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

I never noticed the rise in catholicism in the GOP, certainly conversion-style being a trend. Most people I that know who have converted did it just to shut their spouse up.

yeah i think that's the case w/ jeb at least (not to cast aspersions on his spiritual journey)

i think that's from the house of the dead iirc.

lol

the lay Conservative Catholic Intellectuals are a fun bunch, and by fun I mean their worldview is utterly alien to me but at least it's more or less honest. I don't think any of them have any particular fondness for any current GOP politicians

I think that segment has lately taken the view that America is a doomed Mammon-worshipping edifice and the faithful should just withdraw from the public sphere

I read an article on a website about this

good idea imo

Chris Hedges:

"Bernie has cut a Faustian deal with the Democrats. And that’s not even speculation. I did an event with him and Bill McKibben, Naomi Klein and Kshama Sawant in New York the day before the Climate March. And Kshama Sawant, the Socialist City Councilwoman from Seattle and I asked Sanders why he wanted to run as a Democrat. And he said — because I don’t want to end up like Nader.”

“He didn’t want to end up pushed out of the establishment,” Hedges said. “He wanted to keep his committee chairmanships, he wanted to keep his Senate seat. And he knew the forms of retribution, punishment that would be visited upon him if he applied his critique to the Democratic establishment. So he won’t.”

“The lie of omission is still a lie,” Hedges said. “Bernie’s decision to play the game within the Democratic Party and in essence lend credibility to the party and lend credibility to Hillary Clinton is very destructive. A liberal feeding frenzy within the Democratic Party would see a rise of an actual liberal establishment within the party – I’m not sure one exists any more — that challenged the Party for selling out working men and women.”

http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/07/15/chris-hedges-on-bernie-sanders-and-the-corporate-democrats/

maybe he wants to win

where is this 'liberal feeding frenzy' going to come from

maybe he wants to keep his senate seat and chairmanships because they're incredibly powerful venues to accomplish things with

I heard Trump babbling on about the benefits of a President that doesn't use a teleprompter, and then remembered that for a while Obama using a teleprompter was a thing with the crazies. "He's reading from a screen, but what is he really thinking, hmm!?!?" or "He's too dumb/Muslim/socialist to speak off the cuff, we need a straight shooter!"

I think it's more a distraction from Obama being one of the best and most presidential orators to get within a stone's throw of the White House for a long time.

man listening to Bush fumfer his ways through speeches was so painful

the slide towards doom, easy on the ears.

maybe he wants to keep his senate seat and chairmanships because they're incredibly powerful venues to accomplish things with

Check w/ Matt A, who sez he wants to win.

I think that segment has lately taken the view that America is a doomed Mammon-worshipping edifice and the faithful should just withdraw from the public sphere

― go hang a salami I'm a canal, adam (silby), Thursday, July 23, 2015 9:32 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

the "benedict option". this is rod dreher's thing. i've never read what it really entails

(someone zinged him on twitter saying "you've switched religions more often 15 years than i've changed cars"

the benedict option seems like some insane mel gibson-ish denial of the legitimacy of francis and assuming that benedict is de facto pope rather than pope emeritus.. or some bullshit like that

http://theweek.com/articles/555734/benedict-option-why-religious-right-considering-allout-withdrawal-from-politics

It refers to Saint Benedict of Nursia fyi xp

http://...benedict-option-why-religious-right-considering-allout-withdrawal-from-politics

http://i.giphy.com/64HkOiFLJ4LpC.gif

seriously i promise to believe in god if the religious right promises to withdraw from politics

is total withdrawal the last step on the road of epistemic closure?

pretty sure that's their preferred birth control method

Nah you're thinking of rhythm method, pull out is just as problematic as a condom

"Pope emeritus" = ex benedict

http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/07/why-progressives-shouldnt-support-bernie-120484.html#.VbJ_rHiPAeK

ugh, Frank, what an overcelebrated shit. I am *shocked* a dyed-in-the-wool partisan wrote a vote-for-Hil piece.

Without any substance, some argue that she has been insufficiently committed to economic and social reform — for example, that she is too close to Wall Street, and consequently soft on financial regulation, and unwilling to support higher taxation on the super-rich. This is wholly without basis.

^sucks Dow Jones' meat

srsly that 'no substance' comment on HRC is pure chutzpah.

bad show, Barney

politico going ham

http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/07/is-bernie-sanders-a-socialist-in-name-only-120545.html?ml=m_t2_2h

(cw: freddie deboer)

I'm wondering how much the "Clinton is the only viable GE candidate" argument is based on a naive view of how her campaign will actually go. This is how MSNBC reported her comments about Sandra Bland yesterday:

Clinton also addressed the recent death of Sandra Bland, an African-American woman who apparently committed suicide after being arrested during a traffic stop in Texas.

“I was heartbreaking to read about,” Clinton said of Bland. “It is essential that we all stand up and say loudly and clearly, ‘Yes, black lives matter.’”

Maybe she said more? If not, that's just totally inadequate. (The MSNBC reporter was praising this, by the way, compared to Sanders' "stumble" when he got interrupted on stage the other day.)

eh the headline's more disingenuous than the article. He says nothing unkind about Sanders. And:

While I wish that she, Joe Biden and John Kerry had not been spooked into believing that no one who voted no would have the national security merit badge required to win the presidency, I regard liberal senators’ support for the Iraq War as a response to a given fraught political situation rather than an indication of their basic policy stance — like Obama’s off-again, on-again support for same-sex marriage. (Yes, I am saying that in deciding whether or not to support a candidate with whom I have disagreed on a fundamental issue, I am more at ease if it was a one-time political accommodation rather than a genuine conviction.)

has been his conviction for thirty-five years, for better or worse. He's not a Wall Street toady like HRC (you should read Act of Congress to learn how WS hacks tried to pick off his staff one by one); he decided in 2007 and 2008 that HRC was the better candidate than Barack Obama.

I regard liberal senators’ support for the Iraq War as a response to a given fraught political situation

this is fair but a "yes" vote is indicative of general stupidity and political ineptitude - a "yes" vote indicates either 1) an acceptance of DubyaCo's snake oil or b) a belief/hope that the war would not turn out to be a total clusterfuck disaster. The former demonstrates credulity, the latter lack of foresight.

(3) I'm a post-DLC Democrat who must look tough if I want to be president

I think that falls under b) tbh, cuz you don't look tough for voting for a war that is a colossal failure

you look like a gullible idiot

which is precisely the defense Hillary, Biden etc all fall back on "well, based on what we knew at the time..."

the problem is "based on what we knew at the time" it was still obviously a boondoggle, and there were millions of people that loudly pointed that out

Depends. I know Republicans and Dems whose thinking the war a mistake had nothing to do with its success. Grenada was a 'success.'

you bet your ass Grenada was a success!
http://imoviequotes.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/1-Heartbreak-Ridge-quotes.jpg

seriously i promise to believe in god if the religious right promises to withdraw from politics

― 1992 ball boy (Karl Malone), Friday, July 24, 2015 12:39 PM (7 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

im on board

jeb! on martin o'malley's "all lives matter" thing:

“I know in the political context it’s a slogan, I guess,” Bush said Thursday. “And should [O’Malley] apologize? No. If he believes that white lives matter, which I hope he does, then he shouldn’t apologize to a group that seemed to disagree with it.”

also rick perry is into the idea that all citizens should carry guns everywhere and be ready to be a hero in times of crisis (although i guess he's always said so)

"I believe that, with all my heart, that if you have the citizens who are well trained, and particularly in these places that are considered to be gun-free zones, that we can stop that type of activity, or stop it before there's as many people that are impacted as what we saw in Lafayette," Perry said.

man jeb's a lot more weaselly than his brother huh

"impacted" is not the verb I use to describe the victims in Lafayette.

yes, gun-free zones are the problem

it's all so obvious to me now

http://www.alternet.org/election-2016/latest-national-poll-shows-bernie-sanders-beating-scott-walker-donald-trump-jeb-bush

that... is not what those poll results actually show tho?

See question 21.

right but really I would say that reflects Dem advantage, not necessarily a Bernie advantage. Also what about all the rabid Jindal supporters out there