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A group of conservative lawyers and academics filed a Supreme Court brief arguing that the legalization of same sex marriage would result in 900,000 abortions over the next 30 years.

Leading the group is Gene Scharr, an attorney and former clerk of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia who unsuccessfully argued Utah’s case against same-sex marriage. Scharr’s argument was summarized in The Daily Signal.

“A reduction in the opposite-sex marriage rate means an increase in the percentage of women who are unmarried and who, according to all available data, have much higher abortion rates than married women,” Scharr argues. “And based on past experience, institutionalizing same-sex marriage poses an enormous risk of reduced opposite-sex marriage rates.”

His argument has been met with a “causation vs. correlation” rebuttal, which he freely admitted in an explaination, according to Washington Post. Scharr said it’s “still too new” to do a rigorous causation analysis.

Scharr claims declining marriage rates in Massachusetts, Iowa and Vermont are proof of the “harmful” effects. He does not note marriage rates are declining in Texas and Utah, as well as the rest of the country.

Multiple studies have found that allowing same sex couples to wed has no affect on heterosexual marriage rates.

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U.S. House Representative Bill Flores of Texas argued this week that violence in Baltimore could be linked to the legalization of same-sex marriage in the United States.

Perkins suggested that the government was just creating more problems for itself as courts throughout the nation continued to rule that LGBT people should have equal marriage rights.

“A lot of these problems are created by the breakdown of the family, which the redefinition of would only accelerate,” Perkins opined.

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Texas Republican Gov. Greg Abbott on Tuesday asked the State Guard to monitor a U.S. military training exercise dubbed "Jade Helm 15" amid Internet-fueled suspicions that the war simulation is really a hostile military takeover.

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Well, I think the way to think about that is that if you go from a repressive regime that has — it’s a police state, where people are murdered and imprisoned by the tens of thousands — and then you go to something other than that — a liberated Iraq — that you go through a transition period. And in every country, in my adult lifetime, that’s had the wonderful opportunity to do that, to move from a repressed dictatorial regime to something that’s freer, we’ve seen in that transition period there is untidiness, and there’s no question but that that’s not anyone’s choice.

. . . And, while no one condones looting, on the other hand, one can understand the pent-up feelings that may result from decades of repression and people who have had members of their family killed by that regime, for them to be taking their feelings out on that regime.

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As the first black female mayor of Parma, Mo., took office last week, five of the town's six police officers resigned, Missouri television station KFVS reported.

The new mayor, Tyrus Byrd (pictured above on the right), was sworn in on Tuesday evening. Former Mayor Randall Ramsey told KFVS that in addition to the five police officers, the city's attorney, clerk and water treatment plant supervisor resigned due to "safety concerns."

Byrd was not aware why the five police officers resigned, according to KFVS. When she took office, Byrd said she could not find the resignation letters and that the city computers had been cleared. She told KFVS that she needs more information before addressing the resignations publicly.

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Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush (R) declared himself to be a fan of controversial social scientist Charles Murray’s books at a forum Thursday in Washington.

Bush lauded Murray’s books on two separate occasions during an interview with National Review editor Rich Lowry, at a forum sponsored by the conservative magazine.

Lowry asked Bush, “… is there any policy or anything public officials can do to help turn back what has been a rising tide of family breakdown crossing decades now?”

“Absolutely, there is,” Bush, a likely 2016 Republican presidential candidate, said. “It’s not exactly the core. My views on this were shaped a lot on this by Charles Murray’s book, except I was reading the book and I was waiting for the last chapter with the really cool solutions — didn’t quite get there.”

Later in the interview, Lowry asked Bush what he likes to read. Again, he cited Murray.

“I like Charles Murray books to be honest with you, which means I’m a total nerd I guess,” Bush said.

Charles Murray is a darling of the right-wing because of his book “The Bell Curve” which declares that black people are not as smart as white people because of their inferior genes. No, seriously, that’s exactly what the book is about. Here’s what the Southern Poverty Law Center says about Murray:

"According to Murray, disadvantaged groups are disadvantaged because, on average, they cannot compete with white men, who are intellectually, psychologically and morally superior. Murray advocates the total elimination of the welfare state, affirmative action and the Department of Education, arguing that public policy cannot overcome the innate deficiencies that cause unequal social and educational outcomes."

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Originally posted by Jon Boy:
Donald Rumsfeld in 2003:

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Well, I think the way to think about that is that if you go from a repressive regime that has — it’s a police state, where people are murdered and imprisoned by the tens of thousands — and then you go to something other than that — a liberated Iraq — that you go through a transition period. And in every country, in my adult lifetime, that’s had the wonderful opportunity to do that, to move from a repressed dictatorial regime to something that’s freer, we’ve seen in that transition period there is untidiness, and there’s no question but that that’s not anyone’s choice.

. . . And, while no one condones looting, on the other hand, one can understand the pent-up feelings that may result from decades of repression and people who have had members of their family killed by that regime, for them to be taking their feelings out on that regime.

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Farrar took to the microphone after a debate about how best to retool the state’s social safety net turned to abortion, with a freshman Tea Party lawmaker attempting to insert an abortion ban into a bill concerning the bureaucratic operations of the Texas Department of State Health Services.

Rep. Matt Schaefer (R-Tyler) put forward an amendment that would make it illegal to terminate a pregnancy after 20 weeks, even if a fetus “has a severe and irreversible abnormality,” effectively forcing families with wanted, but unsustainable pregnancies to carry to term at the behest of the state and against the advice of their doctors or their own wishes.

Schaefer said, during debate over his amendment, that suffering is “part of the human condition, since sin entered the world.”

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Originally posted by Samprimary:

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“I like Charles Murray books to be honest with you, which means I’m a total nerd I guess,” Bush said.

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ok

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Originally posted by Jon Boy:
Donald Rumsfeld in 2003:

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Well, I think the way to think about that is that if you go from a repressive regime that has — it’s a police state, where people are murdered and imprisoned by the tens of thousands — and then you go to something other than that — a liberated Iraq — that you go through a transition period. And in every country, in my adult lifetime, that’s had the wonderful opportunity to do that, to move from a repressed dictatorial regime to something that’s freer, we’ve seen in that transition period there is untidiness, and there’s no question but that that’s not anyone’s choice.

. . . And, while no one condones looting, on the other hand, one can understand the pent-up feelings that may result from decades of repression and people who have had members of their family killed by that regime, for them to be taking their feelings out on that regime.

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Urban riots.

Urban riots must now be recognized as durable social phenomena. They may be deplored, but they are there and should be understood. Urban riots are a special form of violence. They are not insurrections. The rioters are not seeking to seize territory or to attain control of institutions. They are mainly intended to shock the white community. They are a distorted form of social protest. The looting which is their principal feature serves many functions. It enables the most enraged and deprived Negro to take hold of consumer goods with the ease the white man does by using his purse. Often the Negro does not even want what he takes; he wants the experience of taking. But most of all, alienated from society and knowing that this society cherishes property above people, he is shocking it by abusing property rights. There are thus elements of emotional catharsis in the violent act. This may explain why most cities in which riots have occurred have not had a repetition, even though the causative conditions remain. It is also noteworthy that the amount of physical harm done to white people other than police is infinitesimal and in Detroit whites and Negroes looted in unity.

A profound judgment of today's riots was expressed by Victor Hugo a century ago. He said, 'If a soul is left in the darkness, sins will be committed. The guilty one is not he who commits the sin, but he who causes the darkness.'

The policymakers of the white society have caused the darkness; they create discrimination; they structured slums; and they perpetuate unemployment, ignorance and poverty. It is incontestable and deplorable that Negroes have committed crimes; but they are derivative crimes. They are born of the greater crimes of the white society. When we ask Negroes to abide by the law, let us also demand that the white man abide by law in the ghettos. Day-in and day-out he violates welfare laws to deprive the poor of their meager allotments; he flagrantly violates building codes and regulations; his police make a mockery of law; and he violates laws on equal employment and education and the provisions for civic services. The slums are the handiwork of a vicious system of the white society; Negroes live in them but do not make them any more than a prisoner makes a prison. Let us say boldly that if the violations of law by the white man in the slums over the years were calculated and compared with the law-breaking of a few days of riots, the hardened criminal would be the white man. These are often difficult things to say but I have come to see more and more that it is necessary to utter the truth in order to deal with the great problems that we face in our society.

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The text of "The Sodomite Suppression Act," posted by the office of the state attorney general, provides some flavor of McLaughlin's voice.

"The abominable crime against nature known as buggery, called also sodomy, is a monstrous evil that Almighty God, giver of freedom and liberty, commands us to suppress on pain of our utter destruction even as he overthrew Sodom and Gomorrha," it begins.

"Seeing that it is better that offenders should die rather than that all of us should be killed by God's just wrath against us for the folly of tolerating-wickedness in our midst, the People of California wisely command, in the fear of God, that any person who willingly touches another person of the same gender for purposes of sexual gratification be put to death by bullets to the head or by any other convenient method," the proposal continues.

The other initiative McLaughlin has attempted, which failed, was a proposal to make the Bible a required text in public schools.

"Even if you don't believe its teachings, you'll agree that it includes rich usage of the English language," he told the LA Times in a 2004 interview.

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In a message posted to Facebook on 31 March, Ms Bachman suggested that the US president is intentionally hurting the US people in the Iranian nuclear negotiations.

“With his Iran deal, Barack Obama is for the 300 million souls of the United States what Andreas Lubitz was for the 150 souls on the German Wings flight - a deranged pilot flying his entire nation into the rocks,” Ms Bachmann wrote. “After the fact, among the smoldering remains of American cities, the shocked survivors will ask, why did he do it?”

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Originally posted by kmbboots:
King didn't.

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Urban riots.

Urban riots must now be recognized as durable social phenomena. They may be deplored, but they are there and should be understood. Urban riots are a special form of violence. They are not insurrections. The rioters are not seeking to seize territory or to attain control of institutions. They are mainly intended to shock the white community. They are a distorted form of social protest. The looting which is their principal feature serves many functions. It enables the most enraged and deprived Negro to take hold of consumer goods with the ease the white man does by using his purse. Often the Negro does not even want what he takes; he wants the experience of taking. But most of all, alienated from society and knowing that this society cherishes property above people, he is shocking it by abusing property rights. There are thus elements of emotional catharsis in the violent act. This may explain why most cities in which riots have occurred have not had a repetition, even though the causative conditions remain. It is also noteworthy that the amount of physical harm done to white people other than police is infinitesimal and in Detroit whites and Negroes looted in unity.

A profound judgment of today's riots was expressed by Victor Hugo a century ago. He said, 'If a soul is left in the darkness, sins will be committed. The guilty one is not he who commits the sin, but he who causes the darkness.'

The policymakers of the white society have caused the darkness; they create discrimination; they structured slums; and they perpetuate unemployment, ignorance and poverty. It is incontestable and deplorable that Negroes have committed crimes; but they are derivative crimes. They are born of the greater crimes of the white society. When we ask Negroes to abide by the law, let us also demand that the white man abide by law in the ghettos. Day-in and day-out he violates welfare laws to deprive the poor of their meager allotments; he flagrantly violates building codes and regulations; his police make a mockery of law; and he violates laws on equal employment and education and the provisions for civic services. The slums are the handiwork of a vicious system of the white society; Negroes live in them but do not make them any more than a prisoner makes a prison. Let us say boldly that if the violations of law by the white man in the slums over the years were calculated and compared with the law-breaking of a few days of riots, the hardened criminal would be the white man. These are often difficult things to say but I have come to see more and more that it is necessary to utter the truth in order to deal with the great problems that we face in our society.

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King's challenge to the nation's social scientists

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The policymakers of the white society have caused the darkness; they create discrimination; they structured slums; and they perpetuate unemployment, ignorance and poverty. It is incontestable and deplorable that Negroes have committed crimes; but they are derivative crimes. They are born of the greater crimes of the white society. When we ask Negroes to abide by the law, let us also demand that the white man abide by law in the ghettos. Day-in and day-out he violates welfare laws to deprive the poor of their meager allotments; he flagrantly violates building codes and regulations; his police make a mockery of law; and he violates laws on equal employment and education and the provisions for civic services. The slums are the handiwork of a vicious system of the white society; Negroes live in them but do not make them any more than a prisoner makes a prison. Let us say boldly that if the violations of law by the white man in the slums over the years were calculated and compared with the law-breaking of a few days of riots, the hardened criminal would be the white man. These are often difficult things to say but I have come to see more and more that it is necessary to utter the truth in order to deal with the great problems that we face in our society.

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Originally posted by JanitorBlade:

But I think King agrees with me. Expect everybody to keep common law.

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Originally posted by kmbboots:
Wow. I don't think that is what he is saying at all. Especially not in context.

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Originally posted by Risuena:

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Originally posted by JanitorBlade:

But I think King agrees with me. Expect everybody to keep common law.

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I also don't think that's what King is saying - especially since he was a proponent of civil disobedience which is predicated on breaking the law - particularly laws considered unjust or harmful.

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Originally posted by Risuena:

quote:

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Originally posted by JanitorBlade:

But I think King agrees with me. Expect everybody to keep common law.

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I also don't think that's what King is saying - especially since he was a proponent of civil disobedience which is predicated on breaking the law - particularly laws considered unjust or harmful.

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Originally posted by Risuena:
You're using Common Law differently than I would, but I see where you're coming from.

There is definitely a difference between understanding why people turn to violent protest and condoning it. I am by no means a Civil Rights expert, but I think there is an argument to be made that MLK and non-violent protest were as successful as they were in the 60s because they were a foil for more violent factions within the Civil Rights movement like Malcolm X or the Black Panthers.

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Originally posted by Rakeesh:
There are some assumptions there that I don't think necessarily hold true, BB. First is that a reluctance to criticize rioters too much is a sign of 'misapplied white guilt'. While for some I don't doubt that it is, it's entirely possible to believe that *any* group, whether racial, political, national, or religious, if you stick 'em in a pressure cooker long enough and throw in some really flagrant provocations, they're gonna explode. It's nothing special about black people when I think that-I believe any group will do that.

There is also the assumption that 'rioters are rabid animals taking vengeance indiscriminately', which is to put it plainly nonsense. Riots are too complicated and poorly understood a concept to sum up in that sort of way. Rabid animals don't loot, for one thing. They don't respect the protection offered by members of their community for some businesses, instead of just rampaging through those protections.

Another assumption that seems to (correct me if I'm wrong) be behind your words is a pretty old-fashioned interpretation of group psychology in riots. You're acknowledging the actual root causes of these things, but once the riot starts you're often speaking as though it's criminality, plain and simple.

I'm only a layman, but I suspect it is very, very difficult to resist being swept up in a riot if, for example, you're participating in a protest that turns ugly. Say, after some drunk bar goers help incite you, or your protest is ignored for a full week, or the cops-who you are already very unhappy with-show up to 'monitor' your protest, etc. or even if you're just sick of being poor and marginalized, and most of the people around you are too, and then someone throws a rock.

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Originally posted by Risuena:
I think there is an argument to be made that MLK and non-violent protest were as successful as they were in the 60s because they were a foil for more violent factions within the Civil Rights movement like Malcolm X or the Black Panthers.

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Originally posted by Risuena:
You're using Common Law differently than I would, but I see where you're coming from.

There is definitely a difference between understanding why people turn to violent protest and condoning it. I am by no means a Civil Rights expert, but I think there is an argument to be made that MLK and non-violent protest were as successful as they were in the 60s because they were a foil for more violent factions within the Civil Rights movement like Malcolm X or the Black Panthers.

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Originally posted by Lyrhawn:
Check out the Ossian Sweet case in Detroit.

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An Auburn woman claiming to be an ambassador for God and his son, Jesus Christ, is suing all homosexuals.

Sylvia Driskell, 66, asked an Omaha federal judge to decide whether homosexuality is a sin.

Citing Bible verses, Driskell contends “that homosexuality is a sin and that they the homosexuals know it is a sin to live a life of homosexuality. Why else would they have been hiding in the closet(?)”

Driskell wrote in a seven-page petition to the court that God has said homosexuality is an abomination. She challenged the court to not call God a liar.

“I never thought that I would see a day in which our great nation or our own great state of Nebraska would become so compliant to the complicity of some people(’s) lewd behavior.”

Driskell could not be reached by phone. She is representing herself in the lawsuit.

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Originally posted by Dogbreath:
It's a bold strategy, Cotton. Let's see if it work out for her.

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Tea party darling Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-TX) on Tuesday demanded that the U.S. military alter a planned training exercise that some conspiracy theorists believe is cover for a possible takeover of the Lone Star state.

Gohmert said in a statement that he understands Texans' concerns that the exercise, dubbed "Jade Helm 15," may be a precursor for martial law. He directed his criticism specifically at what has been reported to be a map of the training exercise, which labels Texas, among other states, as "hostile" territory ...

"Once I observed the map depicting ‘hostile,’ ‘permissive,’ and ‘uncertain’ states and locations, I was rather appalled that the hostile areas amazingly have a Republican majority, ‘cling to their guns and religion,’ and believe in the sanctity of the United States Constitution," Gohmert said in the statement.

"Such labeling by a government that is normally not allowed to use military force against its own citizens is an affront to the residents of that particular state considered as 'hostile,' as if the government is trying to provoke a fight with them," he later added.

The congressman urged the military to alter the tone of the training exercise and draw up a new map so as to dispel any notion that the federal government is "intentionally practicing war" against particular states.

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Last Thursday, fourth graders from Hampton Falls, New Hampshire visited their state legislature to observe a bit of democracy in action. The children had previously proposed House Bill 373, establishing the Red Tail Hawk as the New Hampshire State Raptor, as part of a civics lesson in how bills become laws. Their measure had already sailed out of the Environmental and Agriculture Committee. Now the young students gathered in the House galley to watch their bill pass its next hurdle.

But the nine and ten-year-olds were in for a brutal lesson in realpolitik. At the start of the day, legislators turned and applauded to children for coming to the statehouse. When lawmakers began to consider the bill, however, Republican Rep. Warren Groen—who has devoted his career to combating abortion and marriage equality—took the floor to denounce the Red Tail Hawk. "It grasps [its prey] with its talons then uses its razor sharp beak to basically tear it apart limb by limb," he explained as the children watched. "And I guess the shame about making this a state bird is it would serve as a much better mascot for Planned Parenthood."

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Dallas Rep. Pete Sessions claimed on the House floor today that Obamacare coverage costs federal taxpayers $5 million for each newly covered American.
He was off by a lot — nearly $5 million, in fact.

“If you just do simple multiplication, 12 million into $108 billion, we’re talking literally every single recipient would be costing this government more than $5 million per person for their insurance,” said Sessions, chairman of the House Rules Committee.

The actual math is this: $108 billion divided by 12 million equals $9,000.

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Originally posted by Samprimary:

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Tea party darling Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-TX) on Tuesday demanded that the U.S. military alter a planned training exercise that some conspiracy theorists believe is cover for a possible takeover of the Lone Star state.

Gohmert said in a statement that he understands Texans' concerns that the exercise, dubbed "Jade Helm 15," may be a precursor for martial law. He directed his criticism specifically at what has been reported to be a map of the training exercise, which labels Texas, among other states, as "hostile" territory ...

"Once I observed the map depicting ‘hostile,’ ‘permissive,’ and ‘uncertain’ states and locations, I was rather appalled that the hostile areas amazingly have a Republican majority, ‘cling to their guns and religion,’ and believe in the sanctity of the United States Constitution," Gohmert said in the statement.

"Such labeling by a government that is normally not allowed to use military force against its own citizens is an affront to the residents of that particular state considered as 'hostile,' as if the government is trying to provoke a fight with them," he later added.

The congressman urged the military to alter the tone of the training exercise and draw up a new map so as to dispel any notion that the federal government is "intentionally practicing war" against particular states.

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ok

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Tom Cotton (R-AR) on Sunday cited Iran’s control of their own capital, Tehran, as a reason that the country had to be stopped from obtaining a nuclear weapon.

In a interview on CBS, Face the Nation host Bob Schieffer pointed out that Cotton’s letter to Iran, which was also signed by 46 other Republican senators, may have undermined President Barack Obama’s ability to get a nuclear deal with Iran.

“Let’s say the deal falls through, then what?” Schieffer wondered.

Cotton replied by quoting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

“The alternative to a bad deal is a better deal,” the freshman senator insisted. “The Iranians frequently bluff to walk away from the table. If they bluff this week, call their bluff. Congress stands ready to impose much more severe sanctions.”

“Moreover, we have to stand up to Iran’s attempts to drive for regional dominance,” he continued. “They already control Tehran and, increasingly, they control Damascus and Beirut and Baghdad. And now, Sana’a as well.”

“They do all that without a nuclear weapon. What they would do with a nuclear weapon.”

Cotton told Schieffer that he had “no regrets at all” about sending the letter to Iran.

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Yesterday on Newsmax TV, Ben Carson said that the federal government does not need to recognize a Supreme Court decision on gay marriage because the president is only obligated to recognize laws passed by Congress, not judicial rulings.

“First of all, we have to understand how the Constitution works, the president is required to carry out the laws of the land, the laws of the land come from the legislative branch,” Carson said. “So if the legislative branch creates a law or changes a law, the executive branch has a responsibly to carry it out. It doesn’t say they have the responsibility to carry out a judicial law.”

He also added that members of the judiciary should have term limits in order to “adjust with the times.”

Carson, who announced his campaign for president on Monday, has previously floated the idea of impeaching judges who back marriage equality.

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Lindsey Graham wants you to know that he is sick and tired of Arabs using the word "the."

"Everything that starts with 'Al' in the Middle East is bad news," said U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham, a Republican from South Carolina at an AIPAC dinner in Boston on Monday. "Al-Qaida, Al-Nusra, Al-Qaida in the Arab Peninsula," said the senator, who may be running for president.

As Haaretz writes, "the problem — linguistically — with Graham's comment is that 'Al' is the definite article in Arabic (i.e. equivalent to English's 'the'), and usually appears before most Arabic proper nouns, especially place and personal names."

So, for example, "the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia" (Al-Mamlakah al-Arabiyah as-Sa'ūdiyah) or "the United Arab Emirates" (al-Imārāt al-‘Arabīyah al-Muttaḥhidah) or "the United States of America" (al-Wilāyāt al-Muttaḥidah al-Amrīkīyah) are all, in Arabic, phrases starting with "al." This is also the derivation of the English word algebra (from al-jabr, the reunion of broken parts).

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If that's the explanation it actually sounds reasonable to omit the "Al" in front of these organizations when talking about them in English just like we often omit "the."

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California pastor Jim Garlow, who is active in conservative politics and was among the key leaders of the campaign to pass Proposition 8, appeared on Tony Perkins’ “Washington Watch” program yesterday to discuss his church’s upcoming Future Conference, which will include appearances by Perkins, Newt Gingrich, Mat Staver.

Garlow said that Staver, the Liberty Counsel attorney who has called formass civil disobedience and a revolution to stop gay marriage, will be “speaking on a topic that most of us didn’t want to hear about, and that’s when biblical obedience translates into civil disobedience and we become an underground resistance movement.”


He later told Perkins, who is the president of the Family Research Council, that people who use the refrain “that ship has sailed” in reference to gay marriage don’t realize that “that ship will sink” since “reason is on our side.”

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For some sentences it does seem really redundant, e.g. "Al/The Jazeera America Replaces CEO"

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Originally posted by TomDavidson:
Yes. Headline writers talk like Hulk.

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*The* Hulk.
 

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Posted by Elison R. Salazar (Member # 8565) on :
 
In Canadian news:

quote:

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Mr. Wayne Marston (Hamilton East—Stoney Creek, NDP) posted:

Mr. Speaker, twice in her remarks the member for Vancouver Quadra used the word “mystified”. I was a child of the sixties. My first vote was in 1968. I did not vote Liberal. I know members are shocked, but I have to say at the time we were inspired by the words that came out of Pierre Trudeau. When the Charter of Rights and Freedoms came into place it was a good thing for Canada and I give recognition to that.

However, what is interesting is we have had four previous prime ministers, three of them Liberal, 100 professors and lawyers say that this is a flawed bill and should be withdrawn. I am very much mystified as to why the Liberals would support something where the history of their own party rails against it.

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Ms. Joyce Murray (Vancouver Quadra, Lib.) posted:

Mr. Speaker, when the NDP member mentions the word “freedoms” I would like to remind the member that freedoms do not exist when there are attacks that could have been prevented or guarded against. Those freedoms would be simply eroded. That is why it is important that a government keep up to date with security requirements that our changing security environment requires. That is why the Liberals are supporting the bill.

I would ask the member whether he would want it on his conscience should there be an attack that leads to deaths of Canadians because of the loopholes that the bill is attempting to fix. The Liberals are clear that the privacy and rights sides of the equation are not properly respected by the Conservative government on purpose and those can be fixed. The Liberal Party has made a commitment to do that. We have been open and transparent about our intention to do that. It will be in our platform and it will be an urgent mandate for us should we form government after the next election.

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Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) built his personal fortune, estimated to be nearly $450 million, by selling car alarms. So there was something a bit incongruous about comments he made during an interview with CNN Money’s Cristina Alesci this week in which he described America’s poor as “somewhat the envy of the world.”

“America’s the richest country on Earth because we’ve been able to put capital together and we’ve been able to make our poor somewhat the envy of the world,” Issa said in response to the issue of income inequality. “If you go to India or you go to any number of third-world countries, you have two problems: you have greater inequality of income and wealth. You also have less opportunity for people to rise from the have-not to the have.”

When Alesci suggested that the U.S. should “set the bar” higher than a comparison to India, Issa cut her off, asking, “Why shouldn’t we?” He continued, “I appreciate your comment, but you’re wrong. You do have to compare yourself to the rest of the world. We compete with the rest of the world.”

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Good luck tracking down sermons from Mike Huckabee's two decades as a Baptist preacher. The GOP presidential candidate, who once started a television station out of his church to broadcast his sermons, kept those tapes under wraps during the 2008 presidential campaign.

Among the handful of sermons open to the public is a partial recording of a 1979 sermon in Arkadelphia, Arkansas, at the congregation Huckabee had tended as a pastor a decade earlier when he was a student at Ouachita Baptist University. The sermon, included in the school's special collections, catches a young Huckabee confident in his beliefs and fluid in his rhetoric, riffing from one New Testament passage to the next in critiquing the most "pleasure-mad society that probably has ever been since Rome and Greece, in the days when there was just absolute chaos and debauchery on the streets" ...

Huckabee was upset with Monty Python's 1979 movie, Life of Brian. Huckabee was hardly alone in condemning Life of Brian, which follows the story of a Jewish man, Brian, who is mistaken for the Messiah because he was born on the same day as Jesus. The film was banned in Ireland; picketed in New Jersey; denounced by a coalition of Christian and Jewish leaders; and canceled in Columbia, South Carolina after a last-minute intervention from Republican Sen. Strom Thurmond. (On the other hand, the movie does have a score of 96 at Rotten Tomatoes.) Per Huckabee:

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There was a time in this country when a movie like The Life of Brian which, I just read—thank God the theaters in Little Rock decided not to show, but it's showing all over the Fort Worth–Dallas area, which is a mockery, which is a blasphemy against the very name of Jesus Christ, and I can remember a day even as young as I am when that would not have happened in this country or in the city in the South.

But friend, it's happening all over and no one's blinking an eye, and we can talk about how the devil's moved in and the devil's moved in but what's really happened is God's people have moved out and made room for it. We've put up the for sale sign and we've announced a very cheap price for what our lives really are. We've sold our character, we've sold our convictions, we've compromised we've sold out and as a result we've moved out the devil's moved in and he's set up shop. And friend [he's] praying on our own craving for pleasure.

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No word on whether Huckabee will defund the Ministry of Silly Walks if elected.

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"Immigration is really… there’s a way I can make an accommodation. I did this in a debate once when my opponents challenged me. And I just said, “Well I’m for open borders” and that did get their attention. I said, ‘well sure, every time we let an immigrant in, we’ll deport a Leftist,’ I’ll make that deal all day long."

King has not shied away from making controversial statements about immigrants in the past. In 2013, King refused to back down from his claim that undocumented immigrants have “cantaloupe calves,” telling radio personality Laura Ingraham that he personally caught immigrants “with my hands” who fit that description. King also said that undocumented youths who want to serve in the U.S. military are “mercenaries” who are “defrauding the Department of Defense.” In the past, he argued against passing immigration reform because people from a “violent civilization” would create a more violent environment for individuals living in a “less-violent civilization.” He has also compared undocumented immigrants to a variety of animals and drug mules.

Meanwhile, King has compared himself to Jesus.

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James Inhofe of Oklahoma headed to the Senate floor on Wednesday to explain the benefits of greenhouse gas emissions.

“Counter to the doomsday predictions of climate alarmists, increasing observations suggest a much reduced and practically harmless climate response to increased amounts of atmospheric carbon dioxide,” he remarked. “Also missing from the climate alarmists’ doomsday scenarios and well-scripted talking points are the benefits from increased carbon that has led to a greening of the planet and contributed to increased agricultural productivity.”


Inhofe, the chairman of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, wondered why people didn’t understand that carbon pollution was good for the Earth.

“People do not realize that you cannot grow things without CO2,” he said. “CO2 is a fertilizer. It is something you cannot do without. No one ever talks about the benefits that people are inducing that as a fertilizer on a daily basis.”

“Despite admitted gaps to the scientific understanding of climate change and a track record of climate modeling failures, President Obama and his environmental allies are holding fast to their bedrock beliefs. They are intent on selling the president’s so-called Climate Action Plan to the American people that is less about protecting the environment and more about expanding the role of the government,” Inhofe said.

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Speaking at Tuskegee University over the weekend, Obama said she was the “focus of another set of questions and speculations” because of her race.

Coulter unleashed in an interview with Sean Hannity, saying, “I think she’s just letting out her Reverend Wright now.”

Coulter contended Democratic policies have been detrimental to the black community and the country, taking particular aim at affirmative action.

“Yes, America does owe black America for slavery, for the Democratic policies of Jim Crow,” Coulter added. “I think we’ve — we’re making it up now, when you’re getting admitted to Princeton when you can’t read, is that enough yet?”

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“This nonsense about the peaceful protesters. No, I want a milk carton for, ‘Has anyone seen a peaceful protester in Baltimore?’ As if work-a-day blacks are rushing out to protest Freddie Gray. No they aren’t,” she said.

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During his radio broadcast this morning, Glenn Beck and his co-hosts ended up engaged in a discussion about the cost of attending college, which eventually turned into an attack on President Obama's proposal to offer two free years of community college to students who meet specific requirements.

While co-host Stu Burguiere said that the proposal was just the first step down a slippery slope that would eventually lead to free college for everyone everywhere as part of an attempt to bankrupt the country and make everyone dependent upon the government, Beck said that student loans are really an attempt by the government to enslave its citizens.

How exactly a proposals to provide free college would allow the government to use student loan debt to enslave people was not something that Beck actually bothered to explain, probably because it makes no sense, but that didn't stop Beck for laying out exactly that sort of conspiracy theory.

"That's the goal," Beck said. "Enslaving them. Because once they give you this for free, there is going to be work involved ... I think you're going to have to pay these things back. Why is it the federal government guarantees these things and makes it the only thing that you can't wipe off? You can go bankrupt and you can wipe off houses, cars, and everything else, but not your educational debt. You must pay your educational debt. Okay, alright. So now when people can't pay their educational debt, what do they have to do? Well, why don't you serve your country? I think our children are going to be enslaved by this debt":

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Take Michael Savage, for example. Last year, the right-wing radio talk show host claimed that Obama would “use Ebola as a pretext” to “take the guns.” Since that never happened, Savage now has a new theory for his fans: Obama will sneak a gun ban into the Trans Pacific Partnership, a controversial free trade deal, without the public ever knowing about it.

“This is a dictatorship as sure as I’m sitting here,” Savage told his listeners on Friday. “Obama’s the most dictatorial president in American history, he was never fit for office, he was voted out of office in November.”

Savage cited a memo from Gun Owners of America that was posted on the conspiracy-theory outlet InfoWars, which claimed that the TPP may include “full implementation of the anti-gun UN Arms Trade Treaty” and an “illegal amnesty which locks in millions of new, anti-gun voters.”

Savage said that while he has no idea if such language is part of the TPP, he predicted that the “sneaky socialist” Obama will make sure that the trade agreement gives him “dictatorial power over America.”

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The likely 2016 contender had given evolving answers all week on the issue, after he was first asked by Fox News' Megyn Kelly whether he would have authorized the war "knowing what we know now."

In that Fox News interview, Bush said he would have, while acknowledging "mistakes."

The former Florida governor late claimed he misinterpreted the question. Yet given the chance for a do-over on Sean Hannity's radio show earlier this week, Bush answered, "I don't know what that decision would have been."

He continued to give open-ended answers until Thursday, during the town hall event in Tempe, Ariz. He acknowledged he was initially reluctant to give that response, suggesting he did not want to dishonor the memories of soldiers lost.

On Wednesday, Bush again was asked to clarify his position during a stop in Reno, Nev. Bush said he would not answer hypotheticals out of respect for those who served. Asked again, Bush said that, in hindsight, anyone would have made "different decisions," while again suggesting he didn't want to focus on the past.

On Thursday, Bush clearly answered he would not have gone into Iraq.

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ok
 

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Posted by JanitorBlade (Member # 12343) on :
 
Ask him enough time and he gives sane answers. Maybe there's hope!
 

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Posted by Hobbes (Member # 433) on :
 
I'm choosing to find the possibility that we could have a Bush v. Clinton race in the general to be hilarious.

Hobbes
 

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Posted by Jon Boy (Member # 4284) on :
 

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Originally posted by Samprimary:

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Take Michael Savage, for example. Last year, the right-wing radio talk show host claimed that Obama would “use Ebola as a pretext” to “take the guns.” Since that never happened, Savage now has a new theory for his fans: Obama will sneak a gun ban into the Trans Pacific Partnership, a controversial free trade deal, without the public ever knowing about it.

“This is a dictatorship as sure as I’m sitting here,” Savage told his listeners on Friday. “Obama’s the most dictatorial president in American history, he was never fit for office, he was voted out of office in November.”

Savage cited a memo from Gun Owners of America that was posted on the conspiracy-theory outlet InfoWars, which claimed that the TPP may include “full implementation of the anti-gun UN Arms Trade Treaty” and an “illegal amnesty which locks in millions of new, anti-gun voters.”

Savage said that while he has no idea if such language is part of the TPP, he predicted that the “sneaky socialist” Obama will make sure that the trade agreement gives him “dictatorial power over America.”

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ok

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Anti-gay pundits such as Charles C. Johnson and the editors of WorldNetDaily are making hay over the news that the engineer of the fatal Amtrak crash in Philadelphia on Tuesday was a supporter of gay rights and may be gay himself.

Today on her radio program, American Family Association governmental affairs director Sandy Rios also mentioned the engineer’s sexual orientation, saying it was likely “a factor” the crash.

“Now I am not saying, I am not inferring to those of you that are gay rights activists and like to monitor this show, I’m not inferring that this accident happened because he was gay, but I do think it’s an interesting part of the story and you can bet it would be edited out,” Rios said. She then suggested that the engineer could have possibly been “going through some confusion that has to do with the very core of who they are,” and mentioned the story of an airline pilot who “put his entire plane at risk because he had an emotional, angry outburst to something that happened,” which she says was related to hormone therapy he was receiving.

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“It’s interesting how the Vatican has gotten so political....

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There was a young man doing the checkout and another Walmart employee came over and put up a sign, “No alcohol products in this lane.” So being the inquisitive fella I am, I used my additional set of eyes — glasses — to see the young checkout man’s name. Let me just say it was NOT “Steve.”

I pointed the sign out to Aubrey and her response was a simple question, how is it that this Muslim employee could refuse service to customers based on his religious beliefs, but Christians are being forced to participate in specific events contrary to their religious beliefs?

Boy howdy, that is one astute young lady.

Imagine that, this employee at Walmart refused to just scan a bottle or container of an alcoholic beverage — and that is acceptable. A Christian business owner declines to participate or provide service to a specific event — a gay wedding — which contradicts their faith, and the State crushes them.

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The ranking Republican member on Washington state’s House Transportation Committee thinks that riding bicycles causes more pollution than driving cars, the Seattle Bike Blog reported Saturday.

State Rep. Ed Orcutt (R), pictured, wrote an email to a constituent who disagreed with his support for a new tax on the sales of bicycles, a proposal being considered as part of a larger piece of transportation legislation. Reached by the Seattle Bike Blog, he confirmed the email is real.

In his message, sent to the owner of a bicycle shop, Orcutt wrote: “If I am not mistaken, a cyclists [sic] has an increased heart rate and respiration. That means that the act of riding a bike results in greater emissions of carbon dioxide from the rider. Since CO2 is deemed to be a greenhouse gas and a pollutant, bicyclists are actually polluting when they ride.”

He added that when citizens drive cars they are helping to pay for the roads, whereas bicyclists “need to start paying for the roads they ride on rather than make motorists pay.”

Reached for comment, Orcutt told Seattle Bike Blog that “you would be giving off more CO2 if you are riding a bike than driving in a car,” although he admitted to having no evidence to back the claim.

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Originally posted by GaalDornick:
In his apology, he admitted cycling does not cause more pollution than cars, but he mentioned that his point was just that cycling doesn't have a zero carbon-footprint. I'm not 100% sure about this but I thought the CO2 we breathe out comes from the CO2 stored in the plants and foods that we eat and the CO2 we inhale, and that same CO2 we exhale gets reabsorbed by plants, so that we do basically have a zero carbon-footprint while cycling.

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Originally posted by Jon Boy:
It's sad not just that someone like that can be elected but that he can serve on the transportation committee.

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http://i.imgur.com/XOWMfuB.jpg

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The hosts of Fox & Friends on Monday complained that it was taking too long to execute some inmates on death row, meaning that Americans would not “get to kill” them in a timely manner.

“We’ve got friends and family there ourselves and, I think, most Americans looked at this as justice is done,” she opined. “But now we hear about this appeals process, and we’re wondering, where’s the justice in that?”

Death penalty proponent Robert Blecker explained to Hasselbeck that appeals were guaranteed to condemned inmates, and he argued that they should be.

“People say it’s good that you gave him the death penalty, but he’s never going to get it,” co-host Brian Kilmeade remarked. “Timothy McVeigh gave up on his appeal so we got to kill him. We’re not going to get to kill this guy, are we?”

“And we have to keep giving him a lawyer to do these appeals,” Kilmeade grumbled.

“Well, yes,” Blecker replied. “Of course.”

“Incredible,” Hasselbeck concluded.

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According to Locke Bell, the district attorney of Gaston County, North Carolina, the ethnicity of a domestic-violence survivor can disqualify that person from equal protection under the law. The Charlotte Observer reports that Bell refused to certify a domestic violence survivor’s visa application because he thinks the relevant law protecting crime victims “was never intended to protect Latinos from Latinos.”

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Unlike most car manufacturers, Tesla sells its cars directly to consumers rather than through dealerships.

Democratic state Rep. Senfronia Thompson criticized the company by saying that “it would have been wiser if Mr. Tesla had sat down with the car dealers first.”

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Originally posted by theamazeeaz:
I really want to make a webpage, ismycongresspersondumb.com where you can search by district, and all such things are filed.

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A new survey from Public Policy Polling finds that one-third of Republicans believe the Jade Helm 15 conspiracy theory that “the government is trying to take over Texas,” and another 28 percent of GOP voters haven’t made up their minds yet about the matter.

The right-wing frenzy over an upcoming military exercise called Jade Helm 15 has swept up the Republican governor of Texas and several other GOP leaders who wonder if the drill is part of a plan by President Obama to seize Texas, impose martial law, confiscate firearms and throw conservatives into closed Walmart stores that have been converted into FEMA camps.

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In video highlighted Tuesday by BuzzFeed, Huckabee suggested that, in today's climate of increased acceptance for transgender rights, men will lie about their gender identity in order to ogle women in bathrooms. In fact, Huckabee said he would have done exactly that as a teen.

"Now, I wish that someone told me that when I was in high school that I could have felt like a woman when it came time to take showers in PE," Huckabee said. "I'm pretty sure that I would have found my feminine side and said, 'Coach, I think I'd rather shower with the girls today.'"

Huckabee's remarks prompted laughter from the audience.

"You're laughing because it sounds so ridiculous doesn't it?" he asked the crowd.

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Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum said this week that he was a “huge fan” of Pope Francis but that the pontiff should stop buying into the global warming debate and, instead, “leave the science to the scientists.”

During a Monday interview with WPHT, host Dom Giordano noted that Pope Francis was expected to urge lawmakers to take action on climate change when he visits the U.S. later this year.

According to Santorum, who is Catholic, the liberal media had been misrepresenting the pope as less conservative that he really was.

“He’s someone who is as committed to the nuclear family as I am,” the former Pennsylvania senator opined. “I’m a huge fan of his and his focus on making sure that we have a healthier society.”

“I understand and I sympathize and I support completely the pope’s call for us to do more to create opportunities for people to be able to rise in society, and to care for the poor,” he continued.

But when it came to a responsibility to care for the planet, Santorum advised the church to proceed with caution.

“The church has gotten it wrong a few times on science, and I think that we probably are better off leaving science to the scientists,” the candidate insisted.

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Originally posted by JanitorBlade:
I saw that yesterday. So he admits that he would have eagerly lied so as to leer at girls in the shower? And he doesn't feel particularly ashamed of that either.

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Originally posted by Rakeesh:
The Pope (who doesn't he have a degree in a hard science? I forget.).

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The Kansas trouble started in 2014, when the state supreme court ruled that the disparity between school funding in rich and poor districts violated the state constitution. The justices ordered the legislature to fix the problem. Soon after, the legislature passed an administrative law that stripped the supreme court of its authority to appoint local chief judges and set district court budgets. (Instead, district court judges—who are often quite conservative—were allowed to elect their own chief judge.)

Arriving shortly after the school funding ruling, this law was widely seen as a retaliation against the court—and a warning. In their first ruling, the justices stopped short of declaring that the school system as a whole was constitutionally underfunded. But the court acknowledged that it would one day answer that question. And if the justices mandate more school funding, the legislature will have to raise taxes, a step few legislators are eager to take.

The administrative law, then, was likely an effort to scare the court out of issuing a dramatic ruling in favor of greater school funding. Just in case the court didn't get the message, Brownback and the legislature have also threatened the justices with blatantly political reforms, like subjecting them to recall elections, splitting the court in two, lowering the retirement age, and introducing partisan elections. (Currently, a nominating commission creates a pool of candidates, and the governor selects from that bunch.)

Now the court has an opportunity to strike down the administrative law, which probably violates the state constitution. And that's where Brownback's insane new law comes in. The law declares that if the supreme court strikes down the administrative law, the entire state judiciary will lose its funding. Brownback and the legislature are essentially bullying the judiciary: Uphold our law or cease to exist.

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Public shaming would be an effective way to regulate the “irresponsible behavior” of unwed mothers, misbehaving teenagers and welfare recipients, former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush (R) argued in his 1995 book Profiles in Character.

In a chapter called "The Restoration of Shame,” the likely 2016 presidential candidate made the case that restoring the art of public humiliation could help prevent pregnancies “out of wedlock.”

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One of the reasons more young women are giving birth out of wedlock and more young men are walking away from their paternal obligations is that there is no longer a stigma attached to this behavior, no reason to feel shame. Many of these young women and young men look around and see their friends engaged in the same irresponsible conduct. Their parents and neighbors have become ineffective at attaching some sense of ridicule to this behavior. There was a time when neighbors and communities would frown on out of wedlock births and when public condemnation was enough of a stimulus for one to be careful.

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Bush points to Nathaniel Hawthorne's 1850 novel The Scarlet Letter, in which the main character is forced to wear a large red "A" for "adulterer" on her clothes to punish her for having an extramarital affair that produced a child, as an early model for his worldview. "Infamous shotgun weddings and Nathaniel Hawthorne's Scarlet Letter are reminders that public condemnation of irresponsible sexual behavior has strong historical roots,” Bush wrote.

As governor of Florida in 2001, Bush had the opportunity to test his theory on public shaming. He declined to veto a very controversial bill that required single mothers who did not know the identity of the father to publish their sexual histories in a newspaper before they could legally put their babies up for adoption.

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President Santorum: I Won't Enforce Gay Marriage Because It's 'Government Establishing Religion'

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While speaking at the California ProLife Legislative Banquet last week, California Assemblywoman Shannon Grove (R) suggested a theory that the state's worst drought in 1,200 years may be divine retribution for California providing women with access to abortions, RH Reality Check reported.

“Texas was in a long period of drought until Governor Perry signed the fetal pain bill,” she told the audience. “It rained that night. Now God has his hold on California.”

Grove was likely referring to House Bill 2, RH Reality Check noted, a Texas abortion bill banning abortions 20 weeks after fertilization, four weeks earlier than the standard set by Roe v. Wade.

Grove did not immediately respond to a request for confirmation that she made the statement at the event, but she elaborated on her theory in a Facebook comment.

"I believe --and most Americans believe --that God’s hand is in the affairs of man, and certainly was in the formation of this country," she wrote. "Is this drought caused by God? Nobody knows. But biblical history shows a consequence to man’s actions."

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A Utah man is refusing to eat until his state restores a ban on same-sex marriages.

Trestin Meacham, 35, has been surviving on water and the occasional vitamin pill since Dec. 21. Although he's already lost 25 pounds, Meacham claims he won't eat until all of Utah's counties stop issuing gay marriage licenses.

"You can start a blog and you can complain on social networks until you're blue in the face and nothing will happen but actions speak louder than words and I'm taking action," Meacham told 4Utah.

One day before Meacham began his fast with "no end in sight," federal judge Robert J. Shelby ruled that Utah's ban on same-sex marriages was unconstitutional.

"I cannot stand by and do nothing while this evil takes root in my home," the man wrote on Facebook. "Some things in life are worth sacrificing one's [health]and even life if necessary."

In particular, Meacham is pushing for Utah to "nullify" Shelby's ruling. The principle can be traced back to Thomas Jefferson, who argued that the state legislatures have a right to nullify federal statutes that are unconstitutional.

Meacham believes Utah doesn't need to enforce Shelby's ruling.

"They can end this tomorrow," Meacham said. "They don't have to go through the legal court battles and waste our money, they can end it tomorrow with the act of nullification."

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The 35-year-old one-time state senate candidate had been fasting for 15 days in protest of the court’s decision, hoping that his hunger strike would result in Utah nullifying the ruling. That didn’t happen. But Meacham is happy to count the Supreme Court’s stay as a personal victory, even if he acknowledges that starving himself almost certainly had no impact on the high court’s decision.

Meacham lives in Richfield, a small town of about 7,500 in Utah’s “Mormon Corridor.” In 2012, he ran a self-financed state senate campaign on the ultra-conservative U.S. Taxpayers Party ticket—a “very not fun” experience that he has no plans to repeat. While he makes no effort to deny that he is wholeheartedly opposed to same-sex marriage, Meacham insists that his hunger strike was in response to “the unconstitutional nature” of the judge’s ruling. “If a judge can do that and overthrow the people, there is no part of the constitution that’s safe,” he told The Daily Beast. “He could strike out the Second Amendment tomorrow.”

He’d also like to make one thing clear, as most vocal gay rights opponents often do: He doesn’t hate gay people. He has plenty of gay friends and relatives, he just happens to disagree with them on this one issue. Still, the man did starve himself in the name of a same-sex marriage ban and it, unsurprisingly, earned him a lot of backlash.

So what happens if a federal appeals court decides to uphold the original judge’s ruling and make same-sex marriage legal in Utah again? “I’m going to make the ultimate sacrifice. I’m going to give up football,” says Meacham. He promised his fiancée he’d only fast once.

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Originally posted by Jon Boy:

Side note: Trestin Meacham is one of the most Utah Mormon names I've ever seen.

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Originally posted by GaalDornick:
What's the difference between a Utah Mormon name and every other Mormon name?

That's not the start of a joke, I'm actually curious.

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Originally posted by JanitorBlade:

Aiden, Braiden, Jayden, Kayden.

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Originally posted by Jon Boy:

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Originally posted by GaalDornick:
What's the difference between a Utah Mormon name and every other Mormon name?

That's not the start of a joke, I'm actually curious.

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What scifibum and JanitorBlade said. Weird names like Trestin don't seem to be part of a broader Mormon culture but are more limited to Utah and other parts of the West. Yes, there are some names from the Book of Mormon or LDS Church leaders that you might find among Mormons all over the world, but the practice of misspelling, combining, or making up names seems to be more limited to Utah and some of the surrounding states.

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Originally posted by JanitorBlade:
They are infamous for latching onto a name then applying a bazillion variations to it. And awful spellings.

Aiden, Braiden, Jayden, Kayden.

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Originally posted by TomDavidson:
In my daughter's second-grade class, she has one Aiden, one Haden, one Bayden, one Brayden, one Caiden, one Kayden, and one Cade. Among girls, there's a Hayden and a Jaiden. This is in Wisconsin.

*shudder*

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South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley (R) on Tuesday said that there was no need to remove the Confederate battle flag from the Statehouse grounds because it was not an issue for CEOs, and the state had “fixed” racist perceptions by electing an Indian-American governor.

“What I can tell you is over the last three and a half years, I spent a lot of my days on the phones with CEOs and recruiting jobs to this state,” the governor noted. “I can honestly say I have not had one conversation with a single CEO about the Confederate flag.”

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Originally posted by Samprimary:

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Originally posted by JanitorBlade:
They are infamous for latching onto a name then applying a bazillion variations to it. And awful spellings.

Aiden, Braiden, Jayden, Kayden.

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no, aah, no

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Originally posted by TomDavidson:
In my daughter's second-grade class, she has one Aiden, one Haden, one Bayden, one Brayden, one Caiden, one Kayden, and one Cade. Among girls, there's a Hayden and a Jaiden. This is in Wisconsin.

*shudder*

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stop, no, no aah

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In an interview with Steve Malzberg’s Newsmax TV program on Friday, Republican presidential candidate and former Texas Gov. Rick Perry called the shooting deaths of nine black church members in Charleston, S.C. an “accident.”
“This is the M.O. of this administration, any time there is an accident like this — the president is clear, he doesn’t like for Americans to have guns and so he uses every opportunity, this being another one, to basically go parrot that message,” Perry said

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The NRA, the largest and most powerful gun advocacy group in the world, typically mutes itself after mass shootings, and demands that others follow suit out of respect for the dead. The group’s social-media accounts, normally used to promulgate weapons enthusiasm, fall silent.

On Friday, an NRA spokesperson hewed to that strategy, saying that the group would have no comment “until all the facts are known”.

“We are praying for the victims and their families and, given the tragic loss, we don’t think this is the time for a political debate,” spokeswoman Jennifer Baker told the Guardian.

Board member Charles Cotton, however, strayed from the script late on Thursday, when he posted a comment online blaming the pastor killed in the South Carolina shooting, Clementa Pinckney, for the death of his eight congregants.

Cotton, who did not return a message left at his Houston-area law firm, pointed out on a Texas gun forum that Pinckney was a state senator who had voted against a law allowing gun owners to carry concealed weapons without permits.

“Eight of his church members who might be alive if he had expressly allowed members to carry handguns in church are dead,” Cotton wrote. “Innocent people died because of his position on a political issue.”

“Individual board members do not speak for the NRA,” Baker said.

The remark has since been deleted.

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[insert anything Trump says here]

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Bristol Palin has for the past few years been the face of abstinence-only policies, making close to $1 million through her outreach efforts to prevent teen pregnancy.

And now she’s pregnant again, expecting her second out-of-wedlock child.

The daughter of former Alaska governor and vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin announced this week that she is expecting a child. Bristol Palin announced her pregnancy in a Patheos blog post, saying it was a disappointing revelation.

“I wanted you guys to be the first to know that I am pregnant,” Bristol wrote. “Honestly, I’ve been trying my hardest to keep my chin up on this one… Life moves on no matter what. So no matter how you feel, you get up, get dressed, show up, and never give up.”

She added, “I know this has been, and will be, a huge disappointment to my family, to my close friends, and to many of you. But please respect Tripp’s and my privacy during this time. I do not want any lectures and I do not want any sympathy.”

Ironically, it was lectures on abstinence that helped to make Bristol Palin a millionaire. In 2009, she went to work for The Candie’s Foundation as a teen pregnancy ambassador, giving speeches to warn against teen pregnancy.

“There may be multiple forms of contraception, but I’m here to say that one fact remains. Those that practice abstinence have no chance of becoming pregnant,” Palin said at an appearance in 2010. “Abstinence is not about morality, it is about reality. It is the only thing that works every time. My message is a simple one: Don’t make the same decision I made, just wait. Young ladies, please hear me.”

Her work generated a bit of controversy in 2009 when her take-home pay for Candie’s was seven times what the charity actually brought in donations.

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donald

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trump's

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mouth

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Originally posted by GaalDornick:
Joke stealer

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The most unusual opinion of the lot came from Justice Jefferson D. Hughes, III, who dissented from the court’s conclusion that it actually must comply with binding constitutional precedents handed down by the United States Supreme Court. “Judges instruct jurors every week not to surrender their honest convictions merely to reach agreement,” Hughes began. “I cannot do so now.”
Hughes’s opinion is only two paragraphs. It cites no authorities and provides no legal arguments in support of his position. It does, however, include an apparent suggestion that gay parents are pedophiles. “This case involves an adoption,” he writes, adding that “[t]he most troubling prospect of same sex marriage is the adoption by same sex partners of a young child of the same sex.”

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Today, Republican presidential candidate Jeb Bush, who as of-late has gone relatively gaffe-free, uttered a phrase that may not go over too well with the constituency he seeks to reach. During an interview that was live-streamed on the app Periscope, Bush told New Hampshire's "The Union Leader" that to grow the economy, "people should work longer hours."

He was answering a question about his plans for tax reform and responded:

"My aspiration for the country and I believe we can achieve it, is 4 percent growth as far as the eye can see. Which means we have to be a lot more productive, workforce participation has to rise from its all-time modern lows. It means that people need to work longer hours" and, through their productivity, gain more income for their families. That's the only way we're going to get out of this rut that we're in."

Already the Democratic National Committee has pounced, releasing a statement that calls his remarks "easily one of the most out-of-touch comments we've heard so far this cycle," adding that Bush would not fight for the middle class as president.

A 2014 Gallup poll found that already many Americans employed full-time report working, on average, 47 hours a week, while nearly 4 in 10 say they work at least 50 hours a week.

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Originally posted by Rakeesh:
It's ok-boatloads of those people are adequately compensated with overtime pay!

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Originally posted by JanitorBlade:

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Originally posted by Rakeesh:
It's ok-boatloads of those people are adequately compensated with overtime pay!

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I laughed.

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http://bloximages.chicago2.vip.townnews.com/enidnews.com/content/tncms/assets/v3/editorial/c/1c/c1ca016a-2a51-11e5-bb36-a30b9f4016a9/55a54de26c230.image.jpg

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It was such a stupid remark (politically stupid, I mean)

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Originally posted by TomDavidson:
I actually wonder if someone else in the field is paying Trump to stay in to manipulate the timing of media events.

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Originally posted by Samprimary:

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Originally posted by TomDavidson:
I actually wonder if someone else in the field is paying Trump to stay in to manipulate the timing of media events.

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they better be paying him a hell of a lot of money, because it would have to compensate for how he's torpedoing his media franchises and future business branding

but it's not like it would be out of character for trump to make decisions that cost him billions of dollars~

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Originally posted by FlyingCow:
I think it's a pretty sad testament on the Republican field (actually, probably more on the Republican voter base), that Trump is polling so well - even with deserving to have an entire thread like this dedicated just to him.

I think the favorite line I've seen so far has been "it's like he's a Comments Section running for president".

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Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee told supporters in Iowa on Thursday that if he were elected president he would consider using the FBI or National Guard to end abortion by force. Per the Topeka Capital-Journal:

"I will not pretend there is nothing we can do to stop this," Huckabee said at the event, where a Topeka Capital-Journal correspondent was present.

At his next stop, in Rockwell City, Huckabee answered follow-up questions from the correspondent, saying: "All American citizens should be protected."

Asked by another reporter how he would stop abortion, and whether this would mean using the FBI or federal forces to accomplish this, Huckabee replied: "We'll see if I get to be president."

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Originally posted by Samprimary:
"We'll see if I get to be president."

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"Sadly, because President Obama has done such a poor job as president, you won't see another black president for generations."

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In an address to an exclusive gathering of wealthy donors over the weekend, billionaire Charles Koch said that he and his political network seek "to right injustices" in the style of other movements in American history like abolition, women's suffrage or civil rights.

The Koch brothers brought together a group of 450 conservatives who had donated at least $100,000 to groups backed by Charles Koch and his brother, David, and invited several Republican presidential candidates to address them.

Koch told the donors, "Look at the American revolution, the anti-slavery movement, the women's suffrage movement, the civil rights movement," according to the Washington Post. "All of these struck a moral chord with the American people."

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Michigan state Rep. Todd Courser (R) planned to release a fake story claiming that he was caught having sex with a male prostitute in order to cover up his relationship with fellow state Rep. Cindy Gamrat (R), according to audio recordings released by The Detroit News Friday.

Courser was apparently caught on tape discussing the plan in a series of recordings made by a House aide.

“Courser secretly removed from Caucus several weeks ago due to male on male paid for sex behind a prominent Lansing nightclub,” an email announcing the fake story would have stated. “He is a bisexual, porn-addicted sexual deviant.”
Courser said on one recording that the fake story was designed to make any subsequent reports look like “a complete smear campaign” against him. He also commented that the story needed to “make anything else that comes out after that — that isn’t a video — mundane, tame by comparison.”

“I need to, if possible, inoculate the herd against gutter politics that are coming,” he said.

The now-former House aide who recorded the conversations has been identified as Ben Graham, who was fired by Courser in early July.

Courser declined to comment to The Detroit News earlier this week, but did confirm that it was his voice when one of the recordings was played.

“I’m not commenting on what happened in my office between Ben [Graham] and I inside here,” Courser told The Detroit News Monday. “I don’t have any comment at all.”

Courser also disputed the legality of the recording.

Courser and Gamrat both rose to political prominence as Tea Party activists who took on the Republican establishment to win their seats in the state House last year.

Courser, married with four children, represents Michigan’s 82nd district. Gamrat, married with three children, represents Michigan’s 80th district.

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Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell may be ruling out a government shutdown at the end of September, but Sen. Ted Cruz certainly is not.
“The last government shutdown occurred because Barack Obama and Harry Reid took an extreme position and they were unwilling to compromise and negotiate,” the Texas Republican said of the 2013 budget standoff. “So, I cannot give any guarantee as to whether the Obama administration will once again play partisan political games. For six-and-a-half years, that has been their pattern. So, no one would be surprised to see them go down that road again.”

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He added, “it’s a false narrative that I want to get rid of all of welfare and all the programs. That’s just something that the left-wing puts out to try to make me seem like a bad guy. That’s absolutely a lie. But what I do want to do is get business, industry, academia, Wall Street, churches, community groups involved and investing in people around them. Because that’s the only thing that brings people out.” And “since the 60s, we’ve spent over 19 trillion dollars on the war on poverty. What do we have? 10 times more people on food stamps, more welfare, more incarceration and crime, broken families, out of wedlock birth. Everything was supposed to be better, it’s not only worse, it’s much worse.”

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(MD) Gov. Larry Hogan's top housing official said Friday that he wants to look at loosening state lead paint poisoning laws, saying they could motivate a mother to deliberately poison her child to obtain free housing.

Kenneth C. Holt, secretary of Housing, Community and Development, told an audience at the Maryland Association of Counties summer convention here that a mother could just put a lead fishing weight in her child's mouth, then take the child in for testing and a landlord would be liable for providing the child with housing until the age of 18.

Pressed afterward, Holt said he had no evidence of this happening but said a developer had told him it was possible. "This is an anecdotal story that was described to me as something that could possibly happen," Holt said.

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Former Florida governor and GOP presidential candidate Jeb Bush had an awkward conversation about Common Core education standards this week, calling the initiative’s name “poisonous” while attempting to appeal to conservatives who oppose the program — even though he supports it.

While speaking at the Iowa State Fair in Des Moines on Friday, former Florida governor Bush tried to talk his way around a question about the Common Core Standards Initiative, an education policy initiated by the National Governors Association that tries to bring education standards into alignment nationwide.

“The term ‘Common Core’ is so darn poisonous, I don’t even know what it means,” Bush said. “[But] I’m for higher standards — state-created, locally implemented — where the federal government has no role in the creation of standards, content or curriculum.”

The evasive answer appears to be an attempt to sidestep widespread Republican opposition to the policy, which is rooted in the misconception that it amounts to a “federal takeover” of the education system — even though the standards were created by state governors, not the federal government, and developed at the state level.

But Bush seemed far more confident about what Common Core “means” in May, when he repeated his longstanding support for the policy at an event in Tennessee.

“Because people have a different view of what Common Core is, am I supposed to back away from something that I know works?” Bush told attendees at the event, which occurred before announced his candidacy for president.

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Originally posted by Jon Boy:
So who's the prominent conservative who's standing up for it? Based on that, it doesn't sound like Jeb is.

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George Zimmerman is now selling prints of his Confederate flag painting at a gun store that made headlines earlier this year for deeming itself a "Muslim-free" zone.

..

Zimmerman was originally painting an American flag when he heard the Council for American/Islamic Relations was planning a lawsuit against Hallinan.

"The caption, 'the 2nd protects the first' is a double entendre," Zimmerman said in a statement on Florida Gun Supply's website. "The first flag I painted on this canvas was an American Flag, but decided to repaint over it with the Confederate Flag when I heard Andy was getting sued by CAIR. The 2nd flag I painted was the Battle Flag - which we need in America in order to protect the first."

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Donald Trump is defending his controversial immigration plan, telling Fox News’ Bill O'Reilly that the 14th Amendment — which guarantees citizenship to all people “born or naturalized in the United States,” including children whose parents came to the country illegally — is unconstitutional.

“It’s not going to hold up in court,” Trump said on The Factor Tuesday.

On Sunday, the Republican frontrunner released his formal plan for immigration reform, calling for a wall across the southern border to be paid for by Mexico, the defunding of so-called sanctuary cities and the “mandatory return of all criminal aliens” to their home countries — including so-called birthright citizens protected by the 14th Amendment.

“We’re going to keep the families together, but they have to go,“ Trump said on NBC’s Meet the Press.

“What happens is, they’re in Mexico, they’re going to have a baby, they move over here for a couple of days, they have the baby,” Trump told O’Reilly. "When people are illegally in the country, they have to go.”

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Originally posted by Samprimary:
[QUOTE]Donald Trump is defending his controversial immigration plan, telling Fox News’ Bill O'Reilly that the 14th Amendment — which guarantees citizenship to all people “born or naturalized in the United States,” including children whose parents came to the country illegally — is unconstitutional.

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Originally posted by Dogbreath:

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Originally posted by Samprimary:
[QUOTE]Donald Trump is defending his controversial immigration plan, telling Fox News’ Bill O'Reilly that the 14th Amendment — which guarantees citizenship to all people “born or naturalized in the United States,” including children whose parents came to the country illegally — is unconstitutional.

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How can the actual Constitution be unconstitutional?

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Well see if you look at... uh, maybe if you... oh screw it, I have no idea.
 

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Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
 
Some constitutional scholars actually sat down and came up with a comprehensive writeup about how you could selectively reinterpret the writing of the amendment to create a stateless people.

It's kind of dry but I can't deny their logic is essentially on point.
 

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Posted by Heisenberg (Member # 13004) on :
 
http://www.mediaite.com/tv/donald-trump-flip-flops-on-flat-tax-in-literally-less-than-one-minute/
 

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Posted by Elison R. Salazar (Member # 8565) on :
 

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Originally posted by Samprimary:
Some constitutional scholars actually sat down and came up with a comprehensive writeup about how you could selectively reinterpret the writing of the amendment to create a stateless people.

It's kind of dry but I can't deny their logic is essentially on point.

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Originally posted by Heisenberg:
http://www.mediaite.com/tv/donald-trump-flip-flops-on-flat-tax-in-literally-less-than-one-minute/

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Originally posted by GaalDornick:
Perhaps he copy pasted the wrong tab.

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Originally posted by BlackBlade:
Never ever mention those names! Don't you realize when you do, those people who have been banned rise and inhabit new alternate bodies and roam the these halls, trolling and screaming....trolling and screaming!111!one!

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What I was talking about was the specific case of fraud being committed, where there's organized efforts -- and frankly it's more related to Asian people coming into our country -- having children in that organized effort, taking advantage of a noble concept, which is birthright citizenship.

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Originally posted by Heisenberg:
http://www.mediaite.com/tv/donald-trump-flip-flops-on-flat-tax-in-literally-less-than-one-minute/

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Republican pollster Frank Luntz peered into the GOP’s id by questioning Donald Trump supporters about his appeal — and he found the results terrifying.
...
Luntz showed the participants recordings of Trump insulting women, bragging about himself and reversing his previous positions on a variety of topics — but the vast majority said they only liked him more after watching the videos.

“Nothing disqualifies Trump,” Luntz said afterward.

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Originally posted by Dogbreath:
There's actually another little gem in that video he posted:

"We're the most highly taxed nation in the world"
-Donald Trump

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The Republican presidential candidate Scott Walker said on Sunday that building a wall on the US northern border with Canada was “a legitimate issue for us to look at”.

Asked in an interview on NBC if he wanted to build a wall on the Canadian border, the Wisconsin governor cited his experience talking to voters “including some law enforcement folks” in New Hampshire, an early voting state in the Republican primaries. Such people, he said, were concerned about terrorists potentially crossing over from Canada.

“They raised some very legitimate concerns, including some law enforcement folks that brought that up to me at one of our town hall meetings about a week and a half ago,” Walker said. “So that is a legitimate issue for us to look at.”

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Originally posted by Dogbreath:
It's about time someone did something about the scourge of Canadian terrorists.

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#Obama, you are only the president. You have taken an oath to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution, not to shred it. Mt. McKinley.

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Originally posted by Rakeesh:
Ok, so: take the illegals from the south and send them to the North to join the Watch on the Canadian Wall.

Perfect plan. No flaws.

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I like it. Can we still call it "Operation Human Shield"?
 

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Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
 

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Originally posted by Jon Boy:
Representative Steve King:

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#Obama, you are only the president. You have taken an oath to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution, not to shred it. Mt. McKinley.

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Originally posted by Samprimary:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iAgiK07Py9M

2016: the song

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https://store.tedcruz.org/product-category/sabo/

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Originally posted by Samprimary:

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https://store.tedcruz.org/product-category/sabo/

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ok

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Originally posted by Wingracer:
I find it very hard to consider expulsion monstrous. Wrong perhaps but certainly not monstrous.

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Originally posted by Rakeesh:
How many people do you know who have heen expelled from college in disgrace?

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Originally posted by Wingracer:

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Originally posted by Rakeesh:
How many people do you know who have heen expelled from college in disgrace?

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One. Over a rape accusation. He is doing quite well for himself now.

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“Are they really escaping tyranny, are they escaping poverty, or are they just running because we’ve got cable TV,” Huckabee told a weekend conference of the ultraconservative Eagle Forum. “I don’t mean to be trite — I’m just saying we don’t know.”

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Originally posted by Jon Boy:
Huckabee on Syrian refugees

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“Are they really escaping tyranny, are they escaping poverty, or are they just running because we’ve got cable TV,” Huckabee told a weekend conference of the ultraconservative Eagle Forum. “I don’t mean to be trite — I’m just saying we don’t know.”

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Originally posted by Jon Boy:
Huckabee on Syrian refugees

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“Are they really escaping tyranny, are they escaping poverty, or are they just running because we’ve got cable TV,” Huckabee told a weekend conference of the ultraconservative Eagle Forum. “I don’t mean to be trite — I’m just saying we don’t know.”

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Originally posted by JanitorBlade:

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Originally posted by Jon Boy:
Huckabee on Syrian refugees

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“Are they really escaping tyranny, are they escaping poverty, or are they just running because we’ve got cable TV,” Huckabee told a weekend conference of the ultraconservative Eagle Forum. “I don’t mean to be trite — I’m just saying we don’t know.”

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“This idea that we have an obligation to receive vast numbers of people . . . We have a real obligation to make sure that we protect the sovereignty of the United States.”

Mr Huckabee is having an awful time serving two masters, Jesus, and the GOP.

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Originally posted by Jon Boy:
Thanks, Imogen, for providing translation services.

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Originally posted by imogen:

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Originally posted by Jon Boy:
Huckabee on Syrian refugees

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“Are they really escaping tyranny, are they escaping poverty, or are they just running because we’ve got cable TV,” Huckabee told a weekend conference of the ultraconservative Eagle Forum. “I don’t mean to be trite — I’m just saying we don’t know.”

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"I don't mean to be trite - so I'll just be ignorant, and scaremongering instead."

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TAPPER: Governor Jindal, I'm afraid you didn't answer the question. How do you strike the balance between vigilance and discrimination?

Obviously, we know how you feel about the vigilance part of this. Do you ever see the discrimination part of it?

JINDAL: Sure, I don't think a 14-year-old should ever get arrested for bringing a clock to school. So, if you're asking me I'm glad he wasn't -- he was released. I'm glad that police are careful. I'm glad they are worried about security and safety issues.

Look, in America we don't tolerate them. The biggest discrimination is going on against Christian business owners and individuals who believe in traditional forms of marriage. They are throwing this woman in jail in Kentucky.

(APPLAUSE)

Let's talk about that. Let's talk about the Christian florist, the caterer, the musician, who simply want to say, don't arrest us for having -- or don't discriminate against us, don't shut down our businesses, don't fine us thousands of dollars for believing marriage is between a man and a woman. Lets talk about not discriminating against Christians.

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JINDAL: I've got a practical question. I'd like the left to give us a list of jobs that Christians aren't allowed to have. If we're not allowed to be clerks, bakers, musicians, caterers, are we allowed to be pastors (INAUDIBLE)?

TAPPER: Governor Jindal...

JINDAL: We're not allowed to be elected officials. I firmly -- this is an important point. The First Amendment rights, the right to religious freedom is in the First Amendment of "The Constitution." It isn't breaking the law to exercise our constitutional rights. America did not create religious liberty, religious liberty created the United States of America. It is the reason we're here today.

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Donald Trump has linked vaccinations to what he dubbed an autism “epidemic” during a presidential debate.

Mr Trump, who is the current frontrunner among the Republican presidential hopefuls, claimed autism rates have risen into an “epidemic” over the last few decades that is “totally out of control”.

“Autism has become an epidemic. 25 years ago, 35 years ago, you look at the statistics, it’s not even close. It has gotten totally out of control,” he said.

The property developer and TV personality said he had evidence of a relationship between autism and vaccinations after seeing an employee’s child diagnosed with the disability following an adverse reaction to a vaccine.

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Originally posted by GaalDornick:
He means that he kept the homeland safe after the attack

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Former Alaska governor Sarah Palin is following her daughter’s lead in criticizing Obama’s invitation to a Texas teen detained for bringing a kit clock to school.

A homemade clock crafted by 14-year-old Ahmed Mohamed looked nothing like a clock, the one-time vice president candidate said on Facebook sharing a photo of its jumbled parts.

“That’s a clock, and I’m the queen of England,” Palin wrote Saturday.

While a world of scientists and engineers rallied around the MacArthur High School student, Palin dismissed the Irving teenager as only “an evidently obstinate-answering student” who deserved to be arrested by authorities

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there's just no excuse for hauling the kid off in handcuffs.

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“Now what about the big bang theory,” said [Ben] Carson at speech to fellow Seventh-day Adventists titled “Celebration of Creation,” about the theory for the origin of the universe.

“I find the big bang, really quite fascinating. I mean, here you have all these high-faluting scientists and they’re saying it was this gigantic explosion and everything came into perfect order. Now these are the same scientists that go around touting the second law of thermodynamics, which is entropy, which says that things move toward a state of disorganization.

“So now you’re gonna have this big explosion and everything becomes perfectly organized and when you ask them about it they say, ‘Well we can explain this, based on probability theory because if there’s enough big explosions, over a long period of time, billions and billions of years, one of them will be the perfect explosion,” continued Carson. “So I say what you’re telling me is if I blow a hurricane through a junkyard enough times over billions and billions of years, eventually after one of those hurricanes there will be a 747 fully loaded and ready to fly.”

Carson added that he believed the big bang was “even more ridiculous” because there is order to the universe.

“Well, I mean, it’s even more ridiculous than that ‘cause our solar system, not to mention the universe outside of that, is extraordinarily well organized, to the point where we can predict 70 years away when a comet is coming,” he said. “Now that type of organization to just come out of an explosion? I mean, you want to talk about fairy tales, that is amazing.”

Later, Carson said he personally believed Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution was encouraged by the devil.

“I personally believe that this theory that Darwin came up with was something that was encouraged by the adversary, and it has become what is scientifically, politically correct,” said Carson.

“Amazingly, there are a significant number of scientists who do not believe it but they’re afraid to say anything,” Carson added, saying he would be writing a book, “The Organ of Species,” that shows how the organs of the body refute evolution.

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So now you’re gonna have this big explosion and everything becomes perfectly organized and when you ask them about it they say, ‘Well we can explain this, based on probability theory because if there’s enough big explosions, over a long period of time, billions and billions of years, one of them will be the perfect explosion..."

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“It’s like, if all the tool you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail,” Santorum said. “Every problem that the State Department has, the answer is diplomacy. Why? Because if it’s not diplomacy, they don’t have a job.”

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One of Boehner's aides told Politico that "the Speaker believes putting members through prolonged leadership turmoil would do irreparable damage to the institution" and that "he is proud of what this majority has accomplished, and his speakership, but for the good of the Republican Conference and the institution, he will resign the Speakership and his seat in Congress, effective October 30."

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Originally posted by Samprimary:
Kevin McCarthy accidentally admitted (by bragging, of all things) that the entire purpose of the benghazi committee is to use it as a taxpayer funded witchhunt to hurt hillary's poll numbers

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Presidential candidate Jeb Bush made an eyebrow-raising comment in the wake of the Oregon school massacre -- saying "stuff happens" in response to a discussion about gun violence.

"Look stuff happens, there's always a crisis and the impulse is always to do something and it's not always the right thing to do," Bush said at the Conservative Leadership Project in Greenville, South Carolina, referring to taking away rights.

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Originally posted by Rakeesh:
Really bad political speaking (and not a surprise coming from Jeb!), but I'm not as inclined to find this one especially damning. Even though I dispute vehemently the idea behind his words-that there's nothing that can really be done, that this is an unavoidable thing we do in America, etc...but the truth is Americans generally, myself included, *do* tend to think a mass shooting is just 'shit happens' in my experience. It's on the news a lot, but that seems to be the major discussion presence. Unless I'm an outlier there?

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You Don't Pass a Pool Fencing Law After a Child Drowns, Says Jeb, Who Did Just That

    “Stuff happens” was the dumbest and most unfortunate thing Jeb! Bush said Friday in reaction to the mass shooting at an Oregon community college one day earlier, but his fumbling attempt to clean up that mess was nearly as rife with dumbitude and non-fortune. :snippity:

    “Look, stuff happens. There’s always a crisis and the impulse is always to do something, and it’s not necessarily the right thing to do.”

    “A child drowned in a pool and the impulse is to pass a law that puts fencing around pools,” he said, “Well it may not change it. Or you have a car accident and the impulse is to pass a law that deals with that unique event. And the cumulative effect of this is, in some cases, you don’t solve the problem by passing the law, and you’re imposing on large numbers of people burdens that make it harder for our economy to grow, make it harder to protect liberty.”

    A liberty-eroding, people-burdening law about pool fences is an oddly specific example. I wonder if any state has ever actually passed such a—

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        After the House voted 109-8 for the bill on Friday, Preston met Gov. Jeb Bush, who committed to signing a bill that requires new pool owners to pick a way to keep unsupervised children out of the water.

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    Oh.

    That’s the Sun-Sentinel’s Tallahassee bureau, reporting in May 2000 on a law requiring pool fences, named after a child—Preston de Ibern—who nearly drowned. Florida’s Preston de Ibern/McKenzie Merriam Residential Swimming Pool Safety Act was pushed for three years by then-state rep. (and current Democratic National Committee chair) Debbie Wasserman Schultz, and finally signed by Gov. Jeb! despite its inherent imposition of burdens on large numbers of people.

    Stuff happens. Also things. All the time.

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"I would not just stand there and let him shoot me," Carson said on "Fox & Friends," as seen in the clip above. "I would say, 'Hey, guys, everybody attack him. He may shoot me, but he can’t get us all.'"

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“I never saw a body with bullet holes that was more devastating than taking the right to arm ourselves away,” Mr. Carson wrote.

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Originally posted by TomDavidson:
To be fair to Ben Carson, I have no doubt that he would in fact say, "Hey, guys, everybody attack him." And then take a couple steps backwards.

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Kai Ryssdal: Dr. Carson, good to have you with us.

Ben Carson: Good to be here….

Ryssdal: As you know, Treasury Secretary Lew has come out in the last couple of days and said, "We're gonna run out of money, we're gonna run out of borrowing authority, on the fifth of November." Should the Congress then and the president not raise the debt limit? Should we default on our debt?

Carson: Let me put it this way: if I were the president, I would not sign an increased budget.

Ryssdal: To be clear, it's increasing the debt limit, not the budget, but I want to make sure I understand you. You'd let the United States default rather than raise the debt limit.

Carson: No, I would provide the kind of leadership that says, "Get on the stick guys, and stop messing around, and cut where you need to cut, because we're not raising any spending limits, period."

Ryssdal: I'm gonna try one more time, sir. This is debt that's already obligated. Would you not favor increasing the debt limit to pay the debts already incurred?

Carson: What I'm saying is what we have to do is restructure the way that we create debt.

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Originally posted by Jon Boy:

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Originally posted by TomDavidson:
To be fair to Ben Carson, I have no doubt that he would in fact say, "Hey, guys, everybody attack him." And then take a couple steps backwards.

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Yesterday he told a story of when someone pointed a gun at him in a Pop-Eyes restaurant, and he said, "I believe that you want the guy behind the counter." So much for "everybody attack him." More like "shoot him, not me!"

---

quote:

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Host Jan Mickelson said the modern criminal justice system has been “taken over by progressives,” and said punishment should be modeled instead of the Bible’s Old Testament Book of Exodus.

“It says, if a person steals, they have to pay it back two-fold, four-fold. If they don’t have anything, we’re supposed to take them down and sell them,” he said.

It’s better that prisoners be indentured so that they must “spend their time not sitting on their stump in a jail cell — they’re supposed to be working off debt… Wouldn’t that be a better choice?” Mickelson asked.

“Well, it really would be,” Huckabee responded. “Sometimes the best way to deal with a nonviolent criminal behavior is what you just suggested.”

It’s not the first time Mickelson has suggested the U.S. return to one of its worst historical legacies. In August, Mickelson asked, “Well, what’s wrong with slavery?” while suggesting that undocumented immigrants be turned into slaves rather than deported.

---

quote:

---

Former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee seemingly endorsed “biblical” slavery over the modern prison system on Wednesday’s edition of “Mickelson in the Morning,” ThinkProgress’ Scott Keyes reports.

In Huckabee’s defense, host Jan Mickelson was firing ideas at the long-shot for the GOP candidacy, and many of those ideas were couched in familiar biblical phrases that would incline Huckabee to agree with them content-be-damned, so it’s entirely possible that he simply didn’t understand what he was endorsing.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Jon Boy:
Who among us hasn't accidentally endorsed slavery from time to time?

---

quote:

---

The conservative group Accuracy in Media (AIM) has removed references to Wayne Simmons from its Benghazi commission website after he was arrested on "charges of major fraud against the United States, wire fraud, and making false statements to the government," including allegedly falsely claiming he worked for the CIA.

On July 29, 2013, AIM announced in a press release that it was launching the Citizens' Commission on Benghazi (CCB) "with some of the country's top retired military officers and national security officials," including "Wayne Simmons, former CIA officer." That press release is no longer online.

---

quote:

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TAPPER: Obviously Al Qaeda was responsible for the terrorist attack of 9/11, but how do you respond to critics who ask, if your brother and his administration bear no responsibility at all, how do you then make the jump that President Obama and Secretary Clinton are responsible for what happened at Benghazi?

JEB BUSH: Well I — the question on Benghazi which, is hopefully we’ll now finally get the truth to, is was the place secure? They had a responsibility, the Department of State, to have proper security. There were calls for security, it looks like they didn’t get it. And how was the response in the aftermath of the attack, was there a chance that these four American lives could have been saved? That’s what the investigation is about, it’s not a political issue. It’s not about the broad policy issue, is were we doing the job of protecting our embassies and our consulates and during the period, those hours after the attack started, could they have been saved?

TAPPER: Well that’s, that’s kind of proving the point of the critics I was just asking about, because you don’t want to have your brother bear responsibility for 9/11 and I understand that argument and Al Qaeda’s responsible, but why are the terrorists not the ones who are responsible for these attacks in Libya?

BUSH: They are, of course they are but — of course they are, but if the ambassador was asking for additional security and didn’t get it, that’s a proper point and if it’s proven that the security was adequate compared to other embassies, fine, we’ll move on.

---

quote:

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Asked on Fox Business Network if the United States should take action to close certain mosques as part of the fight against the Islamic State, as has happened in Britain, Mr. Trump said, “I would do that, absolutely.”

Mr. Trump then said that he was not sure about the legality of closing mosques, but that it was certainly something that should be looked at.

“It depends if the mosque is, you know, loaded for bear,” he said.

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quote:

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"My whole life really has been a 'no' and I fought through it," Trump said Monday at an NBC-sponsored town hall here. "It has not been easy for me, it has not been easy for me. And you know I started off in Brooklyn, my father gave me a small loan of a million dollars."

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quote:

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Originally posted by Samprimary:

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literally

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everything

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that

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comes

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out

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of

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donald

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trump's

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mouth

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ok

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Originally posted by FlyingCow:

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Originally posted by Samprimary:

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literally

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everything

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that

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comes

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out

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of

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donald

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trump's

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mouth

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ok

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I think this can be amended to include Ben Carson.

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quote:

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Donald Trump commented on Carson's theory about the pyramids on Thursday during an appearance on MSNBC, saying, "I'll have to put that into my repertoire when I talk about Ben...That was a strange deal."

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quote:

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Originally posted by Samprimary:

It would be like if a couple thousand years in the future someone comes across the remains of an aircraft carrier and decides that it must have been a phone booth of some kind.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Wingracer:

quote:

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Originally posted by Samprimary:

It would be like if a couple thousand years in the future someone comes across the remains of an aircraft carrier and decides that it must have been a phone booth of some kind.

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That's much more plausible. I mean carriers do have tons of communication gear on them. So clearly it's a place where transoceanic flights could land so the passengers could make a few calls before continuing the flight.

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quote:

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Originally posted by scifibum:
If so, wow! He's really going for it.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Jon Boy:
he's appealing to ignorant voters who reflexively distrust authority and expertise.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Jake:
Honestly, it makes me think of Pol Pot. That line of thinking is absolutely part of what lead to the Cambodian genocide.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Jon Boy:
The more I've thought about it, the more I believe that it's less likely a cynical ploy than a sincere but unexamined belief. It's the kind of belief that certainly sounds appealing, because it lets you disregard the advice of experts who say things you don't like, and it's easy to find evidence to support your belief.

But it's probably never occurred to him to question it, and so he doesn't really stop to think that his teachers in med school must not have known what they're doing because they're experts, or how he must not really be a good brain surgeon because he's an expert.

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quote:

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Originally posted by FlyingCow:
Carson is proving that "I'm just a caveman" is a successful political strategy with the conservative base.

If Phil Hartman were still with us, I'd love to see SNL have a debate between unfrozen caveman lawyer and Ben Carson.

---

Oh my god I can picture that now. That would be amazing.
 

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Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
 

quote:

---

Carson, a political novice running for the GOP presidential nomination, made this observation in a late-night Facebook post defending his lack of political experience. As he put it:


“You are absolutely right — I have no political experience. The current Members of Congress have a combined 8,700 years of political experience. Are we sure political experience is what we need. Every signer of the Declaration of Independence had no elected office experience. What they had was a deep belief that freedom is a gift from God. They had a determination to rise up against a tyrannical King.”

Of course, the Declaration of Independence was crafted by a committee charged by the Continental Congress, which was made up of delegates who had been elected by the Colonial assemblies. But we’ll assume that Carson knew that, and instead meant that prior to being elected to Congress, the delegates had had no elected office experience. Is that correct?

Carson needs to hit the history books, or at least do a Google search. More than half of the signers of the Declaration of Independence had elected office experience.

Indeed, one reason why the American Revolution was successful is because it was led by men with many years in politics, political action and protest, often honed in the debates held in Colonial legislatures. In many ways, the background of the Founding Fathers undercuts the very argument Carson was trying to make.

---

quote:

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(Update: After this fact check appeared, Carson’s Facebook post was edited to read “no federal elected office experience.” There was, of course, no “federal” government at the time.)

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ok
 

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Posted by JanitorBlade (Member # 12343) on :
 
Oh for goodness sake, "No federal elected office experience"?!

None of the signers of the Declaration of Independence had "American political experience" either. Thank goodness right?

Ben "Evolution is nonsense" Carson.
 

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Posted by GaalDornick (Member # 8880) on :
 
They were also against gun control.

'Merica!
 

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Posted by GaalDornick (Member # 8880) on :
 
Did someone actually calculate the total years of experience of Congresspeople?
 

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Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
 
At this point would it matter? Fact checkers are experts, right?
 

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Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
 
who factchecks the factcheckers
 

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Posted by Lyrhawn (Member # 7039) on :
 
The whole "signers of the declaration experience" thing should really be dug into and made into a bigger issue.

Many historians credit the political acumen of the Americans with the difference between our forming a 230 year long Republic and descending into the madness of the French Revolution. We had more than a hundred years of political institutions to lean on, the French didn't.

The idea that political novices are superior to experienced politicians has no historical precedent I can find, especially not in the revolutionary period. The Founding Fathers, Hamilton, Adams, Jefferson, Monroe, Madison, were all very learned men, most of whom were very experienced in law and philosophy. They had a deep understanding of the issues and the ideas of the greatest thinkers of the day, grappled with those issues, and debated at a very high level.

The Presidency is not for amateurs. Frankly, high levels of government in general aren't for amateurs. I'm not saying the professionals are killing it, but the amateurs are doing terribly.
 

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Posted by Mr. Y (Member # 11590) on :
 
Once a politician has been elected into office, his or her priority should no longer be their public image (which of course is important during the campaign process). They should focus on doing their job well, which means to make well thought through decisions that will have a good chance of solving or preventing societal problems.
Unfortunately, it seems that they tend to be more concerned with how often they can get their face on TV.
You are in government because you want to help improve the country (or state) that you represent. You are not in politics to become famous. Fame is fleeting, unless it is based on universally acknowledged achievements (which doesn't mean that everybody has to like those achievements or the person responsible for them).

A politician's reward should be (besides his salary) the feeling he or she gets when new and useful legislation is introduced. Much like it should be for any other job.

Rising to the top in politics should be based on skill. This is acquired through practice at a lower level and then being promoted based on your merits. Much like promotions (should) work within a commercial company. Or, to use another simile: You don't book a newly formed band of youths to play Wembley Stadium. You've got to earn your stripes.

Awkward similes aside, I am aware that this post very much describes an ideal situation. One that is usually not achieved due to human weaknesses (that we all have, I definitely do not see my self as a perfect specimen). That does not mean we should stop aspiring to be better (as a person and as a community).

Well, please continue with this interesting thread. Today I just felt I wanted to say a thing.
 

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Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
 

quote:

---

Originally posted by Mr. Y:
Today I just felt I wanted to say a thing.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Lyrhawn:
The whole "signers of the declaration experience" thing should really be dug into and made into a bigger issue.

Many historians credit the political acumen of the Americans with the difference between our forming a 230 year long Republic and descending into the madness of the French Revolution. We had more than a hundred years of political institutions to lean on, the French didn't.

The idea that political novices are superior to experienced politicians has no historical precedent I can find, especially not in the revolutionary period. The Founding Fathers, Hamilton, Adams, Jefferson, Monroe, Madison, were all very learned men, most of whom were very experienced in law and philosophy. They had a deep understanding of the issues and the ideas of the greatest thinkers of the day, grappled with those issues, and debated at a very high level.

The Presidency is not for amateurs. Frankly, high levels of government in general aren't for amateurs. I'm not saying the professionals are killing it, but the amateurs are doing terribly.

---

quote:

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Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback has issued an executive order forbidding any state agencies or organizations that receive state grant money from helping relocate Syrian refugees in his state.

Brownback said Monday the action was necessary because the federal government can't guarantee Syrian refugees coming to America aren't terrorists.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by FlyingCow:
I want someone to ask Ben Carson how he celebrates Christmas.

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quote:

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I represented New York on 9/11 when we were attacked. Where were we attacked? We were attacked in downtown Manhattan, where Wall Street is,” she said. “I did spend a whole lot of time and effort helping them rebuild. That was good for New York. It was good for the economy, and it was a way to rebuke the terrorists who had attacked our country.

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quote:

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“It means a strategy – we don’t have a strategy right now. This president is incrementally getting us into a quagmire, without having a strategy to defeat ISIS. This is a threat to Western civilization, a threat to our own country. We need to be merciless in this effort.”

---

quote:

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Mike Huckabee:
Governor @BobbyJindal is one of the smartest and deepest thinking people in our entire Republican Party.

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quote:

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NRA-Backed Legislator: We Can’t Take Syrian Refugees Because It’s Too Easy For Them To Buy Guns

Rep. Tony Dale (R) made this argument in a television interview on Monday and in letters to Texas’ U.S. Sens. John Cornyn and Ted Cruz (R) and U.S. Reps. Michael McCaul and John Carter (R).

“While the Paris attackers used suicide vests and grenades,” Dale wrote, “it is clear that firearms also killed a large number of innocent victims. Can you imagine a scenario were [sic] a refugees [sic] is admitted to the United States, is provided with federal cash payments and other assistance, obtains a drivers license and purchases a weapon and executes an attack?” He urged the lawmakers to “do whatever you can to stop the [Syrian refugee] program.”

But Dale is one of the Texas legislature’s most fervent gun-rights advocates. Two weeks ago, he tweeted his National Rifle Association membership renewal. In accepting an “A” rating from the group and the Texas State Rifle Association’s PAC in 2012, he observed: “Perhaps no right is more fundamental than the right to keep and bear arms.” And his campaign website vows his fealty to the Second Amendment, saying it “isn’t just an archaic document,” a “guarantor of all of our other freedoms.” And he and his colleagues in the state legislature have blocked mandatory background checks for all gun purchases.

This not the first time Dale has raised concerns about non-citizens in Texas. “I’m not saying all of these people are bad, but there are certainly people from countries of concern,” he said in March, explaining the need for legislation to create special drivers licenses for “foreigners.”

---

ok
 

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Posted by Wingracer (Member # 12293) on :
 
Makes sense to me. The right to bear arms only applies to white people.
 

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Posted by kmbboots (Member # 8576) on :
 
Have they no sense of irony, sir, at long last? Have they left no sense of irony?
 

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Posted by Jon Boy (Member # 4284) on :
 

 

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Posted by JanitorBlade (Member # 12343) on :
 
Obviously the solution to refugees with guns is more guns in the hands of good people!
 

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Posted by Elison R. Salazar (Member # 8565) on :
 
Some dude actually pointed to Japanese internment as a good thing.
 

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Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
 

quote:

---

Virginia mayor cites Japanese internment camps (favorably) in making case for halting Syrian refugees.

Roanoke Mayor David Bowers, a Democrat (and Hillary Clinton supporter), made that case in a statement Wednesday in calling for the Virginia city to suspend Syrian refugee aid until "normalcy is restored."

"I'm reminded that Franklin D. Roosevelt felt compelled to to sequester Japanese foreign nationals after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, and it appears that the threat of harm to America from [the Islamic State] now is just as real and serious a threat as that from our enemies then," he said.

In case you need a history lesson (which Bowers pretty clearly does), the Japanese internment camps are not exactly remembered as being a well-handled and reasonable reaction to a perceived threat. To the contrary, what the United States did to Japanese Americans in the 1940s is pretty universally remembered as being very wrong -- next to slavery, one of the worst blights in American history, in fact.

But don't take our word for it. Here's what, Josh Schwerin, of Clinton's campaign, had to say when The Post's David Weigel asked about supporter Bowers's statement: "The internment of people of Japanese descent is a dark cloud on our nation's history and to suggest that it is anything but a horrible moment in our past is outrageous."

---

quote:

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Donald J. Trump, who earlier in the week said he was open to requiring Muslims in the United States to register in a database, said on Thursday night that he “would certainly implement that — absolutely.”

Mr. Trump was asked about the issue by an NBC News reporter and pressed on whether all Muslims in the country would be forced to register. “They have to be,” he said. “They have to be.’’

When asked how a system of registering Muslims would be carried out — whether, for instance, mosques would be where people could register — Mr. Trump said: “Different places. You sign up at different places. But it’s all about management. Our country has no management.’’

Asked later, as he signed autographs, how such a database would be different from Jews having to register in Nazi Germany, Mr. Trump repeatedly said, “You tell me,” until he stopped responding to the question.

---

quote:

---

"I think we should have a database on everybody who comes into this country," Carson told reporters in the state house. Told that rival Donald Trump had proposed tracking Muslims already in the United States, Carson added that "hopefully, we already have a database on every citizen who is already here. If we don't, we are doing a very poor job."

---

Carson, not to be outdone... why stop at Muslims?
 

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Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
 
I just want this Seventh-Day Adventist to propose putting barcodes on all of us.
 

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Posted by C3PO the Dragon Slayer (Member # 10416) on :
 

quote:

---

Originally posted by FlyingCow:

quote:

---

"I think we should have a database on everybody who comes into this country," Carson told reporters in the state house. Told that rival Donald Trump had proposed tracking Muslims already in the United States, Carson added that "hopefully, we already have a database on every citizen who is already here. If we don't, we are doing a very poor job."

---

Carson, not to be outdone... why stop at Muslims?

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by TomDavidson:
I just want this Seventh-Day Adventist to propose putting barcodes on all of us.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by C3PO the Dragon Slayer:

quote:

---

Originally posted by FlyingCow:

quote:

---

"I think we should have a database on everybody who comes into this country," Carson told reporters in the state house. Told that rival Donald Trump had proposed tracking Muslims already in the United States, Carson added that "hopefully, we already have a database on every citizen who is already here. If we don't, we are doing a very poor job."

---

Carson, not to be outdone... why stop at Muslims?

---

We have social security numbers, driver's licenses, and credit histories, so there are definitely already databases on every citizen. Is that not what Carson means here?

---

quote:

---

Donald Trump suggested Sunday the half-dozen white attendees at his campaign rally on Saturday may have reacted appropriately when they shoved, tackled, punched and kicked a black protester who disrupted his speech.

"Maybe he should have been roughed up because it was absolutely disgusting what he was doing," Trump said Sunday morning on Fox News, less than 24 hours after his campaign said it "does not condone" the physical altercation.

---

quote:

---

Insisting that the United States “would have to be strong,” Trump said that waterboarding Islamic State extremists would be “peanuts” compared with the group’s beheadings of American and British hostages.

“I would bring it back. I think waterboarding is peanuts compared to what they’d do to us … what they did to James Foley when they chopped off his head,” Trump said on ABC's "This Week" referring to the American journalist beheaded by Islamic State in August 2014. “That’s a whole different level and I would absolutely bring back interrogation -- and strong interrogation.”

In the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, the Bush administration turned to waterboarding, a method in which a suspect is made to feel like he’s drowning, to try to extract information from Al Qaeda suspects. The effort proved mostly futile in producing useful intelligence about planned attacks and led to false confessions, according to the executive summary of a long-delayed Senate report that came out late last year. President Obama formally ended the program when he took office in 2009.

Trump, though, said he sees waterboarding as a useful counterbalance to the violent murders committed by Islamic State.

“You know, they don’t use waterboarding over there; they use chopping off people’s heads,” he said.

Trump also doubled down on his calls for a database to monitor Muslims and the possibility of shuttering mosques.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by JanitorBlade:
One wonders to what point Trump would have to be pushed to condemn a supporter.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Wingracer:

quote:

---

Originally posted by JanitorBlade:
One wonders to what point Trump would have to be pushed to condemn a supporter.

---

A Mexican Muslim lesbian supporter would probably not be welcome.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Jon Boy:
I honestly can't tell how serious Trump is about anything. Is he really some sort of neo-fascist, or is he just cynically appealing to neo-fascists? Is he actually sincere about any of his political beliefs, or is he just trolling all of America right now?

---

quote:

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It is highly, highly, highly, highly unlikely that I would ever be using them.

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quote:

---

Originally posted by Jon Boy:
I honestly can't tell how serious Trump is about anything. Is he really some sort of neo-fascist, or is he just cynically appealing to neo-fascists? Is he actually sincere about any of his political beliefs, or is he just trolling all of America right now?

---

quote:

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"Would I approve waterboarding? You bet your ass I would — in a heartbeat," Trump said to loud cheers during a rally at a convention center here Monday night that attracted thousands. "And I would approve more than that. Don't kid yourself, folks. It works, okay? It works. Only a stupid person would say it doesn't work."

"It works," Trump said over and over again. "Believe me, it works. And you know what? If it doesn't work, they deserve it anyway, for what they're doing. It works."

At the rally Trump continued to claim he watched "fairly large numbers" of Muslims in New Jersey celebrating the 9/11 terrorist attacks, further circulating a story that was discredited by New Jersey officials years ago.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Jon Boy:
Trump on nuclear weapons:

quote:

---

It is highly, highly, highly, highly unlikely that I would ever be using them.

---

Why is it that the more "highlys" he piles on, the more convinced I am that he would use nuclear weapons?

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by GaalDornick:
When I watch him speak it reminds me exactly of how I feel when watching John Edward (the psychic) speak. They know exactly what makes those kinds of people tick and what to say to exploit it.

I'm convinced Trump knows exactly how much he's bullshitting, he just doesn't care. He gets off on 'winning' and the Presidency would be the ultimate win to feed his ego and all of the things he says are just his chess moves to get it.

---

quote:

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Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz is the latest presidential candidate trying to downplay the role anti-abortion rhetoric may have played in motivating the Planned Parenthood shooting in Colorado Springs Friday afternoon. When a reporter asked him at an Iowa campaign stop Sunday evening about suspect Robert Lewis Dear saying he was motivated by “no more baby parts,” Cruz countered that he’s also been reported to be a “transgendered [sic] leftist activist.”

Cruz explained, “We know that he was a man registered to vote as a woman.” This discrepancy on Dear’s voter registration was first reported by The Gateway Pundit, a self-described “right-of-center news website,” under the claim that he “identifies as [a] woman.” Conservatives have since run with the claim that Dear is transgender.

---

quote:

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Donald Trump is once again alone at the top of the Republican field, according to the latest CNN/ORC Poll, with 36% of registered Republicans and Republican-leaning independents behind him, while his nearest competitor trails by 20 points.
...
The CNN/ORC Poll was conducted by telephone November 27 through December 1 among a random national sample of 1,020 adults. Interviews were conducted with 930 registered voters, including 445 who are Republicans or independents who lean toward the Republican Party.

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quote:

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The president of Liberty University urged students at the Christian school to carry concealed weapons on campus to counter any possible armed attack like the mass killings in San Bernardino, Calif.

"Let's teach them a lesson if they ever show up here," President Jerry Falwell Jr. told students at a convocation Friday.

The call-to-arms was met with rousing applause from students, but some said Falwell went too far when he appeared to be referring specifically to Muslims, the News & Advance reported.

"I've always thought if more good people had concealed carry permits, then we could end those Muslims before they walked in," Falwell said.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Mucus:
Meanwhile.

quote:

---

Donald Trump is once again alone at the top of the Republican field, according to the latest CNN/ORC Poll, with 36% of registered Republicans and Republican-leaning independents behind him, while his nearest competitor trails by 20 points.
...
The CNN/ORC Poll was conducted by telephone November 27 through December 1 among a random national sample of 1,020 adults. Interviews were conducted with 930 registered voters, including 445 who are Republicans or independents who lean toward the Republican Party.

---

That seems to work out to 15.7% of Americans (.36*(445/1020))*100

In other words, there are more Americans that think Trump is currently the best choice to lead the country than are black. (Roughly the same percentage of Americans that are not-religious)

---

Not quite, the sample is of adults, so the total sample is representative of about 77% of the population. Since you don't have numbers for non-adults, you can't say accurately where his support lies between about 12-15%.
 

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Posted by Mucus (Member # 9735) on :
 
Correction accepted.

Of course if we accept the that we don't have the numbers for non-adults, we can't even say accurately where Trump's support lies between 12% and 35%

[ December 08, 2015, 07:03 PM: Message edited by: Mucus ]
 

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Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
 

quote:

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DONALD TRUMP: "hork hork whoooarrmmm bleed floobl gnuk-gnuk loodleoodle blerrrrrroooarrrrrp eek loopdit squorrrrrrrrrrdddddddddddddd"

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Mucus:
Correction accepted.

Of course if we accept the that we don't have the numbers for non-adults, we can't even say accurately where Trump's support lies between 12% and 35%

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Samprimary:

quote:

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DONALD TRUMP: "hork hork whoooarrmmm bleed floobl gnuk-gnuk loodleoodle blerrrrrroooarrrrrp eek loopdit squorrrrrrrrrrdddddddddddddd"

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ok

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quote:

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Originally posted by Orincoro:

quote:

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Originally posted by Samprimary:

quote:

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DONALD TRUMP: "hork hork whoooarrmmm bleed floobl gnuk-gnuk loodleoodle blerrrrrroooarrrrrp eek loopdit squorrrrrrrrrrdddddddddddddd"

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ok

---

I think we've just uncovered something significant: Donald Trump is a Vogon.

---

quote:

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Originally posted by Wingracer:

quote:

---

Originally posted by Orincoro:

quote:

---

Originally posted by Samprimary:

quote:

---

DONALD TRUMP: "hork hork whoooarrmmm bleed floobl gnuk-gnuk loodleoodle blerrrrrroooarrrrrp eek loopdit squorrrrrrrrrrdddddddddddddd"

---

ok

---

I think we've just uncovered something significant: Donald Trump is a Vogon.

---

That would explain a great many things. I guess he's trying to blow up Earth to build a new super highway.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Orincoro:

quote:

---

Originally posted by Samprimary:

quote:

---

DONALD TRUMP: "hork hork whoooarrmmm bleed floobl gnuk-gnuk loodleoodle blerrrrrroooarrrrrp eek loopdit squorrrrrrrrrrdddddddddddddd"

---

ok

---

I think we've just uncovered something significant: Donald Trump is a Vogon.

---

quote:

---

“These internal documents show the Obama Administration took the nation’s creditworthiness and economy hostage in a cynical attempt to create a crisis so the President could get what he wanted during negotiations over the debt ceiling,” said House Financial Services Chairman Jeb Hensarling (R-Texas).

---

link


 

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Posted by Orincoro (Member # 8854) on :
 
Wait what? This is like blaming a kidnapped child's parents for endangering their child's life by being rich.
 

---

Posted by scifibum (Member # 7625) on :
 
I'm so completely sick of the politics that take the place of governing in Congress.
 

---

Posted by Wingracer (Member # 12293) on :
 
Never trust a man named Jeb.
 

---

Posted by JanitorBlade (Member # 12343) on :
 

quote:

---

Originally posted by Orincoro:
Wait what? This is like blaming a kidnapped child's parents for endangering their child's life by being rich.

---

quote:

---

Earlier today, Rep. Louie Gohmert, R-Texas, put a new spin on his “gay island” story, arguing on the House floor that the push for LGBT rights is wrong because we would never choose to send gay couples or gay animals into space to start a new colony like in the Matt Damon movie “The Martian.”

He said that if lawmakers had to decide “whether humanity would go forward or not” in case of an imminent asteroid collision by putting people in a “space ship that can go, as Matt Damon did in the movie, plant a colony somewhere, we can have humans survive this terrible disaster about to befall, if you could decide what 40 people you put on the spacecraft that would save humanity, how many of those would be same-sex couples? You’re wanting to save humankind for posterity, basically a modern-day Noah, you have that ability to be a modern day Noah, you can preserve life. How many same-sex couples would you take from the animal kingdom and from humans to put on a spacecraft to perpetuate humanity and the wildlife kingdom?”

But due to the attacks on “natural order” and religious freedom, Gohmert said, “we don’t have much longer to go.”

Gohmert also cited the work of Jonathan Cahn, a far-right End Times preacher who believes God is punishing America (and France) due to gay marriage with events such as the 9/11 attacks, to assert that the end is near.

He also claimed that transgender people are disordered and “perverse” individuals who need help.

---

quote:

---

With every month, it has become clearer that Trump is a makeshift politician, whose rancid wit resides in his willingness to say whatever it takes to arouse the fears of a political base. He might have started his campaign with the idea of winning some votes and publicity, increasing his profile as a marketing whiz, and then dropping out. Good for business! But now that he has stunned the political world—and, likely, himself—he has shown little inclination (or, perhaps, capacity) to grow into his role, to modify his language, be it for the sake of the Republican establishment or of simple decency. He’ll have none of that. Whatever inflates his sense of self and prods the anxieties of the country—that’s what works for him.

---

quote:

---

Pastor Roger Jimenez of the Verity Baptist Church is seen a YouTube video of his recent sermon calling the clubgoers who were killed at the Pulse nightclub "pedophiles."

"Are you sad that 50 pedophiles were killed today?" he asked his Sacramento congregation in the sermon. "Um – no – I think that's great! I think that helps society. I think Orlando, Florida, is a little safer tonight."

---

Wowzers.
 

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Posted by Stone_Wolf_ (Member # 8299) on :
 
Bc all people at a night club molest children???
 

---

Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
 
Homosexuals.
 

---

Posted by Lyrhawn (Member # 7039) on :
 
Oh, so he didn't mean Latinos?

They're really hitting across a lot of demographics.
 

---

Posted by JanitorBlade (Member # 12343) on :
 
I'm pretty sure he meant all Orlandoans are pedophiles.
 

---

Posted by Heisenberg (Member # 13004) on :
 
8/10 quality pisstaking
 

---

Posted by Stone_Wolf_ (Member # 8299) on :
 

quote:

---

Originally posted by Heisenberg:
8/10 quality pisstaking

---

 

---

Posted by Heisenberg (Member # 13004) on :
 
Oh, come on. You still don't get it?

What the hell, might as well charge that windmill.

On the face of it, your lament that this pastor was saying that all club goers are pedophiles was pretty ridiculous. When you claim not to know that the pastor celebrating the death of pedophiles after a gay club shooting is talking about gays, it's going to raise eyebrows.

You were either deliberately being obtuse, or you are astoundingly ignorant of the labels and smears that homosexuals have faced in the past and even today. Others decided to poke fun of you for it. "Are we sure it wasn't Hispanics? Florida has a lot of Hispanics! Or maybe he just hates people who live in Orlando!"

I'll give you a pass on not being familiar on the term "taking the piss," as it is primarily British. It means to subtlety make fun of someone, to their face, in a way that they often don't know that it's occurring.
 

---

Posted by Stone_Wolf_ (Member # 8299) on :
 
Didn't know it was a gay club...been a busy week.
 

---

Posted by Stone_Wolf_ (Member # 8299) on :
 
Maybe you are putting too much time/thought into this?
 

---

Posted by scifibum (Member # 7625) on :
 

quote:

---

Originally posted by Stone_Wolf_:
Didn't know it was a gay club...been a busy week.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Stone_Wolf_:
Maybe you are putting too much time/thought into this?

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Stone_Wolf_:
Maybe you are putting too much time/thought into this?

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Lyrhawn:
Oh, so he didn't mean Latinos?

They're really hitting across a lot of demographics.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by JanitorBlade:
I'm pretty sure he meant all Orlandoans are pedophiles.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by scifibum:
SW, I initially thought you were joking and I think there's a chance they thought so too.

---

Very likely true!
 

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Posted by Stone_Wolf_ (Member # 8299) on :
 
So...Heisenberg...there WAS confusion...by everyone but Rakeesh...but NO ONE was mocking me...but you...out of confusion.

Mystery solved
 

---

Posted by Heisenberg (Member # 13004) on :
 
It's nice of you to talk for Lyrhawn and Blackblade, but if it's the same to you I'll wait for them to speak for themselves and confirm this hypothesis. If they do, then of course I'll have been wrong in interpreting their comments. I won't have been wrong about you being woefully ignorant about the plight of gay people.
 

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Posted by Stone_Wolf_ (Member # 8299) on :
 
I don't blame you wanting to hear...and I have never claimed any expertise on *the topic of the plight of gays.

Face it dude...you put your foot in it. It happens. Especially when communicating w/o the benifit of vocal tone or body language.

Happens to me all the time.

No big.

[ June 17, 2016, 08:00 PM: Message edited by: Stone_Wolf_ ]
 

---

Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
 

quote:

---

Originally posted by Stone_Wolf_:

quote:

---

Originally posted by Lyrhawn:
Oh, so he didn't mean Latinos?

They're really hitting across a lot of demographics.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by JanitorBlade:
I'm pretty sure he meant all Orlandoans are pedophiles.

---

Just checking in here guys...are you ribbing me as Heisenberg is suggesting?

I -highly- doubt it, simply considering who is talking...half of the nicest people on the board (the other half is PapaMoose and CT and BobS).

---

I thought you were joking-a strange and somewhat tasteless joke, but a joke-at first. It really didn't occur to me that someone might not know, nearly a week later, that the attack had been on a gay nightclub. So I suspect they thought you were joking too, and played along. I would be stunned if at any point after the attack was publicized that they didn't know it had happened at a gay nightclub, or that they thought you didn't know either.

Admittedly I did forget at that time your deliberate avoidance of facts and insight into politics and current events-an avoidance you've admitted with some pride in the past, which is why I thought you had to be joking. I can't deny that that choice of willful ignorance is baffling to me and nothing to be proud of, in my opinion, but you have said it and I should have remembered. This time you copped to it, so good on you I guess?
 

---

Posted by Stone_Wolf_ (Member # 8299) on :
 
It isn't that I "deliberately avoid facts and insights"...it's...I don't trust the talking heads and use my friends, family & you all to keep me informed of IMPORTANT matters & filter out the noise.

I just don't enjoy broadcast news. Nor have time to, really

If you thought I was joking why did you respond appropriately?

I was mixed up that there weren't TWO shootings...a gay one and a Florida one...so good news for me really that there was only one
 

---

Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
 
Considering the minimal time-investment involved in learning basic facts and current events, that entirely bypass, I don't know, some vision of news-getting wherein one sits after dinner to an hour of Kronkite or something, well, it's a strange system. You have also in the past expressed not simply a lack of trust (understandable) or a lack of time (which is frankly silly in this age of the Internet), but a lack of interest. Which hey obviously I think is bad, but that is after all just one man's opinion. But 'don't have time' and 'I have you guys to tell me things' is really pretty weak. Since it takes very little time and since in the past more often than not you've been less than receptive to suggestions that you do some research. Often citing a lack of time, in fact.

That is a criticism, sure, but it is also of past events. This time you didn't, say, object to people calling this an attack on homosexuals without for example even knowing they were homosexual. So, golf clap I suppose?

As for having thought you were joking: it didn't occur to me that you didn't actually know it was a gay nightclub, or that when some religious figure starts talking about pedophiles it is frequently code, implicit or explicit, for 'homosexual'. So I thought you were making a tongue in cheek remark that seemed pretty strange, hence my terse one word reply.

If BlackBlade and Lyrhawn didn't also think you were joking-that you knew it was an attack on homosexuals but were making some sort of wordplay or jibe-well, I'm willing to be surprised. Incidentally, both of those posters are on your list of 'people I will listen to', as expressed by you. I wonder if you wouldn't consider running your 'I don't have time to be informed, the media lies, and anyway I've got you guys to tell me stuff' policy and see what they thought about it. They too are busy and might not be able or interested in answering such a question, but it might be interesting.
 

---

Posted by FlyingCow (Member # 2150) on :
 
Outside third-party lurker POV on the exchange:

quote:

---

Stone_wolf: Bc all people at a night club molest children???

---

quote:

---

Rakeesh: Homosexuals

---

quote:

---

Lyrhawn: Oh, so he didn't mean Latinos? They're really hitting across a lot of demographics.

---

quote:

---

JanitorBlade: I'm pretty sure he meant all Orlandoans are pedophiles.

---

quote:

---

Heisenberg: 8/10 quality pisstaking

---

quote:

---

Stone_Wolf:

---

quote:

---

Heisenberg: Oh, come on. You still don't get it?

What the hell, might as well charge that windmill... <and so on, and so on>

---

quote:

---

Stone_Wolf: Didn't know it was a gay club...been a busy week.

---

quote:

---

Stone_Wolf: Maybe you are putting too much time/thought into this?

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Stone_Wolf_:
I was mixed up that there weren't TWO shootings...a gay one and a Florida one...

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Heisenberg:
An additional point that might be considered is that the social services and medical system are much different here then in the US. They're socialised, and much more generous. And they're already extremely strained, both for personnel and funding. There really does come a point when there are just too many people to keep the services at the same level.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Stone_Wolf_:
Bc in other countries they use bombs?

---

because only in the us would it be reasonably imaginable that two mass murders would happen on the same weekend.

It would still be horrific but I wouldn't be flabbergasted if such a thing happened in the US. Meanwhile most other western nations are stunned if one happens at all.
 

---

Posted by Stone_Wolf_ (Member # 8299) on :
 
I get that...but aren't there TONs more deaths due to terror bombs in the rest of the world compared to mass shootings in the US?

I tried a google search...not much that is actually relevant to the question.
 

---

Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
 
If this had been a bombing, then it would have tied in to the idea of the United States not being special when it came to mass murders. Though in the rest of the world, no, mass murder via bombing is not remotely common outside of actual warzones such as Syria.

Since this wasn't a bombing, the idea that there might have been two mass shootings on the same day in the same city is, in the United States anyway, at least plausible if, well, uninformed to an alarming degree.
 

---

Posted by Stone_Wolf_ (Member # 8299) on :
 
I get the humor of Hunter's comment (thank you for the explanation )

It's just a weird dynamic...HAD it been a bomb instead of a gun...then the opposite joke could be made...

However, the point I'm trying for is...who cares about the tool used?...it really doesn't matter that much if it was an AR, a sword, a bomb, a car or a pointy stick really!

Sure a pointy stick is harder to wield as effectively...but arguibly it could be done.
 

---

Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
 
You could not kill 49 people in a nightclub with a pointy stick before you were stopped. You couldn't kill 49 people with a pointy stick, period. It would break.

Hell a knife might break after stabbing *one* person, much less dozens. For God's sake! It's not sufficient to say 'ban guns', and I don't support that anyway, but 'what about pointy sticks?' Goddamn.
 

---

Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
 

quote:

---

Originally posted by Stone_Wolf_:
However, the point I'm trying for is...who cares about the tool used?...it really doesn't matter that much if it was an AR, a sword, a bomb, a car or a pointy stick really!

---

quote:

---

i don't know if the eu medical system is suffering from neglect (chopped budgets over time, lack of legislation to expand their activity, etc) or if it is a more intentional starve-the-beast style malevolence where they are intentionally underfunding it to make it work poorly so that they can use its poor functioning state as an excuse for why these things don't work and we should get rid of it

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by NobleHunter:
He's right that it would be bombs outside the US (or missiles if Israel is having a bad day with target identification), but it wouldn't be two separate events. I can't think of any bombings that were related in time but not connected.

quote:

---

i don't know if the eu medical system is suffering from neglect (chopped budgets over time, lack of legislation to expand their activity, etc) or if it is a more intentional starve-the-beast style malevolence where they are intentionally underfunding it to make it work poorly so that they can use its poor functioning state as an excuse for why these things don't work and we should get rid of it

---

I have it on pretty good authority from British friends that the Tories (spits) are intentionally ruining the National Health Service so they can justify selling it off.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Rakeesh:
You could not kill 49 people in a nightclub with a pointy stick before you were stopped. You couldn't kill 49 people with a pointy stick, period. It would break.

Hell a knife might break after stabbing *one* person, much less dozens. For God's sake! It's not sufficient to say 'ban guns', and I don't support that anyway, but 'what about pointy sticks?' Goddamn.

---

quote:

---

carrying a weapon to defend yourself and those around you is the responsibility side

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Rakeesh:
Statistics on the lethality of pointy sticks?

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Rakeesh:
Statistics on the lethality of pointy sticks?

---

quote:

---

I so could! But you have to double dog dare me first.

Imagine Jet Li or Bruce Li or Jackie Chan with a sharp stick...oh no it broke...now I have two pointy sticks!

---

quote:

---

My point was plainly stated...what does the method matter? Planning prevention is one possible good answer. But "because he used a gun", in and of itself doesn't strike me as particularly of much import.

Other than if a single one of those unfortunate victims had been armed, statistically the mad man (closeted gay I heard) would have been stopped after two killings.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Stone_Wolf_:
Dude...mass stabbing in China lead to 29 dead and 130 wounded...sure that was 5 guys with knives, not one with a pointy stick...but the point remains salient.

---

quote:

---

1. Norway
2. Serbia
3. France
4. Macedonia
5. Albania
6. Slovakia
7. Switzerland
8. Finland
9. Belgium
10. Czech Rep.
11. U.S.
12. Austria
13. Netherlands
14. Canada
15. England

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Stone_Wolf_:
You sure like the sound of your own "voice" dude.

It must be easier to win arguments when you control both sides...please tell me what I'll do next...it's SO much easier than having my own thoughts and feelings. [/sarcasm]

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by PanaceaSanans:

quote:

---

Originally posted by Rakeesh:
Statistics on the lethality of pointy sticks?

---

Do (wooden) lances qualify as pointy sticks?

---

quote:

---

Breakups, estrangements and family arguments make up the majority (53%) of cases, though unrelated victims may be caught in the crossfire.

---

quote:

---

clearly it doesn't matter what weapon restrictions are in place you just can't stop a person bent on killing others as it's so fricken easy!

---

quote:

---

carrying a weapon to defend yourself and those around you is the responsibility side.

I'm in process currently to carry concealed in my new county.

---

quote:

---

who cares about the tool used?...it really doesn't matter that much if it was an AR, a sword, a bomb, a car or a pointy stick really!

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by NobleHunter:
The plot thickens. Though who knows if the guy is making it up.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Stone_Wolf_:
Sam, I feel your brevity is inversely related to your participation value.

---

Actually brevity on certain subject matter is a hallmark of this thread, so I dismiss your objection from this part of the discussion.
 

---

Posted by Stone_Wolf_ (Member # 8299) on :
 
You didn't duly note my objection, merely hand waved it away.

I do enjoy your games tho.
 

---

Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
 
You complained about his brevity, I remarked-correctly-that that form of brevity is a feature of this thread in that context. So yeah, your objection wasn't so much noted as analyzed and found wanting, an explanation of why given, and then dismissed.

The joke still worked though. I mean I could have dug deeper and looked at all the times you've resorted to one-liners or jokes in response to serious questions-not just from me-and posted 'em all here. Would've been impressive, as there are a number of times you've done that. More work than I felt like doing, though.
 

---

Posted by Stone_Wolf_ (Member # 8299) on :
 
You sound like my mother in law...'but YOU did this!'

Your message at least is consistent.

Anything I say is wrong & should be dismissed & Stone_Wolf is a jerk.

My interactions w you seem to be nearing the distracting from the topic phase.

Perhaps since you value brevity so you might exercise some?
 

---

Posted by Stone_Wolf_ (Member # 8299) on :
 

quote:

---

Originally posted by Lyrhawn:
1. There actually were two high profile shootings IN ORLANDO that weekend. A singer was shot and killed by a fan at a big concert in addition to the mass shooting. What would otherwise be major news was largely drowned out.

---

quote:

---

2. Stone Wolf, you said that "statistically" it was likely that an armed person in the crowd would have ended the attack after only two people were killed. I'm not sure where you got that statistic.

---

quote:

---

How many mass shootings were broken up in the last year by someone who was armed in the crowd?

---

quote:

---

For that matter, there WAS an armed guard at Pulse who failed to take the shooter down.

---

quote:

---

There IS evidence that vigilantes in crowds are terrible at stopping mass shooters. When Gabby Giffords was shot, a man in the crowd almost shot an off duty police officer. Why? Because in that situation, with little or no training (or even with training), it's VERY difficult to deduce WHO to shoot at. It's not always the crazy person with an AR-15, and even then, if I have a gun and I see someone with a gun, it's hard to look away from that person. You never know. There's a similar story out of the Virginia Tech shooting, that an armed student was nearly killed by police because the situation was very confusing and no one knew who the active shooter actually was. Also, when someone tried to take down the mall shooter in Seattle a few years back, he was instantly targeted by the mass shooter and killed. In short: there's little data to support your point, and quite a bit of data to suggest that untrained vigilantes are actually terrible at stopping a mass shooting in process.

---

quote:

---

3. Anyone who says the method doesn't matter is being pretty silly. Clearly a gun is more deadly than a knife. How do I know this? We haven't fought wars with swords...ever...in America. We switched to guns. Because guns kill people better. It's literally the only thing they were designed to do. Guns shoot things. Guns were made to kill either people or animals. Quickly. Accurately. From a distance or up close. Peddling the idea that a pointy stick is the same thing as a long gun with a high capacity magazine is incredibly intellectually dishonest.

---

quote:

---

4. Why do we pretend that guns are different from anything else in society that kills people? Cigarettes kill people, so we regulate the hell out of them and try to get as few people as possible to smoke them. Cars are dangerous, and back when they killed an awful lot more people, we started regulating the crap out of them to make them safer, and we required people to have insurance to drive one. When terrorists hijacked a plan they reinforced cockpit doors and stepped up searches. When one smuggled in a bomb, they made us take off our shoes and submit to those naked xray vision scans. So on and so on and so on and so on. Every time we've identified a mass threat in society we've taken mass action to reduce the number of deaths. Have any of these solutions COMPLETELY ELIMINATED THE THREAT? No. But we've saved millions of lives for our efforts. Why are guns the only thing that everyone claims defy all the rest of the rules we've set up in society for how we decide to enact regulation to save lives? Guns, in that sense, are no different than unprocessed milk or seat belts. Yet half our society pretends they are. Can we please do more to do away with this notion?

---

quote:

---

wouldn't you like some of our honorably discharged vettes (and similarly trained professionals) to be able to try and save lives?

---

quote:

---

I found the info graph I was referencing, not a clue if they are a trust worthy source, will research

---

quote:

---

This seems to suggest to me that one armed guard is not enough.

---

quote:

---

One thing that strikes me is that you say "untrained vigilantes" a lot, however, you might not remember from the gun control threads of old that I am heavily for required training for ownership, and further training to obtain a carry permit. So...no "untrained" anything. Vigilantes? The world has a negative connotation...but for realies yo, wouldn't you like some of our honorably discharged vettes (and similarly trained professionals) to be able to try and save lives?

---

quote:

---

On MANY levels it does matter...however I feel that when it comes to the discussion of morality and motivation wise, the tool used is not relevant.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by TomDavidson:

quote:

---

wouldn't you like some of our honorably discharged vettes (and similarly trained professionals) to be able to try and save lives?

---

Sure. Issue them all epi pens and bandages to carry with them. They'll save a lot more lives than they would with guns.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by TomDavidson:
I don't trust anyone who thinks that carrying a gun to the mall makes the people around him safer to carry a gun to the mall.

---

quote:

---

Lyr:
So again, I'm not sure where you got your overall statistic that more armed people in crowds means more lives saved.

---

quote:

---

Tom doesn't trust cops & armed security eh?

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Stone_Wolf_:

quote:

---

Lyr:
So again, I'm not sure where you got your overall statistic that more armed people in crowds means more lives saved.

---

I think there is confusion...I was just referencing the main infograph...14.3 dead when stopped by LE, 2.3 dead when stopped by civys.

---

quote:

---

Lyr:
...the idea that more guns makes us more safe just doesn't pass any sort of logical muster with me.

---

quote:

---

And by definition he is a vigilante. I don't have a better word for someone who takes the life or death decisions into his own hands with deadly force.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Lyrhawn:

quote:

---

Originally posted by Stone_Wolf_:

quote:

---

Lyr:
So again, I'm not sure where you got your overall statistic that more armed people in crowds means more lives saved.

---

I think there is confusion...I was just referencing the main infograph...14.3 dead when stopped by LE, 2.3 dead when stopped by civys.

---

You originally said that statistically more armed people means more lives saved. Then you pointed to that infographic as evidence.

I'm confused as to where the confusion is.

---

I see your confusion, and I raise you a "huh?". You wanted the source of my numbers...I gave it...

ETA...I was quoting that infographic from memory from Pintrist & it was the average amount of people killed w/o intervention by a citizen...anyway...as Rakeesh points out, the source is untrustworthy...so I retract the point in question anyway.

[ June 23, 2016, 04:17 AM: Message edited by: Stone_Wolf_ ]
 

---

Posted by Stone_Wolf_ (Member # 8299) on :
 

quote:

---

But to me it seems like you're deflecting. Your argument over the last page hasn't been that methods don't matter when discussion motivation, it's that guns are no more dangerous than sticks and knives and far less dangerous than box cutters and bombs.

---

quote:

---

Sure a pointy stick is harder to wield as effectively...

---

quote:

---

...I remarked-correctly-that that form of brevity is a feature of this thread in that context.

---

Man I'm slow on context some times. My wife complains about it at times...not too much...she knew I was literal when she married me.
 

---

Posted by FlyingCow (Member # 2150) on :
 

quote:

---

Originally posted by Stone_Wolf_:
I have no argument that guns are effective & easy to operate killing mechines...but I'll have to look into the numbers you quoted...

---

Here are links to get you started.

Bombing data from NIH:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16394919

Vegas woman hits pedestrians:
http://www.cnn.com/2015/12/21/us/las-vegas-strip-pedestrians-hit/

Here's another link you may find of interest, too:
https://www.facebook.com/ezraklein/videos/10154000566913410/
 

---

Posted by Stone_Wolf_ (Member # 8299) on :
 
Thank you FC...That is SO nice!

I will read them all before further comments.
 

---

Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
 

quote:

---

Originally posted by Stone_Wolf_:
Sam, I feel your brevity is inversely related to your participation value.

---

you have completely forgotten which thread you are in
 

---

Posted by Stone_Wolf_ (Member # 8299) on :
 
Briefly...yes.
 

---

Posted by Stone_Wolf_ (Member # 8299) on :
 
FC...I read/watched the vid...thank you for supplying them! I will comment soon.
 

---

Posted by Stone_Wolf_ (Member # 8299) on :
 

quote:

---

Originally posted by TomDavidson:

quote:

---

wouldn't you like some of our honorably discharged vettes (and similarly trained professionals) to be able to try and save lives?

---

Sure. Issue them all epi pens and bandages to carry with them. They'll save a lot more lives than they would with guns.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Samprimary:

quote:

---

clearly it doesn't matter what weapon restrictions are in place you just can't stop a person bent on killing others as it's so fricken easy!

---

ok

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Rakeesh:
Being reminded at least twice doesn't usually count as 'remembering'.

---

quote:

---

FC:
Even bombs aren't usually as lethal - having many more injuries than fatalities. From 1983 to 2002, there were 36,110 recorded bombing incidents in the US... with 699 deaths.

---

I'm shocked that booms are so ineffective. I will have to modify my understanding of how the world works...thanks FlyingCow!
 

---

Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
 

quote:

---

Originally posted by Stone_Wolf_:
Um...no?

Just cause you started it you think it appropriate you get to moderate it? Including banning people from posting?

If there is anything Hatrack has taught me is...don't demand other's silence, simply stop replying when you're done.

---

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Originally posted by Stone_Wolf_:

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Originally posted by Rakeesh:
Being reminded at least twice doesn't usually count as 'remembering'.

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Watch this:

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Chances are high that you know who Robert Morrow is by now. The incendiary and oftentimes juvenile middle-aged author leapt to national prominence after ousting the incumbent Travis County Republican Party chair in the March 1 Texas primary.

Morrow’s Twitter feed – a jaw-dropping stream of sexually explicit political accusations targeting both parties, mixed with salacious photos of scantily clad women – has made appearances on national news as well as late-night comedy shows, eliciting caustic ridicule and utter disbelief. Morrow’s obscene remarks (a representative example: “Pretty sure George W. Bush can suck a dick better than Hillary Clinton”) as well as his promotion of pet conspiracy theories, including the insistence that Lyndon Baines Johnson facilitated the murder of John F. Kennedy and belief that Rick Perry and many in the Bush family are engaged in homosexual adultery, have put the local and state GOP on the attack, compelling them to mount a no-holds-barred campaign to unseat the freshly minted chair.

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His political priorities include free speech, low taxes, and lax gun laws: “I think the ATF should be a corner convenience store where you buy your alcohol, tobacco, and firearms,” he says. Less vehement about the social issues, Morrow is pro-choice and against same-sex marriage. When asked about immigration, his trademark lewdness creeps up: We should build a wall to “keep all the sexy Mexican Latinas inside the U.S.”

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Morrow is also an advocate of using the N-word on Facebook — and he berated a Texas Tribune reporter who asked him about the racist slur without uttering the actual word.

“You are a perfect example of what the Trump movement is revolting against because you can’t even pronounce the word nigger when you are talking about a Facebook post,” Morrow told the reporter. “What a pathetic excuse for a reporter you are.”

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As the world watched in horror at yet another mass shooting in America that sparked the debate on race relations, policing, and gun violence, state Sen. Katrina Shealy of Lexington placed blame for the country's problems squarely on the shoulders of "the media" in a Facebook post.

"Race is not our biggest problem... our biggest problem could very possibly (most likely) be the Media!!! If we could shut down all media for one month," she wrote. "The media sensationalizes everything that happens stirring the pot, fueling an already blazing fire."

But she does excuse one group from the month-long furlough - meteorologists.

So Shealy offers a weather-only newscast and to "let everyone else do their job I bet we would see a change," she said.

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On Monday, “Trunews” host Rick Wiles recounted a story about how he called the police after seeing a man taking photos of his office building, only to discover that the suspicious man was simply playing Pokémon Go on his phone.

Wiles, however, said that something sinister is afoot, warning that “these Pokémon creatures are like virtual, cyber-demons” and that “what this man, Friday, was trying to find was the Pokémon demon that had been placed inside the ‘Trunews’ office.”

“What if this technology is transferred to Islamic jihadists and Islamic jihadists have an app that shows them where Christians are located geographically?” he asked, noting that many of the app’s PokeStops and Gyms include churches and other houses of worship.

“The enemy, Satan, is targeting churches with virtual, digital, cyber-demons,” Wiles said, before adding: “I believe this thing is a magnet for demonic powers.”

Wiles went on to claim that “Pokémon masters” may soon start “telling people to kill people in those buildings” in order to catch more Pokémon, comparing the use of the App to Philando Castile’s girlfriend use of Facebook Live to live stream the aftermath of Castile’s shooting by a police officer, which he said might have been staged.

This conversation led “Trunews” cohost Edward Szall to read a fake quote from the creator of Pokémon allegedly endorsing Satanism.

“They’re spawning demons inside your church,” Wiles said. “They’re targeting your church with demonic activity.” He then again warned that “this technology will be used by the enemies of the cross to target, locate and execute Christians.”

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Retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, a military adviser to Donald Trump’s campaign who was briefly on the vice presidential short list, repeatedly called on a deceased Iranian leader to denounce the terrorist attack in Nice, France.

“I want the Imam, or I want Khomeini in Iran to stand up and be counted,” Flynn told Fox’s Megyn Kelly on Thursday night. Twelve hours later, Flynn again called on the late leader to respond to the attacks.

“I have called out for the leaders of Iran ― Khomeini ― and the leaders of the Muslim world” to denounce the terrorist attack, Flynn told “Fox & Friends” on Friday morning.

“I can tick them off if you want, there’s a bunch of countries with a bunch of so-called leaders,” said the former Defense Intelligence Agency director.

Flynn’s offer to list Muslim leaders was significantly undermined, however, by the fact that his number-one example has been dead for almost 30 years.

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"This 'old white people' business does get a little tired, Charlie," King said. "I'd ask you to go back through history and figure out, where are these contributions that have been made by these other categories of people that you're talking about, where did any other subgroup of people contribute more to civilization?"

"Than white people?" Hayes asked, clearly amazed.

"Than, than Western civilization itself," King replied. "It's rooted in Western Europe, Eastern Europe and the United States of America and every place where the footprint of Christianity settled the world. That's all of Western civilization."

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"Under those 8 years, before Obama came along, we didn't have any successful radical Islamic terrorist attack in the US," Giuliani told the crowd. "They all started when Clinton and Obama came into office."

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Originally posted by JanitorBlade:
I feel like he must have tripped over his phrasing. There's just no way.

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BRIANNA KEILAR: You say it’s not a shake-up, but you guys are down—

MICHAEL COHEN: Says who? Says who?

KEILAR: Polls. Most of them. All of them?

COHEN: Says who?

KEILAR: Polls. I just told you. I answered your question.

COHEN: Okay. Which polls?

KEILAR: All of them.

COHEN: Okay. And your question is?

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Originally posted by Rakeesh:
thinking less unfavorably of Clingon, which also makes me suspicious!

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Originally posted by Rakeesh:
https://youtu.be/GwTG05_I2hs Here's a clip I found on YouTube.

My own biases keep me from being too confident in my perception that the Trump campaign is really, especially dagnasty terrible. I mean that is my perception, but I also want it enough that I'm really suspicious of it. So I guess I'll need to wait for some exhaustively researched historian to dig through all of the thousands of clips and excerpts and speeches and tell me, oy.

It doesn't help that my perception of the Trump campaign is so bad that it also pulls me towards thinking less unfavorably of Clingon, which also makes me suspicious!

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Miller also dismissed the racial tensions of the 1960s, when she said she graduated from high school. “Growing up as a kid, there was no racism, believe me. We were just all kids going to school.”

Asked about segregation and the civil rights movement, she replied: “I never experienced it. I never saw that as anything.”

Miller added: “I don’t think there was any racism until Obama got elected. We never had problems like this ... Now, with the people with the guns, and shooting up neighborhoods, and not being responsible citizens, that’s a big change, and I think that’s the philosophy that Obama has perpetuated on America.”

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When asked about the report, Giuliani told ABC’s “This Week” that Trump was a “genius” when it came to tax laws, unlike Clinton who was investigated by the FBI for using a private email server while leading the State Department.

“Don’t you think a man who has this kind of economic genius is a lot better for the United States than a woman, and the only thing she’s ever produced is a lot of work for the FBI checking out her emails?” he asked.

In a separate interview on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” Giuliani was asked whether it was fair for him to criticize Hillary Clinton’s handling of her husband’s alleged affairs when Giuliani himself had dealt with his “own infidelity charge.” Giuliani, who has been married three times, was accused of cheating on his second spouse.

“Well, everybody does. And I’m Roman Catholic, and I confess those things to my priest,” he said.

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“The leaked tape provides undeniable proof for two things: the first is that Donald Trump is exactly the alpha male president this country has been craving for the last 8 years,” he argued. “The second proves without a shadow of a doubt that he is not a homosexual; if anything, he loves the lady parts so much that, in spite of coming out of one such part while being born, he has spent 70 years of his life trying to get back into thousands of other ones. If that’s not a testament to his love of females, I really don’t know what is.”

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Televangelist Pat Robertson claimed on his show, the "700 Club," on Tuesday that gay people in San Francisco have deliberately spread AIDS using rings designed to cut people, according to a video published by Right Wing Watch.

"You know what they do in San Francisco? Some of the gay community there, they want to get people. So, if they've got the stuff, they'll have a ring. You shake hands and the ring's got a little thing where you cut your finger," Robertson said in the video. "Really. I mean it's that kind of vicious stuff, which would be the equivalent of murder."

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Religious Right activist “Coach” Dave Daubenmire posted a video this morning declaring that a recording of Donald Trump bragging about being able to sexually assault women because he is famous should be of far less concern to Christians than the prospect of allowing a woman to become president.

“Women and men may be equal,” Daubenmire said, “but I think it’s pretty clear that the Bible teaches us that women should not be in authority over a man.”

“Here’s the point I’m making,” he continued. “With all that’s going on with Trump and everybody screaming and hollering about that, when is the last time your pastor stood up in the pulpit and said, ‘Hey, listen, we cannot vote for Hillary Clinton because women are not to have authority over men’? If we want to follow the Bible, that would sure be a good place to start, wouldn’t it? Rather than worrying so much about the immorality of a sinful man, what about the biblical principle that when a woman rules over a man … it’s a sign of judgment of the Lord?”

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In a rambling speech in Ocala, Florida, Donald Trump suggested today that ISIS terrorists are rooting for a Hillary Clinton victory because they know they will then be able to “take over this country.”

Trump, who has been featured in ISIS and Al Qaeda propaganda and who some security experts believe is the group’s candidate of choice, said ISIS members are “hoping and praying that Hillary Clinton becomes president of the United States because they’ll take over not only that part of the world, they’ll take over this country, they’ll take over this part of the world, believe me.”

He also once again attacked President Obama for referring to the group as ISIL: “You know why he does that? Because he likes disturbing all of you.”

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Conservative activist Jesse Lee Peterson was not happy with Donald Trump’s performance in the first presidential debate, writing in a WorldNetDaily column over the weekend that the GOP didn’t attack Hillary Clinton forcefully enough because “you cannot be weak with evil.”

Americans, he wrote, have suffered under the “girly” Obama, who is the “son of Satan,” because white men like Mitt Romney have been afraid of speaking up and being called racist (“a made-up word”).

This led Peterson to address the birther movement: “Patriots like Sheriff Joe Arpaio and Donald Trump want openness. They value truth. I’m glad they scrutinized liar Barack Obama. (Between Sheriff Joe, Sheriff David Clarke and a few others, all the real men support Donald Trump.)”

Finally, Peterson brought up the controversy over Trump’s insults of former Miss Universe Alicia Machado, claiming that Trump is being called a “bully” because it is “an anti-male slur meant to intimidate men, preventing them from defending themselves against female accusers” and linking to an InfoWars editor’s YouTube attack on Machado to claim that she is a “moral reprobate.”

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On Tuesday, Donald Trump campaign spokeswoman Katrina Pierson took a page from her boss and touted Trump’s performance in post-debate online polls that have no scientific accuracy whatsoever.

After conservative talk show host Joe Pags told Pierson that “news organization polling” is tilted against Trump because media outlets “have some sort of vested interested in getting Hillary Clinton elected,” Pierson said that the scientific polls conducted by media firms are “skewed.”

As proof, she cited the fact that the CNN sampled more Democrats in its poll of debate viewers. Three other scientific polls also found that most people thought that Clinton won the debate.

Pierson vigorously defended the accuracy of voluntary, unscientific online polls: “When you look at the online polls, these are people who are, like I said, not engaged in the day-to-day, 24-hour news cycle, watching cable news all day every day, these are just people. If you’re looking at Time magazine, if you’re on another website and they’re doing a poll and you vote in that poll, by the way, to the tune of over a million votes in some of these polls, that’s important, because those aren’t the people who are in it one way or another, a lot of those people are just engaging.”

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Today, Rep. Louie Gohmert, R-Texas, guest-hosted the radio program “Point of View,” where he interviewed Walt Heyer, who says he is an ex-transgender woman who transitioned back to being a man.

Gohmert said that back when he was a judge, he observed that boys who were victims of child abuse “ended up feeling that they were gay,” seemingly “universally.”

“As a judge handling thousands of felony cases here in Texas, it seemed interesting to me that so often when it was a case of an adult man being charged with molesting a young boy, that the boys just seemed like, universally, they ended up feeling that they were gay,” he said. “And I was a bit perplexed by that, that gee, a kid would be molested and he goes on to think he’s gay the rest of his life when it seems like maybe that was not necessarily the road he was going down until the adult molester stepped in.”

Gohmert told “Point of View” listeners yesterday that homosexuality appeared to be to blame for Noah’s Flood.

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Religious Right activist “Coach” Dave Daubenmire posted a video this morning declaring that a recording of Donald Trump bragging about being able to sexually assault women because he is famous should be of far less concern to Christians than the prospect of allowing a woman to become president.

“Women and men may be equal,” Daubenmire said, “but I think it’s pretty clear that the Bible teaches us that women should not be in authority over a man.”

“Here’s the point I’m making,” he continued. “With all that’s going on with Trump and everybody screaming and hollering about that, when is the last time your pastor stood up in the pulpit and said, ‘Hey, listen, we cannot vote for Hillary Clinton because women are not to have authority over men’? If we want to follow the Bible, that would sure be a good place to start, wouldn’t it? Rather than worrying so much about the immorality of a sinful man, what about the biblical principle that when a woman rules over a man … it’s a sign of judgment of the Lord?”

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On his radio show yesterday, Glenn Beck continued to complain that America has become so polarized that people are being ruthlessly attacked by their own side for daring to disagree with the party line on any issue … which is, he said, exactly what happened to Bill Cosby.

“Consitutionalists [within the GOP] are now the black population for the Democrats,” Beck said, insisting that African Americans who refuse to support the Democratic Party or its agenda are targeted for destruction and now the same thing is happening to “constitutionalists” within the Republican Party.

“I contend Bill Cosby would have gotten away with everything that he did his whole life had he not rocked the boat at the end and started talking about his community and saying, ‘We’ve got to look at our own community,'” Beck said. “Basically, what was he saying? The same things the Democrats don’t want to say about the family, the same things that they don’t want to say about Detroit; that the things that we’ve been doing and are being told to ignore are the problem.”

“You can’t have anybody think, you’ve got to shout them down,” Beck said.

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In an appearance today on “The Jim Bakker Show,” Charisma magazine founder and CEO Steve Strang said that it is impossible for a person with “a biblical point of view” to vote for Hillary Clinton in the upcoming election.

Donald Trump, on the other hand, is a wise and “humble” man who, according to Strang, has been the candidate chosen by God to lead the nation.

“I believe, as odd as it is, that God has raised him up” just as God raised up Abraham Lincoln to save the nation, he said.

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Conservative activist Jesse Lee Peterson used his radio program yesterday to discuss his recent column urging Donald Trump to be harsher on the “evil” Hillary Clinton, which led him to go off on a tangent about how “America has been hell” and “a nightmare” under President Obama, who has turned the country “into a ghetto.”

This, Peterson argued at length, is because African Americans lack “character” and “destroy” the places where they live, so that if every white person were to pack up and leave the country, within ten years “America will have become a complete ghetto”:

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I’ve said in the past that due to the lack of moral character—and not all, not all, not all, not all, not all but most, not all but most—if white people were to pack up and leave this country, just walk away, just with the clothes on their backs, and they said to black America, ‘We’re going to give America to you, you can have it, we’re not going to take anything with us but what we have on, may we please wear our clothes out of here, but everything else in our homes, in our communities, in the banks and everything, you can just have it,’ I guarantee you in 10 years or less, but definitely 10 years, America will have become a complete ghetto, 100 percent ghetto. It has nothing to do with color but the lack of character. When you don’t have character, you are a very destructive, don’t-care kind of person. We see it happening already in the urban areas around the country.

So just imagine what this black man has done to this country. He didn’t make it better. Isn’t that unfortunate? He did not make it better, he did not unite the country. He destroyed the country that was already built … It was already built and everything, running well and blah, blah, blah, and he could not take it and build on it and make it better. Just like when white people move out of the cities, when blacks start moving in, whites pack up and leave, and it’s already nice and beautiful and the only thing that blacks need to do is go in and continue what’s already happening. But instead they go in and they destroy it. Isn’t that amazing? So, this country is 240 years now … so all he had to do was just live, really , make it better, add on to it, not take away from it.

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Larry Pratt, the executive director emeritus of Gun Owners of America, insisted over the weekend that the founding fathers would have wanted every military-age man in the U.S. to carry an M-16 rifle “at a minimum.”

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Donald Trump on Tuesday made an incredibly alarming claim to supporters at a rally in Florida: “Do you know it was just announced that murder is the highest it’s been in our country in 45 years?”

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Eric Trump sent a fundraising email out to supporters Wednesday morning titled “Momentum,” and included this map.

“As one of the most dedicated grassroots leaders in the country you know, momentum matters,” the email, sent on behalf of the Trump campaign, reads. “And right now all the momentum is on our side.”

Trump called on supporters to donate money to help fund aggressive ad blitzes and “get-out-and-vote operations.”

“We’re making huge gains against Crooked Hillary that you can see for yourself,” Trump wrote before the image of the above map.

Here’s the problem: That map GIF is from FiveThirtyEight’s Nate Silver, showing what the election would look like if only men voted.

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Rudy Giuliani told Donald Trump supporters at a rally on Wednesday that he “doesn’t remember” seeing Hillary Clinton after the attacks on the twin towers — despite being photographed right next to her at ground zero.

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Draft-dodger Donald Trump once said that the danger he faced from getting sexually transmitted diseases was his own “personal Vietnam.”
In a 1997 interview with shock jock Howard Stern, Trump talked about how he had been “lucky” not to have contracted diseases when he was sleeping around.
“I’ve been so lucky in terms of that whole world. It is a dangerous world out there. It’s scary, like Vietnam. Sort of like the Vietnam-era,” Trump said in a video that resurfaced Tuesday on Buzzfeed, “It is my personal Vietnam. I feel like a great and very brave soldier.”

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Originally posted by Samprimary:

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On his radio show yesterday, Glenn Beck continued to complain that America has become so polarized that people are being ruthlessly attacked by their own side for daring to disagree with the party line on any issue … which is, he said, exactly what happened to Bill Cosby.

“Consitutionalists [within the GOP] are now the black population for the Democrats,” Beck said, insisting that African Americans who refuse to support the Democratic Party or its agenda are targeted for destruction and now the same thing is happening to “constitutionalists” within the Republican Party.

“I contend Bill Cosby would have gotten away with everything that he did his whole life had he not rocked the boat at the end and started talking about his community and saying, ‘We’ve got to look at our own community,'” Beck said. “Basically, what was he saying? The same things the Democrats don’t want to say about the family, the same things that they don’t want to say about Detroit; that the things that we’ve been doing and are being told to ignore are the problem.”

“You can’t have anybody think, you’ve got to shout them down,” Beck said.

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Rush Limbaugh appears convinced sexual assault is a bogus concept invented by "the left."

As Donald Trump was in boiling hot water Wednesday evening after numerous media reports alleged he has sexually abused several women, the boisterous right-wing talk show host appeared mostly upset about the fact that rape is illegal.

"The left will promote and understand and tolerate anything, as long as there is one element. Do you know what it is? Consent," Limbaugh said during his namesake radio show Wednesday. "If there is consent on both or all three or all four, however many are involved in the sex act, it's perfectly fine. But if the left ever senses and smells that there's no consent in part of the equation then here come the rape police."

Limbaugh could need a brush up on some U.S. law, since what he's blasting the so-called "left" for policing is what "the rape police" — also known as the police — must enforce according to chapter 47 of U.S. Code 10.

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“I believe that Hillary Clinton will set a standard in this country that will lead to more sexual assaults against women because she will be setting an anti-biblical agenda,” Michelle Bachmann said.

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Trump: ...You know, I’m automatically attracted to beautiful — I just start kissing them. It’s like a magnet. Just kiss. I don’t even wait. And when you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything.

Bush: Whatever you want.

Trump: Grab ’em by the pussy. You can do anything.

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Trump: I didn’t sexually assault a People magazine reporter, because “look at her”

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“When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best. They’re not sending you. They’re sending people that have lots of problems, and they’re bringing those problems with us. They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people.” -Donald Trump

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Speaking to Irina, a Georgian wife and mother who gave her testimony in front of Pope Francis and hundreds of priests, seminarians and religious Oct. 1, the Pope said “you mentioned a great enemy of marriage today: gender theory.”

“Today the whole world is at war trying to destroy marriage,” he said, noting that this war isn’t being fought with arms “but with ideas.”

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Originally posted by TomDavidson:
He never said that voting for Clinton was defensible. He said that not voting for Trump was, because good Republicans could still work to stymie Clinton at every turn even if she were elected.

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Originally posted by Samprimary:

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Eric Trump sent a fundraising email out to supporters Wednesday morning titled “Momentum,” and included this map.

“As one of the most dedicated grassroots leaders in the country you know, momentum matters,” the email, sent on behalf of the Trump campaign, reads. “And right now all the momentum is on our side.”

Trump called on supporters to donate money to help fund aggressive ad blitzes and “get-out-and-vote operations.”

“We’re making huge gains against Crooked Hillary that you can see for yourself,” Trump wrote before the image of the above map.

Here’s the problem: That map GIF is from FiveThirtyEight’s Nate Silver, showing what the election would look like if only men voted.

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“I’m standing at my podium and she walks in front of me, right,” Trump said during a rally in Greensboro, North Carolina. “She walks in front of me, you know. And when she walked in front of me, believe me, I wasn’t impressed.”

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