Tag: politics

I’m not even going to pretend to be following this, but apparently Ted Cruz’s gang is still butthurt or something.

Iowa and Colorado delegations have left RNC convention. Will not return

Of course, the Colorado “delegation” is the one that wasn’t elected, so it’s a little ironic they’re upset about Trump’s team running a rules game on them. Strategic geniuses, those guys.

This is an open thread to discuss the Republican National Convention.

The most dishonest politician in America faces being upset in his home district:

Following a new primary election poll showing that House Speaker Paul Ryan has plummeted to well below 50 percent in his home district, Ryan is out with new mailers assuring Wisconsin voters of his desire to secure the border, and urging them to support him in his contentious August 9th primary election.

The new mailers touting Ryan’s support for border security is interesting given that just last year, Ryan championed a spending bill that fully funded President Obama’s open borders agenda– including funding sanctuary cities, executive amnesty, and the release of criminal aliens. The mailers also come amid new reports indicating that, one month after his election, Ryan plans to bring up “criminal sentencing” measures that could release thousands of criminal illegal aliens from prison onto the streets.

“Keeping America safe is a big job. And it’s the most important one there is,” the Ryan mailer reads. “Protect our Homeland— that means securing the border, confronting Islamic Terrorism, and tackling new threats by stopping them from reaching our shores… Paul Ryan for U.S. Congress… Vote Tuesday, August 9th”

However, new reports indicate that immediately following his primary election, Speaker Ryan plans to bring up legislation that could release thousands of criminal illegal aliens from prison and into American communities.

As Roll Call reports, “The House will take up legislation to overhaul the criminal justice system in September, Speaker Paul D. Ryan said.”

I’ll be very disappointed in the people of Wisconsin if they fall for this cuckservative charlatan’s faux change-of-direction on immigration. Paul Ryan is the most dishonest politician in America since Bill Clinton hung up his quivering lower lip.

Even the mainstream media is beginning to admit that Hillary Clinton is an almost exceptionally horrible candidate:

With a toxic cloud hanging over Clinton’s makeshift campaign office at the Radisson hotel in Manchester, Clinton’s chief speechwriter, Dan Schwerin, and her top policy adviser, Jake Sullivan, decamped for Sullivan’s mother-in-law’s house in the Seacoast town of New Castle to rethink the entire campaign’s approach.

There, huddled together in the February snow, they scrapped her spaghetti-on-the-wall policy approach and came up with a sturdy slogan that aimed to capture the historic nature of her candidacy while making a pitch to African-American and Hispanic voters: “Breaking Down Barriers.”

There was just one problem: Their candidate hated it.

“This is useless,” a frustrated Clinton vented when Schwerin and Sullivan — two of her longest-serving aides — presented the new plan to her that glum Tuesday morning of Feb. 9 in her Manchester hotel suite.

The feeling was mutual. Her staff admired her attention to detail, but knew she was often her own worst enemy. Clinton is known for taking a draft of a speech and changing it some indelible way to make it more literal and less readable. (The joke at her Brooklyn campaign headquarters is that she would take the public safety slogan “If You See Something, Say Something,” and, in her literal-minded way, change it to say, “If You See Something, Alert the Proper Authorities.”)

The entire episode illustrated Clinton’s paradox: On the one hand, she’s a deeply involved candidate who trusts her own instincts. But on the other, she still struggles, after all these years, when it comes to messaging — and remains almost hostile to the idea of a narrative that Barack Obama, Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren and even Donald Trump seem to craft so naturally.

Her best campaign strategy is to go into hiding until November and hope that the Democratic demographics do the job for her. It’s not a good sign when even your campaign staff are joking about how clueless and inept you are.

Interviews with more than half a dozen Clinton allies inside and outside her campaign reveal a candidate who remains deeply insecure when trying to commit to a message about her campaign, and reluctant to indulge in the rhetorical flourishes that make for the rousing poetry of campaigns.

Of course she’s deeply insecure. She’s never achieved one single damn thing on her own. She couldn’t even manage to keep her husband faithful.

I don’t know much about Indiana governor Mike Pence, so I don’t have an opinion on this. The big question is what his voting record on immigration is. I expect he’s probably fine on guns and so forth.

UPDATE: He looks pretty damned good.

1. He Wanted To Report & Deport Undocumented People In The Hospital

In 2004, then-Senator Pence voted for Undocumented Alien Emergency Medical Assistance Amendments Bill HR 3722, which would have required hospitals to gather and report information on possible undocumented patients before hospitals could be reimbursed for treating them. The bill would have also stated that hospitals wouldn’t be required to provide care to undocumented people if they could be transported to their home country (AKA deported while they’re in the hospital) without a “significant chance” of their condition getting worse. Luckily, the bill failed.

2. He’s Rated 100% By FAIR

The very conservative Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) is a national, non-profit, public interest membership organization that seeks to “improve” border security and stop illegal immigration. A 100 percent rating from them is a like a stamp of approval that Pence is throughly anti-immigration.

Other than his criticism of Trump’s proposed Muslim ban, he appears to be about as strongly anti-immigration as an elected Republican gets. He even “ordered state agencies to suspend the relocation of any more Syrian refugees to Indiana.”

UPDATE: Announcement postponed due to the latest Muslim mass murder in France.

He hasn’t even begun campaigning in earnest against Crooked Hillary Clinton and already Donald Trump is poised to take the swing states:

With a drop in grades on honesty and moral standards, Democrat Hillary Clinton loses an 8-point lead over Republican Donald Trump in Florida, and finds herself in too-close-to-call races in the three critical swing states of Florida, Ohio and Pennsylvania, according to a Quinnipiac University Swing State Poll released today.

Clinton loses ground on almost every measure from a June 21 survey by the independent Quinnipiac (KWIN-uh-pe-ack) University. The Swing State Poll focuses on Florida, Ohio and Pennsylvania because since 1960 no candidate has won the presidential race without taking at least two of these three states.

The presidential matchups show:

•     Florida – Trump at 42 percent to Clinton’s 39, compared to a 47 – 39 percent Clinton lead June 21;
•     Ohio – Clinton and Trump tied 41 – 41 percent, compared to a 40 – 40 percent tie June 21;
•     Pennsylvania – Trump at 43 percent to Clinton’s 41 percent, compared to June 21, when Clinton had 42 percent to Trump’s 41 percent. With third party candidates in the race, results are:
•     Florida – Trump leads Clinton 41 – 36 percent, with 7 percent for Libertarian Gary Johnson and 4 percent for Green Party candidate Jill Stein;
•     Ohio – Trump at 37 percent to Clinton’s 36 percent, with Johnson at 7 percent and Stein at 6 percent;
•     Pennsylvania – Trump over Clinton 40 – 34 percent with 9 percent for Johnson and 3 percent for Stein.

“Donald Trump enters the Republican Convention on a small roll in the three most important swing states in the country. He has wiped out Hillary Clinton’s lead in Florida; is on the upside of too-close to call races in Florida and Pennsylvania and is locked in a dead heat in Ohio,” said Peter A. Brown, assistant director of the Quinnipiac University Poll.

Remember, you heard predictions of a Trumpslide here first. Trump isn’t merely going to win, he’s going to win big because Crooked Hillary is a spectacularly bad candidate, and the chances that she’s going to survive the inevitable presidential debates intact are slim at best.

Scott Adams concurs:

The new Quinnipiac poll shows Trump now leading in 4-out-of-5 battleground states. Most of the polling was done before the FBI announced its email server decision. Do you know what else was happening during that time to influence polls?

Answer: Nothing

In other words, Trump didn’t do anything outrageous for a few weeks. That’s all he needs to do from here on out – more nothing – to win in a landslide. The “Crooked Hillary” harpoon he landed a few months ago is bleeding her out. Trump’s glide path to victory involves picking his cabinet and acting serious for a few months. That’s all it will take.