Archive for the 'Politics' Category

So much for the Rubio pro-gun rights advocacy.

Trump on outsourcing jobs overseas.

Back in the days of Trump’s blog on the website of his now-defunct Trump University website, however, he wrote a post in defense of outsourcing titled, “Outsourcing Creates Jobs in the Long Run.”

“We hear terrible things about outsourcing jobs — how sending work outside of our companies is contributing to the demise of American businesses,” wrote Trump. “But in this instance I have to take the unpopular stance that it is not always a terrible thing.”

“I understand that outsourcing means that employees lose jobs,” continued Trump. “Because work is often outsourced to other countries, it means Americans lose jobs. In other cases, nonunion employees get the work. Losing jobs is never a good thing, but we have to look at the bigger picture.”

But as Trump himself has said, “everything is negotiable.”  And just like Rubio above, this was all before he decided to run for president.  So there’s that.

Ace:

Ben Smith, at Buzzfeed:

On Saturday, columnist Gail Collins, one of the attendees at the meeting (which also included editor-in-chief Dean Baquet), floated a bit of speculation in her column:

The most optimistic analysis of Trump as a presidential candidate is that he just doesn’t believe in positions, except the ones you adopt for strategic purposes when you’re making a deal. So you obviously can’t explain how you’re going to deport 11 million undocumented immigrants, because it’s going to be the first bid in some future monster negotiation session.

Sources familiar with the recording and transcript –which have reached near-mythical status at the Times — tell me that the second sentence is a bit more than speculation. It reflects, instead, something Trump said about the flexibility of his hard-line anti-immigration stance.

So what exactly did Trump say about immigration, about deportations, about the wall? Did he abandon a core promise of his campaign in a private conversation with liberal power brokers in New York?

…

“If [Trump] wants to call up and ask us to release this transcript, he’s free to do that and then we can decide what we would do,” Rosenthal said.

If you visit the source article at Buzzfeed, there is a little more than what Ace includes, and a link to a demand by Cruz that Trump release the transcript.

Speaking to reporters in San Antonio, Texas, Cruz called for the tape to be made public before Super Tuesday.

“Apparently there is a secret tape that the New York Times editorial board has of Donald Trump saying that he doesn’t believe what he’s saying on immigration, saying that all of his promises to secure the border are not real and if he’s president he doesn’t intend to do what he said,” Cruz said. “I call on Donald: ask the New York Times to release the tape and do so today before the Super Tuesday primary.”

He won’t, but he should.  Sadly, his supporters won’t really know his sincere positions (as opposed to what used car salesmen do) until it’s far too late.

Release the transcript, Donald.  Do it.  Just do it.  I care about my readers.  Your supporters deserve to know.

Oh dear.  Mike Vanderboegh is in some health trouble.  I don’t like what I’m hearing.  Keep praying for him.

Actually, I’m interested in what you think the lesson is, David?  I’ve thought about it some, now what are your thoughts?  You go first.

Make sure to check out the comments on David’s most recent article.  They are enlightening.

Distributed lethality.  Because I want you to be aware of current military doctrine.

Megacities and littoral regions.  Because I want you to be aware of current military doctrine.

Ace’s thoughts on Donald Trump.  No one says it quite like Ace.  Read it all.

I haven’t watched much of the republican debates, but I have occasionally passed through while my wife was watching.  Tonight was one such time.  I heard Trump say something like, “You aren’t endorsed by a single Senator …  You should be ashamed of yourself!”

I heard that and thought, “You have got to be kidding?  Did you just say that?  Seriously?  Seriously?”  The one who has claimed that he will bring everyone into the Oval office and cut deals, but who has previously sworn to burn it all down according to his bot followers, has hurled the insult at Cruz that he isn’t loved in Washington.  Reality is more bizarre than fiction.  I couldn’t have made this up if I tried.

A couple of days before the primary in South Carolina, I heard the following men speak: Ted Cruz, Louie Gohmert, Mike Lee, and Dave Brat (Congressman Jeff Duncan of South Carolina was there and praised by Ted Cruz, although he didn’t speak), and others (Mark Levin, etc.).  I listened intently to Louie Gohmert describe the events leading up to the death of the “gang of eight bill.”  I am a political wonk, and I keep up with these things.  Even I didn’t know some of what he told us.  I cannot give you all of the details, but I can provide a summary.

Gohmert described the intense strategic meetings to plot the death of the bill.  The meetings were held between Cruz, Lee, Brat, Gohmert, Duncan and others.  When the bill hit the House, it was all but a done deal because the gang had a pretty new face to put with it, i.e., Rubio.  It was very hard to turn it back.  America doesn’t know how close we were to having the gang of eight bill as law.

One of the tactics was a poison pill by Ted Cruz placed into the bill during deliberations between the House and Senate, but it also required much work in the House proper.  And all of this was led by whom, you asked?  Why, it was led by Ted Cruz, with all the meetings in Ted’s office.  If Louie Gohmert was lying, Mike Lee, or Congressman Brat or Duncan could have stopped Gohmert.  None did, because Gohmert was telling the truth.  You don’t have a gang of eight law because Ted Cruz led the effort to kill it.  Why doesn’t America know this?  Well, Ted is trying ever so hard to tell them, but they can’t hear it for the confusion of the mob of monkeys as they screech and bark and howl and sling their feces everywhere.

That’s why Ted Cruz is hated in Washington.  And I’ve thought about my own life this evening in terms of being hated.  In a way, a man’s measure is found in his enemies.  I drifted off this evening to what my grave marker might read.  If it reads something like this: “Herschel was an objectionable and loathsome man but for the sovereign grace of God.  He led a nondescript life.  In fact, he wasn’t worth much even after God saved him … except that he was hated in Washington,”  I would die a happy man.

How do I do that?  How do I make it to 33rd degree blogger-hated-in-Washington?  I so want to be hated in Washington.  Good heavens.  If someone hurled that insult at me, I would wear it as a badge of honor.

Marco Rubio is a robot.  Well, actually I think of him more like a windup doll who in this case got stuck on the same line, over and over and over and over and over and over and over.

Trump: “What the hell is a caucus … no one even knows what a caucus is?”  Well, I think I know what a caucus is.  And I think I’m someone.

Trump: “What the hell is he talking about?”  Well, this, Donald, where you said:

AL: I’d like to talk about public land. Seventy percent of hunters in the West hunt on public lands managed by the federal government. Right now, there’s a lot of discussion about the federal government transferring those lands to states and the divesting of that land. Is that something you would support as President?

DT: I don’t like the idea because I want to keep the lands great, and you don’t know what the state is going to do. I mean, are they going to sell if they get into a little bit of trouble? And I don’t think it’s something that should be sold. We have to be great stewards of this land. This is magnificent land. And we have to be great stewards of this land. And the hunters do such a great job—I mean, the hunters and the fishermen and all of the different people that use that land. So I’ve been hearing more and more about that. And it’s just like the erosion of the Second Amendment. I mean, every day you hear Hillary Clinton wants to essentially wipe out the Second Amendment. We have to protect the Second Amendment, and we have to protect our lands.

You likened federal ownership of land to protection of the second amendment, remember Donald?

Who said it, Trump or Kanye?  I confess that I didn’t even get close to 100%.

Who tweeted it, Trump or Kanye?  I confess that I didn’t even get close to 100%.

Perhaps Trump could pick Kanye as his running mate.  They go together just fine.

Vicente Fox: “We’re not paying for that f***ing wall!”  Hey, you sound like a carnival barker.  Our carnival barker is louder and more obnoxious than you are.

See how much fun this can be?  As the republican field winnows to a single candidate very soon, this should become easier with a veritable smorgasbord of things to discuss.

NYT:

Donald J. Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Club in Palm Beach, Fla., describes itself as “one of the most highly regarded private clubs in the world,” and it is not just the very-well-to-do who want to get in.

Since 2010, nearly 300 United States residents have applied or been referred for jobs as waiters, waitresses, cooks and housekeepers there. But according to federal records, only 17 have been hired.

In all but a handful of cases, Mar-a-Lago sought to fill the jobs with hundreds of foreign guest workers from Romania and other countries.

In his quest for the Republican presidential nomination, Mr. Trump has stoked his crowds by promising to bring back jobs that have been snatched by illegal immigrants or outsourced by corporations, and voters worried about immigration have been his strongest backers.

But he has also pursued more than 500 visas for foreign workers at Mar-a-Lago since 2010, according to the United States Department of Labor, while hundreds of domestic applicants failed to get the same jobs.

Charles C.W. Cooke comments:

Or, put another way, Trump has deliberately chosen to hire foreign workers to fill those jobs that “Americans just won’t do.” 17 out of 300? That’s 5.6 percent. 17 out of 500? That’s 3.4 percent. Bad! So what’s Trump’s excuse? That’s he’s a businessman and that these are the realities on the ground? That, I’m afraid, won’t wash. When Disney behaved like this, there was a loud and sustained outcry from . . . well, no less than Donald Trump himself. In an interview with Breitbart, Trump argued that Disney should be forced to rehire any Americans it had overlooked or replaced. Trump also said this: If I am President, I will not issue any H-1B visas to companies that replace American workers and my Department of Justice will pursue action against them. And he offered this critique of expanding the “H” program: It would allow any company in America to replace any worker with cheaper foreign labor. It legalizes job theft. It gives companies the legal right to pass over Americans, displace Americans, or directly replace Americans for good-paying middle class jobs.

Oh dear.  You mean to tell me that Donald Trump is a charlatan, hypocrite and liar?  Remember boys and girls.  Noise, light and magic.  Noise, lights and magic.

At Zero Hedge, from user barkingcat:

“General populace is dumber than a box of rocks.

They are mesmerized by whores and pimps and charlatans with shinny trinkets.

They do not care about anything but numbing their brains and stuffing their bellies with factory manufactured GMO crap.”

News about boy-billionaire:

One booming business in Silicon Valley is security — but not the digital kind.

Insiders tell Page Six that the young tech billionaires are forced to hire armies of guards after threats from unstable users.

Sources told us that Facebook mogul Mark Zuckerberg has 16 bodyguards now working at his home.

“He has guards over at his place,” said a Palo Alto, Calif., insider, adding that tech moguls around town are all quietly upping security.

We hear that Zuckerberg’s 16-person detail are not all on the scene at the same time, but work in shifts.

Pro immigration, anti-gun nut Mark Zuckerberg wants to curtail your liberties, buy he wants his.  Because he is more special than you.  He has the money to hire 16 bodyguards, and you don’t.  And he doesn’t care that you don’t.  Just like when he conned his partner out of his share of Facebook.  His only statement to his partner was something like “you should have gotten a better lawyer.”  Oh, and if you have a Facebook account, Zuckerberg thinks you dumb.  Well, that’s not exactly the way he put it.

The Washington Post:

Senate Republicans clashed Wednesday over how to battle President Obama’s expected Supreme Court nomination as the White House left open the remote possibility that the president might sidestep a confirmation fight by making a rare recess appointment.

Obama has the option, while the Senate is in recess, of naming a replacement for Justice Antonin Scalia, who died Saturday. A recess appointee would serve until the end of the current Congress in January 2017. White House officials did not dismiss the idea that the president could use the recess maneuver if the Senate fails to hold hearings and a vote on the nomination Obama has promised to send to the Senate.

“Our intent is to nominate an indisputably qualified individual to fill a vacancy on the Supreme Court,” White House press secretary Josh Earnest said Wednesday. “And our expectation is that the United States Senate will fulfill their constitutional responsibility to give that individual a fair hearing in a timely up-or-down vote.”

[ … ]

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) declared in the hours after Scalia’s death that his seat “should not be filled until we have a new President.” But since his statement Saturday, his Republican colleagues have not agreed on where precisely they ought to make their stand: Should they refuse to take any action whatsoever, responding to the demands of the conservative base? Or should they at least schedule hearings and procedural votes in order to blunt political attacks from Democrats?

The hand wringing is so dramatic, yes?  “Blunt political attacks from Democrats.”  Attacks.  Okay folks, listen up.  Relax.  Take a deep breath.  These aren’t attacks.  Attacks are what my son sustained in Fallujah.  Attacks are what happens when someone comes at you with a knife attempting to disembowel you.  Attacks are what happens when someone shoots a gun at you, and attack is when black thugs gang up on a notable and decorated Marine Corps veteran within six blocks of the White House and beat the hell out of him while they scream, “do black lives matter?”

You are not under attack.  You sit in comfortable chairs every day, rub shoulders with colleagues, go to the Congressional cafeteria and gym, and have your aids do all of the heavy lifting.  Your job is a cake walk.  Your strategy is this: You do nothing.

You don’t have hearings, you ignore overtures from the White House, you don’t give them the time of day, and you don’t respond to reporters when they harass you for not kowtowing to the communists in the executive branch.  There.  I’m glad I could be of help.

And all of these hand-wringing articles written by propagandists about “heavens, what are we to do,” yea, those, they are just so much end of the world propaganda.  Don’t waste you time with them, and don’t give them quotes to use against you.  Grow up, and don’t act like pansy-ass little girls.

NRO: