US Presidential Contenders

[vonbach]

The "majority" they are "importing" from the third world tends not to support things like gay marriage and abortion, what with them being heavily Catholic.

Just look at the countries they come from. They are all socialist third world countries.
They aren't "natural conservatives." They vote themselves more money.
In this case our money. "Socialism works until you run out of other peoples money."

[Buster's Uncle]

You know, there's a point in there underlining the schizophrenia of the Republican party.  The Cheney administration sided with big business interests every. single. time., no matter what.  You're possibly to young to have been aware of the business where they backed regulations that considerably extended how far into the US Mexican truckers were allows to go before they had to stop and off-load their cargo.  I don't have to have watched Lou Dobbs (or any of the openly Mexican-hating element) around then to know how that went over with their (frankly Mexican-hating) base.  It was just a terrible political move.  But that's the Bush occupation all over for you; business interests always won with them, and business likes cheap labor.

Yeah, I didn't start to get into politics until I was about 16, so most of my knowledge comes from reading about past events rather than remembering/experiencing their effects. The only political stuff I remember from before then was mostly racism: I'm related to several illegal immigrants, although I myself am legal. I remember my dad getting stopped for a lot of "random" checks at the airport for being brown, the only Bush policies I remember were post 9/11 racism.

Mind-bogglingly, though, many of my Mexican relatives are hardcore conservatives. Hell, some of my illegal-alien relatives are now hardcore conservatives that themselves hate illegal immigrants now. That's Fox News for you.

I actually see the sense in that, and why the talking heads are obsessed with latins this week - they've lost the blacks pretty much forever, or until a lot more blacks aren't poor. 

Latins?  How can any good hardcore old-school Catholic not find some attraction to the social conservative wing of the right, if only the social conservatives weren't the racists too?

(I know I'm offending  many conservatives reading, and I appologize for that; it's just the facts as I know them, and I WILL tell some stories from things I've seen and heard in my life if I'm challenged on this point.)

I actually see the sense in that, and why the talking heads are obsessed with latins this week - they've lost the blacks pretty much forever, or until a lot more blacks aren't poor. 

Latins?  How can any good hardcore old-school Catholic not find some attraction to the social conservative wing of the right, if only the social conservatives weren't the racists too?

(I know I'm offending  many conservatives reading, and I appologize for that; it's just the facts as I know them, and I WILL tell some stories from things I've seen and heard in my life if I'm challenged on this point.)

You hit the nail on the head there. I just wish my relatives would have different priorities. But they care more about mandating Christian morality than ensuring their own wellbeing against racists.

[Lorizael]

The "majority" they are "importing" from the third world tends not to support things like gay marriage and abortion, what with them being heavily Catholic.

Just look at the countries they come from. They are all socialist third world countries.
They aren't "natural conservatives." They vote themselves more money.
In this case our money. "Socialism works until you run out of other peoples money."

You'll note I was responding to your claims about gay marriage and abortion, not anything to do with socialism. You're only conflating the two because it's much easier to hate one big bloc of people than many individual blocs.

[Rusty Edge]

Didn't watch. Not that I don't care so much as I can't stand you know who and would rather read about it.

Nice article, which reminds me that I can actually annoy Hillary and support the idea of a Constitutional Amendment to overturn the Citizen's United decision, by donating to Bernie.  That could happen if the PACS annoy me with their ads.

Is it just me, or is she looking younger and younger since she entered the race?

[Buster's Uncle]

Beats me - but she's looked a lot worse than she looked tonight.


Other apparent sound bite of the night: Lincoln Chafee criticized Clinton's use of private email while secretary of state, saying it hurts U.S. authority. Moderator Anderson Cooper asked for Clinton's response, to which she replied, "no."


I'm curious, given what the talking heads and various people are saying on the innerwebs -someone actually called it an adults' debate- how this is going to affect the national dialogue and the laughable pie-fight on the right.

The Democrats, in typical form, have been idiots to surrender the stage for so any months this way...

[Rusty Edge]

Beats me - but she's looked a lot worse than she looked tonight.

Yes, she looked good. That normally happens to presidential candidates. The gray goes away. Sometimes the wrinkles. Remember when Mondale got a nose job "For my sinuses" ? Or Sarah Palin's designer glasses and clothes?

The Democrats, in typical form, have been idiots to surrender the stage for so any months this way...

Yes, I agree. Our local NBC affiliate still managed to make their news coverage of the Democratic debate about the Republican frontrunner and his Tweets.

Well from what I read Hillary was her lawyerly self, and Bernie was normal passionate and sincere self.

One thing that disturbed me a little was the talk about free college for all, which can't be cheap. I don't know if this is aimed at buying votes, recruiting campaign workers, just a well intentioned ideal about universal opportunity, or a master scheme to perpetuate democratic power by pouring money into professor's, grad students' and union worker's pockets, and  who will in turn indoctrinate future generations, donating both time and money back to the Democratic party..

Anyway as a reporter pointed out, universal college subsidies are regressive, as opposed to doing it by merit or by need. It takes taxes from average working families to give freebies to the rich kids.

[vonbach]

Bernie Sanders: "I think the secretary's right ... the American people are sick and tired of hearing about your damn emails!"

She should be in jail over it. Not running for office.

[vonbach]

Bernie Sanders: "I think the secretary's right ... the American people are sick and tired of hearing about your damn emails!"

She should be in jail over it. Not running for office.

You'll note I was responding to your claims about gay marriage and abortion, not anything to do with socialism.

Like I said look at their countries they don't exactly act conservative in their home countries.
We don't get a vote on either issue regardless. We have judges legislating from the bench.

[Unorthodox]

Bernie Sanders: "I think the secretary's right ... the American people are sick and tired of hearing about your damn emails!"

She should be in jail over it. Not running for office.

She broke no law. (at least not the LETTER of any laws)

Should there be a law?  Yep. 

Why wasn't there a law when the issue of private email servers being used to circumvent official recordkeeping laws had come up in both the original Clinton administration and Bush Jr administration? 

Why is the focus not on CREATING A LAW that would solve this problem going forward?  Nope, we're just going to point fingers and let it happen again. 

In fact, did you know the Hatch Law mandates Government officials HAVE to use a private email server for at least SOME of their business?  Because you can't use the gubment server for "political" use. 

So, we've had this problem going on 20 years now, and we're still just going with the status quo.  Lovely.  See you next administration when someone uses a private email server and "loses" emails. 

[Buster's Uncle]

The Republicans’ Incompetence Caucus
The New York Times
David Brooks   OCT. 13, 2015



The House Republican caucus is close to ungovernable these days. How did this situation come about?

This was not just the work of the Freedom Caucus or Ted Cruz or one month’s activity. The Republican Party’s capacity for effective self-governance degraded slowly, over the course of a long chain of rhetorical excesses, mental corruptions and philosophical betrayals. Basically, the party abandoned traditional conservatism for right-wing radicalism. Republicans came to see themselves as insurgents and revolutionaries, and every revolution tends toward anarchy and ends up devouring its own.
 
By traditional definitions, conservatism stands for intellectual humility, a belief in steady, incremental change, a preference for reform rather than revolution, a respect for hierarchy, precedence, balance and order, and a tone of voice that is prudent, measured and responsible. Conservatives of this disposition can be dull, but they know how to nurture and run institutions. They also see the nation as one organic whole. Citizens may fall into different classes and political factions, but they are still joined by chains of affection that command ultimate loyalty and love.

All of this has been overturned in dangerous parts of the Republican Party. Over the past 30 years, or at least since Rush Limbaugh came on the scene, the Republican rhetorical tone has grown ever more bombastic, hyperbolic and imbalanced. Public figures are prisoners of their own prose styles, and Republicans from Newt Gingrich through Ben Carson have become addicted to a crisis mentality. Civilization was always on the brink of collapse. Every setback, like the passage of Obamacare, became the ruination of the republic. Comparisons to Nazi Germany became a staple.

This produced a radical mind-set. Conservatives started talking about the Reagan “revolution,” the Gingrich “revolution.” Among people too ill educated to understand the different spheres, political practitioners adopted the mental habits of the entrepreneur. Everything had to be transformational and disruptive. Hierarchy and authority were equated with injustice. Self-expression became more valued than self-restraint and coalition building. A contempt for politics infested the Republican mind.
 
Politics is the process of making decisions amid diverse opinions. It involves conversation, calm deliberation, self-discipline, the capacity to listen to other points of view and balance valid but competing ideas and interests.

But this new Republican faction regards the messy business of politics as soiled and impure. Compromise is corruption. Inconvenient facts are ignored. Countrymen with different views are regarded as aliens. Political identity became a sort of ethnic identity, and any compromise was regarded as a blood betrayal.
 
A weird contradictory mentality replaced traditional conservatism. Republican radicals have contempt for politics, but they still believe that transformational political change can rescue the nation. Republicans developed a contempt for Washington and government, but they elected leaders who made the most lavish promises imaginable. Government would be reduced by a quarter! Shutdowns would happen! The nation would be saved by transformational change! As Steven Bilakovics writes in his book “Democracy Without Politics,” “even as we expect ever less of democracy we apparently expect ever more from democracy.”

This anti-political political ethos produced elected leaders of jaw-dropping incompetence. Running a government is a craft, like carpentry. But the new Republican officials did not believe in government and so did not respect its traditions, its disciplines and its craftsmanship. They do not accept the hierarchical structures of authority inherent in political activity.

In his masterwork, “Politics as a Vocation,” Max Weber argues that the pre-eminent qualities for a politician are passion, a feeling of responsibility and a sense of proportion. A politician needs warm passion to impel action but a cool sense of responsibility and proportion to make careful decisions in a complex landscape.

If a politician lacks the quality of detachment — the ability to let the difficult facts of reality work their way into the mind — then, Weber argues, the politician ends up striving for the “boastful but entirely empty gesture.” His work “leads nowhere and is senseless.”

Welcome to Ted Cruz, Donald [Sleezebag] and the Freedom Caucus.
 
Really, have we ever seen bumbling on this scale, people at once so cynical and so naïve, so willfully ignorant in using levers of power to produce some tangible if incremental good? These insurgents can’t even acknowledge democracy’s legitimacy — if you can’t persuade a majority of your colleagues, maybe you should accept their position. You might be wrong!

People who don’t accept democracy will be bad at conversation. They won’t respect tradition, institutions or precedent. These figures are masters at destruction but incompetent at construction.

These insurgents are incompetent at governing and unwilling to be governed. But they are not a spontaneous growth. It took a thousand small betrayals of conservatism to get to the dysfunction we see all around.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/13/opinion/the-republicans-incompetence-caucus.html?ribbon-ad-idx=4&src=me&_r=0

[Rusty Edge]

As for the Clinton e-mails-
Surely the NSA has a copy, why doesn't Congress ask for it? After all, the NSA owes their existence to Congress.

I've concluded they don't really want them. They want to keep the issue simmering through the election, and keep her doing the lawyer dance. That neutralizes her efforts to become "one of us."

[vonbach]

She broke no law. (at least not the LETTER of any laws)

Should there be a law?  Yep. 

There is a law and its actually pretty strict. You can just mishandle classified information.
It doesn't matter if she knew they were classified or not or if it was marked classified or not.
From what I've heard of that case if you or I had done what she'd done we'd be in jail right now.

[Unorthodox]

*sigh*

The law governing the use of the personal server is the Hatch Law.  From 1939.  Ludicrously out of date.  I contend allowing private servers at all should be against the law. 

I'm sure you know more on how classified info is handled than I do.  However, thus far, nothing was classified at  the time she sent it.  Some has since been deemed so, but she was still in the clear.  Now, we can't tell if she secreted any off the server prior to investigation...which goes back to my contention.     

[Buster's Uncle]

Protip:  a certain AC2 member -I won't say who- regularly handles classified information as part of his or her job...

[vonbach]

The law governing the use of the personal server is the Hatch Law.  From 1939.  Ludicrously out of date. 

From what I see its still against the law.  Either she was ignorant of the law and incompetent or she was flat out dishonest.
Then theres the issue of the "deleted" emails. That in itself is a a crime.
Either way it doesn't reflect well.