kpete
kpete's JournalCHARLES P. PIERCE: I Have Come to the Conclusion That It's Very Easy to Be a Republican Candidate
They have achieved full Palinization.BY CHARLES P. PIERCE
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I have come to the conclusion that it is very easy to be a Republican presidential candidate. First of all, to paraphrase J.R. Ewing, once you give up truth, the rest is a piece of cake. Second, and most important, you really only have to memorize one answer.
"Dr. Carson, how do you respond to the simple mathematics that prove that your tax plan was developed by marmosets?"
"Liberal media!"
"Senator Rubio, exactly how many loan sharks are looking for you down in Florida at the moment?"
"Liberal media!"........
You get the picture. The Palinization of conservative rhetoric is now complete.
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The Republican nominating process, which was a completely undisciplined wingnut buffet in 2012, now is spinning even further out of control. Every candidate is an independent operator now. Every candidate is a self-contained universe of erratically orbiting awful. There is only one answer to this problem, and you know what it is.
"LIBERAL MEDIA!"
And all say amen.
http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/news/a39304/republicans-liberal-media-palinization/
Umm. David. We remember George Bush's plans......
BoBo Redux: Who You Gonna Believe…me, or what the candidates very clearly say they are going to do.Posted by Tom Levenson at 11:18 am
Oct
30
2015
At this stage it’s probably not sensible to get too worked up about the details of any candidate’s plans. They are all wildly unaffordable. What matters is how a candidate signals priorities.
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/30/opinion/the-paul-ryan-and-marco-rubio-moment.html?action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=opinion-c-col-left-region®ion=opinion-c-col-left-region&WT.nav=opinion-c-col-left-region&_r=1
Umm. David. We remember George Bush’s plans. They signaled his priorities just fine…and he proceeded as promised to turn a robust budget surplus into the biggest upwards income redistribution in memory, along with deficits from here to Atlantis.
I had thought to fisk the whole damn column, which is full of low-hanging fruit. But really why bother? It’s all there in that don’t “get too worked up “by what alledged “wonks” actually say about the policies they wonkishly espouse. Because it’s not like they mean it.
Except they do.
And once again we see: David Brooks is a terrible public figure not because of his politics but because of his character, his willingness to be a loyal apparatchik transcribing whatever counts as pravda in that universe in which Republicans are the natural party of power.
http://www.balloon-juice.com/2015/10/30/bobo-redux-who-you-gonna-believe/#comments
The Rude Pundit: Random Impressions of Last Night's GOP Media Murderfest
Random Impressions of Last Night's GOP Media Murderfest
Just a few thoughts on the Republican debate from Boulder, Colorado (the major league one, not the farm team):
1. You can pinpoint the moment that Jeb Bush swallowed his own balls. The former governor of Florida had decided to lob his obviously scripted attack at Sen. Marco Rubio, saying that Rubio's missed votes in the Senate disappointed him as a constituent. Rubio was ready with a comeback about all the past presidential candidates who had missed votes, including John McCain. You could see that Bush realized he had brought a lace doily to a razor fight when he said about McCain, weakly, as if he wanted to vomit, "Well, he wasn't my senator." Then Rubio cut off Bush's balls and you could watch Bush swallow them when he attempted to interrupt the grandstanding Rubio with "Well, I've been--." The problem, at the end of the day, is that Jeb Bush isn't the vicious motherfucker his brother was. George W. would have come back with some remark about Rubio being new on the job...just like Barack Obama. But you got the sense, as his balls were descending his throat and into his stomach, that Jeb just wanted to say, "Fuck this." And no one would have blamed him. At this point, Jeb is a hilariously pitiable figure, a vaudeville clown, a sad sack. It's time for someone to walk him into a field and tell him to look at the rabbits.
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3. None of the candidates give a fuck about your facts. Rubio got pissed when John Harwood quoted a conservative group, the Tax Foundation, on the math behind the senator's tax plan. Ben Carson waved off the illogical math of his tax plan when it was presented to him. And Donald Trump? Your piddling truth matters not next to his undulating neck flap of fiction. Did he call Rubio "Mark Zuckerberg's personal senator"? Of course he did, but who the hell cares? Who remembers things that are your own campaign website? He loves Mark Zuckerberg. And bankruptcy? Your stupid laws let Trump businesses declare bankruptcy and get out of paying debts. Is it his fault that he dicked over so many people? Get outta here. And guns? Trump might be carrying one right now. He might have to kill someone on the wild streets of Boulder. And, sure, sure, it's a great idea to let his employees carry guns into, let's see, yeah. casinos. That's all just incredible. Amazing. Best there is. Somebody should be there to shit on Trump's face every day of his worthless life.
5. Creepy Ted Cruz, who looks like every peeping Tom, said the creepiest thing of the night: "If you want someone to grab a beer with, I may not be that guy. But if you want someone to drive you home, I will get the job done and I will get you home." He might have continued, "I might take a detour to my backwoods sodomy pit with you, but your corpse will be dropped off at your home."
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11. And, yeah, the candidates were total twat crumbs about the media. If the trio of moderators had been the ones at the Democratic debate, then, sure, you can accuse them of having gone easy on the Democrats. But most of the time, they were bitching because they hated being challenged. Whining about media unfairness is great for applause from the slavering hordes of cretins in the audience. Maybe that's all that matters to this slate of losers and human hemorrhoids. But Hillary Clinton or Bernie Sander or, hell, even Martin O'Malley would beat them stupider.
Oh please read the whole thing:
- See more at: http://rudepundit.blogspot.com/#sthash.mbA6Nq08.dpuf
This homework assignment says a lot about how America treats its history
When a sixth-grade teacher asked a black student to explain her family origins, the answers delved into a likely unexpected topic: slavery:
"The general assumption is made that everyone has some grand success story of families leaving their home country and coming to America in search of better opportunities. But the simple and plain truth is that not all of us have this story to tell and the ability to trace one's ancestry is a privilege within itself — one that most if not all black Americans do not have."
So while the responses in the assignment are witty, they're also revealing: They show the incredibly dark moments of America's past — and the policies that followed, such as segregation, the war on drugs, and mass incarceration — that still weigh on many black kids and adults today.
http://www.vox.com/2015/10/30/9640302/homework-family-origin-slavery
CNN called Fiorina a liar to her face and it was magnificent.
When Camerota asked if there’s new data to back that up, and if Fiorina should use the new data, the candidate responded with, “absolutely not,” then proceeded to blame the media for asking questions about what she says.
The nerve, really, for the media to hold candidates accountable for what they say. How dare they?
What’s most interesting about all of this is this little thing called facts, and those facts reveal that more women were working by the end of President Obama’s first term than when he came in with the worst recession since the Great Depression. According to CNN, who grabbed numbers from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (are they also part of the evil liberal media?):
“In January 2009, there were 66.5 million American women working in non-farm jobs, compared to January 2013 when there were 66.9 million. That’s an increase of over 400,000 working females in Obama’s first term.”
Sure looks as though the Obama administration that Fiorina is saying was so bad for women, was actually pretty damn good.
MORE:
http://www.addictinginfo.org/2015/10/29/cnn-host-puts-carly-fiorina-on-blast-after-repeated-lies-during-the-debate-video/
LOL!!! The Illustrated Guide to the 'Comic Book' GOP Debate
The Illustrated Guide to the 'Comic Book' GOP Debate
Judging by Wednesday's Republican debate, Donald Trump isn't the only one running a "comic book" campaign
By Matt Bors October 29, 2015
Read more: http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/the-illustrated-guide-to-the-comic-book-gop-debate-20151029#ixzz3q3sMw4hV
100 CEOs Have More in Retirement Savings Than 41% of Americans
Surprise! Most of them are white dudes.
According to a report released this week by the Center for Effective Government and the Institute for Policy Studies, just 100 CEOs have retirement accounts that total $4.6 billion—that's more than the retirement assets of 41 percent of Americans, or 116 million people. The authors used SEC filings to examine the 100 largest retirement accounts among Fortune 500 CEOs, and found that the average CEO has saved up $49.3 million for retirement. By contrast, the median balance in 401K accounts at the end of 2013 was $18,433.
Even more than the overall disparity, what caught my eye was the race and gender inequality, both at a CEO level and in the general population. The CEOs with the ten largest retirement funds were all white men, and their retirement assets dwarfed those of the top ten CEOs who were women or people of color (two women are counted in both of the ladder groups: Indra Nooyi of Pepsi, and Ursula Burns of Xerox.)
MORE, graphs & links:
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2015/10/top-100-ceos-retirement-savings-racial-inequality
