I strenuously disagree with the implication that Cruz (and to a lesser degree, Rubio) is not an egomaniac. I don’t think Rubio has the mental capacity or drive to torch any and every progressive structure supported directly or indirectly by the US Gov’t, whereas Cruz would have the match lit and at the ready just after claiming 'merica for Jeebus.
That said, I detest all of them, and I remain amazed that such a wide swath of ostensibly Christian people would support and otherwise consider electing people who want to bar people from entering America on the basis of their faith. Perchance they skipped that whole, “How 'Merica Done Got Started and Suchlike” in grade school.
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In this election season, I keep returning to this GIF (light soothing sounds of the morning G, but with a punky, crunchy IF):
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WHOOSH
Individuals can only do so much damage.
Romneys people are motivated by predictable greed. He was my governor for a while. It was fun to watch the legislature play with him. They let him put his name on Romneycare, which was written by the D legislature.
Trumps mobs are motivated by the belief that this is FIght Club. He has never run anything NOT into the ground. And he wants to tell you about the size of his penis.
But keep defending Trump, by all means.
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I think that you’re imbuing Trump with positive qualities that aren’t really there. He is a gifted confidence man with no conscience, like a mashup of Bernie Madoff and Kim Jong Un. He knows how to win people over to his side, and has done it repeatedly to enormous profit. He couldn’t have gotten where he is without being fairly likable and compelling.
Contrast that with the outcomes this has had for those he has convinced. Investors. Students (or at least potential ones) for his university. His employees. His ex-wives. How well have ANY of these people faired over time?
He pursues nothing for the benefit of anyone besides himself. His family reputation has gotten him a long way up the ladder. In feudal times he would have amassed an army by now and made a play for the throne, but the only thing he could find like that was the presidency. You know, that office that the founding fathers deliberately created with negotiation, diplomacy, and compromise as requirements? Even without a near-completely obstructionist congress, there’s one hellacious train wreck in the offing.
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Choose the greater of two evils. Cthulhu 2016.
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I am not defending Trump, just suggesting that focussing on him and not what the Republican grandees stand for is a mistake - Romney would possibly have been a lot worse, Cruz or Rubio would be.
I suggest plenty of pols are confidence tricksters and/or less than successful businessmen. It’s why they went into politics, which rewards shiftiness. They become dangerous when the rich succeed in exploiting them.
I don’t see how a vulture capitalist can criticize Trump for shady business practices without showing himself up as a massive hypocrite.
Trump’s awful. Romney would be no better. He’s no different, he just expresses his contempt for people when he thinks the cameras aren’t rolling.
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I don’t know - the Native Americans might feel that they needed a few Trumps in the early days to sort out the Christians and decide who to allow in.
Quakers yes, Church of England possibly, Catholics and Puritans no way.
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Irrelevant. Pre Pearl Harbor we had no dog in the fight. Post Pearl Harbor we had no choice but to support Stalin.
It’s not. Take away the Superdelegates, who can change their vote at any time, and they’re about 200 delegates apart with a bunch of states that actually matter to Democrats (not the South) coming up.
She was way ahead of Obama after Super Tuesday in 2008 as well.
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There have been a lot of claims that Trump grossly exaggerates his assets. But even taking him at his word he is not in the same class as the Kochs, who control about $100 billion between them (I wouldn’t say “are worth” because, frankly, I think that taking the world as a whole they represent a net negative value.) Stephen Leacock, I think it was, who was an economist as well as a writer, observed that rich people all know their relative position in the pecking order. Trump is only hotelier rich, not full on capitalist bloodsucker rich.
Since I seem to be getting regarded as some kind of Trump apologist let me reiterate; I think that Trump is deflecting attention from the real evil and as a result the US risks eight years of far right wing politics (I won’t say “conservative”, these people are radical rippers-up of traditional values.) Look how much damage a certain Austrian managed in the same time frame. Living outside the US I’d rather have someone who would negotiate with Putin to recognise Russian Crimea in exchange for the Yalta Trump Casino than someone who would rachet up the rhetoric in the hope of an even bigger Middle East crisis and the End Times.
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Only to then later close that casino…
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I was trying to work this out the other day, because I’d heard this before.
She was ahead 1056 to 1036. But Super Tuesday 2008 was way more states (23!), and a month earlier.
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Cruz’s stated goal is to take the country back to a time of “exceptionalism” – the way things worked pre-1914, with no IRS, no income tax, an economy on the gold standard, and without all the cabinet positions that’ve been added since then. He’d eliminate the EPA & all environmental rules that constrain business and coal and oil production, and get rid of public media, NPR, PBS, and the NEA. He’s a scary freak.
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I read that as “rewards shittiness” but I guess the statement works either way.
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It would appear that I know too much WW2 history to understand the point you were trying to make and that @AcerPlatanoides clearly thought made sense.
Lend-Lease to the Soviet Union began in October 1941, Pearl Harbor was December of that year. Roosevelt decided to support the Soviet Union when Hopkins reported that it would not, in fact, collapse under the German onslaught.
If you take the time to consult the books in a little more detail you will also discover that the Soviet Union did not join the US in declaring war on Japan.
The two US wars - in the Pacific and Europe - were largely unrelated. Indeed, several senior US officers thought that the focus should be 100% on Japan until it was defeated.
So Pearl Harbor was actually irrelevant - to use your word - to the decision to support the Soviet Union against Hitler, and my knowledge of that fact caused me not to understand what you were getting at.
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I do think Cruz is worse than Trump, but they both want to abolish the EPA. They both are Global Warming denialists who would do nothing. They both have deranged massively regressive tax plans. They both would end Obamacare.
Cruz is worse because he’s intelligent, a rabidly ideological and driven theocrat, and is more dangerous as a result of that. When he gets near the edge of the cliff he shouts “Praise Jesus” and hits the gas. But Trump is only moderate by comparison to some of the more extreme positions of the people he’s up against, and is more extreme than them on others - he wants to put tariffs on Chinese goods to maximize global economic chaos, his immigration stance is far to the right of the pack, and he’s an open supporter of torture and war crimes.
He’s also a delusional narcissistic idiot completely unfit to serve in office emotionally, intellectually, temperamentally, or in terms of practical experience and would be a massive and dangerously unpredictable disaster. Cruz is worse because he’d probably have some successes at dismantling the secular state and pushing through shockingly terrible policy that the House and make Senate would go along with, while Trump would be too incompetent to manage to get much done (though he’d break a lot trying).
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Yes, but what would you say about him if the microphone wasn’t still on?
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That’s a good article, but it pretty much confirms that Sanders is done. Even if he did win the popular vote by a small margin, Clinton would still win. Sucks, but that’s the way it is.
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