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

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.

that should be an opening line of a trailer

that clarridge video is a taste of real evil

RIP Bobby J, kids table's gonna be lonely without you

otm @ "national security interest" being a divine right

Any chance they'll finally just pull the plug on the kids' table debate concept, with Jindal out and Graham and Pataki not even coming close to qualifying for the last one? Dunno if that would mean letting Christie and Huckabee back into the big one or cutting them loose with Santorum. I suppose it's more likely that they just shift around the bar for entry to the big one - Christie and Huck are going nowhere in this campaign but they have name recognition and might still be seen as worth it, ratings-wise? I have no idea what priorities are in play when they decide these things though.

tbh I have stopped giving a fuck about the debates on both sides - feels like nothing's at stake, just a lot of wheel spinning. how many more are there anyway?

jeff

i mean, like a dozen more at least

yer gonna miss Giuliani ripping off his Hillary mask, Shakey

again, why is graham even 'running'? he must hate being a senator