With 72% of the vote counted, Donald Trump easily wins Washington State and outperforms both McCain and Romney in '08 and '12

Washington State Republican Presidential Primary 2016

Washington State Republican Presidential Primary 2008

2012, no primary just a caucus to save money

Cannabis use causes cell mutations altering DNA which can lead to cancer

Reported here.

Trump Train Lamborghini pays early morning visit to White House, warns 'em who's comin'

Video here.

Lawyers on strike over new taxes in Greece push backlog of cases to the year 2032

Reported here:

Athens lawyer Thanos Koussoulos says self-employed professionals like him will feel the most pain, as the new measures will increase monthly pension contributions, taxable income, and levies on services. "An average lawyer will lose half his income and won't be able to survive," he said, speaking in an empty courtroom. "Every part of society has been affected by these measures, including groups once considered to be privileged. I think it's a good thing they are demonstrating." ... Ironically, the lawyers' strike has added pressure on the government to seek a quick way to raise revenue, as tax cases challenged in court have been held up.

If the Fed can buy $4 trillion in shitty mortgages and Treasuries, it can buy $1 trillion in student loan debt

Just sayin'.

Trump takes his first lead over Clinton nationally in Real Clear Politics poll average: +0.2

Obama slaps 522.2% tariff on Chinese cold-rolled steel, and Republican nitwits call Donald Trump a protectionist

Story here.

WaPo: Trump 46% to Clinton 44%

WaPo tries to minimize.

Former Republican Massachusetts Governor William "Mr Magoo" Weld, now on the Cannabis ticket, smokes some bad weed

From hero . . .

. . . to zero. Paranoia will destroya.

Goodbye libertarian moment, we hardly knew thee: "Man has a proclivity for safety, not liberty"

James E. Miller at Takimag, here:

Man has a proclivity for safety, not liberty. Human history is littered with war after war, conflict after conflict. Whatever liberty we eke out of our constant warring state is always in danger of being lost. As philosopher John Gray noted, “To think of humans as freedom-loving, you must be ready to view nearly all of history as a mistake.”

As the ancients maintained but we never seem to remember, even when we study them:

WAR IS THE FATHER OF EVERYTHING.

Hooah NRA! Hooah Donald Trump!

Rasmussen: Trump 42% to Clinton 37%

Here:

Trump earns 42% support to Clinton’s 37% when Likely U.S. Voters are asked whom they would vote for if the presidential election were held today. ...

Rasmussen Reports will update the Clinton-Trump White House Watch matchup numbers every Thursday morning from now until Election Day in November.

States so far where Trump was bested by McCain in 2008 and Romney in 2012

McCain beat Trump in:

Idaho

Kentucky

Oregon

Vermont

DC

Arizona

Romney beat Trump in:

Vermont

DC

North Carolina

Nebraska

Kentucky

Texas

Utah

McCain's total vote in 2008 was 9.9 million.

Romney's total vote in 2012 was 9.8 million.

With six contests remaining in 2016 Trump is already pushing 11.2 million.

Yesterday Rush Limbaugh said Hillary's momentum was "plundering", or something like that

Evidently conflating "plunging" and "floundering".

But the transcript here has been cleaned up, indicating Rush said "plummeting" when that's not what he said.

For once his transcriptionist is covering for him.

With 7% of the vote still not counted, Oregon Republican turnout in 2016 bested 2012 by 26%, 2008 by only 3%

So far Donald Trump in 2016 was bested by John McCain in 2008 in the popular vote only in Idaho, Kentucky, Oregon, Vermont, DC and Arizona. With six contests to go Trump has 11.1 million popular votes versus 9.9 million total votes for McCain in 2008, the most recent analogous contest.

I'd post on the total popular vote in Oregon, but 7% of it remains out on the Republican side two days since the primary

You probably didn't see it but voters prepare a ballot which is mailed to them ahead of time and then they drop it on election day in designated secure boxes all around the state.

How hard can that be to tally everything in a timely manner?

Maybe tomorrow, man.

The perverse Kevin Williamson says presidents aren't in charge of the economy after Hillary says she'll put Bill in charge

Here.

Which of course means he has to discredit Reagan's economic achievement (by never mentioning it), which came because Reagan reduced the top bracket from 70% to 50% and for a brief shining moment to 28%.

Drudge has anothr crappy spellur workin' the nite shit

There's something you don't see everyday: Takimag makes the lineup at Real Clear Politics

And you should read it. It's the inside story of the terrorist attacks in Paris from the band leader of Eagles of Death Metal.

He claims the terrorists were in the building hours before the attacks, having seen them himself.

What's up with John McLaughlin's hair?

Tomorrow marks the 50th anniversary of Mao's Cultural Revolution

From the story here:

Millions of people were persecuted, publicly humiliated, beaten or killed during the upheaval, as zealous factionalism metastasized countrywide, tearing apart Chinese society at a most basic level. ... The Cultural Revolution is considered to have begun May 16, 1966, when the Communist Party's Politburo purged a number of leading officials. Over the following decade, Mao deposed two heirs apparent, his "Little Red Book" of sayings was elevated to the level of holy scripture, and millions were imprisoned, sent to labor camps or exiled from the cities.

We might as well pee in public, Obama does

Obama's civil rights for perverts means predators suddenly feel free to invade women's bathrooms and attack little girls

Impeach the bastard. Hang the perp.

Prove it Paul Ryan: "My plan is to support the nominee," he said on March 1st

Quoted here in The Washington Post.

Hey Mark Levin you big dope: Tariffs were the main source of all Federal revenue from 1790 to 1914

That's why the federal government stayed SMALL from 1790 to 1914.

IT'LL NEVER BE SMALL YOUR WAY (just a little smaller) 

STARVE THE BEAST! A spillover effect we can all appreciate.

West Virginia and Nebraska Presidential Primaries, Final results

Laugh of the Day: If you have principles, you should at least know how to spell it consistently

Newt Gingrich endorsed Donald Trump last night

It obviously didn't push Paul Ryan over the line today, but it did push Hannity.

Story here.

Sean Hannity endorses Trump, too bad Paul Ryan still hasn't

Just now on the show.

What was that again about Trump targeting civilians in ISIS being a war crime?

Obama's hired liar, Ben Rhodes, exploited the foreign policy ignorance of today's young newspaper reporters to spin a tale of a new political reality in Iran when there was none

From the story here:

The job [deputy national security adviser for strategic communications] he was hired to do, namely to help the president of the United States communicate with the public, was changing in equally significant ways, thanks to the impact of digital technologies that people in Washington were just beginning to wrap their minds around. It is hard for many to absorb the true magnitude of the change in the news business — 40 percent of newspaper-industry professionals have lost their jobs over the past decade — in part because readers can absorb all the news they want from social-media platforms like Facebook, which are valued in the tens and hundreds of billions of dollars and pay nothing for the “content” they provide to their readers. You have to have skin in the game — to be in the news business, or depend in a life-or-death way on its products — to understand the radical and qualitative ways in which words that appear in familiar typefaces have changed. Rhodes singled out a key example to me one day, laced with the brutal contempt that is a hallmark of his private utterances. “All these newspapers used to have foreign bureaus,” he said. “Now they don’t. They call us to explain to them what’s happening in Moscow and Cairo. Most of the outlets are reporting on world events from Washington. The average reporter we talk to is 27 years old, and their only reporting experience consists of being around political campaigns. That’s a sea change. They literally know nothing.” ...

Rhodes’s innovative campaign to sell the Iran deal is likely to be a model for how future administrations explain foreign policy to Congress and the public. The way in which most Americans have heard the story of the Iran deal presented — that the Obama administration began seriously engaging with Iranian officials in 2013 in order to take advantage of a new political reality in Iran, which came about because of elections that brought moderates to power in that country — was largely manufactured for the purpose for selling the deal. Even where the particulars of that story are true, the implications that readers and viewers are encouraged to take away from those particulars are often misleading or false. 

So, Zuckerberg's Facebook lies about what news is really trending

From the story here:

As we learned from a bombshell Gizmodo report, liberal elites conspire to hide dissenting viewpoints from the public. Stories that appear in Facebook’s hugely influential “trending” box, one of the most important news sources in the world, are subjected to an ideological-correctness test.

The dirty rotten New York Times smears Trump as if he had a self-conscious policy of violent racism

Here:

He said his huge rallies, where outbursts of violence and racist taunts have vexed many Republican leaders, and his attacks against adversaries on Twitter and in television interviews would continue because he believes Americans admire his aggressive, take-charge style.

See how that works? First state the charge as if it were a fact, and then artfully bury the charge in the subordinate clause so that it reads as if what that says would continue, too. It's technically not so stated, of course, to maintain the appearance of innocence, while ramming the shiv in his back.

Dennis Prager denies we were founded as a nation, remains ignorant of the first line of the Declaration of Independence

Where else? In National Review here:

But America was founded to be an idea, not another country. As Margaret Thatcher put it: “Europe was created by history. America was created by philosophy.”

This, of course, couldn't be more wrong, the crackpot idea of libertarians everywhere, not the least of which has been Charles Murray ("four million people founded a new nation from scratch"), offended as they are by the Declaration's opening separate but equal clause:

When . . . it becomes necessary for one people . . . to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them . . ..

Separate. Equal. Under God. America.

Trump wins in Nebraska besting McCain in 2008 but not Romney in 2012: The influence of #NeverTrump Senator Ben Sasse?

Nebraska turnout in 2016 bests 2008 by almost 31% but lags 2012 by not quite 4%

Trump romps in West Virginia primary even after suppressing the vote and Cruz suspends, turnout 54% higher than 2008, 62% higher than 2012

Ted Cruz earlier today: "But let's be clear, we're not going to win Nebraska today"

See for yourself, here.

As usual everyone's making a mountain out of a molehill, but refreshingly, NOT TED!

Rush Limbaugh perverts conservatism, says there's no other kind of conservatism than "ideological"

Earlier today on the show.

Actually, conservatism is nothing if it is not at bottom suspicious of ideology, as Theodore Dalrymple reminds us here:

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn said of William Shakespeare, the 400th anniversary of whose death has just passed, that he was capable of writing tragedies only about individuals, or small groups of individuals, because he lived at a time without ideology. The latter was necessary for killing on a mass scale, Solzhenitsyn said. Two years after Shakespeare died, the Thirty Years’ War broke out, which reduced the population of Germany by about a third. The war was ideological.

Solzhenitsyn also said that the dividing line between good and evil ran through every heart. This is not a contradiction: Ideology encourages or makes easier the commission of evil.

The propensity to do good or evil no doubt varies between individuals for inborn reasons; but that propensity follows, or at least can be conceived as following, a normal distribution, a bell-shaped curve. At the extremes of the distribution are saints and monsters, the vast majority of us lying somewhere in between; but the whole distribution can be shifted in the direction of good or evil by circumstances, among which is the prevalent ideology. When the bell-shaped curve shifts in the direction of evil, disproportionate numbers of monsters emerge who do things that, at other times and in other places, they would not do.

Drive-by-media keep accusing Trump of flipping on tax increases, but Grover Norquist is having none of it

Reported here:

Anti-tax crusader Grover Norquist, who has backed Donald Trump's promised across-the-board tax cut, endorsed the plan Monday even though Trump now says some of the wealthiest Americans will be paying a bit more.

"Some people who organize their lives around tax credits and tax deductions might see some increase," Norquist told CNBC's "Squawk Box" a day after the presumptive GOP presidential nominee doubled-down on comments he made on CNBC last week. ... "Because Trump takes the top personal rate from 39.6 percent to 25 percent and the corporate rate from 35 percent to 15 percent, there is no way anyone would see an actual tax increase," Norquist said in a statement emailed to CNBC after the interview. "Trump's tax cut would be a tax cut for every American," he added. 

The Wall Street Journal's Kim Strassel still thinks convention delegates could bolt from Trump: "Who knows what could happen?"

Rules? We don't need no stinkin' rules.

Here:

"Nothing is set in stone."

The back of the current very strong El Nino has been broken

After four consecutive measuring periods averaging 2.2 on the Oceanic Nino Index, the back of this current very strong El Nino (VSE) has been broken decisively by the last two measuring periods averaging 1.75.

The January-February-March period has been revised down from 2.0 to 1.9, followed by the initial reading for February-March-April coming in at 1.6.

To date this VSE has extended for thirteen periods still averaging 1.53, making it as long as the 1997-1998 episode but slightly weaker than its 1.56 average on the index.

If past experience is any guide, expect two or three more periods at 0.5 or above on the index before this VSE is finally over.

Currently about 34% of the nation is abnormally dry or worse. A year ago at this time almost 56% of the country was abnormally dry or worse. That's an almost 40% improvement in drought conditions thanks to El Nino rains.

Early May 2016

Early May 2015

Republican presidential primary turnout in Indiana up 175% over 2008: 1.1 million in 2016 (Trump), 0.6 million in 2012 (Romney), 0.4 million in 2008 (McCain)

Indiana GOP primary 2016

Indiana GOP primary 2012

Indiana GOP primary 2008

Mike Huckabee goes "all in" for Trump Wednesday afternoon, urging an end to the anti-Trump movement within the GOP

Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, quoted here:

"I am all in for @realDonaldTrump and urge all the GOP to unite and win back the White House," Huckabee tweeted, linking to a statement that called Trump better than Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton.

Huckabee called on the anti-Trump forces within the GOP to give up on "the hapless 'Never Trump' nonsense."

Wow, Rick Perry endorses Donald Trump late Thursday, further isolating #NeverTrump

Rick Perry was NeverTrumper Erick Erickson's preferred 3rd party challenger.

Former Texas Gov. Rick Perry, quoted here:

"He is not a perfect man. But what I do believe is that [Trump] loves this country and he will surround himself with capable, experienced people and he will listen to them," Perry said Thursday.

"He wasn't my first choice, wasn't my second choice, but he is the people's choice," Perry added.

"I believe in the process, and the process has said Donald Trump will be our nominee and I'm going to support him and help him and do what I can," Perry said.

"He is one of the most talented people who has ever run for the president I have ever seen," he added, saying Trump knows how to market and brand like no one he has ever seen.

"Anyone who is considering a third-party run does not understand what is going on in this country -- does not understand the anger that the country has," Perry said.

Bob Dole endorses Trump after previously supporting Jeb Bush and questioning Ted Cruz' loyalty to the Republican Party

Sen. Dole, US Army 10th Mountain Division veteran, wounded since April 1945

Quoted here:

Former senator and 1996 Republican presidential nominee Bob Dole on Friday endorsed Donald Trump, becoming the latest GOP leader to back the real estate mogul even as others have distanced themselves from the candidate.

"The voters of our country have turned out in record numbers to support Mr. Trump," Dole said in a statement released by the Trump campaign. "It is important that their votes be honored and it is time that we support the party's presumptive nominee."

Dole had previously endorsed Jeb Bush and slammed Ted Cruz as an extremist liked by nobody in Congress. Interviewed in December here, Dole took particular exception to Ted Cruz calling Mitch McConnell a liar on the floor of the Senate.  The irony of the campaign is that Donald Trump has made that charge stick to Ted Cruz instead. There are the Ted Cruz principles, and then there are the Bob Dole principles.

Sleeping with the enemy for 23 years, Bush cheerleader Mary Matalin switches to Libertarian Party

Quoted here:

"I'm not a Republican for a party or a person," she explained, adding she pledged party loyalty in more of a "Jeffersonian, Madisonian sense." For her, the Libertarian Party "continues to represent those constitutional principles that I agree with." Matalin, who served as the campaign director for Bush No. 41 and as an assistant to Bush No. 43, swears her latest move isn't because of Donald Trump's ascension in the GOP, noting that so far she likes what she sees. 

Elsewhere she tried to explain:

“I didn’t leave it, it left me,” she added. “When we had a standard-bearer with impeccable credentials in Ted Cruz and he’s loathed by the party leaders and he’s called a ‘wacko bird’ by the party leaders, where does that leave us? They left us!” 

Evidently this is about the complete absence of any Republican commitment to reign in the size and scope of the federal government, but why doesn't she just come out and say so if that's what this is about? You know, like maybe mention Obamacare and Cromnibus?

That said, government got pretty big and intrusive under her pals George Herbert Walker Bush and his son George W. Bush when they were presidents. Hate speech legislation, Americans with Disabilities Act, savings and loan bailouts, drugs for seniors, TARP, et cetera. Where was the libertarian outrage then, huh?

At least we know she can't stand the John McCain, Lindsey Graham wing of the Republican Party.

Wayward child Nebraska Gov. Pete Ricketts endorses Donald Trump, as does former Gov. Dave Heineman

Trump takes a scalp, as it were

CNN reports here:

Some of the Ricketts family in Nebraska spent millions to defeat Donald Trump. Now the most high profile Ricketts is endorsing him. Nebraska Gov. Pete Ricketts on Friday put his support behind the presumptive Republican presidential nominee while appearing at a rally with him in Omaha, Nebraska. ... 

"Ultimately, it's a choice election," former Nebraska Gov. Dave Heineman told CNN Friday. "It's Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton." Heineman, who endorsed Mitt Romney four years ago and is a longtime admirer of the Bush family, endorsed Trump this week. He said he is nervous that Trump will misspeak or be less-than-presidential, but believes the advantages outweigh the risks.

CNN reports Dick Cheney will put his stink on Donald Trump

Story here.

After siding with Ted Cruz, Indiana Gov. Mike Pence quickly endorses Trump after The Donald sweeps the state

Story here.