Member Of the Tribe, I’m assuming.
I’m guessing Cantor’s fundraising prowess has more to do with his former position as minority whip and readiness to kiss the ass of a wide variety of special interests than his religion.
Democrats raise funds from big business as well of course: it’s how the game is played. The difference is that most Dems favor campaign finance reform while Republicans are dead set against it. Republicans used to say that they were for disclosure, until the Supreme Court decided that corporations were people in Citizen’s United. They were deceiving the public of course: today 501(c)(4)s can be given unlimited funds by billionaire donors who wish to remain anonymous. And given the tendency of such operations to be run by former staff members of various candidates, it’s reasonable to suspect that the word gets within Washington, less so outside of it.
Anonymous giving by billionaires: Bloomberg - Are you a robot?
ETA: Oh sorry: MEGO. I’ll put it another way: “Jeb is spending millions of dollars on “hit” ads funded by lobbyists & special interests. Bad system.”
No promises though.
I was not persuaded that elevating the VA to a cabinet position was any more than a publicity ploy.
However, handing the administration of that service over to the department that is populated by the sort of guys who have routinely dismissed combat trauma (often declaring it mere malingering) and have refused to fund or provide oversight to their own hospitals to handle the wounded returning from Iraq and Afghanistan is absurd. Let’s put the funding for health benefits in the hands of guys who have to make budget decisions regarding troops from whom they can no longer get service or buying new aircraft carriers, hot bombers, or tanks. That makes so much sense.
Descriptivist! :mad:
Masters of Time. I pity those poor linear Jews.
tomndebb, I have to agree. If the VA loses cabinet status, it more sensibly should be folded into the Dept. of Health and Human Services.
Of course, you can tell the extreme ideologues by their desire to abolish the Education and HHS departments. They never seem to say that they’ll consolidate them, either; they act like those federal functions will just…disappear. Bizarre.
Republicans discuss the issues: HOW THE HELL DO WE GET RID OF TRUMP!!!
That was yesterday. Today is “How do we stop Trump from getting rid of us?!”
I suppose we should give passing attention to Ted Cruz, currently in 4th place according to RCP’s polling aggregate, just behind Jeb Bush. During a Colorado fundraiser, John Boehner came out in support of Cruz’s Presidential campaign: it keeps that jackass out of Washington and stops Cruz from telling Boehner how to do his job according to the House speaker.
Scott Walker, the 6th place finalist whom Trump basically characterizes as a total loser IIRC, admires Ted Cruz, says that he thinks it’s just wrong to call him a jackass. Furthermore Walker “likes” and “admires” Cruz: get a room Scott! Cruz thanks him on twitter.
Frontrunner Trump graciously calls second place runner up Carson “A wonderful guy”. There’ just one thing. Trump, who has never held elective office, thinks it would be “very tough” for a someone who spent his life as a surgeon to handle the job. I think it would be very tough for anybody whose policy thinking is limited to applause lines to handle the job as well. Anyway Trump notes that doctors don’t create jobs. So there!
It’s pretty sadface if you can’t manage to get a collection of friendly experts in a room, have them hammer out their differences, and arrive at a single position paper. Then again white paper-shmaper, what sells are [del]nutso[/del] interesting ideas. I see that Carson thinks that, Obama might be planning to cancel the elections and that Obamacare is the worst thing since slavery. Uh-huh.
Still, I think presentation matters more. I’m not sure what the topic is, but whatever Trump was talking about, he summarized it pretty well in a single sentence. See if you can spot the subject. Here it is:
[QUOTE=The Donald]
Look, having nuclear—my uncle was a great professor and scientist and engineer, Dr. John Trump at MIT; good genes, very good genes, OK, very smart, the Wharton School of Finance, very good, very smart—you know, if you’re a conservative Republican, if I were a liberal, if, like, OK, if I ran as a liberal Democrat, they would say I’m one of the smartest people anywhere in the world—it’s true!—but when you’re a conservative Republican they try—oh, do they do a number—that’s why I always start off: Went to Wharton, was a good student, went there, went there, did this, built a fortune—you know I have to give my like credentials all the time, because we’re a little disadvantaged—but you look at the nuclear deal, the thing that really bothers me—it would have been so easy, and it’s not as important as these lives are (nuclear is powerful; my uncle explained that to me many, many years ago, the power and that was 35 years ago; he would explain the power of what’s going to happen and he was right—who would have thought?), but when you look at what’s going on with the four prisoners—now it used to be three, now it’s four—but when it was three and even now, I would have said it’s all in the messenger; fellas, and it is fellas because, you know, they don’t, they haven’t figured that the women are smarter right now than the men, so, you know, it’s gonna take them about another 150 years—but the Persians are great negotiators, the Iranians are great negotiators, so, and they, they just killed, they just killed us.
[/QUOTE]
A: The subject is Donald!
“Persians”?
Guilty as charged.
IMO, they need to hit bottom (i.e. experience a 1964-level electoral debacle) before they can admit their problems, much less solve them.
I don’t even think that will do it. The base is filled with fundies, people who think that their beliefs were handed down from heaven on gold plates by angels. There’s currently no scenario or argument that I can conceive of to get them to compromise on what they believe god’s word to be. The only hope is to wait for them to die
Jeb calls out Donald Trump for dog whistling. But when Trump criticizes Jeb Bush for speaking “Mexican” at a campaign rally, that’s not a dog whistle: it’s a fog horn. Only unapologetic bigots refer to the spanish language as “Mexican”. Trump tweets and re-tweets:
[INDENT]“@LBabcock2: @oreillyfactor @FoxNews I have always wondered why Fox kept Rove on after his disastrous election predictions.” He is a joke!
“@gulfportedd: @realDonaldTrump Jeb bush couldn’t shine MR trumps shoes…give me a break. Bushes are so over…”
[/INDENT] Trump did show some compassion for Jeb: “I watched him this morning on television, and it’s a little bit sad. Don’t forget, he was supposed to win. And he just doesn’t have the energy.”
Over at Politico, Rich Lowry prefers Ben Carson over the Donald. While Carson is “A man of faith”, Trump is characterized as, “an obnoxious braggart”, a representative of “our culture of conspicuous display and tasteless braggadocio” and "… a bold-faced name straight out of our swinish celebrity culture".
Lowry captures perfectly the complete absence of self awareness enjoyed by the modern conservative. It’s one thing to genuflect to a Presidential candidate in a 1000 word article that lacks any sort of policy discussion. But it’s hard to see how it’s better than anything published by People Magazine or any other celebrity culture organ. Nonetheless, he was quoted approvingly by the Washington Post’s Jennifer Rubin.
That’s the whole point. They SHOULD just disappear. A very great deal of what the federal government does these days (A) should not be done at all, or (B) if it is done, it should be done by the states.
Like, invading countries?
Why? Do the states do it “better”? Does the free market? Do you have statistics to back this up?
We had mostly the same constitution we have now when the laws mandating those federal functions were adopted. Apparently statesmen of that era thought they were worth doing despite the constitutional questions. That’s a pretty strong indication that those needs were seen as of national importance.
Last week Trump opined that** Carly Fiorina** was not Presidential material: "“Look at that face! Would anyone vote for that? Can you imagine that, the face of our next President?! I mean, she’s a woman, and I’m not s’posedta say bad things, but really, folks, come on. Are we serious?”
Kevin Drum notes the oddness of the remark: "You wouldn’t be surprised to hear a first-grader get all giggly over childish insults about his teacher, would you? That’s what first graders do. At age 69, that’s still what Trump does too.
But it’s actually even weirder than that. In purely conventional terms, Carly Fiorina is both perfectly attractive and perfectly businesslike. Lots of people might think she shouldn’t be president—anyone who cares about actual success in some field of life, for example—but even a stone misogynist’s first thought wouldn’t be that he just couldn’t stand to look at her face for four years. Even Trump’s handpicked circle of sycophants apparently wondered what he was talking about.
But wait! It’s even weirder yet: Trump says this kind of stuff in front of a reporter? WTF?"
Trump on stage: “Carly was a little nasty to me — be careful, Carly! Be careful! But I can’t say anything to her because she’s a woman.?.?.?.?I promised that I wouldn’t say that she ran Hewlett-Packard into the ground. I said I wouldn’t say it! That her stock value tanked. That she laid off tens of thousands of people, and she got viciously fired. I said I will not say that. And that she then went out and ran against Barbara Boxer, and?.?.?.?lost in a landslide. And I said, ‘I. Will. Not. Say. That!’?”
[Fiorina](Showdown Between Carly Fiorina and Donald Trump Expected at Republican Debate - The New York Times): “Maybe, just maybe, I am just getting under his skin a little bit because I am climbing in the polls.”
Jeb Bush: “I think I’m still the number one beneficiary of The Donald’s insults.”
Bobby Jindal: “I think it’s pretty outrageous for him to be attacking anybody’s appearance when he looks like he’s got a squirrel sitting on his head. I think he should stop attacking other people’s appearances.”
Donald Trump responds to his critics on twitter: @realDonaldTrump Sep 10
Bobby Jindal did not make the debate stage and therefore I have never met him…
@realDonaldTrump Sep 10
… I only respond to people that register more than 1% in the polls. I never thought he had a chance and I’ve been proven right.
@realDonaldTrump Sep 11
Oh wow, lightweight Governor @BobbyJindal, who is registered at less than 1 percent in the polls, just mocked my hair. So original!
@realDonaldTrump Sep 12 New Jersey, USA
"@TrumpDemocrats: Carson on @CNN now. He is worse than Jeb; like ambien for insomnia. We need energy in the White House. We need DonaldTrump
@realDonaldTrump Sep 12
Lightweight Senator @RandPaul should focus on trying to get elected in Kentucky— a great state which is embarrassed by him.
@realDonaldTrump Sep 12
I truly understood the appeal of Ron Paul, but his son, @RandPaul, didn’t get the right gene.
@realDonaldTrump Sep 13 New Jersey, USA
Why is someone like George Pataki, who did a terrible job as Governor of N.Y. and registers ZERO in the polls, allowed on the debate stage?
Wait, I thought Trump didn’t comment on those under 1%.
[QUOTE=Measure for Measure;18687006W]
Trump on stage: “Carly was a little nasty to me — be careful, Carly! Be careful! But I can’t say anything to her because she’s a woman.?.?.?.?I promised that I wouldn’t say that she ran Hewlett-Packard into the ground. I said I wouldn’t say it! That her stock value tanked. That she laid off tens of thousands of people, and she got viciously fired. I said I will not say that. And that she then went out and ran against Barbara Boxer, and?.?.?.?lost in a landslide. And I said, ‘I. Will. Not. Say. That!’?”
[/QUOTE]
I wonder if he’ll talk about anything else he promised not to talk about.