Cruz’s Silence is DEAFENING.

August 15, 2016August 15, 2016 by Annie | Leave a comment

Cruz’s silence is deafening, and that’s a good thing. He’s doing what all good warriors do: getting out of the way while your enemy is self-destructing. And when even HuffPo gets it, you know you’ve fought the good fight. I’ve been saying this for a month. You can’t lose if you hold fast to principles. It may take a while to look like you’re not losing, but it will come.

The only point of disagreement I have with the piece is that Cruz is “smiling.” He’s not smiling. He’s aggrieved. But not for himself, for the Republic. This isn’t fun for anyone who loves the Constitution, or America’s ideals.

Via The Huffington Post, August 14, 2016: As Donald Trump Self-Destructs, Ted Cruz Is Probably One Of The Few Republicans Smiling Right Now by Mario Almonte, PR Strategist, Commentator

Ted Cruz must be a happy camper these days. With Donald Trump spiraling into an epic meltdown not seen since Britney Spears shaved her head, he is among only a handful of Republican leaders who stoically refused to endorse Trump from the onset. As such, he is poised to emerge with incredible political capital and a national reputation as the only major Republican who refused categorically to be “a servile puppy“ to Donald Trump. Even more importantly, unlike the Bush clan, Cruz was the only Republican who showed up at the Republican National Convention and told it to Trump’s face. He told the audiences to “vote your conscience,” which promptly got him booed off the stage.

Although the Trump organization had been given copies of Cruz’s speech hours before he spoke, Cruz’s refusal to “say his name” immediately elicited angry cries of “traitor” from fellow Republicans like Chris Christie and Rudy Giuliani, the former who had “turned over his political testicles long ago,” according to Cruz’s former campaign manager, Jeff Roe. Cruz’s popularity plummeted among Republicans in the days following his speech and pundits wrote his eulogy.

Immediately following the Democratic National Convention, Donald Trump began to unravel in a series of stunningly bizarre and self-destructive rants that included insulting the family of a soldier killed in action. Republicans have begun to come out en masse to denounce his actions and say they might even vote for Hillary Clinton. These included Senator Susan Collins, 50 security experts who signed a letter calling Trump unfit to be President, and other lawmakers and business leaders. Congressman Mike Coffman even ran an ad saying, “Honestly, I don’t care for him much.”

Hillary Clinton has now open up a double digit lead over Trump, according to some surveys. Director of NATOSource Jorge Benitez called him, “The most dangerous man in the world.” Donald Trump’s mental health is even becoming an issue. House Speaker Paul Ryan, despite Trump’s initial refusal to endorse him, easily won his primary race against Paul Nehlen, a “Donald Trump-inspired opponent.”

Today, the growing consensus is that Trump is poised to lose the election. The New York Daily News took it further and called for Trump to end his campaign now, “in a reckoning with his own madness.” The sentiment seems to be supported by the latest Reuters/Ipsos poll, which finds that nearly 1 in 5 Republicans want Trump to drop out.

Cruz has been quiet, these days, watching the show. Only recently, the world was calling his speech at the Republican National Convention political suicide. Might they soon be calling it his golden ticket to the White House?

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Friends Don’t Let Stupid Friends Vote. Here’s How.

June 3, 2016June 4, 2016 by Annie | Leave a comment

Know how Ted Cruz won Utah with 69% of the vote? And won most of the caucuses handily? And most of the Republican-only primaries?

Conservative Review’s Daniel Horowitz has offered a brilliant, near-term, totally doable solution to the problem of a “Dancing With the Stars” electorate, and it doesn’t involve any odious “literacy tests”… except it sort of does.

He offers what we may one day call “The Utah Solution” to stupid people voting and fouling up our Republic. He makes who votes bottom-up+self-selecting rather than top-down+we-know-what’s-best-selecting. He envisions a system 100% open to anyone who cares to participate yet by its very nature, separates the wheat from the chaff.

I offer a few salient paragraphs below, as it’s a long read, but when you have fresh coffee, take some time with it and read the whole thing. It’s great.

THE CASE FOR REFORMING PRIMARIES

By: Daniel Horowitz | June 02, 2016

…Until 1912, most states still used the convention method during presidential elections, but that changed with the emergence of Teddy Roosevelt as the progressive leader. As Professor Sidney Milkis, a noted scholar on the progressive era, observed, Roosevelt’s “crusade made universal use of the direct primary, a cause célèbre.” Roosevelt went on to win most of the primaries, but conservative Howard Taft won the states that still had conventions and therefore won the party’s nomination at the national convention. However, Roosevelt’s views lived on through the election of Woodrow Wilson. It’s no coincidence that progressives succeeded at changing the nominating process precisely as the “newly emergent mass media” became dominant in our political culture, as Milkis puts it.

.
Sound familiar to our time? Mass media and campaign advertisements determining the nominee among “the people?” As one groups of political scientists declared in a 2004 study on the effects of direct primaries, “the direct primary stands as one of the most significant and distinctive political reforms of the Progressive era in America.” While the 17th Amendment is what allowed progressives to ensure half the country would elect senators in line with the views the elites use to manipulate the masses, the institution of direct primaries ensured that even in conservative states only progressive Republicans would be able to survive the money/media/name recognition juggernaut. 100 years later, with a progressive oligarchy in Washington, they can declare mission accomplished.

But Aren’t Conventions Smoked Filled Rooms?

Progressive proponents of direct popular vote primaries complain that conventions allow the party hacks to choose the nominees behind the doors of “smoke filled rooms” without the input of the people. And undoubtedly in some states in the 1800s that is exactly what happened. But the convention model we are speaking of – “the Utah style convention” – achieves the perfect middle ground between the tyranny at both ends of the spectrum from oligarchy to pure democracy.

In Utah, every neighborhood holds a caucus meeting where people who are familiar with each other debate and discuss the races at hand. They select a delegate to represent the precinct at the convention. In the Beehive State, there are 4,000 delegates – all selected by the people in a process that tends to attract high information voters. This is true representative democracy our Founders envisioned, one which would foster an informed patriotism.

The benefits of representative conventions to choose party nominees include the following:

In most states the selection process would be dominated by grassroots activists.
Money and media would play a relatively minimal role in choosing the nominee.
Conservatives could put numerous Senate seats and dozens of House seats in play per cycle in the 25 more conservative states. The threat of numerous senators and House members in the South and Great Plains knowing that a Mike Lee-style conservative could down them at a convention the same way Senator Bob Bennett was defeated in Utah could instantly change their behavior. At present, primary challenges are so unsuccessful they rarely serve as a deterrent in the long-run.

The prospect of winning with a grassroots ground game, without the need for a massive money and media campaign, would attract better conservative talent to run for office.
The requirement to show up for precinct caucuses would automatically end the odious practice of “early voting” in primaries, which not only has a disruptive effect in fluid presidential primaries, but hurts insurgent congressional candidates who tend to surge during the final week – after “voting” has already begun.

Selecting state government officials through conventions would help build up a cadre of state governments that push back against federal tyranny. At present, Republicans control the trifecta of state government in 23 states, yet conservatives cannot count on a single state to consistently fight for conservative values because either the governor or state legislative leaders are part of the GOP establishment black hole.

Our Founders left us a republic – one which was divided between the rights of the individual and the powers of the states and federal government. The federal government itself was divided into three branches, which were supposed to serve as checks and balances against each other. That system has gradually been replaced with a political party system. Conservatives can’t even rely on a conservative party to save us, even as the federalist system has collapsed. …

(The entire article, well worth your time, is here.)

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Target: ISRAEL

May 15, 2016May 15, 2016 by Annie | Leave a comment

Sunday morning begins with Drudge looking like this:

That’s A.P. Then I move over to American Thinker for Obama’s Animus Toward Israel May Lead to War. Below the line, I will pull out & bold a few key paragraphs to bring this matter into horrifying relief, but the entire article is worth a read, especially if you are not like me, and haven’t spent the last 8 years diving deep into why, for the love of God, this American President behaves the way he does. Had we had an honest press, Barry-Soetoro-Barack-Obama would have been dispensed with in the spring of 2007. If a person trying to be a member of his Secret Service detail brought his background with him he’d have been laughed out of the employment office. Consider that. Let it sink in: The men charged with taking a bullet for him have passed a background check the President himself could not have passed. That’s how bad his associations are.

Obama’s Animus toward Israel May Lead to War
May 15, 2016
By Victor Sharpe and Robert Vincent

Will the looming conclusion of the Obama presidency lead him to engineer an all-out war by Iran’s terror surrogates, Hamas and Hezb’allah, against the embattled Jewish state? Will that war conveniently occur in December 2016, as Obama serves out the final days of his presidency?

Is it conceivable that the pro-Muslim president of the United States will …permanently fracture the U.S.-Israeli alliance in a manner that would be difficult for any successor to repair?

…Obama believes that Islam has suffered from British and European Christian colonization and oppression. After being thoroughly prepared to be receptive to this message by his stridently anti-Western mother and maternal grandparents, such was the indoctrination Obama received from Khaled al-Mansour – a Muslim high-level adviser to Saudi Prince Al-Waleed bin Talal and anti-Jewish hate-monger – during his formative years.

It was al-Mansour who helped Obama gain admittance to the Harvard Law School. Edward Said, an outspoken anti-Israel professor of Obama’s at Columbia University, and Rashid Khalidi, a former press agent for Yasser Arafat’s PLO, served as Obama’s mentor in the former case and friend in the latter.

These figures, whose entire professional adult lives had been essentially dedicated to eliminating Israel, focused on influencing Obama to support the Arabs who call themselves Palestinians – along with their thugocracy known as the Palestinian Authority. These overwhelmingly Muslim terrorists amount to little more than cannon fodder in the ongoing Islamist quest to effectively perpetrate yet another Holocaust.

…Given his background, it is no wonder that Obama fell for the monumental lie that the Jewish state is also a modern colonizer, just as the European powers were. After all, Obama’s other confidants included, as the principled and worthy Victor David Hanson recently pointed out, “the obscene Reverend Wright and reprobates like Bill Ayers and Father Michael Pfleger.”

…Prime Minister Netanyahu (has) been treated with unprecedented contempt by Obama and his sycophants. This was evident early on with Obama’s support of and friendship to the Islamist Erdoğan in Turkey, who has reduced once secular Turkey to a growing totalitarian Islamic state that has openly supported terrorism against Israel, as demonstrated by the Gaza flotilla incident of 2010. Erdoğan’s perfidy – which has included all but open support for ISIS – has in no way dampened Obama’s preferential treatment of this dictator, in contrast to his appalling treatment of Israel’s Prime Minister Netanyahu.

Routinely, the State Department… ignor(es) the aggression and terror of the Palestinian Authority, led by the Holocaust-denying Mahmoud Abbas and the Hamas and Islamic Jihad thugs who rule over the Gaza Strip. In deplorable contrast, the State Department routinely attacks Israel…

Obama has also treated America’s other traditional allies with insolent disdain and cozied up to the worst enemy of freedom and liberty – namely, the Islamo-Nazi regime of Iran. Iran’s ongoing implicit threats of nuclear warfare – against the U.S. as well as Israel – including its aggressive development of potentially nuclear-armed ICBMs, which can eventually reach the U.S., does not faze this incumbent in the White House.

The fact that this supposed nuclear “agreement” with Iran was reached, even as his very own State Department admits that Iran has yet to actually sign the agreement and even as Iranian mobs continue to chant “Death to America” to the approving nods of the Iranian mullahs, also fits into Barack Hussein Obama’s distorted world view – a deliberate policy of lies, deception, and dissimilitude.

This was admitted to by one of his closest advisers, Ben Rhodes, who recently disclosed that the Obama administration had deliberately deceived Congress and the American public about the Iran deal – as if this was something to be proud of.

…The president’s bias, his pro-Islamic sympathies, and his agenda point to a seminal hatred of not only America itself, but most pointedly of the Jewish state – this hatred may override all other practical considerations in the remaining few months of his term in office.

His parting shot at Israel may well be to force her expulsion from the United Nations… They would do so knowing that for the first time, an American president would likely stand by and approve whatever the U.N. anti-Israel “lynch mob” might concoct in order to further isolate and delegitimize the Jewish state…

It should be emphasized here that once the American national election is over, there will be nothing to stop Obama from doing this. Obama’s entire foreign policy has revolved around undermining Israel. Such an action on his part in the closing weeks of his administration can be seen as not only possible, but likely, given the pattern of his behavior toward Israel for the whole of his presidency. …What is more, once Israel is expelled from the U.N., it would be very difficult for any future U.S. president, no matter how pro-Israel, to successfully support Israel’s re-admittance into the U.N…

While such a turn of events may sound far-fetched to even some of those most critical of Obama, it is entirely possible in view of Obama’s past acts of blatant hatred toward America’s one and only true ally and democracy in the Middle East.

Victor Sharpe and Robert Vincent are freelance writers for conservative websites. Victor Sharpe is also the author of several published books, including The Blue Hour and the trilogy: Politicide: The attempted murder of the Jewish state.

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Cruz’s TRIUMPHANT Return

May 12, 2016May 13, 2016 by Annie | Leave a comment

Senator Cruz has returned to the Hill. And CNN’s blandly titled Ted Cruz Plans to Run for Re-election in 2018 published Wednesday May 11, 2016, 8 days after Senator Cruz suspended is campaign for President has some veeerrrry juicy nuggets in it for the knowledgeable watcher of all things palace intrigue.

Reminder: Cruz is widely and constantly reported to be haaaaaaated on the Hill. Not just hated, but loathed, despised, and wished a slow, torturous death. Preferably at the hands of a fellow Senator. On the floor of the Senate. In broad daylight. To loud applause. That kind of hated.

Fair observers note, correctly, that this is because he threatens their corrupt little fiefdoms. Cruz, ‘cravenly’ ambitious or not, really does believe his own bulls**t. He really does want to run a vice raid on the whore house – er – Hill. So to read that he was received “warmly” with “applause” from his fellow Senators, and that Senate President Pro-tem Senator Hatch said something nice about him is nothing short of a nuclear event. It just can’t be overstated how significant this is. It is, no doubt, why the headline was so bland. Gotta bury that news. Busts up the narrative.

No. Senator Cruz returned TRIUMPHANT to the Hill. Now hush. Mustn’t draw attention to that fact… but I will. The relevant paragraphs are below.

…Cruz sat down for lunch with Senate Republicans, according to several senators who were at the meeting. Utah Sen. Mike Lee, who endorsed Cruz for president, made some introductory remarks, and Cruz himself addressed the group. The senators who were present said Cruz — who often railed against what he said was the “Washington cartel” during his presidential campaign — was warmly received and received a round of applause.

…When he arrived for a morning roll call (on the floor of the Senate), he spoke briefly with ..(some) senators (and) said hello. Democrat Joe Manchin of West Virginia gave him a fist bump on his arm to get is attention and then spoke for a few minutes. Sen. Dan Coats, R-Indiana, said “welcome back.” Sen. Pat Roberts, R-Kansas, stood talking with him for several minutes.

…Utah Sen. Orrin Hatch, who is the most senior Republican in the chamber, pulled Cruz aside to have a heart-to-heart discussion about what Cruz had been through and what he will do now that he’s back to his legislative duties. “I was encouraging him to really get to work here,” Hatch told CNN later. “He’s got a lot of talent, a lot of ability.”

Hatch, who chastised Cruz last year when the Texan called McConnell a liar, said he didn’t tell Cruz he should make amends with his fellow senators but he did say he should be more open to the views of others. “I just encouraged him to understand that people have differences of opinions,” Hatch said. “He’s got a big role to play here if he wants to.”
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Trump is Bat Guano Insane

May 9, 2016May 9, 2016 by Annie | Leave a comment

Not an hour ago, a grown man, who happens to be the presumptive nominee for the Republican Party for President of the United States, Leader of the Free World, said this:

Trump on his debt proposal: “First of all, you never have to default because you print the money.”

— Phil Mattingly (@Phil_Mattingly) May 9, 2016

What does one even say? I’m utterly speechless.

Kevin Williamson at NRO, a favorite writer of mine, summarizes the book on one Donald J. Trump’s manifest unfitness for any office of public trust. I could not agree more. Enjoy.

This Election Is Not an A/B Test
‘Not Hillary Clinton’ isn’t good enough
By Kevin D. Williamson — May 6, 2016

As soon as it became clear that game-show host Donald Trump was the presumptive Republican nominee, the usual radio ranters and Fox News mouths began the inevitable litany: If you aren’t for Donald Trump, then you must be for Hillary Clinton — it’s Himself or Herself.

There is more to this than A/B testing.

“If you aren’t for Trump, then you’re for Clinton” is a cheap rhetorical ploy. I’d write that any thinking adult would be ashamed for falling for that kind of sixth-grade debater’s stratagem, but a Republican electorate capable of choosing Donald Trump as its standard-bearer is incapable of shame.

The angry insistence — him or her! — is, for the moment, mainly an attempt to forestall further criticism of Trump. That criticism consists of stating a fact that is not a matter of degree but a binary proposition, a yes/no question. It is not that Trump is less mentally stable than Mrs. Clinton (probably true) or that he is more dishonest than Mrs. Clinton (difficult to say) or that he might do even more damage to the republic, or any other point of comparison between the candidates.

The issue, instead, is this:

Donald Trump is unfit for the office.

He is unfit for any office, morally and intellectually.

A man who could suggest, simply because it is convenient, that his opponent’s father had something to do with the assassination of President Kennedy is unfit for any position of public responsibility.

His long litany of lies — which include fabrications about everything from his wealth to self-funding his campaign — is disqualifying.

His low character is disqualifying.

His personal history is disqualifying.

His complete, utter, total, and lifelong lack of honor is disqualifying.

The fact that he is going to have to take time out of the convention to appear in court to hear a pretty convincing fraud case against him is disqualifying.

His time on Jeffrey Epstein’s Pedophile Island, after which he boasted about sharing a taste with Epstein for women “on the younger side,” is disqualifying.

The fact that he knows less about our constitutional order than does a not-especially-bright Rappahannock River oyster is disqualifying.

There isn’t anything one can say about Mrs. Clinton, monster though she is, that changes any of that.

Donald Trump is not fit to serve as president. He is not fit to serve on the Meade County board of commissioners. He is not fit to be the mayor of Muleshoe, Texas.

If he indeed is the Republican nominee, Donald Trump almost certainly will face Hillary Rodham Clinton in the general election. That fact, sobering though it is, does not suddenly make him fit to serve as president, because — to repeat — the problem with Trump isn’t that he is less fit to serve in comparison to Mrs. Clinton, but that he is unfit to serve, period.

Paul Ryan is right to withhold his support, and those who have suddenly discovered that attending the Republican convention conflicts with their cat-shampooing schedule — both Presidents Bush, nominees John McCain and Mitt Romney — have in this matter chosen the better part, while former Texas governor Rick Perry has shown poor judgment. Trump, who long claimed (falsely) that he was self-funding his campaign and therefore was beholden to no one, has just named a hedge-fund boss and former Goldman Sachs partner to raise money, but donors are walking sideways away from him—as they should.

“Unite the Party” talk ignores the question: “Unite with what?” The answer, in this case, is a coddled, petulant, celebrity megalomaniac leading a small movement of cable-news-inspired populist drama queens whose motto is “Eek! A Mexican!” It is shallow, but celebrity is the most powerful force in American culture, more powerful than money and certainly more powerful than argument. Those of you joking about Kanye West running in 2020 shouldn’t laugh too hard.

But celebrity isn’t all-powerful. Trump had a smashing victory in the New York Republican primary, but he received far fewer votes than did second-place Democratic finisher Bernie Sanders, and barely half of Mrs. Clinton’s votes. The idea that a Trump candidacy is suddenly going to put into play states such as New York and New Jersey is fantasy. Those crying “Unite the Party!” might want to think about how closely they wish to be united with a candidacy that may very well lose 35 states and hand the Senate over to Chuck Schumer, who is of course another recipient of Trump’s many generous donations to progressives.

Those shouting “If you don’t support Trump, you’re for Clinton!” do not wish to speak or think very much about what the Trump movement and its enablers, from Sean Hannity to Ann Coulter, have done to the Republican party and to the conservative movement. They’re going to want to think about that even less as the months go by, and by January there’s very likely to be an outbreak of convenient amnesia. But the rest of us should be frank about what has happened.

The Republican party is preparing to nominate for the presidency a man grossly unfit for the office.

— Kevin D. Williamson is the roving correspondent at National Review.

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• salt •

thoughts from a proud tea party infidel in south coastal new england

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