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

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?

Duane Clarridge Defends The Use of Tootsie Glasses

amazing how the diff between barroom bullshitters/internet special operators and true bigot murderers is... well a lot of money i guess

Dr Carson, it's me, Duane Clarridge. I'm here for our weekly meeting to make you smart.

man I guess no one learns English in spook school:

One official, Michael V. Hayden, a former C.I.A. director, described a conversation he had had with Mr. Carson to MSNBC last week. “I had one lengthy phone call with Ben Carson two months ago,” Mr. Hayden said, “and his instincts are all right, but this is a database in which he’s very unfamiliar.”

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

holy fuck

right? "CIA Latin American Division" is practically a trigger warning in itself

lol "overthrowing whatsisname" jesus christ this guy is a monster

Clearly Shakeyou is a database in which he's not familiar.

http://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2016-election/kasich-proposes-new-government-agency-promote-judeo-christian-values-n465101

As part of a broad national security plan to defeat ISIS, Republican Presidential candidate John Kasich proposed creating a new government agency to push Judeo-Christian values around the world.

The new agency, which he hasn't yet named, would promote a Jewish- and Christian-based belief system to four regions of the world: China, Iran, Russia and the Middle East.

"We need to beam messages around the world" about the freedoms Americans enjoy, Kasich said in an interview with NBC News Tuesday.

what could go wrong

jesus fucking christ

that's the name of the agency

lol

Iran and the Middle East, two different regions

@DennisThePerrin
The sooner we admit that it's Clinton v. Rubio, the sooner we can customize our escape pods.

separating iran from the rest of the ME is about the only thing about this that approaches being smart

goole, you're not familiar with this database?

http://www.businessinsider.com/ben-carson-foreign-policy-duane-clarridge-2015-11

Clarridge was repeatedly described by The Times as a top Carson foreign-policy adviser, though Clarridge's exact role in the Carson campaign was not immediately clear. Carson's campaign pushed back on that description of Clarridge, and suggested the paper was taking "advantage of an elderly gentleman."

"Mr. Clarridge has incomplete knowledge of the daily, not weekly briefings, that Dr. Carson receives on important national security matters from former military and State Department officials," Doug Watts, a Carson campaign spokesman, told Business Insider in an email.

"He is coming to the end of a long career of serving our country. Mr. Clarridge's input to Dr. Carson is appreciated but he is clearly not one of Dr. Carson's top advisors. For the New York Times to take advantage of an elderly gentleman and use him as their foil in this story is an affront to good journalistic practices."

xp no i don't interface with it optimally

Clarridge's exact role in the Carson campaign was not immediately clear

no this is not usual behavior for an ex spook

this line from the nyt story did have a can't-get-rid-of-him feel

Mr. Clarridge, who contacted Mr. Carson nearly two years ago to offer his services without pay, has helped the candidate prepare for debates. But the briefings do not always seem to sink in, Mr. Clarridge acknowledged.

wish Norman Mailer was still alive

kasich apparently unaware that something like 75 percent of russians are orthodox christian

One of the lol points in that NYT piece is how Bush is set up as the guy who can have his pick of foreign policy eminences and whose father probably gave Clarridge a few jobs when the father ran the CIA.

like, Clarridge is not more outrageous than Kristol, Wolfowitz, etc -- all Reagan-Bush people.

sounds like bobby j is done

It only took him six years

Just searched his name for a related news story. Nothing about dropping out, but I did learn that he had an "exorcism problem."

Exorcism is a solution not a problem

https://twitter.com/JohnDingell/status/666756346151325697

There are isolated cases where exorcism, by not becoming part of the solution, becomes part of the problem.