Obama vs. Trump (And Pat Buchanan) On The Nation-State—“The True Foundation For Happiness And Harmony.”

In case you’re still not clear about why so many Americans are voting for Donald Trump, let’s follow our president on his recent trip to Britain and Germany.

Last Saturday, April 23,  Obama spoke to a “town hall meeting” at the Royal Horticultural Halls in Westminster, seven hundred yards from Westminster Abbey, where English monarchs back to Edward the Confessor 950 years ago are buried, along with many other cultural notables.

The audience consisted of 400 young people apparently chosen by the American Embassy. To look at them, you would never know you were in England—let alone seven minutes’ walk away from the very hearth-place of Englishness.

I did look at them. In fact I trawled through news photographs of the event to find a picture showing the largest number of audience members, and scrutinized them.

There were 116 audience members in my picture. Tallying up those of white European appearance, and giving benefit of the doubt to ambiguous cases, I got 51, which is to say 44 percent. Thirty faces in the picture — that’s 26 percent — were Negroes. Seven of the women wore Muslim headscarves. Royal Horticultural? More like the Royal Multicultural. I weep for England.

Obama’s address was his usual gassy blather about hope, change, and the wickedness of white people. The audience, including of course that 44 percent of Uncle Tims, drank it down joyfully.

These were young people, though, and way ahead of a codger like Obama on the grand modern project to pretend that everything is equal to everything else. Racial justice? Oh sure, still a way to go yet, but that’s basically a done deal. Obama’s like one of those generals always fighting the last war. The war we’re fighting today is World War T — the fight for transgender rights! Where is Obama on that?

We found out. A morbidly obese Pakistani woman, no headscarf, lumbered to her feet and told our president that, quote: “I’m coming out to you as a non-binary person, which means that I don’t fit within …” At that point she got all verklemptand teared up. Naturally the audience applauded wildly. It wasn’t over, however, until the fat lady had unbosomed herself of the following:

I know that in North Carolina … people are having to produce birth certificates to go to the toilet. In the U.K. we don’t recognise non-binary people under the Equality Act … I really, really wish that yourself and David Cameron would take us seriously as transgender people and, perhaps you could elucidate, what you can do to go beyond what has been accepted by the LGBTQ rights movement, in including people who fit outside the social norms?

Emotional student comes out to Obama at town hall in London, By Liz Hearon, Mashable, April 23, 2016

I must admit, the whole thing had me baffled. You folks down there in the Tarheel State have to show a birth certificate to get into the john? Wow. Up here in New York, just a driver’s license will get you in.

And what does non-binary mean? Two-ton Tessie didn’t get around to telling us. What is she, hexadecimal?

Obama fielded it gamely. He told the lady he was “incredibly proud” of what she had done, and called her “courageous,” as if mouthing some postmodernist psychobabble in a hall full of Social Justice Warriors was up there with charging an enemy machine-gun nest or swimming the Hellespont.

Obama also told her to, quote, “keep pushing”; which, if I understand the “non-binary” business correctly, is likely the last time she’ll hear that from an authority figure.

Then, Sunday and Monday, off to visit Mutti Merkel in Germany. Whether Mutti is unary, binary, ternary, or, as we math geeks say, n-ary [Clip:  “I’m ‘Enery the Eighth, I am …”] … Thank you, Peter. Concerning Ms Merkel’s precise arity, I have no information.

Obama praised her anyway for her courage and foresight in opening her country to a million and a half feral male Muslims who’d rather be drawing welfare in Düsseldorf than shouldering a rifle in Damascus.

Speaking at the opening of an industrial trade show in Hannover, Obama gave them the full multicultural Monty

 Obama clip:  When the future is uncertain, there seems to be an instinct in our human nature to withdraw to the perceived comfort and security of our own tribe, our own sect, our own nationality, people who look like us, sound like us. But in today’s world, more than any time in human history, that is a false comfort. It pits people against one another because of what they look or how they pray or who they love. And yet, we know where that kind of twisted thinking can lead …

President Obama Remarks Hannover Germany | Video | C-SPAN.org, April 25, 2016

Well, yes, we do indeed know where it can lead. One way to avoid such horrors is to maintain a system of nation-states, each with a supermajority of a single ethnicity. As Jerry Muller pointed out in his article eight years ago in Foreign Affairs:

Whereas in 1900 there were many states in Europe without a single overwhelmingly dominant nationality, by 2007 there were only two, and one of those, Belgium, was close to breaking up. Aside from Switzerland, in other words — where the domestic ethnic balance of power is protected by strict citizenship laws — in Europe the “separatist project” has not so much vanished as triumphed.

Us and Them, March/April 2008, also  The clash of peoples, NYT, February. 29, 2008

It took two colossal wars and a couple of smaller ones to get from the diverse states of 1900 to the ethnically uniform states of 1950. But the result was stable for half a century — which by the standards of European history is a lot of stable.

Now Europeans are bored with all that stability and anxious to get back to the ethnic diversity of 1900. What could possibly go wrong?

In contrast, Donald Trump delivered a speech on Wednesday at the Mayflower Hotel in D.C. — hereinafter “the Mayflower Speech“—with more good sense in it than we’ve heard from a leading candidate for decades, and certainly from President Obama last week.

I could almost have written it myself. In fact, Sir, if you’re looking for speechwriters, I can be contacted via VDARE.com …

I did say “almost.” Trump wants NATO members to pay more for our protection; I’d shut down the whole thing, or at any rate pull the U.S. out of it. Nor did Trump call for Puerto Rican independence, as I would have wished; nor for the expulsion of the U.N. from American soil.

There was some bluster, too. “Iran cannot be allowed to have a nuclear weapon,” said Trump. Why not? How are you going to stop them?

And again, “I have a simple message for [ISIS]. Their days are numbered.” Why? Who cares? If we stop Muslim immigration, as the candidate has said we should, why should ISIS bother us?

Trump did, though, argue for a sensible balance of power with Russia and China, for an end to missionary wars, and for a powerful military on the Roman principle: If you want peace, prepare for war.

Best of all:

No country has ever prospered that failed to put its own interests first. Both our friends and our enemies put their countries above ours and we, while being fair to them, must start doing the same. We will no longer surrender this country or its people to the false song of globalism. The nation-state remains the true foundation for happiness and harmony.[speech as written,  transcript ]

My emphasis. Scolpisci nella tua testa a lettere adamantine—carve into your mind in great stone letters: “The nation-state remains the true foundation for happiness and harmony.”

This guy gets it. He’s a nationalist.

My positive impression was echoed by Pat Buchanan, whom history has cast as John the Baptist to Trump’s Jesus. Pat’sThursday column was a whoop of joy. His attention was particularly caught, as mine was, by that line about the nation-state as “the true foundation for happiness and harmony.”

Added Pat: “Is that not a definition of a patriotism that too many among our arrogant elites believe belongs to yesterday?”

Yes, Pat, it is. I hope to see your name in Trump’s cabinet—as Secretary of State, perhaps.

And if I get the speechwriting gig, I look forward to lunching with you at the White House now and then.

John Derbyshire [email him] writes an incredible amount on all sorts of subjects for all kinds of outlets. (This no longer includes National Review, whose editors had some kind of tantrum and fired him. ) He is the author of We Are Doomed: Reclaiming Conservative Pessimism and several other books. He’s had two books published by VDARE.com: FROM THE DISSIDENT RIGHT (also available in Kindle) and From the Dissident Right II: Essays 2013. His writings are archived atJohnDerbyshire.com.

http://www.vdare.com/articles/obama-vs-trump-and-pat-buchanan-on-the-nation-state-the-true-foundation-for-happiness-and-harmony?content=Obama's address was

Trump's Appeal Explained -- Again - The Rush Limbaugh Show

  That’s it :"I don't agree with 80% of what I think Trump stands for, but I'm voting for him."  Because he is willing to fight and because he understands what  threat to the very existence of America runaway illegal immigration is. It’s an invasion. The invaders are even waving Mexican flags.

_______________________________________

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: To the phones.  Marianne, Williamsburg, Virginia, great to have you on the program.  Hi.

CALLER:  Hi, Rush.  Listen, I'm gonna get right to the point.  Mr. Snerdley made that clear.  I gotta tell you -- oops, I'm on the expressway. I just pulled over. I'm so excited.  Here's the deal.  You said you were gonna summarize in maybe a paragraph why this Trump phenomenon is happening.  And I have the answer, in 13 words, Rush.  Here it is.  The Trumpsters believe that he cares more about the welfare of the United States than himself.

RUSH:  Now, that's an interesting theory.  And if that's what you think, it makes you right, you see.  If that's how you interpret Mr. Trump, then you're right.  He certainly wouldn't disagree with you on it.  What I meant was, I meant a six-month review of the things that I have said that explain the inexplicable to people, the connection Trump has, why does it exist with people, what is it that is different about Trump's campaign than others and so forth. 

I've spent six months analyzing this for people.  And I thought maybe I could summarize it in a paragraph or two.  Maybe I'll give that a shot at some point.  

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Sean in Philadelphia, you're next.  Great to have you on the program.  Hi.

CALLER:  Hey, Rush. It's great to talk to you.  I've been listening to you since '89.

RUSH:  I'm glad you made it through, Sean.  Thanks so much.

CALLER:  Thanks.  I just wanted to make a point, at least my perspective on the support of Trump.  I reluctantly support him but I do straight... I mean, I do support him, and it's not about conservatism.  It's not, as some people say -- and I've heard it on your show, too, from a lot of callers calling in. It's not really about, "Well, you know, people are being fooled that he's not really conservative."  It's not.  I know he's not a conservative.  The fact is, to put it simply, Trump will fight. Not only will he fight, he'll fight dirty, and the thing is we gotta get that. We have to have someone that's gonna fight in the mud, 'cause that's where our opponents are. That's where our opponents have been. 

RUSH:  Fight who?

CALLER:  The Democrats.  I mean, look at what happened after 9/11.  Remember it was like a month or two after that, and then Kennedy came out and he started slamming George Bush.  You know, all of his supporters were waiting for him to stand up and defend himself, and he didn't. For eight years, he just let the Democrats plaster him.  And then what happens? Obama gets elected, and he rams Obamacare down our throats.  What were Reid and Pelosi doing?  They were locking people out of committee meetings, remember that? 

What was our response?  Did we fight back?  No.  We didn't fight back.  So then what did we do?  We have a landslide victory. We give them the House.  Do they do it?  Do they repeal Obamacare?  No.  They do nothing.  They say, "Well, we can't do anything 'cause we don't have the Senate."  Okay, we give you the Senate.  What do they do?  "Oh, you know, we're not gonna do anything 'cause we're gonna take our only weapon off the table before we do battle with these people."

We're sick and tired of fighting with people who won't fight, and when it comes to down to Cruz, you know, my instincts with Cruz is that, yeah, he's a nice guy. And don't get me wrong, if he magically wins this nomination, of course I'll support him. But the problem is, I suspect he won't fight.  Three days ago there was an article in Breitbart where he's being interviewed and he said, "You know, if I'm elected, "he said something to that effect of, "I'm not gonna get personal.  This is gonna be about issues."

Okay, great.  You just handed them the election, 'cause you know what they're gonna do?  They're gonna make it personal against you and you're gonna be like the new George Bush just sitting up there like Jeb.  You won't fight.  You'll just sit there and take it and we're gonna lose again.  And the thing is, Trump, you know what?  I disagree with probably 80% of the stuff that he believes in, or he purports to.  But the thing is, I think we're facing an existential crisis.  It comes down to immigration, illegal immigration --

RUSH:  Okay.

CALLER:  -- and Obamacare.

RUSH:  Stop.  You don't need to say any more.  You just said everything in about five words.  "I don't agree with 80% of what I think Trump stands for, but I'm voting for him."  That is why the Republican establishment is about ready to commit harakiri.  They can't figure this out.

END TRANSCRIPT

Related Links

·         RushLimbaugh.com: The Best Endorsement Cruz Could Imagine! Boehner Calls Him Lucifer - 04.28.16

·         RushLimbaugh.com: The One Big Takeaway from Trump's Overanalyzed "America First" Speech - 04.28.16

·         RushLimbaugh.com: Trump: The Blue-Collar Messiah - 04.28.16

·         RushLimbaugh.com: Cruz, Trump and the Media - 04.29.16

http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/daily/2016/04/27/trump_s_appeal_explained_again

Americans haven’t gotten a raise in 16 years

Mark Twain is credited with saying “figures don’t lie, but liars figure.” If he were around today Twain’s quote might go something like this: “Figures do lie, and liars figure out how to make people believe them.”

Granted, not as catchy.

But my quote goes a long way toward explaining something that is bothering many political pundits today. President Obama whined last week that he’s not getting enough credit for the economy.

Democrats are besides themselves wondering why Americans are so angry that they might be willing to elect Donald Trump president when the official unemployment rate is only 5%, oil prices are near their lowest level in a decade and the economy has been expanding for seven straight years.

Why aren’t Americans happier?

One of those pundits made me chuckle Tuesday night when he was talking about Trump’s primaries victories in another five states. He suggested that Americans were somehow being brainwashed by the media into thinking the economy was really bad when in fact it was good.

Then, on Thursday, the Commerce Department showed just how good the economy wasn’t. It announced that the Gross Domestic Product grew by an annual rate of just 0.5% in the first three months of 2016.

But that didn’t stop the media from trying to explain away the disappointment.

The New York Times, for example, suggested softly that “the recovery has two sides.” Toward the bottom of the piece, it included the startling facts that “factories shed nearly 50,000 jobs in February and March, wiping out all of the gains recorded last year. The proportion of Americans in the active labor force remains depressed by historical standards, and more than 6 million workers say they are in part-time positions because they cannot find full-time work.”

But hey, the paper continued, we found some anecdotes of companies that are hiring!

It’s not just political spin, however, that explains the rose-colored coverage. Another explanation is that the media is plain stupid — quick to accept guidance from economists on Wall Street, for example, who have a vested interest in making everything wonderful.

Economists understand what “statistical noise” is. If you don’t, here’s a definition from a website called WiseGeek:“Strictly defined, statistical noise is a term that refers to the unexplained variation or randomness that is found within a given data sample or formula. There are two primary forms of it: errors and residuals.”

In other words, economic statistics may not make sense in the short term because something is innocently interfering with the accuracy of the data or someone is intentionally fooling with the numbers.

I don’t think anyone today is intentionally fooling with the nation’s economic data, although I’ve proven that there were questionable data collections leading up to the presidential election in 2012. These days, I think the data is simply misleading.

Take the economic data that came out throughout the first quarter of 2016 as an example.

The Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta keeps real-time track of the nation’s economy using something it calls GDPNow.

At the beginning of January, GDPNow was showing that US economy growth was around a 2.7% annualized rate. By last week, GDPNow had been ratcheted all the way down to 0.6% — which was slightly better than the actual number reportedon Thursday by the Commerce Department.

How could the Atlanta Fed have been so wrong? Statistical noise made it tone-deaf to what was going on in the real world.

As I correctly predicted last December, the government’s economic data in the first quarter was thrown off by inaccurate seasonal adjustments, among other things.

Seasonal adjustments try to smooth out predictable economic patterns so that data doesn’t bounce around. You don’t want data to show that, for instance, millions of jobs are lost in the summertime just because teachers are temporarily laid off.

Seasonal adjustment programs typically look back five years to see what constitutes “normal.” But economic growth in the first quarters of both 2014 and 2015 was dismal because of horrible weather. So I conjectured in December that the government’s computers would overreact to any normal growth in 2016.

And that seems to be what happened. Early in the first quarter the government reported better-than-expected data (which led to the Atlanta Fed’s bad forecast of 2.6% growth). But those numbers were then quickly revised over the next few months.

This sort of statistical noise has been going on for years, mostly because the Great Recession threw off normal adjustments. And this will continue to happen. US economic data today is untrustworthy. Even worse, it is causing the Federal Reserve and others to make bad decisions.

This unpredictable, inaccurate data is causing politicians and others to incorrectly understand the mood of the nation.

Americans are angry because they don’t care about the statistical noise — they care about what they see with their own eyes.

True, there may have been 15 million new jobs created during the Obama administration — which, on the surface, is laudable. But that’s about half what was needed to both absorb newcomers to the workforce and those who were laid off over the past decade and would like to return.

And that drop in the unemployment rate that everyone likes to point to? Even the Fed doesn’t trust it and has formulated its own replacement gauge.

Here’s why: When you count all the workers who have been stuck with part-time employment or who haven’t searched for work in a year, the jobless rate is twice the official 5% level. And many of the full-time jobs created have been in the lower-paying service sector of the economy.

When you include those people who haven’t sought a job in more than a year, the unemployment rate jumps much higher.

How high? Washington doesn’t even bother trying to calculate what it is.

One last statistic, from Sentier Research. Median annual household income in the US reached $57,263 this past March, which was 4.5% higher than in March 2015.

But — and here’s where the anger comes in — this March’s figure is still slightly below the $57,342 median annual income in January 2000.

January 2000!

Americans haven’t gotten a raise in more than 16 years.

Statistical noise doesn’t just confuse economists and politicians. It also drowns out the sound of people complaining.

John Crudele is a Post business columnist.

http://nypost.com/2016/04/30/americans-havent-gotten-a-raise-in-16-years/

State of emergency declared in Baghdad as protesters take Iraqi parliament

  It’s a good thing the U.S. Embassy, located  in the Baghdad “green zone”, was built like a fortress.

But even that may not be enough now. We may soon see it evacuated by helicopter while under attack like the one in Saigon 41 years ago.

Iraq is a mess now. Probably irredeemable at this point. Does this mean that invading Iraq and deposing Saddam Hussain was a mistake? In retrospect one has to say yes because the Democrats did everything they could to undermine and sabotage America’s efforts there. The war in Iraq was won and the country was stable when President Obama took office in 2009, but he gave away everything that was gained by completely withdrawing U.S. forces in 2011. Now we see the end result of that precipitous withdrawal.

In fact whenever America considers any military operation in the future the government will have to take into consideration the fact that the Democrat party will reflexively work to sabotage it. The radical Leftists who control the Democrat party today HATE America and seek to harm it as part of their goal to transform it. The damage that President Obama and the Democrats are doing to the country as part of their “fundamental transformation of the United States of America” is, as they say, a ‘feature” of the program, not a “bug” in it.

___________________________________________________________________________________Loveday Morris and Mustafa Salim

BAGHDAD — A state of emergency was declared in the Iraqi capital on Saturday as protesters stormed Iraq’s parliament, after bursting into the Baghdad’s fortified Green Zone, where other key buildings including the U.S. Embassy are located, in a dramatic escalation of the country’s political crisis.

Live footage on Iraqi television showed swarms of protesters, who have been demanding government reform, inside the parliament building, waving flags, chanting and breaking chairs. Some lawmakers were berated and beaten with flags as they fled the building while other demonstrators smashed the car windows. Others remained trapped inside rooms in parliament and feared for their lives, lawmakers said.

Baghdad Operations Command said all roads into the capital had been closed. A U.S. Embassy official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said that staff were not being evacuated from their compound, which is about a mile away from the parliament building. Organizers of the demonstration urged protesters not to attack embassies.

The surge of protesters into the secure area, which is off limits to most Iraqis, was the culmination of months of street protests. Under huge political pressure, Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi has attempted to reshuffle his cabinet and meet the demands of the demonstrators, who have been spurred on by the powerful Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr. But he has been hampered by a deeply divided parliament, where sessions have descended into chaos as lawmakers have thrown water bottles and punches at one another.

The political unrest has brought a new level of instability to a country that is facing multiple crises, including the fight against the Islamic State militant group and the struggling economy.

“This is a new era in the history of Iraq,” screamed one demonstrator in the main lobby of the parliament, in footage on Iraqi television. Another said, “They have been robbing us for the past 13 years.”

 At the heart of the protesters demands is an end to the political quota system, which was put in place after the U.S.-led invasion in 2003 and sees positions shared out between sects. Sadr has demanded a new technocratic government.

“This is an end to the political system put in place after 2003,” said Shwan al-Dawoodi, a Kurdish lawmaker. “A big part of the blame for this is on America, which left Iraq without solving this crisis it created.”

Earlier in the day, not enough lawmakers had turned up in parliament to officially convene a session in which Abadi was due to present names for a cabinet reshuffle.

The session had been postponed until the afternoon, but before it was held, Sadr, a leader in the resistance to the American troop presence in Iraq following the U.S.-led invasion, held a news conference from the southern city of Najaf.

“They are against reform, they hope to behead the will of the Iraqi people,” he said of the country’s politicians. “I’m with the people, no matter what they decide. I’m standing and waiting for a major uprising of the Iraqi people.”

Shortly afterward, protesters, many of whom are Sadr loyalists, pushed through the multiple security cordons around parliament.

Rumors swirled that lawmakers — many of them living inside the Green Zone — were trying to flee the city. Ammar Toma, a politician with the Shiite Fadhila Party who had criticized lawmakers who had earlier staged a sit-in inside parliament, was accosted as he tried to leave the parliament building, video footage showed. “Hit him, hit him,” one protester shouted.

One video posted online showed protesters riding around on a military vehicle.

Dawoodi said protesters had tried to attack him and his car as he escaped parliament, and that there was a state of panic in the legislature as they heard that protesters had broken through. Five Kurdish parliamentarians were still stuck inside on Saturday afternoon, along with members of other political blocs, he said.

“They have locked themselves inside rooms and are scared for their lives,” he said. He blamed the prime minister for putting their lives at risk after local television reports cited Abadi as saying he had ordered protesters be allowed into the Green Zone. Abadi’s office issued a statement denying that he had.

U.S. officials are concerned that the political crisis will have a negative effect on the country’s fight against the Islamic State, leading to a flurry of high level visits in recent weeks. “Now is not the time for government gridlock or bickering,” President Obama said of the crisis in Iraq during a visit to Saudi Arabia last week. He said that he was “concerned” by the situation.

Protest organizers said that the demonstrators would remain in parliament in a peaceful sit-in, and directed them not to attack lawmakers or property.

“What happened today was an explosion of the people,” said Hussain al-Sharifi, a parliamentarian with Sadr’s block. “Today was an uprising, a revolution.”

The street protests began last summer, as thousands demonstrated over a lack of services and government waste and corruption. Abadi, also pressured to cut spending because of plunging oil prices, embarked on an ambitious reform program but has struggled to enact any meaningful change powerful political players standing to lose out.

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/state-of-emergency-declared-in-baghdad-as-protesters-take-iraqi-parliament/ar-BBsstpL?li=BBnbcA1&ocid=spartandhp

Why Cruz Lost – Inferior Combativeness

 by Anonymous Conservative

A Freeper rehash’s Rush’s take:

Presidential elections are situational and not ideological…

Ideological conservatives are scratching their heads in this election — For many people [Rush included], ideology is a single focus. They write about, study it, and try to persuade people to believe it.

And this year, many of them thought the closest thing to the dream conservative candidate was Ted Cruz. But his appeal to conservatives has not been as good as you would predict…

Trump understands that presidential elections are situational, not ideological. The candidate is the one who best applies their ideological outlook to the issues of the day.

And rather than announcing at every speech, “And I’m going to make sure that conservative values triumph in this country,” you simply stake out your position on an issue that is conservative. You don’t call it conservative.

I disagree.

Cruz lost the nomination for two reasons. One, Trump fought our enemies and Cruz didn’t. Cruz espoused conservative ideals, but was weak in his rhetorical attacks on our enemies. As an example, Cruz would never say #blacklivesmatters protestors are un-American savages. Nor would Cruz call leftists who support importing third world immigrants traitors to their fellow Americans. Trump would say that, then he would repeat it, then he would insult anyone who criticized him, then he would make fun of them on twitter, then he would repeat it a third time.

Subconsciously Cruz’s style read as, “I support what you support, but I also want your enemies to like me, so I can’t insult them.” That is not confidence inspiring. It was better than what the GOPe offered, which was, “You are wrong, your enemies are right, and you should elect me to fight you for them, because you are stupid and backward-thinking savages.”

But then Trump entered the fray, portrayed our enemies as attacking us, and then attacked our enemies in response. Trump said, “You are right, your enemies are wrong, and now watch as I grab a random enemy and punch him in the nose, just for fun! There’s gonna be a lot more of that! There’s gonna be a lot more of that!”

It began with illegals, then progressed to trade, then segued into the GOPe, then turned on #blacklivesmatters, then called for a complete halt on Muslim immigration, then moved on to guns and Hillary, then turned on all the nations that used us for security while screwing us. He was even talking about beating up the lefties at his rallies, and he was so unctuous that leftists began trying to intimidate his supporters with actual violence in response. Ted never got that threat from the left because he didn’t attack the left that aggressively.

Trump’s aggression against our enemies was so strong that where he didn’t fight, like on transgenders in bathrooms, it was easily overlooked, because the choice was a guy who fought our enemies on many issues, or a guy who never fought the enemy on any issue. The choice was a guy who had our enemies running at him on stage trying to take him out, or a guy our enemies were fine with.

The second reason Cruz lost was that when Donald’s rally was shut down because of leftist violence, Cruz took the side of the leftists and attacked Donald. Cruz literally supported the leftist savages. Until that moment, many conservatives, myself included were willing to offer Cruz loyalty because he had opposed leftist measures in the Senate. But those protestors attacking Trump were our enemy. They were attacking Donald because he was fighting them.

Once Cruz stood up for the #blacklivesmatters protestors, that was it for him among a lot of the voters who were having trouble deciding. I was enraged, and it changed my view of Ted completely. On Free Republic, the shift was astonishing, as poster after protestor began cursing him, and commenting on how they never knew him. Conservative author Matt Bracken publicly posted, “FU Ted Cruz!”

At that point, Cruz would have been wise to drop out, for his political future. From that point forward, to the anti-leftist conservatives who fell in with Trump, everything Ted said was seen as some sort of political calculation, rather than a stance of principle. Every attack on Donald was a reason to dislike Ted more.

As he continued, old wounds were reopened fresh. He took Neil Bush onto his staff. His wife worked for Goldman and the CFR. Lindsey Graham endorsed him. The establishment wanted him to win. And now he chose Fiorina as his running mate. It is almost a farce. If he continues to try and deny Trump voters their candidate by giving the GOPe a brokered convention, I would not be surprised to see him primaried right out of the Senate one day.

Yes Scott Adams is right that Trump’s use of persuasion was an issue. And Trump’s use of K-stimuli like violence, confrontation, images of shortage, and mortal salience stimuli has been brilliant. But I think the overwhelming factor was that this was a man who openly relished fighting the enemies of the movement, insulting them, hurting them, and driving them mad, and he did so in the course of trying to win the support of a K-strategist population that wanted to fight all along. Add Cruz’s support of our leftist enemies against Donald, and Ted was done back then. It just took until now to become apparent.

The only question now is will this battle cost Ted anything more than merely the nomination this cycle.

http://www.anonymousconservative.com/blog/why-cruz-lost/

The Canadian Plan That Could Help Australia Beat Neoliberalism - New Matilda

The Canadian Leftist plan to destroy their country. Actually not much different from our own Leftists’ plan for the  “fundamental transformation of the United States of America”. There is no place to run to anymore.

Feel the ecstasy of the Leftist writer below as Canada prepares to emulate Chairman Mao. And they even refer to the policy set as a "Leap". Yet another demonstration that the Left don't remotely understand economics.  That the policies described would be very impoverishing is not considered.  It's just dreams, divorced from reality.  But the policies concerned would be very disruptive and Leftists like that.  It is probably the real reason behind the "Leap".  Mao's version was certainly very disruptive.  The consolation is that, if implemented, the associated disasters will get Pretty Boy thrown out on his ear at the next Federal election. -John J. Ray, MA PhD, Brisbane, AU – Dissecting Leftism Blogspot
_________________________________________________________________________________

Canada’s Great Leap Forward


In early 2015, 60 representatives from Canada’s Indigenous rights, environmental, social and food justice, labour and faith-based movements met to draft a progressive vision for Canada’s future. The idea came from a belief that “now is the moment for a transformative agenda to come from outside electoral politics, to build a wave of popular support that will put real pressure on the Federal Liberal government.”

The result is the Leap Manifesto.

The manifesto, described as “a call for a Canada based on caring for the Earth and one another”, makes 15 demands. It starts with respect for “the inherent rights and title of the original caretakers of this land” and full implementation of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. It urges the shift to 100 per cent renewable electricity by 2030, a 100 per cent clean economy by 2050, and commits to no new long-term fossil fuel extraction projects.

Other demands include community control of clean energy systems, investment in public infrastructure, high speed rail and affordable public transport, resources for workers in carbon-intensive jobs, and a localised ecological agriculture system.

It also advocates an end to damaging free trade deals, welcoming refugees and migrants, expanding low-carbon professions like caregiving, teaching, social work, the arts and public interest media, a universal basic income and removing corporate money from political campaigns.

These proposals would be fully funded by an end to fossil fuel subsidies, financial transaction taxes, increased resource royalties, increased corporate and high income taxes, a progressive carbon tax and cuts to military spending.

To me, this sounds like a common sense list of good public policy. It would rein in the cowboy extractivism of fossil fuel companies, end the toxic relationship between polluters and politicians, offer masses of good clean energy jobs, deliver justice to the most vulnerable parts of our population and secure a sustainable future for human beings on a liveable planet.

To the establishment complex of banks, government, industry, think tanks and the corporate media, a common sense plan to avoid climate catastrophe is actually an INSANE RADICAL MARXIST AGENDA TO RUIN THE ECONOMY.

The Leap Manifesto has made quite a splash since its release during the Canadian federal election campaign in September 2015, pretty much dividing opinion along these lines.

Thus far 200 organisations, 40,000 Canadians and numerous celebrities (celebrities!!!) have backed the manifesto while the media has hysterically dismissed the document as “economic madness”, a “prescription for economic ruin” and my personal favourite, “another step towards re-enacting the Bolshevik revolution”.

The great strength of the manifesto is its grassroots origins and political independence.

As a “People’s Platform”, it’s not limited by the constant compromises of electoral politics but can still make waves in Parliament. The Green Party of Canada have highlighted similarities between their own platform and the Leap Manifesto. The National Democratic Party (NDP), who were the favourites for the 2015 election until they were outflanked by Justin Trudeau’s disgusting handsomeness, passed a resolution at their convention earlier this month to support the Leap Manifesto and debate its principles at the grassroots level over the next two years. They lost their leader, Tom Mulcair, partly due to his unconvincing and shifting positions on key aspects of the manifesto.

A majority of voters from the Greens, NDP and governing Liberal Party support the Leap.

https://newmatilda.com/2016/04/27/the-canadian-plan-that-could-help-australia-beat-neoliberalism/

Drug Overdose Deaths Leading to More Organ Donors

So look at the bright side…

_________________________________________________________________________________________

America's epidemic of drug overdose deaths has produced a dramatic rise in the number of desperately needed organs for people on transplant waiting lists, statistics show. 

Nationally, the number of donors who died of overdoses rose by nearly 270 percent – from 230 to 848 – between 2006 and 2015, according to data gathered by the United Network for Organ Sharing, or UNOS. In New England alone, the number rose from eight to 54 – or by 575 percent – over the last five years, according to statistics compiled by the New England Organ Bank.

"It's a huge increase," says Alexandra K. Glazier, the New England Organ Bank's president and chief executive officer.

Some of the donors are among the roughly 120 million Americans who have previously consented to organ donation. In other cases, families have consented after a loved one's death, in the hope that their loss might mean salvation to someone in dire need of an organ.

"It's a silver lining to what is absolutely a tragedy," Glazier says.

Unlike deaths from a car crash or stroke, overdose deaths in many cases are anything but sudden or unexpected, says Helen M. Nelson, the New England Organ Bank's senior vice president of organ donation services.

"Many of the families we encounter have been going through this addiction for several years," she says. "It's almost as if the families were preparing for this death; many feel great comfort in knowing that some good has come out of it."

The magnitude of the nation's addiction problem is staggering. In 2014, there were almost 19,000 deaths from prescription opioids, up from 16,000 in 2013, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports. More than 60 percent of overdose deaths in 2014 involved an opioid, a category that also includes the illegal drug heroin. Seventy-eight Americans die of opioid overdoses each day.

There are likely regional variations in the number of organs harvested from drug overdose victims, but the data are not yet available, says Elling Eidbo, chief executive officer of the Association of Organ Procurement Organizations, which represents the nation's organ banks. "We are all actually racing each other to get that information," Eidbo says.

Nearly 80,000 people in the U.S. are actively awaiting organs. About 20 people on transplant waiting lists die each day because no suitable organ could be found, according to UNOS statistics.

Overdose victims represent a new category of organ donors and haven't replaced those who die of strokes, auto accidents or other causes. They have also introduced a new calculus into an already challenging question of organ selection.

Some hospitals, and transplant recipients, are wary of using organs from people who died of drug overdoses because they fear the organs carry hepatitis C or other infectious diseases.

"We had to convince them that these organs should be used because the risk is low," Nelson says. She notes "this is a new donor population" that includes "young people, healthy people, kids in college [and] employed people."

Nelson says the risks can be minimized by thorough testing and treatment, now available for such viral diseases as hepatitis C. President Barack Obama's Hope Act also made possible the transplantation of organs from one HIV-positive person to another.

The New England Organ Bank recently arranged for such a transplant to a patient at Johns Hopkins University.

Nonetheless, Nelson says, not everyone is convinced that the organs are safe.

"We've been able to place them in New England very successfully," she says. "That may not be true in other parts of the country."

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/drug-overdose-deaths-leading-to-more-organ-donors/ar-BBsnSiz?ocid=spartanntp