Trump! Trump! TRUMP!!!!

Several articles about Trump today. Cal Thomas wrote about how Trumps connection to Christianity may not be all that sincere.

He [Trump] did say he goes to church "as much as I can. Always on Christmas. Always on Easter. Always when there's a major occasion." Christians know a lot of people who attend church only on Christmas and Easter and special occasions. They are usually not serious about their faith. Not to judge, but if Trump intends to use faith to win votes from people of faith, then those people have a right to determine whether he is sincere or simply trying to manipulate them.

I pretty well agree with Thomas here; if he is playing to get Conservative Christian votes by pretending to be one of them, well, they have a right to ask how committed he actually is.

That said, Conservative Christians generally don't actually care about the faith of their candidates, so long as they vote the right way. Trouble is Trump has shown himself to be all over the map on that score.

Thomas does carefully exclude Trumps biggest selling point to the Right, i.e. his willingness to take Birtherism seriously. I suppose that makes sense, no sense bringing up embarrassing aspects about your base.

Larry Elder has no such compunction though, and dedicates his article to the proposition that Trump is asking questions that the media won't.

But are the "birther" folks wackier than the majority of Democrats who believe George W. Bush had prior knowledge of 9/11 or are unsure that he did?

Are the "birther" folks wackier than the majority of Democrats who believe that "Bush Lied, People Died" our way into the Iraq War or are unsure that he did?

Are they wackier than the majority of Democrats who, in 2008, held Bush responsible when gas prices hit $4 a gallon?

What's the point? When people are unhappy with a politician and/or his policies, they sometimes see the worst -- whether or not there is a factual basis. But the media do not even have a name for the Democratic equivalent of "birthers," despite these vicious, unsubstantiated and irresponsible accusations of Bush.

Poor Elder. Not a very strong section. But lets go through it.

First of all, 9/11 "Truthers" have never been taken seriously by any major Liberal pol. Liberal website Salon went out of their way to take the mickey out of the Truthers. In contrast there are several Republican pols who are taking this seriously, from state legislators putting up bills that require Presidential candidates to put up Birth Certificates to Presidential Candidates and Congresspeople giving a wink and a nod to Birthers.

Second and three are just said. People think that Bush lied us into Iraq because what he told us about Iraq turned out not to be true. We didn't find weapons of mass destruction. There is strong evidence that Bush and his advisors were determined to invade Iraq regardless of the evidence. Did they genuinely believe we needed to invade Iraq? Probably. Did they present all the evidence to the American people so they could make up their minds with all the facts? It does not seem so.

And of course our invasion of Iraq had something to do with Gas Prices going up.

Finally, yes, the media do have a name for people who think that Bush allowed or caused 9/11 to happen. It's Truthers as mentioned above.

Elder does more than wink at the Birthers, but makes it clear that he thinks they have some good points. Which is nice, since he's Black. This is helpful for Birthers, who are regularly accused of being racist for questioning whether or not President Obama is legally qualified to be President. This is because some of them are clearly racist, and others seem concerned that Obama isn't a real America like the rest of us. So Elder does provide a valuable service to the Birthers here.

Still, even with Elder, you can't get around some of the ugliness in their comments.

I am not so concerned about the so-called "birther issue as the "What are we going to do to Obama when his birth issue proves to be correct. I always have the image of his grandmother stating that "li'l Barry was born in Kenya," in front of me.

There has to be some kind of splendiferous punishment for the con - death by firing squad seems too little in view of the level of the fraud.

When you tell a 224 year old Christian nation that we are not a Christian nation any more and you are going to change the foundation that made us great, then people are going to have questions.

Barack Obama is a limp-wristed-panty-waist, who does not like getting his own hands dirty, instead he surrounds himself with those who are willing to do whatever criminal act or illegal operation Barack Obama has in his bag-of-community-organizing-tricks.

Interesting mix. The top one speaks for itself. The middle one plays off of the belief of many on the right that Liberals just aren't very good Americans. And the bottom one is homophobic crap, which I guess is slightly better than being racist.