No Hiding Trump's Hostility Toward Government

Okay, we get it, Mr. Trump. You're expressing your perfect contempt for the various departments of government to which you're appointing people with either (a) no qualifications for managing those departments or (b) open hostility toward the departments they are being appointed to manage.

Like this fool.

That's really a funny joke. Hahahahaha. Can't wait to see how it all turns out, if the good people who voted for you will be laughing too.

The scorecard, so far:

Steven Mnuchin at Treasury wants to do away with Dodd-Frank

Andrew Puzder at Labor is a vocal critic of increasing the minimum wage and an opponent of rules that would make more workers eligible for overtime pay

Scott Pruitt at the Environmental Protection Agency is a primary architect of legal challenges on President Barack Obama’s environmental regulations

Tom Price at the Department of Health and Human Services wants to phase out Medicare

Ben Carson at the Department of Housing and Urban Development, who believes that the pyramids were grain storage bins

Jeff Sessions at Justice is no friend of either civil rights or voting rights

Betsy DeVos at the Education Department who intends to cut "the public" out of public education

This bunch has tilted radically to the 1% and decidedly away from "those forgotten people" Trump said he wanted to help. Yeah, these guys are really gonna help!

House Wrecker

President Trumplethinskin, a builder and promoter of luxury housing, naturally couldn't care less about the Department of Housing and Urban Development, which deals with -- ick! -- poor people, so he's nominating a man to oversee that department who can destroy it.

Ben Carson knows he's unqualified. Or, at least, he knew it on November 15, when another cabinet post was dangled in front of him -- Health and Human Services. Dr. Carson had his mouthpiece, Armstrong Williams, tell The Hill at that time: "Dr. Carson feels he has no government experience, he's never run a federal agency. The last thing he would want to do was take a position that could cripple the presidency."

He apparently went from not wanting to cripple Health and Human Services (Rep. Tom Price will gleefully do that job) to seeing the Christian value in crippling Housing and Urban Development.

Yessir! Dr. Ben Carson sure nuff is a deep thinker on the whole issue of poverty:

"I do care about the poor people. And in the system that we're putting together, there will be a rebate for people at the poverty level. But I also want to emphasize the fact that as we get the economy moving, and I hope I get a question about how do we get the economy moving, there will be a lot more opportunities for poor people not to be poor people because this is America. This is the land of dreams. And our policies should be aimed at allowing people to realize that dream" ("second-tier" debate, Fox Business, Nov. 10, 2015).

Because ... 'Merica!

Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close: The 4th Republican Presidential Debate

9:10 p.m.

Trump, Carson, and Rubio are hitting the first question outta the Republican ballpark: Should we raise the minimum wage? No, they say, but in this ballpark, it's a display of pure charity. Trump actually allowed as how wages are "too high" now and that "people have to go out, they have to work really hard and have to get into that upper stratum." I'm doing you a favor to keep you at $7.25 an hour. (Or you could borrow a million dollars from your daddy!)

Carson, always ready with a line that can be demonstrably disproven: "Every time we raise the minimum wage, the number of jobless people increases." Fact checkers, go! (And, indeed, that statement isn't true.)

Rubio danced. My parents made minimum wage, and look at me. Ain't I purty?

9:20 p.m.

Bush would repeal every law that Obama even breathed on during the last seven years. Internet. Clean Power. Water. Repeal 'em all. Bush is Mr. Strong Man this evening!

9:23 p.m.

Someone pushed "play" on the Fiorina machine! When she starts, she doesn't stop. Most rehearsed candidate by far, except for Cruz, who has his zingers queued up and ready to go.

9:26 p.m.

Rand Paul: "I think that we ought to look where income inequality seems to be the worst. It seems to be worst in cities run by Democrats, governors of... [APPLAUSE]. States run by Democrats and countries currently run by Democrats." Well, now. North Carolina is completely run by Republicans, and how do we stack up? Higher unemployment, a new tax system that favors the rich.... How about Kansas, that model of Republican management?

9:38 p.m.

Scuffle has broken out over immigration. Kasich starts a fight with Trump after Trump reaffirms that he's going to ship 5 million people out of the country. Kasich says, "Come on, people. It's a silly argument." Trump disses Ohio. Kasich defends Ohio's honor. Trump: I'm rich. I don't have to talk to Kasich. Boos.

9:42 p.m.

Cruz is ready with one of his rehearsed lines: "If Republicans join Democrats as the party of amnesty, we will lose." Then, because attacking the media got him the biggest applause in the last debate, Cruz goes after the press in a clever way: "I will say the politics of immigration will be very, very different if a bunch of lawyers or bankers were crossing the Rio Grande. Or if a bunch of people with journalism degrees were coming over and driving down the wages in the press." Best line of the night.

9:45 p.m.

Fiorina: "We need free-market health care!" The mind develops an instant absess.

10:00 p.m.

The Cruz polish gets a scuff mark: He sez he would cut five agencies: IRS, Commerce, Energy, Commerce, and HUD. Paging Rick Perry!

10:05 p.m.

Paul and Rubio in a fight over Rubio's child tax credit proposal, which Paul calls an entitlement and which therefore means Rubio is not a conservative. Rubio: Family values, family, fam'bly! Rubio fights back, implying Paul is a big wimp because he doesn't want to pour more money into the military. Everybody else begins to pipe up like hungry sea gulls that they want a big military too, goddamn it! Fiorina is positively gonna stomp all over this globe with her armed forces!

10:11 p.m.

Trump says the TPP trade deal is the worst trade deal in the history of trade deals because it advantages China, which is burying us. Paul calmly zings back: China isn't a part of the TPP deal. Trump falls silent.

10:18 p.m.

Carson's plan for ISIS: We have to make them "look like losers." We do that by taking their oil fields and then destroying them. "We could do this, I believe, fairly easily." Carson says he learned that from "several generals." Come on, folks! ISIS is just like 8th grade nerds. Take their lunch money, pants them, and shove 'em in a locker!

10:28 p.m.

Fiorina says she's met Putin not in a green room, like Trump, but in a private meeting. Fiorina is like the president of the most exclusive sorority on campus, putting a rival sorority in its place. "There's that Vladimir Putin. Let's not talk to him!"

10:31 p.m.

Trump comes mighty close to saying STFU to Fiorina. "Why do you keep interrupting everyone? Terrible!"

10:37 p.m.

Kasich, who's barged into other candidates' statements several times and is the real interrupter, is now whining about not getting enough time in this debate.

10:57 p.m.

Fiorina sez for at least the third time: "We have got to take our country back." But did anybody keep the receipt?

Donald Trump said that no debate should go more than two hours, so we break away now to watch Trevor Noah.

Ben Carson Now Leading the Pack in NC

Yep. In the latest ElonUniversity poll of slightly over 1,000 North Carolinians, Ben Carson pulls over 30% support from Republicans who say they'll vote in March's primary.

Pity former Strong Man Donald Trump. He's fallen to just 19%. That brand isn't wearing well.

But get a load of that Ben Carson brand! Christian triumphalism wrapped in the soft-spoken guise of a divinely inspired death angel who looks with disdain on the Jews for not shooting their way out of Auschwitz, who thinks prison makes you gay, who thinks that having health insurance under Obamacare is worse than slavery, who denounces evolution as the work of the devil, and who has certain astounding insights into the true function of certain world archeological monuments.

Not that I want to discourage this state's born-again Republicans from voting for this candidate. Perhaps he really is the "conservative Obama" that y'all have been seeking to lead you out of the wilderness of weak Bush/Boehner/McConnell Republicanism.

Assuming Carson's appeal to church-goers is not a polling mirage, he's going to inspire people in March who don't always vote, or even ever vote, because he represents righteous America besieged by godlessness. He can fly like St. Michael, the guardian angel, armor and drawn sword flashing in the sun, and some people -- perhaps a majority of Republicans in North Carolina -- will vote for that.

But he will not take the nomination, and what will become of those voters in November if their man doesn't ultimately make it? Will they also come out next November with the same sense of purpose if the Republican candidate is Rubio?

Blood on the Moon, Chum in the Water ... The Terminus of Modern Republicanism

At a time when Carly Fiorina parades an acidic self-righteousness and Donald Trump trumpets a tin-horn's strong-man act and Ben Carson puts religious bigotry on fulsome display -- the three leaders in the Republican presidential primary -- it makes perfect sense that a mayoral candidate in Kings Mountain, NC, would come forth advocating...

1. the eradication of all homosexuals;

2. making divorce, alcohol, and "all immigration" illegal;

3. reduced "governance," because the "blood moon" on September 13 heralds an apocalypse anyway.

Well, This Explains Why Dr. Ben Carson Shot Up in the Polls

Vernon Robinson Watch

Remember Vernon Robinson? "The black Jesse Helms," he liked to call himself. He was the Winston-Salem city councilman who famously ran against Virginia Foxx in her first congressional race in the 2004 Republican Primary, warning everyone that Foxx was a very dangerous liberal femi-Nazi who was a soft-on-gayness Trojan Horse.

Well, he got the horse part right.

Robinson actually came in first in that primary, with Foxx in second place, but he failed to get his 40%. In the 2nd primary that year, Foxx prevailed.

Robinson ran one of the nastiest campaigns imaginable against Foxx, which included a now-famous racist attack on Hispanic immigrants. You could hardly imagine anything nastier, that is, until Robinson ran in the 13th Congressional District in  2006 against incumbent Democrat Brad Miller. Robinson repeatedly intimated that Brad Miller was probably homosexual.

After losing to Foxx in 2004, Robinson subsequently lost his seat on the Winston-Salem City Council, ran again unsuccessfully against Brad Miller, ran unsuccessfully for State Superintendent of Public Education, and ran unsuccessfully for chairmanship of the state GOP. Quite the political record!

Which is why it's more than just interesting that Robinson was present and vocal when Hasan Harnett won the NC GOP chairmanship yesterday. Evidently, Robinson sees Harnett as doubling down on the Robinson Recipe for Winning Hearts and Minds in North Carolina.

Robinson is also the instigator and manager of the National Draft Ben Carson for President Committee, because, while Robinson personally tends to drive voters away, he also tends to collect big bucks from the well-heeled who are motivated primarily by hatred/fear. The National Draft Ben Carson for President Committee is a super-PAC that has raised $12.2 million, which makes Robinson a player, y'all.

Steven Greene, a state politics expert at North Carolina State University, is quoted as suggesting that Robinson is a "strategic loser"—"so extreme in his positions that he'd never have a serious shot at office, but an appealing target for the fundraising dollars of ideologues."

"Strategic loser" or "Angel of Death"?

Those blessed with the Robinson imprimatur seem not to prosper. Have you noticed the Ben Carson for President campaign lately? Carson has recently lost his campaign chairman, his national finance chairman, his deputy campaign manager, and his general counsel: "The four senior advisers all quit the campaign, which has fallen into disarray due to dysfunctional leadership, a lack of professionalism and frequent in-fighting" (PoliticusUSA). Was the Robinson personality involved in driving those people away? Dunno. Could be.

According to the Mother Jones investigative piece on Robinson, Vernon "has quietly turned his quixotic Draft Ben Carson effort into a lucrative enterprise for himself. FEC filings show that the PAC paid out over $250,000 to a consulting firm called Tzu Mahan. Buzzfeed reported in November that Tzu Mahan—its name a mashup of ancient Chinese military strategist Sun Tzu and 19th century Navy admiral Alfred Thayer Mahan—is a one-man company, run by Robinson."

We can only hope that Mr. Robinson has the ear -- exclusively -- of new NC GOP Chair Hasan Harnett!