Ted Cruz' true calling is stand-up comedy: The president of China is in town, meeting with the world's most powerful communist

The Don and Ted Show: "You're fired!" "No I'm NOT!"

Seen here:

"And today, the president of China, President Xi, is in town. Media all over the world are reporting on this historic meeting of the world's most powerful communist... And the President of China."

The endorsement of Ted Cruz by so-called values voters means little, except for Ben Carson and Donald Trump

From the story at The Hill, here:

Sen. Ted Cruz won the Values Voter Summit straw poll for the third year in a row on Saturday, a strong showing of support from evangelical voters for his 2016 presidential bid. The firebrand Texas senator won a whopping 35 percent in the poll of summit-goers, ahead of runner-up Ben Carson’s 18 percent. That margin is significantly wider than last year, where he edged out Carson by just 5 percentage points. Former Gov. Mike Huckabee (Ark.) took third with 14 percent, followed by Sen. Marco Rubio (Fla.) with 13 percent. Real estate magnate Donald Trump finished a distant fifth with 5 percent.

So "values voters" have finally figured out one thing: Ben Carson's values may be traditional, but they are rooted in a crackpot religion which was born of a failed prediction of the end of the world in 1844.

Now if they could only figure that out about their own religion.

What's happening here is that the evangelical base is clearly choosing a Southern Baptist over a Seventh-day Adventist, and distancing itself dramatically from the mainline Protestant in the race, Donald Trump.

Meanwhile Ted Cruz isn't going to be the nominee, not as long as he garners just 27% of the support enjoyed by the frontrunner.

The anatomy of an ideologue: Right winger Ace of Spades is a manipulative hope peddler, just like Obama

But dumber than Obama because he comes right out and admits it, here:

One of the things that political movements offer its [sic] adherents, similar to religious movements, is hope. The fecklessness, failures, and flat-out betrayals of the current GOP leadership has [sic] destroyed all hope in the GOP. And a political movement without hope is not a political movement at all; it is simply an advocacy organization for getting a very small number of people cush jobs in the federal government. If there is to be any hope permitted to the rank and file of the Republican Party, then we need big changes that permit us the illusion and fantasy of hope, without which we are nothing at all, just dejected former Republican voters. ... Hope requires a change -- Kevin McCarthy, Steve Scalise, and Cathy McMorris-Rogers are no change at all; they are simply John Boehner's less accomplished inferior employees. ... And if you want to entice the alienated back into the fold, you have to at least let us dream of the possibility of actual change. That requires allowing us hope -- and not simply doubling-down on the current crop of failures and fainthearts we are obligated, sourly, to call our "leadership." Hope is a silly illusion, but it is a necessary, sustaining silly illusion.

Textbook George W. Bush that, trying to fight ideology with a better ideology, except the right doesn't have a better ideology. Better ideology is an oxymoron because you can't just bottle up and export what it took 500 years to develop on these shores and expect it to work elsewhere, or even here the same way it used to. Nor can you tell your fellow Americans that the people they are happy to keep reelecting don't represent them when they do and hope to succeed in getting them to follow you instead. We had the government we deserve and 30 malcontents just got rid of our leader who gave us $3.25 trillion reasons to be pretty happy with him.

I predict the president who was reduced to playing the tyrant to get his way as John Boehner gently strung him along will act more boldly now that he's gone and Republicans are in disarray and are about to crack up. Obama has nothing left to lose.

The Mark Levin wing of the Republican Party is unhappy the American people got only $3.25 trillion in tax relief from John Boehner

WaPo, grossly underestimating Boehner's achievement, calls Boehner's opponents in Congress "conservatives" but what they are is ideologues, fanatics for whom anything less than everything they demand is unacceptable, and for whom the good is the enemy of the perfect, here:

"Boehner could never please his most conservative members. Fiscal deals negotiated with President Obama produced more than $2 trillion in savings and made the GOP’s tax cuts permanent for 99 percent of workers, but the far right painted both deals as sellouts."

Conservatives give thanks for the achievements of John Boehner, libertarians, the ignorant and the stupid just snarl

• Saved taxpayers $762 billion over ten years by making the Bush tax rates permanent for 98% of all filers beginning at the dawn of 2013
• Saved taxpayers $1.8 trillion over ten years by finally fixing the Alternative Minimum Tax for all victims of bracket-creep
• Saved taxpayers $339 billion over ten years by maintaining the 15% capital gains tax rate for incomes below $450,000
• Saved families $354 billion over ten years by maintaining the child tax credit
• Cut average annual federal deficits of $1.3 trillion 2009-2012 by 57%, to $556 billion on average 2013-2016 by ending the emergency Social Security Tax reductions and instituting the sequester spending cuts
• The S&P 500 immediately responded with total returns in 2013 of 32.39%, the fifth best year since 1970  
• The moribund US Dollar rose 19%, from below 80 to 95 today as overall fiscal rectitude improved
• Causing oil prices to plummet from an average of $95/barrel 2011-2014 to $52/barrel on average in 2015 
• Causing average US gasoline prices to fall from $3.34/gallon one year ago to $2.28/gallon today
• Helping to keep the all-items consumer price index year-over-year nearly flat, rising just 0.2%

Politico lies about what John Boehner and Barack Obama accomplished together

Here:

"But [Boehner's] tenure will also be remembered for his complicated relationship with President Barack Obama. He and Obama tried — but repeatedly failed — to cut a deal on a sweeping fiscal agreement."

Boehner got the Bush tax cuts made permanent, and under a Democrat president no less, something Bush couldn't do while he himself was president. If I were Politico I wouldn't mention it, either.

Boehner also got the fix to the Alternative Minimum Tax made permanent, something which eluded Republicans for decades, again under a Democrat president.

Passed at the very opening to 2013, the stock market boomed as a result, tax revenues recovered and the dollar soared from 80 to 95ish today, helping to tank oil prices, for which each and every American should be grateful everytime he fills the gas tank.

"Repeatedly failed"?

Utter nonsense.

John Boehner to resign at the end of October

Story here.

Better to resign than face the mutiny?

German Americans still the largest ethnic group in 2013 at 46 million

The Economist reported here in February:

German-Americans are America’s largest single ethnic group (if you divide Hispanics into Mexican-Americans, Cuban-Americans, etc). In 2013, according to the Census bureau, 46m Americans claimed German ancestry: more than the number who traced their roots to Ireland (33m) or England (25m). In whole swathes of the northern United States, German-Americans outnumber any other group (see map). Some 41% of the people in Wisconsin are of Teutonic stock.

That figure is down from 51 million before 2009 and from 50 million in 2009, so evidently the German American population is declining by about 1 million per year. 

Walls work: The pope's Vatican has a population of 8 people per acre, Manhattan 109

People who live in walled states shouldn't throw stones, even if they have plenty.

Trump's critics of his investment success need to get a new calculator, and some brains

This morning on the Chris Plante Show on WMAL a caller complained that Trump inherited $200 million and that anyone could have $10 billion after 30 years, too, just by investing in a CD.

Chris Plante said "that's some CD"!

This meme is now ubiquitous in the media critical of Trump, and while not as obviously silly as this morning's example the critics nevertheless display remarkable investment ignorance.

Grant for a moment that Trump inherited $200 million, and keep in mind that that is the upper end of the estimates, which go as low as $40 million. Also keep in mind it's mostly real estate, not cash, not stocks, not bonds, a completely different business.

$200 million invested in the S&P 500 for 30 years from 1985 to 2015 yielded $4.2 billion, or just 42% of the net worth Trump claims to have accumulated over the period. The actual average nominal rate of return for the S&P 500 was 10.75% per annum, dividends fully reinvested. The $10 billion net worth claim, on the other hand, represents an annual net rate of return of 13.93%, again assuming the investment of $200 million, almost 30% better every year than what the S&P 500 actually yielded. But again, the S&P 500 return is not net. You still have to deduct taxes, inflation and expenses from that, which is an individual calculation and highly variable, and in New York can be quite onerous. 

On the other end of the scale, the investment of $40 million becoming $10 billion is the equivalent of a net return of 20.21% per annum, 88% better than the S&P 500 nominal return every year on average.

The truth probably lies somewhere in between, but no matter how you cut it, Donald Trump capitalized on what he was given in a way which has been exceptionally more successful than what most people ever experience.

He's Yuge.

Mark Penn strategy memo from 2007 shows Hillary Clinton campaign wanted to exploit Obama's "lack of American roots"

The Atlantic has the memo here.

Trump has held first place in the Real Clear Politics poll average since July 19th, over two months

Trump in first in Real Clear Politics poll average with 24%, 7.7 points ahead of Carson, 12.2 ahead of Fiorina

Trump, Carson, Rubio and Fiorina all rise in latest FOX poll, Trump still in first with 27.5% in Real Clear Politics poll average

FBI successful at recovering e-mails from "wiped" Hillary private server used while she was Secretary of State

Bloomberg originally reported here:

The FBI has recovered personal and work-related e-mails from the private computer server used by Hillary Clinton during her time as secretary of state, according to a person familiar with the investigation. ... Internal government watchdogs have determined that classified information ended up on the system. Their findings sparked the FBI inquiry. ... There has been some question as to whether Clinton deleted her messages or took the more thorough and technical step of “wiping” the server. [Andy] Boian said Tuesday that Platte River [Networks] had “no knowledge of it being wiped.”

Is Hillary worried we'll find the birther e-mail on her server?

Hillary's vigorous denial of the birther story only lends more credence to the charge that she started the birther movement. If it's so ludicrous, why give it this credibility?

Hillary throwing up the smokescreen here, never mentioning that Politico reported, not the right wing, that the anonymous birther e-mail (!) circulated in the Clinton campaign in early 2008:

HILLARY CLINTON: That is – no. That is so ludicrous, Don. You know, honestly, I just believe that, first of all, it’s totally untrue, and secondly, you know, the President and I have never had any kind of confrontation like that. You know, this is such a bad example of what’s wrong with, you know, instantaneous reactions and Americans getting all worked up and people feeding prejudice and paranoia like Donald Trump. And obviously all of us have to stand against it. And, you know, I have been blamed for nearly everything, that was a new one to me, but you know, I’ll just keep going and talking about what I want to do to get income risings and making college affordable and making all of the positive changes that we have to be worried about.

Ben Carson shifts a little, allows a Muslim who forswears Sharia could be president

You mean like Obama?

Ben Carson, quoted here:

"If they embrace our Constitution and are willing to place that above their religious beliefs, I have no problem with that. ... I think anybody, regardless of their religion, if they are willing to embrace the values and principles of America and our Constitution and subject their beliefs to the Constitution, I have no problem with that at all. And that's perfectly reasonable."

Carly Fiorina is a Dreamer, supports citizenship for the children brought here by illegal aliens

From the story here:

“Following her town hall at Iowa State University in Ames, Fiorina said she would be open to passing a version of the Dream Act to grant citizenship for young undocumented immigrants who came to the U.S. as children,” reported NBC News.

WaPo rips papal visit to Cuba's Castro, concluding "it takes more fortitude to challenge a dictatorship than a democracy"

The editorial is here, which I was able to see without a paywall.

When WaPo rips the church for hypocrisy, it makes sure you know it.

Someone should ask Ben Carson to swear to place the Constitution above the writings of Ellen G. White

Ben Carson, quoted here:

BEN CARSON: Now if someone has a Muslim background and they are willing to reject those anti-democratic] tenets [of some Islamic theocracies] and will swear to place our Constitution above their religion, then of course they will be considered infidels and heretics, but I would be quite willing to support them...