Jeb! Bush, 4.2% in the polls, challenges Donald Trump, 36.5% in the polls, to one-on-one debate

Trump polls less than 30% in only one of the last six major polls, now averages 36.5% in Real Clear Politics average

George W. Bush is silently helping Democrat campaigns in their run against Trump

From AP Obama, here, in "Democrats find an unlikely ally on Muslims: George W Bush":

'As Hillary Clinton put it, "George W. Bush was right." Laying out her plan to fight domestic terrorism, Clinton reminded voters in Minneapolis earlier this month of Bush's visit to a Muslim center six days after the Sept. 11 attacks. She even quoted his words from that day about those who intimidate Muslim-Americans: "They represent the worst of humankind, and they should be ashamed of that kind of behavior." ...

'Sen. Bernie Sanders, Clinton's top challenger for the Democratic nomination, visited a mosque this month in a show of solidarity that evoked Bush's after 9/11. And the Democratic National Committee released an ad contrasting comments by the 2016 GOP contenders with footage of Bush declaring that "Islam is peace." ...

'The former president has stayed mostly silent throughout the recent debate. His spokesman, Freddy Ford, recently said Bush wouldn't comment on "Trump's bluster" but repeated Bush's insistence that "true Islam is peaceful." Ford declined to discuss what Bush thinks about Democrats quoting him now.'

Bret Stephens urges "fellow conservatives" to vote for the criminal instead of Trump

A straw man if there ever was one.

Here.

ISIS video doesn't recruit off Trump, it recruits off Hillary's husband: "the fornicator"

See an imbed of the video here and here.

Phyllis Schlafly: The people who ought to be lining up with Trump are attacking him

Still right after all these years.

Here.

Conrad Black defends Donald Trump against the hysterics, and tells you what he's for

Here:

"What Donald actually advocates is the deportation of 351,000 illegal immigrants convicted of crimes and now imprisoned; the end of illegal immigration by building an Israeli-like wall along the Mexican border; an (as yet unspecified) screening process to justify the deportation of some of the illegals and the normalization of the others; and although he advocates the suspension already mentioned of Muslim immigration (not the Christians who are almost half of the refugees), he at least acknowledges that the United States is partly responsible for the political chaos that generated this humanitarian tragedy in the first place. He wants only a small increase in defence spending, reallocated to more effective anti-terrorism; and universal health care through health savings accounts and by smashing the insurance cartel. He is for the gradual legalization of most drugs; is a militant anti-polluter, but correctly (on present evidence) regards climate change and cap-and-trade as hoaxes. He wants to leave education (and same-sex marriage) to the states and to give them the money now wasted in the federal Department of Education. He would ban only late-term abortions, and not when there were overriding circumstances. He would reform the corrupt shambles of campaign financing by abolishing super-PACs and soft money, and lift limits on individual contributions to political candidates. He is a moderate protectionist opposite cheap labour countries, and advocates marginal income tax reductions and the reconstitution of the bloated national debt as a sinking fund to be gradually reduced by spending restraint, implicitly involving an imprecise level of entitlement-reform. Trump opposes foreign intervention in areas where the U.S. has no natural interest, including Ukraine and Syria, but wants a redefinition of the national security interest of the country, and wants to protect that interest, unlike Obama, but not over-extend it, unlike George W. Bush. This is not a radical program."

And another poll gets added to the Real Clear Politics average today, putting Trump in first with 38% in the last four major polls

Trump is averaging 37.7% in the last three major polls, Cruz 15.7%, Rubio 11.7%, Carson 9%, Bush 5%

Ted Cruz has clearly flip-flopped on "the poison pill", and on legalizing illegals

Ted Cruz has clearly flip-flopped on the poison pill and on legalizing illegals: In 2013 he said the poison pill was the citizenship provision in the Gang of Eight bill, but in 2015 it's suddenly his own amendment to the bill which has become the pill. Cruz also was for legalization of illegals in 2013, but is totally against that now, suddenly falling back on "attrition through enforcement", which sounds a lot like a combination of Mitt Romney's self-deportation with a long-term, slow-walking program of round-ups.

Ted Cruz on May 31, 2013 at Princeton, video here, transcription here, specifically calling the citizenship provision of the Gang of Eight bill "the poison pill":

"And what I believe is happening is that citizenship provision is designed, and the White House knows it’s designed, to be a poison pill in the House [of Representatives] to torpedo the bill, because then they want to campaign in 2014 and 2016, and say, ‘see those Republicans? They killed immigration reform.’…”

Ten days earlier that May Ted Cruz in the Senate Judiciary Committee, here, also characterized the Gang of Eight bill as unable to pass without his amendment establishing legalization. In other words, the path to saving the Gang of Eight bill was his amendment replacing citizenship (the poison pill) with citizenship-light, i.e. legalization:

"If this amendment is adopted to the current bill, the effect would be that those 11 million under this current bill would still be eligible for RPI [registered provisional immigrant] status. They would still be eligible for legal status and indeed, under the terms of the bill, they would be eligible for LPR [lawful permanent resident] status as well so that they are out of the shadows, which the proponents of this bill repeatedly point to as their principal objective to provide a legal status for those who are here illegally to be out of the shadows. This amendment would allow that happen, but what it would do is remove the pathway to citizenship so that there are real consequences that respect the rule of law and that treat legal immigrants with the fairness and respect they deserve. And a second point to those advocacy groups that are so passionately engaged. In my view, if this committee rejects this amendment, and I think everyone here views it as quite likely this committee will choose to reject this amendment, in my view, that decision will make it much, much more likely that this entire bill will fail in the House of Representatives. I don't want immigration reform to fail. I want immigration reform to pass."

But now post-debate in December 2015 Ted Cruz is claiming in response to Bret Baier, preposterously, that his amendment to the Gang of Eight bill is what killed the bill.

Byron York has sorted this out better than anyone, here:

Further, in a phone interview with Cruz on May 28, 2013, I specifically asked whether, despite his opposition to a path to citizenship, and given the three-year delay he called for, "You do buy into this whole legalization idea?"

"Legalization is the predicate of the Gang of Eight bill," Cruz responded. "And in introducing amendments, what I endeavored to do was improve that bill so that it actually fixes the problem." ... 

Cruz's team has tried to explain away that position by claiming Cruz was offering some sort of poison-pill amendment designed to kill the Gang of Eight bill rather than improve it. Cruz did it himself in a somewhat stammering interview with Fox News' Bret Baier Wednesday evening. But the situation is more complicated than Cruz says. Yes, he knew Democrats would never accept his amendments, but he spoke with apparent feeling about including legalization, if delayed, in the final deal.

On Tuesday night [during the debate], however, Cruz was in full no-legalization mode. And when some reporters questioned whether his comment "I do not intend to support legalization" was some sort of lawyerly way of leaving the door open to someday doing just that, Cruz sent an aide to tell reporters that he no way, no how supports legalization.

"I'm here tonight, and I want to make this super clear to everybody, so put me on the record on this: Sen. Cruz unequivocally, unequivocally, does not support legalization," national campaign chairman Chad Sweet told the Washington Examiner's David Drucker after the debate. When Drucker asked what Cruz would do with the 11 or 12 million immigrants in the U.S. illegally, Sweet answered, "His plan is attrition through enforcement. He's following the rule of law…If we enforce the law, ultimately there will be attrition through enforcement. And in the end, though, what the senator is trying to do, as well, is save and expand our legal immigration system."

But how is something which never passed supposed to have killed the Gang of Eight bill? The bill died as Cruz originally predicted, because it was poison.

So what we're left with is a Marco Rubio whose positions in support of the original Gang of Eight bill have not really changed at all, and a Ted Cruz who has shape-shifted himself all around the bill to adapt to the new environment against illegal alien amnesty, legalization and citizenship swirling around the Trump hurricane.

For supporters of borders, language and culture, Marco Rubio is definitely out, Ted Cruz is clearly unreliable, and only The Donald appears to be the real deal.

But I predict even Trump will eventually disappoint on illegal immigration. He's aiming for big and over-the-top stuff because he knows damn well how hard it's going to be to get anything at all. Hope for a lot, expect only a little.

Meanwhile Rush Limbaugh's laughable account here actually says CNN stumbled into the truth that Cruz' amendment was the poison pill ("[T]his amendment that Ted Cruz did propose which would have given legal status to undocumented immigrants was meant at the time as a poison pill."). Not according to the 2013 Ted Cruz. Cruz must be laughing how easy it is to dupe the likes of CNN and Rush Limbaugh.

So the question is, What will the 2017 Ted Cruz say? If he's the president, the answer is clearly, Whatever he feels like saying.

Trump on the Geneva Convention: "So, they can kill us, but we can't kill them? That's what you're saying."

Here.

As usual Donald Trump cuts through the crap. ISIS is already guilty of war crimes, including targeting civilians, and the only way to bring it to justice is to destroy it utterly. Allah can sort it out later.

We don't need permission to defend ourselves and our people.

Vanity Fair trots out follicularly-challenged author of 1997 hit piece on Trump to append an attack on Trump's hair, in 16 slides

There's no there there as far as Mark Bowden, here, is concerned, who has his own reasons to be jealous:

"He has no coherent political philosophy, so comparisons with Fascist leaders miss the mark. He just reacts. "

Trump firmly in first but lead narrows in NBC/WSJ poll as Cruz climbs and Carson fades, Jeb Bush rises to 7% in best performance in a month

Mitt Romney's 47% makes a comeback: 47% offended by Trump's Muslim ban plan

Reported here in "Trump holds commanding lead in first national poll since Muslim ban proposal":

"The poll also found that 72 percent of Democrats and 47 percent of overall voters were offended by Trump’s ban."

Not all 47 percents are created equal, however.

For example, Mitt Romney received 47.15% of the popular vote and 47.7% of the US prison population is composed of violent criminals, among other things 47 percent.

Police in Colorado Springs won't investigate ACLUer who called for Trump supporters to be killed, citing freedom of speech

Reported here by CBS Denver:

'The post states, “The thing is, we have to really reach out to those who might consider voting for Trump and say, ‘This is Goebbels. This is the final solution. If you are voting for him I will have to shoot you before Election Day.’ They’re not going to listen to reason, so when justice is gone, there’s always force…” ... Wirbel did not respond to a request for comment. He is from Colorado Springs and police there say his post is covered by free speech and they do not intend to investigate.'

Evidently as long as you don't threaten a specific individual it's permitted to advocate killing the followers of Obama, or Clinton or Madonna or the Pope and so on.

Whatever happened to incitement laws? to law and order?

Colorado Springs has bigger problems than Planned Parenthood shootings.

Mollie Hemingway doesn't get it that Donald Trump IS the balance

If you can get through all the emoting, you reach this at the end, here:

"Yes, the media industry is just a way to make money via entertaining presentation of the news, and, yes, Trump is getting the media clicks we only dream about. But if there is any sense of gratitude for the role we’re allowed to play in the project of maintaining a civil society, could we just work to achieve a bit more balance? Neither self-abasing freakouts nor servile accommodations regarding Trump?"

When Barack Obama promised he'd transform America, no one knew that he meant with Donald Trump. The Donald is the Yang to Obama's Yin. When Trump is finished, the country might be ready to move along again after the male point of view has had its way with the country for a few years. Like Melania, I'm sure she'll enjoy it.

I'm not criticizing the girl for missing it. She's just a girl.

Democrat Jewish Mayor Rick Kiseman at 727-893-7201 bans Donald Trump from St. Petersburg, Florida

Seen in the comments to the story here:

"Just called the wuss Mayor's office at 727-893-7201 (Rick Kiseman) and left a msg for him - giving him Hades for thinking he can stop anyone from entering St. Petersburg. Kindly join me in letting him know that Donald Trump can go anywhere he chooses."

"Racist" isn't working against Trump, so now they'll try "fascist"

Ross Douthat, here, where else?, in The New York Times, attempting to lay the groundwork from the right:

'Whether or not we want to call Trump a fascist outright, then, it seems fair to say that he’s closer to the “proto-fascist” zone on the political spectrum than either the average American conservative or his recent predecessors in right-wing populism.'

The critique is almost entirely non-economic and preoccupied with Trump's style, tone and passions, which makes sense since Americans of all political stripes are blind to the essential character of America as a form of state capitalism. Our politics left and right has stewed in that soup from the very beginning when the colonies were formed as corporate instrumentalities of the British Crown, financed by the Bank of England. We can hardly imagine any other economic arrangement. It only comes up momentarily in our politics when our/their cronies get exposed, and then quickly fizzles away when the truth becomes too difficult to face, restoring business as usual.

Just ask the bankers.

Trump isn't going to get Hillary elected, Obama is going to get Trump elected

Loretta Lynch Vows to Prosecute Those Who Use 'Anti-Muslim' Speech That 'Edges Toward Violence'

Obama uses National Prayer Breakfast to compare Christianity to Islamist killers

Obama calls for gun reforms in wake of San Bernardino shooting

Obama says it’s possible shooting was ‘workplace related’ . . . Giuliani: ‘you’re a moron’

White House: Obama wants to admit more Syrian refugees

ICE Director Struggles to Explain ‘Dramatic Decline’ in Criminal Alien Removals

Obama dropped leaflets 45 min ahead to warn ISIS before dropping bombs

Obama moves to give legal status to 5 million illegal immigrants

U.S. military opens combat positions to women

California massacre shooter pledged allegiance to ISIS: CNN

Trump says libertarians don't get it that we need big government to protect us from big weapons

In an interview with Alex Jones (yikes), here.

Jones called Trump a "statesman" during the interview, and Trump said Jones has an "amazing" reputation.

Well, I guess one true statement out of three ain't bad.