US Presidential Contenders

[Buster's Uncle]

Possibly both several hours apart - one imagines that a fellow who only tells lies has trouble keeping track.

[E_T]

The Toilet Paper team?

The team that you can wipe your @$$ with...   

[Buster's Uncle]

That would be an affront to the dooky.

[Rusty Edge]

They can re-logo and re-brand and re-invent themselves as much as they want, but they can't escape the fact that they are the "T'Pence" team.

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So Bernie, besides his book deal, is working on his grass roots progressive movement, and is retaining control of his e-mail list for that purpose.

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Been digging into Johnson's record. Even the people that didn't like him and his goals or methods seemed to respect him as honest, straightforward, a good listener and not one to hold a grudge or make it personal. Also, as evidenced by his hobby of endurance sports- very disciplined.

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[Sleezebag] has been  complaining about being broke until the convention.

[Rusty Edge]

I thought she'd retired, but Lesley Stahl is still among the surviving journalists.

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Donald [Sleezebag]’s answer on Mike Pence’s Iraq vote is really something
 By Philip Bump July 17 at 7:26 PM

One section of the first joint interview by the presumptive Republican ticket reveals a great deal about the man at its top.

CBS's Lesley Stahl asked Donald [Sleezebag] if he would send troops to the Middle East to fight the Islamic State. From there, the conversation shifted to the war in Iraq — and the vote Indiana Gov. Mike Pence, the presumptive vice presidential candidate, cast in support of it while he was serving in the House. In fact, Pence spoke in favor of the war from the floor of the House in 2002.

[Sleezebag]'s view of that? Meh.

From CBS's transcript:


DONALD [Sleezebag]: Now look, we are going to get rid of [the Islamic State], big league. And we're going to get rid of 'em fast. And we're going to use surrounding states. We're going to use NATO, probably. And we're going to declare war. It is war. When the World Trade Center comes tumbling down, with thousands of people being killed, people are still— I have friends that are still—

LESLEY STAHL: But we did go to war, if you remember. We went to Iraq.

[Sleezebag]: Yeah, you went to Iraq, but that was handled so badly. And that was a war, by the way, that was a war that we shouldn't have entered because Iraq did not knock down—excuse me...

STAHL: Your running mate—

[Sleezebag]: Iraq did not—

STAHL: —voted for it.

[Sleezebag]: I don't care.

He doesn't care. That's a remarkable comment from [Sleezebag], who's consistently cast his purported opposition to the Iraq War in opposition to Hillary Clinton's vote for it. (More on this in a second.) This, he has repeatedly argued, shows his judgment is superior to the presumptive Democratic nominee — in a number of ways.

But Pence casting the same vote? He doesn't care.

Stahl pressed on it.


STAHL: What do you mean you don't care that he voted for?

[Sleezebag]: It's a long time ago. And he voted that way and they were also misled. A lot of information was given to people...

STAHL: But you’ve harped on this.

[Sleezebag]: But I was against the war in Iraq from the beginning.

STAHL: Yeah, but you’ve used that vote of Hillary's that was the same as Governor Pence as the example of her bad judgment.

[Sleezebag]: Many people have, and frankly, I'm one of the few that was right on Iraq.

This is the point at which we note that the only record of his having an opinion on the war in Iraq before it began was an interview in which he expressed support. Our fact-checkers have been over this repeatedly: There's no evidence he opposed the war before it began. And now, his vice presidential pick is on record in support of it.

[Sleezebag]'s excuse?


STAHL: Yeah, but what about he —?

[Sleezebag]: He's entitled to make a mistake every once in a while.

STAHL: But she's not? Okay, come on—

[Sleezebag]: But she's not—

STAHL: She's not?

[Sleezebag]: No. She’s not.

STAHL: Got it.

[Sleezebag] and Stahl chuckled a little at this response, but it seems clear that [Sleezebag] essentially meant it.

"She's virtually done nothing right," [Sleezebag] said during his speech attacking Clinton last month. "She's virtually done nothing good. It all started with her bad judgment in supporting the war in Iraq in the first place."

In [Sleezebag]'s mind, Pence gets a pass on that judgment, rooted in bad intelligence. [Sleezebag] himself gets a pass on not being able to present any evidence that his judgment was any different. Clinton, however, is riddled with bad judgment because of her stance on the issue.

This will cost him zero votes.

[Buster's Uncle]

...All that and she's unnaturally good-looking, still, for a woman who has to be about 9,000 years old by now...

[Rusty Edge]

Remember how I said that the Starship Enterprise should phazer some Romulans or something?

Right now I'm worried that Cloud will eat dancing Solver. He's kinda daring her, and I really like the guy.

[Buster's Uncle]

Now I'm tempted to change the avatar to a .gif and have a dying dancing Solver wriggling in her mouth.  -But I'm rather fond of the fellow myself, and sure as I did it, he'd get run over by a bus and I'd feel bad.  I may have to animate her eyes to glance over at him anyway...

I thought this was going to be about what a babe Lesley Stahl is, which is definitely more interesting than trying to hit the high points of what a disgrace to humanity the Pig is...

[Rusty Edge]

Okay, eye animations would be entertaining, and yes, Lesley Stahl is attractive.

Political news is mostly stuff about-

 Who will Hillary pick?

Johnson gaining ground in the polls (13%)

[Sleezebag]/Pence awkwardness

What Jeb Bush thinks, and what everybody else thinks about that.

[Buster's Uncle]

That last being incredibly uninteresting and actually harmful, as the world needs the Bushes -and the Clintons- to go away.  All that stuff we agree on about legacy presidents, and all.  Stop talking about them, idiots, or it's the Pig problem all over again, if not as obvious.  LEARN, for chrissakes.

[Rusty Edge]

The New Yorker did a supportive piece on Johnson, but it's pretty long.-
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/07/25/gary-johnson-the-third-party-candidate
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On the behind the scenes politics and policy front at the Grand Old Party-
http://www.redstate.com/streiff/2016/07/18/quelle-surprise-donald-trumps-campaign-supports-russian-invasion-ukraine/

Quelle Surprise! Donald [Sleezebag]’s Campaign Supports the Russian Invasion Of Ukraine

Posted at 4:00 pm on July 18, 2016 by streiff

If you've been paying attention at all the title was a rhetorical question.


The [Sleezebag] campaign worked behind the scenes last week to make sure the new Republican platform won’t call for giving weapons to Ukraine to fight Russian and rebel forces, contradicting the view of almost all Republican foreign policy leaders in Washington.

Throughout the campaign, [Sleezebag] has been dismissive of calls for supporting the Ukraine government as it fights an ongoing Russian-led intervention. [Sleezebag]’s campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, worked as a lobbyist for the Russian-backed former Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych for more than a decade.

Still, Republican delegates at last week’s national security committee platform meeting in Cleveland were surprised when the [Sleezebag] campaign orchestrated a set of events to make sure that the GOP would not pledge to give Ukraine the weapons it has been asking for from the United States.

Inside the meeting, Diana Denman, a platform committee member from Texas who was a Ted Cruz supporter, proposed a platform amendment that would call for maintaining or increasing sanctions against Russia, increasing aid for Ukraine and “providing lethal defensive weapons” to the Ukrainian military.

“Today, the post-Cold War ideal of a ‘Europe whole and free’ is being severely tested by Russia’s ongoing military aggression in Ukraine,” the amendment read. “The Ukrainian people deserve our admiration and support in their struggle.”

[Sleezebag] staffers in the room, who are not delegates but are there to oversee the process, intervened. By working with pro-[Sleezebag] delegates, they were able to get the issue tabled while they devised a method to roll back the language.
 ...
 That amendment was voted on and passed. When the Republican Party releases its platform Monday, the official Republican party position on arms for Ukraine will be at odds with almost all the party’s national security leaders.

“This is another example of [Sleezebag] being out of step with GOP leadership and the mainstream in a way that shows he would be dangerous for America and the world,” said Rachel Hoff, another platform committee member who was in the room.

For any decent person, this should have been a no-brainer on every possible level. Russia is an international troublemaker with no foreign policy larger than instigating crises in the hopes that one of them might present a opportunity that Russia can capitalize on. Russia has harassed US diplomatic staff inside of Russia. It runs a rapacious intelligence service that seems like it resorts to violence out of nothing more than a desire to stay in practice.

Paul Manafort, the alleged Russian mob fixer and Donald [Sleezebag] campaign chairman, has been a lobbyist for people connected to Putin for a decade. While Donald [Sleezebag] is a fanboi of totalitarians, Manafort has made his living by making genocidal lackwits and their like seem respectable. Whether or not Manafort financially benefits from this decision is unknown. What is very well known is that supporting the Russian invasion of Ukraine is not in the best interests of the United States, of the EU, or of NATO.

This, folks, is what you have to look forward to in a Donald [Sleezebag] presidency: foreign policy devoid of pragmatism or principle but perhaps with a nice, tidy profit involved.

[Rusty Edge]

Here's one about Hillary-

https://theintercept.com/2016/07/18/hillary-clintons-citizens-united-pledge-doesnt-matter-her-small-donor-matching-pledge-definitely-does/


Hillary Clinton’s Citizens United Pledge Doesn’t Matter; Her Small-Donor Matching Pledge Definitely Does


Jon Schwarz
July 18 2016, 2:02 p.m.

This weekend, Hillary Clinton released a video in which she made specific commitments to reform the U.S. campaign finance system. Unfortunately, she put the least important parts first and the most important part last:


Today I’m announcing that in my first 30 days as president, I will propose a constitutional amendment to overturn Citizens United and give the American people, all of us, the chance to reclaim our democracy. I will also appoint Supreme Court justices who understand that this decision was a disaster for our democracy. And I will fight for other progressive reforms including small dollar matching and disclosure requirements.

Presidents play essentially no role in amending the Constitution. Any amendment Clinton proposed would have to be passed by a two-thirds majority in both the House and Senate, and then would have to be ratified by the legislatures of three-fourths of the states.

That’s never going to happen. The U.S. has amended the Constitution just once in the past 45 years, with the non-earthshaking 27th Amendment prohibiting Congress from voting itself a pay raise that takes effect before the next election. (Moreover, the 27th Amendment was submitted to the states in 1789; it then took 203 years for three-fourths of the states to ratify it in 1992.)

So Clinton’s constitutional amendment pledge is empty grandstanding. Citizens United will either be overturned by the Supreme Court, or it will remain law.

On the other hand, Clinton’s pledge to “fight” for small-donor matching funds is genuinely important. Over the past several years, almost all Democrats in the House and many in the Senate have signed on in support of the idea, and it would change the dynamics of money in politics in a way that even overturning Citizens United would not.

The concept is straightforward: Small donations to candidates for Congress or president would be matched by public funds at some high ratio.

A bill introduced by Rep. John Sarbanes, D-Md., would match donations up to $150 at a ratio of 6-to-1. So if your neighbor were running for Congress and you donated $50 to her campaign, she would receive an additional $300, for a total of $350.

Even better, if candidates completely renounce taking any donation over $150, Sarbanes’s law would increase the matching ratio to 9-to-1. So if your neighbor were running a campaign fueled purely by small donors, and you gave $50, she’d receive an additional $450, for a total of $500.

As Sarbanes explained in an interview last year, this would make it more valuable for a representative to attend a house party in his or her district with 30 small-donor constituents than to attend a K Street fundraiser.

Small-donor matching funds would also make a huge difference in presidential politics. Bernie Sanders would have out-raised Clinton almost 2-to-1 in the 2016 Democratic primary with such a system. Moreover, the extra money from small-donor matching would have swamped the money available from Super PACs for both Democrats and Republicans.

So if Clinton is elected next year, don’t judge her commitment to changing big money politics by her pledge on Citizens United. Look at whether she puts real political capital behind making small-donor matching funds a reality.

[Rusty Edge]

One about the floor fight at [Sleezebag]'s Coronati- er Convention.

I tried to explain this one to my wife. I came from a closed primary state, and she came from an open primary state. She'd say I don't understand why Colorado walked out, and I'd explain some more.  Finally she said -

"So the law and order guy ([Sleezebag]) doesn't want to play by the rules."

Exactly so!

http://www.cnn.com/2016/07/18/politics/rnc-procedural-votes-rules-committee/

[Rusty Edge]

Okay, I never saw this one coming-

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/onpolitics/2016/07/19/melania-T rump-republican-convention-speech-plagiarism/87278088/

Here's the excerpt from Obama in 2008:




"And Barack and I were raised with so many of the same values: that you work hard for what you want in life; that your word is your bond and you do what you say you're going to do; that you treat people with dignity and respect, even if you don't know them, and even if you don't agree with them.

"And Barack and I set out to build lives guided by these values, and to pass them on to the next generation. Because we want our children — and all children in this nation — to know that the only limit to the height of your achievements is the reach of your dreams and your willingness to work for them."

And here's the passage from T rump's remarks Monday night that came under scrutiny:




“From a young age, my parents impressed on me the values that you work hard for what you want in life, that your word is your bond and you do what you say and keep your promise, that you treat people with respect.

They taught and showed me values and morals in their daily lives. That is a lesson that I continue to pass along to our son. And we need to pass those lessons on to the many generations to follow. Because we want our children in this nation to know that the only limit to your achievements is the strength of your dreams and your willingness to work for them.”

IT GETS WORSE-

Matt Lauer was on the plane with the royal couple beforehand, and he asked her is she was nervous about her speech later tonight, and had she been rehearsing? Her answer was that she only read it once, because she wrote it herself.

Well, I can only conclude that she is Michelle Obama's speech writer, and is secretly a dirty Democrat.

I suppose the alternative explanation is that she is a liar, which casts suspicion on the part where she said Donald wasn't prejudiced against Moslems or Mexicans.

[Buster's Uncle]

I take it we're talking about the current Mrs. Pig ripping off Mrs. Obama?