trump is serious!!!!!

[oldr_n_wsr]

From what I have been hearing on the radio, Trump wants Christie and his kids want Pence.

[Big RR]

I don't know Joe, Christie shuts up and stares like a deer in the headlights around Donald. We could still laugh at him, but I doubt there would be any tag-teaming. And of course Bridge-gate would still be an issue then, so additional fun there.

[oldr_n_wsr]

Gary Johnson and the Libertarians are looking better and better.

[Guinevere]

Mother Jones and the Indy Star (how do you like that combo) both say its Pence. He is dropping his re-election bid for Governor and will be announced tomorrow at 11AM in Manhattan.

[rubato]

Mother Jones and the Indy Star (how do you like that combo) both say its Pence. He is dropping his re-election bid for Governor and will be announced tomorrow at 11AM in Manhattan.

He must be tired of being in politics.


yrs,
rubato

[rubato]

That nice Matthew Yglesias apologises to Mike Pence for being too hard on him ...

http://www.vox.com/2016/7/13/12159000/mike-pence-sorry

I was too hard on Mike Pence, and I’m sorry

Updated by Matthew Yglesias on July 13, 2016, 1:30 p.m. ET @mattyglesias matt@vox.com

I’ve written some mean things about Indiana Gov. Mike Pence over the years, and now that he’s in the national spotlight as a potential Republican vice presidential candidate, the time has come to tell the truth: I owe him an apology.

I spent years slagging Pence as stupid and moronic simply because he was a leading member of Congress participating in a major debate over a public policy issue that he didn’t understand at all. At the time, it struck me as genuinely shocking. And I responded in the way that a shocked person responds — emotionally, and with some overstatement.

Today, more than a decade removed from the first time I met Pence, I can say that it’s actually quite common for members of Congress to have no idea what they’re talking about.

There’s a real problem here, but it doesn’t relate to Pence personally. And it doesn’t particularly even relate to individual members of Congress personally. It’s a deep institutional problem that is both a cause and an effect of Americans’ entrenched cynicism about Congress, politics, and governing elites.
Mike Pence and the Social Security debate of 2005

I came to Washington to work at the American Prospect in the fall of 2003. I was still working there in the winter of 2004-’05 when the hot issue in Washington became George W. Bush’s proposal to partially privatize Social Security. I hadn’t covered congressional debates much before then, and the members I’d interacted with had mostly been Democrats with whom I had a lot in common ideologically, which made it easy to take a generous view of what they were saying.

At this time, the Bush administration was coalescing around the idea of allowing workers to divert some payroll tax money out of the Social Security trust fund and into private investment accounts.

Pence was, at the time, the head of the Republican Study Committee, which was an influential right-wing factional group inside the GOP caucus that sometimes rebelled from the right against Bush’s gestures at domestic policy moderation. So when I had the chance to hear Pence speak about Social Security privatization at a small think tank event, I was eager to see what he had to say. And what he said surprised me.
Mike Pence didn’t understand moral hazard

At the time, one of the big liberal objections to privatization was that private accounts were far riskier than conventional Social Security — and retirees could be left in the lurch if their investments went south.

In his talk, Pence had a strange answer to this: He argued that the average rate of return on investments in the stock market would be so much larger than the average Social Security benefit that it would be simple for the government to guarantee nobody would end up with less money in the new private system than they would have been entitled to under the old system. After all, most people would do so much better under the new system that the government would only need to pay up to make the guarantee work for a small number of people.

I raised what I thought was an obvious objection to this: moral hazard. If you promise people they’ll get a bailout if their private investments go south, you encourage excessive risk taking and bigger losses in the future.

My expectation was that Pence would have some kind of answer to this: a technical solution or a plan for a regulatory fix or a promise to think about it harder or something. But he had nothing. He seemed to just not understand at all what the problem was. The idea that a government guarantee could change behavior appeared to be totally unfamiliar to him, even though in most cases it’s a bedrock of conservative economic policy thinking. ... "

see link for more

yrs,
rubato

[Big RR]

Perhaps the rights that Thomas Jefferson was writing about when he wrote "...all men are created equal, that they are endowed by the creator with certain inalienable rights..."? Accept the presence of a creator or not, the terms of natural rights and rights from god are used fairly synonymously throughout history.

[rubato]

Perhaps the rights that Thomas Jefferson was writing about when he wrote "...all men are created equal, that they are endowed by the creator with certain inalienable rights..."? Accept the presence of a creator or not, the terms of natural rights and rights from god are used fairly synonymously throughout history.

Yes, that is the point. Religious people see them as synonymous. Non-religious people do not. Thomas Paine observed the distinction.




yrs,
rubato

PS I think you skipped from one thread to another. Yes?

[wesw]

the "creator" could be interpreted in any way which one wantd to interpret it.

it could be the earth.

it could be god

ambiguity is important sometimes.

like a good song, many things to many people....

...or a good apostle, for that matter.

maybe Paul had it right....

[MajGenl.Meade]

[Burning Petard]

I know of no GOP activist who actually acts as if they believed that clause in the Declaration of Independence about all endowed by inalienable rights. They are all in favor of ending individual lives (capital punishment) individual liberty (the cages at Gitmo) and pursuit of happiness (pornography)

Yes, I know, foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.

snailgate

[MajGenl.Meade]

We don't like that stuff about inalienables either - where's a wall when you need one, huh?

[Crackpot]

What about Jeff Sessions?

[Econoline]

FURIOUS CHRISTIE REFUSES TO PICK UP TRUMP’S DRY CLEANING

NEW YORK (The Borowitz Report)—Governor Chris Christie, of New Jersey, angrily refused to pick up Donald Trump’s dry cleaning during a tense encounter between the two men on Friday, campaign sources confirm.

The ugly scene unfolded at the billionaire’s offices in midtown Manhattan, shortly after Trump revealed that his Vice-Presidential pick would be Governor Mike Pence of Indiana.

According to Trump aides, Christie stomped into the presumptive Republican nominee’s office and hurled a dry-cleaning ticket onto his desk, telling Trump, “You can pick up your own damn dry cleaning.”

The New Jersey governor then stormed out, and has not been seen by Trump or his staffers since.

Trump’s press secretary, Hope Hicks, warned the media against making too much of the apparent rift between the billionaire and Christie. “In the long hours of a campaign, emotions can sometimes get a little raw,” she said. “We are confident that Governor Christie will pick up Mr. Trump’s dry cleaning going forward.”

Reached later by reporters, Governor Christie issued a brief statement: “Get away from me. Just get away from me, you bastards.”

[Joe Guy]

I heard that after Christie was told he wasn't Trump's VP choice, there were some tense moments. Christie climbed a tower on the George Washington bridge and threatened to jump. Eventually, Trump showed up and talked him down with a ham sandwich.

He was last seen heading for the cleaners...

[Joe Guy]

Has anyone else noticed how Hillary is starting to act like Obama when she is speaking? She pauses and looks away for a moment before continuing. It's eerie....

[Bicycle Bill]

-"BB"-

[BoSoxGal]

You can't make this shit up!

[Burning Petard]

I just wish various organizations and individuals had ignored the new GOP logo for a while. The convention has not yet convened. It ain't official. I wish the Trump Pez campaign had more time with this logo so they would be stuck with it. They can issue new publicity after the convention with a 'new and improved' version with no embarrassment.

I heard on the radio yesterday that Trump has called for congress to declare war against ISIS. Part of the same radio comment was that Obama had asked for just such a declaration of war from congress two years ago. Today the NY Times has a story about Trump's call for war, but nothing about Obama asking for such a declaration. Rather, the Times goes on about 'authorization of force', which is entirely different from a constitutional and internationally recognized legal 'Declaration of War '.

Can anyone confirm that Obama did actually ask for a Declaration of War on ISIL or Syria two years ago? Or is the radio talking head just another example of a media 'expert' who cannot distinguish shit from shinola?

snailgate

[RayThom]

Make America SWELL Again!