Say what you will about Jeb, but it’s refreshing to finally see a Bush successfully implementing an exit strategy.
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Seriously? “The only crimes?” The genius of Jeb! is that no-one would ever find the skeletons in his closet because of all the skeletons piled up in front.
Jeb! arranged the pardon and residency in the US for Orlando Bosch with his dad. Bosch was responsible for bombings from South America to Florida to Canada, and even a car bomb in Washington DC. His “greatest hit” was bombing an airliner out of the sky, killing 73 people.
As Salon put it:
Indicted by the feds, Recarey fled the country — but not before Jeb placed a call on his behalf to his presidential dad’s health and human services secretary, Margaret Heckler. For serving as the flunky of a crook, he received a generous tip of $75,000 from Recarey, a mob associate. He performed a similar service, with more success, on behalf of the Cuban militant Orlando Bosch, for whom he sought a presidential pardon from his father. The boastful murderer of dozens of innocent people — and a prosecution target of the U.S. Justice Department — Bosch deserved a pardon about as much as the worst jihadi in Gitmo. But his sponsors were the same Cuban-Americans in Miami who had fostered Jeb’s real estate business there, so he ignored the Republican attorney general’s denunciation of Bosch as an “unreformed terrorist.”
At least the War on Terror would be over, Jeb! being pro-terror. But by harboring terrorists, and by his brother’s statement “Make no distinction between terrorists and the those who harbor them”, Jeb! is a terrorist. (The family dinner after that speech mush have been REAL quiet.)
If America went full Honey Boo Boo and elected Jeb!, it would be awkward for the CIA to switch back from torturing terror suspects to hiring them again. Perhaps they could rectally feed them chocolate and brandy first.
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“Fool of a Trump!”
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Don’t forget the turtles.
I’m clapping, really…
You mean like this?
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Precisely!
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This is a win-win. First, it fills me with schadenfreude to see the Bush reign at least put on hold. Second, removing the bland highlights the nutcases.
It’s amazing that every four years, Republicans try to find a new pig to lather with lipstick. No new policies or ideas, just a messiah. It’s hilarious that Trump is their new guy.
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I have a complete Encyclopedia from 1932, and the entry on Adolf Hitler is profoundly disturbing in that it describes him as more or less a spent force with little likelihood of gaining any power because he’s too crazy for prime time (I paraphrase).
Once they get some power they just need to be willing to cross a few key lines and the rest of us will become too terrified to speak up. How many of us will be posting sarcastic comments about Trump on here if a couple of the editors of BB get arrested and/or deported, maybe beat up or even killed by a ‘mob’.
It sounds crazy, but every population has a latent group of about 20% who are just itching to get sized for their brown shirts and start venting their anger in unaccountable ways. It’s the job of the rest of us to keep them away from the buttons.
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The worst mistake the GOP made was absorbing the Tea Party. You can’t walk back crazy.
They took on a bunch of people with the hopes that “anybody but Obama.” would be enough to put a republican in the whitehouse. It took a turn for the worst (for the republicans) when it became “anyone but establishment.”
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This is a serious concern on mine. We liberals can currently sit back, laughing, and cheer the increasing concentration of loony in the Republican primary, confident that no one in this clown car can win, but if something like a major terrorist attack happens, all bets are off, and we might be faced with the very REAL prospect of one of the nutsos as president.
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I dunno. Whatever else he may have failed at, marketing seems to be squarely within The Donald’s skill set. His businesses may fail and his presidential campaign may too, but nobody can say they’re not marketed.
Of course, that’s also like saying Steph Curry makes a surprisingly high percentage of 40-foot bank shots. Just because he has the knack for it doesn’t mean his fans would have the same kind of luck.
In 2012 Newt Gingrich - 20 years in Congress, former Speaker of the House and then Washington Lobbyist - the ultimate Washington establishment INSIDER - ran as a “Washington Outsider.”
Ted Cruz is no more credible:
In the 1990s Cruz:
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Graduated from Princeton and Harvard.
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Served as a law clerk to the Chief Justice of the United States.
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Worked for a Washington law firm.
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Helped prepare testimony for the impeachment proceedings against President Clinton.
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Served as private counsel for Congressman John Boehner.
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Served in the George W. Bush presidential campaign as a domestic policy adviser.
In the 2000s he:
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Fought on the Bush side in the Bush v. Gore legal battle during the 2000 Florida presidential recounts.
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Served as an associate deputy attorney general in the U.S. Justice Department and as the director of policy planning at the U.S. Federal Trade Commission during the Bush II administration.
In the 2010s he:
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Is a US senator.
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Is arguably the most influential senator, backed by The Heritage Foundation (where the personal mandate and much of the rest of ObamaCare came from), and the major force behind the U.S. government shutdown in 2013.
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Is vice-chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, the committee that seeks to elect more Republicans to the Senate.
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His wife is a manager for Goldman, Sachs & Co. and previously worked in the White House for Condoleezza Rice.
Trump at least has outsider credentials. And it means that Republicans are finally being consistent: They want their science from “science outsiders” - anyone with a lack of qualifications. Likewise with their healthcare system advice. Even their religion: The defining trait about the religious right being a perfect lack of understanding of what their religion stands for.
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He was also the politician who led the “family values” movement of the 1990s despite the fact that he was getting extramarital blowjobs during EXACTLY THE SAME PERIOD that he was trying to get Clinton impeached over extramarital blowjobs.
Gingrich couldn’t have been any less credible if he’d decided to run as a skinny African-American woman.
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Unfortunately, his base didn’t care. I think all they saw as him sticking to someone they hated, who they imagined as being dangerous to the country.
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I think revelations about Gingrich’s personal life actually may have hurt him during his 2012 bid for the Presidency. Most of the Evangelical vote cast their lot in behind Santorum, the socially conservative bigot who apparently practiced what he preached.
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That’s true. Either way, I’m kind of sick of them all, as they make people like Bush or Kasich seem moderate… which they really aren’t.
I dunno. This election season is really depressing. why can’t we do it like the rest of the world, and make it short and much less painful.
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Me too. While extremists like Trump might help the Democrats win this election they still aren’t helpful to the long-term prospects of our Democracy. If the Republicans weren’t all so insane then the Democrats would have to work harder to be a party worthy of our vote.
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Soon enough torture may be a reality show.
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Exactly! This is the problem with the current crop of GOP demagogues, I think. They are whipping up the base in order to win, and it’s scary to think what that’s going to mean on down the road. We can only hope that the far, racist right doesn’t use this as an opportunity to get their feet under them in any sort of meaningful way.
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