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

she repeatedly implies that we should vote for her because she's a woman. if you think that's a substantive advantage she has over other candidates, then i suppose we disagree. if her career has demonstrated anything, it's that a woman is capable of practicing as cynical and compromised a politics as any man.

it should be about hiring the most qualified person not about demographics right

When discussing electoral politics, "cheap" and "cynical" are highly, highly relative, and Clinton's talking about gender doesn't come anywhere close to clearing the bar IMO.

― the top man in the language department (誤訳侮辱), Sunday, November 15, 2015 7:07 PM (10 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

How about her hiding behind 9/11--saying she was Florence Nightingale for the suffering banksters--to explain her "relationship" to Wall Street. Yuck.
P.S. Notice how she never said she'd reinstate Glass-Steagall

tee hee

“There are a lot of Christians in Syria that have no place now,” he explained. “They’ll be either executed or imprisoned, either by Assad or by ISIS. And I think we should have — we should focus our efforts as it relates to the Christians that are being slaughtered.”

Tapper wondered how screeners would know which refugees were Christians.

“We do that all the time,” Bush insisted. “I think we need to be — obviously — very, very cautious. This also calls to mind the need to protect our borders, our southern border particularly.”

they're ALL drunk

P.S. Notice how she never said she'd reinstate Glass-Steagall

I'd have to check--she had some vague comment about her willingness to look at the issue--but I think she specifically said she wouldn't reinstate it.

it should be about hiring the most qualified person not about demographics right

― balls, Sunday, November 15, 2015 6:18 PM (26 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i assume you're trying to insinuate some kind of regressive implication to my remarks, but you'll have to spell it out a bit more. or perhaps you could explain how having a vagina is any kind of argument for hillary clinton as president... preferably an argument that doesn't essentialize or trade in stereotypes.

actually i really only need leave two words here: margaret thatcher

When discussing electoral politics, "cheap" and "cynical" are highly, highly relative, and Clinton's talking about gender doesn't come anywhere close to clearing the bar IMO.

― the top man in the language department (誤訳侮辱), Sunday, November 15, 2015 7:07 PM (40 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yeah when a major concern of the opposition is attacking women's rights, highlighting the contrast doesn't strike me as cynical, esp since women have been an extremely important part of the base this decade.

― balls, Sunday, November 15, 2015 7:12 PM (35 minutes ago)

it would also depend on the debate/election opponent. in the general against a republican, it might be sort of coherent. against bernie sanders -- who i will admit said something about her yelling that one time making him a misogynist -- it comes across as a clumsy dodge. then again it's entirely possible that hilary isn't even taking these debates seriously (why should she?) and is running against the republicans already

neeeed the ask me about benghazi button

if hillary thinks the republicans aren't gonna hit her for wall st ties she's fooling herself. they used anti-wall st anger to take back congress and have been beating the crony capitalism drums for a few years now.

Reading Charles Moore's Thatcher bio a couple years ago, I was struck by her admirable reluctance to demand sympathy b/c of her gender. Part of it is reality: she didn't fit any conventional feminine, maternal stereotypes. By contrast when all else fails, this is HRC's default. Carly Fiorina is the same, defining herself as "business person who can take on Hillary because I'm a woman."

everyone knows what the first paragraph of nader's obit is gonna mention.

...especially if it's written by an ahistorical idiot, i suppose.

Starting to suspect after HRC's "9/11!" "WOMEN!" response that she is in fact Giuliani in drag.

I can think of a word that describes the ecstatic squealers in the room responding to "60% of my donors are women."

Yes, that one.

Co-eds.

I love the conspiracy theory that CBS monkeyed with the applause on the debate broadcast--cutting it out for Bernie, bumping it up for HRC. Yeah, the conspiracy is called the state of Iowa.

Me personally, first thing I think of when I hear "Nader" is the Pinto.

Of course, an exploding car that's been hit from behind is also the first thing I think of when I hear Florida 2000.

...especially if it's written by an ahistorical idiot, i suppose.

i would assume a journalist would write it, yes

NYT ed board blasts Clinton's Wall Street-9/11 comments

Her effort to tug on Americans’ heartstrings instead of explaining her Wall Street ties — on a day that the scars of 9/11 were exposed anew — was at best botched rhetoric. At worst it was the type of cynical move that Mrs. Clinton would have condemned in Republicans.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/16/opinion/hillary-clinton-botches-wall-street-questions.html

daaaaamn

"My question for Hillary Clinton is what I would call the Jane Austen Challenge. You all know the great Jane Austen. One of the greatest novelists who ever put pen to paper in the English lang-guage. She talked about 'constancy.' Like Fanny Price in Mansfield Park. Like Annnnne Elliot, in that great novel, Persuasion. And what is constancy except a willingness to act for integrity, sustain moral engagement, and always subordinating political calculation to deep con-VIC-tion. And we have to be honest about our dear sister Hillary Clinton. When it comes to my gay brothers and my lesbian sisters, one year, she says marriage is just male and female. Few years later, she says she's evolved. I say, OK, I'm open to evolution. But there's certain issues that should cut so deep that you don't need to be a thermometer. You can be a thermostat."

Cornel West in Iowa.

unfortunately that litmus test applies to pretty much every national politician.

i'm surprised that west is using that issue to attack hillary, of the many better ones available.

unfortunately that litmus test applies to pretty much every national politician.

Not to mention professional opinion-offerers like West himself. If there are no "evolutions" or "flip-flops" in his decades of writings and interviews, I'll eat a random stranger's hat.

It sounds like he'd agree?

yeah but which Jane Austen heroine would he be?

philip elton

Cornel West will play Cher in a reboot of Clueless, you heard it here first.

Hang on, does that tshirt up there deliberately ref a Smiths song? Who is this for?

Cornel was correct, but there's no honor in shooting a fish in a barrel. Surely he can't think that the character fault he is identifying in Hillary is the sort that can be corrected through enlightened criticism at this late stage of the game. So, it was not for her own good that he exposed it. Whose good, then? Qui bono?

you can listen to the West address in full here

"Brother Bernie and I come from a great tradition," West continued, his tone rising and falling in the familiar cadence and modulation of the pulpit. "The tradition of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Albert Einnnn-stein. The tradition of Helen Keller and Ella Baker. The tradition of John Dewey, who is the founder of pragmatism, but he was a democratic socialist, too. Reinhold Niebuhr! And my dear brother, one of the greatest folk I've ever met in Iowa, his name is Reverend Gil Dawes, who's a Methodist minister, who has been struggling for fifty YEARS and still on fire for justice! The point is that, you see, democratic socialism is not some kind of alien element. It's organic and indigenous in the history of this nation. Don't allow the 'ism' get in the way of the love of poor people, the love of working people, the love of people of color, the love of gay brothers and lesbian sisters, the love of the elderly and the children and the physically challenged. It's a question of what kind of human being do you want to be."

http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/news/a39737/cornel-west-bernie-sanders-iowa/

i wonder if cornel west gets paid by the word

that graf is worth the money

He's using a legitimate oratorical style: the river of words. And I see he is squarely in Bernie's camp, so now I can see who is intended to benefit.

who's that

Mr. Darcy.

Einnnn

https://newrepublic.com/article/123956/why-hillarys-wall-street-problem-wont-go-away

Not sure what going to war with Ted Cruz would entail--making fun of his bizarre voice?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i9WI59gYQOA

(Weird aside: "Believe me, my walls are effective." Either he's already built a couple around countries elsewhere in the world, or he's equating a wall at the Mexican border with a wall in one of his hotels. Which may or may not be effective; I don't know, I've never been in one.)

http://i.imgur.com/DhL9kCj.jpg

When Trump said "my walls are effective" he's just indulging in his usual "I have never failed at anything and I never will because I am beyond awesome" line of blatherskite. He's like a fourth grader who draws a cartoony-looking battle tank that's bigger than a mountain and bristling with guns and missiles, and brags to anyone who'll listen that it's the most super-powerful tank ever in the whole universe.

Does Trump have resort properties, say in the Caribbean? Maybe he's actually boasting of the effectiveness of smaller-scale walls performing similar work of ethnic/class separation and ideological mystification.

forgive them they know not what they do

http://www.nytimes.com/politics/first-draft/2015/11/17/hillary-clinton-gets-important-labor-backing-from-s-e-i-u/

(picking-a-winner cynicism)

John Kasich Requests 'Equal Opportunity' Coverage from NBC Following Donald Trump's SNL Slot

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/18/us/politics/ben-carson-is-struggling-to-grasp-foreign-policy-advisers-say.html

“Nobody has been able to sit down with him and have him get one iota of intelligent information about the Middle East,” Duane R. Clarridge, a top adviser to Mr. Carson on terrorism and national security, said in an interview. He also said Mr. Carson needed weekly conference calls briefing him on foreign policy so “we can make him smart.”

iirc this isn't the first time that someone from his own campaign has, on the record, criticized and embarrassed him. weird

“The jump from Erbil and Soviets” to the Chinese “in Damascus is a long leap,” Mr. Clarridge said, using an ethnic slur for the Chinese.

Mr. Clarridge is a big fucking asshole

whoa buddy

this dude must really hate his boss to be talking out of school like this

lol this guy is nuts

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/23/world/23clarridge.html

He was a longtime C.I.A. officer, serving undercover in India, Turkey, Italy and other countries. During the Reagan administration, he helped found the agency’s Counterterrorism Center and ran the C.I.A.’s Latin American division.

Indicted on charges of lying to Congress in the Iran-contra scandal (he was later pardoned)

I was gonna say he sounds totally evil but tomato/tomahto

ran the C.I.A.’s Latin American division.

holy fuck

Ugh. I remember seeing his name in books about Reagan-era spooks newly empowered after Bill Casey became CIA chief.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SNgCyDsvi84

^^^ honestly tempted to trigger warning that?