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

Recently, I think Huck has been floated semi-seriously as a Trump running mate. That would be entertaining, and it makes some sense because he would bring some humility, genial humor, evangelical support, and political experience to a Trump ticket. May be moot if Ted Cruzes to the nomination or MarcoMentum becomes a real thing. In any case I still think those are all general-election losers.

I do count this as more proof that nobody knows anything this year: wasn't Charles Pierce mocking the "Rubio surge" the other day?

Also, Matt Yglesias's recent piece arguing that Trump won the Iowa debate by not showing up is looking a little less accurate right now. It seems that turned off a lot of Iowa caucus-goers.

"Floating above the fray, Trump was perfectly positioned to grow even stronger just days from the beginning of voting."
http://www.vox.com/2016/1/28/10866312/donald-trump-won-the-debate

also important to keep in mind that iowa polling is notoriously inaccurate. those cruz voters could always have been there

Before taking questions, Clinton gave the microphone to her celebrity endorser: John “Bowzer” Bauman of the neo-doo-wop group Sha Na Na. Bowzer boomed the intro to the Marcels’ “Blue Moon,” and promised to flex his arms and open his mouth reeeeal wide if Hillary wins the caucus.

ok i'm sold

https://www.yahoo.com/sy/uu/api/res/1.2/aFQzB6S3FzYZhoWsBrtqIg--/Zmk9ZmlsbDtoPTQxNDtweW9mZj0wO3E9ODA7dz00MTQ7c209MTthcHBpZD15dGFjaHlvbg--/http://l.yimg.com/dh/ap/default/160201/ted-cruz.jpg

i mean really

from that Salon article:

The last time a Clinton was in the White House, she pointed out, incomes went up, and the budget was balanced. Then, a Republican president screwed it all up.

“One of the first things they did was to defang the regulators who were supposed to keep an eye on Wall Street and the financial markets,” Clinton said.

Chutzpah defined given the Great Bubba Deregulation of the '90s. Needs some tomatoes flung.

i know the odds are against sanders, but it was tough not to be heartened by the contrast between the clinton and sanders supporters last night. the energy and enthusiasm of the sanders crew is an order of magnitude above clinton's supporters. when they showed the clinton HQ you could hear snippets of arguments breaking out in the background, and the general vibe reminded me of the first family dinner following the tenuous reconciliation of a formerly separated couple. then they'd cut back to sanders HQ and it was like a party. i guess that's part of the benefit of being the favored candidate of young people.

sanders team still has time to find a singer with a larger mouth and more flexible arms, it's not over. has steven tyler made an endorsement? "LISTEN TO THIS BERN"

https://scontent.cdninstagram.com/hphotos-xfa1/t51.2885-15/e35/12317416_586220388198102_1911807337_n.jpg

Steven Tyler promises to go a-"Free Fallin’" into your yum yum yum if you vote Sanders

Picture of Cruz above looks like he's miming singing "Don't Stop Believin'" in his mirror with a hairbrush.

That Cruz pic reminds me of crying Swaggart

http://wp.patheos.com.s3.amazonaws.com/blogs/nolongerquivering/files/2013/04/jimmyswaggert.jpg

lol brownie

looks like a drunk dude singing mike and the mechanics at karaoke

the contrast between the clinton and sanders supporters last night. the energy and enthusiasm of the sanders crew is an order of magnitude above clinton's supporters

Unmistakable. Someone like Begala is always selling the great enthusiasm of Clinton's supporters, but her speech last night, and the general tenor of the room, felt like the same death march (win or lose) that 2008 felt like. (I'm sure I'm projecting a bit.)

apparently there were 6 caucus locations that resorted to coin flips last night, not 3, and clinton won all 6 of them! (something that would only happen 1.5 times out of a 100, but whatever)

saddest prominent performative hilarybro is probably this dude tho https://twitter.com/peterdaou

just a man who really, really wants to see a woman succeed and be president!

love that people figured out he was in a right wing militia in lebanon in his youth

is time for a new thread?

it's time for a new country.

lock thread!

cruz is such a gross thing

he sort of looks like j.r. "bob" dobbs, sans pipe

heresy! Bob is way more chill

well obv but the ur-suburban-robot-dad that the clipart was probably modelled on was clearly a psycho

Cruz has perpetually sad eyes, whereas "Bob" always has a mirthful gleam

he looks like he wants to kill us all

Cruz has the wan visage of an exposed snapping turtle

he has the wan visage of an exposed asshole

the wan visage of an exposed snapping turtle's exposed asshole

His wife said he looked like a '50s movie star when she met him. So I guess modern-day Cruz is what happens when a '50s movie star is first overinflated and then underinflated.

I will keep doing, but not worth it! The 2016 Presidential Primary Voting Thread

he does not want to have a beer with you, he wants to show you his wine cellar and brick you up, cask of amontillado style

man, rubio is a child. hillary could eat him for breakfast and still have room for brunch.

wait i'm on the wrong thread...

marco reminds me of

http://www.moviesonline.ca/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/peter-lorre-m-1.jpg

Politico with this gem:

Trump’s data shop is headed by a pair of low-profile former RNC data engineers, Matt Braynard and Witold Chrabaszcz, who are regarded as technically savvy but who do not have previous high-level campaign experience. And, while Trump’s team late last year entered into an agreement with the political data outfit L2, the campaign has paid the firm only $235,000 for “research consulting” through the end of 2015, the period covered by the most recent Federal Election Commission reports.

Trump’s reports show that his self-funded campaign has spent relatively little on voter data or outreach. They showed $200,000 in list rental payments to the conservative Newsmax Media, and $47,000 to Targeted Victory, a leading GOP digital firm, as well as $700,000 on field staff and consultants.

By contrast, the campaign has spent at least $1.2 million on hats ― presumably mostly for the now-iconic hats bearing Trump’s campaign slogan “Make America Great Again.”

http://www.politico.com/story/2016/02/donald-trump-iowa-caucus-loser-218604

can we lock this thread

The Lonesome Ballad of Mike Huckabee and Martin O'Malley: the 2016 Presidential Primary Thread (Pt. 3).

(I know there's a much better title than that.)

There's already a new thread, linked above.

I'm realizing that I don't understand some of the basic mechanics of this system. Is there a good online resource that explains things like: exactly what a caucus is and how/why it differs from a primary, why the primaries/caucuses take place in the order that they do, how the results of these caucuses/primaries lead to the choice of the party's Presidential candidate, etc? (I gather that e.g. Clinton and Sanders won very close percentages of the vote in this caucus, with Clinton getting 22 delegates and Sanders getting 21: does this mean that at the party leadership convention, there will be 22 Iowa delegates who will vote for Clinton on the first ballot with 21 voting for Sanders? Or does Clinton get to count all of Iowa in her pocket because she got more delegates this time? etc.) It's probably high school civics class material but I don't always trust Wikipedia and I don't always find journalistic sources to be that clear.

Whoops, missed the new thread.

Nm, think I got it now.

rand paul is dropping out

a good note on which to close this thread. We're here now: I will keep doing, but not worth it! The 2016 Presidential Primary Voting Thread

Mods?

whoops, thanks! i'm so used to ctrl+f'ing "faith" when i have urgent political news

Who can find the betting odds on Reagan's dudes working through 2020? They'll be pushing 85 by then.

― service desk hardman (El Tomboto), Monday, January 25, 2016

thread still needs locking but i am happy to have scalia's death marked in every thread on the board tbh