Dan Bongino explains why Cassidy Hutchinson is full of crap

Fact Check: No, Donald Trump Did Not Mock a Disabled Reporter

Apparently, this video needs to be reviewed again. The narrator speaks slowly, so everyone should be able to understand this and get it through their heads. No matter what you think of Donald Trump, he never made fun of the disabled reporter named Serge Kovaleski as so many in the media still maintain. Including the Washington Post, who was the original perpetrator and discredited source for the fake news story.

Also worthy of noting from the video:

• Kovaleski allegedly didn't remember details from a report he did about 9/11, yet expected Donald Trump to remember him personally from his exciting business articles from 22 years prior. That's like remembering a bank teller or a sales clerk from 20 years ago.
• Donald Trump gave millions of dollars to charity for disabled people.
• In 1988, Donald Trump flew an Orthodox Jewish boy named Andrew Ten on his private jet to receive treatment for his rare illness. The commercial airlines refused to fly Andrew from Los Angeles to New York as Trump agreed to because he had to fly while hooked up to expensive life-support equipment.

The conclusion is worth accentuating:

Folks, Donald Trump did not make fun of a reporter with a disability. He did something "worse"—he embarrassed the media. Especially the Washington Post, whose crummy fact-checkers failed to uncover the true story of Middle Easterners living in New Jersey celebrating the deaths of 3,000 Americans on 9/11, a story one of their own reporters covered. As someone who has been around disabled folks my whole life and as one whose wife worked with those who are deemed severe and profound, if I believe that Mr. Trump had truly mocked a man with a disability, I would be writing a very different article and recording a very different video. But the sad thing is, there are those who still perpetrate this lie even when confronted with the facts.

I feel compelled to post this "old news" at this juncture for a number of reasons. Mainly I think that everyone needs to remember how much the media is willing to stretch the truth in order to smear President Trump, and also how in general the Swift's quote still holds true:

Falsehood flies, and truth comes limping after it, so that when men come to be undeceived, it is too late; the jest is over, and the tale hath had its effect: like a man, who hath thought of a good repartee when the discourse is changed, or the company parted; or like a physician, who hath found out an infallible medicine, after the patient is dead.

A secondary reason is that I was one of the victims of this outright media lie fabricated about Donald Trump. It was the picture with the fake freeze-frame which prompted the visceral reaction at the time, and I was livid that Trump would put the GOP in such a predicament, viz., having to own a man with no regard for the disabled. I later realized that my viscera had been fooled by ca leverly manufactured tale as often happens. Then I became inflamed with the mainstream media who, like the mob they have become, all repeated the same false narrative and all presented the same false evidence. Thus it was that I began to appreciate something which I would later begin to share, especially with those who stil recoil at the mention of Trump's name: no matter how irritating President Trump can get, the left and the media is always worse.

Time after time, time and again.

One last thing to note. Several days after September 11, 2001 I was at Daily Mass in a nearby Cleveland suburb. The priest celebrating the Mass talked during the homily about how America needed to come together and so he was starting a Interfaith group with a nearby Muslim Imam. It was put on his heart to do this after he heard about Muslim students at Lakewood high-school applauding and cheering during a school assembly where a video showing the Twin Towers being crashed into coming down was played. So the idea that the only people who talked about this were bigots or crazy people was always offensive to me. The Truth is sometimes uncomfortable, yet it is always incontrovertible.

Unfortunately for the good Father—who is retired now and who shall remain anonymous—his Imam friend was deported in 2002 due to his involvement of funding terrorist group with American Muslim contributions. That was probably the end of the interfaith group, if it had even ever really started. I'm guessing that, er, not every participant had his heart completely in it.

Why don't people want to admit this kind of thing? That some Muslims are bad, and/or succumb to fundamentalist pressure. It's too easy to follow the mob, denounce Trump as an evil maniac and make up stories about him and his supporters.

(H/T Catholics for Trump.)

I'm not alone in my Trump v. Democrats take

I get irritated with some of the actions of my choice for President, Donald Trump. But I get irritated with the media and the Democrats even more, as I have said. I'm not alone in this take on things. In this WSJ opinion piece, Ted Van Dyk advises the Dems to "get a grip". Excerpt:

National security and the economy are the two principal issues in any presidential campaign. The Trump record in both those realms should be critiqued by Democrats. They should, in turn, offer credible alternative policies. If they do, and their presidential candidate seems reasonable, Democrats can reclaim the White House in 2020 not through a constitutional crisis but through a free election and with a popular mandate.

My own guess: By 2020, Mr. Trump will have fatigued the public. Voters will be turned off by him, just as they were in turn by the Johnson, Nixon and Carter presidencies. They will want to see another face on their TV sets. The danger is that Democrats by then may have fatigued the public even more.

Fatigue is right. I have some diehard Trump fans for friends who I argue with regularly when politics comes up about how the man could dial it back a little and have an even higher approval record than his current 46%. They argue that he needs to be tough to "drain the swamp" whenever he goes all-caps on Twitter or when he insults political opponents. I just don't see him losing these people if he took a Twitter hiatus, and I think he could pick up a few supporters if he moderated his style while keeping the substance which most conservatives other than the die-hard never-Trumpers support.

But Trump is moderate compared to the Democrats. Whether it's Cory Booker going full-Biblical on the Kavanaugh pick, John Brennan accusing Trump of high-crimes and misdemeanors for his perceived easy treatment of Putin or a gallery window depicting the beheading of the President, the Democrats currently own crazy, and they seem to be attempting to turn mob-fueled, unhinged, violent insanity into a monopoly.

One Grand Gallery, 1000 E Burnside St, Portland, OR 97214.
Phone number is (971) 266-4919

At Trump's most horrible moments, the left is always worse

David Griffey, a new friend of this blog, more or less echoes my thoughts on Trump's Helsinki performance by referencing this tweet.

I think I've seen you say it, @JamesHasson20, as have many others - all they have to do is not be insane. This Pearl Harbor, 9/11, "attack" and "war" stuff is nuts - Trump opened himself up to legit criticism today, and they can't help but to bury it in crazy. https://t.co/4kT8aqvoZT

— Jason Beale (@jabeale) July 17, 2018

Hasson's remark is in response to the comparison of the Helsinki Summit to Kristallnacht and the Pearl Harbor attacks by former Watergate Prosecutor Jill Wine-Banks.

The sound of Trump's voice is often to me about as pleasant as the sound of a glass breaking. And often his rhetoric is damaging; I agree with Pikkumatti that Trump could do more to unite the country. But to inflate Trump's unpleasantness or even his damage to Kristallnacht is to violate the rule no one talks about anymore because everyone on the left breaks it everyday. Hitler analogies, Kristallnacht comparisons and labeling everyone a fascist are doled out with absolutely straight faces by people accounted serious.

This is just one example of the media overreaction to the Helsinki Summit. Don Lemon gives us the standard brain-dead "not my president" guitar solo after turning the amp up a notch. Beale also takes a shot at Michael Moore's fake righteous anger reminding the left of their conveniently forgetting that Moore accused the entire American intelligence apparatus of deception in order to warmonger in Iraq. By making a documentary! Oh, weren't those the days... But in 2018, even during Trump's most horrible moments, the left and their media is always worse.

Donald Trump is the President of the United States

I have been complemplating writing this post for a long time and keep putting it off. I feel like I need to write this before I post anything else about politics or President Trump, which are somewhat conflated subjects at this present moment. But the first 100 days came and went, then there was the inaugural anniversary. And I think recently there was the first 500 day mark. Missed them all. I could spin this and say "Hey, I wanted to make sure Trump is OK. You know, doesn't flip out or turn out to be actually a fascist dictator, you know...." But that's not it. I can't help it that I'm an optimist who knows a little about actual history involving fascist dictators.

You can find tons of negative stuff on this blog about Trump if you wish, dated two or so years ago. Some of it I still agree with. Other stuff I would agree with except it would make me look even stupider than I was then.

The main reason I feel obliged to write this is that I was very critical of Trump during the primaries, voted for Kasich, and was displeased that Trump got the nomination. I was sure he was going to lose. I even had a friend who saw him as a conspirator placed in the ring to throw the fight to Hillary. I'm not into conspiracy theories, but this one was enticing due to my Trump-disdain.

In hindsight I missed a lot of signs of Trump's impending upset over Clinton even though I saw the same signs in rural Ohio that Salena Zito saw in rural PA. I want to comment on Trump and his administration on this blog more, and the reason is that I have been spending way too much time on social media. I need to go back to the "good old days" of blogs which are much harder to use, seemingly. (More on that in another post....)

Anyway, back to the election. My problems with Trump and my anxiety about the election did not improve much during the run up to the 2016 Election. The polls were so bad and I was so turned off by some Trump supporters that I wasn't paying attention to anyone pulling for Trump and predicting his victory even if they were making some sense.



I was reading Nate Silver's polling site incessantly until mid-September of '16 when I started a very long, on-site project in Detroit for an automotive finance company with a very diverse employment demographic. I voted early in Downtown Cleveland as soon as the polls for early voting opened. For President I voted dutifully for the Trump-Pence ticket. I was never a #NeverTrump person; I'm a process-voter and I always believe there is a calculus which can be used to determine the best or least bad candidate.

I was staying at an Air-BNB in Southfield, Michigan and listening to the election night coverage on a Salem radio station. I realized at the moment that Trump was declared the winner that my biggest objection to his candidacy was always that he was going to lose. So, there went that. I had a bunch of other objections to him that still bug me: the relentless tweeting, the trade-war silliness, the unwillingness to let others fight small battles, the braggadocio, etc. However these are minimal now compared to the cold war declared on conservatives at this time and the attempt to smear us all as racially bigoted, harass people in public, etc.

The day after the big win, I was seated with a bunch of middle-aged white colleagues at the cafeteria of said automotive finance company with very diverse employment demographic. We were all kind of quiet and looking at each other trying not to grin, seemingly. I said, "Well, I can't believe it but Trump won." Everyone sort of loosened up and cracked wide smiles and nodded. "Yep," "Pretty amazing," were some of the replies. "I mean," I said, "Trump frickin' won Michigan!" More replies of "Yeah, pretty amazing." No one wanted to talk much about it in case the security cameras were pointed at us.

In the weeks that followed I really couldn't believe what was going on in the media and in the liberal minds. Anger, frustration, temper tantrums.... Van Jones's famous "whitelash" comments were an example of some of the more mild reactions. Women left in the middle of dates if they found out the dude voted for Trump. Remember that? Some crazy nut advised women to "get your abortions now" just to show where the mind was going, if there was a mind involved in that verbal exchange.

But during those weeks and months I was really consoled by the fact that Trump had really moderated, and his actions deviated from his earlier rhetoric. The case in point is the travel ban. As written, the travel ban does not mention religion, hence the Supreme Court Justices who upheld it did not even need to consider the fact that he referred to a Muslim travel ban in campaign speeches.

I started having interesting juxtaposed arguments with people on both sides. One day I argued with a relative who hates Trump. I pointed out that he really isn't doing anything different than other Republican Presidents would be doing, so you either dislike the Republican agenda in general or you have something personal against Trump. There was probably truth in both these possibilities, but he would not accept either. To summarize his reason for hating Trump: Trump is evil and we must oppose evil. The next day I was at a picnic for a Catholic group arguing with Trump fanatics ("Trump-train" people) that Trump needs to tone it down with the tweets and trash-talking private citizens. They jumped on me reflexively with "What, would you rather Hillary be President? What about Antifa? Huh?" and "He has to do this to drain the swamp," a phrase that is getting stale and shouldn't be used as a blanket excuse for everything Trump does. These guys were Buchanan-ites so I said, "Hey, I think Trump is doing a lot of good things. Bombing Assad and Syria? I'll take that any day...." That shut them up.

Obviously I have been very much enjoying my new role as "the sensible person" even if I am not always recognized as such. In the past I was always looked at as the hyper-conservative. Now I'm properly cynical like the other guys I'd meet in the barber shop if I wasn't a bald cheapskate. I have tried to be very sensitive to the fact that certain people felt like they really couldn't vote for Trump because of what disgusting behavior he has indulged in. I was sitting in a bar in Pennsylvania with five of my friends whom I've known since grade-school. They are all religious conservatives. I was the only one who voted for Trump. Some of them were fine with the fact that I did that, but others were disgusted with me, two in particular. I think it's possible that they might have since changed their mind after Gorsuch, but they are both college professors and I think Trump's pedestrian manner come across as grating to them.

This post has turned into sort of a ramble fest, but maybe that is the best way to introduce my transformation into someone who appreciates what Trump does for the most part if I don't always admire the way he does it. Around the time of the convention, I had been going to send an acquaintance of mine who was an early "Trump Train" passenger a scathing email in response to an email touting his undying Trump support. I'm very glad I did not. If there is one thing to learn from the Trump Presidency so far it is that to lose one's temper is to lose totally, and to control oneself is always the best long-term strategy.

One of Trump's strategies from the get-go has been to troll people until they lose it, or at least show their true colors. That's how he took out Marco Rubio with the Little Marco remarks. Rubio should never had made the "small hands" remark, it was a complete limp-wristed softball for Trump. I admit that watching him do it now earns my reluctant admiration. It reminds me of my favorite exchange in the original 1957 12 Angry Men when Lee Cobb rips Henry Fonda in conversation with E.G. Marshall.

"I'm a pretty excitable person. I mean, where does he come off calling me a public avenger, sadist and everything? Anyone in his right mind would blow his stack. He was just trying to bait me." says Cobb.
"He did an excellent job," replies Marshall.

I have told my kids many times that I like generally the direction in which Trump is taking our country, and that I'm glad he is president rather than Crooked Hillary, but I have also stressed to them that they shouldn't emulate his intemperance and name-calling. (You see what I did there, right?) I think that objectivity is always to be striven for in the matters of the policies which govern our nation and that is why I find it silly for people to insist that Trump is "not my President! Not my President!" I've never said anyone was either my President or not my President, like I refer to my mother or my wife or my car.

Donald Trump is the President of the United States. That is an objective, unbiased fact. And every night we say the exact same thing during our family prayers. We used to say "God Bless President Obama," and now we say "God Bless President Trump."

"Don't let Trump be misunderstood"

Eric Burdon was one of the most horrible people in Rock and Roll history. Why would I say that? Well, he named his band The Animals. Didn't he know that they were human beings made in the image of Almighty God?



It is nearly as bad as what President Trump did yesterday. He referred to Catholic Priests as 'animals'. Can you believe that? He called Catholic Priests animals! That is absolutely unacceptable. Doesn't he know they are human beings? Regardless of what they have done? Oh, wait. Sorry; that was Pope Francis that referred to priests as animals. Excerpt:

During a Q&A session towards the end of the meeting, Francis spoke of a “pastoral cruelty,” such as priests who refuse to baptize the children of young single mothers.

“They’re animals,” he said. “This is individualism.”

[It’s] “an individualism which doesn’t affect only priests, but society as a whole, that looks for pleasure, that is hedonist, searching for that ‘damned’ well-being which has hurt us so much,” he said.

Should the Pope have called these priests who refuse baptism due to lack of paternal parentage "animals"? Hmmm... You know what? Yawn. No one cares. Maybe he should have been a little more specific and called them a "brood of vipers." That's a classic, I always thought. I mean, it is a rhetorical device, is it not? Whether it is Christ, or the Pope, or Eric Burdon or Trump talking this way.

("Hey, Jesus, you said 'Let he who is without sin throw the first stone.' So can I throw a tire-iron?" Ha, ha. Grow up.)

Speaking of the Pope and Trump, I got myself in trouble once when I said "The Pope and Trump are a lot alike." "How so?" shot back an indignant liberal Catholic dude I know who likes the Pope and despises Trump. "Well," I replied, "they both speak off the cuff continually, and get themselves in trouble all the time that way with detractors, but neither seems to care very much." He had no response to this observation.

Do you know what the motto of Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13) is? It's really simple to remember, boys and girls: "Rape, Control, Kill." They are really into facial tattoos, so maybe they want to look like animals. However that wouldn't be justification to call them animals so much as the fact that they are big into underage prostitution. There is tons of money in that industry, or so I have heard.

So if in a scientific or theological or metaphysical sense it is incorrect, inaccurate or insensitive to call the members of the MS-13 gang "animals", I would argue that it is not for lack of trying on their part. And if you think President Trump is saying something racist about Latinos by calling these nasty people "animals" then you are misunderstanding him on purpose.

Update: This is pretty hilarious.

Go to Canada already

Why hasn't anyone moved to Canada since Trump got elected. They said they would, but then they didn't. Promises, promises. Or empty threats maybe.



Just sayin' they're missing a million miles of fun eh.

Tim Kaine: Another Pro-abortion Catholic VP Candidate

Wow, what a coincidence. Hillary picks another souper candidate—a pro-choice Catholic in the mold of Joe Biden. This is obviously meant to secure the Catholic vote which is already eluding Trump as this piece points out; excerpt:

Consistently reliable Republicans who attend Mass weekly supported Mitt Romney four years ago by 15 percentage points. Clinton is winning this critical slice of the Catholic electorate by a whopping 19 points. The Republican ticket also usually performs well with white Catholic voters, who supported Romney by 9 points, 53 percent to 44 percent. Clinton has halved that gap, trailing Trump by only a few percentage points, 50 percent to 46 percent.

John Zmirak sums it up for me. My thoughts exactly, man.

As a Catholic who considers human life the first and most critical issue, with freedom a very close second, I can cut some slack to secular atheists and agnostics who don’t see what’s wrong with abortion. Their worldview tells them that life is cheap, man is a mutant, and we should grab what pleasure we can before our skulls fall to rot with Darwin’s. That’s an ugly view of life, but at least it makes sense. I feel profoundly sad for people who see their own lives this way; they’re like a primitive tribe that forgot why cannibalism is wrong, which proudly shows a visiting missionary their jewelry made out of human fingers.

But when a highly educated Christian, himself a former Catholic missionary, slaps on such a necklace because it will help him win elections — that’s something else entirely. Tim Kaine’s is the face of a man who knows better, who by his own admission realizes exactly what Planned Parenthood is doing, and who they are doing it to: innocent children, who hide in the womb as each of us, and as the baby Jesus, once did. It should be the safest place on this fraught and fallen earth — but in America, it has become a killing field. Not because of men like Lenin, like Hitler, or even like Hugh Hefner.

Because of men like Senator Kaine.

Not evil, just awful

Kotkin sums up exactly the way I want to respond every time I hear a Trump supporter/defender say "he's not racist". Okay; walking like a duck is something our intelligent species can do without becoming ducks, but why would we do it? Maybe to get some really gullible ducks to follow us around.

In reality, Trump is not a classic racist, but rather an ugly opportunist willing to use ethnic divides for his own benefit. He’s been compared to Adolph Hitler, a monster whose philosophy revolved around race, but Trump has no real theory that extends beyond self-glorification, resentment, and attracting the fetching female; “The Art of the Deal” is not “Mein Kampf.”

Trump will play the race card as a way to satisfy his narcissistic need for enthusiastic admirers. This does not mean his approach does not echo the racism of the past. His claim of bias by a U.S.-born judge of Mexican descent, as well as his suggestions that Muslim jurists are incapable of ruling independently, recall the worst of the pre-Civil Rights South. His proposals to ban Muslim immigrants in general recall approaches in the late 19th and early 20th centuries which targeted Chinese, Japanese and, ultimately eastern and southern Europeans.

In short, you don't have to be Hitler to be awful, or to have bad intentions, or to be a wrecking ball for your own movement. When people were calling Obama a communist back in 2008 I was cringing because I knew it would be pretty easy to dismiss the charge. After all, what communist would save General Motors? Barack Obama had to have been secretly smiling every time someone tossed that accusation at him or its even stupider twin sister—the charge that he was born in Kenya. Leave the fact that it wouldn't have mattered if he had been (his mother is an American citizen), it just made everyone making it seem like an instant racist to the general populace.

Yes, Virginia—that general populace. The one which elects Presidents. Not the subsection of critical thinkers or people with degrees in the hard sciences.

So when I heard people saying Trump could be the next Hitler I cringed as well knowing that a few black and Jewish friends will effectively dismiss that charge while a host of others would point at the media, shout "See they call us all racist!" and reflexively support Trump even though his rhetoric is incendiary.

I am not the only person who sees it this way. Larry Elder had been more generous to Donald Trump than many of the other Salem Radio hosts, but boy, did he about lose it when the whole thing about the "Mexican" Judge came out. This all happened shortly after Trump had all but secured the GOP nomination. Elder's conclusion is worth noting: "As found as people are of Donald Trump, if you give him a pass on this it means you have no integrity."

I should probably just accept my new status as politically homeless. Get out the cardboard and lets light a barrel fire.

O Muse! O Seuss!

It's possible that no one on the GOP side of the political divide will ever receive a phone call asking for financial support ever again, now that a gracious billionaire like Trump is running things. But just in case we do get a fund-raising call, we now have the words to give to the script-reader in this brand new political world:

I filed my papers about a week ago. Everybody is amazed at the numbers. I'm very liquid. To finance a billion dollars I would have to sell a building, have to do something like that. Will I do that? I could. I have the option of doing it. I have a lot of cash and cash flow. Would I do that? I don't know. I have the option of doing it.

Will I do that? I could. I have the option of doing it. This is AWESOME. It is just what we'd been looking for. We finally have the words to use. It's entirely open-ended — it has the sound of a yuuuge promise to those praising the new emperor's wardrobe, but it's really just a tiny little shoulder shrug to the real people who actually have to hand cash money to other real people to buy groceries, light bulbs, etc. Plus it has that great Dr. Seuss ring to it:

Will I do that?
I could!
Would I do that?
I don't know.

The Cat in the Hat couldn't have phrased it any more poetically. Or convincingly.

So the tele-fund-raisers will start off their scripts by asking for $200.00 and I'll say "Will I give you $200.00? I don't know. I could. I have the option of doing that." And I'll wait t see if they offer me anything. This is all about the art of the deal. I've been giving too much away, you see, for signed photos of Bush and Romney. Now I want something real, something great.

So they'll ask if I can give the "minimum" of $45.00 and I'll say, "Would I do that? I don't know. I'm very liquid. I have the option of doing that. Who knows," and other short sentences, again waiting to see if the person can actually close the deal. I'm thinking that instead of a signed photo maybe they could get me a signed contract with my business and I'll make it $122.50.*

I'm hopeful that Mr. Trump has figured out how to Make Fund-raising Scripts Great Again since he has no doubt gotten his share of them in his lifetime from people making more that $11.00/hour. We'll have to wait and see.

* - Yes, I know that sounds like quid pro quo, but this is a brand new political era. Get with it, people.

From the lips of the presumptive Republican nominee for President ....

Over the weekend, Donald Trump said perhaps one of the stupidest things ever uttered by a major party nominee for President of the United States:

[T]he presumptive Republican nominee, Donald J. Trump, suggested that he might reduce the national debt by persuading creditors to accept something less than full payment.

Asked on Thursday whether the United States needed to pay its debts in full, or whether he could negotiate a partial repayment, Mr. Trump told the cable network CNBC, "I would borrow, knowing that if the economy crashed, you could make a deal."

He added, "And if the economy was good, it was good. So, therefore, you can't lose."

Such remarks by a major presidential candidate have no modern precedent. The United States government is able to borrow money at very low interest rates because Treasury securities are regarded as a safe investment, and any cracks in investor confidence have a long history of costing American taxpayers a lot of money....

... Pressed to elaborate on his remarks, Mr. Trump did appear to step back. He said that he was not suggesting a default, but instead that the government could seek to repurchase debt for less than the face value of the securities. The government, in other words, would seek to repay less money than it borrowed. ... 

For someone whose main alleged qualification for the office is "making deals", talking down the Nation's creditworthiness, and thus talking up the interest rate, is insanity.

Yup, it's empty.

As opposed to most of Trump's ridiculous statements, though, this one can actually matter. Let's say Trump gains on Hillary in the polls -- mightn't this add some downward pressure on bond prices and drive up interest rates up for new Treasuries?  IOW, this could actually affect debt service costs even if he is not elected.  Sure, he'll talk it back - but the message has been sent that banana republic haircut-financing is in the mind of a potential president, and it will be noticed.  

Worse yet, I am having trouble why Trump would say such a thing, even if he did believe it? How does this benefit his campaign in any way, and how would it draw additional voters his direction? Does he think some voters are so stupid that this will impress them?  Or is screwing creditors just how he does business? 

I can't imagine even a Democrat saying such a thing.

More here.  And here.

I'm with Paul Ryan

Paul Ryan put it best in describing where I am right now with regard to Donald Trump.

Ryan's position makes him the highest-level GOP official to reject Trump since the real estate mogul became the last candidate standing in the party's nominating contest. His move gives down-ballot Republicans cover to hold off on supporting Trump. It could also keep his agenda in the House from being overtaken by Trump's policy positions.

Ryan said he hopes to eventually back Trump and "to be a part of this unifying process." The first moves, though, must come from Trump, he said.

Ryan said he wants Trump to unify "all wings of the Republican Party and the conservative movement" and then run a campaign that will allow Americans to "have something that they're proud to support and proud to be a part of."

"And we've got a ways to go from here to there," Ryan said.

I have felt recently like I might be in the #NeverTrump camp. But the key word is felt. When I actually think about it, I'm more like #NotYetTrump. I think he has some work he still needs to do in order to prove that I would be voting for a grown-up in November and not a spoiled brat. Like, for example, he could have started off better by not telling me that he doesn't want my vote and the votes of those like me.

Now I know that we've started having heated discussions over here about this topic. And that is fine. Let's just continue to be respectful. Let me just say now that a decision not to vote for anyone is just that—a vote for not anyone.

Election Regret

It's hard to admit when you were wrong. Or so I've heard. (That's a joke, son.)

Grant Stinchfield regrets voting for Donald Trump, and in this article he details in a pretty comprehensive way the reasons he voted for him, and he demonstrates how to express your failings with humility. Excerpt:

I fell victim to my own hatred. Donald Trump offered me a vehicle to stick it to the bloviating bureaucrats I despise. I dedicated my life to exposing self-promoting career politicians and their love of big government programs. Trump was the guy who was going to scare the hell out of the “establishment,” the guy who was going to turn Washington on its head. So I voted with anger in my heart. I gave my vote to Trump with expectation he would find his way by putting smart constitutional conservatives by his side. Trump didn’t find his way; he got lost.

Sadly, I did exactly what my mother always warned me not to do. I made an important decision while in an emotionally fragile state of anger and despair. My vote for Trump amounted to a vendetta against the ruling class of DC career politicians. I made a mistake.

It’s why I am publicly apologizing to governors Rick Perry and Scott Walker. I abandoned them way too early. I now realize their level-headed grasp on conservative values and principles would have made them the perfect candidates to carry a torch of limited government straight into the White House.

Hatred, anger, despair.... These things characterize every Trump voter I know personally. This is a brief, honest article by someone who came to their senses although too late. They "gave in to the dark side." Where's Yoda when you need him?

Stinchfield ends by acknowledging that he will vote for whoever gets the GOP nomination in the general election, including Trump. I will do the same. It's just a shame to be forced to vote for someone so woefully unprepared for running in a general Presidential election, let alone actually being President. But we will never have to suffer through that tragedy. He will never win.

Trump Roundup, Volume 1

Stephen Hayes's sensibilities which determine why he cannot vote for Trump are largely the same as mine. If I lived in Maryland or Texas where my vote didn't matter one way or another, I'd probably vote third party like Hayes says he plans to if the Donald is nominated. Excerpt:

....I care most about the two issues that directly threaten the continued viability of the American experiment: national security and the debt. My views on individual politicians are shaped mainly by their positions on protecting the country and reforming entitlements. Accordingly, the most promising policy development over the past decade was Paul's Ryan victory over the GOP establishment and its determined opposition to entitlement reform and the most worrisome was Barack Obama's abandonment of the war against the global jihadist movement.

A Trump presidency would be disastrous on both scores. Trump opposes entitlement reform, and it's unclear whether he even understands the central role entitlements play in our mounting debt. Trump claims Republicans lost the presidential election in 2012 because of Ryan's reforms. "He represented cutting entitlements," Trump said last month, pointing to the selection of Ryan by Mitt Romney as "the end of the campaign." Trump has said repeatedly that he won't touch entitlements. "The only one that's not going to cut is me."

On national security, Trump says he'll be strong and frequently pronounces himself "militaristic." But he doesn't seem to have even a newspaper reader's familiarity with the pressing issues of the day. He was nonplussed by a reference to the "nuclear triad"; he confused Iran's Quds Force and the Kurds; he didn't know the difference between Hamas and Hezbollah. The ignorance would be less worrisome if his instincts weren't terrifying. He's praised authoritarians for their strength, whether Vladimir Putin for killing journalists and political opponents or the Chinese government for the massacre it perpetrated in Tiananmen Square.

Then Hayes basically reminds us of the steaming pile of crap and dead guts that represent the tip of the manure pile which is Donald Trump's thought process. The John McCain remarks, the Megyn Kelly remarks, the Carly Fiorina remarks, the Kovaleski remarks... He especially gives some insights to Trump's remarks about John McCain by relating that Trump's response to Hayes's question about "whether he'd read any accounts of McCain's time in captivity or was otherwise familiar with his experiences as a prisoner of war." Trump said "It's irrelevant." Really, he did.

If anyone wonders why Trump can't get to 50% anywhere and only wins open primaries, there's your answer. And speaking of 50%... For anyone out there who thinks that Trump's issue with women voters—which I blogged about earlier—is not a big deal, guess what? It's gotten worse. The Very Unfavorable camp has increased by 10 points since October. Excerpt:

Real estate billionaire Donald Trump’s coarse rhetoric has won him some fans, but there’s at least one large group in America that is increasingly unimpressed: women.

Half of U.S. women say they have a “very unfavorable” view of the front-runner for the Republican presidential nomination, according to Reuters/Ipsos polling, up from the 40 percent who felt that way in October. The survey was taken from March 1-15, and included 5,400 respondents.

I'm hoping Kasich stays in the race. He can take more of California away than Cruz can. I want to see an open convention at this point. Barring some type of strange intervention of Fate or something, he can't win.

Coulter: Trump campaign is like an "outlandish business idea"

No, not Trump-groupie Ann Coulter. Please. Mike Coulter is a friend of mine who I've known since we were in grade-school, and today he wrote a very practical piece explaining why Donald Trump would likely lose the general election if he is nominated. Excerpt:

But Trump claims—and Rush Limbaugh affirms—that he’s drawing independents and Democrats. He’s getting some of those voters, but the polling data suggest that it’s going to be very hard for him get enough independents and Democrats to win in the fall. A January poll from Gallup indicated that Trump had the worst favorability ratings among any Republican candidates among independents and Democrats. Trump was net -27 among independents (that is, his unfavorability rating was 27 points higher than his favorability rating) and -70 among Democrats. No other Republican was so far underwater with non-Republicans (Trump’s -97 combined was far worse than Huckabee, Cruz, and Bush, who were around -40). It’s not enough to get some independents and Democrats. For Trump to win, he gets a majority of independents and at least 20 percent of Democrats.

Trump, the businessman, should understand you need a plan for winning. When an entrepreneur seeks support for a new venture, he or she has to show how the business idea will attract enough customers. In presidential politics you need a plan for winning a majority of electoral votes because there’s only one winner. Attracting a dedicated minority of voters wins no prize.

The Trump campaign is like one of those outlandish business ideas, like personal travel to the moon, that has some potential customers, but it doesn’t have a winning business plan.

Donald Trump answers the question: What is 2 + 2?

I got this from Facebook, a guy named Steven Edwards posted it. I don't know what the origin is. I find it hilarious.

I have to say a lot of people have been asking this question. No, really. A lot of people come up to me and they ask me. They say, "What's 2+2"? And I tell them look, we know what 2+2 is. We've had almost eight years of the worst kind of math you can imagine. Oh my God, I can't believe it. Addition and subtraction of the 1s the 2s and the 3s. Its terrible. Its just terrible. Look, if you want to know what 2+2 is, do you want to know what 2+2 is? I'll tell you. First of all the number 2, by the way I love the number 2. It's probably my favorite number, no it is my favorite number. You know what, it's probably more like the number two but with a lot of zeros behind it. A lot. If I'm being honest, I mean, if I'm being honest. I like a lot of zeros. Except for Marco Rubio, now he's a zero that I don't like. Though, I probably shouldn't say that. He's a nice guy but he's like, "10101000101", on and on, like that. He's like a computer! You know what I mean? He's like a computer. I don't know. I mean, you know. So, we have all these numbers and we can add them and subtract them and add them. TIMES them even. Did you know that? We can times them OR divide them, they don't tell you that, and I'll tell you, no one is better at the order of operations than me. That I can tell you. So, we're gonna be the best on 2+2, believe me. Ok? All right. Thank you.

I heard him give a speech in Maine the other day and he mentioned Ohio in passing and threw a lot of the same kind of meaningless verbiage into it. Something like "We're going to do great in Ohio. By the way, I love Ohio. Ohio is one of my favorites; there's a lot I love about Ohio. Ohio has always been great and the people there are great." Blah, blah, blah, no particulars at all. We think Ohio is great, but tell us why you like it. Why do you like Ohio, Mr. Trump? You don't know and you don't care. At least that's how you come across. At least ask your campaign aids to dig up a fun fact about Ohio and throw it out there, but you don't even do that.

I guess he thinks completely unprepared speeches are as good as any. Maybe he's right, and that is a scary idea to me. Maybe he's a blank white board onto which everyone projects their own hero. I haven't the faintest idea why he has so much support among smart people.

The following one is from David Alexander.

Trump's oppenent will easily get the women's vote

One of my political beliefs is that it's never too early to think about the general election. We should be imagining a match-up between the front-runners at the very least, and it could end up being a choice between the first woman President, Hillary Clinton, and a new record-holder for bad treatment of women, Donald Trump. Here's a Nation Journal article running off a list of evidence for my claim that Trump might hold such a record, but don't worry if you don't have time to read it. There will be many more if Trump is the nominee. And if he isn't? Good; people of both genders will be able to forget this ever happened. And we'll all be spared the tawdry particulars of a press frenzy which will make Bill Clinton look like a piker in comparison. Excerpt:

The trove of in­cen­di­ary and of­fens­ive things Trump has said about wo­men dur­ing his dec­ades in pub­lic life is seem­ingly end­less. He’s dis­paraged wo­men for their looks, ranked which fe­male pub­lic fig­ures he’d sleep with on The Howard Stern Show, and once said in an in­ter­view with Es­quire, “You know, it doesn’t really mat­ter what [the me­dia] write as long as you’ve got a young and beau­ti­ful piece of ass.” In 2011, Trump called a fe­male at­tor­ney—a new mom—who took a break dur­ing a de­pos­ition to use a breast pump “dis­gust­ing.”

The con­sequences are evid­ent in Re­pub­lic­an primary exit polling and na­tion­al opin­ion polls, in­clud­ing a Feb­ru­ary CNN/ORC poll that found just 29 per­cent of re­gistered wo­men voters had a fa­vor­able opin­ion of Trump, while a whop­ping 68 per­cent viewed him un­fa­vor­ably.

By com­par­is­on, CNN’s fi­nal na­tion­al poll be­fore the Novem­ber 2012 pres­id­en­tial elec­tion found wo­men evenly split in their opin­ion of Mitt Rom­ney: 47 per­cent of likely wo­men voters viewed him fa­vor­ably, and 49 per­cent viewed him un­fa­vor­ably. Rom­ney ul­ti­mately lost wo­men by 10 points na­tion­ally to Pres­id­ent Obama, and lost them by an even wider mar­gin in a hand­ful of swing states.

It probably is a waste of time to relate these truths to some Trump supporters, but not all. I'm of the opinion that many of these people are truly good people who are just misguided followers of a raving strong man with a large ego and harem who has started a cult based on fear and bullying. I mean... we know plenty of good Muslims, do we not?

Open Comment Thread (2016-03)

I'm way behind on posting a new Open Comment Thread. But here it is, with somewhat updated graphic for the age of Trump.

Please talk about anything you want to here, including but not limited to the following:

• Benedict Option(s)
• Trump / Drump
• Should I upgrade to Windows 10?
• The Catholic Bashing Industry
• Music, Art, Humor

"And when you gaze long into an abyss...

the abyss also gazes into you."

Who is Rod Dreher describing here?

__  Donald Trump

__  Rod Dreher

__  Both

The Obvious Comparison

I was going for a run the other day in 25 degree weather and I began thinking about two of the most perplexing people alive at this moment. I mused that maybe I should do a Top Ten list of things that Pope Francis and Donald Trump have in common. But the two main things I came up with is that photographers seem to love to capture their facial expressions and they put their feet in their mouth a lot. So I gave up, even though I knew it would be instructive to point out the similarities of two gentlemen who are so good at surprising, perplexing and making headlines.

So along comes this really good article. It's worth reading, and it details some commonalities of these two super-famous men. Here's the most interesting part to me, something I've been wondering about for some time now:

But iconoclasm, though exhilarating for a while, may not deliver the revitalization it promises. For all his global popularity, the pope has failed to improve the reputation of the church he leads. A Washington Post-ABC News poll found “no evidence that Francis’s likability has boosted Catholic identification, worship attendance or prayer.”

This may be because, as the German writer Martin Mosebach has observed, Francis presents himself as a “dynamic, unconventional, courageous pope with a golden heart” in contrast to a church that is a “crusty, dead, faithless, rigid machine.” Why go to church? Better to follow the pope on Twitter.

That makes me sad; I'm afraid it rings 100% true. I don't hate the Pope the way some people on the Catholic right seem to, but I don't really see him as doing anything that great. He needs a lot of damage control, and no one is coming back to the church because of his "new style".

Obviously this is sort of the feeling I have about Trump. My opinion of him has gone down since he decided to stink up the GOP primaries, but I don't hate him.

I guess the biggest similarity to note is between Catholics who support the Pope and Trump's voters. It doesn't matter if they do or say something cringe-worthy, we still support them. In fact, I would suggest that Donald Trump is already a Pope of sorts, judging from his followers' devotion. But who am I to judge?