US Presidential Contenders

[Dio]

Campaign Staffers Making Progress Conditioning Hillary Clinton To Replicate Emotions
The Onion
NEWS  September 16, 2015   Vol 51 Issue 37     



Staffers test Clinton’s emotional responses by reading through a list of triggering phrases such as “rising unemployment,” “first in their family to graduate college,” and “devastated by a tornado.”



BROOKLYN, NY—After several months of diligent effort, staff members working on Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign confirmed Wednesday they have made significant progress in conditioning her to convincingly recreate and convey a limited spectrum of emotions.

According to aides who drill the Democratic frontrunner for several hours each day on her emotional responses to a variety of stimuli, Clinton can now effectively exhibit concern, mild excitement, and incredulity. Intensive training is reportedly still underway on some of the more challenging-to-produce emotions, such as polite interest and personal warmth.

“The headway Hillary has made is really encouraging, especially when you consider what we started with,” said staffer Cheryl Dumás, who later added that when she began working with Clinton, the candidate was only able to fluctuate between stony neutrality and terrifying anger. “We’re very proud that she can now display a virtually indistinguishable facsimile of empathy. It’s the result of a behavioral modification technique in which we rigorously reinforce any approximations of compassion that happen to flash across her face while she listens to the concerns of voters.”

“We’re hopeful that she’ll have a functional range of 11 or even 12 emotions by the time the early primaries roll around,” Dumás added.

In her current program of operant conditioning, Clinton is reportedly shown a series of images—such as a widow crying at her spouse’s funeral, a family opening presents on Christmas morning, and former House speaker Newt Gingrich—designed to induce specific emotional responses, and depending on the appropriateness of her subsequent facial expressions and other body language, she is either rewarded or punished.

Staffers said they began the process by slowly and painstakingly pairing a correct reaction with a correct stimulus. They reportedly first trained the former secretary of state to reproduce a “happy” emotion by repeatedly showing her a photo of a small child playing with a kitten and then rubbing a soft cloth on her face while physically holding her mouth in the shape of a smile until, eventually, she could display a passable simulacrum of joy.

“There are definitely some crossed wires, like how she nods and applauds after hearing the story of a family that lost their home to foreclosure,” campaign consultant Allison Stevens said. “But it’s just a matter of time and patience. When she gets a response wrong, we spritz her in the face with cold water from a spray bottle, and when she gets one right, we let her work on her memoirs for a little bit or call her ‘Madam President’ in soothing tones—she loves that.”

“She also really likes Luna Bars,” Stevens continued. “She’ll do just about anything for a Luna Bar!”

Staff members acknowledged that Clinton would be subject to extremely rapid regression if she were not conditioned with absolute consistency. They told reporters they didn’t want her to go back to the days when people she met on the campaign trail would voice their deepest worries and she would respond to each by loudly stating, “I am feeling empathy toward you.”

“There have definitely been some setbacks,” senior aide Tim Balducci said. “Yesterday, when a reporter asked for her thoughts on the surge in refugees crossing the Mediterranean, she panicked and rapidly cycled through the eight or so responses we’d equipped her with thus far before making a painfully stilted reply. We really hope to get that ironed out before the first debate next month.”

Other campaigns have taken note of Clinton’s progress and implemented similar programs, with Chris Christie’s staffers reporting this week that they have already had some limited success in training the New Jersey governor not to bite people or defecate on the floor.

http://www.theonion.com/article/campaign-staffers-making-progress-conditioning-hil-51320

That face strikes me as peculiar.

[Buster's Uncle]

It's gas.



I like the reason Walker gave.  True or not, classy.

[Buster's Uncle]

...As in "Hey; let's some of us stop spitting into the wind and stop dividing the has-any-sense vote."..


-Except - if I was advising Christy and actually wanted him to win, I'd tell him to hang in there as long as he can - the Pig seems to be immune to shooting himself in the foot, but it's only a matter of time before he gets bored and goes home - his publicity stunt ran out of control, but he's not quite so stupid that he doesn't know that being president would cost him a great deal of his fortune, not running the business for years, or at least control of it if someone filled in well.  When he finds a pretext to throw a baby fit and go away --- you're [Sleezebag] for adults, if you're still in there.  He's stolen your thunder by being a parody of almost everything about you, only stupid and openly a bigot, like you and Sara Palin had an ugly old baby.

The anti-PC, the hard-butt law-and-order tough-talking stuff - that's you, only you actually know what you're talking about.  Hang in until his lowest-common-denominator shadow stops fouling the process.

[Yitzi]

...As in "Hey; let's some of us stop spitting into the wind and stop dividing the has-any-sense vote."..


-Except - if I was advising Christy and actually wanted him to win, I'd tell him to hang in there as long as he can - the Pig seems to be immune to shooting himself in the foot

Actually, I suspect that he is not really immune, but rather has figured out how to reverse the effects when his nominal target deserves it...and the field is full of people who deserve it, enough that he use them to recover from the exceptions like McCain.

[Buster's Uncle]

I've probably not been clear that I think Governor Christie looks pretty good standing in the back of the clown college this cycle...

Christie tells National Guard leader to slim down
Associated Press  Published September 22, 2015



Sept. 28, 2014: New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, left, and New Jersey Adjutant General Brig. Gen. Michael Cunniff, right, review troops during the New Jersey National Guard's annual Military Review in Sea Girt, N.J. (AP)



TRENTON, N.J. –  Gov. Chris Christie wants the leader of New Jersey's National Guard to shape up.

The governor has given Air Force Brig. Gen. Michael Cunniff 90 days to slim down and meet his obligations.

The action comes after Christie's staff told The Washington Post that the governor was unaware the general had been reprimanded by the Pentagon about his weight and for repeatedly dodging physical-fitness tests.

The newspaper obtained the records under the Freedom of Information Act.

Christie declined a request for an interview.

"The Governor has expressed directly to the General that his failure to meet that standard or to provide notification of his formal reprimand is both unacceptable and disappointing," Christie spokesman Kevin Roberts said in an emailed statement.

The governor has given Cunniff 90 days to slim down and "meet his obligations," Roberts wrote.

It was not clear how much weight the general must lose. Cunniff took a fitness test in November 2013, his first in more than three years. He flunked when his waist size was measured at 43.5 inches — 4.5 inches larger than what was allowed.

Cunniff declined an interview request. But the National Guard released a statement in which the general acknowledged he failed to meet the Air Force's fitness requirements in recent years.

"Many people struggle with weight control — I am not immune from this," the general said in the statement. "However, I do recognize that military members and leaders, like myself, are held to a higher standard. I take this matter seriously and am taking the necessary steps to remedy this issue," the general said.

Christie, who once called himself "the healthiest fat guy you've ever seen," secretly underwent weight-loss surgery in 2013. A band was surgically placed around his stomach to restrict how much food he could eat.

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2015/09/22/christie-tells-national-guard-leader-to-slim-down/

[Dio]

I've probably not been clear that I think Governor Christie looks pretty good standing in the back of the clown college this cycle...

Christie tells National Guard leader to slim down
Associated Press  Published September 22, 2015



Sept. 28, 2014: New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, left, and New Jersey Adjutant General Brig. Gen. Michael Cunniff, right, review troops during the New Jersey National Guard's annual Military Review in Sea Girt, N.J. (AP)



TRENTON, N.J. –  Gov. Chris Christie wants the leader of New Jersey's National Guard to shape up.

The governor has given Air Force Brig. Gen. Michael Cunniff 90 days to slim down and meet his obligations.

The action comes after Christie's staff told The Washington Post that the governor was unaware the general had been reprimanded by the Pentagon about his weight and for repeatedly dodging physical-fitness tests.

The newspaper obtained the records under the Freedom of Information Act.

Christie declined a request for an interview.

"The Governor has expressed directly to the General that his failure to meet that standard or to provide notification of his formal reprimand is both unacceptable and disappointing," Christie spokesman Kevin Roberts said in an emailed statement.

The governor has given Cunniff 90 days to slim down and "meet his obligations," Roberts wrote.

It was not clear how much weight the general must lose. Cunniff took a fitness test in November 2013, his first in more than three years. He flunked when his waist size was measured at 43.5 inches — 4.5 inches larger than what was allowed.

Cunniff declined an interview request. But the National Guard released a statement in which the general acknowledged he failed to meet the Air Force's fitness requirements in recent years.

"Many people struggle with weight control — I am not immune from this," the general said in the statement. "However, I do recognize that military members and leaders, like myself, are held to a higher standard. I take this matter seriously and am taking the necessary steps to remedy this issue," the general said.

Christie, who once called himself "the healthiest fat guy you've ever seen," secretly underwent weight-loss surgery in 2013. A band was surgically placed around his stomach to restrict how much food he could eat.

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2015/09/22/christie-tells-national-guard-leader-to-slim-down/

He looks worse for the wear as his presidental bid fails to gain traction.

[Buster's Uncle]

Do you realize we haven't had a fat president in [rolls eyes up mentally counting] about 80 years?  (If you don't count Clinton having a bad month here and there, or Nixon's jowls.)

We had NOTHING BUT fat presidents from Grant to Hover (with the exception of Wilson - Coolidge is a matter of opinion, I think) for almost 70 years straight...

[Dio]

Do you realize we haven't had a fat president in [rolls eyes up mentally counting] about 80 years?  (If you don't count Clinton having a bad month here and there, or Nixon's jowls.)

We had NOTHING BUT fat presidents from Grant to Hover (with the exception of Wilson - Coolidge is a matter of opinion, I think) for almost 70 years straight...

I know that Former President Woodrow Wilson has the most degrees of any president in the history of our country.

[Buster's Uncle]

Yes, and worked to establish the League of Nations, but a racist and not exactly a friend of freedom of speech and the constitution.  Interesting, complex, man...

[Rusty Edge]

I'm not going to rush in to praise President Wilson, but I'm going to remind our casual readers that Buncle is the first to say that you can't judge people from a century ago by today's standards.

[Buster's Uncle]

Absolutely. 

I'm still going to come down pretty hard on him for the jailing political dissenters, though.  Being right about the League of Nations does a lot to make up for it...

[Rusty Edge]

Sure, the Constitution is the president's oath, not the territory of the USA. AND, it doesn't change that fast.

[Buster's Uncle]

Religious liberty: Ted Cruz’s conservative ‘rocket fuel’
Yahoo! Politics
Jon Ward  Senior Political Correspondent  September‎ ‎26‎, ‎2015



Republican presidential candidate Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, speaks during the Values Voter Summit, held by the Family Research Council Action on Sept. 25 in Washington. (Jose Luis Magana/AP)



To watch Ted Cruz speak at a gathering of religious conservatives in Washington Friday was to more fully grasp why the Republican senator from Texas could win the Iowa caucus next year.

In two words: religious liberty. Cruz has only one rival in the Republican field — former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee — who raises the issue as aggressively. But between the two of them, Cruz has a reputation as a fighter, having tangled repeatedly with GOP leadership in Congress on a host of issues since he was elected in 2010. And the grassroots wants a brawler.

Iowa conservatives, who make up a large percentage of caucus-goers, care deeply about the escalating fight over how religious liberty will be defined in America. They were galvanized earlier this month by the jailing of Kentucky County Clerk Kim Davis, who refused to issue marriage licenses to gay couples and was held in contempt of court when she forbade other clerks to do so as well.

“It is rocket fuel,” said Bob Vander Plaats, a religious conservative leader from northwest Iowa, who was in D.C. for the annual Values Voter Summit. As Vander Plaats spoke with Yahoo News, Davis herself walked past down a hallway in the Omni Shoreham Hotel, surrounded by an entourage that included two people with small handheld video cameras. Davis, 50, was honored Friday night at the summit with a “Cost of Discipleship Award.”

The two-day Values Voter conference gathered together a number of ordinary Americans who have clashed with gay rights supporters.

Cruz, during a 15-minute speech Friday morning, whipped the audience into a state of nearly constant frenzy. He was most passionate, and the crowd was most exercised, when Cruz said in a thundering voice that he would stand against persecution of people of faith in the U.S.

“The third thing I intend to do on my first day in office is instruct the Department of Justice and the IRS and every other federal agency that the persecution of religious liberty ends today!” he shouted, gesturing vehemently with an index finger pointed down at the ground.

The crowd leapt to its feet and sustained its standing ovation for nearly half a minute. The admiration of the Values Voter attendees for Cruz was most clear in the results of the conference’s straw poll. Cruz won the contest with 35 percent. The closest Republican presidential candidates were retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson, with 18 percent, and Huckabee, with 14 percent.

Cruz has sought to appeal to Christian conservatives from the beginning of his presidential campaign. He announced his candidacy at Liberty University in Lynchburg, Va, one of the most prominent evangelical colleges in the nation.

The Values Voter Summit, organized by Tony Perkins’ Family Research Council, has been focused on religious freedom for a few years. But the issue has taken on more urgency for religious conservatives after the Supreme Court made gay marriage the law of the land this past summer.

Before the Supreme Court decision in Obergefell v. Hodges, there was already a growing list of cases in which Christians had refused to take wedding photographs, bake wedding cakes, or otherwise participate in nuptials involving gay couples. But after Obergefell, county clerks have become the latest battleground, as those who disapprove of gay marriage have refused to issue wedding licenses.

Davis’ is just the most public case, and both Cruz and Huckabee traveled to Kentucky to rally a crowd in her support on the day she was let out of jail. Davis agreed not to prevent other clerks from issuing licenses upon her release.

Incidentally, the Davis case has ended up in exactly the same compromise as conservatives and liberals ended up in Utah, only by a far more contentious route. The legislature in Utah passed a bipartisan law that allows county clerks to opt out of issuing wedding licenses to gays, as long as someone else can be found to perform the duty.

Some conservatives have criticized Davis, saying she went beyond exercising her own rights of conscience when she sought to prevent other clerks from carrying out their lawfully prescribed duties. Many believe she has hurt the cause of religious liberty rather than helping it.

“There was no need for Ms. Davis — or Gov. Huckabee and Sen. Cruz — to elevate this issue into a national fight Christians are destined to lose and, in this case, ought to lose,” wrote Peter Wehner of the Ethics and Public Policy Institute.

One attendee at the Values Voter conference, Larry Smith, 77, of Newport Beach, Calif., indicated he did not agree with Davis’ attempt to restrain her fellow county clerks from issuing licenses. But he still supported her and viewed the episode as a positive development on the whole.

“She has at least helped us focus on the issue,” Smith said.

Cruz and others like Huckabee know that many evangelicals — whatever their doubts about the details of the Davis case or Davis herself (she has been married four times and divorced three) — view the matter much like Smith does.

These politicians see the Davis case as a way to go on the offense in the debate and, perhaps more importantly, as a way to rally religious conservatives to their presidential candidacies. And this requires that they interpret Davis’ case as the potential fate of every Christian who has moral objections to homosexuality and gay marriage.

“Six months, a year ago, if I had come and said that a Christian woman was going to be thrown in jail, locked up in jail, for living her faith, the media would have dismissed me as ludicrous. That’s where we are,” Cruz said.

Cruz’s adroitness in talking about the fight over religious freedom was in stark contrast to Donald [Sleezebag]’s cluelessness about the matter. During a rambling 20-minute address, [Sleezebag] uttered six words about religious freedom, in what amounted to more of a non sequitur than anything.

“You know, freedom of religion, so important. We just don’t see it. You know, you take a look at a thing like the Iran deal,” [Sleezebag] said, and then digressed into a criticism of the Iran deal, never explaining what the connection was between the two issue.

[Sleezebag] was also loudly booed by the audience when he called Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., “a clown” and criticized his past support for comprehensive immigration reform.

Kim Bengard, 56, of San Clemente, Calif., dismissed [Sleezebag] as a pretender among the Christian conservatives and said he displayed no understanding of the fight over religious freedom.

“[Sleezebag] doesn’t get it. He’s not one of us,” Bengard said. “There wasn’t an excitement. I think the audience was more gracious than he was.”

[Sleezebag] received only 5 percent in the straw poll voting.

If [Sleezebag] loses steam — and while he still leads the field he has lost 6 points in the last week — no one is positioned to benefit more from a loss of support for [Sleezebag] more than Cruz is. Instead of criticizing [Sleezebag], he has aligned himself with the businessman, inviting him to a rally at the Capitol earlier this month to protest President Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran.

Both [Sleezebag] and Cruz have taken on Washington and positioned themselves as outsiders. But on religious freedom, the issue that is increasingly important to conservatives, there is a clear contrast between Cruz, the son of an evangelical pastor, and [Sleezebag]. And it’s a mark of Cruz’s orthodoxy as a conservative versus [Sleezebag]’s celebrity-based candidacy.

Cruz “is probably the one most people trust to do what he says he would do,” Vander Plaats said.

Before Cruz addressed the Values Voter audience, he attended a press conference organized by the Liberty Institute, a legal group that has defended Christians involved in legal disputes. The group’s leader, Texas attorney Kelly Shackelford, praised Cruz for being involved in religious liberty cases long before his political career.

“Before Sen. Cruz was ever thinking bout running for office … he was one of the best appellate attorneys in the country, and he was donating his time — literally hundreds of thousands of dollars of time — for religious freedom cases,” Shackelford said, noting their work together on legal proceedings around the case of the Mojave Memorial Cross.

Cruz stood with Navy chaplain Wes Modder, who was recently cleared by Navy Personnel Command in a case where he was accused of misconduct for counseling Marines against premarital sex and homosexuality, and with Liz Loverde, a New Jersey college student who said in 2014 that her high school forbade her to create a Christian club.

“These are real people,” Cruz said at the press conference. He spoke of a recent gathering in Iowa that he attended where a crowd of 2,500 heard from nine other individuals in religious liberty disputes. Cruz said the evidence is clear that Christians are being told they cannot exercise their faith.

“For every sneering media reporter who claims there are no threats, look in the eyes of these heroes, one after another after another, who simply stood for their faith and lost their jobs and faced persecution and faced death threats,” Cruz said.

“These threats are real. They’re growing. And yet we will stand and fight to defend our liberty. And I’ll tell you, the worse it gets the more of an awakening you’ll see,” he said.

https://www.yahoo.com/politics/religious-liberty-ted-cruzs-conservative-rocket-129941620471.html


And of course, the fundamental problem is that Cruz' religious liberty is inimical to anyone else's.  I'm gonna have to write up my Render Unto Caesar sermon one of these days.

[Buster's Uncle]

Boehner unloads on the ‘false prophets’ in his party that have made his job a nightmare
Business Insider
By Maxwell Tani  1 hour ago



House Speaker John Boehner of Ohio defends the work of the GOP during a brief news conference on Capitol Hill in Washington, Thursday, July 31, 2014  (J. Scott Applewhite/AP)



House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) did not attempt to disguise his displeasure with the hardliners in his own caucus that claimed credit for his stunning resignation.

"Face The Nation" host John Dickerson on Sunday asked Boehner about the conservative House coalition with which Boehner was constantly feuding, and whether they had unrealistic expectations.

"Absolutely they're unrealistic!" Boehner blurted. "But the Bible says beware of false prophets. And there are people out there spreading noise about how much can get done."

Boehner proceeded to list some of his accomplishments — including reducing the federal deficit and stopping major proposals to increase taxes. He noted that all were passed "over the last four and a half years with a Democrat president" — and that all were "voted against by my most conservative members because it wasn't good enough."

"Really? This is the part I really don't understand," he said.

One conservative member of Congress, in particular, came into Boehner's crosshairs Sunday — Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas).

When Dickerson asked whether Cruz was a one of the "false prophets" to whom Boehner had referred, the speaker smiled and referred to comments he made at a fundraiser in Colorado earlier this summer. There, he reportedly dismissed Cruz as a "jackass."

Cruz was one of the chief architects of the 2013 government shutdown over the Affordable Care Act, as he lobbied many conservative members of the House to oppose the legislation that funded the federal government. Boehner referred to this effort on Sunday, calling the attempt a "fool's errand." And he suggested those behind it knew they were leading a futile effort.

On Friday, Boehner announced his intention to resign from Congress at the end of October. Though he said he had been planning to step down for quite some time, many saw the timing as a bid to avert another government shutdown.

This time, House conservatives have revolted over funding for Planned Parenthood, which they seeking to defund over a series of undercover videos detailing the organization's involvement in abortion-related fetal tissue research.

Despite his criticism of members of his caucus, the speaker stopped short of labeling his caucus as dysfunctional.

"I wouldn't call it dysfunction," Boehner said. "Disagreement, yes."

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/boehner-unloads-false-prophets-party-160127128.html


Incidentally, if you want to count the pores on Boner's nose, click on the picture.  It's huge...

[Buster's Uncle]

Clinton on email controversy: a 'drip, drip, drip' of revelations
Reuters
By John Whitesides  2 hours ago



WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton said on Sunday the politically damaging "drip, drip, drip" of revelations about her use of a private email server is out of her control and she is unsure when the controversy might end.

Clinton, who has seen her lead shrivel in the race for the 2016 Democratic presidential nomination, said she has tried to be as open as possible and take responsibility for the email flap.

"It is like a drip, drip, drip. That's why I said there is only so much I can control," Clinton told NBC's "Meet the Press."

But asked if she could reassure nervous Democrats that no new email revelations would hit her campaign, she said: "I can't predict to you what the Republicans will come up with, what sort of charges and claims they might make."

Clinton compared criticism about her use of private email instead of a government account while she was secretary of state to the flood of controversies and Republican-led investigations that marked the presidency of her husband Bill Clinton in the 1990s.

"I have been involved from the receiving side in a lot of these accusations," Clinton said. "In fact as you might remember during the 90s there were a bunch of them. All of them turned out to be not true."

Clinton has apologized for the email set-up and said it was a mistake. She gave 55,000 pages of work-related emails to the State Department last year but eliminated about 30,000 emails she said were personal. On Sunday, she said she did not help her lawyers determine which ones to turn over.

"I did not want to be looking over their shoulder," she said, calling accusations she was trying to avoid transparency laws "ridiculous".

A new Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll on Sunday found Clinton's lead over top rival Bernie Sanders, a U.S. senator from Vermont, has dwindled to 7 percentage points, 42 percent to 35 percent, amid the controversy.

Asked about the hit in polls, Clinton said "what I have tried to do in explaining this is provide more transparency and more information than anybody I'm aware of who has ever served in government."

The most recent revelation was a report on Friday about an email exchange with former CIA Director, retired Gen. David Petraeus, that she did not turn over, and which occurred before she said she had set up her personal account.

Clinton said the private server was already in her house because her husband had set it up after leaving office, and she just added her account to it.

"What we had available at the time was turned over," she said. "I wasn't that focused on my email server."

(Editing by Andrew Roche)

http://news.yahoo.com/clinton-email-controversy-drip-drip-drip-revelations-153829880.html


I have to agree that it's a reaching, non-story of an attack on her...