Last Call For A Kasich Of Reading Too Much Into Things

Ohio GOP Gov. John Kasich is field testing his ridiculous federal balanced budget amendment 2016 presidential hopeful platform with New Hampshire voters and people love it!

According to John Kasich, that is. The Cincy Enquirer's Chrissie Thompson and Meg Vogel are following the governor on the campaign trail in the Granite State.

Already, it's clear: These voters like John Kasich. 

The New Hampshire Republicans I met this morning said they wanted a presidential candidate who prioritized fiscal conservatism and foreign policy, with social issues as a side note. Contrast that with early-primary South Carolina, whose politicos welcomed Kasich politely last month, but worried he was too moderate on issues such as Common Core and immigration. 

The GOP governor focused his New Hampshire speech accordingly. He talked of balancing the federal budget and boasted of his involvement in strengthening coordination in the U.S. military via the Goldwater-Nichols Act. (The latter brought the "most dramatic change in the way the military operated, frankly, in modern history," Kasich said, although his claim to have been a senior congressman at the time might be a stretch -- he was in the second of his nine terms in Congress.) 

Kasich lacked much of the careful deference from his visit to South Carolina. Visibly more comfortable in this state, Kasich spoke of his efforts to force county welfare services to coordinate, boasting about his threat to take away counties money if they don't comply. It's all in the name of "welfare reform," he said. 

"You wanted to clap at that? Go ahead; you can clap," Kasich said.

Yeah go ahead and clap for massive, massive cuts to Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and every federal department, all to make room for tax cuts for the one percent.  More than any other candidate out there, Kasich is the GOP point man on supply-side idiocy.

Yes, Clinton balanced the budget.  And he did it by raising taxes on the rich.

Does anyone think Kasich will do the same?

P.S, That "heartbeat" bill that would ban abortion in Ohio that Kasich is trying to avoid having to sign?  It's baaaaaaaaaaaack!

Bobby Who? Whatsit Jindal? Never Heard Of Him.

NY Times columnist Charles Blow laments the black hole that is Bobby Jindal's presidential hopes (and the Louisiana state budget gap).

In the latest CNN/ORC poll of Republicans and independents who lean Republican, only 1 percent said that he was the candidate they would most likely support for the Republican nomination. Even “none/no one” got 6 percent. 

And in a desperate attempt at relevancy — and press — he has lately been sliding further into Islamic hysteria. 

In January, he caused a controversy by claiming that parts of Europe were “no-go zones” because of Muslim extremists. Jindal said that there were cities “where non-Muslims simply don’t go in,” like Birmingham in Britain. Prime Minister David Cameron said in response: “When I heard this, frankly, I choked on my porridge and I thought it must be April Fools’ Day. This guy is clearly a complete idiot.” 

That hasn’t stopped Jindal. Last week on Fox News, he set about defending his statement that America “shouldn’t tolerate those who want to come and try to impose some variant, or some version, of Shariah law.” But he went so far as to say of prospective immigrants:
“In America we want people who want to be Americans. We want people who want to come here. We don’t say, ‘You have to adopt our creed, or any particular creed,’ but we do say, ‘If you come here, you need to believe in American exceptionalism.’ ” 

What? Where is that written? I can’t find this “need to believe in American exceptionalism” anywhere in the Immigration and Nationality Act. Isn’t American exceptionalism itself a creed? 

The smart-on-paper Jindal increasingly comes across as nuttier than a piece of praline.

On the contrary, Jindal has all but glowingly accomplished his job: driving Democrats out of what was a reliably blue state.  Blanche Lincoln and Mary Landrieu and friends are ancient history, and the state's vaunted Democratic machinery is in utter ruin.  The state's race to the bottom has been breathtaking.

Now it faces a more than $1.6 billion budget hole, and it's going to be filled with the bones of the state's universities, libraries, and public schools. And when Bobby Jindal leaves office, the state will be a shell of itself, hollowed out in order to give the wealthiest even more money to hoard.

By that criteria, Bobby Jindal has always been the man that he promised to be.

Israeli Getting Messy Out There, Folks

Colonel Mustard's Law And Stuff Emporium:

Now it’s all making sense. The Israelis saw Obama acting deceptively, hiding negotiations that would affect Israel’s existence, and giving away the store to the Iranians.

Netanyahu saw no choice but to go to Congress both through the Israeli ambassador and the speech to Congress, knowing that it would harm Israel with the administration.

This was not something done for election purposes.

Jackass, Son Of Jackass:

How dare Israel undermine American talks with a country that wants to annihilate both Israel and the United States. Our petulant, thin-skinned, mom jeans wearing President is angry because he got exposed. Boo freaking hoo.

 Carl Of Team Israel All Day Every Day:

One final comment. Obama is lucky this story didn't come out last Sunday or Monday. If it had, the Likud might have won 80 seats in last Tuesday's elections. This story doesn't make Obama into a victim (although I am sure that was the administration's intent in leaking it). This story makes Obama look petty, vindictive, and more than willing to abandon an ally that just happens to be the only democracy in a part of the world that is of critical interest to the United States.

Obama has won the title. He will go down in history as the worst President the United States has ever had.

The excuse from the right is that the deal with Iran is soooooooo awful that it has driven Israel to spy on us with, again, the express intent of undermining our foreign policy and involving other US elected officials in the effort. Israel had no other choice, you see to stop Iran from being months away from a nookular weapon, they way they've been for well over a decade now.

 It does explain why the Obama administration has been less than cordial to Bibi over the last couple years. They knew the Israelis were spying on us and going to Congress over it and apparently President Obama has gotten sick of it. Puts that whole "Bibi endorsing Romney in 2012" thing in perspective, doesn't it. Apparently that particular bad bet has continued for the last couple years.

U.S. officials said Israel has long topped the list of countries that aggressively spy on the U.S., along with China, Russia and France. The U.S. expends more counterintelligence resources fending off Israeli spy operations than any other close ally, U.S. officials said. 

A senior official in the prime minister’s office said Monday: “These allegations are utterly false. The state of Israel does not conduct espionage against the United States or Israel’s other allies. The false allegations are clearly intended to undermine the strong ties between the United States and Israel and the security and intelligence relationship we share.”

And Israel doesn't have any nuclear weapons, either, while we're apparently making up stories that nobody actually believes. So yes, this very much explains Israel's actions over the last several months.  An "ally" spying on us, and then using its connections with Congress to get what it wanted, directly.  To see this dirty laundry in the news is a brushback pitch at about 120 MPH.

Israel's response is rather petty:

The White House was directly involved in an attempt to unseat Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in last week’s general election, during a nadir in ties between the Israeli leader and US President Barack Obama, a senior Jerusalem official said Tuesday. 

The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told The Times of Israel that “it’s no secret” that the Obama administration had attempted to influence the outcome of the election, having been partially motivated by a desire for revenge over Netanyahu’s polarizing speech before Congress earlier this month, which sought to undermine the president’s key foreign policy initiative – a nuclear deal with Iran. 

“The White House is driven by three main motives,” the official said. “The first is revenge [over the Congress speech]. The second is frustration: It’s no secret that they were involved in an attempt to bring down the Netanyahu government – something that we have clear knowledge of – and failed. The third [motive] is the administration’s attempt to divert attention from the negotiations with Iran to the Palestinian issue.”

Well alrighty then.

Enjoy your ride, Bibi.  You signed up for it.  And Obama is fresh out of damns to give about you.

StupidiNews!

• Utah will become the first state to bring back the firing squad as a potential method of executing death row prisoners in cases where drugs for lethal injections cannot be obtained.
• Upgrading LA's aging water and sewer systems to survive the next major California earthquake will cost upwards of $15 billion over the next 20 years according to city engineers.
• The Obama administration is assuring Afghanistan's leaders that US foreign aid to fund Afghan security forces will continue through 2017 at the minimum.
• German Chancellor Angela Merkel says that Greece should stay in the eurozone nations and that she wants a deal that will make the country's economy to succeed.
• Cloud computing networks could be the key to providing the artificial brain power needed to run the next generation of robots.