So, it turns out that Obamacare’s failure in Oregon wasn’t just incompetence, but also a bit of graft. Color me shocked…
Rubio, Rubio! Where for art thou, Rubio? Getting ready to endorse Trump, that’s where he is. And there was much wailing and moaning and gnashing of teeth among Rubio supporters. Grab a clue, folks – Rubio is a politician. Sure, he’s miles better than Trump and I’d be enthusiastically backing him had he won the nomination…but he’s still a politician. Rubio is just looking over the lay of the land and realizing that if he wants to jump into the 2016 Senate contest (which I’ll bet money he does) and if he wants to have a good shot at the GOP nomination in 2020 (if Trump loses) or 2024 (if Trump wins), then he’ll need Trumpster support in both cases. Politics – it sucks; but it is always going to be like that. Remember, even Lincoln allowed backroom deals to get the nomination and played the full game of politics to garner and retain political support. It happens. Grow up.
Rio is home to both the 2016 Summer Olympics and the Zika virus. I’m no virologist and I do know that mosquito-borne illness work in weird ways (some types of diseases can only be transmitted at certain times by certain species of mosquito, for instance – and even then only if they bite someone in a certain phase of the disease)…but the thought of sending 500,000 people to Rio and then sending them swiftly back home doesn’t appear a wise move. Others also have some doubts about it.
Charles Murray says “Clinton is worse” doesn’t cut it. But, in the end, it very well might.
For those feeling remorse over Hiroshima and Nagasaki, I’d like to enter into the record Nanking and Manila. A little less “Banzai” from 1937 to 1941 would have resulted in a lot less atomic bombing in 1945.
Not sure if this is really true, but if it is true, it illustrates just how stupid our society has become – a pair of glasses left on a gallery floor is mistaken for art.
Blogs For Victory 
From Murray’s piece:
That describes EXACTLY the way I feel about Trump. Now I can’t vote for Hillary, but I don’t see my not voting for Trump as a vote for Hillary. It just means that those who want Trump to be President will have to find someone to vote for Trump in my place. I’m fully prepared for either a Trump or Hillary presidency, but I’m not prepared to deal with the fact that I helped put either of them in office. The down-ballot positions are important to me, so I won’t stay home, but I fully intend to leave the box for President blank.
I’ll never condemn anyone for how they vote in 2016 – it is a lousy choice. But those Conservatives who are now saying that a vote for Hillary is a necessity are, well, stupid in my view. Hillary is, if anything, more greedy, corrupt and mentally unstable than Trump.
One would be hard-pressed to make the argument that Hillary is the less greedy and corrupt of the two, but I think trump gets the instability award hands down. Greedy and corrupt can be dealt with, instability not so much.
Her words are less unstable – but we are dealing with the woman who recently asserted she has never lied. That is pathological.
Spook, my take on Hillary and her defects is a little different than yours. I don’t disagree for a moment that she is all you say she is, and more. But I don’t agree that this “can be dealt with” because it is linked with so many other factors. One is that she has gotten away with her antics for so long, criticism of them just doesn’t faze her any more, if it ever did. She is absolutely immune to the opinions of others, which I think makes her more dangerous than Trump, who craves approval and admiration more than he does oxygen. That craving makes him more susceptible to being moved by public opinion—-I think he will do what he thinks will make him more beloved and more likely to be a historic figure, and being constantly targeted and harassed by conservatives and people from his own party won’t feed those needs. He is desperate to not be seen as a failure, and constantly being outvoted by Congress, chided by Congress, reined in by Congress, described as a liar and a failure by people who are eager to be proved right in their dislike and distrust of him, will I believe make him constantly testing to see which way the wind blows.
A lot of who and what Hillary is is based on her hidebound political ideology, which has been a defining feature for more than half a century. Trump is ideologically unbound, and his “positions”, such as they are, are not borne of ideology but of a combination of brain farts and pandering to what he thinks will get him the most admiration. While this erratic and unstable characteristic of Trump is certainly distasteful and cause for alarm, in the long run I think it makes him less dangerous than Hillary, who is absolutely confident in her invulnerability and the essential rightness in her beliefs.
In this case I think instability is a good thing, if compared to absolute rigidity of ideology and absolute conviction of immunity from any decision. I think the only danger in Trump’s erratic behavior would be if he has a spasm of unthinking reaction that would lead to international involvement that would be dangerous to the country—a twitchy trigger finger.
Both would be constant embarrassments to the nation, but thanks to the spinelessness of the GOP we may be stuck with that. And a lot of nations have had to deal with embarrassing leaders. The wife of the president of Peru was locked up in the presidential palace because she wouldn’t shut up about her husband’s affair, and she retaliated by throwing his clothes out an upper story window while yelling to the enchanted press below that he was a pig. Trudeau was a bumbling idiot. An orange monosyllabic peroxided stream of consciousness babbler would not be the worst thing to happen to the country. Three of four more Liberal justices would be.
I think a lot of Trump support is much like the admiration for the “art” of the glasses on the floor of the museum. It was cute and daring to come out for Trump when he was just a buffoon. It later became a rite of passage for people eager to jump on the Trump train. I think a lot of people who are “for” Trump for the reasons we have been given are going to find their enthusiasm waning.
“Because he tells it like it is” is already falling apart as he also tells it like it isn’t and walks back so much of what he does “tell”.
“He is not Establishment” but once he is backed by the Establishment that might not be as powerful an attraction, as it starts off as pretty weak anyway.
“He is self funding so he doesn’t owe anyone anything” is already proving to be only partly true and he has been only partly self funded, and even that will go away when he is the nominee, getting all that donation money and also paying himself back for his loans, which BTW have been falsely portrayed as “self funding”.
“He is such a good business man” will fade once the Dems start to point out that so many of his business enterprises have failed and those that have succeeded have (1) not been as great as he has claimed and (2) their success has been so heavily dependent on business practices ranging from shady to downright illegal. At some point these people are going to have to think about whether those ethics are what they want to define the economic development of this country.
“He will surround himself with really smart people”—yet there is evidence that so far he hasn’t done this at all. He seems to be completely ignorant of the process of GOP nominations, claiming that winning more delegates means an automatic nomination. His “really smart” people either never bothered to learn the most basic thing about how to get nominated, or they did find out and told him but he just lied to his public.
And of course there is the disdain so many of us feel for Trumpbots, which is only going to increase as time goes by. I think the bloom will be off the Trump rose a lot more quickly than some people think. I think people will vote for him even if they are becoming less enchanted with him, if only because to have him lose will damn them even more, but I don’t think the Trump Phenomenon is going to be a long-lived thing. And I think Trump himself is going to start to falter. He loves the battle, the name calling, the adrenaline rush of wallowing in the gutter and out-trashing an opponent. Actually having the job, with its pressures and most of all its restrictions, is going to be a very different animal. So I don’t expect a Trump run in 2020.
The Trump campaign strategy, direct from the playbook instructing people how to sell Trump “University”:
“You don’t sell products, benefits or solutions — you sell feelings,” according to the sales playbook.