"Resident Facing Fines For Too Many Trump Signs"

"A Trump supporter in Haverhill is facing stiff fines for having too many signs in his front yard. But Rick Early is standing his ground, literally."

“This is my property, and I have a constitutional right to express my opinions,” said Early. “They’re not coming down.”

The city has an ordinance prohibiting political signs that total more than 32 square feet. Early’s signs add up to over 300 square feet.

“He’s way in excess of what’s allowed, that’s all he’s been cited for is that he’s over the signage that’s allowed by city ordinance,” city building inspector Dick Osborne said.

Mechanicsburg, Penn

I like the name of the place. Never heard it before. I'd expect there to be a lot of mechanical types given the name.

Trump had disputes with a city's fire marshal limiting his crowd to 1,000 even in a space that can easily hold double that number seated at tables, the space sectioned in half with a curtain for Trump and still plenty of room to mill around while more people than that are left outside in the heat after waiting for hours. Trump suspects and accuses dirty politics while the fire marshal is constrained by regulation. The capacity limitation might have to do with egress capability as much as area capacity. The facts are not clear. [trump, fire marshal]

His campaign must get in the habit of booking venues with clearly stated capacity. While his point is made that more people are disappointed than satisfied, this is a losing argument.

But not so at Mechanicsburg.

These Trump crowds are contrasted with Hillary crowds that number far fewer. She is seen speaking to about a hundred or so people gathered intimately compared to this. 

For comparison This video shows her supporters, some 200 or so with professionally printed signs and herself onstage with helpers. The video gives a glimpse of the crowd in Columbus Ohio  July 31, 2016 and the rest is her speech. 

Hillary's campaign is not grassroots, not one bit, it is top down, it is corporate. Trump's campaign is truly grassroots running against GOP as well as DNC and most of corporate media. 

"A lot of holes in GOP presidential ground game in key states"

AP:  Presidential battleground states were supposed to be swarming with Republican Party workers by now.

"We've moved on to thousands and thousands of employees," party chairman Reince Priebus declared in March, contrasting that with the GOP's late-blooming staffing four years earlier. "We are covering districts across this country in ways that we've never had before."

That hasn't exactly happened, a state-by-state review conducted by The Associated Press has found.

With early voting beginning in less than three months in some states, the review reveals that the national GOP has delivered only a fraction of the ground forces detailed in discussions with state leaders earlier in the year. And that is leaving anxious local officials waiting for reinforcements to keep pace with Democrat Hillary Clinton in the states that matter most in 2016.

To be sure, the national party actually has notched record levels of fundraising over the past few years and put together a much more robust ground game than it had in 2012. But officials acknowledge the real competition isn't their past results or the chronically cash strapped Democratic Party. It's Clinton and what GOP party chairman Priebus calls "that machine" of Clinton fundraising.

Some examples of Republican shortfalls: Ohio Republicans thought they were going to see 220 paid staffers by May; in reality there are about 50. Plans for Pennsylvania called for 190 paid staffers; there are about 60. Iowa's planned ground force of 66 by May actually numbers between 25 and 30. In Colorado, recent staff departures have left about two dozen employees, far short of the 80 that were to have been in place.

"Nearly Half of Sanders Supporters Won't Support Clinton"

Bloomberg News:  In the two weeks since Hillary Clinton wrapped up the Democratic presidential primary, runner-up Bernie Sanders has promised to work hard to defeat Donald Trump — but he’s given no sign he’ll soon embrace Clinton, his party’s presumptive nominee. Neither have many of Sanders’s supporters. A June 14th Bloomberg Politics national poll of likely voters in November’s election found that barely half of those who favored Sanders — 55 percent — plan to vote for Clinton. Instead, 22 percent say they’ll vote for Trump, while 18 percent favor Libertarian Gary Johnson. “I’m a registered Democrat, but I cannot bring myself to vote for another establishment politician like Hillary,” says Laura Armes, a 43-year-old homemaker from Beeville, Texas, who participated in the Bloomberg poll and plans to vote for Trump. “I don’t agree with a lot of what Trump says. But he won’t owe anybody. What you see is what you get.”

Conversations with two dozen Sanders supporters revealed a lingering distrust of Clinton as too establishment-friendly, hawkish or untrustworthy. As some Sanders fans see it, the primary was not a simple preference for purity over pragmatism, but a moral choice between an honest figure and someone whom they consider fundamentally corrupted by the ways of Washington. Sanders has fed these perceptions throughout his campaign, which is one reason he's having a hard time coming around to an endorsement.

Voters like Armes, who says she’ll “definitely” vote in November, highlight the difficulty Clinton faces in unifying her party. Clinton’s paltry support among Sanders voters could still grow, as his disheartened fans process the hard-fought primary campaign. But the Bloomberg poll found that only 5 percent of Sanders supporters who don’t currently back Clinton would consider doing so in the future. (read more)

Saturday: four closed caucuses/primaries

[S]o far the primary calendar has been heavily tilted toward open primaries. But there have been four closed elections: the Iowa caucus, the Nevada caucus, and Super Tuesday’s Oklahoma primary and Alaska caucus. Ted Cruz won three of those four closed elections.

So here’s where it potentially gets interesting. Although the media are looking forward to March 15, this Saturday (March 5) there are four Republican primaries/caucuses: Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana and Maine. All are closed.

Then, once the winner-takes-all states begin, a large number of those are closed primaries and caucuses as well (including Florida, for what it’s worth)."

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/2016/03/02/so-far-trump-wins-open-primaries-and-cruz-wins-closed-and-the-calendar-is-starting-to-change-toward-more-closed-primaries/

Severe Trump

MSNBC: The standout topic... was terrorism and national security. Trump repeated – favorably – an apparent myth about how General John Pershing summarily executed dozens of Muslim prisoners in the Philippines with tainted ammunition during a guerilla war against the occupying United States.

“He took fifty bullets, and he dipped them in pig’s blood,” Trump said. “And he had his men load his rifles and he lined up the fifty people, and they shot 49 of those people. And the fiftieth person he said ‘You go back to your people and you tell them what happened.’ And for 25 years there wasn’t a problem, okay?”

The story appears to be a hoax spread via e-mail forwards, according to rumor tracker Snopes.com,with no evidence it occurred.

The moral of the tale, according to Trump: “We better start getting tough and we better start getting vigilant, and we better start using our heads or we’re not gonna have a country, folks.”

Last night some folks on the right where urging caution against trying to use Trump's own words against him.

Honestly, if you care about stopping Trump, best thing you can do is NOT publicize tonight's comments in high dudgeon. Sorry, but it's true.

— Jeff B/DDHQ (@EsotericCD) February 20, 2016

Point/Counterpoint

Trooper York: It was obvious that the FOX debate was weighted to help some candidates and hurt others. Why should a campaign sign on to this. Future candidates will have to take control. They have to force the RNC to set up debates that help get a Republican elected. Not one that tries to destroy them.

bagoh20: FOX, and Kelly in particular, did their job in a way that we all have been begging for, and as I've said repeatedly, vote Republican if you want a real press fitting a great democracy.

--------------------------

This article is an excellent rundown of Kelly taking apart Rubio and Cruz by showing videos of each playing light and loose with the immigration issue. She begins with Rubio's videos, corners him with questions, then asks Bush's opinion on Rubio's behavior:

When Rubio tried to wriggle away, arguing that the “earned citizenship” he opposed in 2010 was different than the “earned citizenship” he supported in 2013, Kelly threw a softball to Bush: “Do you agree Senator Rubio has not reversed himself on his immigration promise?” Bush essentially committed the Republican primary equivalent of a murder-suicide, reminding the audience that he and Rubio both supported versions of amnesty—but that only Rubio lacked the guts to admit it.
“...He cut and run because it wasn’t popular among conservatives, I guess,” Bush said.

Bush acknowledged that his position might not be popular in the primary, but with a touch of charming I’m-not-Trump self-deprecation, he urged the audience to read his book stating his case, Immigration Wars. “You can get it at $2.99 on Amazon,” Bush said. “It’s not a best-seller, I can promise you.” When Rubio pointed out that Bush had changed his position on citizenship, Bush didn’t even deny it.

“So did you,” he said.

Rubio seemed taken aback. “Well, but you changed the—in the book …”

“Yeah,” Bush countered. “So did you, Marco.”

She did exactly the same with Cruz, showing the videos, cornering, but then turning to Rand Paul for his opinion on Cruz's behavior:

“Senator Paul, you know how Washington works,” she said. “Do you buy that?”

Paul [said...] “What is particularly insulting is, he’s the king of saying ‘You’re for amnesty.’ Everyone’s for amnesty except for Ted Cruz. But it’s a falseness, and that’s an authenticity problem … I was for legalization. So was Ted—but now he says he wasn’t. That’s not true.

Bernie's New Ad

h/t AllenS

Is it easier to know who and what you don't like?

Conservative magazine National Review is publishing a special edition called "Against Trump". They enlisted over a dozen notable conservatives to write it. Here are some excerpts from their online introduction to the edition, not from the special edition itself.

[T]rump’s politics are those of an averagely well-informed businessman: Washington is full of problems; I am a problem-solver; let me at them. But if you have no familiarity with the relevant details and the levers of power, and no clear principles to guide you, you will, like most tenderfeet, get rolled. Especially if you are, at least by all outward indications, the most poll-obsessed politician in all of American history. Trump has shown no interest in limiting government, in reforming entitlements, or in the Constitution. He floats the idea of massive new taxes on imported goods and threatens to retaliate against companies that do too much manufacturing overseas for his taste. His obsession is with “winning,” regardless of the means — a spirit that is anathema to the ordered liberty that conservatives hold dear and that depends for its preservation on limits on government power. The Tea Party represented a revival of an understanding of American greatness in these terms, an understanding to which Trump is tone-deaf at best and implicitly hostile at worst. He appears to believe that the administrative state merely needs a new master, rather than a new dispensation that cuts it down to size and curtails its power.

It is unpopular to say in the year of the “outsider,” but it is not a recommendation that Trump has never held public office. Since 1984, when Jesse Jackson ran for president with no credential other than a great flow of words, both parties have been infested by candidates who have treated the presidency as an entry-level position. They are the excrescences of instant-hit media culture. The burdens and intricacies of leadership are special; experience in other fields is not transferable. That is why all American presidents have been politicians, or generals. Any candidate can promise the moon. But politicians have records of success, failure, or plain backsliding by which their promises may be judged. Trump can try to make his blankness a virtue by calling it a kind of innocence. But he is like a man with no credit history applying for a mortgage — or, in this case, applying to manage a $3.8 trillion budget and the most fearsome military on earth.

Trump’s record as a businessman is hardly a recommendation for the highest office in the land. For all his success, Trump inherited a real-estate fortune from his father. Few of us will ever have the experience, as Trump did, of having Daddy-O bail out our struggling enterprise with an illegal loan in the form of casino chips. Trump’s primary work long ago became less about building anything than about branding himself and tending to his celebrity through a variety of entertainment ventures, from WWE to his reality-TV show, The Apprentice. His business record reflects the often dubious norms of the milieu: using eminent domain to condemn the property of others; buying the good graces of politicians — including many Democrats — with donations.

Trump has gotten far in the GOP race on a brash manner, buffed over decades in New York tabloid culture. His refusal to back down from any gaffe, no matter how grotesque, suggests a healthy impertinence in the face of postmodern PC (although the insults he hurls at anyone who crosses him also speak to a pettiness and lack of basic civility). His promise to make America great again recalls the populism of Andrew Jackson. But Jackson was an actual warrior; and President Jackson made many mistakes. Without Jackson’s scars, what is Trump’s rhetoric but show and strut? If Trump were to become the president, the Republican nominee, or even a failed candidate with strong conservative support, what would that say about conservatives? The movement that ground down the Soviet Union and took the shine, at least temporarily, off socialism would have fallen in behind a huckster. The movement concerned with such “permanent things” as constitutional government, marriage, and the right to life would have become a claque for a Twitter feed.

Trump nevertheless offers a valuable warning for the Republican party. If responsible men irresponsibly ignore an issue as important as immigration, it will be taken up by the reckless. If they cannot explain their Beltway maneuvers — worse, if their maneuvering is indefensible — they will be rejected by their own voters. If they cannot advance a compelling working-class agenda, the legitimate anxieties and discontents of blue-collar voters will be exploited by demagogues. We sympathize with many of the complaints of Trump supporters about the GOP, but that doesn’t make the mogul any less flawed a vessel for them. Some conservatives have made it their business to make excuses for Trump and duly get pats on the head from him. Count us out. Donald Trump is a menace to American conservatism who would take the work of generations and trample it underfoot in behalf of a populism as heedless and crude as the Donald himself.

Rush Limbaugh: At this stage, this election transcends ideology. Because Hillary.

Caller Challenges Rush on Rush Apparent Defense of Trump

CALLER: Listen, Rush, you had mentioned something earlier about how Donald Trump cut a commercial and that all the media has played that commercial for free, and that he's a master manipulator of the media.

RUSH: Right.

CALLER: And that got me thinking kind of something that irritated me about your show over the last several weeks, and it's that you utter the word Trump more than he does, and that's no small feat. And I understand your audience gonna walk a line, half your audience are Trump supporters, half of them are somebody else, but I don't understand why you give so much free airtime in the defense of a non-conservative. And you've said Trump is a non-conservative, so I understand defending him against the left-wing attacks, that makes sense to me. But every time some nobody throws an attack at Donald Trump you spend a good portion of your show, you know, knocking it down, and I just don't understand that. There's a real conservative in this race.

Rush was taken aback a little bit because the caller was telling the truth, and after a little back and forth over nothing Rush composed himself and started answering...

Luntz: Donald Trump’s bile is a healing balm for spurned Americans

The simple truth is, the more provocative his language, the deeper and more passionate his support. He is no dummy; there is a method to his proverbial madness. Mr Trump says — to the growing legions who will listen — what tens of millions of Americans are already thinking. Respect or revile him, the man has hit a vein.

I spent three hours in a deep dialogue focus group with 29 Trump supporters. The phenomenon of “The Donald” is rooted in a psyche far deeper and more consequential than next November’s presidential election. His support denotes an abiding distrust in — and disrespect for — the governing elite. These individuals do not like being told by Washington or Wall Street what is best for them, do not like the direction America is headed in, and disdain President Barack Obama and his (perceived) circle of self-righteous, tone-deaf governing partisans.

Trump voters are not just angry — they want revenge.

Mr Trump has adroitly filled the vacuum of vitriol, establishing himself as the bold, brash, take-no-prisoners megaphone for the frustrated masses. They see him as the antidote to all that Mr Obama has made wrong with America. So to understand why millions love Mr Trump so much, you have to take a step back and listen to why they hate Mr Obama so much. (read the whole thing)

Trump: Not so fast there Mohamed....how about some water?

WASHINGTON – Republican front-runner Donald Trump refused Sunday to rule out a third-party presidential run, as he vowed to bring back waterboarding as an interrogation technique for suspected terrorists.

Backing away from a signed pledge he made in September to support the Republican nominee, Trump told “This Week,’ that’s he’s now taking a wait and see approach on whether to run as an independent.

“I will see what happens. I have to be treated fairly,” he said.

His comments comes as fresh polling shows Trump is the undisputed Republican front-runner — even as establishment Republicans are plotting attacks to take him down.

“If I’m treated fairly, I’m fine,” Trump said. “All I want … is a level playing field.”

Sister Souljah: Hillary reminds me of ‘the slave plantation’

“She talks down to people [and] is condescending and pandering,” she said of the Democratic presidential front-runner.

“She even talked down to the commander in chief, President Barack Obama, while she was under his command,” Souljah added, referencing Clinton’s tenure as secretary of State from 2009 to 2013. Souljah’s remarks continue a feud with Hillary Clinton and former President Bill Clinton that began more than a 20 years ago. (read more)

I heard on the radio this morning that more people streamed the last Republican debate over the Fox Business network (1.4 million) than streamed the Super Bowl. Granted, the Fox Business Network is not as available as MSNBC, the network that hosted the 3rd debate, but still, anything out-streaming the Super Bowl expresses a very high level of interest in my book.

Krauthammer: Biden will run as ‘Insurance Policy’ in case Hillary’s indicted

Link to video

Charles Krauthammer predicted Joe Biden will enter the presidential race, but only to be able to easily pick up the nomination should Hillary Clinton be indicted. Relevant footage at approximate 4:10 (via The Corner)