Yeah, the renunciation bit is probably made up frankly. US citizens cannot easily surrender their citizenship. She'd have to go into the US Embassy in Canada and sign an oath. And, there's no reason to even bother doing that because Canada doesn't require you to renounce your other citizenships (or even talk bad about them) in order to be naturalized. So, one, there's no reason she'd do that unless she really hated being American, which seems unlikely; and two, there'd be a written record any critic could point to, which no one has bothered doing.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" lang="en"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">Imma let you finish, but Marco Rubio hitting a kid in the face with a football is one of the best videos of all time <a href="https://t.co/ZbbxTxrWkN">https://t.co/ZbbxTxrWkN</a></p>— Mudacris (@moody) <a href="https://twitter.com/moody/status/633669304874090496">August 18, 2015</a></blockquote> <script async src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
I don't believe for a minute that the people who started the "birther" movement really believed what they were selling. It was classic rabble rousing. If you are going to go around lighting fires just to see stuff burn, you'd better make damn sure you are wearing a fireproof suit - there is cosmic justice in the arsonist burning to death in the fire he set. There would be a great sense of karma in the conservative dirty tricks campaign coming back to burn their own hands, which is why I fully support a thorough vetting of Cruz with lots of vague, sinister unprovable innuendo being pointedly directed at Cruz with no conceivable response that would satisfy the useful idiots who buy in. What's good for the goose is good for the gander. The core principal of Mutually Assured Destruction is that if you use your weapons the opponent will in turn use theirs on you. If the opponent fails to make a reliable and credible counter threat, there is no reason not to use nukes at every possible opportunity. Good behavior in bad people is enforced by linking it to self preservation.
And had a neocon for a son. Those must be awkward Thanksgiving dinners. I get the sentiment, but this is still dumb and a waste of everyone's time. This isn't the Cold War. But, be a birther if you want. I'd be too embarrassed to do it, even if I saw my advantage in it.
So you take a hypocritical position because someone else did in the past? I'm sure that'll teach them....or just perpetuate the cycle of people justifying hypocritical positions with past hypocritical positions.
Ted Cruz debates... Ellen Page? <iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/zKnJunRDzB4?rel=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
No matter how much Ted Cruz or other republicans try to spin in, your religious liberty doesn't give you the right to forgo the law of the land. You don't want the government to tell you how to run your church service, don't encroach your beliefs on mandated laws and we'll be cool.
A wretched waste of human flesh. Less than a day after Carter reveals brain cancer, Ted Cruz already attacking him "I think the parallels between this administration and the Carter administration are uncanny: same failed domestic policies, same misery, stagnation and malaise, same feckless and naïve foreign policy," Cruz said. "In fact, the exact same countries—Russia and Iran—openly laughing and mocking at the president of the United States."
Carter having cancer doesn't mean that you can't bring up his failed presidency anymore. I mean, Cruz is a dick, but there are much better examples than this.
Carter's failure is a myth the same as Reagan's success. Mythic in that they are narratives that give more control of events to Presidents than they actually have. They are products of their greater 'environment' : world politics factors,political climate and opposition factors, economic factors. If the US helicopters hadn't had multiple mechanical difficulties Cater would have probably served two terms, the Soviet Union would have probably dissolved without Reagan, Clinton looked like a economic genius because the computer industry came along on his watch, Bush had 9/11 that made the country war rabid, Mr. Obama is black with a funny name in a time of vindictive political discourse. Successes or failures, I'd still prefer the President that shows the higher moral character, that pulls civilization up from it's baser instincts by example. Taibbi: http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/donald-trump-just-stopped-being-funny-20150821?page=3 Donald Trump Just Stopped Being Funny So two yahoos from Southie in my hometown of Boston severely beat up a Hispanic homeless guy earlier this week. While being arrested, one of the brothers reportedly told police that "Donald Trump was right, all of these illegals need to be deported." SIDEBAR bill o'reilly The Summer of Killer Immigrants, Courtesy of Bill O'Reilly » When reporters confronted Trump, he hadn't yet heard about the incident. At first, he said, "That would be a shame." But right after, he went on: "I will say, the people that are following me are very passionate. They love this country. They want this country to be great again. But they are very passionate. I will say that." This is the moment when Donald Trump officially stopped being funny. The thing is, even as Donald Trump said and did horrible things during this year's incredible run at the White House, most sane people took solace in the fact that he could never win. (Although new polls are showing that Hillary's recent spiral puts this reassuring thought into jeopardy.) In fact, most veteran political observers figured that the concrete impact of Trump's candidacy would be limited in the worst case to destroying the Republican Party as a mainstream political force. That made Trump's run funny, campy even, like a naughty piece of pornographic performance art. After all, what's more obscene than pissing on the presidency? It seemed even more like camp because the whole shtick was fronted by a veteran reality TV star who might even be in on the joke, although of course the concept was funnier if he wasn't. Trump had the whole country rubbernecking as this preposterous Spaulding Smails caricature of a spoiled rich kid drove the family Rolls (our illustrious electoral process in this metaphor) off the road into a ditch. It was brilliant theater for a while, but the ugliness factor has gotten out of control. Trump is probably too dumb to realize it, or maybe he isn't, but he doesn't need to win anything to become the most dangerous person in America. He can do plenty of damage just by encouraging people to be as uninhibited in their stupidity as he is. Trump is striking a chord with people who are feeling the squeeze in a less secure world and want to blame someone – the government, immigrants, political correctness, "incompetents," "dummies," Megyn Kelly, whoever – for their problems. Karl Rove and his acolytes mined a lot of the same resentments to get Republicans elected over the years, but the difference is that Trump's political style encourages people to do more to express their anger than just vote. The key to his success is a titillating message that those musty old rules about being polite and "saying the right thing" are for losers who lack the heart, courage and Trumpitude to just be who they are. His signature moment in a campaign full of them was his exchange in the first debate with Fox's Kelly. She asked him how anyone with a history of calling women "fat pigs, dogs, slobs, and disgusting animals" could win a general election against a female candidate like Hillary Clinton. "I've been challenged by so many people," Trump answered. "I frankly don't have time for political correctness. And to be honest with you, the country doesn't have time either….We don't win anymore. We lose to China. We lose to Mexico….We lose to everybody." On the surface, Kelly was just doing her job as a journalist, throwing Trump's most outrageous comments back at him and demanding an explanation. But on another level, she was trying to bring Trump to heel. The extraction of the humiliating public apology is one of the media's most powerful weapons. Someone becomes famous, we dig up dirt on the person, we rub it in his or her nose, and then we demand that the person get down on bended knee and beg forgiveness. The Clintons' 1992 joint interview on 60 Minutes was a classic example, as was Anthony Weiner's prostration before Andrew Breitbart and Chris Christie's 107-minute marathon apologia after Bridgegate. The subtext is always the same: If you want power in this country, you must accept the primacy of the press. It's like paying the cover at the door of the world's most exclusive club. Trump wouldn't pay the tab. Not only was he not wrong for saying those things, he explained, but holding in thoughts like that is bad for America. That's why we don't win anymore, why we lose to China and to Mexico (how are we losing to Mexico again?). He was saying that hiding forbidden thoughts about women or immigrants or whoever isn't just annoying, but bad for America. It's not exactly telling people to get out there and beat people with metal rods. But when your response to news that a couple of jackasses just invoked your name when they beat the crap out of a homeless guy is to salute your "passionate" followers who "love this country," you've gone next-level. The political right in America has been flirting with dangerous ideas for a while now, particularly on issues involving immigrants and minorities. But in the last few years the rhetoric has gotten particularly crazy. Texas Congressman Louie Gohmert proposed using troops and ships of war to stop an invasion of immigrant children, whom he described as a 28 Days Later-style menace. "We don't even know all of the diseases, and how extensive the diseases are," he said. "A lot of head lice, a lot of scabies," concurred another Texas congressman, Blake Farenthold. "I'll do anything short of shooting them," promised Mo Brooks, a congressman from the enlightened state of Alabama. Then there's Iowa's Steve King, who is unusually stupid even for a congressman. He not only believes a recent Supreme Court decision on gay marriage allows people to marry inanimate objects, but also believes the EPA may have intentionally spilled three million gallons of toxic waste into Colorado's Animas river in order to get Superfund money. Late last year, King asked people to "surround the president's residence" in response to Barack Obama's immigration policies. He talked about putting "boots on the ground" and said "everything is on the table" in the fight against immigrants. So all of this was in the ether even before Donald Trump exploded into the headlines with his "They're rapists" line, and before his lunatic, Game of Thrones idea to build a giant wall along the southern border. But when Trump surged in the polls on the back of this stuff, it caused virtually all of the candidates to escalate their anti-immigrant rhetoric. For example, we just had Ben Carson – who seems on TV like a gentle, convivial doctor who's just woken up from a nice nap – come out and suggest that he's open to using drone strikes on U.S. soil against undocumented immigrants. Bobby Jindal recently came out and said mayors in the so-called "sanctuary cities" should be arrested when undocumented immigrants commit crimes. Scott Walker and Marco Rubio have both had to change their positions favoring paths to citizenship as a result of the new dynamic. Meanwhile, Rick Santorum, polling at a brisk zero percent, joined Jindal and Lindsey Graham in jumping aboard with Trump's insane plan to toss the 14th Amendment out the window and revoke the concept of birthright citizenship, thereby extending the war on immigrants not just to children, but babies. All of this bleeds out into the population. When a politician says dumb thing X, it normally takes ‘Murica about two days to start flirting publicly with X + way worse. We saw that earlier this week, when Iowa radio host Jan Mickelson blew up Twitter by calling for undocumented immigrants to become "property of the state" and put into "compelled labor." When a caller challenged the idea, Mickelson answered, "What's wrong with slavery?" Why there's suddenly this surge of hatred for immigrants is sort of a mystery. Why Donald Trump, who's probably never even interacted with an undocumented immigrant in a non-commercial capacity, in particular should care so much about this issue is even more obscure. (Did he trip over an immigrant on his way to the Cincinnati housing development his father gave him as a young man?) Most likely, immigrants are just collateral damage in Trump's performance art routine, which is an absurd ritualistic celebration of the coiffed hotshot endlessly triumphing over dirty losers and weaklings. Trump isn't really a politician, of course. He's a strongman act, a ridiculous parody of a Nietzschean superman. His followers get off on watching this guy with (allegedly) $10 billion and a busty mute broad on his arm defy every political and social convention and get away with it. People are tired of rules and tired of having to pay lip service to decorum. They want to stop having to watch what they say and think and just get "crazy," as Thomas Friedman would put it. Trump's campaign is giving people permission to do just that. It's hard to say this word in conjunction with such a sexually unappealing person, but his message is a powerful aphrodisiac. **** everything, **** everyone. **** immigrants and **** their filthy lice-ridden kids. And **** you if you don't like me saying so. Those of us who think polls and primaries and debates are any match for that are pretty naive. America has been trending stupid for a long time. Now the stupid wants out of its cage, and Trump is urging it on. There are a lot of ways this can go wrong, no matter who wins in 2016.
But why bring it up at all at that moment? Just like a few months back when he attacked Joe Biden a day after Beau Biden died of brain cancer, Cruz just continues to show what a giant dick he truly is. He's openly attacking these long time public servants at a time when they're suffering. I'm not sure how f***ing evil you have to be to make a habit of this...but Cruz is sure as s*** trying. In the long term, Carter will be remembered throughout history for his humanitarianism. Cruz will just be a footnote in the history of the death of the GOP.
I still don't think Trump is the likely Republican nominee but this article does raise some compelling points. http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/08/maybe-this-time-really-is-different/401900/ Maybe This Time Really Is Different Historical precedents augur against Donald Trump—but perhaps the old rules no longer apply. Historical context is a great asset. But is history always an accurate guide? Does past performance always give us the best predictor of future outcomes? This election season provides a fascinating frame to see if the polarization in politics, from Washington to the states to the public, is no different than what we have seen in the past; if the angry populism evident especially on the right but also to some degree on the left, is no different from the populism that has emerged following every economic setback; if the surge for an insurgent, non-establishment candidate that has always petered out well before the primary process is over will follow the same arc; if the Republican Party will once again flirt with outside-the-box candidates before settling on an establishment figure; if the fact that every major-party convention since 1952 has been over before a ballot is cast will hold true again. Or, perhaps, if this time might be different. Almost all the commentary from the political-pundit class has insisted that history will repeat itself. That the Trump phenomenon is just like the Herman Cain phenomenon four years ago, or many others before it; that early enthusiasm for a candidate, like the early surge of support for Rudy Giuliani in 2008, is no predictor of long-term success; and that the usual winnowing-out process for candidates will be repeated this time, if on a slightly different timetable, given 17 GOP candidates. Of course, they may be entirely right. Or not entirely; after all, the stories and commentaries over the past two months saying Trump has peaked, Trumpmania is over, this horrific comment or that is the death knell for Trump, have been embarrassingly wrong. But Trump’s staying power notwithstanding, there are strong reasons to respect history and resist the urge to believe that everything is different now. Still, I am more skeptical of the usual historical skepticism than I have been in a long time. A part of my skepticism flows from my decades inside the belly of the congressional beast. I have seen the Republican Party go from being a center-right party, with a solid minority of true centrists, to a right-right party, with a dwindling share of center-rightists, to a right-radical party, with no centrists in the House and a handful in the Senate. There is a party center that two decades ago would have been considered the bedrock right, and a new right that is off the old charts. And I have seen a GOP Congress in which the establishment, itself very conservative, has lost the battle to co-opt the Tea Party radicals, and itself has been largely co-opted or, at minimum, cowed by them. As the congressional party has transformed, so has the activist component of the party outside Washington. In state legislatures, state party apparatuses, and state party platforms, there are regular statements or positions that make the most extreme lawmakers in Washington seem mild. Egged on by talk radio, cable news, right-wing blogs, and social media, the activist voters who make up the primary and caucus electorates have become angrier and angrier, not just at the Kenyan Socialist president but also at their own leaders. Promised that Obamacare would be repealed, the government would be radically reduced, immigration would be halted, and illegals punished, they see themselves as euchred and scorned by politicians of all stripes, especially on their own side of the aisle. Of course, this phenomenon is not new in 2015. It was there in 1964, building over decades in which insurgent conservative forces led by Robert Taft were repeatedly thwarted by moderates like Tom Dewey and Wendell Wilkie, until they prevailed behind the banner of Barry Goldwater. It was present in 1976, when insurgent conservative Ronald Reagan almost knocked off Gerald Ford before prevailing in 1980 (and then governing more as a pragmatist than an ideologue). It built to 1994, when Newt Gingrich led a huge class of insurgents to victory in mid-term elections, but then they had to accept pragmatist-establishment leader Bob Dole as their presidential candidate in 1996. And while John McCain in 2008 and Mitt Romney in 2012 were establishment figures, each had to veer sharply to the radical right side to win nominations; McCain, facing a possible revolt at his nominating convention if he went with his first choice for running mate, Joe Lieberman, instead bowed to the new right and picked Sarah Palin. So is anything really different this time? I think so. First, because of the amplification of rage against the machine by social media, and the fact that Barack Obama has grown stronger and more assertive in his second term while Republican congressional leaders have become more impotent. The unhappiness with the establishment and the desire to stiff them is much stronger. Second, the views of rank-and-file Republicans on defining issues like immigration have become more consistently extreme—a majority now agree with virtually every element of Trump’s program, including expelling all illegal immigrants. Third, unlike in 2012, when Mitt Romney was the clear frontrunner and the only serious establishment presidential candidate, and all the pretenders were focused on destroying each other to emerge as his sole rival, this time there are multiple establishment candidates with no frontrunner, including Jeb Bush, Scott Walker, Marco Rubio, John Kasich, and Chris Christie. And each has independent financing, with enough backing from wealthy patrons to stay in the race for a long time, splitting the establishment-oriented vote. The financing, of course, raises point four: We are in a brave new world of campaign finance, where no one candidate can swamp the others by dominating the money race. When establishment nemesis Ted Cruz announced his campaign, he had $38 million in “independent” funds within a week, $36 million of it from four donors. There is likely more where that came from. Some candidates may not find any sugar daddies, or may find that their billionaires are fickle at the first sign of weakness. But far more candidates than usual will have the financial wherewithal to stick around—and the more candidates stick around, the less likely that any single one will pull into a commanding lead or sweep a series of primaries, and thus the more reason to stick around. Fifth, the desire for an insurgent, non-establishment figure is deeper and broader than in the past. Consider that in the first major poll taken after the GOP debate, three insurgents topped the list, totaling 47 percent, with Donald Trump leading the way, followed by Ted Cruz and Ben Carson. And, as Trump and the insurgents have shown depth and breadth of support, desperate wannabes like Scott Walker and Bobby Jindal have become ever more shrill to try to compete. Walker, for example, trashed Republican leaders in Congress for breaking their promise to repeal Obamacare. Walker’s right wing alternative health plan, meanwhile, was trashed by Jindal for being too liberal. And the parade of candidates lining up behind blowing up birthright citizenship has been remarkable. Sixth, Donald Trump, a far more savvy candidate than, say, Herman Cain, has benefited from the anger in the conservative and Republican base electorate by running a pugnacious, in-your-face, I-am not-anything-like-these-other-clowns race, with his signature position being his extreme, nativist stance on immigration. His adherents have cared little about his positions on other issues; after all, Romney, John Boehner, Eric Cantor, Mitch McConnell, et al. promised them everything and produced nothing. So Ann Coulter, a Trump cheerleader, commented that she would be fine with Trump “perform[ing] abortions in the White House,” given his immigration stance, while other supporters have ignored any dissonance between Trump’s views and their own. Trump has also been the beneficiary of an almost-worshipful press thrilled with his perpetual-motion quote machine, which covers every press conference or town hall, often live on television, and rarely challenges his comments, feasting on every outrageous statement or attack against another candidate or critic. And the blanket press coverage has meant that Trump has not had to spend a dime of his fortune on political ads. Most pundits believe that Trump has a ceiling of support around his current levels of roughly 25 percent. But if other insurgents like Cruz and Carson have their own support nearing a combined 25 percent, why can’t Trump potentially garner a solid share of their backing if they falter? Moreover, if Trump does stay at 25 percent well into the primary season, he may well secure a strong plurality of support, with a bunch of other candidates getting 5 to 15 percent, letting him stockpile a number of delegates. And he might be able to win a slew of in states where the minimum threshold for delegates is 20 percent. The Republican Party changed its rules to try to close on a nominee earlier than in the past. But those rules, providing a window in March for winner-take-all primaries, might not have their desired effect. It is not difficult for me to imagine that Trump, Cruz, Carson, Huckabee, Bush, Walker, Rubio, Kasich and maybe a couple more can stay in the race well into April or later, with no single candidate emerging. Perhaps the Koch brothers and their allied wealthy funders will try to unite behind a single candidate, and force the others out of the race—becoming a surrogate for the RNC and the rest of the party hierarchy. But if they go to Bush, Kasich and Walker, say, and push them to drop out and back their choice of Rubio, why would the others, with just as many delegates and some strong financial backers, listen to them? This does not mean that we will have the first open convention in 64 years—it would not be a “brokered” convention, by the way, since there are no brokers anymore, but an open and free-wheeling one. There are still solid reasons to believe that there will be coalescence around an establishment figure, even if this one has to veer even more to the radical side than McCain or Romney did. Or there might be, like 1964, a clear nominee from the insurgent side, possibly Trump but also possibly Cruz. But there are also reasons to believe that if either of those scenarios prevailed, it would not be a happy convention. Somewhere near half the delegates will feel jilted, and Cleveland will rock. But there are plenty of historical parallels for that kind of convention, from the Cow Palace in 1964 to Chicago in 1968. History may prove a guide, but it’s no longer clear where it’s pointing.
I love that Republican candidates are now fighting over who gets the honor to use the term "anchor baby" about American citizens.
