LOL: End the Chinese 5G threat, put Carly Fiorina in charge of Huawei

Ann Coulter: The media are trying to convince Trump that if he abandons the wall, he’ll be a statesman . . .

Bush 41 accepted the Profiles in Courage award from Democrats for abandoning his Read My Lips No New Taxes pledge, many years later of course, proof that the voters were right to turn out the bum in 1992 for his betrayal.

Will Trump follow in his footsteps?

Coulter: Please, No More ‘Border Security’:

Nearly every Republican presidential candidate tried to con voters with these meaningless catchphrases about “border security.”

Here are The Des Moines Register’s summaries of some of the candidates’ positions on immigration a few weeks before the 2016 Iowa caucus:

Jeb Bush: “has called for enhanced border security.”

Marco Rubio: “proposes … improved security on the border.”

John Kasich: “believes border security should be strengthened.”

Chris Christie: “urges … using technology to improve border surveillance …”

Rand Paul: “would secure the border immediately.”

Carly Fiorina: “would secure the border, which she says requires only money and manpower.”

They all lost.

The guy who won: “Trump has said many illegal immigrants are rapists and are bringing drugs and crime to the United States. He has called for building a wall along the southern border, and has said he would make Mexico pay for it. He said he would immediately terminate President Barack Obama’s ‘illegal executive order on immigration.'”

Trump got more votes than any other Republican in the history of presidential primaries. No one was falling for “border security” then, and they aren’t now.

But instead of doing what he said and building a wall, Trump has hired people who don’t even grasp that the point is to make it unattractive to break into our country.

Trump shows little imagination floating Carly "That Face" Fiorina for DNI

When this administration comes a cropper in a few years, who will want to serve in it?

Obama populated his administration with Clinton retreads because there was no there there in Barack Obama. The guy didn't have a clue . . .

. . . and neither does Trump.

This looks silly.

RNC fundraising in July 2016 is down 61% from July 2012: Donors exhausted about $750 million on 16 losers in the primaries

OpenSecrets has the RNC story here.

Stupid liberals blame this fundraising debacle on Trump when Republicans have only themselves to blame for throwing tons of good money after bad during the primaries, exhausting the donors. If the dopes at Politicus had just opened up OpenSecrets they'd have seen how.

Jeb! Bush burned through $152 million as of August 22nd, and won bupkis.

Lyin' Ted Cruz? $155 million spent.

Little Marco? $164 million (he's over $2 million in the hole, which is the real reason why he flip-flopped and decided to run for the Senate again).

John Kasich spent $40 million (and he's nearly $6 million in the hole, which is exactly what he deserves).

Chris Christie spent nearly $32 million.

Ben Carson, you won't believe it, spent nearly $79 million.

Scott Walker: almost $33 million.

Carly Fiorina: almost $26 million.

Rand Paul spent over $21 million.

Mike Huckabee spent $10.5 million and he's still $275,000 in the hole. 

Lindsey Grahamnesty: over $10 million.

Bobby Jindal blew nearly $6 million.

Rick Perry: over $17 million, also in the red by $111,000.

And Rick Santorum spent $2.5 million and he's in the red $412,000.

Pataki and Gilmore bring up the rear with relatively smaller sums.

Donald Trump has spent over $97 million and yet has over $40 million in the bank.

It's clear from the fundraising that there were only four or five real contenders here, not seventeen: Bush, Rubio, Cruz, Trump and Carson. And after four riveting televised debates before Thanksgiving 2015 polling showed the same thing, and arguably Bush no longer belonged up there. The RNC should have put its foot down at that point and cut the debate stage to four: You pull 10 points in the polls or you're out.

Things might have turned out very differently. Instead we had to listen to Kasich, Christie, Fiorina and Paul divert attention away from an in depth examination of the issues dividing the candidates attracting over 70% of Republican eyeballs. The candidate might have been better for it today, and the party more unified and flush.

Republicans demonstrated increased unity last night as delegates previously pledged to others voted for Donald Trump

Trump, who won 1543 delegates in the primary season, received 1725 votes from the floor as states like Michigan upped their ante from the 25 bound delegates for Trump to 51. Trump increased his support by almost 12%.

Similarly Pennsylvania which had 17 votes bound for Trump and 64 total committed cast 70 for him.

Both states passed on their votes in the roll call in order to allow the New York delegation to put their favored son over the top for the nomination, showing that Michigan and Pennsylvania have New York values, too.

Ted Cruz, who won 559 delegates in the primaries and caucuses, received 475 votes from the floor, 15% fewer than he had won.

Marco Rubio, who had won 165, received 114, 31% fewer.

John Kasich, who had won 161, received 120, 25% fewer.

Ben Carson received 7, Jeb Bush 3 (previously had 4) and Rand Paul 2 (previously had 1).

It appears that 26 votes of the 2472 total delegates were not cast at all (no shows? neverTrumpers? never allocated?). No votes were cast for Fiorina or Huckabee on the floor, each of whom had won one in the primaries.

Your official jobs outsourcing ticket

From the story here:

In 2013, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) emerged as one of the Senate's top H-1B visa supporters, and argued for a 500% H-1B visa cap increase. But during his bid for the Republican presidential nomination, Cruz had a conversion. ... Cruz's decision Wednesday to add former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina (and one-time GOP presidential candidate herself) as his running mate if he wins the nomination, may make his newly found H-1B beliefs a hard sell. At HP, Fiorina was a prominent supporter of the offshore outsourcing model, said Ron Hira, an associate professor of public policy at Howard University, who wrote about Fiorina's approaches in his book, Outsourcing America.

Why do the PACs for Carly Fiorina (Ted's new VP) and Liz Mair (Melania photo in Utah) share the same P.O. Box in Virginia?

And how about that very unusual $500,000 transfer from Ted's PAC to Carly's PAC in June 2015? Did that somehow trickle over to Liz Mair's PAC to finance the UTAH operation (March 2016)?

h/t CowgerNation

screenshot this morning

screenshot this morning

Bloomberg says Ted is dead using AP delegate math and can't reach 1,237

Here:

The path for Cruz to 1,237 delegates before the July convention in Cleveland is now officially closed: 674 delegates remain in the states ahead, and Cruz is 678 short of the magic number, according to an Associated Press tally. Worse, his double-digit victory in Wisconsin on April 5 has failed to produce a perceivable polling bounce in key upcoming states.

That's based on 674 delegates remaining.

Beginning with Connecticut next week, Real Clear Politics also shows 674 delegates still up for grabs.

Bloomberg itself, however, shows 734 not yet allocated, including 3 in Colorado, 3 in Oklahoma, 4 in Wyoming, 5 in Louisiana, 9 in the US Virgin Islands, 8 in Guam, 7 in American Samoa, 18 in North Dakota, and 3 in New York. Subtract those 60 and you get 674.

At 559 delegates committed to him so far, Cruz needs 678 to get to 1,237, so technically there aren't enough left in the future contests, but those 60 from previous contests are still in the mix. 101 delegates or so will probably go to Trump in Connecticut, Delaware, Maryland and Rhode Island next week, balancing out those 60, with Pennsylvania's 71 delegates also in the mix.

After that, Ted will be truly dead. 

The delegates won by others are Rubio (171), Kasich (147), Carson (9), Bush (4), Fiorina (1), Huckabee (1) and Rand Paul (1).

With 845, Trump still needs 392, which is 58% of the 674 remaining in future contests, or 53% of the 734 future plus yet undecided, or . . . add in those won by others and Trump needs a combination of future wins, undecideds and poached delegates representing just 37% of the 1,068 total available.

Paul Manafort's job.

GOP delegate race update: No one can win except Trump, which is why the GOP should embrace him instead of fighting him

According to Breitbart here, it's going to take until about April 15th for the Missouri GOP primary results to be certified by the Secretary of State.

The Missouri GOP shows here that Trump won 37 delegates. Real Clear Politics credits Trump with only 25 from Missouri.

Add those 12 to Trump's current 736, and you get 748, which is 48.5% of the 1541 already allocated:

Trump: has 736 + 12 (48.5%)

Cruz: 463 (30%)

Rubio: 171 (11.1%)

Kasich: 143 (9.3%)

Carson: 9 (0.6%)

Bush: 4 (0.3%)

Fiorina: 1 (0.1%)

Huckabee: 1 (0.1%)

Paul: 1 (0.1%).

That leaves just 931 available, of which Trump needs 489 to get to 1237, or 52.5%:

Trump: needs 489 (52.5% of 931 . . . 1.1 times his current level of support, still very likely)

Cruz: needs 774 (83.1% of 931 . . . 2.8 times his current level of support, nearly impossible)

Kasich: needs 1094 (117.5% of 931 . . . 12.6 times his current level of support, impossible).

The only thing Cruz and Kasich are doing is possibly keeping Trump from making it to 1237.

If they want a needlessly and horribly divided GOP going into the convention, they should continue to play the spoilers. If they do that, they'll be to blame for the catastrophe.

But if they really want to have a chance against the Democrats in the fall, they should unite NOW around Donald Trump.

Camille Paglia likes Trump's swaggering retro machismo, is repelled by Cruz' weirdly womanish face

Here:

Cruz’s lugubrious, weirdly womanish face, with its prim, tight smile and mawkishly appealing puppy-dog eyebrows, is like a waxen mask, always on the verge of melting.

Carly Fiorina, call your office.

Carly Fiorina endorses Cruz in incoherent rant against Trump, ineffectively equating him with Hillary Clinton

Here:

"The truth is that Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton are two sides of the same coin," Fiorina said Wednesday, ripping the GOP front-runner.  "They aren't going to reform the system. They are the system."

Fiorina noted that many in the Republican Party are "horrified by Donald Trump. I'm one of them," she added, describing Cruz as "the only guy who can beat Donald Trump."

"Ted Cruz has always been a constitutional conservative," Fiorina said, adding that he "didn’t care if he got invited to the cocktail parties in D.C. ... It is time now to unite behind the one man who can beat Donald Trump, who can beat Hillary Clinton, who can beat the D.C. cartel. It is time to unite behind Ted Cruz," Fiorina said to roaring cheers.

I thought everybody in "the system" hated Trump, indeed is "horrified by" him to the extent of the #NeverTrump movement among Republicans, unlike Clinton who is the darling of her political party, the host of the cocktail parties, and the queen of Wall Street cash.

Carly should check out the concept of synonyms: The system = the cartel = The Establishment.

It's hard to imagine two things more deadly to "the system" than enforcing immigration laws and rewriting "free-trade" agreements to benefit American workers instead of American corporations.

You know. Like Hewlett-Packard. 

Carly Fiorina also dropped out today

Noted here.

Laugh of the day: Tom DeLay says Donald Trump is a novice who needs to learn from first term novices Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz

Here in Trump's Liberty U Performance Was Insulting to Christians Everywhere:

'Is Donald Trump a "novice" Christian and "novice" conservative? "Know those who labor among you," says First Thessalonians 5:12. Do evangelical and Catholic Christians, along with conservatives in general really know Donald Trump? ... Trump would do well to learn from Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz, Ben Carson, Carly Fiorina and other candidates who speak evangelical Christianity with fluent ease because they really do have God deep in their lives, and not just as a political facade.'

Memo to DeLay: Trump is a mainstream Presbyterian, not an evangelical, who incidentally has dominated the race since he entered it while the novices from the Senate lag far behind him.

To Tim Carney, the soul of the Republican Party in 2015 and beyond boils down to (mere) materialism

Here, without the mere:

"More broadly, the rising tide against Ex-Im exemplified a nascent Republican move away from corporate welfare. Marco Rubio led the fight to block an insurer bailout through Obamacare. Ted Cruz is leading in Iowa polls while unambiguously pledging to kill the ethanol mandate. Jeb Bush, Carly Fiorina and most of the rest of the field also feel compelled to inveigh against corporate welfare, even if they don't oppose it in every specific instance. There's a long way for the party to go, but they're at least marching in the right direction, because they're no longer always marching to K Street's tune. ... Dole, Lott, subsidized exporters and ethanol executives will have all the material blessings they need at Christmas. But conservatives will have a much stronger hold on the soul of the Republican Party than they did just 10 years ago, and that's something they can be happy about."

--------------------------------------------------------------------

"Whereas Socialism, and even capitalism in a more grudging way, have said to people 'I offer you a good time,' Hitler has said to them 'I offer you struggle, danger and death,' and as a result a whole nation flings itself at his feet." -- George Orwell, 1940

Rand Paul: Carly Fiorina has ZERO trouble making it back from commercial breaks

Here.

Blue state Republicans contribute a majority of convention delegates but only 37% of the primary vote

Which is why Republican presidential nominees tend to be more moderate than rank and file Republicans.

From the story here:

"Blue-state Republicans have already propelled moderates in the 2016 money chase. According to Federal Election Commission filings, donors in the 18 states (plus Washington, D.C.) that have voted Democratic in every presidential election since 1992 have accounted for 45 percent of Rubio’s total itemized contributions, 45 percent of Bush’s, 53 percent of Fiorina’s and 85 percent of Chris Christie’s. By contrast, they’ve provided just 20 percent of Cruz’s contributions and 36 percent of Carson’s. For comparison, blue-state Republicans cast just 37 percent of all votes in the 2012 GOP primaries. But their real mojo lurks in the delegate chase. ... there are 1,247 delegates at stake in Obama-won states, compared with just 1,166 in Romney states."

Ann Coulter was right: Fiorina criticized Trump for claiming to get to know Putin in a green room but did the same thing herself

Here.

Ann.Coulter.Dangerous.

Carly.Fiorina.Phony.

Latest IBD poll reverses Trump to up 11 points to 28% from 17% last time, Fiorina down 6, Kasich down 3, Bush down 2

Big mistake: Donald Trump says he's 100% in favor of ethanol

The Donald, quoted here on September 22nd:

'Trump said that he supports the RFS at Iowa’s Faith and Freedom Forum, “I am totally in favor of ethanol, 100 percent.” This is the first time Trump gave his stance on the topic publicly.'

So far this only amounts to Trump supporting the current Renewable Fuel Standard signed into law by George W. Bush in 2005, but that's still bad policy. Ethanol is inefficient as a fuel, bad for engines and does zero to reduce carbon emissions. It diverts corn from animal feed, driving up the cost of food supplies from beef, pork and poultry, and from corn added to other products. Ethanol also makes it more lucrative to put more and more land into corn production than would otherwise be the case, potentially stressing the environment.

Arguably Ben Carson's success in Iowa over Trump in part has to do with Carson's pledge to push for 30% ethanol fuel blends, a tripling of the current standard.

The crony capitalism involved with ethanol is YUGE, making Iowa more important politically than it otherwise would be were it not for federal gasoline dictates:

"Iowa produces nearly one-third of the nation’s ethanol and nearly half of Iowa’s corn goes into ethanol production, according to the Iowa Corn Growers Association.

"Iowa’s renewable fuels industry, which includes biodiesel production, supports 47,000 jobs and accounts for $5 billion of the state’s gross domestic product, according to the Iowa Renewable Fuels Association."

That's about 3.2% of 2014 Iowa GDP.

Nebraska estimates Iowa production capacity at 25% of the nation's capability, ahead of Nebraska in second at 13%. Illinois, Minnesota, Indiana and South Dakota round out the top six, who all exceed the 1 billion gallon level of capacity per year. At 10.8 billion gallons of available capacity, the top six states produce almost as much as they can at 10.6 billion gallons, over 70% of total national production.

A number of the current crop of Republicans running for president is more or less opposed to ethanol:

"Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, Carly Fiorina, Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, former New York Gov. George Pataki and Florida Sen. Marco Rubio have all expressed interest in eliminating or phasing out the ethanol mandate that requires a certain percentage of ethanol in transportation fuel."

Trump's position may reflect a conviction that he generally needs to be supportive of ethanol in these states to win them in the general election even though it appears Carson has outbid him in the primary season.

The girly men at National Review still feel like Trump attacked them

Lowry and Ponnuru, here, who think Megyn Kelly, Carly Fiorina and Rosie O'Donnell make a "whole pattern":

'Trump’s discarded wives and his habit of making gross sexual insults of women also make it easier for liberals to campaign against Republicans’ supposed “war on women.” Perhaps one or two of Trump’s comments were not as disgusting as they have generally been taken to be: Maybe he didn’t mean to suggest that Fox anchor Megyn Kelly asked him tough questions because she was menstruating. But look at the whole pattern — his repeated attacks on her as a “bimbo,” his slam of Carly Fiorina’s face, his description of other women as pigs — and it’s clear that these bits of ugliness are not gaffes so much as a way of life.'

What a couple a pussies. No one who goes off on three men automatically becomes a man-hater. Men do it all the time, and so do women. But "discarded wives" gives it all away. They were no more discarded than any other gold digger is discarded. Women always take the side of the women.

Besides, the Megan Kelly and Carly Fiorina examples are weak. In the one case Trump artlessly hunted for the ages old idiom "seeing red" and came up short (and isn't everything he says equally artless?), and in the other the source for the story is as suspect as suspect can be but people who are purportedly conservative are still prepared to buy it? Predisposed to buy it is more like it. Carly Fiorina's success with this fake story among Republicans tells you all you need to know about the Republican Party, and Carly Fiorina.   

Rosie O'Donnell, on the other hand, has a big fat target on her back for a reason, and deserves everything she gets.