Who doesn’t love a good sense of humor? Wit, however, has a lot to do with intelligence. Since the latter quality is scarce in public life, so is humor. It’s been a while since we’ve seen anything like Donald Trump’s sense of humor in our flaccid politics. These two anti-Jeb Bush ads kill it—and are certainly not good for poor Jeb’s moribund political campaign.
Watch:
Jeb For All Your Sleeping Needs.
AND:
Government taxes you indirectly, through spending, borrowing and inflating the money supply. The upshot is that your money’s purchasing power is drastically reduced overtime. That you can take to the bank.
Every Bill the overlords pass, moreover, “requires” more hirees and more salaries in perpetuity, that is if you take into account the generous overtime payments, pensions and other benefits the oink sector awards itself. Government is a tax-increasing scheme. This is why when the Republican presidential hopefuls make a song and a dance out of pledging to Americans for Tax Reform not to raise taxes on the American people; they do so with impunity. They are, nevertheless, full of it. Besides, didn’t they make similar pledges during the previous election cycle? Or was it the midterm prior?
Chris Christie Wednesday became the latest Republican to sign a pledge to “oppose and veto any and all efforts to increase taxes.”
Americans for Tax Reform has been urging presidential candidates to sign the pledge. In 2012, all Republicans except one, former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman, did.
Christie, the governor of New Jersey, is the ninth of the 17 prominent 2016 Republican candidates to agree to no tax increases. Also making the commitment are Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida, Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky, Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, Rick Perry, former governor of Texas, former business executive Carly Fiorina, former Sen. Rick Santorum, retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson, and Mike Huckabee, former governor of Arkansas.
Christie’s fiscal record has also come in for criticism from some conservatives. The Club for Growth Tuesday didn’t list Christie as one of its acceptable 2016 candidates.
“The Club for Growth praised the governor for winning concessions from public employee unions and withdrawing from a multistate compact designed to curb emissions contributing to climate change,” reported NJ.com. But, the group added, “there are enough warning signs in Christie’s record to give fiscal conservatives pause,” such as his decision to expand Medicaid coverage as part of the Affordable Care Act.
Optics, that’s all this is.
Speaking of the season for dopey pledges, I agree with Rachel Maddow, for once, that Trump signing the GOP pledge not to run as a third-party candidate is “a giant screwup.” Trump may have lost “a lot of leverage.” Bernie Sanders, who serves as an independent in U.S. Congress, but caucuses with the Democratic Party—he has not felt the need to sign any pledge to adhere to the Democratic Party’s do’s and don’ts.
If my memory serves me correctly, during the first prime-time Republican debate, in Cleveland, Ohio, it transpired that Marco Rubio, a nice enough, charismatic “regimist,” had spent a total of two years of his working life outside of government (or in “public service,” to use a euphemism). Why wasn’t he asked what it was that he did during that time?
I remember an old joke that was told in Israel, and was aimed at the ultra-orthodox who dress oddly and won’t speak Hebrew:
An Israeli in shorts and a Tembel Hat is walking down the street, when from across the street an ultra-orthodox Jew in black garb shouts obscenities at him in Yiddish. These Jews believe that speaking Hebrew before Messiah arrives is heretic. To ensure messiah comes (often referred to as the longest coming in history), the Jew has to remain weak, dispossessed and persecuted—a sickly spirit without a corporeal country.
The Israeli shouts back, “Speak Hebrew, goy!” Goy means non-Jew.
Kova Tembel:
This reminds me of Donald Trump’s retort to Jeb Bush rattling off in Spanish on the campaign trail. The Trump retort was, incidentally, not only righteous but culturally conservative in the extreme. CNN:
Trump took a jab Wednesday at Jeb Bush for using Spanish to dismiss the mogul’s conservative credibility.
… “I like Jeb,” Trump told Breitbart News. “He’s a nice man. But he should really set the example by speaking English while in the United States.”
Trump was referring to the former Florida governor’s comments to reporters on Tuesday about Trump’s policies.
“El hombre no es conservador,” Bush said, which translates to, “This man is not a conservative.” …