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

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.