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.