Re: Is Ted Cruz Satan? Discuss.
 

Re: Hey Thurgreed!
 

FWIW the wife believes this photo is NOT shopped. The window effect is too real.

Re: Trump/Sanders Voters
 

People are voting for Trump.

Hate the article all you like, it's accurate in its assessment. And we share some of the blame for creating it. All those years of those of us who knew better saying, "Fuck it. Given them bread and circuses... They'll be happy and complacent with reality TV, pop-country, Rush Limbaugh, and video games." Well, that didn't work out so well.

They got dumber. And they kept fucking. And now we're in Idiocracy.

But here's the thing: they're still kind of logical. They know their king is a clown. They figure if you're going to get fucked either way, why not enjoy throwing a Malatov cocktail into the system? DJT may ultimately prove as Establishment as HRC, but with him, Joe Sixpack at least enjoys the temporary satisfaction of watching the Establishment freak out until it discovers this reality.

(And then there are those who think they'll get a wall. These people really miss Pink Floyd. And generally have fetal alcohol syndrome.)

Re: Is Ted Cruz Satan? Discuss.
 

He does not support repealing the ACA. He doesn't like it, but has conceded it's not going anywhere, and so has embraced it in Ohio. He's also not in favor of undoing gay marriage. That's bullshit.

Yes, he's got some pro-business views on the courts. But so does every conservative.

Defunding PP is a vacant policy plank for all GOP candidates. It's like HWBush saying he wanted to undo Roe. No GOP candidate actually wants to to do that (except Cruz, who is a psychotic imbecile). It's just some shit you say to the stupid religious freaks.

But yes -- it's disturbing that he felt the need to prove his lunatic bona fides by trying to seriously defund PP at the state level. That criticism is valid.

Re: Trump/Sanders Voters
 

Molotov, no Malatov.

The name "Molotov cocktail" was coined by the Finns during the Winter War. The name is an insulting reference to Soviet foreign minister Vyacheslav Molotov, who was responsible for the setting of "spheres of interest" in Eastern Europe under the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact in August 1939. The pact with the Nazis bearing Molotov's name was widely mocked by the Finns, as was much of the propaganda Molotov produced to accompany the pact, including his declaration on Soviet state radio that bombing missions over Finland were actually airborne humanitarian food deliveries for their starving neighbours. The Finns sarcastically dubbed the Soviet cluster bombs "Molotov bread baskets" in reference to Molotov's propaganda broadcasts. When the hand-held bottle firebomb was developed to attack Soviet tanks, the Finns called it the "Molotov cocktail", as "a drink to go with the food". Molotov himself despised the name, particularly as the term became ubiquitous.

Wow, this Molotov sounds like a real character. A thin-skinned, xenophobic, megalomaniacal bully who was willing to tell whatever lie, no matter how absurd, to avoid admitting to his darker actions and beliefs.

Re: Trump/Sanders Voters
 

I know you don't read or post here much, so you probably do not have any idea what you did wrong. Adder, ggg and Ty, they all hate on you now because you denigrated the Soviets. If you delete then I'll delete. Maybe best for you to ease into posingt here more regularly?

Re: Trump/Sanders Voters
 

Quite deserved... Christ, how did I do that?

But that long-form added text still isn't getting you script work on Portlandia, or a 2006 writing credit for McSweeneys.

Stick with the funk.

Re: Hey Sebby!
 

There's no reason for this not to coexist with a cash economy for those who want to use it.

The services you describe will inevitably drive us to a nearly cashless structure, wherein cash will be safe, legal, and rare. Summers wants to start banning certain bills. This is an unnecessary legislative dictate troubling to anyone who believes we have a right to transact beyond the scope of govt oversight.

Re: Foreman says these jobs are going boys, and they ain't coming back.
 

I'm not sure Goldenhead even gets the nomination: http://www.xojane.com/issues/stephan...paign-defector

Scenario: Cruz beats him in Wisconsin, preventing him from getting 1237. At the Convention, Trump loses, and his followers go nuclear. I don't know who wins the nomination or election, but it's immaterial. (My best guess is the GOP nomination is decided by steel cage match. And we'd better have our passports in order.)

Re: Hey Sebby!
 

Look, let's just take this conversation to its natural end point. You be Sam and Ty can be Josh.

Re: Trump/Sanders Voters
 

I'm just trying to enforce a minimum standard mental discipline here. But I'm not an ogre and don't like to pile on, so I am going to let slip the fact that I don't think you know what all the terms you used in your post mean.

Re: Hey Sebby!
 

The idea is that the spread of digital technology and connectivity means that it should be getting increasingly cheaper to provide increasingly real-time payments. Things that used to be special should slowly become commodity goods, even payments. Of course, incumbents don't like this and try to use their market power to keep it from happening.

Re: Hey Sebby!
 

I don't really care, but the $100 bill only exists because the government creates it.

Re: Hey Sebby!
 

Um. You know that the government decides which bills to print, right? Are you this outraged that there is no $25 bill? Are you also outraged that there is no $500? You sound really crazy putting this much emphasis on a really tiny thing (that also appears to have no legs).

Also, why aren't you doing your high-value dark transactions in bitcoin?

Re: Is Ted Cruz Satan? Discuss.
 

I am feeling a bit more cheerful today. Trump, upon realizing that he will likely not receive the required delegates, is really starting to melt down a bit. Even Ann Coulter has called him "mental".

My good spirits are precipitated by yesterday's news that Rubio has taken action to affirmatively remove himself from the CA ballot, which should hurt Trump. The polling is tight and generally, Cruz has overperformed and Trump has underperformed the polling by roughly 4-5 points each. Winning CA would be huge. That and a win in Wisconsin for Cruz, which seems pretty certain now with a Scott Walker has endorsed and Trump has appeared typically idiotic in interviews with local radio hosts (which he would never had done if he had competent campaign advisers and management), means that Trump will not get the nomination on the first ballot.

Rubio has further contacted the states where he won delegates and has not released them. Where delegates are usually free to vote their preference after their candidate drops out, Rubio has acted to keep is delegates bound to him on the first ballot, which further hurts Trump. Cruz has been active in states like SC, installing his people as delegates which can only be picked from people who attended the last party convention. He is clearly out-maneuvering the Trump campaign.

While I am a bit more confident that Trump won't win the nomination outright, I do not have words for the hatred and revulsion I feel for John Kasich at this time.

Re: Hey Sebby!
 

Like, hellOOOooooooo, do you, like, even realize that it's the GOVERNMENT who decides what bills to print in the first place. And that it's the GOVERNMENT who then prints those bills? Or did you think money came from the Benjamin Fairy?????

Re: Hey Sebby!
 

Whatever did you and your parents do when they eliminated the thousand dollar bill? I assume you spent a few months in a bunker to avoid falling pieces of sky?

TM

Re: Is Ted Cruz Satan? Discuss.
 

Yay! We might get the actually crazy one instead of the one who maybe kinda sorta is just pretending to be crazy (but who knows for sure)!

Meanwhile, I'm feeling pretty good because either Cruz or Trump will get absolutely smoked in the general election.

What's with the Kasich revulsion? Seems like he should be pretty much up your alley. Or are you buying the silly "moderate" spin too?

Re: Hey Sebby!
 

Non-responsive.

TM

Re: Hey Sebby!
 

I wish they'd bring back the $100,000 bill. When I pay myself my bi-weekly bonii my wallet is so fat now that I'm afraid of attracting muggers:confused:

Re: Is Ted Cruz Satan? Discuss.
 

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epo...tial_race.html

Trump getting smoked by Hil, and it would get worse, not better. Cruz close, and will get closer if the nominee. Kasich smoking Hil.

Re: Is Ted Cruz Satan? Discuss.
 

Look, his own website says he favors repeal of ACA. Kasich has common ground with many of these lunatics, he's just not a firebrand in his approach to advocating for them.

Re: Hey Sebby!
 

Keep your gubmint away from my money!

Re: Is Ted Cruz Satan? Discuss.
 

This is what I love about today's Republican party.

Re: Trump/Sanders Voters
 

Was his wife hot?

Re: Trump/Sanders Voters
 

I'll let slip the fact that other than to give me deserved shit for mangling "Malatov" (I could plead Belgian beer, but honestly I think it might be brain damage), your post said nothing.

Don't get me wrong -- you raise a mildly amusing comparison. And you demonstrate a fast Wikipedia finger. But that reply adds little to the back and forth TM and I were having.

Substitute "hand grenade" for the apparently too general use of "Molotov cocktail" in my post and then offer a reply.

Re: Is Ted Cruz Satan? Discuss.
 

Cruz would actually try to repeal the ACA. Kasich has said, numerous times, that while he favors its repeal, such a thing is impossible, so it's better just to accept it and work with it. That's significant.

I don't know how you cannot see enormous daylight between Kasich and a full on psychopath like Cruz. I can't do the compare and contrast thing with Trump because I don't think Trump even knows what he believes, or would do in office.

Re: Is Ted Cruz Satan? Discuss.
 

There is indeed daylight between the Buckley faction (neo-fascism with good spelling and diction and a bit of due process) and the Cruz faction (screw the due process, screw them all, dam the spelling).

Just not on the substantive issues. (Cue debate over when process becomes substance, concede point, move on).

Re: Is Ted Cruz Satan? Discuss.
 

Kasich's nice guy/only adult in the room spiel is all an act. He's a pretty well known a-hole in GOP circles. Even among other career politicians. That's saying something. For an example, see his account of his 2008 traffic stop:

https://www.youtube.com/embed/nTf_qyRXhxk

He claimed a fake Romney endorsement in Utah, when Romney was stumping for Cruz. He did not get enough signatures to get on the ballot in Pennsylvania and is there only by the graces of a college kid Rubio supporter who dropped the challenge when Rubio suspended. He also did not get enough signatures to get on the ballot in Illinois, which personally offends my rule-following ways. When Rubio encouraged his Ohio supporters to vote Kasich, he received a big middle finger in return in Florida. His asserts that he likes to keep religion out of things only until he invokes it in expanding Medicaid telling those that disagree that they are un-Christian.

He is well liked by the people on this board. Democrats. Is it that hard to understand why many Republicans dislike him? Obamacare, path to citizenship, Common Core, assault weapons ban -- he's on the non-Republican side of a lot of issues. Of the original 17 candidates, there was a dozen of them I would get behind. Kasich wasn't one of them.

Kasich needs about 2000% of the remaining delegates to win. He's won exactly one state and gets offended when confronted with, you know, math. He thinks he can win on a subsequent ballot while there will likely be riots in Cleveland (courtesy of Trump supporters). Heck, he came in 4th place after Rubio in Nevada a week after Rubio dropped out. Given the impossibility of him winning, he seems to almost intentionally spoiling the #NeverTrump movement. A vote for Kasich is a vote for Trump.

Re: Is Ted Cruz Satan? Discuss.
 

Yeah, I've heard that.

He is?

Re: Is Ted Cruz Satan? Discuss.
 

That's all fine and dandy. But your party? It's dead. And though a lot of the credit will immediately go to Trump, like so many other things he's allegedly "won," it will be undeserved.

The blame is squarely on the shoulders of the GOP itself. And you can see it played out plainly in the way the party has behaved since Obama took office. Anti-science, anti-women's rights, anti-immigrant... disrespectful of an elected President who's beaten the fuck out of it twice in elections... owned by plutocrats so out of touch they not only nominate a clearly doomed loser like Romney, but actually think he's going to win and become incredulous when he doesn't!

Trump may be a bigot and an idiot. But that in no way distinguishes him from 80% of the rest of the GOP. It's an old man's Archie Bunker party. It's stupid, it's out of touch, and that's proven by its candidates. Bush and Rubio, the bought-and-paid-for plutocrat servants. Carson, the anti-science crank. Trump, the... well, Trump. Cruz, a dangerous, clinically terminal sociopath. Fiorina, the bored, golden-parachuted business failure.

These people are what you get when you have a party of No Ideas.

The perfect ending to this campaign season would be for Trump to take off the mask and say, "I've been fucking with you. I wanted to see just how far I could go acting like an over-the-top imbecile. Apparently, nearly all the way."

And now I have to listen to Establishment Republicans fret over Trump, and complain that Kasich is robbing Cruz of the best chance at winning the White House? In what fantasyland does this scenario approach reality? And in what delusion are Trump and Kasich the villains? Trump is bringing in the voters without whom the GOP would have 000.00 enhanced turnout this election. Kasich is the sole statesman-like candidate on the stage, without whose presence the primary process would have 000.00 dignity.

You can hate Kasich all you like. But he's not the problem. A party that needs to die is dying, and it's the Establishment's fault. They deserve it, and as a moderate, libertarian leaning person who feels abandoned by the GOP, I couldn't be happier to see it happen.

If it comes to Cruz versus Hillary, I'll vote for her. Happily.

Re: Is Ted Cruz Satan? Discuss.
 

I don't like the guy much at all. He seems best liked here by the independents.

I will give him this, though, it is pretty unChristian to oppose Medicaid expansion. I missed that, but if he said it, good for him. I say that as a Christian who is sick of people using my religion to be assholes. Congratulations, you've done more to make me like the guy than Sebby, who actually does like him.

Re: Is Ted Cruz Satan? Discuss.
 

I can't find the post now, but I am pretty sure that I mentioned on this board that Cruz would have been on my laminated list, were I to have one.

Re: Is Ted Cruz Satan? Discuss.
 

Or perhaps one can agree that it is important to help the poor, but believe that government is not the best or most effective way to do so.

Re: Is Ted Cruz Satan? Discuss.
 

You're right about all of this, and someone I know who's worked with him has stated he can be an asshole at times, but usually when he thinks the other side's view is too ideological.

So, given all you've cited, where can I sign up to volunteer for him?

Re: Is Ted Cruz Satan? Discuss.
 

Please name one Democrat on this board who likes him. I think he is a fucking hump and I hope he burns in hell. Preferring him to Trump or Cruz is like saying, "I'd rather take an ice pick to the brain than be placed on a spit and cooked to death slowly."

TM

As the choppers hover outside my window
 

The Minneapolis cops shot a black man, Jamar Clark, in the head last fall. The cops who shot him tried to tackle him to cuff him and said that after the tackle failed to control him, he grabbed the tackling officer's gun. The other officer said he gave a warning and then fired. The county attorney says DNA evidence corroborates this because Clark's DNA was on the officer's belt and gun.

Some eyewitnesses said Clark was handcuffed at the time he was shot. The officers said he wasn't. The prosecutor says physical evidence suggests he wasn't, as there was no bruising on his wrists and no blood or DNA on the inside of the cuffs (Clark's blood was on the outside of the cuffs, which were found in the grass).

There will be protests. Many who protest will believe that the man was cuffed (I think the prosecutor made a reasonable case that he wasn't). Apparently state law (according to the prosecutor) says you have to judge them at the moment they decided to use the force in question. If so, maybe no charges is the legally appropriate outcome.

But there's video. It doesn't show everything, so it's hard to tell, but the impression is clearly two idiot cops show up to a scene that isn't particularly chaotic and escalate to a man's death in just over a minute.

The prosecutor said that having failed to cuff the man immediately, one of the cops tried to tackle him because he had been trained at a prior job that it is a good way to get cuffs on someone. Clearly it is not, and the prosecutor's statement certainly implies that he and perhaps the MPD don't think it is. That decision - to immediately use force to gain compliance - led directly the chaos that ultimately justified the force that killed the Clark. That's the problem.

The two bumbling officers probably legitimately did fear for their lives, because they had failed to control the situation and wound up apparently believing the Clark was going to get control of one of their guns. That's enough, I guess, to exonerate them, but it doesn't exonerate the system.

Re: Is Ted Cruz Satan? Discuss.
 

I tell you what, put together and find funding for a way to provide such care without federal funding to a substantial number of people who would be covered under Medicaid expansion in any of the red states that have turned down the funding. Then we'll talk.

Until someone does that, the unChristian assholes turning down the funding are just a death panel for the poor.

Re: Is Ted Cruz Satan? Discuss.
 

Good God. What happened to you as a child?

TM

Re: Is Ted Cruz Satan? Discuss.
 

I see a thousand points of light.....