a clown car full of millionaires: the 2016 presidential primary thread

I want to take a fire hose to every outraged and frightened lib on my Facebook wall posting OMIGOD LOOK WHAT TRUMP SAID NOW.

like, Scott Walker is ten times the sleazeball and has a slightly better chance of getting the nomination, as in, slightly better than Nelson Rockefeller.

i just learned the other day that david rockefeller is still alive. he turned 100 last month. still a much more convincing plutocrat president than most of these jokers.

hey karl malone can you maybe tell us what you think is good about the pope's encyclical, maybe phrasing this in colourful or generously sized appropriate to those up until now unwilling to consider delving in themselves?

I was in Mexico this last week and our server at a place in the airport was like 'hey whats up with that donald trump do you agree with him' and he had this look on his face like he was testing us to see if we were dirty american shitbags. we weren't.

like, Scott Walker is ten times the sleazeball

I mean, can Donald Trump do this?

http://gawker.com/wisconsin-is-trying-to-take-away-the-right-to-a-weekend-1716293116

'hey whats up with that donald trump do you agree with him and how much mucus do you want in your food'

i'm sure server would never have done, but to be fair i support using this test at every restaurant in usa, too.

hey karl malone can you maybe tell us what you think is good about the pope's encyclical, maybe phrasing this in colourful or generously sized appropriate to those up until now unwilling to consider delving in themselves?

i thought about this for a while earlier this evening, and then drank too much, on a weeknight, sigh, so i'm sorry that it ended up like this. but i refuse to wait until tomorrow, as that contradicts my understanding of how to use the internet.

first of all he (i say he even though i'm sure this was largely written by underlings) does a good job of pithily summing up the problems (paragraphs 17-61). not strictly climate change but also other effects of humanity's cumulative interactions with the environment. he lays this out up front, and touches not only topics that are obviously"environmental" - pollution, water shortages, extinction - but also things that many people don't usually associate with it - income inequality, refugee crises.

here's an example of the kinds of things he briefly references in his argument:

The foreign debt of poor countries has become a way of controlling them, yet this is not the case where ecological debt is concerned. In different ways, developing countries, where the most important reserves of the biosphere are found, continue to fuel the development of richer countries at the cost of their own present and future. The land of the southern poor is rich and mostly unpolluted, yet access to ownership of goods and resources for meeting vital needs is inhibited by a system of commercial relations and ownership which is structurally perverse. The developed countries ought to help pay this debt by significantly limiting their consumption of non-renewable energy and by assisting poorer countries to support policies and programmes of sustainable development. The poorest areas and countries are less capable of adopting new models for reducing environmental impact because they lack the wherewithal to develop the necessary processes and to cover their costs. We must continue to be aware that, regarding climate change, there are differentiated responsibilities

he makes a powerful argument that the countries that historically contributed the most to greenhouse gas emissions (and built their economies on top of them) owe a debt to those that will suffer as a result, particularly the poorer countries who have the twin difficulties of being vulnerable geographically and also financially to rising sea levels and changing precipitation. that's a familiar argument (in intl climate negotiations this is pretty much the essential debate - how much the richer countries owe to the poorer countries), but he summarizes it so effectively and briefly, while contrasting it with the behavior of the developed world on other kinds of debt (greek/eurozone), which lends it ethical weight.

eh, i'm really making no point here, i'm sorry. i blame the beer - AND MY PARENTS. let me try another angle. he makes an interesting critique of technocracy while still clearly respecting the scientific method and trying to build bridges between christianity and science:

"The basic problem goes even deeper: it is the way that humanity has taken up technology and its development according to an undifferentiated and one-dimensional paradigm
. This paradigm exalts the concept of a subject who, using logical and rational procedures, progressively approaches and gains control over an external object. This subject makes every effort to establish the scientific and experimental method, which in itself is already a technique of possession, mastery and transformation. It is as if the subject were to find itself in the presence of something formless, completely open to manipulation. Men and women have constantly intervened in nature, but for a long time this meant being in tune with and respecting the possibilities offered by the things themselves. It was a matter of receiving what nature itself allowed, as if from its own hand. Now, by contrast, we are the ones to lay our hands on things, attempting to extract everything possible from them while frequently ignoring or forgetting the reality in front of us. Human beings and material objects no longer extend a friendly hand to one another; the relationship has become confrontational."

(if you think this post is terrible you would barf if you saw the paragraphs i just deleted. i'm sorry teachers that i have had, my family, america, the world, programmer gods if they exist. something went wrong)

the current politics of doing anything about climate change have all the worst incentives. warnings about problems that are decades away are near-meaningless to people only thinking about the next election. same deal with many companies/orgs, even if some of the sectors that have the closest connection to climate change (fossil fuel co's, insurance, military) are clearly starting to pay attention to it. yeah, we could just wait until the effects are so obvious and tangible to everyone that something finally gets done, but that point of obviousness is likely past the point of no return in terms of some of the worst-case scenarios coming to pass. in order to do something meaningful now, before it's too late, politicians have to be forced by widespread moral outrage. communicating the facts about climate change is an obvious way to convince a bunch of people, which is why there's an enormous and persistent and growing global environmental movement. even with disinformers and murdoch and inhofe and people like bjorn lomborg, the facts have clearly resonated with many people who really care. but other people respond more to moral and ethical arguments. those arguments have been made before, but most frequently in academic contexts, or in a way that's inevitably judgmental. but there's something about the way the pope approaches these issues and explores them that seems much warmer and plain and powerful, at least to me. this is gonna get a little 420, sorry, but maybe what makes his voice distinct is that he's coming from a place of recognizing and living with human fallibility, selfishness, greed, "sin", so that when he makes moral arguments for addressing climate change they end up feeling more like revolutionary calls to unite together and overcome our collective weakness - a positive appeal - rather than condemnations and preachiness (paradoxically)? it's hard to explain but it's a presence throughout the document.

i definitely don't agree with some of the things he talks about (he opposes the prioritization of overpopulation as an issue for some crazy reason, and i hate how he elevates work as "a path to growth, human development and personal fulfilment." but in general he comes across like a really readable, persuasive, pop-philosopher. that description probably prompts derision from a lot of people, but ultimately i think it might be a good method for someone with moral authority to attempt to make a popular appeal? i will search for someone else who has written about this in a better way (shouldn't take tooooo long) and link to it.

i should have put that in the global warming is tearing our eyeballs out thread, sorry

wow good work there KM

esp for a non-papist

this isn't great http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2015/06/pope-francis-climate-change-encylical-leaked-version/395915/ but it does highlight something which is probably obvious but important nonetheless:

But, in fact, the topic of this encyclical is squarely in the pope’s wheelhouse. Francis links his call for environmental stewardship to the book of Genesis, and he repeatedly couches environmental degradation in theological language. “That human beings destroy the biological diversity in God's creation; that human beings compromise the integrity of the earth and contribute to climate change, stripping the earth of its natural forests or destroying its wetlands; that human beings pollute the water, soil, air; all these are sins,” he writes.

for those that believe in sinning and punishment and life after death, maybe this makes a difference? i'd guess that most people who identify as religious, even those who regularly attend church, don't really spend that much time caring about sin, but for those that are pursuing infinite bliss and haven't been convinced before, maybe clearly categorizing it as a sin changes behavior.

#karl thanks so much for this. the extracts are denser than how i'd imagined this kind of tract but pop philosophy- pap' philosophy - is right, i think. i don't know. it's really hard to imagine reading this as a confrontational text - feeling resistant to accepting this as a problem & its force persuading you - but the idea that any change will be the result of it being pressed fervently by people who care seems right.

Also there is a point where economic ideas against environmentalism are presented with a moral aspect at the cutting edge - this will kill jobs and jobs are good is the message, but the implication is that jobs are a the moral good, that all good things flow from giving people more jobs. So having a moral retort (and a lot of people, even if they are not in a moral hierarchy, find "a man who thinks about moral issues says so") is at least a good way of starting a conversation.

lol

The head of the Republican National Committee, responding to demands from increasingly worried party leaders, spent nearly an hour Wednesday on the phone with Donald Trump, urging the presidential candidate to tone down his inflammatory comments about immigration that have infuriated a key election constituency.

The call from Chairman Reince Priebus, described by donors and consultants briefed on the conversation and confirmed by the RNC, underscores the extent to which Trump has gone from an embarrassment to a cause for serious alarm among top Republicans in Washington and nationwide.

But there is little they can do about the mogul and reality-television star, who draws sustenance from controversy and attention.

Woo! http://www.miamiherald.com/news/state/florida/article26849269.html

Rather gross though:

Grayson has drawn negative attention for his messy divorce from Lolita, his wife of 24 years. A trial to determine whether she committed bigamy was delayed earlier this year when her breast implants leaked. The couple seemed close to an agreement until negotiations recently fell part. In an amended petition June 4, Lolita asked the court to prohibit Grayson from selling or transferring his assets.

“Gold diggers gotta dig. That's all I gotta say,” Grayson told the Tampa Bay Times in May. “We had an agreement. She's trying to renege.”

Grayson has faced criticism about his offshore investments in the Cayman Islands. He has fought with reporters who asked him questions about his hedge funds — and his investments raise questions about why a politician who has been critical about tax breaks for the rich would use a known tax haven for himself. This week The Foundation for Accountability and Civic Trust asked for a congressional investigation to determine if Grayson is violating a House rule by using his name on the hedge funds, while a Fort Pierce Democratic activist filed a similar request. Grayson has said he has done nothing wrong with respect to the funds.

the implication is that jobs are a the moral good, that all good things flow from giving people more jobs

The implication (for at least a thousand years now) has been that the natural resources claimed by the wealthy are rightfully theirs. It's morally wrong to hunt for food in the Lord's forest. Unfortunately there are few moral rights left for the non-wealthy.

Oligarchs and speculators have been fighting environmental concerns for a long time. Drilling for oil/coal now where a thousand years ago they were mining for iron ore. And back then public water supplies were polluted to the point uselessness by those with the funds/resources to use and abuse more than everyone else.

It is interesting the Pope is getting into it now, seemingly for the first time in history(?).

he's definitely addressing it more directly and giving it way more prominence than any other pope, but he's not the first. the encyclical starts off with a summary of what previous popes have said on the environment, actually. benedict seemed to have little to say about it, but that's probably because he was the antichrist, right? (there's more talk on all of this in the global warming thread btw)

in other news, a key piece of jeb's plan to boost the economy is to have us all work longer hours.

In an interview with the Manchester Union-Leader, the first-in-the-nation primary state's most-read paper, former Florida Gov Jeb Bush insisted “people should work longer hours", as a key part of his plan to drive higher economic growth.

The comment is already being treated as a gaffe. But it is actually an accurate if perhaps over-candid explanation of his economic plan, which seeks to combat stagnant or declining wages by getting people to work more hours.

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/bush-under-my-plan-people-should-work-longer-hours

In response to criticism from Democrats, Bush's spokesperson replied: "Only Washington Democrats could be out-of-touch enough to criticize giving more Americans the ability to work, earn a paycheck, and make ends meet."

man, that is some all-time spinning, there. must be tough working in that office, never know when the boss is going to say something just heinously unpopular and stupid-sounding.

one thing that gets me excited about the future is the prospect of spending even more time sitting at this fucking desk

work them at what

i guess bush is now trying to spin it like he was just talking about the underemployed:

Bush later sought to clarify what his remarks -- which he made in an interview with the New Hampshire Union-Leader -- during a town hall event in Hudson, New Hampshire, later on Wednesday, explaining that he was referring to Americans who aren't working full-time.

"You can take it out of context all you want, but high sustained growth means people work 40 hours rather than 30 hours and that by our success they have disposable income for their families to decide how they want to spend it rather than standing in line and being dependent upon government," Bush said.

but that would make his comments just pointlessly circular: my plan to solve underemployment is to raise the level of employment. he wasn't saying that though. depressing as it is to watch the video and hear the hint of the ol' W lilt around the edges of his voice, it's pretty clear.

Hey I'm all for companies hiring full-time rather than part-time so they don't have to provide benefits but it seems like that's on companies rather than the workers.

Most Americans working multiple part time jobs would instantly give that up for a steady full time job w benefits.

i.e. becoming a presidential candidate

one of which benefits is six-figure Fox News contract

W is clearly the political genius of the clan.

hard to argue that

http://i.imgur.com/2L9eJjx.jpg

It's hard work promoting yourself.

Check it out, this painting has four presidents in it.

http://i.imgur.com/vWCcnAi.jpg

"You can take it out of context all you want, but high sustained growth means people work 40 hours rather than 30 hours and that by our success they have disposable income for their families to decide how they want to spend it rather than standing in line and being dependent upon government,"

One or two mentions of freedom and the military, and this could almost achieve Palin levels of linguistic gloriosity.

Good to know our choices are 40 hr workweek or standing in line dependent "upon" government.

get ready to hear "sanctuary cities" about 1.68 million times between now and 11/16

The picture above (depicting various Bushes standing in line for government, arf arf), is from a fascinating article from 2012 on why Jeb won't run:

http://nymag.com/news/politics/elections-2012/jeb-bush-2012-10/index4.html

right there in the headline:

Jeb Bush: ‘You can love your Mexican-American wife and also believe that you need to control the border’

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-politics/wp/2015/07/08/jeb-bush-you-can-love-your-mexican-american-wife-and-also-believe-that-you-need-to-control-the-border/

"You can love your Mexican-American wife and also believe in controlling her."

what the post doesn't mention is that he sung it to the tune of "take a letter, maria"

"You can love the Mexican culture, you can love your Mexican-American wife and also believe that we need to control the border," Bush told the crowd. "This is a bizarre kind of idea that somehow you can have an affection for people in a different country and not think the rule of law should apply. This is ludicrous."

He added that he would push to deploy "forward-leaning border control agents" closer to the actual border; use new technologies, including drones, to monitor border traffic; and fix the E-Verify system and stop providing law enforcement funding to "sanctuary cities" that refuse to work with federal agencies to deport illegal immigrants.

As for the nation's illegal immigrants, Bush said "I honestly think we need to provide a path to legalize status, not citizenship."

"The idea that we’re going to round up 11 million people and send them back -- it’s not real. It’s not grounded in reality."

"forward-eaning" jfc these people and their corpodrivel.

inleaning

"forward-leaning border control agents" closer to the actual border

"I can't see what's going on over there and my binoculours are broken. If only there was another way!"

http://media.giphy.com/media/lGkUyj3IrEcvu/giphy.gif

lol

Note how they aren't actually moving anywhere, just giving the appearance of movement.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-vows-long-campaign-wont-commit-to-backing-gop-nominee/2015/07/09/8f75a5b8-264e-11e5-b72c-2b7d516e1e0e_story.html

Trump said the call from Priebus “was meant, in my opinion, to be a congratulatory call . . . It wasn’t a lecturing-type call. He’s going to lecture me? Give me a break.”

Hypothetical GOP nominee breathes sigh of relief.

looking forward to his financial disclosures

god, this guy. just a quote machine.

“I have a huge staff — I have a big staff in Iowa, New Hampshire, all over,” Trump said. “I absolutely stay in. If for some reason I think it’s not going to happen, I’m not a masochist. You understand that, right? . . . I’m like a smart person. I went to the Wharton School of finance. I built a great company.”

he's like a smart person

“My life has not been losing, you understand that,” Trump said. “They used to say, ‘clown.’ I’m not a person that loses. I don’t lose.”

"There goes Donald Trump, that winning clown", that's what they used to say.