AP-GfK Poll: 7 in 10 Americans Overwhelmingly view Donald Trump Negatively (VIDEO)

THIS IS QUITE STARTLING … HOW COULD TRUMP EVER WIN A GENERAL ELECTION WITH NEGATIVES LIKE THIS?

Could this poll truly be correct? Is Donald Trump, the front-runner of the Republican presidential primaries really have an unfavorable rating of 70%? According to the AP-GfK Poll, 7 in 10 Americans view Trump negatively, including nearly every race, gender, political persuasion and location. Good grief, if this is truly accurate, Trump has no chance of winning a general election. It also plays into the belief that Trump has a voter ceiling of 30-40%. This poll is basically saying that in a general election … Hillary Clinton will most likely win.

The folks at Powerline pose a fantastic an astute question of We the People … “Someday, maybe someone will figure out why voters can’t stand politicians, but at the same time insist on giving them ever more money and power over our lives.”

For Americans of nearly every race, gender, political persuasion and location, disdain for Donald Trump runs deep, saddling the Republican front-runner with unprecedented unpopularity as he tries to overcome recent campaign setbacks.

Seven in 10 people, including close to half of Republican voters, have an unfavorable view of Trump, according to a new Associated Press-GfK poll. It’s an opinion shared by majorities of men and women; young and old; conservatives, moderates and liberals; and whites, Hispanics and blacks — a devastatingly broad indictment of the billionaire businessman.

Even in the South, a region where Trump has won GOP primaries decisively, close to 70 percent view him unfavorably. And among whites without a college education, one of Trump’s most loyal voting blocs, 55 percent have a negative opinion.

Trump still leads the Republican field in delegates and has built a loyal following with a steady share of the Republican primary electorate. But the breadth of his unpopularity raises significant questions about how he could stitch together enough support in the general election to win the White House.

It also underscores the trouble he may still face in the Republican race, which appears headed to a contested convention where party insiders would have their say about who will represent the GOP in the fall campaign.

“He’s at risk of having the nomination denied to him because grass-roots party activists fear he’s so widely disliked that he can’t possibly win,” said Ari Fleischer, a former adviser to President George W. Bush.

Beyond their generally negative perception of Trump, large majorities also said they would not describe him as civil, compassionate or likable. On nearly all of these measures, Trump fared worse than his remaining Democratic or Republican rivals.

Not that voters have all that much love for those rivals. But their negative perceptions don’t match the depth of the distaste for Trump. Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, who is seeking to catch Trump in the Republican delegate count, is viewed unfavorably by 59 percent, while 55 percent have negative views of Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton.

Ted Cruz Won’t Apologize for Calling Mitch McConnell a Liar … Why Should He?

WHY SHOULD HE, MCCONNELL IS A LAIR!

In an interview with CNN, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) and presidential candidate says an apology “ain’t gonna happen” for calling GOP Senate Majority leader a liar. Exactly why should Cruz apologize? The fact is Mitch McConnell is a liar. No one should have to kiss the ring of the establishment. This is what the American people are sick of. The reason why Cruz is one of the last people standing for the GOP in the Republican presidential primary is because he did call the Republican leader of the Senate a liar.

An apology from Ted Cruz for calling Majority Leader Mitch McConnell a liar “ain’t gonna happen,” the presidential hopeful said during a Thursday interview with CNN’s Dana Bash.

“If the Washington lobbyists want to see that happen, they can hold their breath a long, long time,” Cruz said. “My focus is on the American people.”

Last summer, Cruz made headlines when he accused McConnell of lying to him over a deal to vote on reauthorizing the Export-Import Bank.

He brushed aside suggestions from Bash that an apology could help unite more Republicans behind him in his race for the party’s nomination.

Daily Commentary – Friday, April 8, 2016 – In a Recent Interview, Variety Asks Megyn Kelly if She Would Return To Fox After Her Contract is up Next Year

• Her answer was that she’s not sure. Maybe some of this recent notoriety with her spat with Donald Trump is going to her head?

Daily Commentary – Friday, April 8, 2016 Download

Democrat Presidential Candidate & Self-Proclaimed Socialist Bernie Sanders Says Hillary Clinton is Not ‘Qualified’ to be President”

WOW, BERNIE SANDERS AND I FINALLY AGREE ON SOMETHING … HILLARY, FEEL THE BERN.

Bernie Sanders said Wednesday that Hillary Clinton is not “qualified” to be president! After winning 7 out of the last 8 Democrat primaries and caucuses, the war of words has begum between Sander and Clinton. Welcome to the party Bernie. You have finally figured out what many of us have known for years. Although Sanders has other reasons, other then the obvious, as to why Hillary Clinton should not be president, at least he is now saying so.

I will say this right now and have thought it since the Democrat party decided to turn socialist … if Bernie Sanders really wanted to win the Democratic presidential nomination, he would go after Hillary Clinton on trust and her private email server as Secretary of State under Obama. It would only take one on the Left to question her trustworthiness and criminal activity for the entire Hillary house of cards to fall. That is if he is really serious and not just a straw man.

Bernie Sanders said Wednesday that Hillary Clinton is not “qualified” to be president, a sharp escalation in rhetoric in the Democratic primary.

“Secretary Clinton appears to be getting a little bit nervous,” he told a crowd in Philadelphia. “And she has been saying lately that she thinks that I am ‘not qualified’ to be president. Well, let me, let me just say in response to Secretary Clinton: I don’t believe that she is qualified, if she is, through her super PAC, taking tens of millions of dollars in special interest funds. I don’t think that you are qualified if you get $15 million from Wall Street through your super PAC.”

CNN has reached out to the Clinton campaign for comment, and its surrogates responded quickly on Twitter.
“Hillary Clinton did not say Bernie Sanders was ‘not qualified.’ But he has now – absurdly – said it about her. This is a new low,” campaign spokesman Brian Fallon tweeted.
Clinton was asked Wednesday morning by MSNBC whether she thought Sanders was “ready to be president.”
“I think he hadn’t done his homework and he’d been talking for more than a year about doing things that he obviously hadn’t really studied or understood, and that does raise a lot of questions,” Clinton said. “Really what that goes to is for voters to ask themselves can he deliver what he’s talking about.”

More from Hot Air as to further reasons why Hillary Clinton is not qualified to be president.

Bernie could have argued that somebody who has FBI agents closing in on her like the Pinkertons surrounding the hideout of the Jessie James gang was less qualified. He might have mentioned the fact that even Clinton’s most loyal surrogates are unable to list a single accomplishment of substance on her part over her entire career. Since they are battling for votes in New York, he should have pointed to the disastrous upstate job losses which followed her promise of a quarter million new jobs when she was running for the Senate here. He could have even trotted out a laundry list of the issues where Clinton has flipped and flopped her way through every conceivable position on each for the sake of political expediency.

But Bernie did none of those things. He continued the same old, tired repetition of her close ties with Wall Street and her support of the Iraq war. The real irony here is that Bernie is – at least on paper – considerably more qualified than Clinton, yet he never talks about it. He has executive experience as a mayor, albeit in a rather smallish city. (Hillary has only been married to an executive.) His time in the legislative branch, both House and Senate, dwarfs hers. And minor though they may be, he’s at least had his signature on some legislation which made it into law. Clinton has spent her time in American government without leaving a single distinguished accomplishment in her wake. Why wouldn’t Sanders dip into this overflowing bucket of possible critiques?

Country Music Icon Merle Haggard Has Died at 79, Rest in Peace

Country music icon Merle Haggard has died …

It is with incredible sadness to announce that country music icon Merle Haggard has passed away at the age of 79. Wow, this one hits close to home. I grew up on listening to the likes of Merle Haggard, Johnny Cash and Hank Williams, Sr. as my parents played the 8-track tapes over and over. Yes Millennials, 8-track tapes, Google it. There were just so many songs to like from country great Merle Haggard, The Tennessean has provided 15 songs that defined a legendary career. Rest in Peace Merle.

Okie From Muskogee

Merle Haggard, one of the most successful singers in the history of country music, a contrarian populist whose songs about his scuffling early life and his time in prison made him the closest thing that the genre had to a real-life outlaw hero, died at his ranch in Northern California on Wednesday, his 79th birthday.

His death was confirmed by his agent, Lance Roberts. Mr. Haggard had recently canceled several concerts, saying he had double pneumonia.

Few country artists have been as popular and widely admired as Mr. Haggard, a ruggedly handsome performer who strode onto a stage, guitar in hand, as a poet of the common man. Thirty-eight of his singles, including “Workin’ Man Blues” and the 1973 recession-era lament “If We Make It Through December,” reached No. 1 on the Billboard country chart from 1966 to 1987. He released 71 Top 10 country hits in all, 34 in a row from 1967 to 1977. Seven of his singles crossed over to the pop charts.

Mama Tried

More from The NY Times:

Merle Ronald Haggard was born on April 6, 1937, in Oildale, Calif. His first years were spent in the abandoned boxcar that his father, James, a railroad carpenter, had converted into a home for his family. James Haggard died of a stroke in 1946, after which Mr. Haggard’s mother, the former Flossie Mae Harp, a strict and pious member of the ultraconservative Church of Christ, took a bookkeeping job to provide for her three children.

Sing Me Back Home

From Billboard Magazine – Merle Haggard on Death: ‘Sometimes I Fear It and Other Times It Calls to Me Like a Forgotten Dream’ (Exclusive):

Merle wanted to be seen the way he was.

“Wrote a tune not long called ‘I Am What I Am,’” he said, “that sums me up pretty damn good. Song says, “I believe Jesus is God and a pig is just ham…I’m a seeker, I’m a sinner, and I am what I am.”

Seated in an easy chair in the living room of his modest home, he discussed a recent operation that removed a cancer from his lung, the cancer that ultimately returned and took his life on April 6 at age 79.

“All this near-death stuff has me thinking that it’s time to reconcile all the many Merles. There’s Merle the daddy’s boy, the son of a railroad man. Then there’s the juvenile delinquent Merle who tore up more than one reform school, the Merle who spent a decade of hard time in prison, the Merle who had the guts to stand up in those Bakersfield barrooms imitating his idol Lefty Frizzell, the Merle who finally found his own voice and muddled his way through show business. And most devilishly complicated of all, the Merle of four marriages.”

Darkness fell. Merle grew quiet. He slipped in a DVD of his favorite preacher, Dr. Gene Scott, who spoke of eternal life. When the sermon ended, I asked Merle whether he feared death.

“Sometimes I fear it,” he said, “and other times it calls to me like a forgotten dream or an old song. I’m not saying I welcome it, but I recognize it as part of a holy process. Born of nature, return to nature. Maybe that’s the name of my last song.