Buttload of Faith: the 2016 Presidential Primary Thread (Pt 2)

you asked for it

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wBIlehYpdwk

Symmetry.

Awaiting the huddled masses yearning to breath free, arriving from the prior presidential campaign thread.

Believe me, this thread will be effective.

after reading about rand paul's proposal to cut off funding to house refugees, i was kind of hoping that the buttbus and the clown car might collide in a flaming wreck, but no such luck.

two cheeks clapping in harmony

http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/11/rubio-isil-strategy-213377

rubio's plan for isis is to start a civil war in iraq. and... support both sides? or something. so stupid.

hey, it worked for Senator Truman.

Ted-Cruz-reenacting-an-entire-scene-from-the-Princess-Bride-is-the-weirdest-thing-you-ll-see-today.

http://www.dailykos.com/stories/2015/11/19/1452118/-Ted-Cruz-reenacting-an-entire-scene-from-the-Princess-Bride-is-the-weirdest-thing-you-ll-see-today?detail=facebook

what the hell. and of course he's chosen to memorize the worst scene in the movie.

his billy crystal jew voice is veerrrrrrrrry practiced

remember when cruz did a bunch of simpsons impersonations, that was the best

Is Ben Carson playing a ... deeper game?

http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/nov/20/ben-carson-screen-syrian-refugees-like-they-might-be-rabid-dogs

In Mobile, Carson said: “Islam itself is not necessarily our adversary.” But Americans were justified in seeing threats from Muslim refugees and the US shouldn’t “completely change who we are as Americans just so we can look like good people”.

He continued: “We have an American culture, and we have things that we base our values and principles on. I, for one, am not willing to give all those things away just so I can be politically correct.”

No, no he isn't. But if you string together enough randomly generated sentences you'll hit something that looks like sharp parody.

(To be clear, the Guardian isn't making that claim)

this carson asshole cannot disappear from the headlines soon enough.

Yeah, any taint that he or Trump have provided to their party is no longer enough to offset the net benefit of mulching them both in a woodchipper. The longer people are willing to treat their incoherent, naked xenophobia like legitimate discourse the more toxic it becomes to the country as a whole.

Trump is a living testament to the idea that you only need to speak loudly and confidently to get a certain segment of people to pay attention to you. I mean, he's practically shouting complete nonsequitors at this point. On the one hand, this is incredibly offensive and disheartening but, on the other hand, he kinda just seems to be barfing up words he barely knows how to use.

this sets him apart from the politicians who publicly declare they will give up on values and principles

has anyone called Trump a fascist yet? I mean I know that's a loaded insult that gets casually thrown around, but an oligarch "populist" explicitly calling for a racist police state and a belligerent foreign policy pretty much checks all the boxes.

"With Donald Trump stumping for ID badges for American Muslims, it’s certainly no stretch to see echoes of this imagined fascist America in the here and now."

From a review of the Amazon series The Man In The High Castle I just read.

US Muslims trolling the ever-loving shit out of Trump on Twitter with the "MuslimID" hashtag.

i might become a muslim just to get one of these neat IDs

I wonder if Trump has plans for monetizing the atmosphere of hate he's whipped up after he fails to become president.

treat their incoherent, naked xenophobia like legitimate discourse

I don't think anybody outside of the Fox News rump of the GOP is thinking this shit is "legimitate discourse." I think what is happening is that content producers are ecstatically reprinting basically everything these guys say because if you need to fill minutes and column inches, their schtick makes your job profoundly easy. "I'm a man who bites dogs. Don't believe me? I'm biting a dog later tonight. I've bitten eight dogs in the past week."

legit discourse or not it still influences policy.

i bet that guy who wrote the cracked piece comparing trump to hitler is now going to go around saying that he was calling trump hitler before it was _cool_

That 'Cruz Does Entire Princess Bride Scene' video shows that Cruz is a capable mimic, with fairly good, but not excellent timing, who was never one of the popular kids in high school. He is still falling back on borrowed material when he wants to be liked.

i need to see him do the Black Knight scene from Monty Python, then I will vote for him.

he has to play the Black Knight.

also no special effects

imagining Ted Cruz doing that routine in a high school cafeteria throws a number of things into relief for me. almost makes me feel bad for the guy. almost

almost as in, he makes you feel bad, just not for him.

yeah..

good movie tho

Tombot otm on media giving these imbeciles coverage b/c clicks.

It's a combination of clicks and just not having to work hard at all. Trump and Carson open their mouths and you need no context, no background, no explanation as to why it's worth a headline. Just print the quotes, give maybe two of the 5Ws, and then hit the bar.

Sane and considered positions make for weak tea clickbait headlines.

This Muslim ID thing is just a ruse to finally getting Barack Obama to reveal his birth certificate. You know ... his real one.

Trump is running bc if he wins then on his inauguration day he can tell Obama "You're fired!"

well that's gonna happen regardless and is probably on a hard drive somewhere already

konczal talks bernie:

http://rooseveltinstitute.org/thoughts-bernie-sanders-democratic-socialism-and-primary/

just a lonely guy hanging out at SFO waiting for his flight to get cleared for takeoff:
http://ww2.hdnux.com/photos/42/23/26/8992169/3/920x920.jpg

http://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Gov-Chris-Christie-s-plane-delayed-at-SFO-to-6646856.php?cmpid=brknow

bernie's big socialism speech got 100000% eclipsed by all the other news this week. poor old man.

he's got a couple more months of celebrity, might as well milk it

http://i.imgur.com/mCBudgP.jpg

Dude is so uptight. He would look older than his dad by the time his term is over

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RellDX599HY

‏@ggreenwald
Trump's "Arabs-cheered" lie extra-creepy b/c anti-Semites have long told same lie about Jews to blame 9/11 on Israel

november was the month we all realized that an openly fascist demagogue was leading the polls (national and state-by-state) for the republican primary.

http://www.worldmag.com/media/images/content/face012.jpg

trump's superpac director talks about the BLM protester that got roughed up at a rally:

http://www.mediaite.com/tv/trump-super-pac-head-im-sick-and-tired-of-the-black-lives-matter-thing/

salon has a slightly different set of quotes from the same clip:

http://www.salon.com/2015/11/23/head_of_trump_superpac_accidentally_admits_the_donalds_rallies_are_only_for_white_people/

this one is amazing:

“Being in Birmingham, Alabama, going in and disrupting that thing, that’s no place for #BlackLivesMatter to try to bring their issues to the forefront”

i mean

other western countries with parliamentary systems have shown a steady ~10% of the populace goes for nationalist and xenophobic parties (with a weird smattering of nonconservatives liking it too) so trump's support doesn't seem exceptional. we're right in line.

if he actually wins Iowa man I can't imagine the panic that will ensue

It's been a particularly horrifying Trump-centric weekend. I always thought he was a worthless dick but it's clear at this point that he's a legitimately horrendous person. He and all of his supporters can't get dragged under the wheels of a bus soon enough.

gonna be sad when he sells California to the Japanese

if they're going to go wholesale fascist they could at least get some snappier uniforms

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CDuSbHjWgAAOwlu.jpg

i don't really find trump amusing anymore, if i ever did. at this point if he just said "we should fry 'em all in ovens" would his poll numbers drop at all?

probably not

he needs to be trashed creatively, toss some cream pies or shoes at him at close range

I never paid any attention to the views of reality show host Donald Trump before. Was he always this much of a racist fuck?

yes

he's been well known as an asshole since the 80s

frankly I'm surprised no oppo-research has turned up anything criminal

network tv execs and corporate advertisers think openly racist remarks are bad for business, so trump never got to indulge in them during his reality shows to the extent he can now that he's a presidential candidate. tv execs and corporate advertisers are poised to do some rethinking of their position if he wins in iowa and nh.

Trump has been great for click$ though.

at this point Aerican journalism deserves as much condemnation. Publishing his remarks has done wonders for the white right's sense of aggrievement.

John Dean's 2006 book _Conservatives Without Conscience_ points out the work of Dr Bob Altemeyer, who studied American responses to authoritarianism. Dr Bob's take is that any time from the 20th Century on, you always get about 1 out of 4 or 5 people who'd happier walk into full-on fascism and think everything better for it. It helps to explain why Presidential approval ratings will never drop below a certain number, and even Nixon's was at like 19% the day resigned.

We've had both fascists and full -on Nazis thru the 30s & 40s as large movements.

well, sure, but i can't seem to remember a time in my life (i'm in my mid 30s) when someone this openly authoritarian was leading the polls for more than a few weeks.

my girlfriend wondered if this is how some people felt when goldwater was running. i would guess no -- although many in the GOP were terrified of goldwater (and correctly assumed he'd be trounced in the general election), he wasn't nearly so much of a demagogue as trump, no?

https://twitter.com/KFaulders/status/668868071524712448?lang=en

.@RealBenCarson tells me he "saw the film" of American Muslims cheering as the towers fell in New Jersey on 9/11.

Ben Carson also saw the film of Washington crossing the Delaware, and he has forty eyes and a talking dog named Jellybeans. Doesn't really mean much, considering the source.

I would ask the Republicans, again and again: how many thousands of your potential voters do you think are going to hold their nose and pull the lever for Hillary (or sit this round out entirely) rather than support either of these two maniacs?

My dad was a dyed-in-the-wool republican, and I know for a fact that he could've never voted for either in good conscience. I have to imagine there are scores of people in the same position.

he wasn't nearly so much of a demagogue as trump, no?

I was quite young during that election, but Goldwater was much more careful in his rhetoric and far less blatant than Trump. Barry wished to come across as a statesman. He wrapped himself in the flag of patriotism and states' rights and struck a noble pose. Trump really doesn't gaf.

so, to sum up, you're a person alive during the presidential election of 1964 and you're using the word "gaf"

;)

re "I wonder if Trump has plans for monetizing the atmosphere of hate he's whipped up after he fails to become president."

I'm sure he'll be happy to be interviewed saying "See? I told you so, you idiots should have elected me" every time something goes wrong.

xp When the gaf train left the station, I was barely able to grab the caboose and pulled myself aboard. I owe it all to ilxor.com.

http://littlegreenfootballs.com/article/45291_We_Found_Where_Donald_Trumps_Black_Crimes_Graphic_Came_From

Equal parts unsurprising and fucking wow.

hey it's INFORMATION, who CARES where it comes from

- 2 hrs from now

That little tidbit honestly can't be disseminated enough: Trump is spreading racist propaganda created by a neo-Nazi and attempting to pass it off as fact.

xpost So many of the replies to Trump's tweet were all "how can numbers be racist?!". As if those turds wouldn't have balked mightily at stats that opposed their fucked up worldview

"Non Dildo'd Goyim" is gonna be Trump's veep

was hoping for uncle shavedlongcock, RIP

Watching the Sunday shows yesterday, a) I was surprised that Trump's lead was still steady around 25%, at both the state level and nationally (three months ago, almost no one thought that was going to last; I definitely didn't), but b) Rubio would be my pick right now--he's had a steady climb, and, watching him on Meet the Press, I don't think he's going to scare anyone away. Rubio and Cruz sometimes get grouped together, but I can't see that; Cruz is just too bizarre.

bizarre is the fashion of the day

I guess, putting myself in a pair of Republican shoes at the moment, that I would be hard-pressed to say who I favored among the nominees. So you have the lunatics who are excitedly throwing out Trump's and Carson's names when polled and very likely a whole host of Republicans who can't muster enthusiasm about any of the other inhabitants of the clown car for the sake of the pollsters but will probably half-heartedly back whichever non-insane candidate eventually rises above the froth.

Trump is doing some cheap attack ads on his Instagram, which seems like a smart and slightly inconspicuous way to do them:

https://www.instagram.com/p/-bz5HWGhXZ/?taken-by=realdonaldtrump

b) Rubio would be my pick right now--he's had a steady climb, and, watching him on Meet the Press, I don't think he's going to scare anyone away.

if you dig into that recent WashPo/ABC poll, Rubio was also the top "second choice" with 17%, as in, "if you couldn't vote for candidate X, who would be your next choice?". Carson and Trump were just behind him on that, though - 16% and 14%, respectively.

also interesting in that poll was a question about how much attention people are paying to the election at this point. the net (VERY interested + somewhat interested) was 75% of those polled. that may not sound like a lot, but it's higher than previous election cycles. in november '11, for example, it was 65%, in november '07 it was 67%, and in late october '03 it was 54%. there's the conventional wisdom that polling doesn't matter at this point because no one's paying attention and of course that will still hold true to a degree, but more and more people are paying attention earlier and earlier. it's somewhat surprising because you'd think an effect of the endless campaign of perpetuity and despair would end up alienating people from the process altogether, but i guess the magnetic fascism of Trumpism is enough to outweigh the nausea of the infinite campaign.

http://apps.washingtonpost.com/g/page/politics/washington-post-abc-news-poll-nov-15-19-2015/1880/

And the number of wingnuts who really really hate Obama.

I missed if this was already posted, but here's Matt Taibbi following around the clown car in NH:

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/the-gop-clown-car-rolls-on-20151117

So let me get this straight: New Hampshire voters prefer the most destructive antiestablishment candidate in 50 years by 22 percent.

But if Mitt Romney, perhaps the most establishment candidate there could be in this race, was running, he would have 31 percent compared to what would then only be 15 percent for Trump.

I know there's likely some regional bias in these numbers, but what?

https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2015/11/21/gop-voters-would-prefer-romney/WiU9f86jd19UkXYQfb2yxM/story.html

most destructive antiestablishment candidate

Should've said "frontrunner" instead of "candidate"

other western countries with parliamentary systems have shown a steady ~10% of the populace goes for nationalist and xenophobic parties (with a weird smattering of nonconservatives liking it too) so trump's support doesn't seem exceptional. we're right in line.

But he's polling at over 40% nationwide in head-to-head general election match-ups.

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2016/president/us/general_election_trump_vs_clinton-5491.html

xpost So many of the replies to Trump's tweet were all "how can numbers be racist?!". As if those turds wouldn't have balked mightily at stats that opposed their fucked up worldview

Seriously, fuck this country, we deserve the Chump

i'd be shocked if trump was the next potus. by contrast would anyone be shocked if marie le pen was the next pm of france? so we have it pretty good i think.

tim that's in a constrained 1on1 q vs hillary

like, here's another tab from that same page:

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2016/president/us/general_election_fiorina_vs_clinton-5470.html

every head to head matchup has numbers in the 40s

yeah it broadly reflects party support rather than candidate support

xp

Yeah, exactly! I thought in the post I quoted that you were comparing him to European far-right party popularity based on the idea that his 25-30% or whatever it is nationwide in the primary field amounts to something like 10% of support nationwide. But I think the head-to-head match-ups are more troubling!

xp

Yes to Shakey but nevertheless over 40% of the people surveyed in every one of the polls said they would actually vote for him specifically.

I think you're misreading that

I mean you're right in that if the question was phrased "who would you vote for, Hillary or Trump", 40% said Trump but that does not mean that those people would vote for Trump under any circumstances

your first sentence is exactly what i meant, yeah. but no i think the h2h matchups are not that illustrative of anything because they're all about the same no matter which candidate you're talking about!

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2016/president/sanders_vs._republicans.html

No repub is going to be elected president in 2016. I'll bet one person on here $10

i think that's a safe bet but tbh who knows what could happen. a major terrorist attack in the US coupled with another economic downturn could put prez donald in the white house

nah

Equal parts unsurprising and fucking wow.

Just caught up with Trump's crime statistics now (it's hard to keep track of Trump stuff--I thought all the commentary above had to do with his Paris-related pronouncements). Same reaction as Old Lunch--or as Robert Downey says in Zodiac, "Jesus Harold Christ on rubber crutches."

Trump definitely has the thoughtful, measured temperament to respond appropriately to a terrorist attack, that I am sure of.

Meanwhile here's the thoughtful, measured temperament:

Hillary Clinton favors an activist American foreign policy, and Rubio mentioned to me that he was rereading “The Last Lion,” by William Manchester. He said, “It’s this book about Churchill. It’s really long. Only because I’m just so fascinated by the leadership he provided.” He went on, “Churchill was a guy who was largely ignored through much of the thirties as a warmonger, and a guy that was crying wolf, and Chamberlain was this heroic figure that was going to achieve peace in our time by diplomacy. And I think, in many cases, we’re kind of at a similar moment, where many of us, including myself, are warning about dangers that are percolating around the world and what they could turn into [bold mine-DL]. Whether it’s Iran, Russia, China, North Korea, or radical Islam.”

I love the excited way in which he discovers conventional wisdom.

that's pretty lol. "ooooh that's why we've been calling the president an appeaser"

No repub is going to be elected president in 2016.

Not likely; entirely possible.

one more interesting thing about that poll:

http://i.imgur.com/wDFBES4.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/S551VHr.jpg

"There's a part of me that wishes Trump were more outrageous and entertaining, but I'm supporting him anyway because I think he has a really good chance to win next November."

https://twitter.com/jameshupp/status/668924133581963264

omg

hahahahaaaa

many such teachings

It’s this book about Churchill. It’s really long.

an intellectual giant, I tell you

on a more serious (??) note, i had an awakening when i found the facebook page of the current majority leader of the wisconsin house of representatives, and his favorite books were:

- the fountainhead
- the bible
- one of those christian self-help things like "10 ways to get to heaven"

it hit me how many of these folks are highly skilled at prevarication and doublespeak but in every other way are total ignoramuses

An actual clown-car story out of Toronto:

http://www.cp24.com/news/doo-doo-the-clown-commended-for-saving-two-women-from-petrifying-attack-1.2671094

“I had a carload of clowns and I was driving one of them back to Union Station and as we turned the corner, I saw this man jumping on cars. He was wearing just shorts, no shoes, no socks and a shirt,” Doo Doo said.

lol @ Christie:

QUESTION: Governor, you were in New Jersey in 2001 right after the September 11th terrorist attacks. Do you recall ever seeing – were there ever instances in Jersey City of thousands of people cheering?

CHRISTIE: I don’t recall that. I don’t. I mean, listen, I can’t say, Matt, I can’t say that I have – it was a pretty emotional time for me because, as I’ve mentioned before, there’s family involved, there’s friends involved and so it was a pretty harrowing time. I do not remember that. And so, it’s not something that was part of my recollection. I think if it had happened, I would remember it. But, you know, there could be things I forget, too. I don’t remember that. No.

these guys are so "take-charge RAH RAH RAH no compromise ever!" unless they have to contradict Donald Trump, then they're a bunch of obsequious quislings

crying at

It’s this book about Churchill. It’s really long.

“It’s this book about Churchill. It’s really long.” Doo Doo said.

The really scary thing about this whole thing is that somehow all nuts turn to Ted Cruz he ends up becoming the nominee, something legalese or world events would pretty much invalidate Clinton and somehow he ends up President. That's a guy that I think gets ahold of that kind of power could be f'ing scary.

@RealJamesWoods
.@SenTedCruz and I just spoke for 40 minutes by phone about our love of this country. This man is the real deal. I'm all in! #TedCruz #tcot

Vice-President James Woods for starters...

a bunch of obsequious quislings

tbf rubio hasn't reached this chapter yet.

lol burn

http://thehill.com/sites/default/files/styles/article_full/public/blogs/sanders_killer_mike_.jpg?itok=pgLLLBQO

Taken only seconds before Donald Trump burst through the door and saved his fellow presidential candidate from imminent death.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kywpo-XmFYg

just left the Bernie rally at the Fox feat. Killer Mike :D

damn killer mike is the best

wow

"bernie sanders introduced by 'killer'" --the right-wing internet

but srsly though bernie/mike 2016

Run The Country

is the bernie/killer mike img meme a t-shirt / coffee mug option yet? please don't make me duckduckgo it by myself here folks

I know it plays to some of my weak tea progressiveness, that KM's intro is all about the right to healthcare and free college, not specifically about addressing institutionalized and culturally entrenched racism and bigotry, but those ARE my bias - I don't think we can teach other people not to be enema bags, I think we have to sponsor opportunity everywhere equally and then strive to make it actually equal where we can - but he did do a great job summarizing my Bern Feels.

Something that's perhaps more important is that while I'm trying to write down how hey ha, Killer Mike introducing Bernie Sanders is a funny juxtaposition, I had to stop, because I'm a slow moron, and it's not, at all.

unlike Lupe Fiasco, Killer Mike is old enough to serve as veep

Haven't been as alarmed by Trump as others (primarily because he isn't religious in his professional life), but the predicted steps here make a scary amount of sense:

http://theweek.com/articles/590497/donald-trumps-alarming-skid-toward-outright-fascism

is it really "alarming"

more like predictable

The shooting in Minneapolis is a new step forward. Not inevitable, not predictable, any more than us predictably going to war with Russia.

? what does that have to do with Trump/the election

I mean sure it's tangentially related but idk it isn't really related to Trump's shift into fascism

shakey you know alarming and predictable aren't mutually exclusive! climate change, etc

The article makes the bones of a link - heavily armed white nationalists (several groups of which have already declared that he's the only candidate that really furthers their cause) taking advantage of the political environment to start shit wouldn't be a surprising step. Do you want to bet cash that the people responsible for the shooting in Minneapolis don't have Trump bumper stickers? Or that he'd denounce them without a wink?

It's not much of a leap to imagine who the Minneapolis shooters might favor as a presidential candidate. He's practically condoning acts like that at this point. Whether they explicitly did it in his name, it fits pretty comfortably alongside other acts being committed by his supporters.

Man beaten at Trump rally speaks out:
http://thinkprogress.org/politics/2015/11/23/3725051/trump-protester-beaten/

“It was just a sea of white faces,” he told ThinkProgress. “A lady kicked me in the stomach. A man kicked me in the chest. They called me n*****, monkey, and they shouted ‘all lives matter’ while they were kicking and punching me. So for all the people who are still confused at this point, they proved what ‘all lives matter’ meant. It means, ‘Shut up, n*****.'”

Well, it just emphasizes that much more how crucial it is to not let these people control the machinery of the state.

dude's a hero

rumor is that gunmen said something about trump. that's hearsay but speaks to the point above

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CUmmNY5WsAAxUOd.jpg

^ Another Republican about to throw his hat into the ring?

Hippie baby boomer turned Libertarian.

via Taibbi

http://store.bencarson.com/collections/apparel/products/scrub-top

http://data.whicdn.com/images/1828948/large.jpg

what does Trump do if he doesn't win Iowa (or New Hampshire)?

http://www.quinnipiac.edu/news-and-events/quinnipiac-university-poll/iowa/release-detail?ReleaseID=2305

what does Trump do if he doesn't win Iowa (or New Hampshire)?

http://www.lifed.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/Budd-Dwyer2.jpg

Hey, we can always hope, right?

I would guess he would drop out

So did that guy.

having to stop myself from buying 'keep calm and carson on' shirts as joke xmas presents

The media is covering people polling with 1% or less.. they have trump on all fucking day because its ratings. he's not going anywhere until the media stops caring. he'll run third party because his 15% of rump racist awful america will always be there for him.

http://cdn2.hubspot.net/hubfs/53/grillary-clinton-apron.jpg

i think it's very possible he'll run third party but cruz has generally played nice and he doesn't seem to have a hardon for rubio so they could appease him w/ some nice words and a prime convention speaking spot. if jeb looked like the eventual nominee i'd have no doubt trump would run third party.

A CNN guy just talked about a Trump event where people were shaking their fists at reporters (having to do with Trump's recent New Jersey-9/11 comments). Shades of the Goldwater convention! (I've read about that countless times, but there doesn't seem to be any images online.)

i have my doubts, he's all about WINNING xp

Quarter pound of lean rump racist plz

@DougHenwood 1h1 hour ago
The @realDonaldTrump's goddamn hats are made by Latino workers.

...The red-and-white caps are emblazoned with the real estate mogul's oft-repeated slogan, “Make America Great Again.”

But look around the factory floor where these hats are being made by the thousands, and you’ll find faces that don’t seem to fit into Trump’s America.

Yolanda Melendrez is one of them. Melendrez, an immigrant from Mexico who was brought to the United States by her parents when she was a baby, has worked at the Carson-based Cali-Fame headwear company since 1991.

“When we first got the order [for the Trump hats], I said to myself, ‘Just wait until he sees who’s making his hats. We’re Latinos, we’re Mexicans, Salvadoreños.’”

http://www.latimes.com/politics/la-pol-ca-trump-hats-cali-fame-carson-20151124-story.html

I think Trump has said he wouldn't run third party and maybe even signed some pledge, not that that means anything.

Those fucking chillary/grillary things make me want to die

"Killer Mike is a great rapper" – Bernie Sanders

~~killer mike moment~~

he signed reince's pledge a few months ago. this past weekend he said a third party run was still on the table.

Yeah no way is that pledge legally binding. If anything it was a capitulation to trump.

To 5 million followers:

https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/669672417774694400

@mtaibbi Nov 24
Not sure why Mitt Romney isn't running. He'd look like a cross of Lincoln and William the Conqueror in this group:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2015/11/23/the-republican-polling-best-in-new-hampshire-mitt-romney/

and Pierce says bevare, bevare of Ted Cruz.

I find the Tailgunner approximately as unlikable as three-quarters of the political world does. But there's no denying that he has built himself some political advantages that none of his rivals have. However, I'm sure that the "moderate GOP establishment" will get behind moderate John Kasich, or moderate Chris Christie, any day now and capsize the entire race.

http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/news/a39989/ted-cruz-dangerous-candidate/

Neither Trump nor Carson feel like they have a clue about organizing a national presidential campaign, but that Cruz definitely understands that winning the nomination requires sewing up delegates, not just voters in primary states.

Cruz's major problem atm is that the ordinary voters who've attached themselves to Trump and Carson will be extremely hard to dislodge, even if Trump or Carson drop out of the race, because defiance of all reason, sense, or logic is just how they roll. I think he may be looking for a brokered convention now as a fallback strategy when neither Trump or Carson arrives at the convention with more than 25% of the delegates.

Or everything could turn completely upside down three times before next August. Who the fuck knows at this point?

Probably belongs more in that Real Stories You Thought Were from the Onion thread (i.e., what kind of Trump piece would the Onion write if they were Trump supporters who wanted to make a point):

http://globalnews.ca/news/2363403/donald-trump-criticized-for-mocking-reporter-with-a-disability/?hootPostID=47b8eb3ffd18a53e758e2e80fdaae421

I'm just waiting for Trump to make fun of veterans. Fingers crossed.

You mean besides John McCain?

he already called mccain a loser for getting captured in action, so...

lol xp

Future Trump rally:

"You're stupid. You're all a bunch of losers. Worthless, stupid trash."

(crowd goes wild)

so you're predicting a move from Lonesome Rhodes to Howard Beale

Michael B Dougherty ‏
Imagine a fascist Trump POTUS! USA might start unprovoked wars, keep a kill list, weaken Constitutional rights...

Future Trump rally:

"You're stupid. You're all a bunch of losers. Worthless, stupid trash."

(crowd goes wild)

― The Squirrel Who Punched His Dad In The Neck (Old Lunch),

his numbers went up in iowa after his 'how stupid are the ppl in iowa?' rant

Yeah but it's tough to tell if his numbers rose in response to that comment or his racism. Democracy!

my trump popularity theory is that ppl are cynical enough about politics that as they no longer think it matters who they vote for they might as well vote for someone entertaining; at least they can laugh while everything falls a part

The reality show/pro wrestling/entertainment thing is probably half, and then the other half are people that would have votes for Wallace

voted.

iPhone. Fuck

Aaaaaaannnnnnd, it's been 12 hours since the Planned Parenthood shootings and not one GOP candidate has released a statement about it. Hard for them to wash their hands and talk, I guess

They could hardly make the usual recommendation of arming all PP employees and patrons to the teeth. It would seem as if they were siding with the enemy.

seriously what the hell style sheet do you people use that post to ilx from your iphone. they all look like unreadable butt to me.

Zing app

It might have been released during your time away, but it is what pro ilx posters use when they're on the go

does it look different?? on OLDASS.CSS every post looks the same

I'm still on iPhone.css, which has the weird thing now where YouTube links no longer function

“He’s not a bought-and-paid for politician. He knows all the ins and outs of negotiating,” said Clearwater resident Bob Priest, standing in line near a live elephant painted with Trump’s “Make America Great Again” slogan. “He’s got some guts and he tells it like it is.”

Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/news/politics-government/article46970250.html#storylink=cpy

A little disappointed, frankly...

http://i.imgur.com/70Y8DZB.jpg

poor elephant :(

by rights that pic should include the elephant taking a dump

So the media is being p stupid about his chances eh

They're doing all they can to report Trump's bombast and idiocy, which does at least put some sand in the gears and slow down the bandwagon effect.

there was a thing about how his numbers had dipped some after this whole 'mocking a disabled person's disability' thing but it was only to thirtysomething percent among republicans, previously it was in the mid-forties. that's like hillary territory. i think the media is probably swinging too hard the other way after treating him as an consequence free amusement for so long, they've gone from 'this guy isn't actually a candidate' to 'this guy is THE candidate'. plus when he doesn't when it won't be (or at least won't primarily be) for the narrative reasons the media pretends shape the race and instead will be for his inexperience and probably unwilllingness to do the on the ground politicking that wins races. ie how the legend is that the scream sank dean but in reality the dean campaign had already kinda imploded, the scream coming after his finishing crazy low in iowa after looking like he'd sown up the nomination a month or so prior. media hyping up christie getting the union-leader endorsement; who knows if that really means shit but i guess it's indicative that christie is doing the legwork there. if he somehow won new hampshire now i guess i'd know how it happened.

CC is ROLLIN' NOW

“Mr. Christie is right for these dangerous times,” Joseph W. McQuaid, the publisher, wrote in the endorsement editorial. “As a U.S. attorney and then a big-state governor, he is the one candidate who has the range and type of experience the nation desperately needs.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/30/us/politics/chasing-endorsements-christie-showers-new-hampshire-with-calls-and-texts.html

DESPERATELY

@sahilkapur Nov 28
.@UnionLeader endorsements:

2016: Christie
2012: Newt
2008: McCain
2000: Steve Forbes
1996: Buchanan
1992: Buchanan
1988: Pierre du Pont

The flawed premise of the alternate earth suggested by that list is the assumption that humanity would have survived long enough to vote Christie into office.

ted cruz suffered a big loss this morning as the 13-year-old chairman for Teens for Ted who became internet famous for asking why Obama invited the "Muslim kid" to the White House remembered that he is a 13-year-old kid and gave up his position and conservatism

uh

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/cj-pearson-renounces-conservatism

oh man, i haven't seen the name pierre dupont... probably since 1988.

"Quit callin' yourself 'Pete'...."

I hadn't even heard of him until I read Richard Ben Cramer's book.

any of the candidates have anything to say about this PP shooting over the weekend? Carly? Teddy?

Fiorina and Cruz said it was a shame libs still believe in ending the lives of babies when libs already dying for going to Planned Parenthood.

Ted Cruz called the shooter a "transgendered leftist activist" iirc

yeah that was seriously nauseating

haha waht

wait, seriously? Cruz seriously said that?

i guess some form somewhere with the dude's name on it had F instead of M, and about an hour later the r-w echochamber had ginned that up into "omg he was a trans activist!!" then duly repeated by cruz

i guess we know what ted's media diet is

Mine was bullshit.

Chuckles called it terrorism, I guess that's something:

“What he did is domestic terrorism,” Huckabee said in an interview with CNN’s “State of the Union” Sunday. “And what he did is absolutely abominable, especially to us in the pro-life movement, because there’s nothing about any of us that would condone or in any way look the other way on something like this.”

I think when you let Huckabee get out ahead of you on the moral high ground, it's time to set your campaign headquarters on fire and retreat to the mountains to live off of the land.

david futrelle had a look at the echo chamber in action:

http://wehuntedthemammoth.com/2015/11/28/right-wingers-claim-colorado-shooter-robert-lewis-dear-is-a-trans-woman/

It's sad how far shit has to go before it crosses the line that makes (some of) these folks react like human beings.

Even so, I'm sure it's as much about distancing their own extremism from a more unpalatable extremism as it is about expressing true sympathy.

Is Huckabee the only republican candidate to condemn the attacks and/or call them terrorism so far?

*attack

Oh Huckabee had that shit on an index card in his back pocket. For him this is absolutely a pre-planned exercise, the calculated response to a scenario he and a few staff "what-if'd" years ago.

gotta give it to him for being the only GOP candidate to have his index card ready to go, though

I think when you let Huckabee get out ahead of you on the moral high ground, it's time to set your campaign headquarters on fire and retreat to the mountains to live off of the land.

― you're breaking the NAP (DJP), Monday, November 30, 2015 12:58 PM (45 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

OTM

UPDATE NOV 30, 2015 8:14 AM
Cruz campaign spokesman Rick Tyler clarified of the candidate's remarks, "He was making the point that there isn’t enough information. You can’t expect a full response to a story that’s developing. The point was there’s a lot of raw information going around that’s not confirmed.

The campaign also explained that Cruz received his information from "The Right Scoop," which similarly used the voter registration form to ask, "WAS THE COLORADO SHOOTER A TRANSGENDER PERSON?!?!"

there's always the risk that if Ted Cruz retreated to the mountains to live off the land he'd end up like Robert Lewis Dear.

"transgendered" is basically a slur right? like a "Democrat party" kind of jab but a billion bajillion times more reprehensible?

While I'm sure the rightwing echo chamber views the transgendered as freaks and monsters, transgendered is an actual term used by transgendered people (as opposed to, say, "tranny" which is def a slur). By contrast, no Democrat says they belong to "the Democrat Party".

my bad. I thought "transgender" was the preferred term.

lmao look at this trash

https://twitter.com/therightscoop

huh sorry crut I stand corrected, I was not aware of this distinction:

The term trans man refers to a man who has transitioned from female-to-male, and trans woman refers to a woman who has transitioned from male-to-female. Health-practitioner manuals, professional journalistic style guides, and LGBT advocacy groups advise the adoption by others of the name and pronouns identified by the person in question, including present references to the transgender person's past; many also note that transgender should be used as an adjective, not a noun (for example, "Max is transgender" or "Max is a transgender man", not "Max is a transgender"), and that transgender should be used, not transgendered.

The point was there’s a lot of raw information going around that’s not confirmed.

most otm Cruz campaign will ever get

u got to admit it is a unique if cynical and exploitative way to dodge the issue of domestic terrorism

TBF, if we can't keep the accepted terminology straight, I'd be hard-pressed to call out a republican for using something that isn't an outright slur when he's throwing transgender people under a bus.

The point was there’s a lot of raw information going around that’s not confirmed. And we're committed to issuing uninformed, wild speculation of that raw information as quickly as possible.

I'll never understand how politicians can get so much support when they're the type of people who, as neighbors or coworkers, others would rightly avoid and wholly mistrust.

Did not expect to open this thread and hear about a candidate for president of the United States - not named Trump - tie the Planned Parenthood shooting into lol trans jokes.

Huck's got that broken clock thing going for him, if you're into small appliances that don't work 99% of the time. He was somewhat in the right when he condemned Rev. Wright's sermons, but not Wright himself, saying to cut him some slack. That might have more to do with (A.) Being a Rev himself and (B.) serving a term as governor while Nolan Richardson was the state's head basketball coach.

Calling criticism of her misrepresentations about Planned Parenthood “typical left-wing tactics,” the Presidential candidate Carly Fiorina said, on Sunday, “I will not be bullied into telling the truth.”

oh curse you Borowitz, I need to read bylines more closely

'I'll never understand how politicians can get so much support when they're the type of people who, as neighbors or coworkers, others would rightly avoid and wholly mistrust.'

Easily, I think, since presidential campaigns are way more about hopes-and-fears/broad narrative stuff rather than the particulars of actual living & breathing people.

C.f. Hunter S Thompson hating everything about "Nixon" but able to talk football with the actual man.

'I'll never understand how politicians can get so much support when they're the type of people who, as neighbors or coworkers, others would rightly avoid and wholly mistrust.'

There's also the line of thinking that goes, "Of course they're all liars and thieves and douchenozzles: they're politicians. If they weren't lying shits, they'd go into a more honest line of work. If we're going to elect a lying shit no matter what, I at least want to vote for one whose rhetoric aligns most closely with my own views."

Put another way: Power should only be entrusted to people who don't want it.

On this view, thinking you deserve to be president is pathological to begin with; it is almost a disqualifying factor on its own. And yet you need to run to be elected, and we're supposed to have a president. So we have to pick from among the people who want the job.

Yeah, but there are a lot of candidates these days that don't even strive to be "likeable" in that vague way that politicians are considered likeable. Some of this gaggle of republican candidates come off as deeply unpleasant people to an extent that I imagine for many isn't even ameliorated by party affiliation.

thinking you deserve to be president is pathological to begin with

I do p much think this tbh - which is one of the reasons Obama is such an interesting president. Where others' pathologies are nakedly obvious (both Clintons, Dubya, Nixon, Reagan etc.), Obama's are much harder to detect.

Power should only be entrusted to people who don't want it.

This is pithy and I've been guilty of flippantly tossing it around more than once over the decades, but it would be truer to say that people who truly don't want power will generally be inept at handling great power, because they have no practice wielding it. It would be like handing a chain saw to a person who has never even held one and telling them to fell a hundred fifty foot tree growing next to high voltage lines.

imo the pathological nature of the job is in the willing acceptance of, even enthusiasm for, having a job where you will be directly responsible for the deaths of innocent people. No matter what you do as president, this is something that is gonna happen, and because of decisions you make. Accepting that is p messed up imo, only crazy people with advanced compartmentalization skills can/would do it.

people in this thread finding the republican candidates unlikable shocker. also, anyone that pays taxes has to willingly accept that some of that money will be used to drop bombs on innocent people.

true, but I think that's different from actually being the one calling the shots

“And what he did is absolutely abominable, especially to us in the pro-life movement,..."--Huckabee

Nice trick. The real victims here are the pro-lifers.

he probably noticed how after every jihadi attack everyone got really worried about islamophobia

No, I read that more as "They already think we're crazy, this guy isn't helping."

restraint probably kept him from going full-on christian blowback victimization

You're probably right.

I think of that line by Lincoln's longtime law partner: the ceaseless tick-tock of Lincoln's ambition. To enjoy power isn't itself corrupting. FDR enjoyed power too, used it well and not so well (used it less well than Lincoln but was in office longer).

after every jihadi attack there are reprisals against muslims

i doubt the same thing happens to pro-lifers but i'll keep my eyes open

You're right, Austin, but he just can't help position himself as also being at least a kind of victim in this. it's absolutely pathological.

it's p clear what huckabee means tho

i suppose the closest thing to a left wing shooting we've had in a while is the Family Research Council shooting, which the shooter said he got off a list from the SPLC

GOP considers Islamists leftists afaict

Like, "They already think we're crazy. Now they think we're shoot up the place crazy. Woe is us."

I can see that.

And yeah, it's uncomfortable. But at least it's in line with the usual batshit Huckabee rhetoric.

GOP considers Islamists leftists afaict

Actual LOL.

i think huck means "abortion is murder, murder is murder, murder is bad"

"except for kids murdering dogs, that's cool"

it's v true jihadists couldn't be 'further' from 'the right' #freedom

Xpost

Huckabee is saying domestic terrorism is especially abominable to those with the ethical purity and resolve to be 'pro-lifers' afaict.

or just especially abominable because the ironic lol of "pro-life" ppl murdering is clear even to huckabee

Wait, these guys are still running?

who the fuck even knows

Well it took great bravery to say in public that murdering people is v bad.

'There is no excuse for killing other people whether it's happening inside the Planned Parenthood headquarters, inside their clinics where millions of babies die, or whether it's people attacking Planned Parenthood,' he said during an interview on CNN.
'I don't know of anybody who has suggested violence toward Planned Parenthood personnel or some act of violence towards their clinics. I've not heard that, not from one single pro-life person.'

Not a single pro-life person ever personally warned Huckabee that he was about to go murder anyone at PP.

"yo Huck, just a heads-up..."

Definitely pro-life persons pretty narrowly isn't he.

“After all these years and millions of babies that have gone to their death, violence is to be anticipated,” said Judie Brown, president of American Life League, in a phone interview with MSNBC. “Because it’s acceptable to violently kill a baby, so why isn’t it acceptable to violently kill other people?”

“We never approve of violence against anybody, whether it’s the unborn babies or the clients of Planned Parenthood or anybody else,” Ann Scheidler, vice president of the Pro-Life Action League, told MSNBC. But, she added, “it’s not the fault of the pro-life movement that someone found out that Planned Parenthood is doing these things. It’s the fault of Planned Parenthood for selling the baby parts.”

http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/abortion-opponents-defense-colorado-planned-parenthood-shooting

"we live in a world of moral relativism where the original sin is abortion" is part of the story i hadn't heard before

Oh man, this thread is a goldmine for laughs today.

buttload of laughs

"we live in a world of moral relativism where the original sin is abortion" is part of the story i hadn't heard before

― rap is dad (it's a boy!), Monday, November 30, 2015 5:38 PM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i've heard this a lot, actually. from protestant pro-life folks, but more credibly from catholics who champion the "consistent life ethic"— in their view things like abortion, the death penalty, and a variety of things those of us on this board are likely to detest (poverty, war) are all part of the cheapening of human life.

anyway here's an attempt to parse the meaning of the trump phenomenon: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/birthers-trumpists-and-a-crisis-for-the-gop/2015/09/04/3b3e2074-5308-11e5-8c19-0b6825aa4a3a_story.html

it's easy to forgot btw that the tribalism of american politics have meant that the pro-life position is associated with the right but it wasn't always thus. until the 1970s abortion wasn't really a partisan issue. anyway.

i mean it was an "issue," but those opposed to legal abortion were distributed among the major parties, as were those in favor.

From that WaPo opinion article by the "Harvard political theorist" linked just above:

If the Republicans can hang on to the convictions that make them the party of Lincoln, we ought to see the party split. For the good of the country, we should hope for it.

So not going to happen.

...what we’re confronting truly is the rise of a new party. Provided, that is, the Republicans don’t sell their souls.

That sale is all but final.

ha, I had a Catholic friend whose priest would basically come out and say, "no Catholic can ever be a Democrat" and "JFK would have been a Republican" re: abortion

uh they stopped being the party of Lincoln in 1876.

tbf if any new party emerged and called itself the whigs i'd probably join

http://gfx2.aftonbladet-cdn.se/image/14477494/485/normal/e987d71475bb7/AFGHAN-WHIGSbred.jpg

In more mundane news, specifics on Clinton infrastructure spending proposals and Sanders...

Hillary Clinton is calling for a $275 billion boost in federal infrastructure spending over five years and the creation of an infrastructure bank, arguing that the measures will help create jobs while modernizing the nation’s ailing roads and bridges…The Democratic presidential front-runner plans to spend the next month laying out what her campaign is calling her “jobs agenda,” including ideas for upping federal support for research and manufacturing.

That $275 billion falls well short of the $1 trillion in infrastructure spending that Bernie Sanders wants, another sign Clinton is not embracing the robust economic agenda favored by the Sanders/Warren wing of the party. Oh, and seven in 10 Americans back this sort of spending.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2015/11/30/morning-plum-yes-donald-trumps-demagoguery-just-got-even-uglier/

https://www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2015-11-29/hillary-clinton-calls-for-275-billion-in-federal-infrastructure-spending

https://mobile.twitter.com/Timodc/status/671733195960905728

just in time for interest rates to go up .. xp

whut

um, that's the real JEB! communications director twitter acct?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5b2KyVmmVYw

"convicted felons tend to vote Democrat" is a thing Ted Cruz said

His shithead admirers would find nothing wrong with that statement. It plays up perfectly to their bigoted view of the world: violent criminals are overwhelmingly black and blacks are overwhelmingly democratic. QED.

well aside from that, convicted felons can't vote

depends on the state

maybe he had Sheldon Silver on the brain

the guy on the right is the real life version of Fred from Scooby Doo

she's done it again

“I have stood for a lot of regulation on big banks and on the financial services sector. I also represented New York and represented everybody from the dairy farmers to the fishermen...And so, yes, do I know people? And did I help rebuild after 9/11? Yes, I did,” Clinton said.

http://gawker.com/hillary-clinton-again-invokes-9-11-to-explain-her-wall-1745514917

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/c/c9/Charging_Bull_statue.jpg

that's not a milk cow

Her masonry skills were a bit lacking but her heart was in the right place.

this isn't a good look for her, but then i'm not sure how she's supposed to answer since she can't tell the truth ("what can i say? i'm completely in their pocket. but you're gonna vote for me anyway, aren't you?")

"You're not gonna vote Republican!"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Cg7Z2eZmcM

as Pareene points out, there are other rhetorical ways to defend megacapitalism than via 9/11 9/11 9/11

whoa, Wendell Pierce was in Bulworth? forgot about that.

are you shitting me right now

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CVK7HCPW4AMM_Dc.png

that logo is so brilliant

not necessarily this manifestation which seems a little tacky but just the template which is so versatile (and at least to me aesthetically pleasing + memorable)

wonder if there were meetings about how it looks like she's sitting at the back of the logo.

hahaha

and how it was impossible to get rid of that without it messing up the clarity of the H-arrow. but darn it they'd drawn this cutesy cartoon cutout that sorta vaguely looks like rosa parks i guess, and the blurb has already been written and do you want us to just throw all that work away?

the semiotics of that are weird -- are we supposed to think that hillary has defied time and causality by somehow being the inspiration for rosa parks?

That logo is grotesque

"Lady, you need to get up and move off of that 'H'."

wow what an inclusive brand

she can transform her H into the twin towers if she gets another question about wall street funding

come to the front, Ms Parks, and help me rebuild Wall Street.

i think they just got their campaign logo mixed up with the google doodle. tomorrow it'll be an animated gif of tesla, or redone in the style of piet mondrian. #neoplasticism turns 100 years old today! now you know how to say "hello" in dutch!

I'm not at all mad at the Rosa Parks logo

i'm not /mad/ at it, since it can't possibly have been intended to mean what it seems to mean. it's just kinda dumb.

It's dumb if you're predisposed to see everything Clinton does as opportunistic and dumb. It's also more than what Google did today.

Rosa Parks deserves all the recognition she receives. Weaving her into your own campaign logo is a bit on the crass side, but it's not any different than the usual move of wrapping oneself in the flag, and she's a much better symbol to associate with than, say, Dukakis sitting in a battle tank for a photo op.

I haven't checked for hot takes on this Michael Eric Dyson piece, subtitled "Why Hillary Clinton will do more for black people than Obama"

https://newrepublic.com/article/124391/yes-she-can

is it an only reagan can go to china argument bc tbh i find that a v convincing line of thought

seems like the thread title was prophetic

https://twitter.com/politichickAM/status/671725201747415042

3 reasons I’m endorsing @SenTedCruz for Pres: Nat’l Security, Peace Thru Strength & Eidetic Memory. @TeamTedCruz #CruzCrew #CruzToVictory

what

dear lord

So, what, dude can instaneously recite the stats of various weapons systems from a Jane's manual from memory?

seems like the thread title was prophetic

heh

am i sposed to know who that woman is?

no, it's just odd

Meanwhile:

In states with some of the most competitive Senate contests, the concern is palpable, especially after weeks in which Mr. Trump has made a new series of inflammatory statements.

“If he carries this message into the general election in Ohio, we’ll hand this election to Hillary Clinton — and then try to salvage the rest of the ticket,” said Matt Borges, chairman of the Republican Party there, where Senator Rob Portman is facing a competitive re-election.

Pat Brady, the former state Republican chairman in Illinois, where Senator Mark S. Kirk is also locked in a difficult campaign, was even more direct. “If he’s our nominee, the repercussions of that in this state would be devastating,” Mr. Brady said.

Another Republican strategist in Ohio replied to an email asking about Mr. Trump’s effect in the state by sending a link to a Wikipedia page on the 1964 congressional elections, when Barry Goldwater’s presence atop the Republican ticket led the party to lose 36 House seats.

Those of you in open primary states: please vote for Trump.

am i sposed to know who that woman is?

I'll give you a hint, it's a woman whose famous for riding a bus and whose birthday happens to be today

okay hahahahahahahahahahaha Morbs was talking about Goole's Twitter link hahahahahahahahaha

Those of you in open primary states: please vote for Trump.

I kind of can't imagine GOP leadership/moneybags are so weak and toothless that they'd let Trump get the nom but yeah

we're getting to a point where it's really not impossible that trump wins the nomination

which is just kinda insane

I'm not sure what's 'better for america', that happening and this kinda being like the french 2002 election or rubio or cruz winning and having an actual shot at becoming president. I guess #2 is scarier but less embarrassing?

the cowardice in the GOP is remarkable, the totality of the self-serving shortsightedness

it's not just cowardice, they don't have any good angle to attack trump from

haha oh sure they do

he's not some unbeatable figure, the guy is an idiot that gets by on going unchallenged

that they can't bribe a proxy to attack him is the crazy part. I'm not saying Rience Priebus would be an effective vehicle for delivering an anti-Trump message, but you'd think one of these bajillionaire backers would be able to buy a candidate to serve as a front for GOP leadership attacks. This is cloak and dagger ratfucking stuff, sure, but the GOP used to be good at that shit!

'challenging him' just feeds the persecution complex that the reactionary white nationalist subculture is built on

what's the alternative

Voting for him in primaries.

I mean it depends on who's doing the challenging - if its someone who's an even bigger asshole, but (crucially) one who can be brought to heel when necessary, then problem solved. Trump can't be brought to heel, which is the problem.

xp

where exactly are they gonna find a bigger asshole than donald trump?

sometimes I wonder why trump wont go away, but literally every single time I go to the lunch counter in my building they have cnn on and that idiots fat face is on the screen

where exactly are they gonna find a bigger asshole than donald trump?

Cruz fits the bill. Christie too, if he didn't already have the obama-hug-taint

idk I'm just spitballing it's just weird to see all these powerful interests totally cowed and unwilling to invest/pick a side

they did invest and pick a side, that ship sunk

http://www.loriferber.com/media/catalog/product/cache/1/image/9df78eab33525d08d6e5fb8d27136e95/u/s/uss-ronald-reagan-plaque.jpg

they did invest and pick a side, that ship sunk

then pick another side!

that anybody thought JEB! had any legs is also nuts, of course

Clip of Trump on CNN a minute ago (referring to Cruz, I assume): "If somebody hits me, I'm gonna hit him back so hard..." Made me think of Goodfellas: "If anyone complained twice, they got hit so bad, believe me, they never complained again." Cruz is going to turn up in a car trunk one of these days.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EpmtMyr6orE

don't they already know that throwing money behind a losing candidate isn't effective, though? like, wouldn't they be looking seriously at romney's losses and, free of the must-be-insanely-conservative-to-win fixation, thinking that they can't even actually field anyone as 'presidential' right now?

the question is who 'they' are, like how large is the non-crazy part of the republican party at this point?

small but v v rich.

it's not just throwing money behind a candidate, it's financing attack ads etc.

the lines get blurry when ted cruz supporters start to qualify as reasonable people

xp

the thing about the guy is, he's a genius of stupid. i have decades of experience in and with severe mental illness, and i still routinely find my jaw dropping at the batshit crazy things he says. he's a walking issue of the "weekly world news".

vox linked to a couple of article on that subject: http://www.vox.com/2015/12/1/9830556/donald-trump-koch-brothers

Part of it is being afraid of Trumps bullying. Part of it is considering Cruz as the one who would benefit from attacks on Trump, and fearing a surging Cruz more.

So there are strategic reasons for not attacking Trump, though I think they sound spurious. But what's crazy to me is that nobody in the party has the backbone to speak up and say 'this is simply wrong' to all the hateful bullshit he is spewing. Liz Mair, who is working to gather money for an anti-Trump campaign, is constantly basing the criticism on the fact that Trump used to be more liberal, has liked the Clinton's, etc. The attack is that he's too moderate, which seems insane, but that's the GOP atm.

If the megadonors have realized the chances of funding a GOP candidate into a general election victory are all but impossible, then they should mostly be interested in ensuring their downticket investments aren't spoiled by a presidential nominee who drives blue participation up and red participation down. There are no clear options right now.

The piece that amateurist posted about Trumpists being the UKIP / National Front equivalent is pretty interesting

You guys still think Trump is in this to actually be President? C'mon

i do - he seems more megalomaniac than cynical tbh

tho some small part of me does believe he's a hillary mole

Another Republican strategist in Ohio replied to an email asking about Mr. Trump’s effect in the state by sending a link to a Wikipedia page on the 1964 congressional elections, when Barry Goldwater’s presence atop the Republican ticket led the party to lose 36 House seats.

this is amazing

Ding ding ding, Mordy!

let me just say this:

http://imgc.allpostersimages.com/images/P-473-488-90/65/6553/UNT4100Z/posters/the-x-files-i-want-to-believe-print.jpg

'Peace Thru Strength' was a genuine DoD slogan in 1963 or earlier and NOT invented for Dr Strangelove, correct?

age-old idiom

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Si_vis_pacem,_para_bellum

i was probably thinking of Peace Is Our Profession

thoughts on http://theweek.com/articles/583243/what-hillary-gets-right-about-glasssteagall ?

My impression is it's a complicated subject where reasonable, well-intentioned, reform-minded people will disagree. I don't get the impression Glass-Steagall is critical to a sane and thorough reform of the financial services industry.

my understanding is most engaged ppl want legislation with a Glass-Steagall EFFECT, not nec its literal restoration.

I tend to agree with Ben Bernanke's take as expressed here:

http://www.politico.com/story/2015/10/ben-bernanke-puzzled-by-democrats-glass-steagall-214996

I think there are smarter, more targeted ways to make Wall Street safer.

The mere fact of the FDIC should preclude allowing commercial banks to engage in investment banking, which is far less regulated and much riskier.

I think Dodd Frank has shown that it's possible to constrain investment banking in ways that make it less risky and compatible with taking federally insured deposits, for instance through the Volcker Rule and heightened capital requirements. As we saw in the last crisis, there is enormous pressure to bail out any bank of sufficient size, even if it has no federally-insured deposits (as for example Bear Stearns, AIG or Lehman). So to say "Those banks can go off and do risky stuff because they don't have insured deposits" clearly is a non-starter. Once you realize that all banks of a certain size need to be tightly regulated, then the focus on Glass Steagall seems a bit beside the point.

"iatee
Posted: December 1, 2015 at 5:37:17 PM
they did invest and pick a side, that ship sunk"

God knows we have had our differences but this is so fucking OTM it hurts.

Also, the result is hilarious. Not in a Donald racist trump is hilarious way, but in a watch the cockroaches scurry when they bring raid into their own house sort of way.

i think the new panic is very much tied to cruz. a few weeks back it looked like rubio would be the default candidate once trump/carson faded. now if trump fades cruz is the clear beneficiary, which in some ways is as disastrous since they can't spin 'he doesn't represent the gop really' as easily w/ the guy who led the govt shutdown.

well, there is of course the background fear. show of hands: who honestly believes that should this guy lose the primaries, he will not then turn around and run in the general election?

that anybody thought JEB! had any legs is also nuts, of course

― Οὖτις, Tuesday, 1 December 2015 23:51 (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Inevitable slapstick

josh marshall tries to link the current political environment to the Great White Death study that came out of princeton a while ago (Case-Deaton)

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/you-can-t-understand-american-politics-without-reading-this-study

just digging around a little, the study does have its critics:

https://familyinequality.wordpress.com/2015/11/06/age-composition-change-accounts-for-about-half-of-the-case-and-deaton-mortality-finding/

http://andrewgelman.com/2015/11/06/what-happened-to-mortality-among-45-54-year-old-white-non-hispanic-men-it-declined-from-1989-to-1999-increased-from-1999-to-2005-and-held-steady-after-that/

i read that yesterday, and came away feeling like it was the most hedged blog entry of all time (especially the last half, when he tries to get down to business)

This is a complex story. And to be clear, I do not think this rise in mortality among middle aged whites is driving the mix of anger and nihilism among US conservatives. Rather, I think both of emanating from a common cause, albeit one I can identify in the broadest possible terms.

...Reductive explanations almost always fall short. And I anticipate some will say I'm advancing such an argument today. I would only counter that I'm not suggesting a causal relationship. I'm suggesting that these two facts are closely associated and stem from a common cause. What sets these statistics apart is their apparently hard, numerical nature. We can make arguments about political dysfunction, unrealistic fears about political change, historically anomalous refusals to abide within constitutional norms, etc. But every theory about politics and political change is inherently subjective and compromised by our individual place on today's partisan political spectrum. Numbers aren't magic. Perhaps these numbers have some flaw or another interpretation. But that seems unlikely. White people and just white people - particularly at the ages and life statuses where the advantage of race has been most needed - have broken from a trend that is basically universal in wealthy countries for a century. That is real. And I don't think we can understand the contemporary crisis of politics without it.

there's this thing, this connection, that will absolutely blow your mind and is fundamental to understanding american politics
but i'm not saying one is caused by the other, just that they're connected to something...else, something subjective, but also objective, and above all something essential to our lives and indeed to the future of the humankind, but at the same time something that's part of the very foundation of humanity as well. please continue to read my web blog

Marshall's equivocations gave me a headache.

i will tell you this today: that headache most likely came from reading his words. i can't guarantee that it did, just like i can't guarantee many things. but just because i cannot give you a guarantee does not mean that i can't make reasonable assumptions about the future. for example, flip a coin. heads or tails? arguably, no one can say. but i can tell you with high confidence that if you continue to flip the coin, eventually about 50% of the flips will land heads, the other 50% tails, and that as the number of coinflips approaches infinity the ratio of heads to tails will veer ever closer to 1:1. in other words, that headache could have come from anywhere, but thoughtful analysis, hard numbers, courageous ideas - all of these things contribute to a version of the truth. and if all of that or even most of that is true, one of those versions of the truth says that your headache came from josh marshall's equivocations. but that's a big if.

lolololol

yeah that's his thing

i guess it's nice to sort-of quantify the ambient "boy, white people are in a state, aren't they" feeling we've got going

oh, definitely! my main beef wasn't with his qualifications and hedging on the background about what the study was and what the results could mean, but rather that after a few thousand words and buildup he forgot to get to the part where he makes a solid point.

his point, i guess, is that this statistical trend of U.S. middle age white people dying at increasing rates, in contrast to the decreasing trends seen in other races and in other countries, is tied to the anger and outrage that many U.S. middle age white people seem to feel. he doesn't want to imply causality, which is good, because until this study came out a few weeks ago (or whenever it was), i don't think that anyone noticed that some white people were dying at higher rates than before! it seems to be news to everyone. it's not like any of the middle age white anger/outrage comes from an conscious awareness of decreasing life expectancy, and i doubt that there's some sort of subconscious "we're all dying...i feel it in my aging, slowly rotting bones...the u.s. government must paaaaay" undercurrent either. the anger of the tea party and the like comes from many different sources, discussed here and elsewhere ad nauseum. so i don't understand marshall's highlighting of this study and pained attempts to connect it to broader conservative anger trends. what's the point?

i guess this probably doesn't belong in the primary thread, whoops!

have any of you guys moved off yr position "no one can get the Republican nomination"?

He didn't even mention the heroin epidemic xp

somebody will get the Republican nomination. I'm pretty sure of that.

http://www.rawstory.com/2015/12/ted-cruz-there-is-no-doubt-planned-parenthood-was-selling-baby-parts/

would love to see PP bring a lawsuit for slander against Cruz

so i don't understand marshall's highlighting of this study and pained attempts to connect it to broader conservative anger trends. what's the point?

i didn't read the article bc the excerpt was enough to give me a headache but if i were going to draw a link i'd suggest that the same thing that is causing lower life expectancy is presumably a quality of life issue that is also producing the general fear + anger we're seeing.

like for example if you're experiencing acute poverty (which is not what i think is at play here) that will obviously contribute to an affectual state - maybe despair, or anger, or resolve idk these things work differently for different people + cultures - and will cause you to die earlier. you're not angry because you're going to die earlier. but your anger and your early death are linked.

would love to see PP bring a lawsuit for slander against Cruz

this

Would love to see Cruz get dropped out of a helicopter.

oh wow, Cruz is an insane person

Christian Death Cruz

In lieu of a PP lawsuit, I'd accept Cruz's arrest as an accessory to the next attack on a PP clinic.

well, the Christian right needs martyrs.

you know, there was one martyr greater than all the rest. in fact, he was the greatest man who ever lived. and his name was Ted Cruz.

read that to the tune of "Big Bad John"

Agree with Mordy that the angry white dudes on the Trump train are not experiencing poverty, and I would add that they're (mostly) not experiencing acute health problems.

Newt/Limbaugh/Tea Party/Trump, it's all the same dudes with exactly one umbrella grievance, into which they put all their inchoate other grievances. Dudes like them have been running pretty much everything for a thousand years. So any slight diminution of that status feels like a theft. Climate change? Trynta to keep me from driving my big ol Ford. Gun control? Trynta keep me from shootin. Affirmative action? Trynta horn in on our jobs. Taxes? Trynta take my hard-earned money. Regulation? Trynta make me make slightly less money or dump slightly less waste in the crick. Sensitivity on race, gender, etc? Trynta keep me from tellin jokes.

They just want the party to continue, but modernity keeps threatening to ever-so-slightly inconvenience them, and every slight inconvenience is unforgivable. Honestly I wish they were dying sooner.

"Here, grampa, have some more butter!" - me at Thanksgiving

lol otm

haha yes

Hey now, let's not push these guys out the door. There might be other things they're afraid will be taken away that we don't even know about yet.

Good stuff in here: http://www.quinnipiac.edu/news-and-events/quinnipiac-university-poll/national/release-detail?ReleaseID=2307

They just want the party to continue, but modernity keeps threatening to ever-so-slightly inconvenience them, and every slight inconvenience is unforgivable. Honestly I wish they were dying sooner.

Ditto anyone who thinks that this era is worse than any other era. "The world is just going to hell, things are falling apart. Just you watch, society's gonna break down any second now." Okay whatever, grandpa. You're like 35, which is AT LEAST 40 years too young to be spouting that "BACK IN MY DAY" shit. I told someone that last Friday, I think it really pissed him off.

Things were so much better when I was eight and had no concept of the world outside of my bedroom.

that quinnipac poll confirms my suspicion that americans are brain damaged

"It doesn't seem to matter what he says or who he offends, whether the facts are contested or the 'political correctness' is challenged, Donald Trump seems to be wearing Kevlar," said Tim Malloy, assistant director of the Quinnipiac University Poll.

"Dr. Ben Carson, moving to center stage just one month ago, now needs some CPR. The Doctor sinks. The Donald soars. The GOP, 11 months from the election, has to be thinking, 'This could be the guy.'

Tim Malloy obviously wasted here

You think the Boomers are bad, GenX is gonna be even more ornery.

The Kurt Cobain generation? complaining about quality of life? I just can't imagine.

dump slightly less waste in the crick

where are u from, puffin?

I remember well when, immediately after Mittens lost the 2012 election, the GOP commissioned a group of consultants to read the numbers and explain why they lost and what to do next. Their widely trumpeted conclusion: the Republican Party needed to hitch its wagon to comprehensive immigration reform and reach out to more Spanish-speaking voters, muy pronto.

lol

totally worked

hey guys look this piece of shit has something else he wants to say

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2015/12/trump-on-isis-we-have-to-kill-their-families.html

in orbit - yeah. Pastopians.

New rule: everyone who utters something like "things were so much better way back when" should be required to say that in front of an audience of color

Dollar Bill • an hour ago

To win a war, any war, your enemy must feel demoralized enough to quit. That means you also have to go after their support structure, which often means civilian targets. It's war people. It ain't pretty.
(disclaimer: not a Trump primary supporter)

genocide sounds good to me

@ggreenwald
Having a hard time listening to all the claimed revulsion over Donald Trump's "family" terrorism plan: it's not that far from US policy. Or Israeli policy.

yes it's true all the people who are revolted by Trump are 100% supportive of US and especially Israeli military policy

cmon crut, that's a bit of a strawman

okay lol

Another great bit from David Roberts here, mainly about how Trump has kinda upset the "Versailles on the Potomac" vibe that most media courtiers have enjoyed for decades, and that's leading to why they're getting increasingly upset with him yet powerless to change anything. Also goes into the state of GOP supporters, "objective" reporting, etc. Good stuff.

from that link:

'There is a faction of the US electorate that is positively wroth: angry that they are losing their country, angry at immigrants and minorities who want "free stuff," angry at terrorists for making them feel afraid, angry at liberals for rejecting good Christian values, angry at the economy for screwing them and denying them the better life they were promised, angry about Solyndra and Benghazi and Obamaphones and Sharia law and ACORN and Planned Parenthood and black-on-black crime and a government takeover of health care and Agenda 21 and Syrian immigrants on the loose and UN climate hoaxes. They are angry at all institutions, including the Republican Party and the media, that have failed to halt America's decline.

They are mostly white, mostly older, and entirely pissed off. And Trump speaks for them, less in what he says than in his total contempt for those same institutions.

The anger is understandable, even justifiable in many ways, but unfortunately it also involves believing lots of nonsense. And no amount of understanding and empathy can make Jade Helm anything but, factually speaking, nonsense.'

Possible contrarian GOP strategy: Republicans keep running psychos to excite the base, which, while not enough to win the presidency, apparently is more than robust enough to win lots of congressional, local and state elections. Which is enough to stymie and disrupt the executive office. It's a long con.

I remember well when, immediately after Mittens lost the 2012 election, the GOP commissioned a group of consultants to read the numbers and explain why they lost and what to do next. Their widely trumpeted conclusion: the Republican Party needed to hitch its wagon to comprehensive immigration reform and reach out to more Spanish-speaking voters, muy pronto.

lol

― Aimless, Wednesday, December 2, 2015 2:16 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yeah this got some recent discussion starting here: a clown car full of millionaires: the 2016 presidential primary thread

the stated plan wasn't very good, and they're not even able to follow that. good luck gop.

telling how many of the items listed in that bit kingfish quotes above are basically complete fox news fabrications post-2008.

That worked before. Doesn't work forever.

All Trump does is give it voice. He is what happens when conservatives stop being polite and start getting real.

was this really necessary

considering that we have a Real World alum in the House, yes

In terms of actual realness, Trump's version of "getting real" is roughly equivalent with that of The Real World.

we do? here? (xpost)

Joshinchicago - probably not intentional, but I still think that's precisely what is happening, and will continue to happen for the foreseeable future.

"They are mostly white, mostly older, and entirely pissed off. And Trump speaks for them, less in what he says than in his total contempt for those same institutions."

Much to be said for having the correct enemies, in the rightwing hivemind just now.

we do? here? (xpost)

Oh yes, good old Sean Duffy from the Boston season is a Tea Party Republican representing a district in Wisconsin.

(I know one of his current Democratic challengers; he is a friend of a friend and we both sang in the same group in undergrad even though we didn't overlap: http://www.kirkbangstad.com/)

well, the thing about the contrarian strategy is that we have, in the long term, a trend towards creeping executive power. the executive office is much more powerful than it was even twenty years ago, and it's difficult to postulate a reversal of that trend. the other thing is that, as republican strategists point out, "appealing to the base" with a patent psycho was last tried in 1964, at which time the republicans were slaughtered across the board.

i do not think that this is a planned-out strategy. i think it's more that all the republicans have left are psychos.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hO_MkcZh-VY

omg

I'm Ted Cruz and WE APPROVE THIS MESSAGE

"Republicans keep running psychos to excite the base, which, while not enough to win the presidency, apparently is more than robust enough to win lots of congressional, local and state elections."

To get a bit more specific, I think it's really crazy rich right wingers with an axe to grind pick a guy to go out run for President and speak on whatever is their thing (Jesus, unions, regulation, energy policy, social issues etc). I think these candidates get some sugar daddy to get them to go around and give these speeches to get certain ideas out in the media. Some might have a shot at getting some interest, but most of the candidates are just selling their brand so they can clean up in conservative media, appearance, selling books and whatever weird shit they got on sell on their own websites (gold strategies, copper bracelets, biographies, etc). There is something kinda medicine show about the whole thing.

cruz behind the scenes video is funny as hell
who the fuck is that coughing
"one more hug and we're out"

omg. howwwww does footage like that get let out

the "we approve this message" takes approach carvey as brokaw reporting on gerald ford's death.

meanwhile our masters prepare to resist Trumpetry with everything they've got:

The Republican Party is preparing Senate candidates for the very real possibility that Donald Trump could be the party's presidential nominee.

According to a seven-page memo obtained by the Washington Post, National Republican Senatorial Committee Executive Director Ward Baker is encouraging Senate candidates to understand Trumpmentum, use it to their advantage, and then ignore Trump's most bombastic positions.

"We should prepare for 2016 by understanding the environment and recognizing the Trump phenomenon, " the memo reads.

The memo, which is titled "Observations of Donald Trump and 2016" continues, "We may not like it, but Trump has connected with voters on issues like trade with China and America's broken borders."

“Trump has risen because voters see him as authentic, independent, direct, firm, — and believe he can’t be bought,” Baker's September letter says, according to the Washington Post. “These are the same character traits our candidates should be advancing in 2016. That’s Trump lesson #1.”

In that memo, Baker warns candidates they should run their own race and not "engage in permanent cleanup or distancing maneuvers" for Trump. Specifically on Trump's position toward women, Baker warns "Houston we have a problem." He asks candidates to offer a "quick condemnation" and then move on.

But there is still a thing or two they can learn from the current GOP frontrunner.

"Understand the populist points Trump makes and ride that wave," Baker writes.

Hee hee, this is a Bloom County strip made real

reminds of the governor's son in oh brother: "we need some of that re-form!"

embracing nihilism - GOP 2016

http://www.morethings.com/fan/o_brother_where_art_thou/o_brother_pardoned-126.jpg

Best part of Cruz video is where he says mom prays for him for hours a day and she's all "now let's not get carried away, Ted"

everyone otm about Real World. modern politics makes as much sense, possibly less, than the beloved 90s mtv reality show.

all is "How is he still being taken seriously talk" is thumb-twiddling time filler. He has been in movies and on TV for decades now, which alone qualifies him to be taken as some kind of uber-being by most Americans.

Indeed. His celebrity survived even thru that time his brain was transplanted into a cat.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/08/19/ted-cruz-at-princeton-creepy-sometimes-well-liked-and-exactly-the-same.html

“He's not someone who shifts in the wind,” Panton says. “The Ted Cruz that I knew at 17 years old is exactly the same as the Ted Cruz I know at 42 years old. He was very conservative then, and an outspoken conservative. He remains strongly conservative today."

This man stopping growing up at age 17.

This is the real profile: http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/06/30/the-absolutist-2

Unlike what others may say, I consider Ted to be very kind.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CVT0uWxXAAA8Sdd.jpg

Nippled America?

lol at this graphic accompanying one of those stupid "Who should i vote for?" quizzes on WashPo:

http://i.imgur.com/icdgbcL.jpg

(open in different tab for full size)

who is that guy with the goatee and the glasses, 6th from the left, standing next to cool guy Rand Paul?

wait is that supposed to be carson?!

which of these unrecognizable blobs should I vote for?

Reservoir candidates

http://image.tmdb.org/t/p/original/4ctv9pxKpwjTFevWQbvaqXkXbPF.jpg

christie looks like he's about to tumble down the stairs on his way out of a dinner party

i caan driiive, ahm good

You may wish to vote for: 80s Trump.

Hilary seems appropriately smug.

(I should definitely care less about this but): Who's that supposed to be to the left of Fiorina?

no idea. 4 of them look like huckabee on the cusp of discovering a natural gas leak to me

Lol @ Pataki and Kasich as mirror images including skeletal hand.

has anyone compared Cruz to Nixon yet?

unlikable, socially awkward, a demagogue eager to exploit resentments to score points, collector of chits, riddled with phlebitis

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CVTVybKUYAASeeY.jpg

cruz seems like nixon

McCarthy is the first connection that comes to mind, although of course Nixon isn't so far removed

And Mister Rogers.

this idiot wasn't even born in america

I hate that I care about this, but it's bugging me.

1. Sanders
2. Clinton
3. O’Malley?
4. Rubio
5. Paul
6. Carson
7. Trump
8. Jeb?
9. Graham
10. Cruz?
11. Pataki?
12. ?
13. Fiorina
14. Kasich
15. Santorum?
16. Christie
17. Huckabee

you're right on all the question marked ones, i think. maybe 12 is gilmore?

Yeah, that makes sense - I was checking against Real Clear Politics' list, and thinking that it would have to be Jindal, because him dropping out is what took it from 14 to 13, but Gilmore is the 14th in the race! He just doesn't appear on RCP because he never polls >.5%.

Gilmore! Thanks. I couldn't think of a chubster apart from the obvious chubbos.

I also wondered about when it was created and whether there'd be ex-candidates in the lineup. Blue-Tie #3 looks nothing like O'Malley, but even less like Webb. Both are stocky little apple-shaped guys, not slender willows.

Lol the last two sentences on the 'Jim Gilmore presidential campaign, 2016' wiki page:

"Gilmore has insisted that he's "not going anywhere," and will continue to run.

On October 30th, 2015, Jim Gilmore was verified on Twitter."

he's just waiting for the ol' GilmoMentum to kick in

http://www.fanpop.com/images/polls/29428_1_full.jpg

I'm sad that Lincoln Chafee dropped out before that graphic was ordered

will anyone ask the GOP candidates about this I wonder:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2015/12/03/reagan-bush-41-memos-reveal-how-republicans-used-to-think-about-climate-change-and-the-environment/

who is that guy with the goatee and the glasses, 6th from the left, standing next to cool guy Rand Paul?

the Penn Gilette of 1990?

btw Trump says his medical records will show "perfection"

well dammit now we have to vote for him

at least he will make a great organ donor

Trump's essence is pure. Why have the other candidates refused to give sample? What are they hiding?

lol @ Gil. i hope he sees himself playing a tortoise and hare game. these other guys, they'll tucker themselves out, and then at the end, it'll be trump and ol' gil!

My prostate cancer is terrific. Just the best. You've never seen cancer like it.