The lack of credible (sane) candidates makes more sense when you put it in the perspective that the GOP does not want to elect a President. The Executive Branch does not make law and only the House makes tax law. The Presidency is just the Scapegoat-in Chief for them. It gives them someone to campaign against in their gerrymandered districts, i.e socialism, war on Christianity, weak borders etc. The real goal for the Kochs, Adelson's , Super PAC et. al is maintaining control of tax, investment, energy and banking laws.
looks like the book buy was orchestrated by Harper Collins. Guess they recognize Ted's got a short shelf life and it's getting even shorter. Pretty funny overall, but still not a fan of Twitter based journalism re the outrage...
i always thought the book buy was common practice...especially when its a politician...who wants to actually read this stuff, whether its cruz, clinton or bush? i saw prince about 10 years ago and the purchase price of your ticket included his latest cd...so every night he played he "sold" 20k albums and had a top 5 album in the billboard charts. its basically the same thing.
I see Bush to be the Republican nominee at +185. That's not a bad ROI for a year long bet imo. Any reason why this isn't a lock before I plop down some $$$?
That latter one actually sounds shady as all get out, or maybe just difficult to do unless you own the masters or have your own label.
There's enough real pork spending, think tank propaganda and negative campaigning on both sides to account for House returns than to speciously and somewhat hypocritically cite voter suppression and gerrymandering, the latter of which has been used by both parties for two centuries.
Speculative as this is, if it means they've stopped obsessing about appointing Court Justices that's probably a good thing, if at least more practical administratively.
Not to the level that the republican party uses it. http://billmoyers.com/2014/11/05/gerrymandering-rigged-2014-elections-republican-advantage/
NYTimes refusing to put Ted Cruz's book on their bestseller list, claiming most of the sales were from bulk purchases. But the Times will produce no evidence, and both Harper Collins and Amazon say there is no evidence of bulk purchases. http://www.politico.com/blogs/media...e-of-bulk-sales-for-ted-cruz-book-210374.html So petty. My guess is the Times will stay mum and Cruz's book will suddenly appear next week. Usually they refuse to review conservative #1 bestsellers (Coulter, Levin) because they don't want anyone knowing about them. With Cruz they went the extra step of scrubbing him from the list entirely.
Probably one reason you got the "free" cd were the insane ticket prices (and I would love to be wrong about that!). There were demostrations in front of the late, great Music Hall in Houston when the top ticket price went from $5 to $6 and no "service charge" for buying a ticket, of course. I was able to sneak into the place and see Spirit for free thanks to the confusion. Cruz? I see him as an intelligent and dangerous man. A demagogue with his own bizarre agenda. Utterly ruthless. My significant other saw him give what amounted to a stump speech in San Antonio last year at a conference and was surprised at how effective he was in that setting. Not someone to dismiss lightly. The Times and the book thingy? Don't have a clue.
I think you probably undersell them. The crazies will drop out during the primary process and Clinton will compete against a fairly strong candidate. I don't think the fact that Trump is leading early polls means anything. It's a lot easier to let that syllable pass your lips when there are no repercussions -- if the primaries were today, Trump's popularity would suddenly vanish. Just like all the crazies came and went last time before the inevitable Romney candidacy, so will it be this time, with one of Bush or Walker (or maybe my darkhorse fear, Cruz) left standing. I don't know if either would win, but they'll make credible candidates. I don't think this is true. They are by no means done if they lose the presidential election, but it's certainly better to have the presidency than to not have it. If nothing else than to get the EPA off their nuts. I think they very much want to win.
They can't win in a National election with their platform but they can control gerrymandered districts if the national narrative is hot button social issues. If you ever hear a GOP candidate talk about limiting military costs and disengaging from international conflicts, keeping government out of personal life choices, separating religion from government showing no favoritism to any one religion, breaking up 'too big to fail' banks, conserving natural resources for future generations, rapidly expanding renewable domestic energy as a National security issue, then I'd say you have a serious Republican. Right now it's just spectacle (thanks Claire Underwood)
Poll: Trump still in pole position I guess the Republican party rebrand ain't going so well. Maybe if there were fewer Cro Magnons in the party or it spent less time playing down to them, it wouldn't be in this mess.
very interesting dynamic that's going on. day to day signing into facebook i see enough Republican memes from friends to make my head spin.
Billionaires aren't usually dumb, but many are self-interested. I still think you have to look at the motivations of the people who are paying for this lunacy and ask what their 'smart' strategy is. If it's not just 'theater' to direct the national discourse away from economics and building niche gerrymandered districts to control the House then I don't have a clue what they are thinking.
This is one of the reasons I dumped Facebook several years ago. I just got sick and tired of the right-wing nonsense some of my contacts repeatedly posted, especially youngsters.
I get both, left and right wing. I'd like to think its not typical but it sure seems like it. I log in every few months and just have to treat it as entertainment.
Trump's recent comments about Graham and Perry have me like: <iframe width="854" height="510" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/zo-YVqV0v4Q" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
