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

it's not what leaders do, however. which is why POTUSes should not be confused with them.

that awful FDR, putting his finger to the wind each time he made a decision

i knew you were goin' there!

1) You had to go back 70 years

2) Howbout racially exclusive New Deal 'reforms' because nondiscrimination was politically untenable?

i'm talkin' about the modern SuperPAC presidency mostly tho. Few profiles in couurage there.

heh Boxer twistin the knife

Barbara Boxer ‏@BarbaraBoxer 19h19 hours ago

As @CarlyFiorina attacked Iran tonight she failed to mention that while she was CEO she sold them computer parts, which was against the law.

Bush - Rubio sounds like a winner

haha wish we were losing feinstein instead of boxer

me too

although we'll get Harris, which is good

re lessig:

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2015/jun/04/how-money-runs-our-politics/

Also unhelpful are the activities and proposals by Harvard Law School professor Lawrence Lessig. A prominent specialist in copyright law, Lessig took on the problem of money in politics just a few years ago and has since pushed various proposals. At first he called for a Constitutional Convention, which would be a disaster since it could lead to all sorts of other proposals. When this idea came under attack from, among others, law professors, Lessig retreated and encouraged people in the Occupy Wall Street movement to think they could overcome Citizens United through political pressure to amend the First Amendment.

After that movement fizzled out—at least in its initial form—Lessig formed his own Super PAC, called Mayday, to raise funds to fight the Super PACs. He selected eight candidates to back in the 2014 midterms, on the grounds that they would support campaign finance reform. All but two of his selections lost, and the candidates who won had been expected to anyway.

Now Lessig has a new proposal for 2016: it involves a complicated process by which his followers would identify members of Congress who are leaders on campaign finance reform—though there’s really no mystery about who they are. In addition his followers would campaign in the primaries on the side of the candidate most interested in such reforms. His followers also would discourage contributions to a candidate in the primary who wasn’t backing campaign finance reform.

The problems with Lessig’s proposals are several: he’s leading people, from whom he now receives contributions, to believe that their efforts will be able to transform Congress into a body that’s ready to back campaign finance reform, election by election, which means that even if his scheme worked his younger followers would be very old by the time such a transformation occurred. Second, his funds will always be overwhelmed by the corporations that are raising money for their own political interests. There are no shortcuts.

previous elections have veered into post-fact territory, but this may be the first election that goes all the way.

Carly Fiorina on Thursday morning defended claims she made during the CNN Republican presidential debate that the Planned Parenthood sting videos showed a kicking fetus as employees discussed harvesting its organs. However, reports indicate that the videos recently released by the anti-abortion group The Center for Medical Progress did not include the scene Fiorina described.

During the debate, Fiorina told her Democratic opponents to look at the videos and "watch a fully formed fetus on the table, its heart beating, its legs kicking, while someone says we have to keep it alive to harvest its brain."

During a Thursday morning interview on ABC's "Good Morning America," host George Stephanopoulos asked Fiorina if she incorrectly characterized the videos.

"Analysts who have watched all 12 plus hours say the scene you describe - that harrowing scene you described -- actually isn't in those tapes. Did you misspeak?" he asked.

"No, I didn't misspeak, and I don't know who you're speaking about in terms of watching the tapes, but I have seen those images," Fiorina responded. "I don't know whether you've watched the tapes, George. Most people haven't. Certainly none of the Democrats who are still defending Planned Parenthood have watched those tapes."

Stephanopoulos then referenced a report by Vox's Sarah Kliff, who said that she watched all of the videos released and that she did not see the scene Fiorina described.

"Well, you know, there's a lot of commentary about these tapes being doctored. In fact, that's what the mainstream media keeps talking about, is the tapes and their origin," Fiorina replied. "Rest assured I have seen the images that I talked about last night. Rest assured that human lives are being aborted fully formed in order to harvest body parts."

Kilff recently watched all 12 hours of the footage released by The Center for Medical Progress, and detailed what she saw, noting that Fiorina's description does not match anything in the videos.

"But the things Fiorina describes — the legs kicking, the intact 'fully formed fetus,' the heart beating, the remarks about having to 'harvest its brain' — are pure fiction," Kilff wrote. "Either Fiorina hasn't watched the Planned Parenthood videos or she is knowingly misrepresenting the footage. Because what she says happens in the Planned Parenthood videos simply does not exist."

Kliff does point out that The Federalist's Mollie Hemingway found a documentary series produced by The Center for Medical Progress that uses footage from Planned Parenthood, as well as stock footage not shot in a Planned Parenthood clinic. According to Kliff, the documentary does include footage of a kicking fetus, but that footage was not shot in a Planned Parenthood.

That documentary, "Human Capital," also includes an interview with a former Planned Parenthood technician who said she was once ordered to procure a brain from a fetus, according to Vox. Kliff notes that in the documentary, there is no "mention of instructions to 'keep it alive so we can harvest its brain,' so it's still not the footage Fiorina describes having watched."

but the facts really don't matter. a few articles like this will get published, and it might cost her some support. but she gained way more by lying, on balance.

Pretty sure GOP politicans are so obsessed with harvesting babies bc they secretly eat them.

(xpost) Speaking of which, from all accounts Trump was just making stuff up about not lobbying hard for casinos in Florida, and also about never having declared bankruptcy. The former seems to be a complete fabrication: he spent a lot of money trying to get casinos in Florida, Bush (for whatever reason) turned him away. He's got a little depends-what-the-meaning-of-is-is on the latter: he declared bankruptcies for four different businesses of his, not personal bankruptcy.

Can't imagine that it will matter to anyone supporting him.

Insert "wiggle room" into the third-last sentence there.

He's on TV, he clearly is a success. /s

it kind of amazes me that the planned parenthood conspiracy theory dominated so much of the debate. somehow this feels different than scoring debate points by arguing that america has a "missile gap" or whatever, it feels like this is just a step or two away from bringing up chemtrails.

I think Trump can say he never declared bankruptcy because he PERSONALLY hasnt.. just trump resorts holding company llc or whatever

'mostly true' as politifact would say

that PP video spiel of Fiorina's made me super-angry. did I already say that

http://www.democracynow.org/2015/9/17/who_was_the_worst_ceo_david

I look forward to her getting crushed, like so:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2015/09/17/this-is-the-ad-that-might-kill-carly-fiorinas-campaign/

'mostly true' as politifact would say

I guess in a technical sense; the only thing is, the bankruptcy question came up specifically as it related to their (Trump's and Fiorina's) competency as CEOs.

Aaaaaand her tenure at H-P.

https://twitter.com/GoAngelo/status/644657789047017472

we need to poll the faces of the people onstage. personal fav is the mitch mcconnell lookalike on the right-middle of the screen whose jaw remains dropped for about 20 seconds

although the face the woman in the top right makes at 0:08 is giving me pause

Chris Hayes reporting that a man at Donald Trump's event tonight asked the candidate when we're going to round up Muslims because, after all, the president is a Muslim.

Unlike her predecessors, past employees say, she avoided the company cafeteria. She employed bodyguards.

here's the clip, Alfred

https://twitter.com/TheLastWord/status/644657859284721664

i think we're nearing peak trump and there's about to be a backlash

I like this development

Scott BauerVerified account
‏@sbauerAP
Nervous vendors to @ScottWalker presidential campaign tell AP they are waiting to be paid more than $100,000

yes

The other candidates were one-upping each other on their abortion outrage, and to my mind Trump is there to appeal to fiscal conservatives / social moderates who long for the days when being a Republican reflected one's seriousness in business but not religion.

i think peak trump already passed, but plateau trump can continue for a long time. there's been a backlash going on for a long time, but it's not important to the 35% or so of conservatives who are also xenophobic white supremacists.

i think peak trump already passed, but plateau trump can continue for a long time.

sorry. that was kind of approaching http://i.imgur.com/wieYmJw.jpg

https://web.archive.org/web/20061018180210/http://www.bernie.org/media/game/

It would be strange indeed if Pataki outlasted both Perry and Walker.

What is a "nervous vendor to @scottwalker"

538 six stages of doom thing re trump mentioned earlier seems pretty otm

Asked about the debate, Hillary is like: "Oh, I don't watch those silly things."

I can't stop watching this: https://vine.co/v/eUg9teiBPa5

http://vine.co/v/eUg9teiBPa5

Goddamit, how do you post a Vine loop?

ilx wont embed vines

(but it should)

http://giant.gfycat.com/AdolescentEvergreenElephantbeetle.gif

lol

i jumped back a little bit

https://media.giphy.com/media/l41lGydeN1fV0Z5Ic/giphy.gif

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/john-yob-rich-beeson-bar-punch

honestly this is exactly what I've been hoping for from this primary season

"I am hereby calling on Marco Rubio to fire Rich Beeson effective immediately"

duel at dawn or gtfo, cuckservatives