In order to ensure that this thread continues to meet TL standards and follows the proper guidelines, we will be enforcing the rules in the OP more strictly. Be sure to give them a re-read to refresh your memory! The vast majority of you are contributing in a healthy way, keep it up!
NOTE: When providing a source, explain why you feel it is relevant and what purpose it adds to the discussion if it's not obvious. Also take note that unsubstantiated tweets/posts meant only to rekindle old arguments can result in a mod action.
On December 18 2015 11:54 xDaunt wrote: It's hilarious that people are actually challenging Cruz's immigration position. Absolutely no one on the pro-border control side of the debate thinks that he is anything other than one of their greatest champions. Overall, the dude's conservative credentials are absolutely unassailable. No other candidate comes close.
Rand Paul is a far better candidate than Ted Cruz. Not only does he not alienate half the country, but he is *more* "anti-Government" than Cruz is. Cruz has 0% chance to win the general. Rand would crush Clinton, not only taking the sails out of the "anti-war" contingent of the Democratic base, but also on civil liberties, he crushes. Her base would consist of feminists whose only priority is abortion, self-avowed socialist folk, and DNC partisans. Maybe Rand alienates some Neo-conservatives who would much rather see Clinton win, but he picks up way more and stops any Hillary excitement in the (D) voting base.
On December 18 2015 11:54 xDaunt wrote: It's hilarious that people are actually challenging Cruz's immigration position. Absolutely no one on the pro-border control side of the debate thinks that he is anything other than one of their greatest champions. Overall, the dude's conservative credentials are absolutely unassailable. No other candidate comes close.
Rand Paul is a far better candidate than Ted Cruz. Not only does he not alienate half the country, but he is *more* "anti-Government" than Cruz is. Cruz has 0% chance to win the general. Rand would crush Clinton, not only taking the sails out of the "anti-war" contingent of the Democratic base, but also on civil liberties, he crushes. Her base would consist of feminists whose only priority is abortion, self-avowed socialist folk, and DNC partisans. Maybe Rand alienates some Neo-conservatives who would much rather see Clinton win, but he picks up way more and stops any Hillary excitement in the (D) voting base.
Why did you even quote xDaunt if you'd rather talk about electability than conservatism? Maybe you mean to tell us that Rand's libertarian credentials are unassailable? Libertarians are known to have key policy differences from conservatives on foreign policy and social legislation, so bringing him up in this context leaves me puzzled.
On December 18 2015 11:54 xDaunt wrote: It's hilarious that people are actually challenging Cruz's immigration position. Absolutely no one on the pro-border control side of the debate thinks that he is anything other than one of their greatest champions. Overall, the dude's conservative credentials are absolutely unassailable. No other candidate comes close.
Rand Paul is a far better candidate than Ted Cruz. Not only does he not alienate half the country, but he is *more* "anti-Government" than Cruz is. Cruz has 0% chance to win the general. Rand would crush Clinton, not only taking the sails out of the "anti-war" contingent of the Democratic base, but also on civil liberties, he crushes. Her base would consist of feminists whose only priority is abortion, self-avowed socialist folk, and DNC partisans. Maybe Rand alienates some Neo-conservatives who would much rather see Clinton win, but he picks up way more and stops any Hillary excitement in the (D) voting base.
You underestimate how far-right Paul is on economic issues. Clinton is much closer to the center than Paul, even Bernie's slightly closer to the center than Paul is.
And Paul doesn't crush Clinton on civil liberties when he wants to leave everything to the states, basically allowing states to take away civil liberties (including but not limited to abortion) as they please.
But what really makes Rand Paul unelectable is his lack of charisma compared to other candidates and especially compared to his father, who went from 1-2% in the early stages of the 2008 primaries to over 20% in 2012. Rand's numbers have gone backwards.
Rand is the single most technically capable person on the GOP to pick a fight with anyone else in the GOP and win based on facts, but his lack of charisma is killing him.
In 2008, Army Reserve Capt. LeRoy Torres returned home to Robstown, Texas, after a tour in Iraq. He went back to work as a state trooper with the Texas Highway Patrol.
Torres was a longtime runner. So when a suspect took off on foot one morning, Torres sprinted after him. But something was wrong. A burning sensation in his chest hurt so bad, it almost knocked him down.
"I was able to catch up, but afterwards, my goodness, I remember just — I laid on the ground, I was so exhausted," Torres says. "One of my buddies said, 'Man, what's wrong?' I said, 'Man, I don't know. I just feel really, really tired — my chest feels really tight. I don't know.' I couldn't catch my breath."
A few years later, Torres was diagnosed with a rare disease called constrictive bronchiolitis. Scars in his lungs block the flow of air.
He's among a growing number of veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan who believe their respiratory ailments are linked to burn pits. These were acres-wide mounds of waste near bases that contained everything from batteries to vehicle scraps to amputated body parts. The refuse was usually ignited with jet fuel.
"What people don't understand is just how large some of these bases really are — I mean, they're small cities," Patricia Kime tells NPR's David Greene. She's a health care and medicine reporter for Military Times. She says soldiers reported seeing dark plumes of smoke hanging heavy in the air.
In 2008, Army Reserve Capt. LeRoy Torres returned home to Robstown, Texas, after a tour in Iraq. He went back to work as a state trooper with the Texas Highway Patrol.
Torres was a longtime runner. So when a suspect took off on foot one morning, Torres sprinted after him. But something was wrong. A burning sensation in his chest hurt so bad, it almost knocked him down.
"I was able to catch up, but afterwards, my goodness, I remember just — I laid on the ground, I was so exhausted," Torres says. "One of my buddies said, 'Man, what's wrong?' I said, 'Man, I don't know. I just feel really, really tired — my chest feels really tight. I don't know.' I couldn't catch my breath."
A few years later, Torres was diagnosed with a rare disease called constrictive bronchiolitis. Scars in his lungs block the flow of air.
He's among a growing number of veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan who believe their respiratory ailments are linked to burn pits. These were acres-wide mounds of waste near bases that contained everything from batteries to vehicle scraps to amputated body parts. The refuse was usually ignited with jet fuel.
"What people don't understand is just how large some of these bases really are — I mean, they're small cities," Patricia Kime tells NPR's David Greene. She's a health care and medicine reporter for Military Times. She says soldiers reported seeing dark plumes of smoke hanging heavy in the air.
Already trying to send a new generation of recruits to war and won't even pony up the dough to take care of the last one that went. If someone is willing to give everything, there is always someone willing to take it from them.
On December 18 2015 07:53 GreenHorizons wrote: Meanwhile, Sanders has recently passed 2,000,000 contributions. More than any candidate ever in history and is polling better than Obama was at this point nationally.
If the DNC and DWS didn't rig the debate schedule so hard, Sanders would probably be leading before the new year. The media basically ignoring Sanders (something like 50:1 Trump coverage) doesn't help either.
I'm still crossing my fingers for a Clinton implosion, though.
I think Clinton could just not say a single word between now and the primary. She'd likely win 55%+ in almost all states. I won't be surprised if Sanders wins a couple states, though. Honestly, I don't think it's so bad. I think Sanders will be the VP. Clinton is just going to pimp out Sanders so all his meme fans show up to vote.
I don't think Sanders would take a VP role, especially under Clinton. Clinton is a corporate shill, looking to feed the MIC. Even with Sanders as VP many of his supporters wouldn't vote for Clinton.
On December 18 2015 08:04 Gorsameth wrote:
On December 18 2015 08:01 Mohdoo wrote:
On December 18 2015 07:55 TheTenthDoc wrote:
On December 18 2015 07:53 GreenHorizons wrote: Meanwhile, Sanders has recently passed 2,000,000 contributions. More than any candidate ever in history and is polling better than Obama was at this point nationally.
If the DNC and DWS didn't rig the debate schedule so hard, Sanders would probably be leading before the new year. The media basically ignoring Sanders (something like 50:1 Trump coverage) doesn't help either.
I'm still crossing my fingers for a Clinton implosion, though.
I think Clinton could just not say a single word between now and the primary. She'd likely win 55%+ in almost all states. I won't be surprised if Sanders wins a couple states, though. Honestly, I don't think it's so bad. I think Sanders will be the VP. Clinton is just going to pimp out Sanders so all his meme fans show up to vote.
I think there is a decent chance Sanders would say no to a token VP ticket and run 3e party instead which could hurt the Democrats.
Sanders wont run 3rd party save for some brokered convention type game where supedelegates take away the nomination the people gave. If Hillary wins the votes Sanders won't run. Doesn't mean millions of Democrats won't write him in though.
Democrats (especially black democrats) are done voting for "the lesser of two evils". If someone doesn't earn those votes they won't get them and they will lose nationally.
Hillary doesn't seem to give a shit, so expect remarkably low turnout for her among black folks as the process rolls on.
Isn't this a similar logic to what inspired the government shut down? Better to damage the whole and send a message than to be compliant and help move things forward? I am assuming that writing in Sanders would be intended as a protest and that doing so, you would expect a GOP victory. Are you comfortable with a GOP victory if it means sending a message?
I'd probably just vote Trump and move to a remote part of Canada and prepare for the end.
If Sanders loses it wont matter who wins, it's going to hit the fan.
So if you don't get your way you're going to act like a baby? Fuck doing what's best for my country, I'm going to act like the shutdown the government guys!
In 2008, Army Reserve Capt. LeRoy Torres returned home to Robstown, Texas, after a tour in Iraq. He went back to work as a state trooper with the Texas Highway Patrol.
Torres was a longtime runner. So when a suspect took off on foot one morning, Torres sprinted after him. But something was wrong. A burning sensation in his chest hurt so bad, it almost knocked him down.
"I was able to catch up, but afterwards, my goodness, I remember just — I laid on the ground, I was so exhausted," Torres says. "One of my buddies said, 'Man, what's wrong?' I said, 'Man, I don't know. I just feel really, really tired — my chest feels really tight. I don't know.' I couldn't catch my breath."
A few years later, Torres was diagnosed with a rare disease called constrictive bronchiolitis. Scars in his lungs block the flow of air.
He's among a growing number of veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan who believe their respiratory ailments are linked to burn pits. These were acres-wide mounds of waste near bases that contained everything from batteries to vehicle scraps to amputated body parts. The refuse was usually ignited with jet fuel.
"What people don't understand is just how large some of these bases really are — I mean, they're small cities," Patricia Kime tells NPR's David Greene. She's a health care and medicine reporter for Military Times. She says soldiers reported seeing dark plumes of smoke hanging heavy in the air.
Already trying to send a new generation of recruits to war and won't even pony up the dough to take care of the last one that went. If someone is willing to give everything, there is always someone willing to take it from them.
My brother is concerned about that. The bases in both countries were crimes of civil engineering that didn't have to be designed that way.
The Democratic National Committee has told the campaign of Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont that it was suspending its access to its voter database after a software error enabled at least one of his staff members to review Hillary Clinton’s private campaign data.
The decision by the party committee is a major blow to Mr. Sanders’s campaign. The database includes information from voters across the nation and is used by campaigns to set strategy, especially in the early voting states.
The breach occurred after a software problem at the technology company NGP VAN, which gives campaigns access to the voter data. The problem inadvertently made proprietary voter data of Mrs. Clinton’s campaign visible to others, according to party committee officials.
The Sanders campaign said that it had fired a staff member who breached Mrs. Clinton’s data. But according to three people with direct knowledge of the breach, there were four user accounts associated with the Sanders campaign that ran searches while the security of Mrs. Clinton’s data was compromised.
I work in the Farm Credit industry, and I know that if a patch administered by my company caused our customers to be able to see other customers' data, the person responsible in my company would be heavily disciplined and likely fired. I find it very strange that Sanders' campaign is the only one being prevented from using the database if it was in fact caused by a software issue within NGP VAN.
Sanders' data director has been fired due to this. I'm not entirely sure I agree with that decision. The article says 4 users were associated with this - it seems reasonable to me that someone could stumble upon something weird while querying the database and ask peers to look as well to verify an issue (this isn't too far from what my job is related to). But I admit I'm biased, so I'm not going to ignore the possibility that it could be malicious rather than happenstance.
New Orleans' leaders on Thursday made a sweeping move to break with the city's Confederate past when the City Council voted to remove prominent Confederate monuments along some of its busiest streets.
The council's 6-1 vote allows the city to remove four monuments, including a towering statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee that has stood at the center of a traffic circle for 131 years.
It was an emotional meeting — often interrupted by heckling — infused with references to slavery, lynchings and racism, as well as the pleas of those who opposed removing the monuments to not "rewrite history."
Mayor Mitch Landrieu first proposed removing the monuments after a white supremacist killed nine African-American parishioners inside Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina, in June, and quickly signed the monument removal ordinance into law. He says the process to remove three of the monuments will begin within days by finding a contractor to take them down.
Anti-Confederate sentiment has grown since then around the country, along with protests against police mistreatment of black youth, as embodied by the Black Lives Matter movement.
Before Thursday's vote, Landrieu told the council and residents who gathered on both sides of the issue that for New Orleans to move forward "we must reckon with our past."
Landrieu said the monuments reinforce the Confederate ideology of slavery, limit city progress and divide the city. He used President Abraham Lincoln's famous quote: "A house divided against itself cannot stand."
The administration said it would cost $170,000 to take the monuments down and put them in a warehouse until a new location is found for them — perhaps in a museum.
During a Friday-morning interview with Donald Trump, MSNBC host Joe Scarborough was baffled by the Republican front-runner's embrace of Russian President Vladimir Putin.
"Sure, when people call you 'brilliant' it's always good. Especially when the person heads up Russia," Trump told cohost Mika Brzezinski when asked about Putin praising him as "very talented" the day before.
Scarborough pointed to Putin's status as a notorious strongman.
"Well, I mean, it's also a person who kills journalists, political opponents, and invades countries. Obviously that would be a concern, would it not?" Scarborough asked.
"He's running his country, and at least he's a leader," Trump replied. "Unlike what we have in this country."
"But again: He kills journalists that don't agree with him," Scarborough said.
The Republican presidential front-runner said there was "a lot of killing going on" around the world and then suggested that Scarborough had asked him a different question.
"I think our country does plenty of killing, also, Joe, so, you know," Trump replied. "There's a lot of stupidity going on in the world right now, Joe. A lot of killing going on. A lot of stupidity. And that's the way it is. But you didn't ask me [that] question, you asked me a different question. So that's fine."
Scarborough was left visibly stunned.
"I'm confused," the MSNBC host said. "So I mean, you obviously condemn Vladimir Putin killing journalists and political opponents, right?"
"Oh sure, absolutely," Trump said.
Several of Trump's Republican presidential rivals criticized the billionaire businessman on Thursday for saying it was a "great honor" to receive Putin's praise.
Jeb Bush, the former Florida governor, questioned Trump's foreign-policy knowledge. Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina suggested Trump visit Ukraine, where the Russian state has backed separatist rebels. And Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey said he was "really glad not to win the Putin primary."
But Friday during his "Morning Joe" interview, Trump said he always "felt fine" about Putin and touted the Russian president's poll numbers. Putin's position in his country is bolstered by the Russian government's control over much of the Russian news media.
"I always felt fine about Putin," Trump said. "I think that he's a strong leader. He's a powerful leader … He's actually got a popularity within his country. They respect him as a leader."
Trump contrasted Putin's numbers with President Barack Obama's.
"I think he's up in the 80s. You see where Obama's in the 30s and low-40s. And he's up in the 80s," Trump said. "And I don't know who does the polls. Maybe he does the polls, but I think they're done by American companies, actually."
Journalist is forced to as presidential candidate 3 times "Can you confirm that killing me if I disagree with you isn't a good thing?" I know we dislike bias in journalism, but I felt the guy was justified in getting that cleared up.
That doesn't make me more impressed with the response, really. Our candidates praising the leadership of dictator that assassinate reporters, sometimes on foreign soil, is bad. It shows a basic lack of understand what leadership is to a democratic country. Dictators like Putin don't lead, they order things to happen and remove people the oppose them.
On December 19 2015 00:27 Plansix wrote: That doesn't make me more impressed with the response, really. Our candidates praising the leadership of dictator that assassinate reporters, sometimes on foreign soil, is bad. It shows a basic lack of understand what leadership is to a democratic country. Dictators like Putin don't lead, they order things to happen and remove people the oppose them.
I think this is a little excessive. I think it's totally possible to value and praise, from a purely power/results perspective, the work that Putin has done. At the end of the day, the upper elite that make our world's leaders are athletes/competitors in a sick kind of way. The ability to manipulate, force and persuade is highly valuable and can have real consequences. I think it should be possible for Trump to fully appreciate Putin's 'athleticism' in this sense while still saying it's shitty that he kills journalists. Whether he is leading democratically or not is irrelevant. While obviously less extreme, I don't see it as any different from recognizing the career accomplishments of athletes who turned out to be rapists or murderers or that sort of thing. There is the athlete, then there is the person. Putin's career is outstandingly impressive.
EPT
