Jeb Bush the snake: omitted plan to cap itemized deductions in Wall Street Journal tax op-ed

Reported here:

"But the full plan includes one very significant change not mentioned in the Wall Street Journal op-ed where Bush announced his plan—one that would likely raise more than a trillion dollars in revenue over a decade, and secretly accomplish a policy goal sought by everyone from President Obama to Paul Ryan. The change: Bush wants to limit itemized deductions sharply, capping them at 2 percent of aggregate gross income, and eliminate the deduction for state and local taxes entirely. (The exception would be the deduction for charitable giving, which is politically toxic to attack, and would still be unlimited.) ...

"But it’s the politics of the cap that make it really interesting. If you look at who would actually be affected, it appears that the cap is a very benign-sounding way to do something politically difficult: limit the mortgage-interest deduction. Of the $54 billion a year the cap would raise according to the Feldstein estimate, $46 billion comes out of the mortgage interest deduction."

Trump in first with 29.8% in new Real Clear Politics poll average, 13.8 points ahead of Carson in second, 21.5 points ahead of Jeb Bush

Trump questions Ben Carson's job-creation experience, Carson goes nuclear and plays the religion card

Ben Carson has gone sectarian, which comes as no surprise in view of his Seventh Day Adventism, which has its roots among the Millerites and the Methodists of the 19th Century.

What is surprising is that it is in response to criticism from Trump about Carson's job-creation experience. Trump questioned whether Carson has the right stuff in that area, and Carson's first inclination is to question Trump's faith. Pretty thin-skinned of Carson, playing the religion card like that. It's reminiscent of Obama playing the race card. Not a good sign in a chief executive.

Asked to name a favorite Bible verse in a Megyn Kelly interview, Carson named two but tellingly stumbled over one of them.

Video here at about the 2:25 mark where Ben Carson haltingly quotes Proverbs 22:4 as "With humility and the fear of the Lord, that's where life and wealth come from." The King James puts it this way: "By humility and the fear of the LORD are riches, and honour, and life."

Funny he left out "honor".

Evangelicals will question whether this was an honorable thing for Ben Carson to say in a political context yesterday, where sectarian arguments between candidates are generally frowned upon:

"The biggest thing is that I realize where my success has come from, and I don't any way deny my faith in God," said Carson. "And I think that probably is a big difference between us." That was his entire answer. A reporter asked Carson to expand on that response, and on whether he didn't believe Trump's expressions of faith have been sincere. "I haven’t heard it, I haven’t seen it," said Carson. "You know, one of my favorite, Proverbs 22:4, it says: 'By humility and the fear of the Lord, our are riches and honor and life.' And that's a very big part of who I am. Humility, and fear of the Lord. I don’t get that impression with him. Maybe I'm wrong."

Pretty ugly to question Trump's sincerity, but to accuse him of denying his faith? That's wacky. Consider the source.

Make America Great Again: Make Babies

Births per 1000 population in 2013 fell to 12.4, less than half the 1957 level of 25.3.

The preliminary estimate for 2014 is 12.5 per 1000 population, as of June 2015.

Is Trump great or what: Jeb says his brother W spent too much

Here:

'“He should have brought the hammer down on the Republicans when they were spending way too much, because our brand is limited government,” Jeb said. “He didn’t veto things, he didn’t bring order and fiscal restraint.”'

Donald Trump is having an amazing impact on the election campaign: we're talking about illegal immigration and rising crime, sanctuary cities and defiance of federal law, stupid treaties and the stoops who write them, and Hillary Clinton and Jeb Bush are so desperate that she is apologizing (not sure for what) and he is violating the family loyalty oath.

Now that's progressive Republicanism.

Speaking of Ben Carson, it's odd that such a smart guy has a crackpot religion

It was Mormonism's turn in 2012, now it's on to Seventh Day Adventism.

Ben Carson's Seventh Day Adventism keeps the Sabbath on Saturdays, believes in the investigative judgment of professed Christians, ongoing somewhere in heaven since 1844, and considers the scores of revelations of the visionary Ellen G. White authoritative, placing the group outside the beliefs of the world's 600 million Evangelical Christians.

But hey, it's a free country, right?

Ben Carson advocated fingerprint locks on guns as recently as October 2014

Fingerprint locks would incapacitate a weapon to everyone save the owner, which pretty much means the Second Amendment is reduced to a self-defense amendment instead of a militia amendment, i. e. an anti-tyranny amendment. Fallen soldiers' weapons would be useless to others.

It's not helpful that the Supreme Court has ruled the right to keep and bear arms an individual right, which plays into the hands of those seeking constitutionality for fingerprint locks.

Can fingerprint condoms be far behind?

Audio of Carson here.

Rush Limbaugh expresses astonishment that Germany will accept 500,000 refugees annually

Limbaugh said in the last half hour that he looked into it and discovered Germany's birthrate is so low they're happy to have the refugees as future workers.

How long will it take this doofus to figure out that our declining labor force is the result of retirees who aren't being replaced because our birthrates were also too low for too long?

The Baby Boom between 1946 and 1966 produced 83.1 million births. Unfortunately Baby Boomers produced just 72.6 million births from 1967 to 1987, a shortfall of 10.5 million or 12.6%.

What it means is there are 500,000 fewer replacements every year on average for retiring Baby Boomers, about 85% of whom more or less survive to retirement age.

Arrogant hair flippers separated at birth

Rush Limbaugh leads with 94 million not working myth, debunks Syrian toddler drowning story in opener

The irony.

John Kasich says the county clerk in Kentucky has to comply with the gay marriage law

What law? Did the Supreme Court pass a law? Since when did the Supreme Court make laws?

John Kasich, here.

Trump in first with 27.8% in Real Clear Politics GOP presidential nomination poll average, 14.3 ahead of Ben Carson

Government under Obama routinely ignores immigration and drug laws, but the only one going to jail is a county clerk in Kentucky

David Harsanyi, here:

"In this country, people who are here illegally can march in the streets to protest their station without any genuine fear of being rounded up and expelled. They are celebrated. Moreover, we have cities across this country that ignore immigration laws they don't like and create sanctuaries from law. We have cities that ignore federal drug laws because they find them oppressive. Yet no one finds himself in jail. ... [I]f we're going to be rigid about the rule of law, let's throw all officials who ignore it into cells. We can start with the president and work our way down." 

Average of five polls puts Trump in first at 27.2, 14 ahead of number two Carson, 18 ahead of number three Bush, Graham no longer registers

If Trump decides to sign a Republican pledge . . .

. . . he should add a signing statement stating he disagrees with it and has no intention of abiding by it.

Syriza youth wing declines to support Alexis Tsipras and Syriza in upcoming election

That could well signal it's already curtains for Syriza with less than three weeks to go to new elections.

From the story here at the Greek Reporter:

"On Monday, his speech writer Theodoros Kollias resigned stating that SYRIZA has lost its founding ideals. On Tuesday, the SYRIZA Youth issued a statement saying they withdraw their support to the party in the upcoming elections. Also, the same day, another part of the SYRIZA coalition, the Communist Drift, left the party and will join new SYRIZA offshoot Popular Unity. ...

"In social networks the party and its leader are ridiculed for the 180-degree turn from militant leftists to a more conservative, pro-euro political entity. The 20-24 percent the party gets in opinion polls is nothing compared to the 45-plus percentages they were getting just three months ago."

Obama's red line in Syria washes up on shore in Turkey

The refugee crisis in the Mediterranean is the direct result of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton policies to destabilize Libya, Egypt, Syria and more.

Everything they have touched has turned to death for thousands upon thousands of innocents.

Best news yet from Donald John Trump: tells libertarians "no way"!

Bret Stephens imagines the American creed is a sonnet lately written and adorning the Statue of Liberty from 1903

Here:

'[W]e may soon have a conservative movement in which the American creed of “give us your tired, your poor” could yield to the Trumpian creed that America must not become a “dumping ground” to poor immigrants from Latin America, as if these millions of hardworking and God-fearing people are a specimen of garbage.'

The Trumpian creed is that we must not become a dumping ground for illegal immigrants or the world's criminals. But for admirers of French statues and exploiters of cheap foreign labor like Stephens and The Wall Street Journal it is necessary to erect straw men the more easily to knock them down.

Jorge Ramos sends his kids to an elite private school in Miami, not the public schools illegal immigrants are stuck with

Story here.