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

question: two men on this stage have received donations in the thousands by white supremacist Earl Holt, a man who was idolized by mass murderer Dylann Roof. Mr. Cruz and Mr. Paul, to your credit, you returned these donations after the slaughter in Charleston, SC. But why do you think a person like Mr. Holt was so eager to give so much money to your respective campaigns?

lol

John Kasich managed to score the lowest ratings of anyone ever focus-grouped by Frank Luntz

Read more at: http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/426897/winners-losers-running-place-john-fund

I couldn't take another one of these so skipped it. Considering that neither of the last two (three?) made news, and that these fools are in the news every day making crazy independent of their campaign pledges and plans, I can't imagine any of these debates evincing anything surprising or illuminating. At this point we'd learn more by putting a cache of weapons in the center of the room then plunging the auditorium into complete darkness for 15 seconds, a la "Clue" the movie.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GNUP-so0ndQ

@pareene
Ted Cruz referenced the "torture and oppression" his father escaped in Cuba. His father fled the US-supported capitalist Batisa regime.

while i was watching i thought that ted cruz had narrowly avoided an Oops moment, but it turns out he escaped it with an asterisk:

“Today, we rolled out a spending plan,” Cruz replied, “$500 billion in specific cuts. Five major agencies that we would eliminate: The IRS, the Department of Commerce, the Department of Energy, the Department of Commerce, and HUD.”

He encouraged voters to go to his website, TedCruz.org, to learn about the full plan, which also involves eliminating the corporate income and payroll taxes. According to the site, the agency he neglected to mention is the Department of Education.

I heard him pause after DOE and my heart started pounding (i live for Oopsies), but i didn't realize he'd already mentioned commerce when he resumed. either way, he just kept going and i doubt too many people noticed in the heat of the moment.

Revitalizing the economy by putting tens of thousands of people out of work and eliminating Social Security. Sounds legit!

lol so the feds won't collect any taxes?

I didn't watch this cuz streaming these debates is a pain and really who cares at this point, but surprised at the lack of chatter here during this one

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

No tax collections and no weather service! No standard weights and measures. No research labs, no student loans (he apparently meant to say "Education" instead of the Commerce dupe), no housing programs. All that shit is for communist homosexuals. The dipshittery of these people and their campaign staff and their voting base is palpable and odorous.

Donald Trump is definitely not a racist xenophobe, he’s just a normal presidential candidate whose immigration plan would be modeled after an Eisenhower-era mass deportation called “Operation Wetback.”

http://gawker.com/totally-not-xenophobic-donald-trump-praised-operation-1741895276

good to see entitlements for corporations still welcome

Dwight Eisenhower. Good president. Great president. People liked him. I liked him. I Like Ike, right? The expression, ‘I like Ike.’

good lord

I dunno, the fact that there was an expression by which unspecified parties expressed favor towards him makes me think this Ike fella must've been a good guy.

big fan of military, complex solutions i assume

I wish there was a way to express Trump's stupidity/trolling ratio graphically.

No tax collections and no weather service! No standard weights and measures. No research labs, no student loans (he apparently meant to say "Education" instead of the Commerce dupe), no housing programs. All that shit is for communist homosexuals. The dipshittery of these people and their campaign staff and their voting base is palpable and odorous.

― El Tomboto, Wednesday, November 11, 2015 10:36 AM (15 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yeah, the spectacle of these hateful, ignorant man-children dominating the discussion in the primary season for the most powerful office on earth is wrist-slittingly depressing. i find myself absent-mindedly hanging my head in despair a lot of the time.

how did we get here?

(hangs head again)

'Man-children' is, I think, key. By and large, the way in which they express themselves suggests severe developmental setbacks, and those expressions appeal to an audience that's similarly developmentally stunted. It really is like a gaggle of six-year-olds exerting their will against a world that they barely understand.

"If you vote for me, I promise to give you like a bazillion Transformers. And you'll never have to eat anything but cereal again, and you'll live to be five hundred years old."

There you go with the free stuff again.

PFT Commenter went to the GOP debate and asked Ben Carson if he would abort Baby Hitler:
http://www.sbnation.com/2015/11/11/9709934/gop-debate-is-ben-carson-pro-hitler

But Graham and Gilmore sought other avenues to make their voices heard. Gilmore participated in a live-stream event hosted by IJ Review, which at one point drew just 32 viewers, while Graham posted his reactions to the social media platform Sidewire.

people should just start asking Carson totally insane questions, completely random stuff

How would you replace the state of Arkansas, which is planned to dissolve in 2019?

Sir, may I mambo dogface on the banana patch?

What would you do about the Russian plan to build the world's largest skyscraper in the part of Antarctica that belongs to the USA?

lol forks

It is projected that the Chinese will own 78% of Mexico by the time of your inauguration. What's your "day one" action plan for that situation?

how did we get here?

(hangs head again)

― wizzz! (amateurist), Wednesday, November 11, 2015 5:15 PM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

pretty sure putting education at the front of the line anytime someone wants to slash a budget in the last 40 years got us here

Debate season has been very informative to me, in terms of cousins, old schoolmates and not-close friends piping up on Facebook on how Cruz/Carson is their dream ticket.

I guess I can understand a dyed-in-the-wool republican obediently voting for whoever winds up with the nomination, but it's next to impossible for me to wrap my brain around anyone actually having passionate feelings about any of these clowns. Except maybe in terms of them being qualitative blank slates that voters can project their beliefs and values onto.

Like I quasi-articulated to my gf last night re: not having the stomach to watch the debates, this crop of candidates don't seem like people whose beliefs and values I disagree with as much as they seem like hollow suits who tacitly scoff at the idea of things like beliefs and values.

Absolutely, not a one of them believes in anything. Maybe Jeb does, or Kasich, but that's why they're disqualified.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_RfUj09pWfM

mayor jingleberries on point

I've had a lot of opportunities over the last couple of years to teach people about Marjoe Gortner, as an illustrative example.

huh had to look that one up

Marjoe's great in the Kojack movie/pilot, The Marcus-Nelson Murders. Carry on.

Marjoe's doc is free online:

https://archive.org/details/Marjoe.1972.Legendado

@pareene
Ted Cruz referenced the "torture and oppression" his father escaped in Cuba. His father fled the US-supported capitalist Batisa regime.

― skateboards are the new combover (Dr Morbius),

fUS-supported capitalist Batista regime pretty terrible too.

https://vine.co/v/elHn7gxb65p

well no kidding that's why i supported Fidel in '59 xp

I saw your bumper sticker

http://rlv.zcache.com.au/fidel_castro_bumper_sticker-r7db0dc39503b40b5abcb3290702dc656_v9wht_8byvr_324.jpg

http://www.cnn.com/2015/11/11/politics/ben-carson-would-not-abort-baby-hitler/index.html

this emergent issue is really the gift that keeps on giving, URL-wise

but as soon as it was born he would throttle that lil fucker

or maybe stab it, as long as it was not wearing any protective belt buckles

What if he could bring a present-day baby back in time, use his surgical skills to swap their brains, then return the Hitler-brained baby to our time, where any latent impulses to demagoguery would be suppressed by the experience of watching third-rate clowns like Trump and Cruz try their hand? Could be great for an AP Psychology project on the nature vs. nurture debate.

Picturing him in the delivery room with a machete. "He's crowning!"

We need to know where all the candidates stand on these important theoretical time-traveling infanticide issues.

In addition to being entertaining, it undercuts the Christie/Cruzian righteous indignation at stupid media questions: "The American People (tm) want to hear about the ISSUES that MATTER to THEM!"

Yeah, like whether American presidential candidates have jurisdiction in fin-de-siècle Austria-Hungary, and/or how they view the space-time continuum and causal paradoxes.

Baby Hitler is the new "boxers, or briefs?"

Oh, and whether you want to have a beer with a devout muslim teenage girl.

I know Lindsey has already indulged us on his own, but I fully expect Fuck/Marry/Kill to be incorporated into the discourse of the republican debates before long. And maybe a round of Would You Rather, capped off with some Truth Or Dare. By the time we get to the final debate, it will have devolved into recursive babbling.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_JmA2ClUvUY