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

that's my point, xxp: it's not a contradiction in terms that he's a creationist and a surgeon.

Creationism doesn't seem to really have any underpinning moral or philosophical foundations beyond justifying creationism.

you know who else could be a creationist? pretty much any other scientist who doesn't study evolution strictly

sure but in general academic scientists are overwhelmingly not religious or right-wing whereas doctors are more comparable to the general population

switching subjects, Jonah Goldberg has opinions: http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-0922-goldberg-fiorina-planned-parenthood-20150922-column.html

The exact scene, exactly as Fiorina describes it, is not on the videos. But anybody who has watched the videos would find Fiorina's account pretty accurate.

"Fake but accurate>"

Imagine the alternate US where this much stink was raised about the Collateral Damage video.

exact scene exactly

so it's about as accurate as Zero Dark Thirty then

about as accurate as Jonah Goldberg.

what's the point of accuracy if facts aren't real?

/jadensmith

man Jeb! is like incapable of taking a good picture, he looks so deflated and harried here:
http://l2.yimg.com/bt/api/res/1.2/RU_YcqwhQgR_LzGt94DQJQ--/YXBwaWQ9eW5ld3NfbGVnbztmaT1maWxsO2g9NTQzO2lsPXBsYW5lO3B5b2ZmPTA7cT03NTt3PTk1OQ--/http://l.yimg.com/os/publish-images/news/2015-09-22/6e6e7690-614c-11e5-9649-17cc7942eb1e_58005548a5eeb12a820f6a706700280dc.jpg

he looks worse than his dad

all of the fluids have been sucked out of his body and injected into Ted Cruz

xxp the fact that all of the in-focus and non-jeb faces appear to be attached to sleeping audience members probably also doesn't bode well

yeah, jeb's got the most alert eyes in the room!

Is he wearing an Apple Watch?

Jeb! He's Awake!

jeb! is older than Poppy was when elected, maybe?

apparently my (sister's) Jesuit in-law was on the C Matthews show last night, discussing Biden's non/candidacy. Catholic expertise all over the place these days.

http://www.maritimequest.com/warship_directory/us_navy_pages/aircraft_carriers/george_h_w_bush_cvn_77/pres_bush/1990_a_oval_office.jpg

Poppy was 64 when elected, J! is about 62.5

As for Carson, intelligence is no defense against believing weird things. Beliefs are tribal and tend to be reinforced by whatever social group you're in.

So it's no wonder that he can believe weird, erroneous things. Hell, Andy Schlafly got an engineering degree, went to Harvard Law and edited their journal, and he's bugfuck nutzoid.

Jeb looks like he's been filibustering for 12 hours but I'm sure he's just answering his softball first question there

we need to have 'jeb ' autoreplaced by 'jeb! '

This thread takes a long time on my work computer to load in its entirety, so sorry if someone's already posted this:

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2015/09/frank-rich-in-praise-of-donald-trump.html#

It's Frank Rich's New York story on Trump. Haven't read it yet, but in the intro quote--"Far from destroying out democracy, he's exposing all its phoniness and corruption in ways as serious as he is not"--I love "in ways as serious as he is not." And he talks about Hal Philip Walker and Nashville in it.

the US has had a lil bit of democracy here and there, not often in presidential elections

glad that scott walker drop out. he is an ugly motherfucker.

http://blog.flicks.co.nz/wp-content/uploads/predator1.jpg

"I encourage other Republican presidential candidates to consider doing the same so that the voters can focus on a limited number of candidates who can offer a positive, conservative alternative to the current front-runner. This is fundamentally important to the future of our party, and, more important, the future of the country."

taking a shot at trump w/o saying his name at the moment you're quitting is such a cheap-looking move.

Pierce wasn't happy with that Rich column:

How exactly does Trump's tasteless flaunting of his wealth work against the politics created by the destruction of our tepid campaign-finance laws? Look, Donald Trump is a tasteless clown. That means we should knuckle the Koch Brothers and elect Bernie Sanders, who has made repealing Citizens United a litmus test for his judicial appointments? Does any human actually think this way? Also, does Rich think that the people are supporting Trump because of their disgust with money in politics? Or because they realize that all politics is a sham of a façade? People are supporting Trump because he says the right nasty things about the people who scare them. Period. If and when he loses, those people will move on to the next shrewd bigot who steps up to the mic.

I stopped reading when Rich got to the point where he argued that the Trump candidacy would have an equal (if opposite) effect on American politics that the failed Goldwater campaign did in 1964. Frank Rich looks at a freak show and sees a movement. That is such a New York thing to do.

Rich is a theater critic, and everything he writes has to be read through that filter.

"i urge the other candidates to summon the courage to drop out of the race, so that conservatives can unify behind a single candidate and finally take down D-...D-...the current leader in the polls, whose name I cannot say. GOD HELP US ALL, we are frightened and lonely"

I used to read his political column in the mid '00s; it read like fourth-rate Lewis Lapham without the salt.

Also, does Rich think that the people are supporting Trump because of their disgust with money in politics?

Sure, when he says that the others are bought-and-paid-for and that he's not.

he just cuts out the middle man

money shot
http://l1.yimg.com/bt/api/res/1.2/IalPyeMmwHEmpa_KOta3yA--/YXBwaWQ9eW5ld3NfbGVnbztmaT1maWxsO2g9NzAxO2lsPXBsYW5lO3B5b2ZmPTA7cT03NTt3PTEwNDU-/http://media.zenfs.com/en_us/News/ap_webfeeds/41f599b30e9dd729810f6a7067000318.jpg

I have yet to see a picture of that guy where it looks like his heart's in it to win it.

trump would have ripped the shirt off hulk-style; here's jeb! fumbling with the buttons

http://l2.yimg.com/bt/api/res/1.2/Pca2DfQLnw3_WZs4sVYCpA--/YXBwaWQ9eW5ld3NfbGVnbztmaT1maWxsO2g9ODAwO2lsPXBsYW5lO3B5b2ZmPTA7cT03NTt3PTExMTc-/http://media.zenfs.com/en_us/News/ap_webfeeds/3b43942765c36428810f6a7067002728.jpg

Noted imbecile Matthew Yglesias thinks Jeb! should drop out and endorse Rubio, in part because Rubio is "a dynamic public speaker and gutsy political risk-taker" who "performs better than Bush in head-to-head polling against Clinton" (he still loses, of course, but never mind that).

"a dynamic public speaker

By "dynamic" he presumably meant "thirsty."

I loved when Trump literally made Rubio sweat during the debate

I didn't really want to think this hard about Rubio's fluid input/output.

http://www.theonion.com/article/voters-look-horror-3-new-republican-candidates-app-51366

hillary waits until moment pope's plane touches down in U.S., then announces her weird sort of for it sort of against it opposition to keystone xl.

she is a courageous leader

I think we should petition Webster to replace the definition of "chagrin" with a photocollage of Jeb campaign shots

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/jeb-bush-multicultural-iowa

“We should not have a multicultural society,” Bush said. “When you create pockets of isolation, and in some cases, the assimilation process has been retarded, it’s wrong. It limits people’s aspirations.”

re: Keystone

I've been thinking about this and sort of fantasizing about Obama leaving it to the last minute of his presidency to kill it. Is that feasible? cuz it would be p sneaky.

what is bush even saying there? join the white american monoculture or leave?

Thought the Frank Rich piece was excellent. His fictional precedents for Trump, especially The Magic Christian (which I'm sorry to say I've neither read nor seen), are perfect.