Will Trump trump them all?

Donald Trump has surged to the top of the Republican presidential field on the strength of his unpredictable and unforgiving rhetoric toward his own GOP running mates.

Now the question for the other candidates is how to avoid letting Trump turn the first Republican debate on August 6 into yet another platform that he dominates, which could let him consolidate his lead even more.

Trump's ability to climb the ladder has shocked not only his Republican foes, but also those in the media, who are now struggling to figure out how Trump will factor in the debate that many other candidates are hoping can be less about Trump, and more about them for a change.

One major issue is whether Trump, who is quick to interrupt and publicly insult any critic as a "loser" or "idiot," will adhere to traditional (though loosely defined) presidential debate decorum. Some say it just won't happen.

Washington Post politics blogger Chris Cillizza wrote in June that the "lack of rule-following" by Trump "will ensure that Trump is a big part of any story written of the debates or any other forum where multiple presidential candidates are present." He called Trump the "car-accident candidate."

It's possible that the debate moderators can control Trump. Fox anchors Chris Wallace, Bret Baier and Megyn Kelly, all seasoned TV anchors, are confirmed to moderate the debate.

But some implied it's going to be a difficult job.  "I mean, that's going to be up to Fox," said ABC News reporter Jonathan Karl, who was recently cut off by President Obama when he attempted to ask a Trump-related question. "They've got the first debate. But clearly [Trump] will be in that debate. He's a declared candidate. And he's leading in several of the polls. You can't really ignore him, can you?"

In a column for the Independent Journalism Review, Republican strategist Rick Wilson, a Trump detractor, said the real estate maven "is a man who loves the snide ad hominem" and is almost certain to engage in personal attacks on the debate stage.

An aide to one of the leading Republican presidential campaigns, speaking on condition of anonymity, questioned whether the debate would be all about Trump taking on his current main rival: Jeb Bush.

"Jeb Bush has been Trump's top target and it will be interesting to see how Bush handles the sharp attacks on the debate stage," she said. "Will Jeb Bush be in a position to have to respond to all of Donald Trump's lines of attack?"

Since announcing his candidacy in June, Trump headlines have saturated almost every news cycle, starting with his controversial comment about many illegal immigrants being "rapists," and his more recent off-the-cuff remark that seemed to question John McCain's status as a "war hero."

On Tuesday, Ohio Gov. John Kasich became the 16th Republican to jump into the race. The announcement was almost completely overshadowed by a news conference by Trump, during which he held up a piece of paper that showed the cell phone number for Lindsey Graham, another GOP presidential candidate who has called Trump a "jackass."  "He doesn't seem like a very bright guy," Trump said of Graham.

The media's attention to Trump has been to the detriment of other lesser-known candidates like Carly Fiorina, who have tried increasing their own profiles as to have a shot at a place in the first debate.

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More Leftist racism

 Martin O’Malley was booed off the stage at Netroots Nation 2015 because he said “All lives matter.” He was booed off the stage because he didn’t say “Black lives matter.” Saying that all lives matter is actually considered offensive to some because it apparently symbolizes white supremacy or something.

However, all lives matter. Every last one. Whether it be the unborn child that Planned Parenthood wants to treat as an old car that is only as valuable as the parts that can be salvaged to the black person who is unjustifiably killed while in police custody to a white person who is killed by an illegal immigrant (one who has been in trouble with the law several times) to the Marines killed in a terror attack on our home soil. Every one of these lives matters, no matter what the militant Left would have you believe.

There are times when minority lives are tragically cut short. There are times when white lives are tragically cut short. Are we supposed to treat one as more important as the other? Was the entire movement not to create equality among the races? Or will I simply be accused of exercising white privilege simply because I am naive enough to think we should all be treated equally under the law?

This movement that proclaims “Black Lives Matter” and shouts down anyone who says “All Lives Matter” are simply reacting to a status quo that, under Barack Obama, they assumed would be abolished. However, the fact is that the conditions under which we all live in, but especially the black community, have gotten exponentially worse. Communities are more divided than ever along racial lines, but no one is willing to address the fact that it is under the Democratic Party’s rule that they have gotten so.

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Victims of Illegal Aliens Testify to Senate

Five families came to Capitol Hill Tuesday to tell lawmakers how the nation’s immigration policies led to the death of their loved ones, and the Left can only play a political game. The father of Kathryn Steinle, the woman who was murdered in July by a five-time deported illegal immigrant, testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee, along with four other families. “Everywhere Kate went throughout the world, she shined the light of a good citizen from the United States of America,” Jim Steinle said in his written statement. “Unfortunately, due to the unjointed [sic] laws and basic incompetence of the government, the US has suffered a self-inflicted wound in the murder of our daughter by the hands of a person that should have never been on the streets of this country.”

The hearing coincided with a bill the committee’s chairman, Sen. Chuck Grassley, introduced that would strip state or local jurisdictions of federal law enforcement grants if they continue sanctuary city policies. Furthermore, the law would require a minimum five-year jail sentence for any illegal immigrant who was previously deported but still returned.

But the Left is rallying against the effort to fix the problem. “Good policies are made over time,” wrote a coalition of leftist immigration groups to Congress. Ranking member on the Judiciary Committee Sen. Patrick Leahy rebutted the families' testimonies by writing, “We must resist the urge to hastily adopt legislation that has the unintended consequence of making us less safe.” In other words, collateral damage is okay in the pursuit of Obama’s immigration vision.

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What the Greeks Can Learn from the Irish

The Greeks have been on a wild roller coaster ride with more downs than ups. Voters earlier this month celebrated passage of a referendum denouncing fiscal austerity, only to see Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras agree to a financial bailout with conditions that voters would have rejected. Unfortunately, confusion surrounds Greece’s ailment and its cure. What it needs isn’t austerity per se. What it needs are free-market reforms like the ones that revived Ireland’s economy in the late 1980s and 1990s, according to Independent Institute Senior Fellow Benjamin W. Powell.

In the Ireland of 1986, government accounted for 55 percent of the spending in the economy, compared to 52 percent in Greece today. And like Greece, Ireland’s total debt exceeded the value of its final output. But in 1987, Ireland’s government got serious about reversing course. It began making significant spending cuts in healthcare, schooling, and agriculture; cut back onerous business regulations; and even abolished entire government agencies. In the 1990s, the island nation began enacting tax cuts without increasing the public debt. The economy has since attracted workers from other corners of the European Union.

“Ireland’s courageous reforms and the economic growth that accompanied them fundamentally transformed the economy by significantly reducing the burden of government,” Powell writes. “Greece could make a similar transformation if it had the political will to do it.”

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Antisemitic former General wants to Toss ‘Disloyal’ Americans Into Camps

Wesley Clark was in overall command of NATO forces during the Yugoslav intervention.  He ordered a British general under his command to attack a Russian contingent who arrived without notice.  Fortunately General Sir Peter de la Billiere just laughed.  How such a lamebrain as Clark slimed his way to a senior post is a mystery -- but his Democrat sympathies probably helped.  Another thing that is probably in his favour among the Left is his derogatory comment about "New York money people". Any guesses about who they might be?

Retired general and 2004 candidate for the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination Wesley Clark has a suggestion for dealing with “radicalized” Americans: put them in camps.

The shocking statement was made Friday on MSNBC in a discussion of the terrorist attack by Mohammed Abdulazeez that killed five Marines in Chattanooga, Tennessee. It was not met with any questioning or challenge from host Thomas Roberts.

Clark was asked “how do we fix self-radicalized lone wolfs?” His response was, “In World War II, if someone supported Nazi Germany at the expense of the United States, we didn’t say that was freedom of speech, we put him in a camp, they were prisoners of war. So, if these people are radicalized and they don’t support the United States and they are disloyal to the United States as a matter of principle, fine. That’s their right. It’s our right and it’s our right and obligation to segregate them from the normal community for the duration of the conflict. And I think we’re gonna have to increasingly get tough on this.”

After his appearance spawned pushback from people fearing internment camps on Monday, Clark did not back down. General Clark did clarify that he never said the words “Muslim” or “internment,” however.

In fact, General Clark did not use those words, but a fair listening to what he did say does leave one with that impression. What he meant, if he didn’t mean internment camps, remains unknown.

General Clark was a progressive darling when he entered the 2004 Democratic Party presidential primary. As a retired general, Clark was viewed as a strong candidate against President George W. Bush in the midst of the Iraq war. He proved to be a lackluster candidate and quickly fizzled out, leading to the nomination of the current Secretary of State John Kerry.

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Medical Monsters vs. Life-Giving Angels

Another week, another money-grubbing Planned Parenthood baby-parts harvester exposed.

In the second devastating installment of a three-year journalism investigation, the Center for Medical Progress on Monday released undercover video of another top abortion industry doctor haggling over the sale of “intact” unborn baby parts.

Last week, the Center for Medical Progress introduced us to wine-swilling Dr. Deborah Nucatola – a veritable Hannibal-ina Lecter who gushed about the growing demand for aborted baby hearts and livers as she jibed and imbibed.

This week’s clip features stone-faced, bespectacled Dr. Mary Gatter – an Ice Queen who chillingly negotiated $100-per-specimen price tags for organs she promised would be high quality as a result of “less crunchy” methods of dismembering innocent human life. Gatter, the medical director of the abortion empire’s Pasadena and San Gabriel offices in California, dryly joked that she wanted a “Lamborghini” for her troubles – after a prolonged session spouting obligatory talking points disclaiming a profit motive.

Cecile Richards, president of Planned Butcherhood, issued a feckless apology last week for the “tone” of Nucatola’s grisly business-lunch banter.

What will her excuse be for Gatter? Did the tone elves forget to fill her stocking, too?

The fundamental problem with these licensed medical providers, who greedily have turned the “primum non nocere” creed on its head under the guise of “reproductive services,” is not their defective tenor. It’s their defective souls.

With more barbaric video of the Planned Butcherhood racket undoubtedly yet to come, it is worth pausing from this avalanche of evil to remind the nation that there are thousands of miracle workers in the health care industry who value life and honor their professional oath to first do no harm.

I know this firsthand as the proud daughter of a neonatologist who dedicated his life to using his medical training to save lives, not destroy them. Nowhere is the sanctity of life more vividly illustrated than in a NICU. A father in Texas wrote me with his own personal story and wanted me to share his message:

“I read your piece (last week) regarding the monstrous doctor from Planned Parenthood. Though I have tried, I really cannot grasp the horror of the PP abattoirs or the blackness of the souls that labor within.

"I want to tell you about my family’s encounter with another place that is the antithesis of the Planned Parenthood slaughterhouse.

"My wife and I had the great misfortune three years ago of finding ourselves with two beautiful but tiny children in the Level 3 NICU (Neonatal Intensive Care Unit) at the Woman’s Hospital of Texas in Houston.

"Our beautiful daughter spent the first five months of her life there, and our brave son spent the entirety of his life there, all 44 days.

"I want to tell you this, because I want to tell you about a very bright light that shines in this world, but it shines behind the wall of privacy and quarantine that is a necessary function of NICU life. The six neonatologists and all of the amazing nurses who cared for our children are some of the finest, most decent, devoted and caring people I have ever encountered.

"They work tirelessly to save every life, to give every child in their care as much of a chance as possible, and they truly do care for the ‘least of these.’ They go to work every day in a place where, in spite of all their efforts, tiny children pass away in their care. They are people who deserve to have the veil lifted from their works.

"I am sharing this with you as answer to the final paragraph of your moving piece. You ask what kind of a country we live in? I want you to know that we also live in a country that God has truly blessed with these amazing souls and hundreds more like them: Dr. Alagappan Alagappan, Dr. Talat Ahmed, Dr. Salim Bharwani, Dr. William Caplan, Dr. Peter Haney and Dr. David Simchowitz.

"In the face of evil, it is easy to see only the darkness. There are lights burning still.”

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For more blog postings from me, see  TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH,  POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated) and Coral reef compendium. (Updated as news items come in).  GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten. I also put up occasional updates on my Personal blog and each day I gather together my most substantial current writings on A WESTERN HEART.

List of backup or "mirror" sites here or  here -- for when blogspot is "down" or failing to  update.  Email me  here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or  here (Pictorial) or  here  (Personal)

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