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Author: Fuzzy Slippers

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Fuzzy Slippers

I am a constitutional conservative, a writer, and an editor.

Follow me on Twitter @fuzislippers

Posted by Fuzzy Slippers on January 14, 2016 47 Comments
Bernie Sanders' "Democrat socialist" policies sound good and have a lot of popular support among certain demographics, but when pressed on how he would pay for all the free stuff he's promising, he's a bit nonplussed.  Pesky details like that just don't interest him; it's all about the utopian ideal in his dreamy little head, not about reality. For example, although he pledged to release his plan for paying for his health care plan before the Iowa caucuses, he's now decided that might be a mistake and is considering breaking that particular pledge. CNN reports:

Bernie Sanders could break his pledge to release details on how he would pay for his health care plan before the Iowa caucuses, according to a top aide.

Posted by Fuzzy Slippers on January 12, 2016 4 Comments
Given the atmosphere of deep political division that has widened and deepened during Obama's presidency and the clear dissatisfaction among Republican primary voters, Gallup's latest poll on party identification makes sense. According to Gallup, the percentage of people who identify with either the Democrat or Republican party is "nearing historic" lows.
In 2015, for the fifth consecutive year, at least four in 10 U.S. adults identified as political independents. The 42% identifying as independents in 2015 was down slightly from the record 43% in 2014. This elevated percentage of political independents leaves Democratic (29%) and Republican (26%) identification at or near recent low points, with the modest Democratic advantage roughly where it has been over the past five years.
Despite knowing better, I am sometimes surprised by how very few Americans actually identify as Democrat.  It seems that they dominate the news and the culture, so it's easy to forget that they make up such an insignificant portion of the electorate.   I'm never surprised that Republicans make up an even more insignificant portion.

Posted by Fuzzy Slippers on January 11, 2016 99 Comments
Back in November, Donald Trump asserted that if elected president he would have a "humane deportation force" to round up all illegal immigrants and deport them.  This statement is now being used in interviews with other presidential candidates who are opposed to amnesty and want to close the border and enforce existing immigration law. For example, in a Sunday interview, CNN's Jake Tapper harangued Ted Cruz on Trump's concept of a "deportation force." Watch:

Posted by Fuzzy Slippers on January 10, 2016 9 Comments
After years of claiming to be pro-Second Amendment, Hillary Clinton has changed her tune and is now attacking Bernie Sanders on his one weakness with progressives / socialists: guns. ABCNews reports:
Following a week in which the president outlined his planned gun control actions, Hillary Clinton is hitting her rival, Sen. Bernie Sanders, on his record -- and Sanders and his campaign are responding in full force, portraying the former Secretary of State as a flip-flopper. “When it really mattered, Senator Sanders voted with the gun lobby and I voted against the gun lobby,” Clinton told Chris Matthews on “Hardball” tonight.

Posted by Fuzzy Slippers on January 10, 2016 22 Comments
As we watch the 2016 Republican primaries unfold in often-surprising ways, it is clear that there is a strong desire among Republican primary voters for change within the party.  Sick of what Ted Cruz calls "the Washington Cartel" and of the "election conservatives" who managed for so long to convince voters they uphold conservative values and principles, Republican primary voters are taking a stand. It began before Obama was elected, while President Bush was still in office, and has since only gained in strength and resolve, and the GOP establishment has been slow to notice or grasp what is happening. They saw glimpses of it in the TEA Party in 2009 and '10 and worked side-by-side with Democrats to diminish its influence, they may have noticed something was changing in the 2010 and 2014 mid-terms, they probably got a more clear picture when Eric Cantor (then House GOP whip) was booted out of office, and they started to pay attention when Speaker Boehner was also forced out.  They thought they could handle it, though, so they plowed ahead . . . pushing Jeb Bush as the next in line for the presidency, and that's when things started to go so terribly wrong for the GOP establishment that they are finally sitting up and taking notice.

Posted by Fuzzy Slippers on January 09, 2016 23 Comments
Reading the accounts from Cologne about the throngs of Arab men sexually assaulting women in Cologne on New Year's Eve, my first thought went to Lara Logan who suffered a similar fate in Egypt during the "Arab Spring." Lara is continuing to suffer from the unspeakable abuse she endured and was again hospitalized early in 2015.  My second thought went to the Second Amendment. As the evil that was perpetrated on over a hundred women (in Cologne alone) sinks in, the governments in Germany and throughout the western world—reports of similar attacks in Finland are emerging—are feeling more pressure than ever to address the refugee crisis and their own policies. Der Spiegel has published a lengthy and thoughtful article entitled "Chaos and Violence: How New Year's Eve in Cologne Changed Germany."
For some, the events finally bring to light what they have always been saying: that too many foreigners in the country bring too many problems along with them. For the others, that which happened is what they have been afraid of from the very beginning: that ugly images of ugly behavior by migrants would endanger what has been a generally positive mood in Germany with respect to the refugees.

Posted by Fuzzy Slippers on January 08, 2016 18 Comments
Yesterday, a man whose name has not yet been released attempted to slaughter a Philadelphia police officer because the police, he believes, uphold laws that are not consistent with the Koran.  He also reportedly told Philadelphia police officers that he has pledged his allegiance to ISIS. ABCNews reports:
A 30-year-old man accused of firing at least 11 times at a Philadelphia police officer had pledged allegiance to ISIS, police said today. The gunman, now in custody, "confessed to committing this cowardly act in the name of Islam," Philadelphia Police Commissioner Richard Ross said during a news conference. "According to him, he believed that the police defend laws that are contrary to the teachings of the Quran." Philadelphia Police Captain James Clark said the suspect, who's name was not released at the news conference, "stated that he pledges his allegiance to Islamic State, he follows Allah and that is the reason he was called upon to do this."

Posted by Fuzzy Slippers on January 07, 2016 14 Comments
As Marco Rubio continues to present himself as the Jeb alternative, he's begun attacking the other "other Jeb," Chris Christie. Claiming that Christie is too close to Obama on Common Core, health care, and gun control (notably absent from the list is illegal immigration, of course), Rubio implies that he is more conservative than Christie in an attempt to appeal to Republican primary voters. The Washington Post reports:
As Chris Christie’s establishment rivals seize on his blue-state governing record, the New Jersey governor punched back here Tuesday with the kind of bluntness that had been his trademark but in this presidential campaign has been the domain of Donald Trump.

Posted by Fuzzy Slippers on January 06, 2016 64 Comments
In the wake of Donald Trump's call for a temporary ban on Muslims entering the U.S., the UK saw a huge response to a petition that calls for Trump to be banned from the UK.   While there is a petition against banning Trump, it has, so far, only 39,537 signatures. With 560,000 signatures on the petition for a ban, the UK parliament has tempered its initial stance and is now set to debate the Trump ban after all. The Guardian reports:
MPs are to debate calls for the US presidential candidate Donald Trump to be banned from the UK following his controversial comments about Muslims, after more than half a million people signed a petition.

Posted by Fuzzy Slippers on January 04, 2016 24 Comments
Calls for Chicago mayor, Rahm Emanuel, to resign have been increasing and include a call from Al Sharpton.  Amid rumors that Emanuel's office withheld the Laquan McDonald police video purposefully to boost his reelection chances, Illinois is now considering the possibility of a recall election. ABCNews reports:
Illinois state law currently addresses only the recall of a governor, a provision voters approved in 2010 after former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich was arrested and impeached. Now, state Rep. La Shawn Ford, a Chicago Democrat, wants voters to also have the power to remove the mayor of the country's third-largest city. In light of the unrest in the city, Ford said, "It's clearly the right thing to have on the books." . . . .  Under Ford's proposal, two city aldermen would have to sign an affidavit agreeing with a recall petition and organizers must collect more than 88,000 signatures from registered voters in the city. At least 50 signatures must come from each of 50 wards.

Posted by Fuzzy Slippers on January 02, 2016 25 Comments
There has been a lot of speculation about whether or not Jeb Bush wants to be president.  He doesn't seem to have that "fire in his belly" that his brother so often demonstrated on the campaign trail, and he didn't seem to be very interested in his campaign at the outset beyond the massive fundraising efforts and trying to win support from the traditional GOPe "king makers."  This, actually, is what convinces me that Jeb does want to be president; he's just doing it the old, tired way, a way that simply doesn't work as traditional venues for political campaigns simply don't have the same audience share (and thus power) they once did.  It also doesn't help that the Republican primary voters are fed up with—and actively rebelling against—the traditional "it's your turn now" approach to GOP candidates for president. Jeb and his campaign have a tried a number of strategies to help salvage his campaign, but from cutting staff to clumsy and awkward attacks on Marco Rubio and Donald Trump, his campaign quickly moved from tragedy to farce.

Posted by Fuzzy Slippers on January 02, 2016 7 Comments
The marijuana legalization brigade has made great strides in their efforts to legalize medical marijuana in a large number of states, and they only seem to fail (for the time being, anyway) when they go too far and push for too much as they did this year in Florida. While seeing great success across this country, the progressive push for legal pot is having unintended consequences for Mexican pot farmers who are seeing their profits diminish as more states pass pot-friendly laws and the Obama administration refuses to close the border or enforce our nation's existing laws regarding the growth and sale of marijuana when such laws "clash" with the new states' laws. The Los Angeles Times reports:

Posted by Fuzzy Slippers on January 01, 2016 8 Comments
Back in April, the Ted Cruz campaign had a fundraiser in which one could win an afternoon "shooting with Ted," so on the one hand, it's not surprising that when a "Netflix and chill" fundraiser went out people believed it. In other ways, however, because of the meaning of that phrase; it is surprising . . . simply because the Cruz campaign has been pretty savvy thus far about not making such cultural and social media faux pas. https://twitter.com/A_Garcia1990/status/681595388718133248/photo/1 And they didn't this time--the entire thing turned out to be a Photoshopped hoax.

Posted by Fuzzy Slippers on January 01, 2016 10 Comments
In the wake of news that only one person showed up at a Martin O'Malley event in Iowa, news that he has failed to make the ballot in Ohio is probably unwelcome for the floundering campaign. The Hill reports:
Democratic presidential candidate Martin O'Malley failed to qualify for the ballot in Ohio. A spokesman for the Ohio secretary of state confirmed to The Hill on Thursday that O'Malley did not get the necessary 1,000 signatures to appear on the March 15 ballot. O'Malley's campaign submitted 1,175 signatures, but only 772 were found to be valid, according to the secretary's office. "While this news is disappointing, we are exploring all of our options," Haley Morris, a spokeswoman for O'Malley, said in a statement. Morris said that O'Malley will "campaign vigorously" in the Buckeye State and noted that he is on the ballot in 18 other states. O'Malley, a former Maryland governor, has failed to gain traction for his 2016 Democratic bid, placing well behind former secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) in recent polls.
For his part, however, O'Malley is not giving up on his campaign just yet and has opened a new campaign HQ in Waterloo [insert obvious one-liners here].

Posted by Fuzzy Slippers on December 29, 2015 20 Comments
One of the things that I find amusing about the Democrats' war on the Koch brothers is the fact that it seems to be based more in projection than in fact.  George Soros is notoriously behind and/or involved in a slew of progressive initiatives, websites, and assorted pot stirrings. It's usually a good idea to know what the opposition is thinking, so it's worth taking a look at the article he penned for The Guardian entitled "The terrorists and demagogues want us to be scared. We mustn't give in."   In it, Soros claims that terrorists have discovered that western, "open" societies have a key weakness that can be exploited:  a fear of death. Note how he singles out France's response to the Paris attacks as being particularly "irrational" (as we'll see, he's quite happy with America's president's non-response to terrorism.):
Open societies are always endangered. This is especially true of America and Europe today, as a result of the terrorist attacks in Paris and elsewhere, and the way that America and Europe, particularly France, have reacted to them.

Posted by Fuzzy Slippers on December 28, 2015 8 Comments
The mainstream media is having a lot of fun reporting that Hillary is this year's Gallup "Most Admired Woman" for a "record 20th time." What they are leaving out, however, is that it appears that the long list of scandals and controversies that have plagued her since leaving her position as Secretary of State in early 2013 may be catching up with her (read LI's Hillary coverage here). When one looks more closely at the Gallup poll, it becomes clear that while still topping the list, Hillary has fallen quite sharply since December 2012. Take a look at the following:

Posted by Fuzzy Slippers on December 27, 2015 17 Comments
The Oxford University student behind the demand to remove Cecil Rhodes' name from the Rhodes Scholarship now has another demand -- ban the French flag on campuses. The student, Ntokozo Qwabe, has a history of activism in demanding the removal of "offensive" materials.  His first project was the "Rhodes Must Fall" campaign demanding the removal of a statute of Cecil Rhodes; in an ironic twist, it turned out that he attended Oxford on a Rhodes scholarship which he apparently does not intend on repaying. The Telegraph reports on the new demand to ban the French flag:
The law graduate behind a controversial campaign to remove a statue of British colonialist Cecil Rhodes from Oxford University’s Oriel College has turned his attention to the French flag, saying he’d support its ban on all university campuses.
Ntokozo Qwabe, co-founder of Rhodes Must Fall in Oxford, says France has committed acts of terror and refused to concede that Isis is worse than the French state.

Posted by Fuzzy Slippers on December 27, 2015 8 Comments
Jim Webb dropped out of the 2016 Democrat primary in October due to low polling, low fundraising, and low voter enthusiasm, but as Amy noted at the time, his team was even then making noises about an independent run. Those noises have become much more noticeable as Webb has launched direct attacks on Hillary regarding her tenure as Secretary of State and her specific mishandling of Libya (not, however, anything about #Benghazi) and the "Arab Spring" debacle. https://twitter.com/JimWebbUSA/status/680750510236897280 Writing on Facebook, Webb railed against Hillary's "inept" mismanagement and "nonsensical" comments; he even takes a shot at the lapdog media for not holding her to account.
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