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U.S. Politics: mid summer edition


TerraPrime

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I'm thinking more of a 17 person cage match to the death, Thunderdome style. It would be glorious watching all of them bungee jumping around grabbing weapons off the cage trying to decapitate each other. Firiona and Trump team up to take on all comers and she backstabs Trump just as he finishes off Ted Cruz with a Mortal Kombat finishing move, but can't bring herself to strike the death blow because Trump is, after all, a simple minded idiot. Then Obama and Aunty Entity ride in on the Hell on Wheels rig chanting "bust a deal, face the wheel" and Firiona is exiled to being the perpetual CEO of Hewlett-Packard, cursed to forever run the corporation into the ground but never being able to collect her golden parachute severance.

 

Openly fantasizing about the deaths of your political opponents is totally gauche. 

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I think instead of a 16 person debate (which everyone agrees, would be a complete mess), they should just all compete in Republican Ninja WarriorTM

 

 

Wipeout would be more entertaining with this group methinks...

 

I'd prefer Ninja Warrior because Wipeout just involves getting hit by a giant foam pendulum and swimming to the next giant foam obstacle. In Ninja Warrior if you fail, you fail.

 

Unfortunately it'd have to be a remedial Ninja Warrior since I don't think a single one of them would pass even the first round of the real thing.

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http://www.thenation.com/article/how-rand-paul-could-have-profited-from-a-debt-ceiling-crisis-he-helped-create/

 

Rand Paul was shorting Treasury bonds during the debt ceiling shenanigans and didn't disclose it.  What the fuck.  

I fail to see the issue. He's a member of Congress, thus exempt from any insider trading legislation. What's the point of being a member of Congress if you can't bring your nation's economy to the brink of collapse in order to earn some money?

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http://www.thenation.com/article/how-rand-paul-could-have-profited-from-a-debt-ceiling-crisis-he-helped-create/

 

Rand Paul was shorting Treasury bonds during the debt ceiling shenanigans and didn't disclose it.  What the fuck.  

That's pretty fucking shady. And I doubt he was the only one.

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http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2015/07/30/fox_news_gop_debate_roger_ailes_will_call_the_shots_in_private_use_the_polls.html

 

 

As pollsters and number-crunching journalists have already pointed out, Fox News’ decision to use five national polls to determine who makes it onstage—and who doesn’t—at the first GOP debate isn’t exactly a scientific process. As Bloomberg’s Steven Yaccino put it, “Methodologically, they might as well be drawing straws.”

 

It turns out, though, that drawing straws for the final few spots on stage could actually be fairer than what will actually happen next Tuesday at Fox News HQ. It would certainly be more transparent. As New York magazine’s Gabriel Sherman points out, with less than a week to go before the field is set, the conservative cable network hasn’t specifically said how it will go about deciding which polls it will use and which it will ignore. “We don’t know what methodology they’re going to use,” one concerned John Kasich adviser told Sherman. “We’ve been asking the question and they haven’t shared.”

 

The most specific criterion the network has offered publicly to date is that its polling experts will select “the five most recent national polls, as recognized by Fox News”—a statement that effectively says that Fox News will pick the polls that Fox News picks. This isn’t a minor point: With the bottom half of the GOP field so tightly packed and with so much variability from one poll to the next, if Fox execs wait until the last moment, they won’t be picking polls—they’ll be selecting candidates. And as the head of a cable network that thrives on conservative chaos, Fox News chief Roger Ailes is hardly a disinterested observer. Worse still, Ailes is making those decisions in secret while hiding behind the polls in public.

 

 

 

This situation is incredible.

 

Most of the lowest polling candidates are people who have actually held important elected offices, and Fox News gets to decide which of them are worthy to share the debate stage with frontrunner Donald. Fucking. Trump.

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I recall a study that shows that most members of congress have personal investment accounts that tend to underperform with regard to the market.

 

That might mean that most of them are too scrupulous or too stupid to take advantage of the insider trading exemption, or that they can hide certain investment from public disclosure.

 

I'll try to dig up the study.

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Is this the perfect storm of the scandals of the moment? Donald Trump's sons are avid trophy hunters. They've killed an elephant and a leopard. And also tweeted douchily about it!

 

 

 

When the photos initially emerged online back in 2012, the Trump brothers staunchly defended themselves, taking to Twitter to "make no apologies."

 

"In some parts its over populated. Bottom line with out hunters $ there wouldn't be much left of africa. Eco is nice but no $," one tweet from Trump Jr. read.

 

http://www.motherjones.com/mixed-media/2015/07/donald-trumps-kids-are-also-big-game-hunters

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I recall a study that shows that most members of congress have personal investment accounts that tend to underperform with regard to the market.

 

That might mean that most of them are too scrupulous or too stupid to take advantage of the insider trading exemption, or that they can hide certain investment from public disclosure.

 

I'll try to dig up the study.

 

Members of Congress' investments actually outperforms the average joes, at least according to a 2011 study.  I can't find the actual study itself but here's the HuffPost's article on it:  http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/05/24/members-of-congress-get-a_n_866387.html

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ThinkerX - Yeah, it could be a lot like Romney again, and Kevin Drum makes pretty much this point today:

 

 

 

In other words, a repeat of 2012, when all the hard-core conservatives split the tea party vote ten ways while Mitt Romney quietly vacuumed up the entire moderate vote. By the time Rick Santorum was the last tea partier standing, it was too late. Romney coasted to victory.

 

This is the great conundrum of the tea-party wing of the Republican Party. What they should do is coalesce immediately around Scott Walker. He's the most plausible winner among the tea partiers, and if the race was basically between him and Bush from the start, there's a pretty good chance he could win. On the other hand, if he has to fight off a dozen challengers for months on end, it'll just be a rerun of 2012. He'll get a share of the tea party vote, but it won't be nearly enough to fend off Bush, who will have his own share of the tea partiers plus the vast majority of the moderate wing of the GOP, which is disgusted that their party has been taken over by loons. There are still quite a few of those folks around.

 

 

So Bush has this extra advantage in that his likely voters are likely to coalesce around him early whereas Walker has too many folks that, while they might totally and happily vote for him over Bush, might flirt with Trump or Cruz or someone in the early-going, and that's a big advantage for Bush.

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Said it before, I'll say it again: Walker has a fair shot of ending up in a prison cell by election day. An event which no doubt will have half the Tea Party shouting 'conspiracy!' at the top of their lungs. At a minimum, he's been so close to so many crooked deals he won't pass the smell test with a lot of folks. I don't see him making it through the primaries.

Way I look at it, a successful republican candidate for POTUS has to appeal to at least four groups:

1 - the dwindling business oriented republican mainstream;

2 - the Tea Party 'proper';

3 - the Tea Party 'theocratic';

4 - some outside group (Hispanics, swing voters, ticked off democrats, or some such)

Romney had the support of 1, and the grudging support of 2. Theocratic faction never really bought into him because as a Mormon, he is automatically a heretic of the worst sort. And he lost as a direct result.

Jeb Bush is trying for 1, 2, and 4 (Hispanics), but is going to tick off a lot of group 2 supporters in the process. I see him failing by the same margin as Romney, if not more...unless the Democratic Candidate fizzles big time.

Most of the others are trying for a combination of 2 and 3. Again, there is no way they can garner enough support from those two groups to win the election. Even if the Democratic candidate fizzles big time.

Trump...2 and 4, with broader support from 4 than Bush can hope to get.
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