Talking Points Memo: Poor Hunter Biden lol, and being better, different, more righteous, and more norm-honoring is for chumps like conservatives

The only reason Hunter Biden has been in habitual trouble is because he's a bad boy.

 

Progressives very excited about the Tim Walz vibe lol

 

Progressives Very Excited About 'Vibes Candidate' Tim Walz

Hunter Walker, TPM

I don't know but I'm guessing her initials are Lesley Wolf

The question remains who within the Delaware U.S. Attorney’s Office withheld the FD-1023 from Shapley and his team when Barr had directed that the CHS’s reporting be sent there for further investigation. Further, Barr has recently confirmed the Delaware U.S. Attorney’s Office was briefed on the detailed allegations contained in the FD-1023, following then-U.S. Attorney Scott Brady’s conclusion that the CHS’s reporting did not appear to be misinformation. ...

Every indication suggests it was the FD-1023 that the FBI HQ’s team falsely labeled disinformation, which raises the specter that individuals in the Delaware U.S. Attorney’s Office were colluding with FBI HQ to protect the Biden family. It is now up to Sen. Chuck Grassley’s whistleblower to close the circle.

More.

Kooky "Macro Tourist" tells us to put aside our political views, uses crabbed Talking Points Memo graph to warn us about Republican federal spending increases

THINGS HAVE CHANGED...:

Although the Republicans are supposedly the party of fiscal conservatism, we all know that sort of talk is only for when they are not in power. ... There should be little surprise that under Republican stewardship, the greatest fiscal stimulus in the past decade has been instituted. Not saying if it is good or bad because my opinion is completely irrelevant. ... You would be foolish to ignore the dramatic change in the world’s attitude towards economic policy. “Tight fiscal and easy monetary policy” is being replaced with “easy fiscal and (somewhat) tighter monetary policy”. And ironically enough, the Republican Party under Trump’s “leadership” is at the forefront of this change.

Apparently the guy can't figure out the facts for himself, which show that Trump is projected by the center left Tax Policy Center to be in the same league as Obama through fiscal 2020, not in the Reagan league, not in the Nixon league, not in the Bush 41 league, either. Hell, he's not even projected to make the Bush 43 league, which was bad enough. Spending is going up under Trump, too be sure, but it's a world away from previous Republican administrations.

What really matters for spending is who controls the purse strings, which is Congress. Until Clinton, Republican presidents had to bargain with Democrat Congresses to get what they wanted. That often meant agreeing to big spending bills. The Republican resurgence in Congress under Clinton marked a new era in spending, which comparatively speaking is way down on a compound annual growth rate basis, even under spendthrift Bush 43.

Personally I'm less fearful than I had been of a new spending spree under Trump with Republicans in control of Congress. Trump is adversarial with the Republican Establishment in a way that no Republican president of the past has been. Getting what he wants hasn't been at all easy for this very reason. Republicans are obstructing him no less than Democrats are even as Trump folds like a house of cards on taxes and regulation without getting anything in return, like a wall. At some point he's going to veto something, or go down to electoral defeat.

At any rate, talk of a new dramatic change is simply kooky.

Jessica Valenti, feminazi wife of Talking Points Memo publisher, has her work cut out for her shaming Trump voters

. . . Oh well, goodbye

One down in Mike Pence, only 61,898,583 to go, as of this morning.

Story here.

Marco Rubio, the very intelligent imbecile: "You don't win the nomination by how many states you win"

No, obviously you win the nomination by losing all the states!

You Republicans who are promoting this moron better find a new candidate because this one is umbday in any language.

Video available here.

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.

Jorge Ramos acts just like an illegal alien: Won't wait his turn to ask Trump a question, stealing a march on his fellow reporters, so Trump boots his ass

. . . but you are going away.

Story here:

"Go back to Univision," Trump told Ramos.

Democrat General Wesley Clark wants to put radicalized Muslims in camps: And you thought deportation of illegal aliens was impractical

From the story here:

"It's a sad choice, but if people choose ISIS, they should be treated as spies or enemy combatants – or both. I’m frustrated with the argument that sedition is free speech because there is a role for government to step in to prevent a dissenter from becoming an active shooter, or worse.

"Any implication that I support racial profiling or interning people based on their ethnicity or heritage is dead wrong. I’m for separating people who have made dangerous decisions from the rest of society.

"The US has the obligation to protect our own population from terrorists. And ‎if the domestic terrorist threat grows due to ISIS, we must act responsibly and promptly."

Jeb Bush Still Has A Flip-Flop Problem: "I Used To Be A Conservative"

Jeb Bush, quoted here in February 2012:

"I used to be a conservative and I watch these debates and I'm wondering, I don't think I've changed, but it's a little troubling sometimes when people are appealing to people's fears and emotion rather than trying to get them to look over the horizon for a broader perspective and that's kind of where we are," said the former Florida Governor. "I think it changes when we get to the general election. I hope."

---------------------------------------------------

How can you "used to be" something but say you haven't changed?

Easy: the same way you can be for a pathway to citizenship and then be against it and claim you haven't flip-flopped:

"Where the hell was this Jeb Bush during the campaign?" the [Romney] advisor said. "He spent all this time criticizing Romney and it turns out he has basically the same position. So he wants people to go back to their country and apply for citizenship? Well, that's self deportation. We got creamed for talking about that. And now Jeb is saying the same thing."

Liberal Republicans: making suckers of conservatives since . . . well, forever!

Rick The Snake Santorum Wants MI Democrats To Pick The Republicans' Candidate

So reports The Detroit News today here, claiming Santorum is making robocalls to Michigan Democrats to get them to turn out and vote for him:

"Michigan Democrats can vote in the Republican primary on Tuesday," said an unidentified man on the call, which Talking Points Memo said was left on someone's answering machine in Trenton. "Why is it so important? Romney supported the bailout for his Wall Street billionaire buddies, but opposed the auto bailouts. That was a slap in the face to every Michigan worker, and we're not going to let Romney get away with it. On Tuesday, join Democrats who are going to send a loud message to Massachusetts' Mitt Romney by voting for Rick Santorum for president.

"This call is supported by hard-working Democratic men and women and paid for by Rick Santorum for president."


Isn't Santorum's opposition to auto bailouts a slap in the face to Michigan workers?

Half of CPAC This Year is Libertarian, Heckles and Walks Out on Dick Cheney

The Libertarians hate the Department of Defense and the US military more than they hate the much larger, arguably unconstitutional, social welfare state erected by FDR.

Bunch of queers.

Story and video here.

When New Taxes Are Necessary Is Also Above Obama's Pay Grade

In an interview on February 9, 2010, President Obama says raising taxes on households earning less than $250,000 a year must be on the table of the deficit commission, but that he doesn't know if raising those taxes is a solution:

GOLDMAN: Well, if your deficit commission came back and said, as part of this overall recommendation, we would recommend raising taxes on households earning less than $250,000 a year, you would accept that as part of the overall?

OBAMA: I don’t want to prejudge the commission because the whole point of it is to make sure that all ideas are on the table and let’s see what folks can come up with.

GOLDMAN: So, even raising taxes?

OBAMA: What I can’t do is to set the thing up where a whole bunch of things are off the table because, at that point, there are going to be - some who say, we can’t look at entitlements. There are going to be some who say we can’t look at taxes, and pretty soon, you just can’t solve the problem.

So, what I want to do is to be completely agnostic, in terms of solutions. I want everybody to sit down and work off of a common base of facts.

Just eight days prior, however, he submitted a $3.8 trillion budget which was anything but agnostic about the need for tax increases on such households.

The new agnostic tone on taxes is interesting because of the dust-up over a news report, later pulled, that Obama would let the Bush tax cuts expire, which would mean huge tax increases on every American, including whopping increases of 50% on the poorest of taxpayers by letting the 10% bracket expire and shoving them into the 15% bracket.

The White House quickly jumped on that news report, and emphasized that the new budget calls for making the Bush tax cuts permanent for those making under $250,000.

The Tax Foundation subsequently pointed out that

What the article does not mention is that Obama's budget extends all of the Bush tax cuts for single returns making less than $200,000 and married returns making less than $250,000. Whatever you think of Obama's proposed budget and tax policies, this omission in an article entitled "Backdoor taxes to hit middle class" is either evidence of intentional deceit or terrible reporting.

So on February 1 Obama is intellectually certain not only that tax increases on the below $250K crowd are not needed in the current budget, but aren't going to be needed period and the Bush tax cuts should be made permanent. But nine days later he's a doubting Thomas? What happened in the interim?

Ganja, that's what.

Of Course Obama Was For The Public Option

Lanny Davis was interviewed on the Laura Ingraham Show this morning, denying Obama ever ran on the public option, in response to Howard Dean's recent assertion that the people of Massachusetts voted for Republican Scott Brown to send a message to Obama for backtracking on it.

Lanny obviously got the talking points memo: "deny we ever ran on the public option."

As for Howard Dean, Scott Brown ran promising three things: to be the 41st vote against healthcare in the Senate, to treat terrorists like enemy combatants instead of criminals, and to cut spending and taxes. This enraged Bay State liberals so much they ran right out and voted for it.

Do we really need to review the evidence on the public option? For video go here. But remember: "JUST WORDS!"