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

some people wanna win so bad

"The American Dream is dead, but we're going to make it bigger and better and stronger than ever before"

so.... like a zombie with super strength?

this rhetoric actually speaks to some people

They're called 'eight-year-olds'. Or 'adults operating at the cognitive level of an eight-year-old'.

can't watch the video but reading these comments and all I hear is: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GGXzlRoNtHU

I'm impressed that America's first substance free campaign has done so well. This will be a model for future campaigns for sure.

=(

lol first

He literally says nothing!

Huh, kind of forgot about Carson. Is he still running? Did he just sort of quietly self-destruct?

i think he loudly self-destructed.

In a rambling interview with a Catholic news network over the weekend, Republican presidential candidate Ben Carson derided marriage equality and protections for transgender people as “extra rights” for “a few people who perhaps are abnormal,” warning that if the next president’s Supreme Court nominees protect LGBT rights, you can “say goodbye to America.”

Carson made the comments in an interview with the Witherspoon Institute’s Matthew Franck as part of a series of conversations with presidential candidates on the Catholic network EWTN.

When Franck asked Carson about Department of Education efforts to protect the rights of transgender students in schools, Carson launched into a discussion of how “political correctness” and “extra rights” are ruining America.

“You see how silly this is,” he said. “I mean, it’s beyond ridiculous that you take the most abnormal situation and then you make everyone else conform to it. That doesn’t make any sense whatsoever. That’s one of the very reasons that I have been an outspoken opponent of things like gay marriage. I don’t have any problem with gay people doing anything they want to do. You know, it’s a free country, there’s freedom of association. However, when you now impose your value system on everybody else and change fundamental definitions and principles of society, I have a big problem with that. Everybody is equal, everybody has equal rights, but nobody gets extra rights. And when we start trying to impose the extra rights based on a few people who perhaps are abnormal, where does that lead?”

After warning that gay marriage could lead to legalized polygamy and railing against “garbage” arguments for transgender rights, Carson said, “We are absolutely destroying ourselves because we are paying attention to political correctness.”

“Our time is running out,” he added. “If we don’t stand up for principles now and we get a progressive and they get two or three Supreme Court picks, say goodbye to America.”

yeah America was never about granting people rights

Political correctness seems to have become a huge buzzword on the right. It's ruining America. Talking to kids about bullying is enforcing political correctness. Obama won't call it Islamic Terrorism because of political correctness. We love Trump because he's not politically correct.

i feel like people don't talk about 'culture wars' as much. maybe because the left got some big-time Ws on that front (gay marriage for ex.). 'political correctness' is maybe the new enemy for the new normal

Pierce:

And, if you want some more evidence that shit's getting real on the Democratic side, consider that the Clinton campaign has unlimbered Chelsea Clinton to rip Sanders on health care, and consider that HRC herself has decided to appear on Squint and the Meat Puppet on Friday in what appears to be a desperate attempt to re-establish some Green Room cred. (S. & M.P. are "on the scene" in Iowa, probably because cattle mutilations have fallen off.) The simple fact is that, if HRC has lost her lead at the moment, she has lost it to a superior campaign.

And it's not as simple as the "populist anger" narrative would have you believe. Sanders has been running a 50-state campaign since before he formally declared his candidacy. He went to South Carolina. He went to Mississippi. He drew large and approving crowds in both places. He has stayed doggedly on message, directly refusing to help the elite political class in its pursuit of shiny objects. He repeatedly has emphasized that the pursuit of his policy goals, which all have to do with breaking the power of impending oligarchy and its threat to self-government, cannot be limited simply to electing him. And that's where the easy narrative falls apart....

....The respective appeals of the two men are similar only on the simplest and least consequential levels. On the most profound levels, the two campaigns couldn't be more different. Bernie Sanders is where he is because the positions and the policies he has been championing all his career have come back somewhat into favor ever since some grifters broke the world economy and then made off with the rubble. That is why he's different from Donald Trump and that is why Hillary Rodham Clinton is noticing that things in the rear-view window are closer than they appear.

"political correctness" has been a huge buzzword on the right for the past two decades

that goes back to the 80s! history of it is p interesting actually (there's a thread about it...)

Squint and the Meat Puppet?

xp

read an article about Chelsea on the campaign trail doing some fear mongering about bernie's single payer health care plan. if i had a vote in the deomocratic primary, and was on the fence, i'm pretty sure i'd be leaning towards sanders

Yeah, I've certainly heard a fair amount of "PC" comments over the years in a variety of contexts, but never from a political candidate in a quote like "“We are absolutely destroying ourselves because we are paying attention to political correctness.” Researching now... (xposts)

Squint and the Meat Puppet?

xp

― Οὖτις, Thursday, January 14, 2016 8:26 PM (7 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

joe scarborough and mika berzynski (cant spell that name to save my life)

lol The War on Political Correctness ugh

only a totally weak loser would ever be considerate of other losers with disadvantages and stuff.

Feel like right wing usage of 'political correctness' used to mean 'what's wrong with just saying whatever I want to say?' but has recently been expanded to 'what's wrong with emulating a Nazi?'.

ironic that it purports to be about standing up for free speech when in reality is most often invoked for the opposite reasons.

https://scontent-lga3-1.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-xpa1/v/t1.0-9/11984_927891740594082_3114178476815477404_n.jpg?oh=101cbeb3a40fc064117497557e3f6cdc&oe=5739641A

someone posted this on fb. am i right in assuming this is some [probably well-meaning] supporter's graphic and not really a representation of how Bernie Sanders thinks he's going to fund all his programming, right? bc it's clearly insane.

nm i missed that it says 10 years. it's still wrong (the paper cited for the health plan savings which seems outlandish to me is maybe $18 trillion but def not $32 trillion) but over 10 years means it's slightly less insane than i first thought

and still less insane than cutting taxes on 'jobs creators'

I don't think either Hillary or Bernie's plans have any hopes of passing a Republican-controlled House, this kind of stuff is all fantasy more than anything else.

like it's nice to know what the candidates come up with as a combo of what they would like to do + what they think will help get them elected but it really isn't worth crunching numbers over, the reality's gonna be much grimmer and messier. If there was any hope of the Democrats controlling Congress as there was with Obama's election in '08 they would be worth more scrutiny, but I don't think even the rosiest of election scenarios flips the House back to the Democrats.

is the single payer health care plan the same as we have in Canada?

I agree that numbers like that come from Fantasy Island. However, if one were to take it seriously, it actually may be understating things in a few areas.

The money spent on infrastructure (building a bridge, say) isn't just set on fire, it's spent inside the economy. Some of it goes to a contractor, which pays construction workers with some of it. So some of it returns to the treasury via income taxes. Same goes for the youth jobs program. Ditto the downstream paychecks of anyone whose job prospects are improved by more-affordable college.

And, of course, most people with jobs usually use their paychecks to buy stuff - food, cars, houses, etc. - so if your business involves selling goods and services to the people employed as a result of those programs, you're getting your tax money back.

i think we all agree that growth spending (especially on health and infrastructure) is a good thing, unfortunately lots of people at congress will never accept that.

I am guessing no-one here felt like watching Fiorina Santorum and Huckabee do anything other than juggle chainsaws?

that was it for the kids table? damn.

so i guess Paul's appeal to Alex fucking Jones and his army of nitwits to Let Rand Debate didn't produce results?

I was checking the feed for the later one, so I ended up looking in for five minutes. Each person clinging to one hope--Huckabee to Iowa in 2008, Santorum to Iowa in 2012, Fiorini to October of 2015 or whenever her 5-minute surge was. I liked that clip of Paul (literally) giving the finger to Fox on the radio today, although he seemed to be okay with the also-ran debate when he was part of the main one.

I had that Trump speech on in the background (curiosity is a terrible thing) and it's not news, but he's very good at what he does, and he is fantastically shameless in an "oh no, he's not going to..!?!" way. Here's the transcript only of the last minute:

"And we're going to win so much - and I say it - and I mean it! We're going to win so much, we're going to win with all of those things - Healthcare, everything! We're going to win at everything we do, and other countries are going to respect us, because we're winners, we're not losers. And we're not going to be kissing ass when 10 wonderful people get captured. We're going to win at every single level, we're going to win so much you're going to beg me, you're going to say 'Mr President, we're so tired of winning, we can't take it any more, please - don't win any more, Mr President, please, have one or two losses!', and I'll say 'No, I won't do that! I won't do that, because we are going to make America so great again!' We are going to make America great again. The American Dream is dead, but we're going to make it bigger and better and stronger than ever before, and I love you, thank you very much."

― Andrew Farrell, Thursday, 14 January 2016 18:27 (Yesterday) Permalink

Fuck it, he's got my vote for 8th grade class president

And we're going to win so much - and I say it - and I mean it!

In other news, I sort of love "All I Do Is Win" after hearing it just once

I hope Obama's listening to Carson's patient explanation of the things he doesn't understand about the world today.

A sick part of me wants to tune in but so far I'm resisting the urge

Cruz is basically re-enacting the Checkers speech at the moment.

Concern Trumping

Joke of the night: Ben Carson! (Seriously, it was a great line.)

Was the line "Ben Carson"? Because that is a pretty funny punchline to any joke.

Q: How many Republican candidates does it take to screw in a lightbulb?
A: Ben Carson.

Nah, he actually said something really funny (I thought, anyway).

ugh come on say 'well ted cruz has canadian values'

Cruz--who I can't stand--had been doing really well until that exchange. He looked pretty deer-in-headlights at the end of it.

Not sure anything can derail Trump at this point, but the one time when the debate audiences tend to turn on him--last night and every debate--is when he starts rhyming off his poll numbers, generally as a weapon to belittle someone else. I've never seen a politician so openly fixated on polls. (Openly--I realize they all are out of view.) It's a weird and completely unnecessary tendency that does seem to alienate.

It seems pretty crucial for him! What makes a winner? Winning!