"Ann wants a job!" "We need to lower taxes!"

"Bernie wants to raise taxes. No create jobs, Bernie bad! Much communism. .("

There's a fantastic video on YouTube with Col. Sanders having fun at Ayn Rand Paul's expense where said Paul is feigning concern about the po-po ramming down the doors of doctors & dragging them in to examination rooms to aid patients. I can't load YouTube on this mistake of an iPhone, but it's worth the time it takes to do the search.

I don't pretend to know his chances, because I'm in a bit of a self-imposed echo chamber, but if he can convince minorities that economic inequality is a fight worth having & that he believes that Black Lives Matter (he made a mistake by waiting on this--now his concern appears cold & calculated to many), & if the Clinton "scandals" eat her campaign, it seems to me that his chances are decent enough.

I hope that Bernie gets the nomination, obviously, but I'm resigned to Jeb vs. Hillary with Hillary eking out the win.

I normally like to watch all or most of the debates for both parties but unless something has changed in the last day or so I missed where Fox has the entire debate streaming. I've only been looking at their youtube channel, though. Not really interested in watching their highlights. Apparently their "moderators" took something like a third of their airtime themselves.

As far as the tens of republican candidates out there I'm mostly interested in Cruz, Walker, Paul, and Rubio. My primary interest is a candidates real plan to reduce national government and restore federal government. So along that idea I'm not particularly excited about Democrat candidates but I appreciate Sanders honesty. If it came down to the Republican nominee being Bush or Trump (and others, I don't have them all memorized) I would probably prefer Sanders. Coming from me that's probably more an indictment of some horrendous Republican candidates than a genuine support of Sanders but it is what it is.

Personally, I don't believe elections are where we can make the real difference now anyway. The big plays need to be made elsewhere.

In other words, nowhere at all, unless you happen to be a billionaire.

And yes, despite caving to Wall St. on the majority of important issues, getting Obama in office definitely made a real difference. You better believe it would make a difference if Sanders were to.

That said, I understand if you don't believe elections can make a real difference--if you're a Tea Party supporter--since the Tea Party doesn't believe the government should do anything anyway, except perhaps keeping the wealth amplification machine that is the USG running smoothly. And, of course, if the opposition wins, well, we'll just threaten to shutdown the government whenever they try to pass the legislation that they were democratically elected to implement.

I have the feeling that, were we to have had a parliamentary system, the legislative process wouldn't be perpetually frozen in gridlock while the billionaire class remains unfrozen and free to gang-bang us over and over again.

Well, in defense of Fox News (which I can't believe is a thing I'm doing), it does stand to reason that you'll end up with moderators talking more when they have to explain to Donald Trump that he didn't actually answer their question at all and then ask it again, then explain with exasperation that he didn't answer it again before giving up and moving on.

I take umbrage with Ted Cruz because if you were to apply his immigration plan in, say, 1960 or so, then Ted himself wouldn't even exist because his dad would have been deported.

Walker's position on abortion is absurdly reprehensible. When asked why he supports banning abortion even in cases of rape, incest, and danger of the mother losing her life, he replied that there are "always other options." Well you see, Scott, that's really the thing... Sometimes there actually aren't other options. That's why we have abortions to begin with. Let's at least de-fund planned parenthood and force women to get some ultrasounds. Those sure are proactive steps. Walker also carries being recalled as some kind of strange badge of honor. "So many people in my state hated me so much that they actually did try to fire my ass before my term was up. I showed them, though! I won!"

Rand Paul's spat with Chris Christie was amusing, if only because it's hilarious to see someone cause Christie to lose his mind on national television. Suggesting that you're all for increased surveillance on terrorist as long as it's only on terrorists is a magical failure in logical reasoning, but I do agree with his stance that the 4th amendment is kind of an afterthought at this point. That's kind of a "damned if you do; damned if you don't" type scenario, but I feel you have to land on "damned if you don't" if you advocate for civil liberty in any way. Christie's position is more or less "omelette, eggs, etc..." and while I appreciate the pragmatic nature of it, it's also pretty well unconstitutional as hell.

As far as Rubio goes, I'm honestly completely drawing a blank at this point. I can't remember a single thing he said, good or bad, and I really don't have any active idea of what his policy on anything actually advocates. So I guess by way of being completely unremarkable, he's probably one of the more viable candidates on the republican side.

As an aside: Kasich honestly did a fairly decent job in that debate, and while he didn't outright support either thing, I admired his positions on the Affordable Care Act and gay marriage. Standing by his medicaid expansion by way of saying "Obamacare is the ball I was handed, so despite not liking it, I still ran with it because it could help the people of my state" is really kind of a refreshing stance for a conservative to take on something. It wildly goes against the typical stance of "The proposed solution is not a complete solution, so my solution is to do absolutely nothing". And I have to throw points his way for saying that gay people getting married is just something you need to accept, because you've gotta accept people who are different than you, even if it conflicts with your personal beliefs. Really, not a bad showing from Kasich, and this is coming from an Ohioan who thinks he was a terrible congressman and is a terrible governor.

As far as Sanders goes, I honestly think he's the only actual viable candidate in the conversation. His utter disdain for corporations is wonderful, and his way of explaining to people that being a social democrat is a thing that hurts absolutely no one is pretty wonderful. Taking the position of "so many of the problems America has are problems that only America still has among developed countries" is a pretty good way to get even the unlikeliest of people to agree that maybe we need to get on the same goddamn page as everyone else, because regardless of what platitudes Trump wants to vomit up about Making America Great Again (his capitalization, not mine), the only way to do that is by making advancements where we have detriments. Not by being afraid of Mexicans and disparaging women who challenge you and saying stupid **** like how buying foreign cars puts American auto workers out of work when they build more cars for foreign companies than they do for American companies.

I'll vote for Hillary if I have to, and it's for the same reason as always: the GOP seemingly cannot possible field a candidate that is even remotely acceptable.

Seeing that their "solution" was to do nothing before the Affordable Care act was passed, it would be really disingenuous of them to call it a partial solution of any kind in the first place.

That's true enough, but I do still respect Kasich for looking at it and saying "Well, let's make lemonade," which is an honest-to-god actual act of bipartisan cooperation that completely leaves all of the typical bull**** by the wayside.

This is what they refer to as "governing".

You're right.

I'm glad Bachmann lost her seat, so I don't have to hear her say another time that the ACA will kill 800,000 jobs and needs to be repealed.

Unfortunately, though, anyone who doesn't get hung up on the same stupid bull**** that has caused the republican party to become a walking punchline is immediately greeted with a chorus of "RINO RINO RINO RINO DON'T VOTE FOR HIM/HER" by the base.

Because here at the republican party we don't do anything proactive. We just ban things we don't like and then unironically claim to be a party that advocates the government staying out of people's lives.

quote, a government recruiter with retirement benefits.

There are a lot of things a federal government can do that state governments can't or won't. This is a lesson that your country has learned in the hardest possible way. Yes, this Canadian is lecturing you about your own country's history, and yes, you should be ashamed.

Assuming you are earnest, and reducing government is the most important issue to you (that it shouldn't be is a separate discussion), the absolute worst ways of going about it are, in descending order: 1.) Republican-style austerity neoliberalism, and 2.) redistributing powers to states/provinces, as demonstrated repeatedly in histories both modern and ancient.

This is certainly true. Canada's parliamentary system was specifically designed to avoid the deadlock of the American republic, which was well understood even at the time, and such systems have evolved considerably since Canada was founded. Even the United States does not advocate for its own system of government when it "spreads democracy".

Of course, the fact that the United States has been legislatively broken almost since its founding is not a popular idea amongst violent republicans who pretend to respect the founding fathers while saluting the traitor flag legitimate Originalist constitutional scholars, so it probably gets very little airtime.

A political debate where the participants don't answer questions? My god, how unusual. It's almost like Fox News is a bunch of amateurs who are totally unequipped to function as the legitimate press.

It's fine. Most Republican voters at this point are working poor, and so busy working the 4 part time jobs they need to afford rent post-Republican deregulation to notice any public flame-out. They'll get their 45% of the popular vote no matter what candidate they field. In 30-40 years enough of them will die off that even gerrymandering can't save them, and then the United States will be a de-facto single party moderate corporate welfare state with a token party of insufferable, fuming, impotent racists, so everybody can still pretend they live in a democracy.

And vote-rigging. *coughkansascough*

Well, at least you're no longer pretending to be a "constitutionalist."

Let's not forget the Democratic side, with Hillary Clinton gearing up to attack Bernie Sanders on race (a man who literally marched with MLK). Latest internet rumor is that she's been hiring agents provocateur to publicly slander him in the name of Black Lives Matter. Over/under on it being true?

Well, let me rephrase. I read an article on CNN's website stating that Hillary Clinton is going to attack Bernie Sanders on race. Since it was on CNN, that actually is Hillary Clinton attacking Bernie Sanders on race.

God, corporate media is so gross and lazy.

God dammit, Jon`C.

Says the constitutional scholar.

I want Trump to stay Republican and in the race just so I can watch this demented torpedo reach its end.

That said, I don't want Trump to be president though. I don't want any Republican that was featured in that farce of a debate to be president. I don't want Hillary being president. When the election comes, I guess I could hop across the border and move to Canada but I don't want to live in Canada.

Help

Insert Ted Cruz joke here, below the dotted line.

--------------------------------------------

Today Donald Trump said he's all for government funding of planned parenthood as long as the government doesn't pay for abortions, because there are a lot of things that planned parenthood does that are helpful to a lot of people. He's just against abortion, so he's going to take a hard look at it (this is how Trump responds to any questions regarding policy) and he's going to decide what he would do to change it for the better.

Interestingly enough, what he described as his idealized version of how planned parenthood should operate is exactly how it currently operates.

It's nice to know he's educated on the issues at hand.

I'm curious to know what it is about Scott Walker that Wookie has liked enough to possibly support him. I saw in the news today that Walker wants to repeal the ACA and replace it with... something. Here is a summary I found in the WaPo:


[/LIST]

Sounds a little bit like the underpants gnomes to me.

www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2015/08/18/how-scott-walker-proposes-to-repeal-and-replace-obamacare/

Repeal PPACA and then pass a new PPACA which is identical but better because a black man didn't sign it

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/20/upshot/walker-and-rubio-health-proposals-are-less-concerned-about-poor.html?_r=0&abt=0002&abg=1

So, basically the people who watch Fox News (and are possibly poor because of Fox News).

Cool, that's fine. Our ongoing intergenerational wealth transfer from the young to the old isn't unprecedented enough yet.

That is literally every republican campaign policy outlined in my lifetime.