HOW I LEARNED TO STOP WORRYING AND LOVE BOMBAY SAPPHIRE: Steve Green is drunkblogging tonight’s debate; dial your CRM-114 scrambler into this URL and pour yourself a big healthy glass of pure grain alcohol and rainwater — you may need it if and when tonight’s debate goes nuclear.
(Oh and sug — don’t forget to say your prayers.)
CEOs FOR TRUMP: Why is Trump, the candidate who rails against free trade, the GOP candidate with the most support among business execs? Because they have even less affection for the other Republican candidates, as Steven Malanga explains in City Journal. (And forget the Democrats, of course.)
MY USA TODAY COLUMN is about interstellar travel. Because you can’t always write about elections.
HILLARY’S OLD, CORRUPT, AND BORING: Beneath Hillary Clinton’s Super Tuesday Wins, Signs of Turnout Trouble. “Democratic turnout has fallen drastically since 2008, the last time the party had a contested primary, with roughly three million fewer Democrats voting in the 15 states that have held caucuses or primaries through Tuesday, according to unofficial election results tallied through Wednesday afternoon. . . . The falloff in Democratic primary turnout — which often reveals whether a candidate is exciting voters and attracting them to the polls — reached deep into some of the core groups of voters Mrs. Clinton must not only win in November, but turn out in large numbers. It stands in sharp contrast to the flood of energized new voters showing up at the polls to vote for Donald J. Trump in the Republican contest.”
YEP: “The reason both the Democratic and Republican establishments are in full on panic mode about the rise of Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders is a deep seated fear that the plebs have finally woken up.” The Dem establishment has Sanders under control, though, and always has.
WHAT COULD GO WRONG? Team Romney explores blocking Trump at Republican Convention.
If only Team Romney had been this aggressive in fighting Team Obama four years ago.
UPDATE: In other news from the GOPe, “In an interview with CNN’s David Axelrod, South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham said that a brokered convention would not be fair to Republican front-runner Donald Trump.”
Since I borrowed Allahpundit’s trademark for the headline, here’s an Allah-style exit quote from Graham: “You can lose an election. We’ve lost an election before, but what I’m trying to do is focus on the day after we lose.”
JIM TREACHER: Hey, Let’s Watch The New Ghostbusters Trailer!
Alas, I did. And I must say, I concur with this viewer’s video response. It’s not quite Mr. Plinkett dissecting the Star Wars prequels shot by shot, but it makes its point, nonetheless.
UPDATE: “Obviously, though, Lady Ghostbusters is still deeply, incredibly problematic. I mean, AYFKM with this trailer?”
MULTIPLE ‘POTENTIAL CRIMINAL CHARGES’ FOR HILLARY, AIDES: That’s the word from an anonymous source familiar with the current thinking of those in charge of the FBI probe, according to the Daily Caller News Foundation Investigative Group’s Richard Pollock. New factor now in play is an “honest services fraud” charge. Stay tuned.
AT AMAZON, spring deals on Woodworking Tools.
DEBBIE WASSERMAN SCHULTZ: IMAGINE A TRUMP-APPOINTED SUPREME COURT JUSTICE.
Alternate headline: Imagine a Supreme Court judge appointed by a failed community organizer who began his political career in the living room of a guy who bombed the Pentagon.
(Not to mention, DWS sounds more than a little worried that Hillary might not go the distance against Trump. As an American Thinker headline recently asked, “Just How Bad a Candidate Will Hillary Be?”)
OSAMA BIN LADEN, ENVIRONMENTALIST: “The man who ordered 9/11’s mass murder fretted about climate change,” Brendan O’Neill writes. To be fair, it’s keeping Charles Manson up at night these days as well.
A few months before bin Laden died of a massive overdose of lead poisoning, the Washington Post ran the classic headline, “Osama bin Laden embraces his inner Al Gore.”
But then, a year and half later, even Al learned to stop worrying and love Big Oil, tacitly declaring “Mission Accomplished” on radical environmentalism by cashing out for $100 million payday to the petro-state of Qatar.
ARE YOU SMARTER THAN KARL ROVE? On Fox News’ The Five, Dana Perino reported that Karl Rove tried out an iPhone quiz app called History Prep and scored 9 of 10 on a quiz about Reconstruction. I urge you to try besting him on that topic — or any other area of history — by downloading the app. It’s free. And — full disclosure — it was created by my 16-year-old son, Luke, one of the growing number of history buffs in high schools. American students may not do well in most international academic competitions, but they rule in history, thanks to the tournaments run by the National History Bee & Bowl. At the International History Olympiad last year, Bruce Lou from California beat out a Thai student to take first place in the varsity division, and Luke won the junior-varsity division. (In the middle-school event, though, Singapore took the top two spots.) The kids in the these competitions displayed an amazing range of knowledge. A few of the answers they got right: the Emperor Qin Shi Huang, the Merovingian dynasty, Wang Mang, the Council of Trent, the White Lotus Buddhist movement, the War of Jenkins’ Ear. Sound unfamiliar? Get the History Prep app!
MY USA TODAY COLUMN is about interstellar travel. Because you can’t always write about elections.
21st CENTURY HEADLINES: Moms Ask Man to Leave Seattle Locker Room While Their Swim Team Daughters Are Changing.
Why would someone think he could do that? I mean, other than the Webpage published by the Seattle Office for Civil Rights last month that states that “The City of Seattle has a new All-Gender Restroom Ordinance,” that is.
TO BE FAIR, HE’S DONE BETTER THAN ANY CANDIDATE I CAN REMEMBER WHO HADN’T WON A SINGLE PRIMARY BY THIS POINT: Rubio’s path to an outright win has vanished: His campaign is forced to turn to a delegate denial strategy against Trump.
PAST PERFORMANCE IS NO GUARANTEE OF FUTURE RESULTS. “‘Opportunity of a Lifetime’ to Dine With The Donald — and Mitt,” as Newsmax noted on May 31st, 2012:
The Democrats may have raffled off a couple of seats to an overpriced dinner with George Clooney a couple of weeks ago, but, not to be outdone, the GOP has responded with an “opportunity of a lifetime” to dine with the Donald — and Mitt.
The Romney campaign officially launched dinewiththedonald.com [Website redirects to https://secure.mittromney.com/donate/donald and now 404s – Ed] on May 30 amid the hype and sensation that seems to follow billionaire businessman Donald Trump everywhere he goes these days.
“What a spectacular opportunity to dine with two really tremendous individuals — one that is an international icon, and the other the future president of the United States of America,” Michael Cohen, Trump’s executive vice president and spokesperson told Newsmax. “It’s really an opportunity of a lifetime and we suspect that it will raise an enormous amount of money.”
Cohen estimated that the promotion will generate “many millions” of dollars for the Romney campaign.
Trump himself tweeted the following message to his 1.2 million followers on Twitter: “What could be better than dinner with @MittRomney and me?”
Today, Romney tells voters that Trump’s “bankruptcies have crushed small businesses and the men and women who work for them. He inherited his business, he didn’t create it. And whatever happened to Trump Airlines? How about Trump University? And then there’s Trump Magazine and Trump Vodka and Trump Steaks and Trump Mortgage. A business genius he is not.”
And Trump replies:
“He was a disaster,” Trump said of Romney. “He ran one of the worst campaigns in presidential history. That was an election that should have been won by Republicans.” Trump also noted that Romney “begged me for my endorsement four years ago” — an endorsement he eventually gave (as immortalized in the picture at the top of the post). [Reprinted below — Ed]
At Commentary, Jonathan S. Tobin responds, “Right Message. Wrong Messenger,” given that Romney “is the embodiment of the party establishment that so many Republicans have come to despise:”
This animus for anybody that has been part of the party leadership in the past isn’t terribly logical or fair. But a lot of Republican voters are angry at the failure of their party to halt President Obama’s liberal agenda and dissatisfied with government in general. The affable Romney embodies both of these concerns because of his defeat at the hands of President Obama and his characteristic moderation. Having been around for two presidential election cycles and with a past as a liberal Republican governor of a blue state during which he laid the foundations for ObamaCare, the party base was never happy with him and likes him even less today.
And of course, as Michelle Malkin writes, where was this Romney in the fall of 2012 when it came to attacking his actual opponent in the race, or the media that propped him up?
Exit quote:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P-e92jqug0w
Senator Geary, call your office.
FLASHBACK: My 2006 GOP “Pre-Mortem.” Almost ten years ago, and they haven’t learned a thing.
WELL, WELL: Revealed: Obama White House Approved Hire Of Hillary’s Private Email Server Tech. “The document, which The Daily Caller obtained last week through a lawsuit filed against the State Department on its behalf by the watchdog group Cause of Action, confirms that Pagliano was a type of political appointee known as a Schedule C employee. In that capacity, the White House ultimately approved his job, which granted him the official title of information technology specialist for policy and planning.”
Plus: “Pagliano’s involvement with Clinton, her server, and the State Department took on renewed significance Wednesday after it was reported that he is cooperating with FBI investigators in exchange for immunity.”
“LOOK LIKE.” Sanders Makes Democrats Look Like Polarizers.
FROM CORNEL WEST AND ROBERT P. GEORGE: Joint Statement On Genocide Against Christians In Iraq and Syria.
UKRAINE AND SYRIA ARE FOR PRACTICE, LIKE SPAIN IN 1936: Inside the Cunning, Unprecedented Hack of Ukraine’s Power Grid.
Well, be prepared. I’ve got a generator, and an inverter.
SURE YOU’RE UNEMPLOYED AND STARVING. BUT THINK OF YOUR REDUCED CARBON FOOTPRINT! Protests Rise As China Lays Off Millions Of Coal Workers.
MYTH, BUSTED: Study Finds No Gender Gap In Tech Salaries. “No salary gap exists between women and men in tech, says job search firm Dice, looking at its annual survey of 16,000 tech professionals, as long as you are comparing people with equal experience, education, and job titles. That, of course, is a big if. And previous data from Dice found about a $10,000 pay gap between men and women if not controlled for those factors.”
Well, sure, since those are, you know, vitally important controlling factors.
GOPe IS DEMEANING ITS OWN BASE AND FIGHTING ITS EXPANSION: Investors Business Daily has an editorial, “Dazed and Confused: The Republican Establishment Has Had It Coming.”
Donald Trump’s string of victories on Super Tuesday has left the Republican establishment dazed and confused. The GOP’s political brain trust (and we use that term ironically) seems to be asking: Where did all these angry voters come from?
The revolt of the working class is dismissed as a movement of political philistines. The left calls them rednecks; the right calls them “low-information voters.” But that speaks volumes about the incompetence of pollsters, pols and campaign pros in both parties — the parties that profess to stand for and behind these voters — and how oblivious they are to what’s really desired.
Rank-and-file Republicans have been shouting at the political class for years, but no one’s paid attention. Party professionals are so disconnected that they’re seriously thinking of rolling out Mitt Romney as a last-minute alternative to Trump. How delusional can you get?
Trumpism rises above party identification and all the micro-compartmentalizing of voters that the political class has spent tens of millions of dollars supposedly perfecting. But if they’re so smart, why didn’t they see this voter hurricane coming?
Even more delusional are the elitist liberal Democrats who are celebrating because “Trump can’t win.” Right. That’s what the Republican brain trust said six months ago about The Donald’s chances. They could be wrong again. Trumpism may steamroll right over the Clintons; Hillary is the epitome of everything voters have come to detest about Washington.
Amen. What is the GOP establishment smoking? They’re behaving like they’re zoned out on crack–hypersensitive, overheated, paranoid, and filled with anxiety. Why do they not gracefully accept the decision of their own voters?
The rise of Donald Trump is a direct result of the GOP’s failure to listen to, or even care about, the issues of concern to ordinary (i.e., beyond the Beltway) voters. They want a leader who ardently defends U.S. sovereignty, security, and economic interests, and who overtly snubs stifling political correctness. They don’t want a patrician like Mitt Romney, whose speech today smacks of a controlling, wealthy father chastising his upstart children for their foolish attempts at independence.
We don’t need lectures. We need leadership. And more importantly, we need someone who can energize enough voters to defeat Hillary Clinton.
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