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

Ladies and germs, Scott Adams:

Direct democracy via social media – chaotic and ugly – is about to replace the Republic. No longer can a strong leader ignore the will of the people when it is pounding on every door and tapping on every window. The Republic was designed to give elected officials the power to decide for the people. But the elected elites have lost their legitimacy and The People are on the brink of taking back power.

so did the tomato hit him last night?

i skimmed a couple grafs of that Buzzfeed story w/out puking, but for once i can say read the comments.

the buzzfeed story is so weird. i had no idea. just deeply uncomfortable.

uh

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

chorus (to the tune of Adele):

hello from the caucus night
if bernie wins i'm gonna die
this crazy circus it's going coo coo ka choo
and huckabee is the guy who is long overdue

this appears to be a thing that he did on purpose. i guess he needs a miracle to get above 4% in iowa, so this is him, going after it

Someone said hey this Simon and Garfunkel for Sanders had has everyone going nuts! Let's fall in behind with our own version of the same thing. And everybody had more fun than they'd had since the whoopee cushion showed up on the campaign bus.

I was thinking the buzzfeed story was a bad and dumb idea - by the campaign or by buzzfeed or whomever pitched it first, I guess; but the Adams blog post is profoundly dumb on levels that the buzzfeed piece can't touch

http://www.wired.com/2016/01/apple-buys-ai-startup-that-reads-emotions-in-faces/
"Regardless of other costs, GOP having more public debates than DEM makes their range of policy positions seem more moderate/ mainstream"

oof

lol wrong link https://twitter.com/DavMicRot/status/692445923524349952

Clearly the Love & Kindness campaign shtick was pinched by some Clintonian from this 1931 Pulitzer Prize winner -- from George, Ira, and the head writers of Duck Soup:

Of Thee I Sing is a musical with a score by George Gershwin, lyrics by Ira Gershwin and a book by George S. Kaufman and Morrie Ryskind. The musical lampoons American politics; the story concerns John P. Wintergreen, who runs for President of the United States on the "love" platform.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Of_Thee_I_Sing

“I am not actively involved with organized religion,” Sanders said in a recent interview.

Sanders said he believes in God, though not necessarily in a traditional manner.

“I think everyone believes in God in their own ways, “ he said. “To me, it means that all of us are connected, all of life is connected, and that we are all tied together.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/bernie-sanders-finally-answers-the-god-question/2016/01/26/83429390-bfb0-11e5-bcda-62a36b394160_story.html

oh my god

the Huckabee video

goodbye cruel world, you have made me lol to death

wait that's an actual Huckabee campaign thing?!

yeah, that's real!

it's currently featured on the home page

https://www.mikehuckabee.com/home

at least they knew enough to disable comments

it's so ... abstract

also could've used a bass solo

Naval Ravikant calls it The American Spring, and points out that social media has become the real conduit to power. That’s a revolution. We the People are on the brink of replacing the entrenched powers and their monied interests. If the patriots in Iowa, New Hampshire, and the other early primary states put both Sanders and Trump in commanding leads, they will be – in effect – firing the government. But they would also be firing the system of government that was created by the Founders. Direct democracy via social media – chaotic and ugly – is about to replace the Republic. No longer can a strong leader ignore the will of the people when it is pounding on every door and tapping on every window. The Republic was designed to give elected officials the power to decide for the people. But the elected elites have lost their legitimacy and The People are on the brink of taking back power.

Some of this shit sounds like nobody so much as a Neil Breen character, only Breen at least implicates corporate types, as well.

We the People are on the brink of replacing the entrenched powers and their monied interests.

I had no idea Facebook, Google, Microsoft at all were in such bad shape

et al

Speaking of bass solos, how great would this campaign be if there was a talent competition?

also a swimsuit competition

you should also be able to win prizes by watching

living together in a decrepit Big Brother house

with daily video diaries

TRUUUUE STORRYYYYYY

I'm in awe over that Scott Adams article

Warning: If you continue reading this post, it will likely change your mind about the upcoming election. Regular readers know I’m a trained hypnotist. This is not a joke. If you keep reading, you will be persuaded, if not today, perhaps later, when it sinks in.

I will start my persuasion by reminding you that I wrote a book {....}

SPOILER - instead of electing ONE guy no one likes, we can elect THREE!

Trump hashed out his bitter feud with Fox tonight...on Fox.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fBjoe5Frz6Q

Tomorrow, Trump will go out into the middle of 5th avenue in NYC and shoot someone, and we'll forget all about this silly debate thingy.

He will then declare the guy he shoots a wounded warrior, and on Friday he'll host an event in his honour; by Saturday he will be polling around 60%.

I don't think Josh Marshall is nearly as smart as he thinks he is, but this analysis of Trump blowing off tonight's debate is interesting and perceptive.

Trump's comment about Jeb's being "weak", "low energy", "pitiful" ... these are demeaning and denigrating phrases. They seem frankly gross, with an emotional tenor we'd expect from street toughs or frat boys trash talking each other. It's raw and primal and all about dominating by denigrating. But what has really hurt Bush is not so much that Trump is calling him names. It's that Trump has used these attacks to demonstrate that Jeb is unable or unwilling to defend himself. Trump hits him and Jeb takes it. His responses are hapless and weak and generally meaningless. You probably barely remember them. The impact of this is not tied to Trump calling Bush "weak." Trump is engineering encounters that show that Bush is weak.

In an election dominated by national security, this kind of demonstration of power and dominance has a profound impact. That is why the 'Swift Boat' attacks in the 2004 presidential election were so devastating. Whether anybody really believed all these slurs and claims about John Kerry wasn't really the point. What was deadly was his seeming inability to defend himself.

...

Trump doesn't apologize. He hurts people and they go away. He says things that would kill a political mortal (ban members of an entire religion from entering the country) and yet he doesn't get hurt. Virtually everything Trump has done over the last six months, whether it's a policy proposal or personal attack, has driven home this basic point: Trump is strong. He does things other people can't.

This is why Trump has so shaken up and so dominated the GOP primary cycle, at least thus far. As I've said, this kind of dominance symbolism is pervasive in GOP politics. It's not new with Trump at all. Most successful Republican politicians speak this language. And yet somehow for most it is nonetheless a second language. But it's Trump's native language. I still believe it's rooted in the mix of the hyper-aggressive New York real estate world, his decades of immersion in the city's febrile tabloid culture and just being, at the most basic level, a bully. Wherever it comes from, he seems to intuitively get that for this constituency and at this moment just demonstrating that he gets his way, always, is all that really matters. Policy details, protecting the candidate through careful press releases and structured media opportunities ... none of that matters. Trump doesn't kiss babies. Babies kiss him. He doesn't have a billionaire backer; he is a billionaire. Trump doesn't ask for support. He just tells you that you need to stop being a loser and get on board.

So this debate power play is all of a piece. He can just take the table, flip it over and walk out of the room. It's all about him.

There is no question that Trump will completely dominate tomorrow night's debate by his absence. After all, he's the one in the lead everywhere. If he's not there, what is there to talk about? The Rubio v Christie stand off? Jeb? Who cares?

It may be two plus hours of people attacking him without him being there to respond - and the moderators themselves out to get him too. But again, it's still all about him. He can make it all about him by not even being there. He doesn't kowtow to Fox News or go on retainer with the network during the off-season. He calls the shots. And there is little question in my mind that in one fashion or another you will have two competing TV shows tomorrow night, Trump's and everybody else's. And Trump's will almost certainly be better.

or as Bill Clinton says in his autobiography several times - for Americans it's better to be strong and wrong than weak and right

Can we just please have the Trump variant of this already:

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_dSQqLEv7J9w/TUvZJwQlRNI/AAAAAAAAB_w/XgmkExvl4ds/s1600/Berlusconi+foto+bunga+bunga+la+zona+morta+9.jpg

back in less playpennish circusworld

Yesterday, one of the purest and most noxious examples of (the Very Serious Person) tactic was invoked — by Paul Krugman. The long-time Clinton defender announced that all Serious policy experts “lean Hillary”; he even used the term “serious” unironically to advance his claim:

Meanwhile, the Sanders skepticism of the wonks continues: Paul Starr lays out the case. As far as I can tell, every serious progressive policy expert on either health care or financial reform who has weighed in on the primary seems to lean Hillary.

Let’s repeat that: “every serious progressive policy expert on either health care or financial reform who has weighed in on the primary seems to lean Hillary.”

The economist Dean Baker – previously cited as a financial reform and economic policy expert by Krugman but who now most assuredly does not “lean Hillary” – quickly reacted to his formal exclusion by Krugman from the Club of Seriousness:

Paul Krugman Revokes Credentials of Those Who Don’t Support Clinton . . .

Oh well, so much for those of us backing or leaning towards Sanders. I guess we just have to turn to that old Washington saying, “better right than expert.” In other words, it’s better to rely on people who have a track record of being right than the people who have the best credentials.

As so often happens, those who fancy themselves dissident gate-crashers (which apparently can include someone who is a Nobel-Prize-winning tenured economics professor (at Princeton until somewhat recently), an advisory board member of the nation’s largest corporations, and effectively a life-tenured New York Times columnist) quickly assume the role of vigilantly guarding the gate once they realize they were admitted all along. So congratulations to Paul Krugman on his power of decreeing who is a Serious Expert and announcing that the label applies only to those who want Hillary Clinton be the next President, but not Bernie Sanders.

https://theintercept.com/2016/01/28/paul-krugman-unironically-anoints-himself-arbiter-of-seriousness-only-clinton-supporters-eligible/

Yeah Krugman is sadly not at his best during these elections seasons.

this crazy circus has gone cuckoo-ca-choo

they muted the audio on the Huckabee Hello parody

so now it is a completely silent montage of Huckabee wandering through desolate Iowa with occasional captions that say "gangrene" and "frostbite"

there really is so much beauty in this world

lol wut

Remember when Nancy was allegedly a scary SF lefty?

http://thehill.com/homenews/house/267236-pelosi-distances-dems-from-sanderss-plan-to-raise-taxes

Pelosi is smarter and more effective than Bernie, so there's that

"I've been for single-payer for 30 years, and it is a very popular idea in our country. But we have made a decision about where we're going on healthcare."

So effective at being for things she'll never make a move on. You deserve her.

i mean she's not wrong. and it's sort of hard to expect pelosi to support undoing possibly her greatest achievement

Dems haunted by this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=07m39CQRJXw

tho yes obviously distancing herself (and the democrats) from tax increases in an election season is...well unfortunate but not shocking

some achievement, Bob Dole program a dozen years later xxxp

"We're for it and it's popular, but can't do it" - post (and pre?) Clinton Dems in a nutshell

So effective at being for things she'll never make a move on.

lol this is horseshit and you know it

straight from the Nancy's mouth!

http://pubrecord.org/politics/3105/pelosi-allow-floor-single-payer/comment-page-1/

I know you hate facts and history and context and shit but ugh it's so tiresome

allowing floor votes when the outcome is preordained, be still my beating heart