I propose that Baron require everyone to pass a little test before they are allowed to post anything on ET; a test kinda like the Alzheimer's test Trump's been bragging about passing, but not as hard. The ET test would only need one question. For example this one below would be sufficient. (I'm not going to reveal the answer in case Baron wants to use it.) Instructions: Circle the correct answer. A forty year old woman's father (now deceased) was born on the Island of Jamaica. Her mother was Born in India. She was born in Peru Ohio and drives a blue Kia made in Seoul, South Korea. The woman's favorite food is wiener schnitzel. Is it possible the woman could qualify to run for Vice President of the United States? YES NO [P.S., if you know the answer, please keep it to yourself. Let's not ruin a perfectly good question.]
The case for Trump will come down to his record. It’s a strong one. President Trump holds up a signed executive order at an oil rig in Midland, Tex., on Wednesday. (Cooper Neill/Bloomberg) Opinion by Hugh Hewitt Contributing columnist August 1, 2020 at 9:00 a.m. EDT President Trump’s record of accomplishments is easy to compile. Most significantly, he has brought the existential threat posed by the Chinese Communist Party into the sunlight. No more nice words. No more treating the Tiananmen Square massacre as a bug, not a feature. The light is on. Trump has pulled the cord. Support our journalism. Subscribe today. With huge help from Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), Trump has put two justices on the Supreme Court, 53 judges on the federal courts of appeals, 144 and counting on the District courts, and more than 20 on the specialty courts. The Constitution has been buttressed. Trump’s tax cuts, along with the massive deregulation he orchestrated, led to 3.5 percent unemployment until the regime in Beijing acted with criminal recklessness toward a virus that has devastated the world. Economic recovery depends on those rule rollbacks, and not just grotesque overreaches such as the Clean Power Plan and “Waters of the United States” rule, but on hundreds of other intrusions into the private businesses and onto the private property of Americans. Trump took a military operating in President Barack Obama’s last years at about $600 billion and moved that budget by his third year to $738 billion, with more in the budget coming soon. The Navy necessary to meet China on the high seas, all 355 ships of it, is being planned and built. Trump tore up the so-called Iran nuclear deal, which was a tower of absurd hopes built on a policy of appeasement and a foundation of hostility to Israel. Trump moved the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem and blessed Israel’s necessary annexation of the Golan Heights. His peace plan is the closest to reality of any since Oslo. Trump took the United States out of the unbalanced, absurd, doomed-to-fail Paris Climate Agreement and has instead focused on and delivered American energy independence. People have real job security in Pennsylvania as a result, if not in jetting off to Paris for follow-up seminars. Trump ordered Iran’s master terrorist, Gen. Qasem Soleimani, killed, accomplished the complete physical destruction of the Islamic State caliphate and successfully hunted down its terrorist chieftain, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. The former was never contemplated by Obama, the latter couldn’t get done by him even though his scampering from Iraq in 2011 led to the rise of Islamic State and its thousand barbarities. The Syrian butcher, Bashar al-Assad, has twice used chemical weapons and twice had cruise missiles remind him that the red line is back and is real. Russian mercenaries attacked U.S. troops in Syria and were mowed down. Not an American was killed. Those are “Trump rules of engagement.” Even Cuba is back in its box, joined there by Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro. At home, Trump pushed through the long-overdue justice reform legislation and the reorganization of Veterans Affairs, and, this year, the Great American Outdoors Act that fully funds the Land and Water Conservation Fund. House Democrats passed a piffling bill when covid-19 arrived, while Trump, McConnell and Senate Republicans advanced the innovative and massive Paycheck Protection Program that kept the U.S. economy from collapsing even as it contracted by nearly 10 percent in the second quarter as the China’s principal export, covid-19, ravaged the country. Trump’s border wall, proceeding apace, makes obvious sense. More than 200 miles completed, with Trump tweeting Thursday the length with be 300 miles by September. Trump got his United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement, replacing the North American Free Trade Agreement. From dairy farms in Wisconsin to border businesses in Arizona, the USMCA was a huge win for the United States. Trump doesn’t want to deport the “dreamers” and won’t, but his deals with Mexico, El Salvador and Guatemala have helped stem a flow of illegal entries into the United States that Obama was helpless to halt. While establishing himself as the most accessible-to-the-media president in modern times, Trump has also stripped off the veneer of objectivity from the “fake news.” “Blue Bubble” journalists are the last to know the contempt in which they are held beyond the Acela corridor and outside Silicon Valley and Hollywood. They mistake their small audience share for success. In fact, most of America would rather watch a mystery poetry slam than their “news.” Trump hammered that home, and journalists hate him for it. In turn, Blue Check Twitter confirms the contempt that “elites” feel for more than half of America. Trump’s brawling, slugging, tempestuous approach to everything in every hour has worn down many, but his road is marked by these accomplishments. Former vice president Joe Biden’s near-50-year run in government is marked by . . . well, you fill that in. Polls say Biden is far ahead. We shall see. AD There’s an aesthetic critique of Trump that has convinced elites that he must be beaten, that he is cruel and beneath the office. But Americans want their jobs and security back. They like the police. And, yes, most of the time they mostly admire Trump’s
Karen Bass is trying to clean up some association with Scientology. We can read this two ways, 1. She is on the inside track and trying to gauge how the public will view of her garbage (which is very important to all politicians) or 2. She is losing some shine within the veep-stakes and is trying to fix a mess. My inclination is 1., shes on the inside track and they are trying to gauge how the public reacts to her dirty laundry.
It's her worshipping of Fidel that does not play well outside of California. I would not want to market that in the midwest and the south. She is on the inside track. Problem is, Joe is having problems with others who are on the inside track so not surprisingly he is having problems with her too. Losers to the left and losers to the right, everywhere he looks. Big loser in this continues to be Kamala Harris, even if she gets it. Because she checks all the woke boxes- except for mass incarceration of blacks, the party has tried over and over and over to annoint her to something but just hesitates and goes in circles when it comes time to close the deal. Her primary was an example of that. This vp thing is another example. Even if they pick her it will smack of Settling for Kamala in the same way that Joe's nomination is a Settling for Biden process. Feel the burn- OR NOT. I want Kamala to be the nominee but because I am flexible kind of guy, if the dems go with Karen Bass- believe me- I am on board with that. Holy Shiite. The dems have blown their brains out. I have said repeatedly that Susan Rice would be the better choice and if she is chosen- some chance, not necessarily great- I will concede that it would be a problem for the pubs even though they will have fun with it. But Kamala or Karen Bass? Be my guest. Make it a California-fest along with Pelosi.
I personally don’t see what Bass brings to the ticket but obviously someone in Biden-land sees something. Maybe she has congressional sway I’m not aware of. I tend to agree that Rice is the best VP pick simply for her aptitude and experience. I hear you on the Kamala downsides but I don’t think they are as serious as you think. there is an upside you’re underestimating with Kamala too, she can very much move a crew.
Karen Bass defends herself against all this Fidelista love by saying that she was young (and eight times since), went there to connect with the people and has done lots of freedom and pro-democracy things around the world since then. Fine. OR NOT. Chris Wallace gave her the nod and pass on that in an interview but then said that the problem with that explanation is that 2016 was not that long ago and when Fidel passed she issued a statement saying that "Castro was a great loss to the Cuban people." To which, Bass replied: "That was a live and learn situation, if I had it to do over again I would not have done that." WOMP.....womp....womp.... Her 15 minutes of fame just dropped to ten minutes. Hyping your love for Fidel is no way to win Florida. Joe is using this cobbled-together harem of black women as sort of a pump and dump routine. He feigns interest in all of them so that they will say great things about Joe right up until the convention.