Ain't The Devil Happy: In The News - Week of 9/18/16

Is the Race Now Trump’s to Lose?

Jeb Bush's Graceless Decline

New York Times Raised Birther Issue - Against John McCain

NY Gov: Blast 'Obviously an Act of Terrorism'

What Follows the Bathroom Boycott?

Minnesota Man Goes On Stabbing Spree Inside Mall, ‘References To Allah” Made During Attack; UPDATE: ISIS Claims Responsibility

The Greediest People in America Are Liberal Democrats

Hillary’s Fall: Specs, Lies and Videotape

Will Bernie Backers Absence Spell Doom for Hillary's Election Day?

Clinton Foundation Spent Less Than 6 Percent On Charitable Grants In 2014

Will Trump Quit… After He Wins?

Donald Trump Responds to Lindsey Graham: ‘I Single-Handedly Destroyed His Hapless Run for President’

Mediaite.com:

After Sen. Lindsey Graham announced that he would not support the GOP presumptive nominee, Trump lashed back in the manner that has become familiar, blasting the South Carolina senator as being week, unreliable, an “embarrassment.” 

If I got beaten as badly as I beat him, and all the other candidates he endorsed, I would not be able to give my support either,” Trump writes, and wonders “why the media never questions how I single-handedly destroyed his hapless run for President.” 

Graham went on a Twitter tear Friday, explaining why he did “not believe he is a reliable GOP conservative nor has he displayed the judgment and temperament to serve as Commander in Chief.”

RELATED: Why I Won't Endorse Trump

Jeb Bush Endorses Ted Cruz

HotAir.com:

What’s more surprising — Jeb Bush endorsing Ted Cruz, or Ted Cruz bragging about it? After winning Utah but losing Arizona, Team Cruz sent out a statement this morning announcing the backing of the one man who most embodied the Republican establishment against which Cruz has spent his term in the Senate fighting: 

“Today, I am endorsing Ted Cruz for President,” said Bush. “Ted is a consistent, principled conservative who has demonstrated the ability to appeal to voters and win primary contests. Washington is broken, and the only way Republicans can hope to win back the White House and put our nation on a better path is to support a nominee who can articulate how conservative policies will help people rise up and reach their full potential.”  

Bush continued, “For the sake of our party and country, we must move to overcome the divisiveness and vulgarity Donald Trump has brought into the political arena, or we will certainly lose our chance to defeat the Democratic nominee and reverse President Obama’s failed policies. To win, Republicans need to make this election about proposing solutions to the many challenges we face, and I believe that we should vote for Ted as he will do just that.” 

And for good measure, Bush posted a somewhat lengthier Facebook message urging Republicans to unite behind Cruz: 

As I said from the moment I launched my presidential campaign, the stakes in 2016 couldn’t be higher.  

Washington is broken, too many families are stuck in poverty and Western civilization is under attack from radical Islamic terrorists, as evidenced by the horrific attack in Brussels, which was preceded by attacks in Paris and California. …
Republicans can win back the White House and put our nation on a path to security and prosperity if we support a nominee who can unite our party and articulate how conservative policies will help people rise up and reach their full potential.

RELATED:  How Far Jeb Bush Is Going To Stop Trump  

ATDH: In The News Week of 2/21/16

The issue is not Hillary Clinton's Wall St. Links, But Democrats' Core Dogmas

A Social Conservative Case for Trump

Marine Special Operator Highlights Dark Truths Behind Obama’s New Afghan War General

Jeb Bush Bows Out of Campaign, Humbled and Outmaneuvered

Hillary Clinton Beats Bernie Sanders in Nevada Caucuses

Google Extension Aimed at Making the Internet a ‘Safe Space’ for Pro-Choicers

Show This Column to Anyone Who Claims Bush Lied about WMDs in Iraq

Sen. Menendez: ‘Totally Unacceptable’ for Obama to go to Cuba

If Donald Trump Can't Stop Donald Trump, Who Can?

South Carolina Voters Angered by Donald Trump's Claim that Bush Lied to Start Iraq War

WeeklyStandard.com:

Did Donald Trump damage his candidacy at Saturday night’s debate when he alleged that George W. Bush knowingly lied about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq in order to launch the war? A few signs suggest the answer is yes.

On Monday, Rush Limbaugh lumped Trump in the same league as Michael Moore and Daily Kos bloggers for standing by his Iraq war conspiracy theory. Then on Tuesday, CNN released a poll that found Trump dropped 9 points after the debate—from 40 percent to 31 percent. On Tuesday night, every voter I spoke to at Trump's campaign event in Beaufort, South Carolina disapproved of Trump's comments. Their views ranged from genuine disgust to mere displeasure.

Dave Paxton from Hilton Head said he still doesn't know who he's voting for on Tuesday, but he is certain he won't be voting for Trump. Paxton said Trump's comment about George W. Bush "was horrible. I couldn't hardly watch after that. I mean, really, I was hoping they would not even ask him another question."

"I just think he made an ass of himself," Paxton added. "And then he kept interrupting."

On the ride over to Trump's event, Paxton said, his girlfriend and another friend who support Trump brought up the Iraq debate remark and both agreed that it was embarrassing. "I think it hurt him a lot. We'll see come Saturday," Paxton said.

"He just recently got crossed off my list," Michele Williams of Okatie, South Carolina said of Trump. Williams hadn't liked Trump's bullying behavior for some time, but it was "the debate that was the nail in the coffin."

"The thing about 'Bush lied'—that makes me question his conservatism. I don't trust him any more. I really don't. I don't respect him," said Williams, who has narrowed her choices down to Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz, and John Kasich. "Definitely voting in the primary, but I'm as confused as ever," she said about her vote.

Trump's running as Populist, but this attack on former President Bush not only made zero sense, but in a state where Jeb Bush brought out his big brother out to specifically campaign for him, why would you risk alienating South Carolina voters with unnecessary comments about Bush and Iraq? Then too, why would would go out of your way to diss Bush when you consider the facts about us going into Iraq? And when you consider that the far-Left loons who delight in stating that 'Bush Lied' us into Iraq aren't gonna vote for you anyway? And when you consider that Saddam Hussein was a really, really bad guy who needed to go. And when there are still so many people out there who maintain skepticism of how much a 'true conservative' you really are?

RELATED: Donald Trump loses the lead in a national poll for the first time in months

To Liberals Delight, Donald Trump Evokes 9/11 To Make Fun of Jeb Bush

Mediaite.com:

During his presser Monday afternoon from Hanahan, South Carolina, Donald Trump moved from his open criticism of Texas Senator Ted Cruz onto the Bush family, continuing the rhetoric that was hotly-contested during this weekend’s GOP debate.

On the same day that former President George W. Bush is set to stump on behalf of his brother Jeb in South Carolina, Trump called out the frequent talking point that “George W. Bush kept us safe after 9/11”.

“What about during 9/11? I was there,” Trump told the press. “I lost a lot of friends that were killed in that building. The worst attack ever in this country — it was during his Presidency.”

Trump really sounds emotional going after the Bush's like this. To think, Jeb Bush is too wooden and too prone to fumbles to win the GOP nomination. Still, Trump just can't put aside his huge ego and utter disdain for Jeb to leave him alone and let him die a slow death on his own.

RELATED: Rush Limbaugh: Let’s face it, Trump sounded like a liberal Democrat in some of the things he said at the debatejust can't

ATDH: In The News 2/7/16

Hollywood Screenwriter: There’s Nothing Liberals Won’t Attack, Smear And Demean

The Last of the Bushes

DHS Official: I Was Ordered to Purge Records of Islamic Terror Ties

Chris Christie Faces Criticism for Saying Aborting a Baby After Rape is “Self-Defense” for Women

Andrew Cuomo Wants To Keep Gays Gay

WashPost Centers Sympathetic Story on Gay Advocate/Priest to Nudge Pope to 'Reform' His Church

Public School Kisses Goodbye to Valentine's Day, Thanksgiving, Christmas to be Culturally Sensitive

Financial Scandals Follow Socialist Millionaire Sanders

Two Obama Family Vacations Cost Taxpayers Millions: Lawsuit

Donald Trump: With My Immigration Plans, 9/11 Would Never Have Happened

Mediaite.com:

In what is possibly the crescendo of his recent commentary of 9/11, Donald Trump claims that his ideas for immigration would have kept the perpetrators out of America.

Chris Wallace asked Trump to comment on his recently-renewed feud with Jeb Bush, who fired back after Trump attacked George W. Bush for allowing the disaster to happen during his presidency. When asked about whether he actually blamed the former president, Trump said he did not, but has gripes with his brother arguing that W. kept America safe.

“Jeb said ‘we were safe with my brother.’ Well, the World Trade Center just fell down,” Trump argued. “Now, am I trying to blame him? I’m not blaming anybody. But the World Trade Center came down. So when he said ‘we were safe,’ that’s not safe.”

After Wallace asked how he would’ve done things differently, Trump promised that since he is “extremely, extremely tough on immigration,” there's no way the hijackers would’ve gotten anywhere near the planes with him in charge.

“Somebody says ‘well it wouldn’t have been any different.’ well it would’ve been,” Trump said. “So there’s a good chance that those people would not have been in our country. I’m not blaming George Bush, but I don’t want Jeb Bush saying ‘he kept our country safe’ because September 11 was one of the worst days in the history of this country.”

All Trump's doing is going after independent and some socially conservative Democrats voters who can't stand Hillary or Bernie Sanders with all this anti-Bush talk. Which makes sense. But blaming a new President, who was 9 months into his term, for 9/11 especially after Bill Clinton admittedly passed on a chance to kill bin laden, makes absolutely no sense when you look at the facts, which include the many misdeeds of both the Carter and Clinton administrations that led us to the World Trade Center getting attacked.

RELATED: Trump’s Attack On GWB Is Soft Trutherism

Is It Time For Jeb Bush To Drop Out?

HotAir.com:

Here’s the only problem: What evidence is there that Bush can’t come back and win? The working theory behind Trump’s (slight) downturn in the polls since the last debate is that voters are only now starting to get serious about the race. If that’s true, then the Bush boomlet might still be coming. If you believe the last NBC/WSJ poll taken in New Hampshire, Bush is still in third place there with 11 percent, just 10 points behind a weakening Trump and five points behind Fiorina, whom few believe will win the nomination. With a ton of money in the bank and continued viability in his must-win state, there’s no reason for him to get out soon. Purely as an ego matter, why would he want to bow to his protege Rubio by throwing in the towel when he and Rubio are separated in most polls by just a handful of points? And whatever you think of Rahn’s assessment of Dubya as a disastrous president, the fact is that Republican voters don’t agree. Go look again at Bush 43’s favorable rating among GOP voters. It’s entirely possible that having George on the trail for Jeb will lend him the bit of stature he needs for undecided center-right voters to take a closer look at him.

The only scenario where it would make sense for Bush to quit in early October, I think, is if Trump and some other credible center-right challenger like Rubio or Kasich had already bounced out to big leads and made it a two-man race. In that case, Jeb might tell himself that it’s unrealistic to think he’ll be able to catch the center-righty, even with tons of money in the bank and Dubya’s help on the trail, and also that Trump is so serious a threat to win the nomination that the responsible thing to do, a la Scott Walker, is unite behind the leading “electable” alternative. Neither of those conditions obtain right now, though — Trump’s lead is shrinking, not expanding, and second place is up for grabs among Rubio, Carson, and Fiorina. It’ll be interesting to see what happens in the next six weeks or so, though, if Rubio continues to inch up and Trump continues to inch down. In that case, Jeb may decide that the scariest prospect of the campaign — Trump as nominee — has become sufficiently unlikely that he can just continue to run his race for another two months and see if he can catch Marco in New Hampshire. If not, fine. Maybe he’ll drop out then and spare Rubio a death match in Florida. If so, great. Then he’s back on track for the nomination. Until it becomes a two-man race, though, this probably isn’t even worth thinking about — unless it turns out that Jeb hates campaigning so much that he’s actually eager to find excuses to quietly retire.

Exit question: What if we end up with a two-man race between Rubio and Ted Cruz, with Jeb Bush more than 10 points behind both men? Would he quit and endorse Rubio then?

RELATED: Jeb Bush Should Face Facts: It’s Time to Drop Out

How Donald Trump Can Win The Debate

CNN.com:

Muhammad Ali once professed that "it is hard to be humble when you are as great as I am." The current fantastic polling results for Trump in the run-up to the first Republican Party debate may make it difficult for him to approach the event with any sense of humility and propriety.

However, if he could find it within himself to demonstrate the high standards of decorum that the audience expects from a "real" presidential candidate, he could leave the stage as he entered -- the definitive front-runner among 17 Republicans vying to be the next president of the United States. 

In fact, Trump said on ABC this weekend that he won't be "throwing punches" and "I'm not looking to attack." But he also accused his rivals of being "all talk, no action."

Trump should not forget that exigence, the audience's expectation for what will be communicated and how it will be communicated, helps determine how people will interpret and respond to his presentation. Trump's scorched-earth attacks on immigrants, military veterans and the rest of the field have largely succeeded because they fit within the narrative of character and crisis that sustains the attention of the networks and their audiences.

Presidential debates are different. The audience expects more. They want to be informed about solutions and not simply entertained. 

RELATED:  Here’s Who Will Appear in the Fox News Primetime GOP Debate

The Bush Hater's Case for Jeb Bush

TheWeek.com:

Now, I very much dread the idea of Clinton-Bush Part Two, which I fear will play out like a grittier, cash-grabbing reboot of 1992. And nominating a man with a now-toxic family legacy is the surest path this side of Donald Trump to canceling all of the GOP's natural advantages against Hillary Clinton.

But strangely enough, he seems to be the only top-tier candidate on the Republican side who seems to have learned something from the disaster of his brother's presidency.

Yes, he spent a painful week earlier this year awkwardly trying to clarify his views on the Iraq War. He was so determined not to talk about his brother's war that he made it his own problem. But he ended up saying this: "Knowing what we now know, what would you have done? I would have not engaged. I would not have gone into Iraq."

Jeb Bush also went on a brain-shopping spree sometime ago. His advisers include people from across the Republican spectrum, including ultra-hawks like Paul Wolfowitz and John Hannah. But The Wall Street Journal reported that he seems more in line with his father's foreign policy, and the broader realist tradition:

In private, Jeb Bush has expressed admiration for former Secretary of State James Baker and former national security adviser Brent Scowcroft, two veterans of his father's administration known for advocating restraint and a tight focus on national interests, according to people familiar with those discussions. [The Wall Street Journal]

Bush has already had an occasion to distance himself from James Baker, after the old foreign policy hand gave a tough, anti-Benjamin Netanyahu speech to the dovish Israeli advocacy group J Street. But it is clear that Jeb Bush at least respects his non-neoconservative foreign policy advisers.

RELATED:  Jeb Bush: Hillary’s Greatest Weakness is ‘She Can’t be Trusted’

121 Murders Attributed to Illegals Released by Obama Administration

Townhall.com:

This revelation came as a result of an inquiry from Senators Chuck Grassley and Jeff Flake about Apolinar Altamirano, an illegal alien charged with murdering Arizona convenience store clerk Grant Ronnebeck. Altamirano was supposed to be deported after racking up a previous criminal history. Instead, he was able to stay and took the life of an innocent American. 

As a result of ICE providing this information, Grassley and Senator Jeff Sessions have a sent a letter to Attorney General Loretta Lynch, Secretary of State John Kerry and Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson demanding answers. 

"According to information provided by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), up to 121 homicides in the U.S. could have been avoided between Fiscal Year 2010 and FY 2014 had this administration removed from our borders aliens with criminal convictions instead of releasing them back into society where they could commit more crimes," the letter states. "I am writing to ask whether the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), the State Department, and the Justice Department are fully leveraging existing tools and resources to prevent these dangerous outcomes."

Lynch, Kerry and Johnson have until July 6 to respond.


In January, legislation was introduced in the Senate to stop Homeland Security's "catch and release" program.

The Department of Homeland Security currently has a policy in place known as "catch and release," meaning violent illegal aliens are arrested, processed and put back onto American streets if their home countries won't take them back.

According to Judicary Comimittee Chairman Chuck Grassley's office, the policy was "created by a 2001 Supreme Court decision (Zadvydas v. Davis), which prohibits immigrants who had been ordered removed from being detained for more than six months. The Court expanded this decision to apply to all illegal immigrants in Clark v. Martinez in 2005."

This catch and release policy is not only demoralizing to Immigration and Border Patrol Agents, but it's dangerous and deadly. There are countless examples of violent assault and murders committed by illegal aliens after being arrested and released by federal authorities.

In 2013, DHS admitted to releasing 36,000 violent criminal aliens charged and convicted of crimes like assault with a deadly weapon, child-rape, rape, participating in street gangs, aggravated assault and murder onto American streets. 

RELATED:  Jeb Bush's Stance On Immigration Is Surprisingly Progressive But Also A Bit Contradictory

Jeb Bush: No Constitutional Right to Same-Sex Marriage

Mediaite.com:

Speaking to The Brody File Sunday, 2016 hopeful Jeb Bush said he did not believe marriage equality was a constitutional right, and said opposition should continue regardless of the much-anticipated Supreme Court ruling on the issue due this spring.

“I think traditional marriage is a sacrament,” Bush said. “To imagine how we are going to succeed in our country unless we have committed family life, committed child-centered family system is hard to imagine. So, irrespective of the Supreme Court ruling because they are going to decide whatever they decide, I don’t know what they are going to do, we need to be stalwart supporters of traditional marriage.”

“Thousands of years of culture and history are being changed at warp speed,” Bush said. “It’s hard to fathom why it is this way.”

Bush pointed out that President Barack Obama and Democratic challenger Hillary Clinton both held the same view as of four years ago. Obama came out in favor of same-sex marriage in 2012, while Clinton recently endorsed it as a constitutional right.

As for Jeb, he shrugged his shoulders recently at a court decision to allow the practice in his home state of Florida. The candidate sounded far more convicted in the interview.

RELATED:  Jeb Bush Says Christian Business Owners Can Refuse To Serve Gay Weddings