Grand Rapids, Michigan, September 2015 average temperature anomaly: +4.4 degrees F

September 2015 was 4.4 degrees ABOVE normal on average in Grand Rapids, Michigan, dropping the cumulative anomaly for the year to -18.2 degrees F from -22.6 degrees F through August.

It was a beautiful, warm, dry and very sunny September. Rainful was 2.02 inches below normal at 2.26 inches.

Sean Hannity the hypocrite: Shocked Rand Paul criticizes Ted Cruz while the three of them have ripped fellow Republicans for years

Well, I say "fellow Republican" advisedly. What they are is libertarians, and put three libertarians in a room, or 300, all you'll get is dissension.

Sean Hannity isn't a Republican, by his own admission, but likes to play in its sandbox. Rand Paul is self-consciously "purple", imagining that right and left can be united as libertarians as opposed to remaining separated as conservatives and liberals. And Ted Cruz' behavior in the Senate makes him a RINO, at least from the RINOS' perspective.

Audio here.

The libertarian wing of the Republican Party would rather spend its time eating one other than uniting to fight Democrats.

They can't agree on anything, can't function as members of a party, and will never be able to run a country, except into the ground.

Trump's lead in first is actually up 35% in the last USAT/Suffolk poll

When you compare Trump's performance in the last USA Today/Suffolk poll to the previous one by USA Today/Suffolk in July, he's actually up by 6 points in first place, going from 17% to 23%, or up 35%.

Since the July poll, Bush, Huckabee, Paul, Christie, Santorum, Perry and Walker (who are both out now) have all together given up 22 points to Fiorina, Carson, Kasich, Graham, Rubio and Trump, on top of 11 additional points added to those front runners from fewer undecideds in September.

In the averages in yellow, note that Trump has improved his overall lead in first by 1.2 points, or almost 21%.

In the USA Today poll, Trump's lead in first has gone from +3 to +10, up 233%.

Freedom Caucus cracks up at lightning speed proving they've never had any credibility

• They oust Boehner on Friday but have no one to put forward
• They organize to fire Kevin McCarthy before he even wins the speakership while admitting they have no one to put forward
• They hold Planned Parenthood hearings but aren't prepared for their much better prepared foes
• Kevin McCarthy gives Boehner a B- but gets an F out of the box by handing Hillary a talking point on Benghazi

And it's only Thursday morning

Trump reestablishes the momentum in USA Today poll, in first by 10 points ahead of Carson and Fiorina

A crack in the Trump facade

Donald Trump, quoted here:

“I’m a practical person,” Trump said. "If I see things aren’t going well, like for instance there are people right now in the Republican party who are not doing well I don’t think it’s going to change for many of them, at some point you have to get out. Right now, I’m leading every poll I get the biggest crowds by far. I had 20,000 in Dallas I had 35,000 people in Mobile, Alabama, you know so far it’s looking good…So I will go and if for some reason I think it’s not going to work, I’ll go back to my business.”

Libertarian impotence: Purple PAC suspends raising money for Rand Paul but has spent next to nothing on him all year

Amazing but true.

Reported here:

“I don’t want to raise money for a futile crusade,” [Ed Crane of Cato fame] said. “I still hope to raise money for him, but not until I see a concerted effort to get back to the roots that got him where he was for a while.” . . .

Sergio Gor, a spokesman for Mr. Paul’s campaign, said, “It is untruthful for a story to say that this super PAC stopped supporting Sen. Paul, when in fact they don’t seem to have lifted a finger in the first place.”

The group spent less than $8,000 in the first half of the year.

Purple PAC raised $1.2 million in the first half of the year, $1 million of which came from Jeff Yass, owner of the trading firm Susquehanna Partners. Mr. Crane said he had not consulted with Mr. Yass on his decision to suspend fundraising. The super PAC currently has $1.4 million on hand, which it won’t spend until Mr. Crane feels more positively about Mr. Paul’s campaign, he said.

Neocon insanity: Krauthammer blows a gasket, says Russia trying to expand hegemony in Syria

Oh yeah, like Syria is somehow Ukraine. The USSR is alive and well, but only in the fevered minds of the neoconservatives.

Here:

"This isn't about the Russians taking on ISIS; this is about the Russians taking over Syria and keeping Assad as a client in place."

Ah, no Charles. This is about a pro-Christian autocrat rescuing an autocrat who used to protect Christians before the Obama policy to disorganize the Middle Eastern community resulted in Christians getting their heads cut off and their communities destroyed.

We should be thanking the Russians, not trying to bury them.

The Tax Foundation says Trump tax plan will blow up the deficit, reducing revenues to 12% of GDP

From Alan Cole, here:

"Looking at these rates, collectively, note that Mr. Trump is frequently cutting rates in half, and sometimes cutting them by even more than that. Taken together, these rate reductions are enough—by my estimates—to reduce tax collections from about 18 percent of GDP to about 12 percent. Under rates as low as these, economic growth—moderate or otherwise—cannot restore federal revenues to current-law levels.

"Tax cuts can do a great deal of good; each of the provisions I outlined above could help a lot of people lead better lives. However, the reductions in federal revenue need to be acknowledged, and likely mitigated through substantial cuts in spending, in order to make this plan feasible."

Larry Kudlow really likes the Donald Trump 15% corporate tax plan, saying he never thought he'd see it

Here:

'Kudlow, who hosts his own syndicated radio show, has long championed a 15 percent corporate tax rate, but "I never thought I'd see a candidate do it. "It'll give us a gigantic advantage. Bring capital and businesses to the U.S., make us the most hospitable place to invest — and that's what Donald Trump has done."'

Zogby poll on September 20th had Trump out front with 33%

Reported here at Forbes:

Trump 33%

Carson 13%

Bush 9%

Fiorina 7%

Cruz 5%

Rubio 4%

Paul 4%

Kasich 4%

Christie 3%

Walker 2%

Huckabee 2%

Ipsos/Reuters poll of core political approval as of September 24th has Trump in the lead with 30%

Seen here:

"After the Wednesday Republican debate, Donald Trump continues to hold the support of 30% of Republicans in our tracking poll, down 5% from last week. Ben Carson remains in 2nd at 18% among Republicans. Jeb Bush is in 3rd with 10%. Carly Fiorina has made significant gains, currently at 8% among Republicans, up from 2% before the debate."

Vladimir Putin tells Obama he's brought nothing but violence, poverty and social disaster to the Middle East

Marco Rubio was for in-state tuition for illegals before he was against it in October 2011

CBS News claims Trump keeps the EITC

Here.

For the current 5-year period 2012-2016 the Joint Committee on Taxation has previously estimated the annual cost of the Earned Income Tax Credit to be about $64 billion.

That's actually less costly than the food stamp program was in 2014: $74.2 billion.

Keeping the EITC means keeping what amounts to a welfare program, but one which rewards only those who work. The transfer payments to such individuals basically rebate the Social Security taxes they pay even though they generally make too little to pay much in the way of federal income taxes, if they pay any at all.

Trump's claim that his plan will be revenue neutral is already taking incoming because of things like this.

Of course we don't know what spending Trump plans to cut. He might go really big and call for shuttering some cabinet level departments entirely. The Department of Education, for example, costs $77.4 billion.

Sean Trende spells out the achievements of John Boehner

Sean Trende notes that:

• federal expenditures on a quarterly basis flatlined beginning in early 2011, right when Republicans took control of the House under Boehner, largely because of sequestration won in the debt ceiling showdown that year despite controlling only one chamber of Congress, "no small feat";

• even "more impressive" was the fiscal cliff deal brokered by John Boehner in late 2012, making the Bush tax cuts permanent, again with control of only the House of Representatives;

• Boehner "managed to kill" the immigration bill that came out of Mitch McConnell's US Senate, despite "substantial internal pressures" all around to pass it.

Much more at the link.

The Detroit News says GOP malcontents weakened John Boehner's hand in dealing with Obama

Rep. Justin Amash, MI-3, a ringleader of the malcontents

Here:

Boehner has been no pushover for the Obama administration. He has staked out tough, rational positions on issues important to conservatives. But his hand has been weakened in negotiating with the White House because he has lacked the full support of such a large portion of his caucus, those members who feel symbolic fights over principle are more important than long-term victories.

Joe Nocera says Trump will be out before Iowa

In The New York Times here.

Washington Examiner has the rare proper assessment of Speaker John Boehner, faced with the unique challenge of a president disloyal to the constitution

Here:

"[R]ight wingers give him an undeservedly bad rap. As a Republican speaker with a Democratic president, he never had a chance to do several of the things they clamored for him to do. Sometimes his most critical Republican colleagues' demands that he get rid of Obamacare or, more recently, defund Planned Parenthood, have suggested a fundamental failure to grasp the mechanics of the system of government in which they work.

"Boehner was not in a position to enact a sweeping, positive agenda. It could not have progressed through the narrowly divided Senate, let alone [have] overridden President Obama's inevitable veto.

"The best accomplishments Boehner could hope for were mostly defensive and negative. The beginning of the his speakership marked the end of Obama's legislative agenda, although sadly the president took this as a cue to exceed his proper powers and bypass Congress, governing by fiat. ...

"Boehner did his job well, and with the sort of patience that conservatives may not appreciate until he is gone."

Trump's tax plan released to the public today is ambitious and pro-growth

The Trump tax plan can be reviewed here.

Notable features include exemption from federal income taxation entirely for up to about 73 million households who make up to either $25,000 individually or $50,000 jointly.

This is in the spirit of the original income tax law, which for its first few years, that is until the demands of World War I and the bureaucratic state came into play, taxed the incomes of no one except the very wealthiest.

It is unclear whether the plan retains the child tax credit or the earned income tax credit, two programs which effectively transfer welfare to lower income families who pay no income tax anyway and who receive through these two vehicles what is effectively a rebate of Social Security taxes they pay as employees, eliminating its regressivity.

For the rest there are just three tax brackets of 10%, 20% and 25%, kicking in at joint incomes up to $100K, up to $300K and beyond $300K. Presumably, but not stated, short term capital gains are taxed at these ordinary rates. Long term capital gains tax rates are 0% up to $100K of joint income, then 15% and 20% up to $300K and beyond $300K of joint income.

Business taxes are slashed to 15% no matter the size, which is YUGE for American competitiveness.

The AMT is eliminated entirely, along with the marriage penalty and . . . the death tax. It's going to be unbelievable!

Deductions are capped for the richest Americans, but deductions for charity and mortgage interest are retained.

We'll see what the dynamic scorers will have to say about it for revenues, as time goes by.