Michigander Charlie LeDuff has produced an amazingly good boots-on-the-ground video which shows how insufferably connected the chattering class of Vichy Republicans have become.
LeDuff showcases the disconnect by highlighting a series of articles in National Review, and then actually going to the locales belittled by the NRO staff and talking to the ordinary, hard-working middle class people who live within them.
Driving to New York – LeDuff actually interviews the people that NRO is figuratively writing about, the resulting contrast speaks volumes:
“Shocked by their support of Donald Trump, some elitist conservative thinkers are calling places like Garbutt, NY pockets of misery, welfare fraud and dope addiction. They say let these towns die. Turns out Garbutt is not like that at all”.
LeDuff masterfully tells a real life short story and simultaneously contrasts the pontificating arrogance of the Charles Cooke, Kevin Williamson, Rich Lowry and Johan Goldberg types at National Review.  The resulting work is brilliant:

Sometimes when you find yourself in a disconcerting and unfamiliar place, it can be beneficial to stop, look back and understand just how we ended up in this terrain.  The professional DC consultant class are benefiting from the current climate of chaos, and they certainly don’t want anyone to review the consequential and intentional steps it took to get here.
When the Tea Party rose up in opposition to President Obama’s indulgent spending programs in 2009 many were under the mistaken assumption the opposing party, the republicans, were against the progressive agenda based on principle.

However, there were a few voices on our side saying be wary of the UniParty nature of DC, the republican party is not our friend.  Money always fuels their motives; so long as there are millions available to the ‘loyal opposition’, the republican political intentions should not be regarded as altruistic.
At the time those concerns were dispatched by a louder voices demanding strategic unity and instructions to work within the DC-based GOPe system.  However, ultimately what benefit lies within unity if the end result is just a destructive?   The awakened electorate was just as much a risk to the republican side of the UniParty as it was the Democrat side.
It was from this basic framework of acceptance the Conservative Tree House was born. A “last refuge” where common sense approaches still mattered.
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An interesting article within the Washington Post outlines some of the challenges with unbound delegates and delegates available for purchase…
(Washington Post) West Virginia looks perfect for Donald Trump: a struggling working-class state filled with the types of voters who have backed him elsewhere and could deliver one of his biggest victories.
But a sweep there might not matter. That’s because as many as 34 delegates — the entire contingent — may be free to back whomever they want at the Republican National Convention.

Much the same is true in Pennsylvania, home to a hotly contested April 26 primary, where there are 54 uncommitted delegates. Other states and territories, from Colorado to Wyoming to Guam, will also send squads of unbound representatives.
These are the swing voters of the GOP nominating contest, nearly 200 activists and elected leaders beholden to nothing except their personal judgment and empowered to make or break candidacies. (more…)

Senator Ted Cruz has at least eight Super-PAC’s assisting his presidential campaign; and according to a recording obtained by Politico a Cruz’s campaign bundler was directing large donors toward one PAC specifically.  The “Stand for Truth” PAC.

However, the campaign appears to have, yet again, gone into the land of illegality with the following statement (via audio recording):

“If you hit your max then we have a table for you that is the unlimited table,” Keet Lewis, a bundler for the campaign and co-host of a Dec. 30 fundraiser in Dallas, says on the recording provided to POLITICO. “It can take corporate dollars, it can take partnership dollars, and that’s the super PAC, Stand for Truth, so pick up some of that information.” (link)

The politico article goes on to share how and why the fundraising instructions are illegal – read here– but that’s not the part that might stick out to anyone who has been following the 2015/2016 shady campaign finances.
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Having spent the larger amount of two years digging through innocuous reports, FOIA documents, and media reports (mostly foreign), the Gowdy announcement today is more than a little bit disingenuous.
We’ve previously predicted, long before the select committee was announced, that the Benghazi investigation would amount to all hat and no cattle.
The reasoning is very simple:
Both sides of the UniParty were charged with intelligence oversight of the joint CIA/State Department operations in Libya (2011) and Syria (2012) through the Congressional Intelligence Gang-of-Eight.
At the time the “Intelligence Gang-of-Eight” was:

♦ Speaker – John Boehner, ♦ Minority Leader – Nancy Pelosi; ♦ House Permanent Select Committee on Intel Chairman – Mike Rogers, and his ♦ Democrat counterpart Charles Ruppersberger; ♦ Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, and ♦ Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid; along with ♦ Senate Intel Chair Diane Feinstein and her ♦ Republican counterpart, Saxby Chambliss.

Together with Hillary Clinton and President Obama the “Gang-of-Eight” was duplicitous in everything that took place.  Therefore there is no independent motive for the Gowdy committee to find any responsibility – the entire investigation is for public appearances only.
Further evidence therein can be found in this latest press release.  Note the specific wording and the specific emphasis we provide:  (more…)

If you have ever looked deeply into what created the financial pension crisis in Puerto Rico you’d have to admit the potential for a federal bailout is beyond absurd.  But that won’t stop the insufferable liberals from proposing such a possibility – and watch closely as House Speaker Paul Ryan begins to discuss the “outcome for the bond-holders”.
Former presidential candidate Marco Rubio already stated he was in favor of a bailout, albeit with conditions; and we know the Democrats will always look to gain political leverage through the advocacy of the fiscally stupid…. 

NEW YORK — Over a dozen activists descended on a building where Federal Reserve chair Janet Yellen and her three living predecessors were speaking on Thursday to demand that the Fed bail out Puerto Rico’s cash-strapped government.
The demonstrators, who are affiliated with the progressive Fed Up coalition, distributed Puerto Rican flags and empanadas as Puerto Rican music played outside Manhattan’s International House, a student residence. Yellen was there for an extremely rare panel discussion alongside past Fed chairs Ben Bernanke, Paul Volcker and Alan Greenspan, who participated via videostream. (more…)

A few days ago someone posted a link to an official campaign event being held by Senator Ted Cruz.  The link was in relationship to the Super-PAC “Keep the Promise” setting up the entire event, promoting the event, paying for the event, and coordinating the campaign activity culminating in Ted Cruz giving a speech at the event.
Unfortunately, given the thousands of comments daily we can’t find the link.

Despite rather outdated FEC rules -which are supposed to block such coordination- Carly Fiorina ran her entire campaign almost exclusively through Super-PAC financing.   We noted a few weeks ago that Senator Ted Cruz had shifted to a similar financial model as Fiorina.
Essentially both Fiorina, now Cruz, are pushing the boundaries on what is allowable in a post Citizens United campaign operation.   While it is against federal campaign laws for Super-PACS to fund or coordinate with candidates’ campaigns, the rules are very ambiguous as to what constitutes “coordination“.  (more…)

We have actually been puzzled about why candidate Donald Trump was reluctant to present a very easy, factual and reasonable outline of how it is entirely possible for U.S. policy to incentivize Mexico to pay for the Southern Border Security Wall.
One of the reasons we’ve been puzzled, is simply because the process itself is very easy to initiate.  Personally I think Trump is sandbagging on many of these solutions, preferring to hold back the substance of the policy proposals for the General Election.
However, today Donald Trump presented the simple outline (pdf below) and the liberal media is apoplectic.

In addition, when President Obama received a question about it, Obama showed just how insufferably naïve he is regarding the economics of the proposal.
Here’s the basics.  Mexico takes in approximately $25 billion in money transfers to their economy, mostly from the U.S., per year.  These transfers of cash are called “remittances”.  Trump is proposing a Money Services Compliance action, via the U.S. Treasury (Banking Services and Secrecy Act), that would force a Western Union affidavit (or other institution) to be completed prior to the transfer.
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Globalist Politicians outed as hypocritical Limo-Corporatists.

Go Figure…

We’ve been waiting to write an outline regarding the “Panama Papers”, because one of the more interesting aspects in the distribution is how the sources within  the German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung refused to share the massive file of information with the New York Times.
Instead, Süddeutsche Zeitung shared the data through an International Consortium of Investigative Journalists with the including the Guardian and the BBC.
Here’s a brief outline of first batch details: (more…)

The New York Times, via Patrick Healy is pushing/promoting an article intended to demoralize the Bernie Sanders supporters in advance of the Wisconsin Primary tomorrow.

Don’t let the bastards wear you down !

The goal of the NYT article is pure legacy media corporate political psy-ops directly intended to diminish support for your candidate.  See it for what it is and don’t allow Healy and the MSM corporatists who operate on behalf of the UniParty to get under your skin.
Notice how a very notorious, and well known (to us), media political operative is pushing the story: (more…)