announced Hillary Clinton supporter.
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I., Vt.) walked away during an interview with a local NBC channel in Phoenix, Arizona.Watch the video at the link.
The footage was released by KPNX, NBC 12 ahead of Arizona’s primaries on Tuesday, March 22 and widely reported by The Hill.
Sanders appeared irked at first by a question from Brahm Resnik about Sanders’ stance on the Minuteman, a group who would voluntarily patrol the Southern border. After Sanders commented on it, Resnik asked Sanders about his wife, Jane Sanders’ recent trip to ‘Tent City,’ an outdoor prison in Maricopa County, Arizona. The prison is run by the famous Sheriff Joe Arpaio, who endorsed Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump for Trump’s strong stance on illegal immigration.
Jane Sanders went on a tour around the perimeter of the prison with Carlos Garcia, an immigrant rights activist. Arpaio approached her and invited her inside the prison for an up-close tour, which she accepted.
Sanders appears to be unhappy however with Arpaio’s invite. As Resnik attempted to ask Sanders about the visit, Sanders interrupted and gave his take.
“You know, let me just tell you something, you know, what Joe Arpaio is doing is an outrage. My wife went to look at the so-called ‘Tent City,’ which is something that should not exist. The fact that he crashed her meeting is to me, very, very wrong. Not something that he should have done.”
After Sanders was done, he got up, took off his microphone and walked off the set...
