It’s funny because it’s not even clearly true about Trump or Cruz.
His own party won’t unite behind his campaign. Time to get some new policy ideas, GOP.
2 Likes
Googling “John Oliver” now shows nearly every major news outlet in the country reporting that Oliver impeached — even “re-branded” — Donald “Drumpf” last night.
Ryan Reed wrote for Rolling Stone:
Watch John Oliver Annihilate Donald Trump, Re-Brand ‘Drumpf’
‘Last Week Tonight’ host calls Republican frontrunner “litigious serial liar with a string of broken business ventures and the support of a former Klan leader”
…
And WaPo:
…We cannot keep being blinded by the magic of his name,” Oliver said. Of “Drumpf,” he added: “It’s the sound produced when a morbidly obese pigeon flies into the window of a foreclosed Old Navy.”
…
3 Likes
I think that’s a totally fair thing for him to say. Of course he’d have to research the KKK to make sure he knows what to say about them.
It’s not like Trump has ever made any knee-jerk unresearched comments about other groups like Muslims, Mexicans, Chinese, women, other candidates, prisoners of war, or the Pope, right?
5 Likes
New policy ideas? How about any? Seriously, when was the last time the GOP came up with anything new? 1980?
3 Likes
That is an interesting question.
Aren’t all the big conservative economic ideas Calvin Coolidge retreads? Even Reconstruction Era?
Give corporations constitutionally protected status.
Coerce local economies to sell raw produce and commodities.
Coerce local economies to borrow to purchase and distribute manufactured goods.
Federally support owners and loaners with hard money, sound bond interest, low labor costs and just enough unemployment.
Did I misstate or omit anything?
2 Likes
12 Likes
1 Like
The Guardian reported this morning:
…[T]here was a strange Trump victory-rally-slash-press-conference that ran interminably long.
What made it strange was New Jersey governor Chris Christie, who endorsed Trump last Friday, and introduced him and then stood behind him the whole time.
But the look on Christie’s face was one of doom. The internet noticed.
3 Likes
It bears reposting here in all its glory.
3 Likes
Nate Silver examines whether and how to stop Drumpf nomination before convention:
All of this is speculative, and unavoidably so, because we haven’t had a contested convention since the modern primary era began in 1972.
My point is simply that anti-Trump Republicans ought to look for ways to test their voters’ resolve to back Trump.
They could develop better anti-Trump advertising campaigns, which have received shockingly little financial backing so far.
Even if they can’t push Trump’s opponents out of the race, they can push back against a media-driven coronation of Trump or a premature consolidation around him.
They ought to make Trump fight like hell for the nomination through all 50 states. But if he seems to have earned it, they probably shouldn’t count on taking it away from him.
Is that emotion mixed into his beans? I hope so.
1 Like
If they try to sabotage Trump after he wins a plurality (and he will, if not an outright majority), they’ll have complete revolution in their party. Trying to force him out in the convention and supplanting him with someone else (Who? Ryan? Romney?) will be an utter disaster for them.
They’re better off letting him be the candidate, spending their money on the down ticket races and hoping he goes down in flames. I think they’d rather have Clinton as President and obstruct her in Congress than have to defend Trump.
5 Likes
We could have said this about the dems in '68. Were progressives and feminists right to reject LBJ and Humphrey? Both sides can be argued credibly.
For '16, who do we mean by they? Which emerging GOP stakeholders consolidate their hold on party fundraising machinery with a Drumpf nomination? Which have their institutional power diminished?
In realignment, the identity of the GOP will be disputed and the costs and benefits are unpredictable.
In other words, it’s Game of Thrones, GOP edition.
3 Likes
All of this illustrates the problem with a two-party system. The coalitions are too broad, and people are asked to make too many compromises to support someone they don’t actually agree with much. Eventually, enough people get fed up and it breaks down. On both sides.
I’d rather have a ceremonial president, and have the power vested in congress, replace the two parties with lots of smaller ones, have multi-representative districts, get rid of the gerrymandering, enact single transferrable voting and term limits, and ditch the mid-terms.
But that’s not happening any time soon. Or ever.
4 Likes
This is true. Ever visit a MENSA forum? Skip the puzzles and head straight for the lounges. Plenty of racist ill-informed BS. I’m not even talking about debates about race and intelligence. Just people holding forth on the most ridiculous political positions.
10 Likes
6 Likes
Donald Trump Jr grants radio interview to prominent white supremacist
Eldest son of Republican presidential candidate will be guest of honor on The Political Cesspool, called ‘primary radio nexus of hate in America’
2 Likes
Americans, Brace Yourselves for the Bunga Bunga
(you might need to be quick at the old ctrl-a, ctrl-c before the nag screen comes up)
Now that Super Tuesday has brought the Republican nomination, and possibly the White House, within the grasp of Donald Trump, my home country of Italy may have a few lessons to offer America in dealing with his particular brand of leadership. No, not from our time under Mussolini — though Il Duce’s unexpected relevance in an American presidential campaign in 2016 is indeed unsettling. I’m thinking rather of what Italian politics suffered during the 1990s and 2000s, when we elected a billionaire with an abrasive style and a populist flair to govern us. The name of our Trump was Silvio Berlusconi and — spoiler alert — he did not make Italy great again.
It’s unnerving how alike the Republican front-runner and the former Italian prime minister are: skillful practitioners of political expediency, proud makers of shady deals, and unrelenting peddlers of their own cause. “Trump is Berlusconi in waiting, with less cosmetic surgery. Berlusconi is Trump in senescence, with even higher alimony payments,” columnist Frank Bruni wrote in the New York Times. Also in the Times, Italian author Beppe Severgnini didn’t mince words: “Both are loud, vain, cheeky businessmen, amateur politicians and professional womanizers. Both have a troubled relation with their egos and their hair.” In the Washington Post, Rula Jebreal noted, with more garb, that “like Berlusconi in Italy, Trump has built a political campaign employing unvarnished language and jaundiced humor.”
6 Likes
Drifting topic here, but…
In my youth, before such things as web forums, I went to a couple MENSA meetings out of curiosity. I expected, I dunno, a bunch of bright interesting people. What I found was pretty much the same assortment of schlubs you’d find anywhere, heavily weighted towards people who like to go to meetings; it should have been no surprise. I’ve ignored them ever since.
My lifetime experience has been that if you can narrow down a pool to the really really bright people then you do start finding a higher proportion of genuinely interesting people and “happy mutants”, but the top 2% isn’t nearly enough to do it. You have to get out at least past the 3-sigma range (0.1% or above) to find people who think in significantly more interesting ways, and probably measuring purely by IQ tests doesn’t do it.
Also, the genuinely bright people I’ve known have still been almost as likely as the average person to weirdly screw up their lives in one way or another, or to have some area they’re spectacularly stupid about. For public examples, think about Richard Dawkins on feminism, for example. Hoo boy.
10 Likes
Orthogonal at best. I think above a certain point it’s a distinct negative for the happy part (I suspect this isn’t a problem for Trump).
I also think a lot of Trump supporters see the news but think it’s all a bunch of special-interest driven lies. That’s been the position of the right wing for decades now. It’s no wonder people have picked up on it.
My father on MENSA: “They are happy to take your money in exchange for saying, ‘You’re a bright fellow.’”
Only someone who was top 2% would be dumb enough to think that top 2% is something to brag about (But again, we aren’t talking about Donald Trump here).
8 Likes
A CBC story has even more wonderful quotes.
3 Likes
