The 2016 Presidential Candidates Thread

Republican debate audio in about 2 hrs if you don't get cable: http://tunein.com/search/?query=republican debate

Cruz! (shakes head and makes a moue of distaste).

cybrguy said:

Email sent. And I emailed a couple friends who use MJ for pain.

Not understanding its value for pain is like not understanding its value for PTSD. My state won't qualify their medical for either. Stupid stupid people...

Click to expand...

................................................................................

It is crazy to not recognize pain as cannabis biggest strengths are managing pain, inflammation, nausea.
And here they are only considering INTRACTABLE PAIN so patients would have to prove their pain is intense, never goes away, and that nothing else can possible help it.

Cannabis for PTSD---not here. I did mention our vets and how cannabis is needed for their mental pain/ PTSD.
The MN Health Dept Commissioner listened to to testimony and will decide if intractable pain will be added.

Tragic if he does not recommend adding.
If added, it's just a tiny baby-step in the right direction

Intractable pain would be hard to prove. I am always in pain when walking and I have nerve damage, joint and muscle pain. I have my X-rays, MRIs and a list of surgeries and procedures that I've had. Only I know how much pain I'm having.

Well, I listened to the debate via tunein.com . I am tempted to say 2 1/2 hours I'll never get back but I must admit there is some entertainment value in these things for me. Carly Fiorina seems to live in a truth-free zone! It's amazing. Nothing she says is true. Not even 'and' and 'the'. Carson continues to sound like a guy who takes a lot of valium. At times it was clear that he was way out of his depth and he strung out platitudes in order to wait out the clock when he had no clue. Cruz told us 5 government agencies he is going to destroy and counted the Commerce Dept twice (yes, he actually did a quintuple Rick Perry belly flop! Perry himself only ever attempted a triple) . Rand Paul had a few good replies but just as often stumbled badly (his resp to climate change is: stuff happens) and came off weak on defense, which he should know is not done in republican land... Rubio pushed back effectively against Paul on defense, but otherwise played greatest hits of his stump speech. Trump was just as vague and buffoonish as ever - he'll probably retake top place in the polls now that Carson is fizzling. In foreign policy, which somehow crept into an economic debate, they all sounded dangerously amateurish. Kasich, who tried very hard, is probably out of the race. There is a sluggish quality about him, a lack of nimbleness, and some of his message is not mean enough to make it in republican wacko land.

Ya know, way back in my youth we used to have what we called 'conservative' calculations. This meant we assumed the worst might happen - that was conservative math. Today's so-called conservatives always assume maximum, unrealistic returns from tax cuts (which have never actually worked to increase collected revenue). The opposite of what we used to call conservative. This is the new republican math.

i didn't realize that Rick Santorum was running for the GOP Presidential Candidate. He's such a grey horse he's been invisible. This guy has 7 children and one with a disability, he needs to take care of his family with a regular job. He did win the Iowa Caucus last time he was running.

These candidates put so much money, time and energy into this, they will never get that all back. What drives these people to continue? Do they think that they are so great of a person, that they can be president and "make America great again"? Fox was talking after the debate about how people can't find jobs. I guess they haven't been reading the stats on the economy and how low the unemployment is. Of course not, they live in their own little universe.

The Democratic President in office has made the country better than when he came into the job. Remember Fox the economy was in the toilet when Obama came into office.

Edit
Pataki is still running?

Keep the ongoing talk about illegal immigrants, Trump wanting to send 11 million people back to Mexico. it will only help the Democrats. Trump is so rediculous. I want to hear more weird stories about Ben Carson.

Carson is an even worse joke than Trump. He is the Peter Principle candidate. He is not well-informed about politics, economics, or even science. Foreign affairs? We are supposed to trust him to learn on the job. He does not have any well-defined policies. The vague generalities he has put forward as a tax plan don't add up (nor do any repub plans at present, but still). He trims away more than 50% of government revenue and claims he will make it up by finding waste and fraud. Uh huh. Carson has a bit of a blind spot about many of the specifics of our government and constitution and seems to think separation of church and state unnecessary. He is another Herman Caine. A version of Donald Trump who appeals more to evangelicals and other Christian chauvinists and less to racists. In other words, half of republican voters are bigoted: Trump appeals to the race bigots and Carson the religious bigots. Like Trump, Carson's a candidate who does not have a prayer in the general election. Carson doesn't expect to be nominated, let alone elected. But it's all great for selling books and pumping up his speaking fees.

I have to say personal character is important to me, and I would think to most voters. I can't believe that republicans still like Carson... Trying to stab a guy that did not provoke violence towards him, chasing his mom around with a hammer.. These are seriously flawed personality traits. I don't care if it was 40 or 50 years ago.. In anger I may have told my mom I hated her a couple times in my teenaged years( and after felt really bad about it), but I never chased my mom around the house with a hammer haha.. And I don't believe the vast majority of people have ever threatened their parents with a deadly weapon. It might be that this gentle soft spoken man can snap into anger very easily... Are my concerns valid for someone running for the President of the United States, or am I just high??

It also appears likely that he fabricated a number of details in his book.. Character counts!!

CarolKing said:

i didn't realize that Rick Santorum was running for the GOP Presidential Candidate. He's such a grey horse he's been invisible. This guy has 7 children and one with a disability, he needs to take care of his family with a regular job. He did win the Iowa Caucus last time he was running.

These candidates put so much money, time and energy into this, they will never get that all back. What drives these people to continue? Do they think that they are so great of a person, that they can be president and "make America great again"? Fox was talking after the debate about how people can't find jobs. I guess they haven't been reading the stats on the economy and how low the unemployment is. Of course not, they live in their own little universe.

The Democratic President in office has made the country better than when he came into the job. Remember Fox the economy was in the toilet when Obama came into office.

Edit
Pataki is still running?

Keep the ongoing talk about illegal immigrants, Trump wanting to send 11 million people back to Mexico. it will only help the Democrats. Trump is so rediculous. I want to hear more weird stories about Ben Carson.

Click to expand...

A lot of them do it and stick with it, so they can hit the speaker circuit and sell books afterwards.

Gunky said:

Carson doesn't expect to be nominated, let alone elected. But it's all great for selling books and pumping up his speaking fees.

Click to expand...

Roth said:

A lot of them do it and stick with it, so they can hit the speaker circuit and sell books afterwards.

Click to expand...

Yup. Herman Cain is still being booked on Fox for his "expert" opinions on the candidates which in and of itself is quite comical, eh?

It seems that the Republican party and Fox has become a parody of themselves.

I will say this though. Fox Business did a helluva better job at moderating a debate than CNBC did. That was a contest that wasn't even close. Someone over at CNBC should be fired for fucking that one up big time.

lwien said:

I will say this though. Fox Business did a helluva better job at moderating a debate than CNBC did. That was a contest that wasn't even close. Someone over at CNBC should be fired for fucking that one up big time.

Click to expand...

Depend on what you think is a good debate. I think CNBC fucked up major in tone, but I don't think lobbing softballs makes for a good debate.

Fox Business GOP Debate: Here Come the Warm Jets



Gage Skidmore/Flickr
The Republican presidential candidates finally got the debate they wanted last night from Fox Business: questions that let them largely repeat their talking points, and choose their internal controversies, which largely followed the familiar grooves of Trump versus the field (with the exception of Ted Cruz) on immigration and Paul versus the field on national security. Perceptions of who “won” or “lost” will largely track where one stands on these issues and how they do and don’t contribute to Republican performance against Hillary Clinton, whose name was regularly invoked by the candidates like a witch doctor’s curse, presumably in response to her newly consolidated lead in the Democratic race.

Marco Rubio was the “winner” according to most Republican assessments (e.g., Politico’s “Caucus” of early-state GOP insiders), partly on style points and partly because he got in the most telling shots at Rand Paul’s heterodoxies on national security. Those more strictly focused on the “true conservative lane” of the nominating contest thought highly of Cruz’s performance, despite his Rick Perry-ish failure to remember the names of all five Cabinet departments he is promising to eliminate. Trump was a calmer version of his old self, and Carson may have reduced the number of people who think he’s a nice genial man with his clearly prepared but wildly irrelevant and nasty shot at HRC’s “lies” about Benghazi! in answer to a question about his own wandering memories of his youth.

On the rare occasions when the Fox Business moderators challenged the candidates, the echo-chamber nature of the conservative take on this contest became glaringly evident, as Jonathan Chait pointed out at New York:

"Early in the fourth Republican debate, Wall Street Journal editor Gerard Baker, one of the debate moderators, asked Carly Fiorina a question that cut at the heart of the rationale of every candidate on stage. Under Barack Obama, Baker noted, the United States has added an average of 107,000 jobs a month. Under Bill Clinton, it added an average of 240,000, and under George W. Bush, just 13,000 jobs a month. Economic growth is the ultimate basis for the entire Republican economic program — the inducement they can offer to explain why Americans should give up things like cleaner air, a higher minimum wage, and more generous social programs. Fiorina’s reply had no point of contact with the question whatsoever. Indeed, she said, “Yes, problems have gotten much worse under Democrats” — the exact opposite of what the question had stated — before launching into a generic denunciation of the evils of big government. The basic case for changing parties turned out to pose an obstacle that all the candidates had difficulty surmounting."

I don’t know that these candidates think it’s time to make the basic case for change as they grapple for an advantage among early-state conservative voters for whom that case is self-evident. The rest of the electorate enters their rhetoric only via electability arguments like the ones Bush and Kasich tried to make last night, and even then, a very large, perhaps majority, portion of the GOP activist base is convinced that their “team” can win and can only win via a strident message that boosts “base” turnout and polarizes white voters in a way that drives more of them than ever to the polls and into the Republican column. If Scott Walker was still in the race, he might crystallize this claim with serial boasts about his three victories in “blue” Wisconsin despite or even because of his hammer-headed attacks on the hated partisan foe. As it is, the proposition that conservative ideology is a winning proposition in the Year of Our Lord 2016 tends to become a smug assumption barely articulated in inwardly focused debates like the one in Milwaukee last night.

cybrguy said:

Depend on what you think is a good debate. I think CNBC fucked up major in tone, but I don't think lobbing softballs makes for a good debate.

Click to expand...

I didn't mean to imply that I thought that the Fox Business debate was a good debate. It wasn't but it was moderated a helluva lot better than the CNBC debate was moderated. That CNBC debate was embarrassing to watch.

Yeah, they took a very aggressive tone in the CNBC debate, and that was unnecessary and counter productive. But I worry a bit about letting the inmates run the asylum. The republicans have a tendency to attack the moderators when they can't or don't want to answer something, and it is bad to cave to them when that is what they are doing. The partisan audiences make that easier.

SNL made fun of Rachel and her Dem "Forum" format, but I really think this is a better way to do it. A lot harder with a field of 15, of course, but I see no reason why they couldn't do it over 2 or 3 consecutive nights. Don't let them make speeches, but give them all the time to answer they want. And eliminate the bare knuckle fighting they do when they are together on stage. And the moderator has a greater ability to say, "No, that isn't an answer" or "that isn't the question" or "those numbers are ridiculous". We as voters deserve a better way to learn what the candidates stand for and intend to do than we get with the virtually unquestioned bullshit they get to spew in the current debate formats...

I'm not suggesting ALL the debates should be that way. A little bare knuckle infighting is probably a good thing. But it isn't as good for understanding their positions as it is for seeing them under stress.

I liked the idea of the chime that rung when the speaker took too long speaking. It was ignored but it set the boundary.

Along the same lines as @cybrguy ..... What I'd really like to see is a commentator say 'Please answer the question'....over and over, interrupting the person answering when they break out the canned and practiced soliloquy instead of answering the question posed.

Another thing I'd like to see is the ability to turn off the microphone when the person doesn't answer the question posed or goes beyond the time allotted. I realize these things will never be allowed but that's what dreams are made of. What good does it do to set time limits and ask specific questions if the rules aren't enforced?

Yeah, out of all the debates, I think Anderson Cooper at CNN did the best job of moderating out of any of them.

I hate it when either moderators or news anchors either ask a leading question or frames their question in such a way as to either negate or support an answer that they know is forthcoming. Or, on so called "news" programs, when they bring in two people with opposing views on a subject and the anchor will side with one of them rather then being totally impartial.

What ever happened to just presenting the news without any spin whatsoever? Guess that kind of journalism is dead. It's now all about entertaining your audience and giving them what they want to hear.

lwien said:

What ever happened to just presenting the news without any spin whatsoever? Guess that kind of journalism is dead. It's now all about entertaining your audience and giving them what they want to hear.

Click to expand...

It's called NPR, and it's fantastic

GOP trying to recruit Mit Romney? They must feel a little desperate.


He's the least embarrassing? Remember the dog attached to the roof of the car.

At least we are starting to get some serious entertainment from the clowns at the top of the republican heap. Somehow we need to get our money's worth, and it looks like that is coming. I feel a LITTLE badly for the folks who actually want to vote for them, but not much. If you really see presidential politics as a game for beginners than you kinda deserve who that produces, but hey, its a free country and anyone willing to part with other people's money can play.

Added: I thought an example might be illustrative, in case anyone isn't watching...

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/wheels-finally-coming-off-trump-154900157.html

http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/carson-points-secret-info-defend-ridiculous-claim

Seriously, you just can't make this crap up.
Here's some more entertainment from the gop frontrunner:

Trump Unloads On Ben Carson In Wild Interview: Compares Him To Child Molester, Deploys Racist Tropes



Donald Trump is deploying an infamous racist trope in an effort to take down Ben Carson, a top rival for the Republican nomination.

In an interview with CNN, Trump said that Carson — who has recently overtaken Trump in some state and national polls — had a “pathological temper” and was prone to violence. He then compared Carson to a child molester.

“You don’t cure these people. You don’t cure a child molester. There’s no cure for it. Pathological, there’s no cure for that,” Trump said.

Carson discussed his struggles with violence as a boy in his autobiography, “Gifted Hands,” which was published in 1990. He described attempting to stab one of his friends and hitting another boy with a rock.

Carson also described how he overcame his issues with issues with violence as a youth to become an internationally renowned neurosurgeon.

The depiction of a black man as uncontrollably violent and dangerous is an infamous racist trope known as the “brute caricature.” According to the Jim Crow Museum of Racist Memorabilia “[t]he brute caricature portrays black men as innately savage, animalistic, destructive, and criminal — deserving punishment, maybe death. This brute is a fiend, a sociopath, an anti-social menace.”

In another racially loaded remark in the same interview, Trump said that Marco Rubio supported “amnesty” for undocumented immigrants because he’s Hispanic. Rubio co-authored a bill in the Senate that would have opened a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants. He now opposes the measure.

Trump’s campaign first gained momentum when, in his June announcement speech, he made racist generalizations about Mexican immigrants. “They’re bringing drugs, they’re bringing crime, they’re rapists,” Trump said.

Pop goes the weasel.

It was bound to happen - Trump imploding. He's in second place, he needs to show what a crazy person Ben Carson is. Who's the most crazy? Deporting 11 million Hispanics and seperating families. Building a giant wall?



Is Donald Trump Crazy?
Can Donald Trump win the 2016 Presidential Election based on this issue of illegal aliens?

I lived on the Mexican border for many years. I also lived among rednecks all over the US south. Guess who I wish we could deport somewhere else. These people have no power of reason so they can't listen to it. And their schools merely reinforce their closed minds. I know because I "taught" in many of them. And now the Syrian perp caught for the Paris bombing will become another redneck battle cry.

We are a nation of hypocrites, shopping at Walmart and hiring the contractor who uses illegals. But we are also a nation of good people who have to hide from the government and their local bad tempered rednecks. So I guess we will not know anything until the final count next Nov., who is the real majority. I am going to a neighborhood block party today. And I am active in my city's politics. I think those are the two of only two channels Americans have to make any real difference.

hibeam said:

I am going to a neighborhood block party today. And I am active in my city's politics. I think those are the two of only two channels Americans have to make any real difference.

Click to expand...

Unfortunately there is a third channel and it's called a Political Action Committee....

Donald Trump: Stay Classy!!!

Edit:
These are not real debates, and they never have been. These "Debates" are intended to introduce candidates to the nation and allow them an opportunity to expose us to their beliefs. The candidates don't really want to be reminded of past positions.

During the Dem Debate last night I was a little disheartened by Bernie's alluding to Hillary's campaign contributions from wall street as being circumspect ..... or to use Bernie's words 'They expect something in return'. I see his point but I thought we could go a little longer before the Dems start to eat their own like this. Disagree/debate policy...absolutely. Calling out something like this questions Hillary's character and if you're going to go there...don't half step it and have some hard proof.

IMO Hillary ate their lunch so I guess Bernie had to do something strong....knowing how these folks prepare.....he came in with that gun loaded because he thought he needed the fire power. It may backfire on both of them.

I don't think Bernie expects to win. I think his goal was to bring the Dems more left, at least in the platform. Just like Obama in his first election, in which he seemed further left to capture us Lefties, and moved to the middle when elected, I expect Hilary to the same. Whether Dem or Repub, 1st order of business: get the base, then move to the middle to get the Independents. We're lucky: I think we could run Barney Fife against any of the Republican candidates, and Barney Fife would win. He who wins the election controls the Supreme Court for the what, next 20 years?