The Politics Thread

[ThePrinceOfSunspear]

Marco smoothly lied his way out of several sticky/uncomfortable questions. That being said he absolutely SLAYED Jeb Bush. And he did himself a lot of good. His line about Hillary Clinton and the Benghazi hearing was quite telling. In short, I came away very worried about a Rubio/Clinton match up. He seriously is a big threat.

 

CNBC made an absolute fool of themselves and the moderators were a joke. John Harwood practically told Carly Fiorina her time was up and then paused and said "oh okay go ahead". As if he had a mike in his ear and was literally getting instructions from someone backstage to let her proceed with her latest rant disguised as an explanation. 

 

I hope Carly Fiorina fades further into obscurity after this debate. She tried her best to go after my gurl Hillary but she's just desperate and thirsty for attention. Her and Chris Christie were beyond pathetic/obvious.

 

Cruz was a screaming clown. Trump was a clown. Ben Carson was a clueless clown. Poor Kasich looked like he was going to lose his mind. Rand Paul was boring as usual and just there. Mike Huckabee was a hypocrite per usual.

[Juliajms]

My whole issue with free tuition for all is that children are often put on a track very early in their academic careers in that type of system.  Think about how big the academic community is in the United States. It's a system with a ton of middling and even poor students going on to college. We could not pay for that , imo. My point is that I do think those people who did not excel early on deserve a chance to go on. Perhaps a change in maturity and circumstance will give them a better chance to succeed. 

 

Why would we want tax payers to subsides the educations of the upper middle class and wealthy? At the same time the system we have that pushes some poorer children into debt that they will never be able to pay back without a clear career track. It's not working.  That doesn't mean they have to go to vocational training by any means, but does putting someone in heavy debt for a degree in philosophy make sense? In the end, I think that has to stay the individuals choice, but we need to educate people better on what the kind of debt they are taking on can do to their life choices down the road. 

 

People who are naturally good students with great grades are really not the issue. There are always scholarships and grants for those types. I would know, since I didn't grow up in a working class family. I grew up in abject poverty. 

Edited October 29, 2015 by Juliajms

[marceline]

While I certainly agree that more needs to be done to make higher education affordable and to keep advanced education from leaving someone in hock for 20 years, I personally would rather see more focus on improving public K-12 education. Mr. Oh So Moderate John Kasich has run such a scam on this state with charter schools. He's funneled millions of dollars to his cronies and the schools they've started perform worse than many of the failing public schools at twice the price. Of course the media hasn't bothered to come to Ohio to interview anyone about what Kasich has done to this state so they let him sit up on the debate stage and claim that Ohio is doing well when we are 47th in job creation and have a heroin problem that's burning through the state like a wild fire. But I digress...

 

I was having a discussion online with someone about the Spring Valley assault and he asked "Why don't we hear about problems like these in other countries?" After explaining that unless you consume the media in those countries you wouldn't so the assertion is a non sequitur, I pointed out that one of the easiest ways to reduce discipline problems is to reduce class size but that means hiring more teachers and we know what Republicans think about investing in public education. Other countries have better outcomes because they treat education like a valuable necessity instead of necessary evil or profit center.

 

Re: the debate, I didn't watch so I was curious to see who the media would declare the winner. It's been interesting to see that so much of the discussion has been about the "media" that no one has been declared the winner.

[quartermainefan]

Marci Rubio was declared the winner but for the shallowest of reasons:  he delivered a prepared remark.

 

That debate was light on substance and they all spent so much time discussing how horrible the media is.   I don't know why conservatives wish to feel persecuted, but that is one of the great themes of modern conservatism--to feel persecuted.   The media tends to give them all a free pass when they lie in debates, and they give each other free passes too for some reason.   Trump outright lied on a couple of occasions about things he insists he didn't say, but his comments are right on his website.   The moderator knew where she read the statement, she just didn't want to confront Trump about it. 

 

 

[DRW50]

It doesn't get a lot of attention how repeatedly electing far right majorities to government has led a fairly progressive state like North Carolina to be slowly but surely decimated, but this particular example turns my stomach, especially as it involves a woman who made a damn fool of herself in a chilling time when W and the far right who elected him in 2004 seemed to have total power. 

 

http://www.slate.com/blogs/outward/2015/10/27/margaret_spellings_new_unc_president_is_anti_gay.html

Edited October 31, 2015 by DRW50

[DRW50]

Liberal media in action.

 

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/politico-obama-willie-horton-release

[DramatistDreamer]

Some of the Republican presidential candidates look silly with this debate manifesto.  Why don't they just go all the way and cut and paste one of J-Lo or Mariah's show riders as an example.  Word was that the candidates agreed until they disagreed.  Such a mess!

[DRW50]

Looks like another offyear bloodbath for Democrats. The far right lunatic running for governor in Kentucky, disliked by much of the party apparatus (he ran against Mitch McConnell in the GOP primary last year), won, likely due to hatred of Obama and the whole Kim Davis fiasco (cue "the gay marriage fight isn't over" media headlines, when the dumbass worthless piece of [!@#$%^&*] bigoted media are the only ones who ever said it was over IN THE FIRST PLACE). Downballot Democrats are also losing or close to losing. A human rights ordinance in Houston failed after a "men will use women's bathrooms!!!" campaign. And Republicans kept the state senate in Virginia.

 

I hope Kentucky residents on Kynect (their healthcare system) will be able to survive without it.

Edited November 4, 2015 by DRW50

[Wizzerkat]

It's very important to pay more attention to state and local races. State and local governments are getting more and more crazy in some areas as evidenced above by DRW50. These crazy, far right people are getting on my last nerve, and often I feel pretty hopeless about it all.  

 

[DRW50]

I complain so much about The Fix that I should praise them over finally having one decent writer who doesn't sound like she has the Beltway firmly placed between her teeth.

 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2015/11/04/this-colo-school-board-member-wanted-a-more-positive-curriculum-parents-just-wanted-her-out/

[DRW50]

More clickbait from some of the hackier members of The Atlantic.

 

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/11/liberals-are-losing-the-culture-war/414175/

 

Something I've noticed for years is how happy some of the "liberal media" get when the far right wins at the ballot box, especially on social issues. They get to resurrect some of their biggest old lines about how liberals are out of control and "real" "mainstream" America is speaking out. You can feel the smugness and glee throughout. I will never forget how much some of the press basked in this after the hate campaigns Karl Rove ran in 2004, how they basked in W and his "mandate." It's the same reason they get tingly over Marco Rubio. He's the closest to what they loved about W - pushing hard right policies while being sold as everyman and a cool guy (he loves Tupac!!!).

 

Won't be long before we get even further back into the "throw [minorities/gays/women] under the bus" type comments I remember so vividly from 2004 and 2005.

Edited November 5, 2015 by DRW50

[DRW50]

This campaign continues to be a shitstorm for Jeb, with the "Bush legacy" crushing him in myriad ways, now even by his own father. You can't make it up.

 

http://www.politico.com/story/2015/11/jeb-bush-defends-george-w-bush-215564

 

And a big ha-ha to media darling Chris Christie. Fuckabee only cares about shilling anyway, so I guess he will barely notice he's now even more irrelevant.

 

http://www.politico.com/story/2015/11/chris-christie-debates-2016-215554

[DRW50]

You can tell who the Beltway is gaga for when they spin this hard for Rubio and Cruz, talking about "master of facts" for Cruz and Rubio when they couldn't even work basic details.

 

http://www.politico.com/story/2015/11/fourth-2016-republican-debate-milwaukee-215694

 

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/marco-rubio-philosophers-welders

 

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/cruz-eliminate-federal-agencies

 

It's frightening to see media darling Marco keep on failing upwards. The money men and the press would do anything to get him in the White House, especially after Bush and Walker tanked. We're just getting started.

[GMac]

Agreed, the media have a hardon for Rubio.  We have another 12 months of Rubio Ass Kissing to go through.  Ugh.

 

 

[MichaelGL]

It's sad when people like Kasich and even Rand Paul seem to spew out more facts than your opponents. I can't even believe I even praised Paul, but he stated somethings that the GOP was afraid to say. Doesn't mean that I'd ever vote for him be it president or dog catcher.