Columnist.
Donald Trump has jumped to the top of the national polls for the Republican Party's presidential nomination. It's an embarrassing moment for the GOP, the country and the planet. But everyone knows America's richest celebrity businessman will never become the Republican candidate, much less president of the U.S. Unfortunately for the GOP's future, however, the billionaire blowhard is not going to fade away in a week or two like Herman Cain or Michele Bachmann did in 2012.
FYI, my fellow Americans. Donald Trump, a political amateur, has won the first Republican presidential debate of the 2016 primary. It wasn't a formal scheduled TV debate. That political circus doesn't debut on Fox News until next month. The debate Trump won was the one dealing with illegal immigrants from Mexico that he started three weeks ago when he officially announced he was running for president. Trump, who didn't bother to use a prepared speech or read from a teleprompter, said blunt and unfriendly things about his fellow GOP candidates and their lousy leadership skills, which the liberal mainstream media gleefully reported.
You can tell it's presidential election season. Once again, politicians and the mainstream media are being stupid and irresponsible. They are wasting our time on minor issues that get both sides of the conservative-liberal divide riled up at each other, but prevent us from focusing on what really matters. We have a mess of serious problems we have to fix or deal with at home and overseas. And what have the media, the politicians and the whole country been yapping and arguing about for two weeks? The symbolism of a 150-year-old Confederate battle flag.
Poor Jeb. He's Donald Trump's first Republican victim, but he won't be his last. On Monday Bush officially declared he was a Republican candidate for president, something everyone knew was coming. Jeb gave a serious, by-the-book announcement speech, explaining his many qualifications, making his claim that he's a true conservative and promising to make America great again. It was boringly Bush, and maybe a little too moderate for hardline conservatives. But it was mature and dignified. Presidential even.
We've known for a long time that Barrack Obama is clueless when it comes to dealing with what's left of Iraq. Now we also know he's still planless. Our president was in Europe earlier this week at a "Group of Seven" conference, where he met with leaders of the world's seven most industrialized economies. During his concluding remarks he made news when he said his top security advisers were still working on a plan for how to train Iraq defense forces to fight ISIS.
In the past few weeks we've learned that Josh Dugger was a child molester, former Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert was a child molester and the Methodist Church in the UK has apologized for 2,000 cases of abuse dating back to 1950. Child molesters can be found in the highest reaches of politics. Molesters can be television celebrities. And molesters can ply their abuse under the cover of the church. With abusers that pervasive it makes sense to learn more about the perpetrators. Thanks to an excellent article in The Jewish Woman we can. The really bad news in the report titled "Things You Need to Know About Child Molesters" is that child abuse is an infinite chain. "The vast majority of child molesters are male, and most sexual abusers were sexually abused as children." And although in retrospect we consider them monsters, child molesters are successful because they "usually try to be very charming and friendly." They are also patient. After gaining the trust and approval of parents and organizations dealing with youth they are often given positions of authority that the molester abuses along with the children.
I don't care how popular the Duggar family and their TLC reality show "19 Kids & Counting" is with Christian conservatives. I don't care how many Republican presidential hopefuls Josh Duggar posed with in Iowa, or how important his celebrity was to the Family Research Council, the conservative Christian lobbying group. When the Duggar family's oldest son admitted he had molested and fondled five little girls — including some of his own sisters — when he was 14, it was time for conservative Christians to hold Josh and the Duggar family accountable for their actions. Most didn't. Also, I noticed, most of those who want to be the GOP's president in 2016 bit their tongues and pretended they hadn't heard the shocking news.
Books and pencils, not money. That's how you truly escape poverty. American liberals still don't understand that simple concept, but millions of poor people living in the sprawling slums of Nairobi do. They know it's much better to be given an education instead of a handout. I've seen how the urban poor think in Kenya. I've been to Nairobi with my wife Colleen, who is a travel agent. When she takes 24 wealthy clients to Kenya for a safari, she always makes it a point to take them to a remarkable private school in the middle of Nairobi's slums.
Liberals have been the biggest losers in the Baltimore Blame Game. For a week they've been saying a lot of stupid things about the cause of the riots in Baltimore. — They said the wild night of rioting, looting and burning by young black men was caused by Freddie Gray's death, which was supposedly yet another example of our country's racist policing methods even though three of the six cops indicted were black. — They said the rioting in Baltimore was caused by the inner-city's bad economy or the shortage of jobs that'll pay high school dropouts with no skills $15 an hour. — They said the rioting was caused by the mass incarceration of black men, the growing wage gap between rich and poor, Republican cuts in social spending, underfunded schools and the legacy of slavery.
Turkey's President Recep Erdogan, one of President Obama's new best friends along with Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, was extremely unhappy last week as truth — tellers worldwide observed the 100th anniversary of the beginning of the Armenian genocide. By the time the killing concluded an estimated 1.5 million Armenians lay dead in Turkey, killed by soldiers serving the Ottoman Empire. One could accurately describe President Erdogan as a genocide denier. He claims the death toll is wildly exaggerated. What's more, according to him, there was nothing organized about the deaths. It was a time of civil war and unrest that just happened to be fatal to Armenians. Maybe they hadn't had their shots.
Hillary's all in for 2016. Whoopee. She officially arrived Sunday — but not in the flesh. She announced her decision with a low-key tweet and a two-minute video featuring a diverse lineup of adorable Democrat voters, a sappy message about being "a champion of everyday Americans" and very little face-time for herself. Then, to prove she's still a grassroots Chicago girl at heart, the multimillionaire from Chappaqua sneaked out of New York at 70 mph on one of the phoniest "road trips" of all time.
Justice has been done in Boston, but it's not finished. Dzhokhar Tsarnaev has been found guilty in the Boston Marathon terrorism bombing. The verdict Wednesday was no surprise. Everyone in the country already knew that Tsarnaev and his dead brother planted two bombs in the crowd at the Boston Marathon on April 15, 2013. Even Tsarnaev's defense team acknowledged that he took part in the act of domestic terrorism that killed three and wounded 260 others.
March Madness hit Indiana hard this week. It had nothing to do with the NCAA's Final Four Championship, which is coming to Indianapolis on Saturday. And despite what you think, it wasn't about gay rights, either. It was really all about was 2016 presidential politics. The firestorm of media attention and orchestrated liberal outrage started last week after Indiana Gov. Mike Pence signed his state's version of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act.
When Ted Cruz officially stepped into the 2016 presidential ring this week the boo-birds attacked immediately. But it wasn't just the liberals of the mainstream media who threw bottles and chairs at the conservative Texan. It was Cruz's fellow Republicans. Is he qualified after only three years in the Senate? Where was he born again? Isn't he too aggressively Christian? Isn't he too conservative to win the general election? Shouldn't we nominate someone more moderate, someone who isn't hated by the MSM and wouldn't scare independents?
"What about the children?" Politicians of both parties often stoop to using our children as props whenever they're fighting for a new law or pet government program. They argue we need to cut the $18 trillion debt, regulate the Internet or pay teachers more "for our children." "Think of the children" is almost always an emotional and irrational appeal made in desperation by those who don't have a reasonable or legitimate argument. Invoking "the children" is pure BS. It's obvious political BS. But it's BS that's been used for a long time by Democrats and Republicans.
There we go again, Republicans. We keep shooting ourselves in the feet — and at the worst possible times. Things were going pretty well for the GOP until Monday. President Obama was getting major grief from Republicans (and even some Democrats) for preparing to sign America on to a horrible nuclear arms deal with the Iranians. Hillary Clinton was ensnared in an email-deleting scandal of her own making that was so obviously unlawful and politically devious that even the liberal media were attacking her.
I'm beginning the sympathize more and more with the average man who thinks the system is rigged against him. The current unemployment rate in California, where I live, is 5.4 percent. This is almost a full percentage point higher than the unemployment rate for the nation as a whole. So you can imagine how the average unemployed Californian feels when he reads that the state Employment Development Department in Sacramento has hired citizens of India to process Golden State unemployment claims. According to News10, "with the exception of two managers, everyone inside the office is from outside of the U.S. They are employed by Deloitte, a major U.S. IT company hired by the state to create and manage its Unemployment Insurance Modernization project. The mostly Indian nationals are allowed to work here under a visa program called H-1B."
Where does the Obama Administration find these people? How did Marie Harf — the deputy spokesperson for the State Department's Bureau of Public Affairs — get her job? On Monday she provided the latest proof that Barack Obama and the people he's surrounded himself with are not just dangerously incompetent, they're idiots. Appearing on MSNBC's "Hardball with Chris Matthews," Harf said the best way to fight Islamic terrorism is not with guns and bombs but with job programs.
Barack Obama is living in his own dream world. To hear him tell it, thanks to six glorious years of his leadership, America is in great shape again at home and overseas. According to his boasts, which the mainstream media rarely challenge, the economy has rebounded from the Great Recession and federal budget deficits have been sliced in half under his watch. Never mind that we're in the slowest economic recovery since FDR's awful policies prolonged the Great Depression. Never mind that the "official" unemployment rate of 5.7 percent is a statistical fraud because it doesn't count the millions who've dropped out of the job market.
