Columnist.
The Politico headline was blunt: "Ben Carson Admits Fabricating West Point Scholarship." Except Carson made no such admission. He acknowledged never applying to West Point. But as a top ROTC student in Detroit, there's little question that had he wanted to go to West Point, he could've gotten in. Technically, West Point offers appointments, and the full tuition is paid for by taxpayers. But even West Point's own website uses the word "scholarship." In any case, Carson went to Yale, and, as such, could likely have gone to any school in the country.
Question: What did Reince Priebus not know about CNBC — and when did he not know it? Priebus, chair of the Republican National Committee, sanctioned CNBC's sponsorship of last week's debate. When during and after the debate many of the candidates blasted the moderators for their bias, Priebus said that the moderators created a "hostile environment" and "it was one 'gotcha' question, one personal low blow after the other."
The narrative following Hillary's testimony at Congress' recent Benghazi hearing is clear: Hillary won. She (for the most part) calmly answered all the questions. She nodded approvingly when the Democrats on the committee accused Republicans of engaging in a partisan witch-hunt.
"Gun control advocates," reports Politico, "frustrated by repeated failures to pass even moderate restrictions on gun ownership, are trying to forge an alliance with Black Lives Matter and the criminal justice reform movement in a strategy shift aimed at overcoming the lobbying power of the National Rifle Association." Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton recently said: "I think that we have to look at the fact that we lose 90 people a day from gun violence. This has gone on too long and it's time the entire country stood up against the NRA. The majority of our country supports background checks, and even the majority of gun owners do."
Dr. Ben Carson, now second in most polls for the Republican presidential nomination, naturally finds himself under attack by threatened lefties. GQ published an anti-Carson article with the headline "F—k Ben Carson," except it spelled out the f-word. Comic actor Seth Rogen tweeted "F—k you" to Carson. And a Daily Beast column accused him of anti-Semitism. The columnist cited Godwin's law, which states that debate gets shut down the minute one invokes Nazi Germany to make a point.
Here's the narrative: mass killers are almost always white men. The Daily Kos recently published a piece with this headline: "How come we can't tell the truth about the White Mass Killer Problem?" It asks, "Just what the fracking hell is the matter with all these mass-murdering white people?" Certainly mass killers are almost always men. But they're not almost always white men. Overrepresented? Perhaps. But almost always white? No.
"The Late Show" host, Stephen Colbert, in an interview with Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Tex., said conservative icon President Ronald Reagan actually raised taxes and signed an amnesty bill. Gotcha! To the delight of his audience, Colbert argued that if Reagan could "compromise" by raising taxes and granting amnesty, why can't the intransigent Republican conservatives of today do so? For whatever reason, the normally nimble Cruz failed to educate Colbert and his audience that Reagan came to regret the tax hikes of 1982 — the ones that the left reminds us were, as a percentage of GDP, the largest in U.S. peacetime history.
During Q&A at a Donald Trump town hall event in New Hampshire, a man called Obama a "Muslim." When Trump failed to "correct" him, David Goodfriend, a Democratic strategist and ex-President Bill Clinton staffer, appeared on Newsmax TV calling Trump "a racist bastard." Memo to the strategist: Islam is a religion, not a race. But Democratic standard operating procedure is as follows: Whenever possible, convert any issue someway, somehow, into an accusation that Republicans are "racist." The tepid economic recovery continues, most Americans believe our foreign policy is on the wrong track and only 21 percent of Americans support Obama's Iran deal. But hey, Republicans are racist.
Is Vice President Joe Biden in or out? Many praised Biden's "honesty" for saying to Stephen Colbert on CBS' "The Late Show": "I don't think any man or woman should run for president unless, number one, they know exactly why they would want to be president, and two, they can look at folks out there and say, 'I promise you, you have my whole heart, my whole soul, my energy and my passion to do this.' And I'd be lying if I said that I knew I was there. I'm being completely honest. Nobody has a right, in my view, to seek that office unless they're willing to give it 110 percent of who they are."
Despite the lack of evidence that there is an increase in cops shooting blacks, let alone shooting blacks unlawfully, a few recent killings of blacks by cops has spawned the so-called Black Lives Matter movement. But over the past 45 years, per the Centers for Disease Control, police killings of blacks are *down* 75 percent. What *are* on the increase, year-to-year, are cop killings. The No. 1 preventable cause of death of young black males is homicide — usually at the hands of other blacks. The primary cause of preventable death among young white males is auto accidents.
One can be excused if he thought he witnessed a heckler, not a reporter, being ejected from a recent Donald Trump press conference. Jorge Ramos, a so-called "journalist," works for Univision, and has more than two million nightly viewers. He told Trump, "I have the right to ask a question." Trump repeatedly told him to sit down, saying, "No, you haven't been called. Go back to Univision." He asked Trump the following "question": "You cannot deport 11 million people. You cannot build a 1,900-mile wall. You cannot deny citizenship to children." That was, at best, a series of statements. At worst, it was a rant.
A blunt, P.O.'d talker like Trump strikes a nerve with people who feel like they're falling behind and, more importantly, have been let down by get-along, go-along GOP leaders. These are the Boehners and the McConnells who huff and puff about President Barack Obama and his "out of control" Democratic Party, but by Thursday have moved on to other issues, after having yet again been out-maneuvered by the Democratic Congressional minority.
Donald Trump stands accused of "trashing the GOP brand" by many of the same GOP politicians and pundits who have no reluctance in "trashing" the most consequential recent decision made by a Republican president — the decision to go to war in Iraq. When asked a few months ago whether he would have authorized the 2003 war in Iraq, as his brother President George W. Bush did, Republican candidate and former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush first said yes, "I would have." Then, when criticized days later, the younger Bush did a 180: "So here's the deal. If we're all supposed to answer hypothetical questions, knowing what we know now, I would not have engaged. I would not have gone into Iraq." Other Republican candidates — with the exception of Sen. Lindsey Graham — quickly jumped on board the "I wouldn't have gone into Iraq" bus.
The media enthusiastically remind us that it's the first anniversary of the death of Ferguson's Michael Brown, a death that spawned the so-called Black Lives Matter movement. In a September speech at the United Nations, President Barack Obama said, "The world also took notice of the small American city of Ferguson, Missouri — where a young man was killed, and a community was divided." Never mind that both a grand jury and the federal Department of Justice exonerated the officer who shot and killed Brown. Never mind that neither the physical evidence nor eyewitness testimony corroborated the assertions that Brown had his hands up or that he said, "Don't shoot."
Socialism, according to Dictionary.com, is defined as: "A theory or system of social organization that advocates the vesting of the ownership and control of the means of production and distribution, of capital, land, etc., in the community as a whole." Debbie Wasserman Schultz, the chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee, recently appeared on MSNBC's "Hardball with Chris Matthews." Matthews asked, "What is the difference between a Democrat and a socialist?" Wasserman Schultz laughed, looked stunned, and began hemming and hawing.
Donald Trump's ex-wife, Ivana, recently denied a 30-year-old allegation that Donald Trump raped her. The allegation, according to the New York Daily News, stems from the book "The Last Tycoon: The Many Lives of Donald J. Trump" by Harry Hurt III. The News wrote: "Hurt's 1993 book ... cited a divorce deposition, in which Ivana Trump claimed her then-husband sexually attacked her. ... In a rage, Trump allegedly tore out clumps of his wife's hair, the book claimed, and ripped off her clothes and assaulted her. 'According to versions she repeats to some of her closest confidantes, 'he raped me.' ... "Ivana Trump herself, in a statement that ended up on the first page of the book, admitted to there having been an ugly night between herself and Trump in 1989, but said she hadn't used the word 'rape' in her deposition literally."
Ninety-five percent of black voters in 2008 voted for then-Sen. Barack Obama. Surely a "progressive" black president would care about, empathize with and understand black America in a way no other president ever has or could, right?
The Los Angeles Times headline was cheerful: "It's Official: Latinos Now Outnumber Whites in California." The Times said, "As of July 1, 2014, about 14.99 million Latinos live in California, edging out the 14.92 million whites in the state." Is this good news or bad news? The L.A. Times seems to think the former. The article cites the chief demographer for the state finance department who asserts, "A young Latino workforce helps the economy by backfilling retiring baby boomers." Really?
Businessman and celebrity Donald Trump, in his nearly hour-long, teleprompter-less announcement of his GOP presidential candidacy, said: "The U.S. has become a dumping ground for everybody else's problems. ... When Mexico sends its people, they're not sending their best. They're not sending you. They're not sending you. They're sending people that have lots of problems, and they're bringing those problems with us. They're bringing drugs. They're bringing crime. They're rapists. And some, I assume, are good people." His crude and over-the-top comment instantly made him the most hated white man since Donald Sterling. Never mind that Trump hit on a topic the media are loath to admit: our borders remain porous. The backlash against Trump was fierce. NBC, which carried Trump's show, "The Apprentice," ended their relationship with him. Univision dropped Trump's Miss USA pageant. ESPN moved a golf tournament from a Trump-owned resort to another site. Macy's dropped Trump's menswear line. And New York's Mayor Bill de Blasio said, "We are reviewing Trump contracts with the city." For New York City, the Trump organization runs a carousel, an ice-skating rink and a golf course.
For the second time, Chief Justice John Roberts breathed life into Obamacare and rescued it from the Constitution. In the first big Obamacare ruling, Roberts called Obamacare a "tax," and therefore lawfully enacted as consistent with the powers of Congress — and not a violation of the Commerce Clause. Never mind the Obama administration sold Obamacare with the assurance that individuals who failed to purchase health insurance would incur a penalty — not a tax. On this latest ruling, Roberts takes the words "established by the State" to mean "established by the states or by the federal government" — even though the last five words appear nowhere in the law passed by Congress and signed by President Obama.
