Thursday, March 28, AD 2024 2:02pm

New York Values

Well this campaign season just keeps getting better. Last night the Republicans had the latest in a series of presidential debates. I personally thought the top three contenders – Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, and Donald Trump – all acquitted themselves very well. Even Donald Trump, as off-point and rambling in his answers as ever, was basically coherent. Jeb Bush continues to look like a hostage forced to run for the presidency against his will. Chris Christie did well even if he completely dissembled about his record and once again complained about people debating during a debate. John Kasich is still permitted to participate in these things for reasons that elude most sane people. And Ben Carson, well, Dr. Carson is an extraordinarily humble man of great character, and I’ll leave it at that because I don’t want to say anything too mean.

There were some fierce exchanges, and perhaps the biggest moment of the night occurred Ted Cruz deftly handled the question about his status as a natural born citizen. He even got Trump to concede that he only went there because of Cruz’s standing in the polls. It was beautiful to see the crowd actually boo Trump as he tried to continue down this foolish path.

The other Trump-Cruz exchange arguably did not go quite as well for Cruz. On the stump Cruz had dissed the Donald for upholding “New York values,” a line of attack he continued during the debate. Cruz concluded with the line “Not a lot of conservatives come out of Manhattan,” a line which was actually a subtle jab at Trump’s remark that “not a lot of Evangelicals come out of Cuba.” Trump hit back, going to the 9/11 well to talk about how New Yorkers stood tall and united after the terrorist attacks. It was certainly a well-crafted response by Donald, and it caught Cruz a bit off guard. Video of the exchange can be seen at this link.

Now there’s been some back-and-forth in the social media world about Cruz’s “New York values” line of attack – a phrase, by the way, uttered by Trump himself a few years ago. Many New Yorkers are supposedly upset by the remarks as evidenced by this Daily News front page (link does not go to the Daily News*).

*I remarked on twitter that if the New York Times had a lobotomy, the result would be the New York Daily News. I was in error. The Daily News is the result of the New York Times getting drunk. 

Now, I happen to be a native New Yorker, born and raised in the mean streets of Queens. I attended high school in Manhattan and worked there for a couple of years after college. My family still all live in New York. I loved New York, and still get a little weepy sometimes when I hear Frank Sinatra’s version of “New York, New York.” I remain loyal to my New York sports teams, particularly the Mets. Donald Trump was absolutely right about the spirit of New Yorkers, and their great resiliency. There is a great charm in New York bluntness. Having lived in several other large cities, and having regularly traveled throughout the country, I still think in many ways that New York is the greatest city in the country, especially if you are a certain age. The combination of arts, entertainments, business, food (the best food of any major city, or at least the city with the best diversity of good food), and just the general vibrancy of the city are unmatched. And even as Democratic as the city might be, there is a great working class charm to the outer boroughs where the residents are not so easily typecast. There is a reason New York City did not elect a Democratic mayor for two decades, and why the one who served for 12 years shortly before Giuliani (Ed Koch) was hardly a doctrinaire leftist.

All that being said, let me relay a statistic for you. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the abortion rate in 2010 for women aged 15-44 was 17.7 per 1,000 women in the country. New York’s rate was 35.3, second only to Delaware. No other state was in the thirties. I am willing to bet a small fortunate that the rate in the city was much higher than upstate.

Abortion rates of course don’t tell the whole story, though there is a definite correlation between high abortion rate states and “blue” states. There are demographic, economic and other factors at play in the statistic as well.

But let’s be clear about something. Ted Cruz was getting at something all of us understand in our hearts. There is a certain value set among urbanites and other people on the east coast that clashes with the values of folks in much of the rest of the country. Of course not everyone who happens to live in New York holds the same values as the urban elites, and even holding those values does not make you, ipso facto, a bad person. Believing in socialized medicine does not render you incapable of rising to the occasion in moments of great stress, or of helping in times of crisis. But when it comes to the world of politics, and in understanding the role of government, or in holding certain cultural values, New Yorkers and the like generally clash with the values and ideology held by the majority of Republicans, and definitely of conservatives. All the crocodile tears shed in the world will not change this stubborn fact. Even if you cringe at the hint of a suggestion of some kind of culture war, you have to acknowledge the difference in value sets. And no matter how much Donald Trump has pulled the wool over the eyes of many voters, his history and his actions show he’s from a different world (metaphorically speaking) than traditional conservatives. And that’s Ted Cruz’s point, and it’s a point that is absolutely correct.

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c matt
c matt
Friday, January 15, AD 2016 4:20pm

I still don’t get this whole natural born citizenship attack.

8 USCS § 1401. Nationals and citizens of the United States at birth

The following shall be nationals and citizens of the United States at birth:

(d) a person born outside of the United States and its outlying possessions of parents one of whom is a citizen of the United States who has been physically present in the United States or one of its outlying possessions for a continuous period of one year prior to the birth of such person, and the other of whom is a national, but not a citizen of the United States;

I am assuming Cruz falls under (d), and if he doesn’t, should be easy enough to prove.

Steve Phoenix
Steve Phoenix
Friday, January 15, AD 2016 4:21pm

Zummo, hence the term we all cherish, “fly-over country”. We, the Peasants,..
. (Even tho I live in the SF Baytheist Area, where the elites eventually land, my heart remains in Indiana.)

Zummo, you are also overlooking my dear and ever-favorite candidate, Mike Huckster-a-bee, the stealth candidate, who is making his big move—he’s fooling everyone by holding steady @ 2.5% (RealClearPolitics Average on Jan. 13), ready to pounce on Trump, Cruz & Co. Umm, except he doesn’t have a real campaign structure, does he?

c matt
c matt
Friday, January 15, AD 2016 4:22pm

The only people offended by the NY values comment are New Yorkers, and they ain’t swinging GOP anyway.

Ernst Schreiber
Ernst Schreiber
Friday, January 15, AD 2016 4:46pm

[N]o matter how much Donald Trump has pulled the wool over the eyes of many voters, his history and his actions show he’s from a different world (metaphorically speaking) than traditional conservatives. And that’s Ted Cruz’s point,
.
A point that Hillary Clinton, Andrew Cuomo and Bill Di Blasio have all helpfully reinforced by standing with the Donald in his moment of butt-hurt.

Ernst Schreiber
Ernst Schreiber
Friday, January 15, AD 2016 4:47pm

abject apologies for not closing the italics

Art Deco
Art Deco
Friday, January 15, AD 2016 5:51pm

There’s New York and there’s New York. Downstate and it’s affiliate northern New Jersey are one place, Upstate another. As for Upstate, the Hudson Valley’s an appendix to New England and the rest is Rustbelt. There really is not any such thing as ‘New York values’ unless you’re confining your discussion to the City and it’s environs. The state’s political culture is wretched due to the interaction of two dissimilar and unsympathetic parts. Essentially, shady characters from Downstate like Shelly Silver run everything and everyone else has just given up.

Art Deco
Art Deco
Friday, January 15, AD 2016 6:07pm

I still don’t get this whole natural born citizenship attack.

It’s pleasing for Democratic Party lawfare artists and for the usual self-aggrandizing cranks, including the fellow who told me he’d taught ‘the subject’ for ‘thirty years’ and that ‘natural born’ requires ‘jus soli’ and ‘jus sanguinis’. No, he did not point to his law review publications on the matter; he was posting under the handle ‘anonymous’. Statutory legislation enacted in 1790 regarding the status of those born abroad to American parents give evidence to contemporaneous usage of the term ‘natural born’.

T. Shaw
T. Shaw
Friday, January 15, AD 2016 7:04pm

Cruz is right on NY values. Our thug Governor Cuomo recently told anybody that is pro-life (opposes murdering babies/woman’s health), that is pro-Bill of Rights (opposes his make-believe ban on assault weapons), that is pro-traditional family/marriage (opposes pretend gay “marriage”) that they are no good/pure evil and should get the Hell out of NY. Plus, the politicians running (into a ditch) the city and state hate cops.
.

Take it for what it’s worth. I heard on the radio that the Dems and their Siamese twin/media lie factory hate trump; but they fear Cruz.
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Regarding 9/11: If Trump was in NYC that day, he was far away from ground zero. I doubt he ever went below 59th Street. You know he didn’t volunteer to help with anything that was going on in the days, weeks and months after.

Plus, Trump dissed every fire fighter, police officer and first responder outside of NYC buy intimating that running into the WTC was solely a NY virtue.

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Another thing, you didn’t smell death down there. You smelled chemical fire smoke. The smoke was blown south and west. So, Trump never got a whiff of any smoke.
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On 9/11 and every day for months after, one thing (aside from the mourning we all went through) was how downtown was a wreck and a war zone; for months armed troops everywhere, smoke noxious gases/odors, lines of huge dump trucks carrying out the debris.. And, even on 9/11 as we moved out, and later if you had the opportunity to go uptown for a meeting or whatever, it was like R&R uptown it was as if nothing had happened. Trump uptown may as well have been in Palm Beach after 9/11.
.

.Anzlyne
.Anzlyne
Friday, January 15, AD 2016 7:16pm

it just seems like narcissism ….my cousins live in Queens . They are so proud of being New Yorkers like that is some kind of achievement.
I think they hate the idea of Iowa New Hampshire and South Carolina as all three states are rubes of three different flavors, but still rubes.

T. Shaw
T. Shaw
Friday, January 15, AD 2016 8:00pm

Apparently, Senator Cruz felt the need to apologize and have some fun with morons. Quoted at Instapundit.
.

“I apologize to the hard working men and women of the state of New York who’ve been denied jobs because Gov. Cuomo won’t allow fracking,” Cruz continued. “I apologize to all the pro-life and pro-marriage and pro-Second Amendment New Yorkers who were told by Gov. Cuomo that they have no place in New York because that’s not who New Yorkers are. I apologize to all of the small businesses who’ve been driven out of New York City by crushing taxes and regulations.
.

“I apologize to all of the African-American children who Mayor de Blasio tried to throw out of their charter schools instead of providing a lifeline ot the American dream. And I apologize to all the cops and the firefighters and 9/11 heroes who had no choice but to stand and turn their backs on Mayor de Blasio because Mayor de Blasio over and over again stands with the looters and criminals rather than the brave men and women of blue.”
.

And:
‘.

“Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton and Andrew Cuomo and Bill de Blasio have all demanded an apology and I am happy to apologize. I apologize to the millions of New Yorkers who have been let down by liberal politicians in that state,” Cruz told reporters as he left the University of South Carolina.
.

Instapundit, “That neatly lumped Trump, Cruz’s main rival for the GOP nomination, with the leading Democratic candidate.”

Michael Dowd
Michael Dowd
Saturday, January 16, AD 2016 3:33am

When I think of New York values the words tougher, smarter, richer come to mind, i.e., successful, winning. Folks are buying into Trump because he is a winner. Enough already with losers! America always used to be about winners. The folks want that back. That’s why The Donald is their man, the Babe Ruth of politics.

Debbie G
Saturday, January 16, AD 2016 7:33am

I lived in New York state most of my life, in Western N.Y. We had a little farm there. Most of the people who live near the Buffalo area have little love for New York City or the politicians of the state who are morally bankrupt. In fact, a lot of people there wish NYC would become a separate state or
fall off into the Atlantic.

NYC is the abortion capital of the USA. Gov. Cuomo (who should be excommunicated from the Catholic Church) pushed same sex “marriage” and got that passed, and he is big time supporter of abortion, with hardly a word from Cardinal Dolan. The Cardinal marched in the St. Patrick’s day parade with a homosexual group ( a pro-life group was denied to march). NYC Mayor de Blasio is more like Bernie Sanders…a Socialist, who trashed the NYC police.

So, I am from New York and I support Ted Cruz, because I know exactly what he is talking about.
I now live in the south in a more Conservative state and hopefully will stay that way!

DonL
DonL
Saturday, January 16, AD 2016 8:13am

I still think Cruz was setting up for the longer haul–NY values being a buzz-phrase for the “liberal Northeast.” It is fly-over country and the South that must be won to be the nominee–not Manhattan.
The Donald has yet to insure that he has many of those conservative values and if Cruz does his job right over the near-future, he’ll pound home the reality that the Donald may even oppose those dearly-held values. King of making deals doesn’t quite cut it.

Art Deco
Art Deco
Saturday, January 16, AD 2016 8:40am

NYC Mayor de Blasio is more like Bernie Sanders…a Socialist, who trashed the NYC police.

Sanders made his bones as Mayor of Burlington, and was capable enough in that position that he reshaped the contours of the city’s politics. He’s also been mindful of his constituency in certain ways (e.g. staying the heck away from cultural posturing on guns a la BO). It is not fair to Sanders to equate him with someone as witlessly destructive as deBlasio. Sanders is more like the late Frank Zeidler: wrong on the issues in general but not a bad guy within certain circumscribed limits.

Art Deco
Art Deco
Saturday, January 16, AD 2016 8:44am

Most of the people who live near the Buffalo area have little love for New York City or the politicians of the state who are morally bankrupt. In fact, a lot of people there wish NYC would become a separate state or fall off into the Atlantic.

Just to point out Debbie, central Rochester is not a crime-ridden latrine because of anything done by Downstate politicians. Monroe County’s stupidities are it own.

Art Deco
Art Deco
Saturday, January 16, AD 2016 8:49am

I’ll qualify that: Downstate politicians are bloody responsible for turning county governments into conduits with scant control over their finances. Now ask yourself what someone like Maggie Brooks has ever suggested which would correct that situation, or what she or Lovely Warren would do if they did have the discretion, or how suburban voters would react if a proposal for a metropolitan police force were put in front of them or what some lunkhead like Robert Duffy would do if he found himself in charge of such a force.

Lucius Quinctius Cincinnatus
Saturday, January 16, AD 2016 9:09am

I lived from 1986 to 2007 in NYS. I worked at the Indian Point 3 Nuclear Power Plan downstate for a little more than a decade, and at the James A FitzPatrick Nuclear Power Plant upstate for a little less than a decade. Downstate – NYC, and Orange, Rockland, Westchester and Putnam Counties are all vehemently liberal progressive, pro-abortion, anti-Christian and anti-nuclear energy. Upstate – at least where I lived on the shores of Lake Ontario – is loyally conservative, pro-life, pro-Christian, and pro-nuclear energy. Therefore, I would amend Senator Cruz’s statement to be more precise: regardless of the WTC attack and destruction, and NYC’s response thereto, NYC values are the issue. Yes, NYC residents heroically responded to the WTC attack. Bu within two weeks they were back at murdering unborn babies and wallowing in sodomite filth. True, NOT ALL are like that. But a sufficient majority are, and the lesson of Sodom and Gomorrah comes to mind as fewer and fewer real Christians remain therein.
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PS, the real cause of the problem with NYS values is Roman Catholic clerics like Bishop Hubbard of Albany and Cardinal Dolan of NYC who will NOT preach from the pulpit the authentic orthodox faith once delivered unto the Saints, and who ingratiate themselves with the popular culture of infanticide and sexual perversion at large. The cry of the Gospel is, “Repent, for the Kingdom of God is at hand.” It is not social justice, the common good and peace at any price.

.Anzlyne
.Anzlyne
Saturday, January 16, AD 2016 9:53am

This reminds me of Peewee Herman ” I know I am but what are you”.
.
I will remind us of all the midwesterners, rocky mountain westerners and southerners who drove their firetrucks and utility trucks to NYC because of that great sense of unity that wrapped us all at that time.

Art Deco
Art Deco
Saturday, January 16, AD 2016 9:57am

What are you talking about, Paul? Upstate is the home of suburban and mossback Republicans who haven’t a political thought in their head other than complaints about their property taxes. You’ll find people who fit your description, but they’re not that common. I had north of 15 years living in small towns in central New York. Maybe 20% of the nominal Catholics therein can be found at Mass on a Sunday, if that. The protestant congregations are in worse shape. I suspect rates of observance in the cities might be better. As for the Church, Upstate, explicit and implicit teaching is less irritating in Syracuse than is the case in Albany or Rochester, but the liturgy compares unfavorably to Rochester’s (though not Albany’s). Stick to the Eastern rites, or Latin Mass Communities. Your chance of encountering a dignified service in Syracuse would be about 15%. Try Chenango County. Bps. Moynihan and Costello would keep traditional priests away from people by posting them there.

Lucius Quinctius Cincinnatus
Saturday, January 16, AD 2016 10:57am

Art,
.
I agree that cities like Albany, Syracuse, Rochester and Buffalo are mainly liberal progressive. And you are correct about the low likelihood of finding a dignified Mass in Syracuse. Typically, when I go to visit my children in the Syracuse / Liverpool area, I find a parish on the outskirts that is more orthodox. I remember when I lived in the boondocks north of Syracuse, my 12 step sponsor was a devout orthodox Catholic and my priest-confessor was orthodox as well (he too was a 12 step member – I got away with nothing). But I do not have anything to go on except personal experience. If you say that the statistics are thus and so, then maybe you are right.
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I will point out one personal example of a confrontation I had at a family gathering on Long Island. At the time I was working at the Indian Point 3 Nuclear Power Plant and Andy Cuomo’s father Mario had as governor successfully shut down the newly built but never run Shoreham Nuclear Power Plant on Long Island. One of the family members at this gathering was a corporate lawyer in NYC. He was very well educated – smart, intelligent, well-informed EXCEPT when it came to nuclear. He had fully supported the Shoreham shutdown even though that impoverished energy supply on Long Island, increased electric bills exorbitantly, and resulted in more fossil fuel air pollution. He also opposed Indian Point Units 2 and 3 in Westchester County. So I took him through ever design safety feature at Indian Point 3 (I taught the training courses for the Reactor Protection and Engineered Safeguards Systems to I&C Technicians at the plant, so I knew something of the subject matter). I explained the storage of used nuclear fuel (I was the radiation monitoring system engineer, so the spent fuel storage building was important in my assigned system), and how use nuclear fuel can be reprocessed for use in fast neutron burner reactors. I explained the virtually impregnable security (without revealing any classified safeguards information – having been an I&C technician, I had worked on virtually every security electronic system), and how Containment walls were so many feet thick of concrete and steel that even a jet aircraft impact, while making a mess, would NOT cause a reactor accident. I explained the emergency plan to him (I was the radiological engineer on my emergency plan role assignment, so I knew something about that too), and how even if there was no Indian Point, Westchester County would still need a plan for evacuation because of all the toxic chemical industries in the area, and the possibility of a failure in the old Kensico Dam just north of White Plains.
.
This smart man followed every explanation, every description and all my hand-drawn diagrams on napkins and shreds of paper with full understanding. He acknowledged that each of his individual objections to nuclear energy were resolved: safety, security, spent fuel storage, aircraft impact, radiation monitoring and protection, etc. But in the end, he said, “I am glad Shoreham is shut down, and I still want Indian Point shut down because it isn’t safe.” I convinced him on every little tiny nit, but the overall religion of anti-nuclearism that liberal progressive leftism teaches I could not overcome. This is the New York attitude, New York values. It is also the attitude and values of those on the left coast like the Californicators who shut down San Onofre units 2 and 3 (imagine voting for failed governor Jerry Brown from the 1970s into office again!), and the Portlandians in Oregon who have a Che Guevara highway (and a lesbian bisexual pervert as governess), and OSU in Corvallis, Oregon who invented the phrase “flying spaghetti monster” to deride Christianity. This sickness that is liberalism is unconquerable. It must be excised as cancer is surgically removed.
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Yes, downstate NY people will help each other out in an emergency, But when it comes to something like this, they like their left coast komrades are freaking stupid. They would rather have explosive natural gas pipelines routed through their neighborhoods as long as it provides spinning reserve for useless worthless green energy solar and wind than to have a completely benign and safe nuclear energy facility. Just look at Bernie Sanders and Livia Caesar – I mean Hillary Clinton.
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I NEVER observed this kind of attitude among upstate New Yorkers except in cities like Albany and Syracuse (liberals congregate in cities because they could never survive on their own in the country). People in the country often called hicks and hill-billies generally have the common sense to see and understand the truth. But not a rich lawyer boy working in Manhattan and living in Long island. I have often called people like that metropolitan barbarians.

DonL
DonL
Saturday, January 16, AD 2016 10:59am

Ah the real northern New York. I owned a lake property Just south of Malone for years (actually a small deep trout pond in the Adirondack Park) from which I could view the St Lawrence R. We had a Nun in charge of three little churches with a different visiting priest (from the seminary at Ogdensburg?)each Sunday. Once, I recall, she was the homilist during Mass and proceeded to talk admirably about her hero, Teilhard de Chardin. After that I ceased making contributions, though I must admit that I’ve never seen so many men with their rural families singing as well as she had them doing.

Art Deco
Art Deco
Saturday, January 16, AD 2016 1:42pm

I agree that cities like Albany, Syracuse, Rochester and Buffalo are mainly liberal progressive.

Albany, perhaps, given the large corps of state employees conjoined to the state university. Not the others, if you examine the entire dense settlement and not just the core city. Your problem is not some infection of ‘progressives’. Your problem is ordinary people and how they think about (or fail to think about) their environment.

(liberals congregate in cities because they could never survive on their own in the country).

You fancy ‘liberals’ will perish in a house with a well and a septic system rather than municipal water and sewerage? or is it the weekly trip to the county dump you fancy is going to kill them? The head of co-operative extension in Madison County told me about 20 years ago that there were 700 farmers in her county. There were about 15,000 households in the countryside in Madison County at that time; there were another 10,000 in small towns and service villages. People who live in the country commute to work various places like people who live in suburbs. They’re just more likely to own a pick-up truck with a blade on it or hire a plough service (and to have a higher tolerance for long commutes and an affection for certain sorts of yard work).

You mean you encountered a highly educated lawyer who was not willing to admit error or to stop engaging in virtue signalling? Surprises me not in the least. Yes, you do not find many such people in small towns and rural areas where, as David Brooks pointed out, “the self is small”, and the lawyers you meet are rank-and-file people who deal with mundane problems and are not anxious to pick fights with potential clients. Now, I can introduce you to college town denizens who are perfectly insufferable: they have tenure and do not have to make rent on their office.

Art Deco
Art Deco
Saturday, January 16, AD 2016 1:47pm

We had a Nun in charge of three little churches

Seen that in Altamont (Diocese of Albany), and Bp. Clark in Rochester was notorious for his ‘pastoral administrator’ (always a dame) / sacremental capon configurations. Didn’t know it was done in Ogdensburg. Not done in Syracuse.

Penguin Fan
Penguin Fan
Sunday, January 17, AD 2016 8:50am

I am grateful that the attempts of the Pennsylvania Democrat Party to turn our Commonwealth into a New York State clone have, thus far, failed.
Philadelphia envies NYC. They are separated by 95 miles of former Pennsylvania Railroad and have the same worldview. Philly’s suburban counties were once Rockefeller Republican, switching in part when Hilary’s husband was selling nuclear secrets to Beijing and not kicking out Islamists who overstayed their visas.
Outside of Allegheny County, Democrats have become as popular as deer on the interstates in Western Pennsylvania.

Lucius Quinctius Cincinnatus
Sunday, January 17, AD 2016 9:39am

Penguins Fan,
.
On a side note, your home state is 2nd in nuclear energy within the nation, much to the disappointment of Democrats.
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http://www.eia.gov/state/?sid=PA
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And in spite of the TMI accident (which neither killed or injured anyone) in that state back in 79, Pennsylvanians do not seem to have the maniacal opposition to all things nuclear that New Yorkers typically have.
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NY values – Gov Cuomo telling pro-life conservatives they are not welcome. Fear not, Cuomo, for we are leaving as you sterilize yourself out of existence with sodomy and abortion. Maybe however God will hasten your demise. He did so to Sodom and Gomorrah.

Karl
Karl
Sunday, January 17, AD 2016 6:57pm

I heard, somewhere, that Cruz’s mother renounced her U.S. citizenship, but I have no idea. If she did, therein may be the problem, if she did so BEFORE Ted’s birth.

I live an hour away from Indian Point in New York. I feel like a stranger in New York. Whatever Cruz said, because I have not at all paid attention to the presidential race, does not phase me. I may not even vote. I am sick of both parties.

Ernst Schreiber
Ernst Schreiber
Monday, January 18, AD 2016 9:36am

Really, you heard somewhere? I know what my old friend Tuco Benedicto Pacifico Juan Maria Ramirez would say about that!

Art Deco
Art Deco
Monday, January 18, AD 2016 4:11pm

that Cruz’s mother renounced her U.S. citizenship,

His father took out Canadian citizenship, not his mother, at a time when he had an American residency permit but Cuban citizenship. A newspaper reporter tracked down his mother’s first husband to ask if she took out British citizenship during the time they were married, as they resided in Britain after 1958; he said she did not.

Ernst Schreiber
Ernst Schreiber
Monday, January 18, AD 2016 5:33pm

That reporter sounds like an amibtious fellow. Maybe he can track down whomever it was who told Harry Reid that Mitt Romney was a tax cheat.

Art Deco
Art Deco
Tuesday, January 19, AD 2016 10:03am

Yeah, just like the reporter who nailed down the details on Mitt Romney pranking a high school classmate in 1965 (and published them over the objections of said classmate’s surviving relatives). For whatever reason, there was no reference to this scandal in Sarah Palin’s e-mails.

We now know, courtesy that reporter, that Ted Cruz brother was not the issue of his mother’s first husband but of some unknown man she knew in the interval between her divorce in 1963 and her marriage to Rafael Cruz in 1969; we also know that his brother died of crib death in 1966, and not in 1965 as Ted Cruz had thought.

.Anzlyne
.Anzlyne
Tuesday, January 19, AD 2016 10:16am

Yes Karl! The two parties are not helping us find the best leaders!
Washington warned about party system in farewell address

.Anzlyne
.Anzlyne
Tuesday, January 19, AD 2016 10:22am

After a minute search I find also this- from john Adams
“There is nothing which I dread so much as a division of the republic into two great parties, each arranged under its leader, and concerting measures in opposition to each other. This, in my humble apprehension, is to be dreaded as the greatest political evil under our Constitution.”
.
Now we have the two parties arrayed regionally – Boston to DC plus West Coast versus all other. Plus president rejoices at turning Texas blue.

Donald R. McClarey
Reply to  .Anzlyne
Tuesday, January 19, AD 2016 10:48am

“There is nothing which I dread so much as a division of the republic into two great parties, each arranged under its leader, and concerting measures in opposition to each other. This, in my humble apprehension, is to be dreaded as the greatest political evil under our Constitution.”

Adams soon cured that evil by being so politically inept that he led his Federalist party down the path to extinction, leaving Jefferson’s Republicans as the sole dominant national party until Jackson and his Democrat party. Contrary to the Founders, factionalism, as they would have called the party system, has not been the main political problem in this nation. What has been is the tendency of the American people not to elect giants until a crisis comes.

Washington was a very great man, perhaps the greatest in secular history, but he never understood that in a free society political parties are inevitable.

.Anzlyne
.Anzlyne
Tuesday, January 19, AD 2016 1:19pm

I hear you – the fundamental issue may well be the lethargy of the citizenry until crisis time . But it does seem logical that the “factionalism” and accompanying propagandizing exacerbates our problems.

.Anzlyne
.Anzlyne
Tuesday, January 19, AD 2016 1:36pm

Now left thinkers are licking their chops seeing NYC and East Coast, West Coast more and more likely blue, as liberal bases. This is to some extent a product of immigration policy in those states and cities by the party mostly influential there…a grand type of gerrymandering from the ground up- instead of imposition by a mark on a map. And the media largely resides there (except many bloggers)
The body politic in those places has the great influx of immigrants that Democrats try to appeal to. I think Conservatives can appeal to them too- in a different way
What conservatives could take away from this “values” brouhaha is not to condemn the other but to convert. Recognizing that we do actually share values and that we still do have a common identity is what helps us find the best among us to lead us.

Ernst Schreiber
Ernst Schreiber
Tuesday, January 19, AD 2016 2:05pm

The two parties are not helping us find the best leaders!
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The system isn’t designed to produce good leaders. It’s designed to keep anti-leaders from misleading us into tyranny and oppression. Which is why nearly or very nearly every Democrat President since Woodrow Wilson has had little or no use for the letter of the Constitution, much preferring, like all diviners, it’s so-called spirit instead.

Art Deco
Art Deco
Tuesday, January 19, AD 2016 3:17pm

Which is why nearly or very nearly every Democrat President since Woodrow Wilson has had little or no use for the letter of the Constitution, much preferring, like all diviners, it’s so-called spirit instead.

I think if you expect any working politician to make an effort to restore pre-1929 political economy, you’re bound to be disappointed. The only one who would seriously consider such an effort would be Ron Paul, who has many ancillary enthusiasms (e.g. goldbuggery and fanciful WWii historiography).

Art Deco
Art Deco
Tuesday, January 19, AD 2016 3:20pm

It’s designed to

It was designed to split the difference between competing plans and interests. The rest was sales, more or less. Regarding presidential elections, the convention’s plan worked as expected precisely twice.

Ernst Schreiber
Ernst Schreiber
Tuesday, January 19, AD 2016 5:24pm

Be more accurate to say the plan ceased working when George Washington was no longer the presumptive nominee, wouldn’t it?

As for the political economy, I personally favor dusting off and Article Fiving the entire site from orbit.

Art Deco
Art Deco
Tuesday, January 19, AD 2016 6:31pm

Be more accurate to say the plan ceased working when George Washington was no longer the presumptive nominee, wouldn’t it?

No, unless it be your contention that it was not supposed to work unless Washington was the nominee.

As for the political economy, I personally favor dusting off and Article Fiving the entire site from orbit.

What? Which entire site?

Ernst Schreiber
Ernst Schreiber
Tuesday, January 19, AD 2016 9:21pm

it’s the only way to be sure
.
(lame movie reference about what a Constitutional convention fight might look like)

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