Texas Republicans Inch Closer to Secession

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If the nationalists get their way, this November might be the last time Texans vote for a US president.

On Wednesday, the Platform Committee of the Texas Republican Party voted to put a Texas independence resolution up for a vote at this week's GOP convention, according to a press release from the pro-secession Texas Nationalist Movement. The resolution calls for allowing voters to decide whether the Lone Star State should become an independent nation.

Texas was, in fact, its own country for nine years before joining the United States in 1845, and while the idea of returning to independence has never been taken seriously by most people, it remains popular as a romantic notion and marketing hook. Lone Star beer is the "national beer of Texas." Texas Monthly is the "national magazine of Texas." In a 2009 rally, then-Governor Rick Perry hinted that the state could secede if "Washington continues to thumb their nose at the American people." He later backed off of the idea. (Representatives of the state GOP and Texas Nationalist Movement could not be reached for comment.)

The Texas Nationalist Movement, once considered a quixotic fringe group, has added hundreds of members in the years since the election of Barack Obama. According to the Houston Chronicle's Dylan Baddour, at least 10 county GOP chapters are coming to the convention supporting independence resolutions. But this will be the first time in the state's 171-year history that they will actually vote on one. It's very unlikely to win. Then again, that's what people said about Donald Trump.

COMMENTS

New Jersey Man Sentenced to 15 Years for Supporting Islamic State

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Essex County Correctional Facility

by JOHN HAYWARD11 May 20169

Alaa Saadeh, a New Jersey man who pled guilty to conspiracy to provide material support to the Islamic State in October, was sentenced to 15 years in prison on Tuesday.

“The 24-year-old West New York resident, a former supervisor at a Staples store, planned to travel overseas to join the Islamic State group and allowed his brother to buy a plane ticket with Saadeh’s credit card to fly there to join the organization, federal prosecutors said. The government also alleged Saadeh sought to erase evidence of his brother’s trip by tampering with a cellphone, and counseled an associate to lie to the FBI if questioned,” reports theAssociated Press.

NBC News adds that Saadeh was accused of helping to organize a “small army” of ISIS fighters in New Jersey and New York, allowing the cell to meet at his apartment.

Another member of the group, Samuel Rahamin Topaz, has previously entered a guilty plea. His lawyer said that if they could not get to Syria to join the Islamic State, they considered “buying guns inside the US and targeting the White House and other landmarks for an attack.”

The AP adds that at Saadeh’s plea hearing in December, he admitted to looking at diagrams for bombs and discussing Times Square, the World Trade Center, and Vaughn College of Aeronautics and Technology in Queens as possible targets with his terror cell.

NBC notes that Saadeh’s parents were deported over a decade ago due to allegations of credit card fraud, but their children were “allowed to stay with custodians in New Jersey because they were US citizens.”

During his sentencing hearing, Saadeh admitted to smoking a lot of weed before he became radicalized and said his friends misled him when they talked about Islam and ISIS.

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“These people are not who they claim they are,” he said. “They are making it worse for Muslim people.”

“I feel I could have taken so many different routes concerning this situation,” Saadeh added. “It saddens me that I had any part in even a little of this.”

The AP reports that U.S. District Judge Susan Wigenton was skeptical of Saadeh’s apology, as was Assistant U.S. Attorney L. Judson Welle, who noted that Saadeh could easily have blown the whistle on the terrorist cell, but instead he “planned it, facilitated it, and agreed to help cover it up.”

Prior to this case, Saadeh reportedly had no criminal record. He was employed as the supervisor at a Staples office-supply store.

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Convention Delegates are the only hope!

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Brian,

I wanted to reach out to all of you and let you know where the campaign and the election process stands today. As you all know Senator Cruz suspended his campaign. All this means is he is not actively campaigning but he technically is still able to be voteor, nominated and so forth.

Now as the campaigns have worked to obtain delegates and reach the magic 1237 all of this never has meant anything more than a predictor of what would happen at the convention. For the candidate is selected there and only there through the delegates voting ‘your interests’. Some are bound and others are not. We could go into all the various challenges to binding delegates but that argument really has no merit in this email. What you need to understand is once there is a second vote all delegates are unbound.

So these delegates show up at the convention and they vote on plank issues, future convention rules and a myriad of other items all to promote the republican cause. This is why it is still so important to have Cruz minded delegates at the convention. Eventually they come to the ‘main event’, the voting for the presidential nominee. Now it is this first vote that is telling and also what the media has reported the delegate count to predict this outcome. As each state usually verbally declares their votes for each candidate they are tallied. Once the first rounds of votes are declared if the total for any single candidate is greater than 1237 the place goes nuts and the nominee is declared.

If a candidate only gets 1236 or less then delegates get together through some process and try to change or exchange votes for round two. This process is repeated until a candidate has more than 1237.
Now some people keep mentioning rule 40b. Rule 40b applied form the 2012 convention requires any nominee for the Republican Party to have at least a majority of delegates in at least 8 states. Today there is only two that qualify to be nominated, that being Trump and Cruz. Again if the vote is not won by Trump in round 1 there is a potential for a Cruz victory.

This week we will forgo a conference call. Also know we have been asked to hold on to the barn signs until there is a better feeling for what may happen at the convention. I imagine we may work on collecting them to distribute to the local area for a last minute delegate push, but I am just guessing at this point.
Thank you for all your hard work and prays. Julie and I will be in touch as we are discussing another project once more formalized we will invite you to help out. Until then ‘our lips are sealed’.

So proud of all of you and what we accomplished. We will be in touch!

Julie and James

Exclusive: Trump surges in support, almost even with Clinton in national U.S. poll

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www.reuters.com

Donald Trump's support has surged and he is now running nearly even with Democrat Hillary Clinton among likely U.S. voters, a dramatic turnaround since he became the Republican party's presumptive presidential nominee, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll released on Wednesday.

The results could signal a close fight between the two likely White House rivals as Americans make up their minds ahead of the Nov. 8 election to succeed Democratic President Barack Obama. As recently as last week, Clinton led Trump by around 13 points in the poll.

In the most recent survey, 41 percent of likely voters supported Clinton, the Democratic front-runner, and 40 percent backed Trump, with 19 percent not decided on either yet, according to the online poll of 1,289 people conducted from Friday to Tuesday. The poll had a credibility interval of about 3 percentage points.

The results reflect a big increase in support for Trump since he knocked out U.S. Senator Ted Cruz of Texas and Ohio Governor John Kasich last week to become the last Republican in the White House race.

There was no immediate comment from the Clinton or Trump campaigns.

Clinton, who has all but clinched the Democratic nomination over rival Bernie Sanders, has mostly led Trump in the head-to-head poll this year. Trump briefly matched her support a few times in 2016, most recently in mid-March, after U.S. Senator Marco Rubio of Florida, a favorite of the Republican establishment, dropped out.

Presidential elections are not decided by the national popular vote but by the Electoral College, which is based on state-by-state results.

Opinions are likely to change over the next six months as American voters become inundated with hundreds of millions of dollars in campaign advertising, highly publicized debates and a pair of party conventions.

Trump and Clinton both have much to prove to the American electorate. The Reuters/Ipsos poll found earlier this month that a majority of voters did not trust either candidate with key presidential responsibilities such as managing the U.S. economy, handling the role of U.S. commander in chief, and conducting themselves according to a “high moral standard.”

The candidates' choice of running mates could also be important. Voters surveyed in the poll said they would be more likely to support Clinton if her choice for vice president was a liberal, while Trump would help his chances if he picked someone experienced in politics and someone who is “consistently” conservative.

Trump’s rise in the polls coincides with his attempt to take over the reins of the Republican Party from leaders who clashed with him during a bruising and blustery primary fight.

U.S. House of Representatives Speaker Paul Ryan, the country's top elected Republican, said he would not immediately endorse Trump, and party elders including former Presidents George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush and the last two presidential nominees, Mitt Romney and John McCain, said they would not attend the Republican convention in Cleveland in July.

(Reporting by Chris Kahn; Editing by Richard Valdmanis and Peter Cooney)

COMMENTS

Obama: Crime Created by ‘System,’ Successful People ‘Just Lucky,’ ‘Wasn’t Nothin’ You Did’

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by WARNER TODD HUSTON10 May 2016Washington D.C.3,476

In his commencement speech to the graduating class at Howard University last weekend, President Obama excused crime in the African American community as something fostered by an “unfair and unjust” system.

He also said successful people were “just lucky” and hinted they didn’t make their success; “It wasn’t nothin’ you did,” he insisted.

Obama appeared at the historically African American Howard University on May 7 to send the graduates off into the world with some inspiring words. But much of what the president said was less inspirational and more conspiratorial.

The president spent a large portion of the first 15 minutes of his speech properly impressing upon the minority students in attendance that they are living in an era of unprecedented opportunity. But even as he noted how far African Americans have come in America today, he said he would be speaking to the inequities blacks face.

Still, in the first half of his speech Obama did mention how far African Americans have come since he was a child. For instance, Obama praised pop queen Beyoncé and TV showrunner Shonda Rhimes as examples of how far African Americans have progressed since the Civil Rights movement began in the U.S. He also noted that blacks have come a long way in business and the law.

But finally, about twenty minutes into his speech, he did, indeed, get to the usual victim mentality all too often seen on the political scene today.

At one point Obama excused crime as a result of an “unfair and unjust” system and noted that success is all just “luck.”

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The president decried the judicial system and insisted blacks are being imprisoned unfairly.

“We can’t just lock up a low-level dealer without asking why this boy, barely out of childhood, felt he had no other options,” Obama said.

He went on to claim crime was a result of the system, not the actions of criminals.

“We have cousins and uncles and brothers and sisters who we remember were just as smart and just as talented as we were, but somehow got ground down by structures that are unfair and unjust,” he said.

That brought the President to his thoughts on success being more a result of luck than hard work.

“And that means we have to not only question the world as it is,” Obama intoned, “and stand up for those African Americans who haven’t been so lucky–because, yes, you’ve worked hard, but you’ve also been lucky.”

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As an aside, the President of the United States then told his audience of his “pet peeve.”

“That’s a pet peeve of mine — people who have been successful and don’t realize they’ve been lucky. That God may have blessed them; it wuddn’t nothin’ you did. So don’t have an attitude.”

This line invokes his “you didn’t build that” gaffe from 2012 when Obama insisted that people with a successful business “didn’t build that” on their own and that government was really the catalyst for success.

The President’s commencement message is essentially that if you are black in the U.S. and you are successful, it was just luck and most blacks are held down by an “unfair and unjust” system that won’t allow them to succeed.

Obama also raised eyebrows when he insisted that he never intended to create a “post-racial society” with his presidency.

“My election did not create a post-racial society,” Obama told the graduating class “I don’t know who was propagating that notion. That was not mine.”

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It was a speech that talkshow host Rush Limbaugh called “hideous.”

The President’s speech comes on the heels of years of releasing into the public tens of thousands of illegal immigrants who have been apprehended and convicted of committing violent criminal offensesincluding rape, drug dealing, drunk driving, and even murder.

Further, with his “national reentry” policy, Obama has also worked to soften or eliminate the consequences of committing serious crimes and ensure ex-cons are given the same advantages as lifelong, law-abiding citizens.

Obama’s own efforts are only emboldened by the efforts of the Republican leadership in the House of Representatives in pushing asentencing reform bill that some senators charge will release violent felons and drug traffickers back into the public.

Follow Warner Todd Huston on Twitter@warnerthuston or email the author at igcolonel@hotmail.com

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SHE LOSES AGAIN !!!

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West Virginia Primary Results: 2016 Election - NBC News

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Gender Male 51% of voters Trump +6711678 Female 49% Trump +66 9775Age 17-29 17% of voters Trump +5112663 30-44 26% Trump +72 6678 45-6441% Trump +75 8583 65 or over 17%Trump +53 161369 Age 17-44 43% of voters Trump +64 9673 45+ 57% Trump +68 11779 Race White 97% of votersTrump +66 10776 Black 2% Not enough data --- Hispanic/Latino 1% Not enough data --- Asian 0% Not enough data ---Other 1% Not enough data --- Which best describes your education? High school or less 26% of voters Trump +747481 Some college/assoc. degree 36%Trump +74 6580 College graduate 25%Trump +60 13873 Postgraduate study12% Not enough data --- Education by race White college graduates 35% of voters Trump +53 141267 White non-college graduates 62% Trump +73 7480Non White college graduates 2% Not enough data --- Non White non-college graduates 1% Not enough data --- 2015 total family income: Under $30,00015% of voters Trump +73 11284$30,000 - $49,999 21% Trump +7511386 $50,000 - $99,999 37% Trump +66 8874 $100,000 - $199,999 25%Trump +59 8968 $200,000 or more 2%Not enough data --- No matter how you voted today, do you usually think of yourself as a: Democrat 3% of votersNot enough data --- Republican 73%Trump +71 9680 Independent or something else 24% Trump +56 11967On most political matters, do you consider yourself: Very conservative40% of voters Trump +62 13375Somewhat conservative 39% Trump +66 10976 Moderate 17% Trump +802888 Liberal 3% Not enough data --- On most political matters, do you consider yourself: Conservative 79% of votersTrump +64 11675 Moderate or liberal21% Trump +71 11081 Would you describe yourself as a born-again or evangelical Christian? Yes 70% of voters Trump +68 9577 No 30% Trump +64 91175 White evangelical or white born-again Christians White evangelical or white born-again Christian 66% of voters Trump +6710577 All others 34% Trump +66 91076Which ONE of these four issues is the most important facing the country? Immigration 9% of voters Not enough data --- Economy/Jobs 55% Trump +688676 Terrorism 13% Not enough data --- Government spending 19% Trump +55 131268 Which ONE of these four candidate qualities mattered most in deciding how you voted today? Can win in November 9% of voters Not enough data --- Shares my values 31%Trump +22 201742 Tells it like it is 23%Trump +93 2195 Can bring needed change 36% Trump +86 5391 Overall, would you say trade with other countries: Creates more U.S. jobs 25% of voters Trump +58 16874 Takes away U.S. jobs 67% Trump +73 7580 Has no effect on U.S. jobs 6% Not enough data --- Which best describes your feelings about the way the federal government is working? Enthusiastic 2% of votersNot enough data --- Satisfied, but not enthusiastic 5% Not enough data ---Dissatisfied, but not angry 47% Trump +64 8872 Angry 45% Trump +72 10382Which best describes your feelings about the way the federal government is working? Enthusiastic or satisfied7% of voters Not enough data ---Dissatisfied or angry 92% Trump +689677 Would you say you feel betrayed by politicians from the Republican Party? Yes 49% of voters Trump +6113774 No 49% Trump +73 6679 If Donald Trump is elected president, which best describes your feelings about what he would do in office? Excited 30% of voters Trump +96 2-98Optimistic 45% Trump +84 4488Concerned 15% Not enough data ---Scared 9% Not enough data --- If Donald Trump is elected president, which best describes your feelings about what he would do in office? Excited or optimistic 74% of votersTrump +89 3292 Concerned or scared23% Cruz +7 322025 If these were the candidates in November, would you: Vote for Hillary Clinton 2% of votersNot enough data --- Vote for Donald Trump 82% Trump +86 4390 Not vote for either candidate 15% Not enough data --- If Donald Trump is nominated, how likely is it that he would beat Hillary Clinton in November? Very likely 59% of voters Trump +89 3192Somewhat likely 28% Trump +57 13970Not too likely 7% Not enough data ---Not at all likely 4% Not enough data ---Do you think the Republican Party: Is united now 9% of voters Not enough data --- Is divided now but will unite by November 55% Trump +79 6485 Will still be divided in November 34%Trump +39 171356 When did you finally decide for whom to vote in the presidential primary? Just today 6% of voters Not enough data --- In the last few days 6% Not enough data ---Sometime last week 5% Not enough data --- In the last month 20% Trump +52 91365 Before that 62% Trump +7010580 Population City over 50,000 3% of voters Not enough data --- Suburbs37% Trump +59 13872 Small city and Rural 60% Trump +73 7580 Region North Industrial 14% of voters Trump +70 101080 E Panhandle/Allg 30%Trump +64 11675 Central 37% Trump +61 10771 Coal Country 19% Trump +78 8386

COMMENTS

Trump Won with the Working Class Voters the GOP Forgot

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by JOHN HAYWARD10 May 20161,454

Where did all the Trump voters come from, and where did the Cruz evangelicals go?  One of the great mysteries of the 2016 primary is how so many assessments of the Republican electorate turned out to be wrong.  The primary electorate that gave us Donald Trump as the presumptive nominee was dramatically different from the one that chose Mitt Romney in 2012.

Jeb Bush thought there was a huge, quiescent moderate majority nostalgic for a return to the Bush era, or looking for a doggedly inoffensive candidate like himself, blessed with endorsements from all the right people and a campaign war chest so huge it was supposed to scare other candidates out of the race.  Senator Rand Paul thought the GOP’s libertarian moment had arrived, driven by young voters who were deeply concerned about privacy issues in the online era and weary of interventionist for Bush and Obama alike.  Senator Marco Rubio thought he had crossover appeal to every faction of the Republican Party and so much electability that GOP voters would be crazy to turn him down.  Governors like Rick Perry and Scott Walker thought voters in other states would be impressed by their successful resumes.

Most baffling was the miscalculation of Senator Ted Cruz, who was counting on a Southern conservative and evangelical firewall that should have made him an early front-runner.  Cruz had every reason to think those voters were out there and every reason to suppose they would be unwilling to support Donald Trump, on both moral and policy grounds.

Instead, Trump cleaned up with evangelicals, and his eventual victory in the primary was heralded by many observers as a death knell for “movement conservatism.”  At the very least, we were told, conservatives were in such disarray that they couldn’t unite around a candidate who could stop Trump, even though well over half the party didn’t want him as the nominee.

The alternative theory of Trump’s primary victory is that he’s bringing new voters into the Republican primaries, and it’s clearly not just a few saboteurs looking to set Hillary Clinton up with her preferred GOP opponent.

NBC News is the latest outlet to run a story on Trump bringing new voters into the GOP fold, noting that the 2016 Florida primary saw tens of thousands more votes cast than Mitt Romney’s take in the 2012 general election, and the lion’s share of the new votes went to Trump.  In Establishment-friendly Northeastern races, Ohio Governor John Kasich pulled vote totals comparable to Romney’s primary vote in 2012, but Trump’s new voters swamped him.

Mitt Romney, accompanied by Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fl at the University of Miami, Wednesday, Oct. 31, 2012, in Coral Gables, Fla.
Sean Trende at RealClearPolitics suggested in January that neglected white working-class voters were coming back to the GOP after taking a pass on Mitt Romney in 2012.  Trende described them as “mostly lower-income, blue-collar voters who lived in areas that had also voted for Ross Perot,” who had been turned off by “Mitt Romney’s wealth and upper-class demeanor.”

As Trende noted, President Obama’s re-election campaign shrewdly exploited this sense of distance, through such measures as an Ohio ad blitz that rather blatantly asserted Romney was “not one of us,” while Obama’s friends in the media slammed Romney as “a car-elevator-owning businessman who made statements such as ‘I like being able to fire people.’”  (Notice how the same media is now serenely untroubled by the fabulous wealth and opulent lifestyle of Hillary Clinton, who somehow raked in multi-millions without any positive economic activity or job creation whatsoever, as detailed in “Clinton Cash.”)

“Missing voter” theories abound after big elections, because so much of the eligible American electorate consistently chooses not to vote.  With voter participation well under 60%, even in big presidential elections, the “missing electorate” is big enough to be a theoretical game-changer in virtually every race.  It’s arresting when a missing electorate returns, as Trende suggests is happening with Trump.

Along the way, he makes the point that Ted Cruz was fundamentally wrong about who the missing voters were, as he frequently quoted analysts who misunderstood what Trende was saying in his 2012 election post-mortem.

They weren’t evangelicals miffed that Mitt Romney was a Mormon, or a moderate.  The missing voters weren’t mainly conservative Christians at all, since Trende notes that that cohort has always maintained a level of voter participation far above the national average.  Many of the missing voters disengaged from politics long before 2012, and it’s mostly because they didn’t think either party had anything to offer them.

The key to understanding this theory is to remember that Ross Perot brought a lot of disengaged working-class people into politics too, and besides his famous disdain for deficit spending, the big planks in his platform were opposition to illegal immigration and criticism of big trade deals, particularly the North American Free Trade Agreement, which both Bill Clinton and George H. W. Bush supported.  In the second presidential debate in 1992, Perot famously spoke of “a giant sucking sound going south” to describe the effect NAFTA would have when American jobs went to Mexico.

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Ross Perot speaks at the “No To This NAFTA” rally on Saturday, Sept. 18, 1993 on the steps of the state Capitol in Lansing, MI. (AP Photo/Lennox McLendon)

It’s no surprise that Donald Trump is talking about NAFTA too, and getting a huge response at his campaign rallies, even as analysts on the Left and Right scratch their heads and wonder why he’s talking about a “settled issue” from two decades ago after Bill Clinton signed it into law.

To the missing voters, NAFTA has never been a settled issue, or a forgotten one.  They’re still hurting from the shift of jobs and opportunities out of the country.  They were told not to worry about it, because new high-tech jobs with better pay and working conditions would replace the “jobs Americans just won’t do”… and then thosejobs got sent overseas as well, or filled with H1-B visa workers.

There is a line of argument from free trade enthusiasts that insists such policies are good for the country overall.  We’re told that controlling legal immigration, or even cracking down on illegal immigration could significantly damage the U.S. economy.  These grand strategies overlook the fact that the people who have been getting clobbered for decades to provide this higher level of national prosperity are tired of being the designated losers.  On both the Left and Right, there is anger from people who believe they have been exploited to make others wealthy.  That’s the fundamental argument of liberal ideology, but Republican leaders really should have noticed when a substantial number of theirtraditional constituents began feeling that way.

These disaffected working-class people are especially weary of master plans that deliberately injure Americans for the benefit of big U.S. investors and foreign interests.  That’s why a willingness to speak frankly about immigration was such a powerful signal to the missing voters, a sign that Trump was aware of them, in a way that few other Republicans were.

Trump supporters at a Reno, Nevada, rally (AP Photo/Lance Iversen)

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The core element of any fair deal for neglected American workers is the acknowledgement that America exists, and its government understands that it has a unique responsibility to American citizens.  There is nothing inherently hostile or xenophobic about that understanding.  The put-upon citizens of the most open and generous country in the world are tired of being insulted as selfish and hateful for insisting our national priority should be our nation.

For decades now, our central government has asserted the wisdom and moral stature to pick “winners and losers.”  Those assertions are especially loud from Barack Obama, but he wasn’t the first to make them.  The people who feel they’ve been picked as losers, for generations, are tired of it.

Trende talked about the shifting “priorities” of these voters, which could go a long way toward explaining why Cruz didn’t get the support he was looking for in the South.  It’s not so much a question of those votersrejecting Constitutional conservatism, as their political priorities shifting to more immediate concerns.

They’re under attack by the federal government, and they want relief.  Intellectual discourse on the Constitutional basis for freedom of religious expression has less political value when the federal government is sending a battalion of lawyers to escort men into the women’s restroom.  They still care about our future of unsustainable government debt, but their more immediate concern is getting the economy moving for their regions and income brackets again.  Abstract discussion about the proper limits of government gives way to more concrete concerns: What will you do to bring the jobs back, nourish our wages back to health, and make us feel like something more than targets?

Romney got creamed because he couldn’t appeal to these disenfranchised working-class voters.  He should have been able to do it, because his message of creating a business-friendly environment where jobs could flourish was reasonable and consistent with what the missing voters want.  They’re looking for opportunity, not food stamps and welfare checks.

The problem was that Romney never made his message directly relevant to the alienated working class.  He didn’t speak their language or act like he personally cared about them, the way Trump does.  Romney was so thoroughly defined by the Obama campaign’s early attacks that he would have needed enormous populist charisma to overcome it.  He had no detectable populist energy at all.

Romney would bring a hundred entrepreneurs onstage to support him, but not their employees.  For some reason, it didn’t occur to his campaign that they could repel Obama’s foolish assault on venture capitalism by deploying an army of regular folks whose jobs had been saved by capital investment.  He took great umbrage at Obama’s “you didn’t build that” speech, http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2016/05/10/trump-won-working-class-voters-gop-forgot/