Build the Wall, Protect American Drug Dealers

From Gawker, by way of Lawyers, Guns & Money, comes an astonishing article.  An independent consultant working on John McCain's re-election campaign, and her boyfriend, were arrested on a number of drug-related charges:

A Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office spokesman, Detective Doug Matteson, said that detectives executing a search warrant at Pitha’s home discovered an active meth lab, along with unspecified quantities of LSD, cocaine, heroin, methamphetamine, about $7,000 in loose cash, and counterfeit money.

There were also two young children in the home --- a couple of true 'family values' conservatives, these two are.  And to make things more stunning, it turns out that "The independent consultant previously worked for Ambassador Barbara Barrett, Senator Jeff Flake, and Senator Jon Kyl."

The article doesn't say whether the are Trump supporters, but it seems likely they are because:

1. They have a history of supporting Republicans.
2. They probably really want Trump to build that wall, to keep Mexican drug runners from cutting in on their territory. 

Clinton: Trump Wouldn't Have Made it This Far if He Weren't an Asshole

Predictably as we get closer to the fall, the campaign rhetoric is heating up:

Hillary Clinton said that Donald Trump wouldn’t have made it to this point in the 2016 race if he weren't an asshole during a Tuesday night press conference following her sweeping primary wins in four out of five states.

Asked by a female reporter to address her charge that the Republican presidential frontrunner was “playing the asshole card,” Clinton replied: “I think the only card he has is the asshole’s card. He's got nothing else going. And frankly, if Donald Trump weren't an asshole, I don't think he'd get 5 percent of the vote.”

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie's wife Mary Pat, who stood directly behind Clinton, appeared to smile at the remark.

One of Clinton's surrogates has doubled down on the charge:

Rusty Shackleford, senior adviser to Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, argued Wednesday that the average asshole who isn't keeping up with politics or "really using his own brain" will vote for Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump.

“The average asshole who isn’t really involved in politics or isn’t really using his own brain to go, 'let me see you know what does, what has this asshole done for our country' — they’re just going in and saying 'I guess I should vote for him because he’s an asshole,'" Shackleford said in a panel discussion on CNN.

Let's hope these assholes get a clue before November.

Trump's Supporters: Extreme Fools

I saw two good pieces today about Trump's support.  The first, by Digby, summarizes what really horrible policies and personal qualities Trump has that his supporters either admire or overlook:

What this means is that a majority of Republicans apparently either like or don't care that he thinks Mexicans are rapists and criminals. They are fine with someone as president who wants to torture terrorist suspects and kill their innocent children. They have no problem with someone who wants to use summary execution against accused deserters. It's not a deal breaker to vote for someone who has a long history of sexism and misogyny to lead the country. They don't find it completely unacceptable that he has no respect for prisoners of war, saying he "prefers" people who don't let the enemy catch them. They are apparently not alarmed by the fact that he promises to change the libel laws so the press cannot freely write about him. They cheer when he eggs on violence at his rallies and don't think his offering to pay the legal fees of someone who hit a protesters is a problem. They see nothing wrong in his pledge to kill oil truck drivers and seize oil wells in foreign countries. Sending Syrian refugees that have been properly vetted and are living in the country back to a war zone to be killed is fine with them. Reviving the 1950s plan called "Operation Wetback" to round up and deport millions of people doesn't bother them either. Building a huge wall along our southern border sounds like a reasonable plan to them. These, and more, are all "politically incorrect" ideas that many GOP voters are happy to endorse. 

They also apparently have no objections to voting for a man who lies as easily as he breathes and has demonstrated over and over again that he is completely unprepared for the job of president, has no idea what it entails entails and has the knowledge of world affairs and domestic policy of an average 16 year old boy, along with the adolescent temperament.

Wow!  Donald Trump must have something really good going for him if people are willing to overlook all of that horrible stuff!  What could he possibly be doing right?

Well, at the risk of setting up a straw man, I believe a sizable number of Trump supporters like him because he's "authentic" and not your typical politician.  I'll give them the "not typical" part, but as far as his authenticity goes, Timothy Hill at FiveThirtyEight has data demonstrating that this view by Trump's supporters "gets reality almost exactly backward":

The Trump campaign is tapping into a widespread belief Americans have about politicians: They lie. A Rasmussen survey in 2014 found that just 4 percent of likely voters that year believed that “most politicians” kept the promises they made on the campaign trail, while 83 percent did not. (The remaining 13 percent were undecided.) Similarly, when The New York Times asked respondents in 2009 if President Obama would be able to keep his promise not to raise taxes on Americans making less than $250,000 a year, 56 percent said no.1 More broadly, the General Social Survey in 2012 asked people whether they agreed that candidates elected to Congress try to keep the promises they made during the election — a majority (59 percent) disagreed.

It turns out, however, that in this case, the majority is wrong.

Not exactly the sharpest bunch, those Trump supporters.

Donald Trump: Extreme Makeover

This thing can't get too much play, so I thought I'd put it out here for the two or three pairs of eyeballs which might wander by between now and November:

Authentic Donald Trump

This is really rather remarkable.  Take a look at the last few days:

• April 20: In celebrating his victory in New York on Tuesday night, Donald Trump took eight minutes to give a structured, succinct speech that contained no cursing, no name-calling, no self-aggrandizing and only limited rambling. He didn't even mention "Crooked Hillary" and he referred to "Lyin' Ted" as "Senator Cruz." He skipped taking questions from the media and, therefore, the opportunity to ridicule individual reporters or dodge their questions.
  This was America's introduction to the new Donald Trump, one who has undergone a rapid transformation this month after hiring a new team of experienced strategists who are determined to lock down the nomination for him. He's tweeting less, staying off the Sunday news shows and even reading from scripts in an effort to appear more presidential.
• April 21: "Oh, we're gonna build the wall." Then he asked the crowd, "Who's gonna pay for it?" After the crowd yelled "Mexico!" in unison, Trump said, "100 percent." --- "Is there anyone more crooked than Hillary Clinton?" --- "Look how fast our police work...They were running him (a protestor) out. Beautiful!" --- "See the media? That is the most dishonest group of human beings." --- "They have these people, they write in magazines. They're idiots. Stupid people who write magazines. They call them elite. Really? Do they have a plane like I do?" --- "My wife is constantly saying, 'Be more presidential.' I don't want to yet. At some point, I'll be so presidential, and you'll be so bored."
• April 22: Trump’s representatives, including newly recruited senior advisers Paul Manafort and Rick Wiley, met privately with leaders of the Republican National Committee at an oceanside resort hotel where the party is holding a three-day meeting.
  “The part that he’s been playing is now evolving into the part that you’ve been expecting. The negatives will come down, the image is going to change,” Trump senior adviser Paul Manafort assured the party leaders, according to an audiotape of the session heard by Reuters.
• April 23: A confident Donald Trump told supporters Saturday that he's "not toning it down," a day after his chief adviser assured Republican officials the GOP front-runner will show more restraint on the campaign trail.
  "I'm not toning it down," Trump told a cheering crowd of 3,000 people, packed into a high school gymnasium in Waterbury, Connecticut. "Isn't it nice that I'm not one of these teleprompter guys?"

So in the span of 4 days, Trump has shifted his image from "bully/asshole" Donald Trump, to "presidential" Donald Trump, and back again, and back again, and back again.

I'm so old, I can still remember back to 2004, when "flip-flopping" was supposed to be a bad thing.  But Trump supporters don't seem to care, because he's "authentic" and "tells it like it is".  I'm sure he's not just a con artist willing to tell anyone whatever they want to hear to buy into his con, right?  Right?

Ted Cruz is a Big Hypocrite

Since it seems that Ted Cruz might snatch the GOP nomination away from Trump, we should spend some time explaining why he's just as awful as Trump, and perhaps more so.

Let's start with hypocrisy.  On his campaign website, Cruz proudly proclaims that he's "CHAMPIONING AMERICANS’ RELIGIOUS LIBERTY", insisting that he's "spent his career defending religious liberty. He has fought to protect our First Amendment rights in a number of Supreme Court cases, and as U.S. Senator, he has been a tireless fighter for the right to freely live according to our faith."

Note carefully that when Cruz talks about "our faith" he doesn't mean that he defends the right of all Americans to worship as they choose.  He means that he defends the rights of all Americans who worship "our faith", that is to say Cruz's faith.  The Christian faith.  Others can go to Hell, literally.

Consider the examples he proudly holds up as examples of defending "our faith":

• As a presidential candidate, Ted Cruz has hosted two national religious liberties rallies and has brought together Christians who have been persecuted for their beliefs . . . .
• Stood with Kim Davis 'in defense of her right to live in accordance with her faith'.  (Otherwise known as her alleged 'right' to deny same-sex couples their civil right of marriage because of her Christian beliefs.)
• Defended Hobby Lobby and Conestoga Wood Specialties against Obamacare’s contraception mandate. (Hobby Lobby's owners denying their employees the right to make their own decisions about birth control.  And their claim to running their company on 'Christian values' is widely-regarded as hypocritical.  And Cruz overstates his involvement when he says he 'Defended Hobby Lobby and Conestoga' --- he merely filed a 'Friend of the Court' brief on their behalf.  It's not like he represented them in front of the Supreme Court).
• Sponsored legislation to grant Meriam Ibrahim and her children permanent legal status in the US so they could swiftly return home after being imprisoned for her Christian faith.
• Attended prayer rallies for persecuted Christians and has Introduced a resolution that states that President Obama should not meet with Iran until they release American hostages, including (Christian) Pastor Saeed Abedini.
• Kept the (Christian) cross standing at the Mojave Desert Veterans Memorial.
• Led the way to preserve the words “under God” in the Pledge of Allegiance at the U.S. Supreme Court. (It seems Cruz is inflating his role in this case too by claiming that he 'led the way' on the case.  His name was included among dozens of others in a Writ of Certiorari on the case, which lists Terence Cassidy and Theodore Olsen as lead advocates).
• Successfully defended the constitutionality of the Texas Ten Commandments monument, winning a 5-4 landmark decision before the U.S. Supreme Court.
• Supported students’ right to display (Christian) banners containing religious content at school sporting events.

I guess it's just a coincidence that absolutely 100% of the examples Cruz gives of "championing religious liberty" all have to do with championing the Christian faith.

Or maybe not.  Although Cruz is on record saying that he disagrees with Donald Trump's proposed ban on Muslims entering the U.S., he HAS said that U.S. law enforcement should "patrol and secure" Muslim communities.  Not exactly a robust defense of the religious liberty of Muslims, and not really a good idea, either.

And while Cruz doesn't currently advocate for a blanket ban on all Muslims entering the U.S., he does want to ban Syrian Muslim refugees --- while somehow at the same time insisting that Obama is discriminating against Syrian Christian refugees.  Yes, Cruz is a True Believer who thinks that although he can't possibly identify a terrorist trying to enter the country, he can magically distinguish between Muslim and Christian refugees.

I guess it never occurred to him that a Christian might be a terrorist, or that a non-Christian terrorist might lie about his faith.

There's also the curious fact that this champion of religious liberty voted against a (non-binding!) amendment that the U.S. "must not bar individuals from entering into the United States based on their religion."  And, of course, Cruz has made sure his campaign is well-staffed with anti-Muslim wackjobs.

The bottom line is, if you're a Christian, then Ted Cruz will fight for your religious freedom, even to the point of denying freedoms to other people.  If you're NOT a Christian, well --- don't hold your breath.

Dumb and Dumber

Talk about the blind leading the blind:

Retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson, who endorsed Trump after abandoning his own presidential bid, said that he spoke with Trump by phone on Tuesday about a list of 10 to 12 judges from whom the billionaire might fill vacancies on the Supreme Court.

Trump plans to release the names in the coming weeks as a sign of his seriousness and a validation of his claims to being a conservative, Carson said.

"We now talk from time to time, including today, and we went over his list, which I think would be extraordinary," Carson added. "He's got his team studying these people very carefully."

I know I could only support a Supreme Court nominee if he or she came with the endorsement of a clueless neurosurgeon who doesn't mind being compared to a pedophile.

The Illegal Immigration Problem is Taking Care of Itself

I've been meaning to write about this as another in a series of posts highlighting Trump's xenophobic insanity, but it works just as well if the Republican nominee turns out to be Ted Cruz.  He's equally nuts about 'securing our borders' --- he just doesn't get as much media attention for it.

The fact of the matter is that illegal immigration is an amazingly complex subject with no easy answers.  That's why it works so well for anti-immigration zealots like Trump and Cruz.  Their 'throw 'em all out and build a wall' rhetoric stokes the emotions of bigotry and xenophobia which live in most everyone --- just more strongly in some than in others, thank goodness --- and proposes a simple solution to a complex problem.  In short, railing against the 'other' feels good and requires no thought, so it's easy to latch onto that idea, especially in a crowd of like-minded people.

However, if you're interested in finding actual solutions to the problem of illegal immigration, that requires a lot of time and effort and thought and consensus-building, and almost no one wants to do that.  So unfortunately, the anti-immigrant position will always be a winner for guys like Trump and Cruz.

However, there is one counter-argument to those guys which might give their supporters pause.  And that is, no matter the real or perceived ills of illegal immigration, those ills should be on the downswing, at least so far as the Mexican border is concerned.  This is because more undocumented Mexicans are leaving the U.S. than entering --- and in fact, this exodus back to Mexico has been going on for nearly a decade now.

Another pet peeve of anti-immigration forces is birthright citizenship, the clause in the Fourteenth Amendment providing that anyone born on U.S. soil is automatically a U.S. citizen.  Birthright citizenship is absolutely essential in a free democracy --- this is a Thing Everyone probably doesn't Know but should --- but that's a topic for another day.  However, if you disagree with birthright citizenship, it may comfort you to learn that the number of babies born to illegal immigrants has also been steadily falling for nearly a decade.

We can argue about whether illegal immigration is a serious problem or not, but one thing that's beyond dispute is that it's a much smaller problem than it was in 2007.  So perhaps we can wait a while on building that wall.

Cruz?

Today an old college classmate of mine directed my attention to a Huffington Post article which insists, among other things, that Donald Trump will not be the Republican nominee for president.  I don't endorse much of what the article has to say; it's mostly a screed insisting that the Democrats can only win the election by nominating Sanders, which I don't believe for an instant.

However, I've started to wonder recently whether the worm may finally be turning for The Donald.  This is due partly to recent polling data collected at Talking Points Memo, which shows Cruz gaining steadily on Trump for the past three weeks (ignore the headline chart, which for some reason hasn't been updated since March 18, and scroll down to the actual poll results), including the most recent poll which has Trump leading by a mere 38-31 margin.

Then throw in the bump Cruz will no doubt get from his almost-certain victory in Wisconsin tomorrow, together with the fact that many (most?) of Trump's delegates are likely to abandon him if he fails to claim the nomination on the first ballot, and the scales seem to be tipped slightly in Cruz' favor.

Kasich?  Ryan?  Romney?  No.  Thanks to the GOP rule which requires that the nominee must win a majority of delegates in at least 8 states, Trump and Cruz will enter the convention as the only eligible candidates.  And since those two campaigns together hold considerable influence, there's essentially no chance that rule will be changed.

It seems likely that if Cruz gets enough delegates to block Trump from getting the nomination on the first ballot, then he's probably won enough primaries to meet the eight-state rule (Cruz has 5 so far).  So if Trump isn't the nominee, it has to be Cruz.

If Hillary wins the Nomination

I've heard that there is a lot of passionate disagreement on the left about Hillary vs. Bernie.  Hillary is too closely aligned with big corporations (oil, Wall Street), or Bernie isn't a real Democrat.  Susan Sarandon, a well-known Hollywood star and left-wing activist, expressed the thoughts of many of Bernie's supporters when she was unwilling to say whether she would vote for Hillary if she gets the nomination.

I think Susan is great, but that's just insane.

As for Trump, we know he wants to build a wall on the Mexican border (and somehow get Mexico to pay for it), we know he wants to enact draconian restrictions on Muslims, and we know he loves him some guns.  Beyond that, it seems like he's just stumbling around in the dark with no clear idea what he wants to do as President.

As a metaphor, it's fair to say that Hillary wants to take America to a brighter tomorrow in a BMW, and Bernie wants to take us there in a Leaf, while Trump wants to drive from Arkansas to Mexico in a 1966 Thunderbird convertible without entering Texas and without using a map.  Susan Sarandon might be comfortable with that --- she's done it before --- but it might not end so well.  In fact, the odds are mighty small that we'll get anywhere at all.

Feel the Bern (not literally, of course . . .)

Lest anyone think I'm in the tank for Hillary, here's a list of some of the many wonderful things Bernie Sanders will try to do if he's elected President:

• Increasing the federal minimum wage from $7.25 to $15 an hour by 2020. In the year 2015, no one who works 40 hours a week should be living in poverty.
• Putting at least 13 million Americans to work by investing $1 trillion over five years towards rebuilding our crumbling roads, bridges, railways, airports, public transit systems, ports, dams, wastewater plants, and other infrastructure needs.
• Making tuition free at public colleges and universities throughout America. Everyone in this country who studies hard should be able to go to college regardless of income.
• Guaranteeing healthcare as a right of citizenship by enacting a Medicare for all single-payer healthcare system. It’s time for the U.S. to join every major industrialized country on earth and provide universal healthcare to all.
• Enacting a universal childcare and prekindergarten program. Every psychologist understands that the most formative years for a human being is from the ages 0-3. We have got to make sure every family in America has the opportunity to send their kids to a high quality childcare and pre-K program.
• Taxing capital gains and dividends the same as income from work.
• Only nominate Supreme Court justices who support Roe v. Wade and the reproductive rights of women.

I don't mean to give Bernie short shrift.  I think a lot of his ideas are great, and generally speaking, I think my views about what needs to be done align more closely with Bernie than with Hillary.  It's just that his site doesn't contain as many easy-to-copy-paste nuggets as Hillary's.

Hillary is very experienced and well-connected, and I think she has a good chance of getting a lot of her ideas implemented.  Bernie's plan is more ambitious and closer to what we really need, but Bernie doesn't have Hillary's experience or connections --- in fact, he seems to take pride in the fact that he's not really a Democrat --- and so I think he's less likely to be able to enact his agenda.  But regardless which candidate wins the Democratic nomination, they will both work prodigiously to move the country in the right direction.