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

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)