Showing posts with label John Kasich. Show all posts
Showing posts with label John Kasich. Show all posts

Tuesday, September 20, 2016

Yes, 2016 IS The Flight 93 Election–And RATs [Republicans Against Trump] Are The Hijackers

An interesting article from http://www.vdare.com about Republican suicide. This follows this post about a refugee increase. This follows this post about immigration studies.  Remember, “Amnesty” means ANY non-enforcement of existing immigration laws! This follows this comment and this post about how to Report Illegal Immigrants! Also, you can read two very interesting books HERE.
Please follow me here.

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Yes, 2016 IS The Flight 93 Election–And RATs [Republicans Against Trump] Are The Hijackers


See earlier by James Kirkpatrick: Choosing Collaboration–“True Conservatism” After Trump
There is no next time. This is America’s last chance.
Donald Trump uttered this one forbidden truth that the Beltway Right cannot assimilate in his recent comments to CBN’s David Brody:
“This will be the last election that the Republicans have a chance of winning,” Trump tells us from backstage at the Values Voter Summit in Washington, D.C., on Friday. “You’re going to have people flowing across the border, you’re going to have illegal immigrants coming in and they’re going to be legalized and they’re going to be able to vote and once that all happens you can forget it.”
[Exclusive: Trump: ‘This Will Be the Last Election that the Republicans Have a Chance of Winning, CBN News, September 9, 2016]
At some level, everyone—even Republican consultants who pretend otherwise when they are on television—already know this.
Throughout the 2016 election, we have been presented with lovingly detailed demographic breakdowns of voters along with descriptions of who they are going to vote for backed by mounds of data. As we saw during the Republican primaries, even the ethnic differences between different groups of European-Americans was a critical factor in determining who won certain states.
The differences in political culture between ethnic groups are deeply rooted and last for centuries. The differences between races are even more substantial. And politicos have to be aware of them. Indeed, the entire job of a political consultant could be defined as piecing together a winning coalition from disparate groups.
From a traditional conservative viewpoint, mass immigration is horribly destructive because it undermines the foundations of the institutions and culture that conservatives are supposed to defend. But even from a cynical, self-interested perspective, Republicans should be opposing mass immigration because increased Third World immigration means the death of limited government, the Constitution and all the other concepts that “true conservatives” are supposed to care about.
The plain fact is that the “true conservative” arguments against Trump are being made in bad faith. As “Decius” notes in a follow up to his “Flight 93 election” piece,
Every four years the electorate becomes more unfavorable to Republican candidates, owing above all to mass immigration, which so many Republicans still self-sabotagingly support.
As this is written, Trump is closing the difference with Hillary Clinton in the polls and is even leading in some national surveys [Trump Surges To 3-Point Lead Over Clinton in L.A. Times Tracking Poll, by Joel Pollack, Breitbart, September 13, 2016]. However, instead of cheering up Republicans, this is actually leading to deep gloom among party insiders who are actively hoping for a Republican defeat. The doughy, fanatically anti-Trump McKay Coppins smirks at Buzzfeed that “a large number of the party’s consultants, fundraisers and operatives privately preferred” Trump to lose, “though many of them are reluctant to say so in public” [Republicans Privately Panic At “Terrifying” Prospect of Trump Win, September 13, 2016]. The only sources Coppins actually names are Ben Howe and Rick Wilson, the former hawking an anti-Trump documentary, the latter promoting the candidacy of Evan McMullin. Ironically for those who love to mock the anonymity of the Alt Right, the rest are unnamed.
Donors quoted in the Coppins piece gripe that they will have to “hedge their bets” by donating to Trump if the election is close—an admission their only interest in the race is because they need some kind of a connection to the next administration for financial or social reasons. Thus, if you end up with a Permanent Progressive Majority because of demographic change, “GOP donors” will easily switch sides.
Consultants and Conservatism Inc. grifters obviously believe if Trump wins, the party is over. This is especially true for the token minorities who earn a lucrative laboring as professional “blacks” or “Hispanics” of the Beltway Right.
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For example, one Jacob Monty, an immigration lawyer (of course!) is cited by the New York Times bemoaning how Trump has supposedly made it more difficult to reach out to blacks and Hispanics [Back to the Stone Age, by Emma Roller, September 13, 2016]. Another source,black Republican  Charles Badger, gives the title to Roller’s piece when he moans to her that Trump has sent the GOP “back to the Stone Age.” But as Mr. Badger’s last job was “outreach to black voters for Jeb Bush’s presidential campaign,” why should his opinion be met with anything other than incredulous laughter?
While Trump might pose a short-term threat to their racket, the fanatical opposition of Beltway Right functionaries suggests something deeper is at work. As “Decius” notes in his latest piece, if Republicans can’t win in 2016, how can they expect to win in 2020 when the Democrats have “the advantages of incumbency plus four more years of demographic change in their favor?” And the change is coming more swiftly than ever.
Though the Obama Administration is doing its best to hide the data, reports indicate there is another surge of immigration from Central America—something VDARE.com’s Edwin S. Rubenstein has been seeing in the labor force data since May 2015. According to the executive director of the National Sheriffs’ Association, migrants are now all claiming they need “asylum,” presumably because the thought of living among their co-ethnics is a fate too horrible to be contemplated. [Obama’s border plan collapses as illegals surge into Texas, by Pete Kasperowicz, Washington Examiner, September 13, 2016]
But where Americans supposed to go to find “asylum” once their demographic dispossession is complete?
“Decius” observes that the Beltway Right operatives seeking to defeat Trump are slitting their own throats:
Professional conservatives seem to believe that their prospects will remain yoked to that of the managerial class. Maybe, but I doubt it. Eventually their donors are going to wake up and figure out what the Democrats and the left realized long ago: conservative serve no purpose anymore. Then the money will dry up and—what then?
“Decius” suggests one possibility is “dhimmitude” (the second-class citizenship of Christians and Jews in Muslim countries). But he wonders whether the RATs (Republicans Against Trump) don’t understand this—or “do and accept it.”
I suggest that here is a third possibility. Beltway Right functionaries do recognize what is coming—but don’t really see it as their problem.
As one prominent movement conservative told me once in confidence after an animated lecture on demographics and the death of conservatism, “I am a short term optimist but a long term pessimist.” Like many Republican politicians, the politicos of the Beltway Right simply don’t see beyond the next election cycle. Therefore, enhancing their status within Conservatism Inc. by sabotaging Trump in 2016 makes sense, even if it means dooming conservatism to extinction in the quite foreseeable future. After all, like their donors, they could always switch sides, or reinvent themselves as “moderate Republicans.”
Thus the “principled stance” of losing gracefully is actually just a way to safeguard their own self-interest. Supporting Trump may be the only way to save conservatism and the nation, but in the short-term, it poses personal risks. Working to defeat Trump is the safer choice.
And they may just succeed. Thanks to #NeverTrump efforts in Virginia, especially those being coordinated out of Northern Virginia, Trump is losing more of his voters to Third Parties than is Hillary in the Old Dominion. In New Hampshire, a sizable percentage of Republican voters still refuse to support Trump. [Clinton could sweep northeast but RI, NJ, NH Are Tight, by Spencer Kimball, Emerson College Polling Company, September 7, 2016]
And Governor John Kasich, despite his commitment to support the winner of the GOP primaries, is still refusing to help the Republican nominee in the critical state of Ohio. [Donald Trump’s Feud With John Kasich May Haunt Him in Ohio, by Trip Gabriel, New York Times, September 6, 2016]
The 2016 election is, or at least should be, a referendum on the National Question. But many in Conservatism Inc. have no stake in the survival of the nation, nor even in the survival of conservatism. Instead, they are holding the entire nation hostage in the hope of squeezing out one or perhaps two more election cycles in which they can keep their racket going.
If this really is the Flight 93 election, the RATs aren’t the passengers who are refusing to storm the cockpit. They’re the hijackers.
James Kirkpatrick [Email him] is a Beltway veteran and a refugee from Conservatism Inc.

Monday, March 14, 2016

Wednesday, March 9, 2016

“Moderate” Kasich Pledges To Restart Wars In the Middle East

A timely post about from http://www.vdare.com about Kasich and Middle Eastern Wars. This follows this post about Muslim immigration. This follows this article about American energy independence and preventing money from going to hostile countries. For more, you can read two very interesting books HERE.You can follow me here.

“Moderate” Kasich Pledges To Restart Wars In the Middle East


John Kasich is surging in most polls, with one even showing him leading in Michigan [Michigan, March 4-5, American Research Group]  Though this is most likely an outlier, with just about every other poll showing Trump in the lead, Kasich is unquestionably in the strongest position he’s been in throughout the entire campaign. And while every other candidate’s favorable ratings are plunging, Kasich’s are increasing as he tries to stay above the fray.
But while Kasich was interpreted as having a strong debate showing on Thursday, it’s hard to see how some his comments will help him in a general election, especially when it comes to foreign policy. Kasich not only came out for re-invading Iraq, but for interventions in Syria and Libya.
Kasich noted Gaddafi should not have been overthrown. But then he said:
Fortunately in Libya, there’s only a few cities on the coast, because most of Libya is a desert. The fact of the matter is, we absolutely have to be [involvled], and not just with special forces. I mean, that’s not going to work. Come on. You’ve got to go back to the invasion when we pushed Saddam Hussein out of Kuwait. We have to be there on the ground in significant numbers. We do have to include our Muslim Arab friends to work with us on that, and we have to be in the air, and we, it should be a broad coalition, made up of the kinds of people that were involved when we defeated Saddam. Now, you’ve got to be on the ground and in the air both in Syria and Iraq.
[The Fox News GOP debate transcript, annotated, Washington Post, March 3, 2016]
Who exactly are our “Muslim Arab friends?” Everywhere we go, they seem to stick around just long enough to accept aid and weapons and then turn on us.
In contrast, Trump has appointed Jeff Sessions to be his chief national security advisor advisor. And the first thing Sessions did is pour cold water on any new crusade to remake the Middle East.
“We need to understand the limits of our ability to intervene successfully in other nations,” Sessions said in a statement. “It is time for a healthy dose of foreign policy realism. In the Middle East, this means forming partnerships based on shared interests, not merely overthrowing regimes in the dangerous attempt to plant democracies.”
[Trump Taps Jeff Sessions As Chief National Security Advisorby Jonah Shepp, New York, March 3, 2016]
In the current American political climate, vowing new wars and interventions that will kill thousands makes you a sensible “moderate,” supported by people of good will. In contrast, if you are a foreign policy realist and believe the best way to stop terrorism is by controlling immigration, you are a crazy lunatic.
Do GOP voters still believe this nonsense? We’ll find out!

Tuesday, March 8, 2016

Trump Offers Conservatism Inc. A Way Out. They Won’t Take It

An interesting article from http://www.vdare.com about Establishment Conservatives.This follows this post about disavowals. This follows this post about Pope Francis and immigration. Remember, “Amnesty” means ANY non-enforcement of existing immigration laws! This follows this comment and this post about how to Report Illegal Immigrants! Also, you can read two very interesting books HERE.
Please follow me here.


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Trump Offers Conservatism Inc. A Way Out. They Won’t Take It


The Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) this year had the feel of a city under siege. Speaker after speaker made veiled, hostile references to Donald Trump, without mentioning his name [CPAC 2016 Facing Trump Specter, WND, March 3, 2016]. When the conflict finally broke into the open, with Trump snubbing the conference to dodge planned protests, CPAC turned into a defiant rally against the de-facto Republican frontrunner [Donald Trump Bails On Speech At CPAC, WND, March 4, 2016]. By Saturday night, it was clear “conservatism” is no longer really a coherent political philosophy or worldview, but a tribal identifier. Trump is hated not because of his political positions or even his style, but because he does not repeat the shibboleths of the Beltway Right.
Despite CPAC’s theme—“Our Time Is Now”—the conference seemed simply an exercise in nostalgia, a kind of temporary theme park for aging Baby Boomers who want to remember the 1980s and young politicos who want to visit a Disneyesque fantasyland. Speaker after speaker simply urged politicians of the present to copy Ronald Reagan. That would be sufficient to solve every challenge of the present!
For example, Mark Levin, who clearly recognizes the problems with mass immigration and is not afraid to discuss them, nonetheless simply recited the electoral success of Reagan almost ritualistically, without mentioning changing demographics. [Talk radio star attacks Trump without mentioning his name, by Garth Kant, WND, March 4, 2016] He also took an odd swipe at the nationalist currents surrounding the Trump campaign (without mentioning Trump), by suggesting “nationalism” and “populism” is not conservative, and indeed, is somehow foreign or “French.”

Meanwhile, the keynote speaker for a conference celebrating “intellectual conservatism” was Glenn Beck. [The Kool Aid Cult, by Gregory Hood, Radix, February 1, 2016] Beck took the audience on a remarkable journey through whatever reality he is living in, a fantastic realm where the Industrial Revolution began in the United States as a direct result of the United States Constitution. [Glenn Beck at CPAC: Compares Trump to Film Villain, Claims Industrial Revolution Started in America Because of Constitution, by Rebecca Mansour, Breitbart, March 6, 2016] He also compared Donald Trump to the bad guy from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.
As the satirical Twitter personality “Conservative Pundit” joked about Trump and the atmosphere at CPAC, “Just sickens me to see someone take our esoteric Reagan mystery cult and try to make a winning party out of it.”
The day after the conference ended brought the gloomy news that the great Nancy Reagan had gone to her reward. Though I and presumably most other patriots were saddened at the report, I couldn’t shake the irreverent thought that if she had died while CPAC was still going on, the conference may have culminated in ritualistic mass suicide. As always at CPAC, immigration was the one issue that had to be debated rather than proclaimed. There was a “Point/Counterpoint” discussion, with Congressman Louie Gohmert of Texas ably describing the patriot case for restricting immigration. Meanwhile, the ghost of Reagan was invoked to hallow the cause of Amnesty for illegal aliens. The Open Borders case was given by a nice white lady billed as a “GOP Strategist” for the “Latino Partnership for Conservative Principles,” and that alone should tell you what we’re talking about when we make fun of the Beltway Right. [Gohmert Reveals Real Border Guards, WND, March 4, 2016]
During a speech defending “populist conservatism,” Rick Santorum denounced conservatism’s internal divisions when it comes to immigration, suggesting immigration should be as non-negotiable as favoring tax cuts. Great. But when it mattered, Rick Santorum chose to endorse Marco Rubio for President, suggesting he doesn’t really think immigration is the most important issue.

Of course, it’s premature to pronounce the death of movement Conservatism. Indeed, the most consistent “movement conservative,” Ted Cruz, has now emerged to present the most credible challenge to Donald Trump for the Republican nomination following his victories in Saturday’s primaries.
But Cruz has been more insistent during this campaign about deporting illegal immigrants than Trump, not even offering to “let the good ones” back in [Ted Cruz’s Plan To Deport Undocumented Immigrants Is Even Worse Than Trump’s, by Esther Yu-His Lee, Think Progress, January 5, 2016]. Ultimately, it’s coming down to a question of who you trust more to keep promises on immigration—Donald Trump or Ted Cruz.
Marco Rubio, the pro-cheap labor choice of the Donor Class, received an enthusiastic reception at CPAC and was the clear choice of many of the younger attendees dreaming of future careers as Fox News pundits. Yet after his disastrous showing on Saturday, even Commissar Leon Wolf [Email him] over at Redstate is writing off Rubio and urging anti-Trump conservatives to get behind Cruz [Rubio Sacrificed His Campaign to Save America, March 6, 2016]. Open-Borders Republicans have been utterly routed this primary season.
For the Republican Establishment, “Jack Kemp” conservatives and the Open Borders Lobby, Cruz is horrifying and his emergence the worst-case scenario. Someone has finally arisen to present a real challenge to Donald Trump for the Republican nomination—and it’s arguably the only man they hate worse than Trump.
Yet both candidates have serious weaknesses.
Trump has the utterly unique ability to shift the Overton Window, flip the Main Stream Media Script and appeal to working class white voters and independents. He’s completely correct when he brags no one would be talking about immigration were it not for him.
At the same time, his infuriating lack of message discipline, refusal to invest in campaign infrastructure, and seeming indifference to debate preparations is leading the campaign to careen from one disaster to another, from last Thursday’s dumpster fire of a debate to Saturday’s loss of the Maine caucuses. Indeed, were it not for early voting, his campaign would be regarded as being in a tailspin.
Superbly organized, fanatically disciplined, and has the best campaign infrastructure of any candidateMeanwhile, Cruz is superbly organized, fanatically disciplined, and has the best campaign infrastructure of any candidate. Even if it goes to a brokered convention, Cruz can’t be counted out simply because of his skill in these kinds of close-quarters political battles. And though it is perhaps too late, he is uniting movement conservatives behind him. For what it’s worth, he also won the Straw Poll at CPAC this year.
But Cruz’s entire strategy seems to be to squeeze out every last possible vote from a remarkably narrow slice of voters. Cruz wins in caucuses and closed primaries. The broader the electorate, the worse he does. He has shown no ability to win over independents in open primaries. How he expects to win a general election is a mystery when his theory of turning out evangelicals seems to have already failed him throughout the South. Cruz has a large number of delegates compared to everyone but Trump—but he’s supposed to have won the entire South by now, not be fighting Trump to a standstill.
Even Cruz’s large victory in Kansas over Trump on Saturday isn’t that impressive given the state’s history. Rick Santorum won the state in 2012 by a larger margin than Cruz did this year, taking an actual majority of the votes. And in 2008, Mike Huckabee won almost 60 percent of the vote in the Kansas caucuses. It’s not an encouraging sign for Cruz supporters their candidate couldn’t match the performances of prior winners who failed to secure the nomination.
Michigan will clarify a great deal. Each candidate has an advantage in a different way. Trump leads in Michigan by double digits, but only by the same kind of margin he had in Kentucky and Louisiana, where in the end he barely fended off Cruz—and there is no early voting in Michigan. If Trump is collapsing, we’ll see it in Michigan. On the other hand, the state has an open primary, which favors Trump, and if Cruz really is incapable of growing his coalition, he will have no chance in the state.
It’s not impossible to imagine Cruz and Trump reconciling and forming a powerful unity ticket despite the bitter campaign. After all, it’s no more unlikely than Lyndon Johnson and John F. Kennedy or even George H.W. Bush and Ronald Reagan. But it’s probably not going to happen.
The battle in the GOP primary isn’t about candidates or even about political philosophy. It’s about control over the American Right. The forces aligned around Cruz see the conservative movement as the answer to the “GOP Establishment.” But most of the forces around Donald Trump consider the conservative movement itself to be part of that same Establishment. And that conflict is irreconcilable.
If CPAC 2016 shows us anything, it’s that the conservative movement is incapable of reforming itself. Change will have to be forced upon it.
It’s easy to imagine CPAC 2036 speakers still paying tribute to Ronald Reagan amid the crumbling ruins of a Third World America, promising one more round of “deregulation” will make it all okay. Many of them would rather lose without Trump, and more importantly without his supporters, than win with them.
It’s a great sign for immigration patriots that Rubio has faded and the two leading candidates for the nomination both claim to be on our side.
But immigration must remain at the center of the 2016 campaign—or there won’t be much of an American Right, or an American nation, left to fight over.
James Kirkpatrick [Email him] is a Beltway veteran and a refugee from Conservatism Inc.

Tuesday, February 16, 2016

Considering Governor Kasich as Illegal Immigration Ignoramus

An interesting article from www.numbersusa.com  about Governor John Kasich. This follows this post about subsidies that illegal immigrants received. This follows this post about Pope Francis and immigration. Remember, “Amnesty” means ANY non-enforcement of existing immigration laws! This follows this comment and this post about how to Report Illegal Immigrants! Also, you can read two very interesting books HERE.
Please follow me here.


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Why Can’t Johnny Learn? Considering Governor Kasich as Illegal Immigration Ignoramus


Do modern communications not reach Ohio, where John Kasich is the current governor? His ignorance about the past 30 years of immigration anarchy willfully ignored by the government is truly stunning and inexcusable in a serious Presidential candidate. His uninformed ramblings on national television Sunday were remarkable:
FOX NEWS HOST CHRIS WALLACE: You said comprehensive immigration reform, a path to legalization.
JOHN KASICH: Here’s the deal: finish the wall, have a guest-worker program where people can come work and go home, and then for the 11 1/2 million who are here who have not committed a crime since they’ve been here, then a path to legalization.
WALLACE: What about the argument that you have to fix the border before you even begin to discuss it?
KASICH: You get it all done, you get the border done and do the whole thing. Somebody says we gotta sequence it, I don’t have a problem with that. First we get the border, then in six months, we do this. That’s just a little detail. But we need to get it done. Look, I’ve done a hundred town hall meetings here . . . and the country wants answers.
During the February 6 GOP debate [Transcript], Kasich made a point of saying the resident illegal job thieves would not get citizenship, just “legalization” aka the work permit holy grail.
KASICH: And then for the 11.5 million that are here, if they have not committed a crime since they’ve been here, I believe they ought to pay some back taxes, pay a fine, never get on the path to citizenship, but get legalization. It is not — I couldn’t even imagine how we would even begin to think about taking a mom or a dad out of a house when they have not committed a crime since they’ve been here, leaving their children in the house. I mean, that is not, in my opinion, the kind of values that we believe in.
The promise of American jobs has attracted millions of foreign squatters to this country.

Like a number of immigration ignoramuses, Governor Kasich thinks citizenship is a big deal, but eventual voting only matters to political hacks like Luis Gutierrez who hope to ride open borders to greater power for the hispanic tribe. In the minds of the actual foreign job thieves, the ability to work legally in stupid-generous America is the whole point of their breaking in. Therefore:
Legalization, aka a work permit, is the real amnesty.
In addition, Kasich’s remark that securing the border is “just a little detail” really is stupendously dumb. The promises from Washington for border security at some future date have been a constant, meaningless meme. In 1996, Immigration and Naturalization Service Commissioner Doris Meissner made a rare prediction of a time-definite goal, that border security would be accomplished by 2001 at the latest:
California Border Patrols Busier Than Ever / Illegal immigrants line up despite tightened controls, San Francisco Chronicle, by Louis Freedberg, January 31, 1996
Meissner said that controlling the border is going to be a long- term, step-by-step process. “We’ve always said this would be a three- to five-year effort to build up to what would be needed,” she said.
So here we are, 20 years later and meaningless promises of American national security, border category, still fill the political atmosphere. It’s insulting to citizens when Governor Kasich says he can throw together some border security and then reward millions of foreign lawbreakers with a work permit amnesty. But he’s too clueless to be embarrassed at his stupidity.

Tuesday, February 9, 2016

Don’t Let Chis Christie’s Tough Guy Act Fool You—He’s Terrible On Immigration And Protecting American Workers

An interesting article from http://www.vdare.com about Governor Christie. This follows this post about Mexico and heroin. This follows this post about Pope Francis and immigration. Remember, “Amnesty” means ANY non-enforcement of existing immigration laws! This follows this comment and this post about how to Report Illegal Immigrants! Also, you can read two very interesting books HERE.
Please follow me here.



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Don’t Let Chis Christie’s Tough Guy Act Fool You—He’s Terrible On Immigration And Protecting American Workers


See Also Chris Christie Won’t Block Obama’s Bridge To Amnesty  by Ann Coulter
His girth aside, New Jersey Governor Chris Christie has rarely registered a blip on the 2016 campaign’s radar. The Real Clear Politics poll average currently finds him in 6th place with 3.5%. Unlike in the cases of Walker, Bush, Fiorina, Carson, Rubio, and Cruz, the Republican Establishment and the Main Stream Media has never pretended he was surging and about to take Trump out. In fact, he’s never broken 5% in the polls. Despite this, George Will (or his intern) recently suggested that Christie may very well be at “the center of the stage at the Cleveland convention.” [Keep an eye on Chris Christie, Washington Post, January 15, 2016]. Unlikely—but Christie could impact the race.
With the Trump-Cruz truce over, the Establishment now hopes for a war of mutual destruction. As Christie has been such a non-entity throughout the election, he’s remained relatively unscathed. With Kasich and Bush all but finished, Christie and Rubio are fighting for the scraps.
As I and others at VDARE.com have emphasized over and over again, Trump’s base is not ultraconservative Tea Partiers who hate the GOP Establishment for not cutting Medicare spending. Trump does well amongst virtually all Republican demographics but, as Josh Kraushaar has noted, he is strongest among the “more moderate, more secular, more blue-collar” voters [The Crackup of the Republican Establishment, National Journal, October 19, 2015] Cruz, in contrast, depends heavily from conservative and evangelical voters.
This is not to say that Trump and Cruz are not also competing for many of the same voters. While Cruz is running a traditional Tea Party campaign, he has also echoed Trump’s positions on trade and immigration—going as far as to say he would appoint Trump to build the wall and negotiate trade deals. Cruz has managed to gain support of many hardline conservative immigration patriots like Tom Tancredo and Steve King who likely would be otherwise inclined to support Trump.
The most conservative popular talk radio hosts, Mark Levin, Rush Limbaugh, and Sean Hannity have been very favorable to both Trump and Cruz—though Limbaugh and Levin have now all but endorsed Cruz. Yet even if Limbaugh and Co. completely turned on Trump and their listeners followed, Trump has a comfortable enough lead right now that he could probably do without them.
Unless a candidate peels off Trump’s working class base he’ll easily win the GOP nomination. Rick Santorum, who is running on an immigration patriot campaign and wrote a book called Blue Collar Conservatives, never even made it to the main debate stage. Scott Walker, who also flirted with immigration patriotism and governs a heavily working class Midwestern state dropped out. John Kasich represents Ohio, the key state for these voters, but his campaign appeals to liberal media elites and big money donors rather than his constituents.
Chris Christie is the only remaining candidate with a potential to draw off these voters. George Will gushes that “Christie could be an alternative alpha persona, but without the ignorance.” Christie’s shtick as a fat, no-nonsense guy from New Jersey who loves Bruce Springsteen ostensibly appeals to working class whites. As Sean Trende has written:
Christie is probably the only other candidate running in Trump’s “lane.” That is to say, while Ted Cruz and Paul could be seen as running in the “Tea Party” lane, and Carson and Huckabee are in the “evangelical” lane, Christie is the only candidate who really has a foot in Trump’s “tough guy/strong leader” lane. He draws from a lot of the same demographics as Trump,
[Laying Odds on the GOP Presidential Race, Real Clear Politics, December 10, 2015]
But despite these similarities in style and appeal, it’s vital to realize that on the key issue of immigration, Christie and Trump could not be more different.
Recently Christie has tried to sound tough. During the debate last week, he said
Now, I for seven years was the U.S. Attorney of New Jersey. I worked hard with not only federal agents but with police officers and here’s the problem, sanctuary cities is part of the problem in this country. That’s where crime is happening in these cities where they don’t enforce the immigration laws.
[6th Republican debate transcript, January 14, 2016]
In the December National Security Debate, a Facebook questioner named Carla Hernandez asked: “If the Bible clearly states that we need to embrace those in need and not fear, how can we justify not accepting refugees?”
2015-12-13-CNN-Debate-BlitzerCNN’s Wolf Blitzer added, in the helpful MSM way:
Governor Christie, you say there should be a pause in allowing new refugees to come into the United States, including orphans under the age of five. What do you say to Carla?
But Chris Christie doubled down, saying
And it was widows and orphans, by the way, and we now know from watching the San Bernardino attack that women can commit heinous, heinous acts against humanity just the same as men can do it. And so I don’t back away from that position for a minute. When the FBI director tells me that he can vet those people, then we’ll consider it and not a moment before because your safety and security is what’s most important to me.
[5th Republican debate transcript, December 15, 2015]
Good red-meat stuff. But there is an unfortunate complication: Christie’s recent tough rhetoric on immigration completely contradicts his longstanding pro-Amnesty career.
Thus while Christie repeatedly harps back to his career as a prosecutor and speaks out against sanctuary cities, he actually tried to force cities to be sanctuaries against their will.
Christie’s New Jersey is in fact one of the most attractive states for illegal aliens. Several municipalities, including the state’s two biggest cities, Newark and Jersey City, and also its capital, Trenton, have sanctuary policies.
The 1996 Illegal Immigration Reform and Control Act both outlaws sanctuary cities and enables for states and localities to enter into 287(g) agreements to cooperate with federal immigration authorities. But Christie has never done anything to combat the Sanctuary Cities.
Worse, in 2007 Don Cresitello, the (Democratic) Mayor of Morristown NJ, appealed to then-US Attorney Chris Christie for the town to enter into a 287(g) program. Morristown had been overrun with illegal aliens including gang members. One of these illegal aliens killed a ten year-old boy after being twice arrested for crimes involving knives and released without being reported to immigration authorities.
Far from taking the hardcore Joe Arpaio stance, Cresitello told NJ Ledger columnist Paul Mulshine that “We’re not going to go after jay walkers”—but that he wanted to be able to deal with the MS 13-led drug and prostitution rings.
Christie accused Cresitello of “”hyperbole and grandstanding and demagoguery” [Morristown’s mayor was right on immigration, August 14, 2007] To this day, Christie still refers to him as a “demagogue” on immigration.
In 2008, then-prosecutor Christie told a church group
Being in this country without proper documentation is not a crime…The whole phrase of “illegal immigrant” connotes that the person, by just being here, is committing a crime…Don’t let people make you believe that that’s a crime that the U.S. Attorney’s Office should be doing something about. It is not.
[Christie at church forum: Illegal immigrants aren’t criminals, Julie O’Connor, Star-Ledger, April 28, 2010]
While Christie is technically correct that “unlawful presence” is a civil rather than criminal offense, deportation is a civil remedy (as opposed to a criminal remedy like imprisonment). The issue with “unlawful presence” is not that it is a serious crime, but that every second an illegal alien is in the country, he is breaking the law. Moreover, unlawful entry (i.e jumping the border rather than overstaying a visa) is a crime, and in order to function in society most illegal aliens commit a host of other crimes like Social Security and document fraud. [Is Illegal Immigration a Crime?, by Brett Snider, Findlaw, July 9, 2014]
Christie opposed Arizona’s SB 1070, saying: “This is a federal problem, it’s gotta have a federal fix. I’m not really comfortable with state law enforcement having a big role.” [Gov. Chris Christie calls for Republican Party rebranding, Maggie Haberman and Ben Smith, Politico, June 30, 2010]
Yet Christie was quite prepared to addressing illegal immigration on the state level when it came to granting in state tuition for illegal aliens. He surrounded himself with illegal aliens, Democratic politicians, and Hispanic ethnic lobbyists from the Latino Leadership Alliance when he signed the NJ Dream Act. He called opponents of the act “cold hearted” and described the illegal alien DREAMer job thieves as “an inspiration.” [Chris Christie trumpets signing of Dream Act in Union City, Jeena Portnoy, Star-Ledger, January 7, 2014]
Christie portrays himself as a no-nonsense straight talker. His campaign slogan is “Telling it like it is.” In 2010, Christie told ABC News he supported “a commonsense path to citizenship for people.” [Christie: Take my bipartisan example to pass immigration reform, Jordy Yager, The Hill, July 25, 2010]
Yet on the biggest immigration issue that faced our country over the last few years: the Gang of 8 Amnesty, he refused to say whether he supported the bill—or a path to citizenship. When Chris Wallace asked him “Do you still favor comprehensive immigration reform, including a path to citizenship?” Christie responded” “What I favor is fixing a broken system, and the fact is that everybody knows the system is broken. And what Congress needs to do is get to work, working with each other and the president to fix a broken system that’s not serving our economy well, not serving our country well.”[Chris Wallace Tests Chris Christie’s Conservative Credentials, Fox News, November 10, 2013] He repeated that same type of evasion when ABC News asked him [Christie Defers to ‘National Leaders’ to Devise ‘National Solution’ on Immigration, by Matt Vespa, CNS News, November 12, 2013]
And just like the rest of the GOP field, Chris Christie reversed his support for a path to citizenship when his poll numbers tanked. In May, he told Megyn Kelly that citizenship was “an extreme way to go.”
Kelly reminded Christie that about five years ago, he expressed support for giving some undocumented immigrants an opportunity to legalize.
Christie said: “I’ve learned over time about this issue and done a lot more work on it. Just immediately going to a path to citizenship, as Hillary Clinton is proposing to do, is just pandering politics.”
[Chris Christie says he opposes path to citizenship, questions Rubio’s readiness, Fox News Latino, May 19, 2015]
In other words, Christie had no substantive objection to a path to citizenship.
Later in July, Alisyn Camerota of CNN quoted Christie’s previous “commonsense path to citizenship” line and he responded
Well, first of all, yes, I agree with everything I said in there. We don’t have the resources from a law enforcement perspective to forcibly deport those folks, not in those numbers. We simply don’t.
Christie then demurred from giving citizenship but said he wanted to still give illegals work authorization, noting
I have to tell you the truth, I—we have a number of undocumented immigrants here in New Jersey, many whom I’ve met over the course of my governorship. None of them has ever come to here and said that, “Governor, the reason I came here was to vote.” They said they came here to work. So let’s deal with the work situation first, and then we’ll deal with everything else.
[Transcript: Chris Christie Shares Views on Justice System, Immigration, CNN, July 17, 2015]
In an interview yesterday, Christie tried to veer right on immigration again, telling Byron York he opposes raising legal immigration limits or legalizing any illegal aliens until “after we get under control both our border situation and our visa situation.” He also endorsed the term “attrition through enforcement” and said he supported E-verify to “encourage some people to leave on their own.” [A few questions for Chris Christie on immigration, Washington Examiner, January 18, 2016] This contradicts his emphatic statement from less than a year ago that “I’m not someone who believes that folks who have come here in that status [illegally] are going to engage in self-deportation.” [Gov. Chris Christie: Many Undocumented Workers Won’t ‘Self-Deport’, by Charlie Spiering, Breitbart.com, April 21, 2015] As I’ve shown above, this is just the latest of Christie’s many equivocations and flip flops on immigration.
Chris Christie has gotten away with these flip-flops, obfuscations, and just plain terrible statements because no-one has really paid attention to him.
Yet as George Will and other Establishment Poohbahs start talking him up, no amount of tough talk and Bruce Springsteen quotes will be able to hide Chris Christie’s scandalously anti-American worker immigration record.
Washington Watcher [email him] is an anonymous source Inside The Beltway.

Wednesday, November 4, 2015

One More Cheap Drug Problem

An interesting article from http://www.ucg.org/ about marijuana and other drugs. This follows this post about Russia's geography. For a free magazine subscription or to get the books recommended for free click HERE! or call 1-888-886- 8632.
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Young adults have found another substance to give them a rush, but it's rushing some to their graves. Ever vulnerable to the unscrupulous pushers of potions, young people in their late teens and early 20s are buying laughing gas to get high.
Known on the street as “hippie crack,” the gas is attractive in part because it is non-addictive and inexpensive. Laughing gas (nitrous oxide) is not a controlled substance, which means that it's legal to sell or possess it. Small gas canisters called whippets cost as little as 50 cents apiece and are sold with a tool and balloons. The tool is for cracking open the canister and dispensing its contents into the balloons for inhaling, called “huffing.”
Despite the obvious intended use of these items, distributors have skirted the law by labeling their packages, “for food use only.” (Nitrous oxide is the propellant in cans of whipping cream.) However, the death of a 20-year-old Virginia Tech student enabled prosecutors to successfully convict a Phoenix distributor on the technical charge of mislabeling the product.
About a dozen states have attempted to combat misuse of nitrous oxide by legislating stricter labeling and distribution guidelines.
A U.S. federal survey conducted in 1999 showed that its use as a recreational drug had increased 20 percent over the previous year. Nationwide, 6.6 million people had used it at least once. Further, the largest age group among new users was those 35 and older. A number of vendors blatantly sold balloons full of laughing gas at a professional football game tailgate party last fall.
Some readers will recall traveling carnivals that would sell a minute's worth of laughing gas for a few cents to the public. Users would laugh and act silly until the drug wore off, leaving them confused. Even that was probably irresponsible, but today's use is far from humorous.
Today's users sometimes mix it with marijuana and other drugs, seeking to enhance the impact of each. They also will tie a bag around their heads to increase the amount of gas they inhale, which is how the Virginia Tech student died. Nitrous oxide replaces the oxygen in the blood, and a person asphyxiates. Because it is an anesthetic, users are not aware that they are in danger.
The gas can cause people to lose motor control so rapidly that they fall over. A Dateline NBC segment on nitrous oxide huffing showed a Phoenix teenage girl passing out and falling to the ground at a rave party.
Scientists have found that regular use can cause reproductive problems. A 1992 New England Journal of Medicine study revealed that women exposed to high levels of nitrous oxide in their jobs as dental assistants faced a greater risk of infertility. Prolonged use is also believed to damage the bone marrow and the nervous system, due to a diminished ability to process vitamin B-12.
Sources: The Arizona Republic ; www.drweil.com