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

Bobby Genital

Bobby Jinidal

Ben? Bobby? I'd say that knowing when to keep your fucking mouth shut is a pretty essential quality that anyone running for President should possess.

amst otm, i kind of can't even believe there are people this stupid, let alone people this stupid who have lots and lots of supporters who badly want them to be president

stupid is a charitable word

“I never saw a body with bullet holes that was more devastating than taking the right to arm ourselves away,” Mr. Carson wrote.

kinda hacky piece, but his point bears some weight imo: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-partisan/wp/2015/10/06/why-hillary-clinton-is-more-progressive-than-bernie-sanders-in-one-sentence/

― Οὖτις, Tuesday, October 6, 2015 3:58 PM (31 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

breathtakingly idiotic piece

brain surgeon

pro-Palestine students ejected from Sanders rally; staffer responsible axed.

https://theintercept.com/2015/10/05/dissent-on-israel-not-permitted-at-bernie-sanders-event/

I assume the "he wants to give gov't benefits to rich people!" is a generous mischaracterization of Sanders...?

xp

er ungenerous

I lolled: https://twitter.com/CerromeRussell/status/651489635617611780

For someone who doesn't want to waste 1 of 10 free washington post articles by clicking that link, what is the one sentence that shows that clinton is more progressive than sanders?

"I don't want to make college free for Donald Trump's kids."

(paraphrase)

xxp the bullshit powertrip fanfic of "man, if i saw a guy with a gun i would totally leg sweep him what is wrong with these victims" is repugnant as fuck

medicare for all etc includes rich people too (, my friend)

he's conflating "more electable/will more effectively govern" (which is a legitimate point) with "more progressive". it's the same argument gabbneb and most of the people itt make, that HRC would by virtue of being a democrat, and a relatively well-liked one, be more effective overall than a sanders presidency which might lead to a bunch of stalemating. it's a legitimate argument, but that's not the language that guy chose to use

that's not what I got from it. My takeaway is that Sanders is making a bunch of pie-in-the-sky promises that will give gov't benefits to those who don't need them, financed by magic. I guess the extrapolation from that is that Hillary's proposals are more "realistic" ergo she is "more electable" but I think the latter is only indirectly implied.

fully agree that it's a poorly written piece

Hillary's zinger is a good one tho

Why would anyone waste time on being offended by Carson's statements, they're just absurd

He seems intent on talking himself out of the race

I saw someone with a 'I stand with Ben' bumper sticker and was thinking about the lifetime of regret that will inevitably follow

xp can you guarantee that his statements aren't resonating with his base right now? remember that his base is constituted at least in part by the people that suggest arming public school teachers and students at universities is the way to prevent mass shootings

Damn that is the most disgusting thing I have heard in a long time.

Carson could have at least said "If it were me I would have rushed the shooter like that gay guy on Flight 93"

speaking of gun violence and the gop field.. this seems to be an unwanted development

http://www.telesurtv.net/english/news/El-Chapo-Puts-US100-Million-Bounty-on-Trump-Dead-or-Alive-20151006-0001.html

I would've said, "Hey, guys, everybody attack Carson!"

My takeaway is that Sanders is making a bunch of pie-in-the-sky promises that will give gov't benefits to those who don't need them, financed by magic

the "to those who don't need them" is a red herring designed to confuse liberals into thinking the policy is somehow regressive. medicare for all includes rich people. will it actually happen in the near future? no. but if and when such a thing does happen, the climate that allows that to occur will also facilitate the financing of such a plan by higher taxes, not "magic"

i mean, hillary to my knowledge is not talking about expanding medicare

"Hey, guys, everybody attack Carson!"

hey, he can't get us all

http://gawker.com/ben-carson-wouldnt-meet-ucc-shooting-victims-families-t-1735027922

Then Fox’s Brian Kilmeade asked if, like Obama, Carson would would still travel to visit victims’ families despite some residents protests of grandstanding, to which Carson replied all too casually:

"Probably not. I mean, I would probably have so many things on my agenda that I would go to the next one."

but if and when such a thing does happen, the climate that allows that to occur will also facilitate the financing of such a plan by higher taxes, not "magic"

getting the American public to agree to pay more taxes to provide benefits to people who don't need them sure sounds like magic to me

xp

the...rich will bear he brunt of those tax increases. is this the first you've heard of the concept of universal health care?

I'd like to see Sanders' math on how tax increases on the rich will pay for universal healthcare and universal college tuition

Dunno about college, but from what I understand, Medicare for all would be cheaper than the mess we have right now. Of course I'm sure there's a million ways to run the numbers.

Maybe throw in of that ever-increasing military spending money.

x-post

Also, maybe not getting into multi-trillion dollar wars every few years might help.

but they're so fun

"I would go to the next one."

https://content.usaa.com/mcontent/static_assets/Media/cc_rightRailDesigns3.png?cacheid=3123621693_p

https://s.graphiq.com/sites/default/files/5880/media/images/USAA_Military_Affiliated_4385896.jpg

pretty sure there are fairly few trumps in the world. i think the number could even be expressed as small percentage of the overall population, or even a decimal or two shy of that percentage point. the "but his kids will also get this ~universal~ health care" is concern trolling designed to paint sanders as the first person who has ever articulated a "universal" program, as if the values lying behind that were alien importations requiring extensive vetting. this person does know that the middle and upper class can collect social security too, right?

think it's maybe not helpful to be conflating social security, medicare, universal healthcare, and universal college tuition as if they are all the same thing or are financed the same way

that's fair. but my point has more to do with the value system behind guaranteeing a universal than the policy question of how it's paid for. the article already confuses the two, i think, trying to draw both out of hillary's sentence and trusting that together they somehow prove she's more "progressive." there are huge gulfs between how we pay/could pay for these various things, but the idea that they should be universal is a different order of question. closer to philosophical. kinda like the "is this is a fundamental right, or not?" type question.

Means-testing costs money. Like, a lot of money, usually more than would be saved, makes programs more vulnerable to cuts in the long run, adds beaurocracy, hassle and resentment to what could otherwise be a simple and direct public service. It saves money, time, and social friction to send rich kids (along with everyone else) to school for free. It just requires realizing that "giving" things to people who don't "deserve" them is often good policy.

This is all imo and might be dumb soft-headed socialism, which I'm prone to, but it isn't as simple as "free shit for everyone wooooooooo
"

well is it more important that everyone goes to college or is it more important that everyone goes to college for free, cuz those are not the same thing. Maybe there's an order of priority here, and Clinton's priveleging the former over the latter with her crack about Trump's kids.

xp

points about means testing and universal rights make sense tho

sanders's bill has to do with tuition at public universities btw. are we really assuming rich kids wills top wanting to go to harvard? yes, there are huge question marks attached to this and it probably needs to be fleshed out a lot from his plan as far as i know it, which seems to be huge block grants to the states to pay the tuition, combined with requirements that the states maintain their existing funding, while bringing the cost of tuition down anyway by rolling back recently-ballooned cost increases. that latter part sounds like a serious headache, or fifty serious headaches. maybe the logic is that it puts the pressure back on the states and their legislators, as their constituents start saying "you mean to tell me you're going to throw away billions in free tuition money, making me foot the bill, because you're not willing to cut the president's salary" etc. etc.

obviously there are lots of ways for this to backfire or produce other problems. also lots of ways that it gets compromised down from "free for all" to something more modest but still radically improving the balance of wealth and opportunity in the country. i mean, 50% off tuition for all would be earth-shaking.

the big block of money is supposed to come by "imposing a Wall Street speculation fee on investment houses, hedge funds, and other speculators of 0.5% on stock trades (50 cents for every $100 worth of stock), a 0.1% fee on bonds, and a 0.005% fee on derivatives." i know nothing about wall street so i'll leave it to someone else to determine whether that is viable but it's not just some kind of phantom promise of goodies for all and "oh but he hasn't told us how he'll PAY for these things!"

wapo article is total garbage, but that's not too surprising.

hillary's line seems pretty demagogic and dishonest; even if you forced every billionaire to pay for his own kids' college, health care, etc., there are fewer than 550 billionaires in the united states.

are we really assuming rich kids wills top wanting to go to harvard?

why don't we all spend some time learning about how tuition works at places like Harvard before saying shit like this

https://college.harvard.edu/financial-aid/net-price-calculator

haha it isn't def demagogic and I noted upthread that I assumed it was a misrepresentation of Sanders' proposal at least to some degree

But as a rhetorical tactic you can see how Hillary's "I want to help people who NEED it, not give things away to those who already have it" might have legs

I mean it IS def demagogic

sorry

xxp

Well this is fun:

http://m.motherjones.com/politics/2015/05/hillary-clinton-foundation-state-arms-deals