When you differ from people you admire, you have to question yourself. After all, what is the purpose of admiring people if they aren’t capable of influencing you?
So, I have had to challenge my position — stated since the outset of the Republican presidential debates — that if Donald Trump wins the Republican nomination, I will vote for him over Hillary Clinton, or any Democrat for that matter.
I devoted many hours of radio and many columns to criticizing Trump. His virtually assured nomination has therefore caused me grief as an American, a Republican and a conservative. That his character defects, gaps in knowledge on some important issues, and lack of identifiably conservative principles came to mean little to so many Republican voters is quite troubling. (Though, I might add, it is even more troubling that virtually all Democrats ignore the even worse character of Hillary Clinton, as well as the idiotic socialist ideas of Sen. Bernie Sanders.) …
… When forced to choose between bad and worse, we supported Joseph Stalin against Adolf Hitler, and we supported right-wing authoritarians against Communist totalitarians. …
In the 2016 presidential race, I am not interested in moral purity. I am interested in defeating the left and its party, the Democratic Party. The notion (expressed by virtually every #NeverTrump advocate) that we can live with another four years of a Democratic president is, forgive me, mind-boggling. To that end, with at least one, and probably multiple, additional leftists on the Supreme Court, a Republican presidential victory in 2020 would mean little. All the left needs is the judicial branch, especially the Supreme Court. Left-wing judges pass so many left-wing laws that they render those who control Congress, and even the White House, almost irrelevant. …
__________________________________
He then goes on to list “nine reasons (there are more) why a conservative should prefer a Trump presidency to a Democrat presidency”: -Prevent a left-wing Supreme Court.
–Prevent a left-wing Supreme Court.
–Increase the defense budget.
–Repeal, or at least modify, the Dodd-Frank act.
–Prevent Washington, D.C. from becoming a state and giving the Democrats another two permanent senators. (I was not aware of this one)
–Repeal Obamacare.
–Curtail illegal immigration, a goal that doesn’t necessarily have anything to do with xenophobia or nativism (just look at Western Europe).
–Reduce job-killing regulations on large and small businesses.
–Lower the corporate income tax and bring back hundreds of billions of offshore dollars to the United States.
–Continue fracking, which the left, in its science-rejecting hysteria, opposes.
It’s a joyless year that offers us little tangible hope, frankly. I’ll vote for one of the “also rans” in our primary next month as my own mini ‘protest’ vote.
In November … Well, I still haven’t decided but I am more open now to buying a clothes pin and voting for the Republican mainly as a defensive move against the other side. And because of most of the reasons Prager lists above.
It’s not one of those moral ‘purity’ kind of elections in 2016 (as if any of them really are anyway).
I’m a realist and I have a very low bar for politicians in general. This year I’m not even sure any of them clear that. Which is very depressing.
“The recent surge of illegal aliens flooding across the Southwest U.S. border continues undeterred as U.S. Customs and Border Protection set a new FY2016 apprehension record in April, catching a grand total of 38,135 illegal aliens over the 30-day period – an average of about 1,271 per day.
April’s apprehension total is 1,121 aliens higher than those reported in December, which until last month was the record-holder for apprehensions so far in FY2016.
As the number of unaccompanied minors streaming into the United States from Mexico continues to skyrocket past FY2014 numbers, border agents report apprehending another 5,198 unaccompanied minors at the U.S. Mexico border in April, bringing the total number of UACs apprehended since Oct. 1 to an alarming 32,952.
So far, the total number of this year’s UAC apprehensions reflects an alarming 74 percent increase over FY2014 levels, when an unprecedented number of family units and unaccompanied children surged into the United States, quickly overwhelming border patrol stations and raising serious questions into the Obama administration’s immigration enforcement policies. The agency had only reported 26,341 unaccompanied minor apprehensions by this point in FY2014.
——————————
——————————
And hey, now you can bring your freaky tranny cousin too! There’s even a place for them, at least until they turn ’em loose like the rest.
“U.S. immigration officials are opening a new detention facility in Texas that will include a unit specifically created for transgender individuals, Fusion has confirmed.
“The facility is expected to house about 700 detainees, including a separate 36-bed unit for transgender individuals,” said Carl Rusnok, a spokesperson for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE.)
ICE says the Prairieland Detention Center will open in November in Alvarado, Texas, and will operate with the agency’s most advanced care guidelines for transgender detainees. Each detainee will have an individualized detention plan “covering items such as searches, clothing options, hygiene practices, medical care, and housing assignments,” Rusnok said.
Immigrant rights advocates have urged ICE to release LGBT detainees, especially transgender women, because they are more vulnerable to physical and sexual assaults while in custody. The new facility addresses a number of issues to better protect trans women, but immigrant rights leaders say any new detention center is a step in the wrong direction. The advocates want ICE to instead work more closely with community groups that could house trans women.”
“The officer should not have been charged in the first place.
The second officer to be tried in the Baltimore prosecutions arising out of Freddie Gray’s death in April 2015 has been acquitted in a bench trial. The case against the officer, Edward Nero, was among the most inane brought by the incompetent, race-baiting prosecutor, Marilyn Mosby. As we’ve previously recounted, Gray died after suffering a severe spinal injury while in custody in a police van. Back in December, the first officer to be tried, William G. Porter, got a mistrial after a hung jury and is to be retried later this year.”
“The medical examiner eventually concluded that police had no intent to harm Gray, and that the deceased would not have sustained his severe injury had he remained in the prone position in which police attempted to place him. Prosecutors reportedly concealed from the defense at Porter’s trial not only that Gray was found to be under the influence of narcotics at the time of his arrest, but also that he had claimed prior back injuries in the weeks prior to his death. Yet Mosby proceeded to charge six police officers, notwithstanding that a competent homicide investigation was not close to being completed. In a demagogic speech announcing the charges, she claimed she was responding to mob cries of “no justice, no peace.”
—————————–
She was right about that last part. There was no justice done here, for anyone, except the vengeful mob. But the Mosbys and Obamas of the world don’t care, they just keep stoking the flames.
“I can’t recall the first time I heard the phrase “white male” hissed as if it were some form of particularly vile insult. I know it happened in law school, where it was used as a short-hand way of saying that I should be silent, that my views were not welcome. Over time, I learned that, to a certain set of people, there was something positively wrong with being white. “We” were the great privileged oppressors of history. And “we” were the great privileged oppressors of the present.
Our law schools are, in many ways, incubators for the identity politics that dominate the social-justice Left. For those soaked in progressive identity politics, skin color was a stand-in for virtue. It was impossible for a black person to be racist; it was impossible for a white person not to be. Any in-depth discussion of history had to acknowledge past injustice. It was tough even to talk about, say, Omaha Beach without in the next breath acknowledging the systematic segregation in the World War II–era U.S. Army.
Since my law-school days, the problem has only gotten worse. Now the true cultural and historical demons are white — gasp! — “cisgender” males, and any white cisgender woman who doesn’t appropriately check her privilege. The ticket to white acceptability in progressive politics is a form of self-loathing: a constant attitude of repentance not just for the sins of the past but also for the benefits of the present, which are presumably enjoyed only or mainly because of the plunder and exploitation of “brown bodies.”
Oddly enough, this self-loathing doesn’t diminish the power of the white progressive. The movement is still chock-full of rich white men and women. Indeed, they mainly lead the American Left. They simply purport to hate and mock “white males” with the same intensity as do their black friends.”
“Here’s the problem: Progressives don’t like to admit this, but identity politics work as the mirror image of white supremacy — compressing the extraordinarily rich and complex histories of nations, continents, and cultures into one characteristic: skin color. For the white supremacist, white people are natural-born victors. For the identity-politics leftist, white people are natural-born predators.”
“When identity politics rule, racism and polarization thrive. It is no coincidence that we are seeing a resurgence in outright white nationalism — embodied in the so-called alt-right — at the same time that America’s leftist cultural elite are decisively rejecting Martin Luther King Jr.’s dream that Americans be judged by the “content of their character” and not the color of their skin. When one side decides that skin color is a virtue, then — as sure as the sun rises in the east — the other side will eagerly agree.”
Related to Obama’s open door policy, here’s National Border Patrol Labor Council President Brandon Judd on the changed policy re. NTA forms for illegals:
Wandering Views 
I don’t like Trump.
I turn him off when he appears on TV.
I said that I may not vote in this electhon.
However. It is so bad I may have to.
All the Democrats helve is Communism or corruption.
😥
LikeLiked by 4 people
Prager’s take
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2016/05/24/a_response_to_my_conservative_nevertrump_friends_130652.html
__________________________
When you differ from people you admire, you have to question yourself. After all, what is the purpose of admiring people if they aren’t capable of influencing you?
So, I have had to challenge my position — stated since the outset of the Republican presidential debates — that if Donald Trump wins the Republican nomination, I will vote for him over Hillary Clinton, or any Democrat for that matter.
I devoted many hours of radio and many columns to criticizing Trump. His virtually assured nomination has therefore caused me grief as an American, a Republican and a conservative. That his character defects, gaps in knowledge on some important issues, and lack of identifiably conservative principles came to mean little to so many Republican voters is quite troubling. (Though, I might add, it is even more troubling that virtually all Democrats ignore the even worse character of Hillary Clinton, as well as the idiotic socialist ideas of Sen. Bernie Sanders.) …
… When forced to choose between bad and worse, we supported Joseph Stalin against Adolf Hitler, and we supported right-wing authoritarians against Communist totalitarians. …
In the 2016 presidential race, I am not interested in moral purity. I am interested in defeating the left and its party, the Democratic Party. The notion (expressed by virtually every #NeverTrump advocate) that we can live with another four years of a Democratic president is, forgive me, mind-boggling. To that end, with at least one, and probably multiple, additional leftists on the Supreme Court, a Republican presidential victory in 2020 would mean little. All the left needs is the judicial branch, especially the Supreme Court. Left-wing judges pass so many left-wing laws that they render those who control Congress, and even the White House, almost irrelevant. …
__________________________________
He then goes on to list “nine reasons (there are more) why a conservative should prefer a Trump presidency to a Democrat presidency”: -Prevent a left-wing Supreme Court.
–Prevent a left-wing Supreme Court.
–Increase the defense budget.
–Repeal, or at least modify, the Dodd-Frank act.
–Prevent Washington, D.C. from becoming a state and giving the Democrats another two permanent senators. (I was not aware of this one)
–Repeal Obamacare.
–Curtail illegal immigration, a goal that doesn’t necessarily have anything to do with xenophobia or nativism (just look at Western Europe).
–Reduce job-killing regulations on large and small businesses.
–Lower the corporate income tax and bring back hundreds of billions of offshore dollars to the United States.
–Continue fracking, which the left, in its science-rejecting hysteria, opposes.
LikeLike
It’s a joyless year that offers us little tangible hope, frankly. I’ll vote for one of the “also rans” in our primary next month as my own mini ‘protest’ vote.
In November … Well, I still haven’t decided but I am more open now to buying a clothes pin and voting for the Republican mainly as a defensive move against the other side. And because of most of the reasons Prager lists above.
It’s not one of those moral ‘purity’ kind of elections in 2016 (as if any of them really are anyway).
I’m a realist and I have a very low bar for politicians in general. This year I’m not even sure any of them clear that. Which is very depressing.
LikeLiked by 1 person
The wave of illegals continues due to Obama’s open door policy at the southern border….
http://www.mrctv.org/blog/border-apprehensions-surge-past-fy2014-numbers
“The recent surge of illegal aliens flooding across the Southwest U.S. border continues undeterred as U.S. Customs and Border Protection set a new FY2016 apprehension record in April, catching a grand total of 38,135 illegal aliens over the 30-day period – an average of about 1,271 per day.
April’s apprehension total is 1,121 aliens higher than those reported in December, which until last month was the record-holder for apprehensions so far in FY2016.
As the number of unaccompanied minors streaming into the United States from Mexico continues to skyrocket past FY2014 numbers, border agents report apprehending another 5,198 unaccompanied minors at the U.S. Mexico border in April, bringing the total number of UACs apprehended since Oct. 1 to an alarming 32,952.
So far, the total number of this year’s UAC apprehensions reflects an alarming 74 percent increase over FY2014 levels, when an unprecedented number of family units and unaccompanied children surged into the United States, quickly overwhelming border patrol stations and raising serious questions into the Obama administration’s immigration enforcement policies. The agency had only reported 26,341 unaccompanied minor apprehensions by this point in FY2014.
——————————
——————————
And hey, now you can bring your freaky tranny cousin too! There’s even a place for them, at least until they turn ’em loose like the rest.
http://fusion.net/story/305117/transgender-ice-detainees-moving-texas/
“U.S. immigration officials are opening a new detention facility in Texas that will include a unit specifically created for transgender individuals, Fusion has confirmed.
“The facility is expected to house about 700 detainees, including a separate 36-bed unit for transgender individuals,” said Carl Rusnok, a spokesperson for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE.)
ICE says the Prairieland Detention Center will open in November in Alvarado, Texas, and will operate with the agency’s most advanced care guidelines for transgender detainees. Each detainee will have an individualized detention plan “covering items such as searches, clothing options, hygiene practices, medical care, and housing assignments,” Rusnok said.
Immigrant rights advocates have urged ICE to release LGBT detainees, especially transgender women, because they are more vulnerable to physical and sexual assaults while in custody. The new facility addresses a number of issues to better protect trans women, but immigrant rights leaders say any new detention center is a step in the wrong direction. The advocates want ICE to instead work more closely with community groups that could house trans women.”
LikeLike
The race agitators will not be happy, and that’s a good thing because this was not about justice.
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/435736/freddie-gray-trial-police-officer-edward-nero-acquitted-charges-marilyn-mosby-baltimore
“The officer should not have been charged in the first place.
The second officer to be tried in the Baltimore prosecutions arising out of Freddie Gray’s death in April 2015 has been acquitted in a bench trial. The case against the officer, Edward Nero, was among the most inane brought by the incompetent, race-baiting prosecutor, Marilyn Mosby. As we’ve previously recounted, Gray died after suffering a severe spinal injury while in custody in a police van. Back in December, the first officer to be tried, William G. Porter, got a mistrial after a hung jury and is to be retried later this year.”
“The medical examiner eventually concluded that police had no intent to harm Gray, and that the deceased would not have sustained his severe injury had he remained in the prone position in which police attempted to place him. Prosecutors reportedly concealed from the defense at Porter’s trial not only that Gray was found to be under the influence of narcotics at the time of his arrest, but also that he had claimed prior back injuries in the weeks prior to his death. Yet Mosby proceeded to charge six police officers, notwithstanding that a competent homicide investigation was not close to being completed. In a demagogic speech announcing the charges, she claimed she was responding to mob cries of “no justice, no peace.”
—————————–
She was right about that last part. There was no justice done here, for anyone, except the vengeful mob. But the Mosbys and Obamas of the world don’t care, they just keep stoking the flames.
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/435567/identity-politics-race-ripping-us-apart?utm_source=taboola&utm_medium=referral
“I can’t recall the first time I heard the phrase “white male” hissed as if it were some form of particularly vile insult. I know it happened in law school, where it was used as a short-hand way of saying that I should be silent, that my views were not welcome. Over time, I learned that, to a certain set of people, there was something positively wrong with being white. “We” were the great privileged oppressors of history. And “we” were the great privileged oppressors of the present.
Our law schools are, in many ways, incubators for the identity politics that dominate the social-justice Left. For those soaked in progressive identity politics, skin color was a stand-in for virtue. It was impossible for a black person to be racist; it was impossible for a white person not to be. Any in-depth discussion of history had to acknowledge past injustice. It was tough even to talk about, say, Omaha Beach without in the next breath acknowledging the systematic segregation in the World War II–era U.S. Army.
Since my law-school days, the problem has only gotten worse. Now the true cultural and historical demons are white — gasp! — “cisgender” males, and any white cisgender woman who doesn’t appropriately check her privilege. The ticket to white acceptability in progressive politics is a form of self-loathing: a constant attitude of repentance not just for the sins of the past but also for the benefits of the present, which are presumably enjoyed only or mainly because of the plunder and exploitation of “brown bodies.”
Oddly enough, this self-loathing doesn’t diminish the power of the white progressive. The movement is still chock-full of rich white men and women. Indeed, they mainly lead the American Left. They simply purport to hate and mock “white males” with the same intensity as do their black friends.”
“Here’s the problem: Progressives don’t like to admit this, but identity politics work as the mirror image of white supremacy — compressing the extraordinarily rich and complex histories of nations, continents, and cultures into one characteristic: skin color. For the white supremacist, white people are natural-born victors. For the identity-politics leftist, white people are natural-born predators.”
“When identity politics rule, racism and polarization thrive. It is no coincidence that we are seeing a resurgence in outright white nationalism — embodied in the so-called alt-right — at the same time that America’s leftist cultural elite are decisively rejecting Martin Luther King Jr.’s dream that Americans be judged by the “content of their character” and not the color of their skin. When one side decides that skin color is a virtue, then — as sure as the sun rises in the east — the other side will eagerly agree.”
LikeLike
Related to Obama’s open door policy, here’s National Border Patrol Labor Council President Brandon Judd on the changed policy re. NTA forms for illegals:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7qUQ9HNjQZk
LikeLike
I am going to be very interested in who Trump selects as his VP for two important reasons:
1. Whoever is selected has a leg up on other candidates in the next presidential election. See Nixon, Big Bush and Gore.
2. I think there is a greater than normal chance that Trump will commit an impeachable offense and be removed from office, elevating the VP.
For someone like a Scott Walker, it would be a really difficult decision if he was asked to run with Trump.
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