The 2016 Election: Showcasing Republi-CON (Satan's) Fear, Anger, and Hatred

UPDATE V:  "'I will gladly accept the mantle of anger.'

Thus did Donald Trump react this week to South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, who in her Republican response to the State of the Union address bravely called on Americans to resist the temptation 'to follow the siren call of the angriest voices.'

And nobody wears the mantle of anger as well as Trump. The rest of the Republican presidential contenders, acolytes in anger all, seem happy to help him on with the cloak, to hem the sleeves and let out the waist until the fury fits perfectly.

Republicans like to blame Trump for hijacking the party, but equally to blame are the others in the race for letting it happen — and continuing to do so, now just two weeks from the Iowa caucuses. Thursday night’s debate was another depressing development: Any of four men on the stage — Marco Rubio, Jeb Bush, Chris Christie or John Kasich — could have been a viable alternative to the fear and demagoguery offered by Trump and Ted Cruz. Instead, they cluttered the stage and quarreled among themselves, offering little beyond faint echoes of Trump’s rage. . .

The GOP race is typically described as a struggle between the outsiders and the establishment. Really it’s a battle between the demagogic (Cruz and Trump) and the selfish (Rubio, Bush, Christie, Kasich). The latter candidates, blinded by certainty in their own magnificence, refuse to clear the field so that one of them can take on the demagogues. (Ben Carson, the other man on the stage, appeared to have wandered, bewildered, into the debate.)

The polling shows the dilemma: Trump averages about a third of the GOP vote, Cruz a fifth. The four others together are about a quarter – enough to give voters a viable alternative to Trump and Cruz, if only they could put country before self.

Worse, they seem content to echo and imitate Trump. Haley, in the audience for Thursday’s debate in South Carolina, got little support for her noble call this week for tolerance. . .

So if Trump’s other rivals are only going to ape his paranoia and rage, why would voters accept an imitation if they can have the original?"

Read the Washington Post, Trump’s rivals help him hijack the GOP.  

UPDATE IV:  "It’s still very possible that Donald Trump won’t win the GOP nomination. His GOP rivals — particularly Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio — will obviously fight him to the bitter end. If a clear establishment alternative — such as Rubio — emerges, senior Republicans will unite behind him, particularly if Trump continues to roll along.

But last night’s GOP debate suggests that in one important way, Republicans have already surrendered to Trump: they have mostly given up on trying to resist the terms of the debate as he has set them, and have mostly accepted that the battle will be fought on his turf."

Read the Washington Post, Republicans have surrendered to Donald Trump.

UPDATE III:  "President Obama suggested Tuesday that the United States may not, in fact, be on the verge of total collapse. The Republican presidential candidates responded in Thursday’s GOP debate by painting an even more dismal and dangerous picture than they had in the past. The president is a traitor. The military is a shell of a fighting force. The economy is a shambles. Average families are in grave danger. If Democrats win, the country is lost.

With only a few weeks left before the first primary contests, the GOP race has devolved into a competition for who can squeeze the most political advantage out of voter fear, no matter how over-the-top they sound and no matter how much damage they do by darkening the national mood. Sen. Ted Cruz (Tex.) 'won' the latest round of this increasingly disgusting show, with Donald Trump and Sen. Marco Rubio (Fla.) coming in second. But being the most effective at exaggerating the dangers the country faces and preying on voter anger is not an achievement; it is a moral failure."

Read the Washington Post, The dismal, dark, traitor-filled world Republican candidates inhabit, where you can read "the world according to" Republi-CONs. 

UPDATE II:  Now Republi-CONs are worried that party members are "follow[ing] the siren call of the angriest voices."

This after years of the same message:  "Be afraid. That fear and the anger from the GOP establishment’s apparent complacency are the reasons behind the strength of Trump, Cruz and others. Platitudes from Nikki Haley and others won’t stop that fear as long as they keep feeding it."

Read the Washington Post, Nikki Haley shows how the GOP establishment has fueled Trump’s rise. 

UPDATE:  "Cruz’s speeches are marked by what you might call pagan brutalism. There is not a hint of compassion, gentleness and mercy. Instead, his speeches are marked by a long list of enemies, and vows to crush, shred, destroy, bomb them. When he is speaking in a church the contrast between the setting and the emotional tone he sets is jarring.

Cruz lays down an atmosphere of apocalyptic fear. America is heading off 'the cliff to oblivion.'. .

As the Republican strategist Curt Anderson observed in Politico, there’s no variation in Cruz’s rhetorical tone. As is the wont of inauthentic speakers, everything is described as a maximum existential threat.

The fact is this apocalyptic diagnosis is ridiculous. The Obama administration has done things people like me strongly disagree with. But America is in better economic shape than any other major nation on earth. Crime is down. Abortion rates are down. Fourteen million new jobs have been created in five years. . .

But Cruz manufactures an atmosphere of menace in which there is no room for compassion, for moderation, for anything but dismantling and counterattack. And that is what he offers. Cruz’s programmatic agenda, to the extent that it exists in his speeches, is to destroy things: destroy the I.R.S., crush the 'jackals' of the E.P.A., end funding for Planned Parenthood, reverse Obama’s executive orders, make the desert glow in Syria, destroy the Iran nuclear accord. . .

Cruz exploits and exaggerates that fear. . .

The best conservatism balances support for free markets with a Judeo-Christian spirit of charity, compassion and solidarity. Cruz replaces this spirit with Spartan belligerence. He sows bitterness, influences his followers to lose all sense of proportion and teaches them to answer hate with hate. This Trump-Cruz conservatism looks more like tribal, blood and soil European conservatism than the pluralistic American kind.

Evangelicals and other conservatives have had their best influence on American politics when they have proceeded in a spirit of personalism — when they have answered hostility with service and emphasized the infinite dignity of each person. They have won elections as happy and hopeful warriors. Ted Cruz’s brutal, fear-driven, apocalypse-based approach is the antithesis of that."

Read The New York Times, The Brutalism of Ted Cruz.

Read also the Washington Post, David Brooks’s choice words on Cruz — ‘satanic’, ‘pagan’ — draw fire and a little brimstone, in which Brooks notes that other candidates are "'adopting some of the dark and satanic tones that Cruz has . . if you watch a Cruz speech, it’s like, we have got this enemy, we have got that enemy, we’re going to stomp on this person, we’re going to crush that person, we’re going to destroy that person.  It is an ugly world in Ted Cruz’s world. And it’s combative. And it’s angry, and it’s apocalyptic.'"

From the Washington Post, White Americans are boiling mad:

"Trump, Carson, or Cruz" (Now "Cruz, Trump or Rubio")

UPDATE VII:  Pastor Truthiness (aka Huckster and Con Man Gullible-Gallups) endorses the Franken-Trump/Trumpenstein (© NoBullU.com). 

Read Rick's Blog, Who endorsed Trump yesterday.

Of course, The Donald is quite the Godly man, so who else would Satan's Pastor pick ;-).

UPDATE VI: "Many legal scholars say Cruz supports an approach to constitutional law in which modern readers try to understand what the words in the Constitution would have meant to the people who wrote them and voted to ratify them more than two centuries ago. It's a concept known as originalism, and it's especially popular with conservatives. . .

On this straightforward, intuitive, and deeply conservative reasoning, several prominent legal scholars have argued Cruz is arguably not a natural-born citizen. As the Founding Fathers and their contemporaries probably would have understood that phrase, the argument goes, Cruz is ineligible for the presidency — not because he was born in Canada, but because he was born in Canada to a Cuban father. . .

'He should disqualify himself,' said Thomas Lee, a legal scholar at Fordham University, adding that Cruz should 'just be consistent.'

Lee explains that in medieval English law, the term "natural born" originally referred to subjects of the crown who were born in English territory.

Under King Edward III, who reigned from 1327 to 1377, England expanded this definition to include the children of ambassadors and soldiers who were serving the monarch overseas. In the centuries to come, Parliament modified the definition further to include the children of private English subjects who happened to be abroad.

In the late 18th century, though, that definition did not include English mothers who were traveling. If they conceived children with foreign men, it was assumed those children would not be loyal English subjects and were not considered 'natural born.' . .

[A]t the time [the Constitution] was ratified in 1788, Lee has argued that the phrase 'natural born' would have carried a specific legal meaning. Natural-born citizens would have been those born in the United States, or born abroad to fathers who were U.S. citizens. On that interpretation, Cruz would not have qualified because his mother was a citizen and his father was not. If Cruz takes an originalist approach to constitutional law, then by this logic, he should come to the conclusion that he is not natural born."

Read the Washington Post, Why the subtle sexism of the Founding Fathers might disqualify Ted Cruz for president.

UPDATE V:  Of course, there is always Jeb! Who.

Read the Washington Post, Lowered expectations are a blessing in disguise for Jeb Bush.  

UPDATE IV:  The problem with the Franken-Trump/Trumpenstein (© NoBullU.com) is that he's "a xenophobic showman who has been spreading fear and anger across the land toward immigrants, minorities, women, the disabled and, particularly, Muslims."

Read the Washington Post, Obama answers Trump’s dangerous demagoguery.

 

UPDATE III:  Of course, Birthers would say that Rubio is not a natural-born citizen because he was born (albeit in the United States) to parents who were not U.S. citizens at the time of his birth.

And as noted before, Ted Cruz is undoubtedly not a natural-born citizen.  Ted Cruz "was born in Calgary, Alberta, Canada, to a 'U.S. citizen mother and a Cuban immigrant father', giving him dual Canadian-American citizenship." Cruz only recently "renounce his Canadian citizenship and ceased being a citizen of Canada, on May 14, 2014."

Read also the Washington Post, Ted Cruz is not eligible to be president, which notes: "President Obama is without question eligible for the office he serves. The distinction between the president and Cruz is simple: The president was born within the United States, and the senator was born outside of it. That is a distinction with a difference."

So for a truly sincere non-racist Birther, the only choice is the Franken-Trump/Trumpenstein (© NoBullU.com).

UPDATE II:  The question now is "Cruz, Trump or Rubio".

And before you answer, read the Washington Post, 3 very real warning signs for Donald Trump in Iowa:, which notes:

"One of the things that becomes important as the election approaches is the confidence voters have that their chosen candidate can defeat the opposing party in the general election. Most signs point to that opponent being Hillary Clinton, and Iowa voters are less convinced than they were last month that Trump is the right guy to pit against her. (Which is probably true.)

In fact, Iowans think Cruz and Rubio would both be about as successful against Clinton as Trump — suggesting that Cruz or Rubio might gain more support as voters make up their minds.

Trump's support is also higher among voters that have never participated in a caucus before. He sees this as a good thing — that he's energizing people to come to the polls. Maybe he is. But people who've never voted before have a 0 percent track record of getting to the polls, making relying on them to turn out awfully risky. (Notice below that Rubio gets a lot more support from would-be first-timers, too.)

Third, more than a quarter of Iowans say they'd never back Trump. That's the same as wouldn't back Jeb Bush, for what it's worth. But it's far higher than any of the other leading candidates."

UPDATE: "One simple mental exercise when considering electability is: Would you feel at least barely safe with this person running the affairs of state for even a day? A week? Though a couple of Cruz’s legislative policy proposals are far to the right of Trump’s, you could at least see Cruz sitting in the Oval Office for 24 hours without destroying the world. You can’t be as sure with someone as spontaneous as Trump. . .

Debating whether Trump or Cruz is more electable in the general election is like debating whether Trump or Cruz is more likely to be the MVP in the next Super Bowl. Each is a very poor prospect for separate reasons: One has extremely conservative politics, while the other is a visibly insane person. This is why party leaders are still desperately hoping that Christie, Rubio, Bush, or Kasich can make something happen."

Read Slate, Why the GOP Establishment Would Prefer Ted Cruz to Donald Trump.

"Pretend they were your only choices for president."

Who would you pick?

Read Slate, Let’s Play “Trump, Carson, or Cruz”.

Are Birthers (Including Huckster and Con Man Gullible-Gallups) Racists Hypocrites?

UPDATE II:  "A new study shows that negative ads targeting President Obama in 2008 depicted him with very dark skin, and that these images would have appealed to some viewers’ racial biases.

The finding reinforces charges that some Republican politicians seek to win votes by implying support for racist views and ethnic hierarchies, without voicing those prejudices explicitly. The purported tactic is often called “dog-whistle politics” — just as only canines can hear a dog whistle, only prejudiced voters are aware of the racist connotations of a politician’s statement, according to the theory."

Read the Washington Post, Obama’s skin looks a little different in these GOP campaign ads.

Birtherism is also a racist dog-whistle.

UPDATE:  "[W]e’re entitled to savor some schadenfreude now as Cruz himself gets caught in the birther web. Donald Trump’s questioning of Cruz’s status as a natural-born American and, therefore, his eligibility to be president is rough justice. Cruz, like Trump, has stoked the fires of resentment and xenophobia, so it’s entirely fitting that he gets burned. . .

[T]he birther movement, led by Trump, which . . . to portray the first African American president as a foreigner. Now Trump is, with his characteristic disregard for truth, attempting to turn the same nativist forces against his nearest competitor in the Republican primary."

Read the Washington Post, Ted Cruz gets burned by the birther fires he stoked.  

Here's the chance to see if Sheriff Joe 'Scooby-Doo' Arpaio and his gang -- (including the incredibly inept Cold Case Posterior-man Zullo and Pastor Truthiness (aka Huckster and Con Man Gullible-Gallups), Arpaio’s enablers and co-conspirators --  are sincerely 'concerned citizens', or just plain racist.

Ted Cruz "was born in Calgary, Alberta, Canada, to a 'U.S. citizen mother and a Cuban immigrant father', giving him dual Canadian-American citizenship." Cruz only recently "renounce his Canadian citizenship and ceased being a citizen of Canada, on May 14, 2014."

Ergo, Ted Cruz is undoubtedly not a natural-born citizen.
 
The Donald agrees.

"Donald Trump said in an interview that rival Ted Cruz’s Canadian birthplace was a 'very precarious' issue that could make the senator from Texas vulnerable if he became the Republican presidential nominee."

Read the Washington Post, Trump says Cruz’s Canadian birth could be ‘very precarious’ for GOP.

So will Zullo investigate Cruz?

Will Huckster and Con Man Gullible-Gallups regularly and vigorously denounce and condemn Cruz?

And will Sheriff Scooby-Doo arrest Cruz at his next AZ campaign stop?

Or are the three just racist hypocrites?

Red State Hypocrisy

Sometime a picture is worth a thousand words.

From the Washington Post, Some of the most conservative states rely most on federal government aid:

Read also The Republi-CON "Hardscrabble, Up-By-Your-Bootstraps Ethos" Myth.

More proof that God hates the South.

Message or Messenger?

From the Washington Post, Is the 2016 GOP problem the message or the messenger?:

Are You a Hedgehog or a Fox?

UPDATE II:  "How do you spot a hedgehog? [Philip Tetlock, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania who has spent decades studying how people make predictions,] says to listen to their arguments and watch out for 'the experts who say 'moreover' more often than they say 'however'' — i.e., people who double down on their arguments without qualifying them with contrasting information — as well as those who declare things 'impossible' or 'certain.'

You can probably guess that Tetlock's superforecasters are not 'hedgehogs.' Instead, they are the kind of person that Tetlock dubs 'foxes.'

According to Tetlock, foxes are more pragmatic and open-minded, aggregating information from a wide variety of sources. They talk in terms of probability and possibility, rather than certainty, and they tend to use words like 'however,' 'but,' 'although' and 'on the other hand' when speaking.

When it comes to prediction, the foxes outfox the hedgehogs. While the hedgehogs managed to do slightly worse than random chance, the foxes had real foresight. The foxes weren’t just more cautious in their predictions, they were a lot more accurate.

Unlike hedgehogs, foxes also had a desire to keep reviewing their assumptions, updating their estimates, and improving their understanding — a kind of attitude that Tetlock calls 'perpetual beta.' Tetlock says that this approach is the single most important ingredient for learning to make accurate predictions. 'For superforecasters, beliefs are hypotheses to be tested, not treasures to be guarded,' Tetlock and Gardner write.

Read the Washington Post, The secrets the world’s top experts use to make really good predictions.

UPDATE: Humble, perceptive and self-reflective leaders seem to outshine their more brash and charismatic counterparts. Read The New York Times, The Humble Hound.

Are you a humble hound?

Don't know what I mean, then read The New York Times, Learning How to Think.

Hint: "The Hedgehog and the Fox" was the title of an essay by Isaiah Berlin about Russian author Leo Tolstoy's theory of history.

So I ask again, are you a hedgehog, or a fox?

The Republi-CON "Western Moral Superiority" Myth

"Guests at a Jewish wedding in Jerusalem in December 2015 celebrated and mocked "the death of 18-month-old Ali Dawabsheh. 

One guest danced while a holding a knife through picture of the young boy.

The toddler and his parents died after an arson attack on their home in July."

Read the Daily Mail Shocking footage from Israeli Jewish wedding shows guests celebrating the death of a Palestinian baby burned alive in an arson attack.

Read also the story of a Northwest Florida Muslim family "confronted in a grocery store [that same week]. A man threw bacon in [their] cart and said 'Merry Christmas.' It was an unmistakable slur, as Muslims don't eat pork, it's considered unclean in their religion."
Read WEAR ABC 3, Local Muslim stands up for dad after offensive incident at a grocery store.

And don't forget America's own sordid history, including "The Scalp Industry".

"For example, Confederate guerrillas led by Bloody Bill Anderson were well known for decorating their saddles with the scalps of Union soldiers they had killed."

The Republi-CON "Must Have" New Year's Present

"Brace yourself for the Putin 2016 calendar.

Famous for his topless horse riding, shirtless fishing and bare-chested shooting, Russian president Vladimir Putin has been celebrated in the Putin 2016 calendar, produced by Russia's 'Stars and Advice' magazine.

The twelve shots reveal both the president's tough and sensitive sides, although he is resolutely covered up (for the most part).

But while he keeps his clothes on, the posed pictures are no less bizarre.

Each picture sets the Russian supremo in natural settings and are accompanied by nationalistic quotes."

Read the Daily Mail, Now you can spend all year with Vladimir Putin!

Jesus Was a Refugee, Today's Republi-CONs Would Deport Him

UPDATE II:  "JESUS OF Nazareth was born a displaced person. As the writer Garry Wills relates it: “He comes from a despised city and region. Yet he cannot be allowed a peaceful birth in that backwater. His parents are displaced by decree of an occupying power that rules his people. For the imperial census to be taken, Joseph his father must return to his place of birth. . . . Joseph does not even have relatives left in his native town, people with whom he can stay. He seeks shelter in an inn, already crowded with people taken away from their own homes and lives. Because of this influx of strangers, he is turned away. There is no bed left, even for a woman far advanced in pregnancy. She must deliver her child in a barn, where the child is laid in a hay trough.” Soon afterward, the infant and his family become fugitives from King Herod as he seeks out the child he fears will one day replace him on the throne. And so it went. . .

[T]he word 'Christian' is often misused in our times, in a way that implies some allegiance to a particular political party, economic doctrine or set of moral strictures that are not representative of large numbers of true Christians. . . There is a broader concept of the term, one that is succinct, relevant and all but imperative in this season when we face a humanitarian crisis that tests our character and our compassion. It comes from the Gospel of Matthew and is stated as an ideal voiced by Jesus:

'I was hungry and you gave me food.

I was thirsty and you game me drink.

I was a stranger and you welcomed me.'

Read the Washington Post, Reminders of the first Christmas in today’s migrant crisis. 

UPDATE:  Watch also Salon, Stephen Colbert just nailed the GOP’s Christian hypocrisy on Syrian refugees with one Bible verse. :



Colbert noted that "'there are a few candidates (Ted Cruz and Jeb Bush) who think that allowing Christian refugees into the country is fine. Cruz went on to say “there is no meaningful risk of Christians committing acts of terror.”

'I’m sure these guys right here are just campers roasting marshmallows,' Colbert said with a photo of the KKK with flaming crosses. 'You can tell because they’re each wearing one-man tents.'

After all, like the plaque on the Statue of Liberty says: 'Give us your tired, your poor, mostly Christians, and maybe one more two Indian guys with engineering degrees.'

'If you want to know if somebody’s a Christian just ask them to complete this sentence,' Colbert said pulling out his Catechism card. ''Jesus said I was hungry and you gave me something to eat. I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink. I was a stranger and you….' And if they don’t say ‘welcomed me in’ then they are either a terrorist or they’re running for president.'"

"Nicholas Kristof wrote an op-ed over the weekend that highlighted the irony of recent Republican response to the Syrian refugee crisis. The New York Times columnist made the not-so-subtle observation that Republicans would likely have denied asylum to one of history’s more significant immigrant families: 'a carpenter named Joseph, his wife, Mary, and their baby son, Jesus,' who, according to Matthew’s Gospel, were forced to seek refuge in Egypt to escape King Herod’s infanticide.

It’s a fair point, but there’s no reason to limit it to the story of Jesus. The truth is the Bible’s authors have an awful lot to say about immigration, forced or otherwise, and their perspective flies directly in the face of the Republican Party’s jingoistic zeal for border-strengthening and turning our backs on refugees. Given the GOP’s enthusiasm for biblically based governance, Republican leaders might want to consider the chasm separating their current immigration policies and the source document upon which they claim to base some of their politics."

Read Slate, Because the Bible Tells Us So. 

The Republi-CON "Obama Never Says Merry Christmas" Myth

Watch "[o]ur current president . . . swallow his secret Muslim pride and wish the country well in its celebration of Jesus' birthday consistently throughout his two terms:



And read Slate, Here's a Video of President Obama Saying "Merry Christmas" Over and Over and Over.

Holiday Lights

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Happy Holidays!


Amazing Grace Techno.



Music Box Dancer 2008.


Double click to see the video in full screen mode. Watch other videos at Holdman Christmas.

Holiday Lights

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Happy Holidays!





Amazing Grace Techno.


Double click to see the video in full screen mode. Watch other videos at Holdman Christmas.

Redneck Santa

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A holiday favorite:



What more can I say.

Best Decorated House?

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A holiday favorite:

Once again, I was disqualified from my neighborhood's "Best Decorated House." They said I had a bad attitude!



What do you think?

Santa Needs a Raise

2015:  "This year, the cost of all of the items in the song comes to a staggering $34,130.99. . .

Here's how the gifts add up:

1 partridge in a pear tree $214.99 (+3.5%)

2 turtle doves $290.00 (+11.5%)

3 French hens $181.50 (0.0%)

4 calling birds $599.96 (0.0%)

5 gold rings $750.00 (0.0%)

6 geese-a-laying $360.00 (0.0%)

7 swans-a-swimming $13,125.00 (0.0%)

8 maids-a-milking $58.00 (0.0%)

9 ladies dancing $7,552.84 (0.0%)

10 lords-a-leaping $5,508.70 (+3.0%)

11 pipers piping $2,635.20 (0.0%)

12 drummers drumming $2,854.80 (0.0%)

= $34,130.99 (+0.6%)

Read the Washington Post, The ridiculous amount you’d need to spend to buy all the stuff in ‘The 12 Days of Christmas’. 

2010:  Those 'piping pipers, leaping lords and assorted birds' are gonna cost you more.

Read The New York Times, 12 Days of Christmas Gifts Cost 9.2% More This Year.

The Christmas Can-Can (Animated Version)

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By Straight No Chaser:

Holiday Trivia

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"While you're busy wrapping gifts and preparing to feast with family and friends, TIME brings you these bizarre Christmas facts to ponder.

Read Time, Top 10 Things You Didn't Know About Christmas. 

What If Jesus Was Born Today

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Watch a what if -- the story of the Nativity in the time of the web, social media, and mobile phones:

'Twas the Night Before Christmas by Jeff Dunham

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Season's Greetings from Jeff Dunham's Very Special Christmas Special:

Animals of YouTube Sing "Deck the Halls"

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