No, this is not a joke. It is real. Hildabeast and “The Donald” write comedic scripts FOR SNL… SNL doesn’t make it up. What a sad day in our political malaise that THESE TWO people are our candidates. For more resons why conservative should vote different than Trump, see the article and audio at CFA News: http://cfaparty.org/news/
The Morning Answer Crew discusses the rift in the Republican Party… visa~vis the non-endorsement by leading Republicans. From Paul Ryan to the Bushes. Talk of those who are calling for support as well are included in the discussion, like Mike Huckabee and Bill Bennett. I am one who thinks along the lines of Paul Ryan that while we don’t always get the ideal… “The Donald” is not even near the minimum standards of the ideal. He is, as Ben Shapiro puts it, the farthest left leaning person to EVER be the presumptive nominee.
Here is the portion of the article Prager is reading from, via The New York Times:
But it turned out that Republican voters didn’t want True Conservatism any more than they wanted Bushism 2.0. Maybe they would have wanted it from a candidate with more charisma and charm and less dogged unlikability. But the entire Trump phenomenon suggests otherwise, and Trump as the presumptive nominee is basically a long proof against the True Conservative theory of the Republican Party.
Trump proved that movement conservative ideas and litmus tests don’t really have any purchase on millions of Republican voters. Again and again, Cruz and the other G.O.P. candidates stressed that Trump wasn’t really a conservative; they listed his heresies, cataloged his deviations, dug up his barely buried liberal past. No doubt this case resonated with many Republicans. But not with nearly enough of them to make Cruz the nominee.
Trump proved that many evangelical voters, supposedly the heart of a True Conservative coalition, are actually not really values voters or religiousconservatives after all, and that the less frequently evangelicals go to church, the more likely they are to vote for a philandering sybarite instead of a pastor’s son. Cruz would probably be on his way to the Republican nomination if he had simply carried the Deep South. But unless voters were in church every Sunday, Trump’s identity politics had more appeal than Cruz’s theological-political correctness.
Trump proved that many of the party’s moderates and establishmentarians hate the thought of a True Conservative nominee even more than they fear handing the nomination to a proto-fascist grotesque with zero political experience and poor impulse control. That goes for the prominent politicians who refused to endorse Cruz, the prominent donors who sat on their hands once the field narrowed and all the moderate-Republican voters in blue states who turned out to be #NeverCruz first and #NeverTrump less so or even not at all.
[….]
What remains, then, is Trumpism. Which is also, in its lurching, sometimes insightful, often wicked way, a theory of what kind of party the Republicans should become, and one that a plurality of Republicans have now actually voted to embrace.
Whatever reckoning awaits the G.O.P. and conservatism after 2016 will have to begin with that brute fact. Where the reckoning goes from there — well, now is a time for pundit humility, so your guess is probably as good as mine.
I suggest that the lover of our U.S. history and Constitution (and other founding documents) listen to this extended interview with professor Barnett via ReasonTV. Here is a snippet that caught my ear from the interview that has ALL the relevance a day after “The Donald” won the delegates in Indiana:
Is it time for a new third party? Not yet. But if Donald Trump gets the Republican nomination, then a new third party will be an imperative — and the time for organizing it is now.
I have long vocally opposed third parties as irrational in our two-party system. They inevitably drain votes away from the major party closest to them, thereby benefiting the major party that is even worse. But strategies must adjust to circumstances. If Trump wins the GOP nominations, one of two things will happen, either of which would be disastrous for the Constitution and for the country.
If Trump wins, he’s made clear he cares nothing for the constitutional constraints on the president, or on government generally. His ignorance of our republican Constitution — to match his ignorance of much else — and his strong-man approach to governance would make Trump’s election a political cataclysm second only to Southern secession in its danger to our constitutional republic.
For this reason, millions of patriotic Americans who would ordinarily vote GOP — including most conservatives and all constitutionalists — will never vote for him…
[….]
…And let’s be frank. By refusing to credit the legitimate concerns of ordinary Americans, the GOP establishment created Donald Trump. And many K Street Republicans will rush to embrace him because they know he has no principles and will be happy to deal.
What the nation needs is a new party that is expressly dedicated to upholding theConstitution of the United States, however it may cut politically — a party that can attract principled conservatives, but also any American who is tired of crony capitalism, runaway government and rule by an out-of-touch political class.
Should such a party split the GOP vote and throw the election to Hillary, this beats a Trump presidency, which would inevitably remake the Republican Party in the Donald’s own image. And, if Republicans hold onto Congress, divided government under Hillary beats one-man rule by a demagogue and his party.
Could we see a “Rand Paul” figure stand in for the real conservative? People like George Will and others can get behind the movement. National Review and the Weekly Standard can start support this option, called maybe The Federalist Party: Defending Intent Since 1776. We shall see.
(During the actual interview portion the audio changes quite a bit. Whatever phone the Professor was on I tried to even out a bit… be forewarned)
(Video Description) During the first hour and the third, Dennis Prager was talking about the “heartbeat” of America, it’s philosophy. What is conservatism? Later, Prager interviews author and professor Randy Barnett (Carmack Waterhouse Professor of Legal Theory at the Georgetown University Law Center, where he teaches constitutional law and contracts, and is Director of the Georgetown Center for the Constitution). Take note as well that an article was discussed that the Professor wrote for USA Today, can be found here. For more clear thinking like this from Dennis Prager… I invite you to visit Prager.com as well as Prager University.
Clear thinking in the above interview on our REPUBLIC is expressed as-well-as-is clear delineation between Cruz and Trump… which is why — at the risk of repeating myself… as of early morning on May 3rd — I have finally decided that I will NOT vote for Trump. He has mainstreamed conspiracy stories (RPT and National Review), he has expressed clearly the massive expansion of government over healthcare, free speech, and the like.
I have purchased some URLs to meet a need for a real third party choice:
Had to add this short exchange on my FaceBook. I said: “Trump wants Hillary’s plan for healthcare. So either way it [Obama-care] is getting worse.” To which this reply came:
M.H. said: “No he doesn’t. If you like I can help you come to the trump side.”
To which I replied:
…here is his more recent dilliniation of renaming “single-payer” with “heart-payer,” it’ll be INCREDIBLE:
“That’s not single payer, by the way. That’s called heart. We gotta take care of people that can’t take care of themselves. But the plans will be much less expensive than Obamacare, they’ll be far better than Obamacare, you’ll get your doctor, you’ll get everything that you want to get. It’ll be unbelievable.”
If Trump wins in the Hoosier State tomorrow, repeal is a dead letter.
Indiana’s Republican primary is not merely the Cruz campaign’s last chance to stop the Trump juggernaut, it will also determine the ultimate fate of Obamacare. If Trump wins Indiana tomorrow, he will almost certainly win the Republican presidential nomination only to lose the general election to Hillary Clinton, who is committed to preserving the unpopular law. Even if Trump manages to eke out a win in November, he will probably be hobbled by a Democrat-controlled Senate that will kill any Obamacare repeal bill. A vote for Trump in the Hoosier State tomorrow, in other words, is a vote for Obamacare.
[….]
In addition to being the most unpopular presidential candidate in decades, he is viewed askance by key demographic groups without whose support no candidate can win. A recent Gallup survey found the following: “Donald Trump’s image among U.S. women tilts strongly negative, with 70% of women holding an unfavorable opinion and 23% a favorable opinion of the Republican front-runner.” Women make up more than half of the electorate — election over.
Which brings us back to Obamacare. Trump can’t repeal the perversely titled “Affordable Care Act” or anything else if he can’t get elected president. And when he loses in a landslide to Hillary Clinton, she will claim a mandate to expand President Obama’s “signature domestic achievement.” In other words, she will make the already intrusive and dysfunctional health “reform” law even worse. Her vision for building on Obamacare’s “successes” involves a soviet-style regulatory regimen that would dictate how insurance companies, drug manufacturers, and care providers operate and what they charge their customers.
Clinton also plans to exhume the dreaded “public option.” According to her campaign website, “Hillary supports a ‘public option’ to reduce costs and broaden the choices of insurance coverage for every American.” This idea was so bad it never made the cut to be included in Obamacare. Even single payer advocates have denounced it. And it gets worse. Clinton also plans to expand Obamacare eligibility to illegal aliens: “She believes we should let families — regardless of immigration status — buy into the Affordable Care Act exchanges. Families who want to purchase health insurance should be able to do so.”
This illustrates the cognitive dissonance that plagues Trump’s supporters. By backing a candidate whom no one believes can win the general election, the very government policies that make them angry will be perpetuated for at least another four years. Trump’s supporters are angry about how Obama and Congress have handled illegal immigration. Yet their candidate will lose badly to a woman who supports amnesty and openly declares that she will make sure illegal aliens receive taxpayer-paid health care. They hate Obamacare, but their candidate will inevitably lose to a woman dedicated to expanding it….
In case you forgot how bad Obamacare is, Life News has this:
Congressional conservatives are taking a stand against the Obama administration’s abortion agenda by blocking one of the president’s Health and Human Services nominees. Until the White House investigates whether California is unlawfully forcing health insurers to cover abortions, Mary Wakefield, the deputy HHS secretary candidate, will have to wait.
The Senate Finance Committee, led by Chairman Orrin Hatch (R-UT), is placing an obstacle before Wakefield – not out of personal animosity, but concern for the right to life and religious freedom in California. A couple of years ago, the state’s department of health mandated that insurers provide coverage for abortions as a “medically necessary procedure.”
As a result, some churches and Catholic institutions were forced to violate their religious beliefs. Pro-life groups like Alliance Defending Freedom and Life Legal Defense Foundation condemned the directive as discriminatory and filed lawsuits against the state’s department of managed health care, but the mandate remains….
I wish to note here that I was told by the same person that sent me these links that I should use discernment in choosing Trump over Cruz… because Cruz is not a nice guy. And true Christians should always be nice apparently… even in their “office” as Senators (here is a bit of that convo here). Anyhew, I merely responded to these latest linked articles that people like he support Trump… and that is all the “discernment I need.”
Snopes squashed that original report from the whacked site InfoWars when they pointed out that,
…the WMR’s [the second linked article in my bullet points] author doesn’t explain how he could possibly know that the unidentified person standing near Lee Harvey Oswald in these photographs was actually a Cuban (other than by assuming he’s Rafael Cruz), nor does he identify the “source” who informed him that the “individual to Oswald’s left is none other than Rafael Cruz.” (By the standards of “evidence” used in typical WMR items, someone’s saying, “Hey, the dude in that blurry Oswald photo looks kinda like Ted Cruz’s dad” counts as a “source.”)…
NOT TO MENTION that Rafael Cruz did not live in New Orleans until 1965 — two-years after the photo of him and Oswald in “Nwawlins.” PolitiFactadds to this whirlwind of “evidence”
…Two photo experts the tabloid hired — Mitch Goldstone of ScanMyPhotos, a digitizing photo service, and Carole Lieberman, a forensic expert witness — said another man in the image appears to be young Rafael Cruz, according to McClatchy.
We could not independently verify these experts’ validation, as neither Goldstone nor Lieberman got back to us.
When we reached out to Kairos, a Miami-based facial recognition software company, Chief Technology Officer Cole Calistra was skeptical about claims of a positive identification. Calistra told PolitiFact that the photos are too grainy “to perform a proper match one way or the other.”
James Wayman, the former director of U.S. National Biometric Test Center in the Clinton administration, said proper analysis requires two full-frontal facial images.
“Without such images, no professional face examiner will be willing to render an opinion,” he said.
That being said, we had freelance programmer Lucien Gendrot test it out using Kairos’ face recognition API. The software could not verify a match between photos of the unidentifiedman next to Oswald and youngRafael Cruz, even at a low threshold of a 25 percent match.
In short, as Snopes wrote in an April 2016 analysis of a similar claim, the low-resolution photos are essentially “of dark-haired young men with similar haircuts.” That’s speculation, not evidence.
One commentator at Free Republic humorously finishes his serious point:
“This is really the idiot the GOP is going to go with against Hillary? At least he’ll release the files about the moon landing hoax.”
What are some of the facts known? (I cannot believe I have to do this!):
In known pictures of Rafael from the time, the era are vastly different between the two men (MetaBunk);
Rafael is almost an entire head taller than the man in the picture (Secrets of a Homicide);
The two “experts” that identified Rafael for the Inquirer are not returning calls to the press (PolitiFact);
Rafael Cruz said he was not in New Orleans until 1965, the photo touted as Rafael were take in 1963 (Heavy).
I am after another piece of evidence that will surely come sooner-or-later… and it is the connection to the CIA:
For one thing, Rafael’s draft card from July 26, 1967 lists his employer as “Geophysics & Computer Service Inc.,” a French-based firm connected to both Schlumberger and Zapata Offshore Company, the former having a since-declassified relationship with the CIA and the latter once run by George H.W. Bush. (InfoWars)
My experience is that if you wait a bit… those more industrious than I uncover embarrassing facts for the conspiracy believers. More to come, surely.
Donald Trump on Tuesday alleged that Ted Cruz’s father was with John F. Kennedy’s assassin shortly before he murdered the president, parroting a National Enquirer story claiming that Rafael Cruz was pictured with Lee Harvey Oswald handing out pro-Fidel Castro pamphlets in New Orleans in 1963.
A Cruz campaign spokesperson told the Miami Herald, which pointed out numerous flaws in the Enquirer story, that it was “another garbage story in a tabloid full of garbage.”
[….]
Asked to respond, Trump called it a disgrace. “I think it’s a disgrace that he’s allowed to do it. I think it’s a disgrace that he’s allowed to say it…”
Is Trump saying government should be so invasive that it could stop silly speech like Cruz’s father? Moonbattery continues on in commentary on this topic:
Egged on by his Fox News pompom squad, Trump also denounced Cruz, who is a preacher, for courting evangelicals on behalf of his son. Trump has promised to silence critics when he takes power; now he sputters that it is “a disgrace” that Rafael Cruz is “allowed” to encourage voters to support his son.
Despite the appalling sellout by Jerry Falwell, the lines are clearly drawn where Christianity is concerned. Those who take it seriously must be very poorly informed to support a degenerate like Trump.
…Yeah, just when you think he can’t possibly sink any lower than talking about Megyn Kelly’s menstrual cycle or saying George W. Bush was responsible for 9-11.
At this point, Hillary could pick Chuck Schumer as her running mate, Gloria Allred as her Supreme Court pick, and Huma Abedin as First Lady and I would still be #NoFkingWayTrump…
The Trump people are very similar to the social justice warriors (like #trigglpuff) that drown out reasoned discussion in the arena of free speech. In one call into the Medved Show (on my YOUTUBE CHANNEL) a Trumper said if there were a brokered convention (which gave us Lincoln BTW) he would resort to violence. As society becomes more secular and moves away from a classical type of education that teaches people “how to think well,” we will see more emotive reasoning thrown behind opinions. One person told me Cruz did not have “compassion.” I mentioned that acting compassionately with government has gotten us our ever-growing unconstitutional nanny-state. I could care less if Cruz likes me… As long as he is doing his duty according to the document that runs our country and has a plan to curb it’s growth to date (for instance, his flat tax program, whereas Trump said he will raise taxes). Plus this gentleman was wrong (see the FEDERALIST for instance). My view is that if Ted is following and acting oon the spirit of the Constitution… which may, to the modern feminized society seem uncharitable (un loving), it will be in fact the MOST compassionate thing Ted Cruz could do.
I hope another (if it is not Cruz) will be supplemented at the Convention. It is in the hands of the delegates.
Dennis Prager speaks to “American Philosophy” and then has the Carmack Waterhouse Professor of Legal Theory at the Georgetown University Law Center where he teaches constitutional law and contracts, and is Director of the Georgetown Center for the Constitution–Randy Barnett–on:
“If we are to be mothered, mother must know best…. In every age the men who want us under their thumb, if they have any sense, will put forward the particular pretension which the hopes and fears of that age render most potent. They ‘cash in.’ It has been magic, it has been Christianity. Now it will certainly be science…. Let us not be deceived by phrases about ‘Man taking charge of his own destiny.’ All that can really happen is that some men will take charge of the destiny of others…. The more completely we are planned the more powerful they will be.”
[….]
“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience. They may be more likely to go to Heaven yet at the same time likelier to make a Hell of earth. Their very kindness stings with intolerable insult. To be ‘cured’ against one’s will and cured of states which we may not regard as disease is to be put on a level of those who have not yet reached the age of reason or those who never will; to be classed with infants, imbeciles, and domestic animals. But to be punished, however severley, because we have deserved it, because ‘ought to have known better,’ is to be treated as a human persons in God’s image.”
C.S. Lewis, God in the Dock (Grand Rapids, MI: W.B. Eerdmans, 2002), 292.
This disconnect is amazing to me. What this exchange did for me was solidify that I cannot vote for Trump. Period.
Malcolm Muggeridge (a British journalist, author, satirist, media personality, soldier-spy and, in his later years, a Catholic convert and writer)said it best:
“If God is ‘dead,’ somebody is going to have to take his place. It will be megalomania or erotomania, the drive for power or the drive for pleasure, the clenched fist or the phallus, Hitler or Hugh Heffner.”
Ravi Zacharias, The Real Face of Atheism (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 2004), 32.
Here is a great interview with Professor Randy Barnett:
In his forthcoming book Our Republican Constitution: Securing the Liberty and Sovereignty of We the People, Randy E. Barnett, the intellectual leader of a consciously libertarian legal movement that has hugely reshaped how courts interpret the law, lays out his case for “judicial engagement,” in which judges actively challenge and invalidate laws and policies that infringe on individual rights and freedom. Our Republican Constitution is a powerful rebuke to democratic majoritarianism, which holds that legislators have b
A professor at Georgetown Law School, Barnett has also been at the center of two major Supreme Court cases in the 21st century. He was the lead in 2005’s Raich case, in which the Court ruled that Congress’ power under the Commerece Clause was immense. And, as he recounts in gripping and compelling fashion in his new book, Barnett helped to create the nearly successful (and in his telling, partly successful) challenge to the individual mandate at the heart of President Obama’s controversial health care reform.
Born in 1952, Barnett grew up in the Chicago area, attended Northwestern as an undergad (he majored in philosophy), and went to law school at Harvard, where he was a classmate of Supreme Court nominee Merrick Garland. Garland, he says, is a smart, nice guy who would be terrible from a libertarian perspective because of his reflexive deference to lawmakers under virtually any circumstance. “As a matter of judicial philosophy,” says Barnett. I think he would not be a good justice for us to have”. In the early 1970s, he was associated with the Center for Libertarian Studes and economist Murray Rothbard, whom he says continues to shape his thinking in important ways.
An alumnus of the Institute for Humane Studies and an active participant in the Federalist Society, Barnett is the author the highly regarded and controversial academic books The Structure of Liberty (1998) and Restoring the Lost Constitution (2004). Intended for a general audience, Our Republican Constitution is simultaneously intellectually rigorous and a real page-turner, filled with dramatic anecdotes that illustrate Barnett’s powerful and provocative argument that routine deference to elected legislators is the wrong way to interpret the Constitution or create a rich and flourishing society.
Barnett sat down with Nick Gillespie at Reason’s D.C. headquarters for a wide-ranging conversation about his experiences working in his father’s laundry, his favorite Supreme Court case (that would be Lochner), how he developed his nascent libertarianism at a time when few people called themselves such, why he thinks a new political party may be a necessity, why he thinks Donald Trump is an authoritarian, and why he believes Ted Cruz understands how the Constitution limits government power.
After watching this twice, I wish to note how similar Trump supporters are to the SJWs yelling vacuous statements/bumper sticker slogans and trying to drowned out the opposition.
Cruz handled himself in a way that Trump will never be able to. He took a discussion that opposed his views/positions and had factual responses to each point and countered with information PERTENANT to the discussion — unlike Trump.
Video description:
Cruz confronts Trump supporters in Indiana Ted Cruz tells a Donald Trump supporter in Marion, Indiana that he is being played “for a chump.” at a meet and greet in indiana ted cruz took on some “trump supporters” for about a 10 minute debate on who is better for the country cruz or trump. to be honest, this looked staged and fake as fuck. While campaigning in Indiana Monday afternoon, Sen. Ted Cruz confronted a throng of Trump supporters, enduring taunts of “Lyin’Ted” and challenging them to name a single thing they liked about the GOP frontrunner. “You are the problem,” a Trump supporter repeated, while demanding that the Texas senator drop out of the race. Cruz repeated his usual talking points against Trump. “With all respect, Donald Trump is deceiving you. He is playing you for a chump,” Cruz said — to little avail.
Here is another Presedential exchange between Cruz and the MSNBC where Cruz calls out the bias involved — well (via NewsBusters):
Ted Cruz continued his verbal war on the liberal media, Monday, sparring with NBC’s Hallie Jackson over the mainstream media’s excitement to crown Donald Trump the Republican nominee. Cruz, standing next to Indiana Governor Mike Pence, endured a barrage of questions about the businessman. The Texas Senator finally shot back: “I guarantee you if we were here and a Democratic governor actually endorsed Hillary Clinton, the first question would be, ‘Governor, tell me how Hillary Clinton is fantastic.’”
Cruz explained that a successful, conservative governor “is barnstorming the state, campaigning with me. And yet the first question you ask him is, ‘So, tell me about Donald Trump.’”…
Medved fields some calls both from Trump supporters as well as those who are not rooting for Trump. He brings some historical context (as usual) to the calls (Taft v. Roosevelt; Humphrey, etc).
BUT MOST IMPORTANTLY he distinguishes the nonsense of Trump compared to “Republican ideals.” It amazes me that many of the same people that accused “Dubya” of being a “neo-con” are today rooting for someone far more entrenched in expanding government’s role as well as getting us involved in military operations. Here is a commentary by yours truly on my FaceBook:
I still do not understand what people do not like about Cruz’s positions as compared to Trump’s mess of positions. I would be happy if Rand Paul was put in on the third ballot, because he and Cruz are closest to the Founders idealism. I would be less happy but still pleased if Rubio were put in on the third ticket. Why? Because most ppl that ran were truly Republicans that leaned right in their ideology (except Kasich and more-so Trump).
So I view it as maybe being desperate, but only because many today do not think through these basic (101) delineations today. All the people that complained about Bush being a neo-con and who now like Trump (a crony-capitalist’s capitalists) are stuck between a rock and a hard place. He is more about large government than “Dubya” ever was.
For more clear thinking like this from Michael Medved… I invite you to visit: http://www.michaelmedved.com/
