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Wednesday on CNN Brooke Baldwin said President-elect Donald Trump “crushed two political dynasties,” by beating former Gov. Jeb Bush (R-FL) in the Republican primary and defeating Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton in the presidential election.

Washington — PITY Poppy. When I went down to Houston a few years ago to eat pizza with the former president, he was his usual gracious self, speaking fondly about President Obama and his new pal Bill Clinton. But there was one person who got dismissed with a brusque obscenity: Donald Trump. It was at the height of Trump’s birther madness and Bush was disgusted by it. So I can only imagine 41’s dismay and disbelief — and acid flashbacks to spoiler Ross Perot — now that Trump has popped up to block the path of the son who Poppy...

It’s official, Ted Cruz and Rand Paul are running for president. Okay by me, as they both meet my number one criteria for presidential candidates these days: neither is related to a former president or former presidential nominee (former presidential candidates who never stood a chance with their own party don’t count in this round).Because really, does America need any more family dynasties? Take Hillary for example: I see she just hired Lady M’s “image consultant.”With her not only would we get more of the Bubba-sphere, butt now we’d get more of the Obama-sphere as well. Does America want to...

A Signal of Distaste For Dynasties Bodes Ill For Bush, Clinton By Dan Balz January 10 AURORA, Colo. — It’s been a good few weeks for Jeb Bush, who has been setting the pace among prospective 2016 presidential candidates — at least in the view of some in the elite world of political donors, strategists and commentators. But even before the news that Mitt Romney is thinking about a third campaign, a dissenting view on Bush was registered here Thursday night. A dozen Denver-area residents spent two hours dissecting the state of the country and its politics. The 12 participants...

In mid-December, Jeb Bush announced his intention to explore a presidential bid. If he runs and wins the Republican nomination and then the election, he will be the third President Bush in 25 years. That unprecedented prospect has left many wondering: In a republic like ours, is it proper for one family to fill the executive seat so often? The Bushes are not the first family to send multiple members to the White House. They join the Adamses (father John and son John Quincy), the Harrisons (grandfather William Henry and grandson Benjamin), and the Roosevelts (cousins Theodore and Franklin). But...

WASHINGTON (AP) — Again? Really? There are more than 300 million people in America, yet the same two families keep popping up when it comes to picking a president. The possibility of a Bush-Clinton matchup in 2016 is increasingly plausible. After months of hints and speculation, former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush says he's actively exploring a bid for the Republican nomination. And while Hillary Rodham Clinton hasn't revealed her intentions, she's seen as the odds-on favorite for the Democratic nomination. Between them, the two potential rivals have three presidents and a U.S. senator in the branches of their family trees....

Media Titans: The Hearst family Worth: $35 billion Wealth established: 1887 Source of wealth: Hearst Corporation The Hearst fortune began in the late 1800s with George Hearst, a millionaire goldmine owner and U.S. senator. Hearst's son William Randolph attended the finest schools but was kicked out of Harvard University for throwing keg parties in Harvard Square and sending used chamber pots to his professors. After his expulsion, William Randolph took over managing the San Francisco Examiner, a publication his father had won as settlement for a gambling debt. Oil barons: The Rockefeller family Worth: $10 billion Worth Established: 1858 John...

This thread is a friendly collaborative place for FReepers to analyze information and share opinons. FReepers have a wide variety of reasons for investigating Q Anon content; this is not the appropriate place to criticize or badger those who choose to use some of their time in this manner. This thread is a continuation of the prior Q Anon thread located here: http://freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/3637830/posts I plan to post one thread at a time and ping new drops posted to it. The current schedule is to post new threads Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. When I post each (new) thread, the prior...

German media had some enthusiastic words for Jeb Bush after a visit to Berlin last week and his presidential candidacy announcement on Monday, but the press still had trouble distancing him from his less popular brother. […] Jeb Bush has certainly caught the German media’s attention, perhaps more than other Republican candidates due to his family’s history with Germany. “He seems to be getting a lot of press here. Germans tend to prefer him more than some of the others, I believe,” Thomas Leiser, chairman of Republicans Overseas Germany, told The Local. […] The press in Germany also were abuzz...

A column in the paper of record for the globalist "Party of Davos" argues that a Hillary Clinton vs. Jeb Bush battle for the White House in 2016 will be a win-win for America. Writing in the Financial Times, Ed Luce notes that "as wealth is concentrated in fewer hands, so too is political capital" and "the problem with plutocracy is that it is unmeritocratic."However, he argues, Bush and Clinton are "by far their party’s most qualified candidates" and "both deserve their nominations on merit" because each has "made at least as strong a case against the new age of inherited...

Chelsea Clinton isn’t ruling out a future in politics, she tells Vogue. The former first daughter, who has long avoided the press, let journalist Jonathan Van Meter follow her around “for weeks” for a new profile in the magazine’s September issue. From the piece: People around Chelsea have noticed a change in her, too. “As she’s been exposed to the foundation and to what her father’s doing with his post-presidential life,” says Hillary Clinton’s deputy chief of staff, Huma Abedin, “I think a light switched on: This is the legacy I’m going to inherit. To say it is an...

OF FOPS, FOOLS and ENTITLED ELITES Keeping Congressional Districts & Senate Seats in the Family From the ranks of the English and French upper classes and nobility came the “fops”. These over-dressed dandies were more concerned with style than substance. With almost 10% of Congress related to another person who’s “served”, are politicians the new nobility? Is the American political elite class the American fopocracy? Are American political elites the new American 'fopocracy'? There's some evidence to think so. There's also gathering evidence that Americans are ready to show some of their members the door. What is a 'fop'?...

Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. didn't get the vacant Illinois Senate seat. Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton didn't get the Democratic presidential nomination, taking the job of secretary of state as a consolation prize. And Caroline Kennedy and Andrew Cuomo lost out to an obscure two-term upstate congresswoman for the New York Senate seat once held by Mrs. Clinton. Whatever happened to American democracy's traditional deference to political dynasties? Call it Bush/Clinton/Bush/Clinton fatigue syndrome, or perhaps the new Obama meritocracy, but some of the most famous names in U.S. politics have come up empty-handed in recent days. "I don't know how much...

I have been reading David Landes’ Dynasties: Fortunes and Misfortunes of the World’s Great Family Businesses (2006). This book is a coda to his The Wealth and Poverty of Nations: Why Some are so Rich and Others So Poor (1999), part of his ongoing argument with his friend and neighbor Alfred Chandler Jr., exponent of managerial capitalism, who died last year. These are business stories – pithy, chatty, brilliant – about families whose present-day members are, in many cases, friends of Landes and his wife. There is something distinctly old-timey about the book. (Landes, of Harvard University, is a historian,...

According to a Wall Street Journal/NBC poll, 54 percent of Americans think President Bush values party loyalty and personal friendship over competence. The poll was prompted, as if you didn’t know, by Bush’s habit of appointing friends and retainers to major jobs in his administration. Some of these seem qualified enough: Condi Rice, Alberto Gonzales. Others seem more questionable, none more so than Michael Brown and Harriet Miers. In one sense this is nothing new for Bush. From the start, his administration was marked by a web of family connections, and certain members of the press were quick to cry...

Let me build the perfect 2008 Republican candidate for you. He would be a governor, because recent history demonstrates the nearly insuperable advantage governors (Carter, Reagan, Clinton and Bush the Younger) have when it comes to running for president. He would be from a populous state, because his success there statewide might win him 10 percent of the electoral-college votes he would need on Election Day. He would have to be acceptable to social conservatives with resolute stands on social issues like abortion, because the Bush victory in 2004 demonstrated the importance of being able to bring evangelical churchgoers to...