But... But... But... Don't We NORMALLY Punish Illegal Behavior?

From the NYT

*  *  *

"Donald J. Trump said on Wednesday that women who seek abortions should be subject to “some form of punishment” if the procedure is banned in the United States, further elevating Republican concerns that his explosive remarks about women could doom the party in the fall."

That was the Time's first paragraph... their lead... their first salvo.

And what a firestorm Trump's "outrageous" statement - his answer to a direct question - caused.

But before we explore further, allow me to offer an alternate reality where the topic is drug abuse:

"Senator Ted Cruz said on Wednesday that men who seek to purchase and use heroin should be subject to "some form of punishment" because the purchase and use of heroin is banned in the United States."

So... any problem?

(*SMIRK*)

Folks... Trump was answering a hypothetical question - and frankly... his answer made perfect friggin' sense to me. Just as... if the above "alternate reality" Cruz quote was an actual quote... I'd have no problem with Cruz having said it.

Indeed... I'd be thrilled if Cruz... or Trump... or Hillary Rodham Clinton... or Bernie Sanders... would come out with such a common sense no-brainer utterance of basic logic!

(*HEADACHE*)

And by the way... Trump said "some form of punishment." He didn't say "a woman who gets an illegal abortion should spend the rest of her life in prison." He didn't say "a woman who gets an illegal abortion should herself face the death penalty."

Folks... seriously... Trump didn't even specifically call for jail time!

And for "anti-abortion" candidate Ted Cruz - and other "anti-abortion" Republicans - condemn Donald Trump? (Condemn him not for not being tough enough... but condemn him for saying a woman who breaks a hypothetical law should face punishment!)

My question: Is Ted Cruz retarded?

My follow-up: How many millions of my fellow citizens are... retarded?

Because frankly folks... one would have to be a friggin' retard to buy into the NYT/Liberal Media/RINO/Ted Cruz "big screen production" on this!

So let me get this straight... here's the scenario: Abortion is illegal. (With me so far?) Nevertheless a woman seeks and gets an abortion. (Still with me?) A doctor performs the abortion - the illegal abortion - at the behest of the woman. (We're all on the same page with this scenario?) Trump and Cruz both agree that the doctor should "face punishment."

(*PAUSE*)

But... the woman who hired the doctor to perform the illegal abortion... is held blameless? She - under the "illegal" scenario should face no punishment while the doctor she paid... is punished... is perhaps sent to jail... at the very least no doubt loses his medical license and thus his livelihood?

(*HEADACHE*)

Someone please explain to me how Trump is the bad guy and Cruz is the good guy...

(*JUST SHAKING MY HEAD*)

But, hey... I'm up for some Trump bashing! Here... continue reading from the NYT article!

"Hours later, Mr. Trump recanted his remarks, essentially in full, a rare and remarkable shift for a candidate who proudly extols his unwillingness to apologize or bow to “political correctness.”

"If abortion were disallowed, he said in a statement, “the doctor or any other person performing this illegal act upon a woman would be held legally responsible, not the woman.”

“The woman is a victim in this case, as is the life in her womb,” he continued."

Huh...?!?! What...?!?!

Seriously...?!?!

WHAT... A... PUSSY...!!!

I "get" it! It's "damage control." But, folks... what a cowardly act! What a total pussy move!

Oh... but Cruz folks... sorry... you guys can't bash Trump on this pussy move because...

(*DRUM ROLL*)

...because that pussy move was Cruz's "go-to!" Cruz's original "go-to!"

(*MIGRAINE HEADACHE*)

Anyway, folks... my take-away... Trump and Cruz both leave a great deal to be desired as candidates and as honorable men of integrity. They both periodically engage in behavior that literally sickens me.

(*SIGH*)

But... they're our only hope for saving this country.

With all their various faults either man stands head and shoulders above any other Republican and obviously any Democrat.

Folks... all I'm saying is... face the truth as it exists. Don't be like Trump. Don't be like Cruz. Don't be like the NYT.

(*DEEPER SIGH*)

Demand logic and intellectual (and ethical and moral) consistency from "your" guy (or gal) as well as from "the other guy/gal."

Who's With Me? Who Wants Most Washington D.C. Powerbrokers... DEAD?

By the always Honorable Ron Paul

*  *  *

According to a recent poll, 73% of all Americans oppose increases in federal spending.

* MEANING 27% EITHER WANT MORE SPENDING... OR... DON'T HAVE AN OPINION.

(*SIGH*)

Since this anti-government spending sentiment is a major reason Republicans control the House and Senate, one would expect the Republican Congress to hold the line on, or even cut, government spending. Yet, despite the Republican leadership’s rhetoric about "fiscal responsibility," this year’s House Republican budget spends $104 billion more than the GOP’s 2013 budget.

* DEAR AL QAEDA: Latitude‎: ‎38.889931; DMS Lat‎: ‎38° 53' 23.7516'' N; Longitude‎: ‎-77.009003; DMS Long‎: ‎77° 0' 32.4108'' W

* JUST... SAYIN'...

Some conservatives, most notably the Heritage Foundation, have criticized the GOP budget. Heritage and the conservative House Republican Study Committee (RSC) have both prepared conservative alternatives to the official Republican budgets. Unfortunately, neither the Heritage nor the RSC budget meaningfully reduces federal spending.

(*SIGH*)

Conservative efforts to reduce the size of government are handicapped by their love affair with the military-industrial complex.

(*NOD*)

Since the Pentagon’s budget makes up the largest category of “discretionary” spending, it seems logical that a serious balanced budget plan would reduce spending on militarism.

* YEP!

Yet many of the same conservatives who (rightly) criticize the Republicans for refusing to cut spending not only oppose cuts to the Pentagon budget, they actually call for increases in military spending!

* YEP...

(*SIGH*)

These conservatives refuse to admit that the trillions spent on “regime change” overseas have not only failed to turn the targeted countries into Jeffersonian republics but have actually empowered groups like ISIS.

* YEP...

(*CLENCHING MY FISTS*)

Conservative support for ever-increasing spending on militarism undercuts their efforts to end corporate welfare. Much of the so-called defense budget is wasted on boondoggles like the F-35 fighter that only defend the lifestyles of defense contractors and their lobbyists.

(*NODDING*)

Despite insisting on increased military spending, the Heritage and RSC budgets both, at least on paper, eliminate the deficit in less than ten years.

* GIVE ME A FRIGGIN' BREAK. CONGRESSES LAST FOR TWO (2) YEARS. READ THE FRIGGIN' CONSTITUTION!

These budgets contain some other positive elements. For example, the RSC budget calls for an audit of the Federal Reserve. Both budgets repeal ObamaCare and provide the American people with much needed tax relief.

The good features of the conservative budgets do not cancel out their flaws.

For one thing, neither of the conservative budgets actually cuts spending.

(*SNORT*)

* FOLKS... I'M NOT AFRAID TO SAY IT: I'D BE THE HAPPIEST GUY ON EARTH IF MOST OF THESE BASTARDS WERE HUNG BY THE NECK UNTIL DEAD...

(*SIGHING*)

Instead, they both use the old DC trick of cutting projected increases in spending.

Only in DC could budgets that increase domestic spending be considered a “radical attack on the welfare state.”

The fundamental flaw in the conservative budgets is philosophical: like much of modern American conservatism, the budgets accept the notion that the American government is both constitutionally authorized to run, and capable of running, the economy, our lives, and the world.

(Hence the “conservative” budgets do little or nothing to scale back the federal role in education, housing, welfare, or commerce.)

* FOLKS... THIS IS WHY WHEN TRUMP F--KED UP THE OTHER DAY VIA GIVING HIS ANSWER REGARDING A QUESTION ON FEDERAL PRIORITIES I DIDN'T LOSE MY $HIT. NO. WHAT WOULD BE THE POINT? I HOLD OUT HOPE THAT TRUMP CAN BE CONVINCED OF THE ERROR OF HIS WAYS WHICH BROUGHT FORTH HIS ANSWER! BUT WHAT I KNOW... KNOW FOR A FACT... IS THAT THE SCUMBAGS WHO ACTUALLY RUN THE FRIGGIN' GOVERNMENT - THE REPUBLICAN SCUMBAGS - HAVE EVEN LESS RESPECT FOR THE CONSTITUTION AND/OR FISCAL RESPONSIBILITY THAN TRUMP DOES!

Beltway Conservative budgets reform welfare programs by giving the states more authority and flexibility in administering the programs. This may make marginal improvements in the programs, but it does not make the welfare state moral or constitutional. It also does not make government welfare more efficient or compassionate than private charity.

* YEP. DON'T TAKE THE MONEY IN THE FIRST PLACE - AND THEN THERE WON'T BE ANY MONEY FOR THOSE SCUMBAGS TO "REDISTRIBUTE!"

* SERIOUSLY... WHO'S WITH ME... WHO WANTS AT LEAST 90% OF THESE BASTARDS DEAD?!

Similarly, while conservatives promise entitlement reforms that give individuals greater control, they refuse to grant young people the option to care for themselves by opting out of the government entitlement system.

(*NOD*)

If America is going to avoid a major economic crisis, government spending and debt must be reduced. However, budgets that merely tinker around the edges of the welfare-warfare state, or only reduce the rate of spending increases, merely postpone the day of reckoning.

Only a budget that brings the troops home, shuts down unconstitutional agencies, ends all corporate welfare, and begins unwinding our welfare and entitlement programs will ensure future generations enjoy liberty, peace, and prosperity.

* AMEN!

Trump Believes in America First; And So Do I!

By Patrick J. Buchanan

*  *  *

I am “not isolationist, but I am ‘America First,'” Donald Trump told The New York times last weekend. “I like the expression.”

* AS DO I, PAT; AS DO I!

Of NATO, where the U.S. underwrites three-fourths of the cost of defending Europe, Trump calls this arrangement “unfair, economically, to us,” and adds, “We will not be ripped off anymore.”

* GOD BLESS DONALD TRUMP!

Beltway media may be transfixed with Twitter wars over wives and alleged infidelities. But the ideas Trump aired should ignite a national debate over U.S. overseas commitments — especially NATO.

For the Donald’s ideas are not lacking for authoritative support.

The first NATO supreme commander, Gen. Eisenhower, said in February 1951 of the alliance: “If in 10 years, all American troops stationed in Europe for national defense purposes have not been returned to the United States, then this whole project will have failed.”

* YOU GETTING THIS, FOLKS?

As JFK biographer Richard Reeves relates, President Eisenhower, a decade later, admonished the president-elect on NATO.

“Eisenhower told his successor it was time to start bringing the troops home from Europe. ‘America is carrying far more than her share of free world defense,’ he said. It was time for other nations of NATO to take on more of the costs of their own defense.”

No Cold War president followed Ike’s counsel.

But when the Cold War ended with the collapse of the Soviet Empire, the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact, and the breakup of the Soviet Union into 15 nations, a new debate erupted. The conservative coalition that had united in the Cold War fractured. Some of us argued that when the Russian troops went home from Europe, the American troops should come home from Europe. Time for a populous prosperous Europe to start defending itself.

* ONE WOULD THINK...!!!

Instead, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush began handing out NATO memberships, i.e., war guarantees, to all ex-Warsaw Pact nations and even Baltic republics that had been part of the Soviet Union.

* F--KING MORONS...

In a historically provocative act, the U.S. moved its “red line” for war with Russia from the Elbe River in Germany to the Estonian-Russian border, a few miles from St. Petersburg.

* YEP. WE DID.

We declared to the world that should Russia seek to restore its hegemony over any part of its old empire in Europe, she would be at war with the United States. No Cold War president ever considered issuing a war guarantee of this magnitude, putting our homeland at risk of nuclear war, to defend Latvia and Estonia.

Recall. Ike did not intervene to save the Hungarian freedom fighters in 1956. Lyndon Johnson did not lift a hand to save the Czechs, when Warsaw Pact armies crushed “Prague Spring” in 1968. Reagan refused to intervene when Gen. Wojciech Jaruzelski, on Moscow’s orders, smashed Solidarity in 1981.

These presidents put America first.

* YES. THEY DID...

All would have rejoiced in the liberation of Eastern Europe. But none would have committed us to war with a nuclear-armed nation like Russia to guarantee it. Yet, here was George W. Bush declaring that any Russian move against Latvia or Estonia meant war with the United States. John McCain wanted to extend U.S. war guarantees to Georgia and Ukraine.

* MCCAIN IS A LUNATIC.

This was madness born of hubris.

* YES. YES IT WAS. YES IT IS!

And among those who warned against moving NATO onto Russia’s front porch was America’s greatest geo-strategist, the author of containment, George Kennan:

“Expanding NATO would be the most fateful error of American policy in the post-Cold War era. Such a decision may be expected to impel Russian foreign policy in directions decidedly not to our liking.”

* WHICH IT DID...

Kennan was proven right.

By refusing to treat Russia as we treated other nations that repudiated Leninism, we created the Russia we feared, a rearming nation bristling with resentment.

The Russian people, having extended a hand in friendship and seen it slapped away, cheered the ouster of the accommodating Boris Yeltsin and the arrival of an autocratic strong man who would make Russia respected again.

We ourselves prepared the path for Vladimir Putin.

While Trump is focusing on how America is bearing too much of the cost of defending Europe, it is the risks we are taking that are paramount, risks no Cold War president ever dared to take.

Why should America fight Russia over who rules in the Baltic States or Romania and Bulgaria?

When did the sovereignty of these nations become interests so vital we would risk a military clash with Moscow that could escalate into nuclear war?

Why are we still committed to fight for scores of nations on five continents?

* ALL VERY GOOD QUESTIONS!

Trump is challenging the mindset of a foreign policy elite whose thinking is frozen in a world that disappeared around 1991.

He is suggesting a new foreign policy where the United States is committed to war only when are attacked or U.S. vital interests are imperiled.

[Trump believes that] when we agree to defend other nations, they should bear a full share of the cost of their own defense. Trump believes The era of the free rider should be over.

Trump’s phrase, “America First!” has a nice ring to it.