Much better to leave him lashed to the rail. I hear his train's coming in.
On edit:
... which made me think...
Poppa was the first to rail on; Boy Georgie sure could rail on and now Jeb too wants to rail on. The Bush third rail.
'rule' works too.
Moderators: Elvis, DrVolin, Jeff
by Iamwhomiam » Fri Jun 19, 2015 12:56 pm
by zangtang » Fri Jun 19, 2015 2:42 pm
by stillrobertpaulsen » Mon Jul 06, 2015 2:04 pm
Donald Trump Retweets Swipe at Jeb Bush over His Mexican Wife
by Andrew Kirell | 11:06 am, July 6th, 2015
This man is currently placed second among all Republican presidential candidates in a national CNN/ORC poll:
http://twitter.com/GoAngelo/status/617875992594546688/photo/1
Yep, that’s Donald Trump invoking (via supportive-by-default retweet) the fact that Jeb Bush is married to Mexican-born Columba Bush (née Garnica Gallo) as a reason the former Florida governor is known as sympathetic to the plight of undocumented immigrants and is seen as the Republican’s leading supporter of immigration reform.
Before this retweet, Bush had already publicly stated that he has taken Trump’s incendiary comments on Mexican immigrants personally.
It’s gonna be a fun long 2016.
by stillrobertpaulsen » Fri Jul 17, 2015 8:36 pm
How Trump May Ultimately Help Bush
Though he attacks the former governor, Trump is actually dividing the voters whom Bush’s rivals need.
By Ronald Brownstein
The paradox of Donald Trump's bombastic presidential campaign is that his rise may ultimately benefit the rival he has attacked most vociferously.
With his rambling and belligerent speech in Phoenix last Saturday, Trump signaled again that on the sprawling list of targets that inspire his antagonism, former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush ranks near the bulls-eye. "If you people go with Bush," Trump insisted flatly during the speech, "you are going to lose."
And yet, while he is creating some risks for the nominal front-runner, many Republican analysts predict that Trump eventually could prove more asset than obstacle to Bush's bid for the party nomination. "If you were a total evil-conspiracy theorist, you'd think the Trilateral Commission got Trump to run because … it helps Jeb more than anybody," says longtime Republican strategist David Carney.
The surge of interest in Trump could threaten Bush in one important respect: by radicalizing opinion within the party on immigration issues where Bush has taken a relatively moderate position.
But Trump's ascent could inadvertently help Bush, both by providing him a foil in the immigration debate, and also by dividing the populist conservative voters who are least likely to ever support an establishment favorite like the former Florida governor.
That dynamic could especially threaten Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, who formally announced his candidacy Monday and has taken a series of steps—including a hard line on both undocumented and legal immigration—to court the same disaffected voters now flocking to Trump in polls.
Trump's most obvious threat to Bush is intensifying the spotlight on immigration, an issue where Bush already faces formidable resistance from the GOP's most conservative elements.
Even before Trump raised the temperature with his attacks on Mexico, immigration had emerged as a major dividing line in the 2016 GOP race. Almost all of the Republican contenders have rejected any legal status for the estimated 11 million undocumented immigrants in the U.S., which Bush has consistently supported (although he has wavered on whether he would also accept citizenship, as opposed to permanent legal status, for them).
In addition, three contenders—Walker, former Sen. Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania, and former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee—have suggested a reduction as well in legal immigration, which Bush has also rejected. Now, Trump's vitriolic attacks on Mexico have galvanized so much attention that they appear likely to dominate the first GOP presidential debate on Fox News Channel in August.
Polling conducted this spring in Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina, sites of the critical three early GOP contests, found that a majority of likely Republican voters in each state supported either legal status or full-scale citizenship for the undocumented. In the surveys conducted by Burning Glass Consulting, founded by three women with a long pedigree in GOP politics, only 29 percent of likely GOP primary voters in Iowa, 34 percent in New Hampshire, and 37 percent in South Carolina said the undocumented should be denied any legal status.
But Katie Packer Gage, the cofounder of Burning Glass, and the deputy campaign manager for Mitt Romney in 2012, says those attitudes could buckle under a sustained campaign argument about immigration. "I don't think we want to have the whole discussion be on immigration," she says. "When you look at our poll in the primary states, the majority is for a pathway [to citizenship or legal status], but it's more like they would accept a pathway. It's not like they are anxious for it."
Indeed other surveys show a substantial strain of anxiety about immigration—both undocumented and legal—running through the GOP coalition, particularly among the party's substantial blue-collar and older constituencies. In one national Pew Research Center poll, nearly half of Republicans older than 50 and those without a four-year college degree opposed any legal status for the undocumented. Meanwhile, more than three-fifths of each group said legal immigrants were more a burden than a benefit to American society. On each issue, considerably fewer younger and college-educated Republicans expressed those conservative views.
Although Trump broadly praised legal immigration in his Saturday speech, most analysts believe Trump's support is likely to flow most from the blue-collar and populist Republican voters who respond not only to his attacks on undocumented immigrants and free trade, but also to his blunt nonpolitician style. "They tend to be people who like the idea that he's not a politician: They say this is a guy who 'says it like it is' and he doesn't care what people think." Gage notes. "They like that he is a very successful businessman." Trump sent a clear signal to those voters on Saturday when he reprised a phrase from the Richard Nixon era that referred to overlooked middle-class white voters and insisted: "The silent majority is back, and we're going to take the country back."
Trump's potential appeal to voters in the party's populist wing is what could tilt his impact on Bush from threat to asset. Polls generally show Bush running best among the party's "managerial" wing of college-educated, moderate, and upscale voters. That means if Trump can sustain his support—which many Republican analysts question—he is likely to be strongest among the voters where Bush is weakest. And to the extent Trump attracts those voters, he denies them to more-conventional Bush rivals like Walker or Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida.
Many GOP analysts agree that Bush will benefit if voters alienated from him gravitate to Trump, who probably faces a lower ceiling of total support, than to Walker or Rubio, who have the potential to build a broader and more potent coalition. Combining results from the past three NBC/Wall Street Journal national surveys, just 27 percent of GOP primary voters said they would consider voting for Trump, far fewer than indicated they could back Bush, Walker, or Rubio.
Trump creates even more immediate problems for second-tier candidates such as Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, former Texas Gov. Rick Perry, Huckabee, and Santorum, who have all targeted a similar group of blue-collar and conservative voters. "It just takes the energy out of the room, and it's going to be harder for a person not in first place to break through," says Carney, a top Perry strategist in 2012.
Still, Walker may be the candidate with the most at risk from Trump's ascent. Longtime New Hampshire GOP activist Tom Rath, who is unaffiliated in 2016, says that in the state's critical primary next February, Trump "really hurts Walker, because Walker's path to winning the nomination is to do really well in Iowa and then come in here and become the dominant ideological conservative coming out of here, and parlay those two things into a good showing in South Carolina." But, Rath adds, "Walker only can do that if the Right doesn't splinter."
The latest CNN/WMUR/University of New Hampshire poll conducted there last month underscores Rath's point. Across several key dimensions, the voters who express the most favorable opinions of Trump represent the opposite of those most favorable toward Bush. While Bush's favorability rating is highest among voters with a postgraduate degree (57 percent favorable), Trump does best (52 percent favorable) among those with a high-school degree or less. While Bush performs best among those opposed to the tea-party movement (57 percent favorable), Trump does best with those who support it (47 percent). In New Hampshire, Trump is more popular with men (41 percent favorable) than women (33 percent); Bush is more popular with women (54 percent favorable) than men (47 percent). Trump is more popular with conservatives (42 percent favorable) than moderates (33 percent); Bush is more popular with moderates (56 percent favorable) than conservatives (50 percent).
Tellingly, on almost all of these measures, Walker's profile is closer to Trump's than to Bush's. Like Trump, Walker is much stronger with tea-party supporters (61 percent favorable) than those who oppose the movement (27 percent). Again like Trump, Walker is much more popular with men than women and also more popular with conservatives than moderates. On education, Walker straddles the divide between Bush and Trump (Walker shows the most support among those with a high school degree or less or those with a postgraduate education).
All of these findings reinforce Rath's conclusion that any votes Trump wins in New Hampshire are likely to come "right out of Walker's pocket and therefore the Right doesn't coalesce and it makes the winner of the primary, which tends to be the center-right [candidate], really the winner here, as opposed to muffling or muddling the message."
Trump could benefit Bush in one other way: By expressing suspicion of immigrants in such unvarnished and incendiary language, the billionaire could provide the former Florida governor a foil to make his own views appear more mainstream, not only in the primary but also in the general election if he gets that far. Carney says that while "it's hard to predict" how the business executive's explosive rhetoric could shift the balance of opinion within the GOP on immigration, by framing the debate as such a binary choice with Bush, Trump may inadvertently encourage more moderate voters to align with his rival, rather than consider another center-right candidate in the field such as New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie.
"Bush is going to get attacked; front-runners always get attacked, they know that," Carney says. Trump is "really the other guys' problem: everyone sitting in a [campaign office] in Kentucky and Austin and Baton Rouge and Milwaukee, figuring out 'what the hell are we going to do about this?'"
by Luther Blissett » Sat Jul 18, 2015 12:09 pm
by Rory » Sat Jul 18, 2015 12:50 pm
Luther Blissett » Sat Jul 18, 2015 4:09 pm wrote:Did the Trilateral Commission get Trump to run?
by stillrobertpaulsen » Thu Jul 23, 2015 3:52 pm
Luther Blissett » Sat Jul 18, 2015 11:09 am wrote:Did the Trilateral Commission get Trump to run?
The man behind Donald Trump's run
The highly paid, PR-savvy “bomb thrower” managing Donald’s campaign is a lot like his new boss.
By Ben Schreckinger and Cate Martel
7/22/15 5:16 AM EDT
The man behind Donald Trump’s presidential campaign has a knack for spectacle, an eye toward making money and a proven willingness to defy the Republican Party.
In other words, Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski is a lot like his new boss.
Lewandowski, who has been advising Trump since January and managing his improbable — and, for many Republicans, headache-inducing — run to the top of the GOP primary field in national polls has spent the past decade and a half drifting away from the party establishment.
He left a short stint at the Republican National Committee in 2001 to manage the failed reelection campaign of a rogue senator before landing eventually at the Koch brothers-backed Americans for Prosperity, where he primaried New Hampshire Republicans and mocked the state’s Democrats until joining up with Trump.
In that time, Lewandowski cemented a reputation in New Hampshire political circles for getting things done, even if it means ruffling feathers. “He’s a good guy personally, [but] he’s a bomb thrower,” said one longtime New Hampshire Republican political operative.
“Corey was a pretty aggressive guy on issues. He was a go-getter … and he was not afraid to air out an issue,” said Bruce Berke, a Granite State lobbyist and an adviser to the Republican primary field’s latest entrant, Ohio Gov. John Kasich.
He’s also drawn attention for his new Trump-sized paychecks, which would add up to close to a quarter of a million dollars annually.
“Corey has mouths to feed, and a business opportunity to go and make $20,000 a month doesn’t come around every day,” said former state party chairman Fergus Cullen, pointing out that Lewandowski, 40, supports a family of six and lives in a spacious home in Windham, on the Massachusetts border, valued at over $800,000 (that’s a lot for New Hampshire).
The Trump campaign and Lewandowski declined to comment for this story. “Only one guy on the campaign that matters!” texted a spokeswoman.
“He certainly wouldn’t be supporting Donald Trump if he didn’t believe in him,” said Jerry DeLemus, a Republican activist in New Hampshire best known for his support of rogue Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy, who officially became a Trump supporter over the weekend and called Lewandowski a “really decent man.”
The grandson of a union printer, Lewandowski grew up poor in the 1980s in the hardscrabble mill city of Lowell, Massachusetts, playing pond hockey in the winters and going on to graduate from the city’s branch of the University of Massachusetts.
Drawn to Ronald Reagan’s unabashed work-hard, get-rich version of the American dream, Lewandowski became an active Republican and moved to Washington after graduating. There, he worked on Capitol Hill while earning a master’s degree in political science at American University.
Lewandowski worked briefly for the RNC in 2001, as the legislative political director for the Northeast, before leaving the establishment behind.
His rift with “the country club Republicans,” as he’s known to call them, can be traced to another presidential campaign that ticked off the party.
In February 1999, New Hampshire Sen. Bob Smith launched a long-shot bid for the Republican nomination, irking the local GOP, which worried he could catch on in his home state and make the first-in-the-nation primary irrelevant by discouraging other candidates from campaigning there.
As it turned out, Smith didn’t catch on anywhere, so he left the party in July to seek the nomination of the Taxpayers’ Party, before disavowing that party, too, and running as an independent. That lasted until Rhode Island Sen. John Chafee died in October, when Smith dropped out of the race and repledged his fealty to the Republican Party so that he could inherit Chafee’s chairmanship of the Environment and Public Works Committee.
The Republican Party was ready for Smith to retire at the end of his term, but he sought reelection in 2002, recruiting Lewandowski from the RNC to manage his campaign. Several of Smith’s GOP Senate colleagues took the unusual step of endorsing his primary opponent, then-Rep. John E. Sununu, the son of the state’s former governor, who won the primary and the seat, putting it safely back in the hands of the country club Republicans.
By his association with the ousted senator, Lewandowski had burned bridges with the party, said Cullen.
He spent five years as a lobbyist, starting at the New England Seafood Producers Association, before landing with the deep-pocketed Americans for Prosperity in 2008. AFP’s ability to outspend candidates in small, local races made it a factor in New Hampshire Republican primaries, and Lewandowski again became a thorn in the state party’s side.
Most notably, in 2012, AFP backed computer-repair magnate Josh Youssef over a more moderate Republican in a state Senate primary, despite reports that Youssef owed $50,000 to the IRS and allegations that he was hiding assets to avoid making child-support payments to his ex-wife, because Youssef’s views aligned more closely with the group’s anti-tax, anti-regulation agenda.
Days after Youssef won the primary with Lewandowski’s support, the Republican leadership publicly called on their nominee to answer for allegations that he violated campaign laws by misusing the identities of local Republicans to make it look like they supported his candidacy.
Youssef lost in the general election, contributing to a narrowing of the Republican majority from 14 seats to two in the Senate and hard feelings in the party. “That’s a seat that Republicans should hold,” said Berke. Youssef is now a county chairman for Trump in New Hampshire.
At AFP, Lewandowski also showed an ability to draw crowds to events and pull off attention-grabbing gimmicks. At the group’s Tax Day rally in 2010, he pulled a cardboard cutout of Democratic Gov. John Lynch onto the steps of the Capitol building in Concord and began debating it, to the crowd’s delight.
In April 2014, AFP and Citizens United held a “Freedom Summit” in New Hampshire, the first Republican cattle call of the 2016 presidential cycle, where Trump and Lewandowski met. They kept in touch over the intervening months, and Trump evidently decided he had found a kindred spirit.
One Trump insider joked the two had found each other on Match.com.
They even dress alike. “He wears a suit a lot, which for New Hampshire is odd,” the longtime Granite State political operative said of Lewandowski. “You don’t really wear suits in New Hampshire.”
The operative, who did not want to speak negatively about a fellow Republican on the record, had another theory of Lewandowski’s and Trump’s decision to partner up: They both had few other options. “Any serious person in Washington could never work for [Trump], because it would just destroy your career and you’ll never be respected by anyone around here.”
Since the two joined forces in January, Trump has taken care of the bombast, while Lewandowski has been executing on the logistics, which so far consists largely of getting Trump in front of cameras and crowds.
Despite all the bridges burned, an ability to execute may save Lewandowski from political career exile should Trump’s campaign fizzle, as many Republican leaders say they expect it to, when the cameras and the crowds move on.
Greg Moore, who replaced him as AFP’s New Hampshire director, said his old boss excels at the “blocking and tackling” of political agitation.
“He always made sure the ‘i’s are dotted and ‘t’s are crossed,” said Moore. “I assure you the trains will run on time.”
by zangtang » Thu Jul 23, 2015 4:14 pm
by stillrobertpaulsen » Thu Jul 23, 2015 4:52 pm
by stillrobertpaulsen » Thu Jul 23, 2015 6:01 pm
Jeb Bush pushes to ‘phase out’ Medicare
07/23/15 10:05 AM
Republican presidential hopeful Jeb Bush appeared at a New Hampshire event last night sponsored by the Koch brothers’ Americans for Prosperity, and the former governor raised a few eyebrows with his comments on the future of Medicare.
“The left needs to join the conversation, but they haven’t. I mean, when [Rep. Paul Ryan] came up with, one of his proposals as it relates to Medicare, the first thing I saw was a TV ad of a guy that looked just like Paul Ryan … that was pushing an elderly person off the cliff in a wheelchair. That’s their response.
“And I think we need to be vigilant about this and persuade people that our, when your volunteers go door to door, and they talk to people, people understand this. They know, and I think a lot of people recognize that we need to make sure we fulfill the commitment to people that have already received the benefits, that are receiving the benefits. But that we need to figure out a way to phase out this program for others and move to a new system that allows them to have something – because they’re not going to have anything.”
Remember, Jeb Bush is the ostensible moderate candidate in the massive GOP presidential field. It says something important about Republican politics in 2015 when the most mainstream candidate is also the candidate who wants to scrap Medicare altogether.
Regardless, there’s quite a bit wrong with his take on the issue, both as a matter of politics and policy. Let’s start with the former.
The Florida Republican is convinced that “people understand” the need to get rid of Medicare. He’s mistaken. Given the polling from the last several years, what people understand is that Medicare is a popular and successful program, and a pillar of modern American life.
Previous attempts to “phase out” the program have met with widespread public scorn and if Jeb Bush believes he can “persuade people” to get rid of Medicare, he’s likely to be disappointed.
As for the policy, there’s no point in denying that the Medicare system faces long-term fiscal challenges, but to argue, as Jeb Bush does, that Democrats have ignored the conversation is plainly incorrect. On the contrary, while Republicans fight to eliminate the Medicare program, Democrats have had great success in strengthening Medicare finances and extending its fiscal health for many years to come.
The secret, apparently, was passing the Affordable Care Act.
Before “Obamacare” was passed, Medicare was projected to face a serious fiscal shortfall in 2017. As of yesterday, Medicare trustees now believe the system is fiscally secure through 2030.
Kevin Drum noted the slowdown in costs, which is “spectacularly good news.”
Ten years ago, Medicare was a runaway freight train. Spending was projected to increase indefinitely, rising to 13 percent of GDP by 2080. This year, spending is projected to slow down around 2040, and reaches only 6 percent of GDP by 2090.
Six percent! That’s half what we thought a mere decade ago. If that isn’t spectacular, I don’t know what is.
Obviously, all of these projections come with caveats because no one can say with certainty what will happen in the future, but the projections are encouraging – and far more heartening than they were before the ACA passed.
But Jeb Bush is under the impression that Medicare is, without a doubt, doomed, so we might as well get rid of the program now and see what Paul Ryan has in store for seniors in his far-right bag of tricks.
There’s a better way. Medicare’s future is looking brighter, it’s as popular as ever, and its fiscal challenges can be addressed without tearing down the entire system. It’s a matter of political will – either elected policymakers will fight to protect Medicare or they’ll push to eliminate it.
by Nordic » Thu Jul 23, 2015 8:41 pm
by RocketMan » Fri Jul 24, 2015 3:39 am
Bill Clinton and George W Bush spurn partisanship for friendship
George W Bush and Bill Clinton have revealed how they started to grow close, to the point where Bush has taken to calling his Democratic predecessor his “brother from another mother”.
Clinton began working with Bush’s father, President George HW Bush, in the aftermath of the 2004 Asian tsunami. The two continued such fundraising work after Hurricane Katrina and a relationship was born. If that meant that one Bush became a surrogate father to Clinton, the other became a surrogate brother.
In an interview with Time magazine, the two ex-presidents weighed in on the 2016 election – in which it is possible Clinton’s wife, Hillary, could face Bush’s brother, Jeb.
In Bush’s analysis of such contests, “there’s kind of a general pattern”. The 43rd president added: “There will be flashes in the pans, there will be this crisis, there will be the funding thing. There will be all these things that happen, but eventually the person who can best lead their party will be nominated.”
The two also talked about the need for bipartisanship.
Clinton said: “I do believe that people yearn to see us both argue and agree … and they know in their gut, they gotta know, that all these conflicts just for the sake of conflict are bad for America and not good for the world.”
The 42nd president added, however: “This is highly complicated. People don’t like negative, divisive environments. But they frequently reward them in elections.”
Bush noted that when he and Clinton appear together in public these days, they are given a warm reception.
“I think it lifts their spirits,” he said. “Most people expect that a Republican and Democrat couldn’t possibly get along in this day and age.”
With close family members running for the White House, the two ex-presidents are on the sidelines. While Clinton was an active surrogate for his wife in her 2008 presidential campaign, he is taking a more modest role this time.
“I think most of my role will be giving advice if I’m asked for it,” Clinton said. “And I try not to even offer it at home unless I’m asked.”
Bush is playing a similar role on his brother’s campaign.
“If [Jeb] needs my help, he’ll call me,” he said. “Otherwise I’m on the sidelines, and happily so.”
Given that Clinton and Bush are – apart from the present incumbent – the only two men alive to be elected to two terms in the White House it’s likely that at some point, sooner or later, they will be asked for their advice.
* This article was amended on 23 July 2015. An earlier version said “Clinton and Bush are the only two men alive to be elected to two terms in the White House”.
The 42nd president added, however: “This is highly complicated. People don’t like negative, divisive environments. But they frequently reward them in elections.”
by stillrobertpaulsen » Mon Jul 27, 2015 5:58 pm
RocketMan » Fri Jul 24, 2015 2:39 am wrote:The 42nd president added, however: “This is highly complicated. People don’t like negative, divisive environments. But they frequently reward them in elections.”
It's like they've invented their own bullshit rationale for the continuing dynastic plutocracy that has absolutely zero to do with anything resembling real life or even political theory. How exactly do people "reward in election" these "negative, divisive environments"?? Sheeee-yiiiiiiiit. Statesman, my ass. A glib used car salesman, more like it.
by cptmarginal » Sun Sep 13, 2015 11:49 am
What follows is a re-cap from primary sources who were there —including local official and aviation observers—about what took place on the day after 9/11.
And, after that, one final astonishing disclosure, a world exclusive, revealed here for the first time.
But first, a word about the sources of the information about Bush, who it came from, and how I learned of it. In his question, Jackman references Mike (Marty) Treanor from the Venice Police Department.
Treanor was the first person to tell me of Jeb Bush’s flight to Washington with the files from Huffman Aviation and the Venice Police Department. But not the last.
“The FBI took all our files, everything,” Treanor told me. “They loaded the files right outside this window into two Ryder trucks, then drove them right onto a C-130 military cargo plane at the Sarasota Airport, which took off for Washington with Jeb Bush aboard.”
by Grizzly » Sun Sep 13, 2015 10:39 pm
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